Hey, I'm finally finished with the chapter! And it's longer than the last chapter.

When will this story live up to it's name? I don't know... but eventually, we'll get through this. \

Chapter 3: Cunningly CUL

The figure yelled at CUL in a panicking voice, "Hurry! Press the cancellation button!" as he tried running toward the portal. CUL, listened to the man and reached for the control buttons in front of her before the portal blasted her out to the far end of the container. Her back crashed all the way to the entrance door, and she fell down to the ground.

The man, surprised by the portal's power of blasting a Vocaloid, rushes to the portal and grabs tightly to the control buttons. He pressed a black button in a rush and the portal revealed the text, "REVERSAL TRANSPORTATION CANCELLED", and the portal's inner fluids disappeared. CUL woke up from the entrance, as she scratched her head in pain and confusion.

The man sighed while he turned over to the red-haired girl. He walked up to her with an angry glare, which made CUL feel apologetic and hid her face away from his.

"Sorry!" CUL flashed, putting her head down to show her misery, "I just happened to see you so I followed you all this time and… well…"

The man shook his head sideways, but his angry glare faded. He lifted CUL's chin up and observed her half-crying face. She looked back at the man, observing his characteristics on his face. The man was slightly pale, had messy jet black hair beneath his hat, and the most memorable of all: his glasses. His glasses weren't just the average rectangular black-framed glasses. Instead, they had a silver frame, and the glasses were almost translucent compared to the others. She also found a small control panel looking hologram in the far right corner of the invisible frame. It was so futuristic that she ended up staring at the glasses for a long time.

The man recognized that CUL studied his glasses all along, so he chuckled. He took his glasses off and wiped the frames with a cloth he took out of his pocket. After he set them back on, he waved his hand across CUL just to see if she was still alive.

"Are you alright, kid?" He asked.

CUL shook her head and came back to her senses. She blushed for being mesmerized by the glasses and she scooted back near the entrance door.

"So… I'm just gonna leave now..." CUL muttered, opening the door from behind.

"Really?" The man in the glasses replied, "Aren't you curious of the portal that blew you 50 ft.?"

"Um… Maybe…?" She responded, trying to not use her voice as much as possible.

"Are you sure?" The man frowned.

"Then, yes." She replied back, just out of curiosity.

The man chuckled, but before he introduced the giant portal, he took out a card slip with the words, "Kiyoteru, Hiyama. Monochrome Technology Inc. Researcher" with his business phone number to her and gave it to CUL.

The girl read the business card and looked up to the man, "You're a scientist?"

The man replied back as he reopened the portal, "Scientist is kind of an overstatement. I'm more like an adviser to the company."

She checked the name on the card, "Kiyoteru? That's how you pronounce your name, right?"

Kiyoteru answered, "Yeah. Kiyoteru Hiyama." Once he finished turning on the portal, he took CUL's arm and guided her up front.

"This is the inter-dimensional teleporter," Kiyoteru began, "Researchers like Piko, MAIKA and I worked on this project for decades, and we've finally finished the beta form."

"Beta?"

"It means that it's in its secondary phase. It's not complete, but we've tested it enough to prove it's harmless."

"Oh." She responded. It wasn't as cool as she anticipated, but it was still interesting.

"We invented this portal for the last years as a new form of transportation. It was years of trial and error, but we succeeded in the end, which was pretty damn splendid. Our next project's trying to transport between the cities, but since the laboratory we're working in lost space so we ended up using this empty container to secretly hide this from everyone else in the town…"

"You're hiding this from everyone else? Does that mean I'm the only non-scientist to discover this?"

"Now that you bring up that, yeah."

CUL approached the control buttons in front of the portal. She found a button written about reverse transportation.

"Hey," she pointed to the button, "is the button that blasted me out just a while ago?" She seemed less traumatized about it than ten minutes ago.

"That button was created to reinforce the transportation power between two different portals," He explained, "It was created way back in its alpha form. We rarely use it now and it's just sitting there the control panel."

It was too amazing for CUL. She gulped to observe the amazing piece of science right in front of her. She medicated each and every detail: the blue fluid in the inner frames of the portal, the circuits across the outer frames, and the opal glow from the machine that lightened the dark container.

"Gosh Kiyoteru… I can't believe this at all…"

Kiyoteru smirked. "I can't believe you're impressed by something that blasted you a while ago."

CUL turned over to the man with curiosity, "I wonder if you can use this besides traveling place… maybe like a time machine…"

"We had plans for that, actually," he said, "but it was axed off for law violation and because we weren't really advanced with time travelling. We also tried going through different dimensions through the internet but obviously-"

CUL halted. The internet. The reason why she dashed out of her house, it was because of the comments written directly at her. The hate comments pierced her heart every time she recalled them. They made her feel… finished. They made her feel like she was beaten to death with such harsh words. If only if she would show them she's more than some annoying voice on the web… Then she repeated Kiyoteru's words from earlier.

"Going through different dimensions"

That was it. She would use the portal to travel over dimensions and avenge the cowards who commented on the thread. This was it. This was her way of bringing the CUL in the hate cult: revenge. But she wasn't going to just go up to him and say, "Hey, I want to beat up some people using your cool portal. Can you lend it to me?" No, she needed to say something more reasonable. She figured the sequence in her head and smirked.

She walked up to Kiyoteru with a sudden grin. She putted her hand over the taller man's shoulder as he finished his last sentence.

"… and that's why my wife left me." He felt the hand on his shoulder and looked at CUL. He looked confused, but he was more concerned of why she was grinning all of a sudden.

"Yes?" He asked.

"You know how you said this thing can travel across other dimensions?"

"I never said it can so… no?"

"Whatever. I have a plan," She began, "You need to test if this portal can travel through dimensions. Then I'll use the portal to transport through dimensions and I'll do some… 'research' on the other dimensions… maybe like the third dimension."

"Um… that's quite sudden of you, but why would you volunteer yourself for this? We've never actually designed an experiment to prove that this portal can travel through dimensions, and how're we gonna do that? I already mentioned that when I was talking and… wait," he paused, "were you planning this whole time while I was talking about the portal?"

"Around when you mentioned the internet, so partially yes. But I really want to contribute this experiment for the SOLE purpose of science." CUL answered while hiding her true intents.

"But don't you have anything else to do?"

"I don't, to be honest," She said, twirling her fingers, "I'm jobless and I live under my friends' roof. All I ever do is watch cat videos and I rarely go outside. See? I don't have a life," she followed confidently.

"Strange that someone like you would stumble upon my project… So what about the money? Don't ask me to pay a fortune for this."

"I don't need a lot of money," She answered back, "But you have to pay me minimum wage every week. I haven't paid my rent in the roof and I made my friends pay it for me, so this is also a return for them too."

She also planned the money in her head. She remembered that the rent equaled the amount of money she would receive for minimum wage in a month. It was the least she could do to thank her roommates back for once.

"I'll take the responsibility of my life, and if I ever get lost… just contact the apartment I live in to tell them that I traveled out of the town for a job. I live at the Cobalt Street near the train station."

Kiyoteru looked even more puzzled. She was just crying a while ago, and now she wants to be there dummy for the experiment? Despite the oddness, however, he could see the glow in CUL's eyes. She had passion and ambition in them.

"Look, um, your name…"

"CUL."

"CUL, it's not good for someone to just travel to a dimension on his or her own. Sure, it's generous of you of helping us but…"

"But what? I'm just curious of different worlds."

Kiyoteru sighed. He was already tired enough. "Fine. But I'm gonna work with my other partners for this experiment so that you won't die. I'll tell you about this once I think about this… alright?"

CUL smiled even brighter, "Thanks! I'm really excited for this now!"

The man rolled his eyes, and then he took another business card out of his coat, "Write your number behind this and I'll call you when we're ready. Okay?" Then he looked at a hologram of a clock with his glass, "Besides, it's midnight. You need to leave now."

"Sure!" She said, acting like she's finally happy for once, "See you soon, Kiyo!" She dashed out of the container and felt the cold midnight breeze swirl on her face.

Strange Vocaloid… Kiyoteru thought as she left, Very, very strange.