Chapter 11 - Cursed with awesomeness?

“My my, Elayna in the arms of someone not from the family? What a lucky girl you are.” The voice of my mom half-awakened me, and I moved myself a bit in Crisnée’s grasp. I didn’t bother opening my eyes yet, but my ears were primed and working.

“You know that I tried several times to put her in the arms of people not from the family, even friends of ours, and she never accepted it? Well, she accepted Meredith one or two times, but that was an exception. So, how did you get to carry my daughter around so easily?”

“She asked for it Mom! Just like she does with us!” Answered Noa in place of Crisnée.

“Oh, really? She must really like you then.” I felt the pause, as if she was turning her head. Then.

“Hello Sir knight. What do we owe you this visit?”

“Your husband hasn’t told you yet?”

“No, he said it was a surprise and went right back at cooking. If you ask me, I should really discipline this scoundrel more.” Her answer was only half-joking.

Oooh. So Mom and Dad are in those kinds of play.

Don’t start, you pervert.

“Well.” He looked at Vivianne and I felt him smiling at her.

“Do you want to tell your mom yourself?” Which was answered by Vivianne’s enthusiast nod of the head, I think.

“You have something to tell me?”

“Yes Mom. Mom, I can use Shi!” She exclaimed, so lively it was out of character.

“You what?” I opened my eyes just to look at mom’s face. Funny, she sat on a sofa just like Dad did a handful of minutes ago. The exact same way I mean.

Seeing the bewildered eyes of Ela, Sir Gregory supported Vi’s words. “It’s true, she can use Shi, she showed it to us today.”

“It was... very impressive.” And Crisnée too?

Mom took a second to recover.

“That… That’s great!” Her voice had wavered at first, but she had quickly gathered her wits.

You can see she’s conflicted.

That is fishy.

Mom rose from her seat and hugged Vi, taking her in her arms effortlessly.

“I am so proud of you Vivianne!”

But I could see. The little cracks in her joyous face, as if she was both happy and anxious about this news.

Vi didn’t answer anything but she snuggled in her mom’s grasp, nestling her head against Ela’s neck.

“It’s the coolest thing that could happen!” Exclaimed Noa.

“Now we can train together too!” I saw mom’s smile shake a bit under her son’s enthusiasm.

During all this time, Crisnée had stayed recessed in her corner of the room, awkwardly holding me. Curious, I looked at her. And I found something I didn’t expect: longing.

Crisnée was looking at Noa and Vivianne hugging their mother, and the young noblewoman, at that time, felt really lonely.

***

The night of the day Vivianne had awakened her Shi.

For the first time in my (second) life, I was going to eavesdrop, on Mom and Dad to be exact.

Most of the time, I tried to not invade people’s privacy, as I myself disliked being spied on (and, to be frank, it was a hassle to spy on people), but my worries were too big for me to calm down and shrug them off.

We were talking about my siblings after all. If I could do something, anything, to help them, I would. But for that, I first needed to gather information.

I listened for a long time, the two of them talking about boring mundane things, like what dad would hunt next week, or the surge of skin inflammation happening through the city.

Finally.

“So. Vivianne.” This was Dad, talking with caution.

“I… I don’t know. This is all very sudden. I know I should be happy but…”

“Yes, after all, having a kid awakening Shi is a dream for most people. Having two, it’s a wish coming true, a miracle.”

“I know, I know, but I dislike that another one of my children will be forced to train and use Shi. I… I hate the fact that they will not have any choice about their future, nothing but competing to be the best and reap the most advantage out of their ability to wield Shi, instead of being able to become a farmer, a teacher, a blacksmith or the hundreds of others things they could do, they could become. I know being a martial artist is a great honour, with a lot of advantages, but it’s also a difficult life, a dangerous one.”

I think Dad snuggled against Mom, if I heard properly. Silence filled the room, soon broken again by dad’s voice.

“I understand what you mean. But we can’t do anything about it. They’ve awakened Shi, they’ll be taken in by a martial arts family and trained as martial artists. That’s reality. Now, what we can do is support them with everything we have, love them with all our heart, be there as they cry and laugh. If they do well enough, then they’ll once again be able to choose what their future will be, use their strength to forge their own path, and I want to help them achieve that. Look at this another way: this will give them an edge other people don’t have, the ability to survive against impossible odds, to keep going where others would have long fallen, be it by lack of strength or resolve. What happened to Vivianne, if she trains properly, it will never happen again. And it’s also a good opportunity to make her feel empowered once again. She’s lost her hand, now she as gained Shi. And for Noa, well…”

“Yeah. He genuinely wants to be a martial artist. And, as you say, he will now become one, whatever he wants. I just HATE to have the choice taken out of their hands, of our hands. We are their parents, but we’ll need to let go of a good part of Vi and Noa’s education to strangers, people we may even fundamentally disagree with.”

“But it’s also an extraordinary opportunity for them, and for Elayna, an opportunity to see and learn things that they couldn’t hope to have if they hadn’t awakened Shi, and we kept living here.” Dad clearly seemed thrilled by the possibilities offered to their children.

“Even this life will be more difficult, they’ll be able to reach places and grasp opportunities few people can hope for.”

“...Yes. In a way, we trade a kind of opportunities against another kind. Maybe it’ll not be that bad after all.” Mom seemed to slowly agree with Dad’s opinion.

“Yes. Let’s give our all to be sure that they’ll have as much freedom and opportunities as possible, even if their new environment will be harsher than this one.”

Silence followed, then a kissing sound and… Well, I’m not gonna talk about the rest, but I’m sure you can imagine what a couple of 24-year-old youngsters would do in bed at night, right?

Mufufu~, it’s good to be young right?

***

Wow, I was worried because of that?

Hahaha yes. So they fear that the twins will be forced to train and fight? They fear about their future?

Yeah, what a silly worry. After all, I’m here now. I won’t let them be wounded for nothing.

Well, hardships are needed to grow but…

...we can control how much they will endure, help if it becomes too much. Balance it out.

Yes. Of course, they’ll need to face adversity, but that doesn’t mean we’ll let them or their loved one die or suffer for no reason.

It’s a bit like being…

...Guardian Angels? I’m sure Radiance would have loved the concept.

She would have loved it, yes.

With my worries now alleviated, as what had made me anxious wasn’t the subject in particular as much as the lack of information about something important (I was the kind of person making mountains out of dirt piles when I hadn’t enough information on them. Yeah, I know, lame.), I could now focus on the other matter at hand.

This matter being.

YEEEEES! The shields are finally fixed!

I will now be able to make another assessment of the Control Tower’s status.

Gimme!

Understood.

For the energy system, the main mana reactor has lost 23.2% of total integrity, which takes it to 57.7% of total remeaning integrity. This is equivalent to another 25 years of uninterrupted work. The mana grid is totally intact, but totally corrupted by solar radiation. A full purge will be necessary.

The secondary mana reactor is at 100% integrity, as it wasn’t in use when the Control Tower lost its power, and thus is still in its sealed container, which gives us another 5 years of autonomy before the need to change the mana reactor will become critical.

30 years to get into space with enough resources to change a Behemot-class mana reactor.

This is easily feasible if at least one of the three launch pads is still functional. If not, the deadline will be impossible to meet.

Indeed. The other systems?

From the crystal network, all the computing and storage crystals are intact, since the emergency sealing protocol triggered properly. However, this also means we’ll need to disengage the security measure and reboot the whole system once the mana grid is online once more. Also, from what I read, all the ansibles are in working order. Whether there is still something connected to them is another matter altogether.

The propulsion system is online and only needs mana to be used again. No major orbital deviation has been registered, though.

The sensor array as been badly damaged by its exposure to solar radiation, and will need extensive fixing. The MIDAR, however, is still in working order, if partially uncalibrated.

And, as postulated during prototyping, each weapon of the weapon system reacted differently to radiation exposure.

All the lenses of the short burst lasers have fried, and will need to be replaced before further use. Idem for the long burst ones.

However, the gravitic canon is still in full working order, all the coils are primed and ready to fire, and there is even a spear already loaded in the cyclonic accelerator.

Yeah, from all the weapons we have I’m sure the Grav-gun will be the most useful. After all, what better weapon to defuse a small argument than a gun designed to level mountain ranges.

At least you still have this option. Well, you will have it when the targeting system is back online.

Thanks Psaï. So, how much time for the repair?

The mana grid will take two weeks to purge, then a week to refill entirely of mana. After that, it will depend on which system you want to bring online first. I can’t work on all of them at the same time.

Okay.

…That’s all?

Well. Yes?

You don’t want more numbers, more deadlines?

I must admit that I just want to chill out. So far, from what I’ve seen, I’ve clearly enough power to deal with whatever crap is happening, even more after expanding my Conduit, so why bother about gaining more strength? From what I’ve seen, it will come in due time, so no reason to worry.

...You’re not wrong, but I can’t stop myself from thinking about the worst.

You mean, if Entropy is still around?

Yes.

Very unlikely, seeing the technological level of things around us so far. I mean, Entropy captured a quarter of the planet in the first year of the war. Even if we were quite flaccid at that time, well. Aircraft carriers, missiles and guns are still way more effective than swords and bow. This world would have already collapsed if Entropy could do whatever it wanted. And if pocket still exists, we’ll be strong enough to fight them, since they ought to be suppressed right, which means they’re not that strong either.

I hope you’re right.

Don’t hope. Fix the sensors and check the world. But until then, it’s not like we can do something about it, right?

Right.