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Mastema sighed heavily as the child bolted out. "Why do I even bother....." Mastema stood up and dusted himself off slightly. Ten months and not a shred of progress had been made in the positive direction, despite Mastema's various attempts. If anything, the child seemed more resilient against being accepting of Mastema. It was about time for him to give up on the petty attempt. If Eecheb ever came around, then it would be his choice; Mastema was for the most part done with going after the idea himself. As he left the gym, Eecheb already long gone, Mastema was again almost struck down, so to speak, by an uncontrolled surge of sadness and guilt. Just as its last time, it disappeared as soon as it came, Mastema showing no signs of the emotional bout.

Minutes later, Mastema was long gone from the gym. Eecheb would hear no more of his intrusions or attempts to approach or befriend Eecheb. Maybe another day, another time, or another life, Mastema would find it worth trying again. As he was, Eecheb could only drive people away. It wasn't something Mastema, of all people, could teach him. Now somewhere in the south-center part of the citadel, Mastema paused and looked about him, examining the structures now towering over him. Now by himself, he took a moment to contemplate a question which had been nagging him as he spoke to all of his children today. "This wasn't what I had in mind.....No.... I still haven't seen that future in any way." Shaking his head to himself, Mastema continued his march back to the tower.

Unfortunately, Eecheb would find no one to visit at the south tower; Sho was elsehwhere. In fact, he was training with a certain someone.


"Come on! You've never gone down this early so far," Sho shouted at Thanatos, who was now laying back on the ground after having gotten a particularly hard rush from Sho. Both were using bokkens for their training. Thanatos panted on his back for 3 short breaths before raising his legs up and literally throwing himself back on his feet and pointing his sword toward Sho. "I'm not done," he muttered, "I'm just tense. Let's go; hit me with another rekkuzan!" It was almost an order. One look at Thanatos and one wouldn't believe he was still wiling to keep training with how much sweat was rolling over him. Sho looked on to his nephew as he proclaimed his will to continue. At any other time, Sho would have felt inspired by that perserverence.... but there was something about the way Thanatos had been so rigorously training over the past ten months that made Sho feel pity instead. Raising his sword over his head, a purpleish energy would swirl in an orb at the top of the sword before Sho brought it down again. "Rekkuzan!!"

-=Thump=-

With a heavy noise a small mech lands on the side of the AD-508. Its spherical head swivels, spinning the line of its optical sensor as it draws a bead on KB. Finally setting him up in a vertical profile, the short machine observes for a moment before speaking. Its voice is flat and robotic, showing no sign of distinctive personality.

"Oh egotistical and and eternally horny one, this is likely the most retarded plan that spinning hamster wheel you call a brain has concocted yet. I feel it necessary to inform you, pathetic meatsack, that you are almost certainly going to fail miserably like the universal disappointment you are."

Despite its words, the optic sensor inside its head is constantly scanning the area. Its "armaments" are charged and at the ready. Prepped for action was the name of this mech's game.

Tegral paused, glancing off to one side to eye the small mecha unit up and down with barely a hidden hint of annoyance. Such an inapt weapon, pathedic in it's simplicity, and he breifly wondered what it was doing there. No mention of it's assistance, let alone existance, was ever mentioned to Tegral in any of the prior breifings with KB. A twinge of annoyance flashed through artifical nerve path-a-ways, Tegral actually taking a moment to enjoy the sensation as it filtered through the primary CPU and secondary support unit. Emotions and feelings have long since been lost on the animatronic being since his time long ago as a human, well there was that one stint as being human again but that was quickly disregarded as the need for his mechanical weapons arouse again.

Nahil was sweeping up the last of the drone hive's minions, such a work of art! A single class-B battle cruiser against a fully sustained hive mind and the product was a work of art! A full ninety nine point nine eight percent of the hostile forces were already decimated, and if the current readout of ship maintainability was accurate the Nahil Fighter Squadrons only lost about seven Pheonix star fighters. Long range batteries still remain inactive, a good sign considering most battle cruisers lived off the long range these weapons gave them, and the onboard shielding system reports an average battle calculate of eighty three percent shields about the ship's hull. One hundred percent armor and hull integrety with a good ninety seven point four seven percent balistic armory remaining, ninety eight point seven nine percent missiles remaining.

The smile on Tegral's lips returned as a new figure made itself present, quite the party they were collecting on the forest's edge. A woman, aged somewhere in her early thirties or late twenties, with a slender build and an elegant face. She had hair, pulled up into pig-tails on top of her head, and eyes as pitch as night standing at an even five foot five inches. She wore a blackened pair of combat boots, slight mud splatter against the edges, with horizontal stripped pants, black and red stripes, a frilly pink tu-tu around her waist. A white spaghetti strap top,the cold not even leaving goose pimples on her slightly tanned flesh, adorned her chest, a massive smiley face painted on it's stomach with a sharpie marker, with thick mirrored wrap around sun glasses pushed up like a head band. Just below the wrap around glasses, folded into a thin strip about an inch tall around her forehead, was a green pokadotted, black spots, headband with neon green vertical slashes connecting the dots. A single, fingerless, glove adorned her left hand, a sleeve of fishnet webbing down from the gold and jade wrought band that wrapped around her left bicept.

"Kah, good of you to join us." Tegral said, glancing back over to the small mecha unit that decided to plop itself in their midst. It was lucky Tegral wasn't as he was before, else he would have been in a nasty surprise from a very hostile machine that likely exponates it's combat potential. Turning his attention to KB he motioned with his left hand, "KB, Kah. Kah, KB. End of introductions." A slight nod from Kah was all he recieved as she walked up beside Tegral for a minute. A direct link was always safest so she touched her fingers to the back of Tegral's hand. A stream of data flushed through sophisticated transfer arrays, origionally designed to transfer shield energy or laser energy from starship to starship, into Tegral's 'mind'. It wasn't long, maybe a few minutes, before she broke contact and started back into the forest, her boots imprinting heavy marks in the snow. She had big feet.

"Pretty toys." Tegral made mention of the sizeable army, or in more particular the nearly carbon copies of his prior form, to KB. Why sit there and tell him Mastema wasn't worth it and draw out an army to crush him? This boy was drawing his last nerve. Oh well, the time for killing was nearly upon them.

*Despite being so cold out, the air in the area Sho and Thanatos were at, was slowly getting warmer as if something was approching to see what all the noise was about. By now the residence should know what could cause such an abnormality. It was the creature that Micha brought back with him after his out of Citadel trek when the world was covered in darkness. The creature seemed content to wander from building to building, moving through shadows, and flowing down sewer grates taking it to where ever it wished to go. For now it wanted to see Sho and Thanatos training together*

???: ......?

A cold chill could be felt in the air, sweeping in from the southern end of the citadel. A dark figure stood on the edge of a building at the southern erimeter of the citadel, looking out over the strangely familiar, yet also different scene before him. Yuri had grown in the 10 months he had been away, now standing at a decent height of 5'9". He wore a black cloak which had been reduced to tatters overtop his outfit, the cloak being symbolic of what he had been through over the past year. His silver hair hung down to his neck neatly, wisps of hair dancing around his face and briefly obscuring his dark red eyes. He was wearing a black long sleeve jacket over a simple silver vest, as well as a pair of baggy black pants which hung loosely around his legs and partially covered his back boots. He had developed a good deal physically while he was away, as while he was still lanky he had a good muscle tone underneath his clothes, and he seemed to have developed a strong aura, though still not excessively so.

Yuri had been through a good deal over the past few months, and had struggled to come to terms with the powers which Tyrsais had granted him. Now, having been gone for so long, yet in another sense not very long at all, he let out a small sigh. "Home at last, eh? I wonder how Tyr has been doing?" he wondered, remembering Tyr's dismissive attitude about his request to go out and travel in order to learn. He could only hope things had held up well here while he'd been away....