Work Text:
Last week when we were working on a group project last Saturday together Luz brought up that she thinks that she could create a portal back to Amphibia. I would take any chance no matter how small to get back to my frog family so I jumped right on it. That's why I’m meeting Luz in the woods during the weekend. I arrive at the spot that Luz told me she’ll be meeting me at. It’s a secluded area in the worried area near the frog pond I often visit. It’s already the time we said we’d met but Luz isn’t there. I’m not really mad as it gives me a chance to center myself so I don’t do anything stupid if we actually see Amphibia or get too bummed if we don’t. I do this while I get acquainted with the area.
Luz arrives about 15 minutes later while I was observing a salamander, that kinda looks like lady Oliva, climbing around on a log. It looks like Luz ran the entire way here by how exhausted and sweaty she looks. She says. “Sorry, I’m late. I got held up by King when picking materials at the owl house.”
“It's fine I wasn’t waiting long.” Not necessarily true but making Luz feel guilty isn’t something I want especially now. “So is this gonna work?”
“Eh don’t worry Anne, I've made a portal before.” She doesn’t sound quite confident. Luz apparently picks up on my doubt in her confidence as she amends the previous statement. “Well almost created one but I’m sure I can do it now!”
“Then how do we do this?” It's not right to make Luz do all the work for something I asked for and besides I want to know how to create a portal in case I get stuck on either side of the dimensional wall again.
“Well, first off you need a door and a frame with some specific glyph combinations carved into it.” Luz pulls out a trapdoor from behind her. There were some shapes carved into the frame that I have no hope of memorizing at a glance. I can probably just ask Luz about them later and she’ll gladly tell me. She loves gushing about magic despite being exposed to it for so long.
“Next we need some titan blood. Luckily being basically brothers with one made this a breeze to get. Well not a breeze, King complained the whole time.” Luz puts the trap door down onto the ground and pulls out a vial of dark liquid. She then smashes the vial onto the face of the trap door.
“No lastly so it doesn’t connect to the boiling isles. I need you to transfer some of the funky blue energy you have into the door.” Makes enough sense from my limited knowledge of portals. I crouch down and start trickling in my calamity energy. I should be careful, I don’t want to exhaust it and lose my last definite connection there. “Okay, keep putting it in while I open it.” Luz pulls open the trap door and reveals a brown, black, and blue swirl. As I put more energy into the door the mixture becomes more blue until it takes over all doors. The blue begins to settle and becomes more like a window.
Oh frog, it's actually Amphibia. I’d recognize that rainforesty glory anywhere. Ooh, look there is even a Kill-a-piller.
BOOM!
The portal explodes. I would later learn it was because I lost control and put too much power in. Luz joked that she should get a bigger door next time. And thankfully Luz is happy to help build another one.
Stan and Ford were currently on a trip to Japan. They made the trip to talk with a couple where one of them had a similar curse to the one Ford picked up in China. Though theirs was gender-related. Stan has been enjoying this trip much more than the China one. After all, there is much more to do around Tokyo than there was in backwater China. The couple was nice too.
However, currently they weren’t with the couple or anywhere Stan would find super interesting. Instead, Ford had dragged him to a random shopping center. Now Ford is waving around his instruments around the entrance of the place. Stan says. “So what are we exactly looking for here?”
“Well, Stanly where is eminence temporal energy emanating from this area? This very mall could hold the secrets of time travel!”
“Really Ford. Time traveling using a shopping center. How would someone even use a mall to time travel? Now a hot tub, that would make sense.” As he was saying this a girl in a school uniform walks into the shopping center and disappears at the threshold of the entrance in clear view of the brothers.
“Like that young lady, I imagine.” Says Ford slightly smugly.
“God damn it! You didn’t know that would happen. Pure luck!”
Ignoring the outburst Ford asks. “So Stanly want to try time travel?” He holds his hand out towards Stan and prepares to cross the threshold of the entrance.
Stan takes the hand. “I don’t just stepping through will activate it. If so, a lot more people would be time traveling.” The brothers step through the threshold and appear at the entrance to not the shopping center but an old-timey Japanese village. “We’re not just gonna be handed one million dollars.” Ford gives Stan a look but he just responds with. “Look I was instantly proven wrong twice today just seeing if I could use it for good.”
I had recently had an idea to recreate a computation orb in this version of the modern world. Probably cheaper concerning the wonder of globalization and free trade. Also better as it would be free from the influence of being X. The idea came to me when I relaxed that the main job of computation orbs was to help a mage with the calculations needed for spells and a computer was basically made with the job to help with calculations. So a while ago I ordered a miniature motherboard. It took a while and a few research binges on computer science but I got the board to accept magic as an input and that finished magic equation as an output. For my test, I asked Professor Liddell to help me in case something went wrong. Safety first, I’m not Schugel. We currently stand in an abandoned sand pit about an hour away from campus, or a few seconds if you can teleport like Professor Liddell.
“Alright. Beginning test one of the Razzberry type-1 computation orb.” I look over to Professor Liddell where she’s recording the test with my phone so I can review it from a different angle later. She gives me a thumbs up and I start pumpkin a simple flight function into the metal-encased motherboard. The moment I activate the spell I rocket up insanely fast and within seconds I’m already at the height of airplanes and not slowing down. I cut off the mana but that does little to stop the momentum and I don’t trust myself to reverse the momentum when my last spell did this. While trying to figure out a solution Professor Liddell appears right above me with her mouth wide open. It closes and I enter oblivion.
When I was forced out of oblivion it felt like both centuries and no time had passed. I’m not laying on the ground and soaking wet in some liquid. I still hold my makeshift computation orb and as I bring it up to get a view of it I realize my mistake. With only 4 cores I could generate destruction on level with a nuclear blast. The processing unit on the board had about 20 if I remember right. Even if a core of the clockwork orbs was comparable to a core of modern engineering that's still a 4x increase in power of computation. So the motherboard just produced a flight spell that was just too efficient. Next time I should limit the amount of processing power the board can access, but now I have to clean myself. ”Thank you for the save, Professor.” I start making the drive back so I can take a shower.