Her eyes widened with surprise. She tilted her head side to side, trying to confirm whether the hologram would move with her head or if it would disappear. Somehow, it was still present. Then she spun around again to see if it would disappear. Still present.
Uncertainly, she curiously reached her hand out to touch the hologram screen and accidentally clicked into a store. The store name popped up along with different pieces of information.
Aida's eyes sparkled with wonder. This was the legendary "system" that many MCs developed in light novels!! Such an interesting system, she really wanted to play with it more. It seems the servers that had disappeared somehow made it into her head, so now she was a walking library of knowledge (and more). Most importantly, now she could watch anime anywhere she wanted to!
She turned her attention back to the screen and tapped into the locker room area they were located at. She noticed there was one large blue dot, 3 medium blue dots, and 2 smaller blue dots. Apparently, this function came with a GPS. This system was able to scan the area within a 5 ft radius by sending out a series of electromagnetic pulses from her body.
Based on the scans, the size of the dots were determined by the strength of the person scanned. Xiao Ai was definitely the biggest blue dot and the medium dots were the trio. This made sense as the stronger the person, the greater the amount of energy they would emit which would impact the electromagnetic pulses more greatly. Ace was a normal person, so he naturally had the smallest dot. Aida was also an exception as she was a trained killer, she learned to suppress all the energy in her body and appear as a normal person.
This was a very interesting development. While she was a little disappointed that she didn't get the system that she saw in novels that would give her missions to level up, she was satisfied with having something. She fell asleep for two days and miraculously woke up with a scan ability! What a steal!
"Hehehehehehehehe," Aida began to chuckle maniacally with happiness.
The others stared at her with surprise and concern. From their perspective, they saw Aida staring off into space for a while, then waving her hands and pointing for some time while seeming to inspect something in the air very closely, then laughing maniacally. It was a very concerning sight.
Fortunately, soon after Aida stopped and waved Xiao Ai over to experiment some more as this was the nature of a true engineer. Aida rationalized that she could mimic the antenna technology [1] that many satellites use and increase the gain of the electromagnetic pulses if she found the correct frequency offset. In layman's terms, by using Xiao Ai's energy, she should theoretically be able to expand the range of her scan by quite a bit.
Xiao Ai floated over slowly while saying, "Mama is weird, why is Mama laughing to herself? Xiao Ai wants to know too!"
Aida patted Xiao Ai on her bun head, then pulled her over. As expected, the scan radius increased inch by inch. Curious to see how far the scan could go, Aida continued to hold onto Xiao Ai. The radius increased from 5 ft to over 20 ft, and Xiao Ai was visibly deflating. It seems doing there was a huge energy burden from doing this, so Aida should try to keep it the scan at 5 ft unless otherwise necessary. The power drain increased exponentially as the distance increased.
Xiao Ai could also see the holographic screen, but was not at all impressed. Instead, she pouted saying, "Muuu, Xiao Ai is hungry."
Aida nodded in understanding, she was also getting fairly hungry after doing such a large scan. Picking up the fork again, she held Xiao Ai in one hand and inserted the fork into the electrical outlet with the other hand. Within 2 minutes, she was entirely full while Xiao Ai had increased in size by 3 times.
At this point, Ace and Light were staring at Aida as though she were crazy, while Yukio cocked his head cutely to the side in confusion and Rin continued to sleep.
Giggling with amusement at their expressions, she informed them vaguely, "I discovered something new and exciting, so was doing some tests, but I am done now." She didn't tell them about the system or her specific abilities as she still did not entirely trust them.
Ace and Light nodded with some skepticism, but still accepted her explanation.
Then Aida got down to business as her cold face turned serious. She had seen multiple mid-sized red dots approaching the locker room. It appears the ones approaching have had some amount of combat training. The system was also able to label them red, which probably indicated the aggressive nature of the people approaching. She understood that the energy field (aura) around a person changes depending on their mood and personality, so it made sense that the electromagnetic pulse was able to pick up this information.
She informed them, "We have some guests nearby, they should reach here in about 5 minutes. I can't tell if they are hostile or not, but we should be ready to fight."
Light's eyes looked thoughtful as he seemed to figure something out.
Ace took the initiative to ask, "What is the plan of action?" Ace wholeheartedly trusted Aida's ability to make decisions under pressure.
"We will try to talk it out with them, and if it doesn't work. Kill." Aida smiled sinisterly as she said the last word.