Ch 4: Hidden Ram in Four Nations

'Huh, that's funny. I could've sworn I went to sleep in my bed.'

Ram was mildly confused upon waking up from her nap to find herself slumped over a large wooden desk instead. Not only that, she also realized that she was inside what appeared to be the Lowee library rather than her own room.

'Meh, whatever,' she mentally passed off with a loud yawn. 'Wouldn't be the first time I accidentally teleported myself in my sleep.'

As she straightened up to stretch her stiff neck, she happened to catch sight of her reflection in a nearby window.

"Oh, guess I ended up in the past," she casually remarked, not even batting an eye at the sight of her much younger body. "Either that or I somehow managed to get shrunken back down to my adorable fun-size again."

The truth about her situation soon became clear when she took notice of her left arm.

'Ah. Definitely the past.'

After inspecting her hand for a bit and flexing it experimentally, Ram gave a shrug.

"Feels a lot smaller than usual. Then again, I guess everything's smaller about me at the moment. Heh heh." Lowering her hand, Ram shifted her focus back towards her surroundings. "Well, first things first. Time to figure out what era I'm in. Now, if my intuitions are correct, there should be some handy exposition material lying somewhere around... Aha! Score!"

Picking up the newspaper lying underneath a nearby picture book, Ram swiftly skimmed through the major articles.

"Let's see... the ASIC... blah blah blah... missing CPUS... awww man. This time period again? I wanted something a bit more fun like the Flaming Flamingo Crusades. Bah. Looks like I'll just have to spice things up on my own then. Speaking of which..."

Putting down the newspaper, Ram concentrated on herself to take stock of her current powers. A glowing pink aura surrounded her in response to this before she quickly dispelled it with a thoughtful frown.

"Hmm... Looks like only my memories and soul got transferred back this time around. Guess that means all I have to work with for now are my basic ice spells and soul-bound abilities. Man, talk about boring."

After a brief moment to ponder her options, Ram got out of her seat and gave a large stretch.

"Well, looks like I'll have to go out and recollect all of my power-ups again. Shouldn't take more than a few days if I head out now and- oh, wait." She lowered her arms as she suddenly remembered something. "I should probably leave a note for the Rom and Mina of this timeline. Wouldn't want them to worry too much about my sudden disappearance after all."

With a mischievous grin on her face, Ram rummaged through her inventory for a bit before pulling out a sheet of paper and crayon. After quickly scrawling out a short message, she dusted off her hands with a satisfied nod.

"There. That outta explain everything. Heh heh heh."

And with that final laugh, Ram casually snapped her fingers and instantly disappeared in a flash of pink.

'Ugh. Eight damn months and I'm still only at twenty percent of my old power reserves.'

In her isolated corner of the library, Rom heaved a frustrated sigh as she finished collecting her daily supply of Spirit Energy and got up from her magic circle (which only slightly resembled an elongated oval now).

Ignoring the cramp in her legs that had developed from sitting down for so long, the chronologically-displaced CPU summoned up a small ice crystal in her right hand and stared at it intently. After a few seconds, the ice shard magically morphed into an extremely detailed sculpture of a fat penguin carrying a large hammer.

'Hmph. At least my control is back to somewhat usable levels,' she assessed, dissipating her little art project as she clenched her hand. 'I suppose I should thank Mina for that.'

As it were, figuring out a way to get her nanny to give her some more advanced training exercises had been a rather difficult task for Rom. Having decided to avoid radically altering the past until she was satisfied with her combat prowess, she had trouble coming up with a plausible excuse for her sudden interest in training up her spell control.

Ironically, it had been Ram who had solved the issue for her. Thanks to the younger twin's complaints to Mina about Rom spending more time in the library lately rather than playing with her, the Oracle had come to the mistaken conclusion that Rom was devoting herself to her studies in order to get stronger and help out Blanc. When Mina confronted her about this, Rom had exploited this misunderstanding for all it was worth and managed to puppy-dog eyes Mina into giving her some additional training sessions without raising any serious suspicions against her.

'Still wish she would just skip the lecture parts of our lessons though,' Rom mentally complained. 'It's annoying having to waste time hearing about outdated theorems and formulas.'

She gave a grumble as she remembered the close call just the other night when she had almost blurted out a correction to Mina's lecture.

'Seriously, how in the Netherworld did the scholars of this time period not know the proper algorithm for a triangular sealing array? Fucking morons had to be blind to miss the obvious sequence gap in the Nayru formula.'

After colorfully expressing her professional irritation at the inadequacies of the time's magical sciences, Rom erased the spell circle on the floor with a wave of her hand and began to head on back out to the library's main hall.

As she rounded one of the bookshelves containing a book about gremlins, Rom suddenly paused with a worried look.

"Ram's been quiet. Too quiet."

This was ample cause for worry as there was no way Ram would have normally left her alone for so long.

While Rom had done a good job of fooling Ram into believing that her energy-collecting sessions were merely a magical meditation exercise (something that Ram had quickly decided was "boring" and wanted nothing to do with), this did not stop the younger twin from continuously trying to pester her into playing with her. Not wanting a repeat of the explosive, foam-covered disaster of the first day, Rom had been forced to get her hands on a large collection of toys, games, coloring books, and other childish entertainment to use on her hyperactive sister whenever she came looking for her in the library. Thankfully, most of these distractions worked as intended and managed to divert Ram's attention long enough for Rom to focus on her task unhindered.

However, today's distraction had only been a large picture book about magical explosions which, at best, would have kept Ram busy for about ten minutes. In addition, Rom had decided she was falling behind on her schedule and had risked spending at least a good hour more than usual gathering up extra Spirit Energy. The fact that Ram had not come to bother her during that time definitely meant that something was up.

'Maybe she fell asleep while reading?' Rom guessed hopefully. A quick second later though, her head fell down with a forlorn sigh. 'Oh, who am I kidding? She probably got bored and decided to set fire to the historical texts or something.'

Forcing herself to continue walking, Rom apprehensively made her way around the final corner towards the main hall.

To her extreme surprise, however, she found that the place had not been transformed into a lava-filled hellscape like she had been dreading. In fact, the place looked so peaceful that Rom immediately noticed that something was amiss.

"Where's Ram?"

The reading tables where the pink-hatted twin had last been seen was conspicuously empty as Rom began to feel a growing sense of panic. Not for her sister, mind, but rather for the safety of the rest of the Basilicom and possibly the rest of Lowee.

'Oh shit. Please don't tell me she decided to sneak into the item museum again. If she gets her hands on a Blue Shell and Power Star like in my timeline...'

Rom was just about to bolt out of the library in order to prevent the potential apocalypse when she happened to take notice of an out-of-place sheet of paper on one of the desks. Figuring it might be a note that Ram left behind, Rom quickly made her way over to it.

"Bwah-!"

... or at least, she tried to before tripping over herself and falling face flat onto the floor.

Swearing up a storm that would have made even Blanc blush, Rom once again picked herself off from the ground. Pausing just long enough to give her still unwieldy child legs a hateful glare, she carefully made her way over to the piece of paper and snatched it up.

What she found on it though did little to improve her mood.

"Wha-?"

In a messy, uneven scribble that could barely qualify as human hand-writing - written in pink crayon no less - was a short message that simply read:

Gone 2 save teh world. Bee back in few dayz.

The only other thing on the paper was a drawing of a crude smiley face with its tongue sticking out.

Rom stood frozen in place for several long minutes as her poor academic mind tried to recover from the unholy mess it had just been forced to read. After several reboots, her brain finally managed to function enough to tell her that she needed to go out and stop Ram. Though the part about saving the world had been horribly unspecific, it was not hard imagining Ram doing something extremely stupid like trying to take on the Deity of Sin by herself.

'But why would she do something like this so suddenly?' Rom asked herself in confusion.

She quickly arrived at a potential answer when her eyes fell on the picture book lying on the desk. Looking closer, she saw that it was the same book that she had given to Ram as a distraction earlier that day. And considering it was all about magical explosions...

"Oh fuck me!" Rom shouted out as she realized what had most likely happened. "Did that brain-dead moron seriously just read about a new explosion spell and decide to take on the Deity of Sin with it?!"

It was an utterly ridiculous notion to be sure but definitely something that an impulsive child like Ram would do. In fact, Rom had personally seen Ram trying to sneak out and destroy an ASIC factory after learning a new ice spell several months ago. Luckily, Mina had happened to catch the errant child before she managed to get out the Basilicom gates and proceeded to give her the second-biggest scolding that Rom had ever witnessed. Unfortunately – and a bit surprisingly - it seemed the terrifying experience had not been enough to teach Ram her lesson.

With a glower fierce enough to melt a Metal Dogoo, Rom reluctantly utilized some of the precious Spirit Energy she had spent so long gathering to cast a high-level tracking spell.

'I hope Mina spanks Ram to next Sunday after I find and drag her back here.'

With a deep breath to calm herself, Rom closed her eyes and focused on the Lowee share crystal. Her intention was to home in on Ram's soul presence in the crystal and use that as a basis for her tracking spell. However, her plans were completely derailed when she encountered an unexpected and rather shocking problem.

"What the fuck?!"

Rom's earlier anger was quickly replaced with confusion and worry when she found that Ram's soul had somehow been... altered.

In all honesty, the abnormality was kind of hard for Rom to describe. The best way she could put it was that a massive block of static was floating about where Ram's soul had used to be. Strangely enough though, Rom could still vaguely sense snatches of the all-too-familiar presence of Ram's obnoxiously vibrant soul from within this undecipherable static. However, a closer inspection revealed that the static wasn't covering up Ram's presence like Rom initially thought but rather that Ram's soul had somehow been intertwined with this anomaly at the base level. And as if all this wasn't enough to already send Rom's baffled mind in a whirl, the static-like anomaly somehow appeared to exist within the Lowee share crystal but was completely detached from the normal flow of share energy.

Even with her vast amount of knowledge and experience, Rom found herself at a complete loss as she stood frozen in shock. Try as she might, she simply could not bring up anything that could potentially explain the bizarre anomaly she was currently sensing in place of her sister.

"I need to find her," Rom finally said, her confused daze being broken by a growing sense of concern and anxiety. "I need to find her fast and see what happened to her."

Focusing once more on the anomaly, Rom activated her tracking spell hoping that it would work as intended. To her dismay, however, the spell immediately fizzled out as a mental error message popped up in her head telling her that the target was unidentifiable.

"Damn it. You never make things easy for me, do you?"

Undeterred, Rom once again homed in on the anomaly but this time tried to isolate Ram's presence from the rest of the static. This was easier said than done though due to just how interwoven the two soul presences were. In a way, it was a lot like looking through a large bucket of pink paint and trying to pick out the individual red pigments mixed in with the white.

After several minutes of intense concentration and effort, Rom eventually managed to isolate a usable fragment of Ram's soul from the rest of the anomaly. In the process, the analytic part of her mind also noted with a small amount of relief that the none-Ram parts of the bizarre soul presence was devoid of anything dark or malicious. If anything, this other half seemed relatively dormant asides from giving off a hint of something that felt strangely like exasperated cynicism.

Deciding she could question all this after she had confirmed the safety of her sister, Rom instead closed her eyes and cast her tracking spell once more. After what felt like forever to her, a large map of Gamindustri popped into her mind as the spell began its working process.

"Come on." In her mind, a bright dot appeared to zoom around the expansive map of Gamindustri as it scanned for its target. "This better- Yes!"

Rom opened her eyes and let out a cheer in spite of herself as the cognitive dot finally locked onto a location with a satisfying ping. Her relief and joy were short-lived, however, when she focused her attention and realized where exactly the dot had landed on.

"Wait, Planeptune? That can't be right."

Despite her words, the dot identifying Ram's location continued to solidly hover over the south-western shores of Planeptune.

Deciding she must have screwed up the spell somehow, Rom gathered up her energy again to try recasting it when the dot abruptly disappeared of its own accord. Before she had so much time as to blink, the dot reappeared but this time in the central part of Leanbox instead.

"What the flying fuck?"

As she closed her eyes again and mentally stared in confusion, the dot remained blinking in Leanbox for several seconds before disappearing once more. When it became visible again, it now showed Ram to be somewhere in the northern mountains of Lowee.

"Okay, this has to be some kind of mistake on my part... right?"

The words had hardly left her mouth before the dot teleported once again.

Deciding her spell had to be faulty, Rom spent the next several minutes dispelling and recasting her tracking spell at least a dozen times in the hopes that the bizarre occurrence would correct itself.

Unfortunately for her, it did not.

No matter how many times she refreshed her spell, the results always showed the same thing. Someway, somehow, Ram was apparently hopping across one end of Gamindustri to the next as if playing some nonsensical game of international leap-frog.

In the end, Rom was forced to sit down and simply continue observing the situation in the hopes that Ram would eventually settle down in one location long enough for her to make a move.

Much to Rom's chagrin, it took nearly an hour and a half for this to finally happen and by then she was almost fit to burst with frustration and concern.

"About damn time! You better not fucking move again or I'm going to feed you to the Chain Chomps!"

The threat probably had nothing to do with it but the dot thankfully remained unmoving even though nearly five minutes had passed since it had first arrived at its current location.

Quickly getting up from the chair she had been sitting at, Rom made her way out the library doors as she prepared to fly on over towards the area highlighted by the tracking spell's marker.

"Well, I'm glad it's not too far away but why did she have to stop in Lastation of all places?"

As it were, the marker happened to be pointing at a location just a few miles past the south-eastern Lowee/Lastation border. Rom figured it would only take a few minutes for her to fly there with the aid of a Haste spell but that was not the main issue at hand.

For some reason or another, Lastation had completely closed off its borders from the rest of the world just two months after Rom had arrived in the past. Everything from trade to information had been completely blocked off as Lastation had become even more of an isolated island than Leanbox was. Of course, Rom had no idea if such a thing had happened in her own timeline or not but had eventually written it off as just another short-term tactic by Kei to slow down the ASIC. Figuring the borders would be open again by the time of her old adventure like she remembered, Rom had stopped paying any attention to it.

Now though, she wished she had kept more up-to-date with the news as it appeared that she would need to illegally cross the border in order to find her wayward sister.

"It'll be fine," Rom tried to convince herself. "I doubt there would be that many guards patrolling the border when they're all busy dealing with the ASIC. Besides, even if we do get caught, I doubt it'd cause much of a problem. Kei's a reasonable person and I definitely wouldn't mind seeing Uni again."

With a firm nod, Rom continued sneaking her way down the Basilicom halls. After safely making it all the way outside, she quickly activated her HDD, cast a high-level Haste spell on herself, and rocketed into the skies before anyone could stop her.

As the freezing cold air whipped across her face, Rom once again felt her frustration and annoyance towards her twin surface.

'I'm going to kill Ram as soon as I get my hands on her. Well, after I wring some answers out of her first. But after that, it's going to be nothing but happy, fun-times between me, her, and some power tools.'

Radiating an aura cold enough to cause the nearby clouds to begin dropping a torrent of hail on the unfortunate citizens below, Rom sped off towards the horizon and quickly disappeared from view.