Fedora force: Muse works pretty fast too. Then again, I'm not that good at pacing a story so... On another note, giving the bunker children orders to protect their country probably wasn't the greatest decision of the government. I'm sure neither Muse nor Aqours knows that other bunkers outside their own exist.
Resta U: I would put more focus on Aqours, but I'm hesitant on doing so since they're fairly new characters. I want to make sure I understand their characters before putting too much focus on them. That being said, Muse meets Aqours soon, so they'll probably get a chapter of their own either before or after that.
Fayerjiff: Yes, this story supports HonoMaki and several other pairings. But I'm looking to focus on their survival rather than romantic developments, so it won't be tagged.
Dessert Maniac: 'Shelter girls' was another name I was going to use for them, but 'bunker brats' ended up sounding better. Honoka is kind of like a leader that seems to decide things on a whim, but she can be sensitive when she needs to be. Living in the bunker may have made them unused to the outside world, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to listen to what others tell them to do. And again, Honoka pretty much does what she wants, when she wants to.
Sore wa Bokutachi no Kiseki-otherwise known as That is Our Miracle-is the main driving force for this chapter. Because it takes a freaking miracle to get trains that have been abandoned for close to a decade to run again.
My knowledge of how electronics work is limited so I hope this chapter gets by...
"You said we'd take the train to the beach but...no matter how I look at it...these trains aren't operational, Honoka." Umi said, examining the outside of one such train. It was covered in a layer of grime. "It runs on electricity. We don't have the capacity to produce that yet."
"Sure we do! Our bunker runs on electricity; there must be someway we can power the train!" Honoka peered through one of the broken windows into the train. "Someone boost me; I think I can get inside."
"Watch out for glass." Eri warned as she and Nozomi worked together to lift Honoka through the space. She felt the sharp edges of glass cut into her hands as she used them to prevent her head from hitting the floor of the train. Wriggling a bit, she got her lower half to follow and stood up within the train. "And you get yourself cut anyway."
"It can't be helped! Besides, Maki-chan can disinfect it afterwards." Honoka opened and closed her fingers a few times, getting used to the pain it caused before looking around to see what she could do. The front of the train had controls, but they were covered in dust; no one had touched them in a long time. "We can definitely get this train working if we clean it up and power it!" She shouted through the window.
"Even if we found a way to start it up, how are we going to get enough electricity to move the entire train? Honoka, we're better off just walking there!"
"That'd take too long!" She retorted, looking around once more. "Hey...there's enough room in here for the nine of us. What if we just took the front of the train and left the rest of it behind? It could be like a mobile base!"
"That's actually a pretty good idea." Nozomi looked around herself to see the rest of the group giving her blank stares. "I mean, if we could move the train on the rail, we could expand our reach beyond just the city."
"But we still need to find a way to generate electricity for it. It's not like generators exist, and this train will take a lot of work to get it moving again." Eri reminded her. Honoka stood on the control panel of the train to get out through the window again and rejoin her friends.
"Why don't we go back to the bunker for now? I want to take a look at something."
"Oh, you're back from your beach trip already? That was fast." The girls had bumped into Tsubasa's group on their way back to the bunker entrance. They were carrying a deer carcass between the three of them; a fairly large buck that would give them enough meat for a couple of days, if eaten sparingly.
"We're still looking for a way to get there." Umi explained. "Looks like you've been busy."
"Yep. These animals around here have grown up without human interaction. Even so, it's not easy to bring one of them down." Tsubasa gestured at the deer she was partially carrying. "This one in particular was hard to track down." A-Rise, as they preferred to be called when referring to the trio, had taken it upon themselves to become hunters. On their exploration of the city, they had discovered animals, most of which didn't run away when they came close. So the natural thing to follow was for them to hunt down the easy meat and provide it for the bunker. The girls had not had fresh meat since they were young. "We're just about to bring it to the kitchens to prepare. Maybe you should spend the night in the base and enjoy it."
"Maybe." Honoka and Tsubasa fist-bumped before the two groups split up again. Muse, as they had decided their own group name, spent more time in the Academy they conquered.
"We're not going back in yet?" Hanayo asked, staring after A-Rise with hungry eyes.
"Nope. I want to see the top of the bunker. We haven't seen that yet." Honoka responded. The portion of the bunker that was above ground was smooth and dome-shaped, but not steep enough that the girls couldn't scale it. "Look!" Solar panels lined the top of the dome, placed into indents on the dome surface so that they wouldn't get wiped away by the storm. "We can move one of these to the train and power it from the sun just like our base has been powered!"
"But that seems hard. It's wired to the base, and we don't know how to move one." Umi said, even though she looked at the base of the panel. "Plus, we don't know what side effect it could have on the bunker."
"We can go do some research." Maki suggested. "We have the library here, and in the school too."
"Okay, let's go with that. Who wants to go to the school?" Maki, Umi, and Eri raised their hands. "Then the rest of us will stay here tonight." Hanayo looked like she was going to drool at the thought of having deer for dinner, so Honoka bid the school team farewell and led her group down into the bunker.
"I would suggest using solar panels to power the train, but ours are all busted." You sighed as she watched Chika try and figure out what she believed to be a pointless plan. There had been a few blue spots on the map they found in the War Room, but that didn't mean that they'd find water there. Yet, Chika wanted to try and head inland via train.
"We've managed to repower our bunker by starting up the hydro plant nearby though." Riko pointed out, referring to a small facility they had discovered by accident. Fortunately for them, the majority of the equipment to run the plant was untouched. After a few attempts, they-Aqours-had gotten it to start working again.
"I got it! We just need to charge the train with electricity from the plant then!" Chika shouted cheerfully.
"There are wires running in the rail. It could be worth trying." Dia said, appearing to be deep in thought. "And there were plenty of switches in the hydro plant we found. One of them could be connected to this train station."
"So it's going to be trial-and-error until we find it, right? Onee-chan?" Dia nodded in response to Ruby's question.
"Then it won't be long until we can go inland!" Chika bounded into the air, clearly pleased now that they had a plan to go with. You sighed again. None of them were considering the possibility that the power connection wouldn't go through after years of disuse, but then again, it wasn't like she was going to be the one to bring it up. She'd keep her mouth shut and hope that a miracle happened.
"Okay, remove that screw." Maki instructed Rin. The redhead was reading directly out of a book while the other girl obeyed her order. Hanayo waited below at the base of the dome with a dirty wagon she had found while wandering around in boredom. The rest of Muse was at the train station, preparing the train to accept the solar panel as its new source of power.
"Do I just pull the wires out?!" Rin shouted at Maki, tilting her head to look at the tangled lines below the solar panel.
"Yeah! But carefully; we don't want it to get damaged!" Maki tossed her book down to Hanayo; the instructions weren't needed with the solar panel they had chosen most of the way out already. Rin reached her hand down into the hole the wires were in to pull them out. With some difficulty, the two girls half-walked, half-slid down the dome with their electronic prize. They lowered the panel onto the wagon, making sure that none of the wires were trailing outside the plastic vehicle.
Honoka wiped her brow from the heat of her metal cutter tool. Cutting a square out of the top of the train was proving harder than she had expected, but it was the last thing they had to do to the train so that they could install the solar panel. Umi and Eri had already dug around inside the control panel to figure out what they would need to connect the panel to, and Nozomi and Nico were undoing the connection between the head of the train and the rest of the cars. With a final push, the square of metal fell into the interior of the train. Umi and Kotori immediately went in to remove the piece, as well as clean up what glass was still on the floor. Most of the unwanted trash was dumped below the rails, with no other place to put them.
"We're here!" Maki announced as she and her two roommates ran in with the solar panel on the wagon. The panel was installed without much difficulty, to their surprise. Honoka tried to start up the control panel. Nothing happened.
"Well, we kind of figured that would happen." Umi remarked dryly, looking at the dead-but now clean-control panel. Honoka kicked the bottom of the structure the control panel was mounted on and tried to start up the train again. With a noise not unlike the groaning of a half-awake person, the train came to life. She opened the door and let the rest of her friends in.
"And you were saying, Umi-chan?" Umi shook her head, dumbfounded by the ease that they were able to start up a train. "Now, to the beach!" Slowly, the train inched forward, out of the train station. It picked up speed as the sun beat down on the solar panel they had installed, and Muse was on their way.
"It's working, it's working! Riko-chan, it's working!" Chika hugged Riko before hopping through the now open doors of the train. Looking at the colorful control panel below her fingertips, her excitement made it nearly impossible for her to wait for the rest of her friends to return from the hydro plant. They were on their way inland, at last!
With Muse heading from Tokyo to Numazu via train, and Aqours traveling in the opposite direction, what would happen when they meet each other on the railway?
Yes, I really did just write that eighteen teenage girls that have spent the majority of their life underground figured out how to power trains from two completely different power sources. I'm sorry if that seems too far-fetched to believe.
Other than that, please review! :D