Book II: Of Friends and Foes

Chapter XII

"General Adonis! Can you tell us more about the man and blade that broke free of your testing facility yesterday?" the newswoman asked Adonis on the television screen.

"Absolutely. This blade is an extremely powerful blade that was crystal edited. The blade will only attack if provoked and the man with her is just one of our illogical employees who got in over his head. According to our reports, he assumed that he can use this blade as a weapon of mass murder. However, this is not the case. The blade will not attack unless provoked. If you see this man or this blade, calmly call the BCC and we will be there immediately. Simply leave the area and you will be in no danger. Whatever you do, do not provoke the blade or this man," Adonis warned.

"Do you think this man may force the blade out of its editing?" the newswoman inquired.

"Crystal editing has never proven to be undoable, this man is simply an idiot."

"And what of the artificial Aegis?"

"Final testing has been completed. The weapon known as Pyra is ready to be used in dangerous situations, it will be used in the hunt for this blade as it's first true test in real-world situations."

"That's great! And what is the endgame plan for Pyra? How will it help us in the long run?"

"Only time will tell."

KOS-MOS flipped off the television as she heard Acacia stir.

Acacia woke up and immediately held her head.

"You are currently experiencing a headache caused by the excess alcohol in your system from last night, commonly known as a hangover," KOS-MOS explained.

"I know what a damn hangover is, I've had one every day for the last week," Acacia dismissed.

"Intoxication during a BCC-designated mission is a Class Four violation of your duties," KOS-MOS pointed out.

"So what? Are you gonna tell on me?"

"Negative, it is not in my protocol to do so. But I must advise staying alert. We missed our opportunity to strike our targets here and will have to wait for the next train to follow them," KOS-MOS instructed.

"KOS-MOS how did we arrive here?"

"We arrived using General Adonis' Binoceros, a marginally slower, less powerful version of his ship, the Monoceros."

"I think the boy may take his time in Leftheria, let's use that instead of taking the train, it'll only be a three hour trip instead of a six hour one."

"Are you positive that our target will remain there?" KOS-MOS questioned.

"Yes. By the way, I have a bruise on my left temple, do you know what that was from?" Acacia asked.

"In order to ensure that you safely returned to your room, I had to render you unconscious before you made any more reckless decisions."

"You attacked without any order to do so? Are you programmed to act on your own? A simple machine shouldn't be able to do that... This doesn't make any sense! Should I be worried, confused, scared?"

"The algorithms I have been programmed with do not support the comprehension of illogical human thought."

Acacia looked at her, unsure of how to respond to this.

"Just... get loaded up, we leave immediately."

"Granny! We didn't die!" I called out as I knocked on her door.

"Well that's a relief," I heard her laugh as she opened it. "And with Brighid's journal, I knew you could do it."

"Well sort of...," Mythra added.

"What happened?" Granny asked in a way that let us know she expected something to happen.

"Well...," I began before I explained everything that happened. I told her about Argentum, Rafi, Juliani, Praxis, Theory, Acacia, Adonis, New Torna, and Pyra. I hadn't realized how much had happened until I began explaining it.

"The artificial weapon was named Pyra?" she clarified.

"Yeah, she definitely seemed to have been based off of me, but fire instead of light as her element," Mythra explained.

Granny laughed. "And you two really believe that she's artificial?"

"Is... she not?" I asked.

"If she isn't, this is scary. I don't know what that general did to make 'er act so rudely, let alone attack people with such ferocity," Granny pointed out.

"Rafi bet he could build artificial blade!" Rafi gloated from behind us.

"You wanna put your money where your mouth is furball?" Granny challenged.

Rafi didn't back down. "Of course! Does old Gormotti have artificial blade?"

Granny laughed in a way that made Rafi flinch a bit. "Call me old again and Juliani will be the least of your problems. But if you think you can fix an artificial blade, then I might have a job for you."

"Yippee! Rafi got job to do!" he said excitedly as we followed her into her work shed that I kept all my tools in.

She moved some stuff out of the way to see what appeared to be a little girl. She was definitely a robot, as her "hair" wasn't actually hair at all, but a metal casing that resembled hair. She wore a white beret with a red bow tied around it, and she had on some poofy shorts that resembled frilly bloomers, but were black and were obviously meant to be worn on the outside. The rest of her body was metallic gray with orange stripes placed around her different parts.

"Poor girl hasn't said a word in five hundred years," Granny said.

Rafi had already started looking at it before responding.

"She seem to have underwent heavy damage, but everything seems to be in perfect working order!" Rafi examined.

"So you can't figure it out either, eh? Man, Tora was so stumped, I guess it wouldn't be fair to expect someone who wasn't even involved in 'er design to fix the problem," Granny said.

"Rafi never said it was flawless. If everything repaired correctly, then Rafi wouldn't be able to tell blade was damaged, give Rafi some time!"

He urged us to leave, and so we did without hesitation. I had seen Granny go into that shed and heard her talking to that girl, but I had no idea that it ever lived. I just assumed she had a screw loose or something.

I realized I hadn't told her about Gabriel and Kasandra, and after doing so, I inquired about the way he used her weapon. Granny began laughing hysterically.

"You're telling me you don't know the Lorathian Combat Style? Not even after traveling all the way to New Torna? I thought you'd 'ave figured it out by now. Fighting separate from Mythra like you do isn't beneficial to either of you, and you make yourselves weaker by doing so."

"Who's Lora?" Mythra asked.

"It's late," Granny said, changing the subject. "Rest tonight, tomorrow I'll fill you in on as much as I can from the previous millennia."

We looked through a window at the sky and realized that it was already night, it had been so busy that neither Mythra nor I had paid attention to what time it was.

Readability Level: 11th-12th Grade

Time Taken: 3 Hours

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