If Wonderweiss's plan went into effect, it did so in a slow crawl.
Nothing appeared to change after Eleanor's fateful talk in the Leviathan Nest; at least nothing aside from the accumulation of delegation and construction works which gripped Neptunia. Skeletons of the future resembling Old Earth's ancient Khmer civilization, from frames of prangs to the chalked zones for gallery-flanked roads, were erected at a speed so gentle and slow that every denizen could miss it.
But a major tipping point soon arrived. A surreal fracture—suspended in snowy breeze—appeared at the settlement's very edge five days into this creeping development ushered by Wonderweiss's arrival. It folded and expanded until it formed a luminous trans-dimensional gate, wherefrom emerged Vienna and Thessa. The two made their way toward the icy settlement under construction, faces sharing concern for Edgar Shin's most recent radical decision.
Still in doubt, Vienna turned toward her fellow recruiter for an opinion of their potential recruit.
"Isn't she a troublemaker?"
"Yes." Thessa's face scrunched as they entered Neptunia's snowy village, still weighing the benefit of doubt against her better judgment. "She's partly responsible for our current situation."
"And we're still trusting her?"
"She's the best person for the job. Remember, we only have thirty people left on this planet after dealing with Alpha."
The duo soon reached the primitive communal hearth where all roads converged. There, they found their first target amid cargo loads of mystical Omicron Ice—Kirby's latest construction patent. Amidst the crystalline materials now paving the snowy streets stood an Omic girl with silver hair, directing a team of workers slowly dragging sleighs of construction material uphill. Despite her transhuman advantages, she seemed to be standing through sheer willpower alone, exhaustion evident in her posture after sleepless hours of coordination with her survey team.
The Keeper suppressed a twinge of guilty conscience and cleared her throat to disturb this certain girl in dire need of rest. "Sistine," she called.
The silver-haired figure—the youngest Omic in the camp, dressed in hastily sewn clothing like everyone else—stiffened before slowly turning to face them. Dark circles shadowed her eyes while her shoulders sagged. "Hello, Miss Landia," she managed with the nervous smile of someone facing down a predator, seeming to physically shrink before her visitors. "What brings you here today?"
"I want to meet with Erika," Thessa's demand rang flat.
The young apprentice averted her eyes. "I don't think she's ready for a formal visit," she reasoned. "We're very busy."
Vienna watched the interaction with mild curiosity. In her long career, she had encountered so many extraterrestrials—aptly titled Exos by humanity—that she would call herself an expert on the subject. Although this was the first time in a long time she'd seen one who looked so nervous in her presence.
Had Wonderweiss been here and able to read her mind, he would graciously remind her that High Terraria did wipe out most Exos civilizations it came across; only the two closest things to Exos factions on the Rift Compass were the isolated Fae Garden and the ever-snarling demons of Millennium Entropy. He would even add that Sistine and Kirby—who used to be human—were as human as Mars colonists returning to Terraria.
His view, of course, ignored their utterly different biology from Homo Sapiens anymore. Beyond the gills and enhanced muscle density, Omics also possessed unique earthy-toned hair and eyes that glittered like jewels, making some of them utterly impossible to blend into the crowd of average humans. Sistine's silver-salt hair and pearly eyes, for example, reminded the Magister of a deep-sea angel over anything earthly.
Thessa knew her partner was contemplating something. She even had an inkling some part of said something might be incredibly egocentric; but she decided to ignore Vienna and press on with Sistine. "We're relocating your team to another project, Sistine," she said. "Kirby will be taking over where you left off."
Sistine groaned audibly. "That's not the issue. The four of us are the ones who need to file the paperwork."
"Just bring me to Erika. We'll talk to her directly."
Begrudgingly, the young girl led them through the icy path. They passed several Ice Dragons, crossed snowy roads, and rounded behind a hut with a smokestack—the sole restaurant of Neptunia under the name of Bravo & Co, owned by Bravo the subhuman. After the final crucial landmark, they reached their destination: a simple, almost shabby igloo with a hole carved in its roof for ventilation.
Sistine pushed open the office entrance—an ice-scoured wooden plank—revealing the disaster within. Mountains of homemade paper crowded the small space like a jury's stand, piled high and oppressive. Two brave women wielding shabby quills sat at their posts against this proverbial bureaucratic monster, somehow looking even wearier than Sistine.
Too busy to raise her head, one of them spoke.
"Sistine, bring me the paper about the drone deployment in space A-2," ordered Erika—once the woman who stole Edgar's ship and awakened a planetary threat that put the Pioneer in a wheelchair, now an Omic suffering the yoke of Neptunia's endless paperwork.
Thessa and Vienna stood stunned as the girl hurried to follow instructions that seemed to laugh at the existence of child labor laws. Erika hadn't even noticed them. The woman appeared on the brink; her fire-clay hair frazzled, her skin dimmed, and the tourmaline glow in her eyes even dimmer. They could only gape as she mechanically wrote on one page after another.
There the Keeper spotted a familiar face among the workers.
"Shayara?"
"Hello—" her exhausted former crewmate, now an Omic, heaved as she carried forth more pages from the oceans of despair "—good to see you."
Suddenly, a stack of papers crashed to the ground at the frost-worn entrance. Thessa spun to find another Omic—red-clay hair and pearly eyes matching Sistine's—rushing to embrace her waist.
"Sahrin?"
"Thessa!" The former rebel, now drained of all hope, sobbed into her former leader. "I'm sorry! Please save us! I beg you!"
Only then did Erika notice her visitors.
"Oh, it's you," she spoke in despair and laughed without humor. "Here to give me more paperwork? And who's the new guest?"
"This is Vienna," Thessa made a quick introduction. "But what happened to you?"
Erika's laugh carried the weight of her fraying sanity. "It's a funny story"—humor absent from her voice—"We spent a week in this planet's hostile ocean, where we were attacked by either giant orcas or swarms of giant crabs."
Thessa winced. She had met those creatures before and they weren't nice, but in her opinion, the Sea Leviathan was worse.
"I nearly died," Erika continued. "It was the first time I had to shoot something to survive." She giggled madly. "Our Sonic Lance sent its brain matter drenching over me; but I made it." Her recollection sent a shudder down everyone's spine; no one could forget the smell of brain matter. "All of us made it back from that darn journey, received amnesty, and I believed I could take a small break." She cried without tears. "Then a day later, we received the notice about rapid urban development and Kirby's footnote about a potential flashpoint with the Fae Garden."
The duo exchanged grimaces. They had decided to inform the settlement five days ago, and it appeared that decision took a heavier toll on some than others.
Erika proceeded to confirm what they thought, and somehow made them feel even worse.
"All those idiots scattered in every direction for their respective projects. I even heard one Gym-Omic talking about creating a special forces squad. But all of them decided to throw all the paperwork and requests at the four of us."
"Why don't you just refuse?" Vienna asked the forbidden question and unleashed the haunting answer.
"Refuse? Are you serious? I'm blamed for Alpha and why we have fewer than forty people to handle the work. What do you think will happen if I dare shirk responsibility?" came a grounded answer from a voice a few hours away from insanity. "Moreover, those morons don't know how to do paperwork. Left to their own devices, this community would capsize within a day and take us along with it."
Thessa blinked. "I don't recall you having this great a civic spirit."
"That was before I was forced to have my IQ expanded!"
The statement elicited pained groans from every Omic.
"I don't want to understand the necessity of parking spaces and urban planning anymore," Sahrin complained.
"I miss feeling satisfied with my vanity and chasing cosmetic products." Shayara wistfully revisited those wonderful days of being a clueless idiot. "Now I know it's all a lie to make myself feel better. Why do I have to become smarter?"
Thessa, in her personal belief, thought that those who commit travesty due to lack of intelligence getting punished by receiving unwanted brain expansion must be twisted irony on the level of a perpetual slacker being transformed into a human railroad track. But, observing the room's collective meltdown over their gifted Omic intelligence, she decided it might be wiser not to voice such an opinion out loud. Instead, the Keeper cleared her throat and relayed an offer to the frazzled Erika.
"Edgar has a special task for you. He wants you to help manage new manpower being sent from Wonderweiss's ship and oversee their transition into Omic."
The request caused a chorus of pain.
"Did you hear a single thing I said?" Erika shot up in misgiving, grabbing their attention with a loud hand-slam to the table. "We are on the verge of a mental breakdown! And why even come to ask the least trustworthy woman in this entire community for this kind of sensitive orientation? I could do massive damage here."
"And add more to your workload?" came Thessa's retort, which left Erika's mouth agape in a combination of shock and outrage.
Vienna sighed. "Everyone," she suggested, "let's take a break and talk about this outside."
With nothing to be accomplished at such an impasse, the group found no reason not to comply with the Magister's suggestion. They left behind the hut's stuffiness and its great paper mountain for the open air beneath Omicron's clouds. Sahrin and Sistine seized this unplanned break to escape—or limp, to be more accurate—down the road. The silver-haired apprentice stole a worried glance at Shayara and her mentor, but a small, gentle nod from Erika sent the girl away, her shoulders slumped under the weight of doubt.
Erika, ensuring her charges had gone elsewhere, scowled at the two women. "I sense there's more to the story." The Omic's displeasure etched itself across her face as she planted hands on hips. "Why do you prefer me over Kirby or Gopher? Shouldn't Edgar or Eleanor be handling this themselves?"
Thessa met the woman's critical query with half wonder and half annoyance. Whether she liked it or not, Erika's increased intellect made things much harder. Instead of swallowing the bait whole, she probed for hidden hooks, questioning why they'd cast their line for her when other fish already swam in their pond.
This meant they had no choice but to tell the truth.
"Edgar is about to undergo surgery that will put him out of commission for a while," Thessa confessed, only to receive a squinting gaze in retort.
Behind Erika's shoulder, Shayara watched Thessa squirm over her explanation. Part of her wanted to feel sorry for her old boss, but most of her couldn't muster the energy through the fog of exhaustion to care.
Thessa continued, "And because I'll eventually be called to Camelot, I need to train her to use Rift-Rift and teach her about Omicron—"
"But why me? Why not your other attendant, O High Priestess of Leviathan?" Erika's harsher squint cut through the foil of deception straight to the point. "I know you have a better option with a better track record; so far you haven't given me any reason to trust your intentions."
Thessa's mouth fell agape, caught in a verbal iron grip. She had neither sound nor ammunition to rebut Erika.
Vienna, understanding her ally had sunk like an anchor, took over the convincing.
"One of the settlers coming here is Helena Christy."
The former human paused and tilted toward the Magister. "The Helena Christy?" She repeated the name in mild disbelief. "The one smugglers can't stop talking about? Who broke into High Terraria's central server as a hobby, outsmarted the Militia about a dozen times to date, and carries the sole 'Only Alive' bounty High Terraria ever produced?"
"That's the one," Vienna confirmed, feeling impressed. "I'm surprised you know this much."
Erika snorted. "Everyone in the gray area of business has at least heard of that hellspawn. Which brings us to a bigger question: how did you rope her into this? And why bring the loosest cannon on this side of the Rift Compass to Neptunia first?"
"She came on her own." Vienna's lips twisted into some malformed line. She herself had asked all kinds of questions from that line of thinking, but she couldn't wrap her head around that woman. "Apparently, Helena had it out for Wonderweiss's secrets for a long time. This time she somehow blackmailed the old man with some kind of suicide switch."
"And Edgar believed you're the best counterbalance for her?" Thessa added.
"How? She is a former Militia intelligence operative turned legendary outlaw. I am a former loan shark turned transhuman. How can I do anything to her?"
"No idea," replied the Fae. "But I won't discount Edgar's future prediction."
Erika's lips pressed into a conflicted line. An opportunity like this could lift her to high places, but recent events had taught her that a higher flight meant a harder fall. She'd already made one costly mistake, and her improved intellect made it clear another screwup would leave her falling to her death from burning bridges.
Shayara stepped forward as her leader weighed the decision. The earthen-haired, square-jawed former Fae snatched the attention of both Keeper and Magister. "We're having our hands full dealing with community projects. Our leader can't spare time or manpower unless you dig us out of this hole."
The duo sent by Wonderweiss came prepared for Shayara's challenge. They knew they needed to offer something for Erika to accept.
"You'll be given new accommodations, hardware, and extra supplies to aid your current work," Vienna started.
"This also comes with fast-track recruiting and a uniform." Thessa tagged on their secret weapons, emphasizing the word "uniform."
Erika quivered. Due to the dearth of resources on Omicron, denizens of this burgeoning community had settled for scraps: leftover cloth, hand-knit dresses worthy of prehistoric humans, and amateur-styled togas. Minor as this offer appeared, it hit harder than a sledgehammer. Anyone on this planet would die for something else to wear; anything that reminded them of a more civilized world, where shirts didn't sting the skin like mites.
"What kind of uniform?" Erika dared to ask, stamping down the urge to nod along.
Vienna produced a sample: a smooth one-piece leotard with bare legs and shoulders. She offered it to Erika, who ran her fingers over the silky texture; snug enough to hug the skin, light enough to feel heavenly.
"It's made from Prismatic Fiber," the Magister explained. "Porous enough to let water flow freely but with extremely low water retention; designed specifically for amphibious living. It's shock- and temperature-proof, and according to Kirby, makes perfect fiber-optic material once treated."
Erika held the leotard and looked down at the weary rags wrapped around her waist and chest. Her current outfit rubbed like leaden sandpaper compared to this wonder cloth. Temptation grew stronger with each second, amplified by Shayara's audible gulp, but she needed the word from the man in charge.
"I want to talk to Edgar. I need to know what he expects from me."
Thessa took the Omic's response as an answer. She reopened the crack into space with a swoop from the green trans-dimensional stingray and led them into the shimmering light.