That man... He's coming home.

"Oh yeah remember how your father was awarded a personal shield for his achievements?" mum asks finally changing the subject albeit it still involves that man and his achievements at that. As much as I find this sickening I don't really have a choice so I just go along with her nonsense.

"Yeah I remember. He was really proud of that mission but never really cared about the shield itself despite using it all the time." I said trying to drudge up these painful memories. I mean the shield itself isn't at fault but it sure makes it harder to kill the man. Probably a good thing for most people but he apparently doesn't need it.

"Yeah, he is that kind of man" She says with an almost child-like excitement in her eyes. It almost looks like she sees that man as her prince charming. That look quickly fades however as she once again turns to me this time with a sort of smug air about her.

"Well I had this client yesterday that I've been priming for a looooong time and guess what? I finally got him to give me one. Now I have my own personal shield." She declares before holding the little square-like object up like a badge of honour. It's appearance lends itself to the title as well, being in a similar shape as such a badge and shining in an opulent black and gold colour scheme.

My first thought is what a pain in the- but before I can even finish the thought she continues bragging and I have to sit here while she continues to talk about how hard of a job it was to tease a whole personal shield out of one of her clients. She didn't go into the particularly graphic parts of her story in any detail but I can already tell she did some serious work to get it. Among the mix of emotions I feel while seeing her bragging is certainly similar to 'good for her she worked hard'. Though of course that's not the only emotion I'm feeling neither are they all positive.

Regardless I had to listen to her bragging for so long in fact that by the time she was done we both were finished with our food and I headed to my room before hopping into my pod and pressing the button to close the pod around me.

At that moment a refreshing stress-relieving scent permeated the pod and a calm whisper like voice said some indistinct nonsense trying to ease me into sleep. Unfortunately I was a little too worked up for the pod to do anything today and so I stayed tossing and turning for quite some time, thinking about how the information I got today changed my plans before finally getting to sleep.

The next morning I once again got out of my bed lazily as I do every morning. Opening up the pod, I shamble out like a zombie, my head still low and my eyes still half-closed. After making all the preparations for the day I'm supposed to in the bathroom, I head towards the door still shambling albeit with a little more precision this time.

Opening the door to the base room my hazy eyes once again scan the room before heading to the kitchen door. Opening it up and heading straight towards the cupboards filled with different foods and materials to make them.

I decide this time I'll just have the machine decide for me, so I head to the cooking apparatus I always use and poke one of the buttons on the side of it that says rand. Next thing there's a little flash in the middle of the machine and a drum roll plays for a little while before a fanfare sound rings out across the kitchen and I open the door to find a bowl filled with assorted wheat based cereals with a bit of meat in them.

Not my favourite I have to admit but still a better pull than most. I ponder why people would implement such a feature in these machines deliberately but quickly realise there are a lot of people who must be bored enough to randomise their breakfast like I do and they probably have big enough pockets to incentivise the inventors of the machine to make such a feature.

Regardless I head out the kitchen and to the table with my meat-wheat combo food and sit at the table in the base room with my food. Munching on said food while contemplating my plans for the day is my typical routine but even thinking about the plans for today makes me annoyed and a little scared.

So I just think about the changes I can make in my robot at the junkyard. With my new part it will certainly require a bit of experimenting but I can't wait to test out the new features of my robot when I can put it all together.

I continue daydreaming until eventually I reach for my bowl and find only a few crumbs brushing against my fingertips. Annoyed I look down only to find that my bowl is empty and I have nothing left to chew on. Which obviously means I have to face reality now. Well at least nothing will happen until later so I may as well make later a longer time from now than it should be.

With that thought I once again prepare to head out. First I have to grab some clothes. Even though the pod will change you into pyjamas automatically it won't change you into actual clothes with similar autonomy. Apparently you can set it to do as such but my model doesn't have that function and installing it would cost a fortune so I opted out.

Regardless I open the door to my room and look around for somewhere I can find clothes. My old clothes get stored in my pod automatically but I can't really consciously wear the same clothes two days in a row.

If I just went to sleep in my clothes I could wear the same clothes until I started to notice the smell but as soon as I take them off I realise I probably shouldn't for hygiene reasons. Going through the small amount of extra effort to get new clothes seems suddenly more worth it when you've already changed out of the socially acceptable ones I was previously wearing.

So I look around my room almost forgetting the place where I store my clothes that aren't in the pod. I mean I rarely use it but to the left of my pod against the wall is a set of drawers. They are seemingly metallic in their construction given the reflection on their surface and yet they are the same annoying white that the rest of my furniture is.

With the exception of the desk for my computer of course which is just some random wood. That definitely sticks out like a sore thumb now that I think about it but it's not like anyone but me comes here so what do I care?

Anyway I head to the metallic but apparently not metal drawers and open the top left drawer. The arrangement of the draws by the way looks a bit like a smiley face if you have enough imagination. There are two drawers at the top of the cabinet looking thing and the handles on them could be misconstrued for pupils with the fact that they are black on white and round like a doorknob.

Then under those is a massive drawer. It takes up nearly the whole horizontal length of the cabinet part of the drawers. This one is also white with two handles but the handles in these cases are though still round they are closer to rings than doorknobs.

Regardless I pull out the top left drawer by the knob and inside are a bunch of T-shirts, socks, pants. All small stuff folded up so it can fit into the drawer. The organisation looks haphazard and frankly it is but at least I folded them. It's not like I just threw them in there or anything and no one should expect more from me.

Annoyed I'm justifying such pointless things to myself, I grab some random pair of jeans and T-Shirt as well as a few underclothes and a new pair of socks before closing the drawer. The jeans are your typical blue colour and though they're frayed on the edges it only looks like a fashion statement and is in actuality just a sign of how frequently I used them.

The T-Shirt on the other hand is completely pitch black. They remind me quite a bit of mother's wings really. Not sure whether I would consider that pleasant or the opposite but at the very least it's not so bad that I would refuse to wear the shirt because of this fact.

I take off my current pyjamas and fold them up before putting them on top of the drawers to remind me to put them in the washing when I leave the room. Then I put on the new clothes and open the bigger drawer underneath the two at the top while I'm at it.

This results in the drawer opening to reveal a set of jumpers, jackets and other such clothes. They're not necessarily something I wear every day but given the climate here I tend to wear hoodies more often than not. Perhaps it's more of a fashion statement than anything though as I've heard our climate is fairly good from most who visit here as tourists.

Regardless I grab a red hoodie with white accents and place it over the clothes I just put on before grabbing the clothes I placed on top of the drawers and heading out of my room. Once in the base room I head to the corner and just dump my clothes there. It's not like I'm just scattering them in random places this is where mum tells me to put my clothes when I need them washing and when she wakes up she'll likely get to it.

Once I'm done with that I head to the door of the house and look back for a second imagining the scene when I get back home. I can just see mum sitting at that table with… Shaking my head to rid my mind of the image and hopefully maintain my sanity before I deal with potentially lethal weapons I open the door to the outside world and head to my usual haunt.

A quick jaunt through the grav-tube and a walk long enough to be considered a hike later I find myself in front of the junkyard once more. This time however there is a slight issue. The place is crawling with junklads. It's not so bad that I can't avoid them but it's certainly more difficult than usual to get to my home.

Regardless after a few incidents of hiding from these new guards and just generally avoiding areas with high concentrations of them I eventually make it to my little home. I quickly open the door with the cube and go inside before shutting it even faster than I opened it.

At this point despite the fact that I know I don't sense anyone near me I'm almost conditioned to hide from them. I mean I had to crawl into a pile of junk a few less than a dozen times before I got here. The sudden increase in security is understandable to a certain extent but where are they getting the personnel.

I mean surely they increased the security on the weapon's depo the most of all areas and yet they still have this much manpower at the edge of the junkyard. This is just ridiculous. A little exhausted from the constant alertness and hiding I had to do to get here. I find a spot in my home that's not covered in weapons or their parts and sit there staring blankly for a few seconds.