Common Boulders and A Pathmaker

“Holy crap, she was actually hit a bunch of boulders.”

“I don’t think that’s how you should react to this, Kuro…”

“AMY!!!” Lily ran forward after the initial stupor went away. “Hang on there and I’ll find some way to…”

“Do not fret, my wonderful partner!” An eccentric muffled voice called out from the newly created mount of rubble in front of the door. “For this is but a bother against my awesomeness.”

“Can you come back?”

“It shall be no problem at all. I-I only need a little help to move up again…”

“Move up?!”

“I am unsure, b-but… I believe to be below ye…”

Amy’s voice sounded weirdly far away from where she was hit, but that was because she was actually some meters below everyone by now. The combined weight of her own petit frame and the falling rocks had caused the collapse of part of the stairs, but she was mostly fine either way. At least physically, that was.

“The stairs collapse with the weight then… We’ll try to clean up a little here and you try to move away from the rubble, ok?”

“Thou art to take care. One cannot be sure if it is now safe to move around.”

“Shire, what the hells she's saying?” The black-haired sister asked in a somewhat hushed tone. “I’m not even sure if I hearing things right…”

“Her voice’s muffled, but I think she’s speaking in some old dialect…”

“Are you really fine down there, Amy?” The purple idol asked while investigating around the door to be sure they could try to move the rubble. “You’re sounding a little unusual…”

“We art in perfect condition. Only focus on the task at hand for we art in no risk.”

“I think I need to write another paper on Amy’s speech later…”

Dark enclosed spaces weren’t exactly the happiest places for the pink idol. Thinking or doing anything while inside them was quite hard even though she knew for sure that leaving this place wasn’t a problem at all. She couldn’t even notice that her speech was straying further away from the ‘proper’ as she did her most just to focus on opening a path.

First, she had to get an idea of how to move away.

Lifting the whole pile was an option, but it was hard to know what would happen if she went with such a brute-force approach. It would be easier if she hadn’t fallen down when the floor collapsed, but with her posture messed up as is, any move could be a little too dangerous.

Running all the calculations for these variables was hard as is, but there was where the second part of the problem entered.

Now that she had this much rubble above her, the signal anchors were failing to keep the signal strength, so her connection was less than optimal.

It was still a matter of time, but losing time would both cause trouble with her live stream and make Lily worry more than necessary.

Luckily, her allies were very capable too, and were already on the move.

“Amy’s weirdness’ for later, girls. Move away from the staircase please, I'll do something about this.” The ex-cop went on shepherding the curious twins away from the area of possible danger and then turned back to the problem at hand. “I’d like to keep the exploration going, but your safety is also part of our job here, so it may take a while…”

“If I may, missy…” Henrique called while going against the orders to move away. “I believe my help would be useful in this situation. And it would also be a good show of how easy these ‘small dangers’ could be dealt with a proper team of explorers.”

His second phrase seemed to be aimed at the lawyer tapping on his notepad, but the thin man didn’t acknowledge it much. The bulging professor didn’t look very positive at this reaction, but he still kept on smiling at Lily while offering his help.

“I’d like to deny you, but your specs seem much better than mine for this situation...” She unwillingly accepted the difference in capabilities even if putting the contractor in danger wasn’t the best. “So, if you could help me move away the rocks I’ll point out, we’ll be back on tracks very soon.”

“I’m ready whenever you are.”

Then, with a nod and the first few markers received on her datalink, Lily and Henrique started the process of moving away rubble. Their aim was to minimize any possible secondary falls and it was mostly a monotone job, but it had to be done. Lacking care here could very well mean losing the whole stairway instead of most of it.

It would take some time for them to end it though. Time that the twins were being forced to use to make the stream keep on going somehow.

“And that’s what I have on my notes. And you, Kuro?”

“You know crossing notes is a really boring way to pass time, right?”

“You’re only saying this because you didn’t take any and don’t want everyone to think you’re the dumb sister, which is true.”

“Hey! I took very many important notes and they’re all safely in my head. Not my fault that you’re not good enough to go on without typing everything you see somewhere.”

“Oh? Are you picking a fight?” Shiro asked with her deadpan expression and a revolver leaving her clothes. “You forgot how I destroyed you last time? I even stole your weapon.”

“And you lost yours, dumbass.” Her sister answered with the brown whip she stole back at the entrance of the ruins coming to her hand. “I only let you take my weapon because beating you twice without it would be too easy.”

“I see you’re delusional now… That’s so sad.”

“Then let’s go at it!”

The two students in khaki were ready to start another of their weird catfights, but before either of them could engage, the neutral party left by the side tried to interrupt.

“Hum, excuse me, ladies…” Benjamin tried to call out with a somewhat restrained voice, gaining the glare of the two sisters. “What if instead of brawling you tried something less violent to keep the folks entertained? I mean, who knows how stable is this place right now, so if you go around fighting and all…”

“You… You kinda have a point.”

“I wouldn’t like to be buried just to beat Kuro, so maybe we should.”

“Then what? We go back to comparing notes?”

“That’s way too boring, so let’s don’t…”

“That’s what I said before!”

“Don’t remember, don’t care.”

“You little…”

“What about telling jokes?” The lawyer tried again as he could see the twins were close to going into another fight. “Comedy shows are always popular enough.”

The two then turned to him again and then suddenly became very pensive, ending by answering in unison a moment later.

“I don’t know any.”

“That’s… How that’s possible?” The man in a suit looked in confusion as he seemed to be unable to understand how such a thing was possible. It should be especially weird to him even considering the number of visits to stand-up channels he did, but only Amy knew about these.

“Then you tell us one if that’s so impressive.” A pouting Kuro challenged the thin man with the support of her sister.

“Yes, show us how good you are, Mr. Lawyer.”

“Well, If you insist…” Ben fixed his collar in place and then cleared his throat before turning to the nearest flying camera. “What's green and fuzzy, has four legs and if fell out of a tree could kill you?”

“Green and fuzzy…”

“And with four legs?”

“It also has to be heavy enough to kill someone.”

“Or maybe it’s explosive or very very dangerous.”

“It makes sense… Do you know of some military hardware of this kind, Kuro?”

“I can’t remember any… Any poisonous animal then?”

“None that climb trees…”

They both went in a little back-and-forth in search of the answer, but were unable to find anything even after a while of thinking, ending by turning to Benjamin in unison again.”

“Then we don’t know. What is it?”

“A pool table!” He answered the question with a confident smile that was very weird on the tired office worker’s face.

“A pool…”

“Table?”

Both sisters shared a stare between them and started to pass the details in their heads. They could see the point and even count the legs, and then, after some seconds for their logical minds to catch on…

“Pht! Hahahahaha! It’s so idiot, but still...” Kuro was barely being able to hold herself out from the dumb joke and even her sister was trying hard to keep herself together and failing. As they kept on laughing though, they both noticed something weird with the situation.

“Wait, Kuro, if a pool table can kill you…”

“Then how’s Amy fine down there?”

“You two took this long to notice that?!” Benjamin finally reacted strongly to something, raising his voice for the first time ever, even if he soon held himself back. “Aham! I mean, that was very weird for sure, but it’s possible…”

“Of course it is possible!” The pink girl’s voice echoed through the room as she finally recovered herself enough to move on. “For I am the most incredible idol there is, you know?!” Her exclamation was the prelude to a huge impact that shocked the building for a second and even more rubble fell around, but all was as calculated. The right pieces of rubble were away and enough time went by for Amy to take her breath, so she already had the solution to their current problem. And so, the moment Lily and Henrique moved away after Lily received the sign on her datalink, it was only a matter of hitting things.

Hitting things with the perfect strength and position, but only hitting nonetheless. It wouldn't even be impressive if it wasn't for the aftereffect of the whole moving around.

“I know you don’t make any sense, Amy, but…” Lily called out while holding her temples and trying to understand what she was seeing on the emergency stairs. “HOW THE HELLS IS THIS POSSIBLE?!!!”

Part of the staircase was broken down after the fall, with the path down looking hard to access and the path up almost inexistent. If they were left as is, it would be a little troublesome to move away and back to this floor if they went down and almost impossible to go up. Or that was how it would be before Amy had made the rubble settle down as some kind of makeshift ramp.

It wasn’t something perfect and they would still have a hard time going up, but it was still absurd that someone could manage it. Even though it lacks any guardrails and blocked parts of the path down, it was still too much.

None of which made any sense when the pink idol that caused all this came on jumping from the ramp to the door as if it was normal. The jump itself caused a little bit of shacking around the area too, but the others weren’t in a condition to pay attention to it.

“I was right to choose some lighter clothes today. Shall we continue now?”

“I don’t even know what to say to you now… The chat’s going crazy with your antics though.”

“Hahaha! You both are such interesting ladies! And here was I worried that we would need to retreat for now.” Henrique laughed at the absurd situation he was seeing. “I was right to call you both.”

“It is my pleasure to show how awesome I am, you know?” Amy answered while doing the last of the patting to clean her clothes. “But I believe we should hurry down now, I believe to have found something very interesting there…”

“Something that caught your attention?” Henrique rose his eyebrows and Lily also reacted in curiosity to the new development. “What would it be?”

“Hmmm… It is hard to explain… We may not need to see any other buildings in this area now that we found this place though, you know? Looking at it made me feel like the kind of place where very important things are hidden.”

“Is that so…?” The professor looked with an expression full of questions but seemed to give up on making them a moment later as he changed back to normal. “Then, if you ladies could lead the way again.”

“That we shall do!”

“We’ll make sure the path’s safe.” Lily cleared the curiosity from her expression and then moved to climb down the pile of rocks and metal in front of the staircase after Amy.

It didn’t take long after that for the others to be called down and for the droids to start moving on again, with only the twins ending a little behind the group.

“Hey, Shiro, isn’t Amy a little too overpowered?” The more expressive twin whispered to her sister as they started to follow the other members of the team.

“She somewhat remembers me of those mythological heroes of old… Either that or she’s some sort of secret military death robot.”

“Oh? Now that’s something interesting to see… ” Kuro smiled at the thought while glancing at the camera drone hovering around them. “Maybe we should gun for her too if that’s the case.”

“You have way too much of a deathwish…”

“You speak as if you weren’t the same.” The smirking black-haired woman moved to the emergency door and jumped down without caring to reach the ramp properly, leaving her sister alone for a moment.

Who then only opened a semblance of a smile and followed suit.