"Welp it took walking a lot of blocks but we're finally here," Raye said happily. I don't understand how she can be so happy, my legs feel like they're going to melt. We walked across the entire town! I have to remember to work on my endurance.
"If you need a break, you can stay here for a minute," Herald said as it seemed like she was the first to notice me suffering. I try to get my breathing under control before answering.
"No, no I'm good. Besides this is the reason we came to Tantal in the first place. I can't stop now. Especially now I have two reasons to be here." T-elos glares at me and then looks away. Everyone seems to get the idea of what I'm talking about so I didn't have to explain it thankfully. "But first things first, we walk in there and talk to that librarian. We have to figure out where that gear belongs."
"You're right kid, we must stay on track," Cadman replies seemingly agreeing with my statement. We walk up the stairs and open the doors. This building was older than all of the other buildings around it just by looking at the architecture. However, when we walked in....oh boy the atmosphere was completely different. Everything was so technological. Holograms galore. Leftheria was a bit old-fashioned, so I was never used to seeing so much technology around me as there is in Tantal. Everyone was also surprised at what they were seeing. However, it wasn't all tech stuff, there were also plenty of areas with regular books, however, the sign next to them said soon to be digitized. I guess the librarian hasn't gotten around to them yet. Speaking of librarians..where are they?
"Ah, you must be the ones the princess told me about." A voice came from around the corner of one of the old bookcases that were scattered around with all the tech books and such. "Usually you're supposed to be quiet in the library, but today's a special occasion." The voice was that of a female. When she finally turned the corner, we all realized that she was a blade. Also, can I see through her? I decided not to say that out loud but it startled me.
"Ah, you must be Adenine right?" Cadman asked the Blade. She simply nodded and started to reply.
"Indeed I am, welcome to what I call, my space of expanding knowledge, but everybody else seems to call it a library. Now the princess mentioned you had something for me to look at!" Adenine seemed to say excitedly. Raye pulls the gear out of her pocket and hands it to Adenine. "Oh wow I have never seen one of these gears in person!" She then proceeded to dash down a lane of bookcases. It didn't take long before she disappeared from our eyesight.
"Do you think she went to go look for something?" I asked.
"Most likely, I've heard rumors that she generally gets like this when something intrigues her," Herald responded. "I guess we have no choice but to wait." Well while we're waiting I guess now would be a good time to Take T-elos to do the 'thing' we discussed earlier. T-elos looks at me and gets the same idea. I told the group that we were gonna walk around for a bit while we waited. I walked up to Raye and whispered in her ear what we were going to do and she nodded.
"Good luck with what you find out," She says to me as I nod and begin to walk in the opposite direction. T-elos followed behind me as we tried to navigate this large building. We soon find a directory map that says that Tantal's Blade History Vaults are on the top floor of the library, which sadly meant more walking. I look at the map and it says it has four floors, which means four flights of stairs to walk up.
"Four floors should be nothing for you," Huh? Is T-elos trying to encourage me?
"Heh easy for you to say, do Blades even get tired?"
"Of course, it's just that nothing is strong enough to tire me out," T-elos says confidently, almost arrogantly. Well, she's not completely wrong. All the fights we've been in have not been very taxing for her. Although me on the other hand... let's just say it would be convenient to have a water blade around sometimes. I was about to start walking when I saw something out of the corner of my eye.
"Thank Alrest, an elevator. Come on T-elos!" I say with a sigh of relief. We walked over and entered the elevator, which took us to the top floor in seconds. We get off and start to look around. We soon came across a giant bookcase filled with those tech books with different names on them. I look at the sign and it says:
"Blade and Driver must be present to access its history."
"Hmm, good thing we're both here then. I guess it's a security measure." I say aloud, mainly to myself. "Are you sure you want to do this T-elos, this is essentially our last chance to stop before looking."
"I'm sure. I want to know what I did in the past with previous drivers. I'm tired of hearing people refer to me as the 'Destruction Blade' and not know why. You can choose not to look if you want."
"You know I can't do that. We're a team now. We go through everything together from now on." All T-elos did was take a sigh of what seemed like a relief to me as we started to look for her book. "Let's see... Gorg, Finch, KOS-MOS...here." I picked up the book with T-elos's name on it. As soon as I did, a flash on the book's screen-like cover told me that both the driver and blade must touch the book at the same time to unlock it. We both do so and a hologram pops up with what seems like a table of contents.
Info
Past Drivers
Historical events
The info section consisted of general info about T-elos, such as her element and weapon. Essentially stuff we already knew. However, it also had that classification system that Tantal uses to categorize the strength of blades, with T-elos being Aegis-level. How does Tantal even know what compares to an Aegis? Maybe I'm just overthinking things at this point. I swipe to the next section, which contains T-elos's past drivers, well those that are recorded anyway.
"Let's see...Woah...." A lot of T-elos's past drivers were people who would be considered dangerous. Some were just petty criminals and others were mercenaries. I recognize some of their names from stories of the mercenaries told me when I was younger, but one stood out. One person, who was her driver a few centuries ago. He looked mean and devoid of life. I looked at T-elos and noticed that she had a serious look on her face. A face I only see when she's annoyed.
"Keep going." She said to me, I kept scrolling until I hit historical events. This seems to be the place where any events related to a certain blade will appear. It wasn't filled with much stuff, mostly minimal stuff that just happened to be recorded. She and KOS-MOS fought a few times in the past. That probably explains why T-elos finds her so annoying. I keep scrolling and....oh....oh no.
"Blade and driver involved in an explosion that destroyed a fourth of the city of Tantal"
Huh? A fourth of the city? Compared to the size of Tantal now...that spans a whole chunk of what would be Tantal's titan before Elysium was formed! Not to mention the number of casualties.... T-elos.... I have to make sure T-elos is alright-. I turned to my side and she was there staring directly at the news headline. Her lips were slightly parted as if she was left speechless. I decide to continue reading the article. It says here that the driver in question was known to be unhinged...they seem to have a picture...here. It's the picture of the driver that stood out to me earlier. Except here he's smiling as if he enjoyed what he did. It says here that he was soon executed for the crime of leaving the core crystal in the hands of the royal guard. Turns out the only reason she was allowed to resonate with someone else was that the king at the time had a sense that she would do better. However, every driver that came afterward was just the same violent or crappy person.
"Until you resonated with me," I said to myself. I close the book and put it back on the shelf. I then walked to the nearest chair and sat down. I honestly needed a minute to take in what I just read. T-elos's life just seemed horrible. It's no wonder why they dubbed her the Destruction Blade. T-elos walks over to me and sits next to me.
"I understand if you don't want to be around me anymore. After learning about my past, I now see why I've been given this name. It's not like I care, however, that I in the past is not me now." She's right. That was her in a different time, with a different driver. I'm not going to let this bring me down or think any different of T-elos.
"No way, I'm your driver. I'm not going to abandon you. I made a promise that I'll always be by your side and I intend to keep it. This is just something we have to learn from so it doesn't happen again. I won't let it happen again." I noticed that I started rambling about how we were a team. I stop myself so I can breathe. I don't think I ever spoke that passionately in forever.
"You are something else, Nick." For the first time since we resonated, I saw something I thought I would never see. A smile from T-elos.
'Are you smiling?" I said in a teasing tone. Although I probably shouldn't have said anything, because as soon as I did, she went right back to her regular self with her usual facial expression.
"No...and don't tell anyone else," T-elos replied. I could feel a warm emotion coming from her, although I can't tell what exactly it was. Well, it didn't matter at that point. I'm just happy we got to share this moment to strengthen our bond.
"Don't worry I won't. Now come on, let's go back to the others. Adenine might have found what we were looking for at this point." We take the elevator back down to the bottom floor to meet back up with the group. "I want to talk to Amara and the King after all this is that okay?"
"Yes, that's fine. I have an inkling of what you want to talk to them about."
"Thank you T-elos," I said with a smile on my face that I didn't notice it was there at first. We got out of the elevator and met back with the group who was already with Adenine.
"Oh great, perfect timing. Adenine just came back with a large book!" Raye and Zenobia somehow exclaim at the same time. They never fail to surprise me. We walked over Just as Adenine was going to begin explaining. She opened a book that was about the history of technology in Alrest. It looked more like a textbook than anything.
"Ok, this gear is from about 500 years ago and was mainly used in old technology such as the first few artificial Blades ever created. However looking at this particular gear, I would say that this one kind of works like a key in a normal machine. You insert it into a machine and start it up."
"Ok, so where would we go to find old stuff?" Raye asked.
"Gormott is a place known for its antique economy. It's a place where many people who are financially lucky live. Your best place to look is there, but there's no guarantee."
"Well we don't have any other option, whos knows what Kai and his group are up to right now, we have to find Mythra quickly. Although that probably won't solve our problem at the root. It will buy us time." Cadman said out loud. "Thank you Adenine. Your information has been extremely helpful."
"Don't worry about it, if you find any neat antiques while you're there, you know where to find me!" Adenine replies. We all say goodbye and walk out of the library and prepare to walk halfway across the city again.
*Timeskip brought by Herald and Zenobia arm-wrestling*
"Well we're finally back, so what do we do now," Raye exclaims.
"Well according to the train schedule..." Cadman pulls out a piece of paper that Adenine gave him. "The next train leaves in two days."
"That's two days of training!" Zenobia exclaims. Although in my experience, when Zenobia means training, she mostly means fighting the strongest opponent she can find. I guess in this case, that would be KOS-MOS. Oh, wait I should probably tell them about what we discovered today.
"Hey guys so T-elos and I went to Tora Industries and we discovered something with KOS-MOS." I take the time to explain our situation to the group. After explaining they all took a minute to think about it.
"Well, that does sound like probable cause to investigate. We can help since we have a couple of days until we leave." Herald commented.
"Indeed. We will meet with Amara tomorrow and discuss a plan." Cadman says while we walk towards the inn to rest for the night. We enter and essentially ate dinner and went to sleep.
***
After getting up and getting ready, we finally start making our way to the royal palace to talk to the King and Amara. Thankfully, there were other people around me because I was still somewhat sore from walking all around the place yesterday, so I wasn't entirely sure if my legs would give out. The guards let us in, so I took that as they were already expecting us. Praxis and Theory were already waiting for us at the Palace doorway.
"Welcome again, The king would like to have a word with Nick and T-elos."Theory exclaimed. The others will meet with Amara to talk about a different situation. Praxis took the others to a different room while Theory led us to the throne room. She opened the door. However, he wasn't sitting on his throne this time. He was standing and reading a book. "They're here, your majesty."
"Thank you Theory. I'm glad to see you both again. Although you might not know why you are here." He was right. I don't know why the King wanted to see us. We were mainly here to talk to Amara, but I suppose the King would know of our plans as well. "When an Aegis-level blade accesses its history, the royal palace gets a sort of notification. It's a sort of safety measure in the case said blade is known to be dangerous."
"Oh yea, we decided to go to the library yesterday and learn about why T-elos was called the Destruction Blade."
"And did you learn why?" I answer that we did and it was heavy. His tone immediately shifted from lighthearted to serious almost instantly. "Then I must ask you, can I trust you to keep her under control?" Control... I don't want to control anyone. Control means taking away one's free will in my opinion.
"I won't control her, but I trust her with my entire life. I know that she is a good person." The king then walked up to me. I never realized how big he was before since he was always sitting on his throne. He then proceeded to put his hand on my shoulder.
"Good, that was the right answer." Wait..what? "I wanted to give you one final test before letting you keep her as a Blade. After so many bad people being her driver, I needed to know I was making the right choice letting her roam around Alrest."
"So what would have happened if I answered incorrectly?" I asked nervously since I was still kind of scared of the situation I was currently in.
"Let's just say you would have walked out of here without a Blade." I turned around and noticed that Theory was still in the room, not to mention Perun being right next to the throne.
"Well, luckily it didn't come to that," I said trying to hide the fact that I was afraid out of my mind.
"Indeed, you will be a great driver Nick. My father believes in giving people another chance. I do as well so don't let me down."
"You can count on me, your majesty."
"Wonderful! Now let's go join my daughter and the others, I hear that we plan on spying on a researcher at Tora Industries." Ok, so he already knows. We all walk out of the throne room and into a hallway.
"Good Job Nick." Theory says from behind me. "Last time he had to do that, it didn't end very well. That's how T-elos' core crystal ended up in Mor Ardain after he moved it there."
"Oh well, thanks Theory, what do you think about all of this?" I respond. Although I can't see her expression, I could get a feeling of what she was about to say.
"When you first came here, I had to constantly be on my guard and be ready to kill you she went berserk." Oh well glad to know I was possibly on the chopping block. "But I'm glad it didn't come to that. You have the potential to be a great driver, not only in general but to her as well. At one point I had to kill my driver to protect someone. Although I don't remember it, I'm glad that I dared to do something like that if it meant being good. That person wasn't a good driver to me, but the King is an excellent driver. You will be too."
"Thanks, Theory, that put me in a good mood."
"Because you were scared before. I could feel it." T-elos interjected.
"You don't have to tell them that!" Honestly, everyone loves to embarrass me. Theory had a chuckle as we finally entered what looked like a study. Everyone else was already in there discussing different things. They seemed to be already talking about the plan.
"Hey, Nick! Now that everyone's here, we can catch you guys up on the plan we have." Raye says as we walk into the doorway. Amara then took a minute to collect her thoughts and began to speak.
"Ok so me, KOS-MOS, T-elos, and Nick will go meet with a friend we met on the inside of Tora Industries. Cadman and Herald will hang around outside with Raye and Zenobia since they can't easily sneak around with their blades as I and Nick can. They will act as a backup if things go awry. Praxis and Theory will stay outside and act as crowd control/evacuation if things get hairy." I'm gonna be honest, that's a well-thought-out plan. I was expecting the king to lay out the plan, but I guess he does have other royal duties to attend to.
"As expected of my daughter, she can be a strategist when she wants to be." The king replies.
"Thanks, Dad, now let's get this plan underway. Nick, T-elos you know what to do."
"Hmph, just don't get in my way." T-elos replies.
"Yep, you can count on us," I said immediately after just to quickly change the mood. T-elos sure isn't making this easy, but that isn't a bad thing. Our group decides to leave the palace first so we don't appear to be in a large group. The other group said they'd give us about five minutes to walk ahead before they go and take their positions. When we finally made it to Tora Industries, we walked inside and met with a lady at the front desk. "Hello, we came here to see Riku, he should be expecting us today for some testing?"
"Ok please give me a minute." The lady then pulled out a book that seemed like an appointment book. Although it didn't seem like it was necessary since I could see Riku out the corner of my eye walking through a sliding door. "Oh Riku, these people say they are here to see you for testing, is this true?"
"Oh yes these are friends Riku asked to test new inventions! I'll take them to my workshop!" Riku replied. We got lucky since I kind of said that lie off the top of my head.
"Ok well, you four can follow Riku inside then." We said thank you and followed Riku to his workshop. Once we got there, we made sure nobody was around before we start talking. It's time to find out what is really going on at this facility.