Kris:

  Her nerves were getting the better of her. Sitting in a quiet classroom as the instructor swept through the room to answer questions about thermodynamics? Normally, that would be fine. Sadly, there was no enjoyment in sitting there while Mari undoubtedly dealt with the animosity of her classmates all morning.

  The rational part of her mind told her that Mari had survived to age nineteen with nothing more than Kris’ shitty help, so she would make it to lunch, at least. The rest of her mind was preparing pitchforks and seeking to start a revolt.

  She needed a distraction, and thermodynamics wasn’t cutting it. It wasn’t one of her primary vocational training courses anyway.

  And so, Kris finally tugged out her tablet, then paused. A sly smirk hit her lips as she instead pulled up the interactive keyboard of her HUD. At that, she began typing away on the keypad, remotely accessing the newly installed equipment at the house. It barely took her a few minutes to get a schematic diagram loaded, which she used to begin etching new designs with careful flicks of her fingers into thin air.

  The interactive HUD was impressively intuitive, taking into account what her eyes were focused on and using the flickers of motion there to adjust for errors. It became almost disturbing how fast the design came together for some of her newer weapons and, in the back of her head, she was already parsing out a new and innovative design she was curious about.

  A few things were already set up before she’d left.

  For one, her original weapon needed modifications. She wouldn’t replace it, as it had gained some sentimental value, but if she was going to have a silent weapon that could be more damaging without drawing attention, she could use it in creative ways. Kris just didn’t want that to be her only option in the future. The range limitations were really unfortunate, too.

  What she had come up with for her original handgun was what she was going to name ‘Requiem’ for the finality of how it would be used. A silent weapon that pushed the effective range out to thirty meters and rounded off the mana cost from each core to an even ten percent. Best of all, she’d left the weapon inside the machine to begin with, so the modifications were already being made.

  She paused briefly as she realized her classmates and teacher were staring at her as she gestured into thin air with an animated expression on her face.

  “I’m working on something top secret, don’t let that take away from your work, please.” Kris waved them all off, thankful that her reputation still granted her some level of leniency from those around her.

  She set back to work, ignoring the thermodynamics instructor eying her warily.

  Her second weapon project was the new mainline of how she could help Mari in the future. Kris needed a new gun with more in common with Mari’s Remera. It had to be compact while delivering the most effective results. She wanted it to make noise in case the sound of her shooting her weapon could warn Mari she was in trouble.

  It also had to be economical. She’d burnt through four cores faster than she had thought possible, so either the weapon had to put down large threats with vengeance, or it had to be cheaper to fire. Annoyingly, the noise component of her gun would require an additional three dimensional component that cost a lot.

  Instead of having the sound be its own effect, Kris started to play with different effects entirely. If a rhomboid had a fundamental gravity aspect, all based on the parameters and variables she could change? She could extrapolate the variables of other geometric objects and find something more suitable that made the noise inherently with the effect it had.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Which is how she landed on a final option. It was a twisted sort of thing, and she had to reduce the size just to keep it compact, but the end result had her grinning ear to ear. What she had was a prism composed of eight rhomboids with octagonal bases. The end result, based on her estimations, would be an impressively destructive sight. By modifying the barrel of the gun, and reducing the size of the base prism, she could project a magic variable sequence from the barrel, which would travel forward up to twenty meters before burrowing two centimeters into the first surface it hit, then trigger the sequence at that spot.

  What would the variable sequence actually do? She couldn’t wait to test it out. Assuming it didn’t blow up in her hands. If it worked, Kris planned to name it ‘Aria’ to fit the musical theme she’d decided to follow.

  She had a third weapon project based on the ideas her second design had given her.

  The barrel would be a little longer than Vilke’s rifle had been, landing at half again the distance from her shoulder to her wrist. Not quite the size of Mari’s oversized sniper rifle. The real trick behind the design was how Aria’s theoretical main component, the prism, was only the core for the magic sequence. In theory, it would allow her to make a potent amplifying framework she could slot any prism into to create a long-range, or otherwise enhanced effect from.

  She kept it as a design, without sending it to be fabricated. Kris needed to know if Aria would work properly before she used up a large amount of the magically-enhanced metal she had on hand. Alynne had only allowed her to take half of the large plate from the lab to use in her basement foundry.

  When next she looked up, it was because the room was quickly being vacated by her classmates. Kris stopped next to the desk where the teacher stood, eyebrows raised at her questioningly.

  She suddenly felt more than a little contrite for having used his class to focus on personal projects. “Apologies, sir. I had something I was designing for Councilwoman Alynne. It wasn’t related to your course, but it is time-sensitive. I feel bad about coopting your lesson for my own time—”

  He held up a hand to stop her. “Anything for the Council takes precedence. I know you attend my class out of interest and little more. My only concern is the scene you made with your hand-waving and gesturing in the air. After your little tirade in the lobby, I was beginning to lend credence to the rumors you’d lost your mind.”

  At that, Kris reddened.

  But not in embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry?” She grit her teeth, fighting the urge to leap to the worst conclusions.

  “Some of your classmates say you berated your cousin publicly while defending a human girl. While I don’t partake of the emotional outbursts so many of my peers are fond of, several others were quite shocked.”

  Kris closed her eyes and counted to ten while taking slow breaths. The rumors spread quickly, even in a school that taught over eight thousand. Less than four hundred humans were enrolled in all, and only a couple hundred of those were from Mari’s cohort of rescued lab subjects. It was a vanishingly small number.

  She didn’t care much about how her own reputation might suffer, but if the others tried to link her sudden outburst to the human population as a whole, it might ignite something far worse for them. Kris would’ve loved to help out, but there just wasn’t anything that came to her mind.

  “Sir, could you try to refute those rumors where possible for me? I don’t want my strained temper to result in people targeting others ‘on my behalf’ or something equally silly.”

  He nodded, smiling. “I suppose I can do so, given the admirable intentions.”

  Kris returned the smile, then departed with a wave as she headed for her next course. Applied Aerodynamics was the opposite of the Thermodynamics course. The latter was intended more for theory and equations, but the former had very little theory involved. Given the global transit system beneath every city and linking every region to one another in rapid mass-transit routes, few aerial vehicles were used manually. Only the transport of supplies from space traveled in the skies.

  The aerodynamics course focused a lot on older styles of airborne travel. They’d compare the different designs and make improvements by hand. It was one of the more fun courses she had taken. Mostly, she wanted to fly someday. Just with more power involved than the hang-gliders some people enjoyed as a pastime.

  She spent the rest of her morning courses after that class working on her newest design idea.

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