<
“In the same way.”
Norah hung up her call as her bike came rolling towards her on its own, coming to a stop beside her with a beep.
Norah walked to the bike, and opened the seat to access the storage beneath and pulled out a pair of gloves and a crescent-shaped piece of tech. She put it on around the back of her neck before mounting her motorcycle and zooming off.
Man, today’s really been quite eventful, and that’s an understatement…
She had been dragged along through the internals of the fleet center, before being plopped into some kind of big military tech research project so that they could scan her, all because of a single funny scan.
Well, here's hoping that they figure out the whole… void? Yeah, that, the whole void thing going on with me.
As she rolled to a stop at a red light, she took a moment to look around her.
Predictably, there were a lot of people at the waterfront, looking at the brand new Gunnug css, now leaving port for the first time for its first sea trials.
Looking back to the cityscape, she saw the occasional different glowing holographic advertisements in front of random buildings lighting up the evening environment, giving the slowly falling snow an ethereal glow.
Turning to look into the distance, she took in the sight of the city center's silhouette, with its towering buildings lighting up the background.
“...”
I’d never thought I’d live in a city like this. At most, the pces I lived at in Denmark only had few, if any tall buildings, with most being the pleasant Northern-European cityscape you’d come to expect from living in Denmark for most of your life. Sure, pces like Aarhus and K?benhavn (Copenhagen) would have their fair share of taller buildings, but nothing like this.
The traffic light turned green, momentarily pulling Norah away from her thoughts as she accelerated, matching speed with the car in front of her.
Though, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And even then, a lot of pces and buildings around here retain their cozy Nordic style.
Norah continued her ride through the western parts of Bergen, making her way back home after an unusually eventful Monday.
△▽△▽△
The garage door ccked open as the lock disengaged when the door detected the arrival of Norah’s bike.
She drove her bike inside, kicking out the kickstand before dismounting the bike, making sure to close the garage door again before heading inside, making a small detour to the entrance hall to hang her jacket on a coat hanger in the entrance.
“Oh, hello Norah! Perfect timing, food’s almost done!”
Norah entered the kitchen, where her mom was looking through the window into the oven, where a homemade pizza was being baked.
“Would you tell your brother that the food is ready?”
“Ok.”
Norah turned on her heel, walking upstairs to the bedrooms, taking a moment to knock on her brother’s room before barging in.
“Food’s ready. It’s pizza.”
The boy, lying on his bed with his FD headset on, decided to air his frustration out.
“Ugh, Norah, 5 more minutes!”
“Lukas… Well, your funeral. You know how mom gets when it comes to dinner.”
Norah turned around, and left the room without closing the door. She returned downstairs, grabbed a pte of square pizza for herself, and sat down at the dinner table.
Norah’s mom, having grabbed her own pte of square pizza, sat down at the dinner table as well. “So, what’s going on at school?”
Ah, the cssic parent question. Well, what else am I to do than respond with the cssic offspring response?
“The usual.”
“...”
“...”
The two continued eating in silence.
“Did you learn anything new?”
“Nope.”
Her mom took a second to think. “Oh, what a silly question! Of course my brilliant girl would already know what’s…”
Her mom took another second to look at Norah.
“Is everything alright? You look worried.”
At this moment, Lukas came walking down the stairs.
“How do you even tell that? Norah looks the same as she always does.”
Yeah, good question. How does she do that? Mother's intuition or something?
“Lukas! Don’t be so rude to your own sister! She is plenty expressive! And we began eating 5 minutes ago! What are you doing that’s so important, huh?”
Yep. Called it.
“Uhh… I… I was talking to my friends..?”
“Ugh, you… Dinner is important, all right? It’s not something that you can just skip out on, especially not with family-”
Norah zoned out her brother getting scolded as she continued eating her square pizza.
△▽△▽△
Darkness. An endless void.
Until…
The world lit up, as the endless dark void was repced with a seemingly endless grid of squares, with a lone ptform floating above it.
On said ptform, in a fsh of digital particle effects, Norah appeared out of thin air.
Research & Development time! Future tech, hell ya!
Norah floated over to a console on the ptform, navigating the menus to find the option she was looking for, clicking it once she found it.
And as she did so, the scenery changed. Repcing the infinite grid of squares was the quaint scenery in front of an ice cream shop in a small Danish vacation town on the northern coast of Djursnd.
Alright! Let’s get to work!
A multitude of menus appeared around Norah before just as quickly vanishing or changing to something else as she navigated through her computer’s files, importing various objects into the scene she currently inhabited.
Around her, various different technological items and mechanisms of electronic and magical nature appeared, either sitting on the ground of the parking lot she was standing in, or pced neatly on a set of tables she also imported.
And with them, several different contraptions appeared. Purely digital simutions of possible magitech machines were generated as some of the existing machines around her were rapidly torn apart and reassembled.
And now the fun begins! Let’s see here…
Norah walked over to the first item that caught her interest, a 3D model of her very own motorcycle.
A nice, mid-range motorcycle. Magicule powered. And yet, one can do some pretty substantial improvements here!
The magic motor, along with the chain connecting it to the rear wheel, disappeared as the motorcycle shifted according to Norah’s will.
Old motor assembly’s gotta go. Got a much better idea for how to do that particur mechanism.
The forks connecting the wheels to the bike changed shape, as the part connecting to the wheel opened up to show an empty compartment.
And here comes the cool part!
The magic motor from earlier re-materialized, but changed shape as the magicule channels shifted forms and the mechanism was reinforced.
The things are gonna be under stress from the weight of the entire motorcycle, after all… Gotta make it strong enough to hold the whole thing.
The newly created magic motor duplicated itself into 4 identical copies, and floated into the fork compartments, connecting to the wheels and newly created wires leading back into the motorcycle’s internals as a cap ccked onto the motor compartments, sealing them within the forks.
There we go! This guy now has quite an absurd amount of power… Now, that gives me another idea.
The motorcycle’s battery was duplicated, as the copy floated in front of Norah.
Reminds me of something I noticed about the batteries…
A few research articles were brought up, as she recalled the connection she had made earlier from her binge reading session of her gymnasium’s entire digital library.
…Well, that’s interesting. How come no one has tried any of this yet? I mean, I know that magitech is a rather young field, but at least someone would think of this… right?
The research articles she had brought up were about the growth of magicule crystals. Magicule crystals are the main component of magicule batteries, and can store rge amounts of energy. Yet, pretty much every single manufacturer uses the same method of growing magicule crystals, while there are a multitude of other different crystal structures they could try out.
Apparently they gave up back when they wrote the article because their tech wasn’t good enough to grow custom crystal structures. And for some reason, no one decided to try again with all the new tech we have access to now several decades ter… This seems like quite the opportunity. Just gotta find something first...
Norah connected to the wider internet, opening a window within the virtual Danish coastal space she currently inhabited.
Let’s see here… There you are!
The digital ndscape on the other side of the window shifted, as signals passed through the wider internet looking for a specific file. Once she found it, a small file icon shaped object came out of the window, nding in Norah’s hand.
Now to load it in…
The file disappeared, immediately reappearing as the specialized magicule nucleation machine used at her school’s workshops, as the window to the wider net closed.
Alright, let’s see what we can do here…
Norah began directly modifying the machine’s settings and bypassing the firmware to create the unique crystal structures she desires.
△▼△▼△
“You idiots better not screw this shit up. We do this right, and we will be set for life.”
Three men in infiltration gear were standing in an alley near the BEFS, making the final adjustments on their gear and closing their briefcases.
One of the men, clearly irritated, snapped back at the first guy. “Yeah, yeah, I know, I’ve heard that a million times already, for fucks sake…”
The third guy turned to the other two, straightening himself up. “Alright, alright, Johnson, Wilkins, we’ve got a fucking job to do. You morons need another reminder of what exactly we are doing?”
Johnson and Wilkins visibly stiffened at their companion’s remark, as they immediately switched into business mode.
“Yeah. We break into a heavily guarded foreign military instaltion, making it into the big leagues in the process! All we gotta do is snatch some data for a super special scanner project, then exfil the fuck outta there.”
The third guy sighed, steeling himself for the biggest, and most dangerous, mission of his career. “And keep your armor’s cloaking active at all times. Can’t be getting caught by those fuckin’ scanners.”
“Right, right.”
The three men activated their infiltration armor’s optical cloaking before the third guy, Adams, contacted their contractor.
“We’re in position. Get those detection barriers down, will ya?”
A couple seconds passed before the group got a reply.
<
The three men walked out from the alley, stepping close to the compound’s walls before jumping over the 5 meter tall wall, sneakily nding on the other side as their infiltration suits executed a multitude of spell effects, making their nding nearly noiseless.
“Shit, get into cover!”
The three men soundlessly ran behind a container as one of the facility's many defense systems, a UGV, came rolling by, scanning for anything unusual and slowly passing by the infiltrators.
Once the UGV passed them, the infiltrators ran out from the container, moving towards a locked door.
“Wireless hacking is too risky, gonna go plug in. Cover me.”
One of the men knelt down before the door, as the other two moved behind cover, scanning the area for incoming threats with their silenced rifles.
“Got the door open.”
Opening the door, the three infiltrators continued into the building, all scanning the area for potential threats. Once they were sure that they were clear, they continued according to the map on their helmet’s HUD.
“Shit, patrol incoming. We’ve gotta get past them. Looks like the room to our left will get us through a path to get around them.”
“Right, understood.”
The three infiltrators stepped into the room, sneaking soundlessly though as the two power armored Scandinavian soldiers walked by, entirely oblivious to the ongoing intrusion into their facility.
“Scanner up ahead. Move slowly, don’t fuck with your cloaking.”
They moved through the hallway, slowly and silently walking past the scanner hanging from the roof, making their way through to a break room.
However, before they entered the room, all three stopped. Voices. There were people inside.
“S?, du sier att der var en fullstendig normal gymnasie jente de bare… f?rte gjennom fasiliteten? Och hunn kunne iche oppdages av skannerne? Ejejej, sikke noe vr?vel.”
“Det skjete da! Jeg s? p? det skje, for fanden! Se her, jeg opptok en video av hele greierne!”
“Hmm…”
One of the men peeked into the room, spotting the two Scandinavians sitting on a sofa, being distracted by a video on the TV.
“There’s a low wall, we can get past them behind it. Seems like they are distracted. Getting the door open now.”
The infiltrator plugged his suit into the keypad, uploading a spoofed identification certificate and getting the door to open.
The other two joined him, as they crouched behind the low wall and snuck past the two Scandinavians on the other side.
“N?h… Ei, hva!? Hunn bliver f?rt runnt av en SMB agent… Iche noe mann ser hver dag, det kann jeg uten tvivl sike.”
The infiltrators made it to the other door, opening it up and exiting into a side room with access to another hallway, getting back on the path to their objective.
“It’s a straight shot to the objective from there. There is one incoming UGV, but once that has passed, we’re good to go.”
The other two nodded as they waited for the nd drone to pass by. Once the whirring of electric motors disappeared into the long hallways of the facility, the team left the room, their nearly invisible figures moving silently through the hallways, eventually passing through an opened bst door.
As they passed through the door, they navigated their way to a gss door, opening it to enter a room where an impressive machine stood in the center, with a multitude of enigmatic components out in the open, surrounding the shielded center.
“Damn, that the thing we looking for?”
“More precisely the terminal in the bst shelter. We’re almost there.”
The three men continued towards the separate room in the chamber, making their way through the open door towards the terminal in the center.
But suddenly, an unfamiliar voice called out.
“Looks like we’ve got a little rat problem, eh?”
△▼△▼△
Man, that little incident from yesterday was so bizzare… What the hell is going on with that kid anyway?
J?rgen, walking around the high powered scanner, was idly thinking to himself, pondering his encounter with the strange girl who was dragged into a military base of all pces.
It’s really unusual, that. An otherwise seemingly ordinary gymnasium girl, if a little technologically inclined, involuntarily blocking scanning attempts entirely, appearing as a void of nothingness or a garbled mess on the scan data…
Suddenly, his comms interrupted his idle thoughts.
<
Oh? Well, that’s something I simply can’t ignore.
“I’m on it.” J?rgen quickly and professionally replied, as he got to work.
Inside his mind, complex instructions flowed through him, executing a detection spell as magicules began radiating from him in all directions.
Oh? They're here of all pces? Interesting…
J?rgen turned toward the separate room where the HP-Scanner’s controls were, and sure enough…
Three cloaked intruders. How about I go and say hello?
J?rgen disappeared from view, instantly reappearing behind the three infiltrators.
“Looks like we’ve got a little rat problem, eh?”
The infiltrators, spooked by his sudden appearance, turned around, aiming their rifles at the SMB officer.
“Shit!” One of the infiltrators uttered as he opened fire.
However…
Every single silenced bullet he fired flew off in a random direction when they neared J?rgen, being knocked off course by a small, precise burst of magicules.
“Well, it’s about time you guys took a little nap.”
Barely getting enough time to react, the infiltrators were suddenly rocketed into the roof with immense force, their bones audibly crunching as the creaking metal from their infiltration suits was bent much farther than it was ever supposed to be bent.
The three infiltrators fell to the floor, their weapons cttering down with them, knocked unconscious by the vicious assault on their bodies.
J?rgen walked up to them and bent down, inspecting them up close.
Hmm… Mercs. Typical. Probably here to steal some data. Well, wrong pce, wrong time, fels.
“I’ve apprehended 3 intruders, all sporting military grade infiltration suits. Individuals appear to be mercenaries. Most likely USNA affiliated.”
A couple seconds passed before the compound’s KontrolSenter replied.
<
“Alright.”
J?rgen turned to the exit, executing a spell that made the intruders float along with him as he made his way up and out of the compound.
Tasriel