“Are you leaving yet?” Emily asked, her eyes on Gemini, who was busily pondering the meaning of life in a nondescript corner of the laboratory.
The Constellation heard her words, but chose to continue his little sojourn at the comfortable-looking corner. His hands were trembling somewhat, and Gemini had a feeling that his eyes had a haunted quality to them right now. To his left was Lila, who was patting his head as gently as possible.
“There, there. Don’t feel so sad,” Lila coaxed. “You know that Emily’s someone who doesn’t go out much nowadays, so you really shouldn’t hold it against her.”
“Excuse me? I was a popular student on Earth!”
“Shh! I’m getting to get him to forgive you!” Lila replied. “And you should really be asking for forgiveness. Who does that to someone’s clone anyway?”
“There’s no precedent regarding how one should treat clones, so that’s an absurd argument!” Emily fired back. “Haah. Fine, fine. I’m sorry. I should have just cut your clone’s hair and fingernails, and nothing else.”
Gemini trembled again.
“Not sincere enough,” Lila said.
“…Cake,” Gemini muttered, before holding on to his girlfriend’s arm. The experiments had gone well, right until Emily decided to do away with a certain important part of the male anatomy with a good stab. Granted, the clone would regenerate quickly, but it was the principle of the thing. The Constellation had never expected an ally to stab his clone, let alone stab his clone in a certain area.
Although he wasn’t affected at all, his clone had promptly fallen over and returned to him, which meant that Gemini felt the pain of the clone’s temporary loss of a vital male organ.
“He wants you to serve the rest of your cake to make up for it,” Lila supplied helpfully. “Also, my boyfriend — even his clone — isn’t someone you should be stabbing a scissors at without permission…”
“It’s just a cl— fine, I apologise. Take this cake.” Emily sighed. “A few hours of hard work just gone like that. How unfortunate.”
Gemini’s foggy mind cleared up somewhat at that ridiculous lament, but he really couldn’t bring himself to retort, opting to rest his head on Lila’s lap instead. The lunch break was long over, but no one was going to call someone whose primary expertise was in fighting to task for being late to office.
If you were a man, and you had a clone, I’d have done the same thing to you! Count yourself lucky! Gemini sniffed twice, and then beckoned the cake over with his hand.
“You’re so emotional.” Emily Lorenze rolled her eyes. “It’s just a clone, right? Shouldn’t be all that important.”
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Gemini wanted to tell her that using his clone to house his consciousness was a thing he did often, but it was unlikely that she would be able to understand the way he viewed his Unique Skill. Even amongst the other Constellations, his Unique Skill was one of a kind; none of them could split into two the way he did.
Getting up slowly, he stored the remaining cake into his inventory, which was capable of freezing whatever that was stored inside in time. Its quality would not drop whatsoever when he next took it out, which was something no one else could do. Emily made a little huff at that sight, and then shooed the two cake-robbers out in silence.
The doors slid shut behind them.
Soaked by the rays of the afternoon sun, Gemini hurriedly brough Lila back into the Congress building, where it was far cooler. His job here was to simply help the more experienced administrators of Ark City in looking through any documents that came to them. As a rule of thumb, however, Gemini was usually assigned proposals and documents that didn’t need any expertise to actually vet, which were few and far between.
As such, he usually had little to do.
Most of his time was spent training along with the Lords and Paragons of Ark City, honing up and practicing their ability to fight under a wide variety of circumstances. Without his Unique Skill and the Psyche-splitting Strike, he was one of the weakest Paragons when it came to combat strength.
Of course, compared to Lords and Paragons who had either just ascended or spent most of their time in administrative work, Gemini was the perfect training partner. Campmaster Magnus, for instance, was a regular partner of his.
“Quinn,” Gemini spoke in his mind, calling out to his Champion Support Entity.
“What do you think?”
“About the sparring? I think you should pick on someone your own size and not make use of me all the time, so—”
“No, not that.” Gemini followed Lila into the Congress building, content to let her lead by the hand. “About the information we just got from the Memory Sifter. What do you think?”
“I’m quite sure that there are a lot more features that are still missing,” his Champion Support Entity replied. This mental entity of his had been occupied with deciphering Emily’s findings for the past few hours, conveniently blotting out whatever mental anguish that he himself had gone through earlier.
The couple stopped at Gemini’s work desk. “Like what, for instance?”
“I’m not sure myself. More research is required,” Quinn replied. “For me, it feels like I’m lacking a few limbs. It’s a rather uncomfortable feeling, and I don’t like it at all.”
“Lacking a few limbs…” Gemini repeated. “Does that mean that you know what your original state should be like?”
“Something like that, yes. Your original Status was already lacking too much to begin with,” Quinn replied. “Therefore, the CSS that appeared after the presence of the Demon God activated it was also equally incomplete. To me, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle with the edges all filled in and nothing else.”
“How do I rectify this?” Gemini asked.
“I have a few suggestions, but let me finalise them first,” said Quinn.
Gemini nodded, and then turned to Lila, who was reading a proposal someone wrote up regarding a basic training camp for all citizens. “Let’s go find a senator or two to spar with. Lila?”
“Must we?”
“Of course. Come on, let’s go.” He placed the proposal back down, and with an evil grin, began to poke around for some idling senators.
“Wait,” said Lila, tugging at Gemini. “I want to teach you something.”
“Something?”
“A song,” she replied. “One that would hopefully teach you restraint when sparring with others.”
“A song?” Gemini repeated. “What’s so special about it?”
“It’s something from Ars,” Lila replied. Her expression didn’t betray any sorrow, but Gemini could still feel it anyway. It was, however, a sign that she was once again moving on from her past.
The Constellation held her hand gently. “Sure.”