Fortuna Verto

32-Navigating Markets

"Wait, what's a dragon?" "Rosa, believe me, you don't want to know. Something about being a millenia or two out of date of the mythos it's supposed to represent.. something like that." Rosa simply stayed quiet, perplexed but noticing visibly how little patience Kori had left. "Oh, right, aren't you two supposed to be travelling to the land of dragons? I would love up-to-date notes on what the things really look like." "Dragons.. do.. not.. exist! Stop thinking of the place like it was some stupid fantasy from stupid earth fairytales, nothing about it is anything that easy. Bloody earth was always ignorant to the cultures just next door, and those fallacies only got worse with time. I've been to that side, I've seen an orbital cannon blast the ground with a beam of sheer energy as a gigantic bipedal megaton launched salvos of missiles into its enemies. Let me know if that sounds so 'fantasy' to you. Nothing about the place is 'magical', it's just 'different', even in its principles of science." Sophie herself took her turn to go quiet, seeing Kori seriously was not in the mood. Both sisters turned to each other, wondering what might be the best course of action at this point.

"Well, this might explain a few things, even if it might be considered to be a bit unbelievable. More than another world, like a fiction rendered real." "Drew, I..." "Yes, I expect you might have had things rather rough of late. I expect this explains why Rosa had so unexpectedly vanished while working, with nothing but a cold blast in her wake. You two have very obviously been in an avalanche of things going on, and I'm now certain we know much less than half of what might be involved. What I am familiar with is balancing a lot of obligations. Kori, you look right now like a woman who had a plan.. and suddenly found yourself overwhelmed. Go take a moment to relax, go over what has happened at your leisure.. and consider how our efforts could be at your support. I'll make sure Trystine leaves you some synth gear to put on, explicitly tailored to your own cybernetics thanks to Holi's records." "Thanks.. I guess." Drew stepped out of the way so that Kori could pass beyond to a place of recluse. Kori had no idea what to think about everything.. but certainly getting the chance to think at all would be the best place to start.

"Thank you, Drew." "No problem, I know when my staff are overwhelmed, I keep an eye out for that. You however have been quite the oddity in that measure, Rosa. Something about you has struck me as being always overwhelmed.. but always keeping up. By the sounds of things, I'm guessing that you yourself might not be so used to this world then. You're then absolutely remarkable, having caught on to everything so naturally. For me, learning the business world of machinery was overwhelming.. to have to learn an entire second way of worlds would be beyond me." "Well, Kori has been quite the help there, especially as she herself learns of things much less familiar to her. We've both been working on this together." Rosa then took some time to be a bit more open with circumstances to Drew. Hypertech as a whole actually had no record on where the two of them had kept going off too, but they could detect their strange departures and arrivals in a small singularity burst. Being brought up to speed with everything, Drew could tell why this might have been more than the regular person should be made aware of, he was being given a bit of privilege here. It was knowledge he would have to be sure to carefully apply going forward.

Rosa had met up with Kori after that, having grown worried at how Kori was even doing. Kori however was already getting into her new tights, having taken care to adjust her regular clothes over the thin silicon plating. Her version of the tights did not include sleeves at all, her cybernetics serving that purpose on one side and her marked arm being ill fitted for it on the other. The tights came with a full facial mask, something she could place or remove at will, something which made her feel more like a ninja when worn. Unlike Holi though, her armor was much more nondescript, sitting quite nicely under normal clothes.. and didn't glow with strange lights. She did find all the silicon tracing though, if this stuff was ionized.. she would light up like a christmas tree. Kori passed Rosa a second package of such a suit on her way out, offering Rosa some privacy while she considered the proceedings. All of this was protection, to keep them safe.. because they weren't safe. As Axln, she had to worry about the security and wellbeing of the academy, a thing she had fortunately left to Luna's care. On this side, they didn't have some orbital superweapon looking after everything.. so maybe it was really good that the people of Hypertech were simply looking after themselves instead. There weren't any superweapons on this side, so they had to take what they could get.