And first public release of episode 2. Hoping to finish 3 in time for posting next weekend.... ep 1 goes live on SV and SB tomorrow.
Once again, I began my exploration of a whole new world. From the horrors of Winslow High to the camaraderie of the Undersiders, I rejoiced. The bittersweet days of the Wards, and the sharp determination of the hunt for the Nine, I remembered. In the desperate, titanic struggle against Scion, there was so little time to mourn, to reflect, to hope. Here at Baerzen, so far as I knew, there were no threats, no bullies, no gangs. Sure, there were soldiers, and mages, and a whole new culture... but I could get along.
Episode 2 of Super Dimension Magical Girl Lyrical Skitter, hajimarimasu!
I woke up, rolled over, stretched out, and yawned. It was nice to sleep in a soft bed again. Two years of prison, cheap hotels, and whatever safe corner I could grab during the long battle with Scion... it had been a while since I'd been comfortable at night. I managed to get my glasses on, then peered at the clock, found it barely readable, then ran through the conversion the Takamachi girl had helped me work out. It was mid-morning, about ten o'clock by Earth measurements (although she'd mentioned at one point that this particular planet had a slightly longer day, so I wasn't quite sure how that would work into it).
A shower and clean clothes later, I felt much more human. The 'fatigues' they'd left me consisted of cottonish trousers in a pleasant medium blue, a white t-shirt, and a matching blue button-down shirt that I perforce left open. (Everyone I'd seen wearing it did that anyway, so it didn't seem like a big deal, and it wasn't exactly easy to do up buttons with only one hand anyway. Getting the pants on had been fumbling enough.)
The last item, of course, was the armband 'Device', which I finally noticed had a blinking blue light on it. "What's that supposed to mean," I muttered, eyeing it.
I shouldn't have been surprised when the thing heard me and actually answered the question. "You have messages waiting, master."
Erk. Right. AIs, or semi-intelligent ones, at least. And this was one of the cheap ones, that they just kept around for backup. "Er, right, uhm, play first message, please?"
The first message was from a Doctor Testarossa, an older woman with long dark hair and a labcoat, welcoming me to the Institute and saying that she'd like to meet with me at some point. "Record reply," I said, hoping I was starting to get the hang of working with these things.
"Ready," it said.
"Good morning, Doctor Testarossa. I'm sorry I didn't get your message earlier, but I only just woke up. I don't seem to have anything pressing on my schedule for today, so please, call me anytime. I'd be glad to chat." I tapped on the 'end message' button, and the Device beeped. "Message delivered," it said. "Two messages remain."
The next message was from Nanoha; the doctor had told her to let me sleep as long as I needed so she'd spent the morning in the library. She wanted me to call her as soon as I was ready and she'd walk me to the mess hall.
The final message was Doctor Yamada, he was pleased my vital signs seemed to have stayed stable overnight and reminded me to take it easy for the day. He did have some good news, though, they had a supply shipment due in soon and they'd gotten his report just in time to add the parts for my prosthetic to it. It'd be about four days getting here, "so just hold on and we'll get you all set to rights in no time!" I had to smile at the enthusiasm, between him and Nanoha it was infectious.
I left a quick thank-you message for the doctor, then called Nanoha to let her know I was ready.
"Gooood morning!" she said, then "Ooooh, you're up! Great! I'll be right over!"
"Er, yes, I'm up, and I'm starving, I hope they've got something decent left..."
"Don't you worry, they've got Doctor's orders to make sure you get a decent breakfast. I went down personally to tell them."
"Good thinking on his part, then," I conceded. "I'll be right here."
"No problem," she finished. "Five minutes."
Nanoha was as good as her word, arriving at my door (at a jog) four minutes and thirty-eight seconds after disconnecting our call. Yes, I timed her, just for the heck of it. I was still learning how to use the nifty new technology, so I was trying everything, and an excuse to try the stopwatch function was an excuse to try something I hadn't used before.
"What took you so long?" I asked, with a little smile to show that I wasn't really upset with her.
"Oh, just going over some reports and stuff. Sometimes it seems like the whole Bureau runs on paperwork, rather than magic."
I nodded, and a little chuckle escaped before I could stifle it. Then I gave in. "Well," I told her, "The word 'Bureau' comes from an old word for 'desk'. You could say it's a self-fulfilling prophecy."
She paused, blinked, and looked over at me. "Really?"
"Really," I assured her. "My mom was an English professor."
"Oooooh. So you're from an Earth? Me too! That's so cool." She was practically bouncing as we filed into the mess hall. As promised, the cooks had kept something back for me, a nice big stack of fluffy pancakes. "Some things are multiversal," Nanoha said, as I took a careful bite of one, then sniffed at the selection of toppings. "Pancakes appears to be one of them."
I nodded sagely, selected a fruit jam that smelled vaguely like strawberries, and applied it liberally. "But maple syrup apparently isn't."
"Mmm, no. I've tried to get some, but it's really obscure, here. Nowhere near as popular as back on Earth." She'd acquired a small stack of her own, and seemed to have no problems digging into what had to be her second breakfast.
"I'm going to miss it too, then," I told her as I cut off a wedge of pancake. "So, tell me a bit about your Earth?" I asked, and started eating while I listened. She told me about a world that the Bureau called simply "Unadministrated Planet Number Ninety-Seven", a plain enough description for a world that seven billion people called home. It seemed unexceptional - no public knowledge of magic, no capes, no real space travel... no Endbringers. No Scion. I envied them, for a bit. Maybe I could have lived a normal life, there.
"I'd like to visit, sometime," I told her over our finally-empty plates. "It sounds... peaceful. By comparison, at least."
She was about to ask something - probably 'compared to what' - when my armband pinged. "You have an incoming call from Director Testarossa," it said, and Nanoha quickly stifled a scowl. I felt my brows arch as I caught it, curious, but turned my attention to the armband, tapping the key to accept the call. A holoscreen popped up in the air between us, showing the same face I'd seen in this morning's message.
"Good morning, Ms. Hebert," she said, calmly and pleasantly. "I'm glad to see you up and with us at last."
"Good morning, Director. I'd like to thank you for your hospitality. It's been a distinct pleasure so far."
"Thank you, Ms. Hebert, I'll be sure to pass that on to our staff. Would you perchance have time to stop in at my office for a brief chat? No need to rush your meal, feel free to finish."
Nanoha's face, visible through the holoscreen, was carefully schooled to emotionless neutrality. I had no idea what her disagreement with the director was, but it couldn't have been too bad if they were still part of the same organization. I'd worked with people I disliked before, myself. "We're just finishing up, Director," I assured her. "It's not like I have any plans for the day. I'll be up in, say, ten minutes?"
She smiled a little and nodded. "That will be fine, Ms. Hebert, I'll be expecting you." The screen flicked off.
Nanoha's visible distaste for Presea Testarossa had worried me a bit. I was pleasantly surprised to find her a charming, polite, and highly intelligent individual. She started off by welcoming me to the Baerzen institute, and giving me a basic introduction to the Time-Space Administration Bureau - who they were, what they did, and so on. Most of it was a rehash of what I'd read the night before, but there were a few nice new bits to learn.
"You sound like quite the admirer of the setup," I commented. "It seems to work well for you."
"I wasn't, always," she admitted, "But that was years ago. Somewhat more relevantly, we have the Wall, here, and you."
"True, true," I said, crossing my legs at the knee and sitting back. "I read that it started about thirty years ago?"
"Almost exactly, yes. Johann Baerzen was an explorer, a scientist. He was the first one to chart the Tellerman Deeps, for instance. One day, though, a patrol cruiser picked up a distress call from his ship. They traced it down and found the ship, crippled, most of the crew dead, the rest dying. Baerzen himself only lived a few days."
I nodded. "It sounds like they ran into something pretty nasty."
"Most of the damage to the ship was purely spatial distortions, actually. Apparently from the jump out. They really pressed the engines, trying to get through to home space. Johann was absolutely terrified by what they'd seen out there." She tightened her hands on the edge of the desk, briefly.
"I understand you come from an Earth much like Nanoha's?" she asked, then.
"Yes… Earth Bet, we called it. We had contact with at least one other, Earth Aleph." I wasn't about to tell her about Cauldron's portal network, but that part at least was pretty public. It couldn't hurt to reveal that much.
Presea nodded. "And there are hundreds of solar systems, thousands of parallels of each, separated from us by that Wall. Anything that could raise a dimensional barrier on that scale… that kind of power terrified us. Combine that with Baerzen's story, of gigantic monsters spanning hundreds of dimensions… you can understand why we worried."
"I certainly can," I assured her. "Was there any more detail about the giant monsters? I'd like to compare it to the ones I actually saw." And fought against. And killed. Was it Endbringers, or Scion and Eden, that had driven him to such panic? At first I thought it had to be the alien pair, but with what Lisa had told me about how the Endbringers were put together, they could qualify, too.
What she described, however, was a pair of entities meeting a third. The description of the creatures shedding parts of themselves, exchanging bits, and one of the pair colliding with the newcomer… I was fairly certain the pair were Scion and Eden, but what about the third? Was there still one of them out there, endangering my Earth?
I fell silent for a moment, after that. Taking in the disastrous possibility. We'd only just barely defeated Scion. If these people were as powerful as they seemed, as basically decent as they seemed, so far...
"Two of them - the pair, I'd expect - came to my Earth," I told her. "One of them died, somehow. I don't know all the story. The other manifested some sort of humanoid avatar..." I shrugged. "We all thought that was all there was. That he was just someone who'd manifested a power that damaged his mind, or something. We called him Scion, after the first time he spoke to anyone." I told her how he'd been a hero for so long... and how in the end he'd changed. I didn't tell her why, I didn't mention Jack Slash, or Cauldron, or my own part in it. Just that he'd gone mad, started slaughtering people, burning entire cities. Not just on Earth-Bet, but on dozens of others, as well. Refugees streaming to the supposed safety of those other worlds. The desperate struggle, from the day at the oil rig to the end.
I didn't dare even hint at Khepri. At my own part in the madness. The real reason why Contessa had left me broken and bleeding, with two holes in my head.
I think she guessed that I'd played down my role. She was smart, experienced, and powerful, and she knew how powerful people worked. But she didn't say anything about it, didn't question my story. Just took it down at face value.
I would learn, later, that she knew all too well what it was like when things were too intensely personall, too painful, to talk about, even with someone you trusted. But that was later.
"The key to it all is t' pay attention to both bucks," Sergeant Graff told me. "And remember y' can only score with one of 'em at a time." I nodded, watching as the 'bucks', as they were called, flickered back and forth across the pajang table. Sergeant Graff was playing a round against Corporal Barnett, a squadmate of his. They were both fairly good at the game, keeping both of the bucks in motion, sliding and flying back and forth between them.
I watched, following the bucks - one puck sliding across the table, one ball flying through the air, collectively "bucks". Or "bollucks", according to cruder players, but Graff had hushed that when I came in. As I watched, the grounded buck slid through Graff's scoring zone. The game table produced a soft 'bleep', but not the buzz that indicated a score, and Graff just slid his striker in and bounced it back towards the Corporal. "Like that?" I asked, teasing them a little.
"Exactly," Barnett said. "In some leagues that's actually an own-goal, you lose a point for doin' it. This's just a friendly game, though."
"Yeah," Graff added, "Loser buys the beers tonight."
"Okay. I think I get the hang of it... love to give it a try, but." The stump of my arm, adorned with the 'device' wristband, could not even reach the table, much less manipulate a striker.
"Yeah, sorry 'bout that." Barnett was tall, blond, decently built. Graff, on the other hand, was a wiry little guy who was almost as pretty-looking as Alec. How he got to be a sergeant I'll probably never know.
"She could play half-jang," Graff suggested, waggling his paddle at me.
"Enh. Maybe. You gotta switch back and forth pretty quick for that."
"It's okay," I assured them. "Doctor Yamada's ordered in a prosthetic for me, should be on the next supply shipment, he said. Once I get that on, I owe you each a game, okay?"
"Done deal, kiddo," said Graff, then fired back a blazingly quick shot with the flying ball to bounce it right off Barnett's score zone. As I turned to go, the table buzzed and added one to his score.
The afternoon found me back in the privacy of my room, resting and catching up on my reading. The night before I'd focused on the history book, studying up on just who I was dealing with. Now I turned my attention to what they could do.
One thing I found out was that "magic" - actually a dimensional flux of some sort - was their primary power source. They used it to generate electricity and could actually convert back and forth to generate electrically-powered 'magic' events, like the Pajang table. These were generally fixed things that drew a lot of power, but with massive thaum reactors to produce electricity without environmental impact they had power to spare. Batteries and small genereators didn't really do well for it, though, there just wasn't enough power.
Ironically, the best power source available was a human being. They talked about a 'linker core' - Yamada had mentioned that, too, I recalled - that gathered mana from the environment and allowed it to be directed by mental effort. The primary method of doing this required a lot of math. Very complicated math. Someone like Defiant or Tattletale might be able to handle it, but it daunted me. I didn't even recognize their notation, I had to go out and download a math textbook just to even try to understand some of the equations.
The secret, of course, was what they called Devices, which were basically massively powerful computers (artificial semi-intelligences) designed solely around processing the massive calculations required for their "spells" and helping the "caster" channel the appropriate energy through their linker core.
Three hours of reading, re-reading, and headscratching later, I called up a virtual keyboard and set to work. The Device they'd given me was a cheap, civilian-grade unit, no more significant to them than the kind of smartphone you could have bought in a hundred different shops in Brockton Bay. Military-grade units were considerably more powerful and versatile (and, in some cases, more intelligent; there were mentions in the book of 'Unison Devices' that were supposed to be fully sapient. Part of me wanted to find one just so I could introduce it to Dragon... that ought to be fun.)
An alarm chimed, the reminder I'd set myself that the time I'd set for my dinner hour had arrived. I looked up from the results of my labors. The simple phrase "Hello, World!" rotated in mid-air, the three-dimensional letters shimmering with color that ebbed and flowed randomly around them, melting along all the shades of the rainbow. I reached up and prodded the 'W', and felt its presence, the slight give under the pressure of my finger, and watched it spin around as I pushed it, before it eventually resumed its place.
With a smile, I headed off to eat.
-- tsuzuku
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
---------- * ---------- ** ---------- *** ---------- ** ---------- * ----------
Once again, I began my exploration of a whole new world. From the horrors of Winslow High to the camaraderie of the Undersiders, I rejoiced. The bittersweet days of the Wards, and the sharp determination of the hunt for the Nine, I remembered. In the desperate, titanic struggle against Scion, there was so little time to mourn, to reflect, to hope. Here at Baerzen, so far as I knew, there were no threats, no bullies, no gangs. Sure, there were soldiers, and mages, and a whole new culture... but I could get along.
Episode 2 of Super Dimension Magical Girl Lyrical Skitter, hajimarimasu!
--- * --- 1.2 --- * --- 1.2 --- * ---
I woke up, rolled over, stretched out, and yawned. It was nice to sleep in a soft bed again. Two years of prison, cheap hotels, and whatever safe corner I could grab during the long battle with Scion... it had been a while since I'd been comfortable at night. I managed to get my glasses on, then peered at the clock, found it barely readable, then ran through the conversion the Takamachi girl had helped me work out. It was mid-morning, about ten o'clock by Earth measurements (although she'd mentioned at one point that this particular planet had a slightly longer day, so I wasn't quite sure how that would work into it).
A shower and clean clothes later, I felt much more human. The 'fatigues' they'd left me consisted of cottonish trousers in a pleasant medium blue, a white t-shirt, and a matching blue button-down shirt that I perforce left open. (Everyone I'd seen wearing it did that anyway, so it didn't seem like a big deal, and it wasn't exactly easy to do up buttons with only one hand anyway. Getting the pants on had been fumbling enough.)
The last item, of course, was the armband 'Device', which I finally noticed had a blinking blue light on it. "What's that supposed to mean," I muttered, eyeing it.
I shouldn't have been surprised when the thing heard me and actually answered the question. "You have messages waiting, master."
Erk. Right. AIs, or semi-intelligent ones, at least. And this was one of the cheap ones, that they just kept around for backup. "Er, right, uhm, play first message, please?"
The first message was from a Doctor Testarossa, an older woman with long dark hair and a labcoat, welcoming me to the Institute and saying that she'd like to meet with me at some point. "Record reply," I said, hoping I was starting to get the hang of working with these things.
"Ready," it said.
"Good morning, Doctor Testarossa. I'm sorry I didn't get your message earlier, but I only just woke up. I don't seem to have anything pressing on my schedule for today, so please, call me anytime. I'd be glad to chat." I tapped on the 'end message' button, and the Device beeped. "Message delivered," it said. "Two messages remain."
The next message was from Nanoha; the doctor had told her to let me sleep as long as I needed so she'd spent the morning in the library. She wanted me to call her as soon as I was ready and she'd walk me to the mess hall.
The final message was Doctor Yamada, he was pleased my vital signs seemed to have stayed stable overnight and reminded me to take it easy for the day. He did have some good news, though, they had a supply shipment due in soon and they'd gotten his report just in time to add the parts for my prosthetic to it. It'd be about four days getting here, "so just hold on and we'll get you all set to rights in no time!" I had to smile at the enthusiasm, between him and Nanoha it was infectious.
I left a quick thank-you message for the doctor, then called Nanoha to let her know I was ready.
"Gooood morning!" she said, then "Ooooh, you're up! Great! I'll be right over!"
"Er, yes, I'm up, and I'm starving, I hope they've got something decent left..."
"Don't you worry, they've got Doctor's orders to make sure you get a decent breakfast. I went down personally to tell them."
"Good thinking on his part, then," I conceded. "I'll be right here."
"No problem," she finished. "Five minutes."
- 1.2 --- * --- 1.2 -
Nanoha was as good as her word, arriving at my door (at a jog) four minutes and thirty-eight seconds after disconnecting our call. Yes, I timed her, just for the heck of it. I was still learning how to use the nifty new technology, so I was trying everything, and an excuse to try the stopwatch function was an excuse to try something I hadn't used before.
"What took you so long?" I asked, with a little smile to show that I wasn't really upset with her.
"Oh, just going over some reports and stuff. Sometimes it seems like the whole Bureau runs on paperwork, rather than magic."
I nodded, and a little chuckle escaped before I could stifle it. Then I gave in. "Well," I told her, "The word 'Bureau' comes from an old word for 'desk'. You could say it's a self-fulfilling prophecy."
She paused, blinked, and looked over at me. "Really?"
"Really," I assured her. "My mom was an English professor."
"Oooooh. So you're from an Earth? Me too! That's so cool." She was practically bouncing as we filed into the mess hall. As promised, the cooks had kept something back for me, a nice big stack of fluffy pancakes. "Some things are multiversal," Nanoha said, as I took a careful bite of one, then sniffed at the selection of toppings. "Pancakes appears to be one of them."
I nodded sagely, selected a fruit jam that smelled vaguely like strawberries, and applied it liberally. "But maple syrup apparently isn't."
"Mmm, no. I've tried to get some, but it's really obscure, here. Nowhere near as popular as back on Earth." She'd acquired a small stack of her own, and seemed to have no problems digging into what had to be her second breakfast.
"I'm going to miss it too, then," I told her as I cut off a wedge of pancake. "So, tell me a bit about your Earth?" I asked, and started eating while I listened. She told me about a world that the Bureau called simply "Unadministrated Planet Number Ninety-Seven", a plain enough description for a world that seven billion people called home. It seemed unexceptional - no public knowledge of magic, no capes, no real space travel... no Endbringers. No Scion. I envied them, for a bit. Maybe I could have lived a normal life, there.
"I'd like to visit, sometime," I told her over our finally-empty plates. "It sounds... peaceful. By comparison, at least."
She was about to ask something - probably 'compared to what' - when my armband pinged. "You have an incoming call from Director Testarossa," it said, and Nanoha quickly stifled a scowl. I felt my brows arch as I caught it, curious, but turned my attention to the armband, tapping the key to accept the call. A holoscreen popped up in the air between us, showing the same face I'd seen in this morning's message.
"Good morning, Ms. Hebert," she said, calmly and pleasantly. "I'm glad to see you up and with us at last."
"Good morning, Director. I'd like to thank you for your hospitality. It's been a distinct pleasure so far."
"Thank you, Ms. Hebert, I'll be sure to pass that on to our staff. Would you perchance have time to stop in at my office for a brief chat? No need to rush your meal, feel free to finish."
Nanoha's face, visible through the holoscreen, was carefully schooled to emotionless neutrality. I had no idea what her disagreement with the director was, but it couldn't have been too bad if they were still part of the same organization. I'd worked with people I disliked before, myself. "We're just finishing up, Director," I assured her. "It's not like I have any plans for the day. I'll be up in, say, ten minutes?"
She smiled a little and nodded. "That will be fine, Ms. Hebert, I'll be expecting you." The screen flicked off.
- 1.2 --- * --- 1.2 -
Nanoha's visible distaste for Presea Testarossa had worried me a bit. I was pleasantly surprised to find her a charming, polite, and highly intelligent individual. She started off by welcoming me to the Baerzen institute, and giving me a basic introduction to the Time-Space Administration Bureau - who they were, what they did, and so on. Most of it was a rehash of what I'd read the night before, but there were a few nice new bits to learn.
"You sound like quite the admirer of the setup," I commented. "It seems to work well for you."
"I wasn't, always," she admitted, "But that was years ago. Somewhat more relevantly, we have the Wall, here, and you."
"True, true," I said, crossing my legs at the knee and sitting back. "I read that it started about thirty years ago?"
"Almost exactly, yes. Johann Baerzen was an explorer, a scientist. He was the first one to chart the Tellerman Deeps, for instance. One day, though, a patrol cruiser picked up a distress call from his ship. They traced it down and found the ship, crippled, most of the crew dead, the rest dying. Baerzen himself only lived a few days."
I nodded. "It sounds like they ran into something pretty nasty."
"Most of the damage to the ship was purely spatial distortions, actually. Apparently from the jump out. They really pressed the engines, trying to get through to home space. Johann was absolutely terrified by what they'd seen out there." She tightened her hands on the edge of the desk, briefly.
"I understand you come from an Earth much like Nanoha's?" she asked, then.
"Yes… Earth Bet, we called it. We had contact with at least one other, Earth Aleph." I wasn't about to tell her about Cauldron's portal network, but that part at least was pretty public. It couldn't hurt to reveal that much.
Presea nodded. "And there are hundreds of solar systems, thousands of parallels of each, separated from us by that Wall. Anything that could raise a dimensional barrier on that scale… that kind of power terrified us. Combine that with Baerzen's story, of gigantic monsters spanning hundreds of dimensions… you can understand why we worried."
"I certainly can," I assured her. "Was there any more detail about the giant monsters? I'd like to compare it to the ones I actually saw." And fought against. And killed. Was it Endbringers, or Scion and Eden, that had driven him to such panic? At first I thought it had to be the alien pair, but with what Lisa had told me about how the Endbringers were put together, they could qualify, too.
What she described, however, was a pair of entities meeting a third. The description of the creatures shedding parts of themselves, exchanging bits, and one of the pair colliding with the newcomer… I was fairly certain the pair were Scion and Eden, but what about the third? Was there still one of them out there, endangering my Earth?
I fell silent for a moment, after that. Taking in the disastrous possibility. We'd only just barely defeated Scion. If these people were as powerful as they seemed, as basically decent as they seemed, so far...
"Two of them - the pair, I'd expect - came to my Earth," I told her. "One of them died, somehow. I don't know all the story. The other manifested some sort of humanoid avatar..." I shrugged. "We all thought that was all there was. That he was just someone who'd manifested a power that damaged his mind, or something. We called him Scion, after the first time he spoke to anyone." I told her how he'd been a hero for so long... and how in the end he'd changed. I didn't tell her why, I didn't mention Jack Slash, or Cauldron, or my own part in it. Just that he'd gone mad, started slaughtering people, burning entire cities. Not just on Earth-Bet, but on dozens of others, as well. Refugees streaming to the supposed safety of those other worlds. The desperate struggle, from the day at the oil rig to the end.
I didn't dare even hint at Khepri. At my own part in the madness. The real reason why Contessa had left me broken and bleeding, with two holes in my head.
I think she guessed that I'd played down my role. She was smart, experienced, and powerful, and she knew how powerful people worked. But she didn't say anything about it, didn't question my story. Just took it down at face value.
I would learn, later, that she knew all too well what it was like when things were too intensely personall, too painful, to talk about, even with someone you trusted. But that was later.
- 1.2 --- * --- 1.2 -
"The key to it all is t' pay attention to both bucks," Sergeant Graff told me. "And remember y' can only score with one of 'em at a time." I nodded, watching as the 'bucks', as they were called, flickered back and forth across the pajang table. Sergeant Graff was playing a round against Corporal Barnett, a squadmate of his. They were both fairly good at the game, keeping both of the bucks in motion, sliding and flying back and forth between them.
I watched, following the bucks - one puck sliding across the table, one ball flying through the air, collectively "bucks". Or "bollucks", according to cruder players, but Graff had hushed that when I came in. As I watched, the grounded buck slid through Graff's scoring zone. The game table produced a soft 'bleep', but not the buzz that indicated a score, and Graff just slid his striker in and bounced it back towards the Corporal. "Like that?" I asked, teasing them a little.
"Exactly," Barnett said. "In some leagues that's actually an own-goal, you lose a point for doin' it. This's just a friendly game, though."
"Yeah," Graff added, "Loser buys the beers tonight."
"Okay. I think I get the hang of it... love to give it a try, but." The stump of my arm, adorned with the 'device' wristband, could not even reach the table, much less manipulate a striker.
"Yeah, sorry 'bout that." Barnett was tall, blond, decently built. Graff, on the other hand, was a wiry little guy who was almost as pretty-looking as Alec. How he got to be a sergeant I'll probably never know.
"She could play half-jang," Graff suggested, waggling his paddle at me.
"Enh. Maybe. You gotta switch back and forth pretty quick for that."
"It's okay," I assured them. "Doctor Yamada's ordered in a prosthetic for me, should be on the next supply shipment, he said. Once I get that on, I owe you each a game, okay?"
"Done deal, kiddo," said Graff, then fired back a blazingly quick shot with the flying ball to bounce it right off Barnett's score zone. As I turned to go, the table buzzed and added one to his score.
- 1.2 --- * --- 1.2 -
The afternoon found me back in the privacy of my room, resting and catching up on my reading. The night before I'd focused on the history book, studying up on just who I was dealing with. Now I turned my attention to what they could do.
One thing I found out was that "magic" - actually a dimensional flux of some sort - was their primary power source. They used it to generate electricity and could actually convert back and forth to generate electrically-powered 'magic' events, like the Pajang table. These were generally fixed things that drew a lot of power, but with massive thaum reactors to produce electricity without environmental impact they had power to spare. Batteries and small genereators didn't really do well for it, though, there just wasn't enough power.
Ironically, the best power source available was a human being. They talked about a 'linker core' - Yamada had mentioned that, too, I recalled - that gathered mana from the environment and allowed it to be directed by mental effort. The primary method of doing this required a lot of math. Very complicated math. Someone like Defiant or Tattletale might be able to handle it, but it daunted me. I didn't even recognize their notation, I had to go out and download a math textbook just to even try to understand some of the equations.
The secret, of course, was what they called Devices, which were basically massively powerful computers (artificial semi-intelligences) designed solely around processing the massive calculations required for their "spells" and helping the "caster" channel the appropriate energy through their linker core.
Three hours of reading, re-reading, and headscratching later, I called up a virtual keyboard and set to work. The Device they'd given me was a cheap, civilian-grade unit, no more significant to them than the kind of smartphone you could have bought in a hundred different shops in Brockton Bay. Military-grade units were considerably more powerful and versatile (and, in some cases, more intelligent; there were mentions in the book of 'Unison Devices' that were supposed to be fully sapient. Part of me wanted to find one just so I could introduce it to Dragon... that ought to be fun.)
An alarm chimed, the reminder I'd set myself that the time I'd set for my dinner hour had arrived. I looked up from the results of my labors. The simple phrase "Hello, World!" rotated in mid-air, the three-dimensional letters shimmering with color that ebbed and flowed randomly around them, melting along all the shades of the rainbow. I reached up and prodded the 'W', and felt its presence, the slight give under the pressure of my finger, and watched it spin around as I pushed it, before it eventually resumed its place.
With a smile, I headed off to eat.
-- tsuzuku
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.