Glaring a little sourly at the glowing blueprint being projected from his signet ring, Xibalba sighed. More silly upgrades to something that, he thought, he’d done well enough without for years. Sure, paper messages were a bit clunky, but Chariklo hadn’t complained. None of his other senshi acquaintances had complained. He had thought everything was fine!

But, shortly after they’d all returned from the Hallow’s prison, Chariklo had taken him to the side and read him the riot act, demanding that he speak to any of the Mauvians they knew to have his ring fixed so that they could communicate easily and swiftly. She’d argued that in the event of another universal emergency, and there would be others, they needed to be able to communicate in a way that didn’t rely on little bits of paper that might be lost or damaged.

This was the closest they’d gotten to a fight in years.

Of course, at the time, he’d understood her concerns. Hell, he still understood them. Chariklo was terrified of losing any more people that she cared about. Once he’d seen how adamant she was about this, he’d given in and gone out to find an agreeable cat. And, in spite of his concerns, the upgrade had taken, perhaps, a half hour in total. He still wasn’t entirely certain what had been done, but he’d understood it as he’d been added to a database, a teensy chip installed in his ring and viola! He now had a reliable and easy means of messaging senshi. He’d been content, Chariklo had been happy. That should have been the end of it.

Except, he’d tried to check his messages and been greeted with one from the Code itself. Looking at the blueprint hurt his head, frankly. He understood motorcycles. This though? Might as well have been witchcraft. Greek witchcraft.

He didn’t feel like fighting again, so with the barest of good grace, he dismissed the blueprint for the moment and considered his options. He had no idea how to read the blasted thing. The tech involved was far, far beyond him. Therefore, another visit to a cat would be needed if he wanted to see what this was about. And fortunately, he knew, roughly, where one would be at this time. Heading out onto the streets of the City, Xibalba headed for the patch of park that he had learned that little Cuan liked to haunt.

Finding the tiny Mauvian had taken longer than he’d liked, but eventually, he tracked her down and showed her the blueprint. The way her eyes had lit up in sheer glee almost made this nonsense worth his time. Almost.

“Well, little girl? What d’ye think? What’s the meanin’ of this thing?”

The lykoi kept her eyes on the blueprint and only twitched an ear in his direction to show that she’d heard. And when she answered, her voice was distant, almost monotone. Clearly she was soaking up information.

“What this means, my dear Xibalba,” she began, “is with a little work, we can upgrade that chonk of a ring of yours so that when you send a message, it works more like a video call than a text session. Or like something out of a sci-fi movie where holograms are used. Oh, this is fascinating.”

Keeping his sigh purely internal this time Xibalba quietly accepted that this was technology beyond what his brain was capable of handling. Well, that was fine. And if this set of instructions was to make his ability to communicate more efficient, he’d give in and do it. Chariklo would no doubt be thrilled by his initiative.

However, he hadn’t expected Cuan to suddenly turn to him and demand his ring.

“Why d’ye need mah ring? Can’t ye just… flip in the air a few times?”

If looks were capable of killing, the cool glare leveled upon his person by Cuan should have torn his soul from his body and run it through a wood chipper.

“No. I cannot just flip in the air a few times. I need some physical components that I do not keep on my person. And I need the ring because I will need to resync it to the database before I finish. Look, just give me the ring and go… patrol or something. Just do something active so you don’t spend the whole time fretting.”

Finally, he agreed and sliding the ring off of his finger, gave it to the kitten. Cuan locked her jaws around the thinnest part of the band and with a wink, took off running. Feeling oddly naked without his signet, the Mars knight took himself off on a patrol of the park. Finding nothing, he decided that going for a run would probably be a good enough way to fill the time.

Before he could get too far, Cuan reappeared, ring in hand, er… mouth, and looking supremely satisfied. Leaping from the ground and attaching herself to his kilt, the kitten climbed him before finally settling on his shoulder and dropping the ring into his hand.

“It’s done, my dear boy! That was fun. Whoever designed this was simply brilliant! Go on! Put it back on. While I’m here, please contact Chariklo so you can see exactly how this works now. It’s a beautiful bit of engineering.”

Obeying, Xibalba slid his ring back on, flexing his fingers and trying to determine if he could feel any differences. Of course, he couldn’t. But it was easy enough to access his messages and draft one to his wife.

“Chari, Ah’m just wantin’ tae check in. All’s quiet here.”

Before he could say any more, a small holographic version of Chariklo appeared from the shoulders up, smiling and looking confused.

“Xib? How did you manage a video call to my phone? It’s great!”

“Umm,” he’d said intelligently, now understanding why Cuan had been so eager about the blueprint. This was better than Zoom. “Ah found a blueprint and wee Cuan was good enough tae help me with it. We didnae think ye’d mind.”

He allowed himself small interjections here and there as Cuan and Chariklo spoke and had a nice little catch up. He couldn’t deny the usefulness of this particular upgrade. It was like being in the same room with the person you were speaking with. In an emergency, such a thing was invaluable. Insane how such a massive upgrade could fit into something as small as his ring.

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