The girls were having quite a successful day of inventing new magics. Entirely by accident, Anna managed to enchant a random stone with the portal magic, which was later confirmed by Sophia as she enchanted a pillow in the same way. That wasn't the only thing, though. As it turned out, the blonde and Chloe also had successfully linked two portals to each other without having to take the detour through the tiger's storage. The two had no idea when, how, or why it happened, though.

“Hmmnn…” Sophia was staring at one of the portals. Inside its middle part, she could see Chloe staring back at her through the other portal not too far away from her. She was making the same confused expression. "How?!"

“Seriously, how?!” The fox-girl yelled back at her. Afterward, she stepped through the portal and ended up right in front of Sophia in an instant. “It works!”

“That’s amazing!” Taking a step back because their noses were almost touching after Chloe tested the portal, the tiger smiled back at her. “Why, how, and why, though?!”

"No idea!" The two were obviously very happy about their success, but it all made no sense to them.

"You two must have done something while experimenting, right?” Fen tried to understand it, too. “I don’t want to say that stuff like that doesn’t just happen, but we all know better than that… Still, what did you two do while playing with the portals?”

"Hmm… Did we?" The blonde tilted her head. "We created a ton of portals, and they always led to the storage… In there, we put two of them very close together, but that didn’t really work, either…”

“IT DIDN’T WORK AT ALL!” Chloe didn’t like the experience she had there. “Afterward, we tried to put them right against each other, but the moment they touched, both portals disappeared in a flash of light…"

“Yep, that’s pretty much all we did.” Sophia nodded. “Nothing interesting hap-, wait a moment…”

“Is that how it works…?” The fox-girl tilted her head. “Smushing two portals together connect the corresponsive ones on the other side…?"

“Why, though…?” The blonde was looking for an explanation.

“You’re the one who invented the portals, you know?” Chloe wasn’t sure how she could help her.

“So what? Even then, Anna was the one who used it to enchant things."

“And you’re the one that smushed the portals together.” The fox-girl didn’t accept this excuse.

“That doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing, though.”

“It’s not like I knew, either!" The other tiger also started complaining. “Not that I now know…”

“I hate it when all I get are boring responses that are reasonable…” Sophia was missing the passion.

“Well, let’s see…” Chloe decided to give it some thought. “Maybe, thanks to the portals smushing into each other, their magic mixed together? Afterward, it… causing… and then… At least, it makes the two portals on the outside link to each other because… reasons!”

“Makes sense!” The blonde nodded a few times after hearing her sound explanation.

“It does?!” Maya got loud.

“How?!” So did Ari. “There was also half of it missing! She simply skipped like three steps!”

“She said that there are reasons for it to happen! What else do you want to know?”

“A logical response…?” Ari rolled her eyes. “One that has an explanation in it?”

“Mhmmn…” Sophia gave it some thought. “No.”

“Sure, whatever.” The jaguar didn’t feel like arguing more than that. "Well, the important part is that it works, huh?"

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“Exactly!”

“Though, you’re the one that asked for an explanation in the first place.”

“…” The blonde decided that she’ll ignore Ari for a little while. “Should we try it again? To make sure that’s even what happened in the first place?” She focused on Chloe instead.

“Obviously!” She was at least as motivated as the tiger. “Oh, could you go to your pocket dimension while I wait here? I really want to see what happens to the portals on this side!”

“Sure.” Sophia nodded. “It’s probably good to know about that, anyway. While we’re at it, could you open and close the, uhh… pillow portal…? Once I'm inside, I mean. I want to see what happens to that there.”

“Good idea!”

“Alright!” Raising her fist in anticipation, the blonde stepped inside the portal.

“Let’s see…” Afterward, Chloe went over to the pillow and stone portals and opened and closed them a couple of times for twice the effect. Once she was done with that, everyone started to observe the portals.

----------------

A few minutes later, Sophia returned through one of the remaining portals and was very eager to hear and see the results.

“And?!” She sounded quite excited. “How did it go?!”

“It worked perfectly!” Chloe gave her a big nod. “It was really interesting, too!”

“Really?”

“Yes! The portals started flickering for a moment before the inside suddenly started to become see-through and then showed the picture of the other portal once it was done.”

"Fascinating!"

“Very!” The fox-girl agreed with her. “What about the enchanted portals?”

“Surprisingly unexciting.” Sophia shrugged. “They simply appear and disappear. Nothing else."

“Hmm…”

“Ah, but I also linked them, and they went away. I wonder what happens now.”

“Ohhh!” She got even more excited over her idea. "That was our main motivation initially, wasn't it?"

“Yes!” She nodded. “Maybe, I guess? Probably. I kinda lost track of our original plan…” The blonde sounded somewhat confused over the many times they got sidetracked. “Let’s give it a try!” The group walked over to the portals and looked at them. Just like the others, they were linked to each other. Afterward, Sophia deactivated both of them and looked at Ari. “Please open the stone portal.”

“Why me?”

“Why not you?”

“…” The jaguar paused for a moment. “Fair enough, I guess.” Having no problem with that, she kneeled down and touched the stone. Afterward, she poured a little of her magic into it, and the portal promptly appeared again.

“Mhm-hmm…” It looked a lot different, though, and Chloe was scrunching her eyebrows while looking at it. “Interesting…”

"Something like that, yeah…" Sophia was making the same expression while both were studying the portal that was only a sparkly purple frame with nothing inside of it. "Anna, open the other one, please."

“Sure~.” Doing just that, the other portal quickly appeared, and when that happened, both linked to each other once again, and the inside showed what was on display on the other portal.

“Isn’t this working a little too well…?” The blonde wasn’t sure what to say.

“It’s perfect, isn’t it?” The fox-girl got excited again. "It's exactly what we were hoping for, isn't it?!"

“Yeah… The only missing part is for the other side to get a signal or something like that when one portal opens. Right now, it’s just a guess if you can use it before activating.”

“Right…” Chloe nodded. “I have no idea how we can solve that part, though…”

“True.”

"Well, for now, I guess it would be best to keep it open when you're ready and want to go to the other side. That way, whenever the other side is ready as well, both sides will be open, and you won’t miss each other.”

“Makes sense.” Sophia agreed. “In a way, even if you’d receive a signal from the other side, if you’re busy during that time, it won’t do you any good, anyway.”

“Soo…” Anna tilted her head while listening to the two. “What does all that mean…?”

“Plan B for you and Ari to accompany us is pretty much dealt with and ready to go!”

“Yay!” The princess liked the sound of that. “Wait, plan B…?”

“Yup~.” The blonde smiled at her. “Ruthless training to get some power in those long and pretty legs of yours, and the equally amazing ones of Ari will start next week!” Her plan sounded a little biased. “Don’t worry, they won’t become all muscular and stuff if you don’t want to. The soft and squishy shall persist! All the extra power comes from magic being awesome!” This part seemed important to her. “Not that muscular legs don’t have any appeal, but I prefer soft… Anyway, training shall start soon!” She stopped herself before going into too much detail.

“Urgh…” Anna’s expression changed a little. “T-Thanks for the compliment, though…”

“Any time~.” The short tiger's fondness of legs was far from a secret, after all. “Anyway, back to the portal enchantment for a second... What happens if you throw the item into its own portal...?”

“I feel like that would be the same as dividing by zero...” Chloe had a bad feeling about the idea.

“Uhh..." Sophia paused for a moment. "We kinda need to test it, though, don't we?"

“Looking forward to it~.”

“Well then...” The blonde picked up the stone Anna had enchanted and threw it through the portal that came out of it. Immediately after, both portals disappeared after the stone came out on the other side. “Oho! You need to make sure to have a backup at the place you left, but it seems like you’re able to disappear without leaving a trace!”

Happy with that result, the group decided to take a break from the portals for the time being. For the rest of the day, they showed Anna some more chantless magic to get her used to it and let her try out a few things before they decided to head back home. They most definitely didn't need to clean up for an hour after some explosions happened, either.