Chapter 904: Reunited
Without any more productive tests to be done for the evening, Nico led the ship back into the secure hangar of Absolution. In theory, Uncle Lu should have brought his private yacht to a common dock, but with the Imperial Princess on board, it was perfectly acceptable with protocol to bring them into a secure area so that they weren't seen in public together, which would raise suspicions with the young Lady Chen being technically undercover.
Max sensed them coming back in, along with the four guards hanging around in the background, doing their best not to be noticed or in the way when the two family members were having fun together.
So, he went back to the bay to welcome them, along with a fresh tray of drinks that neither would have gotten to try before and a few Koleska snack specials for the young Princess.
Since she was here, Max scanned the ship to find Prince Wushu, her nearly twelve-year-old husband. He was already at the water park, so Max double-checked the routes that would take them through the slides to get to the Prince.
The Princess would be excited to try new things, and the Innu who were on the ship were definitely going to be taking the slides. There was no doubt about that. He just had to make sure that they ended up where he wanted them to without making it too obvious.
"Welcome to Absolution, the mobile home of the Terminus Trading Company." Max welcomed them as Nico led the group out of the yacht.
"Keres Max, it is good to see you again." Uncle Lu laughed while Princess Chen rushed forward to hug his legs.
"I swear you're getting larger. I'm sure I could wrap my arms around your leg last time, and I haven't gotten any smaller." She informed him with a giggle.
"Possibly. The System has optimized me to be pretty muscular, and my strength has reached the physical maximum. So this look is what the System thinks that peak maximum strength should look like." Max explained.
"That's totally unfair. I'm still waiting for my System to wake up. They say that I can't do it before I reach twelve, even though I'm never going to go to a military academy." She pouted.
"That's part of the system, though. It knows when your body is ready for its enhancement. Plus, it will make you grow up in a hurry. Do you really want to get that far ahead of your dear Wushu?" Max teased.
"You have no idea how much I want that. He's bigger, so he always wins the race to the game controllers. If I just activated my system, I could win every time. I'm sure I would be a speed or dexterity type." The Princess insisted.
Max knew that there had to be some sort of motivation behind her wanting to activate her system so badly, but she clearly hadn't thought through what it was going to mean to have the appearance of a young adult while her husband, who lacked a System interface, as he was born in Cygnus, was still a child in appearance.
But then, Max didn't recall if he had ever heard what her compatibility was. Her family was new to the Kepler Empire, and she had been born not long after the negotiations, so there was a good chance that the System might not have recognized her. Her enthusiasm for it suggested that she did have some compatibility, but Max couldn't find how much from her surface memory and didn't want to risk a question that might shatter her dreams by asking directly.
Instead, he redirected the topic to the evening's dinner arrangements.
"Why don't we all get changed into swimwear, and we can take the gravity slides across the island when we land? There is a nice pool and restaurant at the far end, plus it's one of the longest single-route gravity slides on the island?" Max suggested.
Everyone grabbed a drink and a snack on the way by, then Uncle Lu and Lady Chen paused with shocked looks on their faces.
"Oh yes, I forgot to mention that there are a lot of new foods in the snack selection. You can stop and have a refreshment before, or after you change, we're not in a big hurry." Max chuckled.
The changing process was a very fast one, and the little Princess was running back out in under a minute, headed for the juices.
"The nanny tells me that I shouldn't have too much sugar because it's bad for my teeth. But we have toothpaste to rebuild any damage from cavities that might happen from the sugar, so I think that she's just being mean and stealing the joy out of my food." She whispered to Max.
Max knew that it was most likely to keep her from getting overly hyper when she was stuck indoors for fourteen hours a day learning Royal Protocol, but this was a vacation, no such concerns mattered for the day, even if the nanny in question was already here with Prince Wushu.
"Well then, eat up. But not too much, because you've got a lot of sliding and swimming coming up and you don't want to get a cramp." He replied.
"Is that a real thing? Or is it like the stories that the Nanny tells to stop me doing fun things?" She asked.
"That one is a real thing. Some say not to swim for an hour after eating, but if you just have a small snack it should be fine."
The Innu and Uncle Lu weren't far behind her. They gave her and Uncle Lu just enough time to take their pick, then they emptied the trays to bump up their sugar levels and got ready to drag the pair to the transit pod so they could get on the Gravity Slide as fast as possible.
"Team ready? Alright, to the slides! Commander, why aren't you running? Should we get the Uncle an exoskeletal suit so he can keep up?"