Chapter 7: A warning and a lesson

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Several hours later, in the docks, Hearless is deep in the ship, inspecting the bulkheads for water tightness and running her hand on the rubber seal of the door, feeling no irregularities in the seal. She shoved it shut and turned the wheel, feeling it engage. "That feels about right." She turned the wheel back and pulled hard on the door, swinging it open, to see Laffey with a spotlight. "I wonder why she's down here?", Laffey started to flick the light's shudder open and shut in a pattern that clicked in Hearless's mind. "Oh, morse code, let's see, v e s t a l w a n t y o u o u t, Vestal wants me out?" She gives Laffey a small hand gesture, and she starts to walk off, and hearless was following close behind.

After a few minutes, they exited the depths of the ship, walked back onto the concrete of the dry dock, and walked up to Vestal with the red-haired individual talking to her again. "I never got her name," was her hearless thought as she stood nearby. Suddenly, the dock shuddered, and the ship started to glow blue at the welds, breaking into millions of cubes, flying by her, and vanishing into the red-haired girl. "I guess that answers it; she's San Diego." She pulls her list from her side bag, "another one of my kids." She looks up to see San Diego doing a little happy dance and thanking Vestal before walking off. "She seems pleasant." She closed her notepad, setting it back in her side bag. As she turned, she saw a large carrier sail slowly towards the dock flood gates that were open, filling the bay.

Hearless watches the water rush in millions of gallons coming in to fill the space below when it fills the doors open and the ship slowly enters the dock with the doors shutting behind the carrier, and the pumps are felt through the concrete kicking on pumping the dry dock empty of water. The ramps were lowered and work began.

Hearless walked up to the deck to see it in shambles; impact craters of bombs litter the deck; bullet holes pepper it; and black soot covered the superstructure, which was in bad condition; the glass was broken, and parts of it were missing entirely.

"Damn, the hell happened?" She was shaking her head, grabbing a hammer, and pulling up damaged sections of the flight deck. The deck had holes that exposed the metal underneath or punched through and opened up to the hangers below the deck. She felt a tap on the shoulder, causing her to stop and look behind herself. She saw a vestal and another woman, this one with white hair and violet eyes. On her head, she had a white captain's hat perched on top of a sleeveless button-up shirt with a captain's coat resting around the crook of her arm.

Vestal started to talk while signing, "enterprise this is hearless, hearless this is enterprise", Hearless stood there for a moment before sticking a hand out to shake, which enterprise ignored as she turned to vestal facing her back to hearless as she talked, "that was rude" enterprise stopped talking to vestal and turned back to hearless with an eyebrow raised, this time talking to Vestal facing her this time, letting her lip read, "well if shes going to be doing repair work and other dutys she should get a pair of those matnince shoes we have for this kinda work", Vestal raised an eyebrow at this and spoke, "we got rid of those when the government pulled all the human's from here as we were deemed self-sufficient in repairs", "could she make her own?" Enterprise inquired, "Perhaps I don't have the time to help; maybe she can work it out on her own, but you know how I feel about humans handling wisdom cubes", Vestal seemed a bit annoyed "Wasn't there some protective gear you kept in case the government sent someone here?", Enterprise asked, causing Vestal to stop in shock. "You listen to my idle small talk?", Enterprise nods. "Gives me something to do other than look out at the sea." Vestal seemed to take this into consideration before nodding. "Well, that's true; I'll give her a small corse on handling them, then let her build the shoes." Enterprise gives a nod to Vestal and walks to Hearless. "Welcome to the base; I heard you did some good work; as long as you keep it up, we'll have no issues." Hearless stared blankly at Enterprise, then signed to Vestal, "What's a whisdom cube?"

Vestal just smiles at this, "in due time", Hearless nods at this and looks at Enterprise blankly again, unsure what to do. She decides to grab her hammer and return back to the flight deck, hammering down some new teak into the deck.

A few hours pass, and Vestal pulls her off the job and walks to a small forge area, and starts to explain what it's for: "Now this is the forge; we use it for a few things, but today we are only grabbing these", She grabs the thick set of gloves and tells her, "I trust you more than the government officials that they send over, so I believe this should be enough for you when handling a cube", Hearingless calmly watches Vestal and signs when she stops moving, "What's so unsafe about these cubes?", Vestal paused to think and started to explain, "A cube holds a lot of power when in contact with something; it tries to push the energy out. Ship girls can handle them with their bare hands because we ourselves are containing a cube, but humans, on the other hand, don't. When your bare flesh makes contact, it will burn it away. Once it heals, it leaves a mark unique to wisdom cubes". She pulls an image out for the hearingless to see. It was a symbol not unlike the ones she saw in her magic book, but it seemed older and foreign.

Hearless looks at Vestal, and she starts to talk again, "I know it looks like your magic symbols, but when we showed these to the Sakren ships when they were here, none of them recognized them.

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