Empty time sometimes passes quickly, but sometimes it's far too slow. The first few days after the incident in the G-cans seemed to fly by. They had a routine, after all. Get up. Go to school. Come home. Do homework. There was challenge too, to occupy young minds. School was ending. They took their final exams, many of which came easy to them. At least for Bryony, though, some were harder than others. English. Japanese. History. This world was a lot newer for her than it was for Nicola; Bryony still hasn't explained the circumstances to Nicola very well, but she hasn't been awake for that long. As a small comfort, she seemed to take more easily to English than Japanese. Nicola might not be surprised by that. Furatiyyun is a little closer to the former than the latter. The big surprise, though? Math. Bryony passed everything else, but in that subject, her grade was a rather resounding F. She never showed Nicola her graded paper, but somehow, she actually got a 0, despite seeming to blow through the same types of questions in class. And so the brown-haired girl came home with a tall stack of math homework to do over the break.
And somehow, she has actually been doing it. Even more strangely, she has been quiet. She has been ever since that day. Even Jessamine is obviously concerned. Every day, the girls' guardian peeks in on her in her room, hoping the shock of that experience has worn off. Every day, it hasn't.
It has been a week since school ended now. Bryony is still in her room. The door is never locked, but she rarely comes out.
Nicola is worried, too. So, now that it has been a week she finally decides to get Bryony to cheer up a little. Her plan is both unconventional and potentially dangerous. To Nicola, it's just chemistry. She's gotten her hands on some chemicals that are not supposed to be within reach of children, and has used them to produce a small explosive.
The explosive is then attached to Bryony's door, and rigged to explode when someone opens the door. The dose is calibrated to make a loud but harmless explosion and a ton of smoke.
It'll probably piss of Jessamine, but Nicola hopes that it'll be worth it.
The trap is set, waiting for whichever hapless victim happens to come by. Or not so hapless. It's morning, early enough that Jessamine is still home; she doesn't leave for her job until the afternoon. She strolls out of her room, still in the usual drawstring shorts and tee that double as pajamas for her. Her only "accessory" is her necklace. The pendant hanging on it happens to be her intelligent device, Skirmisher.
She walks, oblivious to the hazards before her, and stops in front of Bryony's door. She looks concerned, hesitating for a few moments as she decides whether she should enter. One almost feels bad for what's about to happen to her. She turns the door, opens it, and takes a half-step, just long enough for the fuse to trigger.
It turns out that, however battle-hardened one is, you can still be caught off-guard. Jessamine leaps back into the wall behind her as she lets out a high-pitched, girly shriek, grabbing her device, almost engaging her henshin reflexively. "Skirmisher! Set . . . " Up? Nope! Before she can even finish, a look of enraged realization crosses her face. /Nicola./ But before she can make her displeasure known, Bryony is running past her.
The brown-haired girl dashes into Nicola's room and slams the door behind herself. She runs over and hugs Nicola, burying her face in the other girl's shoulder. She's scared? Maybe an explosion wasn't the best strategy? But then she pulls back and finally speaks, quietly, her voice clearly amused, "I can't believe you did that."
Nicola stifles a giggle when Jessamine is caught off guard by that. Oh, she noticed. She's been waiting for it all morning. And when Bryony dashes into her room, she provides ample hugs. "I thought it'd get you out of your shell." She says with a devious smirk, "And I don't care I'm upsetting Jessamine with it."
Bryony turns toward the still-closed door, almost as if expecting it to fly open at any moment. "Well, she probably is going to kill us . . . eventually." Jessamine doesn't intrude, though. She's not the type to yell, but she doesn't need to. She can be intimidating enough with just a look. She gave the girls a pretty stern talking to in the days after their battle underground. Today, though, for whatever reason, she's keeping her distance.
Bryony looks at Nicola. She's not quite sure what to say after that. She takes a seat on the side of her bed and then lets herself fall back dramatically, legs swinging lazily as she stares up at the ceiling. There are a few moments of silence, and then, in an uncertain voice, "It . . . it was pretty scary, wasn't it?"
"She'll just yell at me and make me do extra chores. I can deal." Nicola reduces the level of imagined punishment to more reasonable levels as she sits down on her bed, next to Bryony. She's in a good mood, despite the serious topic. "It was." She says softly, and then finally asks a question she's been putting off. "Why did you go there anyway?"
"I . . . " Bryony extends her arms, holding her hands up above her, staring through spread fingers at the ceiling above. Her skin is mostly unblemished, but she has a few faint scar lines on her hands, as if she had worked with her hands before. Her voice drops a bit. "I didn't get to do much back home. My parents weren't like your dad. They were . . . " Her tone sours a bit. " . . . protective." That sounds like a euphemism.
"But this crazy world . . . There are no Dunes filled with danger. The weather is sometimes a little unpredictable, but it's nothing compared to the worst we saw back home. I thought it would be safe. I wanted to . . . " She lets out a long breath, and then she suddenly sits up, bouncing off the bed and onto her feet. She proceeds, unasked, to Nicola's computer. "Let me show you something I found on the internet."
She still types a little slowly. She opens a browser and punches a single word into the search box in English, "urbex." "Don't you ever want to see what's out there? To get out of this apartment and go to the quiet places nobody goes to? They call it urban exploration on this world. It's like what our parents did." Archaeology? That was supposedly one of the reasons they came to al-Furat. And that's why they hired Tamsin. She was from al-Furat too. She wasn't just their chief of security; she was their guide. "Well . . . maybe it's not exactly the same. But I always wanted to come with them, when they went on their trips to look for ruins in the Dunes. Instead, they just left me in the lab. I kinda . . . I don't want to miss out on this world, like I did our home."
Nicola follows along, letting Bryony talk. She listens, just happy to hear Bryony speak again. "I think that's a really cool idea." She says eventually, encouragingly. But it's clear in her tone that there's also a but, and she's about to get to that.
She takes a moment to collect her thoughts on it. "Maybe just... try to do it in daytime, take your phone with you and avoid going too far from public places?" She pleads, "At least for now? That way if something goes wrong there's less chance of... you know..."
Bryony swivels on her chair, turning toward Nicola. "That's not going to be a problem!" She doesn't really sound that confident, though, even though she's smiling hopefully. "We're going to go together!" A pause, and then a final word added with clear uncertainty. "Right?"
Her voice shrinks as her eyes slowly fall. Her legs swing again, this time nervously00. "I was going to give up the idea, actually. You really did save me back there. I'm pretty sure I would be dead if you hadn't followed me. I still want to do it, but I don't think I can do it without you."
"Sure." Nicola sees no problem with going together, "As long as we play it a little safe." She refers back to her previous suggestions, smiling back at her friend. "I've gotten saved before, too. This is a weird world, and we don't know much about it."
Bryony raises her arm, legs still swinging back and forth slowly, as she sits on Nicola's desk chair. Her gray-blue eyes trace the form of her bracelet. That's her device. Aegis. She has been wearing it since that day, but she hasn't talked to it. Or about it. At least until now.
Her voice is uncertain, quiet. "Did you mean those things you said? You think they gave me this just to know where I am?"
"I don't know, I think they might have." Nicola says a little softer, hoping that Jessamine won't overhear. She glances towards the door, wondering when their conversation will be interrupted by an angry parental figure. "But uh, they might also have wanted to make sure you wouldn't get hurt. It does have an auto-guard spell set up. I didn't know that when I said those things."
The other girl smiles a little bit at that, still watching her bracelet. "You're right. I'd like to think Aegis is here to protect me. I just wish . . . " Her smile turns momentarily bittersweet, before she looks at Nicola again with renewed optimism. "I wish I could do stuff with her. Like you did." There's a slightly awkward pause. "What was it like for you? I know it was scary, but . . . was it a little fun too?"
"Between being shot at and that device being tuned for a very different way of fighting than mine..." Nicola sighs, looking out of the window. "It just made me miss Ruby Rose even more. I want her back... I'd never been alone when I had her..."
"Do we have any way to get her back?" Bryony asks. She falls silent, quietly thinking on the question she just asked. "I'm not really that great with technology, buuuut we have something now that we didn't before. Or at least we didn't know we had her." She stands up from her chair and moves back to the bed, sitting next to Nicola. She spends a moment pulling off her bracelet, and then she sets it between them. She smiles. "We have her."
"No..." And then Bryony points out that they might. "Huh. We could give that a try, I'm not the best at scanning spells, but maybe it'll work?" She looks at the Device, and gives it a try. "Aegis, set up." Unless settings have been changed, she transforms into a tiny TSAB operative again, "Aegis, Area Search" She sounds hopeful.
Nicola's henshin with Aegis happens quickly, leaving the now blue-glowing bracelet on her hand as the device runs through its now-familiar set up sequence. "Barrier jacket . . . on. Defense mode . . . on. Offensive mode . . . on. Secondary uplink . . . not detected. Functionality reduced." And then finally, the response to her initial command. "Area Search . . . on. Specify search parameters and radius."
Nicola tries to get as wide an area as possible covered, and is able to narrow down the details of what she's looking for close enough that false positives should be pretty unlikely. "Now we wait to see if we get any results, I suppose." She sits back on her bed, smiling. There's legit hope now.
Nicola has already heard that much of the debris from the Arthra landed in the greater Tokyo area. It's not hard to formulate a search pattern from there. As for false positives, Nicola lucks out. Ruby Rose has one unique characteristic that sets her apart from the other devices the Arthra was carrying: she was partially constructed from Ruby. Probably. It's a reasonable assumption that he would use it--it's a potent but rare material that a smart engineer would make use of, if they were sitting on a planet rich with it--but Nicola's not entirely sure of the methods her father used.
Aegis confirms Nicola's reuqest. "Search radius . . . 200 kilometers. Resolution . . . maximum. Search parameters . . . set. Object: Intelligent Device. Type: Mid-Childan. Structure: Handguns. Unique Material: Energy Matrix Polycrystal, Type 37, Pure." That's the "proper," Mid-Childan name for Ruby. With how much range Nicola has asked for, though, it's doubtful that Aegis will be able to get much resolution out of its search.
The six needle-like projectiles orbiting Aegis coalesce into smooth spheres of energy. "Wide Area Search . . . execute." They streak outward, phasing harmlessly through her bedroom window. And then . . . they wait.
Bryony just watches with curious eyes as Nicola works, silent for a few moments when the room is again quiet and still. "What do you mean by a different way of fighting? How is Aegis different from Ruby Rose?"
"Aegis is designed for spells that make the caster like... a fortress." Nicola tries to think of a good explanation for how they're different while they wait. "Sturdy above all. With Ruby Rose, I never stop moving, she's not designed for highly defensive spells like Aegis is, but there's a degree of efficiency in how she handles movement spells that make it so I'm hard to hit. And she's got a lot better aiming support, too."
Bryony falls silent again as she thinks on that response, eyes falling. Her gaze traces upward to the glowing bracelet around Nicola's wrist when she finally speaks, a longing expression in her eyes. "Do you think I'll ever get Aegis to work with me? If Lindy really doesn't trust me, there's no way she'll unlock the device, is there?"
"I don't know, maybe she will. I'll have to mention to Jessamine that it can be really dangerous out here and that it isn't safe to be out without being able to fight back, maybe she'll convince Harloawn." Nicola doesn't sound like she knows if that'll work, but she sounds like she feels it might. "It looks like they got you Aegis to make sure you wouldn't just be shot down if danger happened, so they might care?"
"Maybe," is Bryony's reply. She doesn't really sound convinced, though. Leaning in closer toward Nicola, she extends an arm and nudges the bracelet with a single finger. "I guess you must think I'm rude, Aegis-san. I'm talking like you're not even here." She seems earnest, as if she was really expecting a straight answer. "Why did they give you to me?"
"I am here to protect you," is the reply, spoken matter-of-factly in the same emotionless, female Mid-Childan voice.
"Then why can't I use you?" Bryony actually sounds hurt when she asks that.
"I cannot say."
Bryony just sighs. "Are you even my device?"
"I was constructed for you."
And there Bryony starts to get a little snappy. She seems a little offended, judging by her voice and the slight pout of her lips. Did she expect the device to respond differently? "It doesn't seem like it, Aegis-san."
But that particular conversation is halted a moment later as the seekers, one by one, phase through the wall and return the device's glowing form. It chimes once. "Search complete. Rendering map." In the middle of the bedroom, an orange wireframe map rises, buildings sprouting one by one. It's a three-dimensional image of the city of Tokyo, projected by Aegis. A few moments later, white lines streak outward from a location to the east of the map, drifting across the city. Those were the paths of the seekers, it looks like. "Search . . . positive." A single red sphere appears farther inland. It looks like only one seeker got a ping, so the search wasn't able to triangulate a more precise location. Luckily, though, even that area is small enough that it shouldn't take long to search.
Bryony turns toward Nicola, visibly excited, her own frustration from a moment ago evaporating. "Nicola! We found her!"
Nicola observes the conversation between Aegis and Bryony, and doesn't intrude except to say one thing. "If Aegis is set up not to tell you something, she can't, even if she wants to." She shrugs, imagining that ought to be enough. "I'm sure TSAB had reasons, don't know if they're good reasons." She sounds like she doubts it, "But I believe Aegis when she says she was designed to protect you."
Then they get a response, and Nicola beams. "Let's go!" She agrees, and then runs towards the door, already adding search parameters to do a more fine tuned search in the area while they head there.
"Wait . . . now?" Bryony sounds a little surprised, but Nicola is already out the door. Yep. Looks like now. The brown-haired girl grabs her shoes and runs to catch up with her "cousin." Perhaps surprisingly, Jessamine isn't in sight as they head outside. Did she forget about the explosive surprise that started this conversation? Or was she simply content to give the girls their space after their earlier ordeal?
The day's still young as they find themselves back on the street.