Momo Side Story – Black and White 1 – Find her own story

Momo Side Story – Black and White 1 – Find her own story

Momo remembered the buzzing of her phone quite well. As the wind of the air streamed around her, she also remembered the last time it had buzzed in her hand and how she had subsequently dropped it. That last fight she had over the phone still echoed in her mind.

“Can you come back please? I could use your help with this!” Ria had stated in a tone between begging and demanding. In the background, the rattling of tools had been heard.

“You’re working again, right?” Momo asked, immediately annoyed. “You remember that this is exactly the reason why I am NOT where you are right now?”ViiSiit novelbi/n(.)c/(o)m for latest novels

“Yeah but...”

“No, no buts,” the artificial support had made clear. “You like your work more than me, that’s fine, but don’t expect me to come at your call when you need an extra brain and some mana.”

The workaholic nature of the steampunk princess had driven a wrench between them ever so slowly. Momo had been aware that Ria loved to tinker, how could she not have? That didn’t make the near total lack of interaction outside of the workshop acceptable in any way.

At first it all had been nice and sexy. They challenged each other with ideas about what to build next. Momo learned a lot about mechanics while also keeping the worst excesses of bureaucracy off her newfound lover. Between that, whenever the two felt their very fleshly desires rise up, there were a bunch of things in Ria’s workshops that could be repurposed. It was a time of equal parts intellectual and physical stimulation.

After a few weeks, Momo had wanted more from them, however. As intellectually pleasing as it was and as much as she liked supporting the princess, it lay in her nature after all, doing ANYTHING outside of the workshop was basically impossible. Whenever she managed to drag Ria out of there, the tinker was just looking at her phone and the blueprints she had saved on it. Sure, when they were where Ria wanted to be, they were all happy, but that just wasn’t how the monochrome girl wanted to spend her life, much less her love life.

It all had culminated in a series of fights that were infuriating in how little Ria seemed to care about them even happening. If the tinkering princess had shouted back, then at least Momo would have felt like she was worth something when she threatened to leave. Only when she finally cut herself off did the princess shower her with calls. If she couldn’t help with this or that. Infatuated idiot she was, she had agreed more than once.

One day, when stumbling over some interesting information, Momo had finally snapped out of it. She realized two things. One, that she was once again just playing second fiddle to someone else’s life story, and two, that Ria would never love anything more than her work. No matter how much Momo tried, there was no changing that. With that on her mind, feeling lonelier than ever, rather than just leave the court, she left Austria entirely.

It was time to find more independence out there.

“I REALLY need you though,” Ria had insisted. “I promise that we will do something you want us to do once we get this baby powered up. The gears sound so cute when they are turning, you should hear them!”

Momo had taken a deep breath, said, “There is no us anymore,” and hung up. It gave her an annoying mixture of guilt and liberation. Then the phone had started buzzing in her hand again. After staring at it for a minute, wondering if this time it would be different if she picked up, she finally opened her hand and let the phone drop hundreds of metres onto the roofs of Constantinople.

That way she cut herself off not only from Ria but also everyone else she knew. Maybe that was exactly what she needed. Momo would have lied if she said she went onto that decision with her usual logic.

At that moment, she really missed John and everyone around him. There was a lot of things she could have said about her perverted creator. For example, that he was prone to making decisions that stroked his ego. That he was trying way too hard to be a nice guy. That he was over theorizing most things. That he was hogging Aclysia’s devotion. That he wasn’t paying attention to the people he knew and his harem in particular even when he shouldn’t have had the time wasn’t one of those.

Which is where she went first to find room 1047.

She then thought it had to be building two, room 47. Question was which one was building two? The answer turned out to be completely unimportant, since that assumption was wrong as well. Instead, the second building was counted as the first extension and had room numbers that began with the sign for alpha, followed by floor number, then room count.

In other words, there were at least three different systems by which rooms were organized within this cluster of archives. ‘No wonder they lose things all the time,’ she thought when she finally found the right room, having just wandered around randomly until some sort of system seemed to resemble what she was searching for. That was, terribly enough, the best strategy.

She knocked on the door and was greeted with Greek words inviting her inside. Thankfully, she had learned that language before going on this adventure. Ever since she first had found that hint in the Habsburg’s private library, she had made her preparations for this endeavour. She had just hoped to be on it to go back to Ria instead of using it to get away from her.

“This library is maybe the worst thing I have ever encountered,” Momo stated truthfully the second she entered the office. It was so flooded with light that she almost felt her retina fall out despite not even having one. “And I have fought a Lorylim infected elemental, the goddess of genocide and a golem the size of a skyscraper.”

“It’s not that bad!” the librarian immediately went on the defensive, as if Momo had offended him personally. “Once you get used to all 47 systems, you can find your way around quite easily!”

Just staring judgmentally and trying her best not to fall into a preaching that would maybe get her thrown out of the building entirely, Momo took a seat after being offered one. “Anyway, sorry for the delay. Just to make sure, you are Glykos?”

“My wife likes to say that,” the same smiled, and Momo repressed a groan. The young man had to be a father since he had just made a terrible pun. Glykos happened to mean ‘sweet’ in Greek. “Anyway, you would be Momo Newman, yes?”

“Just Momo,” the artificial support insisted.

“Well... normally finished artificial spirits take on the last name of their creator... ah, well, if you insist,” the man turned to his computer, not even addressing the fact that she was hours too late. The odds were rather high he had expected for her to arrive late due to the building. “I will need some name though, if I am going to give you a library pass.”

“Just like that?” Momo asked, having thought she would have to go through a bunch of trials to be given access.

“My higher ups have told me to not give you too much of a hassle, given who you are associated with,” Glykos went ahead and explained. “Also, we here at Prometheus are happy about any potentially re-discovered artefact. The sudden end of the middle eastern Abyss following the end of Babylon has left quite a few barriers and secrets lost to chaos. There could be entire cities out there that are maintained by just a few monsters crawling around inside them. And this... Tialoyst thing sounds rather important.”

Momo had sent the entire excerpt she had found over to this man, so he was as far informed as she was. The Tialoyst was supposed to be a staff forged by Enki, god of stars and magic, from Astrotium. Momo wasn’t unhappy with her current weapon, it was a good channel for magic, but it was a handout by the Gamer and she wanted something to call her own, earned with her own work. Something that also was an upgrade.

A long lost staff made by a son of Tiamat sounded like just the thing.

“Well, give me a surname you like and then you can go fight against the library.” That comment made Momo realize that the inside of the archives was probably infested with even MORE systems than the layout was.

‘Well, at least getting angry over that will be a good distraction,’ Momo thought about what she wanted to be called instead of Newman. What was a name she could give herself that described what she wanted to be in life or what she already was? ‘Pretty hard to find something that doesn’t sound terribly cringey...’ she realized, going through numerous solutions. Her face became hotter and hotter from each thing she even thought about saying out loud. Finally, she surrendered and just got this thing over with. "Firefly."