Neo showed up at the Oracle's building with two girls this time and they looked familiar and different to the old blind man sitting in the lobby. He accepted the donut and coffee with a chuckle and waved them towards the elevator. The strawberry creme filling was the perfect counter to the espresso and the old man saluted Neo with the cup as the elevator doors closed.
Desiree didn't feel nervous as her temptation approached the door. She did fight down the blush at what he would have done to her if she had accepted his advances. It was difficult for her to figure out how he was doing that, giving her future sight those images, since he never actually did anything to her. She took a deep breath and let it out, then opened the door.
"Welcome back, Neo, Saga, and Akira." Desiree said and smiled warmly at them.
"Hi!" Saga said and waved while Akira only nodded.
Neo held out the large box of donuts to Desiree and then put the tray of coffee cups that had one missing on top of it. "You can pass those out while I wait here."
Desiree's warm smile grew and she stepped back to let them enter and Neo shut the door for her. He sat down on the chair in the small waiting area and Desiree led the two girls into the living room where the other potentials were.
"Make yourselves at home as I let the Oracle know you're here." Desiree said and Saga rushed over to the two girls sitting on the floor playing a game of Scrabble and Akira went to the two kids playing chess.
Desiree gave one of the cups of coffee to the woman taking care of the baby, one of the donuts, and carried the last two cups into the kitchen with the box of donuts. She would save them for dessert and placed them onto the kitchen table before she took one of the cups of coffee for herself and then sat and enjoyed a triple chocolate donut.
The Oracle looked amused as she also sat down and took the last cup and sipped it. She sighed happily and picked up a lemon creme filled one and enjoyed it as well. The two of them sat quietly and sipped their drinks and nibbled on the delicious donuts they had chosen.
"Thank you for choosing to stay here to help me with the children." The Oracle said after drinking the last of her coffee.
Desiree blushed slightly, because she knew the Oracle meant more than what she said. "My own desires pale in comparison to the children. It's my purpose to be here to help you find them and to take care of them until they can be rescued."
"But, you do have desires." The Oracle said.
Desiree nodded. "Neo is a vexing person. He knows what I am and he doesn't care."
"I know." The Oracle said and reached over and took Desiree's hand. "If you had accepted, he might not have discovered someone else to claim him."
Desiree blushed. "Even if I did, it would only be a brief fling. It can never be more than that."
"You foresaw it?" The Oracle asked and she nodded. "Then I won't mention it again."
Desiree nodded. She wouldn't have said anything to anyone about that; but, the older woman in front of her was the Oracle. If anyone would understand her decision, it was her.
"I'm ready to see Saga now." The Oracle said and Desiree stood and left the kitchen.
Saga entered a moment later and Desiree took a bottle of milk and left again. She delivered it to the woman in the side room to feed to the baby and then went back to her duties as she cleaned the various rooms where the children stayed.
If Desiree had stayed in the kitchen, she would have been shocked to see Saga sitting on the Oracle's lap and regaling her about how much fun she had playing with her dad in the warehouse the day before.
Desiree was almost done of her chores when she felt it was time to retrieve Saga and to bring Akira into the kitchen for a visit. She did that and smiled as Saga rushed through the living room to hop onto Neo's lap in the waiting room and then started whispering to him.
"This way." Desiree said to Akira and led her into the kitchen. She returned to her chores and knew the visit was going to be shorter than Saga's, so she only did a few light things to tidy the place up as she waited for the teen's visit to end.
Akira came out of the kitchen with a slightly red face and a smile, so Desiree led her out to the waiting room. The girl was hugged by both Saga and Neo, then they thanked Desiree and promised to see her again later. That kind of surprised the greeter, because usually someone only came to see the Oracle once and that was usually it.
When Neo gave her a wink, Desiree realized that he was the exception to the rule and had already been there to visit several times and broken that trend. She blushed and waved to them as they left. Her mind wondered if the fling with him might have been worth it, then she shook her head and went back into the kitchen to start cooking a meal for the remaining children.
*
The copy of Dragon in the mech suit was having a great time as she worked on making the best version of her mech suit. She had been feeling out of sorts in the one she was currently in and it was because she was so used to different inputs and sensor readings.
It was going to be such a relief to have a retreat where she could once again feel what she had felt before, even if it was severely lacking to what she could feel inside the Construct and the Matrix. It had been a fleeting thought to try and integrate some of that programming into her new suit, except there was no way to wire up the suit itself to give her the same sense of touch that she had with a humanoid body.
Maybe that was something she could ask Neo about? He had so much experience with programming, so it was possible he could help her in relation to that. Was it the feedback from the servos that could be the key? Or was it a type of metal alloy that could allow her to detect temperature variants when touching something?
It was puzzling and also let her mind wonder about what she could accomplish with enough time, resources, and help from Neo. Maybe they could tackle the problem together during their late night sessions and then try to apply anything they came up with in real life.
Then again, having a physically reactive body as they tried to pierce through the Dark Storm layer, was not the best thing for them to work on right now. Being struck by lightning and electrocuted as nanomachines ate away at her fuselage was not a great time to have feeling inside her metal shell.
Neo and the others logged out and went to have something to eat. It was something Dragon regretted she couldn't do with them in the real world and had to settle with doing so inside the Construct occasionally. Even though it was fake food and none of them got anything out of it, it was a chance for them to spend the time together.
Dragon appreciated that Neo was making the effort to do that, since she knew he didn't have to. He was just a nice guy and wanted to make her happy by giving her things he knew she never had before. It endeared her to him even more than she already was and she continued to look forward to spending as much time with him as she could.
The others went about doing their own things and Neo went into the cargo hold to give Dragon a hand. She broached the subject of feedback and how she wouldn't mind trying something like that in the next version of her suit. Once they had the process down, they could reproduce it much easier than building everything from scratch again.
Neo agreed and started helping her with the systems integration and coding she would need for the mission they had planned. Again, they both knew it would be quite some time before they could finish building a mech suit that could traverse such a hostile obstacle, even with Neo's Ablative Armor idea.
Oh, they needed to somehow build those emitters and generators, too. That would have to wait for their shift to gather salvage, though. They didn't have enough resources or spare parts at the moment to cover up that he could pull them from his inventory and could copy them as much as he wanted.
*
After a brief layover at Zion, where the crowds greeting the ship were disappointed that Neo had sneaked off out the back using the family 'car', the ship left again for their week long shift gathering salvage. It passed by quicker than anyone expected with Dragon and Neo so busy in the cargo hold with some weird project that they claimed was going to be a surprise.
Again, Neo used the car to escape the worshipping crowd, even with people there trying to stop him. He really didn't want to encourage anyone while his family took it in stride. They knew the truth, that he was just who he was and he didn't need or want people to worship him. They did make fun and teased him about it, though.
The councillors also tried to reassign Neo to the Osiris again for the next trip into the Matrix. He refused the posting and claimed he wasn't going to spend all of his time healing people of everything wrong with them. They countered that he had a duty to humanity to ensure they lived long and healthy lives and he was employed by the defense forces for exactly that reason.
Neo countered by saying the only woman that cared about his welfare during the first experiment was taking time off to spend with her elderly mother. Unlike everyone else on the ship, including the patients, she was the only one that looked after him after he collapsed or even bothered to check up on him.
The council then tried to revoke Jue's leave, to force the issue and to agree with Neo's unasked condition to have her present, and she calmly told them to shove it and quit. This alone wasn't a new situation for the councillors, since people started or had changed their relationships, and they either quit or changed jobs.
The problem they had now was that Captain Thaddeus agreed with Jue about the council overstepping their authority and he threatened to also quit the defense forces for putting his ship and crew in danger. That Jue wasn't a part of his crew anymore didn't matter. They cost him and the ship one of their best operatives and that angered him and the other crew members on the ship.
This inadvertently caused another huge hubbub and more protests, some for and some against, with a majority of the worshipping people wanting their saint of healing to completely devote himself to the task.
Luckily, the mess was big enough to allow the Reclamation to leave the dock and escape the city. None of them mentioned how much worse it was going to get if Neo continued to refuse doing more healing experiments, since he knew that already. He just didn't think the first one was handled well and repeating the same procedure would repeat the same mistakes or take much longer.
There was no doubt that they would pack the ship full of hurt and injured people if he agreed to do it and he wouldn't be allowed to leave until he healed them all. After the pattern he established for minor and major healing, it would take that much longer to do, since only four patients at a time could log in with Neo.
His family agreed with that assessment. Dragon proved it when she showed them a council document with an order that had been issued that would have stripped the Osiris crew down to just the operator, the pilot, and the captain, just to make enough room to fit in even more people. It was best to avoid that whole thing and that's what they did.
Another session inside the Matrix had Saga and Akira getting more practice, another landlady visit, and removing the black kid from the Oracle's apartment. Neo healed him fully, of course. They made a quick unscheduled trip back to Zion and only landed just long enough to drop the boy off into Councillor Dillard's arms and took off again. It was the only way to avoid the crowds.
More salvage was gathered over the next few days and Neo and Dragon used their spare time to continue to work on the project they had hidden away in the cargo bay. This altered pattern continued on, to ensure that they never matched their old schedule. No one could catch them as they visited Zion to refuel and restocked at odd intervals and not the weekly ones they used to.
*
It had taken nearly two whole months before Dragon and Neo finally finished building the parts to the Dragon mech suit. It wasn't possible to assemble it until it was going to be deployed, so they had to plan around that. Each part was modular and was the best version of plug and play they could come up with.
The computer core was the center, with all the main parts of each necessary system integrated inside. Each add-on part contained the physical representation of each of those systems and would become an integrated whole when put together.
It was an ingenious way to create something like that and both Dragon and Neo were quite proud of themselves when it was done. They broke away from their normal schedule once more and instead of salvaging like they were supposed to, the Reclamation made the same journey as it did when it was first built and needed a long distance flight test and raced the Logos.
The ship came to a stop at the ruined Dark Storm facility and Dragon's small mech made the ship a hole big enough to enter it. That wouldn't normally have been necessary, except they needed access to the rocket launching pad in the center of the facility. This was where the first of the rockets had been launched from and it was fitting to launch a potential solution from there.
"This was the surprise?" Malachi asked after the ship had dropped them off and Dragon flew it over to the landing pad and the cargo bay opened up.
"No, this was the build-up to the surprise." Neo said and a moment later, watched Dragon's mech carefully carried out each of the large twelve pieces of her new suit that nearly filled the cargo bay, since they didn't have to hide them anymore.
"Dad, what is that?" Saga asked as Dragon placed the first three large pieces together and they interlocked with loud clangs. The long rails sticking out of the top didn't make sense, though.
"Those my dear daughter, are rocket boosters." Neo said and she and Akira gasped.
"You're joking." Malachi said, his voice flat.
"Nope." Neo said as Dragon very carefully slid the main part that contained the computer core down along the rails into the very center and on top of those three pieces, locking it into place. "We worked our asses off all this time to create the most EMP hardened detection and analysis lab we could and then built a mobile vehicle around it."
Dragon added braces to the engines to stop it from tipping over and then lifted up and attached the first of the middle pieces around the large computer core and locked it into place on the outside of the rail. The next piece balanced it out across from it and the metal groaning sounds of the braces disappeared. She added two more pieces on either side to complete the large middle section.
"It's huge!" Saga gasped.
"It's mostly done." Neo said. "This is the most dangerous part to assemble, since we couldn't build scaffolding strong enough to hold both that and her mech up at the same time."
Everyone watched as Dragon grabbed a very thick handhold with one articulated mechanical hand and then very slowly climbed up the side of the thing using built-in handholds and footholds.
"Please be careful." Akira whispered.
The massive size and weight of the thing was just enough to counter the pivotal weight of Dragon's mech suit and the part she was carrying. If she didn't have magnetic locks on her torso to keep her steady as she reached for the next handhold, she would have fallen.
Everyone held their breath as Dragon finally reached the top and then slid the top piece onto the end of the rail and the locks clunked into place and secured it. They all let out a sigh as she easily climbed down and retrieved another top piece. It was angled slightly, so when all four were attached, it would make a curved cone shape.
Dragon did the scary climb again on the other side, to balance things out, and the added weight of the assembled parts made it slightly easier for her to climb up. Once she locked that part into place, she let out her own sigh and climbed back down. The next two parts being added was almost anticlimactic and then it was done.
"Hooooly shit." Mouse said with a whistle as he stared up at the thing. It was big in comparison to a human and moderate in comparison to the ship.
"Let me introduce you to the Javelin." Neo said and walked over to it and patted the side of the large rocket booster. He rested his hand there for a moment and then smiled. "Dragon, if you would do the honors to start it up?"
"It would be my pleasure, Neo." Dragon said and her mech suit retreated back into the ship into the cargo bay and it closed behind her.
Saga, Akira, Mouse, and Malachi startled slightly at the sound of power flooding through the huge black armored thing. Small lights lit up from the bottom up to the top and then two large depressions in the nose of the thing pulled back and revealed two large search lights.
"Everything's set, Neo." Dragon's voice said from inside the ship. "All system checks are coming back in the green."
"Awesome." Neo said and walked back over to his family. "We need to get outside the facility for this baby to light the place up properly."
"Light it up... you're launching this thing right now?!?" Malachi exclaimed. "We have to report this back to Zion! They need to know you're going to attempt..."
Neo touched his shoulder and knocked him out. He caught him and slung him over his shoulder. "We've already done all the testing necessary for this to work. Now it's up to the Javelin." Neo said and ushered everyone back up the loading ramp and into the ship. "Dragon, take us out to a safe distance and then initiate lift off."
"On it, Neo." Dragon said and the ship took off and flew back out of the facility and then poured on the speed. "Initiating countdown. Triple checks complete. Five... four... three... two... all systems green! LAUNCH!"
The ship whirled around and the monitors in the main login station all changed to show the facility. The whole place lit up as the rocket boosters ignited. Fire blew out several walls and part of the roof, then a loud crashing sound tore the entire top of the facility apart and the Javelin soared up into the air with a massive rocket trail of flame and smoke behind it.
"Woooooow!" Saga said, her mouth hanging open.
"Wow is right." Neo said and hugged her. "Godspeed, Javelin."
The four humans and a sole AI watched as the rocket approached the thick cloud layer. Only Dragon and Neo noticed the thing almost double in thickness just before it hit and then it disappeared inside the perpetual storm that covered the entire planet.