After a quick rest, the two of them were already active once again, planning productive uses for their time. Coincidentally, each believed the other to actually still be resting, that this was just an opportunity to get stuff done in the interim.

Kori’s first priority was to repay a certain outstanding debt. That circlet was still such a precious gift, and she needed something to return the kindness. She actually touched her cortex, quite honestly already missing the enhanced vision despite having her glasses on. Technically, she was even skilled enough to emulate most of the same things with her nanite’s help, but that really wasn’t the same thing. The fact that it was where her cortex usually sat was such an appreciated gesture too. In that light, recognizing that Rosa in turn was left with rather unfamiliar ears, she considered what might be possible in that area. Enhanced hearing could be a thing, but it wasn’t quite as special, especially because she wasn’t exactly good with such a thing. Her fortitude was with her nanites.. and maybe the holo tech that Fiona left behind. Conferring with her nanites, they reported upon quite the novelty of an idea. Dual ODISF Defensive Relay Emitters projecting from behind her ears. Such a deployable barrier could in turn protect her from an assortment of things, although none of them physical. A kinetic barrier would be very impractical, far more intrusive, especially since she couldn’t move while it was active. However, shielding could protect her from the elements, to help her endure the intense colds far longer. Such was in fact her own personal advantage, having it as an enhanced shield could actually achieve far better endurance than even she herself had. Sure, she could have a DRE also made for herself, but the shielding would have an impact on the ionization in her arm, making it much less reasonable. Unfortunately, the process would possibly be a fair bit painful too, she would have to literally append the device to Rosa’s head, forming a cone around her ears to stick out with them in a suitably high enough location that remained on both sides while still blending in with her physique. Most people would additionally feel it weird that it would look like they then had pointed ears, but that she knew would not be a concern for Rosa. Either way, Rosa would still thus have to approve the blueprint herself, being the one skilled enough at assembling such stuff anyway. Once her blueprint was done, she went to track where Rosa might be resting.. only to find Rosa not resting either.

“Oh, Kori, hey, you up then?” “I’ve been up for a while. You.. seem to have been busy too. What is this, anyway?” “Oh, certainly, I should make sure you’re both reintroduced. Kori, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Haei.” “Hey-e?” Rosa was actually only having problems with pronunciations, leaving Kori confused. This in turn left Rosa convinced that Kori might have had the right idea, learning accents and maybe even writing for this world.. that might be a really smart idea. However, for now, Rosa had a bit of support in her efforts at getting the accent right. “Hello Kori. Miss Rosa is trying to say ‘Holi’, a bit of a nickname she had tried to form for me while working like this.” “Yeah, about that. Did you just make a holo of what looks honest to goodness like an artificial person?” “Miss Rosa was saying that you had developed an interest in artificial people of another nature, and stated that there would be value in a bit of a direct presentation. Since then, she had been working hard at all the visual assets involved. Was this incorrect?” “My word, so you tried to make my nanites like an ersatz? That’s.. that’s genius. No kinetic factor, but this is a work of art. In turn, I may have a gift for you. Take a look at this.” Holi just waited as Rosa turned to look at the plans for the DREs. Of course, those silly nanites wouldn’t have just been restricted to one location, the bloody things had been watching over them both without spoiling either surprise. Rosa quickly rushed off again with the plan, leaving Kori to look over her own prize. This wasn’t fair, she kept falling behind in these exchanges.

This specific accomplishment was actually impressive. Looking rationally ethereal, Holi looked like an actual person otherwise. Her extremely long hair hid any sign of ears, making it impossible to tell if her design there was elven or otherwise, but her long bangs made it impossible to determine if she was actually based on a conduit either. The vibrant jade hair with mint highlights was another thing completely, a color that itself would be naturally impossible, she looked more like a plant person. Her skin was at least normal enough, but the array of browns in her dress really made the whole plant look hit home. At about 168cm, Holi was about as average between Rosa and Kori as possible. The only concern Kori had was in how plain the dress was. Of course, having visited Sophie’s place countlessly, she could come up with a much better style. Pulling out their catalogue, she picked out an outfit that Kori felt would handle things much better. Discarding the browns for whites and rose, she turned the tree into an outright flower. Going for a much more small and casual dress, the skirt flaring like a blossoming flower over the slender long boots while the top cut the striking presence quite literally with its complex weave diagraphed with distinct cuts as it layered over her shoulders unevenly. Beyond the outfit overhaul, she had nothing else she wanted to touch, Holi being a sublime work of art in all accounts. Kori was surprised to discover that this might imply that Rosa might actually have quite the artistic side that hadn’t been very expressed yet. It was clearly something to consider.

With little more than a consideration at first, Rosa returned with her finished product, ready for installation. Of course, something this major couldn’t be installed very easily by them alone, this was going to get quite messy. Recruiting Holi’s help, the two of them worked carefully on Rosa’s installation. Holi ensured that pain suppressants were administered while Kori got her hands dirty. Kori wiped away the excess blood that was spilled in the process, her own temporary gear fully stained in the process a dark red. The hardest part of the process was to make it as non-intrusive as possible, so that her appearance as an elf again would not be impaired. This in turn required extensive microfibers, which caused quite a lot of blood leakage during insertion. Once the whole thing healed over, the small indents caused by the microfibers would leave no lasting impact on her elven ears, it wouldn’t even be possible to notice. Of course, that would first require the whole thing to heal properly, especially to prevent scarring. There was some salve handy to help with such a process, but this was going to take a few hours at least. While waiting for her ears to heal, Rosa noticed that Holi had a new outfit suddenly.

“Oh, so our fashion expert couldn’t stop with just ersatz then? Not that I’m complaining, it really suits her. She looks really pretty.” “She was pretty before I began, you really did some quality work on her. Templating a person with a holo is no easy task, there are few people with the artistic sense to make something with this much quality. The.. the only one I knew of capable of that was.. Fiona.” “Yeah, well, your wild side reminds me of Yhzia sometimes, I hope you know that. Your talent at making something pretty makes me wonder if you would be so skilled that you could purify an ashen kyuemu shard simply with a choice of outfits too.” “So, her name, where did that come from?” “Okay, well, I probably was the least original in that area. She's a holo, right? In my world, if someone is of something, we change the ending sound. A person of Ruixse is a Ruixsi, just like a person of Celese is a Celesi.” “So a person of a holo is.. a holi? That’s rich. A touch between two worlds, it works better than it should, especially since she’s a nanite made ersatz.” Rosa beamed as Kori laughed ceaselessly. It really was more perfect than it should have been, especially if Rosa wasn’t aware of how a holi was also a plant, a holly.

“Excuse me for interrupting, but I’ve been wondering for a while now. Your use of the phrase ersatz seems slightly misplaced. It was hard to be certain because of Miss Rosa’s accent, but even Kori has been using the same phrase in the same way.” “Oh, it’s a sort of artificial being in the place we disappear to occasionally. Don’t worry, some of their words don’t make sense.” “Really? Because my database has identified that the term ersatz remains German, meaning artificial. Rosa used another word that has a deduced interpretation based upon the patterns of her accent for a similar word too. Kyomu is a Japanese word for void. Were these interpretations intended?” “Actually, I wonder if they were. Kyuemu shards relate quite a bit to the void, considering the elemental structure used over there. If they caught earth’s English over there, it is all too possible that they might have absorbed more than that. Thank you Holi, that’s something to consider in the future.” Holi was really giving some identity to the nanites Kori had been working with forever, a priceless change already. Even her speech patterns carried expression and feeling in her posture as a result.. and Kori had just called a collection of nanites as a ‘her’. Left with a lot to think about, she had not noticed that Rosa herself had actually fallen asleep during her recovery. Certainly they could spend a bit more time to relax, the night was still young.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Left to her thoughts, Kori found herself caught off guard again as Rosa awoke. Rosa’s first impulse was to test her new creation, the shimmer of specks glistening around her like a cloak of pale stars. This immediately got Kori’s attention as it was a beautiful and dazzling display. This also reminded her that there was still much consideration to Rosa’s artistic side that would be due, but at least Rosa seemed to like it. With the addition of Holi, it might be sensible to provide Rosa with an outlet to her artistic side as her next planned exchange, hopefully somewhere before Rosa simply beat her to it again. However, not even Holi had any ideas there so far, so it was an idea that would have to be left to stew for a while. For now, it might be time to approach their original goal. They still had a flight to plan for, and she still had some metrics to review. Holi found very little wrong with the metrics Kori had presented, but it still left them open to measure the best plan for a certain place they could shift over without worry. They technically needed to get as central as possible, especially being concerned with what might happen if they did something like shift into a wall. They also had to worry about drawing attention, shifting around people could cause more than a few concerns on either side. The one consideration she had was, if their destination was bad, Rosa could bring them back right away. So many problems, so many contingencies.

Not getting much of a reaction from Kori for so long, Rosa decided to leave the meeting of the minds to the professionals and turned to her own efforts. When their turns were reversed, it was Rosa who had worked diligently on perfecting their circumstances while Kori had studied diligently in matters of local dialects. In that same parallel, she herself should make use of Kori’s distraction to get some proper tutelage from Holi. In her mind, being able to not stick out during this trip would simply work to their favour. This required two things, to foremost not have an accent that stood out so blatantly to everyone else, and then to not be totally lost when reading signs. To help with their studies, at one point Holi simply appeared to just stick a nanite in her ear to softly murmur words while she tried to read them. That was actually a genius idea. It was still a slow solution, but she didn’t look so stupid in the process. It did, however, leave the other problem still unresolved, so she opted to spend more effort focused upon that, resolving to do more reading at a better opportunity. The two of them stopped when Kori suddenly walked in and noticed what was going on. With a small smirk, Kori hastily left just as suddenly, full of empathy as to why such efforts would feel important. Clearly, the two of them would be fine working on their own thing. Kori herself was quite the expert with information, so things really would be better this way. Additionally, while there would really be little stopping Holi from being in two places at once, Kori did feel that such would diminish the sense of identity the act was establishing. The biggest problem was having a second OSIDF prepared for the projection, which then alone would make it feel like a second identity would be deserved of the second unit. It would be an overuse of resources, there really wasn’t any need, and the one gift was enough for Kori. If there was need for her nanites, she would work with them in the old-fashioned way, leaving Holi to just remain with Rosa.

While the two of them had been suffering a shifting sleeping schedule due to that not being an aligned decision on both parallels, it also meant that their projected departure would ideally be during the biggest time of transit. This wasn’t exactly avoidable, such was also the best time to slip into their destination. It did imply that she would far rather have her shuttle planned out in advance. Checking the flight schedules, she looked up the common flights for that hour.. only to find most of them cancelled. That really was strange, why was transit to such a public place reduced? She recalled that it just so happened that they were dealing with transit blocks on the other side too.. but certainly it would be impossible for the foundry to have caused this, right? Of course, this was impossible, the situation wasn’t even the same thing. Large scale cancellations wasn’t the same thing as a complete route blockade, it was still even possible to book flights there, there was no way aerospace control could afford to have the place not maintained. ATA-LS was an orbital thermal relay station, the ATA specifically stood for atmospheric thermal assembly, while it had the designation code LS almost at random for its unique instance. There were, of course, far more than one orbital thermal relay station, there was specifically one per major urban district in the entire world. Without it, not only would their communication to the rest of the world go down, the barrier itself would go down. An OSIDF of that size needed considerable plasma energy, energy being provided directly by the ATA. It really was a big deal.

In all consideration, it might be good that only personal flights would be available, it implied they could travel in quiet comfort. Sure, they would still be dealing with crowds at the terminal, but from there it would get much more peaceful. She even knew a good pilot she could depend upon. However, upon trying to contact Nick, she found the guy to be actually rather busy. Of course, that still worked, she could make a booking with him a bit more indirectly. However, private bookings like that would mean she would be expected to arrive at an exact time, so she would be on the clock the moment she set the booking. At least walking to the terminal wouldn’t be a problem, it would be a great field test for the new DRE Rosa was using. Previously, she had decided to use heavy snow gear for this process, but maybe having the right OSIDFs handy would be a much better solution. They had no idea when they would next be left out in the cold, being able to switch easily between regular wear and weatherproof protection would be invaluable as they continued to shift around at random. Of course, the biggest problem with using OSIDFs would be that she would thus be targeted by humans claiming she didn’t deserve such complex comforts. However, it would be completely possible for her to now slip such gear into their cybernetics, no one would have to know. She even already had such pieces ready, stuff Fiona herself always had on hand. There was, obviously, no problem with humans themselves using such comforts. Fiona just always complained, something about it not feeling quite as warm as dressing the part, so was perfectly fine with doing things Kori’s way. Rosa wouldn’t have nearly the same problems, especially with the DRE.

Once she had everything organized, her own weather protection installed to her arm, she went to find Rosa with her own upgrade unit. Since they were thus basically ready to go, Rosa stopped her studies and turned her attention towards the new offering. So much warmth had been given to her today. The piece was simple enough, it didn’t take long to install to her left knee, and by the time they were done, Rosa was brought up to speed with the basics of the plan. After a quick bite to eat, the two of them were thus sufficiently ready to set off on the next leg of their journey. Crossing to the border of the barrier, they thus set off into the snowy landscape, towards the terminal in the distance. Rosa was already glistening in the snow, all of her defenses holding up perfectly. Kori was actually doing fine as well, though she honestly wasn’t used to being in the snow with such a light outfit. The experience was leaving her wondering if Fiona’s original complaint might have little to do with any actual cold, more just feeling like she should be cold dressed so lightly. Rosa however looked like she was having the time of her life like this, like she was in her element. Kori was willing to keep going like this as such, it wouldn’t be fair to have reservations against their circumstances, her pride wouldn’t allow it.

The two of them continued through the snow-blasted wilderness towards their destination, the depth of their long night approaching in all earnest. Neither of the two were aware that their arrival had however been long predicted, that there were those who had been waiting for the arrival of the long night.