#gv1

     Click, clack. Shhwup 

     The sounds of levers being pulled and switches being flipped echoed throughout the test chamber. 

      Flip, fwip. Murmur murmur.

      Papers shifted around as scientists muttered among themselves about the test plans. They stared out into the rest of the chamber from behind a pane of glass. 

      As they stared it would be easy to see a young boy—probably around 13 or so—hooked up to some kind of machine in the center of the chamber. His head was down, his long white hair covering his face. His purple eyes seemed so… dead and exhausted. 

      “Please… no more…” He quietly said, his voice strained after yelling for so long. 

      A voice came in over the intercom “One more test Takefutsu, then you can head back to your room. We need to see if your control has gotten better, okay?” 

      The voice belonged to Dr. Kamizono. A man known well across Sumeragi for his efficient work on Adepts. He was also… a bit terrifying to work with. 

      Dr. Kamizono stared at the boy with some kind of twisted grin. “The poor monster was already at it’s limit? Hm, how pathetic.” Dr Kamizono thought to himself  “Ah well, any information is better than no information.” 

      The doctor flipped a final switch and the test began. ‘Takefutsu’ tensed as he felt more energy being poured into him. He tried to focus, tried to control it, tried to- 

      The poor child let out a blood curdling scream as the pain started. Gods above it hurt, it hurt so so so bad. Why did he have to suffer like this, why him?! He couldn’t focus like this! Why did this motherfucking doctor expect this out of him?! Why… Why… 

     The white-haired doctor leaned forward, getting as close as he could to the glass. He saw as the boy’s body lost its human shape and became one of pure electrical energy. How fascinating! This was new! 

      “Doctor, we should stop now. The energy is getting too high, it could explode on us!” Kamizono’s assistant pleaded. 

       “Nonsense! We’ve never gotten this far! We must keep going.” The doctor said, his grin getting wider. 

      As the child's hatred and pain grew, so did his power. Growing more and more until everyone’s sight was pierced with  white light as a loud boom echoed throughout the chamber. But as soon as it started, it stopped. ‘‘Takefutsu’s’’ vision faded from white into pitch black, as the power had been knocked out. 

       Unable to be seen by the boy, the scientist's bodies had been slammed against the wall and cooked alive, rendering all instantly dead. 

       And as much as the boy wanted to sit and wonder what just happened, the alarms started to blare. Luckily, because the power was out, he was unhooked from the machine. 

      Grabbing his sunglasses from the table by the entrance, he ran out of the chamber and made mad dashes through the halls. Dodging around guards and sneaking his way to the entrance. 

      He managed to burst through the exit doors and stumbled out, tripping a little on some loose rock on the gravel road. It was a cold starlit night. Running a little bit further, he ducked into an alleyway and slid down the wall. 

      Sitting and out of breath, the purple-eyed boy tried to process all that had happened… He was out… He was actually out! He could! He could… have a normal life…? No, he couldn’t just ignore what had happened to him! What if it happens to others? 

      Standing up with a grunt, he decided that he wasn’t going to just sit around and let Sumeragi do what they wanted. He, Asimov, was going to stop them and take down all non-adepts that came his way. Yeah… yeah that sounded good. 

      As he walked off, a figure stared. A ghostly and ethereal looking figure. They stood tall and looked quite strong. It’s hard to tell what exactly their specific features were, as they had a pale-blue glow around them. You’d have to squint to get a hint of their appearance. 

      They sighed and shook their head 

      “Oh child, this path is dangerous for the mind and soul. I hope you’re careful with it.” With that, they vanished. 

Several years later 

     Asimov had managed to rescue a young boy from a Sumeragi lab. The boy had long blond hair in a braid and small blue dragon wings. He sat at a table, still having broken chains around his neck and wrists. He kept his head down as Asimov walked around the room before sitting in front of him. 

     “Alright, there’s a few options I’m about to give you here boy. You can either stay with us, work with us, be under our protection, and be free like we are, or, go back out to the world and likely end up captured again. What do you choose?” 

      The boy paused for a moment and then quietly said “Do you…promise to protect the adepts that work with you…?” His voice was quiet and uncertain. He tried to look confident in what he was asking but he was still worried. Adepts being treated right was such a rarity these days…       

     Asimov nods, “Correct, though we hope to extend this to outside of QUILL. It’s why I freed you from the Sumeragi labs. No adept should be experimented on like that.” 

      The blond haired boy went silent for a minute or two before saying, “I wish to join you and your group.” 

      Asimov raised an eyebrow, a bit surprised this had worked so well so quickly, and asked, “Why if I may ask? Do you share the same goal we all have? Is it for possible revenge against those who’ve wronged you?” 

      “No, the opposite really… If I continue with only revenge in mind… at that point the only thing I’d be able to do is hate and I don’t want to end up like that.” 

      The white haired man hummed. “Very well then, you are aware you may die at any time by joining us, correct?” The boy across from him nodded. “If you say so, welcome to QUILL my boy. Do you have a name by any chance?” 

      The blue eyed boy looked down in silence, not being able to remember his name… Asimov sighed and looked at the documents he also stole from Sumeragi. At the bottom of this document was the code name “Gunvolt.” 

      “Alright,” Asimov stood and walked over to Gunvolt. He held out his hand to the boy. “Come along now, you’ve got some new people to meet.” He said with a smile. 

      Hesitantly, Gunvolt took the tallers hand and was gently pulled to a new room with two new people. 

      “Moniqa, Zeno, meet our newest QUILL member, 

      Gunvolt.”

     It’s been about four years since Gunvolt joined QUILL. He’s now a 5’3 tall 15 year old, with healthy medium-sized dark blue wings. During his time, Asimov helped Gunvolt harness the power of the Azure Striker. Granted it took a bit of convincing as the poor lad was quite terrified of his power. But that’s besides the point for now. 

     Joining QUILL also meant for the first time ever Gunvolt had a real family. Or at least what felt like a real family to him. He had Asimov as his father figure, Moniqa as the mother figure, and Zeno, the loveable and energetic older brother. 

     Zeno was also the main person that got Gunvolt into a lot of games and shows. It was fantastic bonding for the two. Though Moniqa would get on their cases if the two stayed up too late. The two boys were often trained together as well, which usually ended up being aiming contests that Zeno would start. 

      Speaking of training, let’s go look at one of those sessions, why don’t we? 

     This was one of those more Septima focused training sessions, with obstacles and objectives to better hone the flexibility of one’s Septima. 

      During one of the breaks in this session, Gunvolt looked over at Zeno as a question crossed his head. Zeno eventually caught his gaze and asked, 

     “What’s up little man? Ya got somethin on your mind?” 

     A bit startled Gunvolt answered, “Uh, sorry, I was just wondering… what is your septima exactly? I’ve seen it used but I’m not sure what it is…” 

     Zeno blinked a little and said, “After all these years I’ve never told you?! Damn, I thought I was better than that, heh. Well, basically! I can form these little energy things,” He opened his hand and a small blob of red energy formed “And I can shape it into what I need, like bullets, or grenades and it’ll act like that thing. It’s very useful!” He said with a smile as the energy dissipated. 

      Gunvolt hummed in understanding and fell silent for a bit before asking “Do you… know what Asimovs septima is? I’ve never seen him ever use it if he has one…” 

      Zeno thought for a moment before saying, “Nope I don’t think I’ve ever seen him use it either. I think the only person that might’ve seen it is Moniqa. But he’s pretty secret about that. Dude has his mysteries I guess.” He shrugged. “In any case, let’s get back to training, the scores only 2-1!” And just like that, the redhead shot up and darted towards the training grounds. 

     “Huh- w-wait Zeno!! Wait up!!” Gunvolt called out as he scrambled to his feet and raced after Zeno. 

      Now as you know, change hits us all. Sometimes rather quickly. And for our boy Gunvolt this change was going to be rather… well why don’t we just go watch? 

     Before we get started, here’s what new intel had been acquired. QUILL had found out what plans Sumeragi had when it came to using their Muse, who was a popular cyber idol as her songs could be heard across the country. Because of that they were planning on broadcasting the songs so they'd be able to locate every adept in the country. What would they use that information for? Nothing good that’s for sure. It was quite a loss for Zeno when he found out that The Muse was being used against Adepts, He was a pretty big fan after all. 

They had managed to track down a train that was rumored to be carrying The Muse to its next destination. Gunvolt was to be sent out to infiltrate the train and hopefully put a stop to the “Project Muse.” Let’s see how that’s going… 

      After a small snag with a Sumeragi officer who attempted to capture and interrogate Gunvolt—accidentally giving him some important intel in the process—the boy stood outside the door that led to the room he was just tied up in. He stretched out his wings as he stated the following. 

     “Code name GV, “Gunvolt” here. Sheeps 3, open the line.” 

     Moniqa’s voice came in through his ear piece. 

     “This is Sheeps 3! Looks like you’re still in one piece Gunvolt.” 

     “Yeah, and I got some new intel. The Muse is en route to its new location. I’m gonna bust out of here and resume the mission.” 

    “Please be careful, the chances of this still being a trap is really high.” Moniqa said in a worried tone. 

      Asimovs voice then chimed in through the earpiece 

     “This is Sheep’s Leader. Roger that. GV, resume the mission. Sheeps 3, you catch any new info and keep communication open.” He sounded as stern and confident as ever. 

     Moniqa sighed slightly, “Alright, GV, play nice out there.”

     Gunvolt hummed a little at Moniqas response. 

     “Sheeps 2, change of plans, I want you to be GV’s support.” Asimov said 

      “Hey hey, Sheeps 2 hears ya loud and clear! Sounds like the usual routine.” Zeno replied with a laugh. 

     “Sheeps 2 to Gunvolt, you only have one life dude. Take good care of it.” 

     Not entirely sure what that meant, the blonde responded, “…Roger that. I’ll take the appropriate steps.” 

     “Appropriate st… dude you aren’t picking up on my vibe are ya.” Zeno said with a mild tone of disappointment. 

     Asimov cut in, stopping the conversation from going any further, “Okay, okay, we have a Muse busting mission to restart. Good luck!” The line cut. 

     Pulling out his gun, Gunvolt started to dash through the bronze and black hallway, jumping over random scattered boxes and occasionally blasting the guard robots as they made slow attempts to fire at him. 

    Eventually he reached an elevator. Luckily! The door was open. Unluckily! It wasn’t powered. Hm. The blond stepped into the elevator and looked for any possible way to get this thing goin. He was already late as is. 

    He spotted a generator-like thing on the wall of the elevator. Perfect! With a quick tag and a zap the elevator was moving quickly up. 

    He glanced out the ceiling-length window, dang this was really high up.. was this really where a train was coming out from? He shrugged off the question, it’d be too late to question the intel at this point. 

     As the doors to the elevator opened Gunvolt could hear guards panicking over how he got to the top floor. He could see them start to gather in front of him, weapons at the ready. Well at least there was some variety. 

     With a small stretch of his wings he ran forward, tagging and zapping anything in his way, it was quite efficient really. He dodged his way through the rapidly closing doors as he ducked and weaved around the various guard robots 

     He eventually reached a large pink hexaplye, which must be the last ditch effort at security. It wasn’t really good security as Gunvolt tagged and broke it down with relative ease. 

    Rounding the corner into the hallway he spotted movement through the large windows. Shit, the train was already moving?! But he’d been so fast. Ugh, how to get there now.. Hm wait.. ah that might be a rather stupid plan.. but anything for the mission.

    He took a few steps back and Moniqas voice attempted to chime in with a quick “GV please think about what you’re doing-” but it was far too late. As he ran straight through the window—arms crossed over his face so he didn’t get glass in his eyes—and started falling towards the train. 

    Now he had activated his flashfield and had his wings spread so he was falling slowly and safely. He also couldn’t quite hear what was being said to him through the earpiece, electricity is quite loud that way, but when he landed on the tail end of the train he could just manage to catch Moniqa explaining what he just did and Zeno yelling “What?!” Uh oh.. 

     “Dude!! I literally just told you to be careful with your life and you went and jumped out of a very tall building?! Onto a moving train?! Where is your self preservation?!?” An angry yet concerned voice shouted through the ear piece. Clearly still Zeno.. whoops. 

    “…I’m on the train now so it’s fine right?” Gunvolt asked, hoping his ears weren't bleeding from the scolding. 

    “Duuudeee, whatever- be lucky it’s me yelling at you and not Moniqa, I think she’s too worried about Asimov right now.” Zeno said, followed by a loud exasperated sigh. 

    “I’ll.. count my blessings I guess. I’m continuing the mission as planned.” The blond haired boy said. He stared at the path forward and took a deep breath. He just needed to get to the head, that’s where The Muse was being held. Then he can stop the train and go home. Easy. 

     So off he ran down the train doing what he does best, zappin and blastin. And everything was going great! Well.. until Gunvolt overheard some Sumeragi soldiers yelling about sending out a ‘Mantis’. Whatever that was, it didn't sound good. 

     Luckily—or unluckily depending on how you see the situation—the teen adept didn’t have to wait long to find out! As something scooted up next to him on the tracks, then hopped up onto the train and in front of him. 

      He took a good look at whatever was in front of him and.. oh.. it’s a Sumeragi tank. How lovely. It stood tall with its freshly painted coat of olive green, it’s yellow eyes stared down at Gunvolt. Then it started firing the rockets. Quickly putting up his flashfield to destroy the oncoming rockets, the blonde sighed. Some missions were difficult but this was just getting annoying to deal with. He had never exactly dealt with one of these before either so how was he-

     His thoughts were cut off as Moniqa chimed through the ear piece 

     “Hey GV! If you heat that thing up enough it’ll go down and pop out it’s core to cool off. That should give you an opening to destroy it.” 

     Huh, well, always trust Moniqa to give you the solution to a problem. As the tank attempted to shoot down Gunvolt, he very easily tagged and brought it down. Like Moniqa had said, a yellow core popped out of its back, some steam following it. It didn’t get a chance to get back up as the core was quickly overloaded with electrical energy and broke. 

     Once again Gunvolt was moving swiftly along until he had to duck because a laser nearly burned his entire face. Was that another Mantis? Probably. Did Gunvolt have to deal with it? Probably not. The train car he was on top of did have a door to it so.. down he goes! 

     Now he was immediately greeted with a hexaplye, but that did mean he was getting close to the objective. So after quickly destroying that he went through the other door across the car and into the next one. And everything seemed normal, if not for an unnerving lack of guards. As he walked further in though he noticed something hiding behind a large white crate. 

     Peeking around the crate, Gunvolt made eye contact with.. a kid?! What the hell was a small child doing here?! They stared up at him with their red eyes, the hood of their grey hoodie covering most other facial features. They were curled up into a tight ball, trying to appear as small as possible. 

     “Uhm… Hello.” The child spoke with a quiet voice. 

    “Hi... what... what are you doing here?” Gunvolt asked softly, shaking off most of his confusion. He knelt down to be at eye level with the kid. He could faintly see the tips of their hair being a teal color peeking out from under the hood.

    “I... I don’t know. I got on from a weird building and I don’t know where it’s going and I-I’m scared..” They hugged their sides and looked down. 

    “Okay.. uhm..” Crap... personal feelings weren’t supposed to get in the way of missions but... this was a kid here! Likely no older than ten! He couldn’t just leave them here!!

    ...Screw it, he’ll risk the lecture from Asimov later

     “Alright, here’s what’s going to happen. I still have to stop the train but as soon as it does I’m going to come back and get you to safety okay?” The child nodded. “Okay, stay here until then.” He gently patted their head and stood up. 

     He gave a final wave to the child as he went through the other door to the front of the train. 

     He looked around the room. Lots of computers, a lever to stop the train, and some kind of large machinery. Hm. He wasn’t sure what the machine did but it seemed like it was meant to hold something? Weird... 

     Clicking through some of the computer's files, Gunvolt found nothing that looked like Muse data. Damn. Well... better wipe whatever was here just in case. 

     With a quick zap to the computers, he pulled the lever to stop the train. As he did that though it also cut all lights. Oops... guess that lever did more than stop the train. Eh, whatever. Using his flashfield as a light source, he headed back. 

    Dismissing the flashfield he lightly crouched down in front of the child and gently placed his hand on their head. They flinched a little and placed their small hands on his to make sure he was safe. 

    “Alright, I’m back. Let’s get you out of here now okay?” Gunvolt could feel the child nod. He turned around, kneeling down and opened up his wings. “Climb on my back.” He stated. 

    “Won’t your wings get hurt..?” The teal-haired child asked. 

     Gunvolt shook his head. “No, they’re very strong.” 

    The child hesitantly climbed onto his back, swinging their arms around his neck. He put his arms under their legs for better support. 

    “By the way. What’s your name?” 

     “Uhm... its Joule.” 

     “That’s a pretty name.” He said as he headed out the door. 

     That’s where conversation ended for now as Gunvolt quickly exited the train and made his way to the rendezvous spot, sneaking his way past Sumeragi guards. 

    When he met up with Zeno the taller adept was also confused as to why a child was on the train. But after some talking about where the child should stay for now, Gunvolt recommended the group's shared apartment. Zeno seemed a little hesitant about the idea, worried that the child might end up being a threat. 

    Though after some valid points from Gunvolt, mainly how even if the kid was a threat they’d be able to keep an eye on them constantly, Zeno eventually agreed and passed it forward to Moniqa and Asimov over transmission. 

    Moniqa was all for it and Asimov agreed surprisingly quickly. As suspicious as that was, Gunvolt couldn’t help but smile. He had a new friend! As they headed home Joule revealed that she was a girl with very little memory of any kind of parents or a proper home. The conversation on the way back helped Joule feel very comfortable yet it also made her realize how exhausted she was. 

     As the group arrived at the medium sized apartment, Moniqa greeted them and told them she had already set up a bed for Joule in her room. Joule wanted to sleep so she headed into Moniqas room for the night, falling asleep very quickly. Dinner was also ready so after getting into more casual gear the group enjoyed a lovely meal together and then went to bed. 

      Hm.. how little Gunvolt knows that taking in this small girl was going to change the course of his life. But that’s neither here nor there, as there’s still more to take down within Sumeragi. We’ll catch up on that next time. 

The Adventures of Gunvolt will continue in