"The Walking… Angel?" Iris tilted her head as Mavrick brought out a beautiful looking battle dress. It was pure white, contrasting with Finn's black, and featured angelic feathered wings along with two dangling ribbons on her left and right. Like Finn, she too had a hood, but instead of black it was white to match the rest of her armor.
Her mask was also different—rather than covering her whole face, it only covered most of the upper-half of her face. It was shaped acutely like a bird's wings, angled upwards on the sides, and gave her a very stylish look that suited a female assassin.
Her upper thighs were exposed and seemed unprotected, but in reality, those thighs weren't what they seemed. The entire lower half of Iris was, in fact, artificial. They were built using a combination of advanced motion sensing and virtual detection technology, creating thighs and legs that looked exactly like Iris's real ones and functioned like them too.
At least, that was the theory. So far, the appearances looked fine and even Iris herself couldn't find anything wrong with them—even the texture was the same—but this left the more important factor to be tested. Could she, in fact, walk with these?
"Go on, give it a try," Mavrick said after Iris finished changing in one of the changing rooms, folding his arms and tapping on his elbow impatiently. "I'm not too confident about this one, but… it should work. Probably."
"Um… you sure? It won't like overheat and explode or something, will it?" Iris said dubiously, raising an eyebrow.
"Of course not! … Probably."
Iris definitely did not like the sound of that 'probably', but didn't have much of a choice. If the technology embedded into this armor set was successful, her entire battle style would be revolutionized. She would be able to become a lot more useful to Finn—and that was what was important. Yes, this meant she would have less of an opportunity to ride on his back, but… she put away those selfish desires of her own to the back of her mind.
"… Alright. Here goes nothing."
Taking a deep breath, she slowly stood up, having made up her mind.
And… it worked.
Her eyes widened as she stood on her own two feet for the first time in years. It was a bit awkward, granted—but it had worked. She, Iris Sylvoir, had stood up.
"This… it's really working…!" She began tearing up before she knew it as she slowly began walking around the store in her new armor. Her movements were a bit clunky, but nonetheless, she was walking.
"How I've missed this feeling… of being able to walk with my own two feet…" Iris sobbed, wiping her tears away as more flooded out of her beautiful heterochromic eyes. Mavrick, seeing this scene, gave a light chuckle.
"Seems like it worked, huh?"
"Sure did, boss," Kyler added with a faint smile.
"Thank you… truly," Iris said, bowing down slightly, but-
"Woah—!" Not used to the shift in weight from a standing position, she suddenly toppled forward, and Finn had to step in to catch her before she fell.
"… Careful," he said in his usual dispassionate voice. Iris, however, was flustered regardless and slowly regained her balance with his help.
"S-Sorry… I'm a bit of a klutz…"
"… Don't worry about it," Finn muttered, then let go of her and retracted his hand.
"It will take some time getting used to, girl," Mavrick said. "After all, it's been years since you last walked. No doubt you are a bit rusty. Me, I get wobbly after sitting down for a few hours. Also, that's powered by Voidheart energy, so just like your boyfriend there, it won't be able to remain active all the time. Only walk when you absolutely need to. It recharges on its own, yes, but at a slow pace."
Iris wiped her remaining tears of joy away and nodded firmly. "I understand. Finn has some business for the next few days anyway, so it will be a perfect opportunity for me to practice with this new armor set. It looks great, too!"
"Alright, alright," Mavrick chuckled. "Enough flatterin'. If you want to pay me back, do it with real hard cash."
"How much do you need?" Finn asked, much to Mavrick's surprise. He burst out laughing.
"Hah! Did you just ask the seller how much he needs? Kid, you're going to get scammed a lot in the future."
"… Be grateful. I'm only asking because we are acquainted."
"Alright, alright… then, how about 10 grand? For both armor sets."
"10 grand…?" Finn fell into thought.
"What? Think it's too expensive?" Mavrick snorted. "Hmph! I'll have you know, kiddo, just the two Voidheart fragments alone costed me 8 grand to get my hands on! That means I only charged 2 grand for the creation of both outfits, when I usually charge 4!"
"Uh… no. It's fine. We'll pay the 10 grand," Finn said, scratching his head. Truth to be told, he had expecting the price to actually be higher, but there was no sense pointing that out now. He was rich anyway, he could afford to spend a meager 10 grand.
"Well then, off you go!" Mavrick said with a grin.
After paying, the two, fully-clad in their armor sets, returned to the 5-star hotel Evelyn owned and entered the room she had booked out for them. Needless to say, it was luxurious. There was even a built-in mini-hot spring, but neither Finn nor Iris used it and instead just stuck to the usual shower.
Their armor sets cleaned themselves just like with anything else the Tailor Angelica made, so the lack of laundry machines in the room was hardly a problem. What was, however, was the fact that there was only one bed.
Yes, the two had slept together before, but that didn't make it any less awkward. Also, this bed was shorter in width than the one from last night, meaning the two would have to be cuddled even closer to avoid one of them falling off the edge.
Personally, Finn didn't really care about this and offered to sleep on the couch, but Iris insisted for him to sleep inside the bed with a flushed expression, saying that it was fine and all that.
Naturally, Finn didn't make any moves on her at night. After all, there was something far more important he had to do—gaining his sight back, at long last.
Comments