He remained motionless, but he blinked thrice in a row. 

“Three blinks?” asked Zelsys.

“That means yes. Two mean no.”

A loud rumble echoed from Zelsys’ stomach, and she instinctively looked around for her unfinished mess tin of soup. “Still warm. Good enough,” she said, scooping up a spoonful. 

While she ate, Spliteye left the firepit and disappeared into the transport. The screaming of rusty hinges echoed through the night for a good couple minutes, undercut by the distant sound of the blonde rummaging around inside their living space. A couple times, Zelsys even caught remarks along the lines of “So that’s where that was.” and “I knew we still had one of those somewhere.”

A few minutes and another helping of soup later, Sigmund had begun to move rather cautiously and Spliteye finally came out of the transport bearing a large, reinforced sheet of leather with a number of straps and buckles attached. Before Zelsys could question its design, her raised eyebrow was answered with “I know how it looks, it’ll wrap around the cleaver and loosen when you want to use it. We just have to get it on you first.”

The holster had to be attached to an extra belt that went across her chest as well as the belt loops of her trousers, but when it was finally time to test it, the holster worked flawlessly. With nary a single visible strand of Fog, the hardened leather wrapped itself around the cleaver and then loosened itself just enough when Zelsys pulled on the handle with the intent to unsheath the weapon.

“You think he’ll notice it when he wakes up?”

“He’ll notice the cleaver missing for sure.”

“Let’s hope he doesn’t get too torn up about it.”

“Say, what’s up with that gun on your arm?”

“Oh, this? I don’t know myself. Found it in the Exclusion Zone.”

“Figures. Most explorers come here looking for tech from the War of Fog. While he’s still out, I think there was a way to officially transfer ownership of something within a squad as per the operational guidelines…”

Two words flashed in his mind’s eye, dredging him up from the void of unconsciousness.

DELETION SUCCESSFUL

He awoke to the after-echoes of a familiar, buzzing pain shooting up his right arm, punctuated by the sting of a cracked fingernail. For a brief moment, he thought he was back in the barracks, before he got his bearings. The moment he realized where he was, he immediately looked to the Tablet, and there it was - the very projection he had hoped to see. 

RECORD OVERWRITE

PLEASE ENTER NAME

The consideration of using his legal name was brief, and quickly swatted away by a name he felt far greater connection to. The name of a man he had looked up to in his youth, and also one of the more common names out there.

“Makhus.”

NAME - MAKHUS

SEX - MALE

 SPECIES - HUMAN (IKESIAN)

FORCE - D+

PRECISION - C-

HARDNESS - C-

AETHER - C

TRAITS>

<STORAGE

Makhus was pleasantly surprised by his Aether; he had expected a D+ or perhaps a C-, but not a full C - anything above or below D was considered beyond the usual deviations from human baseline. A full C would’ve been good enough to qualify for further specialist training back during the war. “Were I more talented, I would’ve been there when they stormed central command,” he thought, justifying his low military position as the reason for his survival of the war. He wasn’t lying to himself, even though he was using the truth to justify his own lack of ambition.

“She’ll probably end me if I go rootin’ around in her stuff, but she won’t mind if I check my traits, will she?” he thought, sluggishly swiping through the projection. It flickered and changed to a projection with the title he had expected, though it contained unexpected information

TRAITS

Swordsmanship

Lesser Gunmanship

Lesser Aethermancy

Fog Tolerance

Greater Rubedo Tolerance

Type-2-X Essentia Storage Glyph (Unique)

Greater Purgation Arts (Anti-Rubedo Spec. - Unique)

S.S.S.S. Arts (Unique)

The corners of his mouth and his eyebrows rose in unison. “Greater tolerance?” he mentally questioned, fully aware of the effects Rubedo had on him, lazily swiping the projection again to get back to the main attribute readout. “Eh, guess it’s right. Gettin’ horny sure is less debilitatin’ than sudden-onset shellshock paralysis.”

His train of thought was smashed clean off its rails by the sound of Spliteye’s voice from outside, ringing out clear as a bell, devoid of the hushed tone she had adopted after their first encounter with one of the Exclusion Zone’s beasts. “We should probably go check on him,” she said. “The overwrite should be done soon.”

There was no verbal response, only the sound of a mess tin being placed on the ground followed by footsteps - ones all too heavy and energetic to be Spliteye. And indeed, it wasn’t - it was the tan amazon that called herself Zelsys, though he doubted the veracity of that name. Then again, he was doing the exact same thing he suspected her of doing. 

She poked her head into the doorway, her eyes briefly resting on the Tablet before jumping to his face as a smug smirk formed on her face. “Had a nice nap?” she mocked, not even waiting for him to give a proper response before she added “You sleep like a dead bear. Get up, soup’s getting cold and a certain cyclops wants to overwrite her record next.”

“Y’looked at my-”

“Don’t worry, it didn’t show anything while it was doing its work. Now get up.”

She could see his face flushing - ever so briefly - at the implication of such a benign invasion of privacy as looking at someone’s attributes. Perhaps it was her own lack of social awareness, but something like that came across as no more sensitive than asking someone how much they could lift. The redness came as quickly as it went, and he was none the wiser it had even happened, slowly rising from the bunk. He was visibly doing all he could to ignore the pain that the Tablet had caused. Zelsys made sure to take note of the name that the Tablet showed just before its projection flickered and faded out.