WW - The New World

Staring up at him from this odd position, she just shrugged again. "So, how have you been since our last meeting...?"


~


A nurse, visible terrified, peeped up, breaking the silence that had consumed the hall for a while now. "Mrs. Atererus?" Not even a nod in her direction. Swallowing hard, she tried again, "Ma'am. We need to ask yo uto return to your bed rest, as a healer yourself, you know that you shouldn't be up. I know this is hard, but you must understa-"


"If you ever speak to me like you know what 'hard' is again, I'll break every bone in your body in one blow. Do I make myself clear?" Alec said sharply, still not taking her eyes from the glass. The shuffle of the nurse's feet told her she reached home with that one. "Now leave me alone."
 
"oh not much, doing my thing, a bit of teaching, trying to push back the old ones, drove a demon thing out of alec, then turned her into an enemy... same shit different day"


he smile and rubbed his nose up against her.. effectionite as always, it was only with her that he was able to put all his evil to the back of his mind.


he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her, enjoying her warmth.
 
Riyoshi smiled to see that Sam seemed to have as much fun as he did, after they were becoming excellent training partners.


"I see you have already figured this out." Riyoshi said as he placed the stone in his mouth.


Reaching his arms out wide, he kept his eyes upon Sam, this time, keeping up with most of his steps. Clapping his hands together, Riyoshi started to dissolve into sand.


"I am liking this now." Riyoshi said as he fully dissolved.
 
Ritshi managed to turn to sand just as Sam swung Katsura through his neck, a big clump of sand eas seperated from the main mass, but soon rejoined it,


"damnit"


he ran to the nearest tree and scampered up it, getting to a low branch.


"looks like the ground is now a no-go... that's his domain now"


"what do you propose, sam-sama?"


Sam grinned


"superhead sand and it becomed glass


"but this is a forrest, do you want to burn it down?"


"now, so what else do we have?..."


he got an idea


"katsura, wind breaker mode, now!"


he unsheathed Katsura again and swung her, this time causing a great gust of wind, in an effort to blow away the thick dust cloud and maybe finding the sand that Riyoshi turned himself into.
 
Steven saw the wolf-woman,and nearly hurled her across the room;he heard many stories about lycans. None were nice. But he restrained himself,primarily because they,for lack of a better term,repaired him. Steven picked up the manual and began to read almost as soon as it hit his lap. When the lycan offered him a Pez,which came from his FOOT of all places,he quirked an eyebrow. "One odd joke. But,hey. Pez is Pez. Thanks." he accepted the Pez,and began to suck on it,as he read the manual. When he got a few pages in,the manual outlined a very interesting function for his eyes.


"Camera function? Useful." Steven began to quickly go through the manual,snapping a picture of every page with his eyes. He'd be able to review the pages later,this way. Saving the pages in his memory taken fifteen minutes. He placed the manual on the table beside him,and said, "I'd rather not hide my reconstruction. I was never one to be vain. All I want hidden are the eyes. It's a little unnerving when someone talks to you with robotic eyes." He brought up the chapter about the enhancements to his brain. It was the only internal structure that was saved and whole. But even it was modified. Micro-power cells,capacitors,even a CPU,HDD,RAM,and Cache space,all going off into the zettabytes. His brain was turned into the planet's most powerful computer.


"Your brain has been outfitted with incredibly advanced hardware. It is now capable of holding hundreds of thousands of zettabytes of data on Read-Only Memory,alone,not to mention of the quadruple that of Hard Disk Space and Cached Memory,seperately. A Central Proccessing Unit,twelve cores,has also been linked to your brain,working in parallel. Each core has a five hundred terrabyte runtime. All of this combined allows your brain to store a near infinite amount of data,permanently. Furthermore,in order to hack this information,your organic brain must be "hacked",which would be difficult."


"It is unknown what effects these modifacations to your brain will have to your magic. However,since these modifacations are part magic in their own right,the effects should be minor,at worst."


The chapter went on about several other modifacations,but they seemed minor.
 
Simply raising an eyebrow at his actions, she shook her head. "Strange you are." She said simply. "How's your war?"


~


A few minutes after the nurse ran off, she returned again, with two large men behind her. "Ma'am, if you don't listen, we will be required to use force for your own safety." Still not even looking over at them, Alec hissed. "Touch me, and he dies faster." None of them could see the amount of concentration on her face as she ran her power sources into a ranged healing spell towards the small premature child, keeping his vitals stable. The two men looked at each other, nodded, and stepped towards her. The blast that sent them backwards was nothing short of deadly. A signal went up and out, for extra help on the magically inclined 'patient'.
 
Marco sighed


"its going ok, but i really dont wanna talk about it" when he said this, he looked exhausted.


"what about you, hows work?"
 
"Ah...right.." Leslie said, looking towards the shadow who tapped a witch's glass. "It goes...I have three children to collect this after noon."
 
"the wolf-girl nurse snapped her fingers


"oh! and i almost forgot, we have been developing attatchments for advancements like yours, like shoulder-miniguns, rocket boots, speacial sniper rifles with a scope that plugs directly into your brain, the works"


she showed him one of these attachments, it was a gauntlet


"this here increases the forse of any punch about 16X"


She smiled to him, and handed him a mirror


"look at yourself... we designed these eyes so they look exactly like normal human eyes... green ones in fact, that was my decision"


she walked out, and came back quite soon, this time she had a drill


"dont worry sir, i just noticed a somewhat loose screw, just let me fix that..."


she out the drill under his foot and turned it on, suddenly, Steven would feel his feet, but he couldnt move them, he could feel the tightness of it as the screw went in stronger.


"there we are, AH! you're receptive! good, that means you should be able to move in a day or so"


--- Merged Double Post ---


Marco sighed "its always kids..."


he shook his head, he knew his forces were responsible for their fair share as well.


"so... what now?"
 
Steven observed the gauntlet. "Interesting. Anything that affects the entire arm,for when I'm swinging something around? Like a sword?"
 
"an?... AH! i see, yes we've gotten several limb-replacements, Mr Highland said that as a prototype, you should be the one to tese these out... yep, you're one of a kind Mr Steven"


she opened a nearby box


"of course we cannot get a full arm replacement in here, that takes complicated robotics to install, but something like this is relatively simple.


she pulled out a blade replacement for his hand.


"this is the blade, we also have claws and 25kg solid metal "fists" as well, not to mention the "computer fingers" that split up into 72 smaller "fingers" and allows incredible speed-typing.
 
As the nurse sent out the distress call, a barrier snapped down, severing that hallway from all outside forces. Still staring in at the child, she didn't even notice it when a dart of poison nailed itself into the back of her leg. As her energy started fading, the child began to cry. Eyes fluttering wildly, she sent out a distress signal, before putting the nurse up against the wall as she stepped into range. Opening her mouth to speak, she fell to the side, her bond with the baby broken as she went under.


~


Leslie shrugged, "It's unfortunate, but it's a fact of life." Looking down at her watch, she frowned, "In fact, one's due in about five minutes...the smallest, sadly..." Looking at Marco, she gave a weak smile, "You can tag along if you'd like...?"
 
Marco nodded.


"sure i'll come along"


Marco had seen many dead, wounded and orphan children in the war, most of them are taken to the Legion's orphanage, oddly enough, its actually the Succubi and elves who are the best substitute mothers.


he took a deep breath, seeing dead kids was never easy.
 
Leslie nodded, before opening a portal to a Hospital in Russia. Moving quietly, and unseen, she headed for the maternity ward.


~


As Alec fully went under, two male nurses came and brought her back to her room, checking on her stitches for her side, and to make sure she didn't injure anything else doing what she had.


~


Stopping in the hall, Leslie felt something familiar and panicked slightly. "Marco...you don't want to see this." She said quietly, before phasing through a door into a room full of machines beeping widely. Peering into the bed at the tiny little blue bundle, she pulled the blanket down slightly, revealing a face that looked shocking like Vent, and bent over to kiss it's forehead. It's crying stopped almost instantly, and the machines flat lined. Leaning pack, with a small transparent child in her arms, a cold body left in the crib, she hummed softly to it, while walking out of the room, straight past nurses yelling something about the Atererus child.
 
Marco stood there at the door, his eyes shot open, with tears running down his face


"w... wha?"


his hands were shaking, when the nurses said who's child it was he could barely stand, his breathing was at a heavy pant... this was Alec's baby.. the one he tried to protect... gone.


"no..."


he put his hands over his mouth and he slumped down the wall, his eyes were already red from the tears


"no..."
 
Steven smiled. "My eyes are cameras. If I get access to a workbench and some tools,I'll be able to gut that gauntlet,memorize every aspect,and then reverse engineer something that I'll be able to attach to the existing arm,for similar effect as one of your replacements. And maybe a weapon to go with it." His smile faded. "I don't want to replace my arm with a sword,or make my fingers split to type faster. If you leave me with that gauntlet,I'll be able to make what I want after I reverse engineer it. I have a few ideas already,actually."


Steven knew exactly what he wanted. Ideas were forming rapidly. Steven noticed his thought proccess was MUCH faster than it was before. "You can trust me. I'm calm here. I doubt I'd snap from trying to reverse engineer a kinetic force actuator gauntlet. I've invented more complicated things from scratch."
 
Leslie nodded her head, "I know...." Kissing the child on the forehead once more, he glowed faintly, before fading out completely. Bowing her head as she looked at Marco, she faded herself against the other wall. She knew this job wasn't easy when you didn't know the ones you were taking, but there came a time for everyone, when you had to for those you loved.
 
Marco just sat there, looking at the nurses hopelessly trying to revive the long dead baby... they couldnt see or hear him, so he didnt stop them.


eventually, he opened a portal and went through, emerging again in "the wonderland" a fair while after Leslie had "passed on" the baby's spirit.


he walked in to her house, pale as a ghost and sat down, then put his head in his hands.


"Alec's baby... gone.. *sniff* gone"
 
Appearing 100 feet away from the dirt cloud, Riyoshi was back to normal. Putting the stones back into his pocket he took a deep breath.


"Hey Sam! I am getting a little hungry. How about we go get something to eat?" Riyoshi yelled out as he leaned against a tree.
 
The nurse smiled


"oh i'm sure you can... but only on OUR workbench and only under OUR supervision, you understand?"


she went to his shoulder and screwed in another bit, sending a sharp pain all over Steven for a split second.


"okay, now your right arm is done.. now lefty"


she did the left arm as well.


"now the legs"


she pulled down his blanket, he was wearing patient-pants.


"sorry sir, i'll have to take these down to reinforce the nerves like i did with your arms, would you be more comfortable with a male doctor? completely understandable if you do, if so i could leave and get Dr Mobius to take care fo this"


Sam sighed


"yeah, sounds like a plan"


he sheathed Katsura


"okay, if we stick to the woods untill we get to the canyon, we can follow the cliff path, go past the bridge, then we can sneak in the side door to the school without anyone seeing us, lets mozie"


Sam took the lead, running through the forrest, he didnt go at his full speed so Riyoshi could keep up.
 
Steven nodded at the nurse's grounds for his tinkering. "Understandable. Dangerous,easily weaponized proprietary technology,and there's the possible danger of me going ballistic under stress." When the nurse mentioned what needed to happen for the next step in the procedure,Steven shrugged. "I'm not shy. Do what needs to be done." He thought for a moment,then said, "Could you also get a message off to Marco? I need him to stop all active action against Nightrise,and to focus of recon,espionage,and counter-espionage. I have a plan,and I can't have battles on multiple fronts fouling it up."
 
The shadow peered into the room as Marco had once again entered the world. With an air of someone upset, it marched over, before wrapping it's 'arms' around him. From a small bookcase, a very tiny blue book, one that was brand new, flew over. It flipped open to page one, one the front of it, was the name:


Artemis Yuu Atererus.


Inside, was a story. Every few minutes or so, a new paragraph would appear, detailing small pointless things. The whole book, was a 'history' of the child's life in heaven. It was the shadow's way, of trying to make him stop crying.


~


From the hospital hallway, Leslie remained. Someone needed to tell Alec, and it wasn't going to be a nurse. Fading into visabilty, the nurses stopped almost instantly. Raising a hand, she shook her head, and those that could sense what she was calmed down. Moving past them, she located Alec's room and passed inside. There she was, tied down with the straps used to prevent a patient from hurting themselves, completely gone to the world.


Carefully and slowly, she undid the binds, before sitting the guest chair and waiting. She'd been there two hours before Alec would go back into the world of the conscious. When she awoke, she instantly started to bolt for the door, before stopping as a reflection of the rest of the room made her stop. Bowing her head, she didn't even turn around, hand still on the doorknob to leave. "He's dead."


Leslie bowed her head, "There was nothing I could do." The phone book that came flying at her was no surprise. Catching it, she set it down gingerly. "There was nothing anyone could have done. Two hours from now, or three months, it was unavoidable." It wasn't until the sharp intake of air met her ears she'd realized she'd slipped up.


"You mean...." Alec's knees went weak. Leslie had to commend the woman, for keeping it together so long. Nodding her head, she responded quietly, "He would have been a still birth."


By the time the nurses came to check up on her, the room was beyond destroyed, and the two women sat, one blankly staring into the wall, the other, trying their best to comfort her.
 
Marco's eyes widened at the name


"Artemis..." he watched the words form, reading tham as fast as they appreared, reading about what the child was doing.


he wiped his eyes, strangely, this bought him more comfort than anythign else


"i.. i don't surpose we could give this to Alec?... it would help her more than anyone"


Then nurse nodded to Steven very well sir.."


she placed a hand on a crystal in the corner of the room


"yes? connect me to High Commander Highland"


there was a brief pause


"Commander?.. are you alright? you sound off... very well sir, Mr Steven would like to be in charge of the anti-nightrise operations... very well sir"


she let go tf the Crystal


"he said "shut the hell up you Steven, i know you want revenge but you need a cool head, we have something big planned for Nightrise, something they will never forget, and you are a crucial component in the 2 operations we have planned, i judge you also have a plan, so i will order my troops to stop offensive moves and focus solely on the defesive, but this better be damn good""


the nurse sighed


"i swear the commander scares me some times..."
 
The shadow bowed it's head, shaking it sadly. Cracking it's head back, it gave off a voice that sounded like an old record. "Record books, given to small children who lack living life, are at all times to be left away from mundane parents. If the parents are of magi decent in any species, they are to be evaluated for proper handling. If deemed unfit to handle the knowledge, the book shall remain in the handling of...." The voice cut out, skipped on the last word for a second, before the shadow re-hinged it's jaw.
 
Marco sighed and closed the book. he nodded to the shadow and sld the book towards her... or IT or whatever this shadow creature was.


"thanks shadow... hey, no offence but... do you even have a name? or do i just call you Shadow?"


seeing that book had put his mind at ease, he understood, he had kept many parents away from their children, especially if that child was dead.


after the shadow replied, he leaned back a bit


"uhh, would it be okay if i got a cup of coffee? or should i just... you know... mozie on home?"
 
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