Please stand by, data collection underway.
- That was the most robotic the voice had sounded yet.
Amu looked at Fumi, who was looking expectantly down at her. She rubbed her face, trying her best to cover up the delay, although she wasn't quite sure why she was bothering. The exaltation…
She needed a better name, "The exaltation" was too easy to mix up. Passenger? Shard?
Her shard, then. It had made it clear that deciding what to do was up to her, but it wasn't like she could possibly not try to save the world. If what Fumi said was true - and why wouldn't it be? She wasn't that good at reading people, but even she could tell that Fumi was on the ragged edge of exhaustion, reaching out through sheer desperation. Otherwise she'd never have asked a ten-year-old for help, no matter how odd.
…Actually, she couldn't really tell that much just from looking at her. It seemed right, though.
Thing was, if her shard thought of a solution, then even if she was the one doing it it wouldn't really be her victory. That was a silly way to think about it, the result was obviously more important than who got the credit, but it was a thought she had trouble pushing aside. Still. She looked around the room, examining everyone's faces.
Fumi and Makoto were looking hopefully at her, praying for a miracle. Perhaps not praying, if they were fighting a god. ("The" god, they had claimed, but that was something she'd worry about later.)
Mom and Dad looked uncertain, ready to speak, but holding themselves back for the moment. They'd probably have a lot to say, if there was time. Saving the world from destruction? The idea was one thing, but unlike Tadase's games, this time it might be for real. And that would mean saving them, too? Right? That was a strange thought; it felt like it should be the other way around.
Ran and Miki had settled on her shoulders, both of them deep in thought. She wondered what they were thinking.
Su was playing with Ami, distracting her from the discussion by playing catch. Specifically, Ami had to catch Su… without getting to her feet or moving around. That was probably stretching the limits of her self-control, but it was something she'd gotten reasonably good at lately. They were completely silent about it, too, though Su was grinning widely. Ami looked more frustrated.
That's right. Whatever else happened, and no matter what it cost her, she needed to protect her family. Ami, Su, Miki, Ran, Mom and Dad… every one of them was a precious being. Something as pointless as getting the credit, she didn't want to care about that. So from now on she wouldn't.
"All right," she told Fumi. "The exaltation shard is still figuring out what to do, but it shouldn't take much longer. Just wait another minute."
She could just about feel it, mechanically churning through a list of options at vast speed. It had almost finished, too. She looked down at her right-hand shoulder, looking Miki in the eyes.
"Miki, could you help me with this, please? We can't take any chances on this one."
———
"Much depends on the exact form of the recreation," she relayed. "However, we have a clue already in that Hikawa expects to survive the process somehow, which proves that defending against it is at least conceptually possible, and after the initial event there shouldn't be anything that would be fatal to the survivors. Does that sound right so far, or do you have any further input?"
She was paraphrasing slightly, but the shard rarely seemed to put A and B together even after telling them both. It still had a tendency to talk as if it was in Creation, to the point where she wondered how sapient it really was. The impression she got was usually more of a giant database, rather than a real mind.
Fumi shook her head. "Sadly, that's about all we know as well, though frankly we're only assuming that he intends to survive, based on having no idea how he could accomplish his goals otherwise. Absence of evidence doesn't count for much, so - " She shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine, A… hmm. Actually, should I still call you Amu?"
She gave her an appraising look, prompting Miki to fiddle with her solidly blue hair. There was no real difference from when they'd done this yesterday, no change in the way her mind worked - she was still both, Amu as well as Miki - but the way she viewed herself had changed, so if she wanted to answer honestly she'd have to tell her no. It only seemed fair, Amu got to be Amu almost all the time. Besides… Amu had asked her to transform specifically because Miki was smarter, and thought quicker…
It was a strange feeling, feeling guilty about her own decision's effect on herself. Amu didn't actually mind, or she'd presumably feel conflicted about it, not just guilty, but there had already been a minor commotion when her smaller body had disappeared and Amu's hair turned that colour. She couldn't just tell them she wasn't Amu. Which would be a lie, anyway; it wasn't her fault that "Amu/Miki" didn't roll off the tongue well.
"Still Amu," she lied, and Fumi seemed to accept it.
Come to think of it, why had her hair turned blue? That only used to happen with a full transformation, not this partial one, and she was pretty sure they hadn't overdone it. The clothes change alone would have made that obvious. Just psychological, or… they'd need to check on Amu's hair dye, later.
"All right," she said. "Continuing on… The only analogy I have would be a Wyld Storm, an intrusion of pure chaotic force into an orderly system, rending and collapsing whatever is within its radius into its component motes. Even if it should recede or be beaten back, the damage was usually extreme enough to leave the ground tainted for years to come, barring the intervention of a mature Solar."
She paused. "Needless to say, a day-old Solar would normally be incapable of doing very much to repair the damage. However, what we are after isn't undoing the damage so much as preventing it in the first place."
"The primary method of defending this then becomes clear. A shield that can endure the intrusion of hostile powers, while maintaining physics as we understand it on the inside, at least until the initial cataclysm has passed. The Chaos-Repelling Pattern that is within my awareness would likely serve, and it may be possible for Amu to grasp its fundamentals in the time we have remaining. The problem is range. This power would protect no more then a bare handful of yards, perhaps enough for her family, but certainly not enough for any significant amount of additional survivors. Additionally, the template that I'm using assumes Creation's physics as a baseline, and adapting it to your own world's may take additional time, or risk having unforeseen side effects. At the very least, even should it allow humans to survive, your machinery almost certainly will not."
Miki grimaced internally. Surviving like that, surviving in a tight bubble, might be a fate even worse than death - they certainly wouldn't be able to have much of a life, even if they could stay alive with Su's help to cover the essentials.
"You mentioned you had another method? One capable of working on a mass scale? It... may be possible for her to use your own method as an amplifier. We had a technique known as attunement that allowed essence-users in Creation to bind their essence to a device or a place of power, and have it serve as functionally an extension of themselves. If it is possible for Amu to attune to your own shielding device, it would benefit from her own protections, which would render them proof against the damage of a Wyld storm, possibly allowing it to recover its function after the initial storm has passed. Essence itself is also one of the most efficient forms of energy that our world had ever discovered, and an Exaltation provides an enormous pool of it by most standards - 40 motes of it is sufficient to render a barren desert into a fertile breadbasket that could feed a country when handled by a sorcerer at the peak of their trade. Coincidentally, this is roughly Amu's current maximum capacity, even excluding the three motes currently committed to sustaining the material form of her Chara."
…that made it sound like she was walking around with a nuclear weapon inside her skin.
"If Attunement can be executed, it would provide energy and protection to your system. At the very least, and assuming your shielding device has an inside of sorts, then shielding whoever is inside it at the time should be possible. I cannot guarantee that this will work, but it is the best solution I can come up with that can be executed in the time we have."
Speech completed, Miki lapsed into silence. She had some concerns of her own - for instance, would they really want to give Amu control over a device that was by their own admission meant to prevent the end of the world? Could it even help to bring that up?
Probably not, so she remained silent while Fumi thought it over. Makoto's eyes had glazed over halfway through their first sentence; Fumi was obviously the one who'd make the decision.
…
Except she'd just turned around, and was rapidly tapping away on her keyboard. How… rude. She didn't think she could say anything, though; they were still very much guests here.
Instead she stepped over to Mom and, without saying anything, gave her a firm hug.
Mom seemed a little surprised, but quickly reciprocated. Finally, she got to hug her properly…
"Amu?"
"Miki, really," she whispered. "Or both. More of a mix. Don't say anything, please." She hugged her tighter, trying to make up for lost time.
———
"So you think an attunement would let you protect the device itself, but you have significantly less reason to think it'd protect the rest of the city," Fumi summed up.
"Basically."
Once Fumi had decided that what she was saying wasn't completely impossible, they'd spent some time going over the details. That was impaired by having to ask the shard about something every few sentences - Miki wished she understood what they were talking about better, but at least Fumi seemed to have a good idea of how it might work. It had still been rather exhilarating; the conversation had quickly left everyone else in the room behind, as they bounced concepts back and forth at high speed. Even if Fumi was teaching her as much as discussing the specifics, it didn't seem like any of the others could keep up.
It was a nice feeling, and she thought she'd made a good impression.
"It'll take about three hours to do the attunement, though?"
"Worst-case, yes. Theoretically only ten minutes, but three hours is enough time to cover all eventualities."
Fumi hummed for another minute before nodding to herself. "Which leaves us with about one hour before you'd need to start; fortunately the central dragon stream focus is right here in this building. We'll need Chief Hotsuin's permission, though, and he'll almost certainly want to watch over the process and speak with you himself before we start. I'll ask him for permission immediately; if you could please wait in this room?"
She left without waiting for a response, followed by Makoto. Miki was getting used to her abruptness.
That just left the six of them, though, and Mom looked about to burst.
"Miki, you said? What happened to Amu?"
Right…
"I told you, I'm both." No, that didn't appear to be enough. "Maybe a bit more Miki than Amu, right now, but Amu's definitely in here. Look, just let me detransform and you can ask her yourself."
And now she did feel conflicted. She was basically pushing the explanation off on herself. Yay. Well, it'd definitely have to be a joint effort.
———
Interlude time! Preference ordering; I might end up writing two.
[ ] Makoto
[ ] Fumi
[ ] The Demi-Fiend (This is a trap!)
[ ] Komaki Midori
[ ] Hinamoru Midori
[ ] Polaris
[ ] Hikawa
[ ] Tadase
