Verboten
Chapter 43
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Disclaimer: I do not own the Winx Club series. I do own Raido, Honey, Dante, Quinn, Edric and Sybarite (and about twenty other characters). I don't even own Wolf, sad isn't it?
Fore Note: Chapter 42 has been reposted. It's significantly different from the first version but still the same content. Also, the site screwed with the format of this so tell me if you see some mistakes.
Magix.
The Winx Club, Jared's team of specialists that had just arrived from Lake Crystal and a handful of female specialists from Saint Xanthe's abbey were in Saladin's office, the war room.
There was a brief round of introductions despite the specialists being tired. They sensed that something extremely important was happening and sleeping was not an option.
"Aren't there supposed to be six of you?" Dante noted drily, counting only five fairies. "I know fairies aren't exactly known for being grounded but really—ow!"
"It's too early to deal with your cracks," Sybarite said. She wore a uniform consisting of a red and white jumpsuit, hip-length red coat that hid her feminine curves and a yellow ceremonial baldric denoted her rank over her shoulder.
"Tecna is currently in the medical centre under observation. She was surfing the web telepathically when an email to a woman named Nina came back and started doing unnatural things to the laptop from her end. As of now, Tecna's mind is believed to be still in the laptop and trapped," Saladin explained.
"If I may ask," the specialist known as Edric asked, "What does Nina have to do with anything? Who is she? What is her importance?"
The old headmaster sighed. "With these girls, it's obvious they're involved in something very large," he pointed to the Winx Club. "Aside from that, you're on a need-to-know basis only." Saladin went on to explain that Nina had left them and an email and phone number to contact.
"I guess that means you want us to find this Nina fast and arrest her?"
Saladin nodded. "Try to find a way to make sure that Tecna is still alive and find out what Nina did. As of now, due to priority of this mission, Sergeant Lockwood, your cover is no longer needed."
"Sergeant?!" Dante asked.
Jared straightened up in his seat all of a sudden and the rest of his team looked at him for an explanation.
"S-sir?!" Jared stuttered.
"There's no time for this training pretense. I want this done quickly and efficiently. You will be exempted from all of your courses, practises and other duties until this issue is resolved. You will also be moved to the senior floor and have access to your own lab. I want daily reports, understood?"
"Yessir!" the boys said.
Saladin turned to the girls of Saint Xanthe's. "The same applies for you. You will be moved to the dorms reserved for special operations personnel. Your things are on its way."
"Yes, sir," Sybarite answered.
"Questions?"
The room was quiet for a moment.
"Why us?" the dark-haired Raido asked solemnly. "We're second-year students. Why not get the seniors working on this? They get more assignments than they actually attend classes so it seems…"
"Because you are the most qualified for this," Saladin said quickly but the response seemed unsatisfactory, as if that had not been the real answer. The specialists gave the old man a look of disbelief. "You are dismissed."
They all rose and filed out of the room but Jared stayed back. The Winx Club was still seated, looking confused.
"And what are we supposed to do?" Bloom asked.
"Continue your duties at Alfea. I don't believe for a second that the video Nina gave us is a joke. You would have to be an idiot to pull that kind of stunt at here. Sergeant Lockwood, what do you want?"
Jared jumped from his spot on the wall. "Um, I need one of them to start our search for Nina…just one person, that's all. Also, um, if I may reiterate Specialist Maedue's question: why us? Is it because of the SN—?"
"Not here, Lockwood."
"Yes, sir."
Saladin rose from his seat. "Will one of you go with Jared? I will keep you updated about Tecna but the rest of you can return to Alfea."
Musa was nearest to the door and stood up. "I'll go with him."
-
"Follow me," Jared said. They went into an elevator that required a pass card and password for access.
"So how've you been?" he asked. Musa could hear his heart beating rapidly.
"I'm fine, and you? I thought you graduated already. What are you doing still here?"
"I'm doing my service here. I was 'undercover' to spy on students, to put it simply."
Musa remembered Riven mentioning something about staying with Red Fountain for a year after graduating in passing. It was something about being an assistant or something like how she was being an intern. "Is that what Riven did, too?"
"Last year only but he was not undercover. He was, um, I think, a TA sort of. He weeded out the first years."
They arrived to a windowless corridor with a dozen doors. In each door was a window and Musa could see teams of senior specialists working or arguing with each other. The rooms were soundproof, Musa guessed from the lack of even the smallest sounds.
Jared unlocked one room and where the specialists from before were seated Tecna's laptop. "Okay, guys, what have you gotten so far?"
Musa did not like what she saw. She saw a bunch of second years handling a senior mission.
The boy with the long black hair tied in a ponytail called Raido spoke up, "We've only been here for four minutes, Jared, give us—oh, wait, it's sergeant, isn't it?"
"Just call me Jared. Keep it simple."
The team did not look too happy with the answer.
The boy with catlike green eyes sighed. "I've tried starting it up but as soon as it does, it starts shutting down."
"What does the screen say?"
"The screen doesn't even come on."
"Then that means you're gonna have to physically take it apart and reconnect it by hand. Get to it."
Musa watched for a moment and winced as the white-haired Quinn pulled out a screwdriver to take off the bottom panel and reveal the hard disk drive. Tecna was not going to like that.
"She's not going to get the computer back," the blond woman called Honey reassured. She sat beside Jared who was typing on another computer.
"And why not?"
"No one ever wants a computer back after it's gone through the authorities' hands because one, it's beyond saving, and two, it belongs to the authorities. I'm sorry, take a seat," Honey rolled a chair towards the music fairy. Honey wore a red uniform similar to Red Fountain's blue one but she wore an opened jacket over it.
Musa tried to smile. "So, what do you need me for, Jared?"
"The email is a dud but this Nina left a phone number. We're going to have you call her and ask her to confirm her identity. Do you mind?"
"Why is it only me here?" It seemed wrong to be the only one helping Tecna out of her mess, Musa thought.
"How many people do you need to make a phone call?" Jared asked.
Right, Musa thought. She took the offered phone from Jared and was briefed on what exactly to do.
"We're going to trace the call. Keep her talking for at least a minute. Normally, I could just put it through the phonebook but this number is from off-planet."
Musa nodded and took a deep nervous breath. She could hear her own heart beat deafeningly. It rang three times and Musa's heart stopped when it stopped.
"Hello?"
Musa stumbled with her words
"Nai, geia sou? Moshi moshi? Bonjour…?" the speaker said the last part, sounding dubious.
"Um, yes, I'm looking for Nina."
"Oh, hi! This is Nina. How may I help you?"
"My name is Musa, of the Winx Club. You came to Red Fountain and gave them a video."
"Musa?" Nina purred the name. "Yes, I did."
"I would like to know how you got it."
"Do we really need to keep this up? I know that you're probably tracing this call. I gave it to Red Fountain, a school of special ops trained for these things."
Musa watched Jared swear silently.
"If I'm right, we have another thirty seconds to go before you can locate me. Unfortunately, I can't take that risk and I'm not going to tell you anything over the phone. Meet me in Nessarose Park in Magix. Three days from now—"
"No, wait! What about tomorrow? My friend—"
"Two days then. At the statue of Clariel, at three. I apologise but goodbye, Musa." Nina hung up.
Honey took the phone out of Musa's trembling hands.
What had she done?
"You did good, Musa." Honey placed her hands on Musa's shoulders. "She at least arranged a meeting."
"I can tell you that she's still in the country," Jared coordinates off a computer monitor. "Now, we just need to stake out the place…"
"I'm sorry."
"Don't," Jared assured. "It's better than nothing but this lady obviously knows how to play the game."
Musa tried to not dwell on the phone call but she could not help it. She felt very tired all of a sudden. She looked to the Tecna's laptop which had been stripped of its casing.
"How's the computer?" she asked.
Edric looked at the infuriating hard disk drive which had several wires attached to it. The wires connected to the nearest workstation where Quinn was busily trying to connect to it. Musa saw a complicated coding program on the holographic screen.
"The computer is not reading it at all. I've tried everything I can but this is beyond my level of training," Quinn said. He detached some wires from the stripped drive. "If there is a consciousness inside this, I don't want to screw with it. I might accidentally delete her or something. Magic and digital technology is not my favourite combination. I sent Raido to check the school registries. I hope he comes back with some good news. Musa, if you don't mind me calling you that, do you know anyone else with powers like Tecna? Any friends? Not like that pixie Digit though."
Musa tried to think for a moment. Did Tecna have any other friends besides the Winx Club? Tecna had always been a solitary woman and there were very few people with powers like hers. Musa shook her head, "No. Technology is not a very important power in the scheme of the universe. Fairies are born where they are needed. But I don't know everyone at Alfea and or anyone from Cloud Tower."
"I thought as much."
Raido came back and sighed. "No one with digital powers or anything close to being useful. I even checked the Abbey and the schools across the mountains."
"I have an idea," Edric fidgeted in his seat. "What if we mentally dove into the computer?"
"Are you a fairy all of a sudden?" Dante, who had been almost nothing, said. Sybarite flicked his forehead.
"There is an experimental technology at Gaia Tech called the SND program."
"Hold it right there!" Dante raised a hand. "The test tube baby and clones place?"
"They're also a reputable prosthetics company, Dante," Sybarite snipped. "Anyways, continue Edric. SND?"
"Gaia Technologies, I had worked there for a bit before I came to Red Fountain. When I left, they had started a project called the Synaptic Net Dive program. It was about uploading one's mind into a computer for a certain amount of time."
Musa pursed her lips, interested. Didn't Timmy use something like that to track Tecna when she was on Omega? He had somehow gotten access to couple of satellites around Omega and sorted through the data that Tecna was alive when she was broadcasting her mind through them.
Musa had heard of the company vaguely from Tecna. Gaia Technologies was a company know for working medical miracles from replacing limbs, biologically or mechanically to creating whole artificial bodies. They were a cutting edge research company but it was not above them to sell their patents for a pretty penny. Musa mainly knew them from what Tecna had told her and skimmed from the news.
"Okay, this is useful. How long ago was this though?" Sybarite said
"Two years ago."
"Do you think that they're still working on this?" Sybarite quirked a brow. Not all projects always got the green light.
"They completed it a year ago." Musa could almost jump for joy at this tidbit of information.
"And how do you know this?" Dante said suspiciously. "This is way too convenient. I've read too many things from Gaia Tech to take this as a serious solution."
"Gaia Tech, they're my sponsor."
"Oh."
"Yeah, oh."
Jared crossed his arms, thinking. "It's obvious that they're not just going to let us waltz in and use their stuff. Edric, can you arrange a meeting of some sort? I'd like to know more about this, if possible."
"I'll try."
"Gaia Tech's current chief researcher is an ex-student from the Abbey," Sybarite offered. "Maybe she can help us."
Musa could hear in Edric's heart that something was not right. His tune was broken and sharp like glass. She looked to Jared and saw that something was bubbling under his surface too. There was tension in the team from the lack of progress. They were also evidently tired from their previous mission.
Musa suggested to leave feeling useless and Jared escorted her down the Red Fountain complex. They were in an elevator again. Jared leaned against a wall with his eyes closed.
"Are you nervous, Jared?"
He lips curved but he did not open his eyes. "Very. I want to sleep too and I think I might just do that. I might have a clearer mind about it. And you, how do you feel?"
"I…I don't think I did much."
"That phone call means a lot, Musa. You have no idea."
"But I don't feel like I'm contributing much. I feel so helpless. I can't do anything because this is Tecna's thing. If it had not been her asleep or trapped or whatever, I think that she would be doing whatever she could to fix this. All I can do is play music. What can I do with computers? I mean music is music. Bloom has the Flame, Flora has plants, Stella has the sun…"
"You're underestimating yourself, Musa. Sometimes, you make it seem like only you and your friends are allowed to save the universe but there are smaller and more devious evils out there that I deal with. It's those smaller evils that are the most terrifying because the people you arrest are people like you and me. It's like looking into a mirror and seeing your darker self, what you might have wanted to be. It's not like going against Valtor, he's an inexplicable evil that you cannot on any level understand. It's easier in some ways. I know that you specialise in music but…can't you take the magic out of your music for a moment and think about what kind of joy you would bring people?"
"Joy, Jared?"
"I cannot think of one entity that does not appreciate music. Music is so universal, Musa, that it's amazing how such a concept transcends two groups of people that have never met. Have you thought about that?"
"Yes, but I already knew that."
"It sounds like you're not happy with that enlightenment then."
"I just thought that there was something more to being…I don't know, me. I learn all these things but I'm never happy."
The elevator doors opened and they exited. They were on the lowest floor on the complex.
"You sound like you want to do more on the battlefield when you can do just as much good at home, waiting."
"What?" Musa knitted her brows together. That had sounded vaguely chauvinistic, especially coming from Jared.
"You seem to be unsatisfied with what you have, that's all. You have everything you want to make you happy but you don't want to be happy using those things, or you just don't know how."
"Jared, you're on crack," Musa said defensively. Pff! She knew how to be happy.
"Probably."
"How do you know I have everything I need to be happy?" Musa came to a stop.
"What could it possibly take to be happy with your lot in life? This is my opinion but y'know, we're too focused on getting that happy fairy tale ending. Normal people are so unhappy today not because whatever comes their way was bad but because they are looking for something that does not exist. It's like you and Riven. You look happy with him sometimes but I know that he's a jackass and it makes you angry. Think about it though, it is Riven. He's a jerk by blood but at least he's a good one. He's not going to change or else he wouldn't be Riven."
Suddenly, Musa wanted to punch Jared in the face and it was alarmingly tempting. Jared's psychoanalysis was frighteningly quite like Musa was feeling but it could not be helped. She had grown up in a broken family with a dead mother and a strict overbearing father. Was it wrong to make sure that the past did not repeat itself in her?
"And we're not normal people, Jared?"
"Well, no. Fairies are…well, they're picked by a force that is beyond understanding. That is hard enough for me. Specialists, we're sort of normal but we're not. We do things that regular people can't do at all. We're like the cream of the crop when it comes to genetics and abilities. We're superhuman, in a sense. And witches, they're superhuman too but with magic. It's one of the reasons why our schools are outside the city."
Musa was disconcerted by Jared's logic about not being considered normal. She had always been surrounded by magic like it was normal but that 'normal' was only for a select few who understood those supernatural phenomena. Normal for other people, the rest of the universe, was a life without magic or powers that made you stick out.
"Normal people don't save the world, Musa. They're too scared, not made for the job and this is why they have us. They research and research to determine what would be the perfect person to do the job and they chose us. It's utilitarianism—the greatest good for the greater amount of people."
"And you don't mind being used?"
"And you don't, Musa? Would you rather have someone who was weaker and less competent than us? How would you have felt if you had sent a freshman fairy to defeat Valtor instead of yourself?"
Musa imagined Galatea fighting the Trix when they were trying to raid Alfea's library. She had tried to take the witches singlehandedly, which had been brave and very stupid. Despite being a princess, Galatea had still been a freshman fairy. In terms of musical prowess, the blond was a virtuoso but that was the extent of it. Galatea neither was not street smart nor was she experienced in combat. She had no personal vendetta against the witches like Musa did with Darcy.
"Our flaw is that we like doing these things out of the goodness of our hearts; we like making people happy even at the cost of ourselves. We believe that karma will repay us one day for our deeds to society," Jared said.
The room they were in was small and circular. In the center was the elevator and entire wall had one long ending plane of thick glass that stopped at a heavy sealed door to prevent the strong winds from entering the school.
"You believe in karma?" In other words, she had said "Do you really believe that karma will repay us?"
"This is the law of return that we're talking about, Musa. No one is exempt to it. What matters the most is what you make of what is returned to you. Don't you believe in it?"
"Well…" No, she didn't. She had been raised pragmatically by her father.
All the wonder of life had disappeared when her mother had died. She knew that something in her father had died and Musa had almost died with him there but something whispered for her to continue, that life was not over. She had cried and mourned for a long time. It was not until her school teacher had once asked her "Is this what your mother would've wanted of you, Musa?" that she had started to pull out of her childhood depression.
From then on, she had resolved to try to be happy while being raised by her father and she became the person she was today—with a little bit of tweaking by Riven as well. Jerk. She could imagine that annoying smug grin on his face.
"Do you believe that you deserve at least a little bit of happiness in your life?"
Musa paused. "Of course!"
"You don't sound like it."
What? Musa shot daggers from her eyes as Jared turned to open a sealed door that led onto an opened platform outside. They were on the lowest level of the Red Fountain complex as the building itself was more of a floating fortress. "See ya," he saluted.
"Yeah…bye."
The wind was strong and Musa stepped out while Jared hastily sealed the door shut behind her. She focused for a moment and she was wrapped in a cocoon of musical staffs. She felt her wings grow out of her back and the purple glow faded from her. She looked down at herself, in her enchantix form, perplexed and worried. The music fairy took wing and flew back home to Alfea, troubled by the current predicaments and what Jared had said.
Latter Note: The first time I wrote this, Jared was going to talk about duhhka (from Buddhism), specifically the first truth of the Four Noble Truths, but I thought it was too heavy for a Winx Club fic and for Jared and Musa.
Another disclaimer: SND is from Final Fantasy VII (Dirge of Cerberus).