With a new night quickly approaching, the two girls switched over to Aestus in order to complete their regular tasks there. However, as Lyun sent them off, their shift was suddenly intercepted.

The two looked around, recognizing the temporal plane again on sight. They were each immediately on alert, knowing their presence here would not be a welcomed one. However, even their reception into the temporal plane was met with unexpected silence. For being home to primitive chaos, the place was visibly devoid of a chaotic presence, they were notably the most chaotic aspect in their proximity. Wandering around as such, the two once again discovered the only friendly face they had ever found in this entire plane. The temporal lady, present once again. She seemed rather occupied, though they had no idea how this was exactly obvious. The two waited a while, unsure in the smartest course of action.

“Oh my, guests, once again. I’m sorry for not noticing you sooner, it doesn’t make me the best of hosts I guess.” “Well, at least our stay is welcome this time, you were quite quick in fleeing before.” “I, well, yes. With everything going on, I must admit to not being at my best, it’s terribly difficult to keep up. I’m not usually at my best at this time, but we need to consider how much work there has been to do, how exhausting everything has become. The chaos and I haven’t exactly been getting along very well either, I’m expecting they have just been waiting for the right opportunity. Such was the greatest reason why I really did not want to get involved.” “Why would the chaos hate you anyway?” “You mean beyond blaming me for what has been going on with you? Everything else, really. We’ve got absolutely different agendas. Even from the beginning, from the moment I arrived to where I am.. they’ve wanted me gone. This is their space, they’ve wanted me to supposedly understand that. I.. I’ve never agreed. I know they would not stop there, they would want more and more. Someone has to stop them, or they may one day reach mother…” The temporal lady seemed very stressed, a visibly mounting concern that the two girls could just tell existed.

“That sounds like a very familiar determination. I know of two people who could claim the role of daughter who have spoken with a very familiar sullen dread and responsibility.” “That’s nothing close to the same. Those are just people, I’m…” “You’re.. what?” “Oh, I believe we’ve gone over this already, there is no point in questioning who someone is, not here. You don’t even know which of you are which, right?” 「Wrong, there is one entity here who has no such sense of misdirection, and that would be the one before you. The one to your right is the creative one, who grasps the endless expanse of possibility granted in the imagination. The one to your left is the analytical one, who connects an infinite combination of societal variations into an endless fathom of opportunity. The one closest to the exit is waiting to call herself by the name Rosa, while the one still waiting at the entrance goes by Axln in her society. Beside Rosa stands Kori, and beside Axln stands Lyun. Between everyone remains you, the one who as of yet keeps finding excuses to avoid identifying themselves.」The two girls paused, glancing between each other as the temporal lady absolutely stopped stiff. Wait.. was that chaotic echo.. audible?

“I had not expected to be so directly addressed by one of the chaos like this.” 「You are not, as there is no primitive chaos before you at all. True chaos is found in embracing the principled, not in rejecting it. You may be temporal, but you are certainly one of the principled as well. The same one who had stepped forward to offer the terms of the agreement in the first place, the one who had ensured that true chaos could be realized. As such, there is no reason why you should receive anything less than praise.」 “I can see why the chaos may have left me alone for a time, having driven so much spite. They would certainly hate you more than me, but that will only make their vengeance all the more intense. It won’t be you that has to endure the full intensity of that vengeance, that will mostly be my burden.” 「The creative one expresses concerns in your self-isolation, that you should never feel you need to bear such a burden alone. That one claims that true strength is found by being able to depend on others and their capabilities.」”It is very kind of you to think that way, but there is a sense of magnitude at play here. It will be my burden.. but I will be thankful for even the slightest help you will be able to provide. As I had told you before, if you could discover the solution that would deny chaos its foothold, I might be capable enough to salvage the rest for myself.” The temporal lady seemed genuine in such a statement, even though she seemed so dreadfully weak. It was unfortunate that the two girls still had no answer to give her. Mheridz was correct, there was no distinguished benefit in knowing about the world’s original history.. but they might instead have come up with an answer to something else as a result of that same research.

「The analytical one has figured you out now. A time of weakness, the one most threatened by chaos so directly, the one reachable through a gate invited from a book.. a book that had been left as a gift from your mother too, according to that one. You are the one who is the will of the world, the one who people have named Ruixse. The only reason you have been unwilling to let that be known is so that your enemy does not find you, but there are no enemies before you. You are the embodiment of principle, the one who has gained a pledge of devotion from the chaos no longer of chaos. This chaos shall be your champion as well, ensuring that the true chaos you have offered is kept in eternal balance. Primitive chaos shall have no claim to it, primitive chaos shall suffer if ever it tries. Do not think this pledge comes from one so light as a person who graces eternity with nary a glimmer, the being behind such a pledge is one who is far greater than that. You are not alone, you will never be. By the veil’s grace, you will have eternal protection.」

「However, I do not think you should underestimate the influence of a single person either. The two bound, the four bound, this one who has been graced by that influence. Such interaction has brought great change to one so eternal. You yourself are said to have to thank another for having even brought to life your own existence. Your mother had even graced glimpses of the short wills of people simply to seek that one’s own salvation. You can trust that your burden will be lightened by those who support you.」 “It is good that you claim that.. but I worry that things may have moved a bit too far. You’ve probably not noticed, but they’ve been preparing something big. So many of them just aren’t here anymore.. but they aren’t attacking either. It’s been like that for a while now.. but of late I’ve started to feel really drained, and I don’t know why. I simply can’t find a cause for it, I have no idea at all. Meanwhile, you haven’t even noticed anything has been wrong, leaving me to fend for myself. No one has noticed.” It explained why the temporal lady.. why Ruixse has appeared dreadfully occupied of late, actually enduring against an unseen foe. The two realized that they might have caused this too, by having shifted how chaos saw them, chaos had shifted its entire battle plan to something much more discreet and unnoticed. Meanwhile, they’ve just left chaos to it, not addressing such a threat at all.

「Feeling drained.. that implies that they are ensuring you are devoid of principles, draining a state of balance from you. However, you are not under any attack?」 “No, they’ve been promptly absent both here and there. I have no idea about the state of things to my parallel though, the temporal layer I walk on does not include exposure to any entities on that side.. I don’t even know if the principles there encourage such a design. Considering their plan though, they may be trying a similar trick there as well. The principles between each aren’t the same, so maybe there are more signs on that side of what happens to be going on? There may also be a chance that they are only invested on this side, on my own weakness, due to whatever distinction is actually ongoing. If you’re on your way there now, make sure to figure out which case might be true. If the enemy is there, they might be easier to notice or something there.. and then they could be traced back to me. If they are not there, then we might have an opportunity to learn what sort of weakness they are taking advantage of and thus address it.” Ruixse of course wasn’t very capable of manipulating Aestus, the terms of her existence.. of its existence didn’t exactly provide a way to do so. Ruixse would need help, and the two girls were quite encouraged to provide it, including their chaos. Their chaos was especially savouring this opportunity.

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With a firm goal set, the two of them proceeded from their location, the process guiding them from the temporal plane. The conclusion of such also completed their parallel shift, they were back at Hypertech once again.

“That was still surreal. Like always, it felt like I couldn’t figure out who I was.. but then our chaotic side pins everything down and is able to express myself better than I could.” 「There have been plenty of opportunities for this chaos to adjust to the chaos you generate. Your own lessons about depending on others have been keenly interpreted in that light too, clearly such might be valid for more than just simply people.」 “Well, that’s another point then. We just promised to figure out if there was anything going on here, maybe we should go find the right people to ask.” Rosa was fairly concerned by that obligation too, considering that they had very little to work with at all in order to even figure out where to look. She was compelled to go inquire with Drew, considering his business talent regarding discovering the big picture of a situation, but Holi was also a wise place to begin. Holi outright had eyes everywhere, was connected to everything, though she wouldn’t be as useful without knowing the right things to ask about. Kori meanwhile hadn’t even defaulted to considering checking with Holi for once, she had more than one promise to keep right now. She needed to figure out a way to contact Velvet instead.

“Oh, Rosa, great! Need help, let's go.” “Tristine, woah! Where are we going?” “The stupid engine just went down again, need to go get it fixed. This sucks, I swear I did all my checks this time. Why is the stupid thing messing up?” “It failed? But the barrier is still up, the heat is still on, everything seems fine.” “Oh, that’s the backup generator. We’re not supposed to depend on the backup generator.” “We have a backup generator?” “Sort of? ATALS might be a bit more than just that, but we’re not exactly allowed to use it still. Holi has us connected again to give me a chance to get our own stuff up, but there is no telling if ATALS is just going to disconnect us by a reboot or something. Considering our new relations with Aerospace.. Drew wants to keep the stealing to a minimum too. We’re probably going to be charged a premium for what we’re taking.” Tristine dragged Rosa back over to the underground engine room, the two of them promptly working to get the engine back up. Rosa still wasn’t certain about what was going on, nor was she certain how to fix everything, but Tristine took care of most related responsibilities and instead left Rosa with clear and distinct instructions. They got the engine back on.. but the power draw was still too low for it to ionize correctly. To deal with that, Rosa manually supercharged the core with a creative use of her shifting once again.

“Well, at least we’ve restored trade, maybe we can get replacement parts to rebuild the engine. Then again.. I still can’t even figure out why it went dead.” “Well, how did you just get it going again?” “Oh, well, we basically turned it off and on, if I’m going to be that honest.” “But.. it didn’t seem to want to turn back on then.” “Well, yeah, that’s strange too. Was like having a dead battery.. but it’s not like we’re using something so simple. The stupid thing’s draw cycle processes an ionic cluster using natural currents. For there to be a shortage would require an imbalance in electrolytic density in the very ground. No way that would be a thing, so something else has to be wrong. Maybe the draw process failed, I can’t think of a better reason than that.” Tristine stayed with the engine, running over futile surplus checks that Rosa simply could not help her with. A shortage of natural currents.. as if the world’s potential energy was becoming harder to draw from. This was something she needed to confirm, it would apply directly to what they had just been sent here to discover. A shortage of energy.. that decidedly sounded very much like chaos was involved. She ran back to the surface in order to complete her investigation.

“Holi, I need your help. Are you available?” “I’m here. What may I help you with?” “Tristine and I just figured out that we’re having some power trouble.. but I suspect the problem is with the source. Can you detect any natural decline in energy within the area?” “You mean root electrolytes in the ground? I’ll need a bit of time to run some scans.” “Sure, though I guess you can multitask too. If you find nothing strange, we’ve hit a dead-end, but if you find something, we’ll need even more information. What would have caused a decline like that, where would it have come from?” “Planetary electrolytes are a core component in its construction, the entire planet distributing such energy evenly as a matter of course. By design, this place would be very difficult to cut off too.” “Ah, so we should see if there are other places with the same problem.” “Most of society though does not depend on ionic sources, they use thermite instead. Getting that information from other systems would then be impractical.” Rosa didn’t like that news, it made it difficult to triangulate a potential enemy. If chaos was causing this, then might it be hiding deep underground? Still, this world had no phasecrafts, reaching the depths like that would be decidedly difficult. Pondering how chaos might be cutting things off like that was a whole extra problem.

“I completed an initial test, the ground’s electrolytic density is indeed below established estimates. I tried a few tests, though deep probes proved difficult outside of the barrier due to the cold. The current saturation of low temperature is slowing down electrolytic flow, making that even more difficult. Extreme colds have this impact due to slowing down everything at a molecular level.” “Wait, right! The cold! That could actually handle so much. Do you have any thermal information? Of course, considering people expect the cold, they even work to counter the cold, you should have access to plenty of weather information.” “I’ve actually got immediate access to that information locally, I’ll check updates in remote locations too. The ground has permeated a lot of cold of late, even more than typically expected for this solar season. Ground freezing has been outreaching, while air temperatures are at a record low.. around 16 celsius lower than historically recorded.” Holi’s information was plenty for Rosa to at least know the answer to her mission. Yes, chaos was impacting this world too, chaos was attempting to freeze the planet over somehow. She still had no idea how such a large scale freeze was occurring, but that was the obvious next step.

“Kori is way better at all this analytical stuff, maybe we should try to include her.” “Kori has insisted that she wanted to not be bothered for a while, she was about to undertake something personally undesirable and didn’t want any distractions.” “What about if it’s important.. like life-critical importance?” “That’s the level of importance she had placed on her own actions. I expect she is then finding her own way to achieve the same goal as yourself. Taking different actions may result in new information, so I would personally recommend waiting for her to finish before involving her. However, if you feel everything is urgent, I can help you be available for when she completes her own task.” “Yeah, sure, let’s do that. I guess while waiting.. maybe you could keep running tests? I’m not analytical, so I’m going to need your help, but maybe we can organize enough information to be ready for when Kori is free.” “That’s fine, my routines were designed to be very analytical, though I won’t share in having an understanding in all of the information you use for your own objectives. Much of it involves measures that defy common logic, so it’s been difficult for me to process.” Rosa still tried her best to work with Holi to put everything together with what they had. Still, she could admit to being curious, what might Kori be up to that she was finding undesirable and yet of such high importance?

Rosa sat down in one of the research rooms, pushing aside manuals and blueprints to make room for her to sit amidst the clutter. It was unfortunate that such guides would have been no help either, as certainly there wouldn’t be a book that would simply drop the answer before them.