Primal Saga Volume 1: The Queen of Silence

Chapter 25: The Queen of Silence

"Will you be patient? Do you know how much of a royal pain it is to reconnect these circuits? On top of that, I only have one good arm to work with. If I screw anything up then I will have to take it apart and redo the whole thing over again," I said.

Ace chirped angrily in response.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. You sacrificed your whole body to save me. So I shouldn't be whining about my arm is that it? Look. Just give me like two more days and it will be done. I'll have Aila bring you one of those manga things tomorrow. She will probably even flip the pages for you. Until then, find a way to entertain yourself," I said as I glaring at Ace. Through my magnifier glasses, he appeared far away. At the moment he was stripped down to just his data core - a small metallic sphere the size of a baseball with two glowing eyes staring at me. He was levitating; suspended in space above a small gravity pad on my desk. He started to do backflips in response to my comment. I couldn't tell if he was doing them out of spite or if he was having fun.

I returned to working on Ace's new body. My fusion pen emitted quick flashes as I touched it to different areas of the circuit board. Ace's old body was laying on the desk opposite to where Ace was - crushed beyond repair. Right now, I was reintegrating salvaged circuits from the old system and adding them into a new body built using Ace's spare parts and some new parts Aila's father had shipped to me. After that, I am going to need to start creating new circuits from scratch to replace the ones that were destroyed. The process is long and having my left arm in a sling only slows it down even more.

"Hey, do you want to try a new color on this body or do you want me to used the blue color scheme we used last time," I asked as I continued to work.

No response.

"Ace?"

Ace still remained silent.

I turned in my chair to look at him. He was no longer flipping in place. Through the magnifiers, I could see he was staring at something. I followed his line of sight until I was looking at the door. I froze. At the end of the long tunnel the magnifiers created with my vision, I could see someone standing in my doorway. My face began to grow hot when I realized who it was my jaw went slack.

"Miyabi! What are you doing here?"

I removed the magnifiers from my face, almost dropping them, and placed them on my desk.

"My apologies. I was going to knock, but you seemed focused." On the surface, she was not the least bit fazed by my extreme reaction, but I thought I caught a hint of red on her cheeks. If anything, my reaction was spurred on by how she was dressed. She wore a grey blouse covered by a light black jacket, a white knee-length skirt with black leggings, and black boots. Her long purple hair was tied into two braids that ran down the back of her shoulders. I have never seen her in anything other than a school uniform so seeing her dressed casually just caught me off guard.

"N-no. No. It's fine. Please come in. If I had known you were coming I would have cleaned up a bit," I choked. To my horror, she looked around my room. My bed wasn't made and robot parts were scattered everywhere. "I promise, it's never usually this bad. I have just been super busy trying to fix Ace."

"Ace?" She stepped into my room. She was carrying what I originally thought was an umbrella, but I now realize it was something bundled in canvas. She walked towards me holding the canvas bundle tight to her chest.

"Yeah, my companion robot," I said, pointing to the floating metal ball next to me. "His body was destroyed when the arbora attacked the school. Luckily, his core wasn't damaged so I have been repairing him."

Miyabi knelt down so she was now at eye level with Ace. "Hello Ace," she said with a smile.

Ace chirped at her. Passively and turned away from her. I have NEVER seen him react like that. What's going on with him?