Soban
Convention Veteran
Ghost Star Fortress [NK-X1-02] Docking Bay One
Nataria
YSS Artemis
Deck 6 - VR Chamber
Maradia stood in the VR room, looking at a holographic mirror with a projection of her old self overlaid on her.
Sacre slid into the VR room, holding a small bag with practice knives in it. Her eyes flash over the hologram as she entered. "Oh, hey Maradia."
Maradia quickly turns off the holgram. "Oh, hey..." sounding startled by her squad leader's entrance.
Sacre pulled open a small bag with knives in it as she got ready for practice. "What are you up to?"
Maradia shifted uncomfortably, "Oh, just uh... looking at... things..."
Sacre started to lay out her knives on a holographic table. "Things?"
"Yeah, like uhh... armor?"
Sacre nodded understanding, she had to rework her own loadout recently. "Armor, yes, it's an inportant decision. What combinations were you thinking of?"
"I think... the Daisy with Kalamari arms maybe?"
"Kalamari? Intresting, why?" Sacre moved to a new holographic table and put the practice knives down. She casually took off her uniform jacket to reveal a body covered with scars. The only place that they aren't are her forearms with some of them even distinctly dead ending onto the much smoother skin.
"It'd just be useful to have more arms, I guess..." She glances at Sacre then looks at her own entirely metal arms, She might have some scars where the implants were installed, but it's not exactly possible to heal out implants
Sacre slid over to Maradia. "or to have biological arms again." There was a pause in which a dropped pin would have sounded like a gunshot. "You weren't looking at armor."
Maradia silencely turned the projection back on, revealing Maradia as she looked before the implants.
Sacre took a breath and nodded sadly. "Sometimes, the changes we under go are not our choice."
"I don't understand why they thought they were making me better. Was this not good enough?!" She gestured downwards at her unmodified body.
Sacre purses her lips. Then steps forward and shoves Maradia out of the hologram, seperating the two so now there were two Maradias, the hologram and the Cyborg. "Does it matter if it was or wasn't? It is not who you are now."
Maradia looks down at her metal arms and the hologram follows her movement. "But it could've been... I didn't ask to be changed..."
Sacre's face softened slightly, "Neither did I."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Anything" Sacre said gently, approching close enough to touch, but not.
"What did they do to you?"
Sacre turns away with a shiver, not wanting to answer Maradia. She clenched her fist tightly. "Do they eat eggs where you come from?"
"No, why?"
Sacre looked up to the simulated sky with her back to Meradia. "There are some places that do. Where I grew up, we didn't. Our ancestors taught us that children are precious. It is said that long ago our ancestors made an oath to a fertility spirit. We would not eat any eggs for their blessing. So none of us eat eggs, it is said that the one who eats eggs is cursed by the spirit. Over time, it became worse then murder. When I was young, I got into a fight with my father and ran away to the stars. But the blackness between was where I ended up."
Elenor Herrick pocked her head into the VR room. "Hey, lunch's almost over you two." With that the moment was shattered, and Sacre was suddenly the hard Joto Hei again.
"What was the fight about?" Maradia asked.
"We should get lunch." Sacre said, the moment broken by the interruption. She put her uniform jacket back on, covering the scars. There was a disquiet silence as Sacre left the room. Maradia followed Sacre, watching the hologram of her original self disappear.
---
Three days later, Sacre had still not told Maradia about what exactly had happened. Everytime she had been asked, Sacre brushed it off either by saying that there was something to do or giving Maradia something to do. Anything other then tell Maradia what had actually happened.
The metal-armed woman was determined to find out. With her scarf on, she slithered around in search of Sacre. She was going to get her to answer this time, for sure.
This time Sacre was found in the gym, practicing with her throwing knives. Calmly thunking knife after knife into a variety of targets. Some moving, some not. There was a screen that Sacre was using to do some sort of programing between throws.
The partially mechanical snake made her way into the gym, being careful not to startle the medic since she'd rather not be stabbed. "So..." Maradia spoke up from beneath her lime green scarf.
Sacre closed the screen, "So what? I'm practicing with my throwing knives." She said sharply, acting like she didn't know what Maradia wanted.
"I see that," the robo-snake said as she looked at where she had thrown them. "You're very skilled," she commented in an attempt to butter her up so she would answer the question when she asked it.
Anouther knife landed on the target. "Good."
Maradia turned her head to look at Sanssinia, inquiring "Where did you learn to throw knives?" She hoped it might be related to her father, which could smoothly lead her towards giving the answer.
"Fort Victory, it came in handy at the Battle of Yamatai. It was... something of a graduation exercise as it were." Another knife buried it's self in a target.
"Ah..." Maradia replied. Well darn, that plan wasn't going to work. She sighed, she wasn't sure what she was going to say next, she couldn't think of a way to bring the subject up without asking about it outright.
Sacre quietly kept putting knives into the target, seemingly willing to just stand there in silence.
Seeing there wasn't much else she could do, Maradia just went right for it. She looked up and began "That fight..."
"Was a long time ago." Sacre interupted.
"Can't you tell me what happened?" Maradia meekly asked.
Sacre sighed, looking down and realizing that she didn't have any knives left. "You aren't going to leave this alone, are you?"
Marardia squirmed the end of her very long tail, looked down, and then spoke up "You always try to dodge the question... why won't you say anything about it?"
"It's a private matter, not any of your buisness. Besides, it doesn't matter anymore. Far as I can tell, the Kuvexians killed them." Sacre said, pulling a knife from seemingly nowhere and holding it tight.
The pythbot saw the knife and backed up slightly, somewhat startled. "B-but... why?" she asked. She almost felt it was unfair; scars could be hidden, Sacre could just keep her jacket on to hide the many on her torso and not talk about the ones on her face or tail. Meanwhile Maradia's implants were rather drastic, they were prominent and she had no way to hide them- the closest she could come was using a scarf to hide her mouth, as she was doing now.
Sacre shrugged and went to go retrive the knives. "What I was told was that my hometown was the hometown of some bigwig so they fought back hard, everyone who worked at my father's blacksmith shop and their families were imprisoned and taken to Kuvexia or killed."
Maradia's face, half-obscured by the scarf, winced. "What you were told? You... don't remember?" She asked, confused.
"I was halfway across the Galaxy taking the fight to the Kuvexians on the Kaiyo during the occupation. I had enough to deal with without thinking about a home I hadn't seen in a decade or so."
"What happened to you... after the fight? Before you joined the army?" the pink-haired Separa'Shan solemnly asked.
Sacre returned. "The ship I was on got taken by pirates, and I was turned into a exotic slave. There aren't many Separa'Shan in the universe now, much less then. ... I dealt with my masters about as well as I dealt with my parents. Opposional, defiant. They controlled me however they could, with drugs and beatings. But they all sold me as too much trouble. For a while I was trapped in a market. The drugs... the memories are cloudy sometimes. I don't know everything that happened. I do know I 'starred' in a lot of porn."
Sacre pulled up a picture of what looked like the bottom of a wooden bunk with names carved into it. "We promised not to forget each other. I don't know what happened to any of them."
Sacre paused a moment to remember them before continuing. "Eventually they broke me. I don't remember much after that untill I was rescued by Star Army."
Maradia gasped and looked down. After a moment, she said "I'm so sorry..." She thought, then added "I... hate my parents. I hate my whole family. I refuse to use their last name anymore."
"I don't blame you. Sometimes I wish I could hate my parents, but looking back, I've grown, changed. Sometimes I wonder if it was because they really were wrong, or if I was just a defiant kid who needed to listen to them. I guess I'll never know." Sacre shook her head.
"I don't understand what I did... they just said they were going to upgrade me, and... and..." Maradia stopped, unsure if she should continue.
Sacre tossed a knife into the target, "And they didn't care if you wanted it or not. Didn't listen when you said no. Took away your selfworth and your body."
"No, they didn't," Maradia said, clenching her metal fist and her claw with an audible clink. "Do you know what made it worse?" she asked.
"What made it worse?" Sacre asked.
"How many times I said it... how much I begged... they never listened. It... it wasn't all at once. They kept sending me to get more and more improvements. I tried to tell them no every time and they still forced me. My siblings... I don't know if they were ever forced to... when I was there, they never got any implants... but suffice to say, they weren't nice to me, not even after..." she struggled to explain.
"even after you could crush them without a thought." Sacre filled in.
"I couldn't," the Separa'Shan admitted. "I wish I could, but I couldn't. That would be murder; and they were sinisterly sly too. They tried to keep it a secret that they had forced me unwillingly to... It would've looked like I killed them in cold blood if I did."
"I did, or a fork of me did, when they got free. They went though and did their very best to wipe out everyone who did, very sucessfully I might add. Their a part of my soul, so I guess it's on me too." Sacre admitted.
"A fork? As in a clone?" the longer-tailed but shorter-standing snake asked. "In that case I wouldn't say it is. It wasn't you yourself who did it, it was a clone. Even if it was you, it wasn't you," she sighed.
"It's irrational, but still how I feel about it. Especially given that the only reason I didn't is the Army didn't really give me a chance." Sacre responded.
"It's still not you though- maybe you would've, but you didn't," Maradia suggested.
Sacre tossed another knife into the target silently. "You should learn how to throw a knife." She said, trying to change the subject again.
"I suppose I could try," the bionic mamba replied. "How do I start?" she asked, slithering towards Sacre.
Sacre handed her a dull training knife. It was very precisely balanced and well made. "You start by throwing this in the direction of the target."
"I see... sounds easy enough," Maradia commented. She took the knife with her heavy duty claw rather than her hand and moved her arm around, getting a feel for the knife and its weight.
"So... are you paralyzed by your own incompetance or are you going to throw the knife?" Sacre asked.
"You don't have to put it that way..." Maradia mumbled. Her claw swiveled and spun on her robotic wrist, orienting itself before she moved her arm back. She then flung it forward and released the knife, propelling it toward the target with incredible force. Her throw didn't have much going for it besides the raw strength, she had never thrown a knife before.
The knife missed by a pretty wide margin, slaming into the wall, but not sticking due to an odd angle, it skittered across the gym floor. "Go pick it up." Sacre said simpley.
The long woman slithered to the other side of the gym, a drop of sweat forming on her forehead. She could feel her throw silently being judged and so she picked up the knife with the grasper on her right arm again, her joints quietly whirring.
"Do it again."
Maradia returned to the throwing area and moved her mechanical arm. It whirred more loudly this time, and she threw the knife at the wall with such force that it might even top a neko's throw, even if her throw wasn't that much better.
"First lesson: You will be doing that a lot. Throwing a knife, picking it up, and then going back to throw again." Sacre moved a pile of knives over to Maradia's side of the table. "That's why we have lots of knives. So we can throw a lot before we have to pick up again. Second Lesson: You have plenty of power, but all the power in the galaxy won't help if you miss. So try and hit the target, or at least worry it a bit."
"Hmm... Okay," the black-tailed snake said, reaching into the bowl. Her metal claw clinked against the knives as it picked another one up, trying the throw again, and again, and again. She made several misses before one finally came close to the target, even though it didn't hit.
"Closer, I think you might have made that one think there is a mouse in the woods. Although, I do wonder why you are using your claw?" Sacre asked as she assess.
Maradia turned to look at Sacre and asked "I-is there something wrong with that?"
"No, but I'd probably consider it my 'off hand' as it were. The claw doesn't have nearly as much dexterity in exchange for it's strength." Sacre held one of the knives a coule of diffrent ways in her hand to demonstrate.
"Well I..." Maradia watched the "fingers" on her claw move back and forth, seeing what Sacre meant. She tried to make them move in different directions, but observed that they only twitched back and forth unsteadily as they were rigidly attached to hinge joints and couldn't swivel side to side independently of her "hand". "I am- or I was right handed," she explained, "At least, until they changed my right hand into this."
Sacre nodded, "Makes sense, you do need wto know how to throw with both of your hands. Let's see how you do with your left, it can't be worse." Sacre suggested.
"A-alright," Maradia nodded. Her metal left hand, which was in the style of a regular hand, clinked as it picked up a knife. She aimed it, and, despite the better dexterity, her throw somehow actually was worse. Not only did it totally miss the target, it went too far to the side and bounced off the side wall before it even got there.
"Or perhaps you are a never ending well of disappointment. Let's try to get it in the same direction as the target this time." Sacre said dryly.
The cyborg snake facepalmed with her robotic hand, before trying again. Her next attempt was much better, but only in that it was about as good as the throws she made with her right "hand".
Sacre had more to say over the next several throws, her voice fairly neutral and never seemed to run out of either patiance or cutting remarks when Maradia did particularly poorly. Untill finally, if by luck, Maradia hit the target solidly. "Acceptable, now we just have to do that more often." Sacre commented with a hint of genuine pleasure that Maradia had hit the target.
"I-I did it? I did it!" Maradia exclaimed, surprised and proud. She tried to throw another knife at the target, but unsurprisingly, she wasn't able to get two in a row and missed. She looked at the knives on the floor ahead of her, disappointed.
"Looks like it's time to go pick up the knives again." Sacre said, even though they still had several, she slid with Maradia as they went to pick up the knives.
"I guess," the snakeborg said, her metal shoulders drooping as her robotic eyes saw how many knives had missed. Slithering over with the basket, the knives made jingling sounds as she put them back in with her mechanical hand.
Sacre slid out with Maradia, helping her pick up the knives and put them back into the basket. "Do you remember the first lesson?"
Maradia nodded, parroting "Yes... I'll be doing this a lot..."
"You'll be disappointed a lot, I practice a lot because I still don't always hit things the way I'd like. That said, it's really rewarding when I do, or when I get to show off a bit. There is always a challange to be overcome, something about your throw that's not perfect. It's your attitude about the imperfections that matters." Sacre explained.
"Yeah, I know, it's just that it's annoying to keep missing like this," the black-tailed snake sighed.
Sacre put the last few knives into the basket. "It certainly is, but it's part of the process. You start out missing things, and it doesn't matter why. Perhaps it's becuase someone smashed your fingers and you couldn't really use them for a while, or a crosswind you didn't take into account. Regardless, you have to be bad before you are good. Practice makes permanant, and how you practice throwing a knife is how you'll throw a knife when it comes down to muscle memory."
"Or when your fingers got replaced on one hand," the pink-haired Separa'Shan added, pinching her two-fingered claw. "I can't use muscle memory if I don't have muscles in these things anymore," she griped.
They arrived back where they had been throwing from. "Muscle memory isn't in the hand, it's in the head. You get used to doing things a certain way. You do it conciously and then your mind allows you to do it easier. It's why it's hard to do things for the first time, but get easier." Sacre took one of the knives and pinched it between her thumb and forefinger, with it resting in the webbing between the two fingers. "I've never trained someone with a claw before, but I think you would hold it like this. Then throw like this." Sacre made a throw, and hit the target with the knife bearly sticking in. "Perhaps you can be less dissapointing this time."
"If you say so," the very-long-tailed-cyborg replied. She spun her claw around on her wrist and used it to hold the knife again, this time in a different orientation. Her artificial appendage moved forward and backward, sending the knife towards the target once more.
It missed, but not by much. Sacre didn't seem impressed. "Again. Focus less on angle, you need to hit the target before angle matters."
The thick-tailed snake clamped her claw on another knife and aimed it toward the target, being more careful about where she was aiming. She released it, allowing it to soar at the target.
The knife hit the target, but clattered off at the wrong angle. "Again. Do the same thing."
Maradia picked up another and raised her arm, but the servos inside of it whirred a little more weakly. She stopped, looked at her arms and the implants running through her tail, and then lowered the knife. "I uh..." the partially battery-operated snake mumbled, trying to find an excuse. "I think I might need to uh... go now?"
"We still have quite a few knives left in the bucket. Let's finish them." Sacre encouraged.
"Well, I mean, it might be good to take a break. My arms are getting tired," the cyborg tried to lie, managing to forget the fact that inorganic arms could not get tired.
Sacre didn't seem to be impressed. "I thought you arms didn't have any muscles." She said dryly.
Maradia took a moment to look at the shining metal making up her arms. "Oh. Well, they don't, but it's an expression!" she tried to save the excuse.
"For your battery running low?" Sacre asked, spotting the blinking indicator on Marida's back.
"What?" Maradia asked, trying to act like she didn't know what Sacre meant. The cyborg snake didn't realize the indicator light on her battery was blinking red, she only knew that it was low because her implants told her directly.
"I can see the indicator flashing. It's to tell us so we can help get you plugged back in." Sacre told her.
"I-I have an indicator light?!" Maradia asked, blushing from embarassment. "Where?" She wasn't able to see the light flashing through the fabric in the back of her shirt, also glowing through the back of her uniform's collar. Her changeable battery was placed on her back, thus she never saw the light that had been placed behind her all along because she never caught it blinking in the mirror.
Sacre nodded, "On your back, just under your collar. It's off when your charged, but when it starts to run low, it blinks."
Maradia twisted around, unsuccessfully trying to get a look at the battery that was attached to her. "W-what? There is? I thought it was just the battery... How long did you know? Have I been doing that every time?"
"Not every day, it depends on how hard you've been working and how much you've charged." Sacre said.
Maradia cursed under her breath, trying to hide the light with her hands. "Does everybody else know about that?" she asked quietly.
"It's my job to know. I don't think they know yet, but it's something you need to tell them."
"I-I didn't know it was there, I guess I never bothered trying to look back there when it gets low. I don't feel comfortable telling them..." the more electronic one of the two replied.
Sacre nodded, "Why?"
"I don't... I don't like these..." Maradia tried to explain, slithering over to a bench. She sat down on it, letting the rest of her large tail lay across the floor on its back. "I don't want to have to talk about them."
Sacre curled her tail under herself. "We're a team Maradia."
The Pythus looked down at the more lightly colored underbelly of her tail, which by contrast was not tainted by wires and implants, so they wouldn't interfere with moving. "I know, but... I still don't like to talk about them."
"I don't think any of us like to talk about our traumas. I know I don't."
"I guess not. But do I really need to?" Maradia asked.
"The way I see it, it's a medical issue. You need to get plugged in from time to time. Not a big deal, but still something we need to know about." Sacre showed Maradia her arms, and drew out a bone knife from a nearly invisible slit near her wrist. "Do you know what theese are?" Sacre asked, using the knife to gesture at the slits.
"No, I don't. What are they?" Maradia asked, looking at them. Her robotic eyes with slitted pupils had enhanced vision, so she didn't need to get closer to see them.
"Their symbiotes, they make knives inside me. It means that I need supliments to keep them alive, as I don't make everything they need. Usually about once a week, but I keep a supply on me all of the time. It's something that Klaus knows about, and Setsua, and several others. So if something goes really wrong with them, they know and can help." Sacre explained.
"I see... But how could they help me if something goes wrong? They don't know how to fix me, or how to... how to repair me..." Maradia timidly asked.
Sacre tossed the bone kife at the target and stuck it in. "They don't have to fix you, I can do it, and everyone on the squad is going to have basic medical training. But helping isn't always about fixing, it's also about knowing to cover your weaknesses just like you cover theirs. We're a team."
Maradia thought, and said "True, but I'm not sure how you can cover... that." She glanced over her shoulder, still unable to see most of the battery that was attached to her back without a mirror, nor the blinking light.
"I've seen worse, try covering a clanking robot who takes things entirely too literraly in the worst possible way." There was the tinyist smile on Sacre's face, the first Maradia had seen. "Always an adventure. but we did because She was a member of our team."
The cyborg snake blinked, looking at Sacre. "Well, she certainly sounds interesting," she spoke. "Clanking? Is she like a mecha or something?"
"I first met her as a wounded grunt drone, she's been though a few diffrent bodies, but I think she identified as a tank. Comeon, let's get you to an outlet before you run out of juice." Sacre said, picking up the knives and the bucket.
"Oh..." Maradia said, trying to imagine what that must've looked like. "Yeah, you're right, I... erg..." Without finishing, the Cypara'Shan got up and started to go towards the door, but was clearly slithering much more slowly and struggling to move as her servos and implants started to lose charge. She grunted, trying to push forward, but they were not designed to be easily moved by whatever biological muscles she had left without power. Evidently, she had been running low for longer than she realized. Quickly, her battery gave out, she stopped in her tracks and fell limp before she could even make it to the door. The light under her shirt was no longer blinking, it was off.
Sacre sighed, "Also, this."
Sacre considered for a moment as she looked at her sticken companion. The outlet wasn't too far away, four meters at the most. Sacre started to pat Maradia down, looking for her charger. Sacre didn't find it. "I don't know if they replaced your ears, but your going to start carrying your charger around for doing this to me, you useless pile of wires. I'll be back in a minute."
Once Sacre left, Maradia started crying, for while her eyes were electronic, her tear ducts were still intact. Her implants wouldn’t function without power, not even off bio-energy, so she was completely immobilized thanks to her servos and strength implants, and blinded because of her eyes needing power too. She couldn’t even speak, her tongue and jaw were artificial, and because of her total mouth replacement her lips had to be replaced with cybernetic ones too so those wouldn’t work either. Her ears, however, were still biological, and she heard everything Sacre said, which was the cause of her sobbing.
It didn't take long for Sacre to be back with the charger. She plugged it in and tried to stretch it out to reach Maradia, it didn't reach. "It's too short, I guess we'll have to do this the hard way."
Sacre rolled Maradia onto her stomough and pushed her into a pointing towards where the plugged in charger. "What did they make your circuits out of? lead? I'm glad I don't have to do this on Essia." Sacre lifted the front part of Maradia's body and tried to pull her towards the charger. Maridia slipped forwards, but only slightly. "Ok, that's not going to work, I'd suggest a diet, but I doubt it will help."
When she was rolled over, Sacre could see tears pouring down her face, but she was unable to see, move, or communicate. She felt horrible to be like this but she couldn’t say anything or help move herself to the socket. Her biological components just weren’t enough to budge her robotic components unpowered. Her implants were so extensive that she was useless if her battery ran out, like a phone. Fortunately she could power herself with the power supply in power armors so this wouldn’t be an issue in the field, but she didn’t have one in this situation.
"Oh come on, it's not that bad. We're only have a few meters to lug you." Sacre took out her commlink, "Aten, could you cut the gravity down to a third in the room I'm in?" Sacre asked.
"Certainly, what you need it for?" Aten asked.
"Just want to do some practice in low gravity." Sacre lied as they got lighter. Now that they were lighter, Sacre pulled again and Maradia slid easily to the charging port and Sacre plugged her in.
Relays clicked inside of Maradia, it took a few seconds before she beeped and her implants came back online. She blinked, regaining her vision in her wet eyes. She looked at her charger to see she was plugged in now, still tearing up. She covered her face with her robotic hands and cried "You're right... I'm a useless pile of wires."
Sacre had to think for a moment to remember that she had actually called Maradia that. "If you take everything I say as a judgement of your worth, it's going to be a long deployment."
The mechanical-mouthed snake finally snapped, shouting with droplets coming out of her eyes "What worth?! What good is a half-replaced Separa'Shan that runs out of battery like a cheap toy all the time?!"
"What worth is a sucidal ex-slave with no skills to speak of? Or a damaged drone from location unknown? We don't start with assuming your worth anything, we shape you to be someone of worth. To be the person we need." Sacre explained.
"At least you still have your body!" the black-scaled one blurted out.
Sacre shook her head, "No, I took my body back, and that took, no, is still taking years."
Maradia muttered "Because you had a complete one to work with..."
"Not where it counted. Not up here." Sacre said, tapping the side of her head.
"And what about me? This counts too!" Maradia protested, pointing to how she was plugged into the wall.
"I didn't say that it didn't count. I've been through a lot of crap, and it's made me the bitch I am. You've arguably been through more, and still were able to help free Essia. I wasn't able to free myself." Sacre tossed a knife at one of the targets and missed.
"Neither was I. Not in time." The robot-Separa saw Sacre throw the knife and started to slither toward the basket of knives, but she felt a tug on her charger which was locked into the socket to prevent it from being pulled out. Consequently, it also prevented her from going very far from the charging port while she was plugged in. She glanced at the cable and backed up closer to it, standing there and waiting for it to replenish enough of her battery.
Sacre passed over the bowl of knives to Maradia. "Your a little bit farther back, but we're in one third gravity, so your probably going to throw high."
The mechanical-armed Separa sighed, taking a knife from the bowl. She threw it at the target, attempting to hit it again. Maradia missed the first time, going high. Sacre helped her walk the knives down over several throws, untill finally she accidently threw low, the next knife after that hit the target.
Sacre was about to say something, when her tablet beeped. She swept up the knives into the bowl and started to head towards the door. "I've got to go, spent too much here with your wirey ass already. Perhaps next time you won't miss as much."
Maradia was happier after having hit the target again. "Oh..." she said, looking at her long tail, a little hurt by Sacre calling her wirey. "I hope so... I'll be here until this thing finishes recharging." She patted the battery on her back under her shirt, its shape was similar to Sacre's tablet, but larger in size. It visibly made a rectangular bulge against the back of her uniform. It was still flat in shape, so it didn't go out very far, but it was noticeable near the edges of the battery.
Sacre nodded and left Maradia to practice.
Nataria
YSS Artemis
Deck 6 - VR Chamber
Maradia stood in the VR room, looking at a holographic mirror with a projection of her old self overlaid on her.
Sacre slid into the VR room, holding a small bag with practice knives in it. Her eyes flash over the hologram as she entered. "Oh, hey Maradia."
Maradia quickly turns off the holgram. "Oh, hey..." sounding startled by her squad leader's entrance.
Sacre pulled open a small bag with knives in it as she got ready for practice. "What are you up to?"
Maradia shifted uncomfortably, "Oh, just uh... looking at... things..."
Sacre started to lay out her knives on a holographic table. "Things?"
"Yeah, like uhh... armor?"
Sacre nodded understanding, she had to rework her own loadout recently. "Armor, yes, it's an inportant decision. What combinations were you thinking of?"
"I think... the Daisy with Kalamari arms maybe?"
"Kalamari? Intresting, why?" Sacre moved to a new holographic table and put the practice knives down. She casually took off her uniform jacket to reveal a body covered with scars. The only place that they aren't are her forearms with some of them even distinctly dead ending onto the much smoother skin.
"It'd just be useful to have more arms, I guess..." She glances at Sacre then looks at her own entirely metal arms, She might have some scars where the implants were installed, but it's not exactly possible to heal out implants
Sacre slid over to Maradia. "or to have biological arms again." There was a pause in which a dropped pin would have sounded like a gunshot. "You weren't looking at armor."
Maradia silencely turned the projection back on, revealing Maradia as she looked before the implants.
Sacre took a breath and nodded sadly. "Sometimes, the changes we under go are not our choice."
"I don't understand why they thought they were making me better. Was this not good enough?!" She gestured downwards at her unmodified body.
Sacre purses her lips. Then steps forward and shoves Maradia out of the hologram, seperating the two so now there were two Maradias, the hologram and the Cyborg. "Does it matter if it was or wasn't? It is not who you are now."
Maradia looks down at her metal arms and the hologram follows her movement. "But it could've been... I didn't ask to be changed..."
Sacre's face softened slightly, "Neither did I."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Anything" Sacre said gently, approching close enough to touch, but not.
"What did they do to you?"
Sacre turns away with a shiver, not wanting to answer Maradia. She clenched her fist tightly. "Do they eat eggs where you come from?"
"No, why?"
Sacre looked up to the simulated sky with her back to Meradia. "There are some places that do. Where I grew up, we didn't. Our ancestors taught us that children are precious. It is said that long ago our ancestors made an oath to a fertility spirit. We would not eat any eggs for their blessing. So none of us eat eggs, it is said that the one who eats eggs is cursed by the spirit. Over time, it became worse then murder. When I was young, I got into a fight with my father and ran away to the stars. But the blackness between was where I ended up."
Elenor Herrick pocked her head into the VR room. "Hey, lunch's almost over you two." With that the moment was shattered, and Sacre was suddenly the hard Joto Hei again.
"What was the fight about?" Maradia asked.
"We should get lunch." Sacre said, the moment broken by the interruption. She put her uniform jacket back on, covering the scars. There was a disquiet silence as Sacre left the room. Maradia followed Sacre, watching the hologram of her original self disappear.
---
Three days later, Sacre had still not told Maradia about what exactly had happened. Everytime she had been asked, Sacre brushed it off either by saying that there was something to do or giving Maradia something to do. Anything other then tell Maradia what had actually happened.
The metal-armed woman was determined to find out. With her scarf on, she slithered around in search of Sacre. She was going to get her to answer this time, for sure.
This time Sacre was found in the gym, practicing with her throwing knives. Calmly thunking knife after knife into a variety of targets. Some moving, some not. There was a screen that Sacre was using to do some sort of programing between throws.
The partially mechanical snake made her way into the gym, being careful not to startle the medic since she'd rather not be stabbed. "So..." Maradia spoke up from beneath her lime green scarf.
Sacre closed the screen, "So what? I'm practicing with my throwing knives." She said sharply, acting like she didn't know what Maradia wanted.
"I see that," the robo-snake said as she looked at where she had thrown them. "You're very skilled," she commented in an attempt to butter her up so she would answer the question when she asked it.
Anouther knife landed on the target. "Good."
Maradia turned her head to look at Sanssinia, inquiring "Where did you learn to throw knives?" She hoped it might be related to her father, which could smoothly lead her towards giving the answer.
"Fort Victory, it came in handy at the Battle of Yamatai. It was... something of a graduation exercise as it were." Another knife buried it's self in a target.
"Ah..." Maradia replied. Well darn, that plan wasn't going to work. She sighed, she wasn't sure what she was going to say next, she couldn't think of a way to bring the subject up without asking about it outright.
Sacre quietly kept putting knives into the target, seemingly willing to just stand there in silence.
Seeing there wasn't much else she could do, Maradia just went right for it. She looked up and began "That fight..."
"Was a long time ago." Sacre interupted.
"Can't you tell me what happened?" Maradia meekly asked.
Sacre sighed, looking down and realizing that she didn't have any knives left. "You aren't going to leave this alone, are you?"
Marardia squirmed the end of her very long tail, looked down, and then spoke up "You always try to dodge the question... why won't you say anything about it?"
"It's a private matter, not any of your buisness. Besides, it doesn't matter anymore. Far as I can tell, the Kuvexians killed them." Sacre said, pulling a knife from seemingly nowhere and holding it tight.
The pythbot saw the knife and backed up slightly, somewhat startled. "B-but... why?" she asked. She almost felt it was unfair; scars could be hidden, Sacre could just keep her jacket on to hide the many on her torso and not talk about the ones on her face or tail. Meanwhile Maradia's implants were rather drastic, they were prominent and she had no way to hide them- the closest she could come was using a scarf to hide her mouth, as she was doing now.
Sacre shrugged and went to go retrive the knives. "What I was told was that my hometown was the hometown of some bigwig so they fought back hard, everyone who worked at my father's blacksmith shop and their families were imprisoned and taken to Kuvexia or killed."
Maradia's face, half-obscured by the scarf, winced. "What you were told? You... don't remember?" She asked, confused.
"I was halfway across the Galaxy taking the fight to the Kuvexians on the Kaiyo during the occupation. I had enough to deal with without thinking about a home I hadn't seen in a decade or so."
"What happened to you... after the fight? Before you joined the army?" the pink-haired Separa'Shan solemnly asked.
Sacre returned. "The ship I was on got taken by pirates, and I was turned into a exotic slave. There aren't many Separa'Shan in the universe now, much less then. ... I dealt with my masters about as well as I dealt with my parents. Opposional, defiant. They controlled me however they could, with drugs and beatings. But they all sold me as too much trouble. For a while I was trapped in a market. The drugs... the memories are cloudy sometimes. I don't know everything that happened. I do know I 'starred' in a lot of porn."
Sacre pulled up a picture of what looked like the bottom of a wooden bunk with names carved into it. "We promised not to forget each other. I don't know what happened to any of them."
Sacre paused a moment to remember them before continuing. "Eventually they broke me. I don't remember much after that untill I was rescued by Star Army."
Maradia gasped and looked down. After a moment, she said "I'm so sorry..." She thought, then added "I... hate my parents. I hate my whole family. I refuse to use their last name anymore."
"I don't blame you. Sometimes I wish I could hate my parents, but looking back, I've grown, changed. Sometimes I wonder if it was because they really were wrong, or if I was just a defiant kid who needed to listen to them. I guess I'll never know." Sacre shook her head.
"I don't understand what I did... they just said they were going to upgrade me, and... and..." Maradia stopped, unsure if she should continue.
Sacre tossed a knife into the target, "And they didn't care if you wanted it or not. Didn't listen when you said no. Took away your selfworth and your body."
"No, they didn't," Maradia said, clenching her metal fist and her claw with an audible clink. "Do you know what made it worse?" she asked.
"What made it worse?" Sacre asked.
"How many times I said it... how much I begged... they never listened. It... it wasn't all at once. They kept sending me to get more and more improvements. I tried to tell them no every time and they still forced me. My siblings... I don't know if they were ever forced to... when I was there, they never got any implants... but suffice to say, they weren't nice to me, not even after..." she struggled to explain.
"even after you could crush them without a thought." Sacre filled in.
"I couldn't," the Separa'Shan admitted. "I wish I could, but I couldn't. That would be murder; and they were sinisterly sly too. They tried to keep it a secret that they had forced me unwillingly to... It would've looked like I killed them in cold blood if I did."
"I did, or a fork of me did, when they got free. They went though and did their very best to wipe out everyone who did, very sucessfully I might add. Their a part of my soul, so I guess it's on me too." Sacre admitted.
"A fork? As in a clone?" the longer-tailed but shorter-standing snake asked. "In that case I wouldn't say it is. It wasn't you yourself who did it, it was a clone. Even if it was you, it wasn't you," she sighed.
"It's irrational, but still how I feel about it. Especially given that the only reason I didn't is the Army didn't really give me a chance." Sacre responded.
"It's still not you though- maybe you would've, but you didn't," Maradia suggested.
Sacre tossed another knife into the target silently. "You should learn how to throw a knife." She said, trying to change the subject again.
"I suppose I could try," the bionic mamba replied. "How do I start?" she asked, slithering towards Sacre.
Sacre handed her a dull training knife. It was very precisely balanced and well made. "You start by throwing this in the direction of the target."
"I see... sounds easy enough," Maradia commented. She took the knife with her heavy duty claw rather than her hand and moved her arm around, getting a feel for the knife and its weight.
"So... are you paralyzed by your own incompetance or are you going to throw the knife?" Sacre asked.
"You don't have to put it that way..." Maradia mumbled. Her claw swiveled and spun on her robotic wrist, orienting itself before she moved her arm back. She then flung it forward and released the knife, propelling it toward the target with incredible force. Her throw didn't have much going for it besides the raw strength, she had never thrown a knife before.
The knife missed by a pretty wide margin, slaming into the wall, but not sticking due to an odd angle, it skittered across the gym floor. "Go pick it up." Sacre said simpley.
The long woman slithered to the other side of the gym, a drop of sweat forming on her forehead. She could feel her throw silently being judged and so she picked up the knife with the grasper on her right arm again, her joints quietly whirring.
"Do it again."
Maradia returned to the throwing area and moved her mechanical arm. It whirred more loudly this time, and she threw the knife at the wall with such force that it might even top a neko's throw, even if her throw wasn't that much better.
"First lesson: You will be doing that a lot. Throwing a knife, picking it up, and then going back to throw again." Sacre moved a pile of knives over to Maradia's side of the table. "That's why we have lots of knives. So we can throw a lot before we have to pick up again. Second Lesson: You have plenty of power, but all the power in the galaxy won't help if you miss. So try and hit the target, or at least worry it a bit."
"Hmm... Okay," the black-tailed snake said, reaching into the bowl. Her metal claw clinked against the knives as it picked another one up, trying the throw again, and again, and again. She made several misses before one finally came close to the target, even though it didn't hit.
"Closer, I think you might have made that one think there is a mouse in the woods. Although, I do wonder why you are using your claw?" Sacre asked as she assess.
Maradia turned to look at Sacre and asked "I-is there something wrong with that?"
"No, but I'd probably consider it my 'off hand' as it were. The claw doesn't have nearly as much dexterity in exchange for it's strength." Sacre held one of the knives a coule of diffrent ways in her hand to demonstrate.
"Well I..." Maradia watched the "fingers" on her claw move back and forth, seeing what Sacre meant. She tried to make them move in different directions, but observed that they only twitched back and forth unsteadily as they were rigidly attached to hinge joints and couldn't swivel side to side independently of her "hand". "I am- or I was right handed," she explained, "At least, until they changed my right hand into this."
Sacre nodded, "Makes sense, you do need wto know how to throw with both of your hands. Let's see how you do with your left, it can't be worse." Sacre suggested.
"A-alright," Maradia nodded. Her metal left hand, which was in the style of a regular hand, clinked as it picked up a knife. She aimed it, and, despite the better dexterity, her throw somehow actually was worse. Not only did it totally miss the target, it went too far to the side and bounced off the side wall before it even got there.
"Or perhaps you are a never ending well of disappointment. Let's try to get it in the same direction as the target this time." Sacre said dryly.
The cyborg snake facepalmed with her robotic hand, before trying again. Her next attempt was much better, but only in that it was about as good as the throws she made with her right "hand".
Sacre had more to say over the next several throws, her voice fairly neutral and never seemed to run out of either patiance or cutting remarks when Maradia did particularly poorly. Untill finally, if by luck, Maradia hit the target solidly. "Acceptable, now we just have to do that more often." Sacre commented with a hint of genuine pleasure that Maradia had hit the target.
"I-I did it? I did it!" Maradia exclaimed, surprised and proud. She tried to throw another knife at the target, but unsurprisingly, she wasn't able to get two in a row and missed. She looked at the knives on the floor ahead of her, disappointed.
"Looks like it's time to go pick up the knives again." Sacre said, even though they still had several, she slid with Maradia as they went to pick up the knives.
"I guess," the snakeborg said, her metal shoulders drooping as her robotic eyes saw how many knives had missed. Slithering over with the basket, the knives made jingling sounds as she put them back in with her mechanical hand.
Sacre slid out with Maradia, helping her pick up the knives and put them back into the basket. "Do you remember the first lesson?"
Maradia nodded, parroting "Yes... I'll be doing this a lot..."
"You'll be disappointed a lot, I practice a lot because I still don't always hit things the way I'd like. That said, it's really rewarding when I do, or when I get to show off a bit. There is always a challange to be overcome, something about your throw that's not perfect. It's your attitude about the imperfections that matters." Sacre explained.
"Yeah, I know, it's just that it's annoying to keep missing like this," the black-tailed snake sighed.
Sacre put the last few knives into the basket. "It certainly is, but it's part of the process. You start out missing things, and it doesn't matter why. Perhaps it's becuase someone smashed your fingers and you couldn't really use them for a while, or a crosswind you didn't take into account. Regardless, you have to be bad before you are good. Practice makes permanant, and how you practice throwing a knife is how you'll throw a knife when it comes down to muscle memory."
"Or when your fingers got replaced on one hand," the pink-haired Separa'Shan added, pinching her two-fingered claw. "I can't use muscle memory if I don't have muscles in these things anymore," she griped.
They arrived back where they had been throwing from. "Muscle memory isn't in the hand, it's in the head. You get used to doing things a certain way. You do it conciously and then your mind allows you to do it easier. It's why it's hard to do things for the first time, but get easier." Sacre took one of the knives and pinched it between her thumb and forefinger, with it resting in the webbing between the two fingers. "I've never trained someone with a claw before, but I think you would hold it like this. Then throw like this." Sacre made a throw, and hit the target with the knife bearly sticking in. "Perhaps you can be less dissapointing this time."
"If you say so," the very-long-tailed-cyborg replied. She spun her claw around on her wrist and used it to hold the knife again, this time in a different orientation. Her artificial appendage moved forward and backward, sending the knife towards the target once more.
It missed, but not by much. Sacre didn't seem impressed. "Again. Focus less on angle, you need to hit the target before angle matters."
The thick-tailed snake clamped her claw on another knife and aimed it toward the target, being more careful about where she was aiming. She released it, allowing it to soar at the target.
The knife hit the target, but clattered off at the wrong angle. "Again. Do the same thing."
Maradia picked up another and raised her arm, but the servos inside of it whirred a little more weakly. She stopped, looked at her arms and the implants running through her tail, and then lowered the knife. "I uh..." the partially battery-operated snake mumbled, trying to find an excuse. "I think I might need to uh... go now?"
"We still have quite a few knives left in the bucket. Let's finish them." Sacre encouraged.
"Well, I mean, it might be good to take a break. My arms are getting tired," the cyborg tried to lie, managing to forget the fact that inorganic arms could not get tired.
Sacre didn't seem to be impressed. "I thought you arms didn't have any muscles." She said dryly.
Maradia took a moment to look at the shining metal making up her arms. "Oh. Well, they don't, but it's an expression!" she tried to save the excuse.
"For your battery running low?" Sacre asked, spotting the blinking indicator on Marida's back.
"What?" Maradia asked, trying to act like she didn't know what Sacre meant. The cyborg snake didn't realize the indicator light on her battery was blinking red, she only knew that it was low because her implants told her directly.
"I can see the indicator flashing. It's to tell us so we can help get you plugged back in." Sacre told her.
"I-I have an indicator light?!" Maradia asked, blushing from embarassment. "Where?" She wasn't able to see the light flashing through the fabric in the back of her shirt, also glowing through the back of her uniform's collar. Her changeable battery was placed on her back, thus she never saw the light that had been placed behind her all along because she never caught it blinking in the mirror.
Sacre nodded, "On your back, just under your collar. It's off when your charged, but when it starts to run low, it blinks."
Maradia twisted around, unsuccessfully trying to get a look at the battery that was attached to her. "W-what? There is? I thought it was just the battery... How long did you know? Have I been doing that every time?"
"Not every day, it depends on how hard you've been working and how much you've charged." Sacre said.
Maradia cursed under her breath, trying to hide the light with her hands. "Does everybody else know about that?" she asked quietly.
"It's my job to know. I don't think they know yet, but it's something you need to tell them."
"I-I didn't know it was there, I guess I never bothered trying to look back there when it gets low. I don't feel comfortable telling them..." the more electronic one of the two replied.
Sacre nodded, "Why?"
"I don't... I don't like these..." Maradia tried to explain, slithering over to a bench. She sat down on it, letting the rest of her large tail lay across the floor on its back. "I don't want to have to talk about them."
Sacre curled her tail under herself. "We're a team Maradia."
The Pythus looked down at the more lightly colored underbelly of her tail, which by contrast was not tainted by wires and implants, so they wouldn't interfere with moving. "I know, but... I still don't like to talk about them."
"I don't think any of us like to talk about our traumas. I know I don't."
"I guess not. But do I really need to?" Maradia asked.
"The way I see it, it's a medical issue. You need to get plugged in from time to time. Not a big deal, but still something we need to know about." Sacre showed Maradia her arms, and drew out a bone knife from a nearly invisible slit near her wrist. "Do you know what theese are?" Sacre asked, using the knife to gesture at the slits.
"No, I don't. What are they?" Maradia asked, looking at them. Her robotic eyes with slitted pupils had enhanced vision, so she didn't need to get closer to see them.
"Their symbiotes, they make knives inside me. It means that I need supliments to keep them alive, as I don't make everything they need. Usually about once a week, but I keep a supply on me all of the time. It's something that Klaus knows about, and Setsua, and several others. So if something goes really wrong with them, they know and can help." Sacre explained.
"I see... But how could they help me if something goes wrong? They don't know how to fix me, or how to... how to repair me..." Maradia timidly asked.
Sacre tossed the bone kife at the target and stuck it in. "They don't have to fix you, I can do it, and everyone on the squad is going to have basic medical training. But helping isn't always about fixing, it's also about knowing to cover your weaknesses just like you cover theirs. We're a team."
Maradia thought, and said "True, but I'm not sure how you can cover... that." She glanced over her shoulder, still unable to see most of the battery that was attached to her back without a mirror, nor the blinking light.
"I've seen worse, try covering a clanking robot who takes things entirely too literraly in the worst possible way." There was the tinyist smile on Sacre's face, the first Maradia had seen. "Always an adventure. but we did because She was a member of our team."
The cyborg snake blinked, looking at Sacre. "Well, she certainly sounds interesting," she spoke. "Clanking? Is she like a mecha or something?"
"I first met her as a wounded grunt drone, she's been though a few diffrent bodies, but I think she identified as a tank. Comeon, let's get you to an outlet before you run out of juice." Sacre said, picking up the knives and the bucket.
"Oh..." Maradia said, trying to imagine what that must've looked like. "Yeah, you're right, I... erg..." Without finishing, the Cypara'Shan got up and started to go towards the door, but was clearly slithering much more slowly and struggling to move as her servos and implants started to lose charge. She grunted, trying to push forward, but they were not designed to be easily moved by whatever biological muscles she had left without power. Evidently, she had been running low for longer than she realized. Quickly, her battery gave out, she stopped in her tracks and fell limp before she could even make it to the door. The light under her shirt was no longer blinking, it was off.
Sacre sighed, "Also, this."
Sacre considered for a moment as she looked at her sticken companion. The outlet wasn't too far away, four meters at the most. Sacre started to pat Maradia down, looking for her charger. Sacre didn't find it. "I don't know if they replaced your ears, but your going to start carrying your charger around for doing this to me, you useless pile of wires. I'll be back in a minute."
Once Sacre left, Maradia started crying, for while her eyes were electronic, her tear ducts were still intact. Her implants wouldn’t function without power, not even off bio-energy, so she was completely immobilized thanks to her servos and strength implants, and blinded because of her eyes needing power too. She couldn’t even speak, her tongue and jaw were artificial, and because of her total mouth replacement her lips had to be replaced with cybernetic ones too so those wouldn’t work either. Her ears, however, were still biological, and she heard everything Sacre said, which was the cause of her sobbing.
It didn't take long for Sacre to be back with the charger. She plugged it in and tried to stretch it out to reach Maradia, it didn't reach. "It's too short, I guess we'll have to do this the hard way."
Sacre rolled Maradia onto her stomough and pushed her into a pointing towards where the plugged in charger. "What did they make your circuits out of? lead? I'm glad I don't have to do this on Essia." Sacre lifted the front part of Maradia's body and tried to pull her towards the charger. Maridia slipped forwards, but only slightly. "Ok, that's not going to work, I'd suggest a diet, but I doubt it will help."
When she was rolled over, Sacre could see tears pouring down her face, but she was unable to see, move, or communicate. She felt horrible to be like this but she couldn’t say anything or help move herself to the socket. Her biological components just weren’t enough to budge her robotic components unpowered. Her implants were so extensive that she was useless if her battery ran out, like a phone. Fortunately she could power herself with the power supply in power armors so this wouldn’t be an issue in the field, but she didn’t have one in this situation.
"Oh come on, it's not that bad. We're only have a few meters to lug you." Sacre took out her commlink, "Aten, could you cut the gravity down to a third in the room I'm in?" Sacre asked.
"Certainly, what you need it for?" Aten asked.
"Just want to do some practice in low gravity." Sacre lied as they got lighter. Now that they were lighter, Sacre pulled again and Maradia slid easily to the charging port and Sacre plugged her in.
Relays clicked inside of Maradia, it took a few seconds before she beeped and her implants came back online. She blinked, regaining her vision in her wet eyes. She looked at her charger to see she was plugged in now, still tearing up. She covered her face with her robotic hands and cried "You're right... I'm a useless pile of wires."
Sacre had to think for a moment to remember that she had actually called Maradia that. "If you take everything I say as a judgement of your worth, it's going to be a long deployment."
The mechanical-mouthed snake finally snapped, shouting with droplets coming out of her eyes "What worth?! What good is a half-replaced Separa'Shan that runs out of battery like a cheap toy all the time?!"
"What worth is a sucidal ex-slave with no skills to speak of? Or a damaged drone from location unknown? We don't start with assuming your worth anything, we shape you to be someone of worth. To be the person we need." Sacre explained.
"At least you still have your body!" the black-scaled one blurted out.
Sacre shook her head, "No, I took my body back, and that took, no, is still taking years."
Maradia muttered "Because you had a complete one to work with..."
"Not where it counted. Not up here." Sacre said, tapping the side of her head.
"And what about me? This counts too!" Maradia protested, pointing to how she was plugged into the wall.
"I didn't say that it didn't count. I've been through a lot of crap, and it's made me the bitch I am. You've arguably been through more, and still were able to help free Essia. I wasn't able to free myself." Sacre tossed a knife at one of the targets and missed.
"Neither was I. Not in time." The robot-Separa saw Sacre throw the knife and started to slither toward the basket of knives, but she felt a tug on her charger which was locked into the socket to prevent it from being pulled out. Consequently, it also prevented her from going very far from the charging port while she was plugged in. She glanced at the cable and backed up closer to it, standing there and waiting for it to replenish enough of her battery.
Sacre passed over the bowl of knives to Maradia. "Your a little bit farther back, but we're in one third gravity, so your probably going to throw high."
The mechanical-armed Separa sighed, taking a knife from the bowl. She threw it at the target, attempting to hit it again. Maradia missed the first time, going high. Sacre helped her walk the knives down over several throws, untill finally she accidently threw low, the next knife after that hit the target.
Sacre was about to say something, when her tablet beeped. She swept up the knives into the bowl and started to head towards the door. "I've got to go, spent too much here with your wirey ass already. Perhaps next time you won't miss as much."
Maradia was happier after having hit the target again. "Oh..." she said, looking at her long tail, a little hurt by Sacre calling her wirey. "I hope so... I'll be here until this thing finishes recharging." She patted the battery on her back under her shirt, its shape was similar to Sacre's tablet, but larger in size. It visibly made a rectangular bulge against the back of her uniform. It was still flat in shape, so it didn't go out very far, but it was noticeable near the edges of the battery.
Sacre nodded and left Maradia to practice.
