Chapter 2.
When focus on the goal is lost, obstacles may begin to seem insurmountable.
Sitting in the hangar as the last of the gear was loaded onto their transport, Sousuke tried to organize his thoughts regarding the mission, its objectives and probable challenges. He considered methods of disguising the strange AS for transport, and wondered if Kaname had chosen the robot's paint colors. He thought of pertinent questions to put to the Lab Assistant and his mind wandered to impertinent questions he would like to put to a certain blue-haired young woman... if she were at all capable of answering them. A strange queasiness rippled through him as he wondered briefly just how she was. In his mind, he could not picture her as anything other than the boisterous, lively, energetic (well, honestly, violent), optimistic and generally cheerful girl he had known. Even so, he had witnessed enough cases of battle fatigue and post traumatic stress disorder to know that harsh circumstances could change a person in almost unimaginable ways. But Kaname?
Then again, what reason did he have to think he would know her even if circumstances were normal? Two years could change a great deal about a person. It had been two years since their last communication. "I just can't take this anymore! You've been a good friend, when you weren't completely screwing up my life, and I would love to see you again, but until then I need to get on with my life. I can't just wait forever. There's more to love than waiting by a phone for a clueless idiot who seems to think that quoting the "Art of War" is all it takes to maintain a relationship. Do you understand?"
He hadn't understood. There was something in her voice over the line that seemed to want an answer beyond "affirmative," but he didn't know what. He did sense a strange finality in her words and her tone, but it wasn't until he had voiced his reply and ended transmission that the chill feeling of termination touched his heart. It would take over a month of answering machines and empty mailboxes to drive home to him what he had lost.
"I would love to see you again..." Would she really? Or would she really have wanted to see him again before this happened. There had been missions and objectives, training and research: a myriad of things to keep him occupied and tied to the organization. A month had lead to six, to a year, and although he thought about her constantly, he never quite took the extra step of requesting leave, or an assignment in her proximity. What if she hadn't meant it? Something else had always seemed more important, higher priority, until now. And now, there was a good chance it was too late.
"How're you holding up?" Kurz plopped down beside him on a pile of gear. "Had enough time to get your mind tied up in little bitty knots yet?" Sousuke turned to look at him in consternation. He'd thought himself less obvious than that. Kurz simply shook his head and blew his bangs out of his eyes. "Guess so. You know, it could be worse."
"True. If an incident of the proportions indicated by the blast radius had occurred during peak lab occupation hours, the casualty rate could have been much higher." Sousuke avoided the issue.
"She could be dead. I don't know exactly what the situation was between you, but I know there's stuff you needed to deal with. We're going to see her again, and no matter what kind of vegetable she may turn out to be, at least she's alive." He glanced away. "Where there's life, there's hope." He smirked, watching Melissa head in their direction. "And if that doesn't work out, there's always friends and beer."
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"Yoshi? What time is it?" She woke up in a chair in Yoshi's control room. He'd asked her to come pick him up for dinner, and then asked her to wait a couple minutes while he finished something up... and then a couple more... and then, "How long have I been here?" The outer lab looked completely dark and no one else was around. The control room timer said 03:26, but that could mean anything, since Yoshi often reset it for various experiments. A voice-activated tape recorder whirred quietly on the table in front of her. Strange. She stood up, straightened her skirt and blouse, and pushed open the door to the containment room, noting that the warning light was currently green. The lab clock read 03:27. Components which had been neatly arrayed when she arrived were scattered in seemingly haphazard fashion all over the floor. Papers with Yoshi's terrible handwriting, and hasty-looking sketches were taped up all over the room and Yoshi himself was buried down to the knees in his project, his feet tapping excitedly on the floor while bangs and skreeches filtered through the machine.
"YOSHI! YOU IDIOT, I HAVE A 7:30 CLASS TOMORROW!"
"Wha?" was as far as he got before being pulled forcibly by the feet from the machine. "K-Kaname??" His expression flowed from joy to chagrin as he registered the glaring menace in her eyes. He looked up at the clock. "Oh! I am so sorry. I am so soooo sorry!" but suddenly he smiled. "But, you may have just helped me solve your problem."
It was her turn to stammer. "W-what do you mean?"
"The distance, K-chan! I think you may have hit the nail on the head with that psi-field generator stuff, and if we can just find a way to contain the singularity then the distance is no longer a problem!" He leaped up from the floor and hugged her. His enthusiasm was contagious, but she wouldn't let herself be won over quite so easily.
"First, I don't know what the HELL you're talking about, and Second—and listen up because this is important—if I am embarrassed in class today because of you, I swear I'm never coming here again!"
"But you--" he paused, confusion evident, then the more familiar calm patience suffused his features. "Kaname, do you recognize this?" he held out a very large sheet of paper covered with detailed schematics. It looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn't say how. The notes on it, though...
"That's my handwriting! But I don't remember..." suddenly, it dawned on her and she stared, panic-stricken, at her friend. "I did this, didn't I?"
"We did it. I was working on the schematics and we were talking about distances and your friend and all of a sudden, you started mumbling these fantastic ideas, and I gave you a pen, and you started writing, and I nailed down the details when you were too vague, and it's crazy and the laws of physics say there's no way in hell it should work, but it just might," he took her face in his hands and smiled into her eyes. "You and I are going to warp the laws of time and space." Then he looked closely at her, and registered her nervousness and concern. "Are you alright, Kaname-chan? I'm not crazy. I'm really not. And if I can make this work, you could see your friend whenever you wanted to whether he's in Japan or Timbuktu..."
"I'm okay, Yoshi-chan. And I know you're not crazy. Just promise me you'll keep this absolutely secret, okay? Not to sound too paranoid, but our lives may depend on it." The image of someone else saying those words was hauntingly clear for a moment.
"Lives nothing! My future in the academic community hangs in the balance." He smiled. "But I promise," he kissed her gently on the forehead, "I will not tell another living soul, and no one will find a single one of my notes, until you say it's okay."
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"Okay..."
"What? Do you like that one Kaname?" Kyoko and Joel were sitting with her in a sunny room, showing her old photographs of high-school and college. Images of friends and parties and summer trips covered the little table in front of them, and part of the tatami beneath. The latest picture was of Kaname sitting on a bench with Bonta-kun at a local carnival. "Do you want your doll? I'll have the nurse bring it from the room...?" For a moment, something seemed to hit home in Kaname's expression, but the moment passed and her gaze resumed its unfocused perusal of the pictures. Kyoko sighed. She had been here for over three hours today, and the tears were threatening to come back with a vengeance. That her once dynamic friend could be reduced to this seemed unspeakably unfair. Still, at least Kaname was no longer trying to injure herself, or murmuring those strange nonsense words. Whether that was due to her friends' presence or to the sedatives, Kyoko wasn't sure. She hoped the former.
"How about this one, Kaname?" she held up an old photo of her friend in the act of launching Sousuke across a hallway with a well-placed smack of her halisen. If that didn't get a reaction, nothing would. A flicker of what might have been annoyance or pain was all she got.
"Damn, what did that guy do to piss her off?" Joel looked at the photo and thought of the many times he'd seen her on the verge of this kind of thing. He'd never seen her actually use the halisen, but it had been brandished frequently when Yoshi became too absorbed in his work.
"I don't think there was anything he could do that wouldn't have made her mad. Although that time I think it was something to do with breaking the bust from art class." Kyoko smiled wistfully, remembering old times. "That's Sousuke, by the way."
Joel looked at the picture more closely, then at Kyoko. "Sagara? The Sousuke?"
"The one and only. Why, did she talk about him with you, too?"
"Only once. But I think she and Yoshi discussed him quite a few times." At the mention of Yoshi's name, Kaname turned from the window to stare at Joel.
"It's Wednesday. I have to go running at three." She looked around, presumably for a clock. Joel and Kyouko stared at each other. It was Thursday, in point of fact, but this was the most lucid comment Kaname had made all afternoon. She smiled at them. "You guys want to come? Yoshi won't mind." Her expression guileless, and her friends both had to fight the immediate sadness the statement brought.
"We'll have to ask the doctors if it's all right for you to go out, Kaname, but I'd be happy to go running with you, if that's what you'd like." Kyouko had decided on cautious encouragement, at least to try to keep her talking.
"You two pretty ladies stay right here, and I'll go ask." Joel stood and gave Kyouko a significant look, do you really think this is a good idea? She shrugged and he headed back to the nurses station.
Kaname watched him go, then pored over a few of the pictures. Kyouko was beginning to fear that her friend had relapsed into her dream world, when the the blue-haired one suddenly reached out and snatched one of the pictures Joel had brought. It showed herself and Chikitaka-san in the lab. He held her in a bear-hug a few inches off the floor and she was clearly laughing. Kaname held the photo close to her face for several moments, staring at it intently, then she looked in the direction of the nurses station, out the window and behind herself before grabbing Kyouko's hand.
"Keep this picture for me, will you?" She closed Kyouko's hand over the photograph and looked up, as though waiting for some acknowledgment. Kyouko, unsure what to do, nodded and tucked the picture into one of her photo albums. She could always give it back to Joel later, after making a copy for her friend. As quickly as it had come, Kaname's lucidity seemed to flow away. By the time Joel returned, she was staring out the window and rocking slightly back and forth.
"The doctors said you shouldn't go running until after they take the stitches out, but we can all go for a walk. Would you still like to go?"
"initialgpserrorbeyondacceptablparameters...Huh?" Kaname looked up. Joel decided to ignore the lapse.
"Would you like to go for a walk in the park?"
"Oh. Yes. Sure would. Can't get out of shape just because of a little bump on the head, right?" She smiled, and Joel decided to take it at face value. Maybe she was coming around. "Let's get these put away." The three of them quickly began replacing pictures in the albums and boxes they'd been brought in. Within moments, the room looked just as it had this morning, with the exception of its occupant, who seemed strangely energized for someone on that many anti-psychotics and sedatives.
They made it as far as the nurses station when Joel's cell phone went off. Digging it out of the satchel, he saw his roommate's phone number. While Kyouko helped Kaname find her shoes in the alcove behind the desk, he took the call.
"Hey Joel," surprisingly, Jan was speaking Dutch for once. What the hell?
"What's up?" he fell easily into his native tongue.
"Look, I just got back, and somebody's tossed the place. It's a mess!"
"WHAT!?"
"Yeah, all the drawers are out, stuff everywhere. If it were mid-terms I'd figure you went on one of your tears, but this is a bit messy even for a world class slob like you." He was joking, trying to make light of it. Joel was in fact almost compulsively tidy. "Did you piss off the wrong people?"
Good question. Their grant sponsors had been getting more than a little pissy about the lack of notes lately, but if they were really ticked, they'd initiate legal action. Unless... did someone know about the notes in his satchel? His mind snapped back to what Jan was saying.
"Oh, and there's a message for you from the police department. They need you back for further questioning at 3:15. I guess there are still some things they want to clear up. How long are they planning to grill you, anyway?"
"Probably until my last hair turns grey, or at least until Kaname gets lucid and Yoshi returns from the dead," he sighed. "They give you any idea how long they wanted me for?"
"Nope, just that as one so 'intimately involved with the project' they expected your 'eager' cooperation in determining the cause of your friend's death." There was a pause on the line as Jan waited and Joel shoved his battered emotions back under control. "Aw man! Did they have to knock over my philodendron?"
"If the cops call back, tell them I'm on my way. I've got to run if I'm going to make it. Catch you later," he thought for a moment. "Say, I just thought of something. Can you crash at Toji-san's for a bit? I might have a hot date later." Or someone might decide to show up in person later, and I've seen too many spy movies to want my roommate to meet anyone who does...
Jan laughed. "Gotcha. I'll ghost until I hear back from you. Good luck!" They hung up.
"Kaname, something came up and I can't go with you two today. I'll see you tomorrow, though."
"Sure thing, Joel. Say 'hi' to Yoshi for me." And she walked out. He sighed. Well it was better than catatonia... wasn't it?
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"I'm afraid I must report that the search revealed nothing. At this point in time, neither the lab nor the assistant's residence contained anything which might constitute design plans. Operatives will conduct a search of the girlfriend's residence this evening, however, I must repeat my assertion that simply retrieving the asset and reverse-engineering it may be our best option at this point."
"Always practical. Has it occurred to you that Agent Vandenberg was effectively eliminated by an untrained, pacifist scientific researcher? The man had no weapons, no martial arts training that we've uncovered, and no warning of Agent Vandenberg's approach."
"He had a greater familiarity with the lab. Perhaps he used the asset in a weapons capacity."
"Ah, but he couldn't have. Our last transmission indicated he was not in the asset at the time of the attack."
"So you think he may have created some sort of remote control for it?"
"Perhaps. Or perhaps he had help. A second pilot. In either case, simply picking up what could potentially be a deadly trap would seem ill advised."
"A second pilot seems unlikely. Mr. Vermeer was no where near the lab at the time of the occurrence. As for a remote... none has been found."
"No, I think your focus may be a trifle off. They call it Saya, a woman's name, or hadn't you noticed?"
"The girlfriend?"
"They say the female of the species is more deadly than the male. For her sake and our amusement, let us hope so."
