Two Years Later…

  "Late?" Lorelei repeated, frowning at the air in front of her. "Why?"

  Rain's voice spoke in her ear, formed by vibrating vennfog. Domain was still not mature enough to do more. Another year or two, though… "My ship got rerouted to Nox Valley because there was a kaiju emergence from the Void breach in Gloomdell. It adds a half hour to my flight. Sorry, bestie."

  Lorelei let out a sigh. "Nothing you can do. I'll tell everyone you'll be delayed."

  "Actually, I had Princess tell them for me already," Rain said cheerfully. "I just really missed you, so I called you myself."

  Ah. That was why. "I missed you too," she said honestly. They'd lived next to each other for years, and she'd become used to her presence. Not having her around for the past year and a half had been very inconvenient. "It will be good to have you back for the week. Meiya seems ready to reveal whatever project she's been working on, so she'll probably finally tell us what it is soon."

  "I think she's going to propose some sort of new outer space initiative," Rain said. "She asked me about how she could get project time in one of the space docks. Ah, there's my luggage now. We have to cut this short, Lor'. I'll get in the air as soon as I can, all right?"

  She huffed. "Fine… bye, then."

  "Bye!"

  The call cut, and Lorelei let the little bit of vennfog in her ear dissipate as she let out a frustrated sigh.

  "So… was that good news overall?" the sister sitting at the desk across from her asked.

  Lorelei had to take a second to remember the name. Abigail, that was it. Ugh, poot her stupid, defective brain. No one else ever had these problems. "It's fine," she said, then sighed internally as the choice of words roused even more concern. Kaedekin didn't say 'fine' unless they were talking about tuning an engine. "She's just going to be delayed for meeting with our friends later because her ship got rerouted on its way down from orbit."

  Abigail relaxed, the full-time teacher deeming this sufficient explanation. "Do you need to leave now?"

  Lorelei waved a hand dismissively. "No, it's not until the late afternoon. I can finish going over the essay questions. Has the latest set of stories been approved yet?"

  "Not yet," was the apologetic reply, "although I think that's because Sheryl is editing while she's reading, and cross-referencing concepts to determine if they'd been taught yet. However, I don't think any of this set is going to be rejected this time."

  She sighed in relief that was good. "That's good," she said, and got back to work marking essay questions about trains going at speed and when they would meet. Lorelei marked one as wrong, no doubt causing some little sister somewhere to feel their skills were inadequate in the most objective way possible.

  Lorelei was officially 'evil' now, having passed the civil service exam and become a civil servant. She was supposed to do these things. No one who knew her had really been surprised, and no one really held it against her. Just because she was evil didn't mean she wasn't a good person. It just meant she had to be watched for government corruption, starting unsanctioned supervillain teams, trying to conquer the world, and trying to use official resources for personal gain.

  She was a bit unsure what 'personal gain' was supposed to be. From Kaede's memories, it had involved having one or more houses that required more resources than was reasonable, owning several cars whose only salient features seemed to be 'go fast' rather than practical attributes like heavy armor or being a t-type mecha, and misallocating resources just to have a lot of resources but not actually using them to build anything practical or needful, just simply having them so that a number would go up. It all seemed very silly to her, although it meshed with the Kaede's empirical experience that people who were evil were also insane, so perhaps that was why.

  All she intended to do was use the training branch to condition little sisters so that they were less likely to be disoriented by Kaede's legacy when they became thirteen by spreading propaganda material that would allow them to more easily differentiate between Kaede's memories and their own. That was perfectly in line with acceptably evil civil servant behavior. And she didn't even need to place any restrictions on anyone! At worst, she would need to trick little sisters into thinking that reading the material was their idea. She wasn't sure how. Possibly some kind of reverse psychology would be involved, as while they had an understanding of the principles used in the mind-controlling microchips the criminal known as the Commanding Conqueror used, the technology itself was only kept as a reference to counteract any similar mind control.

  Of course, doing so required her to go over her memories and writing them down in a coherent fashion. Ugh, no one ever told her how hard writing was! All the sisters who wrote scripts for plays and movies or wrote books to keep Yamiryuusei entertained made it look so easy! She'd approached some sisters to get their help, and they'd written their versions of some of the major incidents in Kaede's legacy, but a few had overlapped, so she'd needed to make a list as to what incidents needed to be novelized, and she had to do it herself because by that point Rain had run off and joined the space service to become a Star Ranger…

  She missed her best friend.

  "I'm planning to go to space. Wanna come along?"

  Everyone in the kitchen paused as they heard Meiya's declaration. Well, nearly everyone. Chloe didn't stop checking the pork in the smoker out in the backyard patio despite being as surprised as they were. You didn't waste good meat, after all. The vat-grown cultured meat had turned out great, with the layers of fat cells interspersed nicely, giving the meat a nice marbled look. Not as randomly natural as actual pork cut from pigs, but they rarely decanted those. The pooting things supposedly ate anything, and as everything on this planet tended to have a high metal content…

  The cuts were getting nice and soft. Just a little bit more, and she could take them out to rest…

  "You're joining the space service too?" Lorelei said, looking disapproving as Chloe went back inside. Aw, it was nice to know she cared.

  "No, no, I'm not planning to sign up as a Star Ranger," Meiya said as she continued mixing the leadberry iced juice. It would be the last leadberry drink for a while, since there was currently a leadberry shortage in town due to the decontamination equipment currently being down for maintenance. "Everyone's pretty sure someone is finally going to find us within the next ten years, right?"

  Ah. That's what she was talking about. "My bet's on the Shinkamrai Hegemony," Chloe said as she went to check the gravy and took it off the heat. "Earth's busy trying to turn its temporary alliance into something more permanent, and that's going to take some time to consolidate properly. Stove's free, Reiko-chan."

  Reiko made a sound as she carried the hash brown patties she'd just finished making onto the counter next to the stove before she put the pan of oil she'd prepared on to heat. "Nah, that alliance was already a confederacy in all but name. The only thing that slowed it down was because Earth and the other human colonies kept trying to push it to become a federation, and they only dropped that when it became clear they wouldn't be the power in the federal government. The Frontier Cooperative's got resupply stations closer to here than the Hegemony does."

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  "What brought this on?" Lorelei asked, clearly trying not to look like she was feeling abandoned and failing miserably. Ah, so cute. But no, no, she's Rain's best friend…

  "Oh, we managed to make a breakthrough with artificial gravity!" Meiya said with a grin. "We're waiting on the confirmation from other scientists around the world, but it so far it's looking promising! And it's not just for artificial gravity specifically, but for elemental-variant magic in general! With this we can be able mass-produce previously variant-specific effects!"

  "Context, please?" Chloe said as she put out the plates and utensils, stacking them up on a sideboard since the table was still in use. "Start with the artificial gravity."

  "All right, you know how the artificial gravity system we use now on our ships is derived from the magic-based gravity field that was used in the Fortress of Friendship?"

  "Not really, but please continue." Chloe took out a tray with the nice thermal insulated cups and set them next to the plates.

  Meiya put down a big coaster next to the cups and set the glass pitcher of leadberry juice on it. "It works, but the problems with it is that the smallest we've been able to scale down its field is a diameter of fifteen meters. Anything smaller than that is a waste of the field. The system also becomes more efficient the larger the field becomes, so it's better to build it big than to make it small."

  "And your big breakthrough is an improvement on—"? Reiko said, only to be interrupted by a knock on the door, followed by it opening and two voices calling out.

  "We're here!" Mutsuki and Tomoko chorused as they came in together. The former was carrying a container of hopefully-strawberry ice-cream, the latter carrying her mech suit in its suitcase form and a bag with what smelled like her really great lasagna. The suitcase was carefully placed in the guest weapon rack next to Meiya's sword, the heavy case settling with a solid thump.

  "Guess who's now licensed to fly!" Mitsuki said cheerfully as she rushed into the kitchen. Chloe helpfully popped open the freezer, letting her sister put the ice-cream in to chill until it was time for dessert.

  "I can fly!" Tomoko declared, her smile radiant.

  "She can fly!" Mitsuki confirmed

  "She can fly! Congratulations!" everyone cheered, even if Lorelei sounded like she wanted to find a couch and take a nap.

  The lasagna was put on the table and enclosed in vennfluid by Lorelei that would allow it to maintain its temperature as Reiko started cooking the hashbrowns. Chloe took out the meat from the smoker and let it rest, wrapping it up in some vennplate to keep it juicy as Meiya started pouring everyone drinks to tide them over until Rain arrived.

  Rain touched down on the sidewalk in front of Chloe's house—well, officially Chloe and big sister Aris' house—and took a moment to straighten out her clothes. Her sleeves were windblown from the speed of her flight, and her cheeks were a little red from the cold, but nothing that wouldn't go back to normal now that she was on ground level. She made doubly sure that her arm band and collar button was still in place, the balance scale of a Star Ranger in Enlisted-black. Once she was sure her appearance was acceptable, she picked up her duffel bag and made her way to the door of the house, knocking on it before just opening it and stepping inside as her buddy Princess finished her handshake with the lock. "I have loot!" she declared cheerfully.

  "Hey, Rain!"

  "Rain! You're back!"

  "About time you got here."

  That last made her smile as Lorelei gave her a look that was probably not supposed to be a pout but turned out like one anyway. "Hey, Lor', everyone. I missed you girls." Dropping off her bag next to the weapon rack, Rain took off her sword from her waist—her growth spurt had finally made her tall enough for that—and set it into place as she went to the kitchen where everyone had gathered. "Where's big sis Aris?"

  "Oh, she's on a hunting trip with big sis Sophie, Mary, Marla and Katrina," Chloe said as Lorelei got ahead of everyone and gave Rain her first 'welcome back' hug. "We've got the house to ourselves for the week, unless you want to go to someone else's house."

  Everyone looked at the smoker in the back patio.

  "Here is good," Rain said, and everyone nodded, while Chloe smirked proudly.

  Reiko, realizing that Lorelei probably wasn't going to move any time soon, rolled her eyes and moved in for a side hug.

  Once all the hugging was done—it was nice to be with her crèche-sisters again—Rain managed to get Lorelei to finally let her go and sit down at the table while Chloe got the plates. Everyone was quiet save for appreciative yummy noises as they helped themselves to food. Only when everyone had gotten their third bite did conversation start up again.

  "So, Meiya, I saw your proposal," Rain said. "A dedicated science ship?"

  "Yeah!" Meiya said. "And not just science. I figure with first contact coming soon, we need to get started on a dedicated branch of the civil service that will deal with aliens outside of repelling attempts at invasion, and that means ships meant for going beyond the system."

  Rain nodded, though everyone else seemed confused.

  "What's wrong with the ships we have now?" Tomoko asked.

  "Capacity," Rain said, the information still fresh in her mind. "The ships the space service has now are designed to hold a lot of fighters and mecha, but only enough food for a month before needing to restock, and they also need a lot of power to run. A lot of it can be provided by a PTEG, but things like the weapons system and the gravity generator need venecite, and for a ship that's going to be leaving the system that's going to be hard to replenish unless everyone onboard spends a lot of their spare time crystallizing it."

  "That's where my breakthrough comes in!" Meiya announced. "We were talking about it earlier, but I got interrupted. We've found a way to be able to make elemental-variant venn without actually needing a sister with an elemental variant! We've only tested in with my gravity magic, but there's no reason it wouldn't work just as well for Lorelei's temperature magic or Mitsuki's lightning magic."

  …

  """"Oooooh!"""" everyone chorused.

  "How did you manage that?" Lorelei demanded, her gaze focused and sharp.

  "Well you see, we were working with Seneschal—they're an unpaired buddy, very nice person, great stories—when Ai came by because she and Addie had plans to have lunch together, and she made a comment about Seneschal's color. At first we didn't know what she was talking about, but we eventually figured out that Seneschal's spiritform—to Ai's eyes, at least—still had the same color as their old partner's venn. So that got me thinking, if that was true and buddies got colored by their old partner's magic, then what else did they pick up from their partner? Buan was willing to give it a shot, so we set up some experiments with vennplate anchored to venecite and then deactivated, and when Buan managed to activate it without me, he was able to give it a slight gravitational effect."

  """"Oooooh!"""" everyone repeated.

  "With a proof of concept, we've been working all week on figuring out how to make the effect stronger and seeing if there was some way to be able to get a different buddy to replicate the same result. It took direct spirit to spirit contact, but we managed to get Seneschal capable of producing gravity effects too. Not very strong ones, but definitely gravity effects."

  "Does that mean there's a way we can let everyone use variant element effects?" Chloe asked, her fingers flexing as if already feeling what it would be like to use one of those effects with spells anchored to one of her bullets.

  Meiya frown, then shook her head. "Not at this time, no. Near as we can figure, buddies who synch with girls with variant magic take an imprint of the variant over time as they synch with their partner. They can transfer that imprint to another buddy, but as soon as that buddy synchs with someone and the two of them start doing magic, the secondhand imprint is basically washed away by the live contact with their partner's venn. But in the near term, it means that Buan or an unpaired buddy can basically produce gravity-varianted magic. Working from that, we can develop a method of producing gravity effects that doesn't actively require me to be a participant to do so. Once we develop this enough, we can mass produce artificial gravity equipment, and maybe even other magic variants. And if we can find a way to record the elemental imprint into a medium that isn't a buddy but a buddy can access… and then if we can figure out a way for a synched buddy to retain the imprint and let their partner use it…"

  "This will likely mean a whole new format of venngrams," Lorelei said thoughtfully. "Or at least a new notation for the elemental component."

  "Personally, I'm going to focus on being able to mass produce gravity," Meiya said. "If I can manage it, then it means the venecite requirements for a ship will drop to a fraction of what it currently is. Less, because we can turn off gravity in unpopulated areas. The problem with the gravity magic we use now is it's an all or nothing deal."

  "Hmm… can you use also use it to make anti-gravity effects? Or zero-gravity effects, basically?"

  "Sure," Meiya said. "I don't use it much because it's just easier to directly lift something with venn, but I can do that. Why?"

  Mitsuki pointed to the weapons rack near the door. "Because as much as I try my best, that suitcase is still pretty heavy. And reducing the effect of gravity on it would make it require less energy to lift off and fly."

  "Could I get a copy of your paper on this as soon as you're done?" Rain said. "I'd like to show it to the big sisters in the space service, there's no reason why the ships we have now can't be refitted with new gravity systems…"

  The food slowly disappeared around them as they talk, and it was just like old times…