Wings of Celebration (26.7)

"This thing in the center is a balance of some sort. Nia and I solved the first part of the puzzle and managed to fill up this container with water. We need counterweights to balance on the other side but we don't even know how much this container weighs," Val explained.

The blue-haired woman leaned down next to the container, "Hm…My guesses on measurements may not be as precise as Bella's since she's the expert at that but…Hey, Chaewon, would you say this container is about…2.54 feet long?"

Chaewon knelt down next to her, eyeing the container, "...That looks about right to me, but we should trust your judgment over mine. And it's about 1.42 feet in height, right?" Risále nodded and Chaewon continued, "Seeing as this container seems to be a perfect square, a good guess on the volume is—"

"9.16 feet cubed, converting that to weight would be…" Risále hummed thoughtfully for a moment before sticking her finger in the water, "Okay, it's about 4℃ so the weight per foot squared would be 62.424 pounds…"

Nia stared at them both before leaning over to Val, "This is so fucking weird. That's not normal."

Val whispered back, "They're fucking cyborgs. Of course, they're not normal. What the hell did you expect?"

"I didn't expect it to be this freaky!"

"We can still hear you, you know," Chaewon said, her eyebrow twitching, "Anyway, in that case, the weight would be about…Uh, 570.22 pounds. Sound alright to you? I usually am off by a bit."

Risále nodded, "Nope, I got about the same thing that you did, give or take 0.01 pounds. Let's set it at 570.22 pounds then," She turned to Val and Nia, "What can we use as counterweights?"

Val pointed to the wall, "Four of those gears come off the wall. They're heavier than they look."

"In that case," Risále walked over to the gears before lightly lifting them, as if trying to feel them a bit, "This one is about 180.23 pounds."

Nia stared at Val, "What was that about it being no more than a hundred pounds? Also how the hell did you lift that like it was nothing before?"

Risále moved onto the next gear, "Uh…About 190.39 but Chaewon's going to have to double check that one for me."

"Your guess is probably closer than mine, you're a more fully completely cyborg than Elliot or I are. Kaedan and Owen are probably lower on accuracy than us but still higher than the average human, especially when it comes to memory. You, Leon, and Bella have the most accurate calculations, memory, and the most capabilities, though Bella's is geared towards battle and destruction while yours is towards innovation and creation."

"Kind of ironic that I'm supposed to have a good memory and yet I'm the recovering amnesiac. What about Leon's specialization?" Risále asked, "This one is 85.45 pounds."

Chaewon hesitated, "...Leon's cyborg capabilities are in intelligence gathering. High-level information processing, analyzing, and decoding. His mind is like an archive. He can remember any information he has been given unless it has been fully removed from his mind. In a sense, his is geared towards protection. You all have general things that the three of you can do though, most of them apply to Elliot and me as well. These kinds of estimations and calculations are things we can all do, but you, Bella, and Leon would probably be faster than Elliot or I."

Val hummed, "Creation, destruction, and protection…Sounds kind of familiar actually."

"It probably would to you," Chaewon nodded, "Hyunwoo taught you a bit about Hinduism, didn't he? In their belief, there was a creator of the universe, a protector of the universe, and a destroyer of the universe. They worked in a cycle to keep a balance. While the White Lotus wasn't particularly into religions, they did slightly take inspiration from that—Kind of ironic seeing as it's called the White Lotus and it's basically stealing the idea for a millennia-old concept made by Desi people, but you know, what do you expect? Anyway, each of you three would have had key information about the White Lotus while you were working under them, but the only one still retaining that information is Leon. Your memories are all jumbled up and after her betrayal, they revoked any information Bella had about the inner workings of the White Lotus. Actually…" Chaewon frowned, "I think we found out there was someone before Bella who had the same capabilities as her due to experimentation but we never found out their identity. The White Lotus thought it would be safe to transfer the information that Bella had back to the initial person so I'm assuming it's someone on their side."

Risále hummed, "Does Leon know about all of this?"

"He probably knows about you, Bella, and himself, but I'm not sure if he knows there was someone else before Bella and that person may have important information and capabilities that are specialized to that specific cyborg implant. Each implant is unique except for the 'destroyer' implant. That one was made twice, once for the initial subject and once for Bella. Unfortunately, since the White Lotus made the chips, they know who both owners are which is how they were able to locally switch certain parameters in the chip so that the classified information that comes with the 'destroyer' implant was sent to the other subject," Chaewon explained.

"I see. That might be something to look into after this," Risále murmured, "I already messed with the programming of one type of chip. If we knew who the second person was, then maybe I could do something to transfer the information back to Bella—Also, this one's weight is practically negligible to the others," She frowned, "Even putting all of those weights onto one metal plate, that still leaves about 114.15 pounds…"

The number rang a bell in Nia's head, "...Hey, guys?" She said slowly, "This might sound stupid but…I think I weigh about that much?"

"...You're so fucking tiny, Jesus, Nia," Risále walked over and gripped Nia under her arms before lifting her a few inches into the air like a wet cat, "Yeah, you're about 114 pounds, give or take," She muttered, ignoring the way the other girl was spluttering hitting her shoulder.

"That still doesn't tell us what to do for the other side. I don't think even the three of us combined make it up to 570 pounds, right?" Chaewon asked, "I'm about 145 pounds…"

Val hummed, "I'm about 158."

Risále sighed, "I'm about the same weight as Chaewon, even though I'm like four inches shorter than her. Either I'm putting on a lot of muscle or you're really skinny, Chaewon."

"Both," The other woman huffed, "It's genetics for me. Gaining weight has always been a bit of a struggle for me."

"Fair enough. Even adding those together, we still only get about 448 pounds, we're still missing a whole 122 pounds."

Then, something occurred to Val. They stood up, walking over to the place where Nia had tripped over a slightly raised floorboard. Leaning down, instead of simply moving it to the side like they did before, they instead tried to lift it up, "...Hey, Risále? About how heavy would you say this thing is?"

She walked over before taking the panel from them, "...I think this is about 80 pounds?"

"Damn. I didn't think it was 120 pounds but I thought it might be close enough to not matter?"

Risále furrowed her eyebrows, "Actually…" She reached behind her back and they realized that they hadn't noticed the long, covered silhouette she was carrying. Unwrapping it, Val stared as Risále held up a metal…Walking stick?

"What...?"

"Oh!" The woman twisted certain parts of the walking stick until the base widened enough for it to look more like a large metal bat, "My mace isn't easy to compress the way Lumina's spear, your archery set, or Owen's scythe is. It weighs like 60 pounds so they haven't found a way to compress it so it's easy to sneak around. So, I have this instead. Oh, it has spikes too!" She clicked another knob on the handle of the bat and immediately, spikes jutted out of the metal.

Val stared at her, "...I see. So, what are you using this for?"

Risále grinned, "This thing is about 30 pounds. I think it should be close enough that it'll somewhat balance. It didn't say we had to be exact, just that we need to get all the sides to balance."

"You, my dearest friend, are a fucking genius," Nia grinned, "What are you waiting for then, let's try it."

On one spoke of the scale was the container with water. On the second spoke, the gears were all placed while Nia sat on them like a makeshift stool. On the last spoke, the panel was placed while Val, Chaewon, and Risále all stood on it, the latter holding the bat.

There was silence for a moment, and then—

"Look, something's glowing!" Nia pointed.

"It's aiming towards that wall," Val said as a beam of light hit the wall behind them, which held the constellations, "That's…"

Risále rubbed her chin, "I think we need to figure out which constellation it is-"

"Pyxis!" To all of their surprise, both Nia and Val called out the constellation at the same time.

Nia looked at her friend, "How did you know…"

Val just smiled, "You love the stars. I love your stars."

Ah. Nia had almost forgotten.

One of the constellations that made up Nia's freckles was the Pyxis constellation.

"Are you two done flirting?" Risále asked, and they both glared at her, "Okay, so know the constellation. What do we do now?"

Chaewon stepped off the scale and looked around the room, "...It seems like there's nothing else to do so…" She looked at the second door in the room, "I suppose we have to use this here?"

Just as she moved over to the door though, there was the sound of footsteps approaching from the door they had all entered from. All four of them looked at each other before Risále and Chaewon rushed towards the door, holding it closed, "Nia, Val, grab my earpiece! One of you put it on and try and get that door open! Chaewon and I will hold them off!" She winced as there was a bang against the door.

"But—"

"Do what she says!" Chaewon yelled.