Chapter 4

When Ikuno, Hachi, and Nana walked into the lab, Naomi was nervously fidgeting at her desk. Hearing them come in, she looked over and complained, "What took you so long! I've-"

Ikuno interrupted her with a sigh, "I'm making some tea." she continued walking towards the back wall and after typing something into the holoraphic keyboard, a compartment extended out of the wall to reveal a full mini-kitchen complete with an oven, stove, sink, and refrigerator.

Naomi took a deep breath, smiled, and said, "That's a great idea!" she pulled open one of the cupboards on the side of the room and pulled out a teapot, handing it to Ikuno.

Ikuno filled and set the teapot on the stove to boil while Naomi worked on preparing tea bags. Nana and Hachi sat on the edge of the bed and leaned on eachother. The room was silent, everyone too engrossed in their thoughts to start a conversation.

After the tea bags were ready, Naomi made a table and bench extend from the wall, and pulled four mugs out from the cupboard. Shortly after, the teapot cried out and Ikuno poured them all cups of tea.

Ikuno took a deep breath and sipped her tea. Exhaling, she said, "Lavender tea is so relaxing." She took one more deep breath and started, "Ok, first..." she looked at Nana and asked, "What happened with you?"

Nana thought for a moment before answering, "Well, we were coming up to the tree, a-and there was that girl, the one who looked like Zero Two. She was running, and tripped. I ran to go see if she was alright when I heard that boy's voice from around the corner. He said his name was Hiro, then all of a sudden my head hurt and then..." A tear ran down her face, "I had some sort of dream, or a vision, I guess. I saw them. Relived every memory I had of Hiro and Zero Two. When I woke up I needed to see them, so I ran." She sniffled and wiped her eyes with her hands.

Ikuno grabbed a pen and some paper from her desk and jotted down a few notes. She looked up at Nana and explained, "It was probably a memory relapse caused by the emotion wipe, likely caused by the sudden increase in emotive output. Maybe similar to the one you had way back in Mistleteinn." She then took another sip of tea and continued, "Next..." she prepared herself with a deep breath, "What's this about VIRM, Naomi?"

Astonished looks came to Hachi's and Nana's faces. Hachi asked, "Huh? What do you mean, isn't VIRM dead?"

"Well," Naomi stood and walked over to her desk. She pulled up a graph on the monitor that showed a horizontal line followed by a steep incline. Pointing to the graph she said, "I've been monitoring the portal that Strelizia Apus went through, and while you three were out just now, it reopened." She turned back to the desk and pulled something else up on the monitor. She looked at it and explained, "As soon as the portal opened I recieved this radio transmission on an old APE frequency." She pressed a button and the message played.

"We have returned. You foolish, insolent humans seriously thought we would be destroyed by your little bomb? VIRM, the pinnacle of evolution, spans across many systems and many planets. Destroying our homeworld was not enough to silence us. We have rebuilt and regrouped, and you shall lose. When we arrive again at earth, you will surrender or you will die. You have your time to think, I suggest you chose life over death."

The voice that played was the same as Papa's, the same as the VIRM hivemind. It sent a shiver down their spines.

Nana's face was pale. Staring into nothingness, she asked, "What are we gonna do?"

Ikuno stared into her mug, her knuckles white as she gripped it and took a long drink. She sighed and her whole body relaxed. Closing her eyes she thought for a while. The silence threatened her concentration. When she reopened her eyes she asked, "How much time do we have?"

Naomi quickly answered, "Well it was eight years after Strelitzia Apus entered the portal that Zero Two's body dissapated. Assuming that's they detonated the bomb, travel time through the portal should be around eight years for ships of Strelizia's speed. Only large ships can survive in the portal so it should take VIRM about the same amount of time, eight years, to pass through the portal. Once they are through, they may send out faster scouting ships that could reach Earth from Mars about a year after that. Their bigger ships should take about twice that time to get here." She paused for a second and regained her breath, "So..." She did some mental math, "Worst case scenario, if they can get through the portal faster than Strelizia Apus did, seven years for scouts and smaller ships to arrive, eight for their larger ships, and best case scenario nine years for scouts and ten for large ships." She sighed and looked at Ikuno with a worried face.

"Nine years if we're lucky... What can we do in nine years?" Ikuno's head dropped into her hands.

"I'd rather die than surrender." Said Hachi.

Nana agreed, "Yeah, anything is better than surrendering to them."

Naomi scratched her head and suggested, "The only thing I can think of that would work in nine years would be to try and start up those old franxx."

Ikuno quickly disagreed, "We don't have any viable parasites, and those franxx are probably broken down by now, and we can't use magma to power them either even if we did get one of those running." She lifted her face out of her hands and continued, "Unless..." Standing up, she explained, "Maybe... Maybe we could refit them with fusion reactors."

Naomi argued, "The franxx aren't big enough to have their own fusion reactors!"

"Given nine years we could design one small enough." Ikuno moved on, "The oldest children that haven't recieved treatment are about six years old. If we start now we might be able to make them fit to pilot by the time VIRM arrives."

With a concerned look Hachi said, "Franxx won't do any good if they have a space fleet, they could just annihilate us from afar."

Naomi's face lit up and she turned to her desk and pulled up a model of Strelizia Apus. Pointing to a module in the main body she explained, "If we had enough energy, maybe we could protect all the cities with energy shields similar to this one Strelizia Apus had. Therefore protecting ourselves from orbital bombardment, and forcing VIRM to come down to Earth so we can fight on our own terms."

Nana frowned and looked at the model, "Can it really be done?"

Ikuno looked at her worried face and answered, "I don't know. Fusion reactors supply a lot of energy, so if we built an extra one per city we should be able to power a shield like that, but..." Her expression worsened, "But energy shields still wouldn't prevent invaders coming through on the surface," She tapped the table as she thought, and continued somberly, "with which we have no working franxx to combat them with." She drank all the tea that remained in her mug. With her body calm once again she finished, "I guess that'll just have to be a problem for future us." She walked over from the table and sat down at her desk.

Hachi gazed down at his watch, which read "12:37 AM." Suprised, he looked at Nana and told her, "It's really getting late, we should leave them to their business." She agreed and they quickly drank the rest of their tea and headed for the door.

Naomi frowned and said, "Would you mind asking the president to come have a chat with us? All this is going to need a lot of resources and money."

Nana nodded in agreement and said, "We'll try to meet with her tommorow." When they passed the desks Ikuno was already looking at a model of a fusion reactor, and Nana recognized Dr. Franxx's parasite scoring notes pulled up on Naomi's monitor. Leaving the room Nana said excitedly, "Good luck! Good night!"

She heard a distracted "Good night!" back.

Hachi closed the door behind them and wondered, "How can you sound so excited in a time like this?"

Nana started walking down the hallway and answered, "It wouldn't do any good be sad, now would it?"

He jogged to catch up. Falling into step next to her, he mumbled in response, "It wouldn't hurt to take things more seriously, either." Looking down at her face, however, he found it full of worry. She looked up at him and sighed. With a smile he forgot VIRM, took her hand, and continued through the museum.

Hand in hand they exited the museum, walked past The Great Sakura billowing in the wind, past the statues standing still at the foot of the hill, and back through the gate.

Outside the park, the city streets were still bustling with people. Merchants peddled off flashy toys or aromous food, others laughed and had smiles on their faces, enjoying the night off for the holiday. Nana and Hachi walked past it all, soon coming upon the tallest bulding in the city. They flashed their badges at the access gate, which turned green letting them enter the building. The elevator took them to their destination on the top floor. They walked down the hallway, and after presenting their badges one more time, opened the door to their apartment.

Too stressed to fall asleep, they sat next to eachother on the couch facing the window and gazed at the city below. Leaning on eachother in silence they tried to comprehend what had just occured.

Nana finally broke the silence with a small laugh, "We were here originally to support the children so they could become adults, but now they are the adults and are supporting us like we are the children. I sat and listened to them figure out how to save us all and couldn't help in the slightest." She looked down and slouched in defeat.

"That just means we did our job well." Hachi said with a grin.

"Yeah, I guess we did." She placed her head on his shoulder, and as the city below finally started to die down they succumbed to exhaustion, falling asleep in eachother's arms.