For the first few days of her break, Aya helped Midnight with his speech patterns and gave him a general rundown of who she was, where they were, and what the state of affairs was. It had occurred to her that allowing Midnight to connect to the world net, and essentially glossing over all that was their world, may not have been the greatest idea. Surprisingly, he was very passive about what he’d learned, although he’d become wary of what people were capable of, and preferred not to interact with anyone unfamiliar unless it was absolutely necessary. She couldn’t really blame him, the current state of the rest of the world seemed to be pretty dim, although she reassured him that the net was heavily biased, and didn’t accurately represent the rest of the world.

After getting him up to speed with his new home world, it was time to start practical tests. So far, it was noted that Midnight was capable of using advanced magical and technical skills, innately at that. Telepathy was a very rare skill, and was sought after for military purposes, yet it was his initial, and only, form of communication. Luckily, Aya had several sets of programmable nanites on hand, and she demonstrated how they could be used to form components capable of replicating speech, which he picked up on almost instantly. It was a relief to finally be able to hear his voice, coming from his body, and not just having transmitted directly into her head. She also tested his ability to cast basic magic spells. Surprisingly, he had very little trouble casting magic, in fact at times he’d seem to over do it. On the technical side, however, he seemed to be struggling a bit more. Whenever he altered the composition of his nanites to change their form, he would seem to lose control over some of his groups, causing parts of his body to either dissipate or just fall apart until he refocused. Clearly it’d still take some time to get used to his form, or maybe it just wasn’t quite perfected?

As the end of Aya’s time off was approaching, she had very little left that she could teach Midnight on her own. His grasp on magic was already quite strong, although he continued to struggle controlling the nanites. After spending all this time secluded to the area around Aya’s home, Midnight had begun to grow curious about the HIVE research facility. Originally, Aya was against letting him come along, since all the facilities are essentially keeping an eye out trying to find him, but she couldn’t keep him hidden forever. Midnight seemed to express some kind of distrust towards anyone who wasn’t Aya, and appeared to only be interested in seeing what was actually in the facility. For better or worse, she conceded and opted to let him come along, in whatever way he’d manage, so long as he wasn’t discovered. He’d revealed that previously, he was able to remain hidden by dispersing the nanites into the air using magic, hopefully this method would also work inside of the lab.

On the morning of their return, Aya had received a message from Eranor. He’d be waiting for her back in the lab, and that he’d wanted to discuss a few things. Not exactly the greatest news since she wanted to keep a low profile with Midnight tailing her, but there wasn’t much she could do at this point. On her way into the facility, Aya could feel Midnight's presence, but it didn’t seem like any of the security cameras, personnel, or even the sentinels could tell that he was with her. She tried not to think about it much and headed straight to the Lab.

Awaiting her arrival, Eranor could be seen by one of the work tables on the left side of the lab. On the table was a clear cube containing a black mass, a small crystal, and a few tools she hadn’t seen before. As she approached the work table, she could feel Midnight’s presence dissipate into the room, but she’d have to worry about him afterwards. She greeted Eranor in an upbeat tone:

Aya: “Good morning~”

Eranor: “Ah, and a good morning to you. Nice to see you in high spirits, I take it you enjoyed your time off?”

Aya: “Uhhh...Yea, I guess you could say that. I take it you were probably putting in extra hours during yours, huh?”

Eranor: “Well, you know what they say, science never sleeps!”

Eranor chuckles to himself as he continues to probe at the cube on the table. Unlike Aya, Eranor was a dwarf. He was arguably wider than he was tall, but he had a bit of charm to his character. He was roughly 4 feet tall, Bald, but had an impressive mustache. His eyebrows were so thick you could hardly see his eyes, but it gave him the appearance of a very kind, old man. Given his size he usually had all kinds of gadgets to help him do his work, although Aya was certainly a big help to him since she became his apprentice.

Aya: “What’cha got there?”

Eranor: “From what I’ve heard, the search parties were unable to Locate The Prince. These are the left over nanites from what we’d used to summon it. Sir Veremire had asked if we could run a few tests to see how they react to certain stimuli, and perhaps we could use our findings to develop something to track it down.”

Aya: “What exactly is he planning to do with it when he finds it? If it’s really as powerful as the legends imply, wouldn’t it be incredibly difficult to capture it?”

Eranor: “Hmmm...he hasn’t exactly told any of us what his intentions are. Our instructions were to alert him as soon as we made contact. If I had to guess I’d say he’d try to communicate with it before anything else, but you can’t communicate with it if it's nowhere to be found. What’s brought this on?” He turns to face her.

Aya: “Well, Hypothetically speaking, let’s say we find a way to make contact, and it just so happens that for some reason or another it decides not to be cooperative on its own?”

Eranor: “That situation would be less than ideal, but given Sir Veremire’s history, he’d probably shift strategies, ultimately we’d have to find a way to contain it. It’s not safe for something like that to be left unchecked, who knows what kind of damage it could cause if it was influenced by the wrong people, or worse, if it decided for itself that we are its enemy.”

The nanites in the cube behind Eranor start to stir, almost as if something is compelling them to break free of their container. Aya’s expression at the sight was easily noticed.

Eranor: “Aya, are you okay? You seem a bit anxious, is there something you’re not telling me?”

Aya: “No! I mean, I’m fine. I was just curious about what the council’s plan would be, that’s all.”

Eranor: *sighs* “You’ve always been a bad liar Aya. It’s written all over your face, come on, out with it. I’m not getting any younger, you know?”

As soon as he finishes his statement, the container of nanites bursts open, and the nanites start scattering into the air, towards the far side of the room until they’re no longer visible. Uncertain as to what may be about to happen, Eranor motions to have security come to the lab, but Aya stops him abruptly:

Aya: “Wait! Just...give him a chance, at least a few minutes before you call anyone, please.”

Eranor hesitates for a moment, then reluctantly concedes. Aya told Midnight to reveal himself, and after what felt like a small eternity, he’d manifested in front of the pair. To her surprise, he was smaller this time, perhaps a few inches shorter than Eranor, as opposed to roughly her height like he had been previously. His form was a bit comical to look at, with his oval shaped torso, and long, slim limbs. Though, his devil-like head still had a sinister kind of aura to it.

Having agreed to hear them out, Eranor settled with just observing Midnight, Although he’d occasionally inspect him with one of many odd gadgets he had. Midnight had no issues going along with it, so long as Aya was calm, he simply idled around the lab. It took a little while to thoroughly explain how she’d come across him. The idea that Midnight had already seen the world through the net, and didn’t immediately become an extinction event came as a relief. It certainly wasn’t all bad, but the majority of media coverage definitely made it seem that way. Aya added that Midnight was more of an observer than anything else, but his potential was unmatched, having taken in just about everything bit of knowledge she had to offer within the short time span.

Aya: “The only real issue he seems to have is his memory loss, which he claims will return over time. Well, that and his inability to multitask without losing control of portions of his body. He really seems to struggle controlling his body whenever he has to heavily concentrate on something. That’s part of the reason I brought him here.”

Eranor: “Aya, I know you mean well, but your actions could have had unimaginable consequences, not to mention we’ve both essentially disregarded a direct order from Sir Veremire.”

Aya: “I know, but something just felt off about this whole thing, you say he’s an eccentric, but wouldn’t he have put the country, no, the whole world at risk by just calling The Prince forth with so little preparation? You saw how that went, and had it been anyone else, who knows what they’d be doing with him right now.”

Eranor: *sighs* “Your argument is valid, but it doesn’t change the fact that we have a duty to uphold, but I’m willing to compromise with you. We can keep him here, in the lab, for research purposes. We’ll see what we can do about any issues he may have, but within a week's time, we need to let his presence be known to the Council.”

Aya: “Deal, but wherever he goes, I go.”

Eranor: “I can’t make any promises of that, but I won’t restrict you myself.”

Aya: “Fair enough. We’re already here, so I’ll go ahead and start doing a few tests with him and see if we can figure out what’s causing his dissipation issue. Just let me know if you need anything. Oh...and, thanks for giving him a chance, you’ll see, he’s no threat to us.”

Eranor: “It’s quite alright, although for our sakes, I sure hope you’re right.”

It was interesting to watch as Midnight perused around the lab. Now that he’s able to properly see and interact, he’s much more curious about the projects and equipment. It came as no surprise that the workstation where they designed the nanites drew the majority of his attention. Given the incredibly tiny size of nanites, manufacturing them by hand is impossible. On the workstation were several controllers for machines which scaled to a progressively smaller size. The machines essentially took the place of any other equipment they could need. They could cut, meld, assemble, program, disassemble, everything. It was a joint project between the Automation and Hive Facilities, making micro-component production significantly easier for both sides.

Prior to being called upon by Xavier, Eranor had been designing a kind of micro-manufactory, a component that would be able to rapidly recreate a pre-programmed nanite type, using raw or refined material input. The plans were still strewn about the workstation and displayed by its holo-crystal. Midnight seemed especially interested in those designs, and the ones for his own nanites’ composition, so Aya gave him a brief walkthrough of how they were designed as well as an explanation as to what they were aiming for with the micro-manufactory.

Inexplicably, Midnight waved his hand across the Holo-crystal’s projected screen, and began navigating through the various menus and applications. Typically, only personnel are able to use holo-terminals, as they only respond to those with sufficient permissions. Aya and Eranor looked on, in both amazement and slight unease. It seemed that at some point, he’d established a connection with the Facility’s network, and scanned through nearly all available files, projects, and documents. Now, being acquainted with the facility’s purpose, achievements, and capabilities, he began to draw up a design for a new nanite, a variation of the kind he was composed of. Unlike Aya’s previous design, this one would be significantly more elaborate. The magic stone shard was separated into 6 identical pieces, each evenly spaced out among the body of the nanite. The crystal aspects wouldn’t be individual components, but rather melded together with the alloy of choice, and had a similar look to circuitry on a circuit board, but not as complex. The alloy of choice was Triorium. Triorium isn’t a well known alloy as its usability was questionable due to its properties. It’s a variable alloy, in the sense that its composition and structure can be altered with relative ease, with the right stimuli of course. It has incredible magnetic properties, is relatively malleable, but also incredibly durable depending on how it’s formed. It’s also relatively lightweight, and one would think it’d be a miracle alloy given these properties, but it also has its caveats.

Because of its composition, Triorium can cause a variety of undesired effects depending on its use-case and stimuli. For example, using it as an electromagnet can cause irregularity in its strength, and on one occasion, a kind of EMP like reaction that knocked an entire city’s power grid offline. Heavy impacts to Triorium are generally absorbed, but will occasionally be reflected or displaced with 2 to 3 times the initial energy, making it incredibly dangerous as any kind of armor or plating. Exposure to elements can cause similar dampening and enhancing effects, although most tests were done at very small scales to avoid severe incidents. It was found that most of the negative effects can be micromanaged by controlling the rate of the stimulus in response to the alloys changes, or the alloy’s composition in response to the stimulus. Although for the longest time neither of these options were viable, and the alloy was deemed unusable within reason, and has since been seen mostly in small samples for occasional demonstrations.

Aya and Eranor looked over the design, then back at Midnight.

Aya: “Are you sure you want to make these? They’re not exactly the most stable, and honestly I’m not even sure if we’d be able to make a design as intricate as that, let alone deal with the Triorium during the processing.”

Eranor: “She’s right, if we tried using our equipment to make these, between the intricate design and the instability, we’d be more likely to have our equipment destroyed before we can manufacture one of those.”

A somewhat puzzled expression can be noted on Midnight’s face, he gestures towards the quantity of the raw materials, Inquiring if he’d be allowed to use them.

Aya: “I mean, I don’t see any reason why not but…”

Eranor: “We can bring you the materials, but like I mentioned before, we can’t produce these with our equipment. Furthermore, the amount of Triorium you want to use is an unsafe quantity to experiment with. I’ll bring you a quarter of the amount, and if all goes well then we’ll procure the rest.”

Aya: “Just to be safe, how certain are you that this is what you need anyway?”

Midnight appears pensive for a very brief moment, and then replies:

Midnight: “These will be a suitable substitute until I’m able to create a perfected design”

The sound of his voice was a surprise to Eranor, who’d yet to hear him speak. The soft tone with a slight hint of a robotic voice was gentle, and assuring.

Aya: “Alright, if you say so. How soon do you think we can get a hold of these?”

Eranor: “It shouldn’t be long, we have most of these in our storage room, the Triorium will probably be a couple hours though. In the meantime, why don’t you two discuss how he’s planning to make those?”

Overall, there wasn’t really much to discuss. Explaining a process that he wasn’t sure he could even complete wasn’t exactly easy for Midnight. The general idea was that it’d be a similar process as to how he was created, but without the need for any power or magical resources. Instead he would use magic to essentially break down the materials into a manageable size and state, and then using a combination of magic and his current nanites, he’d design and assemble the new nanites from the raw material. It’s not a foreign concept, as magic can be used to change and create all kinds of things. The only issue is most magic has been around for centuries, and has simply been built upon and altered. This would require entirely new spells to be written, which isn’t exactly a quick process, and it’d likely never get done for hyper-specific use cases, such as this one. Not to mention the level of control required for strong magic at a small scale grows exponentially. But at this point, it was worth a try. Midnight didn’t exactly fall into the usual conventions of what was possible and what wasn’t. He’d already proven that the first day he was summoned. So if anyone was capable of doing it, it’d probably be him.

A few hours had passed and Eranor made his way back into the lab with a cart that had several boxes on it. Sure enough, these were the materials Midnight had requested, in a quarter of the quantity. Eranor set the Triorium, Magic stones, and Crystals onto the workbench.

Eranor: “You’re more than welcome to begin whenever you’d like, but remember that our equipment is unusable.”

Midnight nodded, suddenly shifting in size back to about Aya’s height. As he reached for the materials, his arms divided into 3 separate appendages each, and picked up everything. They then slowly receded back into his body, swallowed up by his dark and shadeless figure. He stood seemingly in deep thought for a moment, then walked over beside the work table. In one motion, his body had collapsed on itself, and all that was left was a black cube, roughly half the height of the workbench. After that, it was silent. There was no noise or movement, just a solid black cube idling beside the workbench. Aya and Eranor looked at each other. Uncertain as to what they should expect, they opted to leave Midnight to his work, and they carried on with their own.

For the first day and a half, nothing really happened, everyone continued with their usual work flow, and no one really questioned it. At around mid-day, there was, what can only be explained as, a small explosion of sorts. A clump of nanites was blown off the front of Midnight’s cube form. Many of them did return to the main body, but a decent quantity remained on the lab floor. They appeared to be damaged beyond repair as they no longer held any kind of form or pattern to them. Aya had quickly cleaned up the nanites and put them into a container, just in case. It was very evident now that he was in fact, attempting to create the nanites. It was a good call not to start with the full quantity. After that incident, not much else went on the rest of the day. There was a bit more concern knowing that his attempts may have a variety of wild side-effects, so Aya had decided to spend her nights in the lab.

Aside from the occasional thunk, spark, or shudder, not much else was seen or heard from Midnight’s cube for the following two days. On the morning of the fifth day, as Aya was just waking up, Midnight’s cube began to surge and swirl as the nanites swarmed out into the middle of the lab floor. They slowly began to recombine into a familiar, but slightly different form. Although his figure remained the same, there were a few new details to be noted. It appeared as though there were several crystalline structures where a normal person’s major joints would be, and a sort of crown, or tiara hovering just a bit over the forefront of his head. His once completely dark and shadeless surface was now lined with glowing accents, similar to those seen on the nanite’s design.

Aya: “Good morning~ Long time no see, huh?”

Midnight nodded to her, with a brief wave of the hand, and walked over to the workbench he’d been beside the last four days. Without any input this time, the Holo-Crystal came on and seemingly navigated itself to a new blueprint, one that wasn’t in their database, but looked very familiar.

Midnight: “I believe this design may work as intended for you, mine are not stable for independent use.”

Aya: “Wait, is that a working, micro-manufactory print then? I thought you were working on your new nanites?”

Midnight: “I was, although this proved to be a more efficient method, mine allowed me to repurpose my existing nanites, given the right materials. That one is simpler, and must be pre-programmed with a specific recipe, but it should help cut down production times on future projects. Consider it my thanks for assisting me.”

It was around this time when Eranor had arrived at the lab himself, instantly noticing the pair by the workbench.

Eranor: “Would you look at that, our resident sleeper has awoken, and that's quite the look you’re sporting. What might you two be working on so early?”

Aya: “We’re not exactly working on anything yet, but it looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us thanks to our prodigy here. He made a print for what seems to be a functioning micro-manufactory. It’s a bit bigger than our original designs, but if it works it’d definitely put us ahead of schedule.”

Eranor’s eyes widened, although given the size of his eyebrows, you could hardly notice.

Eranor: “You mean he designed that while creating the new nanites? Speaking of which I take it that this new look must be related to his success?

Aya: “Seems to be the case. I was kind of worried when he had that blowout the other day, but it looks like he got it under control.”

Midnight pinned the design he’d shown them to the workbench, and brought up the print for his new nanites. The remaining material requirements were circled in red, and he sheepishly looked over at Eranor.

Eranor: “Alright, I did say we’d get you the rest if things went well, and this is certainly more than I’d expected to see this morning. I’ll bring you the rest, wait just a moment.”

Eranor took the empty cart and headed off to the storage room. As Aya looked over Midnight, the realization had yet to set in that in two days' time, they were meant to let Xavier know The Prince had been found, and find a reasonable explanation for having delayed that information. Aya didn’t like the idea that Midnight would most likely end up being used as some kind of weapon or deterrent. Although if the messages in the ruins were true, then regardless of the fact he’d still end up as some kind of super weapon to “save the planet.”

She shook the thoughts from her head as Eranor returned with a cart packed full of materials. Like before, Midnight was welcome to begin whenever he desired. This time, however, he simply walked over the cart, and held his hand above the materials. A faint circle of magic could be seen forming just beneath his palm, and within seconds the materials on the cart appeared to be dissolving into powder and being siphoned directly into his palm. After a few seconds the cart was completely empty. Midnight took a step back, and the nanites on the surface of his body appeared as though they began to vibrate, rearranging themselves as his figure changed.

In his new form, much like before, the surface of his body was a shadeless black, with glowing lines spanning its entirety. This time, however, his body resembled a more humanoid design, with limbs that appeared of appropriate lengths, a defined torso and hip, with some spike-like protrusions around his collarbone and shoulders. His head had also changed quite a bit. His devil-like appearance was replaced by a much softer, friendlier design, similar to a decorative mask with animal ears. The legs were still fairly cylindrical in design, and he didn’t really have any feet, they just comically ended in stumps, but overall, an elegant design. In awe of his sudden transformation, the silence was broken by an urgent message: “Councilman Veremire has arrived at the facility.”