Chapter 6: Junk Chimera part 3

"So let me get this straight? This little girl is the pistol?" Claire looked at him with skeptic eyes as the said girl in question sat on the workbench staring at the two of them.

Rewind to the previous evening

"Papa?! I'm not your father!?" Kaden was very confused, for good reason, he was far too young to have a child and the girl looked nothing like him.

She looked up at him with curious eyes, a shade of deep blue, not at all close to the dark brown of his eyes.

"But you made me…" She sadly remarked, unaware that she should explain something like how that made any sense.

"I-Wait, I made you?" Kaden was about to snap back but that comment confused him even further.

"Yeah! Look, you even gave me this today!" The girl smiled as she let go of him and turned around. On her neck was a crude handwritten tattoo, it read 'Junk Chimera'.

"You're kidding me…You're Junkira?!" Kaden was surprised and worried. How was he going to show off the product to Black Heart during the expo?

The girl just smiled and gave him another hug, giggling the entire time.

Back to the present

"Look, I know I sound crazy, but-"

"Of course you sound crazy!" Claire interrupted him before he could explain. "You can't honestly convince me that she is the pistol you've been working on for the last 5 months!"

"Well, what else or who else could she be?!" Kaden was already exhausted and his calm and collected mindset wasn't something that he could continue to keep up.

The small girl looked between the two, moderately confused as she sat on the table. They both sighed and looked at her, Kaden with a slight frown and Claire with a morbid curiosity.

"Actually… I think I might be able to figure out what went wrong if I ask my friends who helped me make the magic circuit for her." Claire grabbed her phone out of her pocket.

Kaden sighed again and patted Junkira on the head, "Please do, if they give an answer that will help us or at least give us an idea of what's going on."

Claire nodded as she walked outside to make a phone call, hoping to find the answer to her new problem.

Back inside the shop

Contending with having a child was not something that Kaden was prepared to do at this moment, let alone trying to provide for her? He was considering all the issues that might arise since she wasn't exactly a human. Maybe she was something like a golem now? Kaden had heard of golems in the wild but they were extremely dangerous and didn't have a proper consciousness which Junkira clearly did have.

The more he wracked his mind the more confused he got, just how did a basic magic circuit give a pistol a full life? Nothing he could think up gave him a clear idea of how that could happen, hopefully Claire would get a more clear answer after her phone call. For now, all Kaden could do was wait.

But what now? If the pistol was essentially gone, what would he show at the Expo?

He glanced at Junkira who was looking at his tools as she sat on the workbench. She reached for the drypoint that he used to make the engraving and she held it in her hand while tracing the name on her neck. She looked like she had a moment of realization and quickly tried to concentrate a bit, by closing her eyes. Suddenly, she reached with the tool and started scratching her neck.

Kaden quickly reached to stop her but paused upon hearing metal scraping metal. "Ummmmm, Junkira, what are you doing?"

The little girl moved her hand away from her neck to reveal that instead of the skin that was there previously, metal now resided in a little patch. "I was trying to write my name right." She looked a bit proud of herself for figuring it out, not realizing she can't even see what she was writing and had just undone the work Kaden had done the prior day.

He sighed and took the tool from her, "You have the right idea, but let me do it. You don't even know how to write properly yet and you can't see it."

She smiled as she turned to let him see the metal patch, "Okay papa! I'll let you do it!" Her legs started kicking back and forth as she sat, excited to see the new name engraved on her neck.

Kaden took a breath and started engraving, not sure where this was going or how she figured out how to transform only partially.

Meanwhile outside

Claire quickly lifted the phone to her ear as she tapped her foot impatiently. "I swear if those two did something that they thought was just a prank so help me…"

The phone ringing abruptly ended as someone picked up the other line, "Hello? Uni, is that you?"

"Yes it is, Blanc. I was wondering if I could talk to your sisters. I need to ask them some things." The malice dripping from her words was palpable, she wasn't really trying to conceal it at all.

"Uni, if you're about to yell at them I would request that I stay in the room, I do not wish that someone other than me does the duty of making sure they behave properly." Blanc's tone left no room for argument.

Uni sighed as she sat on the bench outside the shop, "Well call them over and you'll find out what's going on. And I would please ask that you move quickly, I'm in the middle of something and don't have a lot of time."

The sound of the phone being lightly put down was heard as Blanc walked away for a moment to go get her two little siblings. Who knows what Uni had in store for them? Blanc could only hope it was the result of another prank gone wrong and not something more serious.

Uni sat in silence for a moment thinking about what she was going to say and how she was going to say it. She couldn't fully reveal what the magic she asked them for was for, then who knows what might happen to Kaden? She wanted her CPU life and her "ordinary" life to stay separated. That's why she went through all the trouble of disguising herself with some basic magic and contacts. She wasn't about to lose her job or the companionship of a normal work relationship over some ridiculous prank, was she? She shook her head, Kaden wouldn't do that, he was kind hearted despite his more sarcastic sense of humor. In fact, he never talked down to her unless he was joking, which was surprising considering she thought that he was going to be more self centered when she started working. A shop on the edge of town that only had a few repeat customers and very few new customers being run by one person? That was inconceivable for her considering the high rise industrial zone that a majority of Lastation had become. But a small shop in the residential area making highly specialized weaponry wasn't unheard of, maybe he could make something of himself with some time.

"Alright, the phone is on speaker and they're here. Ask away Uni." Blanc's voice cut through the fog of Uni's thoughts as the call finally resumed.

"Hey Rom, Ram, when you gave me that magic circuit a few weeks back, did you put anything strange in it? Maybe something to mess with me?" She had the veneer of someone just asking a question but Blanc could tell she wasn't too happy with whatever the two had probably done.

On Blanc's side she saw the twins tilt their heads in confusion while they both tried to remember before Ram started giggling while Rom looked at her with just as much confusion as she had a few moments ago.

"Well I guess I've been found out! Mwahahaha!" Ram laughed like the villain she apparently saw herself as while Uni just listened patiently, waiting for Blanc to rip into her.

"Ram, what did you do?" Uni cut straight to the point since she wasn't in the mood for any kind of messing around any more.

"You see dear Uni, I have tricked you! Since that circuit needed to be complete by itself, I thought it'd be funny if it included the ability to turn whatever it was put on into a living being! Mwahahaha!" She either thought she was a mad scientist or something though Blanc just stared at her with a squint as she turned back to the phone.

"Well there's the answer for you Uni, I hope that you didn't engrave that circuit into anything dangerous, right?" Blanc's older sister sense was tingling but she had no idea how close she was to the actual answer.

"Thankfully, no. I just tested it on something unimportant and was a bit surprised is all." Uni deflected while looking back into the shop, watching Kaden use his tools on Junkira. Fear flashed across her face for a moment before she noticed that Junkira was smiling and talking to him, not a single concern on her face.

"Look I need to go, and Rom, Ram? You'll get your payback when I decide the time is right." She hung up the phone and walked back inside, leaving Blanc staring at the phone while the twins started trying to inch their way out of the room.

"Girls, you better have a good explanation for thinking this is funny or else I might have to punish you." Blanc left no room for any argument, her tone was calm but firm.

Rom didn't do anything since, as far as she was concerned, this was all Ram's fault so as soon as Ram went to appeal to Blanc, she left the room. Blanc didn't stop her, whatever Uni was going through was definitely Ram's fault anyways.