The sky was suppose to be a clear bright blue today according to the weather updates that flashed by on holoscreens in the Inner Gear, but as Senki looked up she can only see a light grey blanket over the rows and rows of polygonal buildings that stretched across the the landscape. With a bright white patch of cloud drifting by now and again. The girl took a small sigh, not from the lack of colors but the lack of work as she flipped through her phone schedule. One of her main patrons decided to marry off their youngest daughter, which was some bad bad news for a home tutor like her. It wasn't the first time this happened, but new customers would be hard to find. After all, the Hoiken family has been removed from the Inner Gear for almost two decades now, most other elite families who still trusted them don't have children that age anymore. Gazing up at the sky again Senki Hoiken pondered about the future, about her research, about Nanaimi, and hoped that the deal she made a week ago did manage to go through. The small vibration from her navigator pulled her attention back, a small text message displayed.
It's kind of late now you know, come on.
Back here we're starting to make dinner already.
You should come back soon.
I am going back to school soon.
The terminal crashed just now, need to fix it up.
-Tobu
Senki looked at the line breaks, the first word of the first line, second word of second line and so on, diagonally the words made up "its here come back now." She let out another sigh and started to move towards the Outer Gear gates. The gates between the gears was simple enough to pass if you worked between them, and the household Senki resides in isn't too far from the Inner Gear walls, for connivence sake. Opening the door and stepping through a couple binders full of scraped paper she saw her brother Tobubyo, half slanted across a sofa, half on the ground, with multiple holoscreens opened all over the tiny amount of space between the floor and cushions.
"Really? That's what you came up with?" She started at her brother half disappointingly half condescendingly.
"Better than 'hey I got the come over' at least, if the big guys sees that we're all getting throw out, if we're lucky. You want the thing or not?" He threw an envelope at Senki, "all copied down."
"Thanks." The girl replied half heartedly as she left the living room, dashed up stairs and shut the door to her own bedroom. Leaving her brother as he was. As the door clicked shut Tobubyo stared at his sister's room door for a split second.
"There goes the last law abiding citizen in this house..." He muttered almost inaudibly.
Upstairs Senki shuffled her way through papers, rulers and smudged whiteboards that littered her room floor, cleared off a dark grey table that's been reduced to the functions of a shelf and slowly pulled out a microchip from the envelope. "Not bad." She quietly said as she pulled an old fashioned card adapter out of a drawer and swiftly connecting all the components before slipping into the VR world that is the only thing of color in her life.
Umbra
Senki dropped down into the neon colored skylines of the secret virtual world, her usually black hair with white streaks changed into pure white hair but with bright carmine colored stripes where her meat world body lack pigmentation. The last time she was here was a week ago, there was an attack by Henzai, right near the fortune telling shop. She had watched from a far, so far that not even a photon of those brightly dressed girls' attacks splashed near her digitally complied body. Although that isn't going to be happening anymore.
A few light red, glowing holoscreens popped up around her as she started to extract the contents of the chip. "Hmm, as expected." It was directories towards a destination, the fortune telling shop where the action happened a week ago, and some sort of programmed that seemed like an action verification. Senki guessed that the inner rooms isn't a place that anyone could just access freely, some higher privileges were needed. It wasn't long before Senki found her way into a room, decked out in purple and other neon colors that would likely burn out her retinas if this was the meat world. Standing at the doorway she observed the few individuals, three girls, in blue, yellow and white clothing, all were at the ruckus last week. Being crowded by the three humans was a cat, the animal avatar perked Senki's interest, it looks like she's got her target.
"Eri-san." She leaned against the doorframe of the room and spoke up. "I see that you've accepted my deal." Raising an eyebrow as well as cracking into a small subtle smile, Senki glanced at the cat avatar before stepped up and taking a slightly exaggerated bow.
"Carmine Shadow, at your service."
