Well, let's hope the ecosystem here is resilient. "If you say so." She sounds unconvinced, but doesn't push it. She turns to Rightside, momentarily not sure what to say. "It was a suggestion from a friend." They have to choose names for themselves, this should be normal.

Rightside nods, and there is immediately much speculation on what the reasoning of that friend was. Questions fly, but there doesn't seem to be much expectation for Strawberry to answer, as the conversation moves quickly and doesn't wait for a reply. Indeed, the conversational atmosphere in the truck seems as chaotic as it is genial, and soon enough the topic of names is left behind. There's some talk about what the hell that monster was, to which Fib adds that it seemed to have been some kind of polytoad, a shapeshifting lifeform from Mu that forms clonal colonies where individuals merge together to achieve stronger and more diverse forms, but with the weirdness that's been showing up occasionally ever since he made contact with the all-girls-school. Then it moves on again. Lots of topics come up on the drive, but also a decent number of quiet periods when Strawberry could get a word in if she's curious about anything.

Outside, the shale plain is taken over by moss, then soil with sparse grasses and flowers, then proper grassland over the course of a few hours. Eventually, a pale dot in the distance grows into wide fields of unfamiliar crops, which in turn has a small town in the center of it. Various sosei-shita (again, in all sorts of colors) doing farmwork or milling around town, all of them greeting the truck with a waving hand and a glad shout of "Kao-ru!", which Fib, Sniper, and the others all echo back with equal gladness.

Soon enough the truck pulls into a big garage (one of the central buildings of the town), and then into a fancy repair-dock, with a floor that opens up to reveal an under-layer with a few more sosei-shita in grease-stained outfits all waiting to start checking the vehicle.

Fib and the others all start filing out, and Fib in particular is escorted to off to another room by another sosei-shita, asking him about who the new person is, telling him that they're trying to keep up info-sec and he can't just go picking up strays, saying they recently got a surprisingly big order for orichalcum plating from Rorch, as part of a new train being built and that he should probably get on that ASAP.

She involves herself in conversation as best she can, but she hangs back, and when the conversation drifts away she drifts away with it. The truth is, now that the action has died down, she can take a quiet moment to take it all in.

It's a beautiful view.

She feels weak seeing it. An unspeakable vastness stretches before her, an entire world lay in front of her like a carpet, lake and forest and sea and plain and savanna and hill and mountain. Stripes of darkness in the distance at regular intervals, no doubt those structures up high are made to simulate a day and night cycle.

Her new reality collides with the cold certainty that this world can't exist, and all she can do is stare. Stare at the immutable evidence that she has broken free of Earth and its petty constraints. This is how the world should be. Filled to the brim with magic, with a landscape that curves the wrong way, with magic and immortality.

It is without a single doubt in her heart that she decides right then and there that somehow, eventually, no matter how long it takes, she will travel the entire Rim.

The only thing that could've brought her back from her trance, of course, is talk of a train made of a shiny fantasy metal. "Train?!"

The sosei-shita who mentions the projects grins wide and nods, before guiding the two of them on something of a winding journey through the garage and engineering complex.

He's a stout one, squat and round but also very solidly built. He has maybe the palest complexion of any of the sosei-shita Strawberry's seen, blue that gets lighter towards his head. He's bald, and the very peak of his head as well as his two big crescent-shaped horns are stark white. This makes it unsurprising to learn that his name is Moonhorns.

He explains that on Rorch, internal combustion engines are forbidden, point blank, as part some broader ban against fire in pretty much full generality. Moonhorns gestures to Fib's distinctly fiery appearance, and explains further that their business there tends to be pretty minimal, but recently there's been a bit of a shake-up among the flow of cash, old businesses are collapses or breaking apart and new firms are growing pretty fast, one of them in particular is sufficiently risk-tolerant to try and capitalize on what the sosei-shita living in that District have to offer, which happens to include Fib's orichalcum.

So, now they've got designs for a train, most of which they are not responsible for, but which has several sections (including the exterior shell, linkages, and various internal structural components) highlighted. That's what Fib's got to make.

Ultimately, they arrive in workshop, adjacent to a cargo bay with an empty truck, waiting to be filled. There are a handful more engineers present, discussing schematics or working molds. Fib links up with them and joins the discussion, before eventually settling in for more prayer, Sniper watching over him.

What the hell kind of society bans fire? She nods along, asking questions occasionally. Like what design changes will be made to exploit orichalcum's durability?

Ultimately, she wants to see the creation process, but it seems like it's going to be a while until Fib is finished charging up.

Moonhorns, like the narrator, is not sufficiently trained in engineering to determine what sort of changes would be from first principles, nor does he have the schematics provided to them by their client memorized, but he's happy to pass her off to one of the engineers who is looking at it right now, a tall and thin sosei-shita with a dark red-brown complexion and two broad, flat horns that curve back tight against their scalp. They are appropriately named Helmet, and are happy to get into the nitty gritty details.

It takes about an hour for Fib to conjure another block of orichalcum, which he then compresses into a square sheet with a single swift motion, before he and a couple of the sosei-shita grab it and haul it over to some kind of machine, which displays a number, which they seem satisfied with. Then Fib is back to praying for more orichalcum. Helmet says that according their estimates, he's probably going to be busy with this for at least six hours, maybe eight, not including any breaks for shower, or food and drink, or toilet, or sleep. Moonhorns is the one who keeps everybody's tasks organized, or at least one of the ones who does that, so he'll know where everything is, if there's anything Strawberry wants to see.

Most of the explanation goes over her head, she gets the impression that pieces made of orichalcum can be made thinner and lighter while being more durable than mundane counterparts.

She entertains herself by dropping things into her Bevin and watching them fall in slow motion. When she goes back to her Bevin, the effect is reversed, as she watches the sosei-shita all move in fast forward, she can hear them too, all speaking in an unintelligibly accelerated and high-pitched speech, and for some weird reason some don't seem to make any noise at all when they speak. When she asks Helmet says that if the pitch is high enough it will fall outside of the human hearing range. Afterwards she becomes wary of spending too much time in her Bevin, lest she miss out on something.

She looks up at one of the Rim's giant panels floating above to mimic a day and night cycle. "Well, I'd like to see what's up there."

"We haven't managed to get our hands on any aircraft, or been able to make any, yet, but we've checked them out with telescopes as they're coming up and down the Rim,  and they're surprisingly habitable, sometimes at least. They've got deserts and jungles and such on them. They're similar to the surface, really, though I'd guess the animals are going to be different, probably birds and bats and insects, given the need for flight to access them. If you do go, would you be willing to take a recording of what you find, or maybe bring an exploratory team with you?" one of the sosei-shita who happen to be nearby, and possibly misunderstood her as speaking to them, replies.

"Go up there? Under my own power?" She considers it. "Give me a second to experiment a little." She steps outside.

So what are my options here? Ok, let's try the obvious one first.

She takes a breath to brace herself, aware that she has an audience, then takes the little steps necessary to transform. The sparkly light that she envelops herself in is banished from her form in stages, revealing her sky-blue sleeves, skirt, gloves and shoes.

Oh thank fuck, I didn't embarrass myself.

She teleports straight up, moving a handful of feet, then attempts to teleport as soon as she can, but hits the ground before she can. "Yeah, I didn't expect that to work." She considers the problem before her. Time for a physics exploit.

She crouches down, then jumps as high as she can, flying upwards a few times her own height. When she feels her ascent slow, she goes to her Bevin. She quickly jumps again, returning to the Rim as soon as her feet leave the ground, her momentum carrying her upwards. From a Rim perspective she is gone for almost a minute.

From the point she went into her Bevin from she ascends, gaining height. She holds her breath as she falls, the fear that this fall will kill her is a persistent one, no matter how many times she's proven wrong.

"Ok!" She says as soon as she lands. "I can go up there!" Her heart pounds in her chest. "Slowly." Distantly, she gets the feeling that she has performed a similar physics exploit in a game before.

The sosei-shita who proposed the idea gets the look of an engineering considering how to solve problem. "So, you're stopping in your Bevin when you disappear, and as long as you're there, you can't really lose altitude, right? Doesn't matter how long you wait or what you do on the other side?"

"Yup! I could bring whatever fits in my Bevin, but it's smaller than the other ones I've seen."

They nod, their surprisingly long and fluffy mane of hair bouncing at the motion. "What sort of utilities does it have? Do you have a boiler room, like Fib?"

"It has... air." She knows that one for certain. "Light, streaming out of some lovely cracks in the wall. A bed, with bedsheet. A little water stream and some flavorless cookies that self-replenish." She wonders if she is missing something. "And some shelves."

"Hm. Not ideal if there's no way to recharge in the Bevin, but maybe not insurmountable," the sosei-shita replies, before taking Strawberry on a bit of an adventure around the complex collecting various parts and assembling what is starting to look like a jetpack.

"We don't exactly have any rocket fuel, but," they say, before reaching over and pulling over something like an engine and a big, orichalcum pressure vessel on wheels, "we do have some pretty serious air compressors. If I gave you the gas, do you think you could run this in your Bevin?"

She looks at the device. "I don't actually know how much air I can get out of my Bevin, or how well it filters air. We should check. And while we're at it I should actually show you the Bevin." 

"Hey, Hunter!" Strawberry's conversation partner calls out, prompting the nearest engineer, working under the carriage of a car, to pop out and look at them curiously. "I'm going to go see if the guest's Bevin can handle a gas-burning air compressor! Might be a while before we're back!"

"Got it! Don't blame me if you miss dinner, Lion!" Hunter replies before sliding back under the subject of their work.

Lion waves them off dismissively, then grabs the compressor and looks to Strawberry. "Ready to go."

She pokes Lion, they both vanish and appear in her Bevin. It consists of one dimly lit sandstone room. Some clothing was folded and piled up somewhat neatly on the shelves, along with a binder filled with her map of the Academy, her sword, and her flashlight. Her bed was made, complete with stolen blanket and pillow. She had repurposed the large cookie jars to hold her snacks. A clean room. A far departure from the small disaster zone she had lived in prior, and she intended to keep it that way. In the corner was a stream of water flowing into a hole.

"It's not much, but this is my Bevin. I think this is as small as they get."

Lion nods more as they begin to search around the room, looking for a breeze or other evidence of the air supply. "Huh. No idea where the air is come from, or where it's going. If this place isn't ventilated then running the engine in here would be a pretty bad idea."

"Well, I have slept here. So it must be maintaining air quality somehow. There's never any dust and stuff gets cleaned by itself. But I've never stress tested it. Is Fib's Bevin ventilated?"

Lion nods again. "Especially after we installed the server racks, the airflow's actually pretty strong in some places."

"What do you suggest? Even if the air quality gets really bad in here I think the Bevin will fix it eventually, so testing an engine in here isn't out of the question."

Lion scratches their head. "Well, I was going to suggest we try an electric air compressor instead, but I don't see any outlets or other power sources in here either, so I guess we can give it a shot. Any idea how long your Bevin would normally take to refresh the air?"