This installment was inspired by Mirage's PA dialogue in Arkives. Initially, I thought Mirage actually tested her theory by jumping over the edge herself! But it seems really illogical and out of character now that I write and think more about this. Hehehe...
Log 01 - An Equal and Opposite Reaction . . . Begin!
The woes of a stumped and baffled inventor. Mirage could have sworn on her life that she had made it before, that she had on her own, no less, made that thing. That horrible, despicable, notoriously hard to make thing. But now, she couldn't even remember its name. After six failed attempts resulting in gaudy pairs of jewelry, the female martial artist gave up and quit Arkives' Eternal Sphere simulator with an uncharacteristic scowl.
What in the world am I going to do with these, anyway? Nobody in their right mind would want them...
With time to spare while Fayt putted around town, Mirage took a seat at the edge of one of the weird roadways, oddly left without safety rails or any way to prevent small children from sailing over the edges. It was another one of those fourth-dimension anomalies, ranking slightly above the endless skies below the citizen's feet. Under different circumstances, it might have been interesting to investigate the fourth dimension further.
What would happen if you fell over the edge...?
Suddenly, she came up with a solution to kill three birds with one stone, and to prove being blonde had nothing to do with intelligence. Those useless trinkets could be put to use! Fishing out a square-shaped hoop earring, Mirage promptly tossed it into the cloudy, blue abyss. No matter what happened to that abomination, it wasn't really a loss at this point.
And she waited.
And waited.
Waited.
"Ouch!" Something had jabbed her in the back, and as she looked behind herself, saw no man to accuse. Mirage did a double-take when she saw a faint sparkle on the ground; upon further inspection, it was definitely the earring the woman had discarded for the sake of science. Some phenomenon had caused its flight path to loop back to the platform, though whatever advanced technology actually caused it, it wasn't likely she'd ever find out. Nevertheless, Mirage found it fairly exciting that such things were possible, and felt the urge to test the system a little bit more. This time, she dropped the dud straight downwards and it landed beside her, bouncing slightly and falling back into the possibly artificial sky.
"It wouldn't be good if you somehow fell into an infinite loop..." Mirage wondered to herself, no longer paying attention to the object she discarded that recently dropped from the sky again. "They must have safeguards for that. Or else surely there would be objects continuously falling from above and back down, wouldn't there?"
It was basically self-confirmed that at the very least, small solids would always be returned to the walkway, but what troubled her now was what happened when the subject in question was large, or not solid matter, like a beam from a phase gun or the results of symbology. It was Mirage's lucky day...
No matter how Maria approached the situation, Mirage was looking increasingly insane. The woman in question was sitting on the side of the walkway, feet dangling over edge, and looked like she throwing things into the distance. Every now and then Mirage would look around suspiciously, smirk for a second, and then go back to whatever the heck she was doing in the first place. Quite bored herself, Maria let curiosity consume her and approached the apparently crazy blonde. "Hey, Mirage, what are you..." Maria said as she approached, pausing in the middle of her sentence because she could have sworn she heard the other woman giggle insanely for a second. "...Doing?"
"Oh, hello Maria." She stood up and stared at the younger girl for a few seconds. "Do you have your gun with you?"
"Yes... Why do you ask? And you haven't-" Maria answered as she was cut off by a very enthusiastic Mirage.
"Alright, now just stand right over there- Right, just on the edge. Now point your gun directly downwards, alright?"
"O-Okay, but what's the point to all this?" she complied, caught off-guard by the sudden orders.
"Pull the trigger." commanded the blonde, ignoring the other's question.
"You had better tell me what this is all about..." Maria said as she fired. The beam pierced the mass of clouds and sky and disappeared from sight. Mirage took a step away from the blue-haired girl knowingly and was met with a strange look from her. The blonde just smiled back and waited, hoping Maria wouldn't move. "Mir-AHHH!"
Mirage Koas, member of Quark, not-so-dumb-blonde, and martial arts master(?), did not in any way feel guilty. With all the innocence of a young child, she set up her presumably younger-sister-figure to test a horribly cruel theory. If you were to shoot a phase gun directly downwards, I bet it would come back and hit you in the head. Maria's sacrifice was for the sake of science.
And boy, was she correct. After waiting a few seconds, a beam of blue light shot straight down from the heavens, destined to hit the blue-haired girl in the middle of her head. So suddenly, that she didn't finish even the first word of her forming question.
"AHHH!" Maria screamed in the sort of way that if it weren't a life-or-death situation, was hilarious. Mirage took no time in realizing and reacting to this by laughing her head off. Her normally distinguished leader was now reduced to a pathetic-looking, smoldering little girl, filled with feelings of betrayal, and boy, did she find that funny. "M-Mirage, WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?"
"You- the earring...dropped it- came back..." the blonde choked out between spurts of laughter.
"Argh! You're just terrible!" Not fully comprehending what made the blast come back at her, but assuming the same things Mirage had, she kicked the woman off the edge with full force. Mirage actually dropped like a brick and for the most part, fell vertically, not horizontally. "Maybe I made a mistake... Nah, she deserved it!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!" came a shriek from somewhere above, barely giving warning and enough time for Maria to think "Not again..." As expected from the writer's sense of humor, that seemingly random falling object was Mirage, not immune to Arkives' safety features. Pointless description aside, it was pretty painful for the both of them, especially Mirage's back, being on the receiving of a kick similar to her own.
"On a better note, you're a great breakfall."
"Shut up!" Maria grumbled. "And get off of me. People are staring!"
"No, but thanks. I'm fine right here."
"Mirage, stop acting like Cliff and stand up on your own two feet. This isn't funny!"
"Oh, now you're using the ultimate insult!" Mirage finally stood up and turned around, smiling. She outstretched her arm towards her abused friend to help her up.
"Thanks."
Braindead and a lot of junk...