Fortuna Verto

41-Isolated Experimentation

Both girls continued to circle their foe, looking for even the slightest opening that might be made for them. Having been driven into an isolated battle, the two remained unaware of the greatest advantage left before them.

Even isolated, they were never alone.

Kori knew that running wouldn't win them anything, so took a careful calculation of distance and opened up for a shot. As expected, her bike swung wildly out of control, herself falling from the bike in the process. Holi however recovered control of the thing and awkwardly repositioned the bike for Kori's use, the whole process taking a considerable amount of time. Kori had however at least managed to put enough distance between herself and her foe that she could pull off an escape at the last moment.. but her own shot had failed. It wasn't as if her shot wasn't accurate, her enemy had simply.. evaded. By ensuring she had enough distance with which to recover, she had left her foe with enough distance to also deal with the circumstances. Somehow, she needed to be faster.

Rosa skimmed back and forth around her spiral maze of holos, firing hopelessly upon the fiend before her. Some of the shots even connected, though you could hardly notice. She pondered her own resources and options, looking for anything that could give her an advantage here. Of course, she had the nuclear option, but she wasn't allowed to use it. Her system was even upgraded with a sense of stability there, to make it harder for such an option to even happen naturally. Her next biggest resource was her ability to shift the natural laws of the world, but that held nothing but problems for them right now. If she did that, her holos and Kori's bike would both go offline, they wouldn't even be able to dodge anymore. Worse, she could honestly admit to being less capable with elemental law than scientific law at this point. The only one who was actually good with elements was...

"Wait a minute, right. I've been so worried about my own situation that I haven't even taken the opportunity to consider Kori. ... Kori would be riding around on that bike, trying to get a good stable shot. Holi, are you there?" "Yes Rosa. Do you need anything?" "Kori's arm was upgraded with a DNTI interface unit, since I know she's a lot more hands-on with her planning. It should be possible to set an uplink from her arm to her bike, giving her DNTI direct access to the controls in the same way you do. She can personally hack equipment, and that might give her an edge in her own battle. Could you make sure she is aware of this advantage?" "Already on it, thanks." Rosa still wasn't certain what she could provide for herself, but knew that giving this information to Holi would at least provide something for their circumstances as a whole. There were more than a few bits of inspiration she had applied into her latest upgrades, with awareness of Kori's areas of struggle.

Kori blinked in surprise at the news once Holi had finished repeating it. Her arm had.. what? She wasn't even aware how to properly build an uplink like this remotely from her arm to her bike. As this wasn't the best situation for lessons, Holi took over with the process, forging an uplink from the arm to the bike. The bike instantly stalled in the confusion of Kori's uncertainty, throwing her from the bike once again. So.. she had to think in code, make code work in the same momentum as her own actions. The bike sprung up, swirled around, and tilted towards her fallen frame, placing it's grip right in line with her cybernetic hand. Grasping the handle, she pulled herself up while the bike spiraled around to catch her, moving as if a single unit. Okay, maybe this really could be.. a lot of fun. Noticing that Kori had everything under control, Holi even withdrew all control of the bike, waiting instead as a backup in case something went wrong. Kori thus compensated for her own circumstances, turning to face the fiend once again. At the same moment as she opened fire, she set the bike's engines to a fury, blazing a reverse burst that mitigated some of the backlash. She still hadn't properly compensated for the angles though, the effect throwing her from the bike. The bike however turned with her own momentum, spinning round to catch her in return. She was now facing backwards on her own bike, but that didn't make it much harder to control. Activating the thing's lane assist control, she even got a pretty good mental impression of the path in front of the bike.