CHAPTER 29: PROGRESS BAR

A sense of dread filled Hiro. Had Moria seen? She glanced back at the construct. The rushing foaming water covered the thread of time and shielded it from view. Eventually, when the water was drained, the golden thread would be visible, but right now it was covered. She couldn't have seen right? But why was she gone?

Hiro wanted to leave, but she wasn't going to make rash decisions with her magic again. Instead, she took a moment to double-check the whole donut-shaped construct. Everything still seemed to be in harmony. Her water mana was filling it at a decent rate. The vessel wasn't strained whatsoever. It was a huge improvement from the dozens of tries she had done the last day and a half.

She nodded to herself, satisfied that everything was working properly she closed her metaphysical eyes and pushed her consciousness up and out. When she opened her eyes her legs felt cold. The warmth from Moria's closeness faded. She glanced around, Moria was at the door speaking softly.

"Yes, I know it's your time Cadet, we're wrapping up." She glanced back at Hiro and raised an eyebrow when she saw her blinking owlishly at the dimmed lights. Moria's brow furrowed as she turned back to whoever was at the door. "We just had to finish a delicate process. We will be heading out shortly. One moment."

Moria slid the door shut, "We need to go, it's someone else's turn. How'd it go?" She walked over to push one of the chairs back where it came from.

Hiro stood from the bench and helped move things back in order. "It went well so far." She pulled up her progress bar.

Quest: Progress of Water Mana coalescence: 8/100%

A smile spread across her face, "Eight percent! Finally some progress!" She pumped her arm once in joy. Moria raised an eyebrow. Hiro shrugged at her but calmed down. Everything in the room was back in order, so she patted her leg. Ness came to her and she clipped the leash onto her collar.

The success on the progress bar had loosened the knot in her chest somewhat, but Hiro was still anxious about the last step she had taken and how much Moria had seen. She wanted to ask Moria about it but didn't want to raise suspicion if she didn't see anything. She definitely didn't want to ask if someone was outside the door who could overhear.

A deep growl of a voice came from the other side of the door as they were approaching to leave, "Officers think they can ignore the timetables. Don't they know who you are?"

"Be calm Thoz, the old one said all things happen in their own time," A familiar voice answered. Hiro joined Moria at the door and pulled it open to reveal a silver-skinned man and a large lizardfolk.

Ape tilted his head to one side in curiosity as he saw Hiro, "Hello, Cadet Skylark."

"Hi Ape, hello Thoz. Sorry for holding you up." She said as Ness tucked her ears back and a low grumble rose in her throat as she looked at the Lizardman. "Shh Ness." Hiro tried to calm her dog. Thoz growled showing his considerable amount of teeth. Ness backed up to stand between Hiro's legs, still growling low in her throat.

Ape tilted his head examining Ness. "What a strange critter." His eyes flickered with blue. "A Canis lupus familiarise, the first I've seen on this planet and a breed I am unfamiliar with."

"You've seen dogs before?" Hiro said confused. Moria was looking between the two but kept watching the lizardman out of the corner of her eye.

"Yes, There are some on my planet." Ape settled a hand on Thoz's arm ceasing his growling. Ness kept hers up. This time his eyes flashed silver as he looked at her. "You look more solid today. I hope that means your healing is going well."

"Better now I think," Hiro replied distractedly trying to get Ness to calm down. Had he just said they also had dogs on his planet? That was something to ask Button about later.

"Good," Ape replied, He walked into the room between Moria and Hiro who stood to the side to allow him to enter the room. "If you'll excuse my hurry. I need to work on my consolidation. It is interesting timing to keep running into you."

Hiro kept a tight hold on the leash as Throz entered the room after Ape. "We will leave you to it. We should chat later Ape." He nodded as he settled cross-legged on the floor. Hiro awkwardly walked Ness out the door and calmed her once the door was shut. Ness licked her lips and returned to her normal heel.

Moria gave her a sidelong look as they walked towards Hiro's room. "Who was that?"

"Oh, that's Ape and his bodyguard of a friend Throz. I met them at breakfast the other day. He's the new Soul." Hiro shrugged as she walked.

Moria twisted around to look at the door they just left. "That's the new Soul huh? No wonder his friend was getting annoyed. We didn't bow out of the way immediately to let them in."

"Well, we were doing something delicate, as you said. It's fine. We were only three minutes late out of the room. They'll survive." Hiro said nonchalantly.

"Hmmm," was Moria's only reply. Hiro just blinked, maybe she should lay off the timekeeping Considering she was trying to keep her concept of Time on the down low. She sighed and decided to take an indirect approach to asking what Moria may have seen.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"So I was pretty caught up in the last few steps there. I didn't notice you leaving as I was finishing up. What'd you think of the whole thing?" There, that was fairly benign.

"I got a ping saying someone was at the door waiting for their turn. I slipped out to handle it. I didn't want to distract you from your task." Moria grinned at her, "The whole construct is pretty impressive! The self-feeding element you put in there to account for the mana movement was great. But when you think of water cycles it makes perfect sense."

"Thanks!" Hiro smiled, the weight beginning to lift from her chest. She fiddled with the end of Ness's leash.

Moria continued, "Right at the end I felt a strange bubble of power as you connected the water from the pool. Did everything go alright after I left?"

Hiro's hands grew still and she focused on watching Ness. "Everything went fine, I had to make some tweaks as I pushed power in, but I listened to everything like you said and eventually reached equilibrium." She looked at Moria who was watching her, "That whole exercise helped a lot! I will have to practice it some more." She should ask her a question, "How long did it take your grandma to teach you all that?" There, that was always the best way to distract her mother.

"She taught me from the time I was very small until I was able to journey to the concept of caverns in my sector. I didn't fully understand until I had my concepts to listen to. It didn't take very long to find the song of my soul after listening to hers for so long." Her eyes gained a faraway look.

"Forgive me if it's impolite, and you don't have to answer, but you've only talked about your Grandma, what about your mom or dad?"

Moria looked at the floor taking her time to answer. Hiro was about to apologize and move on when she opened her mouth and responded. "It's a bit of a long story. My people live in large family groups called pods. I have many Aunties who also taught me growing up. Few of them are related by blood. It's common for when you come of age to move between pods, especially males. There are so few of them compared to females. My mom was still technically in my grandmother's pod when she went off to serve Headquarters as I have done. She met my father, while she was at one of her postings." She looked over at Hiro who was fascinated with the story. They kept walking slowly through the halls, weaving between the other cadets, back to Hiro's room.

"The long story short, my mother got pregnant. My grandmother was disappointed. She had lined up another Gold from another pod to try and strengthen the Spark in our family line. Just as she had done when my grandmother had my mother. The first child tends to be the most powerful, but he was a copper to her gold. They had a big fight about it when she had come back to present baby me to the pod as is tradition." Moria let out another sigh.

"My mom left after their fight, waving her maternity leave saying she'd come back when her service term was done in a year. When my grandmother cooled off, but when she came back she was wrapped in her death shaw. It was the only time my father visited my home world. He brought her to us to give back to the sea." Moria trailed off.

"I'm sorry about your mom," Hiro said softly.

Moria looked up as they exited the building. She looked up at the darkening sky filled with flying ships. "Thanks, it was when Genisis went rogue. My mom was called in to help deal with the situation. She wasn't the only one who didn't make it through that day." Another pause, "My father messages every so often and we've had dinner a couple of times since I came to Headquarters for my service. But men don't do a lot in the raising of children in my culture and he's a terrible swimmer. He wouldn't have done well trying to help raise me. My aunties told me my grandmother made it very clear she didn't want him around anyway." She shrugged, "So my grandmother raised me with the rest of the pod."

"I'd like to meet your pod sometime, they sound important to you," Hiro said.

"They are, they took care of me and gave me a strong foundation. I wish I had known my mom though." She took a deep breath, "How about you? You have your pet here, what about your family?"

"Ness is my family. I haven't talked to my mom in a decade or so. I don't know who my dad is. He left when I was a baby." Hiro shrugged. They arrived at her door and she opened it to let Ness inside. "I have a few work friends, and maybe the folks I play online with might wonder where I've gone. I don't know what Headquarters did when I left to cover my disappearance. I don't know if it matters. I do feel bad for work though. I did a lot of the welding in the shop. The only other guy is on night shift."

"I'll check on it for you if you want. Sounds way more interesting than the paperwork I'm currently doing." Moria replied.

"Yeah? Thanks." They stood in the doorway for a moment in comfortable silence.

Hiro looked at her progress bar.

Quest: Progress of Water Mana coalescence: 20/100%

Hiro grinned at Moria, "The progress bar is still going up! It's working! Thanks for showing me another approach to working with my magic."

The corner of Moria's mouth quirked up, "No problem, Professor Davenport is a great teacher in some ways, but I think we're all in the dark about what you need. She had the right idea, but it sounded like she was trying to cram too much in at a time. Like I said, she teaches the advanced classes. Not the introductory ones."

"Yeah, the crash course was cool, but it made it hard to focus on making constructs." Hiro agreed.

"Miss Skylark, you have an urgent message," Button spoke in her ear.

"Hang on I have a message," Hiro told Moria. She nodded and Hiro's eyes grew distant as she accepted the message.

"Cadet Skylark, It seems you had a breakthrough, we need to move onto the next step as soon as you're done consolidating. Please meet Professor Davenport in twenty minutes to come to the lab. Good work. - Professor Gendry."

"It seems our work set off the professors," Hiro said tapping the monitor on her belt. "I'm supposed to go back to the lab with Professor Davenport here in a bit."

Moria smirked, "I got a message from her asking if I had anything to do with the breakthrough right now. She saw I booked the meditation room. I told her that 'Water flows where it will.' I always loved saying nonsense proverbs to her in class when I did something that my grandma taught me rather than by the book." She chuckled and leaned down to pat Ness.

"She'll probably call me in too if I stick around. So I'm going to go home. She might call me in tomorrow to debrief, but that's better than the bureaucracy I'm doing now." Moria stood and held her arms out for a hug. Hiro stepped in to hug her back.

"I appreciate everything you shared with me." Hiro told her softly while they hugged, "About the mana control and about your pod and mom."

"You're welcome," They pulled away from the hug. "We'll go visit Duffy soon. See you around!"

"Bye!" Hiro watched Moria walk away for a moment before following Ness inside. She was satisfied that she hadn't been found out and distracted her enough not to ask questions. She had just enough time for a cold shower before meeting the professor for more work.