While everyone was in the living room, Sophia had gotten the tablets she and Maya bought in the old world out of her storage, and the sisters showed how they worked to everyone. Chloe was very impressed by how far technology had advanced since she left about 20 years ago. The wolves were a little more confused, though, as it really looked like, to an outsider at least, that magic very well existed in the world they came from. They somehow could convince them that magic, in the way they know it, definitely isn’t a thing, but it was also hard for them to explain how the technology worked because it's rather complex.
“Alright, should we get to the next thing we got?” Everyone was still playing with the two tablets, but Sophia slowly wanted to continue because they had bought many more things, after all. “It’s camera time!” Saying so, she pulled a couple of boxes out of her storage again. It was the main camera she bought, the instant print one, and many accessories, including the paper for the instant one.
"Eh…?" Fen got confused again while he looked at the boxes and the pictures on them. “It looks so different than the, uhh… tablet? You said that also had a camera thing?”
"Ahh…" The tiger scratched her cheek. "The tablet from earlier has another main function. Its selling point is the big display you can use to look at pictures, for example. They just crammed a camera in there because… because they could. This is a standalone camera you use purely to take pictures. They’re of much better quality.”
“I see?”
“Think of the tablet as activation word magic. Pretty versatile, easy to use, and you can do most moderately well with it. The camera is highly focused chantless magic designed to do one thing perfectly.”
“Ohh!” Somehow, this seemed to have made sense to him.
“We’re going to take so many pictures!” Sophia sounded really excited about it. "Maybe not today, though…" She noticed that it had already long gotten dark. “I guess we can save the cameras for tomorrow. In the end, it’s just a much fancier version of what the tablets can do, after all.”
“The tablets also are about to run out of battery, so, the instant one aside, we also have nothing to look at the pictures on. Not to mention that setting up the cameras would also probably empty their batteries." Steph agreed that playing with them right now wouldn’t lead to the desired outcome. “You also bought solar generators with battery storage, right? How about we check them out now? They’re kinda essential for everything, after all.”
“True, but…” The tiger then looked out of the window again. “I doubt we’ll be getting much of a charge out of that.” She then pointed at the pitch-black darkness outside.
“Yeah, but the batteries of the generator should be at least 50% or more charged, as well. That stuff really doesn’t like to be fully empty, after all. If you really got as much capacity as you claimed you did, that should last us for a loooong time!”
“Ohh!” Sophia’s face lit up again. “That’s true! Let’s try them next!” She jumped off the sofa in high spirits and then looked at Maya. "Can you help me get all the boxes out of the storage? It was quite a lot of boxes."
"The many and somewhat heavy ones we bought in the camping store, right?” She tilted her head in response before also getting up. “Sure!” Afterward, the couple stepped into the portal, and a few minutes later, half of the living room was littered with boxes.
“That’s even more than I thought! Just how much did you spend?!” Once the dog-girl got a good look at everything, her eyes grew wide. “That must’ve been a fortune!”
“That is a pretty good description of how much money I left in that store…” Sophia reacted with a small sigh.
“No kidding!” Steph raised her voice a little.
“Well, we went shopping with the intention of getting rid of all the money we had because we were sure that we couldn’t come back to get more or replacements, so…”
“Yeah, that’s fair enough. I probably would’ve done the same. I haven't seen any solar generators myself, so I'm also looking forward to this!
“Oh, that’s no good…” The blonde’s expression suddenly changed. “I was counting on your expertise here! I have no idea how any of this works or is even put together!"
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“I’m sure it comes with a manual.”
“R-Right!”
“Then again, manuals are nowadays often just an online link to a video or something like that…" The little sister also got a little awkward. "W-Well, I've always been the learning-by-doing type, so it'll be fine!"
“Uh-oh…” For some reason, Sophia didn’t seem to be relieved in the slightest.
“Let’s go!” Steph ignored her and energetically started opening the first box.
----------------
After a little over an hour, a ton of boxes, and packaging material, together with a mess of cables later, the sisters seemed to be finally done setting everything up.
"Thank everything holy that it came with a manual that even included pictures…” The tiger sounded slightly tired.
“Ahaha… Well, I think it was pretty plug-and-play for the most part.” The dog-girl looked a little more confident. “Okay, connecting the solar panels was a good bit of pain with how you have to connect them in a certain way with a mess of adapters…" She was somewhat confident about it.
“Why did you two want to plug in all those solar panels in the first place? It’s not like those will do anything right now.” Chloe tilted her head while staring out of the dark window. “It’s amazing that those are somewhat portable now, though! It’s a great idea to make them foldable!”
“Because I wanted to see how everything goes together!” Steph had an easy explanation for her.
“Okay, I can accept that.”
“It’s not like you joined us halfway in and were just as excited about it as Plushie, after all.” The blonde was a big fan of the nickname.
“A-Ah.”
“What is all that…?” Fen was confused a lot today already, and the array of new and weird-looking things wasn't making it any better.
"Any electronic device needs something called electricity.” Steph tried to explain it to him. “All those square boxes are something we call batteries. They're used to storing it. Electricity can be generated in many ways, but we’re going to use solar power here. In easy, very easy, terms, it uses the sun's light to generate it. It then gets stored in the batteries, and we can later use it in the electronic devices even when there is no sun anymore.”
“I see…” Aura was the one who nodded in return. “Long story short, magic is called electricity in your old world, and all of you are just in denial?” She had her very own explanation for all the weird-sounding things she had heard just now.
“…” The sisters and Chloe paused for a moment. “I mean… Sure, why not…” They gave up.
“There are many logical explanations, scientific proof, natural occurrences as examples, but…”
“Same goes for our magic here.” Aura had no intention of letting Steph have this.
“Did our world have magic…?” The brainwashing was working, and she looked at her older sister with a questioning expression. “I mean, if we really want to, we can also create electricity with our own body by converting movement… It’s just incredibly low and negligible in general terms.”
“Same goes for the magic power of humans in this world.” Fen had to use this chance.
“…”
“W-We still aren’t able to create something out of nothing like we can do with magic here, so…” Sophia was grasping for the last straw she had. “Also, let’s just ignore our old world! It’s a bad place, so let’s just enjoy some of the few good things here, and we’re good!”
“Sure~.” The wolves took it as their win.
"Hmm…" While all this was happening, Chloe started staring at the solar panels again with a curious expression.
“What’s up?” Noticing that, Sophia then addressed her.
“Does it have to be sunlight?”
“What do you mean?” She needed a little more context.
“Light magic to use on the panels.” The fox-girl tilted her head. “If you put some power into it, it has some, well… real power. It can be blindingly bright, and it even radiates some warmth. If used right, it can feel exactly the same as being hit with the warm rays of the comfy afternoon sun. There's a high chance it has the same properties and can be used to generate electricity through the solar panels…."
“Ohh!” The tiger liked the sound of that. “Let’s try that!” Looking really motivated about the idea, she moved in front of the six huge solar panels they had unfolded on the other side of the room and concentrated for a moment. Soon after, a big ball of pure light formed above the panels and brightly illuminated the whole room. It even made the surroundings feel warmer, as well.
"Woah!” A few moments later, once Steph was done being amazed by the show, her eyes grew even wider when she looked at the two base stations of the solar generators. “They’re each charging with about 1000 watts! The panels can apparently do 350 each, so it’s basically maxed out!”
“Seriously?! That’s amazing!”
“First: Ouch, my eyes!” Maya wasn’t a fan of the sudden brightness and was covering her eyes. “Second: What does that mean?”
“Ahaha….” Hearing that, she turned off the light again and smiled at her girlfriend. “It means we have unlimited electricity! We’ll be able to easily run and use everything we bought in the other world without having to worry!”
“Yay!” That was all she needed to know.
“Alrighty! That went even better than expected!" Sophia's mood was excellent. "How about we clean up a bit? The boxes and packaging material ended up everywhere, after all. After that, we can continue with the other stuff we got!”
“Okay!” Everyone agreed with her, and the group made the living room livable again before they could finally focus on the main attraction, the TV. Maya disagreed with that being the most important thing they got, but that was a different story.