Chapter Eleven
Catch Me I’m Falling
Aurora had settled in for a nap again as soon as she boarded the transport. With the new ability Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy that Gus had given her, she acquired a new tab on her display. When activated, she could open a window and design objects virtually with a fairly low MP cost. She found that by experimenting with simple designs, she gained new tabs that she could access, and then subtabs within those as she designed various creations.
At first, she had focused on apparel, which then developed the tabs for clothing and armor underneath it. Initially, she just played with the interface, but the more she designed things, the more intuitive things became. The epiphanies and discoveries became more frequent the longer she worked on a project.
So many ideas were springing to mind that she jumped from one thing to another in a very stream-of-consciousness way, without any real direction or goal. It was incredibly fun, and almost like a game to get the proper configuration and to tweak the aspects of her designs. When she had produced a viable product, a name and stat table would appear. She could save that design at that point and then work on modifying aspects to improve stats or improve how it looked.
She had already designed some cute outfits and some shoes that she would love to try on. When she wondered what she would do with all of these designs, inspiration on different materials and how to manipulate and shape them was revealed to her.
The system prompted her multiple times if she would like to sync with an established workshop to produce either the raw building blocks or even finished products depending on her own or the workshop’s level. She would have to see if Gus could unlock a workshop in the manor to facilitate the production of the things she would need. It seemed like an offshoot of the Foundry, and probably wouldn’t cost a lot of FP. She would get around to making things that weren’t just cute but functional. Eventually.
A big surprise was that when she fell asleep, her ability created a vivid dream state where she felt she was actually in her virtual workshop. Playing with designs was much more direct and she could mold materials with a combination of thoughts and gestures. Instinctively, she knew how to enlarge, compress, remove, and edit her designs. Then walk around them, or simply have them rotate themselves to view an aspect of the model. She found herself trying to grab naps and looked forward to sleep just so she could tinker more easily with her designs.
Not to mention the XP! Even if she was unsatisfied with something, when she got to the point the interface allowed her to save a design, she received a generous boost to XP, so she made it a habit to save everything and then simply save future adjustments with a version number, which also gave XP once it was significantly improved. In the short time she had the skill, she had already leveled it to seven and added an overall level and a half of XP from that skill alone.
After seeing the Oracle and hearing that they would be heading to Hinansho, she started trying to design cloaks and stealth devices that could conceal one’s identity. She had barely begun when she was forcefully woken, and ejected from her workshop. She had not been able to complete the design she was working on and as a result her progress was lost. She angrily looked around for the source of the disturbance to see a drone zip by her window.
Pressing her face to the plastisteel window to get a better look outside, she could see there were over twenty of the small craft, pummeling the transport with different colored beams of energy.
The transport groaned then the fuselage tore. In an instant, Aurora removed her seatbelt and was flying to match the trajectory of the ship. The engines managed to maintain some stability in the front half of the ship, however the back half began to tumble down and was lost amid the clouds, swallowed almost immediately.
Wind whipped everywhere and she had to squint as she used the chairs to anchor herself as the ship began to shimmy and lose altitude. She saw Jet sawing through Darik’s belt and then allowing him to get astride like he was a witch. She saw the little man wince as he tried to maintain himself stably on the polearm, clinging on for dear life. Whatever ability Jet had to move was severely compromised with the added weight of the super, but they disappeared out the torn roof of the transport as Jet began to slow their descent. Darik’s curses were lost as the transport fell away from them.
Aurora found Yuki, whose eyes were bulging out of her head. She knew Yuki needed to be ferried, as she had no flight skills of her own. Aurora held her as she fumbled one-handed with the release. Her tray table was down and she tried to stabilize her laptop as it jumped around with her other hand. At last she got the belt loose and she grabbed the laptop close to her, hugging it tightly. Aurora grabbed her under the arms and began to lift. As the ship continued to fall away, she saw Pulse burning through Grimdark’s seatbelt and then the transport pulled away, engines still propelling the craft forward.
Aurora arched her back and pulled, trying to balance her MP usage to slow their descent while still maintaining enough to stay aloft. She alternated with flying and free-fall until they got closer to the ground to minimize their acceleration and then gave it all she had. The skill leveled off about a hundred feet above the ground, giving just enough of a boost to slow
