Old Corridors and Small Talk

“Are we there yet?”

“Do you see anything other than random rocks around?”

“Quite sure we are walking over granite right now, and I can also see something that looks minable around there.”

“I don’t know how to answer that… Then, no, we aren’t there yet.”

“It’ll be some fifteen minutes more, ladies. All the ruins are after some especially deep cave, so I beg you patient in the meanwhile.” Henrique interfered with Amy’s bothering and answered her question as someone who had more information there. It seemed that he was unable to notice that this much was only the pink idol acting dumb for no reason.

“Is that so, professor? What an annoying condition… Next time we should bring carts or some small car here.”

“Huh?” Lily turned her attention away from her duo to look at the notification appearing on her eye’s datalink. “It seems we got a donation with a message for you, Amy…”

“Oho? And what it says?!” The pink ball of energy turned to her purple counterpart while skipping around the cave. How she was acting was enough to amuse Lily as she knew the smiling girl already read the message even before it was posted, but she kept in character.

“It says to stop being lazy or the twins will steal your place. And thanks for the thousand credits, NoobMaster69.”

“That is so mean!” The idol pretending to cry shouted out to the cameras and then almost teleported to the two quiet women following their antics from behind. “And they will never steal my spot, you know? We can always work together if they want to join, but stealing my place is a no-no. And do not try to take Lily out too or I shall use all my very real idol martial arts to take you down.”

“We would never, right, Kuro? We’re more of…” A somewhat stiff Kuro tried to call her sister but didn’t get much from the equally stiff deadpan woman. “Well, we’re more about watching than participating.”

“Oho? Voyeurs, are you? Kinky, I say.”

“W-what?! N-n-n-no... I mean... No!”

Amy was mocking the black-haired explorer in a very clear way, and her sister was trying to keep herself from laughing just like Henrique. Even Lily was smirking at it as she kept playing around. Only the target of such was a little too nervous to notice this much.

“Now they say our archetypes are too different for it to be an option. I agree with that, by the way. And thanks for the five hundred, Lixtrinimix.”

“Who knows? Maybe when they reach full bloom and show their true potential, we may find out that their characters are not as simple as they look. And then we will not have two happy-go-lucky members on the same screen…”

“You know this weird terminology of yours gave birth to a whole wiki, right? Someone even tried to make a dictionary based on you, Amy.”

“It was my project for when I tried the language course,” Shiro answered to the pretend surprise of both idols. “It was a lot of work, especially when I couldn’t find a single source for many of her idioms. And then…”

Touching on something the white-haired student was knowledgeable about was a good way to take her to talk more. And going around this random subject wasn't against how Amy's usual stream went. Even with Lily trying to keep things under control, Amy was known for being random.

Her official fan club was named The Heralds of Pink Chaos for a reason. Lily’s were called The Knights of the Purple Queen and was, from what the pink girl said, a little on the wilder side.

Either way, the goal was to make the two students participate more and, if possible, thin out those who had no interest in the expedition. The professor’s plan was to get more people to know about the ruins and want to protect them, so viewers who wouldn't help didn't matter.

She needed a certain breed of nerds to flood enough the web with something about the ruins to pressure whoever wanted to ransack them.

So, the next step was to have the other sister talk too. As long as they kept appearing and saying interesting things, they would get enough notoriety. And with enough notoriety, when the expedition was in full swing, they would draw attention to said expedition instead of all going to the idols.

The pink mastermind had the right stolen data already to do it too. And since the black-ribbon sister was closing her speech about the ‘Amysh’ language, it was time to put it to use.

“I never imagined someone would go this far to understand me. And here I thought you both were ignoring the wonderful me and gunning for my cool partner…”

“But I was. My project was overdue, I lacked anything real to show and there was this wiki page Kuro forgot open, so…”

But then the plan vanished from Amy’s head as she heard Shiro’s reasoning, creating ripples in the chat as she stared in utter shock. She wasn’t ready for such a heavy punch on her ego and now needed some time to recover. How she was still walking forward while frozen in place was impressive enough even.

“Well… Let’s change subjects before you kill Amy and end up hunted by her mania… I mean, by her fans.” Lily jumped into the rescue and tried to steer the conversation back in place. “What about you, Kuro? Anything interesting you made in college? Anything that’ll change the subject...”

“Huh?! Me?! I... I mean… Oh, I know!” Kurogane buckled under the targeted pressure on her and ended up doing exactly as she planned. “So, do you all know about the ‘mana theory’ in archeology? The one that says people could actually use magic centuries ago.”

“I remember Amy talking about something of the kind some day or another, but she’s… you know… she’s Amy. It’s hard to take what she says head-on.” Lily turned her eyes away while remembering some of the more ‘unusual’ streams her partner would do. The chat was also flooding with recounting of the times the pink idol spoke of cryptids, urban legends, and mysticism, three things she seemingly believed a lot.

If she wasn’t still in shock from earlier, she would sure be boosting about them while complaining about how anyone took her seriously.

“Well, some theories go a little too wild on the internet, but we have some evidence that magic could have existed. Or that, at least, some kind of worldwide religion had control over the world and they had some very advanced technology.” The black-haired student continued as she lost awareness of the cameras. “Every one of the Seven Cities found relics with way too big similarities even if they're in very different areas of the world. The depictions show different clothes sometimes, but they still show similarities somehow.”

“And they're written in different languages too. Almost nine-tenths of all thirty-seven death languages appear on these old things.” The other sister added. “Also, we have some ten words for werewolves and vampires which always match the same description. Six words for ghosts, three for demons, four for angels, and other six other for witches. But the more interesting is that almost every single language uses the same word for spell, mana, dragon, hero, and god.”

“Yes, yes! And we have drawings, written pieces, sculptures, and a few pieces of old computer technology to prove it too. The fact that we have this much evidence but no one ever thinks about it is so weird.”

“Or people before the spires were way too religious and that’s the reason why they couldn’t get along and ended up destroying each other.” The professor interrupted her student’s excited explanation with a smile on his face. “Isn’t that the usual counter-argument? Not that many people care about history nowadays…”

Before the seven massive tower cities were built, the world was as close to a post-apocalypse as possible. From the few records that survived that time, things were chaotic and only got better after NorCo’s founder started to organize a proper city. A city that started as a huge cooperative and ended up creating the standard way people lived in the world nowadays.

Obviously, everything from the foundation of NorCo and Miskaria to now was heavily recorded and easy to cross-check. But everything else was in the realm of lost civilizations. It was hard to find much when most of the world was a desertified wasteland.

For a while, Amy had even panicked as she ran through the internet unable to find anything about what she knew or the little she remembered. She even had to learn a new language that was some bastard version of most languages she already knew.

Remembering all this was enough to bring her out of the shocked state from earlier. How the three history geeks were going on about their theories and all else helped too.

“You guys know a lot of weird things, you know? I am a huge connoisseur of dark internet knowledge, but I did not expect to see proper scholars with the same mentality.” The pink idol rejoined the conversation, feeling that the grace time before some more ‘vocal’ fans would start making noise was coming. “Would you wish to join my own expedition to find a dragon then? I am having trouble finding truly capable people to join my project.”

This one was a meme on her community based on some of Amy’s happy rumblings as she was diving into the internet rabbit hole of her own mind. Basically, the day she made a half-serious proposal of going on an adventure to find a dragon’s nest she was sure existed.

The only catch was that it would mean going in person to the wastelands that covered most of the world. And of course, the more serious members of the group had no idea of what she was saying and could only stare in confusion.

“No good? Such a shame… There is no point in going on an adventure alone, you know?” Amy shrugged off with a hint of dejection on her face but bounced back as she saw comments incoming. “No, I am not trying to recruit two girls I just met. Why would I do something of this kind? Yes, they are cute but that is beyond the point… Or is it not? So, you two, what about…”

“Sorry, but no.” The two fangirls answered in perfect synchrony even before the question left Amy’s mouth.

“I wouldn’t be able to survive in front of an audience for long and, heck, I don’t think following your choreographies is something a human can do... Even Lily’s bits are way too complex.”

“We tried once…” Shire added in a very serious tone. “And I still remember all the repair costs. We both ended up stuck to a chair for a week then.”

“All the wrong bends and the falls… It’s insane. Makes me want to see what kind of mods you two have…”

“Both of you are in need of more training, you know? Lily is almost whole biological and she can do her job just fine due to my magnum opus training, so you can do it too.”

“You gave me a drive with dance moves, dragged me to a karaoke party, and then decided it was time to debut in front of thousands of people.” The ‘magnum opus’ training result answered with a face of disbelief and a tone of outrage. “Where in the twelve hells was that a training, much less a whatever opus one?”

“It worked, did it not? Or do you think your beautiful meat limbs would survive all the power of an idol without my thoughtful guidance?”

“I don’t even know what to answer to that. In fact, I would say…”

“Wait, wait, wait! You can do all that without any bionics, Lily?! How?!” Kuro shouted out from the state of surprise she was stuck in earlier, going directly for what she needed to know right away. And as someone that didn’t care about it all, the purple idol only turned to her and answered without much emotion there.

“My legs are fake from the knee down and my eyes aren’t normal too, but it’s only the bare minimum in specs. I’m not willing to throw away my body for performance when I can do fine as is.”

“That’s a very radical way to see things.” The deadpan sister answered this time. “I wouldn’t believe anyone else that told me such even.”

“Yeah. Putting some extras on your body is way too useful to waste it. To be honest, if it wasn’t against the law, I would’ve changed almost everything here and not just 60%, right, Shiro?”

“Agreed. I can only imagine how cool it would be if we could download our brains into synthetic bodies... Not being limited by anything while I research and dive into the web would be perfect.”

“It sounds terrifying to me…” Amy muttered in such a serious tone that everyone else had to turn to her in surprise to be sure she was really the one talking. But her next words turned the whole situation upside down and cleared any suspicions. “Losing the whole drive from my computer would be as terrifying as it could be indeed, chat. Huh? The other girls are talking about something serious? Oh… Apologies then, I was backtracking, you see?”

The weirdness of the situation died down as Amy scratched her pink locks and looked back at the people staring at her in confusion. For almost every single one of them, it was just the normal Amy being random. Only knew enough to notice that she was only using an easy excuse, but she couldn’t say anything right now.

“And you, Amy. Are you as radical as your partner?” Shiro went back to the subject now that all was back to normal, trying to pry on the pink idol’s secret for her stunts. Although, in answer to her, the chaotic mass of frills had to stop a little to think.

“How much am I modded? What if I said the answer is a secret?” She started with a smile and a wink that didn’t convince anyone. “All I can say is, if one put my head inside any of the bodies here, I would still be able to dance exactly as I can now. Singing is a little harder considering the voice would change, but I can manage too. I am just that good at it, you know?”

At her answer, the black and white twins turned to one another and started to have a discussion of the veracity of this information with stares only. Turning back a moment later with an answer in unison.

“Looks fake.”

“It colors me surprise you lack belief in the power of an idol… I wish I would be able to show you what I could do before I was one.” Amy smirked against the skeptical looks she was receiving and then started skipping her way forwards without care. “Anyway, that is our objective, is it not?”

She was pointing to the half-buried door of semi-transparent material stuck in a reddish metal frame deeper down at the cave. A single weird and out-of-place object in the whole irregular cave and the entrance of the ruins.

“That’s exactly what you think.” Henrique started to talk again, turning the attention of the cameras to him as the person who, in theory, knew more about it. “This polymer door leads to the first found building and is the easiest entrance to these ruins. We’re dubbing this whole area as the ‘Rust Town’, by the way.”

“’Rust Town’, eh…” Amy repeated as she got closer to the door and started to knock on it, hearing the dull pangs as she tried to look past it.

“What a tasteless name it is.”