Chapter 1: Summer Festival: The Night Before
Summary:
The reason why you should always procrastinate your school projects.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“Oh, come on, work damn it!”
When you’re a kid, adults around you always parrot the same mantras about “dreaming big” and “following your heart”, but no one ever tells you what to do when your dreams turn out to be mediocre and dreadful at best. If asked now, Shieda Kayn’s only dream would be to get a hot home-cooked dinner and have a deep uninterrupted sleep for at least seventy-two hours. This dream wasn’t necessarily big, but his heart would eventually stop sooner rather than later anyway, considering the number of energy drinks he had consumed in the past month. No one told a seven-year-old Shieda that getting into a superhero school is actually a shitty dream, because at the end of the day, school is a school, and all schools fucking suck. Now, almost a decade later, sitting at the working table in tech lab #7 of the Babylon academy, a stink hole where he spent the better part of the past nine months, Shieda Kayn wondered if all children grow up to regret their dreams, or he was special even in something like this.
It was the end of the school year, so most of the academy students were spending their days lazing around in the grass or playing a new edition of some card game with little action figurines that could shout profanities at your opponent. Shieda wasn’t a huge fan of card games, (though he was delighted to overhear some boys from his club discussing the list of insults they should program into their figurines next) but he would pay the last bits of his pocket money to have a roll in the school lawn and get a feeling of late spring-early summer sun on his tired face.
As if pulling him back to the harsh reality, the circuit in a robotic arm he was currently working on exploded in a bunch of sparks and made Shieda flinch hard enough to drop the screw on the floor. Sighing, he grabbed a recorder from the top drawer of his table and pressed a button on top of the device.
“Shieda Kayn, first year, Babylon Academy advanced engineering class. Recording number seventy-one, or seventy-two… oh for fucks sake, no one’s gonna listen to this anyway.” The recording button snapped back with a soft click, but after a moment clicked again, now with more irritation. “The thing’s exploded. I think it’s what… the fourth time? I swear, those manuals were clearly written by an old fart in the middle of an aneurysm. I still believe it’s somehow connected to the materials used for the base. Maybe it’s too hot, or too cold, or whatever the fuck else. Doesn’t matter really, because if your battle robot shuts down from being in a room temperature, you probably shouldn’t turn it on in the first place. However, I don’t know what other metal is usable for quantum tunnelling, not like this one would realistically work, given it burst into flames from me breathing on it too hard. Anyway, the presentation starts in, err-“ Shieda squinted at the wall hanging clock, glass material shining against the lamp light, and grimaced, “About sixteen hours, which is wonderful news for someone whose project is ready, and who is not me.”
He was tired, oh so tired.
Every year at the start of summer, Babylon Academy held a festival where school clubs showed off their skills in combat and had a great time being cool, funny, and popular. Luminary Club however, was the only one that did not get to take part in any fun and instead held a nerd-gathering where nerds had to present their projects to other nerds, while the biggest available at that moment nerds in the field were giving them scores based on their nerd level. At least that’s how Shieda would describe it.
Clubs were an essential part of the academy and dictated the course of studying you would take for the following year. It was kinda confusing why something this important would have such a superficial name, but everything in this place was kinda backwards if you stopped and started thinking about it for more than two seconds. Shieda, who was cut off from all of the cool clubs because of low performance scores on his entrance testing, had thinking as a last resort of a hobby, which probably was the reason why he was brooding as much as he was.
While Battle Club, Assassin Club, and Sorcery Club students were focused on honing their skills and dueling each other on the school fields, Luminary Club spent their nights in labs crafting weapons, armour, or fancy boots for rich and fancy know-it-alls like some sort of free labour workers. For Shieda, who only got here because of his A (for Average) in science, this was the equivalent of being locked in a room with a pack of toothpicks and a broken humming-top while kids behind the door were playing a new video game without a care in the world. Technically speaking, he could’ve still been training in his spare time, if only to get ready for the club entrance testing at the start of the next school year, but with so many assignments and so many students much smarter than him around, Shieda spent the better part of his first year just trying to keep up. If he wanted to have an actual chance of stepping into Assassin club’s training hall during his second year, he first needed to gain the advantage, which in his mind was to make himself a nice and shiny battle robot to assist him in fights, which turned out to be more difficult than he first thought, because the damn thing could not stop exploding in his face.
Shieda’s phone chirped, buried underneath scrap metal parts, instant noodles cartons, and miles of multi-coloured wires. He would have plenty of time to clean up tomorrow after the presentation is over. And after he’d got a proper sleep. And a cold drink with cherry flavour (not like he was the cherry flavour type of guy, but it would be nice to treat himself once in a while). Giving his darkened from working with metal hands a proper wipe on his pants, Shieda unlocked his phone.
“Yo!” The message stated, “Ready for tomorrow? I told dad about your fancy nerd project and he suggested we go together and see you live. I asked if we could afford to close the shop for a day, but he said he wouldn’t miss you speaking in front of the crowd. He’s charging his camera as we speak. Gonna be hilarious.”
Shieda sighed. His younger sister Akali was about to graduate middle school and had spent the whole year harassing him about his classes, dorms, girls, food, and whether or not Shieda became popular enough so she would not be embarrassed to publicly admit they were related. Unfortunately for her, Shieda wasn’t admitted to any high-profile clubs, was spending most of the nights sleeping in the farthest lab in the building that did not have any traffic, was forgetting his classmates’ names right after they left the room, and did not have enough money to go out with other students, most of whom were born rich and would die even richer, depending on if they survived more then a year in the field after graduation. Now when he was thinking about it, their survival rate would also probably rely on the quality of their gear and weapons, which was kinda his job, and that would also mean that it was actually in their best interest to treat him to a nice meal once in a while.
“Oh, Shieda!” Those lucky students would say. “We are so grateful for your hard work! Sacrificing your place in the prestigious Assassin Club and spending your best years studying engineering, just so you could protect us and save innocent civilians from evil intergalactic monsters with your genius inventions! You are the true hero, Shieda! Our gratitude cannot truly be expressed with words, so please accept this beef steak instead!” Maybe they would be grateful enough to actually let him join the club, or pay him in real money for once. Maybe, he would even get kissed by someone popular and pretty, but right now beef steak looked much more appealing than any other reward for his unfair and cruel life.
Shieda looked at the clock again. Fifteen hours. He had fifteen hours to finish the project he tried to complete for months.
He had to come up with a new plan. Maybe something flew under the radar with so many manuals not making a lack of sense. If authors did a leap of fate with making stuff up on the spot, maybe he should too; after all, if he fails, there always is a way out, even if that means staying in his dad’s workshop and repairing magical toasters for the rest of his days.
Crawling out of the spider web of wires and almost tripping on the stray empty potato chips bag, Shieda rummaged through the drawers that he'd been meticulously filling with different sorts of trash for the past school year.
“Where are you, where are you… Aha!”
Squished between his lost advanced math textbook and a 5-months-old furniture magazine (“LIMITED OFFER: buy two couches now and get a third one with a 3% discount! Shipping is not included!”) was an old binder he had since elementary school. Scratched and covered with half-ripped stickers, it was a memory of itself even without having to take a look inside. Shieda opened it, scheming through work he did during the winter break, when he had decided to actually make an effort to start this whole affair with robotics. Numerous drawings, blueprints, and schemes he redone from memory based on his dad’s work regarding energy flow and its synergy with electronics. There shouldn’t be any mistakes here, it just couldn’t be. Shieda had a horrible memory when it came to everyday stuff, like his professors’ names or cafeteria working hours, but he knew his wires as he knew himself. Or, if that wasn’t very convincing, like he knew the entire storyline of the “Star Guardian” comic series, including alternative universe spin-offs and special edition remakes. Which he knew very well. (Not like he would admit it to anyone though.)
Between two stuck-together pages, there was a list of materials he had used for his first size-down prototype. It was pretty basic as a result, but it did survive the initial testing. He added some internal changes to his current design which was fine on its own, but it all bleaked in comparison to his main problem. The materials he had were simply not compatible with his abilities and no tinkering with the hardware could solve it, four exploded models were the proof of that.
“Quantum tunnelling my ass, Syndra” Shieda murmured, rubbing the bridge of his nose and continuing to flip through the binder, “in what world walking through solid matter is harder to scientifically engineer than fucking long-distance teleportation?”
In this world, apparently. Maybe, walking through walls was not considered a high-priority invention by the scientific community since the creation of doors, but it was also completely unreasonable (in Shieda’s humble opinion) to spend so much time and money developing new types of armour to nullify received damage, while they could be focusing on ways to completely evade it. But oh well, it’s not like he had a say in what grownups do or don’t, so all he had left was munching over the same topic over and over, getting irritated over nothing, and then feeling even more hungry and tired than he was before.
“Mr. Kayn, you see” as principal Syndra, a fierce white-haired woman with intense presence and eyeliner blindness used to say, “Your power, which has a scientific name of quantum tunnelling, allows you to rearrange the atomic structure of your body to make a blah-blah-blah which allows you to be super-duper cool and walk through walls, however living and non-living matter have different blah-blah-blah properties which means that we will not fund any of your projects, and also every time I see your face I’m reminded that I have made a mistake of allowing your broke ass into this prestige establishment even though I could’ve just enrolled some rich kid without type-C class power whose parents would make generous donations to the school and pay for all expenses before losing their child to the first Primordian attack fifteen seconds after graduation. Also, fuck you and I hope you die.” This wasn’t the exact quote, but Shieda was a big and brave boy and he knew about the concept of “reading the room”.
The gist of it was this: Kayn’s power was innate, which meant that it was rare enough for no one to know what the hell they were supposed to do with him, and it was also a type-C power, which basically got him locked up in the academy until graduation, because type-C apparently stands for Can Go Ballistic If We Don’t Control Their Every Move. He didn’t really understand what was that dangerous in whatever he was doing, not like other schools didn’t have students powerful enough to explode the entire building with their mind, but maybe it was his charming personality that made the higher-ups think he would join the whatever evil monster decided to destroy humanity that week the second he left the school grounds unsupervised. Syndra personally made it her life goal to deprive Shieda from any fun, probably so he would go Ballistic faster, get killed by special forces and stop bothering Babylon Academy’s Financial department for money for his stupid school projects.
Oh yeah, as a proud type-C haver, Shieda Kayn could not have research funding for anything connected to his abilities, so it meant that in order to not fail his tech classes, he had to use whatever materials he could find (or steal from other students, but they were rich enough to not notice a few metal panels missing anyway) without actively breaking the law. There also was a warehouse across the tech building, that was more of a giant storage unit where most of the space was utilised for broken dummies used in training by fighting clubs, that were lying around there taking space until being sent off for recycling. Besides those, plenty of stuff was being thrown out by students, workers, or occasional special force agents, who could use the Academy as a temporary base and a free source of tech, which they went through like toilet paper. If you were desperate (and fabulously talented) enough like Shieda, it was a useful habit to occasionally go through trash containers in the warehouse in case a wild hardware set or some broken models appeared; ones that could still be repaired if given effort others would put to just buy a new model and save some precious time.
Speaking of time.
His head whipped towards the clock. Fourteen hours and fifty minutes until the presentation. He needed to stop talking to himself and get to work. Snapping the binder shut and getting up to his feet from the floor, Shieda completely forgot about the screwdriver, which was still strategically positioned under his feet. It only took half a step for him to fall victim to the evil plans of the universe and almost crack his skull against the metal table.
“Whew, that was close.”
The loudest metal CLANK he’s ever heard performed in this lab signaled someone else’s skull cracking in the peace and quiet of this Saturday evening. Well, something else’s.
Shieda unclenched his fist, realising he accidentally grabbed and pulled some of the heavy cables, that were connected to the robot he was working on, during his fall. The thing itself was now lying on the floor, all of its metal insides completely on display like a victim of a brutal murder. Its arm, the one that was sparking earlier, was bent in an unnatural (even for a robot) position, hand reaching for the ceiling in an almost pleading gesture.
“Daddy, daddy!” The arm probably wanted to say, “Why are you so fucking dumb dumb? Aren’t you supposed to love me? Why did you let me die then? Did you kill mommy with your stupidity too? That’s why I never saw her-“
Alright, that’s enough.
It wasn’t that bad. It was a battle robot prototype, for fuck’s sake, falling and taking damage was basically its whole thing. Plus, it’s not like Shieda’s engineering skills were this bad, he still had plenty of time to fix whatever damage the poor thing took during the fall. As long as no wiring was ripped, which it probably wasn’t, he still had a chance to make it in time by morning. He needed to change the strategy. Maybe he should’ve just forgotten about any quantum tunnelling long ago and focused on the main build. If he went to the warehouse now, he could probably find some salvageable stuff before it gets moved tomorrow (trash was sent for recycling every Sunday). He would look into different types of panelling, something more sturdy, now that it didn’t need to move through walls or whatever. If the Assassin Club had training today, there would be plenty of sliced metal to choose from. Yes, it was fine, he could do this. After all, he was the star of the Babylon Academy Luminary Club, Shieda Ka-
The robot caught up in flames.
Shieda watched as the metal on that goddamn arm was blackening and withering, stubby fingers curling into themselves, while the middle one stood tall and strong, facing him in mockery. Now that was just unfair.
***
There were two trolley carts at the back of the warehouse that were used to transport broken machinery and training dummies. On the rare occasion, students would race them down the road from the tech building to the girls' dorm, almost always getting bruises and cuts from the rocky terrain or just piss poor cart driving skills. Whatever Shieda was doing now was balancing between these two extremely fun activities, with adding his signature touch by riding the cart through the wall to avoid the security patrol. It’s not like rummaging around the warehouse was illegal, but it wasn’t encouraged, especially the night before the big festival when security had to be on high alert to save face. So, through the wall he went. He wasn’t skilled enough to pull a cart through just by touching its handle, so the most optimal solution was to give the cart a little push, climb inside as fast as he could manage, and lay down in a star-shaped position, covering as much space with his body as possible. The plan was executed perfectly until the very moment he hit the wall, with the cart sliding and disappearing into the brick smooth as a stick of butter, while Shieda himself first hit the brick, phased through the cart by accident, and finally fell onto the dirty pavement, which reminded him of what Syndra was so scared about when she forbade him from leaving the school grounds. Well, at least now he knew why his power was placed in a C-type along with kids that could teleport and shoot lasers out of their asses.
Walking forward through brick and thick layers of old paint was easy when not done in a moving vehicle. Shieda held his breath instinctively, not risking his chances of dying inside the wall. He never tried to actually breathe while phasing through non-living matter, even though his dad said it would “probably be fine”. In Shieda’s defense, his dad always said this to unknown danger, explaining it with a child’s innate need to experience the world as it is. Except for times when it was an obvious danger. Then Shieda would get reprimanded for being stupid and reckless. He figured he still lacked the “experiencing the world” thing, whatever that was supposed to mean, to see the line between types of danger, but in order to get that piece of wisdom he first needed to stick himself into reckless shit and get reprimanded. Maybe, it was a necessary part of life. He still wouldn’t risk breathing inside a wall though.
The inside of the warehouse was dark, small windows at the top not catching any streetlight. Shieda fumbled with his working pants, trying to get out his flashlight from the knee pocket where he also kept his student ID, the strongest mint-flavoured gum their on-campus grocery store carried, and a small bag with various kinds of batteries (nothing was more romantic than offering a spare battery to a Luminary Club student who’s forgotten theirs). The light beam from his pocket flashlight that he usually used for tinkering with small devices was not strong enough to carry through the giant building, but it wasn’t a problem. Even if Shieda was quiet, if not careful the light could reflect from a variety of metal sources in the room straight into the windows, attracting unnecessary attention to his little escapade.
His cart made it inside unscathed, luckily avoiding one of the giant containers by an inch. There were three of them, big enough to serve as medium-sized pools if filled with water. At the end of each work day, half of one would be filled with junk, broken mannequins, and stationary targets clubs used for shooting. Sunday was a day-off for all students, so Saturday was the last day before all these containers were emptied, ready for another week of hard work. Lightly knocking on the one closest to the door, Shieda listened to the vibration the metal gave on impact. It was full, meaning the Assassin Club actually had training today. All three fighting clubs used similar in AI and structure training bots, however, Assassin Club members were the ones with the cleanest cuts and the least amount of collateral damage.
Holding the flashlight with his teeth, Shieda stood on hip tip-toes (he wasn’t short, it was the container that was huge), jumped, and pulled himself up the metal side wall onto the edge. A small groan escaped his lips, reminding him how far behind he really was in physical activity compared to fighting clubs.
Sitting on top, he shined down with his flashlight, looking for anything worth taking. To his surprise, everything he could see was soft-type dummies that could absorb energy attacks, which was weird, given that the Assassin Club students mainly used blades. Holding onto the wall for balance, Shieda gently kicked one of the fake bodies to the side with his boot. Below it, there were dozens identical to this one, each in a different state of disintegration. Did the Sorcery Club have a field day today or something? Shit, maybe they were getting ready for tomorrow's showdown as well. Shieda frowned. He needed some actual metal, not this pillow stuffing. He turned to other containers. Three for each day of the week. Below his feet were leftovers from Saturday. This means that if his memory wasn’t failing him and the Assassin Club had a gathering on Thursday…
Still perching on the edge like a bird sitting on a power line, Shieda turned around to the second container in line. The distance between them was not that big. An idea flashed across his brain. He didn’t need to do it, not really, the way he got up here was perfectly acceptable, and he would not waste much time by sliding down the wall and repeating the process. But…
He leaped into the air, his ego hurt from that stupid edge he had a hard time climbing on. It was stupid and childish, but just this once he wanted to be stupid and childish. He was always on the run when he was young, eager to explore the wild nature outside their small, cozy, and perfectly safe village, little Akali always on his heels, eager for new adventures. They climbed trees, fell from them, swam in the river that ran through the forest and tried to make friends with a pack of wild dogs that lived under the bridge five blocks away from their house. But after just a year in the academy, having been deprived of his dream club and getting himself locked up behind ten different locks in the tech lab, Shieda felt like he completely lost his edge. He avoided stairs because he was irritated at how hard it became climbing them, didn’t show up for non-mandatory sports events, and did not explore about half of the school grounds, a sin his younger self would never forgive him for. So this was his leap of faith, even if the distance between the containers was about two meters. It was such a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but right now it felt like a proof of his worth, a challenge that could rival the Assassin Club entrance exam.
Please, thought Shieda in that fraction of a second he was hanging in the air, praying to every god from that big book with pretty pictures his dad used to read for him, and to no one at the same time, let me have this one thing.
And once, just once, the universe let him have a small victory. Shieda landed on the other side with heavy “oomph”, desperately clutching the metal edge under his fingers to find balance. He did it. It was enough. He felt like he could do anything. The morning will come, he will somehow make it through the festival, and Akali will not think of him as a failure of a brother, and his dad will have that crescent of a wrinkle next to his brow when he is satisfied, and maybe, just maybe, principal Syndra will explode in a cloud of purple sparkly mist, or get trapped in a magical crystal like an evil witch, setting free the princess (Shieda) from the curse (Luminary Club’s heavy machinery summer training program).
The flashlight in his hand illuminated the shiny material of heavy robot-type bots, each one of them missing a limb, a head, or straight up half of the body. This metal was sturdy but light enough for bots to maintain a moderate speed for about five to seven minutes of intense dueling against finesse weapons. Bingo.
Shieda fished out metal snips from his other pocket and carefully placed his feet on top of one of the bot’s chest plate. It sagged a little under his weight, but was strong enough to hold him without making unnecessary noise.
“Sorry bud, but you’ll have to do.” Shieda flexed his feet before squatting down and starting to rummage around as quietly as he humanly could, snipping particularly big chunks of metal away from the chest and back parts of still moderately intact bots. He was trying to work fast, but cutting metal while holding a flashlight with your mouth was not as sunshine and rainbows as one would think it was. Minutes were ticking away, and Shieda swiped sweat from his brow, hurried by the danger of night patrol catching him just when he was about to finish his quest. Almost snipping half of his finger off, he sliced through the last sheet and placed it on top of an accumulated pile, sighing heavily and finally unclenching his teeth to drop the flashlight in his palm. Even though he tried to be careful, the handle was still covered in his spit, so he took another deep sigh and wiped the thing down on his jacket, which needed a wash anyway. Now all that was left to do was to load the cart and sneak out without drawing any attention. He could not afford to waste any more time on this.
Clutching the metal pile to his chest while trying not to cut himself with sharp corners in the process, Shieda stepped on the edge of the container and looked down. It was quite high, and he was not fond of jumping from higher ground. It wasn’t possible to phase through from the inside of the container because of the amount of trash under his feet, which was a risk of getting stuck in one of the bots. He could try to throw the pile straight into the cart first, also throwing the secrecy out the window, but then he would need to move with an inhuman speed to escape, which contained getting down from here, maneuvering the cart to the wall with an appropriate speed and then hopefully getting to the other side in one piece. Maybe he lost his edge after all because Shieda was determined not to take any more unnecessary risks today.
Still clutching those sheets of metal with one hand, he positioned himself on the edge, facing the damaged bots, and grabbed the edge of the wall as tightly as he could. Carefully sliding his feet down, he stopped, realising he would still need to jump down. Sending one more prayer to the universe, he released the container and went into a free fall that lasted about two milliseconds. However, that was enough for his knees to buckle at impact, making him slam his head against the metal wall. If the sound he’s made could be relatively compared to the volume of ringing in his ears, he was undeniably fucked. Grabbing his forehead and hissing in pain, he missed an especially slippery sheet of metal making it to the floor after all, which was followed by a loud screeching sound of it dragging across the ground.
“Who goes there?”
He heard the warehouse door slid open behind him, the night patrol guard not yet seeing him behind the containers. Fighting the stars in his eyes, Shieda started to blindly back away into the wall, gathering all his strength to phase through it.
“Mark my words, should I encounter any of you robotics-possessed aberrations once more, your posterior regions shall be dispatched directly to the principal office! Emerger forth, lest I take it upon myself to -”
The second his back touched the solid mass, he held his breath and made another step back, clutching those damn metal sheets to his chest like a child their favourite stuffed animal. The feeling of utter weightlessness and bone-chilling cold hugged him tightly for just a second, dulling both pain and his senses. The feeling was both ethereal and dreadful, like the infinite dark void trying to consume him and disintegrate him into a million tiny pieces, but as it always was, he was outside before he could get actually scared.
Except he wasn’t outside. He opened his eyes, but everything was still dark. Yeah, he hit his head pretty hard, but he couldn’t possibly lose his vision, right? He didn’t have time to be blind, he had to finish his project first. A moment later, Shieda realised he couldn’t feel any wind on his skin. Instead, the air was still and stuffy, like those rooms that hadn't been touched for a few years after someone died in them. He must’ve stumbled into one of the locked inner storage rooms he never bothered to check before, mostly because of the giant locks on them that unambiguously hinted at the speed one would get thrown out of school if one tried to get in. Then he heard the night guard still shouting and cursing the life out of “reclusive poindexters” (who in their right mind still talks like that?) with an acute lack of corporeal interaction with the female gender, who ventured to perturb the tranquil ambiance of the evening such as this through their unruly comportment.
“Sheesh”, the reclusive poindexter in question thought to himself, trying to figure out the level of education required to get a job in the Academy security.
Deciding to wait out until it was quiet again, Shieda carefully sat down on the floor, not risking to venture forth into unknown darkness while he could still be heard. For all he knew, there could be anything stored in here from rare AI chips used for special types of training bots to a dinosaur that could not be harmed because it definitely would turn out to be some kind of Syndra’s close relative. Because Syndra was obviously a lizard disguised as a human that wanted to destroy and enslave all humanity. It was fascinating how all these theories of his sounded more and more convincing the more times Shieda had to face his principal in person.
He didn’t know how much time he sat in the dark, but eventually, the sound of the warehouse door sliding shut reached his ears. Turning on the flashlight, Shieda looked around the room, which turned out to be another storage space big enough to fit a commercial truck. Gently placing his precious metal sheets on the ground, he stepped forward. If he was already in here and hasn’t been eaten yet, might as well take a look. Along the walls, in different states of assembly, were robots he’d never seen before used at academy grounds. Those were not bots, but war machines. Part of them were locked to walls with special fasteners, others were disassembled and displayed in pieces, all limbs separated from each other. Shieda went along the walls, studying each model in detail. Some of them were recognisable as robots used by special forces against the Primordian attacks a couple of decades ago, which he saw in one of his textbooks, but others were either too niche for him to know the purpose of, or too damaged to be recognisable in the dark with only a tiny flashlight to guide him.
Distracted by a glass display filled with robotic helmets of various types, he almost missed it in the dark with his limited vision. He felt it, however, a strange pull, like his very being was moving him towards the far right corner of the room against his will. His legs stopped, and that unknown feeling made him look up, squinting in the dark.
It was another bot. No, it wasn’t just a bot. It would be insulting to call it something so mundane. Before Shieda was the most beautiful piece of machinery he’s ever laid his eyes upon. A tall sharp figure, suspended from the ceiling by a metal bar and crafted from white sleek metal, with individual parts made in black and bright, almost neon red. The creature’s legs, resembling some kind of animal’s feet, ended with two toes and a big talon on each one. The left arm was completely absent, while the right one, also adorned with four sharp claws, was connected to the same metal bar above its head and was positioned horizontally to the ground. The robot, a creature, an entity, didn’t have a face, but a row of sharp teeth with no lips around them formed a dangerous, almost uncanny smile. Above its head, probably connected by some kind of a magnetic field, were two red horns, each one as long as the robot's wide shoulders, facing the sides and curling back at the tips.
Illustrations of spirits from children’s books came to Shieda’s mind, but not a single one of them depicted those creatures as something so overwhelmingly powerful, almost elegant in its deadliness. It was so easy to imagine this thing on the battlefield, slicing through enemies with precision and fluidity, not needing a weapon to be considered a threat.
Shieda took a breath, not realising he was completely motionless all this time. New air in his lungs cleared his head a little, and he stood closer to the robot, trying to figure out the intricacies of its design.
“Whoever left you here, was jealous of your beauty, that’s for sure,” Shieda breathed out, fascinated.
Studying the robot's single arm, he remembered seeing its pair on one of the displays. He walked to the shelf and picked the limb up, studying the naked wiring at its shoulder. Suddenly, it felt wrong. He knew this feeling, but it was weird to feel it again after so long. Back in his home village, where people more often than not were born naturally attuned to magic, plenty of folks used it as an alternative source of energy to save on electricity. However, depending on the skill of the user and the object the magic was used on, it could lead to short circuits and breaks. Zed, his father, had a shop that specialised in fixing all sorts of machinery, so Shieda saw plenty of times how his dad had to fix broken electronics that were not designed to be powered by magic. He described it to Shieda as something similar to a blood system in the human body, but back then Shieda was more interested in his robotic toys than broken teapots and irons. Akali was more gifted in seeing magic than Shieda anyway, given her abilities, but he didn’t need to see to recognise the same exact feeling of magic being applied in the wrong way when he held the arm of that demonic robot, hidden in the academy warehouse.
Shieda turned off his flashlight and got a hold of the arm, closing his eyes and concentrating on the fleeting sensation that managed to slip away every time he tried to chase it down in the past.
“Don’t rush it,” dad’s voice sounded in his head. “You would not try to overpower a wild animal, so don’t be more stubborn than magic.”
First, it was just a glimpse, then a thin line. Cautiously, Shieda swiped his hand along the metal, reaching down to the power trapped inside. It was a blood-red colour, and it was angry, circling inside like a hungry caged animal, not broken yet to give up on its freedom. Without opening his eyes, Shieda turned to the body of the robot and saw the same blood red, running up and down its limbs and torso like the circulatory system he was told about many years ago. The robot was powered by magic, this was obvious, and it had either gotten here semi-recently or was powerful enough to contain this amount of energy after all this time locked inside. So what went wrong? Why was the arm unattached? Shieda opened his eyes, releasing the vision. He turned on the light again, focusing on the circuitry inside the arm and coming up to compare it to the one inside the robot's body.
He felt wrong when he picked up the arm. Why did he feel wrong? Suddenly, everything clicked into place.
“Because it’s different,” he whispered. “The left arm was manufactured much later.” Was it made as a replacement? “That would mean that whoever made it had no idea what power you were using and created an arm with a classic type of wiring instead of the magically attuned one, which is like trying to plug your teapot into sockets with different voltages.”
A wave of sadness rippled through him, along with something he was not yet articulated enough to describe, which tasted salty, stale, and melancholic if melancholy could ever have a taste. It felt like going up in the attic and finding your favourite childhood toys in a dusty box along with your outgrown shoes. You didn’t abandon these things because you didn’t like them, you walked your way along with them and became another person, who had other priorities and different shoes. Zed probably would’ve described it as “grief for something you haven’t lost but unknowingly let go of”. But this was different to his dad, who probably had much more experience with grief than Shieda in his seventeen years of age. So where did this feeling come from?
He found a little stool and climbed it, actually facing the robot for the first time. This close, its eyeless face wasn’t scary, not after showing Shieda through its magic that robots could be scared too.
“I will try to fix you,” he said into the quiet of the dark and empty room, his voice barely a whisper.
No, it sounded weak. He sounded weak.
Something glinted on the black material of the crease along the robot’s neck, a little above the place where human clavicles would be. He scooted closer, balancing on the shaky stool. Those were letters.
PROJECT Model 28: Rhaast
“Rhaast”, he spoke the name aloud, not expecting an answer. “My name is Shieda Kayn, I am a first-year student of the Babylon Academy, and I will fix you.”
Notes:
Thank you for reading and I hope you had fun! Let me know what you think, I would never miss an opportunity to trash talk BA lore (no but seriously why would they make Rhaast's model into a PROJECT skin even though these two timelines are not connected whatsoever omg rito they could never make me love you)
Chapter 2: Summer Festival: Obeying The Rules Means Missing The Fun
Summary:
Outrunning the time (don't forget the lunch break!)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“Remember Shieda, magic is everywhere. If the electricity was created by humanity, magic has always been around and will still exist after we're all gone. Like the sun, or the wind, you will be able to see it, to feel it, and with proper tools, to harvest it. Don’t try to tame it, but let it flow through you.”
"Uh-huh." Young Shieda, in his favourite washed-out sleep shirt, hair in five small ponytails tied with colourful rubber bands (Akali's work), and fuzzy socks grunted from the floor. He was too busy assembling his new Mechanoid figurine he's got for his birthday to actually try and make sense of adult nonsense smart-talk.
"Don't ever try to mix it with human-made powers, the magic does not like that. If you want it to work towards your goal, you have to accommodate it with proper tools. The wires I commission do not contain copper or aluminium the electrical ones are made of. A bit expensive, if we're being honest, but you won't buy these anywhere else."
"So, what's they're made of, then?" Shieda asked, figuring that the faster his dad stopped talking, the sooner he would be able to play pretend in peace, at least until Akali came back from the store and decided to paint his nails seventeen different colours or interject with his storyline of invading a Dumpling planet with a fleet of ships shaped like different utensils.
His dad raised his head from the rice cooker he was currently working on and gave Shieda a mysterious wink. “A master never reveals their secrets”.
The older Shieda, the one who was hungry, sleep-deprived, and dusty from trying to clean all the dirt from his newly found robot, was banging his head against the table cursing his father for only being cryptic about stuff that was actually important. Not like Shieda would be able to make his own wiring in the little time he had left, but after everything he's been through, getting defeated by something like this was just humiliating.
The technology itself was disgustingly easy to understand if you knew where, or rather how, to look. If no one in the tech department that tried to fix it was properly attuned to magic, they could've unintentionally done more damage than help. Shieda peeled off the "DEFECTIVE" sticker from the robot's back plate, not doubting this was the result of faulty work. He had to rewire the arm, and then connect it back to the inner panel that was attached to the endoskeleton below the right shoulder. The panel didn't look like the heart, but it served the same purpose, directing the flow of magic into every corner of the mechanical body. While carefully fishing inside, Shieda found a different panel inside the robot's neck, preserved in a bubble of a soft colourless material that was similar to silicone. He'd read about the importance of protecting the main chips that contained the robot's programming (which could be called a robot's brain), but it was the first time he'd actually seen this kind of material. He didn't want to try his chances, but he bet at least a tenner that the bubble would not be able to burst under most types of physical pressure.
While the relatively simple structure of wiring made his job easier, the lack of any visible ports on the robot's body was mildly infuriating. The Academy Personal Programming System, designed to ease the process of repairing whatever could be considered a standardised type of machinery, was also very helpful with analysing the condition of anything that could be connected to it via the cable, and "diagnosing" the problem without needing to check every single function manually (by rummaging inside and hoping nothing would chop your finger off in the process). APPS also served as an open-source manual Luminary Club students were encouraged to engage in and supply with additional research and information they made during their study, but to general dissatisfaction of the professors, the overwhelming majority of students used it for campus gossip and stealing each other's homework.
If Rhaast was a regular, electricity-based robot, Shieda would have been able to boot him up to his lab computer and figure out which cables needed replacement in a matter of minutes. But since nothing in this life was easy, all that was left for him to do was to open up the hatch in the robot's right arm and start copying the wiring composition on paper as detailed as he could, prolonging the inevitable.
He still needed the materials. The materials that no one knew about and which could power up a system that could've been considered a lost technology if he hadn't seen his father use a suspiciously similar one on something primitive like kettles. Shieda knew exactly where he would get the wiring. But he would first need to sweat for it.
***
"Wha?" Akali's voice was muffled through the speaker like she was trying to eat a bag of chips without the chips.
"Akali, listen," Shieda glanced at the same clock in the lab he was trying to hypnotise all evening. It was five in the morning, "I need your help, this is important."
“I’m sleepin’.”
"And I respect that, but this would actually mean a lot to me if you picked up some stuff from Dad's storage before he wakes up."
There was a shuffling on the other side.
“Akali?”
“Kill yourself.”
His room-reading skills were suspecting he needed to change the strategy, but what kind of older brother would he be if he just started begging without pushing some authority first? “I will keep calling you until you agree.”
“Fucking try me.”
If she smashed her phone, and she could certainly do that in the name of pettiness, according to their family rules Shieda would be considered responsible. He still didn’t want to beg.
“If you help me, I will get you to the party the most popular girl in school holds today after the main event. Extra fancy and girls only.”
This wasn't begging – it was bargaining. A dangerous one, but still worth a risk – Akali loved both girls and parties.
There was silence on the other side for a moment, but just as Shieda started to lose hope, Akali sighed.
“I’m not carrying more than can fit in my backpack”.
This he could work with.
***
When Shieda and Akali were edgy tweens, their dad eventually grew bored with their constant fighting and decided to write a Sacred List of Rules. Both siblings were encouraged to make their own rules, so it would be fair. Each rule one would add was required to be approved by the other two parties, and it had to be "fair enough" for others to follow (Akali's request about adding a rule where Shieda couldn't go up to her any closer than two meters didn't pass through, mostly because their house was small enough and that would require Shieda to move outside, which everyone but Akali had problems with). Most of the rules were tied to their behaviour and messing with each other, like "no touching Akali's hair products" and "don't bother Shieda from four o'clock until five" because it was his The Mechanoids: New Generation time on TV, but all three of them wrote a separate Sleep Decree, which no one was allowed to break. The main points of this Decree stated:
“All talking above loud whispering is banned from twelve o’clock to eight” because Dad has a job in the morning and he can’t be cranky because if he’s cranky he will be rude to customers and Shieda and Akali will be left with no sweets at the end of the month.
“Do not let Shieda fall asleep on any soft surfaces” because back in the day it was easier for him to unconsciously phase through the mattress if it was too fluffy and then he would panic and most likely start crying.
"Do not wake Akali up" unless she's about to be late for school, or if there's a natural disaster. "If there is a natural disaster, do not wake her up until it's absolutely necessary. If woken up, the collateral damage she does would be put on whoever woke Akali up and not on the natural disaster."
Sure, Akali was not a fan of natural disasters, but she would never pass on an opportunity to get into the centre of the action. Shieda figured that if her and Dad had bought train tickets for six o'clock, she would need to wake up early anyway, so it was actually him being a good big brother and giving her a head start. He would not risk saying it out loud though.
“I’m not bringing the whole cable drum on the fucking train!”
Akali stayed on the phone with him while sneaking into the storage room with her backpack. He knew there should’ve been a small cable drum she could lift without falling flat on her ass, but it seemed like he overestimated the love Akali still had for him.
“Don’t bring two pairs of spare shoes with you then!”
“And what, walk in sneakers all day? What am I, an animal to ya?” Well, at least she didn’t raise her voice above a whisper.
“Then go in your fancy shoes.”
“I’ll get bristles if I walk in them for too long, I need them to leave the first impression and then change to sneakers.”
“Get them in a different bag?”
"Dad will ask me what I put in my backpack so my shoes don't fit."
“Tell him it’s girls stuff.”
“Already used this excuse three days ago when I sneaked seventeen onigiris out of the all-you-can-eat buffet, he’ll get suspicious.”
There was some huffing on the phone, probably Akali fighting with the cable drum. Shieda wasn’t sure what his purpose in this conversation was, but he couldn’t hang up in the middle of the heist, at least for moral support purposes.
“What’s that party you talked about? Is there a theme? Where will it be held? Where’d ya know about girl parties anyway?”
"Tch… Rude." Shieda gasped on the phone, trying to dodge the question on purpose. "It will be in a girls' dorm from what I've gathered, they have a fancy basement."
"A basement basement? Or a Babylon-style basement?"
“A Babylon one.”
"What?! Spirits may guide me, this changes everything!" Akali hissed in the speaker, making Shieda wince from the static.
“What does it change exactly?”
“Everything? Think of the underwater lightning! Oh man, I’ll probably need to pick a different outfit…”
“Akali, no one will care about the colour of-“
“Oi, shut up for a minute will ya, I’m in the middle of a vision.”
Well then…
If you asked Shieda what he thought about the underground levels of the Academy, with windows and glass tunnels opening up the view of the undersea levels, he would say he's too busy to stare at fish and seagrass. On a deeper level, however, he was terrified. He couldn't explain why he didn't like water so much, but the idea of studying in classes or, spirits forbid, sleeping under the sea level made his skin crawl. It's not like he had something against the sea vastaya who did live primarily underwater and had separate classes from the landwalkers (or the proud feet havers, as Shieda liked to say), he just never understood the concept of enjoying being potentially crushed down by tons of salty water and die by a horrible death when not even being a vastaya.
To the disappointment of his fellow classmates (and Shieda's immense relief), all of his classes this year were taught above ground; he had heard from upperclassmen however, that multiple science labs for advanced research were located on lower levels, which made his desire to join one of the fighting clubs and stay under the sun with both feet on the ground even stronger.
Anyway, from what he had gathered, the girls' dorm was multilevel and had a beautiful (according to some people) aquarium-styled hall with a coral reef view, where the residents had tea parties, hair braiding tournaments and gossip nights, or whatever teenage girls did in their spare time, not like Shieda was interested in details.
"'Kay, I'm done here, everything's fine and dandy. That party better be worth it though, or I swear by my name I will shove this wire in your throat and rip it out of ya- oh, hi Dad! Good to see ya! Feeling fresh on this peaceful morning?"
Shieda sat straight in his chair, concentrating on trying to figure out whatever his dad was saying to Akali through those half-dead speakers on her phone (they didn't have enough money to afford high-quality models anyway, but Akali was double-prohibited from having any expensive electronics with the speed she was breaking them).
"Oh, this? I was packing for my moon cycle. Nasty stuff. Need to be prepared." Akali laughed in the mic. Shieda was sure both he and his dad had similar expressions right now, trying to figure out if they somehow skipped another mysterious chapter in female biology or if Akali was bullshitting her way through as usual. Based on the intonation of the reply she got Dad probably didn't know and/or didn't care enough to ask further, because Akali quickly ended the call with a playful "Sorry Hani, I'll send ya outfit pics later, Dad needs help with something, bye-bye!" leaving Shieda contemplating the importance of cycles in a girl's life in the silence of his lab.
He got back to work, disassembling the robot's left arm to figure out how he would need to put it back together with the new wiring assembled, getting distracted once again only about half an hour later by another ring of his phone. A message from Akali, right below the first one he forgot to respond to, stated "If you need help with the Thing, we'll need to get rid of Dad. He's cranky af and he's packed at least a litre of coffee to go."
Shieda only hoped the train would survive both of his family members being sleep-deprived and irritated for the three hours it took to get to the Academy.
***
At about eight o'clock, when his skin felt like it was leaving dirty stains on the air around him, Shieda figured it was a sign to take a shower. Checking one of the cabinets, he realised he ran out of spare clothes he was keeping in the lab, and that would mean he needed to walk across half of the campus to his dorm, but if he didn't want Akali to lose consciousness after taking one sniff of him and then shame him until his final days, he would have to endure it. Leaving the window open to get some air in, he mentally added laundry to his piling chore list, covered the robot up with a required by the Academy's protocol anti-explosive tarpaulin (in case of explosions), locked the door with the passcode keypad outside and jogged out of the tech building.
A first step through the heavy metal doors and bright sun blinded his eyes, making him feel like an ant getting burned with a magnifying glass by a kid who was never taught about animal cruelty. The air was warm, the sea breeze filling Shieda's lungs with life. The festive vibe was not quite reaching the tech buildings that were on the outskirts of campus, but the closer he got to the main square, the more cheerful the atmosphere became. Paper lanterns painted in clubs' signature colours were hanging across the streets, tinting everything in a red-blue-purple-turquoise palette. Students who had time to partake in hobby clubs (or who weren't interested in wasting the whole day in fighting tournaments) were setting up stalls with handmade food, games, and craft toys, joking around, playing music, and stealing sweets from the neighbouring booths, awaiting for first outside visitors to arrive with the nine o'clock train. Even though it was a day off, Academy rules forbid students from wearing civilian clothes on campus, however, it didn't stop girls and boys from going all out with their hair and accessories, probably using their appearance as walking club advertisements. Those who were partaking in the battle tournaments later enjoyed their last hours of freedom napping in the freshly trimmed grass of the field across the main building.
Shieda climbed the stairs into a boys' dorm, diving down to not get hit by a giant paper dragon five second-years were trying to fit through the door and almost squashing some boy's companion, an ugly looking mechanical what-d'you-call-it, shaped like some kind of a weird sea creature. Shieda hated those things with passion. Companions were provided by the school to first-years and some not fully abled students to help with basic matters, like finding a classroom, grabbing a certain book in the library, or just hanging around their "owner" to keep them company. Shieda had no problems with that in particular, he even saw some older students successfully using special-type companions as assistants in battle practices, but whoever first designed those bots decided that it would be a great idea to shove a personality chip inside while simultaneously limiting the amount of interactions each companion would have. Shieda himself was not supposed to know these things yet, these were all higher-level engineering stuff, but it was inevitable with his unnerving (for some people) interest in robots.
To put it simply, personality chips were fully programmable, meaning you could use code to control the behaviour of a machine and its "character", like making your companion speak only in riddles or do a flip each time it completed a task. However, it didn't give the bots any free will, which would require a completely different chip Shieda wasn't sure in the legality of. When he first got his companion at the beginning of a school year, a pug-like creature introduced itself as Cheese and proceeded to make a joke each time Shieda chose a cafeteria food that included dairy. Many found mannerisms like these amusing, but to Shieda, who was raised in the countryside far from technologies like these, it was unnerving, like seeing a brainwashed human experiment victim used as a slave by a high schooler. Cheese couldn't have opinions besides things the developer put inside it, nor could it decide to not obey his requests. It always followed him around, always upbeat, always happy, and repeating the same jokes over and over again. Shieda returned Cheese a week later, angry at himself for feeling guilty because that damn thing was programmed to ask him if something in its behaviour was the reason to be returned, and it made Shieda feel an ugly human feeling of compassion for something that could never reciprocate it. "No," Shieda wanted to say, at least to not feel like a complete monster to himself, "You did exactly what your creator told you to do, and by book definition that would mean your program was successful, but no matter what my answer will be, it will not really affect you in any meaningful way. You won't feel sadness, you won't go and get drunk in the bar because of my low score, or pick up a book on comedy to refresh your ability to make puns. More than that, all your artificial memories of the past seven days will be erased, you will be given to another student and you will feel absolutely nothing because, at the end of the day, you were coded to be this way." The tech guy couldn't really understand why Shieda started ugly crying over a deactivated entry-level pug companion in a storage room after staring at it for about fifteen minutes, but that probably was due to his lack of room-reading skills.
Silently cursing at the damn fish-thing, Shieda proceeded through the main lobby into the right hallway. Half of the building was still asleep, but it seemed like the other half didn't have more sleep than Shieda did this night, getting the last-minute tweaks to their armour done, styling each other's hair in the latest ridiculous fashion, or finishing up with the decorations for the festival stalls with room doors wide open, giving the glue smell an opportunity to spread through the whole floor. Shieda passed the kitchens on his way upstairs, smelling at least six different things burning at the same time. The Babylon Academy Culinary Club was not the most prestigious one, but its members surely never lost their enthusiasm.
Shieda's room was on the third floor, which was most likely the reason why he preferred to sleep in his lab. The tech building had a commune shower on the utility floor, and during his first week in the academy, he found and successfully fixed a broken electric kettle from one of the storage cabinets (that he decided to keep in his lab for personal use), which allowed him to boil as much instant noodles as he wanted. Also, it was so damn quiet there. The walls in labs were thick enough to prevent any sound from escaping, and most Luminary Club members were cramped in the newer building anyway, fighting over the latest equipment which resulted in having to share one lab with five or six people at a time. His tech building #3 was old and quite nasty, mostly being used by students who had to test some explosive stuff, but his dad believed everything was fixable with a bit of effort and love, so Shieda never complained about having a whole lab on the first floor to himself, getting to store all of his snacks in spare cabinets and rarely stumbling on anyone alive in the hallways.
Unlocking the door and stepping inside, he sneezed at the dust hitting his face. Haven't been touched for nearly a week, everything looked quite depressing and neglected, but Shieda hoped he would learn to appreciate his bed properly after this festival-marathon was over and he finally got some peace for himself. With a quick rummage through the closet, he withdrew a pair of his uniform pants and a shirt he would probably need to wear to the presentation to not be skinned alive by Syndra with the faculty as witnesses. Most of the students preferred to modify their uniforms themselves, but at the beginning of the school year he was too busy moping around about not getting into the club he wanted to care about fashion choices, so he used the lab uniform as his daily clothes, leaving the formal pants and a jacket (with a Luminary Club insignia sticking out at the front like a sore thumb) for special occasions that didn't involve fishing around in the the Academy warehouse storage containers at night. Finally picking one of the ten completely identical black tank tops he used to work in and grabbing his toiletries, a pair of underwear, and a towel, Shieda finally found his way to the showers, praying there was no line.
Surprisingly, there was no line, but the second Shieda turned the tap on he realised why. The hot water had either already run out or was completely down for the day, leaving him shuddering under the cold stream and eventually going down to the level of using the "one limb at a time" technique. His hair situation was more difficult, needing at least two shampooings for Shieda to stop looking like a greasy homeless dog (Akali's words, not his). His dad would probably say something encouraging about training his spirit and will, but Shieda's will was weak and his spirit was already on its way leaving his freezing and numb body. The probability of Akali shaming him was bigger though, so he endured this battle like spirits' strongest guardian and slipped out of the room shining like a polished wok, drying his hair on the go.
It took him about three minutes to get all the stuff he needed in the bag and leave the dorm, but when he looked at the clock at administration building tower, he had to demean himself once again to a jog across the campus in the opposite direction he came from towards the train station.
The Babylon Academy was located on a separate island that was connected to the main city by an underwater multipurpose tunnel that was also a final stop for the biggest bullet train route in the country. The train station was underground just outside the Academy gates, and given that Shieda didn't have a reason to leave the campus before (not like he was allowed to), he was there only once when he had got enrolled nearly a year ago. He was about to fish out his ID from the pocket to show it to the guard at the school gates when a low authoritative voice came from right behind his back:
“I’m afraid I must stop you right there, Shieda Kayn.”
"An honour to be followed around by you personally, Master Shen," Shieda would most certainly be more polite to the head of the Assassin Club if his train wouldn't be arriving in five minutes, "Didn't know principal Syndra assigned me a guard."
"You know the rules, Kayn. You are not to leave the premises." The lower part of Master's face was covered by a black mask, but Shieda's immaculate room/street-reading skills came to the rescue once again: Shen was not a fan of patronising him either.
"Come with me, then." Shieda impatiently watched as Master's brows climbed his forehead. He hated wasting time on useless conversations. "I need to meet my family at the station. Surely you'll have a spare five to look after me if you're so worried I'll escape."
He was definitely too rude. Master Shen was unquestionably not the worst of the professors Shieda met during his first year, but he certainly knew how to test Shieda's rebellious streak. His clothes neat and ironed, brown hair put up in a clean ponytail at the back of his head, hands always folded behind his back, Shen had the aura of a teacher's pet even though he was a teacher himself and was somewhere in the middle of his forties.
“Fair enough.” Master Shen, finally deciding to not call the special forces on him, gave a nod to the guard and led Shieda through the security fence, heading straight to the stairs leading to the station. Well, this certainly went smoother than he anticipated.
***
The train doors opened, unleashing the crowd of parents, friends, and close relatives at the station. Shieda and Master Shen were standing by the stairs, Shieda three steps up to be able to see above the heads. Finally, Akali appeared from the doors, arm at their dad's shoulder, all while he was too busy shooting over-the-top polite looks to an old lady who marched out of the car right after them. Spotting Shieda on the stairs, she raised her other hand in a short wave before basically dragging their father across the platform.
"I swear, you're worse than Shieda sometimes," reached his ears, confirming the danger their family presented to society if they did not get enough sleep.
“Did he wrestle that grandma?” Shieda asked his sister instead of a greeting. Watching his father’s anger being directed at another person was certainly more entertaining than being responsible for it.
"No, but he was close," Akali answered, throwing invisible daggers at the man. He shrugged her off.
“Her fault for trying to fight over the ticket”. And then, “Good to see you, Shieda.”
"Hi." He had no idea what else to say. They hadn't met in nearly a year, and he didn't know if he needed to explain the absence of proper communication. "This is Master Shen, he's the head of the Assassin Club," he said instead, not wanting to be vulnerable in front of a teacher.
Dad immediately stood taller, bowing politely to the man in front of him. “I apologise for the impression I must’ve made on you. Thank you for taking care of my son. I hope he didn’t cause the Academy much trouble.”
“I haven’t got an opportunity to be his teacher yet, but the Academy is yet to receive a formal complaint about his behaviour.”
Shieda and Akali shared an unimpressed look. Yet to receive a complaint? As in "he's doing fine, we've seen worse?" Or "he's on thin fucking ice and we wait for the first opportunity to kick him out?" Either way, the score was unimpressive at best, but certainly better than Shieda's middle school evaluation results.
They went up to the surface together, Shieda yet again happy to get a breath of fresh air in. Akali, never been to the academy before, was absorbing every bit of scenery with all of her senses. With a stupid smile and disheveled hair, still somehow holding on in her signature ponytail, she acttually looked sixteen. In the sun, he finally had a moment to have a look at her outfit she buzzed his ear off about over the phone. She did choose sneakers after all, brown old things but polished enough to look vintage, as she liked to talk about rags. Black shorts and a top of the same colour didn't stand out much, but when Akali caught Shieda looking, she proudly turned around, straightening the fabric of a dark blue haori from under her backpack, a long floppy jacket she probably bargained (stole) from their dad's closet, painted with white jellyfish along the back and part of the sleeves. Shieda whistled, impressed.
“Don’t tell me you painted that this morning.”
“A month ago, actually. The paint’s fluorescent, so it’ll be all nice and shiny in the dark!” Akali gave him a spin, proud of her work, almost crashing into an older woman with a big basket. “I wanted to rock it for the beach trip we planned with the girls for the summer, but I’ve decided to give it a test run here, heard city folks love colour.”
"Damn, how's dad letting you off on friend trips, but I was stuck at home every year?"
Dad, summoned with the call, turned away, by the look of it, from the most intriguing conversation he’s ever had in his life, to look at Shieda: “I would’ve let you go if you had friends to go with, so that’s on your part.”
"Damn." Shieda and Akali grumbled while Master Shen gave Dad a small laugh (what's so funny about a kid not having friends, huh?)
"Is this your first time in the Academy? The main event starts at noon, so I am free to give you a short tour around if you'd like." Shen suggested, polite as a butler.
"No!" Shieda gasped at the same time his dad opened his mouth to agree. Three heads instantly whipped in his direction and he immediately folded in half, bowing apologetically, "I mean, if Master Shen will excuse us, I promised Akali to introduce her to my club friends, if you don't mind."
"Ah, sure, you run off kids," Dad shooed them away with his hand. "Have fun making business connections, or disgracing our family name, or whatever teens these days are up to."
Shen, surprisingly content with the arrangement, nodded. “I hope you will enjoy the festivities to the fullest.”
"We'll sure do," Shieda sing-sang, already half-dragging Akali through the beeping terminal, the academy gates, and away to his yet-to-be-finished project.
***
“Wait, wait, hold on a minute,” Akali floored the breaks when they were about to round the corner to the tech buildings.
“What, Akali we seriously need to hurry up-“ he got cut off quickly with a pair of brown sneakers shoved into his hands.
“One.” Akali stretched her arm behind her back, not to the backpack, but under haori producing a pair of blue sandals with shimmering gems along the straps out of thin air, like a video game character using their inventory. She nonchalantly dropped them on the ground and stepped into them.
“Did you get them from up your ass, or something?” Shieda asked.
"None your business. And two-" Akali threw a peace sign, not looking very peaceful with how close her nails were to his eyes, "It's summer, we're at a festival, and I'll probably get stuck with you for the rest of the day anyway, so I'm getting fried noodles."
“Well, you better have money for that, ‘cause I’m running on empty.”
"And you better fix that by the way, and soon, because the willow cables I got you cost around a month of our shop's income. Don't know how dad's gonna react when he finds out, but this whole affair better be worth- woah."
Shieda followed Akali's gaze, throwing his head backward to follow a hovercraft the size of a small plane descending onto the Babylon Tower's helipad. As far as Shieda knew, Babylon Tower's only purpose was to be a giant helipad. An ugly one as well, not like Shieda was an architecture expert. It was built to look like a giant nail, probably waiting to be smashed into the ground by a sky hammer, with no windows and one door — an entrance that led to the giant elevator used to reach the helipad. Maybe, it was useful in other ways during the big Primordian war, back when the Academy was Babylon's prime military base. Maybe an observation deck, if he was generous. Shieda saw hovercrafts at least a dozen times throughout his first year. They were used by other schools' officials for important meetings or by special operation squads dropping their soldiers off for whatever reason. He hadn't heard about the military being present at the school festivals before, so that must've been another school's high-and-mighty descending to this celebration of life to enjoy the fish cakes or something.
“Anyway,” Akali lost interest in the hovercraft the second it escaped her view, “Noodles! Come on, chop-chop. Fried and spicy!”
The noodles were great. Well, at least that's what Akali told Shieda while slurping the whole plate in one go. The festival already looked more lively, with humans and vastaya of all ages exploring the stalls in anticipation of the main event. Of course, Luminary Club's nerd exhibit of nerds did not count as one, being held at five after noon when the battle showdowns were already over and everyone was too tired, full of sweets, and moderately tipsy on lychee wine to not give enough of a flying fuck about what was happening. At least one of them was having some fun, because now when she mentioned it, Shieda couldn't get rid of the ugly feeling that he fucked up big time. Even if they managed to fix the robot up, it's not gonna pay their bills. It would probably add even more bills because sooner than later, since Dad would need that cable drum sooner or later, and then he would need to order a new one after the discovery. More than that, Akali was going to high school this year even if she didn't pass the Babylon Academy exams, she would need a bunch of stuff to buy and take care of, and now the whole thing with the project looked so small in comparison to-
“They were definitely flirting with each other by the way.”
"What?" Shieda looked at Akali, trying to figure out if she'd been talking for the last couple of minutes.
“Master Shen? And dad?” She wiggled her eyebrows.
“What? No. Huh? You don’t mean… How’d you…” thoughts were rushing through Shieda’s head, making him relive the last twenty minutes of his life in real time.
Akali wheezed, covering her mouth with the back of her hand to not spit the noodles out, “You know what Shen did when we came up to y’all at the station?”
Did he even want to know at that point?
“A full check-out. Eyes to the feet,” Akali squared up her shoulders and folded arms behind her back, parodying the teacher, “and up.” The piercing stare she gave him made Shieda want to cover himself up. Noticing his discomfort, Akali giggled, “Exactly. You were standing behind him, so you didn’t see it, but that stare was intense.”
Shieda gave it a little more thought while Akali was returning her bowl to the students at the noodle stall. Unfortunately, his brain didn’t produce anything more deliberate than “Ew.”
Akali snorted. “A very mature reaction indeed. What, ya don’t want our old man to find true love? After all the support he gave ya? Shame, oh shame, dear brother.”
Shieda made a gagging noise. “Oi, shut it. I don’t care if he dates, I just don’t want it to be Shen of all people.”
“Why not? Ya said he’s a big shot at the Club.”
“Yeah, an Assassin Club, Akali! I don’t want to finally get a spot there next year and… I don’t know, catch them making out in the training hall, or something!”
"Ha! Oh spirits, Shieda, you are so dramatic! They flirted once and are currently having an old man walk around campus, they're not getting married. Besides…" She gave him a wiggle with her eyebrows, "Who knows, maybe he's rich and is good with his hands."
“Akali!”
“To help us with the shop! What did you think about, pervert?”
“I don’t know, pervert, it’s not me who doesn’t think that one dad is enough for-“
Shieda couldn't finish his incredibly smart answer about the necessity to have a balanced amount of father figures per family to not disrupt the natural order of dad jokes quantity because a bunch of Sorcery Club girls who were hurdling at the neighbour stall suddenly exploded in screeching, pointing fingers at the Babylon nail-tower.
“It’s Jayce! Zakina, it’s Jayce!”
“Which Jayce?!”
“What do you mean which Jayce? The Jayce!”
“No way, where?”
“There, look!”
"It's Jayce! It's him! What is he doing here? I thought he was still on a mission with the Anima Squad F305!"
“He works with Anima? But he’s still a student!”
“I know right, he’s so cool!”
“Who’s there with him?”
“Who cares?! Ah! He looked at us! He definitely saw me!”
“Jayce! Jayce, we love you-u!”
Akali covered her ears while Shieda maneuvered her from the line of fire and towards the tech building. It was time for them to leave anyway. Giving the square a final look before turning the corner, he caught a glimpse of a mob closing in on a guy in the Durandal Academy official uniform, his companions, a slim boy with a cane and a tuxedo cat in comically big glasses, completely left out at the safe distance not far from the tower entrance.
***
Akali closed the lab door behind her, dropping her backpack on one of the spare chairs and finally stretching her back with a satisfied groan. “Damn, who was that guy? Looked like some kind of a cult leader to me.” Her spine gave a few pops with a stretch.
Shieda realised he was still holding her sneakers in his right hand and unceremoniously left them by the door, his bag with spare clothes right beside them. He glanced at the clock. Five past ten. They had around seven hours to either make a scientific breakthrough or fail miserably. “Because it’s not that far from the truth,” he gave his desk computer a few shakes, waking up the system with a double-clap of his hands, “Command, APPS search: Jayce Talis.”
Akali stared in awe at the machine completing the voice command by opening up the requested page on the screen while Shieda finally got his hands on her backpack. The zipper was tight, and he wondered what else she managed to shove in to make it so hard to open. The answer came quickly, with a familiar smell hitting his nose.
“Red bean buns!” He exclaimed, excited. “Did dad make them?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, he made them for ya yesterday,” Akali answered, not looking away from the screen, reading an article on the guy whose fan club almost left their ears bleeding, “Forbade me from touching any, but I ate one anyway otherwise it wouldn’t fit.”
Shieda immediately shoved a bun in his mouth, kicking his feet in the air from finally getting a taste of home after so long. Carefully getting the bag with three leftover pastries out, he retrieved the cable drum, losing balance a bit from the sheer weight of it.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was this heavy? I would’ve helped,” he groaned, carrying it to his working station.
“Ha, with those noodle arms? Please.” Ouch. “Hey, did ya know that Tallis guy almost invented artificial magic-“
"By fucking around with the god-weapon shards he stole in the Durandal Academy, yeah." The better question here would be "What didn't he know about Jayce Tallis?", but the answer to that wouldn't be very abundant. Someone from the Lumianry Club decided to dedicate their life to writing a Jayce Tallis article on APPS, regularly updating it with all of his known and unknown works, missions, and life news, making the page constantly sit at the top of the article list, where it gained a constant flow of additional traction and made it the most viewed page in the whole archive. To the disappointment of rare individuals who didn't consider themselves to be Jayce fans, It didn't technically break any content rules because the only difference between Jayce and other famous inventors from before the war times who also had their pages in the archive was that he wasn't dead yet.
Jayce Tallis was a third-year student at the Durandal Academy who was believed to single-handedly carry their whole tech department on his shoulders. Being from a pretty rich family gave him enough of a boost to run leagues ahead of his peers, creating a new branch of weapons that used a free energy flow as a baseline, simulating how magic flew through living beings. When he stole those shards from the Durandal lab, he almost reinvented humanity's understanding of magic by almost artificially creating it out of thin air, but the whole thing got shut down pretty quickly by the higher-ups because of the unknown potential risks, almost costing Tallis his place in the Academy as well.
Shieda wasn't sure what he felt about the whole thing Jayce was trying to achieve. Magic was a huge part of Babylon's culture and it would not be appreciated to mess with it. Trying to generate it artificially could be considered illegal at best and blasphemy at worst, especially by many vastayan tribes. On the other hand, human desires to try and explain the unknown were as natural as magic itself. Shieda's gaze travelled to the robot next to his work table, covered by the protective tarpaulin. No, it wasn't the same. He and Jayce weren't the same. Whatever he was doing, whatever Rhaast's original creators were doing was not disrupting the natural balance.
"Mister Shieda Kayn", Syndra's booming voice rang in his mind, "you have to understand, that magic and technology are not meant to be fused into one. Babylon Academy encourages its students to develop and cultivate their magical abilities blah-blah-blah, under the condition it's not a Type-C power blah-blah-sucks-to-be-you-blah, but as long as you are a member of the Luminary Club, I advise you to refrain from trying to combine them with the machinery." Well, now that he remembered that Rhaast could be considered not only lost but also forbidden technology, the pettiest part of him decided to proceed with his work anyway. As far as he was concerned, whatever his dad was doing was completely safe as long as the magic used to power the machines was not destructive in nature. Jayce was not Magic, so he did not and could not understand it, but Shieda was born with it. Yeah, he had a shitty time controlling it most of the time, but if he powered Rhaast with his own inner power, it meant he was just transferring the energy into another vessel, preserving the natural order of things. Healer-types have always been using it as part of their job, so what was so bad about it? He almost forgot that Syndra was an old stuck-in-the-past hag, probably scared he would try to slip into the dangerous territory just like Jayce did before him, creating a precedent and getting the whole scientific community involved in his mess. However, Jayce was not Magic, so he was not capable enough to do what Shieda was about to pull off.
Shieda firmly pulled the cover down, exposing the robot to the sun for the first time in who-knows-how-many years. He was angry, full of spite directed at no one and everyone at the same time. Fuck that Jayce Tallis guy. Well, not literally — not like Shieda had a chance with him, but even if he had one, he wouldn’t! First of all, Jayce wasn’t his type, but also because he tried to shove his nose where he shouldn’t have, like magic-powered weapons.
“Akali.” Shieda called out, only to feel her breathing at the back of his neck not even a second later.
“M-m-m? Where’d ya get this beauty from?” She stepped forward, studying Rhaast's half-dismantled body. “Nice colour, the magic I mean, looks bloodthirsty.”
Ah yes, he forgot how good she was at actually seeing it. Shieda wondered if Syndra would find an excuse to lock Akali up as well, or if it was his face that was so annoying for her to look at.
"The whole thing works pretty much the same way the shit Dad makes does. However, I suspect he lost his arm at some point and whoever tried to repair it didn't know how he worked, so they fried him up by attaching an electricity-powered arm to his core."
"That's a he? Seems like a pretty girl to me." Akali giggled, shoving her head inside the open chest plate. "Look, I'm not an expert in robotics, but the thing is, any energy could create an overflow. In the worst-case scenario, the thing would literally explode."
"Yeah, been there, done that." Shieda's gaze shot to the corner where four of his test models were dumped in a scrap container. "So, your point is, our scenario is not the worst-case one?"
“Nope, I would even say, this guy took it like a champ. The energy overflow, I mean, not whatever you thought, pervert.”
“You are the pervert here, pervert.”
"I'm not the one with a naked two-meter-tall robot in my lab with all of its inner world on display."
“All robots are naked.”
“Yeah, a very perverse type of thinking if ya ask me.”
“No one asked you.”
“Their mistake. Anyway, have ya tried to power it up yet?”
“No. Honestly, I was too scared to mess with the power. Was too focused on the arm, plus I didn’t know if it would work the usual way.” Shieda glanced at his table, which was covered in drawings he made last night.
"The usual way" meant physical contact with a machine to create a circulation, allowing the magic to flow from the person and into whatever they were powering. With enough concentration, the intensity of magic could be changed, but Shieda wasn't sure in his abilities to this degree yet.
“Mmm, fair enough,” Akali extracted her head from the robot’s chest and turned her attention to its right arm. “However, I suspect you would not need to actually touch it.”
"What do you mean?" Shieda walked closer, trying to look at whatever Akali was focusing on.
“The inner panelling. It’s a material that absorbs magic. Look at the wires over here, along the inner walls. See?”
Shieda followed Akali’s finger, studying the thin, almost invisible to the naked eye wiring. “No way,” he breathed out, “He can absorb magic on his own. As long as he’s in a place with enough energy flow, he can work almost indefinitely! How did they come up with that?”
“I don’t understand how the Academy, or whatever squad it was assigned to, could just forget about it,” Akali sighed, “this thing's a masterpiece, I cannot imagine how long it could take to engineer this.”
"Well, I guess it's time for us to find out," Shieda glanced at the clock. Twenty past ten. "We have the willow cables. The brown wire inside of them could be used for magic absorption. It would be less than ideal, but if we properly connect it, it shouldn't at the very least burn the system down. We could cut the metal I found yesterday, and then use the material from sorcery-type bots for inner plating. It can serve as a conductor for magic and keep the whole thing together. The rest of the cables will be used as usual." He grabbed one of the schematics from the table. "Along the fingers, double circle at the elbow, connecting here, here, and at the base of the shoulder. I was thinking about doing the socket type of attachment, so the arm could be disconnected if something goes wrong without the need to rip it off."
“And connect it on the other side? Smooth.” Akali took the blueprint and returned to the right arm, mirroring the positioning of the components. “I’ll do the metal and the socket if ya manage the innards. I don’t feel like soldering, don’t want to smell like shit for the rest of the day.”
“Deal.” Shieda never actually believed his sister was capable of so much selflessness, but he would not pass on the opportunity of actual help.
“Deal.” Akali hung her haori at the back of the chair and marched to the scrap container, picking out the least burned parts and carrying them over to the cutting saw installed at one of the stations. “Where’s your safety equipment by the way?”
“Uhm…”
“Don’t fucking tell me ya was exploding robots this whole time without even having the gloves on.”
“…”
“Shieda Kayn!”
***
As someone who's been working alone for the better part of the year, Shieda had completely forgotten how it feels to share the workplace with someone. Akali on the other hand, was baffled by his way of living, starting from his messy nature and ending with Shieda not listening to any music while working.
“Only maniacs listen to their own thoughts for so long,” Akali barked, starting her music player.
“Try to think for once in your life, and you’ll see it’s not as scary as it seems.” Shieda laughed, already diving under the table trying to evade the robot finger she threw at him.
They had six hours left.
Assembling an arm into one coherent piece turned out to be more difficult for completely different reasons than one would've expected.
“Can you stop moving so much?” Shieda hissed, trying to evade Akali’s hand, “If I poke the wire through, we’ll need to start over.”
"Stop being left-handed then," Akali grumbled from her spot on the table she had to climb onto for them to not elbow each other every five seconds.
Four hours.
When it came to actually attaching the arm to the robot’s body, Akali insisted on Shieda doing it using his magic. “You’re the one who likes to touch naked wiring with your bare hands. Besides, I won’t reach that far deep into the shoulder with my tiny, delicate arms,” she insisted, sneaking the last red bean bun from the bag. Shieda, realising he would most likely need another shower anyway, tried to at least not make his hair more greasy than it already was while reaching inside of the robot.
Three hours.
“Are you sure this thing was in the armpit?” Akali asked, staring at one of the curcuits, “I thought the important parts like these would go somewhere in the chest, or at the very least in the head.”
"If you were to fight a giant robot, where would you try to hit first to disable it?" Shieda asked, testing out the hinges. Akali squinted, contemplating her answer.
“Smart little bastards, those PROJECT engineers.”
Shieda grinned and attached the side panel to its place.
Two hours.
“So, wanna try to start him up?” Akali was sitting at the table, eating the last stash of his snacks — jelly fruit-flavoured candies.
"Should I be doing this?" Shieda was staring at the black sleek panel inside the robot's chest. At the side of it, there was a small switch, they conducted was some sort of a reset button.
"Look man, if he burns, he burns." Akali shrugged, clearly not feeling the intensity of the situation. It was almost three o'clock.
Shieda held out his hand, gently touching the panel with his dirty fingers, “Do you think he needs more magic?”
"Mmm, I don't think it would do any damage, but shoot."
Somehow, it wasn’t that convincing.
"I think it will start to absorb your magic passively after you turn the thing on," Akali tried again, "you're practically leaking it."
Shieda glanced down at himself, wondering what she meant by the word leaking.
"It's hard to explain. You don't have good control of your magic so it starts to drip down. Like blood, or oil, but blue."
"Am I standing in a magic puddle now?"
"Not a puddle, but there's a bit of mist around ya feet. Oi, quit stalling already!"
Shieda took a deep breath and flipped the little switch. A deep silence settled in the lab, and even Akali stopped rustling with a candy bag. "Wake up", Shieda sent a silent prayer to the universe, holding his breath. He waited a couple of seconds, anticipating any kind of response. Then a couple more. Then a minute more. Nothing was happening. The robot was dead to the world. Shieda could not see it, but he felt like he had started sweating magic. He was doomed.
"We probably fucked up with the connectors in the shoulder-" he started when the panel suddenly lit up with red, a bit pixelated letters.
> System hard reset completed >
Letters dimmed out, immediately getting replaced with others.
> Initiating protocol R-H-1-1-S-T >
"What, what is it?" Akali was immediately at his side, gripping his tensed shoulder and inspecting the inside, "Oh damn, congrats on not exploding something for once. After all, you had me to guide ya."
> Starting the automatic system analysis >
"Huh?", Shieda was following the screen lighting up with multiple system names he could not identify, each getting a positive response from the analysis. "Don't fucking tell me you've had a built-in APP system inside of you this entire time!"
He had spent the whole night manually checking every bolt and screw because of the lack of ports, afraid of powering the system up in case it breaks down, and this is what he sees the first thing after booting the robot up? Whatever that PROJECT thing was, he hoped their headquarters would explode.
> Automatic system analysis completed >
> Initiating the main programming protocol >
He heard a soft whirling sound from the inside, the machine coming to life step by step. So, the main chips were indeed intact behind that bubble in the neck. His hands were itching to get to the main program and finally see what the robot's functions were.
> Initiating memory protocol >
Well, this was not ideal, but Shieda hoped that back in the day robots' memory chips were tied to data storage and not artificial personalities. Who would need a battle robot to have a personality anyway? Besides, the thing was probably completely wiped out with the hard reset. As far as he knew, data like this could be stored for up to a couple of hours in case of an emergency transfer, not years. Worst case scenario, he could probably rummage around and find a way to turn the personality thing off completely. He didn't feel like becoming a slave owner today. The buzzing became a little louder, and when Shieda thought the reboot ended, another set of words appeared on the screen.
> Initiating learning protocol >
All thoughts vanished from his head in that instant. No. Please, if there were any spirits left who still gave a fuck about his pathetic life, may their guidance find him and tell him he suddenly went insane and his eyes were deceiving him. The robot had a learning chip. A learning chip, rejected by a scientific community for violating the rights of living and capable of feeling creatures. Yes, now he remembered why it was illegal. This old, neglected thing he accidentally found in the academy warehouse by sheer coincidence had, for whatever reason, a functional learning chip inside of it. Rhaast was created to be sentient. This was wrong. This was very wrong. If anyone discovered he reactivated a robot with a learning chip, he could be sued by at least fifteen different international parties for more money than he could ever make in his life. He didn't have the same influence Jayce Tallis had. He would lose everything, and who knows what would happen to Rhaast after that. No, what would happen to the Academy, which was in potential danger from having Rhaast on its grounds, in a lab with no security measures involved? According to the Babylon laws, every life was sacred. However, this life, an artificially created life, was a line no one was allowed to cross since the Primordian War.
Shieda clutched the front of the robot, raspy and heavy breathing rapidly escaping his lips. He hoped he was having a stroke, preferably a lethal one. Akali, not realising what kind of crime he had just commited, was gently shaking him, voice raising in panic, but he couldn't hear her over the noise of blood rushing in his ears. He had to do something. He had to stop the activation while the reboot was still underway. The panel switch would not work until the system was recalibrated. Maybe, if he managed to get to the bubble with the programming chips, he could rip the whole damn thing out and throw himself down the stairs later to escape the presentation. He shoved his hand inside the chest plate, trying to feel that silicone-like thing inside the robot's neck with his fingers. Yeah, he was sure he wouldn't be able to breach it with any form of brute force, but it's not like physical barriers were much of an obstacle to his powers. He felt it, just out of his reach. Instinctively taking a breath, he phased through the metal oh Rhaast's chest with just his arm, wincing from the feeling of every metal plate piercing through his skin, muscle, and bone. He breached the bubble and took hold of the bundle of cables, feeling the cold material of the chips puncturing his palms. He took one second to concentrate, trying to mitigate the magic around his arm. One pull. One pull and it's all gonna be over.
The panel beeped once, and the machine moved under his arm. Shieda felt the tears gathering in his eyes, but he could not lose his grip on the wiring. Come on. It will take you just a second.
"Observation," he heard a mechanical voice right above his head, similar to automated responses in the terminals, but with static behind it. He jolted in surprise throwing his head back, arm still an elbow deep inside the machine, pain cramping his muscles. A metal head, still as faceless as before, was looming just above him, so close he felt his own breath reflect on the metal surface. Robot's voice broke, getting rid of the static and turning into something deep, almost guttural, but with a distinct smugness to it.
"You look like shit."
Notes:
Woke left: we don't perform abortions after birth!
Also woke left:
Hi, I hope the wait was worth it because I'd lost so many nerve cells while trying to write this chapter I feel like throwing up and getting a 48-hour sleep (this monstrocity took me 5 drafts and almost 20 hours to write)
The Summer Festival arc will last for two more chapters before we move on to other things. After that, the fic will continue in “arc” format, telling one story throughout a couple of chapters. I have a lot of stuff prepared for these two for their years in the academy, so I hope you’ll stick around!
I try to keep notes on the things I still need to explain, but if you think you've found a giant plot hole in this almost 10k words of manic writing, please let me know so I could retroactively explain it later to look more smart. Have a good day!P.S. after thinking about it for some time I’ve decided to share with you that I was considering making Rhaast’s first line “can you stop touching my balls”. You may use this information however you see fit.
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