Chapter 41: Fast Forward - 4.
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Location: SS-Enterprise, Martha's Lab.
Time : Six Months Later.
Omni POV (Leon Based.)
It was, by any reasonable measure, a good day.
Leon stood in the middle of Martha's lab with both hands raised above his head like he'd just won something, which — technically — he had.
Six months. Six months of failed arrays, rescheduled sessions, and at least two incidents that he and Raymond had quietly agreed to never bring up in polite company. And now, finally, the completed array sat mapped across the worktable in front of them. Every rune accounted for. Every sequence verified.
He kept his hands up a moment longer than was strictly necessary.
"A little too happy there, aren't we, sir." Luxion drifted in a slow circle nearby, his tone carrying the particular flatness he reserved for when Leon was embarrassing himself.
"Of course I'm happy." Leon lowered his arms without any hint of shame and turned to Martha. "And it's all thanks to you. Genuinely. Thank you."
Martha looked up from the table. Then she looked back down. Then up again. "I… no, that's not — I mean, you were both helping. It wasn't just me."
"Martha." Leon kept his voice steady. "Me and Raymond left halfway through to help Merlin Incorporated." He held her gaze. "You stayed. You kept working." He bowed his head. "So — thank you. I mean it."
She went quiet in the way she always did when a compliment landed somewhere she didn't know how to put it, her hands finding the hem of her coat sleeve and smoothing it for lack of anywhere better to go.
From the far side of the lab, Raymond adjusted his glasses. "He's right." His voice was measured, unhurried. "At this point I'd say you know more about practical rune application than either of us."
Martha looked between them both. "...Is that your way of saying you left me with all the hard parts?"
"It's our way of saying you handled them better than we would have," Leon replied.
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Her shoulders settled slightly. "...Oh."
Raymond glanced at Leon.
Leon glanced back.
Close enough.
"Right," Leon said, clapping his hands together before the moment could get any more complicated. "Enough standing around. Let's get on with it."
***
The bed in the corner of the lab was narrow and not particularly comfortable. Leon had noted this the first time he'd seen it and was noting it again now as he lay back against it, shirt off, staring at the ceiling with the practiced calm of a man who had already committed and wasn't going to let himself reconsider.
Beside the bed, a pot of black liquid sat over a low heat. Martha stirred it once, checked the consistency, then lifted the quill — a specialized instrument, nothing like the ones used for actual writing — and dipped it carefully.
She looked at him. "This is going to hurt."
"I can take it."
She still didn't look convinced. That was probably the honest response.
Raymond, without a word, bound Leon's wrists to the frame with calm efficiency. He placed a leather bite guard between Leon's teeth, stepped back, checked his work, and gave a single quiet nod.
Then Martha began.
***
She started between the shoulder blades — the heart of the array.
☉
Ω
Leon felt it immediately. Not pain, exactly. Not yet. Something closer to pressure dragged slowly across skin, deliberate and precise.
Then the spine. Top to bottom, each rune placed with the kind of focus that had kept Martha in this lab long after everyone else had gone to sleep.
Ⲁ — Ϟ — Ξ — Ω — Ϙ — Ψ — Ω — Ξ — Ϟ — Ⲁ
Origin. Balance. Flow. Mastery. Will. Dominion. Mastery. Flow. Balance. Origin.*
The governor. The structure that would regulate his mana output before it could regulate him instead.
The right shoulder came next.
Λ — Δ
The beginning of strength. Then the rest of the arm, each symbol building on the last —
Ϝ — Ϛ — Λ — Δ — Α — Ρ — Κ — Ω — Ν
*Strength. Reinforcement. Endurance. Power. Ascension.*
Then the left.
Ψ — Ξ
Control. Followed by —
Ω — Ϙ — Ν — Ε — Μ — Ω
*Flow. Regulation. Precision. Balance. Harmony.*
Somewhere around the second hour, Leon had stopped tracking time. He was aware of Raymond standing quietly near the wall, watching without interfering. He was aware of Martha working without pause, her breathing controlled, her focus absolute.
He bit down on the guard and said nothing.
***
"Done."
Martha set the quill down. She pressed the back of her wrist to her forehead, exhaling slowly, and for a moment just stood there. "Sorry it took so long." Her voice was tired. "I tried being faster."
Leon sat up.
Every nerve in his upper back immediately filed a formal complaint.
He breathed through it. "Don't worry about it," he said, his voice admirably steady. "They barely even hurt."
Across the room, Raymond pushed off the wall. He crossed to the bed. He reached out and touched one of the runes on Leon's shoulder.
Leon's expression flatlined. "What the hell, Raymond."
Raymond withdrew his hand. "You said they don't hurt."
"I lied."
A pause. "Why?"
Leon had no good answer for that. He chose silence instead.
"Sir," Luxion cut in, rotating once in that particular way that meant he'd already calculated the optimal solution and was patiently waiting for the humans to arrive at it. "A medical pod would accelerate your recovery considerably."
Leon considered the bed. Considered standing. Made a preliminary assessment of how that would go.
"Yeah," he said. "I'll take you up on that."
Raymond extended a hand without being asked. Leon looked at it for a moment, then took it.
***
Location : Boys Barracks, Lounge.
Omni POV.
The two of them had drifted back from the lab in a loose, unhurried group — Martha still carrying traces of the morning's work in the careful way she held her hands, Raymond quiet beside her, Erica and Daniel already settled on a couch by the time they arrived in the lounge.
"So it worked?" Erica asked, her eyes moving to Martha first.
"It did." Martha sat down, folding her hands in her lap. "But it was really all down to how long Leon held out. He must have been in so much pain."
Erica's expression didn't change much. "He's a big boy. I'm sure he's fine."
"You finished in time, Martha," Raymond said, settling into the chair across from her. "You should be proud of yourself."
Daniel looked up from where he'd been leaning against the wall. "What do you mean, in time?"
"I'm talking about the next stage of training." Raymond's tone was even, matter of fact. "The Sergeant Major mentioned we'd each be assigned to a team of third years."
Daniel's face fell slightly. "I wanted us to stay together though."
"Then we perform well in our assigned teams," Raymond said. "Do that, and I imagine we'll have grounds to petition for our own unit."
Daniel considered this. The logic was sound enough that he didn't argue.
"That would be good," Martha said quietly. She looked around at them — Raymond, Erica, Daniel — with the kind of expression she rarely let sit on her face for long. "I wouldn't want anyone else by my side."
The lounge went briefly, companionably quiet.
Then, from the doorway —
"What's going on in here?"
They turned.
Leon stood in the entrance wearing only his combat trousers, apparently entirely unbothered by this. The runes covered his back and arms like dark tattoos against his skin, stark and precise alongside the few scars he'd collected since arriving. He looked, objectively speaking, like someone who had just come from something that should have kept him in a medical pod.
He also looked extremely pleased with himself.
"Go put some clothes on," Erica said flatly.
"What are you talking about?" Leon stepped into the room and, without any visible shame, flexed. "I look too good to cover it up."
Erica gave him a look. The kind that had, on at least two prior occasions, made him reconsider whatever he'd been about to do.
This time, Leon held her gaze. Thought it over. And arrived at a different conclusion.
"I'm not scared of you anymore," he said, with the easy confidence of a man who had recently had a full rune array inscribed into his spine. "I'm pretty sure I could give Daniel a run for his money, if it came to it."
From across the room, Daniel straightened slightly at the mention of his name.
Erica's expression shifted. Not into anger — something considerably more dangerous than that. The corner of her mouth curved upward.
"Oh?" she said. "Is that so"
It was not a question.
Leon's confidence, to his credit, held for almost a full second.
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