Gilded Ashes-Chapter 78: Spin Risk

Next day, Alteea led them into a hall that looked like a gymnasium designed by people who didn’t like floors staying still. She mumbled something about "finding your perfect vehicle" or something like that.

The space was long, divided into lanes by embedded rails and shallow grooves. Panels lined the walls - some flush, some extended at different angles, all adjustable. A grid of vents covered the ceiling, each one capable of opening into a vertical shaft. The floor was segmented into plates that could rise, tilt, or retract. Everything in the room moved or could move.

"Traversal gallery" Alteea said, glasses catching the overhead light. "Built for staff-users who blast themselves through the air instead of walking. It teaches control - or it teaches humility. Usually both."

Saffi stepped in behind her, quiet but with her slate ready.

Esen rolled his shoulders. His rings clicked softly, settling along his fingers. "You can save the tour, I move quite fine!"

Keahi tilted her head with a grimace. "Yeah, he does move fine. Like a very enthusiastic flea."

"Jealousy is an illness" Esen fought back, immitating her grimace, somehow ten times worse. "I hope you recover."

Alteea pointed at the nearest lane. "If you’re so confident – go on the trial one. Straight-line burst. Short pulse propulsion from here to the far wall." She paused for a split second. "Please stop in front of it before you hit it face-first. I wouldn’t want to see your cute faces squished!"

The far wall was smooth, white, and very solid.

Esen stepped onto the starting mark. "Watch and learn" he told everyone. (Mostly himself.) He lifted his hands - rings aligned and waking their shine up, elbows tucked - and fired.

The pulse was measured: a white-blue burst from both fists that launched him forward. His ginger hair snapped back. His baggy trousers flared. For the first three meters, it looked perfect.

...Then he accelerated faster than his feet were ready for. His upper body pulled ahead of his legs. Halfway down the lane, he made a sound that was either a laugh or the beginning of a panicked cry.

"Brake!" Arashi shouted.

"WITH WHAT!?" Esen screamed back.

He twisted his wrists for a counter-pulse. The rings fired – but it was way too powerful. He spun ninety degrees, then a full one-eighty, arms wide, hair everywhere. The safety cushion at the end of the lane inflated with a soft whump a stride before the wall. Esen hit it, staggered, and slowly got back on his feet. Then turned to face the group with his hands behind his back.

"First try" he said, smoothing his hair. "Mmm... It’s a calibration run, y’know?"

Alteea clapped twice, slowly. "Ten for drama. Four for the actual task." She flicked two fingers and the cushion deflated. "So you’re warmed up? Great! Course two, gate slalom."

Panels rose from the floor - a zigzag of gates, each one ringed with light that made them too colorful and too visible. Esen took a breath, rolled his shoulders, and launched with a smaller burst. He passed through the first gate. The second, then the third. On the fourth, he overcorrected.

He went through it sideways. His hip clipped the edge – a beep reminding him of his incompetence - and his momentum spun him backward. He blinked, righted himself mid-slide, and scraped through the last two gates facing the wrong direction, laughing hard enough that his aim suffered even more.

"Time?" he asked, breathing hard.

Saffi didn’t look up from her slate. She mumbled something in Alteea’s ear.

Nodding to Saffi, Alteea shouted. "Not competitive at all."

"Savage" Esen answered.

"Here’s something else" Alteea said. "Let’s see how good you are with vertical stuff."

Raizen was looking at the whole scene. If anything, it looked more like Alteea was trying to humiliate Esen in front of everyone for his self-confidence. He sighed.

With a soft metallic sound, vents opened in the floor. A column of air pushed upward through a grated pit - not enough to lift a person, but enough to completely destabilize one. A soft target ball dropped from the ceiling on a thin cable, swinging in the updraft.

"Launch up, catch it, come down in one piece" Alteea said. "That’s the whole test."

Esen squinted at the ball, then at his rings. "This is a trap" he told himself.

"What, you really thought it would have been simple?" Alteea chuckled.

Esen crouched, fired, and jumped, tryin to do all three at the same time. For a half-second he was flawless - body and shockwave aligned, rising straight. He reached for the ball, fingers brushing it -

The updraft pushed him left. His counter-burst overcorrected. He spun midair, clipped the ball with the back of his wrist – another beep, denied - and the safety cushion caught him on the way down. He landed on his side with his arm extended, reaching for a ball that was already swinging away.

Lynea, very gently: "You almost had it."

"I completely had it" Esen mumbled from the floor. "But the wind has personal beef with me now."

"Again?" Alteea asked, not holding back a smile.

Esen stood. "Again."

He missed again. He also laughed again - and this time it wasn’t covering anything. It was the honest sound of someone discovering how bad they are at something and deciding to finally enjoy the process. On the third attempt, his fingers closed around the ball just as the updraft tried to push him sideways, and the strangled screech he made when he held on was loud enough to echo off the ceiling.

"Better" Alteea said. "But I’m writing "high spin risk" in six language on your file."

"I prefer dynamic angular excellence" Esen corected, trying to imitate Arashi’s tone when he said something smart.

"Of course you do." Alteea winked. "Take a break. Most staff-users need about five weeks of daily work to get where you just got on try three. Be proud, not stupid about it."

Esen lowered his hands with exaggerated dignity. He raised his chin towards Saffi. "Compliments from Command. Please put that in my file too."

✦ ✦ ✦

Arashi had been watching with his arms folded and his weight on one leg - still, focused, cataloguing every detail of the room’s mechanics.

When Alteea looked at him, he didn’t wait for her to say anything. "I need height" he said. "And good angles. If I can’t see over the field, I’m half as useful. I need to be in the air."

Alteea’s expression softened. She bit on her finger as she thought for a few seconds. Then her face brightened. "Ohh, perfect! Come with me, all of you."

She led them down a few floors with the elevator, then through a pressure door into a research bay – an absurdly long room lined with workbenches, tool racks, and half-assembled components. Engineers in clean coveralls looked up as they entered.

"Where’s the deck?" Alteea shouted.

A technician with a buzzcut greeted Alteea with a small head nod, then rolled what looked like a metal plank out from a charging station. It was narrow - about a meter and a half long, fifty centimeters wide - with a shiny silver surface, recessed foot plates, and a thin luminite strip running down the centerline.

"Astra-203" the tech said proudly. "This one has better stabilized gyros, redundant propulsion, edge thrusters for micro-yaw. She’ll hold a steady platform better than solid ground if you learn her right."

"Why 203?" Arashi asked Alteea, voice barely above a whisper.

"Because it’s the two hundred and third attempt." Alteea answered, like it was the most normal answer.

Arashi ran his hand along the board’s edge. Smooth. Warm from the charging, but it cooled down fast. "Hello, beautiful" he said to it. "Do not betray me in front of my friends."

Keahi folded her arms. "If you fall, I will laugh politely."

"Rude" Arashi frowned. "But fair."

After taking it to a test room, he stepped on. The board adjusted under his weight - a tiny, live shift, the gyros finding his center of gravity and adjusting in real time. The tech clipped a tether to a belt he gave Arashi and stepped back.

"Assisted takeoff first" Alteea said. "Then we turn off the training wheels."

Arashi bent his knees. The board lifted - a handspan, then half a meter, then a full meter off the ground. His grin spread. He leaned forward and the deck responded: a clean, level glide across the bay. He drifted left, right, made a slow S-turn in the air.

"Good stuff" Ichiro said from the ground. "Steady enough to shoot from."

Arashi drew one pistol and raised it to a comfortable position. "Yes." He didn’t fire - nobody wanted holes in the ceiling - but he sighted down the barrel, and the difference was visible. On the ground, Arashi was accurate. On the board, with the gyros absorbing his micro-movements, he was like a moving turret.

"Kill the assist" Alteea smiled. That woman looked like watching people fail was a hobby she really liked.

The board instantly wobbled. Arashi’s knees flexed, his weight shifted, and the board steadied under him - not the machine correcting, but Arashi finding the balance point and holding it himself. He rode into a slalom, rotated in place with a tap of the edge thruster, and climbed a diagonal line along the wall that made Lynea gasp and Esen mutter about show-offs.

He tried a hard stop. Overshot by half a meter and bumped the safety with his shoulder. Soft impact. He adjusted his feet, tried again. This time the stop was... Decent.

"Up-and-stall" Alteea said. "Rise, cut forward momentum, hold position."

Arashi rose. Three meters. Five. Seven. Then he cut thrust and held - balanced on the board at the top of the climb, motionless, the gyros humming. He could control the whole thing with the way he moved his feet, the way he shifted his weight.

He tipped a fraction to the left and the board rolled with him, giving him a new angle without breaking the hover.

"Alright" he said. "I’m in love."

"Don’t marry it" Alteea shouted up. "Batteries don’t do personal vows."

"So I don’t have your blessing..." Arashi pouted.

"At least land before you propose" Alteea answered.

After Arashi landed, the buzzcut guy took the board back to its place, handling it carefully.

"Again" Arashi said.

"Woah there, mister in-love" Alteea told him. "Patience."

She looked at the Astra-203’s charging cradle, where the board sat with its settings still locked to factory default. Then, quieter - to herself, careful so nobody else would hear. Her eyes narrowed behind her glasses:

"It wasn’t calibrated to his weight or his height..."

"...So how did he stay on it at all?"