– III –

Swapping the magazines on both Punishers turned out to be easier than I’d expected.

The armatures held the rifles under my arms, allowing me to eject the spent magazines and then replace them with fully loaded ones without the need to hold the Punishers in my hands. Then the armatures retracted against my back, tucking the linear rifles snuggly against my shoulder blades.

It was a similar arrangement to what I’d experienced with the Viper railguns, except that the armatures swung the Punishers under my arms rather than over my shoulders. All I had to do was raise my arms a little and the linear rifles would slide under them. Then I would slip my hands through the circular grips, at which point the armatures would release the Punishers, then return to their standby position at my back.

I’ll admit I was surprised by how strong the armatures were.

The metal arms were thin and frail in appearance, yet when I tested their strength at one point, I quickly realized they were incredible sturdy.

Mind you, I wasn’t intent on bending them since that would harm their function, but that little test reassured me that if I was to fall and tumble, then the armatures would survive the beating. However, it was likely that the Punishers in their grip would not, so I decided to avoid rolling along the ground as much as possible.

That brings me to my present course of action.

I had decided to take the high ground to the tree-like tower for a couple of reasons.

By running atop the rooftops, I could keep myself on track toward the tower, but I could also keep an eye out for Miss Ponytail.

The Argus System was still maintaining a sensor-sphere of twenty-meter radius active around me. It might not seem like much, but the sensory data it was feeding into me was acting like a look-ahead radar – mapping out the terrain in front of me. Combined with my overclocked consciousness, this was allowing me to choose my direction of travel with considerable forewarning, but I’ll return to this shortly.

The Argus System was also keeping an eye on my surroundings. But this, I mean that it was watching the skyline around me. I didn’t know how it was doing it, but I suspected that the Argus was seeing my environment via the two wedge shaped fins attached to my head. Somewhere they were fitted with cameras that stared out at the world. Regardless of how it was done, the Argus System had activated this extra feature and was using it to search for any sign of Miss Ponytail while I ran to the tower.

How did I know this? Because it told me.

The Argus System informed me via short thought pulse that it was engaging visual scanning, and that included a brief explanation, the gist of which I’ve just recounted. So I was feeling fairly confident that the Miss Ponytail wasn’t going to sneak up on me like she had during the paint bullet training exercise. By leaving things to the Argus System, I could focus on choosing the most efficient path to the tall tree-like tower.

As I was explaining earlier, the Argus was mapping the ground ahead of me using its sensor-sphere. It wasn’t a detailed map but more like an outline of what lay in my path such as ledges, parapets, balconies, bridgeways, entrances, the walls of buildings, and so forth. Thus, it was like having a game map of the terrain within twenty-meters, and this helped me find ways across from building to building.

But I needed a faster route.

A more direct route.

The tower looked to be a kilometer away, and knowing that Mirai could run a hundred meters in around seven seconds meant that she should be able to arrive at the tower in a little over a minute. However, that was only if she could sprint that far, and if the terrain was favorable to her. Running along the rooftops prevented me from capitalizing on Mirai’s leopard-like speed, though I was using her ability to leap far – as much as forty feet on a couple of occasions – to traverse from one rooftop to the next. When the distance was too great for her, or I felt I couldn’t make the jump, I’d search for a bridgeway between buildings and make use of it. Yet while I was travelling across the skyline at inhuman pace, I wasn’t moving nearly as quickly as if I was running along the ground far below.

However, I couldn’t risk losing the high ground to Miss Ponytail because I had no idea where she was. On the lookout, the Argus System had yet to locate her, so not knowing where she was put me at a disadvantage and restricted me to staying on the rooftops.

Thus, all I could do was focus on making the best possible time to the tower.

Erina was no longer on display across the habitat’s ceiling.

The blue sky with wispy clouds air brushed across it had returned.

But across the skyline, holo-projection billboards advertising various products commonly found in Ar Telica also included a countdown.

As I ran from building to building, rooftop to rooftop, there was no escaping that countdown.

I glanced at a giant holo-vision sign with a pretty girl modelling suntan lotion. Normally I would have found myself drawn to her bikini body, but not on this occasion.

24:13…24:12….

That’s what the countdown displayed.

I winced inwardly as I continued running.

Why I hadn’t I retreated from Miss Ponytail on the bridgeway? Why had I engaged her in furious gunfire that only served to delay me?

Arnval had given me thirty minutes to get to Erina, so had he known that I would waste several of those minutes in a shootout with Miss Ponytail?

Had he known that I wouldn’t run away?

As I continued to run from terrace courtyard to courtyard, grateful that the buildings of the habitat weren’t built too far apart, I ruminated the question.

Why hadn’t I run away?

I could only think of one answer: I’d wanted to beat her – to blow her apart and finish her off. But in the end, I’d been forced to run away, and if Fate hadn’t helped me when I had my back to Miss Ponytail, I probably wouldn’t be where I was now, making tracks over the rooftops.

Heading for the tower was the right thing to do, and yet I was nagged by the suspicion that losing track of Miss Ponytail was a mistake. That feeling turned into one of unease, and it wormed around in my chest, bringing me to a hard stop at the edge of a building.

It was then that I realized what had been truly bothering me.

“…much too quiet….”

In other words, why wasn’t she shooting at me?

I had my answer seconds later when the Argus System sensed something moving swiftly below me – something bipedal and human sized.

Damn it!

Miss Ponytail hadn’t been running over the rooftops like me.

She’d been running through the buildings.

Within the habitat, she had the home advantage. She didn’t need to shoot her way from building to building. Doors that were closed to me were open to her, allowing her to pursue me from inside the buildings.

I suddenly experienced a horrid premonition.

I would arrive at the tree-like tower and find her right behind me.

Worse still, if I stumbled, fell, or lost ground to her, I could find her waiting for me at the tower.

Despite being overclocked, time slowed down even further, and my surroundings grew eerily tranquil.

I felt as though I was encased in a bubble, able to perceive what lay around me, yet unable to interact with it.

The aforementioned tranquility flowed into me, as in the corner of my eye, I watched the countdown in a holo-projection tick over a tenth of a second at a time.

23:13:10…09…08…07….

Slow as it was, time waits for no one, and I needed to decide on my next move.

I could either stop Miss Ponytail here or attempt to outrun her to the tower.

As I considered both options, I suddenly realized that perhaps I was going about this the wrong way.

In my hyper-accelerated state of mind, my body moved rather quickly as I looked up at the Promenade off to my ten o’clock and some distance ahead of me

To my chagrin, I acknowledged there was a third option.

Why the Hell didn’t I think of it before?

Making my choice, my overclocked awareness sped up in response, and within my mind one second became four rather than ten.

Summoning both Punishers, I slipped my hands through their hand grips a moment before the armatures released them.

Aware of Miss Ponytail running toward me within the building underfoot, I aimed the linear rifles at the Promenade sailing high over the habitat’s buildings.

Arnval had said I needed to board the Promenade and face him to successfully save Erina, so my intention had been to board the floating observation deck when it docked at the tower.

However, Arnval had never said I couldn’t shoot it down.

The Punishers used their range finding ability to report the Promenade was over two hundred meters away, but it was a trivial distance to a rifle that could strike targets almost two kilometers away.

Aiming at the tail end of the oblate vessel, I watched it for a fraction of a second through the Punishers’ optical system—

Please, don’t let me hit Erina by mistake.

—then I squeezed both triggers simultaneously.

A twin double-shot erupted from the Punishers, and nearly instantly the bullets penetrated the Promenade’s rounded stern.

To tell the truth, being an ovoid, the front and back ends were the same, but I chose to think of the region I’d targeted as the stern simply because it was closest to me.

Watching through the Punishers’ proverbial eyes, I saw the holes the bullets made but could only picture them tearing through the Promenade’s innards.

Not expecting them to bring the flying structure down, I fired a dozen more rounds into the Promenade’s butt, then waited a second for something to happen.

When nothing did, I clamped down on my disappointment, and shot off another ten rounds, before taking off at a run for the edge of the building off to my left.

Why? Because I sensed Miss Ponytail drawing dangerously close beneath me.

To prove just how dangerous, the area I’d been standing on exploded into a greyish mist as it was pulverized by a fusillade of bullets fired from the floor below.

Dozens of rounds ripped through the rooftop.

Then another fusillade chased me as I ran toward the edge of the building.

However, I wasn’t running in the direction of the tower, but perpendicular to it.

If we consider the tower as standing at the northern end of the habitat, then we could say I was fleeing west atop the building's rooftop.

I’d said it before, I needed a faster route, and the Argus System had found it for me.

It had glimpsed an elevated structure resembling a mag-lev track running between buildings in a northerly direction. In other words, running toward the tower.

With bullets chasing my heels, I glanced once more at the Promenade sailing serenely – albeit more slowly – toward the tower after weathering the twenty odd rounds I shot into its stern. The Argus System also spared it a long look and estimated it would dock with the tower in 131 seconds. But knowing that the tower was still some seven hundred meters away made my stomach clench unpleasantly. A second later, and I took a running leap to the building ahead of me. However, the distance was farther than Mirai could manage, and I fell short of the building’s rooftop terrace.

To be fair, I didn’t have much choice but to attempt the sixty-foot jump.

A stream of bullets from Miss Ponytail was ripping up the ground inches behind me, so there was no safe place on the rooftop.

And the bridgeway connecting the two buildings was a handful of floors below and to the south, requiring me to descend the sloped wall of the building by making use of the numerous long balconies there. That would take time, so I honestly felt I had no choice but to jump. It was simply unfortunate that the distance was beyond Mirai’s ability to cover in a single bound.

Fortunately, while I was going to fall short of the rooftop, this building also had long balconies running along its east face, thus I was guaranteed to land in one of them. But as I was falling toward a balcony on the fifth floor – three floors short of the rooftop – I felt my parabolic descent level out by several degrees.

In an overclocked state, I glanced down and was surprised to see Mirai’s split skirt had fanned out to either side of me, and was acting like a parachute—

Or a pair of wings.

I was no longer falling for a balcony on the sixth floor. Instead, I was headed for a landing on a balcony balustrade on the seventh floor. And because the side of the building was sloped at a sixty or seventy-degree angle, I could use the balconies like footholds and jump my way up to the rooftop.

My heart twinged with renewed hope as my booted feet touched down on the metal coping of the balcony’s balustrade, quickly dropping into a crouch to cushion the impact of my landing.

Maybe I can still make this work!

Then from behind me, I heard the sound of glass shattering.

Don’t tell me!

Still crouched on the balustrade, I looked at the wall ahead of me.

It was a floor-to-ceiling patio window, more than a dozen meters wide, and the building behind me was reflected on its tinted surface.

In that reflection, I could see that Miss Ponytail had crashed through a similar window-wall and out onto a balcony with enough momentum to carry her into the glass balustrade. The metal frame warped, and the glass panes shattered under the impact. Miss Ponytail had to catch herself on the balustrade or she would have fallen nine floors to her demise.

Then I realized she wasn’t simply arresting her momentum.

She was bracing herself as the took aim at me.

I jumped down onto the balcony, and held the Punishers in wide, outstretched arms – one pointing at Miss Ponytail, the other pointing at the window-wall.

Now that she was out in the open, I caught my first good look at her.

It really is her.

She looked every bit like the tall girl with the blue tinted ponytail I’d first encountered in the villa’s garden courtyard. But there was no lifeforce aura surrounding her body, so she was clearly a mechanical avatar. She also looked like she’d been dragged through Hell and back. Her black and crimson outfit was punctuated with numerous holes.

Then there was the condition of her features.

Skin and tissue was missing from the left side of her skull, right above her left ear. It looked as though her head had been raked by a chainsaw, but that damage was done by a couple of ten-millimeter AP rounds that scored a lucky hit.

In short, she didn’t look so pretty anymore.

She was a sight that would terrorize young children whether it be day or night.

However, seeing her in that dismal state made me wonder why her outfit was in an equally sorry condition.

My Princess Regalia had taken hits to the arms and shoulders, yet not a single bullet had penetrated the material. That wasn’t to say each shot hadn’t hurt, and no doubt I was sporting large bruises because of them, but my point was that my clothes were relatively unharmed.

In contrast, Miss Ponytail’s outfit was fit for the dumpster – and I’m not referring to a donation bin.

So why the big difference?

Was my Regalia truly unique to me and therefore abnormally tough and resilient?

Was it because I had something to lose if I was shot, and Miss Ponytail didn’t?

The difference was something to note, but it didn’t stop me from shooting at her with the Punisher in my right hand, while perforating the window-wall to my left with shots from the second rifle. Therefore, while one Punisher weakened the glass wall in preparation for my escape into the building, the second one was pummeling Miss Ponytail’s chest with a handful of heavy grain bullets.

She gyrated wildly when struck by each AP round, but held onto the metal guardrail of the warped glass balustrade. Using it to steady herself, she was able to return fired despite the damage I was inflicting upon her.

I had no idea what kind of weapon she was wielding – it didn’t strike a bell with Mirai – but it was fitted with two ammo drums, one on either side of the receiver. That meant she had a lot of bullets at her disposal, and that was bad news for me.

I ducked on impulse as she shot back a lengthy volley from her balcony across the street.

Through the Argus System, I sensed the bullets zip over the top of my head and stitch a tight pattern on the window-wall behind me. Surprisingly, the glass didn’t shatter and break away.

That was disappointing since it would have made my escape a little easier.

Clearly, the glass wall was demanding my undivided attention, but first I had to something about Miss Ponytail, because turning my back on her while trying to break the window was simply too dangerous.

There was also the fact that Mirai was terrified of exposing her back to Miss Ponytail.

Well, describing her as terrified might be going too far, but she was quite determined not to turn and run.

Her Fight or Flight switch was very much set on fighting back.

Thus, I had no choice but to swing around and aim both Punishers at my opponent across the street.

Now I was unleashing double the trouble on Miss Ponytail, but the problem with remaining on the balcony was that it offered me no protection – not that there was much that could protect me from the heavy rounds she was shooting at me.

The point is that I was vulnerable to her gunfire, and unlike the mechanical body she was operating, Mirai couldn’t stand out in the open taking bullet hit after hit like Miss Ponytail was enduring. The only reason I hadn’t been stitched with bullet holes was because I was hitting her over and over, and that was throwing off her aim.

However, it was only a matter of time before she got lucky with her return fire, and that happened sooner rather than later.

The Punisher in my right hand was caught in a stream of gunfire.

Its muzzle and about a quarter of its barrel length fractured then broke apart as dozens of small rounds smashed into it.

My hand and wrist cried out in pain and I released the mangled weapon as I fled northward along the balcony.

Her counterattack chased me away from the window I’d been softening up to break through, but having changed direction by 180 degrees, I was now aiming the left Punisher at Miss Ponytail.

Arnval had been surprised by the high accuracy of my marksmanship, and so had I. When I checked the scores later, I discovered that I hit on target 99.3 percent of the time. According to the Assisting Intelligence, that was utterly unnatural. But what truly shocked both Arnval and the A.I. – if you can imagine the latter being capable of surprise – was that I achieved similarly high marks when shooting as I ran.

A solid score of 98.8 percent.

When I explained that I could see where I was pointing through the weapon interface to Mirai’s wetware, the A.I. pointed out that rarely did I make a correction. It seemed the training facility’s Assisting Intelligence had been watching me very closely, and I had to admit that its observation was true. Despite engaging holo-targets while overclocked and on the move, it was rare for me to make corrections to my aim, especially as I grew increasingly accustomed to the Punishers’ weight and limited recoil.

With that said, it was times like these that my high scores came into play.

Aiming at the weapon in Miss Ponytail’s right hand – the firearm that was busy ripping up with balcony around me with a hail of bullets – I switched the Punisher to single shot mode, then fired one round into the ammo drums attached to her gun. One of those bullets passed through the drum and slammed its pointy head into her right shoulder. The drums fed a few more bullets into the gun before they jammed, but the impact against her shoulder had thrown her aim, so she missed me by a couple of inches.

Grateful for the close call, I kept a low profile as I ran along the wide balcony.

Switching back to double-shot mode, I fired through the glass balustrade of both our balconies. The AP rounds shattered the glass, then slammed into her knees, fragmenting the armor that protected them.

Miss Ponytail’s legs wobbled in a rubbery fashion and then she went down. But before she could collapse, she dropped the gun in her hand, and grabbed onto the balcony guardrail. Using it to keep herself upright on her knees, she reached behind her back with her left hand. What she whipped out was a handgun best described as the bastard child of a shotgun and an assault rifle.

During all this, I skidded to a hasty stop, and continued shooting AP rounds into her body.

The Punisher’s stopping power was some thirty to forty percent higher than a Viper Vanquish’s, and every bullet that struck her was punching right into her.

Yet Miss Ponytail refused to go down.

She gyrated and rocked wildly on her knees, but her right hand held onto the guardrail with a dead man’s grip.

It infuriated me that she continued to make no attempt to avoid the bullets I was shooting at her.

Instead of crawling back into the apartment, she clung to the balcony, and endured hit after hit.

Small chunks of her outfit, skin, and even metal would spray into the air as the Punisher’s bullets took her apart.

To be honest it was horrible to witness, but I had no choice but to continue shooting…until I decided it was time to end this.

Thus far I’d been targeting her arms, chest, and torso.

Now I paused for a half second to take aim at her head.

In that brief moment, she took advantage of the lull in gunfire, and shot me with the heavy gun she’d pulled out from behind her back.

Large caliber bullets struck my exposed left flank, spinning me around on impact.

I lost my footing and landed heavily on my back.

Pain lanced through my torso, locking my diaphragm, making it impossible to breathe.

I didn’t know if the Princess Regalia had been breached, but I was in too much agony to check. Yet somehow Mirai’s body moved on its own, succumbing to her intense desire for self-preservation. Through sheer willpower, she first rolled me over onto my belly, then forced me up onto my hands and knees.

Because of the pain, I’d broken into a cold sweat that bathed my face, and I struggled to balance myself on one hand as I knelt on the balcony floor.

However, like Miss Ponytail, I was down but not out.

I’d been shot, but I’d held onto the Punisher.

Pointing the linear rifle at Miss Ponytail’s head, I was aided by the feed from the rifle’s targeting system.

When I was certain my aim was true, I squeezed the trigger.

But once again I was a little too late.

The agony from my injuries had slowed me down, and Miss Ponytail got the jump on me for a second time.

Her gun’s muzzle flashed brightly, and her shot struck my left thigh.

I screamed in torment. What else could I do? The pain was excruciating and I honestly believed she’d blown my leg away.

I collapsed onto my belly, unable to move, and barely able to breathe.

My overclocked awareness wavered, and time inside my head sped up and down repeatedly in a nauseating manner.

Yet despite all this, I refused to drop the Punisher. Held in my left hand, it pointed in Miss Ponytail’s general direction.

It seemed that my left arm was the only part of my body that didn’t hurt, and the only limb that I could still control.

Desperately, I tried to maintain my accelerated mental state as I made one of those rare corrections the A.I. had talked about.

With time moving at a snail’s pace, I raised the Punisher a few inches off the balcony floor, aimed once more at Miss Ponytail’s forehead, and then squeezed the trigger.

This time I shot at her before she could shoot at me.

Unfortunately, my shot fell into the 0.7 percent margin where I missed my intended target.

I failed to center punch that metal bitch’s head.

Instead, the double-shot punched a sizeable hole into her throat.

I didn’t see any blood, flesh, or metal fragments spurt into the air, but I did see Miss Ponytail jerk back sharply under the impact.

Then she stiffened for a moment before breaking into a wild seizure.

Losing her grip on the balcony guardrail, she slumped back on her knees, then toppled over onto her side where upon she continued to spasm vigorously on the balcony floor. Those spasms caused her fingers to flex, and the gun in her left hand belched fleeting flames as it discharged numerous rounds into the air.

Some of those rounds ripped into the balcony.

Some of them blew large chunks out of the window-wall to my right.

I lay flat on the balcony floor, unable to move, praying that she ran out of ammo soon.

But she continued jerking about madly, and the supersized handgun continued firing wildly.

If I didn’t do something, I was going to be hit by a stray bullet.

I had no choice but to take matters into my own hands.

Holding onto my overclocked awareness, I pointed the Punisher as best I could in the direction of Miss Ponytail’s head that was bobbing and rocking loosely at the end of her neck.

I wasn’t hoping for a clean hit.

I was hoping to do enough damage to break the connection between the operator and the mechanical body.

And I was also hoping that by blowing her head apart, her body would stop moving.

So when Miss Ponytail’s cranium passed through the Punisher’s targeting reticule that projected into my vision, I squeezed the trigger and held it down until the magazine emptied.

AP bullet after bullet slammed into her mechanical body.

The first few holed her skull, and violently kicked her head back.

The remaining rounds ripped into her throat, neck, and chest.

By the time the Punisher clicked empty, Miss Ponytail had been knocked into the foot of her balcony’s window-wall where she twitched for a handful of seconds before she finally grew still.

I waited a few more seconds before relaxing my grip on my overclocked awareness.

As time resumed moving normally inside my head, I took a pained breath and sucked precious air into my lungs. But breathing too deeply was more than my lungs could to handle, and I broke into a wracking cough that exacerbated the fire blazing through my left flank. It burned for another ten to fifteen seconds until the Angel Fibers within my body began to extinguish it with extreme prejudice.

Yet each short, shallow breath that I took sent fresh waves of agony racing through my torso.

Lying still helped mitigate how much it hurt to breathe, but soon my breasts began to complain about the weight upon them.

Rolling over onto my back proved to be as painful as I feared it would be.

Afterwards, I lay gasping for air.

Incapacitated by injury, all I could do was stare up at the fake sky overhead and wait for the Angel Fibers to patch me up from the inside.

It felt like an eternity before I could breathe without feeling as though my left flank was being stabbed with a hot poker.

In truth though, only a minute had gone by.

Yet I really couldn’t afford to be lying down.

I needed to get back up and chase after the Promenade.

Who knew how many obstacles I would encounter between here and the tower.

However, I was too exhausted to move until I recalled Miss Ponytail lying on the wrecked balcony across the street.

Abruptly anxious, I turned my head and cast a long look her way.

She was right where I left her – or rather shot her – slumped against the foot of the balcony wall.

Several seconds ticked by, yet she showed no signs of reviving.

Eventually, I sighed loudly in relief, but it turned into a short, strained chuckle.

I knew that by laughing I risked raising a bad flag, but I couldn’t help myself.

That said, I kept a watchful eye on Miss Ponytail as I swapped the Punisher to my right hand, and then cautiously checked on my injuries by tracing my fingertips over my wounded left flank.

At one point I pushed too hard and triggered a fresh wave of pain that left me gasping for air.

Miss Ponytail’s gunshot had sent me spinning to the ground, and it had probably broken a rib or two judging from how much it initially hurt to breathe, so I expected to touch an open wound. Instead, I was shocked to discover the Princess Regalia felt pitted and rough over my flank but was otherwise intact.

Well, I’ll be the Devil’s uncle….

Gasping a little, I then reached down to run my fingertips over my left thigh.

Again, there was no open wound.

The Regalia felt ragged, and my thigh burned hotly where my fingers touched it, but the material had survived the blast.

Relief flooded my chest and I exhaled loudly before breaking into a soft laugh that soon trailed off into silence. But my heart felt lighter, and it wasn’t long before my body began to relax. My injuries still caused me discomfort, but they no longer incapacitated me, and my breathing grew longer and deeper. Able to think clearly again, I turned my thoughts to my next move, yet I found myself confronting a familiar conundrum.

Why was I enduring so much punishment to save Erina’s ass?

Was it truly because I didn’t want to feel guilty afterwards if I sat on my hands and did nothing? Or was I lying to myself? Did I care about what happened to my former sister?

I shook my head wearily.

Me? Care about Erina? You must be joking.

However, if that was true then I was back to square one.

If it wasn’t the fear of guilt or family affection driving me onwards, then why the Hell was I trying to save her? Was it because I believed that I still needed her? Or was it because I wanted to hurt her with my own hands? Was I doing this to make my revenge on Erina that much sweeter?

I didn’t have an answer and lying on the balcony wasn’t going to help me find it either.

The countdown was still ticking, and I needed to get to the tower.

With that in mind, I pushed myself up onto my elbows, then readied myself to rise to my feet.

At that moment, and without warning, the habitat’s blue sky turned a Hellish red.

At the same time, the countdown that was displayed across every holo-projection now flashed up onto that burning sky, and I watched in growing horror as the numbers rapidly dwindled.

The countdown arrived at 10:00:00, stopped for a few anxious heartbeats, then quietly resumed ticking down toward zero.

In disbelief, confusion, and despair, I stared up at the red sky and wondered why I’d been robbed of ten minutes on the clock.

---

Thank you for following the webversion of Book Three.

Dear Readers, I have an important announcement to make.

For since the beginning of this year, I have suffered from Tinnitus in my left ear.
Recently, I started experiencing soft Tinnitus in my right ear.
I believe both started from ear infections.
The Tinnitus has greatly affected my life.
It has affected my work and my writing.
And last week, I seriously thought about suicide on many occasions.
I have experienced a breakdown in front of my family, too.

I have been fortunate to have their support, and I was able to see a highly regarded specialist in Australia.
I am on medication that helps me sleep and calms the Tinnitus down.
For this past week, I have been doing well. On one day, I had total quiet in both my ears.
I treasure those quiet days.
For now, with the treatment, I am not thinking of ending my life.
In 3 weeks I see the specialist again and this week I have an MRI scan booked to check if I have a problem with my audio cortical nerve as the Tinnitus started in one ear.
I am also taking magnesium supplements.
I truly hope that I can get treatment to manage this condition long term until a cure is found.

The reason I say all this is because the Tinnitus is the main reason Gun Princess Royale book 3 has not been released. I have trouble working on the novel when the hissing in my ear is too loud. But lately with the medication and proper sleep, I have been able to concentrate a fair bit on the novel. I recently edited about 40 pages of the book in 2 days.
My goal is to stay sane and to manage the Tinnitus while still being able to work effectively at my day job and my novel.
My girlfriend is extremely rich and she has been extremely supportive of me, to the point where she wants me to retire and focus on my writing.
She and I have much to discuss on that front, but I am seriously thinking of her offer.
In any case, our plans to get married have been put on hold while the virus pandemic is ongoing.

All I can say for now is that I will do my best to get the ebook version of GPR Book 3 out in the next few months.
I will do as the doctor says and undertake whatever treatments are necessary to get through this.

I thank you for reading this, and for not giving up on my beloved series.

If you are new to the series, and are interested in reading of purchasing Books 1 and 2 of the Gun Princess Royale, the links are provided below:

Book One - Awakening the Princess

Book Two - The Measure of a Princess

A percentage of the purchases made through the links will go toward supporting the website.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

I wish you all well.

Please, stay safe.