Now, seven months after that dark day in the operating theatre Daichi couldn't believe he'd been nervous.

In the depths of one of the underground laboratories at the Glaude Foundation, he sat up from the contoured table connected up to the computers all around him. He'd been making sure that he was linking the sensory interface on the table the right way up to the contact pad at the back of his neck. There'd been one accident with the data feed from that and he'd been hearing colours and smelling sounds for hours. Not an experience he would care to repeat.

He hopped onto the floor and into the testing booth which would allow full scanning of his body's abilities.

He looked down at his arms and flexed his fingers as if for the first time. He was a constant ball of motion, bending, stretching, jogging on the spot, flexing and curling, marvelling at the power his limbs now held.

Behind him he could hear the Professor making notes into a dictaphone. Enhanced hearing allowed him to make out the mumble as clear as day.

"Subject Land-3 has recovered full mobility after last operation and is now running at optimum theoretical levels.... and he says he feels fine too."

Daichi smiled, nice of the Professor to remember the human touch.

"Carbon fibre intramuscular augmentation in leg tensors and flexors have been achieved with no sign of tissue rejection. Enhanced skeletal support acting within acceptable parameters. Teflon derivative lining to ball and socket joints in lower body is withstanding wear. Proceeding to initial external testing. How's the interface with your eyes bearing up Daichi?"

"This has got to be the coolest thing ever Prof. I can zoom in, wide angle, and a couple of others I haven't totally worked out yet. Can I start running now? Please?"

"In a moment or two, we've got to make sure that all the feedback links are in place properly. Okay, before you start anything, have you tried to access the on-board tactical systems?"

"I think I can feel it in here Prof. It's like... having a bit of food stuck between your teeth that you just can't quite reach. Hang on...." He frowned and screwed his face up... it didn't help, but at least he felt like he was doing something.

"Just trying thinking the boot-up sequence. Remember your training, don't think with your mind, relax, centre, focus."

Managing to centre him thoughts, Daichi was sure he heard a silent popping sound (He knew it was a contradiction, but that was the only way to describe it) from somewhere inside himself, and suddenly he wasn't alone inside his head. There was something with him. Not so much a separate personality as an awareness of his surroundings that didn't come from him directly.

It was weird, like having someone you could only see out of the corner of your eye whispering advice in a barely audible voice. He'd had the theory drummed into him for four years and both Sho and Ushio had explained it to him, but nothing could prepare him for the actual experience.

His vision changed too, becoming sharper in both depth of field and colour perception, small cross-hairs appeared directly in front of him and a small readout displayed distance to object being looked at. He knew his eyes were untouched by the surgery (he didn't know why he should be squeamish about that considering what else had been done to him, but that was the way he was), but the computer lodged in the base of his skull was modifying the signals reaching his brain from the optic nerve.

He blinked in a certain prepared pattern and a terrain map appeared in front of him, altering the scale of his surroundings so he could see obstacles far in the distance whilst maintaining his relative position within the terrain.

He blinked again and the crosshairs flashed up in red. His eyes flicked around the laboratory, sending small mental signals when his eyes landed on specific objects, "marking" them. It was like playing a video game.

'multiple targets acquired - tracking lock - scanning effective... displaying optimum projected attack scenarios'

A red line appeared on the screen indicating the most efficient and quickest attack vector which would allow him to intercept with all the targets in either passive or combat mode. He blinked back to normal vision, reminding himself that this was far from a game.

The voice the computer used was reassuring, the Professor had suggested that they would be more likely to accept the computers recommendations if it sounded like a voice they associated with trust.

Daichi had chosen Sho's, of course. Ushio had picked Jacques Cousteau for some reason (A long time idol of his, plus he said he liked the accent), Sho wouldn't say who he had picked, but from the way he blushed whenever the matter came up it _had_ to be a girl. Daichi was just starting to see the attractions of girls, but wasn't sure he would want one talking in his ear all day.

"How's it working Daichi?"

"Well Prof, if I ever need to launch an attack on a bunch of computer equipment, I know I'll be able to handle it, no sweat."

"Well, let's start simple. You shouldn't run before you can walk..." the Professor smiled "Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to. Well it all seems to be set here, let's get this show on the road. Are you sure you don't want to the others here? This is nothing they haven't been through before."

"But not with me, they haven't. I won't take the chance of screwing this up with them around to see me."

"If you're sure then, come on."

The Professor led the way out of the lab. Behind him Daichi was discovering that it might prove to be an effort not to run like crazy every step of the way. He forced himself to walk at a slow, sedate pace, there would be plenty of time for running later and if the Professor though he was having trouble walking he'd be straight back in bed for a month. Carefully, and aware of every step he was taking to a concentrated extent that only a baby learning to walk for the first time might appreciate, he made his way to the doors of the lab.

A short time later he and the Professor arrived at the outdoor training track. Once it had been an athletics field in a military base. Now thanks to the funding of the Glaude Foundation it included elements of an elaborate obstacle course, with piles of rocks, large scramble nets, hoops hanging from a complex metal framework a several stories high, a giant lake and a patch of what looked uncommonly like it might be quicksand. In short everything a prospective Steel Saint could wish for in a test that didn't involve actually hurting people.

"We'll start with some simple laps Daichi. Start off normal, and then pick up speed. We'll see how you go."

Daichi was off in a moment, racing and leaping down to the starting blocks. He switched to wide angle vision and could see the Professor, now over three hundred yards away make a tiny little hand signal. Taking that as a sign he gave a big thumbs up (Might as well show the visual enhancement was working) and then started running.

When he thought about it, he knew that he had always run to get away from his problems, he'd run when the arguments had home had got too much, he'd run when school was getting too much for him, when the bullying had got out of hand. For years he'd looked on himself as a bit of a coward, but his brother had shown him that as long as he could run TOWARDS his problems as fast as he could run away from them, he wasn't being a coward, just being sensible. Since then he had taken as his personal mantra, "It's not the speed, it's the direction you're going in."

He had always been fast on his feet and could easily outpace children years older than himself. Sprinting or long distance it didn't matter, he could handle either and switch between the necessary styles as required. It had proved useful on more than one occasions as Daichi's normally rather.. energetic approach to matters often got him into trouble, and his feet would get him out of them.

And so this experience was as close to heaven as he could imagine. All he had to do was run, let the relentless rhythm of his feet carry him forward and never let it stop.

For the first fifteen laps he kept to normal speed. He didn't want to give the Professor any chance of faulting him before he got a chance to try out his new tricks.

"Am I ready yet Professor? Please."

"I think so, this final test-run was just a warm up really. All your preliminary psychological and physiological profiling all seem to indicate the time is right. Come back here."

He changed channels and spoke into the communicator again, "Bring it in."

>From one of the buildings around the track three men in lab coats sweated under the strain of the large box they carrying. They lowered it on the ground gratefully and backed away. The Professor pulled out a remote device and pointed it. As he pushed the button on top, the sides of the crate folded in on themselves, revealing a gleaming chrome silver box, it had the picture of a fox carved into the sides, along with the symbol for earth and a toothed cogwheel motif. It was about three feet to a side.

"You've seen the Cloth you were trained to wear often enough, but we thought we'd add a little something. Traditionally the Saint Cloths of Athena have had carrying chests. We can't quite manage that for you, the weight alone would make it pointless, but we didn't see any reason why the storage and recharge unit couldn't reflect their heritage. It's sort of a graduation present to you."

Daichi raced towards the box excitement building up inside him. He ran round the box to see it from all sides, touched it, stroked it and at one point even hugged it with glee.

"Can I open it and try it out Professor, please? Huh? Please?"

The Professor smiled, it was impossible to keep a straight face around Daichi when he was excited.

"I don't see why not. You _do_ remember the command code for actual activation don't you"

"I certainly think so, It's been drummed into my head since I was seven Professor."

Taking a deep breath Daichi gave the command, he could have done it mentally, but felt that the first time should have a certain drama to it.

"Land Cloth... initiate sequence Vulpecula 1"

The box shook slightly and then started to unfold, segments pulled back and retracted into themselves, internal cables pulled themselves on to prepared drums and the whole thing pulled back from it's contents.

At first glance it didn't look like much, it was a four wheel vehicle somewhere between an exotic skateboard and a large toy car, but it was his, linked to him in a way that was hard to put into normal language.

'cloth activation initiated - tracking host - homing in'

It rolled out of the box, and like a dog seeking it's master headed straight for him. He spent a few seconds marvelling at it's sleek lines and at the way he was already picking up information from it as a separate entity in his head.

Wanting a bit of room before the next stage, he started to jog around the track, with the vehicle following behind him.

"Land Cloth... initiate sequence Vulpecula 2"

He leapt high into the air and the vehicle leapt to join him, but it was doing a lot more than that. Sections slid out, other sections slid in and it broke into numerous separate pieces. Catching them in the magnetic field his body was generating the pieces flew to their designated positions; arms, legs, torso, waist and finally his helmet.

The interface unit at the back of the helmet made contact with the contact jack at the back of his neck and suddenly the true power of the Cloth was at his disposal.

As well as increasing what he already knew was an impressive processing speed he was now linked to the main computer at the Foundation, and also to the other two Steel Cloths' systems, enhancing teamwork through parallel processing.

And the power cells of the main Cloth were ten times more powerful than the smaller internal ones now built into his skeletal structure.

With a start he realised the biggest change was probably to his vision. With a third visual implant being fed into his brain from the tiny fibre-optic devices in his helmet, and so above his eyeline, he now had the full three dimensional vision denied to a binocular human, Sho had called it "Height perception". The effect was subtle but remarkable, he now had absolute perception of position within his surroundings in a way no human could consider.

Taking the initiative he firstly called up the visual display that showed his ground speed. It was normal, then he started the mental processes that he'd been told would let him progress to the next stage.

'initiating acceleration mode - modifications alpha through gamma activated' came the internal voice

He felt the lachrymose fluid (He'd looked that up) in his eyes start to congeal slightly, giving more protection to his eyes.

At the same time filters in his nostrils and at the back of his throat slid into place, extracting dust and dirt more effectively. His lungs expanded slightly within the rib cage allowing him to process oxygen more effectively.

The artificial joints that had replaced his ankles, knees and hips shifted slightly, giving him a longer and more stable stride than normal. A faint whine could be heard as his Cloth powered up.

Modified sweat glands started to emit a modified coolant compound into his perspiration to cool him more effectively. Friction heat would be largely dissipated by his bodysuit but such heat as was generated would be channelled back into the Cloths systems.

The power directed into his legs began to build at an incredible pace, with each passing footstep he could feel more power driving into his leg muscles, hydraulics in the armour around his legs sliding into his flesh, augmented his own calf muscles, shifting backwards and forwards with effortless efficiency. Shock absorbers in the balls of his feet were activated, cushioning his footfalls.

His legs started to pump like crazy, but he was paying too much attention to the path of track ahead of him to really notice it.

It was only after a few seconds of pure joy at the sensation of unbridled motion after several weeks in bed or locked in a lab that he took the time to look at his speed. His eyes bugged out of their sockets, which had an odd effect on the display, he was running at over 8 metres a second, heading towards world class athlete level and then some. Then he realised he could watch where he was going and monitor his speed quite satisfactorily. As he watched, his monitor clocked up to 9 m/s then 10, then 12! Had he been in competition he would just have broken every world record in history. And he didn't even feel so much as mildly minded.

'adrenaline levels rising - adjusting parameters to compensate - all systems maintaining optimal operational status'

And still the speed increased. He was running at over 20 m/s and was finding that he was running through his own dust cloud from the preceding lap, which hadn't had a chance to settle yet, when he heard the Professor's voice coming through the receiver now implanted in his mastoid sinus.

"This is amazing Daichi! You're exceeding every expectation we had for you on a first run. You've been holding out haven't you?"

If it had been possible, Daichi would have blushed (The pacemaker controlling his heart rate would not allow such wasteful use of resources). Maybe he had been resting a little longer than he absolutely had to before trying this, but there was no way he had been taking chances. He mumbled to himself, confident the throat mike would pick up the words and carry them back to the Professor.

"How long would you like me to keep this up? My power levels aren't even at 85% yet, and I can keep this speed up for as long as you want."

"Well, let's see what we can do to make this interesting shall we? We weren't going to do this to you until your third or fourth day, but since you haven't seen fit to tell us everything about you, I think a little surprise from us is called for... Initiate sequence Delta Test 3. Keep moving and stay on the track Daichi, those are the only rules."

Suddenly the track ahead was no longer smooth. Hurdles sprang up and down at random, trip-wires emerged, the ground became rough and uneven as hydraulic jacks under the ground came into play.

It took Daichi a few seconds to select the right viewing options for the terrain and he nearly broke his neck waiting for the system to catch up. The onboard computer was offering advice as fast as it could.

'48 degrees left - obstacle - wire 25 cm above ground - tensile strength estimated at 14kg/cm square - no deviation required - increase speed to compensate - 39m/s - possible land mine area 23 degrees right - likely target areas acquired and plotted - avoidance pattern laid in - pattern initiated - large pit opening ahead - estimate long jump of 12.3 metres with 23 degree angle of launch - initiate'

The drone of the voice in his ear was reassuring, offering advice as his brother would have done. He obeyed all the instructions that he felt were sensible, but the computer was something of a worrier and he deliberately didn't obey all of it's instructions, free will was a far more useful function.

- - -

The Professor was watching in astonishment, this was far beyond anything he could possibly have hoped for, Daichi was a barely visible blur of motion, and so far had managed to avoid any and all of the pitfalls that his design team had spent weeks coming up with. This obstacle course would have laid waste to the worlds elite combat teams and a scruffy little green haired 13 year old was demolishing it!

So far this had been a massive success, Mr Kido would have been proud of his achievements. Daichi was already operating at 115% of his expected capacity and that was on a first day, even Sho hadn't managed that.

The mechanics of the Cloths had been fairly straightforward, but the design and implementation of the cybernetics had been vastly complex. Mr Kido had provided schematics for the designs he wanted but the actual implementation had taken three years of design work alone.

He'd had to hire the finest biologists, electronic technicians, metallurgists, psychologists and chemists and manage to get them to co-operate enough to work in harmony, but stop them talking to each other for long enough to work out what was going on. Project Latterday Saint had been the culmination of his life and after this he would be able to retire on the large retainer Kido had paid him, and engage in some nice theoretical research.

Then he looked again at the figure who was currently hopping 8 foot hurdles like they weren't even there and smiled. Right, like he'd be able to leave these kids behind after all he'd put them through. His wife had left him as a result of his job and he hadn't seen his own daughter in six months. These three boys were his family now, and families are never really through with each other.

He'd taken a good chunk of their humanity, quite literally, and he owed it to them to be there for them when they needed him. Of course, to be sure they had to be ready for anything meant being a swine once in a while, like this...

He spoke into the communicator again.

"Daichi, we're shutting the scenario down, you can slow down now."

- - -
Daichi gave the professor a mocking little salute (Well, a rather blurry salute, but it was at least visible) and started to slow down.

He was totally unprepared for what happened next, a flight of javelin-like spears were fired from somewhere on one of the cliff faces. Their pattern of fire meant that dodging them would be impossible, even for Daichi and they were actually homing in on him.

His head was filled with a graphical representation of their projected flight paths, it looked like a plate of hi-tech spaghetti coming straight at him. Various options were considered at rejected, faster than he could even consider them.

'incoming fire - evasion impossible - initiate special attack series 1 - shutting systems down to self protection mode'

Daichi felt his arms move practically on reflex, and triggered the complex series of thoughts required for the next action. He'd been running this through in his head for months, but this was the first time he'd actually been able to expect a result.

He clenched his fists as he brought them up above head height, and triggered the magnetic field generators in the cloths torso, aligning them with the surrounding natural fields. Tapping the Earth's magnetic fields was not something that anyone does lightly but there was no time to worry about the implications.

"Geomagnet Pulse!"

He brought his hands together in front of him as if clapping them very hard and for a moment or two, patterns of energy became barely visible in the air as the magnetic fields interacted and interfered. A column of magnetic force shot out, visible on Daichi's passive displays. The flight of the missiles was thrown into confusion as the metal in them came under his influence.

A second later he was surrounded by a pile of metal shafts, though for three meters around him the ground was bare. He stood, panting visibly, more from shock than anything else. A second later and he was standing in front of the Professor, his fists still clenched. The Professor had the good grace to look a little embarrassed but still kept a smile on his face.

"Well, I think we can safely say your reaction time and specialist implants are reacting within operational parameters under adverse conditions."

"You miserable...! Professor, you just tried to kill me!" His barely noticed that his voice broke with the outrage he was feeling.

"Tried? Yes, but the odds of success were slim even before I saw your performance today. Besides, there was a back up plan."

"Hey little brother, I knew you could do it!" The voice came from the very top of the six story building next to the track. A figure in dark red armour leapt from the roof at first free-falling but then actually slowed down as he neared the ground. Daichi heard the faint whine of the turbines as Sho landed. He was in the full version of his Cloth and looked pretty spectacular in it

Whilst he had his running, his brother had dreamed of flying, becoming a pilot had always been his ambition and Daichi remembered long hours they had spent just staring at the sky, not saying anything, but the smile on Sho's face had spoken volumes.

With a sound like a depth charge Ushio leapt from the depths of the pool, reaching a height of 25 feet in the process, and landed neatly before doing cartwheels to get to their position. He was wearing his Cloth too.

Ushio was still a mystery to him half the time, more of a loner (spending hours and hours swimming by himself) but probably far smarter than he ever really let on. He occasionally worried both Daichi and Sho; sudden outbursts of temper, a seeming delight in combat that didn't seem entirely healthy. Still he was a good friend in times of peace and a good person to have at your back in times of trouble.

Daichi didn't know whether to be pleased or annoyed, but decided on the former, "You guys saw everything, even though I told you not too?"

"We knew you'd be nervous, but you didn't think we were going to let you go through this alone, did you? I'm.. WE'RE both really proud of you."

Sho reached over and tousled his brothers hair, even under the helmet it stuck out. Ushio just smiled and nodded, another thing about Ushio, he never wasted words.
   
Basking in their goodwill Daichi realised something, he was a Steel Saint now, a proper Saint, and he and his friends were going to let the world know that a new age had arrived!

+ - + - +

End of Chapter 2

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