The man accepts the gift of the strange robot, the finger that was once part of its body now left in the care of HIS hands. “Thank you…” He nervously said, unsure of The Machine’s intention, only for it to walk past him. The Machine was certain that it would be free to pass…

The man grabs The Machine’s arm, surprising it. The Machine turns around to look at him… “What is your name?” The man asks, and The Machine stares at him, uncertain as to how it could possibly answer him his I.D.-Set.

“Let’s call him Giro.” The girl says, as she sits back and stares at the man and The Machine, her wolf partner shifting in place a little. “Giro.” The man repeated, his voice gruff and worn. “Yeah, I think it’s cute.” She says, resting her arm on the now Giro’s shoulder.

“Maybe we should ASK Giro first?” The man asks as Giro turns around. “Hey, Giro, give us a single clap for yes, and two for no.” The girl says and he jumps at the chance to respond! A single clap. “Good, now we can get yes-no answers out of him.” She leisurely and smugly says, folding her arms as she leans back.

“Can you talk, Giro?” The man asks, deciding to get this out of the way… Two claps. The man nods in reply. “Why don’t you come sit down with us, before rushing off so suddenly?” He asks and Giro decides to go the safer way.

“I’m Dialora, and my two companions here are Jax and Yagdor.” Dialora tells him, referring to her man-friend, and her not-man-but-instead-canine-friend. “So do you actually LIKE the name, Giro?” Jax asks, as Giro decides to appraise the group a little better…

A single clap. Jax looks physically old, even though aging should have taken well over two thousand years for him. “Right, figured.” He simply replies. Thanks to magic, it’s believed all life on Orion had evolved to wield it on a biological level, and so all creatures have come to a lifespan of indeed two-thousand years old.

Not that most of them actually get there, mind you. His eyes make him look cold, almost ruthless, yet ambitious and undeterred. He wears a jacket of some kind of leather with jeans and a simple top underneath.

Dialora looks a lot shinier next to him, considering the stringent and dark miasma the man seems to put off with his presence alone. Her hair is long and stretches down her backside, and she seems to have claws with sharp canines. Giro definitely wouldn’t have been surprised if she had a strong sense of smell to go alongside her canine features.

“Jax, Yagdor, and I are on a journey to Vall City. We took up a quest by the adventurer’s guild to investigate, you see.” She says, as Jax nods in agreement. “I heard the place was recently torn apart. No survivors.” Jax begins, as he fiddles with the finger Giro gave him…

“My home was torn apart too, so I’ve got my own personal reason to go there.” He says, as Giro looks at Dialora and Yagdor. Yagdor’s got nightly fur with a single scar on his eye. “Yeah, Jax and I met on a beach outside his old home, we were kids.” Dialora explained.

“I guided him to my small village, so Jax and I grew up together. Then we headed off with Yagdor, and began our lives of adventuring.” She says, as Giro puts thought and imagination to everything she says. Picturing everything so much different from how it really was.

“I believe it’s about time we got going.” Jax says, standing up and walking away, followed by his two friends, as Giro watches his new friends leave… “Goodbye, Giro!” Dialora calls out, waving at him as he waves back.

Giro stands up, deciding he would keep this name as his own, using his sword to etch it into a spot on his head, just below his visor, so he may now point to it whenever he must give someone his name.

Giro… He should have asked Dialora while he had the chance. But nonetheless, he still likes this name, as it is his. His own, personal, name, nothing like the countless numbers of his rank and file.

He marches on, returning to his journey of chasing the light that had inspired him just hours ago. So on and so forth with newfound clicks and hums from his deteriorating mechanics, and his small ether core filling him with constant supply of weak mana.

Magic, a nigh limitless power found in all living creatures, generated from their ether, and controlled with their essence. But thanks to Giro’s microbiomes, full of microorganisms all generating their own mana, he can use it to manipulate his magic.

Giro, using his equipment, managed to scale cliffs and mountains, before a strange light appeared behind him. He turns around, to find that the star has resurfaced from behind him… Realization comes to him as he watches it for hours rise over the horizon, the equinox sweeping over and bathing him in a golden light.

Giro reaches for the sun, but finds that it may be a little too far away… So he sits there, content to watch for hours as it floats over his head, until it sets once more. Giro decides his only course of action is to chase it down again, hoping this time he’ll be able to catch it.

The night was long, but his memory banks told him the next sunrise was almost here… Giro comes upon a settlement, just a simple town hall and set of houses with a happy group of settlers looking to create the world’s next big city.

Everyone turns to look at the newcomer, their smiles turning to intrigue and interest for the now dusty and worn machine. Giro decides that of course, the only way to prove his intentions is through action, and begins considering what he doesn’t need…

End of Chapter: 2 “Personal Gold.”

Thank you for reading.

“Hey, thanks!”