Chapter 744: Rice and Steak.
She grabbed the two main power leads_ the bridge’s heart and the gravity storm’s tether. "If I connect these, the feedback is going to kick that thing’s butt back to the ionosphere from overfeeding, right?"
[Correct. Or it will fry your nervous system like a cheap circuit board. It is a fifty-fifty split, host. I have grown fond of you, so I suggest the former.]
"I like those odds! Better than the lottery!" Sunshine yelled over the roar of the wind. "Which is probably not the best comparison as I have never won the lottery in my life." With a roar of pure defiance, she slammed the wires together.
The world turned white.
Sunshine felt like she was being pulled through a tiny straw at the speed of light. For a split second, she wasn’t on Elitope anymore_ she felt like she was in another world entirely and this one was an all-electric place.
She felt every bolt, every wire, and every spark. She saw the Thunder snake in the clouds come at her, felt its cold, ancient hunger, and then... she channeled the power. She poured every ounce of the bridge’s backup power into that one connection.
BOOM!
An explosion of blue light cleared the sky for miles. The Thunder snake in the clouds uncoiled with a silent, vibrating scream and vanished into the upper atmosphere, its connection severed.
Sunshine flew backward and she was flung off the bridge, her harness catching her with a bone-jarring snap just before she plunged into the abyss of mist. She hung there, spinning slowly in the air, watching as the lights of the bridge flickered once, twice, and then began to glow a steady, beautiful, domestic gold.
[Power restored. East bridge tower online. Bridge steadiness at one hundred percent. You are... surprisingly not dead, host. Congratulations.] The System said, it’s voice sounding genuinely relieved.
Sunshine let out a long, shaky breath, watching the mist below stop vibrating as the electrical interference died down. She looked at her smoking gloves, her burnt sleeves, and the quiet sky. The job was not done, but she had fixed the most dangerous aspect of it.
"I better skip straight to grand master after this." she whispered, a tired, lopsided grin spreading across her face.
The reboot had not just restored power to the eastern side; it had also turned the bridge into the biggest, brightest dinner bell in all the universe--or this planet.
Sunshine’s tired, lopsided smile fell the second the system started flashing a rhythmic, angry red color. The mist below was churning, and it wasn’t because of the wind.
[WARNING: Multiple biological signatures detected. It appears the reboot has attracted even more local wildlife, Host. And they look very interested in you since you are electrokinetic. If they can’t feed off the bridge of the damaged bridge, they will feed off you.]
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" Sunshine barked, her voice cracking with exhaustion. "So, I am like rice and steak to them?"
[Yes, you are a strong power source, more than the bridge, these creatures feed on such power for energy.]
From the swirling mist below, things began to fly upwards. These were winged, oily-looking creatures with too many legs and glowing orange eyes. Sunshine thought to herself that now was a good time to hung up the wrench and give up the job.
[Creatures identified to be Fanged Skulkers.]The System said.
They hissed, their claws clicking against the metal beams as they scrambled toward the dangling repair woman.
"Hammer! Go to work!" Sunshine yelled, releasing her grip on her favorite tool.
The hammer hummed and it zoomed through the air like a loyal, angry golden retriever.
CRACK! It slammed into the skull of a fang skulker that had been inches from Sunshine’s hair, sending the creature spinning back into the abyss.
"Good job!" she cheered. "Smack anything that looks at me funny!" In the meanwhile, she would navigate gravity and right her body. Her fighting chances would be better off she was on her feet.
The hammer obliged, zipping back and forth in a blur of orange heat, but there were too many. For every Skulker the hammer crushed, three more emerged from the shadows. They were fast_ unnervingly fast_ darting around the girders and snapping their needle-like teeth at her harness.
"System, I’m going to need more to fight these things, I need you to get creative here because I have work to do. I am not going to give up on this job." Sunshine hissed, kicking a creature in the snout as it tried to climb her leg.
"I should have just put on the exo suit," she muttered. But she already knew why that was not a possibility. She couldn’t repair things properly when her body was hidden inside the suit.
[Activating the Guardian protocol. Please try to stay off the ends of the bridge.]
Suddenly, high above in the red sky, small streaks of silver light appeared. A swarm of spherical flying robots descended like a metallic cloud. Half of them formed a tight, circle around Sunshine, their energy fields overlapping to create a shimmering blue protection shield. The other half deployed tiny laser turrets and went to fight the Skulkers.
"Now that’s more like it!" Sunshine laughed, feeling the vibration of the shield protecting her from the atmosphere of the planet completely. "System, you should have done this from the start."
[You didn’t ask.] It replied easily.
With the robots and her flying hammer holding the line, Sunshine turned back to the wreckage of the junction box. She wore a new pair of gloves, adrenaline running high.
"Okay, let’s make sure this thing stays fixed," she muttered.
She reached into her utility belt and pulled out a tube of semi liquid-crystalline Insulation. It looked like glowing silver toothpaste.
"System monitor the heat levels while I seal this," she commanded.
[Yes host]
She didn’t just twist the wires back together. She used her soldering iron to fuse the connections into a solid block of conductive alloy. Then, she squeezed the silver goo over the entire assembly to the point that it dripped like drops of rain.
"What I’m doing here," she explained to the System, as if it were a student, "is creating a thermal sink. This stuff absorbs the heat from the surges and spreads it across the bridge’s frame. It’s like a radiator for a car, but way more expensive. It won’t melt again unless someone actually burns it with like Pyreath kind of heat. These people are so lucky they found me in my generous era. I could have used the cheap stuff but no....in order to solidify my reputation and get such jobs, I have been splurging."
[An impressive solution, albeit messy, Host. Great news, the heat signature is stabilizing.]
"Messy? It’s creative!" Sunshine retorted, wiping a smudge of grease off her nose. It was perfect, in her opinion.