8:00 P.M.
Jack got out of the shower. The thoughts kept springing up—some he had no answer for. For some, he found the answer when he looked deep into his being.
Diana had already served dinner. They sat down and ate together. They finished up soon and got up. Jack went into the basement, and Diana picked up the utensils and dropped them in the washer. Then she headed into the basement.
The portal door was no longer there. She imitated how Jack opened the door.
"Verification failed. Please back away. Two chances left. If you try it for the third time, you will be thrown into the space-time vortex."
"Yikes, that's scaryyyy," Diana said in anguish.
"Indeed it is. I am sorry. I forgot to authorize you for freely accessing this area," said Jack, poking his head from the portal again. The portal still hadn't completely appeared in place. Instead, it just appeared as an outline, adjusting its size accordingly as Jack moved through.
"You know what is more scary?" said Diana, walking forward quickly and grabbing Jack's ear. "IS YOUR HEAD POKING THROUGH THE WALL LOOKING LIKE A DAMN MOUNTED ANIMAL!" she added as she pulled Jack out of there by his ear.
"Ow, ow, ow," Jack muttered, rubbing his ear.
"Serves you right, idiot. I already told you I don't like seeing you that way. It makes me uneasy," she said furiously.
"Fine, fine. It's alright. I just forgot," said Jack, walking towards the door again.
"Shit, it closed again," he said as he tried to enter the gate.
Jack opened the portal again. They entered. One of the computers was on, and many Ortho Sapien wristbands were lying beside it.
"Authorize Diana Richards. Give her full access."
"Verification of requester is complete. Miss Diana, please put your hand on the sensor behind you and pass some energy into it."
Diana followed the instruction, and soon she was registered.
"Good job, Diana. Now let me go disarm the failsafe."
"Disarm the what?" said Diana, tilting her head to the side, her expression blank.
"Gahhhh~ That's too cute," Jack thought. "Ahem... Come, I will show you," he spoke out loud.
Jack got back onto his computer. Diana, too, fetched a chair and sat beside him.
A complex program was open on Jack's screen. Diana didn't understand anything from it. Looking at her puzzled look, Jack decided to play with her a bit.
"You see here? This is the code part where the function which executes the failsafe is called. If we delete this part, the function won't get called. But there is an issue again. There is a success message in the function as well. So if the function doesn't get called, there won't be a success message, hence alerting the Sapiens that something is wrong. So I will print a fake message here," he blabbered, enjoying the dazed look on Diana's face.
"I see."
"Pfft~ AHAHAHAHHAHhAHAHHA! Just say you don't understand! AHHAAHHH!" Jack laughed with his hands on his stomach.
"Stop playing around," Diana said, pouting.
"Well, they had a function in the wristband that allowed them to remotely administer cyanide to the official wearing it, thus preventing any info leaks from an officer that was caught. I was just getting rid of that. Up until now, I was using a small Kana slab under the band to protect myself. Now it's okay. I will program this into the Trojan USB so that we don't have to get onto my computer every time," Jack said, connecting the USB to the computer.
"Wow, that's so cautious of them. You should've disarmed that before leaving, idiot. All this time, you were wearing it like that. What if something happened to you?" she said, looking down.
"I am sorry. I was just so worried about you that I didn't even think of my own safety," Jack said, working on the computer (trying his best to hide his blushing).
"Alright, it's done. All we gotta do now is connect Trojan to every band. It will take about ten minutes. Oh wait, I can just do this."
He dashed out of the room and returned a few seconds later with a multi-headed USB cable. He stuffed each of the heads into one band and attached the main one to his computer. Then he attached "Trojan" to the computer.
"I will copy-paste the virus into the main hub, and it will automatically distribute itself into the bands. Since I removed the function, if we remove the cyanide bags, it won't send an alert. We can use it in the future," he said smugly.
"Where is the bag, though?"
Jack picked up one of the bands and used his hands to bend open the bottom covering. There was a small bag filled with a white liquid among the many wires. There was a small needle attached to it, held by a lever. It fit perfectly inside a tiny opening in the bottom covering. Jack resealed the covering back.
"Alright, thanks," Diana said, amazed at Jack's skills.
"Now then, don't be amazed so easily. Let me show you something much more amazing."
Jack walked to the twin beds. He put his hand on the wall near the top bed.
"Open, Arsenal," Jack said.
Another portal door opened up in the same fashion as the former one. Jack poked his head inside for a second and then came out, stepped aside from the path, and bowed.
"After you, M'lady," he said, grinning.
Diana expected to see another room. Well, she wasn't wrong, but the room was too full of special items to be called that. It was, as the name suggested, an arsenal—a room full of fuel for war.
Jack walked inside before her, smiling at her amazement.
The room was lined with shelves all around it, gigantic shelves, and items in display glasses were set up throughout. There were guns of various kinds, from small handguns to big machine guns, from assault rifles to plasma rifles, and some that Diana didn't recognize, even though her parents were in the army. The shelf opposite was lined with armor, battle suits, gauntlets, swords, and all kinds of melee weapons.
At the end of the room, there was a shelf full of metals—different kinds, though just in tiny amounts. The display glasses housed a hammer, five cuboidal structures shaped like underground bunker doors. One display glass showcased a full-fledged battle suit equipped on a mannequin. It looked like one of the most highlighted and coolest things in the room. There were about fifteen drones of different designs housed in the glasses.
"Wow, that's... so, so damn awesome."
"I know, right? All of this is my grandfather's collection, and almost everything was made back in Creta, except the assault rifles and plasma rifles," Jack said, smiling at her.
"That's cool, but the metals aren't in much quantity."
"Oh, that." Jack walked to one of the shelves and tapped on the screen displaying the name of the metal.
The display glasses rearranged themselves, making a big space at the center. The floor slid under one of the shelves, revealing a big hole. A few seconds later, a big container rose from the hole, full of the metal Jack had tapped. Diana read the amount of metal in the container—12 tonnes! Jack tapped the button again, and the container returned while the display glasses resumed their positions.
"Woah. Nice. But tell me, Jack, why does it seem like your grandfather was an influential person? He is always linked to something major."
Rick Hauston, Jack's grandfather, was a great warrior. He was a Kratian who fought in the Great War. This was the only information the public knew—except perhaps a few Kratian families. What they didn't know was who he truly was.
Rick Hauston, a pure-blooded Kratian warrior, was the commander of the Zeroth Battalion of the United Army. The name wasn't because it was the first battalion of the united force—it was because there were no men under Rick in the battalion. Yes, he was a lone fighter.
Even though he fought alone, he managed to take down seven Xeno battleships by himself, without even borrowing the help of the air force.
He took on a whole Xeno invasion army by himself when they ambushed the safe zone he was in charge of. The number of attackers was multiple folds that of the refugees. Yet, they were defeated. By a single man. Within an hour. How? No one alive knew.
He had a special power called The Authority Over Kana Energy. Some speculated that it was a secret Ikanami. Some thought it was just a bluff and that Rick was simply too adept at using his Ikanami. Whatever the answer was, only he and his close ones knew.
Creta followed a monarchy system, and the Hauston family was the ruler of the Kratians—unrivaled in their prowess. Rick was the crowned prince of the royal family, as his father had died on Creta when their planet was destroyed. Thus, Rick was the king now. However, he allowed the Kratians to have a democratic system and disappeared among the general public.
Jack remembered his grandpa once telling him what he did on the day of the signing of the Co-Existence Pact.
"They asked me to hand over the stuff we got from Creta for supposed research purposes. I rejected them, saying that the Kratian scientists were there to help them with that. There was no need to hand over the last mementos of Creta. When they insisted, I got angry and threatened them, saying, 'You know very well what I can do. We came for peaceful co-existence, but if you are going to act all high and mighty, I will send my people into the solar system for an hour and trample all human lives on this planet myself and start a new era of Kratians.' They got scared and submitted," he told him, laughing.
Jack told all this to Diana. She was amazed by the history of Jack's family.
"Well, aren't you the prince now? Well, Mr. Prince, get a white horse soon, and let's go rescue a Kratian princess in distress," she said teasingly.
"Heh~" Jack said with a smile.
"Huh? What's this? Don't tell me you've found one already," Diana said, raising an eyebrow.
"Who knows?" Jack replied smugly.
They caught each other's gaze and started laughing out loud.
"I haven't found a princess. I have found a queen, as she is already reigning over my heart. You, my queen, are the sole one who will ever sit on the throne of my heart. And me? I will be your knight if I can't be the king—protecting you forever, staying by your side, finding happiness in your happiness." he thought while laughing, watching Diana's mesmerizing laughter.