Fortuna Verto

31-Business Opportunity

By the time Lyun finished her work and was ready to return to the academy, a new dawn had taken the academy in full. Student lessons were ongoing all over, with even Axln still in the depth of her own lessons.

"Axln, finally I found you. I didn't expect you to be so hard to find over here." "Finally, it took you long enough. Also, if you couldn't find me, why didn't you just ask?" "I.. guess I could have. Anyway, stop sitting around, we've got work to do. Getting these upgrades done will make things safer for the both of us." "You have noticed Ezhyrae, right here.. right? It seems she's.. volunteered to.. stuff, or something. There's actually some equipment in the other room over there pristinely designed for working with my arm, ask me how I know, I dare you." "Wait, what do you mean?" Lyun found herself out of pace with everything she'd missed since leaving Axln to the academy. She still really wasn't used to the idea of just pooling consciousnesses either, and the fact that it never felt like she was actually reaching out to Axln in the process did not help that assumption. Her biggest mistake though was not trusting Axln's perspective and actually falling for the dare, Ezhyrae's eyes gleaming.

In a repeat of the same experience Axln herself went through, Lyun found her knee suddenly under high scrutiny, herself being asked questions she sometimes found difficult to answer, given her inexperience with ersatz designs. Quickly, she even found her own designs under scrutiny too, ersatz methods being put into a strong comparison to her cybernetics. Life element filtration and balancing, blood flow shielding to reduce unconscious strain on the gift being supplemented unwillingly in bodily instrumentation, even structural and component density and composition in ways that would best match natural design. Lyun was already worn out by the time her knee was rethreaded with more appropriate fibers that matched her crystalline density. At least the basics of the work she had just completed weren't so easy to dispute, Ezhyrae having no way to balance scientific principles. Once everything was successfully completed, Lyun even found her legs capable of moving far better than they could have originally. The instrument in her knee that induced improvements to the more organic features of her legs really helped out considerably as well, leaving her legs with a far greater physical ability than would be expected of a person of her build. Visibly satisfied with her research, Ezhyrae having repeated the same tale of her arrival for Lyun, Axln and Lyun were found dismissed back outside. Ezhyrae still had plenty more work to do, but the girls could occupy themselves with the gifts she had brought along as a bit of a reward for their participation.

"I know she was being helpful, but I'm not sure about this weapon idea. Learning to use a sword would be annoying, and potentially a bit impractical when compared to some of the other stuff we're working with. I personally recall using this power gear to make a cutting wave already, potentially a lot more practical." "Swords? Eww, how old fashioned do you think we are? Wait, is that more of those earth fantasies again? Come on, Axln, you should know better than to trust outdated ideas from earth. A thousand years of Mythos tends to get really old pretty quick." Axln was surprised at what exactly Lyun would eventually present to her. In much of the same light, they were yet another type of firearm.. though they weren't the same thing either. Apparently called an arbalestae, Axln was left with the impression that someone had made a rifle on its side. Supposedly, the design was modelled on old implementations of crossbows, although even that was from back in the day when crossbows fired sheet metal blades instead of bolts. As with all instrumentation, this stuff had put a lot of focus on elementals, the arbalestae Lyun chosen being a light elemental style that was supposed to be reasonably close to her choice on the other side. Axln had nothing practical to go by, so she instead opted for a consideration of physical design similarities to her other choice, a slightly comparably heavier choice with a visible punch quality but otherwise sat well in her cybernetic arm. It wasn't until she got introduced to what her choice actually did that she would then discover her choice was actually dark elemental.