Ch 2: Pancakes and Explosions

Dropping the F-bomb in front of Mina was not the dumbest mistake Rom had ever made but it definitely ranked up there with her drunken attempts to use a Bombchu as a sled. Thankfully, Mina had apparently been feeling rather merciful that day as she had only used three bars of soap to wash out her mouth with rather than the expected ten.

After surviving through that humiliating ordeal, Rom had been too drained to do anything else other than to stumble back to her room. Deciding to put her issues on hold for the time being, she had sneaked back into bed with the full intention of sleeping in until noon.

Unfortunately, she forgot to take into account one very important and loud detail.

"Hey Rom! Wake up! Mina's making us pancakes!"

Rom simply let out an irritated and tired groan as she tried her best to ignore her twin sister. A rather futile effort though considering Ram was currently shaking her with enough force to make the entire bed shake.

"Come on, Rom! It's pancakes! Pancakes!"

Rom gave a wince as she was sure that even the people down in Leanbox heard that last shout.

"Leave me alone Ram," she mumbled out. "I've had a long night."

"You went to bed at the same time as me! Now get up, get up, get up!"

Apparently deciding she needed some further encouragement, Ram grabbed her pillow and began to playfully whack her over the head with it.

Knowing that trying to continue sleeping in this situation was a lost cause, Rom reluctantly pulled herself up with another groan.

"Why couldn't I have ended up in a time period when I had my own room already?" she muttered groggily to herself.

Ram stopped smacking her with the pillow as she shot her a confused look.

"Huh? Time period? What are you talking about?"

Rom covered for her slip-up with a tired sigh. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

Her twin did not seem convinced though as she leaned in closer to inspect her.

"Are you feeling okay Rom? You're acting a bit weird."

Suppressing her urge to give a snarky retort, Rom dismissed her sister's concern with a wave of her hand.

"I'm fine Ram. I'm just still feeling a bit sleepy. Don't worry about it."

Seeing Ram continue to give her a worried look, she gave another sigh.

"Really, I'm fine. Why don't you go tell Mina to make us some extra pancakes? I'm sure that'll cheer me up."

This did the trick in distracting her sister as she immediately tossed aside her pillow and zoomed out of the room with enough speed to leave behind an afterimage.

"At least dealing with her is the same as ever," Rom grumbled.

Deciding she might as well go and wash her face, she lethargically got out of bed...

only to trip over the pillow that Ram had left on the floor.

"Son of a-!"

"Pancake! Pancake! Yummy yummy pancake!"

Ram's cheerful chanting greeted Rom as she slowly dragged herself into the dining room.

"Ah! You're finally here Rom!" the younger twin called out upon noticing her. "You're such a slow-"

The rest of her words died off as she fully took in the state her sister was in.

"Don't ask," Rom grunted out, her face and hair still smoking a bit in places as she shuffled her way towards the dining table.

In hindsight, she really should have known better than to try and obliterate the offending pillow with an Armageddon spell in her current state (keyword being 'try'). For that matter, using a spell like that was a bad idea in general but venting her frustrations with explosive magic was a bad habit of hers that she had developed as a teenager and had never been able to break.

Ignoring Ram's open-mouthed stare, Rom took a seat across from her with a world-weary sigh.

"Ugh. I can't believe I'm saying this but I'd much rather deal with paperwork instead," she let out in a disgruntled voice.

Ram did not get a chance to question this as Mina chose this moment to appear before them carrying a large serving dish piled high with what could only be described as the Leaning Tower of Pancakes.

"Sorry about the wait you two! Now who's ready for some- Rom!" The towering stack of pancakes wavered dangerously as the Oracle stopped in surprise upon seeing the Candidate's disheveled form. "What happened to you? Were you experimenting with magic without my supervision again?!"

Rom immediately jerked up in fear at her nanny's stern tone. Realizing that telling Mina the truth would probably get her into more trouble, she decided to simply go along with the story she had been provided with.

"I'm sorry Mina!" Rom squeaked out. "I... I just... um... read about this new fire spell and I really wanted to try it out. I'm sorry about doing it without your permission."

Deciding to play it safe, she even gave out a small dose of her puppy-dog eyes.

While it had been a long, long, time since she had been able to utilize her child cuteness like this, it seemed she still retained her knack for it as Mina's disapproving expression quickly crumpled.

"Please be more careful Rom," the Oracle sighed, putting down the large plate of pancakes onto the table. "I understand you're eager to learn new spells but trying them out without first learning how to properly control them is extremely dangerous."

Rom barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes at this. After all, it was not like she was a recognized professor in her timeline with a PhD in practically every field of magic imaginable or anything.

Still, she knew Mina had no way of knowing this so she decided to simply accept the advice for what it was and nodded her head.

The Oracle seemed pleased with this response and was just about to let her off the hook when Ram spoke up.

"You learned a new spell? Oh! Is that why our bed looked a bit burnt this morning? Did you try it out last night and set it on fire?"

Rom had never wanted to chuck something at her sister's face as much as she did right then.

The rest of breakfast passed by rather uneventfully following the massive scolding she got from Mina.

Once they were done with their meal, the Oracle told her and Ram that they were free for the rest of the day as she had some important meetings to deal with. As Mina left the room with the dirty plates, Rom immediately decided to use this opportunity to head towards the library to gather some more information.

Sadly, her plans were waylaid the moment she reached the dining room door.

"Hey Rom! Let's go play some Super Smash Sisters!"

Rom barely had time to face her twin before Ram grabbed her by the hand and tried to drag her towards their room. Unfortunately, the sudden tug ended up offsetting Rom's precarious sense of balance which resulted in her face-planting onto the floor yet again.

"Gah-!"

"Ah! I'm sorry Rom!"

It was a good thing her sister apologized right away or Rom really might have exploded right there. Even so, she could not help but mutter darkly as Ram helped her back onto her feet.

After dusting herself off, she raised her head to find her twin looking at her with a surprised look.

"What?" Rom snapped, not bothering to hide the irritation in her voice.

Ram simply continued to giver her a baffled stare for a few seconds before finally responding.

"You're... not crying?"

"Why the fu... I mean, why would I cry over something like this?"

It was only after seeing Ram's disbelieving face that Rom's stressed out mind remembered that she was currently back in her child body.

"Oh... right..."

Realizing the sticky situation she had put herself in, Rom debated whether or not she should just tell Ram the truth. After a quick thought though, she decided against it. While she had no qualms about altering the past, causing too many reckless changes this early on could potentially lead to the timeline veering off in an unpredictable and dangerous direction. While she normally would have been confident enough in her abilities to deal with any new threats that arose, her current body was far too handicapped for her to safely make such a choice.

Plus, she really did not want to spend the whole day explaining her backstory to Ram.

Focusing back on her shocked sister, Rom chose to simply pass off her uncharacteristic behavior with a small shrug.

"We all have to grow up sometime Ram. And besides, crying isn't going to solve anything."

After all, freezing, burning, and otherwise horribly mutilating your problems was a much better way of dealing with them instead.

Meanwhile, Ram seemed to consider her words for a moment before her expression slowly morphed into one of jubilant praise.

"Wow Rom! That's totally awesome that you're not going to cry anymore! You're like a real grown-up now!"

Rom gave a slight wince at just how true that last part was. Covering for this with a slight cough, she quickly tried to shift topics and make her escape.

"Um... thanks. Anyways, I'm going to head to the library now so..."

"What?" Ram's smile quickly fell as she faced her with a petulant look. "But the library's boring! I don't want to waste time there! Come on, let's go play some games instead!"

"We don't have to go together," Rom said, trying her best to keep calm despite her growing impatience. "Why don't you play by yourself for a bit and I'll meet you back in our room later?"

"No! You're going to play Super Smash Sisters with me right now!"

Rom was just about to snap at her twin's immature behavior when she remembered just how attached Ram had been to her as a child. It was kind of hard to believe considering how fiercely independent Ram was in the future but this was clearly a time period where her sister could not stand to be separated from her for any longer than a few minutes. In fact, while her memories of the time were a bit hazy, she was pretty sure the reason Ram had been so unfriendly to Nepgear during their initial meeting was because she had been jealous of her taking Rom's attention away from her.

Realizing this was another issue on her ever-growing pile of problems to deal with, Rom gave a tired sigh. Getting Ram to drop her over-dependence on her was definitely going to be a long-term endeavor that would require a gentle touch. To that end, upsetting her right now would only prove to be detrimental to her plans.

"Fine," she let out. "We'll play for an hour. After that I'm going to the library."

Ram did not seem to hear the last part as she gave a loud cheer. Before Rom could protest, she grabbed her hand and tried to drag her forward once again.

Luckily, the carpeted floor did a pretty good job at muffling all the swearing that followed.

It was a quarter past noon by the time Rom finally managed to make her way to the library. Ram had practically held her hostage for the past couple hours as she had refused to let her stop playing with her. Any and all attempts to leave their room had been met with an increasing order of tantrums, violence, and eventually even the dreaded puppy-dog eyes. In fact, the only reason Rom had managed to escape at all was because Ram was currently taking her afternoon nap.

As she entered into the vast halls of the Basilicom library, Rom let out a large yawn as she realized just how tired she was feeling as well. Even without her mental fatigue, her child body naturally needed more sleep and her late night excursion probably did not help matters either. Unfortunately, she needed to gather more information on her situation to properly plan out a course of action and now was her best chance to get it.

"I could really use an espresso shot right now," she mumbled out.

With no source of caffeine nearby, she opted for the next best thing. After a bit of fumbling due to her faulty magical control, she managed to cast a simple Concentration spell to keep herself awake.

"Whew. Much better. Now then, where did we use to put all the old newspapers?"

Saying that, she began her search down the countless aisles of towering bookshelves.

After walking along in silence for a couple minutes, she briefly noted that she was slowly starting to get accustomed to her child body. A big sign of this was that she could now keep her face off the ground for longer than a minute as long as she maintained a relatively slow pace and there were no unexpected obstacles in her path. Sadly, she was also starting to realize that her child legs were naturally unsteady to begin with which probably explained Ram's earlier comment about her frequently falling over and crying.

"What I wouldn't do to have my regular body back," she sighed. She suddenly stopped in her tracks though as an idea popped into her head. "Hey, wait..."

Deciding she might as well try it out, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the small amount of shares she had.

"HDD activate!"

Once the transformation ended and the light faded away, Rom slowly looked down at herself expectantly.

"...Dammit."

Her faint hope of possibly regaining her adult body while transformed was thrown out the window when she saw herself still stuck in her child form. Even worse, the skin-tight plug suit she now wore only served to highlight just how flat she really was.

With a dark scowl, she canceled out the transformation and resumed her walk down the bookshelves.

"Stupid time travel. I swear, once the plot finally reveals the fucker that sent me here, I'm going to..."

The rest trailed off into a long and creative list of ways she would get her vengeance that probably would have made even Iris Heart feel a bit disturbed.

Her ranting lasted for several more minutes before she finally found what she was looking for. Giving a disgruntled complaint at just how much easier this would have been if her current phone had a web browser on it (Mina clearly did not trust her or Ram with unsupervised internet access yet), she headed off towards the central reading desks with a large stack of recent newspapers in tow.

The next hour or so was spent researching her current time period as she flipped through the numerous papers. While most of them simply dealt with the ever-increasing number of problems caused by the ASIC, she did manage to pick up on one very important fact.

According to the various reports, the CPUs had apparently been missing for about two years at this point in time. This was a very crucial piece of info for Rom as it gave her a solid time frame to work with. While her memory of this era was spotty at best due to how far back in her past it had been, she was still fairly certain that their big adventure had started about three years after the CPUs had been captured. In that case, she now knew that she had roughly another year to get herself ready before the inevitable clash with the ASIC and the Deity of Sin.

"Well, I've had tighter schedules than this before," she muttered with a frown. "Still, leaving Blanc in that graveyard for a whole year..."

Even if she knew that this was technically not her Blanc, she still wanted nothing more than to go save her older sister right then and there. Of course, she knew she was more likely to blow herself up at the moment considering all her recent attempts at using any sort of offensive magic.

"Tch. Talk about annoying."

Suppressing her irritation at her current helplessness, she quickly skimmed through the last few newspapers just in case she could find anything else.

Nothing else really stuck out to her as she read which was mostly a good thing since it meant that the past was progressing as she remembered it. There were a few odd reports about Lastation enforcing stricter border control as well as unusual military activity but the reports on them were rather vague seeing as how she was reading the Lowee papers. Seeing as how she had never really paid any attention to this sort of thing as an actual kid, Rom figured this was simply Kei's attempts at combating the rising influence of the ASIC.

"Alright, enough research then. It's time I got to work."

Putting aside the newspapers in a neat pile, Rom got up from the desk and walked over to an isolated corner of the library where she was less likely to be spotted.

While her abysmal spell control was a major issue, there was not much she could do about it other than to manually train herself up again. What she could do at the moment, however, was to gather up a secondary source of energy to use in place of the pitifully low amount of shares she currently had.

After looking around to make sure she was truly alone, Rom pulled out a marker from her inventory and drew out a large spell circle on the wooden floor. Or at least that's what she attempted to do. Much to her professional irritation, the end product ended up looking more like a spell oval than a circle thanks to her unsteady child hand. Luckily, the spell array she had in mind was not a very complicated one so she figured the error would not matter that much anyways.

Just to be safe though, she did inscribe a dozen containment and flame suppression runes around it's perimeter.

After checking to make sure everything was drawn out properly (or at least as properly as she could manage), she sat down cross-legged in the middle of the spell circle/oval and activated it.

To her relief, the array did not blow up in her face as a soothing glow of light blue energy surrounded her.

"At least something's going my way today," she muttered before closing her eyes and focusing on absorbing the energy.

Out of all the alternative forms of energy she had used in the future, she had concluded that the the most accessible and safest to use in her current state would be Spirit Energy AKA the residual energy produced by all living things. It was potent, plentiful, and, most importantly, able to be stored within her own body rather than her share crystal so that Ram would not accidentally tap into it and blow the entire continent up. The only issue with it though was its frustratingly long collection time. The spell array she was using helped to speed this process along but she figured it would still take at least a hundred plus hours to collect even a tenth of the reserves she had as an adult. Luckily, she now knew what her deadline was so she was not overly worried. As long as she managed to sneak away at regular intervals throughout the year to gather more energy, she was sure she would have a large enough reserve to handily one-shot the Deity of Sin and then some.

"Just killing her would be too easy once I'm back in fighting condition though," Rom mused. "Maybe I should tie her up in some cables and have her displayed in the Basilicom courtyard as decoration. Heh, that would be-."

"WHOA! What are you doing Rom?!"

Rom jolted in surprise at her twin's unexpected shout. Unfortunately, her magic oval did not react well to the sudden shift in her mental state as its faulty structure immediately began overloading. This in turn ended up setting off all the Spirit Energy that was currently around her as it promptly exploded.

The good news was that the emergency runes worked as intended and prevented the entire Basilicom from going up in flames.

The bad news was that Rom ended up being buried alive underneath a small mountain of flame-retardant foam.

To her credit, Ram at least had the decency to look slightly guilty about this as she gave a nervous laugh.

"Um... oops? Heh heh..."

The only response she got was an angry pair of eyes glaring at her from within the pink foam.