Chapter 3: Nitori Kawashiro
Sakuya Izayoi walked to Meiling's room with Patchouli in tow. She creaked open the door, half expecting Lie Meiling to jump her. Instead, the room seemed empty.
Sakuya held her breath as she took a step inside the room. She was immediately jumped by Lie Meiling and slammed into the wall. Lie Meiling forced Sakuya's arms to her side and began to roughly kiss her, her tongue barging her way into Sakuya's mouth. Sakuya let out a startled noise as Lie Meiling pressed her body against Sakuya's.
She didn't know how to react. What should she do? Stopping time wasn't an option. But only if she could reach one of her knives…
Sakuya pulled a hand away from Lie Meiling's grasp and reached for her knife in her pocket. She then stabbed Lie Meiling in the shoulder and left her knife there. She pulled more knives from her pocket and stabbed Lie Meiling with them.
The red-eyed, purple-clad, evil girl took a step back and gasped in pain. Finally, Sakuya was free!
Sakuya ran over to Lie Meiling and pulled out all of her knives, only to stab her again in different places with them. Patchouli took a few tentative steps in and held out a sedative shot to Sakuya, which she gladly took from her.
"How long will it take-" Sakuya grunted, struggling with the thrashing Lie Meiling. "For the sedative…to kick in?" Sakuya asked, inserting the sedative into one of Lie Meiling's veins.
"About fifteen seconds. I got this one from Eirin. She told me that if things get rough with Flandre, I should use it on her," Patchouli replied, her purple eyes glimmering with knowledge.
After about fifteen seconds of worthless thrashing, Lie Meiling had finally calmed down. Sakuya gave the empty shot to Patchouli, which she pocketed.
"Now what?" Sakuya asked the purple mage.
"Now we take her to see Nitori Kappashiro," Patchouli responded. She sighed and lifted Lie Meiling's sleeping body with magic and walked out of the room. They went down the hall and into the front room, where Patchouli paused. "Sakuya, would you mind getting the door for me?"
Sakuya opened the large wooden door of the mansion and held it open for Patchouli. Just as she did this, Remilia walked into the front room.
"Sakuya, where are you and Patchy going?" Remilia asked. She had a curious expression on her face.
"Meiling's fallen ill. We're going to see Nitori Kappashiro," Sakuya explained.
Remilia frowned. "Isn't it Kawashiro? And why Nitori instead of Eirin?"
Patchouli stuck her head back into the mansion. "Now I remember! It's Kawashiro, not Kappashiro! We're going to Nitori's because Meiling-or Lie Meiling, as she calls herself now-claims that she is from the future. I'm going to ask Nitori if she can run a few tests on her," Patchouli answered to Remilia.
Remilia chuckled, like stuff like this happened every day. Sakuya felt a little angry that Remilia had chuckled at something serious like this. What if Meiling was never the same again? She would feel sad that her beloved would never be better again.
"Take care, Patchouli. And you too, Sakuya," Remilia said, and then turned on her heel to and walked down the hallway to Flandre's room.
Patchouli sighed and went out the door once more. Sakuya followed in suit, closing the door behind her as she entered the outside air.
"So…are we flying?" Sakuya asked the mage. She didn't know if she was strong enough to fly outside because of her asthma attacks. Plus, what if Patchouli's aura dropped?
"Yes, we are. I hope that I don't have any asthma attacks. I haven't had one in a while," Patchouli informed the maid. She suddenly began hovering in midair, and then took off toward Nitori's home in the mountains.
Sakuya followed Patchouli, flying at her side. She knew the way to Nitori's house, but it had been a while since she had flown.
The wind tickled her nose, bringing the scent of winter with it. Cirno and the other ice fairies would be playing with their ice powers at the lake. The air felt chilly, and Sakuya shivered a bit. Patchouli seemed like it didn't bother her though.
Lie Meiling floated at Patchouli's side, her chest rising and falling in time with her breathing. Sakuya felt tears come to her eyes. Why did this have to happen to Meiling?
Finally, after a few minutes of flying, they arrived at Nitori's house. Sakuya landed on the ground and Patchouli landed beside her, and then erupted in a fit of coughing and hacking.
"Lady Patchouli, are you okay?" Sakuya asked her.
"I'm fine," Patchouli groaned, and then coughed some more.
Once Patchouli's coughing had stopped, she and the purple mage walked up to Nitori's house and knocked on her door. Nitori, being the shy person she was, surprisingly opened up the door.
"Wh-who are you?" Nitori asked them, the door only open a crack.
"I'm Sakuya, maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Remember me? I stopped by to ask for some lamps from the outside world, remember? And you directed me to the human village," Sakuya explained. "And this is Patchouli Knowledge. She stopped by to loan you a few books on technology."
Nitori's eyes lit up. She must have felt relieved that she knew them. "Why are you here?"
Sakuya explained to Nitori their situation and Meiling's strange behavior. Nitori nodded and opened her door up wider. "Come on in. I think I know what's going on," Nitori said, blushing shyly.
Sakuya and Patchouli stepped inside. The walls were a cucumber-green color and on one wall there were shelves full of sprockets, hammers, wrenches, and just about every piece of building equipment that someone would ever need.
"You have a lovely home," Patchouli commented as they walked through Nitori's house. They followed the kappa through a big wooden door.
"Thanks," Nitori said quietly and blushed once more. She tinkered with a few machines in a brightly lit room. The room was huge, with cement floors and machines of all types lined up neatly on the wall. Despite the neatness of the machines, there was Nitori's messy desk in the center of the room.
Nitori grabbed a wrench from her back pocket and screwed a bolt into a machine that had a table attached to it. The machine buzzed and came to life as Nitori screw the bolt into the machine and pressed a big green button.
"Bring her here, please," Nitori said so quietly that Sakuya wasn't even sure if she had heard her. But she must have, because Patchouli walked toward Nitori and set Lie Meiling on the table with magic. Patchouli looked like she needed to rest because of all the magic that she had used to bring Lie Meiling here.
Nitori strapped Lie Meiling to the table and hooked up some cords to her, placing suction cups on her forehead, arms, and cheeks. Sakuya watched as Nitori pressed a red button, and the machine stopped making whirring noises. Nitori quickly pulled some earmuff looking things out of a drawer in the machine and shoved them into Patchouli and Sakuya's hands. "Hurry, put these on!" Nitori exclaimed, and shoved them onto her own head. She had an expression similar to that of a child's on Christmas morning.
Sakuya pulled the earmuff things over her ears and then figured out why Nitori had given them to her. It was because of the loud sounds that the machine made.
Sakuya watched as the machine turned a bluish color, lighting up the whole room in blue light. Lie Meiling was zapped with powerful blue electricity and Sakuya winced as Lie Meiling was poked and prodded by the machine. The sensor things that Nitori had attached to Lie Meiling's head were glowing lime green and Lie Meiling was shuddering in her sleep.
Suddenly, after about five minutes, the lights dimmed, and the machine shut down. Nitori took off her earmuffs. Sakuya and Patchouli took theirs off as well and handed them back to Nitori, who was grinning very broadly.
Nitori clasped her hands together in front of her. "Well, I guess that means that we have all the information that we need now!" Nitori said, and then ran over to the machine and pressed a large blue button. A computer screen ejected itself from the side and a printer popped out behind it. The printer began to print all of the test results and the computer was covered in charts, like heart monitors and the probability that Lie Meiling was from the future.
Sakuya watched as Nitori took the papers off of the printer. The kappa then turned around and handed them to Sakuya.
"There you go," Nitori breathed. "That's all of the results in simplified form. Patchouli should be able to help you figure them out; she's smart." Nitori ran across the room to her messy desk. "Here's a book on coding and all that stuff," Nitori said, giving them a big blue book. "That Marisa girl stopped by to give me this book a while ago and I opened it yesterday. Remilia Scarlet was written on the inside so I figured it was yours."
"Thank you so much! I don't know how I'm going to repay you!" Patchouli said enthusiastically, smiling widely. She took the book from Nitori. "We must get going now, don't you agree, Sakuya? We have a lot of coding to do," Patchouli asked the maid.
"Yes, I think we need to start heading back to the mansion. Thanks for all the help, Nitori," Sakuya said.
"No problem. And also, don't forget Meiling!"
Sakuya pushed open the Scarlet Devil Mansion's doors and let the mage go in first. Sakuya had the book in one hand and the coding in the other because Patchouli had to carry Meiling with magic and couldn't hold anything else.
"Thank you, Sakuya," Patchouli said as she walked in.
Sakuya closed the door behind them and followed Patchouli to the library, where they found Koakuma waiting patiently at Patchouli's desk.
"Would you like some tea, Patchouli-sama? Sakuya-sama?" Koakuma asked them as Patchouli sat down in her desk.
"That would be lovely, Koa," Patchouli answered.
"No thank you," Sakuya replied to the little devil.
Koakuma hurried off into the kitchen of the mansion to prepare some tea while Sakuya and Patchouli remained in the library.
"I don't know much about computers," Patchouli sighed. "But I think I know a bit on how to read this stuff. Let's see…"
Patchouli skimmed the page, her eyes flickering over the coding. Sakuya was amazed that Patchouli could read that fast. Then again, the purple mage did read for a living.
Sakuya looked over Patchouli's shoulder at the text and was surprised to find everything in random letters and numbers. It looked something like this:
Effort11211223455f=?yes1111x=?no32941z=?notconfirmed1111342571257148571495734985374958rebooting214143restarting1343125325confirmationz=?yes9304814508940185109328509238509238509213850350892803298501985309285093285091283509QQQQQQQQQQQQ982905801923589032890324804932158392392399060e=mc2?hhh383283288128futureconfirmation=323232323232394800285092389032840923832932490324093249834298234902439049243908243908234904238442234234dfwefhqeffvjfbeifbef3irq89238938932
"What does it say?" Sakuya asked, anxious to know if Meiling would ever be okay. She looked over at a couch in Patchouli's library, where she had been set down gently by Patchouli when they had arrived.
"Sakuya…" Patchouli sighed. "This is going to be hard to explain…"
"What is it?"
Patchouli skimmed the page once more. "Meiling is in a condition that is…complicated. She was struck by lightning and replaced with her future self. This test has confirmed that she is in her future state at the moment.
"But, at least this is undoable. She must kill someone or something to be able to come out of her current state. If she doesn't, then the spell will not be undone. It doesn't matter when, how, who, or what she kills. She just has to kill something.
"I haven't seen a case like this in years. In fact, Cirno had it once and was walking around like a zombie. She must die or something in the future.
"Good luck, Sakuya. And if you can't get her to kill anything, then come to me and I'll create something that she can kill. Just make sure she doesn't kill you," Patchouli finished. Koakuma came by with the tea and set down the tray. Patchouli took the cup off of the tray and took a sip as Koakuma walked away with a stack of books that Patchouli had already read.
"Right. Thank you so much for all of this," Sakuya said to the mage.
Patchouli nodded, and then picked up the book on coding and began to read the first page.
Cool! Chapter 3 is DONE! I'm going to bring out Chapter 4 soon. Sorry I didn't update the story very quickly; my teacher enjoys giving us homework. But Chapter 4 will come out soon!