After applying themselves so intently, the two girls went from their hard work pressing them towards dawn to taking it easy right until another dusk. Maintaining a decent sleeping schedule drifting between two different realities was proving to be decidedly more than challenging.

Axln herself spent her time actively considering matters of time. She had noticed that this planet at least progressed its time in perfect sync with her own planet, but she didn’t completely understand how it had watched matters of time. Researching the matter with Lyun, she had learned some rather interesting details on the subject at least. Ruixse also had an orbital calendar system, though a lot less refined than Aestus worked with, even if a lot of things were surprisingly familiar. Just like Aestus, most of the time tracking had been ripped wholesale from their original homeworld of Celese. Instead of months, they had something called a lunar cycle, watching the orbit of a moon. Just as stupid as earth though, a lunar cycle was the orbital period of the Celesi moon’s phases, not even of either of the two local moons. This resulted in a lunar cycle taking effectively 18 and a quarter days to complete, which were in turn split into groups of 5 that covered the duration of a standard season over 91 and a quarter days. The full cumulation of seasons spanned the term of a year, which was itself also a Celesi construct for the same time period as a Terran version of the same stupid word, the amount of time Celese needs to do an orbit around their own sun. Even more confusing, the term Solar cycle was invented to represent Ruixse’s own orbital period of their own sun, being effectively like a Sidus. Axln had no idea why stellar travellers seemed to feel so compelled to make such a process so complicated.

Even more complicated was how all those quarter-days fit into the annual rotation. Because of such odd fractions, each cycle is considered to simply be eighteen days, but the day bordering the switch of seasons was considered to be a special seasonal holiday. Since this still left one last odd day in the sequence, there was also a similar special day that was considered the border of the annual sequence, being yet another special holiday right mid-summer. Meanwhile, the same lunar cycle is divided further into three groups of six days called a lunar phase, each as the early, mid, and late phase. Meanwhile, it seems Celese had never been paranoid about structuring their days with more clarity than morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Instrumentation though, much like technology, did however call for a system of more precision, a concept she could personally agree. In simplicity, a day is simply split into a hundred moments, which are then further split into a hundred instants. Having processed the math in her head, with consideration that a day here is the exact same length as on her planet, that would mean that ten moments are inadvertently the same as one hour. Any instrument that needed values more precise than an instant simply relied on a fractal of an instant. The average lifestyle of a person though did not make application of such precise measures, they were only used in instrumentation. Finding this disappointing, she was really considering asking Lyun to create an actual timepiece for her, one with decimal-level precision in instants. Time was something very important to her.

With considerations to time, she had found it interesting just how much was actually matching up. Not just the passage of days, the current season was actually considered early summer when taken into consideration of their primary sun, Yhndae. Their other sun, Taeqhyx, governed their solar phases that would either empower or weaken the planet’s elements, the current solar phase being a void phase because Taeqhyx was so far away. This was all the exact same placements as the Aestus’ suns, except for that there wasn’t a third sun in this system. This itself appeared strange to her, that absolutely everything was mapping up so exactly. Certainly this couldn’t just be a matter of coincidence. In fact, from her considerations about how laws of reality were mapping across to each other, the patterns were showing that quite a lot of things could possibly be keeping up with this idea. It was a prime idea, but Lyun’s workshop just was not a place of research, Axln would have to find a much more suitable opportunity to look into such stuff at another time.

“Sometimes, this place just seems sort of cramped.” “Yhzia kept saying the same thing, which I guess might be why she went out a lot. I guess though travelling around like she did might be a bit hard for you, since everything is still so unfamiliar.” “That, and I’m worried about drawing too much attention to myself. You already know, me otherwise being a conduit, those sorts of ideas have always been a concern. Here, I might fit in as one of the humans, but I actually now look strange again because of having such an arm. It probably doesn’t help that the arm I’m hiding looks almost as unnatural. Your implants at least hide very easily as a part of your legs, at least as long as they are covered.” Axln honestly missed having technologies such as her holo and nanites, things which could solve such problems much easier, things Lyun had very little to deal with. Both instrument sets had finally started behaving properly, Axln had full control over her new hand while Lyun hadn’t been finding walking to be all that difficult anymore. However, Lyun was still in no position to simply provide new instruments she didn’t already have. She was already aware that there would be some potential to improve on the initial design, but she didn’t have the right stuff to make such a thing.

“Sorry, I wish I could just provide us with an easy solution, but my workshop just hasn’t been doing very well, my stocks haven’t been the best. The thing I lack the most are probably the most important, kyuemu shards, so that the instrument has a power source to run with at all. They’re pretty much a requirement for any instrument, with certain designs needing certain types of shard. I just haven’t been able to make enough Qeld to purchase much in the area of shards, the sort of stuff we need for this.. I don’t even have any at all.” “Great, so money problems. We would have to figure out a decent way to make up for the missing cash. Maybe it would help to sleuth for some deals, look for cheaper offers from competitors.” “Competitors? The Kyuemu Foundry is the only organization that provides kyuemu shards.” “A monopoly would make this a lot more difficult.. and potentially extra expensive.” “It’s worse that the Void Phase makes kyuemu shards extra scarce, but that was also supposed to be why making and repairing instruments was supposed to be so lucrative. If I had known before that the Foundry was also the prime supplier of instrumentation, I might not have even bothered trying. I’m pretty sure that’s why no one bothers trying.” Lyun had been standing against such a commercial empire all this time, Axln could see just how rough that might have been, much like how hard it has been for her to stand up against earth’s bias. With that realization, Axln decided she didn’t want to be such an economic liability. She was used to suffering against oppression, she could then easily just keep doing so.

“Okay, new plan then. Let’s just get out there and I’ll be a showcase for your work. If we need to just make some money, then we should profit from all of your hard work.” “What? But there is no way I could reproduce this stuff, a lot of this was your doing.” “Yeah, and..? That just means we’re in this together, which works for me. Means I’ll get to earn my own upgrades.” “This is the exact problem Yhzia and I were left with though, looking for new buyers. Where would I go to find a new buyer?” “Easy, possibly the last place you’ll want to be. Wherever we can find the largest social presence and gain the most attention. Hopefully, somewhere at least close to your workshop, would put less strain on your legs that way. I know that was a prime benefit of having my office near a big mall, do you have anything like that nearby?” “Actually, there is a big mall nearby, not that far away from here. It’s where I go shopping for all of my supplies, even the Foundry has an outlet there.” “Neat, and is it about a 2 moment walk from here too?” “Oh, about that.. why?” “Sounds good, let’s go.” Axln was already getting ready to go, making for the door while Lyun still had no idea what exactly was going on. A moment later, or about six minutes by Axln’s calculations, the two of them were on their way. Axln kept track of the route taken, feeling a slight familiarity in the process that matched the typical 15 minute walk after just over another two moments passed. The two of them fit into the mid-dusk crowds entering the mall, Lyun thankful that this wasn’t at least a busy time. She knew however that they might very well be here long enough for the place to get packed, getting exceptionally nervous in the process. What if something went wrong, what if their arms reacted, what if…?

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“Don’t worry, just stay focused and we’ll be fine. Remember, we want to be here, we want to make some positive relations with business opportunities, we won’t have any problems. Keep in mind, I’m not some liability here, I can actually take care of myself, you won’t need to worry about me either, even if someone confronts me. It’s not like I’m even a Conduit, we’ve got nothing to worry about. So relax, and seriously make sure you remember that we want to be here. Speaking of having places we want to be though, do you know of a store here that deals in maps? Pretty sure we could get some impressive.. advantages in working with such resources.” In the shining light of the mall, it actually appeared that Axln’s arms were a heavy contrast to each other, the white of her glove standing in pure contrast to the black of her crystalline arm. She wasn’t even causing that much of a commotion either, because in such light it appeared as if her arm was actually just in some kind of thin crystalline plating, like a single-armed vambrace. When blended to the rest of her outfit, she actually looked sort of dignified.

Lyun brought Axln to a sort of map store, the maps however stored in handheld instruments. As Axln couldn’t navigate such an interface, being unable to read the prompts, Lyun showed her how such a map worked. Axln however quickly took it from her, and scanned around for herself using the strange GPS device, simply having tracked what options did by memory alone. The device was even capable of measuring across distances, which Lyun interpreted for her. Applying some relative trigonometry, using considerations of ratios for distances instead of interpreting a direct conversion, she calculated a couple of distances from some very notable locations. To begin with, she used the workshop and mall as a baseline, matching it to her office in Aestus and the mall there too. The overall size of civilized development was very different, Aestus having compressed itself very well, but some of the more major sights that she had found significant were very diligently placed in similar locations. Most importantly, every place they had shifted between realities remained geographically the same location in the other reality. The location of Sophie’s work did only seem to match a park, but even her house was about the same ratioed distance from things as the home of Yhzia’s sister. The two major terminals added up as well, as did the notable distance of the Obsidian Hall and the Diamond Falls. So, things really did map together very well, this made it very easy to assume where they would show up if they were to shift through right at that point. The mall, obviously, though she wasn’t quite certain which store. The malls themself had different shapes, the one on this planet being a lot wider, but this was at least some very useful information.

At the same time as she was checking out such an instrument beside the mid-aisle shelves designed to showcase them, a retail staff was going around cleaning up, the manager looking upon them with a strict glare as the individual had not kept to the diligence of his work. Feeling the intensity of pressure, the worker rushed around to get his work done, not paying enough attention to his surroundings. The back handle got caught on one of the bars of the rack, abruptly pulling the worker around to smash face-first into another rack slightly beyond it. The force of such a collision was enough to destabilize the entire rack, the rack being slightly more weighted on his side. This was the same rack Axln was standing beside. Observing things shift dangerously, Axln grasped the rack with her artificial arm, impressing her will to have the rack braced rigidly before it could fall over. Despite being what would have been around 300 kilo using weight measures of her own planet, Axln braced the entire thing with one hand and little physical effort. A couple of instruments on the other side did fall over anyway, one bashing painfully into the guy’s leg, but it was clearly a disaster averted. The manager rushed over to assess the situation, visibly thankful for Axln’s aid. The commotion in turn caught quite a lot of attention from the crowds just outside, clearly exposed to a side profile of the situation. A passerby of the crowd event went closer to further investigate the matter.

“That was impressive. I mean, anyone could tell your gauntlet is just an instrument that was empowering your strength, but to have such efficiency from something that looked like it could barely be thick enough to cover your arm would have taken some impressive craftsmanship. How many Qeld was the Foundry selling something like that for, anyway? It looks like it wouldn’t have been cheap. Do you then need this for your work or something? I’m not even familiar with the product category.” “Oh, good day. No, actually, this isn’t even Foundry made, it was an independent project by my colleague here, we’re walking around to test how well it feels with a regular day of use.” “Really, that’s remarkable. Is there any chance you would be willing to take it off, I would love to get a better look at such a thing. I happen to know people who would love to have access to such a thing, who could even pay substantially for such a thing.” “Ah, that does sound like an interesting offer, though I would have to admit that taking this off can be a bit.. difficult. If you could show me where such people are, maybe we could go over the related details, possibly come to a decent enough agreement?” “Alright then, sure. You can’t read the sign from here, but you should be able to see the sign with a brown half-opened book on it? Go there and say you were recommended to show up and show off a new innovation, then let them know that I’ll be back in another three moments or so. Thanks.” The strange guy continued on his way almost as unexpectedly as he had arrived before Axln, clearly trying to get something done in a tight window. Lyun managed to notice the human had then headed for the small Foundry outlet of the mall while Axln tried to find the place that had been mentioned in discussion. Unfortunately, even with her own human eyes, she could not determine which sign had such a simple icon.

“You can’t find it? Isn’t that it over there? I mean, I know you’re a human, but I don’t think this should be that hard. Actually, having been given a bit of time with human sight, I’m pretty sure it should still be visible from here. That guy had no problem seeing it either.” “It might be fine for most people, but my eyes never were the best, and that seems to be true here too. I’m actually a bit nearsighted, I really miss my glasses right now.” “Oh, so the stuff you had over your eyes in your world.. wasn't it just to look pretty?” “No, they were prescription. I wear them so that they can sharpen my sight a bit more, to make up for my natural vision problems. I tried to get treatment too, but it seems no one wants to provide such special services for conduits.” Lyun was surprised, unaware that even her human side’s vision was better than Axln’s. Vision correction had never been a big deal in her society, they didn’t have anything like glasses specifically. Setting aside the problem for future consideration, Lyun guided Axln to the place that was specified earlier, a place that oddly looked to be little more than a bookshop. Books weren’t even common in modern society, people having far more taken to using instrument recordings in place of actual books, the place then looked like a really old antique store. The books however weren’t normal either, having visibly been coated and treated to have records that could stand the test of time.

“Hello, may I help you?” “Oh, sorry. Had a recommendation to stop by here from someone who said they would also be back in another three moments or so. Was supposed to present our latest innovation here, this.” “A gauntlet? How might that be novel? Wait, how do you even take that off, it looks like it’s…” The elf was surprised, getting the chance to look closely at Axln’s arm. With elven vision at that distance, it was clear that there was no actual fold for fitting the gauntlet over an arm.. the gauntlet instead looked more like it was the arm. The elf thus motioned for the others to follow, the group passing into a more private environment in the back. In the process, Lyun found some familiar signs, letting her identify what affiliation this business had. This place was a part of the academy, working with them directly. Of all the places that might have been interested in her work, Lyun had never once considered that the academy might have been one of them. She wasn’t even certain why the academy might have been so interested, either.

A short discussion later, and the two girls had found themselves with a personal invitation to visit the academy itself. All too suddenly, the two girls had found things had suddenly reached a positive spin, it was almost enough for them to forget all the hardship they had gone through to just get there.