While the hero and his party dealt with the chaos in Eclanor, the only living scout of the army, Lumine Moon, lies on a table in front of Mono. Her eyes were covered with a blindfold, and something kept pricking her in the back. Although she couldn’t see and had her stomach against cold metal, the feeling of the queen trimming what little part of her feathers that had remained attached to the body was quite obvious.
"Anaesthesia, Lutz..."
"Yes, ma’am!" Injecting anaesthetic right by the shoulder blade, Lutz quickly backed away to allow Mono to do the rest of the procedure.
Using a scalpel, she made an incision to extract the fickle bone that was once attached to the wings from the rest of Lumine’s body. Thankfully, without only a few cuts, the cartilage let loose–leaving for a well-pressed flesh wound through which she could inject the metallic replacement.
"This might still hurt. Bite the pillow if you need to." Doing as the queen told her to, Lumines bit the pillow as the cold metal was inserted into the open wound. She could feel it squirming around for a while, along with the warmth of Mono’s fingers, injecting into her body some strange, gooey fluid.
By the time the queen’s hands were out of the wound, Lumine was left crying, with her teeth having torn through the pillow cover.
"Now I hate to do this, but," placing a hand over the stitched wound, Mono closed her eyes and breathed a light magic spell. Using her mechanical mana circuit, she quickly began healing the woman, but as someone who preferred the mechanical instead of magical, she wasn’t happy about the ending steps. "There, done for now."
Pulling her hand away, Mono took a step back to admire the small metallic rod coming out of Lumine’s back. With it now in place, she could attach or detach her new wings like any other prosthetic. However, with so little time, Mono hadn’t yet made anything, especially since the keeper’s core also needed to be integrated into the wing.
’Balancing her wings would be an issue, not to mention I can’t just make one to replace it later with something else if we’re using a keeper’s core to make it.’ Momentarily looking at Lutz, who’d been somewhat distracted throughout the process and kept looking away from the patient, Mono walked next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"You can go now," she said, and without waiting for even a second more, the boy left the place at once.
Bringing her attention back to Lumine, Mono approached her body and positioned the towel covering her lower half in the proper spot again. Bare to the bones, the woman had been practically naked thus far.
"You can get up and get dressed," she said, moving her hand along her spine before patting her shoulder.
A simple gesture that she didn’t think about, but had she known that Lumine swung a different way than most women, the queen probably would’ve recoiled with disgust.
"It’s done?" Turning her head sideways, the strained eyes of the owl-girl glanced up at Mono. Nodding right back, the queen gestured to her clothes.
"Yeah, but you’re not going anywhere until the wing is done. I don’t want to make any mistakes and take them to completion, so you will stay here and test out the different iterations."
Getting up while closely listening to Mono, Lumine reached around her back and lightly touched the iron piece coming out from under her shoulder. The first touch made her gasp; after all, she could feel the metal rod moving inside her flesh with the slightest touch.
"That...feels strange," slowly turning to face the queen, Lumine covered her body with a towel and quickly looked away, "I-I’m sorry, it’s okay–it feels okay, your highness."
"Drop it, I know what it feels like to have iron stuck in your flesh." Seeing right through her buttered words, Mono grabbed Lumine’s clothes and brought them over to her side. "Just take these, get dressed and follow me for a few days–you’re a foreigner in this city, so I doubt it’d be a good idea for you to wander by yourself."
Unaware of the maze-like circular structure of the city, Lumine decided to take the advice to heart and quickly got herself changed. To her surprise, however, the moment the two walked out of the lab, they were met with a machina holding a colorful rack of clothing.
"As you asked, Master Mono, clothes for the girl to try," said Grace, her eyes shifting between her master and the girl behind her.
"For me?" Raising an eyebrow, Lumine pointed at herself.
"Yeah," turning halfway around, Mono smiled at the owl-girl. "What, you thought I was being generous? I want you to try these clothes on, help me see what kind of attire looks good on a winged woman."
"Wh-wha-wait, I..." Grabbing her hand while Lumine continued to stammer, Mono pulled her forward, forcing her to step up to the rack.
"About your visit to Eclanor, are you still planning to do it?" Ignoring the girl, Grace pressed on to another matter.
"Yup, nothing’s changed except the fact that now I have a tour guide for that trip," raising Lumine’s hand, Mono looked her in the eye, smiling. "You will show me around that city, won’t you?"
"I..." Once again, before she could finish, Mono shifted her attention back to Grace.
"By the way, can you bring those frilly underwear as well? I think her fair skin would be a perfect fit for those things."
The more Mono revealed about how she had to repair her, the more Lumine felt embarrassed. And yet at the same time, being bisexual, she felt a strange excitement bubbling from within. However, the queen felt no such way, and with the royalty’s abhorrence of girls who loved other girls or boys who loved other boys being an obvious fact, Lumine kept her lips sealed.
For now, all she had to do was be a model for Mono’s hand-tailored clothes, something that was, in a way, a nice break from the chaos from before.