True to her word, Nika went directly to the new zone accessible to her, she dropped down from her Loftwing and entered the desert area.

She landed on a platform that seemed to be made exactly for that purpose, however, there seemed to be absolutely nothing around, the place looked to be even more broken down than the ruins in the woods, "Master." The spirits of the sword spoke up, "This area we're in appears to be completely uninhabitable for creatures that require water to survive." It explained before quieting down, leaving Nika to her devices.

"Hello?" Nika said, hoping to get a response from the spirit, nothing, "I guess I'm on my own this time." Nika accepted before making her way forward into what appeared to be a digging site or something, "Why would someone try to dig for materials in this place? Was it not always a desert?" She thought while walking, she stopped to push a cart which she used to climb over a ledge, after that she reached a deposit of some kind, a pedestal in the middle of it held a purple stone.

Looking around, there seemed to be no way forward, but there was something else that caught her interest, there was scrap, quite a lot of it, but it wasn't simple scrap, it was familiar, in the bazar on Skyloft there's a smithy and he always has a pile of junk on the counter, and it looked an awful lot like these things.

The fact that something from the surface somehow ended up in the sky confused Nika, the cloud barrier was supposed to not allow anyone to go down, or up, was it on Skyloft since before the barrier was formed? This was a question for later however seeing as the spirit finally decided to lend some advice, "Master, the stone in the middle, I sense a great amount of energy, I'm certain that if struck it will cause something to happen" It explained before quieting down once more.

Nika took her sword out of it's sheat and hit the stone with it, a moment later, it chenced to a shiny cyan and it's power activated, the circular area of the site went back in time, revealing it was once a place full of grass, the scrap piles even turned back to what they were, robots, the carts turned on and floated on the guideways, the doors reactivated and the way was freed.

Getting close to it didn't open it, so Nika got on one of the carts, it went through the door she was planning to cross, and behind it was again sand, but it was less, the stone power managed to cover a bit of that area, so half was sand, and half grass, the contrast was unreal.

Walking down the path, Nika had to cross quicksand, which wasn't difficult to do thanks to the Acceleration Engine,, but something was weird, she felt a bit tired this time, it wasn't that bad so she ignored it.

Here she reached the door that led out of the mines, finally getting out of the surprisingly depressing reality of time passing, even the exit, she had to activate another time stone to get out, reminding her again what the place was, but at last, she arrived in the desert itself.

Lanayru Desert.

It was even more sad somehow, from what she saw in the mine, the machinery seemed also full of life, as if the nature couldn't exist without it, it was clear that there was a bigger meaning to this place however, it wasn't clear what though, in the middle of a weird structure, there was just... Nothing, something was clearly missing.

Going towards the only way that wasn't covered in quicksand, she saw a three cages, one empty, one had a broken robot inside, the last one had rocks, the one with rocks was the more interesting one, maybe something was under them, so she place a bomb near it and blew them up, accidentaly activating a time stone in the process.

She didn't notice that there were piles of bones in the area that was sent back in time, so when she turned around, it was quite surprising when she saw two of those red moster which seemingly appeared out of nowhere, both of them dressed in weird suits and holding electric wands.

"Where did you come from!?" Nika exclaimed, but got a hit on the head from the electric wand instead of an answer, the electricty did nothing though, "Oh right, rubber." Nika remembered and used the moment of confusion the monsters had from this to slice them down, the defeat of the two made the cage holding the robot open, and it hurried to Nika.

"Hey! Thank you for defeating those guys! How can I thank you?" It asked before noticing Nika's beetle, "Hey you have a beetle, but it's quite an old model, if you want I can upgrade it to hook beetle, it'll allow you to grab things from a distance." The robot suggested, but Nika shook her head in denial "No, no, grabbing things from a distance is something I can already do with this." She explained before showing her stretching ability.

The robot seemed surprised at this, "Wait, you ate the Hito Hito no mi Model: Nika!?" It exclaimed in surprise, "The what?" Nika asked in return, "Maybe you know it as the Gomu Gomu no mi? It was mislabeled due to it giving rubber properties to it's user." The robot explained clarifing what it meant.

Nika of course was confused, it still gave her rubber powers, what would change? In any case, the robot grabbed the beetle from Nika's wrist and started working on something, "Well, since you don't need the hook model, I'll make something else." The robot said as it finished working on the upgrade and gave it back to Nika, this time it had a weird sack underneath, this was weird for Nika, but the robot explained what it did new, "You see, this upgrade allows the beetle to hover in place, suck in different substances and shoot them out, the sack is elastic so don't worry about it running out of space, oh and it can also carry bigger things, but you have to place them in manually."

The improved beetle seemed useful, maybe removing dust or carrying liquids, "Thank you, by the way, I need to reach a temple, do you know where it is?" Nika asked, the robot nodded and handed Nika a map, "You see, the entrance to the temple is broken so you'll have to go through the alternate entrance in the Mining Facility, the map has the key points and here are the notes on what to do.

"Thank you and see ya!" Nika waved goodbye before checking the map and notes, this is gonna take a while.