28 The Absurd Military Hardware

Naomi covered her mouth with both of her hands. She whispered back to the two serious-looking people in front of her. Sister Lena being a witch should be a horrible thing, but she didn't know why her voice sounded so excited.

"Really?"

"Who doesn't get unnerved when witnesses the overwhelming strength that comes out of your tiny figure? I mean, even I did, and I live in a place where people can do that all the time." Emma explained. "Don't forget this is a medieval world with a trend of burning people with strange power."

"I'm sorry to bring this up, but back in the Milky Way, who were the ones that treated you fairly and did not discriminate against you?" Jack asked with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

"Um, the augmented community and people from the aug sympathizer groups." Naomi replied, her gaze fixed on the wooden floor. "Some of them contacted me and talked to me on the neural net."

"They helped me to overcome that difficult time of my life, I'm forever indebted to them."

"Yeah, the downside of that was you hardly ever did anything else, and your mom told me you were sitting with the neural net VR headset on like 100 hours a week." Emma grinned. "I asked her to send me a few photos of you back in the days, and man, were you unrecognizable." She laughed with a hand on her tummy.

Naomi's face instantly became as red as a tomato. The girl mentioned lunged toward Emma, took her by the shoulders and shook the engineer until she nearly got a concussion.

"Naomi… stop… stop…"

"My mom talked to you? Why haven't you said anything?!"

It took a while for Emma's brain to stop rattling in her skull, still, her wide grin was still present during the dizziness. Jack got curious.

"What did she look like back on Earth?"

Naomi hurriedly silenced Emma with her hand and stammered in panic. "I… I was a bit chubby, that's all!"

Jack raised an eyebrow. Emma spoke with difficulty through the gap between Naomi's fingers. "Chubby? You looked like a hamster, wearing the headset with your cheeks bulging with snacks! Ha-ha."

The ex-captain amusedly imagined the scene with a hand on his chin, Emma giggled and the flustered Naomi with steaming head in the middle, waved her arms about. The atmosphere, for a moment, became light-hearted as the people involved seemingly forgot they had been thrown into a hostile world with most of their companions dead, despite the talk about the old life.

Had they come to terms with the peril they were in and left everything behind?

Or did they just bury the sorrows deep inside the back of their memories, pushed desperation down below the surface in their attempt to soldier on the hopeless mission?

Naomi was even more surprising. She used to be a very emotional girl. She did not cry as much as Emma, but she got upset over the tiniest things. What happened to her?

Jack admired the two people in front of him, as they jested and jokingly punched at each other.

The photo of the crews was placed in his breast pocket. He should have burned it, for it brought him nothing but tears every night.

He was the captain. This situation happened because of him. Because he got greedy and succumbed to his materialistic desire, he put everyone that trusted him in danger. Resigning as the captain did not rid him of the responsibilities of one.

There was also another woman. Her race did not have genders, but she identified as a female. A certain sarcastic psychologist doctor that Jack regularly had drinks with and loved talking to.

One would think that psychologists and sarcasm didn't go together, and one would be wrong. Jack thought that her brash, clever comments were incredibly relaxing, much more so than the slow, soft voice of conventional psychology doctors that Jack found sleep-inducing.

Emily's wealth of experience and stories to tell was amazing. She had lived for over a hundred Galactic years, after all. Jack couldn't believe an ex-bounty hunter could become a psychology doctor. The multiverse was full of crazy events.

He wondered if she had a peaceful rest. But it was not the time for them to do so.

"Hey," Jack shook his head and raised his voice, "let me continue."

The two women stopped their playful fighting and concentrated.

"Discounting the augmented community, the aug sympathizers are mostly relatives or close friends with augmented people."

He looked at Naomi. "Therefore, we think that Anver has a close relationship with an abnormal person like you, Naomi. People don't fear what they understand or what they think they understand."

"And considering the circumstance surrounding the team, it's safe to assume that Lena is… different."

Naomi kept her head down in silence. She felt the eyes of concerns on her, and a soft touch ruffled through her purple hair.

"Don't worry about Lena, we will protect her." Emma's reassuring words were heard, and she felt her mind easing.

***

The morning after, Naomi woke up long after the last rooster in town had crowed.

[Oh no, I'm late. Why did I stay up to watch sister Emma work last night?] Naomi punched herself in the head. With her left arm, of course. This was something she had painfully learned by experience after many black-outs.

Captain Jack had already left. Sister Emma was lying next to her, snoring exhaustedly.

The object at the corner of the room, on top of a bunch of rifles, caught her eyes instantly.

Naomi activated the shock-absorbent modules on her legs, carefully stepped over Emma and jumped down the bed. The modules worked perfectly, reducing the noise caused to near zero decibels.

Naomi picked up the sword. A few lettered were etched on its scabbard. "To N.W", it read. A leather sling was attached to it. She smiled and grabbed the handle.

The handle was so well ergonomically shaped that it fitted every inch of her hand. Naomi could almost feel the carbon-fibre handle of the dark energy manipulator from this wooden handle wrapped by many layers of cloth. It was very comfortable.

The handguard was minimal. It only extruded a little over the handle of the sword, and had no carving. Naomi did not see any sign of connection between the handguard and the blade. It seemed like the sword was cut out from a single piece of metal.

"Sheeeng…"

The blade slid out and laid before Naomi. She gasped.

The blade was black. In fact, the entire sword was black.

If a military knife had sex with a historical katana, the result would be this beautiful baby. The blade was as thick as a thumb, curved slightly toward the end. There was even an outward-convexing line of extra reinforcing material running next to the spine of the blade.

The edge was serrated from 1/4 the blade to the half-trapezoid tip, and only slopped to one side. It looked like someone merged the blade of an industrial paper cutter and a saw together. The threatening jagged edge pointed toward the hilt, ready to shred any creature it touched to pieces of bloody meat.

Naomi didn't know whether to laugh or to cry about Emma's absolute functional designing sense, and her katana's modern appearance.

[You went overboard, sister Emma! How would this absurd military hardware fit in the medieval setting?] Naomi moved her lips to refute without making a sound.

Naomi swung the katana in the air. Despite the unusual thickness and weight, the sword had great balance. After having played with her new toy a few times, she sheathed the sword in satisfaction.

[Oh?]

Naomi noticed the powerful magnetic force that guided the blade into the scabbard. She didn't even have to look to put the sword in. The blade would automatically fly into its safe spot, if its tip was near the opening of the scabbard.

It was planet-core magnets, the effect was too powerful for rare earth magnets to achieve. Naomi wondered where Emma had gotten the impossible material. She looked around and found something on the table.

"My mobile phone!"

Naomi cried, immediately covered her mouth after the fact. Luckily, Emma only moaned a bit and turned on the bed.

Naomi read the note below the phone that had been broken apart. [Sorry, Naomi, it was a necessary sacrifice *laughing-with-tears emoji* The phone was useless, so I took its battery to make your katana. Hehe.]

[But you can carry the sword on your back now! Wouldn't that be cool? Please don't hate me.]

Naomi signed. How could she ever hate sister Emma? It indeed seemed like a suitable price to pay for her auto-sheathing sword. She could not use the phone to contact anyone in this place anyway.

She found two more notes next to the note written by Emma. One had two sentences written in English by Captain Jack, the other one was written in an incomprehensible, but Latin-character language.

[Give the note to your leader Anver. It would explain to him about your new sword training.]

Naomi jolted. [I forgot I was late! When do you learn, Naomi? When do you ever learn?!]

She hastily put the sword on her back and bolted out of the room, still took care to close the inn door gently.