Nocturnio (22.12.9978 AS)

“It feels like I’ve been away forever!” Tristan said as he entered his laboratory, where he found Abigail in her usual place typing on her holographic keyboard, created by her active ability: ‘Archive’.

Abigail looked away from the holographic monitor to confirm, who had just entered the laboratory. As soon as she realized it was Tristan, she returned her attention to the monitor, with a disappointed expression on her face.

“Hey, don’t you want to greet me, it’s been long since I’ve visited this place after all!” Tristan said with an astonished tone. He had expected Abigail to react a little more hyper and happy after seeing him doing fine after all he had gone through or at least he had expected her to greet him with a bright smile like she usually did.

But today Tristan’ didn’t receive a greeting, but the cold shoulder, making him feel a little anxious. It hadn’t been the first time he hadn’t visited the laboratory after a long period of time. Even if it felt to him like an eternity, he had visited the laboratory quite a few times during his stay in Terra, so why was Abigail reacting this way?

Abigail sent him an annoyed look and returned back to her monitor. “Oh, yeah, yay, Trist is back, we must celebrate!” She said with a sarcastic tone.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to get greeted like that! I just wanted an honest ‘hi’ from you!” Tristan said, getting annoyed by Abigail’s act.

After spending almost every night with her for the last five years, he had gotten quite used to her childish outburst and teasing, so he wouldn’t react to them anymore. But today it was different; he knew the way Abigail was acting wasn’t fake, like when she was trying to tease him. Knowing this made him feel upset, since he just couldn’t figure out what he did for her to get mad at him.

“Well, I said ‘Hi’ to you two days ago, when you returned from your mission. Oh, wait, you didn’t come here that day! No you forgot all about our secret base just because you were with some other girl.”

“Oh.” Tristan said, looking like a kid who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. After a few seconds he shook his head wildly regaining his composure. “Wait, what, did I miss something? Since when are we married? I’m pretty sure I would have realized, if I had married you!”

Abigail turned red. “Even, if I’m not your wife yet, I’m your best friend and of course I’ll get mad if you go out of your way and spend more time with some random girl you just know a bunch of weeks ago! Doesn’t your friendship we build over the past five years mean anything to you?”

**Sigh**

“It does, that’s why I’m here, I could have been hanging out with her right now, but I came here for you to say hi, are you happy now!”

“Really?” Abigail asked with a pouting face.

“Really, so now that we have made up, can you tell me what you’ve been working on, that caused you to ignore me?”

“Well, I’ve been working on the gauntlet.” Abigail answered, putting the most innocent smile as she could.

“Wait, don’t tell me you spent all your time, while I was gone with that useless gauntlet?” Tristan said while massaging his temples.

Tristan and Abigail had worked on and created many kinds of spells and artifacts during the past five years and in all this years they had never abandoned a project except for these gauntlets. It had been Tristan’s idea to created exploding knuckledusters but it just didn’t seem to work out how they had expected; since the impact of the explosion would hurt the user as much as it did hurt the target. Thus, Tristan had decided to drop this project and to concentrate on different type of magic.

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“Erm, also, yeah, you can say so.” The bashful Abigail answered.

*Sigh*

Tristan once continued massaging his temples as she took his seat. “For some reason I thought, you would have continued working on one of our other projects.”

“Well… They are boring after all! And it’s not like we’ll ever sell any of these things we work here anyways!”

“Still, we could use it on our own, making ourselves stronger.”

“Ok, ok, but actually I found a way to embed the barrier around the user without weakening the power of the explosion.”

“You did what?”

“You heard right, I just need you to put the theory into reality.” Abigail said, smiling brightly and gave Tristan a book full of her theories around the gauntlet. “You may want to read it when you have time, it’s still quite dangerous, but we still can do it… So how did the final days of your Trip go?”

Tristan put the book she had given him aside and put on a serious expression on his face. “Not good. We were confronted by a group of Seraphs and they turned out to be stronger than we expected them. Well, we were able to corner the first two we fought, but then the third one entered the battlefield and trust me don’t want to face someone like her.”

“But you still managed to get that girl here with you, so you won, right?”

“Not really, if it wasn’t for Schattenklinge, I would be dead by now. Her speed was out of this world; she was even faster than Laura at top speed.” – “And she didn’t do any unnecessary movement while fighting with the sword, I seldom meet someone with perfect fencing skills like her.” Shattenklinge butted into Tristan’s explanation.

“So you’re saying she was that strong in close quarters?”

“Not only close quarters.” Tristan answered with a sad voice. “She also used an area of effect spell that was strong enough to destroy my barrier.” Tristan added still looking all disappointed.

“Don’t worry partner, I will help you get better than that bird brain at fencing, and I will look up ways to have you match her speed.” Schattenklinge said with determination.

“Since when is Shatty so determined to teach you something?” Abigail asked towards Tristan with a teasing voice.

“During the fight with that girl he lost control and almost messed up.” Tristan answered with anxious voice.

Obscurati (22.12.9978 AS)

Laura and Dolores were sitting in the reception room of a big mansion. The maid had already brought them their drinks and they were now just expecting their host to arrive.

“I didn’t know they were so wealthy.” Laura said as she gazed at the furniture of the room in amazement.

“All their money doesn’t make up for their lack of influence; everybody just sees them as the puppets of the clan head. Everything they do to increase their influence and reputation just ends up strengthening the main clan.” Dolores explained with a bored expression.

The door suddenly opened and a man and a woman entered the room. The woman that didn’t look older than twenty-five looked strangely similar to Dolores, she was wearing her brown straight hair open, causing her thin face to look thinner than necessary.

The man was cleanly shaved and didn’t look much older than the woman, his expressions were much rougher, his most prominent expression being his cheek bones. The man took place in front of Laura, not paying any attention to Dolores and began speaking with a deep voice. “so this is my granddaughter?”

“Yes, that’ Laura” Dolores answered for Laura, who seemed speechless because of the strange atmosphere in the room.

“I didn’t ask you; didn’t you learn to only speak when you’re asked to?” The man replied with a sharp tone.

“I’m sorry; my parents weren’t even able to do that.” Dolores answered finally getting the woman to register her presence by sending her a deathly glare.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” The man replied with a cold voice.

“I just answered truthfully, now can you finally tell me why you asked us to join you here today?

“We Called our granddaughter here ask her if she wants to be the next head of the Verheerung family.” The woman answered for the man that had gone all quiet.

“I refuse.” Laura answered without even thinking about it.

“What?!” Dolores and the couple replied at her in disbelief.

“You heard me.” Laura answered to the confused adults. “You see I don’t care about being the leader of the puny Verheerung family, no, one day I’ll lead the Zerstörung Clan.” This caused the couple to look even more baffled than they already were, meanwhile Dolores couldn’t hold the tears of happiness in anymore.