"Hmm, it should work this time."
Pressing the button on the handle, motors start whirling causing a buzzing noise to fill the room and my bow slowly folds into its shield mode.. Halfway through the transformation, the right bow limb catches on something in the mechanism and stops moving while the motor in charge of rolling up the bow string goes too slow on the left limb, and the excess line gets caught between two folding parts, jamming the whole thing. Sighing, I press another button and have the weapon go into its bow mode. Darn, I was hoping to finish it today.
"Still broken?" Rhet's voice call out from his desk. Checking the time on his pocket watch, he grabs a small vial from a drawer and throws it to me. Ugh, this thing. "Well, at least this is the last day you need to take this. Your arm will be out of that brace in a week," he reminds me as I gulp down that nasty drink.
"So how are the repairs going boss?"
"Argh, nowhere. That Taijitu really did a number on the shield." There's still a small dent where the beast's fang hit the shield. I've replaced the broken parts but it seems the impact just cracked some gears, bent some pieces of metal ever so slightly and cut some of the circuitry in ways too small to be noticeable and at this rate, I may as well just redo the entire system.
Deciding to take a break from it and check on my other equipment. Glancing at the blade of my dagger, I find the handle has separated and needs repair. "I need to get something from my locker." My pushing my chair away, I open the oak wood door of our dormitory before heading down the deserted corridor to the locker room. Arriving there, I open my locker and retrieve the small wooden kit in the corner. Closing the locker and I head out of the room. Before I head out of the room, I notice a locker has been left open, huh, could have sworn it was close awhile ago, there's no one here except…
There are plenty of shadows here. Smirking I walk out the locker room, leaving the first year to get whatever he's looking for, sneaky little guy. On the way back to my dormitory, I hear a relatively loud "No I don't" coming from a rooftop quite a distance away. Some people really don't understand that at the dead of night, sound can travel quite a good distance especially in a large open area and when the buildings have windows every few meters. Something about Jaune faking his transcripts. ( don't pay it too much attention to it, it's been done before and will be done again, though the perpetuators don't usually say the fact at a large volume at night for everyone to hear, and definitely not on a rooftop above other's dorms.
Filtering out the rest of the conversation I head back to the dormitory and when I get there, I drag my feet to the foldable table where my dagger rests. Removing the pins the connect the blade and holds the hilt together, I look at the inner side of the hilt to check fir any hidden damage.
What I don't expect to find is a relatively small crystal hidden in a hollowed on part of the hilt.
Picking up the crystal, I get a closer look at it. The crystal is lush a leaf green and glows an emerald green. Unlike other crystals which are cold and dead to touch, this one is warm and seems to pulse in my hand. Is this? Bringing the crustal to my left forearm, I feel a warm sensation wash over it, energy coursing through it and any stiffness at having my arm trapped for weeks disappearing.
"Hmm, Rhet, can you help me take off this brace, its healed."
A look of confusion on his face, Rhet comes over and inspects the brace before removing it from my hand arm. Before he can ask, I pass the crystal to him. "This is…"
"Yes. It's a nature crystal, I can heal minor injuries. Now know how I got my crystal aura."
Crystal aura is a rare thing, practically the stuff of legends in fact. It's not easy to acquire, you need several factors to be right just so that you have a chance of acquiring it. Heck, the four of use are the only people we know to have it and we've done a lot of searching, looking for someone else who has crystal aura and found none. Even though some books of mythology mentions it, they don't give any examples causing us to believe that there are no known documented cases of people with crystal aura.
The conditions for crystal aura are: the user's semblance must be a crystal effect, a user's aura colour must match that crystals colour and the user has to bond with a crystal of that type. This worked out for us since our semblance, fire, ice, electricity and nature are crystal effects, though the nature crystal only appears in books. It should be noted that the aura colour changes when attaining crystal aura, from electric yellow to amber, cyan to sapphire, scarlet to ruby and grass green to emerald. The change is sudden but subtle so most people don't notice the difference unless they're actively keeping track of your aura. The last condition was always the one we were most uncertain about due to the fact that it seems that I don't have a crystal but the fact that there is one in the dagger pretty much proves it.
The process of bonding with a crystal is rather unclear, but in theory all one has to do is connect to an item that contains a crystal, even if they don't know about the crystal. For Fireo it's his flamethrowers, both of them containing a burn crystal, Rhet's quill is basically a freeze crystal, Lioso's machine gun is powered by a shock crystal and my dagger has the nature crystal. So when a bond is created between the crystal and and the user, the crystal feeds back to user and at this point it is possible for the user's aura to be crystallised. We're still not sure what causes one's aura to be crystallised, but some sort of event happens crystallising the user's aura giving them crystal aura.
It should also be noted that gaining crystal aura also comes with a crystal skill. It can be useful at times, being very powerful but like a crystal, you can only use it for a short time and then you're out of aura. For Fireo, he got Celestion, the fire dragon, Rhet can turn a huge amount of area around him into a landscape of ice, low temperatures included and Lioso send electricity though the air around him, causing the muscles of enemies around him to tighten and making them curl up into a basll.
Mu musings is interrupted when Rhet passes the crystal back. Realising that the brace is off I finally scratch that itch that's been bugging me for the past few weeks. Deciding that now's a good time to sleep, I wish them a good night and lay on my bed, pulling my hoodie above my eyes to block out any light and slowly begin to drift into sleep.