Chapter 6
The Madness of Science

Dr. Akihiro knew he should've taken the subway instead of the taxi. The traffic jam was a really bad one, and it just had to be on the day he was going to "make life better for all human beings". He originally shunned the idea of taking the subway, because he didn't like to be compressed inside the train with so many people.

"Are you in a hurry?" the taxi driver asked him.

"Well, not exactly… I've got all day to finish my work, but it would be nice if I can get to my workplace and get things done faster…" the scientist replied.

"Yeah, if it were me, I'd wish the same," the taxi driver said. "Being able to finish your work sooner makes you feel freer for the rest of the day! You said you work at Ota Tech, right? How about this? Since that place is only around the corner up ahead, I'll let you get off here and then walk there. It should only take about ten minutes to walk from here to there. Hope it's not too much for you…"

"Actually, I was thinking of doing that," the scientist told him. Just then, his smartphone rang, so he answered it. "Hello?"

"Hello, Doctor Machida? It's me, Professor Okazaki," said the voice on the other end. "Where are you?"

"I'm on my way to the office," the scientist, not suspecting anything at all, replied.

"I was wondering why you haven't arrived yet. Perhaps you're still feeling under the weather… Are you feeling better now?" Yumemi asked.

"I'm feeling fine now," Dr. Akihiro told her. "I can't wait to get back to work! Unfortunately, the traffic jam is a severe one…"

"It's all right," Yumemi told him. "There's no need to rush, since traffic jams are something we cannot do about.

"Actually, I plan to get off the taxi and walk there," Dr. Akihiro told her. "It's much faster that way."

"What? But it may be dangerous! You should stay in the taxi!" Yumemi suggested.

"What danger can there be? Getting to work sooner is much better, so I'll do it that way. All right! See you at work!" Dr. Akihiro said, and then he ended the phone call.

After putting her smartphone back into her pocket, Chiyuri asked Yumemi, "Well? Where is he?"

"He's stuck in a traffic jam and has thus decided to walk to Ota Tech…" Yumemi told her and the two girls from Gensokyo. "That would mean he's not far from that place… This is bad… Even if we take the subway there, we won't be able to make it there before him…"

"In that case, Nue and I will fly over to where he is and stop him!" Mamizou suggested. "At top speed, we should be able to get there before he reaches Ota Tech! We will buy you time to ride the subway to get to Ota Tech and hide the cloud-making machine from him."

"That sounds like a good idea!" Yumemi said. "Wait a minute… You both can fly?"

"No time to explain! Just watch! And you better get to the subway now, too!" Mamizou said before she ran to the window with Nue, and then they both jumped outside and flew into the distance as fast as they could.

Yumemi and Chiyuri ran to the window and watched them fly away in disbelief. "Well, that was unexpected…" Yumemi said. "But if you think about it, it may not actually be that unexpected, considering that in Gensokyo… Wait a minute…"

"Let's talk about that later… Let's head over to Ota Tech at once!" Chiyuri told her.

"Right! We should go there at once! C'mon! Let's go!" Yumemi said, and then they quickly headed out of the warehouse.

After paying the taxi driver and getting off the taxi, Dr. Akihiro got onto the sidewalk and then walked along it. After turning around the corner, the sight of the towering Ota Tech office building was visible in the distance.

When he was about five minutes away from the building, someone called out to him. Dr. Akihiro looked around to see who was calling him, and when he realized that the voice was coming from above, he looked up and was shocked to see Nue and Mamizou flying towards him. "Found you at last!" the former shouted.

Nue and Mamizou landed in front of the scientist to block his way forward, and then the former pointed her trident at him. "Looks like we're on time! This is as far as you go!" Nue said to him. "You must have the serum in that bag, right? Hand it over at once!"

Hearing what she said, Dr. Akihiro realized that she must've went back to the warehouse and learned about what he was going to do from the video. Not willing to give up so easily, the scientist feigned innocence and said, "I don't know what you're talking about! I'm just an ordinary old man on his way to work! Please don't hurt me!"

Not one to fall for his act, Nue brought her trident closer to him and said, "Like that's going to work! This may work if I don't know what you originally look like! Hand over that bag at once!"

Dr. Akihiro took a few steps back and desperately said, "Please! Have mercy! I'm just an old man trying to earn some income for his family! My life is very important to them!" He then took out his wallet. "You may have my money! Please! Spare me!"

"Still trying to feign innocence? Give it up already…" Mamizou said.

Annoyed, Nue got close to the scientist and grabbed him by the collar. "Enough of this! If you won't give it to me, then I'll take it by force!" Suddenly, a police officer pulled her away by the back of her dress. "Hey!"

"What do you think you're doing, young lady?" the police officer asked her. "You're coming to the police station with me for that behavior of yours!"

"Police officer! The person you're supposed to capture is that old man!" Mamizou said to him. "He's planning to change everyone into… monsters! We have to stop him!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" said Dr. Akihiro, still pretending to be innocent. "I just want to go to my office and do my job! How can you accuse me of doing something like that?!"

That was when Mamizou realized what the scientist was doing. "He's feigning innocence in order to get us into trouble when we try to stop him!" she thought.

"Let go of me!" Nue angrily said as she struggled to break free from the police officer's grasp. One of her blue wings speared itself at the police officer's shoulder, creating a small cut that was enough to make him let go of the nue in pain. Nue then charged at Dr. Akihiro, pushed him onto the sidewalk, and pointed her trident at his neck. "ENOUGH! I'M LOSING MY PATIENCE AGAINST YOU!"

"YOU!" The police officer shouted as he grabbed Nue by her shoulders and pulled her back. "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!"

While Nue struggled fiercely against the police officer, Dr. Akihiro stood back up and then opened his briefcase to reveal four test tubes containing blood-red liquid. Holding one up and showing it to Nue, he said, "You're after this, aren't you? Heeheehee! Just try and stop me if you can!" He then opened its cap slightly using his thumb and poured a tiny drop onto his other hand. Nue and Mamizou were both horrified when they saw this.

The scientist laughed as his body started to undergo metamorphosis. Fur started to grow from his body, while the latter's size started to increase, eventually causing his undershirt to be ripped apart, leaving only his overcoat. His face became more and more primate-like, and out from his back sprouted red and blue wings, not to mention a large green snake.

Onlookers were shocked at the sight of the scientist's transformation, and some were even taking pictures of him.

The transformed Dr. Akihiro closed his briefcase and said to Nue and Mamizou, "You want to see what will happen if I use it on other people?" With the test tube still in his hand, he jumped in the direction of the street and then swung the test tube around to make drops of it fly everywhere. All those who came in contact with the drops of red liquid felt pain in their bodies, and they screamed as they started to undergo metamorphosis to become nues.

Sight of this made those who didn't come in contact with the liquid scream and run. The "newly born" nues were horrified by their new appearances, and some of them screamed and ran around in panic and fright.

Dr. Akihiro smiled upon seeing the results, and then he looked in the direction of Ota Tech's office building before jumping from vehicle to vehicle towards it. Snapping out of her state of horror from seeing the people being transformed into nues, Nue flew after Dr. Akihiro and shouted at him, "You're not getting away with this, you madman!"

Dr. Akihiro turned around to see her firing beams from the tip of her wings at him, so he quickly jumped back to avoid it. After landing, he took note of how she was flapping her wings to stay in the air. Thinking that he could do the same, he flapped his wings and slowly lifted himself into the air by doing such. "Heehee! You made me realize that there is more to what I can do!" he said to her. "This makes being a human even more pointless!"

"You wouldn't think the same if you meet see some of the humans from where I come from!" Nue said before firing more beams at him. Dr. Akihiro flew out of the way and then pointed his wings at her to fire his own laser beams, but she also managed to dodge them.

While they were flying around and firing shots at each other, Mamizou got behind Dr. Akihiro and then clapped her hands to create a large amount of smoke. She then flew out of the smoke at a fast speed with a karakasa in her hand. Normally, the snake tail would've saw her coming, but her sudden appearance from the smoke caught the snake by surprise, which was her plan all along, so she managed to give it a good whacking with her ghostly umbrella before he could respond in time. Dr. Akihiro cried in pain from being struck in his tail, and then he was pelted rapidly by Nue's laser beams. Mamizou also gave him a powerful whack to the back of the head and caused him to fall down on top of a truck.

CRASH!

People were running away from the scene of the battle. Even those inside the vehicles got out to run away on foot.

While panic was happening on the street, Yumemi and Chiyuri came out from the staircase leading into the subway and saw Nue and Mamizou engaging in a dogfight with Dr. Akihiro, who had gotten back into the air. "Are we too late?" Chiyuri asked.

Yumemi looked around and noticed some nues among the crowd. "I think so…" Yumemi said. "Looks like we'll have to create a serum for reversing this transformation after all… Quick! To Ota Tech before Dr. Akihiro gets there!" Chiyuri nodded, and then they both quickly ran for the building, which wasn't too far away from the subway.

charged at Mamizou with his fist pulled back, and the latter quickly transformed into a statue for self-protection. However, the force of the punch sent her crashing through a window, and the tanuki felt great pain in her abdomen when she changed back. "Ow… Not this part again…" she groaned while rubbing her abdomen.

"Unidentified: Blue UFO Invasion of Grief!" Nue shouted as she used a spell card to summon blue UFOs that flew at Dr. Akihiro while firing laser beams nonstop. Dr. Akihiro turned around and used his arms for defense, and at the same time he fired beams from the tip of his wings with precision to take down each of the UFOs until there were none.

Nue took out another spell card and shouted, "Nue Sign: Undefined Darkness!" The card released a large amount of black mist that quickly spread throughout the air and covered a large amount of area. Nue and Dr. Akihiro were both inside the mist, and only the former was able to see clearly.

The mist also went into the building Mamizou was in, so she quickly found herself unable to see anything. She decided to stay still and wait for the mist to clear away by itself. Suddenly, she was hit by something in the front that pushed her backwards. The mist quickly cleared away after that, and Mamizou was seen on the floor with Nue lying on top of her. "How… How did he… catch me…?" Nue wondered.

Dr. Akihiro looked at the two girls inside the building and explained, "My heightened senses allow me to detect you, even if I can't see you! All right, it's about time I get started with what I really want to do! I have no time to mess with the both of you now!" Then he flew towards Ota Tech's office building.

Yumemi "burst" into a room where several scientists were working on medical products. "Listen, everyone!" she said out loud. "I have a very important task that I need you people to start working on at once!" She then showed them the notebook containing the formula for Dr. Akihiro's "nue" serum. "I need you all to make something that can reverse the effects of this formula!"

"Um… What's the matter, Professor Okazaki?" one of the scientists asked her.

Yumemi looked at him and replied, "If you don't do what I say fast, then there's going to be a big problem! Even all of you here will be in trouble!"

Chiyuri was looking around in panic in another floor of the office building, looking for the cloud-making machine.

"Where is it? Where is it?" she asked herself as she opened a locker and looked inside. "Not here too… I'm sure they put that thing in this floor… It has to be here somewhere…"

After looking through several more lockers, she eventually found it. "Aha! Here it is!" she said as she took it out. "Better hide it before…" Before she could finish speaking, Dr. Akihiro crashed through the window, freaking her out. "Yikes!"

Fortunately for her, the scientist didn't see anyone when he flew in. He started searching around the place for the cloud-making machine by looking into each of the lockers. Unknown to him, Chiyuri was hiding underneath a desk close to a corner at the far end of the room. "Please don't find me…" she said in her head while trembling in fear. "Please…"

Chiyuri trembled more and more when the sound of the lockers opening and closing came closer and closer to where she was. Fearing that she would get caught soon, she reached into her pocket and took out a futuristic gun to get ready to use it for self-defense. The sound of the lockers being opened and closed eventually stopped, but Chiyuri was still nervous that the scientist was still going to search around in this room.

All of a sudden, the desk she was hiding underneath was quickly picked up and thrown away by Dr. Akihiro. The girl screamed in shock as she quickly crawled backwards while firing energy beams from her gun at Dr. Akihiro, who shrugged them off with ease using his arm. The scientist approached her and swatted the gun out of her hand before forcefully taking the cloud-making machine she was holding in her other arm away.

Ignoring the girl, Dr. Akihiro headed over to the window and then flew out it. Chiyuri was still paralyzed with fear from what happened just now.

"We're in luck, Professor Okazaki!" a scientist said to Yumemi while holding a test tube containing clear liquid. "We already have the main ingredient of the potential-maximizing pill in its liquid state! All we have to do is add one particular ingredient into it in order to reverse the effect written on this notebook."

"Good! How long will it take?" Yumemi asked him.

The scientist looked at a test tube and said, "With a test tube this size, creating one shouldn't take more than five minutes. Simply dropping the ingredient I talked about into it won't do, however, as you need to forcefully mix them together using a certain process…"

"Then do it now!" Yumemi told him.

Dr. Akihiro flew to the highest part of the building's rooftop and placed the machine there. After that, he opened his briefcase and then poured the contents of the three test tubes into a larger test tube. After he was done with that, he put that test tube into a slot at the lower part of the machine.

After that, he pressed some of the buttons close to the side of the machine, and when he was done, a timer appeared on a small screen just above the slot containing the test tube. Eight minutes before the serum would be launched into the air in the form of a cloud that would spread throughout various parts of Tokyo…

Suddenly, Nue and Mamizou showed up at the top of the building, and the former shouted at him, "You won't be getting away this, Doctor Machida!"

TO BE CONTINUED