Chapter 65 – Do You Have Any Sense of Remaining Within the Bounds of the Human?

The Administration Bureau's central hospital.

As the tedious stretch of two weeks' absolute bed rest drew toward its close, Milea sat in Grain's white-walled room, data pad in hand.

During the first week of his admission, she had kept even communications to a strict minimum -- his brain wave stabilization and the repair of the microscopic internal damage came first. But Seldia's cutting-edge nanomachine medical technology, combined with the simply monstrous rate at which Grain's body was healing, had brought him to a point where he could stand from the bed and pace the room with ease.

"Letaria is something else, but so are you. Do you have any sense of remaining within the bounds of the human?"

Milea watched his back as he stretched by the window, and said it with a feeling of complete, genuine exasperation.

"Honestly, I'm the most surprised of anyone."

Grain smiled wryly, turned, and settled on the edge of the bed.

"Actually... I heard the plants Letaria brought improved the treatment efficiency. I can't thank her enough for that."

Milea had heard about that as well -- the flower seeds from another world that Letaria had given them, the ones called Fluara. They had been quietly taken to Seldia's bio-farm, where they were now being cultivated in secret and had begun blooming.

Grain moved his gaze to his own arm.

"...Seldia settling down -- I've been following that from the news and the Bureau's regular updates. And..."

He let his gaze drop a little, and the corner of his mouth turned self-deprecating.

"Apparently my 'disciplinary action for unauthorized conduct' has been completely dropped."

"So it has. Regrettably."

Milea answered with something that was wry, but underneath it, relieved. She had been quietly pressing contacts across the Bureau to advocate for leniency on his behalf from the moment he was admitted. But before she could take any formal action, the matter had already been officially withdrawn. Grain's achievement -- standing alone against the sudden emergence of a mobile weapons platform and preventing Seldia's destruction -- was more than sufficient to outweigh a military regulations violation. She was careful not to let the relief show.

"Once you can fully move again, I expect you back in the captain's chair immediately. Merry and Ethan are currently screaming under a mountain of paperwork and structural reorganization."

"Heh heh heh... Now that is a picture."

Grain laughed with obvious amusement, apologetic look notwithstanding.

"Though even when I'm back, I'd like those two to stay on as deputy captains. Ethan in particular is an excellent anchor for the field. Pinning someone of his caliber to desk work does feel like a waste of our best firepower. ...Personnel placement is going to need some thought once I'm out."

He put his hand to his chin and began genuinely mapping the organization in his head -- "Come to think of it, Steshia's all energy with no direction, it might actually not be bad to put her directly under Merry as her second..." Milea observed his workaholic tendencies and shrugged with quiet resignation.

"Speaking of which --"

His expression shifted to something more serious as he turned back to Milea.

"Shuel -- my machine -- is gone at the frame level, there's no salvaging it. The corps doesn't have a spare Rude sitting around, and Syn-Fibra's reserve parts were all used up on the Restful battle, weren't they? ...So. Has my time come? Am I finally being put out to pasture?"

He said it in an artificially light tone. A joke -- and he knew it. There was no world in which the corps' captain was being retired in the middle of all this.

"Rest easy. We can't afford to let you rot behind a desk."

Milea turned the data pad's screen toward him, with a look of quiet confidence.

"Syn-Fibra's main Makina development division is currently sending a 'latest prototype' to this branch."

Grain stared at her.

"A prototype...?!"

"You pulled some extremely reckless maneuvers. And you reduced that custom-built Photon Rifle I provided to rubble rather thoroughly. ...You said you'd be my test subject, didn't you? I expect you to keep crawling to that promise for a good while yet."

She said it in a tone that was both mischievous and purely that of an engineer.

"What's coming is a prototype of the military trial machine 'Riese.' Basic frame stability has been verified at headquarters. For the purposes of handing it to you, I've applied one tier of safety limiters. Even with those, it surpasses the current military model 'Luzam' across every metric. ...That said, even if you manage to strip the limiter, I've locked it solid so it cannot exceed its design spec sheet."

Grain winced slightly at the preemptive warning, but a new question surfaced.

"Military grade? Something that top-secret shouldn't be moving to a civilian organization, even for a vigilante captain."

"This is a special case. Given what happened with Restful, similar incidents may occur again -- I made that argument, and received formal authorization from the very top to field-test it in the hands of a pilot qualified to handle that performance level. It's also still classified as a 'company-confidential test unit' rather than an officially delivered military machine, which helps."

"I see -- developer's privilege. Your political reach never disappoints."

Grain settled back with genuine admiration.

"That's not all. For the corps' standard membership, we're also introducing one prototype of the next-generation general model 'Rasta' to this branch at the same time -- the machine that will eventually replace the Rude."

"That's quite the package. When did Syn-Fibra become a charity?"

Milea's brow furrowed just slightly at the implication.

"Not by choice. This incident happened to produce an enormous amount of operational data on the Rude -- performance data, damage data at failure limits. Headquarters concluded that with the unsettled situation ahead, further real-world feedback would be invaluable. The Seldia branch is deeply involved in the 'Rasta' development as well, so running it here makes the feedback loop very efficient."

"Fair enough. If you're endorsing it this strongly, the handling and stability speak for themselves. ...So who are you thinking for the new general prototype? Ethan, most likely?"

A perfectly reasonable candidate -- if you're assigning an unstable prototype, you hand it to the veteran with the most skill and experience.

But Milea shook her head.

"No. I'm considering Steshia as the pilot for the Rasta. She lost her Flode in the battle, she has nothing to ride, and she's at loose ends. The timing works."

The unexpected name made Grain's brow furrow.

"It would certainly fill a gap on the front line -- but. Steshia's handling itself isn't bad, but she's not an especially outstanding veteran by the corps' standards. Isn't a prototype test pilot role a bit much for her?"

"That's precisely why. Grain."

Milea smiled with conviction and changed the screen.

"The 'Riese' I'm giving you is a high-performance military machine -- which means data from a top-tier professional pilot is essential. But the 'Rasta' is a next-generation *general* model -- ultimately meant to replace the Rude and be operated widely by civilians and ordinary vigilante members. Which means what I need is data from a pilot who is *not* overly professional. Someone who shows me what the machine does with, shall we say, an average and general level of operation."

Steshia was, entirely without her knowledge, being categorized in highly pragmatic and moderately unkind terms as "average and general." That said, the logic of the choice was sound enough that Grain could only nod. "...That does make a certain kind of sense."

"The reasoning holds. Give Steshia a new toy and she'll cry with joy and come back with all the data you could ask for."

"Hehe, true enough. ...Now, about Arden itself --"