Thirty-Two

They spent an hour or so chatting in idleness. The noise of the outside world blended away and Rose soon came to see that what the girl enjoyed watching on the floating screen, the television, was simply a tournament of martial arts.

A man threw a punch and the other dodged before retaliating with a kick to his abdomen. He shook, and a straight jab to his head brought him crashing down.

"If he can't get up, that's a KO."

Yet, before they could even blink, the screen switched to the image of a motor.

"Ugh, advertisements—" Elsa mumbled, falling back into the chair in exasperation.

Rose smiled slightly at her side, not quite getting the enthusiasm of the sport, nor the advertisement itself. Curiosity, though, brought her to a question.

"Do you know Martial Arts?"

"Huh?" The girl raised her head and shook it.

"Only a bit; my forte is knocking the lights out of someone with my fists, aka, boxing."

Rose had no idea what boxing was.

When the time struck 5 pm, they both found themselves in the yard of the house. There were scraps of metal, heaps of them across the small section of the yard, and there was a blanket of brown that covered something else. There was a crude fence of wood that boxed everything in, and, there was a shack to either side of them, and to their front, not touching in the least, but quite close. The whole area seemed very tight, and quiet, much more quiet than an hour earlier. She did not hear the sound of pulses and assumed that the so-called territorial war had either ended or, more likely, reached a stagnant state.

"I'll get to work." Elsa sat down on the dirt, in front of the mecha Rose had once seen only through her Pad.

The thing looked fully humanoid now. It was still a mismatch of metals, but it looked as if it might just be functional. Squinting slightly, she could even see an innard that appeared to be packed full of soft embeddings. Before Rose could even puzzle over it, Elsa had already focused as a mana line danced on her finger—from time to time, she would look at her pad, nod to herself, and trace over certain parts of the weapon, connecting lines of mana here and there.

Rose found a piece of metal, several in fact, and propped them up on the ground, quite a bit away. Her hand reached to her thigh and she clipped out the white pulse pistol.

The gun wasn't simply made of a plastic-like metal. As far as she knew, orium, the thing it was composed of, was a metal that facilitated mana—especially the third form, fire-power. With the right mana lines, with the right coding, you could get mana to do things it normally was incapable of.

She tapped the orb at the side of her weapon, twice, and it blinked with the breath of blue. She aimed forward, hands steady, a finger to the trigger, and pulled.

A small vroom resounded as the mana pulse flew from the muzzle and struck one of the metal scraps. It kicked off and flung into the air like a ragged doll.

A whistle came her way. Elsa had turned her head to take a peek for a moment.

"Clean shot."

"Thanks."

"No problem, if you need any help, just ask—I've handled a pulse pistol for a fair bit. You look like you're doing well though. . ."

Rose nodded and they both continued their respective work.

She checked the scrap of metal, there was a noticeable dent within it. Of course, it was a pretty thin metallic plate, but a hole had almost drilled through it.

'Another shot at that spot and it would likely break the structure of the thing apart,' She thought, backing away and readying her weapon again.

A 'pulse' was in essence just an extremely, densely packed, compressed, volume of mana shaped aerial dynamically and flying from the muzzle of a weapon. As such, there was no heat, and there was little kick back from firing it, it acted much more like a projectile than a laser. At least, that was true for guns.

The more compressed a pulse was, the greater the fire-power. The more speed it had, the greater the fire-power.

She aimed thrice more, and hit her marks quite well. Each scrap of metal was easily flung away and some were blown to bits due to how crude, rusty, or badly made they were. In essence, with her eyesight and disregard for the usual human bodily reactions, she thought Shana had been right to recommend a pistol for her.

There was a certain thing to most guns, however, that would seem to ignore the 'compression' and 'speed' rule of thumb.

Rose tapped thrice on the orb and aimed to the sky.

She pulled the trigger. There was a delay of 2 seconds.

Her arm kicked back as a blast of a pulse shot from the muzzle. It was like the flash of a grenade, but blue, and it smacked into the air, kicking up the wind. Its reach wasn't far, maybe less than a meter, but it packed a mean punch as it actually caused a kickback.

That was a 'burst' mode that ate up 10% of the charge the pistol had, in juxtaposition of the usual 0.5% a normal pulse would cost. It wasn't an expertly condensed pulse, nor was it fast, it simply covered a larger area.

"Alright." She attached the thing back to her thigh, satisfied with the flexibility she found with it.

It was the first time she had used the burst mode and, although she frowned at the current 75% charge of the weapon, it was paramount she at least felt, experienced, and saw what it was like. It was a mode of the weapon usually used to fight beasts—or break through things—you would be hard pressed to utilize it well in human battles. Then again, she thought, her weapon was on the lowest end of pulse pistols, its limitations could rather be a design choice to shave costs.

"I'll be heading out," She said, walking away from the yard.

"Where to?" Elsa took the time to look up from her tinkering, a blue light upon her face. Without her noticing, there was also a bucket of what looked like murky red by her legs, her left finger was in the same color, while her right still held a mana line she continually traced onto the mecha in front of her.

"Sword Instructor."

Since she met him, she had went there at least twice a week now. This would be her 7th visit.

"Alright, have fun, while I. . .ugh. . .I'll be connecting the Instruction Lines in preparation for the mecha's core. Beats me when I'll get the core, though."

'Instruction Lines?' Rose recognized that word as the knowledge of Homunculi leapt to her mind. Her body also had those lines of mana running through its innards. In technicality, it was what moved her figure, taking instructions from her Core.

She smiled.

"Good luck."