Hyperbolic Epiphany
"Why were you glaring at Moeka like that?" Kyouma asked her, as they climbed the stairs.
"I..." Kurisu tried to come up with an answer. "I don't know! I just... didn't like her, for some reason. And the shopkeeper and the little girl are sort of creepy too."
"Nonesense!" Kyouma chortled. "Besides, Moeka is a lab mem also, so you will need to get along with her for your work here."
"I'm not working for you, okay?" There was a limit even to helping people who'd saved your life.
"Welcome!" Ignoring her, Kyouma gestured grandiosely as they stepped into the room. "—to the home of Future Gadget UAWAAAH!" The "mad scientist" was suddenly side-swiped by a girl in a blue lacy dress.
"Okarin!" chirped the girl happily, clinging to Kyouma. "You're back! Mayushii was so worried, she went all the way to the hospital and you had already been discharged and then she came back here but Daru-kun said..."
"Mayuri!" hissed the 'mad scientist,' hurriedly disentangling himself from the girl's grip. "Can't you read the atmosphere?"
"Huh?" Mayuri blinked at him innocently.
Kurisu blinked at the two, taken aback. She couldn't speak.
Why... why does...
Kurisu realized her mouth was tilting upwards. It was amusing, of course, and strangely heartwarming... suddenly Kurisu could see there was a whole other side to this Kyouma. There were plenty of reasons for her to smile at the exasperated male and the clueless girl. But none of them were the cause of the strange warmness filling her breast.
It felt... so familiar. So right.
"Eh?" Mayuri looked away from Kyouma's tirade, straight into Kurisu's eyes. Again, Kurisu felt a strange stab of familiarity at the expression of puzzlement. "Okarin, who is Okarin's friend?"
Kyouma sighed. "This is lab mem 004." He stated impressively, gesturing. "My Assistant, Christina."
The odd feeling was drowned by a fresh wave of annoyance. "For the last time-!"
"Uwah!? Another female lab mem!?" Mayuri's face lit up. She leapt forward and caught Kurisu in a hug, knocking her a few feet back. "Welcome, Kurisu-san!"
"Uh... hi." Kurisu awkwardly patted the girl's head. This... this feels so... familiar.
A heavyset man at a cluttered desk had turned to look at them. "Whoah. Really? Makise Kurisu?"
Kurisu felt a wave of relief. Finally, someone sane in this world.
"You know her?" Kyouma asked. Kurisu noticed that his voice sounded curiously eager.
"She had her thesis published in Science magazine," nodded the man, eyes wide. "Jeez, Okabe, when you said you that pin was for our fourth lab mem, I didn't think you'd get a REAL lab mem."
Kurisu felt that she and this man were going to get along fine.
"...not to mention one with such a hot-ass bod."
Kurisu frowned. Or not.
The man started to giggle as he stared at her and Mayuri. "Oooh. Major yuri flags, bro."
"Not now." Apparently the pretentious hipster didn't appreciate his friend's comments any more than she did.
"You're such a spoilsport, Okabe." The man grumbled, turning back to his computer.
"And you're a pervert," grumbled Kurisu, disentangling herself from Mayuri's embrace. Then she realized what the man had called the hipster. "Wait." She turned. "Your name's Okabe? Not Hounin Kyouma?"
For some reason, she expected the skinny "scientist" to flinch, but instead, he grinned broadly.
"Oh, my WORD, you are an IMBECILE!" Kurisu exploded. "Do you know how many hospitals and police records I went through looking for the name Hounin Kyouma? How many times the police asked me if I was SURE I got your name right? How..." Words failed her momentarily.
"Hounin Kyouma is my true name!" The man jutted his chin out, still grinning. "Know it well, for it is the name at which the ruling structures of the world shall topple and fall!"
"He does that." The heavyset man answered. "Pretentious hipster bullshit."
"Well what is his REAL name?" Kurisu directed her question to the hacker, feeling it would be useless to ask Kyou—Okabe.
"Do not tell her!" Insisted the pretentious hipster, rounding on his friend. "It is vital that we retain the secret of..."
"Okabe Rintarou."
"Gaah!"
Kurisu smiled victoriously. "Thank you, Daru."
"Okarin is Okarin." Mayushii smiled, oblivious to the lanky man's ravings.
Okabe Rintarou... Okarin. Kurisu could see how that would work. This Mayushii seemed a little childish, but very sweet.
"Wait, wait." The heavyset student interrupted them. "How... how'd you know my name was Daru?"
Kurisu blinked at him. "What? I... That's your name?"
"Yes that's my name! You called me it just now!" Daru accused.
"That's ridiculous, I..." But she had, Kurisu remembered. Just a few seconds ago.
What is going on with me?
"You must never reveal Daru's identity!" Okabe insisted. "He is our laboratory's secret weapon, our 'supah hackah!'
Daru frowned in annoyance at his friend. "Hack-"
"-er." Kurisu finished, her mind in a whirl. Why did that exchange sound so familiar? On one level she was totally familiar with the correct way to pronounce the word, on another... how had she known 'Daru' would be annoyed with it?
"See? She says it properly!" Daru, oblivious to her ponderings, gestured angrily. "Now is that so hard?" He shook his head in exasperation. "I'm starting to like this new lab mem better than you, Okabe!"
"Uwaah?" Okabe's lank face drooped in sudden dismay. "Daru! My right-hand man! My secret weapon and foremost comrade! Do not be swayed by the powers of seduction so easily!"
"Se—How DARE you!" Kurisu's face flamed with the implication.
Okabe must have seen something in her eye that hit home, for he quickly laughed and attempted to cover up his flub. "Suppose we show you around the laboratory." He said hurriedly, motioning her towards the back of the room, where a makeshift curtain concealed the remainder of the room. "This..." he said, grandiosely indicating the current space, "...is the Chamber of Apocalyptic Meditation!"
"It's a break room." Daru said.
"Not entirely!" Okabe insisted, rounding on his friend. "We have meetings here too!"
"Dude, when have we had a meeting here?" Daru wrinkled his face in confusion.
"All the time!"
"We've never had a meeting. "
'Mayushii remembers us having a meeting." The girl piped up. Then her face clouded. "At least... Mayushii thinks so..."
"It's just the three of us here, why would we bother having a meeting?"
"Ah, forget it." Okabe shrugged in exasperation. "Let's just move on to the..." he swept the curtain aside "...Enigmatic Lair of Illuminating Geniusity!"
"Okay, we've never called it that before." Daru looked at his friend in total disbelief. "Seriously, what is with you? You're worse than ever today."
For once, Kurisu didn't bother to join in. The Enigmatic Lair of Illuminating Geniusity did not look like a particularly great lab, workshop, or even apartment. There was a fragile wooden table with one single computer on it, all surrounded by cluttered, leaning shelves that were showered dust through the dim light.
And yet, again, there was something powerfully familiar about it. Something about the scent.
"Behold!" Okabe swept past her, indicating a particular shelf that was piled high with a stack of CRT televisions. "Future Gadget #7! Active Shell Opto Camouflage Ball!" He started to fumble with the switches in the back. "We have CC cameras, you see, and they feed into these televisions to..."
"Opto-cam? Like in Ghost in the Squad?" Kurisu quirked her eyebrow. "Seems too bulky to be of any use."
"Stupid idea to open with that anyway." Daru grunted, throwing his disappointed friend a look. "Here, Kurisu-chan..."
"Don't call me that."
"...here's something you should find interesting." Daru proffered an outdated vacuum cleaner. "Future Gadget # 5. It takes the waste heat, see, and converts into a blow drier..."
"That is way too messy, way too clunky, and..." Kurisu took a look over the device, "...looks highly inefficient. How much electricity does it use?" Glancing from one silent man to the other, Kurisu shook her head. "Honestly. 5 and 7, huh? What else do you genius scientists have? Where's your future gadget #6?"
"Er..." For some reason both Daru and Okabe glanced toward an empty corner of the lab.
Something on the opposite shelf caught Kurisu's eye. "Is that..." She moved forward and picked the item up off the shelf. "What... what is this?" She asked, turning.
"Oooh!" Daru's face lit up. "That's Future Gadget 2! It..."
Okabe interrupted him. "Why don't you tell us, Ms. Great Scientist?"
Unaccountably nettled, Kurisu glared back at him. "Okay, I can see it's a plain bamboo copter. What I DON'T see is why you think this is some super-special future gadget."
"Then why did you bother to pick it up?"
It struck Kurisu that Okabe was watching her strangely closely, like he had when she'd met Moeka, almost like he was looking for something. But she abandoned that question in favor of the more immediate one. Why HAD she picked up the bamboo copter? There was nothing remarkable about it, it could have been a bit of random trash sitting around the lab.
Turning it over, she studied it more carefully. Light glinted off something at the base... a lens. Squinting in the gloom of the lab, Kurisu made out a tiny CCD camera affixed to the base.
"A spy camera? Attached to a bamboo copter? Really?" She said aloud.
"Ah-HA!" Okabe grinned triumphantly. "Future Gadget 2: Bamboo Copter Camera!"
"Alternative edition 2.67." Daru added.
"This... this is..." Kurisu turned it over in her hands ...strangely familiar... "...absolutely useless." She said aloud. "It'd never be able to fly high or far enough to get any images outside of your own range, and there's no wireless transmitter attached... you'd have to retrieve the video manually."
"It's a prototype." Daru answered defensively.
"I told you we should have sprung for the remote-controlled copter." Okabe shot the man a glance.
"We don't make enough money for that, dur." She heard Daru answer. "Or well, Mayushii doesn't..."
"Mayushii misses copter-chan..."
"No matter." Okabe plucked the copter from her hands and fiddled with the camera a little. "It is merely a test proof, a concept. And, as a tool to defend from the Organization, invaluable in our crusade of destruction. Learn their use, Assistant! Some day your life might depend on one!"
He gave the copter a twirl and sent it flying at her. Shrieking a little, Kurisu recoiled and snatched it just before it hit her face.
...not dying just leaving to another world Mayushii's cute face against the floor with a pop of blood across her white dress can't save both time to go now oh god i love him go back tell him nowNOW...!
"...Kurisu-san?"
Mayushii's face was blinking up at her anxiously. "Are you all right?"
"I'm... I'm fine..." Kurisu managed, feeling her head. She had a hazy sensation of... something. Love? Sorrow? Yes, sorrow, definitely, when she looked down at Mayushii's a strange feeling of utter sadness and loss washed over her. Unable to quite help herself, she reached out and tentatively touched Mayushii's forehead.
"Uwaah..." Mayushii crossed her eyes to look up at her hand. "Are you sure you're all right, Kurisu-san?"
"...ah... yes." Kurisu hurriedly withdrew her hand. Turning away in embarrassment, she caught again the curious look in Okabe's eyes. Had he known, somehow, that the bamboo copter would do... that to her? Impossible. How could he?
Okabe must have noticed her intenser-than usual stare. "Ah! Daru! Didn't you just start that new and incredibly-fascinating series of experiments I told you about? You know, the ones that have NOTHING TO DO WITH MICROWAVES."
"Oh!" Daru had apparently seen the same look. "Right! Those! They're... um..." He scratched his head. "Well... we're... currently working on... this." He proffered the strange bits of wire sitting next to him. "It's a sort of... initial design for... a brain-wave scanner, you understand."
Kurisu rolled her eyes, the copter momentarily forgotten. "Those exist already. CAT? MRI's? Any of these ringing a bell?"
"Yes, but this is different." Daru held up a finger. "I had this... idea, see... came out of nowhere..." A puzzled look came over his face. "...like, really out of nowhere, usually we get ideas from animes and what-not..."
"Daru!" Okabe hissed, face red.
"...anyway, I just got this idea after Okabe called earlier." Daru looked at the device with pride. "It's Future Gadget No. 8 v.1"
"That's a terrible name." Okabe frowned. "Let's call it the Perseus Mantle of the Inner Eye!"
"Dude, you don't even know what it does!" Daru rounded on him.
"It's still a better name than FG No 8 v.1!"
"What does it do?" Kurisu interposed before the argument could devolve into a fight.
Daru sighed. "It... well, nothing yet. It's just a heap of wire. But I was thinking it might be possible to make a device that could... read memories? And then transfer them to..." He shrugged. "Honestly hadn't gotten that far yet. Another mind, I guess."
Kurisu shook her head in disbelief. "That's... that's..." A thought occurred and she paused. "...that's... were you planning on mapping the hippocampus with electrical impulses or creating a library to compare the brain waves to?"
"Er..." Daru and Okabe exchanged glances.
"The electrical impulses would make better sense, but there's no guarantee that whatever you transferred them to would be able to translate them properly." Kurisu frowned as something obvious occured to her. "And how would you transfer them to another mind? I mean, we don't exactly have the equipment to implant thoughts in someone..."
"How about a cell phone?" Okabe answered. The curious look was in his eyes again, but Kurisu was too excited to notice.
"What... don't be ridiculous. How would that get to the brain? Some sort of sonic impulse, or a electric shock or... let me see that." Kurisu stepped forward and grabbed the mass of wire. The design was rough, amatuerish, but there was an odd genius to it. Kurisu could already see where the magnetic couplings should go and what kind of software would be necessary.
She could feel Okabe watching her out of the corner of his eyes. But for the moment, she couldn't care.
The moment passed, however. True, it did not pass until several hours later, when she and Okabe were exiting Future Gadget Laboratories after a breathtaking day of the most mind-bendingly-inspirational work sessions she'd ever had, but still it passed.
"You will have to come back tomorrow to help us with the interpretive..." Okabe was saying.
"I'm not coming back tomorrow." She answered wearily, brushing her hair back. The night air felt nice and cool after the oppressive heat of the laboratory. "I told you. I have a plane leaving tomorrow, and I need to be on it." She turned to him and gave what she hoped was a polite smile. "I'm glad to have met you, Okabe Rintarou, and I'm glad I had the chance to thank you for saving my life. But now I have to get back to that life."
Something flashed across Okabe's face, but he suppressed it. "A-ha, you say that now, Assistant, but I know the truth! The Stein's::Gate choice will not allow you to leave!"
"You know I could get you arrested for saying something like that." It was probably a lie, Kurisu had no idea what she could and couldn't do, but it seemed to work, for the strange look flashed across his face again, longer and more plain. It wasn't anger, it was more like... regret? longing?
"I'm leaving." She repeated. "Again, thank you for saving my life..." She gave a little bow (but only a little one), "...and thank you for showing me your laboratory. It was good to be here aga- it was nice to meet all of you. And you gave me some great ideas. I'll..." Personal integrity squashed professional insecurities. "...I'll co-credit your laboratory when I release the memory reader."
"A terrible name." Okabe shook his head mournfully. "What was wrong with the Perseus Mantle of the Inner Eye?"
Kurisu fought back the giggle that was threatening to rise. (Giggle? What the hell was she, a schoolgirl?) "I'll consider it." She assured him, turning to leave. "Sayonara, Okabe Rintarou."
"Kurisu, wait...!" A hand grabbed her shoulder...
...staring pale eyes framed in black spikes how are you here why aren't you dead...
Kurisu was back. And she was staring at Okabe's face, and finally she recognized the look he was sending her, the look that had been flashing across his face. Fear. Stark fear.
But that wasn't all she recognized. She recognized the face, the face she'd just seen, the impression that had flashed through her head when he touched her shoulder.
Several things fell into place at once. His questions, his odd knowledge, the way he'd been watching her all day.
"Explain." She managed to grind out.
He blinked at her. "Christina, I..."
"Stop it!" She nearly screamed. "Stop..." Kurisu took a deep breath and composed herself. "Stop." she said, more softly. "Stop calling me names that I know but have never heard. Stop introducing me to familiar faces I've never met. Stop doing... whatever it is you're doing and just TELL me what is GOING ON!"
The fear in his face grew. Kurisu realized, with a strange thrill that this man, for all his pretentiousness and bluster, was actually very vulnerable.
And then he blinked, and it was past. "Well, after all, you believed it before." He muttered to himself.
And so he explained. He explained her murder, Mayushii's murder, Moeka's murdering. He explained time vortexes and memory readers and lines of destiny. He explained another world, another time, another future.
And when he was done, Kurisu found herself backing away, into the darkness of the street. "I... I... have to go." She swallowed, and fled.
A/N: Huh. This is easier than I thought to keep going. I did debate about whether to end it here or at the earlier break, but ending it earlier would have made the next chapter either really short or really boring.
I did have an interesting time thinking what might keep a amnesiac Kurisu around. Initially she stayed for the experiments they were doing, and of course fell in love later. But if they weren't doing experiments, what would there be to pique that interest? I feel a little cheap for just repeating stuff from the show, but hey that's what fanfiction is for.
One further chapter. Reviews, as always, are appreciated.