A/N: I APOLOGIZE FOR THIS CHAPTER. I think I did a good job though *beaming with pride*
Chapter Eleven
The Professor wasn't in his office when Tres came in. In fact, his monitor was off and it was cold, signaling that the man hadn't been in it for at least a day. He's probably off experimenting, Tres thought, thinking of Poseidon WWW. Most likely another failure…
Tres didn't mind the cold, and his heavy priest robes would keep him warm anyway. Still, it didn't matter regardless. After searching through the various boxes that AX had kept on the HC series and Gepetto Garibaldi, he finally found the two, faded brown notebooks labeled 'HC-IX' and 'HC-IIX'. Unum and Duo.
Tres knew, even before he started, that deciphering the notebooks was going to be a trying task. Dr. Wordsmith had been trying for three years on Tres's notebook, and had only gotten about a third of the way through it. Hopefully Tres would have better luck. At this point, he was desperate.
He didn't know how long he sat there, trying to figure out in his head where to even begin. It made no sense, there weren't even words!
"Vkxambhg hgx: ngnf," said the first line. Complete gibberish. No pattern, no set rule that Tres could see. It was the first time in a long while did he think that his creator had been a complete psychopath. "T vextk lnvxll, xqvvxim yhk hgx yetp: max XIN, exym hg, kxlnemxw bg AV-BQ mh wxyr wbkxvm hkwxkl."
After reading over that bit for hours, trying to conduct some sort of reasoning behind the letters, something clicked. Only three words in the English language began with only one letter: a, I and O, in poetry uses, of course. From Tres's notebook, after deciphered, showed Gepetto did not use these patterns, so all that was left was 'A' or 'I'. T = I, A he wrote. There was a start.
Considering that 't' was, in fact, an 'a', he began from there, deciphering every t he saw, There were only two, so it didn't help him as much as he needed it to. But he kept going. He assumed XIN had only two possible uses: for OPS or EPU. Using OPS as XIN, he worked on that.
Vkoambhg hgo: sgsf. A veoll, oqvvopm yhk hgo yetp: max OPS, eoym hg, kolnemow bg AV-BQ mh woyr wbkovm hkwokl.
Using hgo as his basis, he wrote down a list of every word that ended in o. There were a few options: who, bio, ego, ago, two, and duo. So now, he wrote: h=d, g=u and began again from there.
No, the words were back to not making sense. He scratched out 'duo' and began again with 'who'. No sense once more. He retried with 'bio'; no luck. He took a breath to calm himself, as this was frustrating him to no end.
He tried again with 'two'.
Nothing. Start all over. He crumpled up the paper and threw it haphazardly against the floor. His head was hurting, but there was no sign of physical injury. This was getting infuriating.
This time, he repeated the process, using EPU as XIN.
As the hours wore on, he realized that words were starting to form from all this gibberish. He kept working on it, and soon, he had deciphered the first three words.
Creation one: unum.
This was it. He had cracked it. And he knew exactly what Gepetto was using. A Caesar cipher. He had read about it in a book about Rome, more specifically, of Julius Caesar. He remembered the image provided, and drew it out on the paper he was writing on, using T for A, and so on.
Using the image he had drawn, he deciphered the rest.
Creation one: unum. A clear success, except for one flaw: the EPU, left on, resulted in HC-IX to defy direct orders.
The full reality of what Tres had just done didn't sink in for a few moments. But he realized, with an odd feeling of pride, that he had just cracked Gepetto Garibaldi's code. Quickly, he grabbed his own notebook and read over it, to see if the Caesar cipher applied there as well. It did, though every letter had been shifted over two. 'A' now corresponded to 'R' and so on.
And Tres had that irresistible urge to smile again.
He really needed to find the Professor.
He left the cold room in favor of the warmth of outside. Tres hadn't realized it, but he had been working for nearly two days straight. He should be exhausted, but he was only exhilarated. He went to the Professor's testing room, as it was so dubbed, and wasn't surprised to find Dr. Wordsmith there.
He was surprised to see Abel.
As he swung the reinforced door open, Abel looked him up and down, a stunned look on his face. "Geez, Tres-kun…" he murmured somewhat sheepishly. "You look… exhausted." A pure understatement, the Crusnik thought to himself. He looks awful. But what is that gleam in his eye?
"Dr. Wordsmith," Tres said, ignoring his partner's questioning looks. "I did it. I cracked the code."
William's eyebrows knitted. "What code? What do you mean?"
Abel gapped openly as Tres did something so… un-Treslike. His broad shoulders dropped as though a weight had been put on them. He grabbed Dr. Wordsmith by the wrist and drug him outside the bunker, and back towards his office.
"Tres, what are you doing?" Dr. Wordsmith said, sounding incredibly aghast. Tres didn't grace him with any sort of response until they got to the office.
"Look," Tres said, flipping open the notebook on Unum. "I've figured it out. What he's using to encrypt his notes. It's called a Caesar cipher, designed by the ancient Roman emperor Julius Caesar. Watch." Tres redrew the cipher for Unum, and then explained how the letters correlated together, one by one.
Dr. Wordsmith listened quietly the entire time, merely bobbing his head occasionally.
"There was a book in the library I read about ancient Rome and the emperors," Tres said. "Caesar used the cipher to encrypt documents with military significance, just like Gepetto Garibaldi has done in his notebooks. The book said it was easy to crack, but considering it hadn't been used since long before the Apocalypse, I suspect he thought it would be safe."
William smiled and clamped him hard on the shoulder. "I'm proud of you, Tres," he said. "Think of all the things we'll be able to discover now! Oh, I can't wait to decipher all of them!"
"Each notebook consists of a different shift of letters," Tres explained further. "In Unum's, 'A' corresponds with 'T'. In mine, 'A' matches with 'R'. I'm fairly certain that this pattern continues indefinitely."
"Tres, I could kiss you right now…" Dr. Wordsmith murmured dreamily.
To which Tres quickly replied, "Please, refrain from doing so."
A/N: Wow. Okay. I feel you Tres-kun, I have a headache too. So, I used the Caesar cipher. Mhm. Easy to crack, I know. But I had writer's block and it was there so… (sue me) (not really, I'm already very poor, you would get nothing)
Thanks to yume girl 91 for reviewing and favoriting this! It warms my heart and fuels me to put out new chapters when people review! (THANK YOU LIKE A LOT OMG)
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