Hypertech was still burning the midnight hours, much like any other work night, but Rosa and Kori had plans of their own. Making their way to the same hill Rosa had tried to light a beacon on the fateful day before, both of them prepared their thoughts for this unexpected turn of events.
Quite ostensibly, the two of them were honestly convinced that they were exclusive in their pursuit of research in improved conditions with teamwork. Kori was herself wondering if this might actually be a foolish idea at this point, considering this would be the second time in a row they were now surprising the other with presents. Their teamwork had honestly improved quite suddenly, this sort of outlook was starting to seem like it would be mutual. However, stunning enough were the discoveries involved in the process. Rosa was already wearing her new model of armored tights, already connected to its new ionic supply. Kori could still remember struggles with a misconfigured dragon causing problems, but the display of a detonating holo was quite a sight to behold. Hearing that such an energy discharge could be manipulated was impressive, hearing that there was something like that saved for her was also remarkable.. but nothing was as surprising as hearing that Rosa had holos working like this on the other side too.
Rosa was at least happy to also get a chance to demonstrate her keen ability at making reasonably functional frost designs too, absolute pieces of art in quick and easy design. Kori had little new there to show for her own efforts, little more than how her gravitation has at least gotten a lot faster. Rosa thought she heard a quick mention of shadows in disappointment, but had missed the rest of that idea. Oh, maybe Kori was sad to have been left in the shadows of all of Rosa’s accomplishments. With that in consideration, they returned to exchange a few finished products for the other to use. While Kori worked to get her new tights in position, Rosa looked at the small glass lens she herself had been offered. The thing was slightly manipulatable, and allowed for a nanite to fine tune accuracy on demand, if ever she had a shot she needed to make without missing. Rosa suspected that such a shot could probably be hacked into by Kori’s newest trick too, if they really needed to work together on it. It really wasn’t much of a thing though, Rosa suspected that if she really needed to make something count.. she could always count on a holo.
Back on the hill again, Kori looked over her new tights. It seemed, because her arm was supposedly better at the idea, her tights were engineered to do ionic surges. More than just sort of discharge ions in a direction, it also provided her with an ionic barrier that was supposed to feel like the barrier her power gear provided for extra protection. She turned on the full ionic spread, seeing a perfect sphere develop around her. Clearly, this was to make up for Rosa having the same thing from her DRE.. just in a far better quality. Well, except she could amplify her’s, it could work like a sort of firewall.. ionwall? Combined with her gravitation surge.. clearly she was being expected to tackle stuff. The problem there would be being fast enough to tackle stuff. In a bit of a self demonstration of such a concern, she turned up her ionic veil and just vaulted to a snowbank.
Rosa watched as Kori absolutely missed the snowbank, blinking over it in a flash of light. Kori was found a fair distance away, heavily disoriented. Rosa then brought the entire problem to Tristine’s attention instead, which then led to a history lesson on the Luminescent Era that had forged the original OSIDF. It seems that, to reach this planet, humans had originally outfitted colony ships with an ionic veil too.. as a pure sphere of accelerated ions caused the area within to be diffused to the passage of molecules outside, allowing the entire thing to travel at a speed fitting for electrons.. otherwise known as lightspeed. Such was why the ionic process was known as a lightspeed engine. Such a thing has existed, but no one has ever put it at a small scale before, because the amount of ion intensity needed for this reaction would be pretty stupid to make it convinent. However, because of Kori’s cybernetic arm being additionally useful for intense ionic circuits, it seems they had actually achieved the intensity required for such a reaction.
“Oh, great, so this means that Kori is going to start warping all around the place.” “No I won’t, lightspeed is just going really fast, like the whole gravitation thing. The only way I can teleport is as Axln.” “Wait, what? I know I can get this same thing setup there too, but…” “No, I don’t mean with ions. I mean with elemental shadow.” Rosa stared at Kori as the whole shadow discovery thing came to light. So hold on, not only is Axln a protege of elementals, but she actually had a diverse grasp of it already? Is that even fair? Actually, compared to engineering an infinite supply of energy..maybe she shouldn’t be so quick to complain. She was at least really eager for a demonstration though, pulling Kori to a suitable location to switch worlds over again.
Getting to see Axln at work with shadows, Lyun was left simply stammering. Not only was Axln projecting shadows, she was even inverting shadows and causing rift or phase reactions. Her inversions were sort of still limited to such, but that was still rather impressive. Her shadow arts alone were impressive, capable of providing a degree of stealth.. if you weren’t alarmed by the subtle shadow or could otherwise detect elementals. Lyun ended up discovering though that such was exactly where such talent ended.. for now. It wasn’t as if Axln had discovered any of the other established ways that shadows were known to be capable of inspiring confusion or otherwise swaying how people perceived things. Axln was especially getting pretty close to the sort of composition that resulted in illusions, something Lyun would be decidedly unimpressed with if it came to pass.
However, while distracted, Lyun was then caught off guard when Axln started on the idea of producing yet another lens, again. This was surprising, seeing that Axln had refined enough of a process in elementals to actually produce a glass composite. Lyun had to handle most of the design work, using inverted frost carefully enough to vacuum in enough heat to shape the glass appropriately. However, from there, she got to witness Axln’s discovery in using shadow elementals for light tracking. Lyun eventually once again put away her arbalestae, impressed by the spiral her weapon had achieved. This was something even Lyun hadn’t been aware of as a capacity that shadow was capable of, directing and reflecting projections of light. When the instrument responsible for offering such features for her was completed, she couldn’t help but be impressed.
Actually, would the potential of such shadow arts stop there? Rifting, mind molding, pathing.. those three things, in addition to Axln’s already sizable hacking of instrumentation might actually be enough to make Lyun’s last goal happen too. Axln was left in the cyclone that was an occupied Lyun as they all went back to the citadel for some kind of new project. With a rough instrument done, Lyun took an opportunity to present it to Axln, along with related notes on the same subject. Wait, Lyun was trying to make something that could produce what would be basically a microchip that she could.. rift to her spinal cord? Axln's circlet would even be of immeasurable help in matters of microscopic precision too. With it, this chip would… Axln was quickly following everything in another round of shock. Lyun wasn’t about to stop at creating OSIDFs with real ions, she was making an outright DNTI for holo manipulation. Actually, with it, wouldn’t this then allow Axln to also be able to do some really fine established control of her own ionic burst or veil.
When dawn came around, Axln was blinking across the ashen fields while Lyun left her distortion up so that she could manipulate some holos. To Lyun, this was absolutely perfect. Axln might have all that shadow nonsense advantage, but from it Lyun was able to get the pure essence of her holo design even while on Ruixse. Considering how much it had taken to get ions working there at all, maybe it was acceptable that Axln had some kind of impossible achievement of her own. However, as Axln blurred passed, Lyun realized that the most unreasonable part of this situation was in how much more walking she had to do. It wasn’t like she could just slap a jetpack on her back and… After that idea, Lyun pulled out an ashen shard, formed it into a holo, and projected the holo as a set of ionic jetwings for her, the highstream current of ions throwing her into the air. Nevermind, everything was still fair. The experience however did remind her of when Velvet had cut herself off, remarking upon potential travel recommendations for Kori, back at the outpost when Rosa was getting the bike. Between holo jets and lightspeed veils, she wasn’t even certain which one might have been the one Velvet had almost let slip, but it really didn’t matter.
Both of their thrill of discovery were interrupted by having their thoughts suddenly pooled without warning. Both of them were thus left wondering if they had been having fun trying to mutually surprise the other in an outright comedic act of chaos. They both also knew where that idea had come from, their chaos. What was harder to identify was the subtle suggestion that maybe being open to each other’s plans might have been a smarter idea.. no one knew where that came from. It was however probably a good idea, these surprises were seeming more fumbly when they ended up so widespread like this. From this, Axln ended up learning that Lyun had yet to spill the idea that she had actually learned to read in the other world reasonably well too, just not at a complete state, so it was something she hadn’t planned to disclose yet. Lyun then learned about Axln’s elemental research and the diversified nature it had required, explaining some of the recent discoveries at least.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
What had also come up in that process was the exploration Kori had endured in the process too, a period where she had wandered around the hidden depths of HT’s place and getting to see all of the historical conduit secrets. Such had in turn left Axln eager to learn more.. especially from this world. This world.. this planet had its own secrets buried in an ancient past that even the local people had no knowledge of having ever been in existence. Sure, it might not have been what the past conduits had discovered, it would have been something else, but the fact that conduits had done stuff in a past iteration of this world did imply that the world had been alive before its current locals had brought life to it. This made her especially curious then as to what sort of people might have originally been here, what they were like.. really anything about them. It was an ancient civilization she just really wanted to explore.
Being still pooled, Axln did not miss the stray idea in how this behaviour was a lot like how Yhzia had been. Yhzia also had a history of being quite the architectural researcher, even though she was more focused on this planet’s lifetime and not its previous lifetime. In turn though, Lyun was informed of how Fiona was also a very adept holographics artist, being so keenly capable when it came to effective usage of holos. However, Fiona had never tried to revolutionize holos, she was far more keen on making the most of what holos did than finding ways for holos to do more. There was a really eerie degree of similarity, but they weren’t exactly the same. More notably, such people were the lost friends of one and the lost sister for the other. In fact, this similarity made it even more tragic, this sister they would never know could have been such incredible help in adjusting to their new paths in life. Such was another thing the two of them shared in parallel, and another thing they would have to help each other with.
Presenting a quick apology, they both decided to cut the pool. Being so mixed together did make it easier to share ideas, but it also made everything a lot more confusing. If they could find a way around such confusion, it would be much easier. Their chaos kept up silent contemplation as the pool ended. Instead, the two of them started working towards Axln’s recently mentioned plan, the deep histories of the world. Not even Lyun had any ideas where to start in that one, so Axln simply went to find Jhez. The records of this planet would not be old enough, but certainly an established historian would respect such an outreach of history so as to have more knowledge and resources on the subject than most. They eventually found Jhez again working with Xwyhr on what was probably more class work. However, their discussions ceased immediately, Xwyhr excited to turn instead to whatever Axln might have wanted. As Axln again repeated her concerns, Lyun was surprised to be dragged away by Xwyhr without warning.
“Hey! I wanted to help out too!” “Shh, just let those two work on this for now, please. I’ve been working on this opportunity for a while now too.” “Opportunity?” “Oh, come on, you haven’t noticed? Does that mean sis might not have noticed either? Hells, no wonder everything has been really slow.” “What are you talking about?” “You haven’t seen how much of a great pair those two proteges make? A mutual love for history blossoming into a fascination of…” “Wait, what? But Jhez is a human.” “So.. is Axln. I know, she told me she’s something else in that other world, but that just means she has twice the options of the average person. Options here, options there, both are valid. You can’t really have her discount options here either, considering what she said about how crappy things were for her in the other world. Being treated like trash as a species, how disgusting. Meanwhile, here she’s making waves. I only know her a bit, but I still consider her my sister, and so I still think she deserves whatever happiness she could find.” “Really, but Yhzia…” “Had seven boys lined up, and I was just waiting for my course to end to make anything happen. Stupid me, that was apparently waiting too long. I’m not going to make that mistake twice.” Lyun was surprised at Xwyhr’s passion at playing cupid, just as surprised that she might not have ever noticed such before either. Jhez and Axln would be pretty much the same age, and did have plenty in common.. and did spend a lot of research time together. However.. she was certain that Axln hadn’t ever stopped to consider matters like personal happiness. Both of them had been pressuring progress and success pretty hard, not exactly taking any time for such considerations.
“I’m certain Axln hadn’t ever taken the time to slow down and think about it either.” “By the divine, why are geniuses so stupid. Okay, whatever, this is still going to work then. Just promise me you won’t let her know, okay?” “Uh, we pretty much just agreed to not keep our activities from each other.” “Argh, fine, then just don’t spill what you know. It just means that I can’t include you in my plans, but that’s not a problem either. However, if you’re being open with each other, then you might want to talk about the idea that a constant pursuit of glory doesn’t leave any room for happiness. Don’t just run around devoting everything to getting stuff done and learning about new gimmicks, there is too much in two worlds for you both to cover there. Take some time to just figure out what makes you happy too, and work towards stuff like that. I mean, I keep trying to take sis there out shopping or to do casual stuff, but she’s always been so distracted, like she isn’t allowing herself the opportunity to enjoy such things. Life isn’t only about getting work done.” Lyun could tell this subject seemed to bother Xwyhr for some reason. Actually, from what little she knew, wasn’t Xwyhr’s whole family generally dedicated to some generic pursuit of ambition? As far as she knew, the entire family didn’t even meet up very often. Maybe this was a point Xwyrh had personally struggled with in that family, something else Axln had been included into.
“You both might even need to find your own kind of happiness too, find it in your own way. Sure, nothing says you both have to keep quiet about it, but dragging her everywhere isn’t going to let her find her own thing.” “But when we go to…” “Yes, yes, you’re both kind of glued to the hip in all of the two-world mess, but that’s just your work. You know this world, and you know her a lot, you should then be recommending things to her that she could go off to do so that she could find her own way in things. Remember, she’s a stupid genius, she knows a ton about certain things and is still learning about plenty others.” “Well, then at least.. what is she doing now?” “Heh, so you want to at least have her back, then. Fine, skipping on a few of the petty details.. well.. foremost, she’s probably getting history lessons. Quick lesson, Axln asked a question there are no answers for, so that’s going to inspire Jhez in the process. If he’s been paying any attention to the lessons I’ve been giving him though.. they will be taking a break from that pursuit soon enough and relaxing together in more casual conditions, just the two of them.” “Wait, but that means then that I could help out, I just have to not get in their way!” “You.. yes, I guess.. you could do that.” “Want to lend a hand, or do your secret plans need you to work on something while those two are together?” “Hey! I would have you know that I still actually have real homework to do, not ‘everything’ was a mask there. Then again, I’m pretty sure that any discoveries I could make would land me extra credit in some of my courses, so I’m in.” Xwyhr sounding hesitant at first thus caught Lyun off guard at the sudden acceptance. Then again, over the whole student-teacher ordeal, this was still a matter of Xwyhr having a teacher that held a passion for the subject. Being in a cosmology class, there were decided course-relevant aspects in having a report on the world’s ancient history. Lyun was getting rather shocked at how silently clever Xwyhr might actually be.
“True, you’re the history student here…” “Cosmology.” “... so where might be a good place to start?” “If I thought that my teacher would be lost without hope, do you really think I would do much better? Our records begin with the world’s discovery, when it was desolate and dead. The planet’s elemental readings were almost flatlined, though there were faint traces of stone and darkness.. the only elements that could endure such conditions.” “But.. if the world’s elements were so void.. why was this one picked for the world’s seed?” “Well, it’s.. uh.. well... Hells, has no one asked that question before?” Lyun followed Xwyhr towards the archives as the student devoured records in hopes of getting that faithful question answered. “Well, it says here that the owner of the world seed was also the mother of all ersatz, so.. it was an ersatz thing? But.. ersatz aren’t the brightest of anything, so this doesn’t make sense either. An ersatz wouldn’t have anything special to have made something seem appealing over anything else.. but this world wasn’t picked at random.” “So maybe we need to find an expert in ersatz then, right?” Lyun was getting excited about how this was suddenly going places, especially watching Xwyhr fumble like this after the previous discussion. Bunch of history nuts, and no one was asking the easy questions. Lyun then used her cell to quickly send a message to Axln, saying that she would be trying to see what she might turn up with Axln’s sister, leaving Axln to figure out stuff her own way with Jhez. She got a pretty quick reply of thanks, the uncertainty exposing that those two were still stuck on planning.
To Lyun, outcomes there were fine regardless, even if Axln would surprise her with historical or romantic discoveries as a matter of process. Meanwhile, she would simply see where this trail went, and let Axln know if it went anywhere worth mentioning.