The next day went by very slowly for Mike and Emily, time seemed to just slow down and torment the both of them. Around one o'clock Mike found Jack Turner outside the autoshop smoking a cigarette. As Mike was going to go up to him, two guys appeared out of nowhere, and attacked Jack. Mike was in action before he knew he was doing anything. Both attackers were over six feet tall, and out weighed Mike by fifty pounds each. One had Jack's arms restrained behind his back, while the other pummeled him with his fists. Mike charged towards the attackers and slammed into the guy giving the beating, like a professional footballer in the AFL.

The guy he tackled didn't know what hit him and they both hit the ground with a loud thud. Jack was just starring at Mike in surprise, then realized his captor had loosened his grip. Jack yanked himself free and drove the palm of his hand into his captors' nose, breaking it on contact. Mike's right shoulder went numb after he tackled the perpetrator, he heard with some satisfaction a popping sound coming from the big goon. The fight was over before it even started. Mike picked himself up off the ground as teachers were running towards the confrontation.

They asked what had happened, both Mike and Jack told them that the two goons jumped Jack and Mike jumped in to help Jack out. The police were called, where they placed both goons under arrest, and took them off to the hospital to get looked at. Mike and Jack were allowed to leave. Jack stopped Mike once they were out of the room and halfway down the hallway.

"Thanks for watching my back out there, man. That was some tackle you gave that guy." said Jack.

"Your welcome, though getting into a fight wasn't on my list of things to do today. Anyway what was that all about?" asked Mike.

"Well they are the Welsh brothers, and I had just broken up with their sister, Tina. Apparently Tina didn't like being dumped and had her brothers try to explain it to me. Then you showed up and you know the rest." said Jack.

"Look Jack, I came here today to ask you a very important question, and maybe let you in on the greatest discovery of human existence."

"Well you certainly piqued my interest," said Jack, "so what's the deal?"

Mike told Jack that he needed him for an engineering job, and that his reputation spoke volumes regarding his mechanical expertise. But Mike wouldn't tell Jack what the job was, until he agreed to come and see it for himself. Jack was reluctant to agree to this, but Mike had just saved his butt, and he owed him one.

Emily had a difficult time tracking down Mitch down, she spent half the day combing his usual hangouts. She finally found him at Grand Central playing video games at EB Games. Mitch was surprised Emily was looking for him, barely anyone notices him nor would they want to look for him. Emily started with idle chitchat, asked how he was doing. He said he was fine, but was wondering why Emily was looking for him.

"Mitch, can we talk in private for a few minutes. I'm doing a survey for psychology on young males and how they would want to change the world, if they could." Emily was lying through her teeth, hoping Mitch wouldn't get squeamish about why she wanted to talk to him. Emily and Mitch went down to the food court, which was fairly empty. They sat in a far corner with two sodas that Mitch bought for them. When they were comfortable, Emily asked some basic background questions. After five minutes background information, Emily started her real questioning.

"Mitch. If you had a chance to change the world, how would you do it?"

"Well that is a really good question. First off, I would try to get our country off of fossil fuel resources and on to a cleaner source of power. Then contribute money into an organization trying to cure deadly diseases. That's all I can think of at the moment."

Emily thought his answers were good. Emily asked him to meet her later at Mike Anderson's place for another little project she was working on. Mike and Emily met back at Mike's place around two o'clock. Mike told her about his encounter with Jack and that he would be here around three to see what was up. Emily thought that was good news and told Mike that Mitch would be here at three also. Jack and Mitch arrived at Mike's place early, and were surprised to see each other there.

Before they could ask any questions, Mike and Emily had them walking towards the tunnel. Mitch looked questioningly at Mike and Mike shook his head Yes. With that they all went down into the tunnel, moving at a fairly good pace, tripping every once in a while on some loose stones. When they arrived at the ship both Jack and Mitch looked like kids in a candy store. Their excitement soared when they met Sam. They agreed to whatever Mike and Emily had to say. Three hours later, both Jack and Mitch were brought up to speed and were willing to help repair the ship. Jack was now Chief Engineer and Mitch was now Science Officer. Jack and Mitch made their way to main engineering and asked Sam for a detailed scan of all the ships' systems.

Sam brought up a three dimensional image of the ship and all the damage was outlined in red. Both Jack and Mitch agreed that main power was their first priority. Jack looked at the image. Power circuits that were damaged or fried from sabotage had to be replaced immediately. Jack went to a storage area and found replacement circuits, cables, tools, and a few maintenance droids.

Mitch was inspecting the damaged circuits and found the device causing the power drain. A small black square device was hidden behind a junction station. Mitch disabled the device and solved one of their many problems. Now they could replace the power that was lost, without fear of a power drain. Jack and Mitch would work together trying to solve the power problem, but would need help from Sam on what kind of power they could use.

Sam could use solar energy, but it would be very slow to get to full power. Since becoming active Sam had been scanning for alternative power sources. Sam told them of a nearby factory that had processed silicon circuits that could be used to covert solar energy into the power they needed. Jack knew about the factory. It had been shutdown two months back, because of lawsuits by environmentalists. Jack told them there were piles of silicon circuits lying behind the building. Sam said the more they could get the better. Mike said he could borrow a friends' trailer and they could haul the circuits back for Sam to convert for his use.

Emily, Jack, and Mitch waited with Sam while Mike went to his friend to barrow his trailer. An hour later Mike walks back in and said they could go now. They all piled into Mikes' car with the trailer already attached. The trailer was eight feet long, six feet wide, and had a safety rails on all of the sides with a ramp on the back. Five minutes later on a deserted factory driveway they checked to see if anyone was watching the factory. They made their way to the back of the factory. No one was around to disturb them. Sam hadn't been kidding; there were several piles of silicon circuits stretching for about a quarter of a mile. Each circuit weighed about ten pounds, so they all did multiple trips from the piles to the trailer. After half an hour the trailer, as well, as Mike's trunk was full of silicon circuits. As they headed back to the ship, everyone was abuzz with excitement.

When they arrived back at the tunnel there was a lone maintenance droid waiting for them. The small group looked at the droid questioningly, until Sam announced that the droid was there to help them unload the circuits. It took little over an hour to unload the trailer and Mike's trunk. Sam was very pleased with how many silicon circuits they had brought back with them. He said that the circuits would take at least five hours to convert and then install the solar panels. So with that they called it a night, when they had emerged from the tunnel it was dark out and it was well past midnight. They agreed to meet back here tomorrow nice and early to work on the ship. Around nine the next morning they all met at the tunnel, all prepared for a long day's work. Mitch was the odd-man-out, because he was the only one who brought a medium size red cooler.

"Mitch, why do you have a cooler?" asked Emily.

"Well, if we're going to be working all day on the ship, I thought I might as well bring some food and drinks for lunch."

"Oh. Ok." replied Emily.

They set off down the tunnel and when they arrived at the ship Sam informed them that the circuits were installed and were producing a significant increase in power. At the current levels of power intake, it would take nine weeks to reach full power. Sam could take himself off of backup power when the power level reached ten percent. At the moment the power level was at four percent, and would take two more days before Sam could go off of backup power. Everyone said that was good news.

Sam also informed them that he had now reactivated five more maintenance droids to help with the repairs. Mitch and Sam were working for four hours on finding more powerful resources to use for the ship. While Sam worked scanning for additional power sources, Mitch was in la la-land; he was accessing the ships main computer core and the information stored was thousands of years more advanced than anything on the planet.

Mitch thought, "The beings that created this ship and all of its technology were more advanced, but couldn't fix their own ship when it was damaged." They seemed to lack creative thinking that Mitch and the others possessed naturally. Mitch routed through the files for the rest of the day, finding surprising little tidbits of information. The beings from this ship had over seven hundred elements on the periodic table.

This ship had shields, particle weapons, a cloaking device, and fighters with the same capabilities. Mitch also found a small treasure trove of top-secret information stored deep within the computer core, some were experimental upgrades for the ship that didn't quite work or just seemed impractical at the time. From these upgrades Mitch was getting all sort of ideas for the ship and for Sam, the only problem was getting them to work. Mitch felt sure he could do it, he had a very creative imagination.

Jack wasn't having as a great of a time as Mitch was, though he was very productive with the time he spent in Main Engineering. As soon as Jack arrived in Main Engineering there were six maintenance droids waiting for orders on what to repair first. Jack had three droids head towards the engine room to repair the engines and their sub-light drives on the back end of the ship.

The damage done to these areas was minimal, so it wouldn't take long to repair them. Jack had the other three droids replace or repair the remaining circuits on the ship and anything else that needed to be done. Jack on the other hand wanted to explore the ship searching for anything interesting and repairing any damage he came across. Jack was exploring for over an hour, this ship could hold a crew of three hundred. He found several storage closets, some with replacement circuits, others with strange crystals the lined the walls from floor to ceiling.

Later he found the main Security Center. Inside he found both defensive and offensive weapons. Surprisingly the weapons looked very similar to what they were using currently. Each of the weapons had labels underneath them. There are plasma rifles, stun batons, pulse grenades, fragmentation grenades, and what seemed to be blade weapons that run on a small power pack.

These were called Breaker blades, which look like twisted Japanese katanas. Each blade was different in design and shape, but the metal used in the design of the blade-looked onyx in appearance. Jack looked at the rows of blades and spotted one that caught his fancy. It was at the far end of the row and gleamed coolly in the artificial light. The blade of the sword was three feet long, which curved slightly in the middle of the blade.

The handgrip of the sword was eight inches long and had two reptiles twisting down the handle snake-like to merge at the pommel. Each was made of a different metal, one that looked like platinum and the other look like bronze. Jack reached out and picked up the sword. For some reason it felt right in his hands, though it felt too warm to be made of metal. Suddenly the blade of the sword began to glow a faint blue, and pulsate in his hands. Jack was slammed to floor like he was hit with a Mac truck and intense pain racked his body.

It seemed like it lasted for hours, when in truth it was only a couple of minutes. As soon as it started it stopped, Jack was covered in sweat and stars filtered across his vision. When his vision cleared, the sword was still in his hand, but it had stopped glowing. Instead his skin was covered in bright blue symbols he couldn't read, Jack was starting to panic, but the symbols faded away and left no marks behind. Jack got up off the floor feeling better every second. The sword felt like it was apart of him now, an extension of himself. Jack wondered what in the world had happened, when a voice spoke in his head.

"Hello Jack, you have passed my test and we have been bonded together. Breaker blades were created thousands of years ago as simple weapons, but an incident on a sentient planet, created a unique reaction to the planet environment. The planet passed some of its consciousness into the Breaker blades, creating a form of techno-life. Since then Breaker blades had given the knowledge of how to create more blades, like myself, to those who deserve such precious knowledge. Over the centuries very few have earned that kind of trust from us."

Jack was too stunned to speak for a second. When he did it was with caution.

"Why did you pick me?"

"Well, to be honest, you picked me. I just reacted to your touch and probed you thoughts, memories, and experiences. I knew then that you were the one I have been waiting for. When the ship was stranded here very few of the crew were bonded with a blade and they just forgot about us at the time. We are all sentient and have been aware of you and your friends' activities for some time."

"Oh, you don't seem upset to be left alone on the ship for all this time. So what should I call you? Do you have a name?"

There was a moment's pause before the blade answered Jack question. "No I don't have a name Jack. We were never given names as a general rule. The bonding process is an incredible offer that blades don't make lightly. Mainly, if we were picked up to be used in a fight there would be no bonding, no relationship, just used for a purpose. The species that used us didn't trust artificial life and felt that the bonding would corrupt the wielder. In fact, we never really talked to anyone that wasn't worth talking to."

"Wow, would you mind if I give you a name?" There was a moment's hesitation from the blade. "Yes, I would be honored to be given a name."

Jack stood there thinking of names for this sword, that any regular name wouldn't cut it for this sword. Then it struck him like a slap to the back of the head. "Ok, I'll call you Magnus. How does that sound to you Magnus?"

Jack was sure he heard Magnus chuckle, but decided not to ask what was so funny. "Yes, that is a good name for me. Thank you, Jack."

"Your welcome Magnus. Do you mind if I tell the others about you?"

"No, of course not. In fact why don't you get them down here in a little while. For now, I'll teach you all that I can."

For the next two hours Magnus taught Jack how to wield him and how to unleash the potential hidden within the blade. For his part Jack was having fun with Magnus, every thing he did with him was easy. Jack thought it was time to get the others and show them what he had found. Jack found everyone on the bridge; they looked surprised when they saw him holding a sword. Jack asked them to follow him to the Security Center, where he had something to show them. When they arrive at the security center they saw all the weapons, but the swords drew them forwards. Mitch was the first to inspect the swords and saw a blade with a green pommel that seemed to call to him. He reached out to pick it up before Jack could warn him first.

Mitch held the sword lightly in his hand when the blade glowed a hazy green and Mitch hit the floor with a loud thud. Mike and Emily rushed forward to help Mitch. Jack told them to stop and let it happen, that it was going to be all right. Jack explained what he could to them about the Breaker blades and how the bonding process worked. Just as he was finishing up his explanation, Mitch slowly revived. He got up and had what appeared to be a one way conversation with himself. Mike and Emily looked concerned at this new development, but Jack assured them that the sword was explaining everything to Mitch. Mitch finally ended the conversation with the sword, coming to a silent agreement with it.

"Guys, I'd like you to meet Seether. Seether, these are the guys."

The sword shimmered for a few seconds, as if saying hello. Jack then introduced them to Magnus, his partner. Mike and Emily were starting to get confused at all that was happening. Magnus asked Jack to have them pick a sword, for they would be bonded. Mike and Emily walked up to the rack to select a sword, they were looking for five minutes before Mike found one that seem right to him. This sword had a red tinge to the blade with a squared off platinum pommel, then the blade began to glow and Mike went through the process just like Mitch did before.

While Mike did this, Emily found a sleek looking sword with a black mesh pommel. On this sword the blade was slightly shorter than the ones Mitch and Jack had, the blade began to glow with a violet hue to it. The process was just beginning for Emily, while Mikes' had just ended. He stood up and had a similar conversation with his partner, like Mitch had with his. After a few minutes Mike introduced his partner Crimson. Now they just waited for Emily to finish the process. It ended and Emily started to talk with her sword, who she later named Nightshade.

The group withdrew to the galley where they could discuss what they were going to do with their partners. Magnus announced to the group that they could take the swords with them, because they could alter the perception of any who saw them so they wouldn't notice a thing. With that it seem like a good idea. Jack had produce sheaths for the swords from a storage closet in the security center. They informed Sam of the situation and asked why he had not told them of the swords before. He said that he himself had not known they were there. If he had known, he would have informed the Captain immediately.

With that they decided to hold a meeting on the ships status. Jack told them that the repairs were coming along nicely and could be completed in five to six weeks, give or take a few days. Mitch said he was still routing through the computer core and was making progress. He would inform everyone with a report of his findings once he was done. With that Mike called the meeting to a close and decided to call it a night, he was bone tired.

They all agreed to come back in a day or so because tomorrow was mother's day and they wanted to spend it with their family. Sam said he would keep working on repairs and said that the power level was up to six percent already. Apparently the silicon circuits were very efficient. Everyone began to shuffle out of the ship into the tunnel, said good night to each other and headed home. Tomorrow would be a bright new day.