Gilded Ashes-Chapter 79: Warn All Ceilings

"Well... That’s two down" Alteea said, clapping once. "Egos bruised the correct amount. Who’s next?"

"Lynea" Raizen said. He tipped his chin toward her boots. "You’ve got your fragments. Maybe you could shape them into - wheels?"

"Wheels?" Lynea asked, blinking in confusion.

"Something like skates. Small rings, near your ankles? So they match your balance."

The engineers along the wall straightened. Saffi’s stylus stopped mid-stroke.

Lynea looked at her hands, and frowned. A soft chime answered - fragments lifted from the inside her sleeves, dozens of small pieces rising.

"Ohh, so that’s where you’ve been hiding them!" Esen laughed out loud, silenced by Hikari’s look that warned him about another possible kick in the shin.

The fragments circled her heels, clicked into each other, forming crescents beneath each sole, then overlapped and locked until two smooth rings remained in the air, right next to her ankles, keeping her somehow levitated.

Lynea shifted her weight forward.

Her knees wobbled. Her hands swung up for balance. The rings spun under her and she slid a half-meter, then quickly caught herself. After a second of silence, she pushed again, gentler this time. The rings responded smoother, steadier. The adjustment started in her ankles, then climbed through her knees to her hips. The next pass was a straight line, slow and half-controlled. The one after was a careful curve.

Keahi whistled. "Oh, that’s nice."

Esen, towel draped over his head, raised one hand in protest. "I lodge a complaint. She brought her own wheels!"

"Complain to the wall" Alteea said. "I encourage bringing your own toys if it gets my people home alive."

Lynea leaned into her left heel. The left ring slowed; the right spun faster. She carved a figure-eight down the center of the room - smooth, banking turns, weight shifting from edge to edge. On the turns, individual fragments adjusted their positions: the ones under her heel widening their position for stability, the ones under the ball of her foot angling for better grip. A few close-by engineers watched the whole scene, then looked at each other, with the surprised kind of wide eyes.

Lynea tried something harder this time, building real speed down a walkway. The fragments buzzed at a higher pitch. She banked into the turn at the far end, leaned too far, and nearly lost it. Luckily, she caught herself with one hand grazing the floor, and came up safely. The second figure-eight was faster. The third was almost smooth.

"Obstacles?" Saffi asked with a low voice.

"Obstacles" Alteea agreed.

Led by Saffi, Lynea stepped in a proper training room, right next to the one where Esen kissed the walls. Panels were already risen from the floor, and a polished rail unfolded along one side - half a meter high, narrow, smooth.

"Don’t" Arashi said. Which, from Arashi, meant absolutely do.

Lynea went for the rail.

First try: she ended up beside it, on the ground, laughing quietly at herself. Second try: she committed too early, the rings clipped the metal, and she hopped off with a surprised squeal. Third try: she didn’t think. She let the rings carry and her knees adjust. She slid along the rail for three meters and hopped off the end with a small hop.

"Let’s see... Curbs?" Alteea asked, looking at Saffi, who was already nodding.

Steps extended from the wall - shallow stairs. Lynea approached them carefully. Up was easy: the rings climbed the edges, changing their form, unraveling slightly, ready to grip the next stair. The way down took nerve, though. She rolled to the top step, kept her knees soft, and let the rings drop - catching her each step, one after another, then almost fell on the landing.

Lynea, cheeks bright, looked at Raizen. It was his idea. As an answer, he nodded shortly. It might have been his idea, but she was the one making it real.

"Last bit" Alteea said, clicking her tongue. "Columns."

She made Esen carry four support columns from a storage room and set them at intervals across the floor. Lynea looked at them for a few seconds, with disbelief. Then she approached the first, leaned into a wide spiral, and the rings followed - she curved around the column in a half-turn. On the second, she tightened the radius. On the third, she tucked one knee and whipped a fast circle that lifted her hair off her shoulders.

She rolled to a stop in front of Alteea, breathing hard, letting out a small smile. Her cheeks were bright red. The fragments floated in the air now, warm from friction, still spinning.

"Name it" Esen said excitedly, like giving your weapon a name was normal.

Lynea blinked. "I don’t -"

"Good work" Alteea interrupted, almost disappointed she didn’t make Lynea fall. "Controlling fragments while moving at speed? That’s not beginner-level. That’s instinct."

Lynea looked at Raizen. He was leaning against the wall with his arms folded, and he was watching her with the expression he got when something he’d imagined turned out to work. He gave Lynea the kind of expression that meant "What’re you looking at me for? You did it."

Lynea looked proud. Tried to hide it, but gave up after a few seconds. "Thank you" she said to nobody in particular.

✦ ✦ ✦

"From clever to chaotic" Alteea said, looking at something Saffi was showing her on the tablet. "Feris?"

Feris hugged the whale plushie – yes, she still carried it around like she couldn’t live without it, realized she was about to move, and shoved it into Lynea’s arms. "Hmm... I want something that spins" she announced. "Really fast."

"Oh no..." Esen gasped.

"Then I have a museum piece for you." Alteea said.

They left through a side corridor. The room they entered was near the corridor’s end - half-archive, half-workshop: racks of retired prototypes, labeled drawers, dead projects stacked on shelves. But they all looked mantained, somehow. Somewhere on the side wall, mounted on a stand, sat a harness with two folded nacelles attached to a central spine. Each nacelle could swing outward into a wing-length brace. Thin nozzles studded the rims. The straps were old but conserved, with a few traces of being worn. The whole thing looked like it had been through ten pilots and outlasted all of them.

Saffi read the placard. "Vector Gyropack, twin spin. Design: Professor Eiden."

"Professor Eiden?" Arashi said.

"The guy was head of engineering for a long while" Alteea said. "Brilliant, truly a genius. I remember he never slept enough. This was his personal project for about a decade. Most pilots couldn’t handle the torque - it spun them out before they could correct. We had to cancel it after the third back injury." She tapped the frame. "But if you want spin..."

Feris was already stepping toward it. "Absolutely."

"Listen" Alteea said. The flirt dropped out of her voice. "You put your hands where I tell you, not where your excitement tells you. I want all your teeth in the same arrangement when we’re done."

Feris nodded fast.

A few engineers moved in, at Alteea’s orders. Straps, buckles, safeties, a chest clip. A secondary harness around her thighs. One tech plugged a diagnostic line into the spine of the prototype, checked the readout, and stepped back.

"Half throttle to lift" Alteea said. "Quarter on the right wing yaws you left. Don’t go full power if you don’t want to stick your head through the ceiling. Got it?"

"Yes."

"Go."

Feris thumbed the controls. The nacelles unfolded - swinging outward into position with a mechanical hiss. Twin columns of air pushed down and she rose. Just a bit, then a handspan.

She grinned, then nudged a stick. The pack shifted left, smooth and responsive.

"Pretty, but I want to spin" Feris said, and didn’t wait for Alteea’s approoval.

She rolled her wrists and angled both nacelles off-center. The gyropack rotated her - Feris laughing on each pass. On the tenth rotation she pushed the right control too hard. The spin accelerated. Her body whipped sideways, arms wide, legs trailing.

Foam panels burst from the walls, just like they did with Esen. Feris bounced off one, tumbled through the air with her pink ponytail horizontal, and came down on a sprung mat on her knees. She was laughing so hard she had to cover her mouth to breathe properly.

Arashi made a strangled noise. "I can’t decide if that was majestic or a medical emergency."

"Both" Esen said. "It’s badass, I would have wanted to use that thing."

"You’re banned from using it" Alteea immediately answered, not even looking at Esen. "Your rings spin you enough"

Then she turned towards Feris again. "This time, when the spin accelerates, don’t fight it - ease it back to center."

Feris wiped her eyes. "Yes."

The second time, she paid attention to the resistance in the controls before committing. The gyropack’s torque wasn’t random - Feris spent the first ten seconds just tilting them in small adjustments.

Then she let the spin build. Slowly. Her body rotated once in three seconds, then once in two. The nacelles’ exhaust made two rings of extremely-pressured air that ruffled hair and fluttered papers on the engineers’ clipboards. Feris widened the spin radius by angling her body - leaning out from center, arms extended - then pulled tight and the rotation sped up, the same principle as a skater tucking their arms.

"Haa, she looks like a corkscrew" Esen joked from the sides.

Feris angled the exhausts and rose in a spiral - climbing and spinning at the same time, arms tucked. At the top of the room she stopped the spin, and hovered - three meters of empty air between her boots and the floor.

"Professor Elvis would cry" Alteea said, covering half her face with her palm. "If anyone asks, I did not authorize this."

Saffi, without looking up: "No logging. Understood."

Feris tried a lateral burst and nearly collided with the wall. Foam panels fired again, but there was no need. The engineers flinched anyways. Alteea snatched Saffi’s slate pen and wrote a note on the screen: STATUS: EXTREMELY FERIS. WARN ALL CEILINGS.

"Alright" Alteea said when Feris landed for the third time - cheeks red, hair wild, chest heaving. "We’ll refit the harness for your frame and add a kill switch somewhere very accessible. No full spins indoors without three foam layers and a lawyer."

"Unfair" Feris said, twisted, trying to take the machine off of her while fighting off two engineers that tried to help.

When she finally managed to do it, Lynea handed back the whale. Feris hugged it with a grip that would have made the gyropack controls break completely.

✦ ✦ ✦

They walked back toward the main corridor. Esen bumped Arashi’s shoulder, trying to tease him. Arashi answered with a bump that almost made Esen fall.

Saffi glanced at Alteea. "Schedule for next?"

Alteea looked over her shoulder at the eight. Her eyes stopped two of them.

"Hmm... We did flying while spinning, we did flying normally, we did skating and we did chaos" she said. "I think it’s time for cuteness and fire."

Hikari stepped closer to Alteea. Keahi rolled her shoulders slowly, the way she did before sparring.

"So? Where are we going?" Arashi asked.

"Vehicle level" Alteea answered. "A whole floor of bikes, cars, drones, and a few things that might be crimes in other cities."

She turned 180 degrees in front of the elevator, making Saffi flinch.

"Keahi. Hikari. You’re up."