The mining laser was heavier than Akiko remembered.

Back on the entity's station when she'd first taken it, she'd been flush with more mana than she could burn and high on adrenaline.

She paused, breath catching. Glanced down at her arms like they'd betrayed her.

She'd always been slight, but… were they thinner than before? No. Couldn't be. Not after everything she'd been through.

The damned mining rig must have known how badly she needed it, and decided to gain mass out of spite.

She gritted her teeth, tail flicking with stubborn energy, and shoved it toward the corridor near the Driftknight's fabricator, magboots scraping against the deck with every lurch.

Tanya followed, arms crossed, her expression steeped in skepticism.

"You sure you want to drag that thing all the way to the fabricator?" she asked. "It's not exactly plug-and-play."

Akiko smirked. "It's not going to fix itself, is it?"

The fabricator workshop was cramped and cluttered, tool racks crammed against the bulkheads, half-finished projects hovering where they'd been left in a hurry.

Akiko released the laser with a grunt, letting it drift awkwardly until Tanya caught it and latched it to a tether.

Tanya brushed her hands off. "All right. You said you've got schematics. Let's see them."

Akiko tapped her necklace, focusing. A thin pulse of mana flickered through the link, and the schematic shimmered into being between them, lines and symbols hovering midair, spinning slowly. The hybridized rig, refined in her inner space, was now real enough to touch.

Tanya leaned in, eyes narrowing as she scanned the projection. The skepticism wavered, slipping toward awe.

"This is…" she trailed off, tracing one of the light streams with her fingertip. "You're splicing a mana core into a conventional power system and routing it through this laser? Do you even know how many variables that introduces?"

Akiko shrugged. "That's why I've got you."

Tanya let out a low whistle. "You're insane. This is leagues beyond what we've tried. You want it precise? You're going to be here for days just fabricating the casings, assuming the system doesn't melt itself."

She gave Akiko a sideways glance. "You remember the drive cone retrofit, right?"

Akiko's grin twitched. "We figured it out."

"After nearly cooking the whole ship twice," Tanya muttered. "Just don't expect this to be quick. Or clean."

"I don't," Akiko said, softer now. "I just need to know we're doing something. That we're building toward it."

Tanya studied her for a beat, then sighed. "Well, you've got me curious. But you're not watching from the sidelines. You're in this, too."

"Wouldn't dream of skipping out," Akiko said, giving a half-mocking salute. "Where do we start?"

Tanya groaned and rubbed her temples. "We start by feeding this madness into the system. If the fabricator doesn't throw a tantrum, we'll see what pieces we can actually make, and which ones we'll have to invent."

Akiko stepped back as Tanya began feeding the schematics in, fingers moving in crisp patterns across the interface. One by one, segments of the plan began to register, green-lit and tagged for fabrication.

Hours into the process, Tanya muttered something about letting the printer queue, her voice distant, already drifting off toward the corridor. Probably to grab coffee or complain to someone who'd actually argue back.

Akiko stayed behind. The silence settled thick in her ears once the door hissed closed.

She leaned against the fabricator, still warm with the queue. One hand braced near the control panel, the other pressed flat over her ribs.

The wound was days old. A parting gift from the monstrous thing that had clubbed her across the scaffolding. It had scabbed over, healed halfway, sealed again with every patch-job and half-rest, then torn open the next time she moved like she wasn't broken.

She didn't know when it had started bleeding again. Maybe when she'd dragged the mining laser across the corridor. Maybe when she'd twisted to get a difficult interior component.

Maybe it had never really stopped. Her palm came away wet.

She exhaled slowly. Stared at her hand like it belonged to someone else.

The workshop door hissed open behind her.

She turned instinctively, pulling her arm behind her back in one fluid motion. Too slow.

Raya stood in the doorway. Her gaze flicked to the globules of blood drifting in the air between them.

Then to Akiko's ribs. She didn't hesitate.

"You're reckless," she said quietly. "Hold still."

Stolen story; please report.

Akiko froze.

The words slammed into her harder than any gunship impact. For a moment she couldn't breathe, couldn't think. Just stood there, spine tight, mouth parted, everything inside her skidding sideways.

That voice, that tone...

Kaede had said the same thing once.

Back on the crumbling rooftop, after another skirmish gone wrong.

She'd been furious. Hands glowing. Bandages shaking.

"You're reckless. Hold still."

Akiko blinked hard.

By the time she focused again, Raya was in front of her, crouched.

The fabric of Akiko's suit split open at her touch. Unbidden, automatic, like it knew better than Akiko did what she needed.

Raya's hands were steady, impersonal. But her jaw was tight.

"You didn't say anything," she murmured.

"It wasn't that bad," Akiko said reflexively.

The silence that followed felt louder than any accusation.

Raya pressed a cloth against the wound. Her movements were gentle. Deliberate. She didn't speak again.

Akiko didn't fight it. She stayed still, eyes unfocused, throat tight.

Raya could have used her nascent magic to heal the wound, but Akiko understood why she wouldn't. It was still new, not understood.

In a world ruled by diagnostics and data, not knowing how magic knit the wound meant not knowing what else it might change. The shape of the tissue. The underlying nerves. The code of a body built for a different system.

Maybe Raya didn't say it aloud because she didn't need to. In Eridani, guessing was a risk. And Raya didn't guess.

The workshop door slid open again.

Tanya stepped in, pausing just long enough to take in the scene: Akiko still seated on the bench, suit pulled aside, Raya crouched beside her, blood-dark cloth in hand.

She didn't say anything. Just gave Akiko a flat look that said I told you this was a bad idea without needing the words.

Raya stood slowly, folding the cloth once, then again, pressing it into Akiko's hand. Her expression was controlled, but her shoulders were rigid. She didn't speak, didn't meet Tanya's eyes.

She left the room with a silent rustle of air. The door sealed behind her.

Tanya let out a long breath and rubbed the back of her neck. "So. Still planning to build your ridiculous cannon?"

Akiko managed a shrug, the cloth clenched in her fingers. "Not giving up now."

"Of course not," Tanya muttered, crossing to the fabricator. "Let's see if it's still in one piece."

Tanya crouched beside the mining laser, her movements sharp and deliberate as she began prying open the outer casing.

Each removed panel exposed another knot of strange components: etched crystal veins pulsing faintly, spiraled coils, conduits laced with the afterglow of spent mana.

Akiko hovered nearby, arms crossed, the cloth tucked in her belt. She watched in silence for a moment, letting Tanya settle into the rhythm.

Tanya gave a low whistle. "This is... something else. I don't even know where to start. These crystals, are they power sources? Or conduits?"

"They're mana conduits," Akiko said quietly. "The mana flows through them like veins. They channel into the focusing mechanism." She tapped the edge of the barrel. "That's what generates the beam."

Tanya squinted, fingers brushing along the coils near the base. "This whole stabilization array, it's way too much. It's like someone tried to strap a storm into a glass bottle. The power draw must've been absurd."

"It was," Akiko murmured. "Back on the entity's station, I fired it a few times. It burned through every drop of mana I had in seconds. Like trying to run a fusion drive off a necklace charm."

Tanya gave her a sideways look but didn't comment. "Whoever built this thing wasn't aiming for efficiency. They just wanted raw output. This could probably punch through a cruiser if you fed it enough juice."

"Yeah," Akiko said. Her tail gave a slow flick. "And if we want to make it usable, we'll have to strip it down to something sane."

Tanya snorted. "You say that like it's easy."

Akiko offered the ghost of a grin. "I just come up with the ideas. You're the one with the toolbox."

Tanya rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitched. "Great. Your ideas better come with coffee and patience."

Together, they got to work, laying out each piece, separating usable tech from the magical unknowns. Mana conduits and runed cores glowed faintly where they'd been set aside; the stabilization coils and emitter housing joined a growing pile of salvageable components.

Tanya paused, frowning at a crystalline structure near the base. "This regulator, it's meant to channel mana evenly, but it's behaving like it's waiting for something else. A sync we don't have."

Akiko leaned closer. "Like another system?"

"Maybe. Could be something the entity had integrated. Or maybe this just wasn't designed to work alone."

Akiko exhaled through her nose. "So... magical death laser, version one, refuses to play nice with mortal hardware. Great."

"Pretty much," Tanya said, leaning back. "But that's the job, right? Take the impossible. Start sanding it down."

Akiko looked at the parts. At the gleaming fragments of something too big, too strange, too much. Her ribs still ached faintly beneath the bandages. Her head buzzed with fatigue.

But she nodded anyway.

"Piece by piece," she said. "We'll make it ours."

Subskill Acquisition (Magitech Integration): Fusion Interface Theory– 25.5% milestone achieved.

Hours later, the workshop was a storm of floating parts and tools, the disassembled mining laser occupying most of the space like the wreck of something half-remembered. Components hovered in slow drift, caught in the soft pull of the ship's inertia.

Tanya floated near the back wall, unsealing a container marked with hazard labels. Something inside caught the light. Sleek, compact, gleaming with precise etching and reinforced ports.

Akiko's ears perked. "Is that—?"

Tanya glanced over, a crooked smirk tugging at her mouth. "Yup. One micro-fusion core, courtesy of the pirate frigate. Salvage crew pulled it just before we burned for rendezvous."

Akiko drifted closer, eyes widening. The core looked pristine. Efficient. Dangerous.

"Perfect," she breathed. "If we can integrate that into the hybrid rig, it might actually work."

Tanya's expression shifted. Less amusement now, more calculation. She turned the core in her hands, inspecting the connections like she was already troubleshooting failure scenarios.

"This thing could run half the Driftknight," she said. "Stupidly efficient. Stable. And worth more than every other piece of salvage we've got, combined."

Akiko felt the cold drop in her chest before Tanya even said it.

"You know what that means."

She didn't answer. Just stared at the core, already seeing the argument she'd have to make.

Tanya set the unit down gently on the workbench. "Before we so much as think about hooking this up to your overgrown wand, you're going to have to get Kara on board. And I mean fully, no-takebacks."

Akiko's tail flicked with restrained frustration. "It's exactly what we need. If the hybrid system works, it'll be worth ten times whatever we'd get selling it raw."

Tanya raised an eyebrow. "Maybe. But Kara's not big on ifs. You know her, she likes plans with guardrails and fallback options. This?" She gestured to the scattered array of parts. "This is a blueprint held together with optimism and duct tape."

Akiko bit down on her retort. Tanya wasn't wrong. Kara didn't bet the crew's survival on theory. She wasn't built that way.

Still… this core could change everything.

"What do you think my chances are?" Akiko asked.

Tanya shrugged, floating back toward the tether rail. "Depends. If you pitch it like a reckless gamble? Zero. If you make her believe this is a tool, not just for your project, but for the ship... maybe."

Akiko nodded, the shape of the argument already forming.

"I'll talk to her," she said.

Tanya's smirk returned, crooked and weary. "Good luck, little fox. You're going to need it."

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