Yagiri Pharmaceuticals looked just as it did before, big but ordinary, yet now, it inspired awe, terror, and yearning.

Despite the risks - and oh were there risks - Mei couldn't wait to get inside. To pass through those heavy, industrial doors and finally, finally chase that lead home. She could feel the hammer of her heart in her chest resonating deep in her bones. It was almost within her reach. At the same time, that fear of failing, of slipping up, absolutely terrified her. That adrenaline-causing concoction of fear and hope pulsed through her veins, practically overflowing as she fought an intense, chaotic grin from crawling onto her face.

Mei was a perfectly ordinary waitress, that's what she was, and even if the look in her eyes somewhere between steeled and predatory was a lost cause, she still retained enough of her facilities to not want to look too weird in front of her friends. Image mattered even if, in the back of her mind, she didn't think that they'd judge her too harshly for it.

After all, it was understandable that she was eager. She just wanted a way home.

Yes, that was what it was.

Kyouhei, Erika, and her were stopped right before the open gate, collecting themselves one last time before breaching the premises. A few genuine employees could be seen waiting near there, presumably for their friends and coworkers. The walkie talkies were tucked away in the trio's lab coat pockets - to be used on their end first in case of an emergency - and Kyouhei now held the keycard. Saburo was parked in the van in a nearby alleway, and Walker could be seen loitering across the way. It was time to face the music.

Mei and Erika made small talk about the weather as they crossed the property line. It was a bit awkward, but they wanted to appear as normal as possible to blend in (thankfully, said awkwardness helped Mei school her expression better, settling on a plain, genial smile). A few other scientists could be seen walking to work, most of them on their own and heading to different buildings than the three of them. There were a few scattered groups making small talk like themselves though, so they weren't too out of place. It almost seemed like no one was paying them any attention at all until a man with messy light brown hair and a friendly, lopsided grin walked up to them.

"Hello! Are you three new here? I haven't seen you around before," he greeted, falling into step with them. His hands were casually tucked away in his lab coat's pockets.

Oh. This was… bad.

"Yep, new hires," Erika admitted, giving him a friendly smile back. She was doing their best to cover for them, but depending on his next question-

"That's nice, it's always good to have more people on hand. What research have you done in the past?" he asked, looking away from them to open the door to the main building. He… just so happened to be going in the same direction as them. Shit. Kyouhei shot a look of panic in Mei's direction.

"Specialty materials, mostly," Mei covered. She didn't know if Yagiri Pharma did research on that, but it was prior experience she actually had and could bullshit enough about to sound decently knowledgeable, so that was what she was going with. "What about you, though? What do you do here?"

She had to keep him talking about himself for as long as she could. He hadn't asked their names yet, but if he did-

Well, even fake ones would give him something to look up and make it harder for them to get away with this (even if the existence of this conversation at all was making it less and less likely).

"That sounds really neat! I work with scaling up our pharmaceutical production from the experimental stages to the actual production bit. It's a lot of modeling - you know how pharmaceuticals are mostly made in batch reactors, right?" he rambled, clapping his hands together. He seemed genuinely enthusiastic to be talking to them, which was good. Mei hoped that maybe they could get away with this yet.

This could all be a trap, but he seemed nice enough. Again, as long as they kept him occupied…

"I do," Mei admitted. "What modeling program do you use?"

She did her best to keep the conversation flowing. Once they made it to check-in (a keycard scanner that both served to metaphorically stamp an employee's timecard and to open the door to the building's main hallway), the scientist was so passionately going on about his work that he didn't notice that they just slipped in hallway behind him, not even bothering to scan their own keycard. Taking it out at all probably would have alerted the scientist that the group only had one, so it was good that he was so absorbed in the somewhat one-sided conversation.

At some point while trailing after said scientist - he unfortunately seemed to be going in the same direction as them, despite the labyrinth-like gray halls with plenty of split off points - the conversation shifted back to what Mei's supposed research was, even if she was doing her best to redirect the conversation back his way.

"-well, the Fermi level-"

"-that sounds absolutely fascinating! What happens if-"

Regardless, her science talk was letting them blend in. By the confused look on Kyouhei's face, most of it was going over his head, but it was working. If she ignored her nerves, which were practically screaming since if she slipped up here they'd all be done for, she could almost pretend that this was a pleasant science conversation among peers. Even if she was way less qualified than the man they were trailing after. Like, way less qualified. Some of the stuff he was going on about - well, Mei found it interesting regardless of how much it hurt her brain.

Eventually, they reached the hallway where they'd have to split off for the reference room (Mei had it memorized, and by the cautiously hopeful look on Erika's face, the other woman knew where it was too). The scientist they'd stumbled across even looked to be going in the other direction!

"Well, it was great talking to you," Mei said, and again, despite her nerves and internal scrambling to actually scrounge up enough knowledge to keep up the conversation, it actually was. "We'll see you later!" Erika and Kyouhei edged towards their desired hallway, itching to be free.

The scientist moved to wave goodbye to them before stilling. "Ah, you know that's the way to Yagiri-san's office, right? She's… been in a bit of a mood recently."

Oh. He was trying to warn them away from her. Unfortunately, the reference room was there, so they really didn't have a choice, regardless of the danger. How to convey that to him in a way that seemed normal-

"We need to pick up a few references, unfortunately," Mei said, an apologetic smile on her face.

Shit, she… really didn't know how to continue from here. Thankfully, her comment didn't seem too strange to the other scientist.

"Newby work, am I right?" he chuckled nervously, bringing a hand behind his neck. "I could come with, if you want. I don't have to check on my simulation for another twenty minutes or so, so…"

Mei moved to tell him it wasn't necessary, but Erika chimed in.

"That'd be great, thanks. Guide us well, sempai!"

Kyouhei shot her a betrayed look before quickly smoothing his expression out. He must have realized that having a legitimate employee there would make them seem less suspicious, and Mei had only realized the same thing a few seconds after Erika spoke up. The scientist blushed before stammering out that of course he would, following the trio over to the reference room.

It was only a short walk from where they were, and the hallway opened up to a small rectangular room with five dark wooden desks at its center. Across from them was an office with large windows and closed blinds, and the silhouettes of people could be seen bustling around inside. Mei turned her attention towards the reference room instead, which was along the wall that extended from the hall they came from. It thankfully had a nameplate, so the trio knew they were in the right place.

Kyouhei moved to open the steel shuttered door to the reference room, and as he did so, Mei realized that they had no way to keep the scientist from noticing what exactly they were going to be looking up on the computer in there. Fuck. Fuck.

Maybe is she could keep him out of the room-

A blast of hot air hit their faces as Kyouhei wrenched the door open. Good, she could work with this.

"Ah… it's kind of warm in there. Do you want to stay out here and chat in the meantime?" she said, directing her question to the scientist. "We shouldn't need all three of us to grab what we need."

Erika realized what could've happened shortly after Mei turned to the scientist and sent her a relieved look. They could've easily been caught here, if he'd followed them in and realized what they were looking for. Well, that was if he was involved with the more… eclectic experiments. From his high level knowledge on process optimization though, she doubted that he was.

"O-oh! I'd love to," he said, clapping his hands together. "So as you were saying about-"

Erika and Kyouhei walked into the reference room, gaits as casual as they could make them, and Mei resisted the urge to cheer as she discreetly handed the flash drives off to Erika as she passed by her. She just had to keep talking for a little while longer.

Erika was proud of her friend. Surprised, but proud.

She hadn't known that Mei knew so much about science (like how to operate a synchrotron - what even was that, and who even knew the process off the top of their head?). It was great that Mei could keep the conversation going. Amazing, even! It was just that she hadn't talked about an interest in science before or even mentioned it offhandedly.

To be fair, Mei hadn't really talked much about her life before Ikebukuro. And given the whole time travel thing, it was understandable, really. Just… the most Erika knew about it was that the other woman watched a lot of anime in high school and never learned how to drive manual transmission. That was literally it, and for someone she and Walker spent so much time with-

Well, they'd have to fix that.

Erika shot a thumbs up to Kadota as he gestured to the computer that he found. It seemed to be the right one from the description Mei had given them. Erika sat down in front of it and logged onto the computer using the list of written passcodes Mei passed along to her with the flash drives.

Erika wanted Mei to find what she needed here, she really did. She'd just be a little sad that she never got to know the other woman better in that case. But realistically…

Oh. Oh.

Realistically, the odds of finding something were better than she originally thought.

Erika's eyes scanned the titles of some of the research documents in the locked folders at the end of the strange maze that the password list had opened, Kadota leaning over her shoulder. Mind control, vampires, and pyrokinesis? Limited pyrokinesis, admittedly, but fire-

Ooh, an elixir of immortality too? It was unfinished, but they really had everything in here!

And was that-

"'The possibilities of parallel universes across time and space,'" Kadota read off. "Looks like she was really tellin' the truth."

Mei was. Erika had been getting that feeling, but Kadota's and Saburo's doubts were well-founded. It did exceed the bounds of their current genre, after all.

Erika plugged in the first flash drive and started downloading the files. This… might take a while. She hoped Mei would be able to keep up the science talk for long enough. She really wanted to read some of these once they got out of there.

For now, though, those papers on fully sentient artificial intelligence and beaming a language into someone's mind looked promising (the pyrokinesis one did too, but she'd rather read it with Walker later). Admittedly, Erika doubted that she'd understand much of them.

Mei waved goodbye to the brown-haired scientist. It was taking Erika and Kyouhei quite a bit of time to download the documents, and he had to get back to work. He reassured her that it was great talking to her and that he'd see her later, surely at a companywide event even if they worked in different departments, and Mei gave him her best smile as he left.

That was… certainly something. Thankfully, he was nice and didn't seem suspicious of them, which were both pluses.

Mei moved to catch up with the other two in the reference room when she heard some shuffling in the windowed office. It's thick wooden door opened, and out came-

Yeah, that was Yagiri Namie. Shit.

Mei kept her head down and walked into the reference room, not looking her way. Mei's heart was in her throat, and it took her complete and total attention to prevent her body from shaking. The other woman continued on, not sparing her a glance.

That was… good, but they needed to get out of here soon - that was too close.

That woman supported and possibly did human experimentation for a living - not someone Mei wanted to cross.

Mei followed the clattering keyboard sounds over to Kyouhei and Erika. It looked like they were shutting down the computer.

"Hey guys, did you get everything?" she asked, and Erika and Kyouhei both jumped. Their faces morphed into relief when they realized it was just her.

"Yeah, we got it," Kyouhei said.

"Right. We should go, then," Mei said, her tone clipped. She was still a bit frazzled from her almost-encounter with Yagiri.

The three of them made their way out of the reference room, closing the door behind them. As they made their way back through the halls they came from, walking as fast as they could while still seeming like they belonged there, frantic footsteps started to beat after them.

"Wait, you forgot to check in!" a familiar voice called.

Shit. Shit. It was the scientist from earlier.

Mei shot Erika and Kyouhei a panicked look. Kyouhei immediately turned the corner, Erika and Mei shortly behind him. He glanced around, spotting what seemed to be a cleaning closet, and pulled Erika and Mei into it with him. He was about to slam the door shut in haste, but Mei intervened to make it shut quieter. She didn't want to make it easy for the scientist to find them there. The sneakier, the better.

With bated breath, the group stilled as the footsteps slowed down before passing them.

"...I never got their names," they heard the scientist mutter. "Now they can't get paid for their cool science! What a shame." His footsteps could be heard a little while longer, as it seemed that he was ducking his head into a few nearby labs, before he seemingly gave up and went back the way he came.

"Damn, that was close," Kyouhei exhaled in relief.

"Great thinking, Dotachin!" Erika said, grinning. "You really saved us there!"

"Yeah, thanks," Mei said, shooting a small smile up at him. That would've been bad otherwise-

Oh, was that the sound of wheels? Not large enough to be a cart, but-

"A mop," Kyouhei hissed, "and this is a cleaning closet. We're done for!"

Mei held her breath, hoping that whoever was on the other side of the door would pass despite the odds. However, luck wasn't on their side anymore. It was probably all used up during that encounter with the scientist.

A very tired looking janitor opened the door, blinking at them in disbelief and then annoyance.

A man and two women packed into a small cleaning closet probably didn't look the best, did it?

Oh God, the innuendoes - what was that poor janitor thinking about them? Probably some violation of workplace conduct that would be-

"...Dollars?" Erika asked with an incredibly awkward grin, bringing a hand up behind her neck.

The janitor blinked back. "...Maybe."

Oh. The code word! Right, the code word.

"Bad apples, then?" Mei said hesitantly. Hot damn, this was the most awkward moment in her life-

"If you could, uh, just forget you saw anythin', that'd be great," Kyouhei said.

"...Right, I'll do that," the janitor sighed, closing the door behind him before walking away, mop squeaking behind him.

Again, that was so awkward-

"...We should get a move on," Kyouhei said. Erika and Mei agreed, and after a beat to confirm that no more footsteps were resounding in the hallway, the group snuck out of the closet and left the building.

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit, they actually did it.

Mei did… honestly not expect for that to go as smoothly as it did, even with all the interruptions. No one noticed they weren't where they were supposed to be, disregarding that janitor who probably wouldn't tell anyone. Besides, they left the premises already, so even if he did tell, the company was more liable to just convince themselves that they were some of their own employees being unprofessional than anything else; well, either that, or the janitor would have to admit to being a part of the Dollars, which… wouldn't be a good look, given the group's connotations. They practically got out of there scot free! Mei wanted to dance and cheer, but she restrained herself.

She restrained herself because the answers she was looking for could be in her hands right now, nestled within those flash drives Kyouhei had passed over to her at the beginning of the van ride back to her apartment. This could be her ticket home-

"We're here," Saburo spoke up, pulling the vehicle to a stop. Kyouhei let out a sigh of relief, Walker a cheer, and Erika a light laugh.

"Yes! We did it," Erika exclaimed.

"We did," Mei said, pocketing the flash drives and giving the group a grateful smile. "Thank you so much for all your help, I really couldn't have done this without you."

And she couldn't have. There were multiple moments where she would've been caught if she were alone.

"No problem," Walker said, grinning widely. "Even if I didn't get to go inside, helping you on your main quest line was a blast! The lore was great, and I can't wait to see what the results are!"

Neither could Mei, to be honest. The plan was to look through the results on the cheap laptop that Mei bought earlier, off the wi-fi for safety reasons.

"About that," Kyouhei started. "We were skimmin' some of the papers as they were downloading, and they were pretty complicated. I don't think we'll be much help."

"Wah, Kadota-san! I want to see what the results are," Walker complained.

Erika spoke up. "No, he's right. They were pretty complicated, Yumacchi," she explained, "but Mei-chan knows lots about science! I'm sure she'll be able to figure it out."

Ah, what were they…?

"So you wanna leave her with flash drives, then?" Saburo asked.

Kyouhei nodded. "Yeah. We can come back and check later if you're good with giving us the gist."

Oh. So they didn't want to be here for the actual analysis part.

"If that's what you guys want to do, I'm fine with that," Mei admitted. "But I really don't mind you staying-"

"It's cool," Saburo said. "We got other stuff to do today anyways."

Right. It was pretty short notice…

"Don't worry about it, Mei-chan," Erika reassured her. "We'll definitely follow up on this later!"

"Man, I hate that Saburo's right," Walker groaned. "But…"

"Life's like that sometimes, yeah," Mei finished once it was clear that Walker wasn't going to say any more. The van squad had certainly earned a place looking through the information as soon as possible, but if they couldn't… "I'll head back to my apartment and look through it now. I'll try to keep a list of the main takeaways. There's an extra flash drive too, right? I'll copy the files over to give you all next time."

This seemed like a well-recieved plan, and Mei and the van squad parted ways. After she waved to the van as it left the parking lot, Mei couldn't help but run the rest of the way to her apartment with a wild grin on her face. Her heels resounded on the pavement, and she couldn't help but laugh in delighted relief. It was time for her to get her answers.

No. No. This couldn't be right, it couldn't be-

Shit.

Shit.

AN: Nice cliffhanger again, right? Admittedly, you can probably infer what happened here. This chapter was… interesting to write, and there were a lot of ideas scrapped and repurposed along the way. I think it came out okay though.

Sorry(?) about the early update; I won't be able to upload anything tomorrow, so I figured better early than late. Also, this fic is getting long (I mean, I expected that, but it's still surprising). I'm over 100 pages on my Google Docs now, and editing on my phone is literal hell (the lag is absolutely terrible!). I usually do some edits on mobile for the slight format change as it helps me spot mistakes better. The more you know, I guess.

Thanks for listening to me ramble. Next time is the last chapter for this arc! Thanks again for reading, and have a great week!