Terazuma let out a low whistle as they took in the expanse of the space that had a moment ago been sealed behind a literal firewall. "What do you suppose this place is?" he thought aloud, bending in order to look farther up the chamber beyond.

"It looks like some sort of file room," Tsuzuki said.

"Or a morgue," Kira echoed. She gestured for Terazuma to hand over possession of Fluffy to her.

"Fools," the demon said, as he seemed fond of doing, as the transaction was made. "Leave it to human weakling mortals to attach some kind of significance to an inconsequential place such as this."

The other four, already used to his empty insults, ignored him.

"The question is," Tsuzuki said, "is it safe?"

In the meantime, Wakaba had taken to examining the area before the statues guarding the entrance where a shallow depression ran in an unbroken curve around the complex, indicating where the wall of fire had been. As the others stared on bated breath, she nonchalantly stepped over it, inviting no disastrous consequences on herself.

"Seems like it," she said under her breath, and pressed studiously onward.

With a shrug, the others followed her, Tsuzuki picking up the metallic bug from where it had fallen, Kira hooking a finger under Fluffy's collar for good measure.

They could not help looking all around them once they had arrived in the steel-encased chamber. Every surface reflected brilliant silver light, and in every rectangular partition was a bronze plaque with neat characters set into it. Drawing close to one wall for a better look, it became apparent what they signified. "These are people's names," Tsuzuki told them. Sure enough, they were spelled out in Japanese characters with the Roman equivalent underneath. And beneath that:

"Death dates?" Terazuma asked. "So this is a kind of file room after all."

Fluffy said nothing to contradict him, but a hungry look crept over his chubby features.

"Maybe not," Kira said. "I thought so before, but it doesn't quite make sense. For one, Enma-cho already has redundancies regarding their data, and second, these drawers — if that's what they are — look too small for files."

"I've heard about something like this," Wakaba said, looking up from the GPS device. "Something about a secret . . . cabinet of curiosities or something buried beneath the grounds."

The demon twisted in Kira's arms to face her when she said that. Terazuma asked, "Curiosities?"

"Yeah, like rare rocks and bones, and artifacts and stuff. It was all the rage during the Meiji era, along with all those other Victorian things. Right, Tsuzuki?"

"Wrong part of Meiji, Wakaba-chan."

"Well, that's very interesting stuff," Kira said, "but I should be returning to the surface now. I'm afraid any more time spent here with this thing—" She indicated Fluffy, whom she shifted to a better position like he were a fidgety toddler. "—would be inviting disaster."

"There's an elevator in the center column," Wakaba told her.

Kira nodded her thanks.

"You mean you don't want to stick around and see what curiosities this place might hold?" Tsuzuki asked her.

"Tempting as that may be," she said around a slight sigh, "as long as I'm on the clock, I look out for only my client. Have you forgotten, Tsuzuki-san?" She fixed him an histrionic gaze. "I'm a mercenary."

"No! Halt, human!" Fluffy sniveled desperately. "I'm sure we can spare just a minute. O-or two."

"And let your sticky fingers have their way? I don't think so." She narrowed her eyes at the little demon. "Besides, weren't you saying just now how inconsequential this place is?"

"I take it back—"

"See you, Tsuzuki." With a curt wave, she headed for the elevators.

"Wait," Tsuzuki called after her as though just remembering. She turned, and he held the mechanical bug up to the light. "You don't mind if we keep this, do you?"

She shrugged. "Why should I? It's not like I asked for it or anything. Just . . . lock up when you leave, or, you know, whatever you have to do."

As Kira left for the center column, Wakaba made her way to a control panel mounted in the thick walls just behind one of the winged statues. Pulling a retractable keyboard down she immediately set to work.

"I'm trying to see if I can't get the firewall back up," she told Terazuma as he came over to ask what she was doing. "If Fluffy wasn't responsible for all the weird things happening down here, then all those beings that were affected might still be wandering around somewhere."

"Whatever you do, don't break it."

As though I would, Wakaba thought sardonically. She entered her commands, and with the sound of bolts locking into place and the hiss of escaping gas, the firewall roared back to life beyond the forelegs of the statues. Though Terazuma probably hadn't meant anything by that comment that otherwise sounded like male compensation for a lack of computer know-how, Wakaba shot him a gloating look anyway.

Then she looked over his shoulder. "Where's Tsuzuki?"

Terazuma turned, but there was no one there. He dashed out into the crossroads between the aisles and looked both ways, while Wakaba called Tsuzuki's name.

"Over here!" came the response from down an aisle further in.

They rushed toward his voice, finding Tsuzuki descending a flight of stairs between levels. "Just where do you think you're going?" Wakaba asked him.

He smiled back excitedly. "I thought maybe, since we're here, we might as well check this place out."

Terazuma leaned over the railing. "But a few hours ago you were complaining about your stomach. I thought you wanted out of here even more than I did."

"Just indulge me for a few minutes. I promise it won't be a complete waste of time."

Exchanging glances, the other two shrugged and followed after him. They had nothing to lose, they figured, except sleep.

—

It was a dark and alien place Hisoka found himself in, disorienting yet somehow not as unsettling as he had expected. Lacking was the impression that anything here wished him harm. A simple-minded yet logical purity surrounded him. As he looked around, lights and shapes made themselves known to his adjusting eyes. Colored streams of light rippled out over the horizon from his feet like the lines on a topographical map, building pylons into space — circulating with a constant flow of energy and data that seemed to be regulated by some kind of pulsating heart. . . .

There! Hisoka spotted it across the way: the silver tower rising above a plain of LEDs and magnetic tape. An impregnable fortress of code spinning at the speed of thought. "Spock-kun . . ."

As sights unfolded before his eyes he saw it under attack from veins so black they seemed invisible, penetrating the tower, sucking the light out of the arteries that struggled desperately to shake them off. Feeding the tumor that loomed above, rippling organically like something straight out of Videodrome, as malignant and demonic a force as any that Hisoka had encountered.

He raised his eyes, and reality returned to him full-force. In the middle of the courtyard, between him and the rubble-filled cavity that up until a short while ago had been the engineering lab, Juuohcho's invader writhed, it's metallic skin swathed in the sparks of both a physical and metaphysical shorting out. It's garbled, electronic bellows pierced the air, ringing off the sides of the buildings with an underlying sound that was unnervingly not man-made. The lighted parts of its hulking body flashed erratically on and off.

"Watari-san!" Hisoka yelled over the noise. "I found him!"

"Tsuzuki?" came the excited response.

"No, Spock-kun! You were right! I can feel him. . . ." In the back of his mind, confused and angry, but not like before. "He's trying hard to resist the TVC-one-five, but it doesn't look good!"

"The TVC-one-five is useless on its own," Watari said. "It needs a user t' do any damage. It must be usin' him as its mode of transportation — like Master Blaster!"

A cancer was more like it, Hisoka thought. Another howl, and something within the forcefield made a grating moan. Something gave. The pressure intensified and the bubble expanded. Hisoka grunted as he put all his strength into compensating. He had to keep it contained; he was in too deep to abort now. . . .

"The reibaku alone isn't going to do it, Watari-san! As long as Spock-kun's online, I can't separate the two entities!"

"I've got the same problem here." Watari fiddled with the controls of the EMP gun, but there was nothing more he could do. It was already at full power, and to make matters worse . . . "The EMPs should be causin' a total meltdown of the electronic parts, but they only seem t' be feedin' that thing more power! I don't understand. Must be somethin' it brought along from the other side . . ."

"If only we could just shut him down," Hisoka thought aloud.

A haughty grin pulled at one side of Watari's mouth. "Once again, Bon, your understated genius inspires me. The TVC-one-five would be a sittin' duck without his body — albeit with a fully-operable subspace frequency oscillator strapped t' its back — but we could destroy it easily! However, there is one tiny complication that I'm afraid in a case like this becomes a matter of gravest importance."

Hisoka didn't like the sound of that.

"Namely, just how do you suggest we get close enough t' do that?" It appeared to be a rhetorical question, as Watari continued: "If we had the key, we might just be able t' pull it off . . ."

"What key?"

"The back-up of his hard-drive— If I had the proper codes, some way t' enter then int' his system, then it would be a simple matter of forcin' a hard shut down, regressin' him t' his state before the incident—"

"Great!" said Hisoka. "Where is it?"

"I wish I only knew! I lost it in the implosion twenty-two years ago." Watari forced a laugh in frustration. "It's times like these I'm reminded of the immortal words of Socrates when he said, 'I drank what?'"

—

"Do you know where you're going?" Terazuma asked with skepticism in his voice as they turned down a corridor that looked the same as the last one.

"I'm pretty sure I'm on the right track," Tsuzuki said as he studied the inscriptions on the drawers.

"Pretty sure . . ."

"He's on a mission," Wakaba said. She showed the GPS to her partner. "I don't know where we're going either, but at least it's not in circles."

Terazuma huffed. He took out a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket, tapped one out, then thought better of it and put it back, the whole ritual performed out of nervous habit. "You know something about this place you're not telling us, Tsuzuki?"

"I'll tell you this," Tsuzuki said excitedly. "A cabinet of curiosities is not far off the mark. When Wakaba said that I was reminded of something that had come up during the Devil's Trill case. I just never paid much attention to it before. The violin that was in Hijiri's possession was said to have been confiscated by Enma as a precaution — you know, just in case there was still some sort of curse on it, even though Surgatanus was vanquished. Originally the instrument had been banned from the country, but after it was sneaked in under the radar without raising any red flags until that case, it was decided it was too dangerous to let exchange hands any further. We were never told where it ended up — I guess we must have assumed it would be destroyed — but apparently there was plenty of precedent for just that sort of thing."

"What are you saying? That the violin ended up here?"

"Along with all the other atypical instruments and weapons and who knows what else that disrupt the spiritual order."

"So you can take it with you!" said Wakaba. "At least . . . in a sense."

"Right. But in cases like the violin, the owner didn't die. I don't think these are death dates. I think they're the dates of confiscation."

Terazuma stood up straight. "This place is a goddamn evidence locker. You looking to reopen a case?"

"Not reopen per se. . . ."

Putting a contemplative finger to his chin, Tsuzuki continued to scan the plaques. There were foreign names here as well, but none seemed to be in any particular order. Still he seemed to be confident he was moving in the right direction.

"A-ha!" he said at last, and grabbed a step stool in order to reach a particular drawer that sat in the wall just above their heads.

His companions looked up to read the plaque, and when they did their eyes went wide. "That's Watari's!" Wakaba ejaculated.

"You've gotta be shitting me," said Terazuma.

But it was no joke. "Watari Yutaka" was engraved in Chinese characters and Roman on the bronze plaque, followed by a date: July 2, 1980.

As they stared, Tsuzuki gave the handle a good pull. The drawer was wedged in fairly tight, and yanking it at an angle made it stick. Wakaba flinched, and Terazuma asked him, "Are you sure you should be opening that? I mean, have some respect for the man's privacy."

"You don't think there's something dangerous in here, do you?" Tsuzuki said as he tried again.

Terazuma didn't answer, but Wakaba suddenly piped up, "Do you think there are files on us in this place?"

"I don't know." Tsuzuki gave the drawer a good and gentle tug and it opened uneventfully. "And I don't think I want to find out."

Yet he didn't seem to have any problem tomb-robbing his coworker — at least, in an indirect sense. He reached his arm up and into the drawer, fishing around for anything inside. His fingers must have hit something, for there was the sound of an object rattling against the sides of an empty box. At last he managed to grab ahold of it, and held it up for his companions to see. It appeared to be nothing more than a cassette tape, rattling dully in its plastic case. Across a piece of masking tape stuck to it was written one word: Spock.

"What is that?" Terazuma said.

"This," Tsuzuki said with gravity, "is Spock-kun."

"What does that mean?" said Wakaba.

Tsuzuki closed the drawer and stepped down. "It was one of Watari's old inventions. To make a long story short, an experimental recognition AI robot Watari lost more than twenty years ago in a mysterious accident."

"Spock-kun, huh?" Terazuma said. "Sounds like a pretty innocent invention for Watari — I mean, next to Jason-kun and Freddie-kun, and Michael-kun . . ."

"And Hannibal-kun," Wakaba added.

Terazuma shivered. "Jesus, don't remind me. Convenient household appliances, my foot. I haven't been able to so much as look at a sausage since."

"I'm not sure I understand. There's a whole AI program on that tape? And how did you know it would be here?"

"I didn't," Tsuzuki said with a slight shrug. "All of a sudden I just remembered what Watari kept repeating to himself before he died. 'Spock-kun.' I didn't make the connection with that old robot until we got here, and then it all clicked." He turned the cassette over in his hand. "To tell you the truth, I have no idea what this has to do with Spock; but Watari should be glad to have it back, even if just for sentimental value. He'll be able to tell us what it all means, when he wakes up."

He made a motion to slip it into his coat pocket, while an uneasy expression came over Wakaba's features. "Are you sure it's wise to take that? I mean, if what you said is correct, it's here for a reason. . . ."

"I'm sure it—" Tsuzuki started to say, when a buzzing in the same pocket cut him off.

It was his cell phone. He took it out and flipped it open. "More mail from Tatsumi," he told the others while he scrolled through. His brows furrowed as he stared closer. "Looks like there were a couple of messages. When did these come in? . . ."

"What does he say?"

"It doesn't sound good," he said aloud to himself. Then, after a moment, to the others, "We've got to get back to the office right away. Emergency. Something about an intruder." The phone folded up with a dull click. "Anyway, looks like we're going to need this after all." He indicated the cassette, taking off in a jog back the way they had come.

"Wait," Wakaba said as they ran after him. Terazuma finishing for her, "Just what is going on?"

Tsuzuki was already bounding up the stairs, that clunked metallically under his footsteps. "I'll explain on the way up," he shouted over his shoulder. "There's no time to lose."

—

Watari searched the surface of the monster machine through binoculars, studying each inch of its skin for any point of penetration. It was tough going what with the reibaku shield obscuring his view and the writhing of the machine itself. At last, however, his searching paid off.

"Bingo. . . . There're a couple of serial ports visible underneath what remains of the keyboard console," he announced. "It might be a long shot, but I could try wedgin' something in there. Let me see. . . ." He rummaged through one of the file boxes he had brought along, looking for the appropriate cable. "I'm gonna need a lot of extensions!" he said suggestively over his shoulder to the two at the laptop.

"You're going to hook it up to your computer?" Natsume asked as he came to Watari's assistance.

"And hope the cables don't snap before we can make some headway? Yeah. At this point it looks like our only option. All we need is t' simply get int' his system. From there we should be able t' shut Spock-kun down remotely."

"You want me to do it once you're in?"

Watari shot him a skeptical look. "Do you know Commodore Basic?"

"Man, I was eleven when those things came out."

In other words, no, Watari thought. A resigned look on his face, he shook his head and patted Natsume on the shoulder. "Guess I have t' do everything myself around here . . . Bon!" he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth and stepping closer to the broken windows.

"I'm here!" came the distracted response.

"Listen very carefully, 'cause here's what we're gonna do. There's an accessible serial port on Spock-kun's exterior—"

"Is it normal size?"

Watari hadn't really thought of that; in his urgency to find one, he'd just assumed it was. He checked again. "Yeah, it is. Now, I'm gonna climb up there, plug him int' my laptop and put him t' sleep from there. It's gonna be a quick and delicate operation 'cause I have t' get right up next t' the beast, so we only have one shot at this. With me so far?"

Hisoka nodded. Then, remembering Watari could not see him, shouted: "I copy."

"Good. Now, right before I get up there t' connect the cable I need you to abort the reibaku."

"What?" Hisoka said under his breath. Was he mad? "Uh, I don't think that's a good idea. Right now it seems to be the only thing keeping that thing under control. Not only that, but the rebound—"

"I know." Watari sounded tired as he explained, "But it's a risk we're gonna have t' take. As long as the containment shield is up, there's no way I can get in there. And if this gambit works, and we succeed in shuttin' Spock-kun down, you better not be bound t' his soul. I know he's just a program, but in a way so are we; and I don't want you followin' him t' that dark place."

There was silence on the other side of the courtyard as Hisoka contemplated the gravity of his words. Hypothetical though the idea was, he wouldn't want to risk it coming true.

"Besides," Watari added as though to reassure him, "I should have a whole fifteen seconds or so before that thing recovers from such a massive release of energy."

"I hope you're right," Hisoka said, steeling himself. "For all our sakes."

"Then you'll do it?"

"On your signal."

Watari smiled as he gripped a coiled length of cable and slung it over his shoulder. His heart was racing like a five cylinder engine, but he took comfort in the equations running instinctually through his mind. Failure was not an option. He couldn't afford it, financially or egoistically. And what was the worst that could happen? They could die in the attempt? Mere nickels and dimes to a shinigami.

Still, just in case, he felt compelled to say, "It's been nice workin' with you, Kurosaki-kun."

"Watari-san—" Hisoka couldn't believe what he was saying. That sober tone wasn't like the scientist. But he couldn't argue either. "Same here."

"On your mark!" Watari began.

But he didn't get any farther than that. Suddenly he noticed something approaching from the meadow outside the courtyard. Behind the machine's bulk, something big and dark was moving toward them at high speed. Two reddish-orange lights like the backup lights of a car but much higher off the ground approached and grew steadily brighter. Nearly forgetting about the cable over his shoulder, Watari hurried to grab up the binoculars once again. What he saw made him break out a grin and laugh out loud in relief. The lights were fiery eyes that belonged to a giant, horned and winged black lion, mane flying as he bounded effortlessly over the trees. Two human figures clung to his hair; and as they neared he made out the features of Wakaba and Tsuzuki.

"What is it?" Tatsumi asked him when he noticed Watari's hesitation.

Watari beamed. "The cavalry has arrived! See for yourself." And he handed Tatsumi the binoculars.

In seconds Kokushungei had charged through the invisible shield that kept the machine in and into the courtyard, pulling up beside the engineering lab like a car in a spin to the curb. "Watari! Heads up!" Tsuzuki shouted down, and tossed something palm-sized and rectangular to the man in question.

It was the cassette tape. The key to Spock-kun.

Watari wasted no time expressing his gratitude. "Abort reibaku now!" he yelled to Hisoka as soon as the tape was securely in his grasp.

Hisoka did as told, disconnecting himself from Spock's essence. He threw himself face-down in the grass and covered his head as the bubble of energy that surrounded the machine was propelled with awesome force back in his direction, like a ricocheting rubber ball. The wind it left in its wake whipped his hair and clothes and the grass in front of his face. Then it slammed into the side of the building behind Hisoka, cracking the exterior wall and blowing out windows, leaving a hemispherical dent in its place.

Back inside the engineering lab, Tatsumi winced. The way things were going, their department would be in the red for decades.

The machine seemed momentarily stunned by the disappearance of the binding spell's enclosure. It stood there dumbly for a moment, as though trying to find its footing again, but Watari knew it would be all too brief a moment. With the reibaku down, he leaped up onto a narrow shelf on Spock's body, clinging to a nob in the skin. By some stroke of luck, the cassette I/O drive appeared intact and unaffected by Spock's time in whatever universe he had been trapped in, which was more than could be said for the chiclet keyboard adjacent to it.

He opened the drive, shoved the cassette tape in, and closed the lid, the second time doing the trick. "Here goes something," he said under his breath, mentally crossing his fingers, and pressed play. Nothing happened immediately, except for the whir of the data loading slowly into Spock's system.

But Watari wasn't so foolish as to wait for the big bang. He let go and jumped back down. He landed squarely on his feet, took a step backward, and promptly fell on his backside.

Tatsumi hurried to his side. "Are you injured, Watari-san?" he asked, trying to help the other man to his feet. Watari waved him off.

In the meantime, Wakaba had nimbly dismounted from the lion and ran inside the engineering lab, stepping around broken glass and chunks of concrete in the process. "Gatekeeper coming through!" she said as she made her way to the laptop. Natsume was already vacating the seat when he saw her approach. She flopped down into it, her orange eye seeming to have an extraordinary jack o' lantern-like glow to it in the commotion. Wasting no time on pleasantries, or even to ask who the heck the other was, she set to work activating the gate system, fingers flying deftly over the keys.

It felt like minutes had gone by with nothing happening. Then the blue and white screen set into Spock's head abruptly went black. The array of cameras soon followed suit. Before their eyes the whole front half of the monster machine sagged lifelessly and even seemed to shrink upon itself with almost imperceptible gradualness. The other half of it bellowed its ire. It wasn't going anywhere now, and it knew that all too well.

Tatsumi looked up at the noise in the middle of hoisting Watari up by his armpits. His mouth fell open in an uncharacteristic expression of surprise. "What is that?"

Watari looked up as well. The machine had reversed itself, the back half stretching up into the air, opening the maw it had turned on Hisoka, using its cables as rudimentary arms braced against its side to pull itself away from the useless skeleton that was Spock, like a cicada emerging from its old skin. A seam began to form between the two bodies, the inky black dark matter bridging the gap between.

"Meiotic division!" Watari said in awe, adjusting his glasses. "It's tryin' t' split itself in twain! I've never seen this kind of behavior in an electronic device!"

"Not that," Tatsumi said. He pointed upward.

Watari stepped back and nearly stumbled again over Tatsumi's shoes.

A black hole was fast opening up in the air above the new head of the beast. The wind swirled about the courtyard as though being sucked inward, and the ground began to vibrate steadily. An alien ringing sound filled the space, echoing off the sides of the buildings, but it was not simply the effect of the changing air pressure on the inner ear. It was coming from the TVC-15.

—

In the file room deep underground, the vibration above made the whole place rattle, jostling computer equipment just paper-widths off the tables, but making enough noise for the Gushoushin brothers to panic.

"Ah!" squawked the elder as he glanced at the computer screen. The younger rushed to look over his shoulder. "The anomalies are back — and in full force! This data indicates they're inside the shield. What's going to hold them back now?"

"Where is this happening?"

The elder hummed in thought. "Engineering—"

"That's almost right above us!"

Sitting in the swiveling chair, her knees pulled up to her chest, Kazusa tried to be brave; but she couldn't help being reminded of another time she had hid like this while the walls shook around her. The same could not be said for K, who had crouched low to the ground under one of the desks, looking as though he would have buried himself in the floor if he had the option.

The Gushoushin must have noticed their banter had done nothing to comfort the girl. They exchanged glances, the younger breaking a nervous smile. "Eh, don't worry, Kazusa-chan," he tried. "This ceiling is made of like a foot of steel and concrete. I'm sure we'll be safe here."

"I know," she said in a small voice, looking to the ceiling. "I'm not worried about us."

The Gushoushin exchanged glances.

"Ooh. . . ." The elder's face scrunched up and he balled his fists. He yelled to no one who could hear them: "Keep it together, everyone!"

—

Hisoka slowly raised himself off the ground. His hands and knees felt raw from pitching himself forward with such force, and the dew had dampened his jeans and jacket sleeves, but that was little price to pay for escaping his rebounding soul-binding spell.

Someone knelt down beside him and touched his shoulder. "Hisoka! Are you all right?"

He would have recognized that voice anywhere. "Tsuzuki . . ."

He raised himself to his knees and sat back on his heels, taking in the scene. The misshapen machine dragging its front end, Kokushungei and now Byakko, as well, clawing and biting at its raging back, and the hole growing larger by the minute above it. He turned to look at the damage to the building behind him and put a hand to his forehead. "Tatsumi's gonna be pissed . . ."

"Hisoka . . ." Tsuzuki repeated, and he realized he hadn't answered his partner's question.

"Yeah, I'm fine." He waited a moment for the blood rushing to his head to return to normal. "What happened to Spock-kun? Did Watari manage to shut it down?"

"Yeah. But we're not out of the woods yet. Whatever attached itself to him is trying to break free."

Hisoka grabbed his sleeve. "Tsuzuki, that other thing is the device that caused the implosion twenty-two years ago — it's responsible for the anomalies occurring all over Juuohcho tonight!"

Tsuzuki looked up at it, as though searching for some clue. It was not difficult for Hisoka to grasp his train of thought.

"Yes, in the Castle of Candles, too. It's disrupting the fabric of space itself. It must be destroyed—"

He tried to stand and rally his strength but felt woozy as soon as he did so. Tsuzuki put an arm around his waist to support him, asking, "You used reibaku, didn't you?"

Hisoka nodded. "But, really, I'm fine—"

"Oh, no you're not. Your part in his battle is over. Leave the rest up to those two—" He nodded his head toward the two shikigami tearing up the remainder of the landscape. "—and let's get you somewhere safe."

Meanwhile, Wakaba was working frantically to find the coordinates that would allow her to seal the thing away for good, but it was proving more difficult than first imagined. At least the random wormholes from earlier in the night had all but ceased; the hole the TVC-15 had opened up above the courtyard, however, was deliberate and well-fed. The ever-expanding edges began to glow with a circulating heat, as though it were literally burning a hole through space itself.

"I can't get a good reading on this portal," Wakaba said in frustration as she tried formula after formula. "And it won't even recognize the usual passcodes. I'll have to find a long way in, but this isn't normal gate phenomenon. It doesn't resemble anything I've seen before."

"None of us have seen anything like it before," Watari said, hurrying over debris toward her with Tatsumi in tow.

She looked up at his intrusion. "What have you dragged me into? Where does it go?"

"A heret'fore unknown universe made up entirely of dark matter — with the exception of my two long lost inventions here for twenty-two years, that is. Come t' think of it, I wonder if they were even visible t' whatever's over there. . . ."

He appeared entirely too chipper about the whole thing. Maybe if it were a controlled experiment in which the welfare of the Judgment Bureau was not on the line, that would be appropriate. But unknown . . . dark matter . . . "Oh, no. . . ." she groaned.

"Oh, yes." Watari turned to gaze at his unintentional handiwork. "We really ripped the universe a new one!"

"Wipe that stupid grin off your face," Tatsumi muttered, pushing his glasses back into place. "Think. We have to solve this thing. You have to solve this thing."

"At least Terazuma and Byakko are doin' a pretty good job keepin' the TVC-one-five on its toes." Whether Watari meant that as an excuse or not, they seemed to be fairing well, both black lion-beast and white tiger sinking their teeth into metal skin and squishy dark matter alike, tearing whatever they could.

"But at long as the portal between our worlds remains open it will continue to grow larger."

"I know." Watari stroked his chin for a moment before raising his index finger into the air. "Of course. The TVC-one-five operates on the same principles as a patch oscillator. At least, it did when I was testin' it. It seems t' be functionin' pretty well independently now."

"How does that help me?" Wakaba said, but by her look she was starting to catch his drift.

Watari spread his arms. "Each patch creates a unique frequency. And you can only project one frequency and its harmonic resonances at a time. If you want t' replicate them later, or not repeat the same frequencies over and over, you write them down."

"You wrote the patches down?" Tatsumi seemed surprised.

Watari puffed out his chest. "Of course. I may seem the disorganized, absent-minded professor, but I assure you I'm nothin' if not a meticulous note-taker. I would have written down every patch I tried."

"Including this one?"

"If the device is in fact dialin' the last known address, which I believe it is, yes."

"Wait a second," Natsume spoke up. "That's all well and good, but you're forgetting every record of the TVC-one-five but the original sketches was confiscated by Enma after the implosion and-or destroyed."

"Oh, Natsume, you're young yet." Watari shook his head. "While it's true my journal and equipment and anything with the device's name on it disappeared — whether lost in subspace or deleted from the material sphere, I don't care t' know — the numbers remain. Only Mother would find any significance in my empirical ramblin's, hence their deletion from my brain. But no one fed her my copious notes. They wouldn't know where t' start."

He looked quite satisfied with himself, his arms crossed over his chest. The others just stared blankly, contemplating the ramifications of what he had just revealed, perhaps wondering too why he hadn't revealed them earlier.

"Hold on," he added; "I've got them here somewhere." And he began to dig through thick files of loose leaf paper he had brought along with him; which, to the other two men who picked up and browsed through the rejected ones, seemed like a hopelessly random collection of mathematical free associations and sloppy sketches.

At last he pulled a couple of sheets of paper out from the midst of an overflowing folder, flapping them stiff and handing them to Wakaba. "These should help," he told her. "The last coordinates here represent the last patch I tried before all hell broke loose. And these—" He indicated the sheet underneath. "—are the calculations I was workin' on last evenin'. They're a little crude. . . ."

Difficult to read was more like it. However . . . "That'll do," Wakaba said, and began to put in a new set of values and commands that corresponded to his information while Watari went back to attend to his electromagnetic pulse generator. In fact, the more she did so, the more familiar the process began to feel. "These aren't so different from the procedures for sealing the Gensoukai gate after all," she thought aloud, surprise evident in her voice. "It's just that much of the process is reversed. As long as I remember to think of the opposite . . ."

"You'll be able to close it?" Tatsumi asked.

She nodded. "It really isn't so complicated once I have the proper values."

However, almost as soon as she had said that, the computer emitted an inauspicious ding. The three all leaned closer toward the screen. "Oh no," Wakaba said again. "My calculations are off. The information won't go through."

"What do you mean?" said Natsume. "Watari's numbers were incorrect?"

"No." She shook her head, trying an alternative route, also to no avail. "It's mine. I must have messed up somewhere, left out a decimal point or something. . . ."

Tatsumi glanced back outside. The wind and noise were terrible. The device was putting up quite a struggle against the two shikigami, but the hole in the sky appeared unaffected by their tussle. If anything, something seemed to be coming through. It was not immediately visible, but the fighting end of the machine was clearly growing in size, swelling up like an inflatable beach ball just as fast as Kokushungei and Byakko could tear it apart.

"Watari-san, shut that gun down!" he said over the roar, but wasn't sure the other understood him even though he nodded and gave Tatsumi a thumb up.

Just as all things seemed hopeless from Wakaba's point of view, she caught the shape of something small and fuzzy and brown drifting out of the corner of her eye. She paid it no attention until it landed ungracefully with a painful clack on the side of the keyboard.

"Zero-zero-three?" she said. "What are you doing here?"

The owl did not answer. Instead she righted herself, deleted the nonsense she had entered upon landing, and began to type something onto the screen with purpose, hunting and pecking with her beak and claws interchangeably. Wakaba was too stunned to stop her, at first startled that she would do such a thing, and second because 003's input actually made sense. Then the owl pressed enter, and the counter-portal started up with a flash from the screen and a whir deep in the machine.

Wakaba and Natsume leaned in even closer to the screen. "That's it," Wakaba breathed. "Oh my god, that's it!

"We're in!" she yelled to Tatsumi and Watari. The latter cheered and pumped a fist in the air; the former exhaled in relief.

The machine under attack knew something was wrong immediately. The black hole above its head slowed its spinning until it came to a stop. Then, with a brilliant flash of light on their end of the universe, its spinning began to reverse.

The TVC-15 reversed itself as well, throwing the shikigami off and losing chunks of artificial flesh in the process as it did a 180 and pointed its new head at the engineering lab. In doing so, its body folded in half, causing Spock's dead weight to flop over onto its side and nearly roll over the top of Hisoka and Tsuzuki, who were making their way to join the others inside the building. The tentacular cables braced the machine like the legs of a tarantula, each moving the head into position independently.

Ignorant of the changes, and falling into her old familiar stride, Wakaba continued to work. The portal acted like a proper black hole now, sucking dark matter off the back of the machine and out of its horns like oil from water.

The machine howled from its makeshift mouth, which warped and started to atrophy under the suction. Weakened, its limbs folded under it when Kokushungei, his eyes blazing with unholy fire, wrapped his jaws around what might have been its jugular had it been an animal. Rising on his hindlegs, Byakko joined the fray with slashing claws, cultivating a ball of energy in his own open mouth.

The gate was nearly closed. The tension between the two opposing forces was at a head, the ground trembling with the mounting pressure. There was no way all the matter that had transferred over from the other plane was going to return to whence it came; its sheer mass, stuck in transition, was all that was keeping the portal from closing completely.

And Byakko was about to fire right into its core.

"It's going to explode!" Watari warned them as he pulled the plug on the EMP gun.

The portal sealed itself with a flash that lit up the courtyard like day; and Byakko released his charge. It ripped through the outer layer of the TVC-15, tearing it to shreds just as a surge of dark matter welled up from within, expanding outward and enveloping all in its path.

Wakaba looked away and threw up her arms, managing to shield herself, 003 and the laptop at once. Tatsumi and Natsume simultaneously raised a defensive barrier over their party within the engineering lab, while Watari casually opened a clear plastic umbrella printed with yellow ducks. Trapped outside on the grass, Tsuzuki reached inside his jacket for a fuda, bringing it to bear just as the dark matter came raining down upon him and Hisoka. Great Jell-o-like globs of it mixed with shrapnel and colored wire fell hard and slid down the sides of the bubble while they watched wide-eyed.

And, slowly, silence descended on the courtyard. So utter was it after the ruckus raised by the combination of Watari's inventions that for a moment Hisoka thought he had temporarily lost his hearing. He worked his jaw and rubbed at his ears, but when Tsuzuki asked if he was all right he heard him just fine.

He managed a shaky, affirmative, "M-m." And when Tsuzuki leaned against his back, he did not bother to shake him off and chew him out for it as he usually would have done. "Good," Tsuzuki slurred next to his ear. "'Cause suddenly I don't feel so good, and if I had to carry you . . ."

"That's all right," Hisoka said, just remembering the pain his partner had been in earlier. Hard to believe that was only a few hours ago, and not the days it felt like. "I'm pretty sure I can manage."

The courtyard and the sides of the buildings were littered with debris. The lightest materials continued to slowly drift to the ground, fluttering through the air, while twisted chunks of metal and the guts of electronics made a chaotic pattern on the broken concrete and torn-up grass like the remnants of an alien spaceship's crash landing. Spock alone remained pretty much in one piece, lying on its side, back blown out, yet — by some miracle of chance or physics — nearly completely reduced to normal size. Large blobs of fuzzy dark matter completed the scene, some still smoking or jiggling where they lay.

In the center of one such puddle, and liberally covered with the stuff, Terazuma pushed himself up into a sitting position with a groan. "Ugh . . . I feel like the floor of a taxi cab," he remarked as Byakko licked the gunk out of his hair, making one side stick straight up. Then he noticed where he was, and moreover that he had no clothes. "Kannuki!"

"Here."

Terazuma looked up to see a lab coat being held in front of his face. And behind that, a bespectacled face he did not recognize. He took the coat and accepted a helping hand to his feet, staring. "Who are you?"

Still grasping his hand, Natsume turned the gesture into a handshake, and began to explain the whole thing.

Inside the lab, Watari hooted and jumped in boyish excitement. "We did it, we did it!" he was chanting in a sing-song voice. "Wakaba-chan, I love you, you brilliant young thing!" He grabbed her around the shoulders and swung her around laughing, while Tatsumi looked on with a slightly embarrassed but grateful grin. 003 hooted as well, her excitement albeit more restrained.

"However did you guys find that cassette?" Watari asked, letting Wakaba go. "I thought I'd lost that t' some other universe years ago."

"It was all Tsuzuki's idea," she said. "He remembered what you had said about Spock-kun and took a chance that there was something of him left behind important enough that Enma would have hung onto it. And," she shrugged, "I guess it turned out he was right."

"You mean, that slacker Tsuzuki may have saved us all?" Watari said. But his surprise was exaggerated. He turned around, looking out over the courtyard for the man in question. "Where is he when you need him? . . . Tsuzuki!"

Hisoka heard Watari's call and gently nudged the man in question who leaned against his back, his arms draped over Hisoka's shoulders. "Tsuzuki," he said, "I think Watari-san wants to talk to you. . . . Tsuzuki?"

The only answer he received was a quiet snore. Tsuzuki had fallen asleep.

"Dork," Hisoka mumbled, feeling the heat rise to his cheeks. He had been wide awake only a few seconds ago. But that thought only made him smile to himself and relax, even under that dead weight. Even with the probability of being drooled on. At this point, he too was eager to put this night behind him.

Over the buildings behind them the sky was just beginning to lighten to a warm indigo. In the west, the moon was sinking into the topmost boughs of the cherry trees. The earth continued its eternal rotation, as though the whole thing had been nothing but a short summer night's dream.

—
to be concluded