Land of the Blades

45. Static

During our short trip to the moon, Aechmea had told Caster and me about their previous attempts to convince Sensei to help them. One of them involved creating synthetic body parts with artificial inclusions, and either replacing parts of one of our kidnapped brothers, or building a completely new but fake lustrous. However, according to him, they had never been able to make them do anything besides standing in place. Sugilite looked lethargic, but he had life of his own.

—That idiot prince lied to me! —I said, wanting to return to the surface and cut him again. Only then I noticed I had left my sword lying on the ship. Not that it mattered, my claws should suffice.

—If you are speaking of the former ruler of the Lunarians, he wasn't involved in Sugilite's development —Sugilite said.

According to him, he had been created by the head of the science department, who was technically Mantis' boss. I had heard before that he was one of the few who they hadn't even attempt to persuade to join their rebellion, as he seemed to enjoy working for Franny.

—I removed most of the "programming" that the Lunarians put on her inclusions' DNA to make her follow their orders —Shirou said—, it looked like the work of an amateur, but it was so messy it took me years to remove it all.

Borted looked very confused at the mention of DNA, so I had to give him an oversimplified explanation of what it was. Granted, my knowledge was only what Shirou had learned as a highschooler, but it included all the basic concepts. I made a mental note to ask Shirou to help me write everything in our collective memories from the old world once this war was over.

—But still, I'm pretty impressed you were able to see and modify Sugilite's DNA.

—I had a lot of time to practice, and fixing this place also helped me develop my abilities —Shirou said—, though I admit I messed up at first and... killed a few pieces of her.

—Sugilite isn't mad about it —the moon-made lustrous said, not showing any visible emotion, but his words were able to raise Shirou's spirit a bit.

—That reminds me. I need you to keep both of their existences as a secret, at least for now —Shirou said— Despite what I did, I'm not sure how Sugilite could react to our "guest", and if they were to capture Malachite they could force the Admirabilis out of the ocean by poisoning the water.

—I understand —I said, and Bort nodded in agreement—, but once we have finished this, we'll come back to take them with the rest of us.

—Really?! —Malachite said, grabbing Sugilite's hands and jumping excitedly— We'll meet our brothers, all of them!!

—Yay... —Sugilite said once again with a deadpan tone, but I think I saw a slight smile on her face.

After that, Shirou asked Malachite to treat Bort's arm. She went and grab a jar from a shelf full of similar containers, and started applying its green and mushy content on both parts. The cut had been pretty clean, so putting the two pieces together wasn't a problem. Their "glue" however, wasn't as effective as the one we had back at home, so they had to bandage his entire arm to keep it in its place.
I took the opportunity to look around for a bit, the other containers had weird pastes and powders akin to those Rutile used, thought these had been most likely obtained from the bottom of the ocean. Their waterproof cream was more effective than ours, according to Shirou, but it was way more viscous.

—It is horrible, and I have to use lots of it whenever we have to look for stuff under the ice, just to be sure —Malachite said, shivering—, that's why we had been trying to fix this diving suit.

There was indeed some sort of suit on the table, the project they had been working on when we got there. It was nothing like I had seen, even in Shirou's memory, but so was most of what was on that place. I could guess all of that had been invented after Shirou's death. Thinking about that made me uncomfortable, so I shook my head trying to get those thoughts out of it.