Calibration

〔Conurbation Haven〕

〔The Arc〕

=======================================

〔Casern〕

〔2/5/2306 07:27〕

There were too many questions for Dawn to ignore so he stayed wide awake instead of falling into a meditative trance. The night felt like an eternity until he decided to give up on meditating and start his day. However, he was proud of himself to have resisted the temptation of his HUD, on which he could have looked at all kinds of diversions to make the time go faster. His sense of time was irritated and in the windowless room, he had not been able to use the sun as his alarm clock. A look at his HUD showed him the current time within a submenu.

***It's after seven already! I think I've been meditating long enough. Or at least I've been trying long enough… Let's see what's on the agenda today.***

On his HUD his schedule was displayed, which was automatically updated by his superiors via the HMD Network and his own Neuro Feed.

"PhD Shen Hualing Case Completion〘0800〙

"Audience with the Council 〘1300〙

Full of verve, Dawn propped himself up from the cross-legged seat in which he held out the night stiff as a board and joyfully threw open the door. In the living room, there was already a lot of hustle and bustle and since everyone was already dedicating themselves to their tasks, Dawn's entrance was only noticed after he made himself heard with a slight cough.

Jo lay on the couch and strained her eyes to look at a Dawn. That morning she only wore a men's shirt with the letters Seal Class 229, which Dawn concluded was Erik's. Underneath, she had only worn skimpy panties so that her shapely rosy thighs looked out. Her shiny hair was still uncombed and she had pinched her eyes as if she could not yet stand the light.

If Dawn was still human, he would have blushed at that sight.

Even though he didn't, Jo noticed his embarrassment. "At least I'm wearing clothes, unlike you pervert!" she slurred with a smile.

Dawn was petrified and quickly looked away as if he had overheard her comment.

"She's obnoxious when she has a hangover. They shouldn't be allowed to sell alcohol to children" said Erik, who calmly sipped a large cup of coffee with a T-shirt aptly labeled "The Boss".

"What were you doing yesterday after I went to bed?" Dawn asked his Sergeant.

"Zero and I have recovered Jo's lost money," Erik laughed and offered Zero a fist bump.

Zero added, "Gambling is too easy when you can do 3 billion calculations per second."

Then JP added, "They would have let Erik win anyway for fear."

"Nobody messes with Sergeant Erik Baker by choice" Erik approved and devoted himself again to his coffee.

"Who was the man you had dinner with yesterday, JP. He was creepy as f**k" Dawn said.

"That was Parzival. He works for ATLAS, Haven's Intelligence."

"That means he's not part of HMD?"

"We work together, but he has a direct line to the council. He was created as one of a million clones in the Nano War, and now he's one of the top ten" JP explained.

"That says a lot about him. He must be one tough cookie."

"The toughest."

Shortly thereafter Shen Hualing arrived, who approached Dawn in fasciation and brushed over his armor keeping a close eye on every single weapon system. "Excellent. You are my Magnum Opus." Then she instructed Dawn to lie down on his bed where she could make further improvements on him.

There she put on a microscope visor and gently touched over Dawn's face with her smooth fingertips. She whispered, "It's time to finish your head." From her suitcase, she took a tube of a viscous white substance "This is genetically engineered spider silk. In a moment, you will look like a real human again." She carefully set up weaving the threads of the solidifying liquid slowly across his metallic jaw plates.

"Stop! Please wait" Dawn interrupted her concentrated work.

She looked at him in surprise with her slit chocolate brown eyes. "Have I done something wrong?"

"No, nothing at all. It's just that... I'm not a human anymore. I'm something else now. And I'm not ashamed of it. When I'm unfinished, it just reflects how I am inside."

"What?"

Dawn sat down and said clearly and earnestly "I'd rather stay the way I am if that is okay."

"That's your choice, DWN-49. If you change your mind, we can always do it later."

"Thank you. I really appreciate your understanding. And my new name is Dawn" he was relieved.

"Let's calibrate your weapon systems next," Shen Hualing suggested.

"Sounds good to me."

The two of them left Dawn's little chamber again and after explaining everything to Erik, he said "If you need a sparring partner to calibrate, I'd love to be it. But first, we need to go to the dojo."

"The dojo?" Dawn was wondering, before the floorboards started slowly folding so that a steel staircase appeared underneath, leading to an underground sandbox.

"We practice down there?" Dawn was surprised by the secret story.

"It is the only room in our quarters where we can use our weapons" JP explained.

"Unfortunately," Jo added.

Shen Hualing handed Dawn three fist-sized balls with before the test fight. They were coated with shiny silver metal and also contained small built-in lenses. The balls were closed with a tight closure on the top. She put them into three slots on Dawn's chest.

" - - - - - - - - - New weapon received - - - - - - - "

|> Arsenal

|> Universal Hand Grenade v.1.0 HMD Custom Design

|> Category: Explosives

|> Detonation Modes

|> Fragmentation (Adaptive Explosion Radius)

|> Smoke

|> High Explosive Anti-Tank

|> Additional Modes

|> Electrostatic Discharge Pulse

|> Description [show more]

Erik and Dawn descended into the umbrageous room. The sandbox took up most of it, otherwise, there was nothing in it at all. Jo, JP and Shen Hualing watched Erik and Dawn enter the pit from above through the hatch on the floor.

Erik stood right across from Dawn, took off the "Boss"-T-shirt and threw it in a corner of the room to limber up. His body was more muscular than Dawn thought, he had a broad neck and a scar-covered, athletically trained chest and abdominal area. The two were about the same size when they were standing face to face.

***Oof, wouldn't a skeet shooting have been a better idea for testing purposes? I will not be able to use my protocols against him. Without their help, I'm completely defenseless.***

After a while of wordless confrontation, Erik turned to Shen Hualing "Shall we begin?"

She typed something on a set of holograms and nodded.

" - - - Case Calibration initiated - - - "

Erik took off his prosthetic arm and went into a flexible fighting position.

"Isn't that a bit unbalanced?" Dawn asked.

Then Erik answered "Yes, it is" and took the second arm behind his back.

***The guy underestimates me even without my systems. Should I just beat him up now? It's better if I let him have the first move.***

However, Erik only watched Dawn at first and made a challenging hand gesture. "Go on, try and hit me."

"Got it."

Dawn took his first fusion pistol out of a holster on his loins from his case

Without further ado, Dawn pointed his gun forward with both hands to get a clear shot at Erik.

" - - - - SARRMAN-FUSIONCRAFT Dual Pistol 6.0 - - - "

" - - - - - - - Fusion Cores: 25 | Volt Projectiles: 10 - - - - - - "

" - - - - - - - - - - - - - Select Fire Mode- - - - - - - - - - - - - - "

He chose the physical ammunition and fired a couple of shots directly in Erik's direction who evaded all of them almost untraceably fast and moved towards Dawn in a blink of an eye.

***I need my auto-target system so I have a chance against him.***

" - - - - - - - - - - Auto Targetting Mode disabled - - - - - - - - "

***What? I can't even use that? I'm screwed!***