"Hweeh?" Ester blankly woke up from his self induced coma atop the hard stone floor, his mind foggy from what had been happening.
Clutching his head, a sudden headache struck his head like a sledgehammer with a sudden dry wind rushed through his throat.
"Vwhaaattt... Happened?" Voice slurring as Ester's half awake mind tried to process his surroundings, he moved the blanked off of his body and tried to recall what had happened yesterday.
"I just remember making some calculations... when did I faint?"
Hand using the table as a support, Ester clutched his forehead.
The cool touch of metal instantly alleviating most of his headache, Ester instantly realized what it was he was missing.
"The Arm, Where's the arm!?"
Eyes snapping wide awake, Ester's eyes hurriedly scanned the room he was in, only noticing that the calculations that were extremely prominent in his memories had been neatly rearranged atop a table top.
Tearing his eyes from the many stacked pieces of paper that reached his height with the aid of the table, Ester soon landed his eyes onto Eva's half dead figure.
Blanket hugging her figure, her short brown hair gently cascaded over her face as she lay there on the ground with drool coming out of her mouth.
Absentmindedly rubbing the saliva from his own mouth, Ester stared at Eva's body hoping to find the arm nestled in the protective embrace of her large assets.
At the least he would be relieved at the fact that the arm that they worked so hard on was in the protection of the most violently inclined person her knew.
'Not there.'
Staring at Eva sleeping peacefully on the ground, Ester couldn't help but notice how the blanket hugged her body, revealing many of its curves.
But that wasn't the focus point despite Eva being drop dead gorgeous to Ester's eyes.
'Shut up and focus on the crux of the matter.'
Slapping his face with both hands, Ester felt the sensation through his metallic palm as he continued his previous search of the room, now making a point to stare at any place other than Eva.
'Now where the hell are you?'
Left hand raking his hair, Ester stared in a rising tension as he continued to search the room.
Moving past the stacks upon stacks of paper and observing the tower of yellowish brown, he came to the conclusion that it wasn't on the table where he last recalled it was.
Turning around his eyes scanned the rest of the room, gray eyes carefully and meticulously looking for anything vaguely arm shaped that wasn't near Eva's half dead body.
'Is that? No it's not.'
Moving towards a pair of Aether Wrenches arranged in the skeletal form of a bone, Ester scratched his head in confusion as he couldn't find any sign of the mechanical arm anywhere.
'...Did we leave it in the forging room?'
Opening the doorway to the forging room, instead of the blast of heat from the open forge like he expected, Ester was only met with the same cool wind of a similar temperature room.
Blinking, Ester ignored the fact that the forge had had its flame snuffed out and instead turned to the many crucibles, anvils, and other forging devices scattered around the room.
The remnants of a forging process making itself known all over the forge, Ester now knew for a fact that he wasn't insane and they actually made the arm.
'The question is where in the pits of tartarus is it?'
Seeing as there were still the numerous moulds piled next to the forge tap with bits of metal stuck to their sides, having cooled into small spiky bits, Ester just had the question ring constantly in his mind.
'No seriously, where the hell is it?'
Confusion prominent on his face, Ester held his head with both hands and stared at the surroundings.
'The Hammers are still in the bucket with grime on them so I know we forged with them, the question remains on where the hell the arm went.'
Knowing how ridiculous it was for the culmination of a twenty hour straight work to go to waste, Ester desperately combed through the forging room for the arm.
Even resorting with looking into the smelter and separator for the arm, Ester blinked as a voice echoed into his ears.
"Ester...? What are you doing?"
Turning around, Ester caught sight of a tired Eva holding the blanket around their shoulders while rubbing their grey eyes.
Shaking the brown strips of hair out of her eyes, Eva yawned into the crooks of her palm.
"Why are you in the forging room?"
"..." Pausing, he wondered how to break the fact to her before slowly raising his hands.
"Now don't panic Eva but..."
"I might have lost the arm." "You got the arm stuck on your shoulder?"
"What?" "Hm?"
Voices overlapping, their brain finally processed each others words before Eva burst into a face splitting grin while Ester's face flushed a crimson red.
Blood rushing to his head, Ester crouched to the ground and placed both of his hands to his face.
His one metal left hand cooling his burning face, Eva burst into unrestrained laughter as she fell onto the ground from the overwhelming laughter.
"HAH! How'd you forget that you didn't even have an arm in the first place!?"
Wiping the tears from her eyes, Eva choked. "My lungs!"
"..."
"I'M Dying!?"
Choking on her own spittle, Ester gave Eva a stare that would've killed her if glares could kill.
Shoving past her convulsing body as she laughed on the ground, Ester resisted the urge to bonk her head with a heavy fist of metal.
He didn't resist the urge to bonk her head with a heavy fist made of flesh though.
*Bonk!
"Ow!?"
"Will you please just shut up for a moment?"
Rubbing her head with a pout, Eva smirked at Ester while getting up from the ground. "Sure Ester, it really is fun- I'll shut up now."
Hearing the implied message as Ester raised his left fist, she covered her mouth.
Moving to the table Ester picked up one of the top pieces of parchment and waved it towards Eva.
"Now then, once you've finished laughing at my early stage dementia, can you please tell me what had happened yesterday?"
Rubbing her forehead, Eva took a seat besides Ester and took another piece of paper before speaking. "Kinda, do you?"
"Vaguely."
"Who do you think placed the arm onto me?"
"You... didn't put it onto your shoulder and forget?" Raising an eyebrow, Ester shook his head.
"I'm pretty sure I would've felt a pinch when the arm bonded to me, so no, and on that note." Ester snapped his left finger causing Eva's eyes to widen. "I'm pretty sure that I'm not even supposed to feel anything through my left arm am I not?"
"...Are we just going to skip over the fact that your left hand is somehow flexible enough and respondent enough to snap your fingers?"
"Are we going to skip over the fact that I can literally feel my fingers snapping despite it not actually being a part of my arm?"
"You can feel sensation through your arm?"
"Yep."
"Wow." Touching Ester's silver colored bicep, causing him to flinch slightly.
"It feels really weird though"
"Oh, sorry." Moving her chair so that her face was now directly parallel to his shoulder, she tapped it. "So you can feel that?"
"Strangely enough yes."
"Wow." Blinking in awe, she then turned to the three stacks of people height parchment papers then spoke. "What the in the Void did we do last night?"
"I honestly don't even know or remember."
"...Want to try and understand?"
"Maybe? Just looking at it is giving me a headache."
"It doesn't hurt to try right? And surely it isn't more complicated than the communicator we built for the engine cleaning right? Most of the papers we see probably aren't even the glyph scheme in the first place, nevermind the blueprint for the arm."
"That... is true."
Turning to look at the stack of paper, he tapped the top of it.
"So... should we get to it?"
"You do that." Adjusting her shirt so that it was now properly covering her shoulders and wasn't revealing as much skin as it was she continued. "ANd while you do that, I'm going to get one of the runners to bring some food for us because, I for one, am starving."
"Get me it in the form of that sandwich thing the Pope talks about a lot."
"No cheese?"
"None of it."
"Got it, so much cheese until you vomit."
"I shall kill you."
"And I shall live."
Ending their little banter, Ester watched Eva saunter away to the communication line directed into the kitchens Ester cracked his knuckle and stared at the towering stacks of parchment paper.
"Welp, let's get to it."
---
Five hours before the duo woke from their self imposed coma.
"..." The pale man rubbed his chin while staring at the arm in mild apprehension.
Directing his gaze to the arm and to the children sleeping besides the arm, he ignored the numerous pages floating around the room rearranging themselves into three tall piles of parchment paper.
"...This is vexing."
Having analyzed the entire arm from its physical portions to the metaphysical portions of it, the arm could be summed up as one thing.
A singularity.
Most Spliced Armaments in the universe like the additional arms on the back of his old friend were like tools.
Tools that could be controlled with the mind, but tools nevertheless, they could get close to being something inherently a part of the body, but they could never get over the distinction of a tool and an integral part of the body.
But this arm?
'An impossibility...'
Like the Aether Devouring Blackholes that were theorised but never proven to bring the aether back to the weave in a balancing act, it was a gateway to a world previously untouched by all the sentient races of the universe.
The difference between a normal splicer armament and this impossibility not even produced by the central powers was like the sun and moon.
On the surface it was similar, but the difference was about a million times.
'The central powers- no, the whole universe is going to go rabid if they discover them.'
Tapping his feet against the floor, the pale man rubbed his face while wondering just what in the seven voids did the old man dump onto his shoulders.
'...I swear to the architects I should never trust that man.'
Now cursing the old man for taking the much worse looking option on paper which was actually the best one in reality, the pale man silently stared at the duo sleeping on the ground.
And with it, he couldn't help but think.
'Should I just kill them? All of the problems would go away if I do.'
A brief shadow covering his eyes as he pondered on that question, the arm on the table briefly flashed with a blue light, catching the pale man's attention as it brought him out of his murderous mindset.
Staring at the brightly glistening arm that seemed to react to his murderous intent, the pale man felt his murderous intent ebb away like the tide.
'...I'm losing control over myself nowadays, killing children is crossing the line.'
Rubbing his face in agony as guilt eroded his soul at the thought of murdering two children over past habits, the pale man clenched his fists.
Snapping his fingers, three strands of white instantly manifested themselves and burrowed into the arm.
'But better safe than sorry.'
Sinking into the silvery colored metal, two hands soon held up the arm and brought it to the one armed teenage boy on the floor.
Blue light shining brightly, the pale man watched as the arm swiftly bonded to the boys arm as if an integral part of him.
'They're definitely going to go feral over these two.'
Watching the arm seamlessly meld with the metal alrea part of his flesh, the pale man rubbed his face before briskly walking out of the room.
Closing the door behind him, the pale man let out a long sigh.
"With this and the thing that the old fool showed me, I feel as if large waves are going to soon cross the universe."
+++
Drank straight vinegar on sunday and had the worst day of my life on monday
Tree