Rogue

Chapter 6

"You're late." Akira huffed at the stout old man and shoved her hands deeper into her hoodie pockets. Well... Izumi's hoodie. He'd been stopping by her room frequently in order to regain her friendship and he ended up leaving a hoodie of his on her floor. Now, in order to spite him, she wore it to their meeting with Kinuta. He definitely didn't pout about his favorite hoodie all the way to the engineering room. Plus, having the hood up meant she could keep her horns out.

    "You can blame my escorts." She jabbed her thumb back at Tachikawa and his team. "So, what's the plan for today?"

    "You claim you can improve our labs," he motioned toward their working stations, "so prove it." The blonde girl moved toward a control station while wrapping her hair into a ponytail. She scanned the boards with her green eyes and took in exactly what she was working with.

    "Blondie," she snapped her fingers in the boys' direction. "Glasses." With a roll of his eyes, Izumi dug her glasses out of his pocket and tossed them to her which she caught flawlessly. The girl quickly situated them on her nose and activated them so she could start planning her redesign. "Uh-huh," she hummed. Akira heavily exhaled through her nose before removing her spectacles and spinning to face Kinuta. "I'll need to make some adjustments before I can modify this place."

    "Like what?" The man crossed his arms, his usual scowl on his face.

    "All of your engineers have safety triggers, correct?" Kinuta nodded as she fiddled with her glasses between her fingertips. "Why don't we use them as a safety key?" She dangled her glasses before him and then dropped them in his hands. "In Aftokrator, these glasses are used by all of the engineers to keep data secret from the public and safe from thieving hands.

    "We can do the same thing here, but with triggers. If you can modify this entire space to operate like your training rooms, it might be possible."

    "What exactly are you planning?"

    "If you step into the engineering room with an active Border trigger, than you can access the lab and its data. It's a safety precaution for intruders. And with that, I can implement my own data to help advance the technology itself. Think of it as me turning your triggers into my glasses."

    She shot him an innocent smile and batted her eyelashes at him.

    "I can have it done by tomorrow." Her smile grew, her lips pulling toward her ears. "Commander Kido wants to see what kind of work you can do on our triggers immediately. He'll be here in less than twenty minutes for a demonstration."

    "A demonstration?" She cocked her brow. "If that's the case, then I'd like to make a compromise. I modify my own trigger and demonstrate it in a battle with Border's strongest."

    "Good luck getting Kido to agree with something like that," he scoffed.

    "Everyone wants to know exactly what I'm capable of anyways. Let's kill two birds with one stone."

    "Wait, wait," Tachikawa put in his two cents. "I think a battle between us would be fun."

    "I wasn't talking about you," she groaned. "I meant the one with the Foresight."

    "Jin?" Tachikawa and Izumi looked at each other as Akira moved toward the control panels to begin dissecting her trigger.

    "How do you know about his Side Effect?" She pried open the plastic case of her trigger, inspecting the eight slots for trigger chips.

    "He said so himself. He spoke about the future and you all believed him without a second thought." She set her tools down to look back at them. "You gave it away." She began to dig through their collection of chips, trying to decide which would be the best to tinker with. "What is a 'Kogetsu'?"