The Sixth | Ekko

Chapter Thirty-One - Flashback #5, Part 2

For the next one hundred twenty-two days, Six's silence remained. The people around her didn't understand why she'd gone mute out of no where but were slowly learning to accept it.

Mylo tried the hardest out of anyone to get answers and to get her to speak again. He still hadn't succeeded.

Six followed Mylo around everywhere during the first week of her being there. His presence brought forth a sense of security, a guide in a foreign world. Though she had Heimerdinger, nothing could compare to the ease of having her older brother there.

Alive and tangible; a restorative for her mind and spirit.

On her first day attending a 'meeting' at the gardening club, she quickly learned that she was the only registered member for that club. Her responsibilities as the sole member were to care for the plants, having to stay behind three days a week to do so, as well as track their growth patterns and abnormalities. Unfortunately, there were some issues when it came to pollination. Pollinators avoided campus grounds due to a major accident in the chemistry lab a few years ago, which left traces of toxins around the school. Heimerdinger gave her the whole run down of how it was difficult to completely rid the facility of it, and how it wasn't dangerous for people, but only insects. She had a headache when she went home that day.

There was a singular bumble bee that flew around the gardens, pollinating the flowers and buzzing about. The small critter often perched on her arm while she watered the plants, and it was during one of these instances that she noticed the bee wasn't actually a bug. It had various mechanical parts, including artificial wings.

She mentioned it to Heimerdinger one day and learned that it was one of their joint inventions. Six met with Heimerdinger on a regular basis, the yordle insisting they continue their research on the anomaly. Through these meetups, Six discovered the reason he had trusted the other version of her with this information was because she was the only one present when he first arrived to this timeline. She'd been his apprentice of sorts, trying to learn about technology and inventing from him. Apparently, they'd made some success during his teachings, trying to create a solution for the pollinator scarcity. However, they hadn't managed to replicate the bee just yet.

Ekko found the switch from working in Powder's hideout to the gardening club's shed an unnecessary nuisance at first, having had the initial impression that he had to migrate all his work to the small, dirt ridden place. Though in the end, he settled for moving just the minor components there—things they'd need while working on calculations. As for constructing the energy containment chamber, he went back and forth between his workbench as his parent's house and Powder's hideout.

Six and Ekko had worked together to move a wheely chalkboard to the shed. It was a struggle, given how many times the wheels got stuck in the grass on the way there. But in the end, they succeeded. It stood tall amongst the gardening supplies, and faced the opposite direction of the old, worn couch that was already located within the shed. This allowed them to sit and ponder their calculations while having them displayed in front of them.

Six and Ekko worked on his innovators competition project together nearly every evening after classes had concluded. She learned the name of this potential invention was called the zero-drive, which he most often shortened to z-drive.

Ekko discovered that working with Momo wasn't as intolerable as he originally thought. Not only was she quiet and less... distracting than Powder, but Heimerdinger had been correct about her skills in mathematics. There were times she pointed out mistakes in his calculations—things he wouldn't've noticed otherwise.

Six ate lunch with Rue every day, the black-haired girl having endless things to talk about. Six didn't mind, given she couldn't provide input anyway. This version of Rue differed from her old timeline's so greatly that the only comparison she could make was how they looked. The Rue who'd been one of the other founders of the Vitalia was quiet, only speaking when absolutely necessary. She held a melancholy about her—a walking heap of depression. But this version talked and talked and talked, and seemed much more mentally secure. It was apparent this version of her hadn't suffered through the cruelty that they had.