Analogic hacks and Makeshift Solutions

“Hey, isn’t this ‘causing unnecessary damage’, lawyer guy?” The black-haired twin asked while welding some cables on the now open console. She wasn’t looking at who she was asking though, it would be a danger to look away right now. Only the idol strapping pieces of equipment together was nonsensical enough to stay close by.

“Hmmm…” Benjamin stopped to think while trying to see anything from the faraway safety he and the other members of the expedition were. “Most of what I’m seeing are things you brought, so it should be fine as long as you put everything in place later.”

“No, no, no. Look again, and tell us to stop!”

“Do not fret, all I saw here was a single circuit board connected to the panel and many analogic mechanisms behind it, so it should not blow up, you know? Unless one of the rotors in the mechanisms overheats and throws a full block of gears on us, of course... But these old machines are easy to fix, I heard. A knock and they go back to business… Or blow up.”

“Why do you keep trying to make me panic?!” Kuro asked the idol trying her best to keep a serious face, and failing at doing so. “I can see you ‘trying’ to not laugh, but what you’re saying is still a valid risk, isn’t it?! Everyone else even went away due to this.”

Amy was playing around, but many of her words were very much true still. From her analysis, this door ran with many heavyweight mechanisms which, without proper maintenance, could not work as intended.

Safety locks, door movement, pressurization, and who knows what more. There were many problematic systems that could do badly if not maintained. And since they were going to force them to open without being sure of their state, there was a real danger of something going wrong.

For one, the inside of this door was likely depressurized, so a wrong move and the pressure could destroy the whole corridor. The moving parts could detach and fly away. Something could simply break apart and take the whole wall with it. Many options of things that could go wrong that Amy didn’t have the time, or proper capabilities to analyze.

Old analogic systems were problematic.

Still, she could play around because nothing there would be more than the pink idol could protect the worried student. Something of this level wasn’t enough to hurt Amy even with her having less armor than usual.

Both things that her partner knew very much.

“Don’t worry, Kuro.” Lily shouted from the end of the corridor since she couldn’t keep watching her partner ‘bully’ one of their contractors. “Amy WILL protect you if anything goes wrong, won’t you, Amy?”

“As I said, do not fret! I am entitled to protecting you all, remember? And an idol never goes back on her job, you know?” The smiling short girl went on with an unusually convenient aura surrounding her, even with an added serious glare at the end. “Well, as long as it does not break the contract at least. I am not fond of being forced to do what I do not wish to.”

Differently from usual, looking at Amy’s smile right now gave a sense of security and a huge weight to her words that would never appear before. It was even enough to make Kuro feel as fearless as when she went against anything through which her body was made to survive.

It was also the kind of thing that made her and her sister lean their interest toward the original idol, even if bit by bit.

“Fine… I’ll connect the thing now, okay? Get ready, okay? Okay?”

“Do the thing already, Kuro. I’m getting bored here…” The other twin called out from her position with a yawn. “And I’m sure the viewers are getting too.”

“You… They… Aaah... I give up.”

“Welcome to the club…” Lily whispered in an apologetic tone that was barely noticed by the other people around. They were more focused on the twin working on the console either way.

“Here goes nothing!” The focus of all eyes shouted to get her courage going and then thrust the slot in without even looking at it.

And then, luckily, or not since it didn’t catch the eye that much, the device and the bootlegged console were connected without a problem.

A very unceremonious ending to the whole suspense that was pretty much only there due to Amy’s playing around going too far. Even the audience wasn’t feeling very happy with the conclusion, even though this one was the safest ending possible.

No one was willing to say something about it right away though. Even the professor and the lawyer were knowledgeable enough to know what was meant to happen the moment anyone made a careless comment. Saying anything along the lines of ‘nothing happened, eh?’ was the same as asking for something to happen, and everyone knew it.

But one of them couldn’t stand still until everything was obviously safe.

“So… Kind of anti-climactic, no?”

“Don’t say this kind...” The calming-down khaki-wearer tried to admonish the idol only to be stopped by a creaking sound coming from the area around the door. “Hells, it’s making noise now!”

Kuro panicked and tried to flee towards the other members of the group, who were moving away too, only to trip halfway and roll farther away from the door. Only the crazy frilly girl stood where she was while staring at the creaking door with her head tilted to the side.

The increasingly loud noises coming from the blocked path weren’t affecting her at all, but not because she was confident it was safe. In reality, with this much noise, there was a real chance that everything was collapsing inside the walls, but that was it.

Only Amy wasn’t affected by this possibility for reasons beyond herself even.

She was sure that nothing bad would happen and that was it. She also had to see what was behind this door even if she was unable to say the why. Worst-case, her aim would be to keep some passage open and avoid anything that could hurt the other members of the expedition.

For now, though, she had a simple action to try and avoid any possible disaster.

“Have I not said yet…?” The pink girl closed her hand and fixed her feet to a more stable stance. “There is no need to panic.”

And then she roundhouse-kicked the wall from which the noises were coming, leaving a huge dent in it but making the noises stop. More even, right after her kick, the creaking noise changed to what was clearly a vent working and soon gave way to the door opening.

Only one of the sides of the door was moving and the air in the corridor was pulled inside still, but things seemed to be fine now.

“As I said before, give it a knock and it shall go back to business. I believe this door will not close anymore though…”

“Can I ask a thing, Amy…” Lily started to approach to check if everything, including the still slightly panicked Kuro, was well. “Is brute-forcing your way through the only plan you have today?”

“I would not use these words, but... Yes? This place is both unfit to my skills and not dangerous enough to hurt me, you see?”

“That was what I feared…” Amy’s partner sighed once more but bounced back right away as usual. “Doing fine there, Kuro?”

“I thought we were goners for a moment…” The woman sitting on the floor spoke with her worries going away for now and her sister’s stare locked at her.

“Weren’t you the one saying that this kind of thing was more interesting?”

“I was talking about finding some good mystery or maybe a weird discovery! Worst case, some hardcore sport or anything of the kind. It was never about putting me in front of a deathtrap and trusting things would go fine.”

“It was not trust, you know? It was belief!”

“I’m starting to think you’re crazier than cooler, Amy. And right when I was starting to think you would be a good playmate too…”

“What? Why?!” The shocked idol went with her overexaggerated reactions and then turned to her duo. “I am very cool, am I not, Lily? It is even possible that I am as awesome as one can be, right?”

“Yes, yes, you’re very cool, so let’s move on... The other two are leaving us behind already.”

As the ex-cop said, the lawyer and the professor were ignoring the whole situation and moving forward without a care. Their reasons were different, of course, but it seemed that both of them cared more about their jobs than about their safety right now.

Why they were so fixated on the damaged door was beyond everyone’s comprehension until they started to pay attention to the conversation between the different-sized men talking.

“…this is clearly unnecessary damage, professor. Who knows what more is broken inside here now…”

“I don’t see how disabling a possible danger would be unnecessary damage.”

“We could have avoided this ‘danger’ to begin with, so…”

“Oh? If we could avoid it, then how would we explore this corridor? Unless you have some weird toy hidden around, we can’t cross a closed door like this.”

“There must be other ways which wouldn’t involve breaking…”

“But it was already like this when I kicked it, you know?” Amy interrupted the discussion with a matter-of-fact tone in her voice. Her sudden call made the other two parties stop in silence for a moment, but they soon processed how nonsensical was what she was saying. One of them already going to argue against it even.

“No matter how you slice it, girl, it’s impossible that…”

“It is impossible that a kick could destroy a wall, no? It must be that the wall was already like this, which would even explain the weird noises from earlier.” The blue-eyed idol kept going with her stare aimed deep into the lawyer’s head. “The most I did was set something in place, right? It would be weird otherwise.”

“I mean… If you put it like this. Fine… I’ll let it slide this time.” Ben convinced himself for reasons he couldn’t guess and then continued. “But don’t go kicking anything else, got it? This kind of excuse won’t fly forever.”

“You speak like a sore loser, lawyer. Even I could see that this kind of damage should be here from the start.”

“It’s my job to be sure. Who knows what kind of mess I would be if something went wrong here…”

“Huh. Let’s pretend that’s it and go see the insides already. I’m sure we’re in front of something much more interesting than some malfunctioning door…”

Henrique then turned to the door and started to walk towards it with a close-by drone following him almost right away. And before he could even get much inside the new room, the rest of the group was already following suit with the twins and Lily staying a little behind.

“Hey, Lily…” Shiro said in a somewhat low voice, grabbing the attention of the girl in purple. “What in the twelve hells was that?”

“I’d like to understand it too…” The other twin chipped in with an expression that fit the confusion of the two women better.

“You say ‘how Amy suddenly convinced those two like that?’, right?” Lily asked just to be sure but didn’t wait until more than a nod was given in answer. “Then I have no answer to you. I asked a couple of times myself and all she answered was that it was her ‘charisma’ or something of the kind. Rare to see her use it though…”

“Scary…” The two pseudo-archeologists said in unison, with only the black-haired one continuing after that.

“But it’s kinda cool too, isn’t it?”

“Makes you wonder how far she could push it, right?”

“Maybe getting some extra grades, eh…”

“Weren’t both of you scared of her just a moment ago?” The weary idol scouting the twin duo went on while starting to think that these two likely had as many loose screws as her partner. “I’ll warn you that she can be even more insane than what you saw, okay? That girl even threw me at a ten thousand audience without even a shred of training…”

“Hey, girls! Come here fast.” The professor’s voice interrupted Lily’s venting before she could get any reaction as she instead urged the two to hurry with her eyes, and then rushed to the new room too.

Getting there, the late arrivals finally saw the small room hidden behind the pressure chamber. Weird as it was too, it was packed with stands filled with decorated antique weapons in varying states of decay. Be it a sword, spear, or axe, it had them all. Even pieces of old armor and some small flintlock guns were around, although these looked weird for some reason.

Other than these, the room also had many file cabinets on the back and a last weird piece of furniture: a person-sized metal box with no clear openings.

“Is this…?”

“An arsenal? It seems so, missy.” Henrique answered the obvious question right away before bringing up the more important one. “But why would something like an arsenal be a pressurized room?”

“To avoid rust?”

“Wouldn’t you say it’s an overkill solution to rust, Kuro? Who would build a whole complex room just to not have their weapons rust?”

“Then give an idea too, smartass!”

“I would if I had one…" Shiro answered as she walked around the room closer to the file cabinets. "Maybe if we looked around here...”

“I believe it has something to do with this box, you two. It seems to be some kind of machine, but I have no idea how it works…”

The burly man was staring at the object in the center of the room while moving around in search of anything of note, but he too was failing to find it. There were clear openings on the metal box and, after a better look, it had what seemed to be power cables connected to it from below the floor, but that was it. No way to turn it on and no signs of what it should be used to.

“A bunch of swords, some small guns and weird pieces of armor, a cabinet full of documents I can’t read... There’s even a map here. And then, this huge box…” Lily went on, now in her inquisitive mode, while investigating the cabinets around the room with Shiro in tow. “I can’t see the connection as is, but this place seems like something important. Can you turn this thing on like you did with the door, Amy?”

“Hmmm… We could open the floor and make a direct connection, but…”

“Yeah, these cables seem way too thick for what we have to generate power…” Kuro added as she also approached the metal box.

“Not enough energy… I guess we’ll have to give up then.”

“I don’t think so.” Shiro suddenly spoke with her hands full of papers collected from one of the cabinets. “If these are right and that factory from earlier is what I think it is, then we may have a way to make this whole thing work.”

“What do you mean? There’s some trick to turning it on?”

“No, I don’t think so at least, but… Give me a moment, please.”

All eyes went to the white-haired student as she tried her best to decipher the ages-old papers before taking a picture with her notepad. She then proceeded to write some notes and scratch her head a little while still being the focus of attention before finally showing what she wanted: a map with many notes handwritten on it.

“This will do...” The less expressive twin pointed to a location on her map a quarter away from a place marked with ‘factory?’ and another with a note saying ‘weird box room’, a huge building with the inscription of ‘city’s power plant’.

“What if we brought this city back to life?”