Azazel snickered at her plaintive groans of annoyance and returned to his paperwork. This small incident had almost given him an excuse to ditch work but Shemhazai was a persistent bugger and insisted he take some work with him.
He also spent his time pondering on the conundrum that was Junichiro. The kid literally had no way to know what he knew. Where did that information come from? What else did he know? What secrets were squirreled away in his brain? Not for the first time, Azazel wished he could read minds.
A few hours later, Junichiro once more began to stir. His mind came online much faster this time so the moment his eyes opened he was looking at the stump that used to be his right arm. He moved his right shoulder and watched the stump move through the air with a sort of morbid fascination. It was so surreal to him. According to his perception, he'd had a perfectly functional arm just a few minutes ago. Now, there was nothing there and it was so weird.
A detached part of his mind was pretty certain he was in a state of shock, denial, or something similar that kept him from truly processing what it was he was seeing. Despite that, silent tears trickled from his eyes as a part of his mind processed his loss. Soon that loss coalesced within his conscious mind and became sadness. Though not for long as his sadness quickly morphed into anger and finally into rage.
His life had never been easy, even before he started living alone on the streets. Still, he'd always done everything in his power to survive, to move forward, to get what he needed to not just live, but to thrive! His Artificing had given him the edge he'd needed to become anything he desired. It gave him not just the illusion of power, but the promise that with time and effort he would truly become powerful. That he could earn his strength through his own blood, sweat, and tears, that he had the potential to stand at the top of the world.
Now he felt as if that potential had been irrevocably damaged. He needed both of his arms. Losing his left arm would have been bad enough.
Running all of his equipment required two hands to be done properly. But losing his right arm? His dominant arm? That wasn't just bad, it was career ending. He couldn't even begin listing the many things that would suffer from the loss of his arm that were required to make anything functional.
It was too much and he let the world know of his agony and anger by screaming at the top of his lungs. He put every last emotion he could feel thrumming through his being into his shout. He poured everything he had lost into the sound and let it all out in the only way he knew how to.
The world felt all the more silent when the screaming faded away into nothing.
It was only a short time later that the door to the room opened once more and Mittelt, in all her gothic lolita glory, walked into the room, "Well, at least this time you didn't faint."
A part of him wanted to deny that he had every fainted in his entire life. Fainting was just not something a 'man' would ever do! Except, he also couldn't bring himself to care that he had fainted and couldn't muster the energy to even try denying it.
Instead he looked at Mittelt with his dull unfocused eyes, "Were you the one to save me?"
He asked because he remembered seeing the horribly burnt and managed body of the fish faced creature rising up from the flames. How it survived was beyond his understanding so he chalked it up to a combination of determination and physiology. The thing had just plain been tougher than he had imagined, simple as that.
In answer to his question, Mittelt nodded, "I did. I was still within the city getting the lay of the land since I'm going to be spending a fair amount of time here. I was only a few blocks away when you sent up the emergency signal so I arrived near instantly. You did a hell of a number on that stray devil before I got there. It took zero effort to finish her off and rescue you from the burning building. Hell, I don't know what you did but I barely even had to bandage you up."
She gestured to the heart rate monitor, EEG, and nutrient drip, "Azazel came pretty quickly and we got you hooked up to some machines. He said whatever you did to save yourself took a lot of chemical energy from your body leaving you dehydrated and starving. You went through eight nutrient bags last night."
Even as she was speaking, Junichiro's stomach let out a rumble that demanded it be fed. He nodded his understanding of the situation and ignored his stomach, for now, "The scroll I used to stop the bleeding greatly accelerated my natural healing. That energy and the necessary nutrients for cell growth had to come from somewhere