Fib and Strawberry tour the multiverse
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"Which way are the hives?"

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"I don't know where the actual hives are, we've never gotten anywhere near that close, but we usually encounter the bees vaguely in..." he glances up at the sky, orients himself, then points, "that direction, ish."

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"Alright, I'll see what I can find." She teleports away. She tries to aim another one, but finds her range coming up short. "The hell?" She can aim just fine within reach of the bridge, but can't teleport outside of that, not if she cares about accuracy at least.

"Oh no." Her surroundings shift again, white sand replaced by black, the ever-present metallic smell becomes sharper. She's at the edge of what the bridge will let her jump to. "Well... shit." So her powers, some of them are from Earth, the parkour and maybe the lightning are from Rorch, Azoth manipulation from Crucible, and magical girl transformation from the Academy. Each of those worlds provided a range boost when she teleported off of their bridges, but Brazen didn't. Her Bevin's  bridge seems to not provide any extra range, so what? Does she just have zero range here? She walks for a bit into the forest, between the trees, she lays a hand on one, it's cold. "Dang." It doesn't make much of a noise when she knocks on it, it's probably not hollow.

Out of range of the bridge, she aims a teleport, and finds that she can't go further than a few feet. "Well shit." She jumps to her Bevin to try scrying around. And thankfully that doesn't seem to be affected. "Ok, so where is there a hive?" She pulls her perspective upwards, above the canopy. "So there are lots of types of hives, the classic ones hang from trees, but I think there are others?" She thinks that some of them are on the ground? "A giant beehive would have to be on the ground, right? These trees aren't big enough to hold them otherwise. "Do bees have underground hives?"

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A fair distance away she spots a large globe of brass the size of a house in a clearing. "That must be it! Man, how did they build that?" She spends minutes pushing her scrying sensor closer, but to no avail, she was getting too far from her starting location, she was going to have to get closer. "Man, if they are smart bees then them seeing me intruding could be an issue, especially if they see me with Fib afterwards."

She always had the option of teleporting back to the bridge, so she could just escape if she were spotted. She could always just not look into their homes.

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No, she was too curious, she had to see.

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"Ok, I still have an hour." She says, meaninglessly, since she has nothing that can keep the time. "I really need to steal a watch or something." She goes back to Brazen and starts walking, keeping her  ears peeled for strange noises. The temptation to just transform and parkour off of the trees like a goddamn ninja is strong, but she doesn't want to accidentally run anything weird.

The sound of the wind passing through the stiff metal trees was fascinating, with much less give and flexibility than wooden trees there was basically no rustling of leaves. There was, however, just enough give that two trees that grew up just a little too close would have a leaf or two scratching against one another in a horrible, shrill scratching sound. "Blegh. At least they're pretty." The large blooming flowers spread throughout the canopy made it look like spring in an alien world. Which, come to think about it, might be the case.

The opportunity to ogle a clockwork bee presented itself as soon as she heard a buzzing sound, from her Bevin she looked around, spotting her brass creature.

The wings were a red blur, dark eyes that might've been actual rubies, faceted like precious gems. The main brass body of the bee was a brass shell, with circles lining the abdomen, and a single black spike at the tip. It was actually rather large, maybe the size of a kitten, though that didn't seem to hurt its agility any, it darted quickly and precisely to a flower on the tree.

When it landed, and its wings stilled, she could see that it actually had two pairs of glass red wings framed by shiny brass. As it crawled in the flower, the inner layer of the abdomen rotated, revealing holes, then crawled out of it, holes closed and trailing dust. Pollen? It repeated the process several times with the flowers on the tree. She tried to get as good of a look at it as she could manage. It seems like the pollen was stored in the abdomen, which seemed to be a mostly hollow capsule. It made sense, normal bees carried pollen on the hairs of their abdomen, which wasn't an option with clockwork and brass.

After a few minutes it seemed to be full and flew off, it was much faster than her perspective, so she lost it fairly quickly.

"Clockwork bees! Clockwork bees! They're so cool! They collect pollen? Do they eat? Metal flowers have pollen?" She peaked into a couple of flowers and they had some sort of dust in them, but who knew if it actually served the same purpose as Earth pollen.

She jumped back and made her way closer to the hive. Making sure to avoid bees wherever possible. The ones she was seeing were mostly the same size and roughly the same appearance. She had noticed some subtle variation, which carried implications about how they were made.

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Deciding she was close enough to the hive, she went back to her Bevin and made her way to the ribbed brass globe. The closer she got, the greater the concentration of bees. She hadn't seen an Earth beehive in a while, so she couldn't tell how it compared, but this hive had several openings and... doors? It seemed that there was some mechanism to shut the entrances if needed. For defense?

The bees here varied wildly in size, and their eyes and wings seemed to vary in color too. The red ones were out there collecting pollen, bigger than her fist, but there were ones as big as a toddler, with clear glass eyes and four sets of wings. The number of legs wasn't consistent, six legs seemed to be fairly common, but there were others with eight or ten. Most of the extra legs seemed to be used as manipulators, with brass claws on the end.

Some of them were carrying sheets of brass that seemed to have engraving on-

"They have writing!" She hissed. She went in for a closer look. No doubt, the hexagonal brass sheets it carried had strange curving gyphs on them. "Literate bees!" She whispered excitedly, bouncing in place. She had to get a closer look, she just had to, she had no choice in the matter, she was looking at a brass hive filled with sapient and literate clockwork bees!

She held her breath as she moved in closer. If only she could take pictures! She moved through the wall of the hive, her vision blackening for a second before brightening once again.

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Her jaw dropped. The interior was covered in curving walls covered in hexagonal cells illuminated by glittering crystals shoved inside them at regular intervals. The glittering liquid inside many of the other cells told her that yes, they did make some sort of honey analogue. But that wasn't all, the cells were divided into sections, many of them were capped with hexagonal plates with glyphs, a group of bees seemed to be in the process of manufacturing bee parts, packing them tightly, quickly and efficiently into the tight hexes, then capping them with the plates. She made a note of the glyphs, if she took notes, maybe she could show them to groundskeeper and the two of them could start deciphering the language!

If she closed the connection now, she'd have to move her perspective all the way back to the hive. The blonde girl, perhaps stupidly, opted to grope around her Bevin blindly, in hopes of finding one of her notebooks.

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She bonked her head on a sandstone shelf. "Fuck." She hissed. The bees went still.

I really have to stop doing this. 

The bees started moving, searching for the source of the noise. Berry opened her eyes. "That could've gone worse." She grabbed a notebook. The next long while was spent mapping out the hive, recording glyphs and not saying words out loud that bees could hear.

"Ok," she said after closing the connection again. "I should go tell Fib what I found." She went back to the bridge.

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When she returns, she'll find Fib kneeling in the white sand, hands clasped and lips forming silent prayers. Sniper is standing watch over him, and gives Strawberry an amicable wave when she reappears.

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Huh, she didn't think he was religious. She waves back at Sniper as she walks up to her. "What's he doing?" She whispers to her.

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"He's working on conjuring some orichalcum. We're not going to commit to anything infrastructural yet, so it's mostly just going to be a sort of monument, to serve as a landmark and as a test to see how the locals react."

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"Ah, I see." So probably not religious. Activating Aether powers through prayer makes sense, she supposes. Does it have to be sincere? She could absolutely pray sarcastically if it means cool powers. The girl is bursting with excitement to tell them what she found, but she doesn't want to distract him. "What does orichalcum do, what are its properties?" She asks Sniper in a low voice.

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"It's very resistant, in a general sort of sense. It's rigid, its an electrical and thermal insulator, in general if something tries to change orichalcum, it will resist that change, and pretty strongly. We've put it through a bunch of tests and just about the only thing that's managed to ding it is other pieces of orichalcum going very fast. Orbital speeds fast. It's only pliable to Fib's touch because he's the one who  conjures it, so it recognizes him on some level."

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"Well that explains the armor." She pokes Snipers shoulder plate. It's not cold. Thermal insulator, so it doesn't conduct heat as well. "Wow, that feels weird." The prospect of armor becomes more attractive, but not enough to ruin the magical girl aesthetic. Maybe a shield? Actually, I could cosplay genderbent Gilgamesh in gold plating. Fate/Stay Night already hot-girlified king Arthur. I can even keep all my treasures and weapons in my Bevin, it's perfect! I guess I'd have to figure out how to launch things out of it with speed, huh?

She eyes Sniper's orichalcum gun. She should probably get her hands on some sort of firearm, even if she intends to primarily fight in melee, a ranged option would be nice. If she starts working for them, she could probably trade for one.

There is, however, one weapon that would be an excellent fit for her, given what she can do with bridges and teleportation. "Do you guys work with explosives?"

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"Not much, no. We try avoid being too destructive. Why do you ask?"

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Teleporting.

Grenades.

"No reason, just curious." Maybe she could raid some army base on Earth. She waits for Fib to finish.

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After 15-30 minutes of prayer, there's a feeling of culmination, a flash of divine radiance, and a whooshing sound, a huge block of gold-gleaming orichalcum land on the sand, blowing out a billowing cloud of the white dust-fine particles and sinking slightly into the ground. Sniper, seeming to just realize the potential problem, jumps in front of Strawberry to try and block a portion of the sand.

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Without really thinking she grabs Sniper and jumps to her Bevin. "Uh. Sorry, I just- sand."

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"It's fine, this is better than risking damaged lungs, probably," Sniper replies.

If Strawberry scries through the bridge, she'll find Fib wiping sand off his face, looking around, briefly freaking out at Sniper and her being gone, and then noticing Strawberry's Bevin bridge and calming down. "All clear!" he says, presuming (perhaps erroneously) that she's listening in.

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The two of them jump next to Fib. "Are you ok?"

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"A bit dusty, but other than I'm fine, yeah. Ego's maybe a little bruised for not realizing that would happen. You two alright?"

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"Yeah, we're fine." She whistles at the size of the blocks. "That is more than I expected. What are you planning for the monument?"

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"Nothing special, really. I don't have a Logo or anything, so I'm either going to just make it a big noticeable spire, or maybe a statue of me and Sniper so that people can recognize us later if they find it. Honestly though I'm pretty open to suggestions."

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"That's way better than my idea for a huge, ominous and inexplicable monolith. For a more serious suggestion, maybe keep them small if you're just testing the waters?"

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