I found myself in the training room, my arms were on fire as I could feel my mana circuits flaring up from overuse. I used my sleeve to get some sweat off my forehead as they were getting dangerously close to getting in my eyes. I looked to my left to see Mr. Apollo some feet away from me, he was reading a book that I could not read the title of. The top two-thirds of the book was orange with a circular design in the center of it was the bottom third being black with a white line separating the two colors.
I look in front of me to see a broken target, small bouts of steam are coming from it. From my side, I hear a book closing. "Not bad, you're getting better at magecraft. Faster than I ever could. You might be a prodigy or at least gifted." His eyes turned back to me as he looked mostly indifferent. "Where do you want to take this magecraft of yours?" He asked.
My sight flicked to his as I tried to catch my breath and produce an answer. "Uh, I would like to focus on steam based magecraft as it comes na-"
"That isn't what I'm asking, more like your purpose." He explained.
"Oh, uhm. I would like to be a student worthy enough that you can brag about me. That's about it." I replied.
Mr. Apollo started rubbing his chin as if he had a long beard. "I guess that is a fair reason, just make sure its strong enough to get you through hardship." Mr. Apollo continued to eye me down as if he were inspecting me like a doctor would. "Just don't die Marth, I rather not lose your ability." Mr. Apollo said as he went back to his book leaving me confused as while I was tired, saying something like that to me seemed out of place.
I turned my attention back to the test dummy to see that it repaired itself to how it was before I started training. Taking a deep breath, I clasped my hands together as I felt the familiar surge of mana. As it surged a small mark began to form on the back of my hand. "Breath and sh-" instead of the spell what seemed like my heartbeat echoes throughout my body not once, not twice but three times. What I wanted to be a small surge of mana quickly ramped up as my arms burn as if it was on fire. "AhhhhhhhhhhhhhH." A scream from my heart left my mouth without a second thought. I could not tell how long the burning was, but it only got worse by the second. I reversed the flow of mana out of my arms but as I did the burning only traveled with the mana. No matter where I sent the mana the pain followed, I barely controlled it or rather it felt like my body was doing whatever it could do to get rid of it.
"Send the mana to your arms." I heard Mr. Apollo said as I sent the mana where he asked. Within a second what seemed like bandages wrapped around my arms. "Give it a moment, you will feel something move underneath the bandages, do not resist it." As he said I did feel something move, it was wet with a sort of texture that was familiar but could not focus on as the pain was still there. However, the pain soon started to fade as the bandages started to change colors from white to black like someone dropped ink on it.
Mr. Apollo stopped in front of me as he continued to carry his book while tasting his sucker. "You are suffering from a mana block within your circuits. Gladly this is nothing terrible, however it can easily get worse."
He drops my hand as I let the feeling of pain leave me completely.
"This is perfect time, from here you'll learn another important skill. Your next lesson slash assignment is to figure out how to deal with this issue outside without the need of tools like bandages. If you do what I hope, you'll have other applications for it." Mr. Apollo said. "With that you are free to go, you can use whatever you can find to help you come up with an idea."
After he finished saying that he started to leave the room.
"Oh, before I leave depending on how things play out in the background. I may not be able to teach that class anymore, at least in person. I'll have the homunculus to be the permanent teacher. Tell the others if you find them."
"That seems quite sudden, what happened?" I asked.
"Nothing yet, but I have a feeling. I will say this however." Mr. Apollo said as he looked at me. "If anything happens to me understand this, everything in that office will be yours. You're my proud first student here and I don't regret picking you up."
"You don't have to be so serious Mr. Apollo, if something can hurt you, then I doubt I could do anything." I spoke.
"That is true now, however. Why way of magecraft is all about growth and the passing of information and passion of the human will. You are a human just like everyone else, more so than I am. So, I'm sure you'll be fine." Mr. Apollo said as he left the room, not allowing me to say anything else.
Leaving me allow with bandages that are licking my arms. I make my way to the top of the landship. I was some distance away from the edge. For a piece of metal going so fast, the wind felt surprisingly soft. I look around as I see a large body of water some way away with the moonlight bouncing off it, surrounding it being small hills. It looks like a small utopia of some small tribe who lived there, much better than whatever was in Kazdel.
"Seem like you're gaining his habits."
I turn around to see Ms. Saria, wearing a lab coat along with a metal water bottle is colored orange and black. Her expression was mostly flat but not a bad one per say.
"Whose habits?" I asked.
"Kotemine of course. He often comes up here at random times of the day. I catch him in the early morning, evenings and even deep into the night. Sometimes I wonder if he gets stuff done." Saria said as she stood looking out to nature. "What happened to your arms?"
"Oh, something just happened during my train. Mr. Apollo said it wasn't too terrible but it's something I'll have to work on, so it doesn't happen again." I explained to her as I stuck my arm out to give her a better view. As I showed her a small lump came and went as one strand of the bandage turned black like charcoal.
I saw Ms. Saria's eyes instantly narrow as she watched what happened. "Oh, don't worry it meant to treat the pain in my arms after what happened today."
Her eyes softened slightly although her intensity was still ever clear. "Have you gone to the infirmary? I'm sure many of the medical operators can give their two senses. More eyes are better than just one."
"I could but, this is an issue only Mr. Apollo could solve. It's a side effect of using his style of fighting." As Marth was talking a thought or rather a question game to mind. "Mr. Saria how does someone get rid of something, like if the body makes too much of something?" I asked.
Ms. Saria looked at me confused for a moment but quickly opened her mouth. "Depends on what you are trying to get rid of. Waste you remove through urine and fecal matter, too much energy due to things like sugar or adrenaline you get rid of through doing something. That a quick answer, I doubt you'll want to hear a depth explanation this late. Although in some cases the body will store it in the body, think of fat for that example."
"I see, damn. I really hoped that I would have learned something from that, but nothing came to mind." I spoke.
"Sorry that I couldn't be of much help." Saria replied.
I respond by telling her its ok, along that I'm feeling exhausted. I wished Ms. Saria good night and retreated to my room. As I walked through the hallway, I saw that half of the bandages had turned black and nothing had come to mind still.
Within the landship, Apollo found himself in front of a door, a familiar door within the landship. He pressed the door open to see a respectable number of people, two of them being Nian and the Elite operator Mechanist standing in front of the object in question. The large black pyramid that was retrieved from Kjerag, slick engravings along its surface.
"I heard big news, so what's up." Apollo asked as he ate another sucker.
Both Nian and Mechanist turn around, both having bags under their eyes the many hours they must have spent working.
"I think we managed to open it, took long but we have an idea on how to open it." Nian explained as she rubbed her eye. "We had to change my abilities so much that I can barely recognize it as my own such as this."
Nian pointed to the side as Apollo eyes locked in on an object. It was a sphere with engraving on it akin to the pyramid. As Apollo focused on the sphere it noticed an aura of energy although extremely faint to the point of it being invisible even to him.
That's our key, we test it, and we get a reaction out of the thing. Some steam and slight movement, something out of a movie." Nian explained.
"Currently we are waiting on a few others, such as kal'tsit. She wants to see what happens." Mechanist said as he pointed a bit past the key towards the operators, Ace, and Blaze. "In case something goes wrong we have a few combat and medical operators on standby, Kal'tsit orders and she tend to be correct about things like these."
Apollo mused as the information. "She might be right with this."
It was only a few minutes until Kal'tsit entered the room with a face Apollo is familiar with.
"Oh, hi Silence. Welcome to hell." Apollo said as he pointed towards the key.
"It is good to see you again Apollo, also thank you for the training dummy. Ifrit has found some joy in training her fire abilities again."
"Don't think too much about it. I just want to see the kids reach their potential. Besides that." Apollo looked towards Kal'tsit and made his way towards her. "Boss Cat, any idea what's in there?"
Kal'tsit looked at Apollo briefly before returning her gaze to the key and the black object. "I was going to ask you myself; this has your name written all over it. In the span on one mission, you somehow did a lot of things I feel. You got kidnapped, brought an unknown object that even Nian has issues understanding. Add in that the enemy our operators fought had similar abilities to you and an old man who spoke of said enemy. " Kal'tsit made her keep her voice down making sure that only Apollo could hear. "Do not take this the wrong way and it could be wrong. However, do not overstep your bounds and put my operators in danger. I will not hesitate to kill you; I have done it before. I can do it again.
Apollo could only hum at the threat. "Loud and clear. At least if something goes wrong here, don't get mad at me. I have no idea what it could be inside.
"I see." Kal'tsit replied in a faint voice.
After some time Nian and Mechanist gave Kal'tsit the green light that they are ready to activate the key. With a swift nod Kal'tsit gave them the ok. Nian walked over to the key, as she did the combat operators doing last-minute checks on their equipment. The medical operators watching from behind those armed. Nian placed her hand on the key as she followed power into the key. A sound hum came from the sphere as red streaks of light appeared on it.
"All levels are good, more power Nian." Mechanist said.
Nian pumped more power into the key, the black pyramid reacted. Symbols and designs akin to an engineer's notebook sketch lit up. On the siding facing everyone was a symbol that no one had seen before. A near complete circle with leaves along its shape. Within the circle was another circle with a tide wave in the shape of a 'C.' Kal'tsit looked to Apollo but on his face was an expression she had not seen before, his expression was neutral. Hissing filled the air of the room as steam left the pyramid, soon came a sound no one expecting. Coughing.
"Damn, where the hell am I?"
"Where you are? That's what I should be asking?
"Wait, no is that who I think it is?"
"I hope, your voice is so annoying at times?"
"That's rude, cough, cough."
"Still stick as always, even as a servant. How sad."
Everyone in the room was confused as to what was happening. Everyone in some form was expecting either a weapon of mass destruction or some shadow of power like something out of a show or movie. Instead, they were treated into something akin to a comedy sketch. After the smoke and steam cleared every finally got a visual of the two people speaking.
One of the unknown people was a woman, small in stature. Dressed in a black out for a military official with spots of gold, green and bronze. Off their back is a red flowing cape, on one side there was a sword, on the other being an older style of firearm. Her face carrying features of a Higasian woman.
The other person is also a woman. Slightly taller in stature than the other, her top being both sky blue and white while her pants remained black. Along her neck was a scoff the same color as her pants, her fair short hair tied into a ponytail as on her hip was also a sword. Like the first one, she also carried the features of a Higasian woman.
After a moment, the two nice where they were, it was not the place where they are normally summoned. Instead of seeing a familiar red-headed master who saved the world. All they see are people they are not familiar with, everyone having some form of animal feature on them. Everyone expects one, as both the women looked, their eyes trained onto one person. Someone they didn't want to see again, someone they should be dead.
The room went cold, whatever scene of warmth that would heat up the operators from the object opening disappeared as the powerful and violent wave of murderous intent pulsed from the two women. Before anyone could react, the blonde woman disappeared from everyone's view. Just as fast as she disappeared, she appeared Infront of Apollo, blade drawn with a killer's eyes trained on him. Aloud clang resonated throughout the room, as Apollo changed slightly. His hands had small aggressive jagged marks that appeared on his hands as a dark red blade with no clear features quickly formed to stop the attack. Similar marks appeared along his face against a mix of cracked bullet proof glass and the cracks formed from dried dirt.
Like a quick paced dance, Apollo shoved the blonde woman back and jumped back avoid the myriads of gunshots that was aimed at his direction. Within the air were a handful of guns like the one on the red woman's hip. Pull the trigger were deeply saturated red skeleton hands no bigger than an arm.
Apollo relaxed his stance slightly as he began to speak. "I rather we not fight, I do not want innocent people getting caught in the crossfire. Wouldn't it be rather unfortunate if someone were to die here?" Apollo toss a look toward the red woman. "I know Nobu isn't one to care given her nature." His gaze returns to the blonde one. "But Okita I know deep down you care for the innocent. So let not fight."
Silence filled the room as the quick hitch of combat was at a standstill. Okita raised her sword.
"I hate dealing with the devil."