“There you go, you should be in the system now. Be sure to follow the safety rules, alright?”
“Understood, many thanks.”
“No problem.”
Norah turned around, leaving the school office to go straight to the workshops after obtaining her access pass.
Kinda odd to just be given access to an entire warehouse of high tech equipment and materials like that… not that I’m compining! I’ve got all sorts of stuff loaded onto my portable SSD, and now I’ll get to build them all in realspace!
Norah walked along, with an almost imperceptible grin on her face, when she was suddenly intercepted mid-walk by Sarah.
“Going to the workshop?”
There she is.
“Yep.”
Sarah straightened up, a grin forming on her face.
“Can I come with?”
Hmm… I mean, why not? Might be nice with some company… and help carrying stuff.
“Sure.”
Just like that, the two girls continued on, walking at a leisurely pace, making their way through the school’s halls, eventually arriving at an elevated walkway connecting the separate school and workshop buildings. However, during their walk, Norah notices something odd with Sarah.
Huh. She looks awfully thoughtful for some reason…
Norah walked up to the door into the workshops, standing before the door as the scanner above it activated. However, instead of promptly opening the door…
“[Error. Scan failed. Please present your access pass through digital verification.]”
Oh. Right. Scanners still can’t see me.
She took her phone out of her pocket, pcing it on the access terminal next to the door. While the terminal connected to her phone, Norah turned to look at Sarah, as she stared out the windows into the expansive courtyard below.
…Yeah, something is going on between her ears. Might want to ask her what is going on at some point.
“[Access granted. Remember to follow all necessary safety precautions around heavy machinery.]>
The door opened automatically, accepting Norah’s access pass. The two girls continued, walking through the door into the workshop.
They walked out onto an elevated ptform overlooking the workshop grounds. Around the open space, several students were doing a variety of different tasks, creating all sorts of different contraptions.
Ah, I missed pces like these. Feels like home.
Norah walked over to the side of the ptform, going through a doorway to the stairs, descending down to the ground floor, before walking straight to the materials terminal pced neatly underneath the ptform.
She tapped around on the touch screen, navigating through all sorts of different materials the school has in stock, picking the things she needs to create her ideas.
And I have access to all of this for basically free… Praise be to the welfare state!
As she tapped the [Confirm] button, the dimensional storage array in a recessed space to the side of the terminal began glowing, as magic circles appeared in the air and began executing their spells. Space warped, and several boxes appeared in fshes of magical light, neatly stacked onto some sort of pstic pallet.
Norah turned around, and saw Sarah driving one of the forklifts towards the dimensional storage array.
“Where to?”
“Bst chamber 3.”
“Okay!”
Sarah drove up with the forklift, sliding the forks into the pallet before lifting it up. She turned around, before driving off toward the bst chambers, with Norah following closely behind.
“What are you gonna make with this?”
“First of all, batteries. Not exactly the most exciting thing in the world, but you’ll see.”
“Hmm… Ok, then!”
The two continued, driving past students and half-finished contraptions, the ambient noise of the workshops and the forklift’s motors droning along in the background.
But as Norah looked back over to Sarah. She was back in that same state from before, her usual smile slightly dulled by something.
There she goes, back to that odd contemptive state again… I’ve really gotta talk to her.
△▼△▼△
A phone was ringing. Suddenly, the recipient of the call picked up.
<
“Something isn’t right with Norah. I can feel it. Something’s terribly wrong.”
<<…>>
Her decration caught the voice on the other end off guard.
<<…What makes you think that is the case?>>
“I… I’m suddenly getting an ominous feeling when I am around her. Her aura feels… Off. And when I poked her, my magicules suddenly began flowing into her at a concerning rate… But that wasn’t the only thing. The… I don’t know… Energy inside her feels wrong. Like it’s not supposed to be there. It feels dangerous, like it would eat away at her… I… I want her checked out… By real professionals… Please…”
<<…Give me a couple seconds.>>
The voice on the other end of the call disappeared for a moment, the faint background audio of the call giving signs of a conversation.
<
“...Ok. Many thanks.”
<
“Right. I’ll see you ter, papa.”
<
The call cut off, leaving Sarah alone on the school rooftop.
Enjoying school… Hah, as if that would ever happen! The only enjoyable thing about this pce is firing off spells during magic practice!
Sarah returned back to her usual attitude for a moment, before turning around and walking back to css, her worries hidden to most behind her nearly perpetual happy attitude.
I really hope this is just me being paranoid…
△▼△▼△
“So, letting two gymnasium kids onto a military instaltion, eh?”
The other older man chuckled for a moment.
“It may seem quite unusual, though I’d imagine this request is still in the realm of possibility. What say you, J?rgen?”
J?rgen looked thoughtful for a second before replying to Alfonse.
“Of course. Not like we’re going to be shoving cssified documents into her face. If the scanner room even has any.”
“...”
“...”
The two men each sat on their own sofa, across from each other in the instaltion’s lounge area within the office sector.
“My daughter usually isn’t like this. And she is a very talented magister as well. You would do well to avoid disregarding her, despite her young age.”
“...Understood. I’ll help you out. Might find something if I give her a look myself.”
“That would be appreciated.”
The two men continued lounging, drinking their coffee.
“So, about that manufacturing contract…”
△▼△▼△
“What do you mean??”
<
“But isn’t the AI some super-duper stuff, one of the fastest AI thingamabobs on the pnet??”
<<…While that is an odd way to put it, yes. Which is why this development is so concerning.>>
“...Will Norah be alright? Is it dangerous?”
Alfonse paused for a second.
<
“...Okay… Thank you. Thanks for the help, papa.”
<
The call cut off, as Sarah set her phone down on her nightstand… before abruptly deciding to smash her face into her pillow, resulting in a particurly pronounced fwompf.
“Agh, why do I have to worry so much!? This is terrible! I hate it!”
She rolled around in bed with her pillow over her face, before abruptly sitting up and sending the pillow flying across the room with immense force, knocking a pair of her plushies off their shelf.
I don’t like this… Not one bit…
△▼△▼△
The machinery inside the bst chamber was humming loudly, as it was producing the components that Norah needed.
“Why did they make the overriding process for this thing so convoluted? I spent like 30 minutes getting the right settings in…”
“Well… They probably don’t want you to mess with the thingamabob so that it explodes!”
“Right…”
The sound from the outside world was entirely muted as they were talking. The thick walls of the bst chamber were made to shield the outside from both unintentional explosions, and the loud noise that would result from said explosion, and yet it seems to work both ways.
Oh, it’s done!
The machine began powering down, having completed the parts for Norah’s contraption. She immediately entered the room, and began piecing the thing together.
“What’s this thing supposed to be?”
“A specialized magicule nucleator.”
“Ok. Cool. Fancy words are nice, but what does it do?”
“It grows magicule crystals, most commonly the energy storing kind. I’ve modified the normal nucleator, making a custom model that should be able to grow user-specified crystal structures that could be more efficient… err, better than the normal structures made by normal nucleators.”
“Oh, ok. Cool.”
Sarah stared at Norah doing her work, clearly not understanding much of Norah’s expnation.
Heh, It’s kinda cute when she pretends to understand what is going on.
Norah continued assembling the machine, putting the final components into pce and finishing her custom machine.
“Alright, there we go. Now to test it out.”
She went back to the entrance area of the bst chamber, picking out a few wires from a box before returning to the machine, and proceeding to plug it into the socket in the wall marked [MGKL].
“Here goes.”
The machine powered on, the control terminal lighting up and awaiting instructions.
Alright, just gotta give it the files, and let it to it’s thing.
Norah moved over to the terminal, inserting her portable SSD and transferring the structure data files to the machine. She additionally linked it up with the chamber’s robotic arm to make it easier for it to lift out the completed crystals once the machine finished everything.
Cool thing about this fel is that it can grow all the crystals at once. Should save me a bunch of time, and make a pretty light show while doing so.
As she confirmed the instructions, the nucleation chamber within her machine glowed in a multitude of colors as it began doing its thing.
“Ooh, shiny.”
Well, that’s that done with. Now, to sort out a few other things while this guy cooks up some energy storage crystals.
△▽△▽△
“Oh, they’re different colors?” Sarah said as she looked up from her phone, after both girls were alerted to the completion of the crystals by a beep.
“Yeah. The color changes depending on the particle structure.”
The machine that Norah had made, the specialized magicule nucleator, had finished doing its thing, and Norah opened it to find 5 rge, shiny cubes of a particurly hefty weight.
The robot arm on the roof rolled along its guide rails, descending to pick up the cubes and ferry them over to the battery casings that Norah had the fabricator make while they waited for the energy storage crystals to grow.
If my virtual testing is right, then these things will be 5 to 20 times more energy dense than current magicule batteries, which would be one hell of an improvement. Of course, we're gonna have to test them first. You know, to see if they actually work. Thus, the bst chamber.
Norah began closing up and finishing the batteries as the robotic arm lowered the crystals into pce. However, as she was finishing up the st battery…
“Ow!..”
…She accidentally cut herself, spilling some of her blood onto the crystal in the battery.
“Man, these things are sharp…”
“You alright?”
Norah looked over her finger, inspecting it for damage.
Eh, just a little scrape. I'll be fine.
“Yeah. T’is but a scratch.”
Sarah chuckled, amused at Norah’s monotone attempt at humor.
“Heh, sure.”
After licking her finger clean, Norah closed up the battery, moving back to get a good view of her finished work.
“Nice. Now we fill them up. Help me with the cables?”
“Fill 'em up? Sounds kinda naughty, but sure.”
The two went off to the cable box, finding a particurly thick cable that they pnned to use to charge the batteries.
“Why the massive chunky cable?”
“Safety first. The batteries are made to charge quite a bit faster than normal ones, so a smaller wire might not be able to handle it.”
“Oh, okay.”
Sarah hooked the cable up to the wall, as Norah plugged the other end into one of the batteries.
“Now, we go off to the safety room. You know, in case it explodes.”
“Yeah, probably a good idea… What about the cube making thingy?”
"Oh, right."
I should probably move it into storage in case something explodes. Could probably use it again at some point.
The robotic arm came down from the roof, picking up the empty nucleator and ferrying it off to the bst chamber's storage room.
After the nucleator was safely stored away, the two girls moved into the safety room adjacent to the bst chamber, closing the bst resistant door behind them before moving over to the console.
“Aand power is flowing… Oh, it showed up in the system. Digital systems are online, and the battery is charging rapidly. Nice.”
“Cool.”
The two sat there, occasionally looking down to the console to see the battery percentage, a moment ter peeking into the room to see if the battery would explode.
However, as they were waiting…
Now is probably a good time to bring it up…
“Hey, Sarah?”
Sarah turned to Norah, a curious expression on her face.
“Yeah?”
“It kinda feels like you’ve been a little miffed for the past few days… Do you wanna talk about it?”
“...”
A complex expression showed itself on her face, before a slightly forced smile returned to Sarah’s face.
“I… I’m not exactly good at these kinds of things, you know..? I might be able to obliterate a guy with pure magical force, but when my best friend’s aura suddenly turns into this… awful feeling thing, like it’s eating away at her?.. Well, I’m not really sure what to do. If I can do anything about it.”
Sarah paused for a moment, letting her words soak into the quiet environment of the bst chamber’s safe room.
“And when I feel like this? It’s always when something bad is about to happen. I… I can tell, through the magicules themselves, when something is off.”
“...”
“...”
“Sarah… I-”
“Sorry… This seems really silly, I know, but… I just can’t stop worrying. It doesn’t exactly feel great, you know? But…”
Sarah had a strained smile on her face, as she prepared her next words. However…
“Sarah.”
“...Yeah?”
“Thank you… I mean, it doesn’t exactly feel great to hear that something is “eating away” at me, but… That you care enough to tell me about it? It says a lot.”
“Norah…”
“I’ve been going through some stuff myself for the past few days… I guess it could be reted. I mean, it is a really odd, and maybe unbelievable story, but-”
Norah was suddenly interrupted, as the safe room terminal beeped to notify her that the battery was fully charged.
“...Let’s continue with the heavy emotional stuff after we do the battery thingy stuff?”
“...Heh, sure.”
As Sarah returned to her usual attitude, Norah turned herself towards the terminal, reading through the data coming from the battery.
“100% Charge reached. No catastrophic failures. Energy density is twice that of an ordinary battery. Charge rate 20 times standard. First test: successful.”
“Ok, cool. So, do we have to do this 4 more times or what?”
“Yep.”
Norah got up from her chair, walking towards the bst door.
“The batteries aren’t going to test themselves, are they?”
△▽△▽△
The two girls were sitting in the safety room, staring at the 4th battery.
“100% Charge reached, again without any catastrophic failures-”
“You mean explosions?”
“Yeah, that. Energy density is 17 times that of an ordinary battery. Charge rate is 150 times the standard. Fourth test: successful.”
“...I thought at least one of them would have exploded by now. Maybe the 5th one?”
“Come on, a little confidence, please? The st 4 worked. Though, I did spill a bit of my blood onto the crystal… And it’s the one that should store the most energy as well…”
Norah looked down to her hand, rubbing her thumb over the pster on her pointer finger.
“But it should be fine. Even if it does explode in a spectacur fashion, we'll be fine with all of this reinforced shielding between us and the theoretically explodey battery.”
“Okay. Well, let’s see what this one does! Let me guess, it’ll make the numbers go up?”
“We’ll see.”
Norah left the room, entering the bst chamber to connect the 5th battery to the wall and test it. The robot arm came rolling in from the roof, picking up the 4th battery and moving it off to storage.
There we go, all hooked up. I mean, it might be a bit worrying that I spilled blood on it… but energy crystals are quite resilient, and even if it does explode, it’ll explode inside a bst chamber… But I did kinda go a little overboard on the structure of this one, so it would naturally be a bit more RUD prone, with the heightened energy density and all that.
Norah leisurely walked off to the safety room, closing the bst door after herself and plopping down on the chair in front of the terminal.
“Here goes.”
“I hope it ex- ahem, I hope it works!”
“...” Norah stared at Sarah.
“What? I’m bored!”
“You’re the one who is willingly staying here.”
“But it’s so interesting to see you make things! And now you are doing it irl as well, so of course I gotta see for myself!”
“...Right, then.”
Norah turned to the terminal, enabling energy flow from the terminal.
“There we go. Battery electronics are online. Readings look… Normal… huh?”
…Ok, no. This can’t be right. Did I accidentally do something to the setting-
“Look, it’s glowing!”
“Huh?”
Norah lifted her head, looking into the bst chamber, and the battery was indeed glowing.
Oh shit, it is.
The glow was becoming brighter and brighter by the second, piercing through the titanium alloy casing and slowly brightening the bst chamber.
Sarah turned to Norah, with an uncertain smirk on her face. “Uh oh.”
“Yeah, uh oh indeed.”
Taking another look at the control panel, the numbers were absurd.
“Uhh… Charge rate is a million times the standard… and energy density is 170.000 times that of an ordinary battery and climbing.”
They sat there, staring at the rapidly energizing battery, dazed like a deer about to have it's face smashed in by a rapidly aproaching car.
△▼△▼△
Oh man, this is the easiest job ever... But of course, it’s gotta be boring as shit too. Ugh.
A guy was sitting in the grid monitoring room, looking over a massive control panel, with a giant monitor on the wall dispying an energy usage map of the entirety of the Vestnd region.
Just sitting here, monitoring energy zooming across wires. Barely even get to do anything with how much of this shit is done by the AI. Only reason I’m here at all is because people want at least one guy keeping watch over those AI suckers.
The guy was lounging about in his comfy chair, messing around on his phone without a care in the world, as he usually does. However, suddenly…
“[Caution. Grid anomaly detected in Bergen.]”
“Hm?”
The guy turned around, looking up at the massive monitor as the unusual alert caught his attention. As he did so, several arms began bring as the grid sensors detected an absurd amount of energy flowed into a single building.
“[Caution: Extreme unusual energy flow. Emergency mode activated. Contacting emergency services.]”
Looking over to the numbers for the particur energy line being highlighted by the AI, he took in the astonishing numbers for the power flowing through the high energy connection. And to make the situation even stranger still, it was going to a single building.
“Huh… OH FUCK!!!”
Having done some quick mental calcutions, the guy quickly figured that this kind of energy going into a single building could very easily get very explosive. As he deduced that this could cause quite the massive explosion, he scrambled over to the terminal, calling the emergency services to inform them of the situation.
“There is a situation in Nyg?rd! Excessive amounts of energy are being channeled into a single building at a Gymnasium! It’s the… It’s the Bergen Technical Gymnasium!”
<
“THE PLACE IS GETTING ENOUGH ENERGY TO LEVEL PART OF THE CITY, FOR FUCKS SAKE!!! IT’S CURRENTLY DRAWING 200 MILLION WATTS AND RISING!!!”
<<…We will be contacting the BT. Stay on the line, we may need real time information.>>
""...Alright."
The guy leaned back in his chair, sighing heavily.
Ok, maybe I am fine with this pce being boring... Fuck.
△▼△▼△
Sirens bred in the distance as the BT and fire brigade mobilized to bring the situation in Nyg?rd under control.
“MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!”
A group of power-armored soldiers crammed into an aerodyne as its quad jet engines were spinning up, ready to lift it off towards the sky at a moment’s notice.
“GEAR CHECK’S ALL GOOD, TAKE THE FUCK OFF!”
The aerodyne’s engines were smmed into full thrust, lifting the aircraft off the helipad and sending it flying towards the ongoing emergency at high rates of speed.
△▼△▼△
“I did not expect we’d get to use her this early.”
A guy, sitting at a terminal in the new Gunnug's bridge, stretched himself, looking over to the SMB guy on board the ship.
“Well, shit happens. And this is a really good fucking excuse to test out the strategic css artificial caster on this beauty.”
J?rgen adjusted himself, grabbing onto the designated magister seat and readying himself
“Yeah. I heard that whatever this thing is, it could level the city if it got out of control?”
“Yep, which is why we are gonna get this fucking barrier going, alright? Now, let's get this shit done before half the city explodes.”
“Understood.”
J?rgen's aura fred around him and into his seat as he established a soul link to the Gunnug css, tapping into its systems to begin generating a massive barrier around the specific building where the energetic anomaly resided.
“Thank fuck it’s a school. Most, if not all of the kids are probably at home right now, seeing the net blow up about how their school is turning into a nuke.”
“J?rgen. There might still be some people in there, possibly even the ones who caused this.”
“Which is why the BT is charging right in there.”
Suddenly, the received a communication from one of the BT aerodynes as it arrived in the area.
<
“Roger that. A strategic css barrier is going up in a moment. Sending magicule frequency now.”
<
Alright then… While it would be cool to directly save the city from getting nuked, I'm really hoping it won't come to that point, even if single-handedly stopping a nuclear level explosion would look amazing on my CV, and get me a nice fat bonus!
The fusion reactor locked into full power. Massive amounts of energy flowed straight into every single casting system in the Gunnug css, as a massive, intricate magic circle formed in the sky over Bergen Technical Gymnasium.
…Hm? What's this?
The ship's captain suddenly had a concerned look on his face as he looked over the telemetry of the spell being executed.
“Uhh, J?rgen, we’re experiencing some sort of interference. Barrier integrity is slightly compromised.”
“Fuck. Sic the AI on it.”
“AI’s on it.”
The captain of the battleship tapped away at his console, getting the AI to work at stabilizing the massive spell.
“Interference detected. Barrier integrity at 95%. Completely dispelling the interference is impossible.”
“Shit, even with the power of a whole fucking fusion reactor? Damn, alright. 95%? We can still work with that… I think.”
The spell activated, forming a rge shining dome off in the distance, covering a particur building in the city’s unofficial school district.
“Man, I love this big thing.”
The other guy looked over to J?rgen, who had a massive grin forming on his face as he interfaced with the strategic css casters, creating shock absorbing structures around the barrier to fend off the potential nuclear level explosion within the barrier itself.
“Right…”
△▼△▼△
Aerodynes were nding by the dozen, both of military and BT affiliation.
“We’ve got two civilians in there! Get them out before the pce fucking explodes!”
Right before touching the ground, the side-door of the aerodynes opened, letting the power armored men jump out, nding on the ground with an audible thump.
The instant they halted their momentum, they immediately got up, and sprinted towards the building at inhuman speeds.
△▼△▼△
“...”
“...”
The “battery” was glowing brilliantly through the safety room’s bst proof gss.
“... Charge rate is dropping. The energy density figure is stabilizing.”
“...Whoah.”
“Energy density is… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but 5,5 million times the standard. Charge rate maxed out at 150 gigawatts.”
“Whoah, big numbers…”
Sitting mere meters in front of them, was a single, small, car battery sized battery storing as much energy as a tactical nuclear weapon.
Yep. Don’t even have to do the math to know how dangerous this little fellow is.
“...Ok, we should probably get out of-”
Suddenly, a metal hand was driven through the door to the outside from the safety room, as a man in power armor violently ripped the door off, the metal groaning in compint as he effortlessly flung it off to the side.
The speaker on the power armor roared to life as the man spoke.
“BERETSKAPSTJENESTEN! We’re getting you two out of here IMMEDIATELY!!”
Tasriel