SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI
T H E
G E K K O U K A N
I N C I D E N T
SEPTEMBER 4, 1999
"Uh-huh...that's correct...send out the last of the teams on Tuesday...okay...tell them to send the samples to the lab in Yakushima first before sending them here...okay...okay, I'll talk to you later, bye."
I put the phone back onto the receiver and looked down at my desk...damn, two years into the project and already we were hitting major roadblocks. Package delays, clerical errors, misplaced wire transfers... all of it could be handled but the thing was I didn't want to handle it. My son was doing the best he could down in Yakushima, but, knowing Takeharu, that isn't saying much. Ever since Mitsuru was born he's been paying less and less attention to his work as the project went forward. Not that I'm the sort of man who would want to strip a man away from his family, but...I just can't justify it in my mind. I can't understand why he can't grip the awesome power of our work here in Iwatodai.
The door opened and in hallway stood one of my most prestigious scientists, two actually, if you counted her apprentice. She came to me twelve years ago with the knowledge of Shadows...I haven't forgot her since. Three years later I recruited her and in the nine years since I brought her into the fold of the Kirijo Group I still do not know her real name.
"Ah, Bibi-san!? I trust you bring good news?" I asked her. Her apprentice was a short, scruffy little man whom I had recruited some three years ago. The induction interview was the only time I'd ever spoken to him in the last three years. A business relationship was all it was, with Bibi-san being out intermediary.
"Indeed I do, Junichi-san. Preliminary results from the Shadow containment system are in from Yakushima. They are all satisfactory. Not even the strongest of Shadows can escape our containment facility without manual override."
She told me the news in the same way she'd always been giving me reports for the past nine years: cordial, smooth, and expressionless during the actual report, then afterwards she would give me a small smile and a nod. At first, during our first months working together, I had thought that this was flirtatious trickery...I soon found out she was a decisive, no-nonsense individual whom I would come to love anyway.
But, shaking these thoughts aside, I nodded to her to indicate my satisfaction with the way the project was advancing so far, because, after nine years of work, the Gekkoukan Project was finally given a completion date: September 31, 1999. It was a date clearly marked on my desk calendar and, no doubt, Bibi-san's calendar as well...
There was a reason for my obsession.
Twelve years ago, the Kirijo Group was nonexistent. As the Iwatodai Director of the Nanjou Group, I was heading to Tokyo for a conference on production efficiency and cost reduction. As fate (or The Fates, as Bibi-san would later tell me) would have it, I passed by a group of students in another conference hall apparently studying philosophy and psychology, because when I passed by, I heard only a few words: "The Shadow is the true self, bounded not by this Earth but a wholly different realm." The speaker had been Bibi-san and, as I passed by her conference hall, our eyes had a chance meeting before quickly drawing apart, but the damage, or should I say, the bond had already been made.
In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have been so curious, peeking my head inside or listening in on their conversation, but then, who would be here today to recount these events?
It would turn out that she would wait a whole five hours for my conference to end, sitting outside the convention center with a cigarette in her hand and a small book in the other. I never got to see the book, she stuffed it in her pocket as soon as I approached, as if anticipating me. Then, without warning, as I was descending the steps of the convention center, she extended her hand towards mine, introduced herself as "B. B." (her initials, she had told me, hence Bibi-san) and told me I was destined to change the world should I seize the opportunity. Being the young, thirty-something executive-with-a-family I was, I quickly grabbed onto her notions of my greatness and instantly followed her to a small side street where she told me a few short, yet essentially fundamental facts about our universe.
Firstly, our universe is not our home.
Second, other universes exist.
Third, and most terrifying to me, other beings existed within those universes.
Finally, if there was a way to seal our universe within itself and shut ourselves off, we would be "free".
Free from what, exactly? I asked the question to her, looking her dead in the eyes as she held my arm.
The answer was not as clear as I had imagined, in fact, it didn't make any sense whatsoever when I first heard it. The answer to my question was just as confusing to me as these four "truths" she had just divulged to me:
The Cycle of the Arcanum.
Now, I know what you're thinking and I most certainly know that if you were in my position you would have no clue what that meant at the time, but I also know that if you were in my position that you would be equally entranced by such a bizarre concept. This woman, with all her tanned skin and white hair and unholy eyes was about to open Pandora's Box...literally.
I stared into her face for a few moments after that. Dazed and confused, I refused to wrap my head around the idea. I refused to believe that she was real. And in that instant my brain refused to recognize the facts that now hold this universe so tightly within their iron grip, she had vanished from my eyes.
I don't know whether or not the Bibi-san that day was an apparition or not, but three years later I met her again, this time when I fully understood what she was talking about, but that's a story for another time, ne?
Coming back to reality, Bibi-san was still standing in front of my desk, staring intently into my face. I noticed out of the corners of my eyes that another one of her apprentices had shown up. She had three of them, all equally skilled in various areas of Shadow-related research. There was Eiichiro Takeba, the scrawny guy who, with his devotion to his family, reminded me of my own son, Takeharu. Kujo Edogawa, a bookworm with a penchant for old artifacts...and finally, there was the man that had just walked into the room.
Shuji Ikutsuki was a pain in the ass sometimes - scratch that, most of the time...no, all of the time. For some reason I always saw him hanging around the library, doing nothing in the research facility but reading. I would have fired him long ago if Bibi-san had not gone out of her way to testify in his defense, because apparently, seeing the hidden supernatural meaning in ancient poems and texts was his specialty, so I left it at that.
"Oh, Majestic One, how do I grace your presence today!?"
That was Ikutsuki.
"Knock it off with my name or I'll have you-"
I found myself standing up from my desk and raising my voice before Bibi-san raised her hand in front of me and walked over to whisper something in his ear. I couldn't make it out, even while trying. In fact, it's doubtful that Bibi-san ever said anything to Ikutskui, but one thing was for sure...
He sure was doing a hell of a job pissing me off.
"What do you want, Ikutsuki? Make it quick!" I tried to bellow out with as intimidating a voice as I could muster...it came out as a sigh.
His face quickly stiffened and I saw the slightest twinkle in his eye. That meant he either had great news for me or he was about to massacre everyone in the room. I steadied my hand on the security button below my desk.
"I've located an energy source capable of containing the immense pressure of spiritual energy within the Shadows..."
"Tell me."
"I call it...SET, or Suppression-Evosion Technology,"
He was smiling...I didn't like that, not one bit...
"It works by-"
"I don't care how it works, do you really think this can compress the Shadows' spirit energy long enough for us to fuse them?"
A sly grin appeared on his face, replacing the innocent smile of achievement he had held before.
"Why, yes...yes of course..."
