As one final reminder, this takes place right after the last chapter. It was going to be one large chapter but 10k words was too wordy for a moderately uneventful chapter. This is mostly backstory stuff at the minute. Just wait, the good stuff's coming.
For a collection of such immense size, the massive SRC library had only two librarians to manage it and they were an odd pair. Rubinek was a fat, waddling, little American man with a variety of waistcoats and a pair of antique circular glasses perched on his jowled face. By contrast, Head was a slender and polished Englishman who had all the characteristics of a middle-ranking noble with tailored suits which he was not above literally rolling up the sleeves to get down with work.
Between Head's refined approach to managing the collection and Rubinek's haphazard tendency to just slap a quick fix on whatever issues arose, their unifying enemy was the destructive Dr Din. Which explained why Akiza was met with the business end of an actual crossbow as she came through their office door.
"I don't suppose that little upstart is with you today?" Head was the one actually holding the weapon, casually moving to point at the floor in order to prevent any harm from a misfire. He still didn't take his finger from the trigger in case Din suddenly erupted into view. "We're overdue for a visit."
"Maybe it's just a distraction while he sneaks past." Tiny eyes squinting around the room, Rubinek was paranoiacally searching for any sign of the living nightmare that caused his sleeping ones. "Remember that time with the goat?" A haunted look crossed both their faces which Akiza decided not to enquire about any further.
"I'm just here to pick up a book." Slowly reaching into her pocket for the scrap of paper as the crossbow was nonchalantly aimed a bit closer to her direction, she wondered just how much damage her squat lab partner had inflicted over the years. "Nothing to do with Dr Din. It's for me." Handing the paper to Head, it was a struggle to not feel like she was being held hostage.
"... Interesting choice." Running a trained eye over the title, he put down the crossbow on his neatly organised desk and Akiza remembered how to breathe normally. Looking up at their unofficial go-between for the aforementioned devil, Head unwound for his battle-ready mood. "Is there anything else that we could help you with?"
"Don't bother with manners," Huffing and puffing his way over to a worn leather chair, Rubinek collapsed into it. Much like their polarising personalities, his desk was the antithesis of his partner's. Books stacked chaotically all over, remains of unfinished meals carefully piled between and clutches of handwritten notes scattered all about. "She's probably going to rob us blind the first opportunity she gets."
"Apologies for my companion." Carefully hiding the crossbow beneath his desk, Head double-checked the book information on his computer. "His previous line of work caused him to become a sceptic."
"I'm used to it." Scientists doubted each other to extremes. There were always a handful of philosophers wandering around the SRC with the notion that nothing except themselves existed. This would normally have been manageable except for the way that physicists had started taking sadistic pleasure in showing them the mathematics which suggested that nothing existed at all.
"May I ask why you're checking this book out?" Jotting down a reference number on the reverse of the paper, Head was professionally keeping at his job. "It seems a little different from Dr Din's usual tastes." Walking across the divide between their desks, he handed the information over to his colleague.
"It's a bit of personal reading for myself." There were a few books nobody was allowed to take out of the buildings but most of what they had was simply rare and not dangerous.
"Personal reading?" Rubinek looked up in surprise. There was technically no rule against it but this was a research library with little in the way of enjoyable texts. "I mean..." Putting down the paper, he adjusted his glasses. "Are you certain that is the book you are looking for?" There was a worried look at the request.
"The unedited version. A friend recommended it to me." She could feel a tense atmosphere growing around her. "Is there a problem with borrowing it?" She noticed how Rubinek suddenly became intent with cleaning his messy desk for the first time in what looked like decades. Which was impressive since the SRC had only been founded eight years ago.
"Not exactly." Avoiding both their gazes was a bit difficult. "Anthony, you remember when I got my desk and it kept leaning towards one corner?"
"And I recommended that you put something heavy in the bottom drawer until it was fixed..." That face was too refined to scowl outright. It settled into disapproval instead. "Saul, give her the book and ask maintenance to fix your desk."
"That's the thing." Wriggling one stocky finger into the narrow gap between drawer and book, he failed to make any space. A startled grunt accompanied his catch. "I forgot how heavy this one is."
"I have heard the same said about you." Peering through his glasses, Head picked up the tome without any sign of trouble in one hand. "Who We Are and Who We Are Not: Practical Ethics and Their Application in the Modern World. Unedited version." Holding the book out for Akiza to take, a whimsical look settled on his face. "Over three thousand pages of ethical claptrap."
Taking the thick, leather-bound manuscript in both hands, she was staggered by the weight. There was a chunky buckle holding the covers tight about the contents but she felt that a crate would have been more effective. Noting her difficulty, Rubinek held out a thick canvas satchel for her to deposit the unwieldy package into.
"Take care of it." Managing to hold the bag aloft to help her sling it over one shoulder, Rubinek could barely breathe as he took the weight. "The contents are irreplaceable." The pair gave their condolences as she went to her day of work alongside Din and they remained in their own corner of heaven.
Shrugging off his jacket, Head hung it up on the rack he kept near the desk as Rubinek sank into his padded leather seat. Sliding onto his upright chair, the Englishman tucked himself in tight and continued his work as if nothing was amiss. "She checked out the book. Even though I tried to convince her not to." Tidily making notes in a journal, he showed no outward sign of response to the words. "Anthony, you do realise what this means?" Creaking back and forth in his chair, Rubinek seemed unusually excited by what should have been a humdrum regular carrying out of his duties.
"I'm not unaware of the consequences, Saul." Capping the ornate fountain pen, Head pinched either end between fingers and thumbs. "I had just... become accustomed to our life here. Not exciting. Like a holiday." Reaching into a pocket sewn inside his waistcoat, he pulled out a faded photograph and held it in one hand.
"Yeah, it was nice just being able to have a normal life for once." Strapped to his waistcoat was a beaten pocketwatch. It looked small when held open in one meaty palm to gaze at a misfit collection of individuals that had formed his own family. "There's far less running here. God, I hate the running."
"Funny." Propping the picture on his desk, Head leaned on one armrest as he stared at a family he hadn't seen in a long time. "Running towards the danger is one of the things I miss the most."
"Me too." Unlike his companion, Rubinek didn't have to prop his picture up to see it, simply setting the pocketwatch on the table instead. "Still, at least we know there'll be a lot of danger to run at soon."
"We might as well start making arrangements for the others." Straightening up the rest of the way, Head had a wry set to the sides of his mouth. "I suppose that we can probably spring for a few comforts along the way. Our salaries have been quite generous." In another life, he had been shackled by the mediocre budget of a school librarian. The number of zeros after the first positive digit instead of before had flummoxed him.
"Speak for yourself." Stretching in his seat, Rubinek actually managed to gain an extra inch in height before deflating back to his regular size. Unlike his more reserved counterpart, he regularly blew through each payment before the week was out. "I used all my cash on the books and this chair."
"After our jobs here are done," Rubbing strained eyes beneath his glasses, Head was the more suffering member of their partnership. "It will not shock me if we never see one another again. But I will definitely miss your unique way of both helping and screwing everything up all at the same time."
"How's it going?" After a day with Din, Akiza was hoping for more of a normal evening. A rare visit from Vella the hawk had resulted in a hunt for the owner of her latest gift and that had only been after the incident with the laser. Din wasn't even meant to have a laser pointer yet he had somehow smuggled an industrial laser into his lab without anyone noticing. Dumping her bag at the base of the ramp, she moved to stand beside Yusei as he stared at the wall.
"That's a matter of opinion." Scrawled across the bricks in sheets of paper and the floor in shades of chalk was the sort of work that people usually kept inside their heads. Interesting, mostly correct, and splayed everywhere with string connecting the various parts. "Phantom knows things about carbon fibres, artificial cell cultures, and thermodynamic generation that I wouldn't expect from half of my staff." Jack and Crow had tried to join in for a combined total of five minutes, after which they silently went about their private businesses as if nothing was happening in the room.
"Huh." Craning her head to match the same angle as Yusei's, she studied a diagram that required the eyes to focus in a specific way to imagine it in three dimensions. Recognising that it needed four would have taken more insight than Akiza immediately had. "And where is she now?" One thing that had been missing from the drawings was the creator. She was so flighty that Akiza half-expected her to have run away again.
"In the cupboard under the stairs." Jerking a thumb at said cupboard, Musume was sitting a short distance away. "Laughing at different words for being funny." Cards spread out across the floor, she was impatiently cycling through combinations as they waited for the next bout of sanity to descend.
"And how was your day?" What he was really asking was 'how is everyone at the SRC?'. A good boss should care about their employees. Yusei was closer to a friend to most of his staff and wanted to know they were doing well. Even the ones who doubted his innocence.
"Human Resources wants to know if they can create a taskforce with the legal department. Legal is trying to see if they're allowed." Nobody needed to guess why they wanted to create a taskforce. Even Musume had started to learn stories about Din. Including the one about... well, it ended badly for the man holding the broom.
"What did Din do this time?" Everyone had heard about the one where the... which had ended badly for the man holding the broom. And that had been with Yusei present to appease him. Many potential disasters had been averted after Yusei had literally thrown himself in the path of a rampaging Din.
"That's why legal's involved: they can't tell if it was even his fault." Following the lines of string, she eventually traced an outline for a condensed capacitor along to where a formula for the combination of molecular matrices was located. "All we know is, Vella brought him a human finger." That was – frighteningly enough – not the first time that it had happened. A good doctor can reattach a digit if it was still fresh. An SRC scientist could easily add some upgrades along the way. "And we may have more victims than fingers."
"... Is it just me or does it look like a smile?" Moving away from the unspoken question of 'how many more victims than fingers?', Yusei could feel the tattered edges of his mind starting to unravel under the strain of the last few days.
"Noticed that, did you?" At the same time that she had been scribbling out equations and numbers, Phantom had been keeping any trace of the most sensitive information out and arranging the parts she felt safe to share in such a way that various pieces of string vaguely resembled a smiling face. Musume had been watching the bigger pattern and seen it falling into place while Yusei was studying an esoteric diagram of a cell culture.
"Huh." Taking a step back, Akiza looked over the strings for herself. It had been a long day with the crazy and she had somehow come back to more of the same. "And now she's sitting in a cupboard..." Even though she had been told it a few minutes ago, reconciling the two states of mind was a challenging task.
"Laughing at different words for being funny." Slipping cards atop one another, nobody else was privy to the fact that Musume had just created a combination move literally capable of bringing about the end of the world. "Yeah." Clearing her throat slightly, she tidied up the piles before anyone noticed what she had done.
"How ma" Yusei couldn't resist the growing urge to ask the question.
"Six." A slight twitch ran through his face. "Four of them are old wounds." Anticipating the first question had been easy. The follow-up had been inevitable.
"Oh." Another twitch flickered past his nose. "Tell me Din doesn't have their fingers." Bearing a grudge had been elevated from an unpleasant habit to a refined artform under his brutal state of mind. Din had once waited three years for a rival to publish a paper before publishing one that completely disproved the theory the next day.
"You know, I didn't ask." Akiza still remembered the time she had asked her unorthodox research partner if he had any idea about Yusei's condition. His suggestions for a priest had not gone down well. "Probably not." Then she remembered how a simple round of drinks had ended with a riot. "Maybe not." Chris had only just started to get around to rebuilding the bar.
On the bright side, word had reached Akiza that functionally mute Chiyoko had put a huge bet on Crow taking second place in the Pegasus and used the resulting windfall to pay their collective debt. The odds on him making second with both Jack Atlas and Yusei Fudo in the competition had been astronomical.
"Can you explain to me how we're suddenly living with four freeloaders and a cat?" Between her daughter, his brothers, the cat which let them live with it, and the newest addition to the group, there were far too many people in the tiny house for comfort. Indeed, the latest 'freeloader' slowly pushed open the faded cupboard door at the introduction. "I swear, I'm going to start charging them rent."
Do you accept barter in trade? Yusei almost had a heart attack as she rose behind him without warning. Musume cackled at the reaction as she piled her Deck away.
"Hello again." Having noticed the slow emergence of the outline from beneath the stairs, Akiza kept her voice carefully even. Brushing off the cobwebs that had gathered in the rarely used space, Phantom had one of those unearthly smiles beneath the mask. "What's the joke?" After the day that she had just had, she felt ready for anything that could brighten the mood.
'Monosyllabic'. Another quick smile flashed by as Akiza stood blinking dumbly. 'Monosyllabic' is polysyllabic. Akiza failed to react and Phantom felt more explanation was needed. It should have at least raised a smile. But 'polysyllabic' is not monosyllabic.
"Yes." Autism was not Akiza's forte but she was starting to understand the sort of mindset that was standing before her. "I suppose that's a bit funny." From a logical point of view, it could be viewed as moderately amusing. "Nice work." Waving a hand at the mess of science, she genuinely meant the compliment.
I meant to ask. Sliding over to one workbench, Phantom returned with a disturbing mess. It looked like a toolbox had come alive and vomited its contents in one messy ball of string. What is this?
"That?" Until she had dragged it out into the light of day, Yusei had forgotten the thing even existed. "Found that after we moved in. Jack forgot to pack some tools correctly and they got tangled up together. So – being Jack – he hid it in the bottom of a box." After years of silent waiting, the shapeless blob looked dead without even having been alive.
May I... fix it? Trying to follow the single thread, she had the uncanny feeling that it was actually splicing into itself as it went. No matter how hard she looked, the other end was nowhere to be found. She had only been looking for string to use but had discovered a new project instead.
"Probably best just to throw it away. Most of the tools have already been," When people used the phrase 'eyes shone with desire', it was usually in a metaphorical manner. When looking towards those glowing orbs of intense emotion, Yusei found himself wondering just what would happen to the helmet if he didn't back down. "Replaced but if you think it's worth it, go ahead." Smoothly continuing as if nothing out of the normal had happened, he deftly changed his decision without the slightest pause. Catching Akiza's eye, he jerked his head towards the stairs to indicate that they continue the conversation on the next floor.
Thank you. Following the pair up the stairs, Phantom was carefully prodding the mess from all angles. Musume scrabbled to pick up her cards and follow the happy lamb like a butcher just waiting for a limp to mark it out for slaughter.
"Hey." Jack had started taking an unusual interest in the news broadcasts. There were so many fractional updates to the ICC's case against Yusei that they required constant supervision to keep up with. "What's she doing now?" Looking up from her tangled ball, Phantom gave a cheerful wave before returning to her puzzle. Crow said nothing as he continued to scroll through websites on a puzzle of his own.
"Who's up for an early dinner?" Both scientists had a bad habit of missing meals when working on a project and his brothers had clearly survived the day through constant snacking. Musume, meanwhile, had been keeping a constant vigil in case Phantom went rouge again.
Would you like me to help? Holding a rescued utility knife in one hand presented a strange underline to her offer.
"It's okay, we've got it." She moved to stand beside the window as Yusei waved away the offer of help. Musume recognised it as a tactical advantage to remain invisible from any prying eyes as she took up position on the other end of the window.
"Guess that you don't need us then." Jack's easy out received no more than a rough grunt from Crow.
"Not if we want the food to be edible." Only slightly untrue. Jack could do noodles nearly as well as he could coffee. That was about it.
If I may ask, Looking up with string already starting to unravel across her arms and a rescued pair of screwdrivers tucked into a breast pocket, Phantom was the most relaxed that she had been in days. What caused the... incident over the weekend? She had been able to figure out the 'what' when Yusei and Trudge had come to collect her yet still hadn't heard the 'how' or 'why'.
"Just someone trying to do the wrong thing for the right reasons." Piling vegetables on the side, Yusei began carefully washing them as Akiza diced. When it came time to cook, Musume would stir. He had felt a bit uneasy when she had started between him and the knives until Akiza stepped in. "Aion tried to make us forget Akiza because she thought that it would stop a 'calamity' she said was coming. I don't know," Sharing a glance to one side, it was possible that he was a bit soon in breaking humour. "It was all Greek to me."
From her nearby position, Musume had a clear view of what happened. Knees buckling off in different directions, one hand made a half-hearted grip about the back of a chair as Phantom slowly sank down to collapse gracelessly towards the floor.
"Hey!" Grabbing at one arm did nothing to slow the descent as the boiler suit just flopped away with those fathomless eyes staring up at her in stupefaction. Both scientists turned around at the commotion and watched as Musume hauled her cargo upright. Over on the couch, Jack and Crow noticeably straightened and made it look like they were on the verge of volunteering to help.
"What happened?" Realising that a knife was still held in one hand, Akiza dropped it back onto the chopping board before focusing her attention on the unusual patient.
Aion of Olympus? Wrapping one arm around her neck, Musume held her companion upright as they struggled to find footing through the shock. That is who you were fighting against? Finally able to recover use of her feet, she made a fair effort at standing upright.
"Yes?" Phantom would have to run out of unpredictable reactions at some point. The majority of her time had been spent in prison and then as an unmoving statue with only a mild bout of madness between. "It was close but we managed to pull it off." That was when her feet went and she was unceremoniously dumped into a chair by an impatient carrier.
You fought a god. Sparing a moment to look at the looming figure of Musume, she factored in a bit more reality and continued trying to explain the cosmic pecking order to the people who were screwing around with it. And you think it was... close?
"It was all down to Akiza." Wringing his hands clean, he pointed the finger of responsibility solely where no sane man would. "My Deck mixed up with hers. Without it, we wouldn't have been able to win." A twitch ran through a face that wasn't there as non-existent ears heard the words.
Excuse me. Stumbling upright, she moved towards the room which housed clock mechanisms and laundry machines. After a moment's consideration, she returned to pick up the ball of twine before shuffling back off in a traumatised stupor. Calmly shutting the door, there was the distinct sound of her collapsing against the other side.
"At least we know where the 'off switch' is in case we need it." A chorus of neither affirming nor denying mumbles sounded. The jury was still out on how to treat Phantom.
"She just needs more time to get back on her feet." As Akiza finely diced the vegetables into thin slivers, Yusei wondered if Musume had inherited her skills with a knife from her mother. It was certainly one more reason to never cross either of them. "The slower we can take it, the better it will be in the long run."
"Say what you like." Touching a knife of her own, Musume knew a few things about their supposedly traumatised figure that she wasn't keen to share just yet. "But I still don't trust her. It's going to take more than a few fancy numbers and some sob story to win me over." With the room still divided over courses of action, they universally chose to drop the subject.
Once dinner had been eaten and the previously lazy brothers left in charge of clearing up, Akiza surreptitiously indicated Musume join her downstairs. "I got you that book." Dragging it from the bag with both hands, she handed it across. Even with all that supernatural strength, she spotted a moment when her knees bent to take the weight of the tome. "Why did you want it?"
"For what's inside." Peeling the tome apart, she revealed a thick segment cut directly through the words. In the hidden hole was a small collection of stapled pages with cramped text filling every inch.
"What are those?" Brushing a lock of hair behind an ear, she moved to stand beside Musume and better read the titles. With names like 'Basic Principles of Thaumatology' and 'Prevalent Aberrations of a Chronometric Nature', Akiza could only wonder who had written such peculiar texts. More worrying, they had been hidden in a book that nobody had supposedly gone near since it had been brought to the SRC.
"A crash course in all things weird." There had been plenty of time to talk while they waited for Jack to summon Red Nova and force an opening that Aion couldn't block. Just not enough time to cover everything that she would need to know. Providing the closest alternative to actual instructions was the best that Himeru could do. "One more thing," A sullen tone entered her voice. Of the many negative inflections – from caffeine withdrawal to outright hate – Akiza had never heard one this depressed before. "Where do you keep the textbooks?" One booklet flopped open to a thick layer of equations and diagrams. For the first time since Akiza had met her daughter, she looked like a normal kid who had just been set a headache of homework.
"I'll get you some of our old textbooks." There was enough knowledge between Yusei's and Akiza's interests to cover engineering, biology, chemistry, and any other areas that Musume wanted to learn. "You can borrow them as long as you need." A mumbled word of thanks came in reply as they went back up the stairs.
Jack and Crow had taken advantage of the lack of supervision to ditch their chores and escape to their rooms. With her attention already lost in the mess of information, Musume missed Akiza slipping away for the night. Shuffling down against the worn couch, she slowly passed through the first pages of one of the papers while piling the rest of the material on the coffee table.
Everything was neatly laid out in an organised fashion with a contents page and reference information at the fore. After flicking through several of the dossiers and recognising the inevitable boredom of wading through the bland texts, she had settled on the slimmest volume to begin with – 'Prevalent Aberrations of a Chronometric Nature'.
'These are not mere ideas or hypotheticals stored within these pages.' It began in a sombre warning. 'Time is not as people think. What is past may come again. What is future may never happen. All it takes is one step in the wrong direction and not even chaos may survive the resulting calamity'. Tucking the other papers back away into the satchel, she was fixated on that final word. It was the one word she knew described an event in the near future.
When Aion had made the world forget Akiza and Musume been kept safe inside Convergence, she had tried every trick she knew to pry the knowledge from Himeru with no success. The only information she had been given was on the location of these reports and the fastest way to rescue Akiza. Plus one other subject. Folding a hand behind her head, Musume looked over at the door where an uncertain figure lay on the far side, quietly unravelling a puzzle nobody else would bother their time with.
Himeru had told her to send Phantom away to await the day Musume would call for her. That either meant she was utterly insignificant until that day or that she had information Himeru didn't want shared. Either way, Musume would be sure to keep a close eye on her from that moment on. It wouldn't be like the night before. She'd stay awake and alert until someone else was around to keep an eye on the intruder. Crow was habitually an early riser, Akiza would have to get up early to cover a shift at the SRC and Yusei... but she quelled that train of thought before it could reach the violent stages. She only had to stay awake for a short while as she read the reports. This would be child's play.
Two hours later, the only sounds in the room were a steady humming and the rumbling thunder of her snores. Dark hands carefully folded the pages of the paper into those of a physics book to keep her place intact and silently laid them aside for the morning. Carefully lifting the blanket from the back of the sofa, the sleeping figure was gently covered as a snoozing feline was gently tucked alongside. With the more important task completed, Phantom was free to return her attention to the chaotic mess of her string puzzle as the quiet hours of the night continued to tick past in solitude.
Hidden with the book were secret papers. Hidden within the secret papers? Secreter reviews! That's all for now. Check back in a few hours for the next chapter. (Spoiler alert: this one has characters in it. Maybe even some dialogue!)