Previously on TLA: Yusei was accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of 'crimes against humanity'. A scientific advisor to the effort was Dr Undercliff of CERN, a man Yusei has had a close working relationship with for several years.
Meanwhile, the search for a cure to his unique neurological condition was headed by the indefinable Din and assisted by Akiza.
Din was a man of many talents. A scholar, a fighter, a drunkard, a swearer, a fighter, a physicist, an engineer, a microbiologist, a wordsmith, a fighter, and even a neurologist. But (with the exception of a few particular talents) he was not a people person. Akiza had wondered if it was a form of Tourette's Syndrome which led to his profanity but he'd openly accepted the challenge of an entire hour of high-class grammar – it had nearly been a relief to be called a flabby cow to hear him talk like a more normal human being again.
No, Din was far from a social butterfly. Which was why it was disconcerting to hear him cooing over slices of grey matter with all the grace of a newborn parent. "Look at you!" Feeding a slice of material into a container, he carefully sealed the top and slid it into a waiting receptacle. "Oh, you are perfect. Hey, Flabby!" Many work colleagues developed nicknames over time. Din's equivalent was a mild insult and the unspoken promise to not directly inflict undue physical harm. "Check out this slice of pie!"
"That used to be somebody's brain." She responded icily. "Can you show a little respect to the dead?" Dangled in a pair of tweezers was a slice of brain, donated to the SRC by a willing patron. The entire embodiment of a person, everything they had seen, heard, hoped, feared.
"Why? They don't care." Sliding the piece of flesh into a jar, he joined it into the growing congregation of phials in the tray. "Dead and gone."
"Don't you care about anyone?" For the first time, she was genuinely concerned with the mental stability of her partner in science. Besides that bar brawl (where she wouldn't have been surprised for anyone else in the party to do what he did), he had been neither restrained nor aggressive towards anyone in particular. Violence didn't seem to be an outlet as much as it was a reaction. Some people sneezed, others impulsively tested security equipment whilst it was being worn.
"Of course." Both mangled eyebrows twisted further as if he had been presented with an incorrect equation. "What makes you think otherwise?" Akiza gestured to the rows of tubes. Nearly a dozen samples had carefully been embalmed in various solutions and each one had received a detached form of compliment. "Oh, that." He waved away the issue as each medical glove was snapped off. "People are like bicycles."
"Bicycles?" That was a new one. Picking up the tray, she carefully took it into the adjacent storage room. Each specimen would be studied at regular intervals to check on the effects of the solutions Din had cooked up to combat microcellular decay. It was easier to slow the deterioration of Yusei's brain than cure it but a lot of the traditional approaches were toxic to living tissue – they wanted to save his brain, not embalm it alive.
"Yeah, bicycles." Tearing off his mask, Din spat a glob of phlegm into a corner. Out of respect for science, he had avoided the possibility of contamination. Out of loathing for the hair that had been stuck in his mouth for the last twenty minutes, he put enough force into its ejection to hit the wall. "More useful in bits and I can probably make a few good weapons if I've got ten minutes, explosives in fifteen."
That was a step too far and she slammed the door upon her return to the main room. "Look," Her tone in that one word fully explained that she wouldn't give an inch to his usual aggressive outbursts and that her research buddy had finally crossed a line.
"No, you look." Tearing off his stained lab coat, he went from looking like Frankenstein's assistant to Frankenstein's monster twice-removed. Those ever-shifting Pollocks of pustules and oozing sores seemed to change every week and it was difficult to determine which burns were chemical and which were thermal. That drooping eyebrow gave him the sort of mad scientist glare which typically accompanied pickling brains and his other eye was surrounded by a trio of faint scars which looked to have come from a hunting bird. Between his hunched shoulders looking like he was trying to force his way out of his own back and the gnarled position of his spine, it was a miracle that Din could even walk, let alone manage a fair gallop (for there was no better word) on all fours. With the rank smell of infrequent washing, Akiza could have believed that Din was an unethical science experiment instead of a morally dubious scientist. "I've been pissed, shat, and beat on, chased out of every town, village and backwater since the day my mother abandoned me in the woods. You think life's been hard to you? People have tried to kill me because they'd sooner see me dead than treated as an equal and I've got to rise above it or prove everything that they say about people like me is right – all because I hope that people who look like me will someday get the same chances as people who looked like everyone else. What?" He caught Akiza's look of shock and horror she tried to hide behind locking the cupboard again. "You think that I had this cushy a life before Fudo scraped me out of the gutter? Do you know how we even met?"
"Knowing you?" Factoring in his violent temper and short fuse, she didn't have to guess. "Police."
"You think you're so smart." His growl was unsettling but not as much as his glare or that twisted smile which was his look of genuine happiness for another person. "Yeah, the cops didn't take too kindly to me breaking a guy's legs for kicking me in my sleep. Yusei was down the hall fighting some parking tickets when that caveman has him come along – thought I was one of his science experiments got loose. Gave the idiot a few choice words and asked if he could do anything to make up for the mistake. Since he didn't take my first suggestion" That leer suggested Din would have enjoyed whatever tormented sight he had put forth. "I asked him if he could give me something to write with because I'd been having some ideas about Fermat's Last Theorem."
Now that Din had so eloquently detailed the realities of his life, Akiza could empathise with his radically hostile baseline to anyone who treated him as less than the bafflingly productive maniacal genius that he was. "And what's Fermat's Last Theorem?" The good doctor knew the part she had to play as the situation slowly returned back to their chaotic normal – dumb lab tech for anything not biology related.
"Funny you should ask," As much as Din knew she knew she had to play along, he enjoyed educating people in whatever manner was most appropriate. Spontaneous lectures, sudden beatings, sometimes both at the same time. "It's a simple equation of an = bn + cn where n is an integer greater than two."
"That doesn't sound so hard." She frowned. "After all, it's not too different from a2 = b2 + c2 and that's easily solved with Pythagorean Triples. I suppose you could probably solve Fermat with the correct application of elliptic curves and a few bits of number theory." If a melted toad roasting gently on flaming magma survived long enough to expand to the size of a small boulder, it would probably look half as enraged as Din's face. "What? You think I've been friends with Yusei for half my life and never heard about Fermat's Last Theorem?"
"Screw you, flabby cow." He grunted his favourite insult while retrieving the discarded gown.
"Din?" She didn't want to ask but dreadful curiosity spurred her onwards. "Can you really make an explosive out of a person?" Despite what popular media portrayed, the chemical formulas of human beings were too stable for casual explosions. However, Din treated science as more 'guidelines' than actual rules and tended to amend them as needed.
"How about we skip down to the morgue and I'll show you?" That chilling laughter of his cut-out mid-bellow. "That's a thought."
"What thought?" Anything he said following such a laugh was probably the stuff of nightmares.
"Dissection."
It took Akiza a minute to realise what he was angling towards and that newfound patience of hers nearly snapped back to wherever it had come from. "No." But she was stalwart in her reply this time.
"Yes." Came the swift counter.
"No dissection." Was her equally firm reply.
"Have you considered the other option?" Knuckling his way across the room, Din pulled open the fridge where he kept the chilled rats for Vella. "Yes, dissection."
"I have. On the other hand," Musing over a complex chemical formula he had scribbled on the walls, Akiza tried to mentally integrate it with the working of an enzyme painted by her feet. A lot of what he doodled on the walls didn't directly come into their research together. Like it or not, his fanatic drive to understand everything was an equal partner to her determination to save Yusei in their finding a cure. "Have you considered the possibility that maybe your approach has a certain flaw to it?"
"Bullshit." He gave a callous laugh while dragging himself onto the windowsill. "There's nothing wrong with a dissection. It gives us the best chance of directly interacting with the affected tissue to directly counteract the symptoms. Tell me one way it's not the best method." A shrill whistle echoed as he briefly leaned out of the narrow aperture.
"Because most dissections of this nature wouldn't leave a patient alive afterwards." There was a long pause and flap of wings as Vella arrived. "Or have you figured out how to cure death?"
"Hey, I said it would cure the disease. If the patient happens to die from other causes, isn't that a different matter?" Holding up the rat to his partner in lunacy, Din received an angry snip to the ear as he shrugged scientific indifference.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything?" Those deceptively consoling words turned Din's expression from 'resting anger face' to 'faking resting anger face while temper rises inside'. It was a subtle change that Akiza had come to recognise as the warning sign that shit was about to go down and hazard pay was about to go up.
Turning around, she silently examined the well-built suit in the doorway and the dark face she hadn't seen since Yusei was put on trial. Not sure of how she would respond, Akiza coldly decided that it would be far easier to let her (technically) superior colleague take the lead (and blame) first. "Dr Undercliff. So nice to see you again." Anybody as the SRC would recognise that tone as one to instantly agree with and then run from. Anybody outside would mistake it for 'politely restrained'. Undercliff was willing to let the tone slide - until Din finished his warm greeting. "Was there anything that we could help you with? Cup of coffee, shallow grave, accusing a couple more innocent people with trumped up charges?"
"Was that a threat?" A guard was standing outside the door with a clear view of the room. Every word was being recorded and nothing would be overlooked. Judging from the yellow badge on his lapel and the grunt behind him, Undercliff was being granted limited access to the SRC and 'coincidentally' happened to glance in on the pair.
"It was clearly an offer." Having a hawk perched on his shoulder choose that exact moment to tear the head of a rat was an impressive metaphor for his 'offer'. "But I'm sure that you'd like to see my references before taking me up on it." Tapping the claws with one calloused finger, he sent Vella swooping over to his assistant. She gave a welcoming burble to her new perch and heartily swallowed the rest of her treat as Din ripped a door from a cupboard above the counter. Most of the higher storage was useless with his limited reach and left alone but there was a pair crammed with papers Akiza had never asked about. If they were out of normal reach, they were for special occasions and Din would let her know if they were ever needed.
"'Subject displays violent tendencies to anyone not a trusted confidante as an instinctive reaction from years of social abuse. These reactions are deemed to be beyond the conscious control of the subject.'" Quoting from a thick manilla folder, he carelessly threw it over a shoulder, scattering the pages across multiple surfaces. "'Din is prone to violent outbursts when confronted by lesser minds attempting to justify logically flawed arguments. Due to exceptionally high IQ results, this can apply to most persons.'" Another manilla container spewed contents across the room as he tossed it over the other shoulder. "Oh, this is my favourite." Pulling a dusty wallet from the bottom of the stack, he unveiled the dusty innards of the red card.
"'Din has shown himself capable of output in areas of both formal and natural sciences far exceeding 90% of staff currently employed by the New Domino Scientific Research Centre. His grasp of social sciences is hampered mostly by the strict aversion he holds to everyone he deems capable of mindless, barbaric cruelty. Or, in his own words, '[expletive deleted], [expletive deleted], [expletive deleted], [expletive deleted], people!'.'" Not since Nixon had that phrase been used so much in an official report. Din would probably have gotten along quite well with the deposed President. "'I recommend immediate hiring, regular psychological evaluations, full-time assistance and an increased security detail posted near assigned rooms. Rooms with external windows are requested as he is frequently visited by a hawk he calls 'Vella'. Care should be taken not to harm Vella as Din harbours extreme resentment against cruelty to animals. (A stance I cannot professionally support but personally share.) Signed, Director Yusei Fudo.'"
Akiza had known that Yusei had hired Din but she hadn't read his official recommendation. It was clear that he had known exactly what he was getting in for when he hired the angry dwarf. Everyone else was simply going to have to deal with the new normal. "Am I meant to be intimidated by this?" Though Undercliff's scowl became a tight grimace, he didn't appear any worse for the graphic descriptions.
"Not at all." Leaving the red folder on the side, Din crashed down beside it with his vicious grin. "It simply means that I have extremely limited patience when it comes to idiots."
"Then perhaps Dr Izinski would be willing to fill me in on your current progress?" What Dr Izinksi was currently focused on was straightening a small clutch of feathers on Vella's back. They had been loosened by something. Probably a branch or fight with another bird. "I take it that you are still attempting to find a cure for Dr Fudo's mysterious condition?" His pointedly enquiring tone was the smartly dressed big brother to plain sarcasm.
"Dr Din and I were arguing the ramifications of a potential course of treatment." Even that description was arguable. "Dr Din has possibly discovered a viable cure which would involve a lengthy removal of the patient's brain to fully apply." A couple of Din's early formulas showed plenty of hope provided direct application and enough pickling.
It was obvious that neither the aggressive scientist nor his calming companion was going to fill him in on their actual progress and the CERN scientist swallowed his anger at the stubborn resistance. "Well, I guess you must get a lot of downtime if you've got the time to train a pet." Undercliff switched tactics to a more hopeful approach. Few people could resist bragging about their animal companions.
"Oh, Vella isn't trained." Undercliff snatched back his hand as the razor-sharp beak snapped into the air. Both wings beat fiercely as she let out a shrill cry to warn off any parties stupid enough to tangle with a bird of prey. "She just likes to drop in and get a snack if she's passing. Isn't that right?" Settling down again, her cargo let out a grumbling warble and began preening her feathers.
"I see." When he first entered the room, Undercliff believed Din to be the most feral creature before he saw the bird. Now he realised his original suspicion had been correct. Taking a few steps to where Akiza had been standing before, he tried to analyse the same data she had. "Is there anything you can think of which might be relevant to the trial?" Idly tilting his head to read equations Din had impossibly scrawled onto the ceiling, Undercliff intentionally sounded disinterested. "If Fudo is found guilty, his replacement may undertake certain personnel changes. I'd be happy to put in a good word for anyone who's willing to help speed justice along."
"Ah, see, you really shouldn't have said that." All pretence of restraint dropped from Din's voice. Unlike the colouring Akiza, violence was his first plan and not a last resort. "Because I don't give a fuck if I get kicked out of here. A pile of dog turds being carried upstream by an orgy of rabid swine would interest me more than helping you build a false case against Yusei. You'd be lucky to find anyone besides the ICC's snivelling, sodomised, schoolboy cronies who has anything less than overwhelming respect for that boy. And we know their game. This place is organised so that half the major staff could go at once and it keeps on running fine. We're gonna make sure the ICC spend the last few years left in that pisshole where their hearts should be jumping through more hoops than their entire legal team has arseholes on it before you can even look at the spottiest section of my sacred scrotum, let alone get so much as a single straight answer from any of the fucktards stupid enough to consider working with you for the smallest fraction of a second. And if anyone is stupid enough to try and set a single finger on my grunts here, we'll find out if they can survive long enough for me to strangle them to death with their own guts before they snap."
Undercliff was more accustomed to bland profanity. The graphic nature of Din's speech had left his usually tanned pallor tinged with a touch of green. "Dr Izinski." He retreated to safer waters. "Are you sure that his mental health is stable enough to continue work? He seems quite... irate." Not directly addressing Din was plain rude but some people seemed to try ignoring his existence to imagine he hadn't spoken.
"Without a doubt." She responded coolly. "Dr Din is remarkably perceptive on many matters. I think you'll find both predictions quite accurate: the SRC will pursue all legal options to find justice for Yusei and that you really shouldn't have tried bribery."
As had been brutally established, Vella was neither a trained hawk nor any form of pet. In her many hours working alongside Din, Akiza had honestly realised that he was far more a partner to the bird than he was to anyone else at the SRC. Even so, he offered no noise or movement or signal of any kind which set Vella swooping and clawing at the intruder as he sprinted from the room with his guard in hot pursuit. Shrieks from both species echoed down the corridor as they fled from the onslaught of outraged beak and frenzied talons.
"Don't worry about Vella." Most people would have been more worried about the prey but Akiza had seen the footage of Yusei's arrest. Din had – and there was no other word for it – broken three police officers when the bird had been harmed. Security had never had problems with the bird before but they went out of their way to avoid them now. "She'll chase them for a bit before coming back."
"Good to know nobody will get hurt." Mostly the bird. The fallout which followed would simply be a natural consequence.
"Good enough for that dissection?"
"No dissection!"
Picking up the discarded cupboard door in both hands, Din performed an impressive hammer throw with perfect aim through the open window and a scream of outrage chasing it into the sky. "Fucking missed." He growled indignantly. "Screw it all, how do you feel about getting some lunch? I have the weirdest craving for steak." After dealing with slices of grey matter all morning, Akiza could practically feel herself breaking out in vegetarianism.
Unfortunately, Din's extensive lists of talents extended to moderate clairvoyance because what awaited in the cafeteria was a rotating line of prime meat, perfectly grown on-site at the SRC with plenty of green alternatives for those with dietary or religious issues with the vatted meat. Grabbing two trays, Akiza joined the slowly shuffling queue and was (once again) confounded by the reality of the dining facilities. For one, the food on offer always seemed to be the results of some selective breeding experiment or another and was being served by people with more degrees than dishes. For another, nobody seemed surprised that Din hoisted himself onto the tray rack and shuffle along with the queue.
"Call these potatoes? Are you trying to ostracise the Irish? Look as this palaw of shit, have you ever asked Afghan how it's cooked?" Whereas the patrons before and after them in the queue used phrases like 'please' when asking for servings, the Dinglish equivalent was a specified insult target at each worker. Until the last chef in line turned up with a fresh plate of thick meat. "Chris." Interactions with the head chef had been tense. Between burning down his club and then paying for the repairs, Akiza's circle of friends had created a strange atmosphere around the global star in molecular gastronomy.
"Din." The chubby hippie could barely keep a smile off his face most of the time but he was downright serious to the perpetually enraged dwarf. "Steak?"
"Flabby cow here isn't a fan of cannibalism." Jerking a thumb to his assistant, his gaze was fixated on the tender slabs lying on the other side of the reinforced divide. Previous incidents of Din smashing through to get the food had called for a few security upgrades and he had personally been challenged to create a partition even he couldn't break unaided. "Care to give me her steak and let her have my rabbit food?"
"Sorry, one serving per customer." Chris tried to glare, he really did, but it came out as a kind of determined squint instead.
"If you switch from Sierra conduction to Bate convection, you'd probably be able to get ten, twelve per cent more efficiency on your cookers." Din was practically salivating across the transparent divide. "And the metamaterials department can probably give you something for your cover." A thin streak of drool was already sliding down the glass and leaving a dirty smear in its path.
"Here, have the extra steak!" Aggressively arranging extra salad leaves was the closest Chris came to violence as he thrust the completed meals across the counter. "Just get him away from my kitchen." As one of the few people with a special relationship (i.e. one not involving screams of bodily pain) with Din, the chef was allowed to issue instructions to Din's official food carrier instead of the man himself.
"I love your juicy rump." Hopping off the tray rail, Din knuckled his way over to their usual table of outcasts and misfits. "Fucklenuggets." He nodded familiarly while hopping into a seat. "Anyone else nearly had their illegal research interrupted by the International Cuntry Cuntfaces?" Taking her own seat, Akiza had also noticed the visitor passes liberally sprinkled throughout tables in the cafeteria.
"Oh, we would never do anything illicit." Fingers splayed dramatically as Tom slapped his chest in mock horror. "We've simply been asking one another about our definitely real ongoing 'research' which anyone working at the SRC has immediate clearance to hear about. Baiting the ICC would be far beneath the standard of professionalism that we all live and work by." Politics aside, the quintessential pretty boy wasn't to be trusted outside an emergency. Any chance to screw with authority was his for the taking and he wasn't above increasing those opportunities.
"What's the highest score so far?" Pissing off an international court wasn't meant to be a casual game over lunch and nobody should sound angry that they hadn't pissed off the most lawyers.
"Haruka asked if they could clarify the difference between molecular transmission via matter broadcast or quantum entanglement." Chiyoko's pale face split into an unnaturally wide grin as the junior nurse buried her face in both hands.
"Realllly?" Koharu could fit a lot of mockery into such a small body. She was nearly a more polite version of Din, albeit with the inclination to build an exoskeleton to trick people into thinking they had a fighting chance against her. (If there was one fact that could be agreed on for Din's savage aggression, it was that he didn't lie to people about their chances beforehand – they merely came to the wrong conclusion based on their own preconceptions.)
"Why's that bad?" What was visible of Haruka's face and ears was nearly red enough to match Akiza's hair but she couldn't figure out the reason.
"Quantum physics is an immutable law of the universe and relates to the fundamental interconnectivity of all matter in existence." Of course. Like she'd needed Din to tell her that. "But 'matter transmission' is more what you would call 'teleportation' and that's so highly illegal that it makes Dr Fudo's little science experiment look like one of those parking tickets he refuses to pay."
"Awww, Haruka!" Reaching over to one side, she gently pulled the embodiment of shame into her shoulder. "That's the funniest thing I've heard in weeks." Leaning her cheek into the shaking bun, she glanced pointedly across the table at Tom. "How many topics have you guys mentioned so far?" Chiyoko let out her most sinister smile and pulled out a scribbled grid of topics. Taking it in her spare hand, Akiza looked over the bingo sheet with a careful eye. "Did I ever tell you about my nootropic drugs research? They helped me crack the secret of" She scoured for the craziest combination possible. "Temporal mechanics."
"Boo!" Din bellowed in her ear as he snatched the sheet for himself. "Let me show you how it's done." Shouldering his way up onto the table, he swallowed half his steak in three bloody bites. Anyone not wearing a visitor pass knew to look away and try not to draw any attention to themselves. Like so many of the unwritten rules of social cliques, those poor outsiders in the cafeteria had been left out. "My last genetics experiment was discontinued after I was caught sleeping with one of the subjects. Three weeks I put into that experiment and it never got out of animal trials!" It was possible that the ICC could spend years trying to figure out what of Din's tales were brutal exaggerations and what was simple brutality but no fewer than three people broke out in intense vomiting. Far from the social butterfly, Din's coarse nature raised several laughs as the other SRC staff refused to confirm or deny anything the social outcasts were saying.
Any theories in reviews will be neither cconfirmed nor denied.