It wasn’t long after that Rosa and Tristine finally arrived at a section visibly more metal than stone, the place a massive structure within an expansive chamber of the stone. Passing through the reinforced door, the two were finally at the generator station, their overall destination.
It was also becoming clear that this place was actually really cold. Rosa was very thankful that her protection from the cold was still running strong, but it was getting so intense that she could still feel the chill regardless. It didn’t help that sheets of ice were visibly coating everything everywhere, things just looked really cold. Tristine was already shivering, even her own conduit nature was having a few struggles keeping up in this cold. Even so, it didn’t seem like her own weaknesses were slowing Tristine down, she ran quickly over to the controls and checked to see what needed to be done to get everything operational once again. Rosa meanwhile was at a total loss, feeling very out of place. Why was she even here, again? Tristine worked on the main control unit for a while, getting no response. After a while, she figured out what the problem actually was though. Beyond a few system lockups after so much disuse, the entire thing really was just too frozen to start. She looked around for the central core, a prime location to get moving to get some heat pumping in the place. Eventually she found it, in a level far above them.. with no access remaining to climb up with.
“Rosa, do you see anything we can climb up here with? Going to need to restart the central core up there.” “Ice, ice, more ice. Not much else. Oh, but couldn’t we use some holos?” “I don’t happen to have anything like that handy, though I remember you brought something like that. Could you give me a hand climbing up?” Tristine waited for Rosa to construct a sort of ladder for her, but unfortunately Rosa found herself unable to generate a ladder more than a few meters high. Their destination however was a good 30 meters above them. If Tristine was generating her own holos, such a thing wouldn’t be a problem anymore. It wasn’t even as if Rosa could just pass off her own kit, such a thing was sort of wired to her brain now.. even depending on cybernetics. Tristine however simply stared at Rosa, as if the solution was all too obvious.
“Okay, just let me know when you get up there and I’ll see what I can do to help you from down here.” “Wait, what? Me? But I really don’t know this stuff at all.” “You mean, always in the past, you had to get tips from Kori and then did it yourself. Like I said, I’ll be here if you need any tips. I’ll probably just be chipping ice off the console while you’re gone anyway. Don’t forget, we’re in a hurry, don’t spend too long thinking about it.” Tristine left Rosa to simply stand there stuttering, moving instead to tend to the ice layer problem on the console previously mentioned. Rosa was still very uncertain about this idea, but no one was leaving her with any alternatives. Still muttering concerns under her breath, Rosa wove a ladder for her to climb, creating the thing as she went up. At the top, she took a break against the black stone of the wall, looking upon the spherical form of the core before her. Much like everything below, this too was covered in ice. Before the sphere was a dashboard designed for manual operation, and as such it was full of physical controls. However, most of the controls too were frozen. She could work to free particular controls.. as long as she knew which controls she needed access to.
“So, it has some weird controls, what am I looking for?” “I’m not certain what sort of layout such an old model is using, but there should be some controls for manual ignition. Look across the labels for anything that seems pretty close to that.” “What.. exactly would it look like?” “Again, the order of controls would depend on the model, the only thing that would make what you need stand out is the label it was given.” Rosa knew Tristine was overestimating her abilities, but hadn’t expected quite the reason she would end up having her first problems. Reading.. the exact thing she hadn’t put much attention into, she had no way to figure out what any of the labels actually implied. Sure, it did mean she could always spend the effort to get all of the stuff unfrozen.. but then what if she touched the wrong thing? This.. simply implied the safe solution wasn’t her choice. She turned her attention instead to the core itself, generally coated with ice too. These controls were here to manually put stuff inside the core into action, something which would be dangerous to do for a person because close proximity could lead to serious injury. Fortunately, she had the tools to work on such a thing from a bit farther away than conventionally possible.
After a few holo bashes, she managed to get the main cover opened, peeking inside. Of course, the interior was ceaselessly complicated too, the entirety of her original concerns. She was still well aware that, in all consideration, if she had actually taken the opportunity to actually learn to read.. this whole thing might have actually been as easy as Tristine made it sound. Instead, she was left staring between valves and connectors, left generally confused. She did know the thing needed an ignition spark to get the main core going, was generally how all the plasma stuff around here worked. It reacted to an electric current to polarize the plasma, and then with the stuff agitated, it would start a chain reaction. This was the sort of stuff she had bothered learning instead of how to read. Even so, she had no idea how this thing was designed to begin a reaction, especially one so large scale. Sure, it wasn’t hard to figure things out elementally using the principles of the other world, electricity being effectively lightning of the sky element. A controlled spark could then just be injected into the system as a matter of focus, a precision process that took care of itself. Even so, such logic did not work in this world, only scientific premises worked. Well, she could potentially get it working with a surge of temporal chaos.. no no no! The only thing she trusted much less than herself right now was the chaos that wanted to consume her. She might not know much more than some loopy logic that didn’t actually apply here, but that was way better than something more likely to make problems worse. The knowledge she had might not be of much use to her right now, but if she wasn’t able to achieve this for herself, then there really wasn’t any point. If only somehow she could figure out a way to convert the knowledge she knew of such otherworldly practice into something more valid here.
Such a request was possibly far easier than she might have ever imagined.
Rosa felt a pulse spread from her, a faint haze as a white mist that lasted for but a heartbeat. After that heartbeat, she could still feel something draining from her, but she also discovered newer problems. Her legs completely buckled upon her, having completely lost function as she fell upon the metal floor, the stone she was carrying falling to the floor before her, her arm suffering a nasty bruise on impact. She soon found her ears had gone offline too, as had her DNTI, she couldn’t call up more holos. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried, putting a lot of focus into setting a nice sheet over a section of the floor. The stone at her hand however reacted, drawing a current of its own into an extension of her will, a sheet of ice forming at the area of her focus. Ice? What? That didn’t make sense, even if she wasn’t using a holo. Worry dawned upon her that such was a breach of chaos instead, leading her to a moment of panic, an intent that such a frost would puff into a cloud of air. It literally did, the entire design of the ice shifting composition to a white tuff of air that quickly dissipated. Okay, that made even less sense. Ice didn’t just evaporate like that without a lot of heat, but the whole place was still cold, thermal conductivity simply made what she saw make no sense at all. Sure, such a thing could be possible, but only in the other world as a readjustment of elemental composition. It would be like trying to make that icicle over there, teleport to that spot over there, considering science had no known principle for actual teleportation.
She blinked, startled, as the icicle eventually shifted on its new foundation and shattered on the stone. How? She put her face into her palm, only for it to then smack into the stone she had subconsciously picked up. The stone in the meanwhile had mostly chipped away, exposing a black shard of crystal within the opal itself. Such a black crystal.. with a slight white haze.. it somehow seemed.. very familiar. She set the stone down, trying to repeat the same phenomena.. without any effect. Picking the stone up again though was different, she could even call up a small flame to offer her a bit of warmth. The experience was relaxing too, as she laid back and just took a moment to zone out in the wonder and warmth. However, as soon as she did so, the flame vanished. Not only that, but her cybernetics came back online, the faint haze of her surroundings going away too. She picked up the stone, trying to replicate any of the same functions.. without effect. That haze, that was something special then, something she had caused. Notably, it had even felt as if doing so had tried to drain her too. Wait, was that something her own chaos had done? It seemed honestly as if.. she had created an opportunity where the world’s laws were exchanged.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Of course, that would then explain why her cybernetics had gone offline too, such a thing didn’t follow instrumentation at all. However, these stones worked a lot like a kyuemu shard. Considering instrumentation and the design of her cybernetics, she could get a half-decent functionality out of them if she attached one of the stones and then herself constantly kept a degree of focus on their function. With a bit of work, she managed to get two of such stones to fit into her knees very rudimentarily, one each. Trying to call upon the same form of chaos, she managed to open that haze around her again, stumbling to the ground once again. With a bit of effort though, she managed to get back to her feet, her motions very rigid. She was, once again, starting to get cold, her typical warmth source being deprived of her. Making use of the original stone though, she managed to call up a half decent heat source to warm it up a bit. Wait, if she could do that.. then what was stopping her from making her original idea work, to set lightning into the core as an ignition. Of course.. a big issue would be that the thing probably couldn’t work as an instrument either, it would just fail much like anything else. There was a slight concern about how sky elements weren’t exactly her forte too, even in the other world. What she needed then was to make it a matter of timing, generating elements that she could easily convert, creating a sky lightning’s presence before switching back to the scientific method one more time. Wobbling over to the core, she fixed her focus within, calling for some elements as she grasped upon the doorway. Once the elements resolved, she cut off the flow of chaos as she personally fell backwards in the process of her instability. As a result of the same momentum, the stone she was carrying fell into the core, a faint wisp of its elements lost. The ionization of the core surged successfully, causing a draw and shift of electrons.. especially those already rendered unstable, causing an isotopic reaction, the stones within her knees also undergoing a similar process. Rosa as a result really didn’t feel that well, fleeing the area and rushing to make her way down below. There, she found Tristine, instantly worried and running a check on her condition.
“My word, you’re suffering radiation poisoning! What the hell would have caused that? This isn’t a nuclear engine or anything.” “I’m sorry.. I.. may have.. messed.. something up.” “Oh, good. Your DRE looks like it's trying to compensate for the radiation.. but it’s having a hard time. We need to get you out of here.” Tristine had probably gotten Rosa out on her own at that point, it was hard to tell. Rosa was having quite a problem trying to concentrate at that point. Top side, she found herself soon stirring as a radiation suppressor was administered to her, it being almost as good at getting her awake as the sound of crashes outside. Rushing outside, she found her misfortune had caught up with her, the fiend of chaos thrashing upon the main wall of their perimeter. Looking around, she saw people panicking about as much as she wanted to. She did however find Drew, himself working on one of the nearby turrets, trying to get the thing online, the unit slightly lit up in the glow of its own power. Wait, that implied that they had almost done it, things were almost ready.. but she had been too slow. That also implied these circumstances were all her own fault. That realization haunted her, knowing that she had friends she could count on to pull through for her.. but when the situation was reversed, she proved to be far less dependable.
Rosa wasn’t going to let such a thing happen. If she had made a mistake, she was going to own up to it. Holi had provided them with a distraction to get this far, Rosa would just have to pick things up in the same way. If she could distract the thing long enough, maybe Drew could get the turret working and then they would all be okay. She was aware of the problem presented by that idea, it involved trying to dance around it again without getting smacked. Even for a short delay, that really was asking for a lot. However, much like last time, she still owed the thing a round of revenge, that was something she hadn’t yet achieved. She walked straight towards the thing, having it then pausing its rampage to consider her. She didn’t even wait, not even for any inner reaction she might have had too, she just came down on it with another holo to what would have been its face. Of course, that only made it mad, such was only to be expected. Luring it away from the place, she kept her route of dodging, her holo strikes rapidly having less and less meaning. She shifted to a complete defense, her dodging already getting difficult in the rage of attacks sent her way. It really didn’t matter, she was only there stalling for time anyway. However, she was quickly becoming insufficient for that as well, the things calculated sweeps suddenly having her slip in the snow and land on her back. Well, that was that, she had no way to dodge the next strike nor to block it. She could try to hit it with another holo, but again such a measure was too minor in energy to have any effect. Only something supercharged with energy would work, something she couldn’t do on her own.
After all of such circumstances, all of her failures, all of the time where she simply couldn’t do anything.. and yet stuff just happened anyway.. she snapped. The hells she wouldn’t do something. In the finesse of the moment, she did feel something inside point out that she could call for some chaotic support. To hells with that, get saved again? If she had to depend on anything, it would be herself.. and if not that.. her other self. A haze burst out around Rosa again, a move of desperation driven by instinct as she lost touch with herself. While she had very little to work with scientifically, things were very different elementally. This entire area was a saturation of the frost element, her own personal favourite. Much like before, she shifted such an element to its sky counterpart.. and thunder boomed as a surge of lightning ruptured around them, the thing driven backwards in surprise at the high energy environment. However, under elemental principles alone, the frost element wasn’t that highly affected by the sky element. It advanced again, finding the same surge of lightning as it struck out. This time, the haze vanished mid surge, the bolts causing fragments of the thing to instantly go inert and fade away. Rosa then used another holo to provide herself a retreat.. only to get an even greater surprise.
As the haze faded, the stones in her knees once again resolved their slightly faded state. When her holo was called using the OSIDF set directly against one of such stones, the propulsion of ionization flowed with an isotopic reaction, resulting in a beam of atomic force that collided with a hill in the distance, the snow melting along the entire path. Such a reaction was quite the inverse of the static form of the absolute zero fiend, the dramatic shift of molecular form causing it to instantly dissolve completely. The recoil of such a blast simultaneously threw Rosa far and wide, her protection working overtime against the radiation of a close proximity to a small atomic explosion. Slamming hard to the ground, Rosa instantly lost consciousness. She awoke in a medical bed, Kori at her side with worry. At least.. Kori looked like she might have got a bit of rest.. even though she still looked really tired.
“Rosa!” “Hi.. Kori. I think I might have messed up again.” “Are you kidding me? I heard about the frosty mess out there, pretty sure I know what it is, but I also heard you nuked the thing.. actually pretty literally. We got readings of a silicon isotope out there that was somehow impossibly unstable. At least the half-life wasn’t bad, the place isn’t even dangerous anymore.. but that doesn’t explain how so much energy could discharge then either. There was something about the most wild of a sudden storm too, I actually woke up because of the thunder.” “I was probably mixing things I shouldn’t have. I.. I found my own chaos too. You might be able to manipulate time, as wild as that sounds.. but it sounds pretty normal when compared to me switching over world laws. The pure opals underground, they make for some really good quality kyuemu shards. Wait, silicon isotope.. Tristine said that opals are silicon based… I might have caused a destability in the opals by trying to draw the elements from it. It might be a good idea to take them out of my knees then, probably isn’t healthy in their current state.” Kori rushed to comply with such knowledge, quickly getting both stones extracted from Rosa. Rosa meanwhile went to a state of half sleeping, not completely up to the idea of doing more. Both stones were locked away for safe diagnosis while Rosa’s legs got additional treatment.
Rosa was only half paying attention to what was going on, her mind racing at what had happened. She had done it, she had ended that thing, not even needing the big weapons in the process. She was the big weapon. Being a big weapon hurt though.. but it really was quite the thrilling feeling. She had finally accomplished something serious, and didn’t even need anyone else’s help other than herself. Technically accurate, she did need Lyun’s help there, but she’s sort of Lyun already, so it didn’t exactly count. Even so, it did open a lot of other opportunities for her.. but it really did involve a lot of preparation first. Such was something she could figure out.. when she felt a bit better. Even Kori was starting to relax, with everything under control, Rosa could see Kori already asleep in another bed. Certainly, no one would complain if she got some rest then too, right?
Unfortunately for Rosa, she found sleep would prove more elusive to her, her mind reeling in a swarm of thoughts she tried to shelve. More than exchanging the laws of the world, it seemed as if Rosa had been capable of even exchanging such circumstances with Kori in the process.