Ebb and Flow

The footsteps from the group fell upon the mostly-empty room now as they began to walk back toward where they'd come from. As they walked, however, Evie fell into step besides Gustave, the energetic girl looking up at the Major. "Hey. I got a question."

At the suddenneess of the words, the older man gave a small smile, before nodding his head at her. "Very well then. What can I assist you with?" he asked, although he had a fairly good idea to start with what her query might be.

"So you use Summons too. I wanna know- does your Summon normally look like a big, crazy, wild Beast thing or is that something you did to make it look that way?" she asked, cocking her head to the side even as they walked. She gestured back to Mr. Woodhead who stomped along behind them. "He's kind of big."

The older fellow smiled at her, reaching up to stroke at his short, wiry beard for a moment as he considered it. "Generally speaking, it is something that will come with time and practice. Your Summon's innate form, that is, what it looks like right now, comes from within and that cannot be changed. That is where the Summon will fight at its most effective. But you can, with practice, change their appearance and what they can bring to the proverbial table."

In front of them, Ted frowned, glancing back over his shoulder. He was also a Life Framework, but he didn't have the same Summons that Evie did. All the same, he was still interested in the topic. "Why would...you ever Summon it differently? If it is...at its best in its...innate form?" he asked, mostly curious to the answer from an experienced Soldier.

"A grand question. Aside from the element of surprise, as I've just done against the lot of you, sometimes the Summon's innate form simply isn't a good fit for the enemies you are attempting to fight. Using a more specialized Summon can, even if the Summon itself isn't as strong, make the flow of battle surely flow in your favor."

At that, Evie gave a loud sound of thought, stroking her jaw a bit as she turned around while walking, keeping perfect pace despite now walking backwards as she looked at Mr. Woodhead. "Hey!" she said, pointing a finger at it. "Can you turn your hand into a sword?" the green-eyed girl asked, curious if the Summon would just adjust itself because she asked it to.

The creature paused its footsteps as the puppet-like Summon lifted up its hand to look at it in confusion. It seemed to be concentrating on it, but even as it did there were no changes, the hand simply staying just as it was. After a few seconds it lowered the hand and looked to Evie before shaking its head slowly.

At the display, Gustave laughed softly. "Such is the way. You will learn with time and practice. But until that point comes, you will need to learn how to best bring out the abilities of your Summon with the power it has currently. That will help you the most to begin with," he spoke, nodding to the young woman, before he paused at a shadowed corner near the doorway. "Here we are."

Sasha frowned. "Are you going to tell me that you've got another secret doorway hidden right there?" she asked, and the older fellow merely turned back and winked, leading to the woman moving her hand up to her face in an exasperated sigh.

Wesley smiled placatingly, patting her on the shoulder as he moved past, stepping into the room that Gustave opened for them. It was considerably smaller than the previous one, and it also had a single pad in it, as opposed to the five. "This seems to be something a bit less structured," Wes noted as he looked inside. "The equipment seems newer."

"These are generally used for the Military, rather than the new recruits. Although extremely rare, sometimes the Framework of someone can change after extreme mental duress, and so there are some of these in each Training Camp just in case. It's a rare enough occurrence that these don't see a lot of use, but all the same, they're nice to have." He gestured to the pad then, looking to Wes. "I am not certain what you want to test, but the two of you seem to have something in your thoughts, so if you wouldn't mind..?"

The young man nodded in response to the question before he moved up to the pad, unsure what would have changed, if anything, within him. But he couldn't shake the thought that he had something new and different that he could apply, and he needed to just have it verified in some way.

Gustave handled the technological instruments, prepping the system before allowing it to proceed. There was a dull humming sound that came from the machine, much like the other. Thankfully as there was only one of them firing up instead of four, Wesley didn't feel like his brain was rattling around in his skull from the system.

As he looked up at the screen, he could feel the system reading his Framework as it had before, and it didn't take long for numbers to start appearing on the screen. As they did, he heard a noise from Theodore, and he imagined the young man's hypothesis, as he'd said, was correct.

Life: 8% | Death: 0% | Time: 5% | Space: 0%

Code: 08L00D05T00S

Wesley looked up at the screen in a measure of both confusion and interest, before he glanced back down to his hands. The faint grey energy emerged once more as if on command, wrapping steadily around his fingers before he turned to look at Gustave, who was watching him with extreme curiosity. "I don't know what that means," he said, gesturing back to the screen. "How can I have a Framework of less than one-hundred percent?"

At that, he heard a small laugh from Jay, and he glanced over at his brother. "I don't know what the big deal is, bro. You already waltzed up before with nothing in your Framework. Less than a hundred is pretty much your style," the boy commented, and Wesley frowned, looking back down at his hands, the grey energy starting to flicker and fade a bit.

"Well it seems like...you took some of Gustave's Framework?" Sasha asked, reaching up to scratch her head. "Or something? Why doesn't it show the Space Framework you got from me?" She pointed up to the screen, where it showed the Space showing at zero percent still.

Wesley frowned as he looked at the screen for a moment, before his eyes opened a little wider. "It was when I touched your shoulder again. When you felt that warmth? I must have somehow given the Framework back to you. Maybe that's the Process Energy Skill?" he asked, not really having an answer on his own.

"It's...difficult to say, but that may be the case," Ted spoke, the young man's tone quiet as he considered things over in his mind. "The question becomes... what else can you do...with that processed energy?"

Evie stepped forward, pointing her finger at Wes. "You need to give that back to Major Gustave," she spoke, having decided that the older fellow was a friend, it seemed. "That's not fair if you just take it."

"I was not going to bring that up," Gustave spoke, a small, calm smile on his face, "but what she says is quite true. If it were a Beast that you had stolen the Framework from, I would not have any hesitation in allowing you to keep it. However, I am on the front lines much as you all be after your training. And if I were to be without some of my Framework, I would not wish to think on what the consequences would be."

While Wes knew that this was the right thing to do, he had a thought flit through his mind that it was somehow "his" that he had earned through combat. He dismissed the thought as childish immediately as it came into his mind, and he instead turned, nodding to the older fellow. "All right," he agred, extending a hand out toward Gustave.

The grey energy appeared again, but it seemed almost silvery, rather than the dull, toneless grey that he had been utilizing before. He hadn't noticed it when he had put his hand on Sasha's shoulder, but he had a lot of other things that were going on. At the moment instead, he pressed his hand against the older Soldier's forearm, and immediately felt a stinging, biting cold that lanced through his fingers and up his arm. It didn't hurt quite as bad as it had when he had used Devour Energy... but the cold still numbed him to his core.

Wes panted, taking a step back away as he tried to get the feeling back in his arm. Gustave looked down at his forearm. "How...curious," the older Soldier spoke, looking at Wes, an unreadable expression replacing his usual cheery demeanor.