We should have all been dead, we should have been destroyed by the explosion, or at least crushed from the shrapnel that would have destroyed the truck, but that's where luck comes into play. The shooter was obviously expecting us to not have done much with this truck, but he was wrong, one of the many things we had done was reinforce the walls to stop most explosions from damaging the vehicle, which it did. The second thing the shooter hadn't expected was that we had a surface to air missile able to be fired, which had locked onto where the grenade had come from, and was being fired back at it with a few simple commands by Katana. The truck would need to be demolished, there was no use selling it, as it would cost more to sell it than it would to scrap it, but before then, we would take it to our new home, which wasn't too bad, judging by what this truck had just put up with to protect us.
We entered the city, heading straight for the address, which was on a backstreet, so it was harder to find than a house on the main street. After about half an hour of wrong turns, we eventually turned down a leafy avenue and saw our new home at the crest of the hill, which looked similar to the Acropolis in Athens. The mansion was a sight to behold, three stories high, with large windows with Venetian blinds of amazing quality, the garden was of such beautiful quality that the onlooker would see two birch trees encircled by a spiraling bed of white and grey flowers. I was the first out, and I had the keys, which I had pick pocketed from Voulge at our break, all our animals came out with me, apart from Sling's frogs, who stayed with her. Adrianus landed on my shoulder and sat there, perfectly balanced, as I raced up the short stairway to the front door. I unlocked it and went inside, and was amazed by what I saw.
I was standing in an entrance hall, with a massive chandelier hanging down from above. There were two spiral staircases, which led up into the second and third floors. In the room sat a lively looking plant, and five doors leading off into different places. I ran up the stairs and found myself the nicest bedroom I had ever been in. The west wall was mostly taken up by window, which let in so much light. There was a king sized bed, with a lovely and large study desk, a nice cupboard, and a bookshelf even larger than my old one. To the side there was also an ensuite, with silver-metallic tiles, with crimson intrusions through it, with this coincidence, I was set on staying in this room. While Adrianus made up the fort of keeping this room, I ran downstairs, where people were still gawping at the lovely interior of the entrance hall.
I grabbed my luggage and utensils out of the back of the truck, and, as I was the last person to do so, Loch pulled out with the truck, saying he was off to get five new cars, which I was looking forward to seeing. I carried my stuff inside and up the stairs, and laid out my stuff in my room, which Adrianus had done a good job of guarding, falling asleep while doing it was an added bonus.
I went back out and climbed to the final level, where I was greeted by an spectacular appearance. There was a training gym, similar to what we had dug in our old place only about 10 times larger and much more grand, there was enough room in here for everyone to train at the same time and never run into each other, which is a pretty impressive stunt to be able to pull off. I sat down in an area that wasn't reserved, and reserved it for myself, before setting up targets and a rack designed to hold knives, however I kept a lot of my knives on my own person, and that was when I noticed the forge.
Why I hadn't seen it before confused me, but when I entered the enclosed room with a retractable roof, I knew what I had to do. Grabbing a sheet of metal, I started mapping out how my knives were going to look. My only problem with C.L.O.U.D.'s knives was their weighting, which I was going to fix with my own design of knives. I started hammering as soon as I finished the planning and had finished my first knife within 30 minutes, which had been a big drain on my body, but I now had a knife that looked so beautiful and worked so well that nothing would be able to stop me if I had numerous blades like this. So I set about doing more.
It must have been around 10pm when Rapier came in and told me to stop for the night, which had been perfect timing as I had just finished my eighth blade, which I promise myself I would get more of tomorrow, but for now, I was content to let Rapier lead me down stairs into the dining hall, which was impressive in itself, with a lovely mirror at one end and a giant set of glass doors at the other end. I sat down and ate the most beautiful meal I have ever tasted, before he could leave, Rapier was hounded by questions about the dish, which he had made. The taste was so nice that when I crashed for the night, my head full of ideas, sleep came faster because of the beautiful food that had my stomach full of food.
I worried about what we were going to find in that case, but I was happy letting it go for now, at least until morning came around and everyone else could share the same thought with me.
I was woken up the next morning by the clanging of metal coming from the forge, which wasn't too bad, as I realized I was going to go train this morning, but it was still annoying not to be able to wake up on my own. I went and took a nice warm shower, something that I hadn't had for a while. I got dressed into my usual summer apparel, shorts, flat-soled shoes, a t-shirt and a thin wind cheater, all of which were serving a double purpose, as it helped hide my knives. Once I was changed, I walked up the stairs and found Glaive behind the glass door of the forge, working tirelessly on his weapons, which I guessed he was making more of them like me.
Glaive, Sling and myself were unlucky to a point. We all had throwing weapons, which were commonly hard to get back, even though I always aim to get all of them, as I am an OCD and can't survive without feeling guilty about losing one of my knives. I leant on the door and opened it, which squeaked really loudly when I pushed it open, making Glaive look up from where he was working, and then went back to work, where he had been making more of his weapons, making him seem like he was a weapons expert, which he obviously wasn't from how messed up his metal work looked. I pushed in and started to help him, as I had spent months perfecting the art of metalworking. Glaive seemed grateful of this action and promised to help me with my work, which I thought was kind but waved off, as I worked I made conversation with Glaive, trying to distract Glaive from the task at hand, so that I was able to do all the work, as, while I hate to admit it, Glaive was slowing me down, denting the metal in the wrong way, and making the metal grow cold, meaning that the time needed for the making of the weapons almost tripled.
"Why do you think the previous owner had a forge in the roof?" I wasn't sure why it was truly, and it was a pretty decent question. "I honestly have no idea what it is, do you have any idea what they were doing with it?"
"I heard from Rapier that the guy wasted his life away by making antique style weapons, using conventional ways and making weapons out of the metal that he bought for huge expenses from the local metal factories," Glaive was obviously slowing down on the amount of work he was doing, which gave me the opportunity to take full control of the job, which went a lot faster without Glaive's input, no offence to him, but he really needed lessons on metalcraft before he attempted such a feat as a glaive.
Once we had completed his, I turned my attention to my knives, which I wanted to make 30 of, so as to be able to fully leave C.L.O.U.D. and everything about them behind. Of course that was impossible, my life had been ruined by their input into it, they had hunted me, shot at me, fired missiles at me, not to mention the folder with something dangerous and powerful which had something to do with us inside. I turned my attention away from the worry of what we were going to find in that accursed folder, and instead turned on my work, which at the moment resembled nothing more than a pile of metal, which I then crafted into a knife, fixing a red gemstone into each of the hilts, to balance the sword, each of which I hand cut to make designs, each carved into the shape of a J, which would be a reminder of the name I left away behind at the last home we were staying, for I loved Jacob, and it felt like I lost a brother when I was forced to go back to my name of Knife.
Rapier came in, only to find me in a reckless mess, clutching a red diamond in the shape of a J, When I noticed him, I stood up quickly and brushed away the tears and standing up straight, which made me almost a head above him. He looked at me empathetically, but I shot him a look, saying silently 'I don't need pity, so don't talk about this again' which he seemed to understand and closed his mouth before teeth were removed by my fist. I walked past him, saying thanks for understanding and heading downstairs, leaving 20 more knives that needed to be made.
Over breakfast everyone was saying that we should all get tattoos, before going shopping. They all asked me if I wanted to go with them, and while I thought it would be good to get a tattoo on my arm, I hated shopping, so I told them that I needed to finish off my knives, which was true, and that I wanted to complete my assignments from our old school, which was a lie, both because I didn't want to do any homework, and that I had completed the homework the day we had been given it, but they weren't to know that. I just needed time to my own, without people prying into what I was doing and why I was doing it, which was just annoying and I didn't understand why people did it, maybe I was upset, but that didn't mean I needed any help, and if anyone thought otherwise, they were lying to themselves and me.
They all joked that I didn't need to spend my entire time inside that gruby forge, well, everyone except for Rapier, bless his soul, which he explained to me that there was scientific proof that it weighed approximately 13 grams, who argued with the others that I could do what I wanted, which got him a mouthful from Voulge, who thought he was being mean to me, but when I finally joined the argument and backed up Rapier, everyone shut up and cleared the table, I dried the dishes and then we headed off to the tattoo parlour, which was only down the road.