If Ash was asked to describe the laboratory they arrived at, there was only one way he could put it: He had no idea what he was looking at. It was simultaneously empty and full. Empty, in that beside the two trainees, it was completely void of people. The only sound that could be heard was the hum of machinery that droned on in the background. And yet at the same time, it still felt full because the room was stuffed to the gills with computers, cables, monitors, and things he didn’t even know the names of.

Even though Ash had grown up in the Mega-city Midgard, he had never been around so much technology before. Kyouko would’ve had a field day here, which is why he was glad that he had specifically barred her from coming. For a brief moment, Ash glanced back towards the entrance, expecting to see crimson eyes staring back at him. There was nothing there, but that didn’t make him feel any safer. “This is a bit overwhelming.”

“Is it?” asked Liesa. “Everything should be up to safety guidelines... Oh you mean the lab itself! Yes well, I suppose a Bifrost Laboratory can be quite overwhelming for a newcomer. When I first set foot in one, I- Well, that was so long ago that I can only recall my wonderment.”

Wonderment. Right, that was exactly what Ash was feeling right now. Definitely not like a fish out of its aqua biome. Although admittedly, he was getting used to the sensation of having no idea what was going on. With a sigh, the vintrkind simply placed the girl in his arms onto a chair in one of the few open spaces. She smiled at him, cheeks pinked with a hint of a blush. “You have my gratitude for carrying me here, Mister Ash, even if the exact process was a bit embarrassing. N-not that I minded much! It’s just that being seen like that together was- Um- Oh my! Look at this chair!”

Ash looked at the chair. It was a chair. Entirely normal, or so he thought before Liesa flipped open a panel in the arm rest. Her fingers turned into a blur before her glasses flashed. A moment later the backrest popped into cushions as the legs retracted. The furniture began to float off the ground as Liesa leaned back. There was only one response that came to Ash’s mind at the sight. “That looks comfy.”

“Oh it definitely is. Convenient as well! By using my Smart Glasses, I can control the movement of the machine with just my neurotransmitters!” The Alfheim girl let out a laugh before a far away look came into her eyes. “Back in my home realm, we used to call them ‘Corpse Chairs’ since they were primarily used by scientists who life extension procedures no longer work on. That, and because some researchers would fight to the death to get their hands on one. Working in a Laboratory can get quite stressful after all. Creature comforts like these prevent us from making disastrous mistakes due to mental exhaustion.”

Nodding slowly, Ash turned around and faced the equipment. “Alright, but don’t fall asleep in the middle of the experiment.”

Liesa’s back shot straight up. “I will not! Despite the tired state of my physical form, I have taken enough supplements to keep my mind running active until zero-two-hundred hours! Er, not that we have this place reserved that late.”

At the sudden reminder of the time constraints, she clapped her hands. “Right! Enough dilly-dallying then! The first thing on our agenda is uncovering the mystery of your Einherjar! Mister Ash, would you please step into the next room and put Loptr into the machine at the very center?”

The Vintrkind followed Liesa’s gesture to a glass door, cautiously stepping inside while making sure that he wasn’t about to trip on anything. At the very center of the room was a large contraption attached to both the floor and ceiling, wires jutting out of it and burrowing into the walls as if it were a mechanical parasite. Slowly Ash made his way over towards it, heart pounding in his chest. How much would it cost if he were to trip and break it right now? Unable to help himself, a wintry chill entered his body as he took the final step. At the very center of the machine was a glass tube with a handle which he cautiously opened. Taking the Einherjar card out of his pocket, he slipped it inside and closed the lid. “Just what is this thing?”

“One of the finest pieces of engineering in all of Alfheim- No, all of Humanity’s history! The Bifrost Interface Mechanism! B.I.M. for short,” the bespectacled girl announced proudly. “Thanks to the help of B.I.Ms, we’re able to create new Einherjar as well as safely conduct experiments with the Bifrost itself! Uh, relatively safe that is. Mister Ash, would you please exit the testing chamber? You currently don’t have the equipment to protect your body from direct Bifrost Exposure.”

Well, he didn’t need to be told that twice. The tall boy practically fled the room, the door closing behind him with a solid thunk. Breathing out a sigh of relief, he walked over to his friend, before giving her a sidelong glance. A niggling thought was worming its way into his mind. “Out of curiosity, what would’ve happened if I had been directly exposed?”

A sinking feeling in his gut kicked in when Liesa slowly turned her head towards him. Cautiously, she lowered her glasses to stare into Ash’s eyes with dead seriousness. “Mister Ash, I know that in neither my lesson plan nor the school curriculum we have touched up on the subject in much depth but I must ask, how knowledgeable are you about the Bifrost?”

“Not very much,” Ash admitted honestly. He quickly pulled up his arm to glance at his Valkyrie Gear. “All I really know is that these things use it and the Einherjar to transform.”

“I see… Then perhaps it would be better if I demonstrated first.” Slipping her glasses back into place, Liesa’s chair hovered over to a control panel. A heavy whirr echoed throughout the building as the machine in the next room came to life. From where he was standing, Ash could see his Einherjar card begin to float up in the glass tube. A thin beam shot down from the top of the machine, striking the card and scattering into an intense bloom of light. Ash winced, raising a hand to cover his eyes. A few moments later, he heard Liesa speak up. “It’s okay to look now.”

Cautiously, Ash lowered his hand, only to let out a gasp at what he saw. The room through the window had been transformed into a dazzling rainbow void, constantly shifting and forever in flux. All of the walls had been replaced by an endless expanse of myriad colors. Only the machine remained, Loptr slowly cycling as a scanning laser panned over the surface of the card. “What is that?”

“That is the Bifrost!” Liesa proudly declared, a smile worming its way onto her lips. “The fabric of the universe that connects all of space and time together! Every moment, every place; past, present, and future. All of it is held together by the Bifrost!”

The Vintrkind nodded as if he understood that explanation. “So if I had still been in the room when you activated the machine-”

“Your body would have broken down and scattered throughout reality as nothing more than a cosmic smear,” the alfheim girl said flatly, before pausing. “At least, that’s what we think happens. We don’t know for certain what exactly happens to organic matter, but looking at experiments gone wrong reveals that it’s definitely not pleasant.”

“And every time I transform, I risk that happening to me?”

“Oh no! Valkyrie Gears and Einherjar are actually quite safe to use!” She clapped her hands. “As technology bestowed upon us by Odin herself, it is the only known mechanism capable of safely utilizing the power of the Bifrost! For the past three centuries it has served as the guide we have based all our experiments off of! Do you know how that Einherjar of yours functions?”

“By giving the Valkyrie Gear its power?” He answered. Liesa stared at him expectantly and Ash began to wrack his brain for more. When he transformed, the first thing that he heard was the Valkyrie Gear connecting to the rainbow dimension in front of him. Without an Einherjar, it only deployed Phase Zero armor. So when the Einherjar was added to the mix it would have to serve as a- “It’s a blueprint for the abilities.”

“Close, but not quite. There’s actually an extra step, though I can’t fault you for not being aware of it.” Liesa adjusted her glasses before raising her fingers. “If that were all it was, then the Einherjars wouldn’t generate different armors for different users. ‘Modes’ would not be a thing either. No, the most important thing about the Einherjar is that they act as a connector.”

Ash could already feel the headache starting to form. “Connector to what?”

“The question is not to what but to who.” Reaching into her pocket, the Wing Candidate pulled out her own Einherjar and displayed it. Engraved upon it was a man in robes, with equations, diagrams, and spirals floating around him. Liesa moved her thumb down to point specifically at the name written on it. “My Einherjar is Archimedes. Whenever I use it, the Valkyrie Gear activates a link to the Bifrost to locate a copy of the man in an alternate dimension, and uses that to generate a set of abilities and armor. This is what is referred to as a ‘Phase One’ Valkyrie Armor. We can see this exact process if we take a look at Loptr. Watch!”

Her hands blurred across the keyboard as various holographic lights and displays manifested around them. Ash’s Einhejrar began to rapidly spin, before a giant red error message was thrown up and everything ground to a halt. Liesa pursed her lips, staring at the message as it was slowly replaced with a display that was just pitch black. Her lenses flashed, her eyes darting rapidly as she read something that only she could see. “That’s… odd. It appears that your Einherjar isn’t connecting to anything in the Bifrost.”

“You mean my Einherjar is broken?” The large teen crossed his arms. “That can’t be right. It’s been working fine for me.”

“Indeed. For you… Pardon me a moment, would you mind connecting your Valkyrie Gear to this device?” Silently, Ash powered his gear before stretching out his arm. Liesa did the rest of the work, all the Vintrkind had to do was agree when the prompt popped into his head. After running the machine one more time, the black screen quickly phased out to reveal an endless multitude of Ash himself. Or rather, herself, as the one constant between every other version of himself on the screen was that he was a girl. They were wielding different weapons, in clearly different situations, but his gender was the one thing that was universal. “Oh my! Could it be?! Instead of connecting to a Hero, the Loptr Einherjar instead connects to an alternate version of yourself! This explains so many of the oddities I’ve noticed!”

“Oddities…” Was about all Ash could get out as he stared into the myriad of possibilities. Did he just spot a copy of himself working for a corporation? What the hell? And the next one was clearly a Musspelheim soldier! An oppressive feeling started to weigh on him as more and more and more versions of himself flashed on to the screen. In the face of the myriad sea of possibilities, Ash felt like he was going to drown. He felt so tiny and fragile.

Oblivious to his ongoing existential crisis, his friend continued to chatter on. “Yes, oddities! Loptr’s ability to produce new weapons when faced with new ones is powerful, but how does it work? What allows you to instantly be able to master them with no training? This is the answer! Loptr isn’t generating new weapons, it’s utilizing your parallel selves and combining it with you!”

“Liesa,” Ash said quietly.

“This also explains seemingly inexplicable things like your gender swapping on transformation! Because whenever you transform it grabs a copy of a parallel version of your body! With a little more research on this I can write a paper and-”

“Liesa.” The Vintrkind grit out, frost obscuring the glass in front of them as the room noticeably dropped in temperature. “Turn the machine off. Please.”

“Huh?” Blinking, Liesa snapped out of her stupor only to see what state that Ash was in. “O-Oh! Yes, right right away Mister Ash!”

Taking a breath, Ash went to grab a chair of his own as the machine dialed down. Slowly the rainbow light faded before the infinite void was replaced once again by sterile walls. Thoughts rattled inside of his skull, trying to process what he had just witnessed. Liesa hovered over towards him, the two trainees sitting together in tense silence before the Wing Candidate finally found the words to speak. “My apologies. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to witness so many versions of yourself.”

“You really don’t want to know.” The knowledge of how his life could’ve turned out was like poison, sickening the Vintrkind to his stomach. The more he thought about what he just witnessed, the more it felt like ghosts of himself were scratching at the walls of his mind.

“I vowed to watch over you, and yet the moment something related to the Bifrost came up I completely forgot. Never once did I think of what you might’ve been experiencing.” Liesa sighed, sinking back into her hover chair with a depressed slump. “...And even now my mind keeps wandering back to The Great Mystery.”

Ash nodded slowly, not knowing what the hell was so ‘Great’ about that. “Is uncovering the secrets of the Bifrost really so important?”

“Naturally!” Liesa shouted, jumping off of her chair while excitedly pointing towards the experiment room. “With the power of the Bifrost, anything is possible! Time and space is at our fingertips! ...Theoretically, that is. In truth, even three centuries down the line, successful utilization is nothing more than tall tales and rumors. If there have been any, they’re classified to the point where only the Council of Wisdom knows about them.”

A wistful sigh escaped her lips as she stretched her arms. “But what we could accomplish with the Bifrost is so vast and wonderful. Infinite food, powers beyond imagining, it could even be used to get rid of the Jotun outside of Yggdrasil so we can reclaim the world! The sheer amount of possibilities has captivated the hearts of all Alfheim researchers! From our originators, to my parents, and of course myself.”

“Your parents research this stuff as well?” Ash said, surprised. “So it’s like some kind of family tradition?”

“I suppose you could put it like that.” The Alfheim girl nodded. “I’ve had the pleasure of reading their research papers sometimes. They’re working on some very fascinating stuff!”

“You make them sound like work colleagues, rather than your parents.” When only silence was the response, the Vintrkind raised an eyebrow. “Wait, seriously?”

“I believe I’ve only ever met them face to face five times in my life.” Liesa chuckled nervously, scratching her cheek. “I suppose that might seem weird to you, but it’s actually the norm in my home realm. Alfheim is the Realm of Progress. We believe in further academic study and achievement. Raising a child costs time, effort, and attention. Between that and the choice of continuing their research, most Alfheim parents send us to boarding schools instead. Truthfully I find the class I grew up with to be more like my family then the ones I’m actually blood related to.”

At the revelation, Ash couldn’t help but narrow his eyes. “...Then what Mimosa said about the school’s suicide rates, is that true?”

“Miss Mimosa was really using stats and figures to paint the realm in a bad light! It’s not really as awful as she made it seem!” The weak smile on the girl’s face said otherwise as she began to clutch her stomach. “Or at least, I’ve never had any problems with it myself! There are… Others, I know, who struggle with the curriculum and expectations.”

A moment of silence passed. Liesa stood there, lost in thought and memories before she made her decision. The Wing Candidate gripped her uniform. Turning around, she stared at the Vintrkind with a fire in her eyes. “I’m truly sorry for ignoring your condition earlier, Mister Ash! And this may seem out of the blue, but do you know why I chose to become a Wing Candidate?”

“You’ve never mentioned it before.” He shook his head. To be totally honest, Ash had kind of just assumed that she had gotten it by default. The title just felt so right for Liesa that he never put much thought into it. Evidently there was more to the story as behind her bespectacled gaze, her eyes took on a faraway look tinged with bitter memories.

“I’ve mentioned this before, but when I was an Alfheim Student, I also helped a few of my peers with their own studies,” Liesa said. “Among them was one girl who, while promising at first, ended up having increasing difficulty with the assigned workload. I tried to help her as best as I could but… Problems I thought were simple, that she could learn with ease, she struggled to complete. And in that time I never noticed how much the stress began to affect her. I was so wrapped up in my own research and life that by the time I noticed, it was too late and she snapped.”

Liesa closed her eyes, taking a sharp breath as she traced the sides of her stomach. “She called me out one day outside of our lessons. When I arrived, I found her holding a knife. Before I could even comprehend what was going on, she stabbed me, and I found myself on the ground. She screamed, cursing the school, cursing Alfheim, and above all, cursing me. The pain I never knew she was bearing, that at the time I couldn’t imagine anyone was going through, she unloaded all of it onto me.”

Her knees began to wobble again and Ash moved to catch her, only for Liesa to hold her hand out to stop him. “Luckily, her screaming caught the attention of someone nearby and I was saved. I was taken to the hospital while the authorities apprehended her. Ariana was expelled. To our peers, so focused on their own studies, she became nothing more than an example and a distant memory. The wound she gave me didn’t even leave a scar, with Alfheim’s medical technology. They told me to forget, and it would’ve been so simple to act like it had never happened… But I can’t.”

“Even now, I can still feel the metal sinking into my flesh. I still hear her voice inside of my head. Still can never shake off the deathly cold I felt that day.” She shook her head before turning back to Ash. “While I was recovering, I realized that I wanted to do something but I didn’t know what. All I knew was that I wanted to change my home realm somehow, so that this never happened again. When I was approached to become Alfheim’s Wing Candidate, that’s when I realized that if I became a Wing then maybe I would have the power to do something with my life that wouldn’t be forgotten. Something that would help everyone. That’s why I came to Valhalla and ended up meeting Miss Kyouko and you, Mister Ash.”

“But in order to become a Wing, you can’t just be the best. You have to be great,.” Ash concluded, parroting the words his own handler had spoken to him on the day that they first met. It was what pushed him to keep taking risks at VEA rather than simply just playing it safe. “Is that why you wanted to do this experiment so badly?”

“That is correct. As a Wing Candidate, I’m allowed to perform experiments on the Bifrost.” Liesa nodded before sighing. “But on the other hand, if I fail to show any results, not only will I not become a Wing, but Alfheim would soon throw me away as well. There’s no point in wasting resources for a dead end after all. That’s why… Please!”

The green haired girl dashed up towards him, grabbing Ash’s hands and pushing herself as close as possible. “Please let me continue using Loptr for my research! I will give you my everything and do anything that you desire if that is what it takes! As long as you work with me then no matter what you want, I will service you to the utmost of my abilities! My body is at your command!”

Ash couldn’t help but get a sense of deja vu, except this time he felt even sleazier for some reason. Suppressing a grimace, he tried to put some distance between him and Liesa. “You don’t need to go that far. You’re already helping me enough as is.”

“No, if I am to do this then our relationship must change! Not just tutor and student, but as two who will forever walk side by side!” Uh, what?! Did Liesa even realize what she was saying?! “Do you realize what the value of working with you is?! Just today alone has put me in a debt that I cannot hope to repay! If you give me your precious treasure, then we must become inseparable! Together we will walk into the future-”

There was no way Liesa would stop once she had gotten passionate about something. That was a fact that Ash had learned after working with her for the past month. Groaning, the Vintrkind took his hands out of the girl’s grip and sprayed her with a quick puff of chilled air. “Alright, alright. I get it. Just stop.”

Liesa shrieked, leaping out of his personal space. Her cheeks were soon a blazing red as she realized her actions, shaking her head rapidly in an attempt to calm herself down. Ash almost found it cute the way she looked like a puppy who had gotten too enthusiastic. “A-Ah! Yes! You will think about my offer right? I mean I don’t need your answer right now of course! I know it must be a tough decision!”

The Vintrkind took a breath, feeling the winter chill in his body. He never wanted to go through that experience again but at the same time… Ash couldn’t just ignore Liesa’s story. She said this would put her into his debt, but the fact of the matter was that the only boy in VEA would have quickly flunked out of the school if it wasn’t for the Alfheim girl. He was the one in her debt more than anything. And at the end of the day, they were friends. Was there anything more he could ask of her? Wait, there was one thing. Making up his decision, Ash spoke. “Alright, I’ll work with you. But only on one condition.”

Liesa snapped to attention, her eyes sparkling behind her frames. “What is it Mister Ash?!”

“That. Right there. Stop that,” the boy said flatly. “Stop adding Mister to my name. It feels weird, like we’re strangers. Just call me Vargr like Kyouko does. We’re friends right?”

The girl stared at him before a smile blossomed onto her face. With a warm gaze, Liesa nodded her head. “Yes. I suppose we are, huh? Alright then, Var- Hm. Hm. Alright then Ash!”

All emotion left Ash’s face as the Vintrkind gave Liesa a flat stare, causing her to let out a laugh. “My apologies Ash! It’s just that even for me, calling you ‘Vargr’ feels a bit odd! It’s quite a unique nickname, all things considered.”

“There’s nothing weird with it.” Vargr definitely didn’t sulk. “It’s perfectly normal back in Midgard.”

“Cultural differences?” The Alfheim girl suggested before pulling her hand out. “Regardless, it’s a pleasure to be working with you Ash!”

He took out her hand, feeling how small it was in comparison with his own. “Same here, Liesa.”

With a shake, the deal was done. A light atmosphere was in the air as the two began to get back to work. Where the partnership would take them they didn’t know. But Ash didn’t care, enjoying the new sense of closeness he now shared with Liesa.

It was pleasant, if nothing else.