[White-Jet]

Before the Rebellion uprising, Giga City manufactured an artificial Isle that would study, manufacture and store rare, unrefinable Force Metal. It had since been cleared of all occupants by order of the Federation and left adrift for sky and sea animals to perch on and inhabit.

After flying from Abel City across the ocean for a few hours, Hajime started to feel his arms overheat from being stretched out and swung too long. He decides to descend into the ocean for a while to cool down his systems while continuing his trek to Giga City.

Upon dipping his chest into the ocean, the medallion glowed, causing the robe to glow vermillion and suck into it before slipping off his chest and sinking before he managed to catch and stick it in his pocket.

Being half machine, Hajime lacked the lightness to stay afloat; he began scissor kicking to keep from sinking any further into the ocean as he contemplates whether to swim the rest of the way. He didn't have to think long, however as he noticed something drifting in the distance; an isle of sorts he seemed to recognize as he stumbled upon it a couple years after the Rebellion uprising and used as his personal Force Metal construction and study lab.

Figuring it best to rest and play around with some more of his Force Metal experiments, Hajime drifts towards the isle, stretching one arm out and pulling downward while doing the same with the other. Once he reached the shores and shook off the excess water, he drapes his Vermillion Robe back over his body and saunters deeper into the moss and vine-covered jungle, coming across a cave halfway through the isle.

The inside is dimmly lit with computers making up most of the walls, and construction tables carpeted with different varieties of Force Metal ranging from common to experimental.

Hajime heads into the center of the cave and reaches towards the light bulb hanging off the ceiling, feeding enough plasma energy to recharge it's power and illiuminate more of the room, then walks over to the Force Metal littered construction table and began separating the common-made types from the experimental-types.

After separating the mess into two piles, Hajime takes all but one of each type of Force Metal and sifts them into a glass jar with a zenny symbol stickered around the side for sale upon arrival at Giga City, placing the jar in his arsenal pack before stretching slightly sluggishly and heading out of the cave, feeling it was time to recharge his cybernetic body once again.

[White-Jet]

A few miles from the cave, Hajime finds one of the artificial trees making up the majority of the forest, seeming to have been programmed to keep the isle afloat through solar energy and other energy absorbing devices he has yet to uncover.

There were plenty of trees to keep the isle afloat, so Hajime isn't worried about draining one of its energy as he walks over and places his hands on it and lightly squeezes it, causing red lines to glow through the back of his hands, indicating the absorbtion process had begun. This time, it didn't take long for his cybernetics to feed off the energy and restore him to full health.

Back to normal, Hajime heads back to the cave and begins running tests on the experimental Force Metals left on the table. Each of them were created through the use of other devices used to restore reploids to full health that carry similar traits and programmings to the ones used in Giga City. He hopes the new Force Metal will have the same capabilities as the original, but with less errosion that would either weaken a machine's stats, or drive it insane with Maverickism.

So far, the alternative devices he used only proved to reduce a small amount of errosiion, making the Force Metal's still weary to be used. Hopefully, with the new batch he created using Energy and Weapon Capsules in place of sub-weapons, and Heart Tanks in place of enhancing Force Metals, they would have less errosive side-effects, but still maintain the functions they were designed to perform.

He took the new Force Metal and placed them in slots sitting over a computer monitor, the insertion activating the screen as it began running tests to check on the level of errosion, and if it will be active when equipped. A timer appeared on the screen, estimating how long the process will take; a few hours roughly. Hajime decides to use this time to take the other Force Metal to Giga City and sell them for on-hand money; though he decides to choose another mode of transportation to avoid the jar getting wet and rendering the Force Metal near useless.

He heads outside, donning his wings, and flies back to Abel City, deciding to use their transport terminal to get to Giga City.

[Returning to Abel City]

[White-Jet]

[From Mangrove]

Hajime had lost track of how far he swam, though at the moment he didn't seem to care. For the moment, all he wanted to do is swim; swim and think of nothing but his own personal thoughts and plans.

Some time passes before a mild brush of wind against his face snaps him out of his thoughts, noticing the sky had grown dark and cold; a change that didn't affect his current body temperature, but signals that he should focus on getting to the Isle before a presumed massive storm slows him down if not electrocute him with its untamed lightning.

Fortunately, he didn't have to worry long as the making of artificial trees bobbed over the spiking variables of the agitating ocean. Not wanting stick around and see if lightning will be added into the stormy mixture, Hajime makes a hastened breaststroke towards the trees, watching as they rose higher and grew bigger to indicate how close he was getting to his intended destination until the familiar settings of the Isle could no longer be obscured by the extreme close-ups of the wilding currents.

Once passing over the long shores, Hajime slowed back to his favorite human stroking maneuver until he felt his knees hit the all but drowned dirt, prompting him to stand up before he leans too far forward to dunk his head below the surface. It was at this point that the winds started to roar louder, dropping more of the temperature while ironically helping to dry off the excess water showering down from his body. He quickly rushes into the lone laboratory, hitting a button on the side panel to shut the door and keep the cold air from sucking out any warmth it may have gathered from its journey through the midday sun. Once sealed tightly, he pulls the medallion from his arsenal pack and stick it on his chest, causing a vermillion glow to envelop his body before fading, forming his Vermillion Robe, quickly pulling his hood on and tugging it around to better shelter his still damp body from what little cold managed to escape into the room.

Though his skin suit is resistant to any temperatures short of extreme, he still didn't like the sensation of sharp coldness coursing through his body. Once he felt the heating sensation of the fleece-made robe, he heads off to the observation machine where he had kept his experimental force metal, finding the readings had since finished and were awaiting him to study their results.

The erosion count didn't go down as far as he had hoped for, suggesting that he either didn't get the right ingredients or there was no other alternative to making Force Metal safer and easier to use. Sighing a bit in disappointment, Hajime decides to spend the remainder of the storm continuing his attempts at experimenting with more alternative ingredients while fusing more of the current metals for future profits. There was still a pile of stuff he had dug up from a junkyard somewhere in the wastelands that fit the recipes Gaudile had shared with him (though rather begrudgingly as he still didn't trust anyone else mimicking his creations).

[White-Jet]

It had been a couple hours into the storm as Hajime finishes refining another Force Metal for profit. These Force Metals were the highest in defense and functionality, but with it came a higher erosion count; something he wasn't too happy with, but could do little about until he can find the right ingredients to make a safer, yet highly powerful form of Force Metal.

He gathered the Force Metal he crafted so far and piles them into another glass jar before checking his FME, noticing that it has been drained to half of what he had gathered over the past few weeks since its last usage. Though it would be good for another batch, he didn't want to waste too much of it, knowing that this early model needed FME just to heal out-of-reach machines, and there was no telling how long the floating Isle can last in such a harsh storm.

Hajime decides instead to try investigating the Ultiminium again despite his earlier failure in gathering the nerves to reach inside the capsule.

The red area of his arsenal pack pops open as a wire holding the capsule containing the Ultiminium slithers out and plops it gently on the table before releasing hold and retreating back inside. Hajime picks up the capsule and looks around for a computer that might have a better chance of reading past the high radiation levels and uncover any secrets it might hide within all that astrological mumbo-jumbo that would have already been pointed out by even the most seasonal astrologist. He eventually finds a computer hooked up to a diagnostic box large enough to fit a small mechaniloid and heads over to it, placing the capsule inside and closing the glass door in front of it, which causes a scanning light to slide down from the top, recording its appearance onto the monitor beside the box in the form of a green wireframe.

Windows began to pop up around various parts of the image, one identified the capsule while the other began popping up information on the Ultiminium inside: it's radiation level, its size, it's origins, and the miscellaneous stuff, which is taking a while to upload much like the capsule itself did when Hajime first ran a test on it.

Sighing a bit in frustration, as he would have to wait again, Hajime heads over to a rotating chair and sits down, one of his wires slithering out of the white area of his arsenal pack with a pair of visors attached to the end that clamped over his eyes as he replays the incident he recorded at Lake Livius between the female reploid and the cynical one who also seemed to have obtained a similar power from the same intergalactic mineral.

[White-Jet]

Hajime puts away the visors as he gets up to check on the computer again, finding it almost done with the examination of the Ultiminium, though the results still remained the same concerning its intergalactic differences from the stuff found on earth. He decides to take a break from uncovering its secrets and focused on the other cause of public insecurity which is the core he extracted from one of the reploids in Zephyr City. He was intending to drop it off at Maverick Hunter and let them deal with it, but considering their current situation it would do best to just leave them to their own problems and craft his own investigation into the source of its origin.

It could have come from some fascist who thinks reploids should just be man's tool, but there was only one person he could pick up that knew something about the core; Magnus. Though he had no obvious hand in distributing the cores, he seemed to know where they came from.

As Haijme thought deeper about finding Magnus and asking him what he knew about the core, he suddenly sensed his agonized distress coming somewhere far from where the floating Isle currently is. Almost like a thrown switch he starts to sense the same malicious presence that had been controlling Magnus up until their last encounter; they've finally met.

Hajime compresses his lips in worry; he shouldn't be interfering with Magnus' conflict with the dark presence that had been screwing with his mind and body, but he couldn't help sensing the Flaming Champion was facing more than just his evil culprit. He decides it best to track him down and monitor his situation before deciding whether to get involved.

He sticks the core back against the center of his arsenal pack before heading over to the door and pushes the button on the panel beside it, causing the door to slide up to a still dark, cloudy sky, though the rains and winds had since let up. Taking this opportunity, he throws his arms into the sleeves of his wings and leans at a forward angle as a rocket thruster pops out of the bottom white area of his arsenal pack and bursts to life, shooting him off the Island and towards the direction he sensed Magnus to be in.

[Leaves Force Metal Isle]

[White-Jet]

[Continuing from Government Precinct]

Hajime takes a moment to shake the sensation of dive-bombing from the Central Tower helipad before heading inside the cave-shaped laboratory and pressing the keypad next to the door to close it off. He only hopes no one had seen him leap off the helipad and make a big deal out of it that would eventually lead to the discovery of the floating isle.

The parrot flutters back over to his shoulder, watching him rather sternly as he heads towards the computer station at the far end of the cave and begins shuffling around a nearby pile of junk for stuff to begin his refining and possibly another attempt at creating less erosive Force Metal.

[White-Jet]

Hajime splayed out a row of items he plans to use to make Force Metal, most of them were other generic brand Force Metal and some sub weapons he had been collected during his visits to Air City. Among them were Heart Tanks and energy and weapon capsules he had been tinkering with in hopes of making less erosive Force Metal.

So far, he hasn't gotten the substitute ingredients to respond to the original recipe, but he hopes that with the right adjustments and change of parts, he could get them to produce something that might be more usable than what was already on the market.'

Right now, though, he decides to focus on refining more Force Metal for profit and to kill time until he believed the smuggling operation could be resolved. Thinking back to that situation, he wonders what else he plans to do in Giga City aside from selling more Force Metal. Introductions were out of the way and he was certain everyone would be parting ways once things have been taken care of.

Perhaps he was better off staying on the Isle and mulling around his current objective before deciding whether he should bother exploring the rest of Giga City.

[White-Jet]

Hajime picks up a WE +5 Force Metal, which he had kept in storage for experimental purposes, and a large energy capsule, observing both while remembering the last time he attempted to substitute other ingredients for similar fusion.

So far, he had failed to get the Force Metal Generator to respond due to its fixed set of recipes. Perhaps he should focus on reworking the Force Metal Generators in his hands to accept more than what was available in Giga City at the time of their construction.

Hajime puts the items back down before heading over to a swivel chair near one of the computers and sitting down in front of it, pulling his gloves off and hooking some wires to the glowing generators situated in the center of his palms. Four wires slithered out of his arsenal pack and began tapping on the keys and buttons controlling the computers, initiating a scan of the design and bringing up data on Force Metal refinement, complete with a list of items Gaudile had designed to refine Force Metal from.

The Model One appears to be limited to just the items and sub-weapons sold in Giga City, seeming to indicate Gaudile either wasn't planning on distributing the finished product despite actually showcasing the abilities through Cinnamon, or he abandoned the old model the second he began working on its successor.

However, the program isn't fixed and can easily be upgraded with some careful modifications. The only problem is that the computers on this Isle are very limited in terms of studying and modifying stuff that wasn't Force Metal; the fact only slightly misleading by his attempts to conduct study on the Ultiminium and core he found throughout his time spent outside, though both seem to come up with unanswered results. He would have to do that in his Stingray carrier mechaniloid, which he had earlier programmed to camp out outside the cave in case he needed to get somewhere fast.

Hajime unhooks the wires from his hands and pulls his gloves back on, heading over to the computer he had left the Ultiminium in and slipping it into his arsenal pack, deciding to continue research on its intergalactic secrets in the mechaniloid while remodifying his Force Metal Generator to expand its recipe list, and heads for the cave exit, pressing a button and waiting for the door to slide open.

[White-Jet]

Once outside, Hajime presses one of the buttons on his ear protrusion, causing an outline to flash before the stingray mechaniloid faded into view. He climbs onto its back and walks over to the hatch situated in its center spine area, then crouches down and grabs the handle at the edge to pull up and reveal the interior before jumping down.

Aside from the usual sight of the navigation chair near the neck, and resting quarters on the adjacent end, there stood a construction table and a computer containing all his personal data and information of everything he had studied up to this point.

Hajime wastes no time heading over to the computer and digging around one of the consoles for a clutter of wires which he attaches to gaps in his palm, finger, and wrist joints, then uses four of his wires to access the program and work on expanding its recipe list from the usual items found in Giga City to that of other major areas that use other means to revive and recharge their machines. The process estimates that his inputs and updates would take roughly an hour or two to fully complete, granted he doesn't move his hands during the procedure.

Hajime feels this is probably a good time for a short nap and uses the four wires to drag one of his futons and a blanket onto the construction table, carefully laying down on it as his arsenal pack unravels and slips to a safe position beside the table, all the while draping the blanket around his body below the neck. He shifts into a comfortable position on his side, ensuring the wires aren't hampered too badly, before closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep.

[White-Jet]

The sound of beeping wakes Hajime up as he looks towards the monitor to find that the updates have been completed. He quickly gets up and pushes the futon and blankets off the table before unhooking the wire from his hands and wrist and heading towards the window of the mechaniloid, deciding to see how far he's drifted from Giga City before eagerly testing out his updated generator.

The Isle seems to have barely left the territory, only passing by the coastal areas were more Force Metal mining rigs had been set up. Though he had been to the coast on several occasions, he still couldn't help but be curious as to what kind of Force Metal could be hidden within those mines.

"I guess it wouldn't hurt to do a bit of hunting before I test out the updates on my generator," he mutters more to himself than the parrot that had just perched itself on the head making up the backrest of his operator chair.

Since the coastal area was within view, Hajime decides not to waste the fuel energy of the stingray mechaniloid, but instead swim there, provided he doesn't draw attention to the drifting Isle he had since manipulated into his own workshop. He pulls the medallion away from his chest, causing the robe to glow vermillion and suck into its puck-like plate, before strapping his arsenal pack back on, then heads out of the mechaniloid through the top hatch, making sure to put its cloaking device back on so no one would notice or feel intimidated by its presence, and towards the shores of the Isle; the parrot having perched on his head before he left.

Wadding down the shores took only a few seconds before he felt his foot drop further below the surface, taking the rest of him with it. He quickly bends forward and starts making his way towards the coast, stretching one arm out and pushing downward while doing the same with the other, keeping his head tilted back so he could breathe easily.

[Leaves Force Metal Energy Isle]

[White-Jet]

[From Giga City Coastal Area]

Hajime lands on the shores of the Isle, shaking his cape loose as he makes his way back to the cave towards the two tables where he last left the materials he needed to refine Force Metal.

He observes the items he arranged on one table before picking up another set of items; a Heart Tank, Power +1, Speed +1, and Protect +1, observing them a moment before pressing them together, hoping the updates he made would be able to register the combination.

A few seconds pass with no reaction; just as Hajime was about to contemplate what where he went wrong, his palms begin to emit a bright light, feeling the items shrink into a small object. Pulling his hands away, he finds a single Force Metal floating within the fading light. A label on the chip identifies it to be an Full Specs +1, indicating part one of the experiment to finally be a success. It didn't fully showcase abilities he had installed into the generator, but Hajime prefers to take baby steps rather than jump the shark and risk getting eaten.

He contemplates how he can test out the chip; his best bet is the Byakko Monastery, but considering their reluctant ties with the UN, he worries the success may provoke the lawful good factions to abuse his upgraded abilities before he has a chance to measure its erosion level; for all he knew, the refining could have doubled the risk of mental malfunction than reduce it.

Perhaps he could borrow one of the mechaniloids from the Deployment Center in Central Tower; the idea was no better than his previous candidate, but he trusts Giga City would have a better sense of Force Metal know-how to not repeat the same fiasco that almost isolated them from the rest of the world. With this in mind, Hajime pockets the newly refined Force Metal and heads out of the cave, looking towards the direction of Central Tower before pulling his arms into the sleeves of his Wings and flying off towards the helipad situated at its top, intending to enter the Command Center the same way he left.

[Leaves Force metal Isle]