"You are finally here! I've been waiting for ages. Well at least my calculations were correct and you came in the end..."
The voice sounded exhausted and tired while calmly rambling on. Ren didn't know how to respond or whether it made sense to respond at all, since it was a video she was watching and not an actual person standing in front of her.
The girl in the screen continued on with her rambling about how she has been waiting and taking care of matters here. Reverie assumed she meant the person in the coffin when she said 'matters' as she kept listening.
At long last the girl addressed her again.
"However I am surprised to see you came with company...In my predictions you were alone..." the woman said and Reverie's face paled in shock. This wasn't a video recording she was watching, it was an actual live stream. But how was that possible? She knew there was no internet here, so how?
While many questions floated in her mind she decided to talk to the person herself.
"WHO ARE YOU?!" she sounded more agitated and stressed than she intended and her voice came out louder than planned.
The white haired girl stayed silent. Reverie grew more agitated with each passing second and at last broke the silence.
"Tell me! I know this isn't a recording and it's somehow live streamed even though I have absolutely no clue how. Just answer me already, who are you?! And you were waiting for me? Why? What do you mean by you calculated all this?!"
The questions poured out of her like water and the girl in the screen listened silently. The silence was so loud ,the only sound came from Michael gulping. He had approached the pc after he heard the voice for the first time, out of curiousity of who it might be. Of course , he didn't recognize the person in the screen and just silently observed the spectacle.
*sigh*
"Fine. I will answer some of your questions, for the rest you need to find the answers yourself. Time will tell you in most cases." The voice said clearly annoyed but still calm.
*sigh*
Now the sigh came from Reverie, clearly exhausted from this tiring exchange. She didn't expect the person opposite from her to be this stubborn but she accepted it in the end.
"Fine. I take what I get." she said in response.
Michael looked between the screen and Ren's face several times, thinking that these two woman were similar somehow in their way of speaking. Yet he kept quiet and kept observing.
"First; I can't tell you who I am as of yet. You will know when the time comes. The reason is quite simple, but if I were to tell you ,you would figure it out immediately and then it would have the exact effect I'm trying to avoid. Second; I've laid all the stones for todays encounter several decades ago. I knew you would come here sooner or later and set this laboratory up, so you would be able to meet 'her'"
The girl pointed to the coffin with her index finger and both companions looked in the direction pointed. So whoever was in there was a woman, Ren thought.
"Anything else?" Reverie asked expectantly.
"Indeed. The woman laying in there is not human. Or not anymore" she paused to let the words sink in for the two companions.
Michael looked pale, he was wondering what kind of monster was inside there if it's not human anymore. A zombie?! A mummy?! The more he thought about it the paler his skin got.
Before he could start talking about his weird ideas the voice continued.
"A long time ago this woman was your best friend. She was half dead when you found her back then and you nursed her back to health. However she was in a way more critical state than you thought and you made a very hard decision. With the best professionals on earth, way too much money and alot of recovery time, you were able to fully restore her body. She recovered fast due to the nano technology and adapted even faster to her new body. Back then you were sure she would hate you for making that decision for her, but you were willing to accept her feelings ,as long as she would be alive. And to your surprise she never hated you for it. She even thanked you and pledged eternal loyalty to you. This brings us to the present. Her name is M.I.Y.U or Multi Intelligent Yggdrasil Unit. She's a cyborg and she's been waiting for you to come. Miyu is probably the only person you can ever fully trust, so don't forget that.
Now then, enough idle chatter, I'll unlock the seal for the coffin now. We will meet again"
With that the girl vanished from the screen. It distorted like before and turned back to the desktop, as if the stream never happened.
A loud click could be heard from the coffin and the lid slowly moved away, revealing the naked body of a woman.
Miyu was tall and of slender but mascular statue. She had a body every stage model would fawn over and her long blueish silver hair glimmered in the transluscent fluid she lay in.
Her eyes were closed, as if she was in a deep slumber.
Reverie and Michael carefully approached the coffin to peak inside.
Michael seemingly excited about seeing a cyborg in reality, stared at the woman in the coffin. Ren quickly covered his eyes with her hands and told him to wait at the back.
The boy wasn't happy about that but he quietly retreated to the back of the room and watched from afar.
Reverie took off her coat and waited for the girl to wake up. Now that the seal was broken, she should awake soon she thought and watched her carefully.
She had long lashes and defined facial shapes. She certainly was a pretty woman and Ren caught herself admiring Miyu's beauty.
The eyes of the woman quivered slightly, as they slowly opened. She stretched out her arms and pulled herself up from the railing of the coffin.
With a loud splash sound the girl rose up from the fluid filled coffin.
Drops of the fluid rolled down her face, hair and body and she slowly turned her head to Reverie.
The two girls quietly gazed at each other and with a slight nod from Reverie, Miyu stood up.
Cables and tubes, that were connected to her neck and back cut off and fell back into the coffin.
Ren gave her the coat to cover the girls body , to prevent her from freezing , also to keep a certain premature boys eyes away from staring.
Miyu gave a soft smile to Reverie and hugged her, as if trying to make sure the girl in her arms was really the one she had been waiting for all this time.
Ren returned the hug a little awkwardly and the two stayed in that position for awhile before parting again.
It was Miyu who broke the silence first and addressed the girl opposite from her.
"It's been awhile, Alyssa" she said and Ren looked confused at her.
"My name is Reverie..." she said and Miyus eyes wavered a little at her response.
"Ah that's right, my bad. Apologies. How have you been?" she returned in a soft manner.
"Well... to be fair I have absolutely no memories of you or my life from before nineteen years ago, but I hope we can be friends regardless..." Reverie stuttered in a low voice. She felt ashamed about that and lowered her head.
Miyu shook her head in response, giggling away. With her index finger, she raised up the girls face and smiled gently at her.
"There's nothing to feel bad about. I know why you erased your memories back then, it is also why I've been laying here, waiting"
Reveries eyes slightly opened in surprise, she had finally met someone who knew about the past, aside from the bunny plush, who wouldn't tell her a thing. Maybe, just maybe she would be able to get answers from her ,she thought.
But her excitement didn't last for long.
"I'm sorry, I know what you want to ask me, but I promised you back then to never speak about it, unless you find your memories again yourself." Miyu said regretfully.
Reverie cursed her old self more than anything at that very moment. Why would her past self get in the way of her current self? It was the past after all, things were different now ,she thought but she couldn't be more wrong. Yet she didn't know about that yet. The past clearly affected the present and future but she wasn't aware of it at that moment.
Reverie gulped down her anger and looked at Michael, who was standing at the back watching and waiting to be called over.
She gave the boy a quick nod and he excitedly ran over to them.
"AHHHHH HELLO!!! I'M MICHAEL! NICE TO MEET YOU! PLEASE PLEASE CAN WE BE FRIENDS?!" the boy shouted at Miyu and she laughed in response.
"Of course ! It would be my pleasure!"
The boy jumped up in joy and hugged her, he was overjoyed to have met a cyborg in reality. They might have lived at a time where robots and cyborgs weren't that much of a big thing in theory, but cyborg projects were officially seen a moral dilemma. But behind the scenes, there were quite a few illegal projects regarding them, governmentally funded, nonetheless.
So in short, while Michael has seen quite a fair share of robots in his life, who even lived a normal citizen life ,he never saw a cyborg.
Both girls could understand his excitement and smiled at him happily.
Miyu quickly caught onto the gentle look Reverie gave the boy and realized, that these two shared a familiar bond, just like brother and sister. She was happy to see that her best friend had opened up enough to let people close.
In the past ,Reverie was known for being a loner and not trusting anyone, except Miyu. It wasn't always like that back then, but ever since a certain incident she closed herself off. It was one of the reasons, why she erased her memories and scattered the pieces of them all over time and space.
The new person in front of her was both familiar and a stranger to her, but she loved her regardless.
Reverie noticed the gaze from Miyu and turned with a questioning look in her eyes.
"Is something the matter?" she asked and Miyu only shook her hand in response.
The two girls shared a moment of silence ,when Michael cut in with his voice.
"Well I don't know much but I think we have done what we came here for, right?" he asked and Ren nodded.
She took out the pocket mirror and demanded some warm clothes for Miyu from Mr bunny, who obediently listened.
Miyu dressed herself in a set of black pants with short black boots and chaps (usually used in horse riding, they are leg covers, that go over the boots and up to the knee and are extremely tight and thick). She wore a white blouse with a ribbon around her neck. A thigh long dark purple coat covered her arms and shoulders and her hair just fell loosely on her back.
Of course she dried herself up properly before getting dressed and Michael was made to wait outside for them to finish.
While Miyu got dressed, Ren checked on her wounds, she hasn't pushed herself too much but she knew, that her wounds weren't fully healed yet. They didn't look infected and she sighed in relief. She would be able to keep going this way.
The two girls grabbed anything important from the documents in the shelves and saved them in the pocket mirror, then they joined Michael, who was waiting outside the room for them.
"Let's go, to Gilbert and back to our world"
-to be continued-