Angel Monarch

"What The Fuck Was That?!" Shouted Sera.

Frank seemed oblivious of her problem. He just had a dumb expression, not understanding why she was shouting.

With a large exasperated sigh Sera turned away and grabbed one of the strange metallic balls. She held it with two fingers, fearing it would spontaneously explode. The ball was small, its diameter about 5 centimeter.

While she was carefully examining the explosive device, Frank just stared at her like she was an idiot. He walked to the pile of balls and grabbed one as well.

He was much less careful with it. While Sera was terrified it would explode for no reason, Frank just tossed it up into the air and caught it like it was a regular ball.

Each movement caused Sera's heart to skip a beat. After a few more throws she finally had enough.

"Could you stop throwing that device into the air?" Frank zoned out while tossing the ball up and down, but when Sera spoke he perked up.

He caught the ball in his hand, then with a wicked grin dropped it onto the ground.

Before it even landed Sera's wings were fully out and her head was covered in the armor as well. She jumped back covering Maya from the explosion that never came.

Behind her a small sound of metal hitting concrete could be heard. After a few moments of nothing happening she turned back towards the explosive device, but it just sat on the floor.

What was even worse, that both Maya and Frank were dying of laughter. She dismissed her wings and helmet, when Frank saw her eyes, which were really angry, his laughter turned into coughing.

In the next second he pretended nothing had happened and he put the explosive back onto the pile.

"So... Sera. Are you curious about my explosives?" He said as a change of subject.

She just walked to the pile and carefully placed back the ball she had taken a minute ago.

"Yes." Was the only thing she said. Turning around she saw Frank nodding along, then he moved towards his workbench. Sera followed stopping next to him.

"I make bombs. My ability makes it really easy to do so!" While speaking his hand reached to the side and grabbed a handful of some pus. He then violently slapped it with his other hand, which caused the unstable explosive to ignite.

The explosion that should've killed both of them on the spot was stopped in a similar bubble like last time, but much smaller. The fiery energy was contained between Frank's hands.

"As you can see I can freeze explosions and can even decide to make their yield larger or smaller. Plus I can concentrate it, so even a small ball like that can hold onto a much more destructive bomb!"

Sera's eyes had never left the strange bubble of fire. For some reason she reached out her hand and was about to touch the bubble, she looked at Frank to see if he would stop her, but he said nothing. He just looked at her with a goofy smile, waiting to see what she would do.

Slowly she moved her finger towards the edge of the bubble and then she pierced it. The bubble had no texture or any physical property, but when she pushed through it, she instantly pulled her hand out with a yelp of pain.

The edge of her finger was burned, like she pushed her hand straight in the middle of a large fire. For some reason her armor didn't try and mitigate the damage, which was a bit strange. It was like the bubble confused the armor and made it think that only that small area was the whole armor.

She had been exploded before and the armor defended against it perfectly, so that wasn't the issue...

Next to her Frank chuckled a bit, then slowly compressed the explosion. It again became really tiny and around the table specific metal parts floated around it, until it was fully turned into a ball.

When it was done he brought it close to his eye and began examining it.

"I make these bombs for the siege. It will greatly help with the fighting and since my team is made up of crafters, this is the way I can actually contribute!" After a minute he seemed satisfied with the explosive and tossed it on the top of the pile.

This time Sera suppressed the cringe when the metal ball hit the other bombs.

"How many of those did you make, and what's their yield?" He turned towards the pile with great pride and said, "That was the 127th, and they could turn about a large building to dust!"

Sera nodded, that was pretty good, 127 could do a lot of damage if given to the right people. She was about to say something else, when Maya spoke. She was sitting right next to the pile fidgeting with some electronic device.

"Franky, I think she meant since we arrived, and not just today!" Next to her Frank facepalmed himself, while mumbling something about 'being so stupid'.

"Wait... Don't tell me you have more of those bombs?! Are you planning to explode the entire city, at this point just use a nuke!" Said Sera. Suddenly Frank gasped and looked at her, like she had killed and flayed his whole family in front of him.

"A... A NUKE?!?... Bu-but... But those make MUSHROOM clouds!" He began mumbling to himself, but Sera was too stunned to actually understand what he was saying.

With an expression that seemed to say 'Are you serious?' she turned towards Maya, who was just happily humming to herself. She was constantly typing on her watch, like she was talking to someone, but her face was too concentrated for that.

Curiously Sera left Frank to his crazy ravings about mushrooms, and she walked behind Maya to see what she was doing.

On her watch the holographic interface showed a strange picture. There were a bunch of squares in a large rectangular pattern and a timer up top with two different numbers. On of the numbers had a strange bomb next to it, the other had 'Score' written next to it.

Maya pressed on each of the squares which caused a bunch of the nearby ones to change color. Some of them didn't stay empty though, instead they showed numbers.

She proceeded to press on specific squares and place flags on others. For Sera there seemed to be no pattern, but the number next to the bombs slowly decreased, until only one remained.

There were two gray squares and she seemed to conflicted about which one to press. When she pressed one of them a small animated explosion showed, and it wrote 'Game Over' in the middle of the screen.

"What was that game?" Asked Sera, causing Maya to nearly jump out of her skin. She was so absorbed in the game, that she haven't noticed Sera lurking behind her.

"It's just something I coded! It's based off of a retro game I have read about, I think it was called Minesweeper or something... Anyway, did you want something?"

For a moment Sera stayed silent. What she had just said was a great achievement in and of itself, Sera had never heard of anybody who can code these watches with ease.

They were made of some special material that arrived with the Apocalypse, and the A.I. somehow comes pre-downloaded on it, with all the functions. She didn't even know that customization to that level was a possibility.

But this gave her another idea, and it reminded her of the actual purpose of this visit.

"Yes actually... You seem quite familiar with the watches and how they operate. Could you maybe see if anyone has placed some tracking and/or spying software on mine?"

Maya didn't even question her request and just said, "Sure!" She seemed very enthusiastic, which was really cute!

Sera quickly gave her the watch, which she immediately started to type on. Following, whatever she was doing, was impossible for Sera. Watching the windows pop up and go away faster than she could've read them, caused a deep headache.

While waiting on Maya, she began to explore the warehouse-like home. At the workbench small explosions could be heard as Frank made more and more little bombs.

The room was much cleaner than it should've been. Seeing all the workbenches and tools, one would think that the whole floor and wall would be covered in oil or machine grease, but it was actually really well kept.

But that was only the room. When Sera looked at the state of the workbenches, she second guessed her previous praise. The tools were all over the place, some hanging precariously on the edges of tables. There were nails and bolts everywhere. This whole home was truly just a large workshop!

"Hey, uh... Ma'am!" Shouted Maya.

Sera was in the process of examining one particular machinery, that looked like some large stationary drill.

Without looking towards her she shouted back, "You can call me Sera! No need for formalities between friends!"

She took a small glance at the girl. Her reaction was just simply adorable. Her whole face was red and she looked very flattered.

Slowly Sera walked towards her, and she quickly pulled up the watch's interface.