by Narrator » Thu Jan 27, 2022 9:31 pm
It had been one week since the fake Jacques was caught, and the real Jacques had been set to work to try to repair Katarina.
A week of sculpting and carving. A week of making wax copies, clay molds, firing and re-firing, every line, every crease, every tooth and dimple carefully worked and reworked over and over and over again. Had Jacques slept? Had he eaten? He certainly hadn't left the art room. He had even drawn his pistol on a few poor students who had wandered in, wondering why things were off limits. You get a bit paranoid in times of war, after all!
Leo had not found Katarina's image on file in the danger room. She was not on the X-Teams and had no reason to go down there, and Nika would surely have not allowed the image of the princess to be recorded while her presence at the school was supposed to be a secret to begin with! He had to instead settle for helping Jacques, and distracting him from his paranoia by getting him to explain all the various steps and precision that went involved. That was just as exciting as it may sound, mind you, but hey, it was something.
But after a week's worth of work, they were at least nearing completion, and would soon be able to start work on Katarina herself.
For her part, the Princess had spent the week in a coma-like sleep. She had asked for nothing -- for the void, for darkness -- but Sam had meddled with that just ever-so-slightly. And so she occasionally tossed and turned, as Sam's triumphant image played itself out over and over again in her mind, twisting and iterating on itself as Katarina the week away.