Chapter 17: Checklist

Chapter 17: Checklist

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryugii. This has been pulled from his Spacebattle publishment. Anyway on with the show...errr read.

Checklist

I landed the Bullhead in the same place we'd left from and it was only slightly worse for wear, which seemed kind of miraculous. Blake was already there waiting for us, reading a book by the door to our acting headquarters on the docks.

"Welcome back," She said as we left the aircraft closing and putting away the book. "I take it everything went well?"

"Can't complain," I said, walking passed her. She wrinkled her nose as I did, so I probably didn't smell so great. "Crashed the Bullhead into everything I could, got chased and eaten by a Giant Nevermore, fought some Grimm, was hunted by a pack of Beowolves, gained some levels. It was fun."

Blake stared at me, then at Adam.

"He's not joking," He said. "Except maybe about the fun part and even then I'm not sure. He's kind of insane."

Blake frowned, looking between the two of us. Adam didn't say anything more but I shrugged my shoulders and smiled.

Blake paused for a long moment before gritting her teeth and shaking her head, moving on.

"And his training?" Blake asked Adam, looking away from me. Adam gave me what I guessed was a pondering glance, frowning slightly.

"He's gotten stronger quickly," He said after a moment. "At this rate, it should be enough if"

"When," I corrected.

Adam thought about that for a moment before nodding agreeably.

"When something goes wrong," He corrected. "There are still a few things that could use improvement, though. Pick up some books on boxing, dancing, sports, and any other martial arts books you can get. Anything that could create passive skills is worth the investment, even if it's not a huge improvement, and he could use more options for when he can't afford to use Bai Hu's techniques."

I raised an eyebrow, glancing at Blake.

"We don't have any other ancient magical martial arts if that's what you're wondering," She stated. "But it should be simple enough to get a hold of a few close combat books, though getting something you can absorb might take some looking. I'll handle it."

"Cool," I drew out the word and did some karate chops on the air while shifting my body as if to music, before stopping at the look Blake gave me and withdrawing my scroll from my Inventory. "I'll be lord of the battlefield and lord of the dancethough I assure you, my moves don't need much help in that regard. You get what we needed, Blake?"

She looked at me impassively as I checked over her results, whistling appreciatively.

"Guess we aren't the only ones who brought home some treasure," I said. "Emails and passwordsyou have time to check through them yet?"

"I saw a few emails that looked promising, but I didn't want to accidentally do something that'd give us away," She answered evenly. "I figured you'd know best if you saw what we wanted, besides."

"Shifting through emails unnoticed isn't that hard, actually; I'll show you later. But yeah, I'll look through it. Since it's unlikely they'll change email accounts anytime soon, we can use these to monitor the company for a long time, too, though only what passes through these public emails. Still, as you can see, that's more than a bit." I replied absently as I flicked through pages, opening new tabs as needed. "It wasn't hard to get any of this, was it?"

Blake shook her head.

"The email accounts were easy to get into, since they had their passwords saved, though figuring out what their passwords actually were took a bit more effort. But usually, it was just a matter of figuring out one password and most of those," She nodded at my scroll. "Had files on their computers or notes. I'll go back and look at the others, if I have to."

"I'll show you a few more tricks if needed, but this should be enough," I mused. "Oh, there's even a list here about who to contact for what on the airship project."

Blake sighed.

"It's almost depressing how easy it was," She said scornfully. "Even more so because it would probably work on the White Fang, too."

I shifted how the cloak settled slightly and drew up the hood so that it and the mask hid most of my head but left it clear my upper body would have been bare, but for my armor.

"Since it doesn't have anything like sleeves, it's fairly easy to use it like a large cape," I said. "And I can also us my Inventory to do this"

I took off the cloak and pushed it into to the equipment screen beside my Inventory, causing it to suddenly appear tied around my waist with a belt and falling down to brush my ankles and shins.

"For when I need to display my magnificent body," I finished gesturing at my chest, from which my armor had vanished. After the problems not being able to remove my armor on the fly had caused me, I'd realized a solutionit was equipment and I had an equipment screen. As such, it didn't matter if it would be practical to put on or take off my items, did it? I wasn't certain I could do it in battle, since some games didn't allow that, but shifting stuff to and from my Inventory or Equipment screens wasn't a problem.

Blake shifted her gaze from where it had faded into the air to where it now hung and stared.

"It should be longer than that," She stated, looking at the cloak that had covered my entire body moments before.

"One size fits all, Blake," I said, Adam nodding sagely. We could both see this irritated here. "In games, that is."

"And your armor"

"Ah, Blake, game characters don't put on their pants," I said, shaking my head with a smile, Adam joining me. "They just equip them!"

I did just that, taking off my armored leggings by replacing them with my jeans.

"I can change my pants without even having to look down," I stated with proud superiority as she continued to stare. "Which makes me better then all of you, by the way."

Blake took a deep breath and held it for several seconds before opening her mouth, shutting it with a click, and then slowly exhaling.

"Don't worry Blake, He's wrong about that part," Adam chimed in. "He loses any of the points he gets for that by owning and wearing a bunny onesie."

"No, see, you're wrongthat makes me even more superior!"

Adam shrugged at Blake.

"I told you," He said evenly. "Insane."

Blake was silent for another second, blinking once, twice.

"It's been a long, long night," She said, turning away. "So I'm going to bed now. Goodbye."

"Wait, Blake," I said, becoming serious again. I gestured at her with the scroll when she looked back at me. "Thank you again for this. With this, we'll be able to move into the final stages of preparation. It's almost time so just hold on for a little longer and then we'll go save them. We'll win. I just need to handle a few more things, okay?"

One of Blake's hidden ears twitched and she nodded once before turning and continuing her walk. When she was gone, I took a deep breath and sighed, glancing up at the stars.

It wasn't a lie. The amount of time until the end of the mission hadn't changed, but from now on, it was just hard, repetitive work. We'd done what needed to be done, now we were just making last minute arrangements. The rest of my training would take some time and putting the finishing touches on our plan wouldn't be possible until we had all the information we needed, but reallythis was it. We were going to do this and whether we would win or lose, return or die, I had no idea.

But we weren't going to turn back now. And I had no intention of losing. I'd stack the deck as far as I could in my favor and I'd keep my promisesto my father, to Blake, and to Adam. I'd make what we had be enough, do everything I could, and come back home.

There were only a few things left to do now.

"Hey, Adam."

"Hm?"

"You wanna play some minigames?"Follow current novels on novelb((in).(com)