Chronicle Four | The Catalyst - Chapter One: Buried Feelings - Part 1

He was close, but he wasn't at its completion, knowing it was going to take a few more hours before he finally fixed that damned piece of tech he had been working on for an entire year now. He had troubleshooted it sooooooo many times, but even after getting so close to fixing it, the realization that it was damaged entirely was that much more devastating. The X Scouter did a lot of things for him, displaying information on the lens, projecting both imagery and sound from prerecorded data and scanning and saving multiple items. The problem here was that Lex didn't have his wristband device, and without that, he couldn't go through the final steps of resyncing the device to his scouter.

If he could have just found the wristband, he could access his main central network system and reconnect his scouter to it, letting him see the tons and tons of information that he had stored over so many years. The sad part was that he couldn't find the wristband without the scouter, but he needed the wristband in order to resync the scouter for it to work in the first place. Well... that wasn't true, but the alternative wasn't really desirable at all. He would have to wipe the memory from the X Scouter in order for it to work, which meant that it would wipe out the hard drive on the wristband device and that he would have to start collecting data from scratch again.

All... from... scratch.

He wasn't willing to go through that again, but after spending an entire year focusing on fixing this thing and now finding out that he had one of two choices, after getting so close too? It was too early to make such a choice just yet, he was too frustrated to get results and he was sure that he'd make one hasty mistake if he chose to wipe out the hard drive right away. He gave a light sigh as he slowly rubbed his head after he slowly set down the miniature screwdriver and melding tool. 'I just need a little rest, I'll surely make a breakthrough after a little relaxation.' he pondered, dragging himself off of the wooden chair as his eyes drifted to the poorly illuminated light above him.

The only way he took notice of it was because how late it had gotten since he put his entire focus on tinkering with the gizmo. He didn't even eat; what a shame too, because it was too late for him to grab something or he would screw with his diet. Tomorrow was the day that the spell he had casted on himself to sustain his body would be running out. If he wasn't careful, he'd feel the large hunger pains rip through him by tomorrow afternoon and nearly kill him. It wouldn't be all that bad, or at least as worse as it could be, since he had been getting food every four days or so, preparing his body to keep from perishing the moment that the spell wore off.

He gave another tired sigh and slowly made his way to bed, flicking off the light in the makeshift workshop of a room that was actually his den, moving from the main room to his bedroom. He made his routine slithering motion towards his bed, not bothering to turn on any lights as he tossed off his shirt and slid out of his pants, tossing them to the side of the room before tightening the covers around himself. The apartment had a tendency to warm up before getting rather cold, the heavy comforter was for the cold, but the lack of clothing besides his boxers was for the heat. It was always here, always now when the man's thoughts drifted onto the costs of getting things for free.

He couldn't complain to the super because she was the one who allowed him to stay here for no cost. But he couldn't go out and call a technician to fix the air conditioner or heater because he wasn't supposed to be in the building in the first place. Oh what a first world dilemma he found himself to be in. He just had to bear with it of course, slowly drooping his eyes as he thought about all that he would accomplish tomorrow and that he had accomplished today. He had attempted to learn how to draw, failing with his daily expectations but still gradually getting better; finished learning a new set of kanji and its meanings; and had learned the coding for programming his new prototype android. These thoughts usually helped him drift off to sleep, thinking about what he was progressing in always helped him ease his mind, but it was always that one second of hesitation as of late before he finally drifted off, that one thought that kept him wondering exactly what he may have been doing all of this for; a companion, a friend.

Truth be told, Lex never had a friend, the price to pay for always sticking his head in books, physical training, or other various tasks that were meant to help him learn and master useful or even just the most recreative of skills. As nice as learning was though, not actually finding any connection to a living being for twenty-five years was slowly starting to eat at him it seemed. He needed a spell for this, at least until he finished his quest for all of his equipment anyway. He hadn't even gotten started and he was already starting to stray from his path. 'What the hell is wrong with me? I should stick to the plan...' he thought, restlessly shifting in the sheets a couple of times before he suddenly fell into sleep.

(Word Count: 967)

An eagle gave a majestic shriek as it flew overhead the entourage of armed men and women about a hundred feet below, watching the mixture of blue and grey attire and weaponry making their way up the mountain and at a flat clearing within the mountain side. "Alright everyone, set your armaments here and get ready to clean up whatever forces remain of the Denquo; I don't want any survivors to retaliate against us later, got it?" a dark skinned male asked as he turned towards his soldiers. The rest of the blue and grey cladded men and women gave a salute or a high rise of their fist into the air. "Yes sir!" they all chimed in unison. Some of the soldiers grabbed for their muskets as others grabbed for more melee ranged weaponry like the staffs and double-edged swords.

One of the girls sifted through the ranks of the army however, gliding past the various mercenaries and trained assassins to go to the one in charge. The blond haired woman earned her stripes to be able to break from the orders given, at least, this particular one; after all, she was the general of his army. Once she made it to her leader and the one already accompanying him, she would swiftly take out a rolled up scroll of parchment before handing it the man. "Lex, the map." she said with a smirk. He turned towards her from facing his lover that was standing beside him, the remnants of laughter dying out just as the approaching woman reached him from a joke she had seemed to say a few moments ago.

He took the map from his loyal companion and tapped the rolled up map against the temple of his head several times, a devious smirk seeming to stretch on his face before he let it drop down to his side. "Excellent work Veronica, the Denquo should have thought twice before messing with the British Powers." he said before starting to unroll the map. The blond haired girl sneered as she adjusted her blue beret, tilting her head for a second towards the pillaged town before, several pillars of smoke rising from its position. "I'm pretty sure they're very aware now sir." she said, snickering a bit at their rather crude but effective results of eliminating their current targets.

Lex couldn't help but join in with the somewhat menacing snickering, his muscular arms folding over his chest as he relished a bit in his rather impressive track record. Five thousand of theirs for only two hundred of his, that was some really good numbers; he thought they would have put up more of a challenge for how much the Eastern forces were hyping them up to be. Of course, that was the problem with stories these days, they usually always got blown out of proportion. The young man was suddenly punched lightly in his arm by the fair lady beside him, stopping his rather intimidating laughter before turning to face the woman. A dark skinned woman who was his complexion and dressed in what seemed to be the most royal of robes, shaded in deep and dark blue designs that matched the vibrant color of her eyes.

She had a rather judging look on her face as she playfully wagged her finger at the two, mainly Lex, for their dark sense of humor. "See, this is why it's imperative that I'm around, you two can be so caught up in yourselves some times that I'm sure the recruits would get the wrong idea... Lex!" she said, snapping at Lex at the last moment before giving a bit of a playful glare to end her lecture. He sighed as he rubbed the back of his head, sifting through his black crew cut hair before turning to face the entranceway to a cave that was within the mountainside. "You're right you're right Pyra... jeez. Cut a guy some slack would ya?" he said before finally looking down and stretching out the map that was in his grasp. "Hahahaha... I am." she said half jokingly, half seriously.

Pyra was without a doubt in love with the devilish rogue, that's why she got married to him after all. But there was a cost to the daring excitement and gain in riches and status within the world, and that was Lex's arrogance. She made sure it didn't get out of hand, keeping him from making grave mistakes as long as she kept him in line. She wasn't calling the shots, nor did she want to, but she wanted her husband to keep making level-headed decisions, just like he had been when he first started out with his empire a few years back. If barking at him now and again or hurting his pride just a liiiiiiiiiittle bit was all it took at times, than she was more than happy to do it if it meant that he prospered and got to achieve his dreams in the end.

With the map in hand, he was one step closer to that very thing. Both Pyra and Veronica's curiosity got the better of them after about one full minute of silence, glancing over Lex's shoulder to look at the map as well. "Sir...?" Veronica called out, more than anxious to know what was the new plan for her and her men. Pyra was no better, twirling her finger through the curls in her black hair as she wondered why it was taking Lex so long to navigate the coordinates to the fabled treasure. She was about to say something as well, but Lex knew her a bit too well as he didn't even bother to look up from the map before quickly saying something himself. "Ah ah ah Pyra! Don't even start, I already know where to begin, I was just looking for other ways out in case something happens once we get in there. Based on what I see though, there are several exit routes within the cave, so we should be fine. Veronica, grab five of your finest men, we're going hunting." he ordered as he rolled up the piece of parchment and tucked it into the inside of the right side of his pants, under his shirt. The blood thirsty woman grinned as she gave a salute, more than proud to hear those orders given to her by the only man she trusted. "Yes sir!"

It was at this point that the vision began to fade, slowly dissipating into blackness before it slowly became full of color and imagery again. This time, eight blue and grey cladded people stood over what seemed to be a huddle of treasure chests within the small confines of a cave, a beam of sunlight somehow providing a ray of illumination on the biggest treasure chest of the bunch that was in the middle of the area. Lex had already opened it though, holding the new item in his hand as he inspected it, his deep blue eyes wandering over the weapon in hand.

The premise of it all was strange enough, having seemed like a regular Chinese sword until he picked it up from its confinement within the chest. The regular steel blade slowly formed into a deep blue one, the faded bronze hilt turning into a very shiny silver hue and an insignia of his hometown slowly etched itself on both sides of the blade. He wasn't sure what this meant, but he couldn't help but be fascinated. He could feel the surge of power flowing through him, immense power, power of intense magnitude. For a few seconds upon first holding it, he was almost anxious that he wouldn't be able to handle it if the power kept 'rising' and 'pressurizing' within him, but it leveled out and he couldn't help but grin.

"So is it the real deal? Is that really the Catalyst?" came Pyra's soft voice from behind. Lex nodded, still inspecting the seemingly ordinary weapon, besides its color change, before turning his head to glance at his wife. "I can feel the power that the legends spoke of, they weren't exaggerating when they said how much it gave off. Had it not been for that constant bickering of that old man insisting that I meditate and train my spirit, I'm honestly not sure I would have been able to handle its intensity." he admitted. The fair skinned woman gave a low 'oh' as she thought about this, knowing Lex wasn't exactly one to admit when he was almost bested or acknowledge the help of someone besides her and his immediate crew. She was finally starting to rub off on him perhaps...

"Either way, now that we have it, what's our next course of action Lex?" Veronica asked, more than anxious to already get started with their next campaign. That's why Lex had recruited her of course; he had seen the spark in her so long ago when she had tried to challenge him to a fight on the poor streets of London. Now, only three years later, she was his general and had led every campaign of his into success. Hopefully this very next one would have the same results, knowing that it was one of the most important ones to date of his life. He couldn't help but smirk as he gave it more thought, the eight of them finally exiting the cave as he looked out at the raided town once again that was about a mile away from the foot of the mountain. " We're going to go find this legendary Azure Knight, and then we're going to rid of him and his evil sword. It should be a piece of cake now." he said with a hint of excitement in his voice. And so, off they went, looking for the cursed knight and his demonic sword, wanting to do the world a favor by destroying the both of them.

Lex slowly awoke the next morning, a tired expression on his face as he gave a loud yawn and stretched as best he could. The sound of the city air resonated outside his window, slowly bringing his mind back to this time period that he was in as he slowly got out of bed and made his way to a fresh pair of clothes, preparing himself to take a shower and finish the completion of the scouter today. There were several questions buzzing through his mind however, a sense of excitement about wanting to go find that sword.

He had dreams about it before, knowing that it gave the wielder immense power, enough power to punch metal structures and make them blow away like it was nothing, enough endurance to run for days on end without seeming to break a sweat, enough tolerance to get an arm chopped off and not be fazed in the slightest, showing no hesitation on performing their next move. Had he not seen this for himself within the visions, he wouldn't have imagined that something like that was even fathomable. He made up his mind that right after fixing his scouter, his first course of action would be to look for the Catalyst.

(Word Count: 1868)

A few hours? Is that what he predicted? Maybe it was the burst pipe that connected to his shower which led to him having to deal with a plumber half the morning, or maybe it was the small kitchen fire that he had started after he had almost forgotten that today was the last day that his sustain magic spell was in effect and tried to rush preparing a meal, or maybe it was all the time being spent having to back track on his progress on the scouter from the day before after realizing that he had forgotten to re-install the Duplex Perfect Monitor back into the device, having to go back several steps to correctly install the chip into the hardware and software of the scouter. With more than half the day gone and no virtual progress on fixing it, Lex made his decision then and there.

He had to wipe the hard drive.

He didn't like the thought at all, and he would have very much preferred to just resync the wristband so he could have his previous data. But he didn't have anymore choices here. An entire day almost wasted and so much internal damage within the apartment that he was going to have to clean and fix. He was in no mood to just call it quits and rate the day as an entire set back. With that, he would press a series of buttons within the inner frame of the scouter, in the process of resetting the entire system for both the scouter and the wristband. He hesitated for a moment as he got to the very last button within the sequence, running his options in his mind as he thought about all of the information that was about to get erased.

All of the data he had accumulated during his stay on Nadira and the latter years of his life on his homeworld. He sighed as he realized that the workings of the government, building plans, blue prints for weapons and items he was currently working on, and many other various projects and things he had revealed over time would be gone forever. Still, that was the price he was going to have to pay if he wanted to make any progress. He couldn't get started without the scouter, that was the cold truth to it, and so, with a slow inhale, the man pressed the final button on the inner frame of the device, hearing a series of beeps go off before it made a loud chime, the blue transparent lens seeming to 'turn on' as it began to illuminate a bit and display several forms of data on the piece of glass. He grabbed for the device and slowly put the rather large sized ear muffler looking part over his right ear and adjusted the lens to fit a few inches in front of his right eye again.

He tried to look past the fact that it was saying '0 Bytes of data to access' and the fact that he would need to program the interface all over again, actually a bit happy to see that it was finally working. The update in an interface wasn't all that bad for him though, finding an excuse to change the way that he categorized his data and how he accessed it. He planned on giving the interface a brand new sleek look once he finished designing one for it. For now though, he was going to fill the temporary network system with data! He hopped out of the chair, pressing a series of buttons on the outside of the ear muffler part before accessing the scanning feature. Pressing it, he began to scan the entire apartment space he was living in, going from room to room as he scanned every inch in several different vision formats, which was in normal mode, X-ray mode, and infrared mode.

It took him about twenty minutes, but Lex finished scanning the entire apartment, leaving nothing out of the scan as he took a quick look through the scroll of data he had just made. Here is where things got interesting, finding several weak spots in the walls that had hollowed out spaces for him to store things in, deadly things, things like traps and mechanisms in case someone tried to come take his life in the middle of the night. Strange, that this was the very first thing that came to mind after he got his scouter to work again, but he knew better than anyone through all of the visions of the Lex variants in the past that he tended to get himself in some trouble at times, so it was best to be prepared for anything. Unfortunately he couldn't do anything as of now though, not having any equipment to set any deadly traps around the house. But at least now he felt much safer knowing where he could place them, knowing he could get started the moment that he found or created his arsenal of weaponry.

Despite all of that, his concern quickly turned to the matter at hand; the Catalyst. With a click of one button on the scouter, several low chirping noises emitted from the device as he calculated the fastest route possible to India. This was where he needed to go if he was going to get his hands on the fabled sword, since after all, this was the final resting place of the Lex within the 1600s. He could only imagine what kind of power he would be getting the moment he got his hands on the blade. He wouldn't know though until it was in his grasp and he had no more reason to stay. 'Can't wait to see what awaits me out there in the vast world.' he thought, walking to his room so he could get ready to pack his things. This was about to be one hell of a journey, he just hoped that it would be a very good one.

(Word Count: 1003)