A modicum of routine had started to emerge in the cramped household. Crow would rise first and distract Musume with conversation on the lower floor as they looked over the cluttered collection of Duel Runners. Jack would get up next and join the group. Meanwhile, their continued conversation would alert the pair huddled in the remaining room that it was safe to emerge and use the bathroom.
"Admit it." Lingering with both hands blocking the doorway, Akiza was taking too much enjoyment in teasing Yusei for his liking. "She scares you a little bit."
"I'm more scared of what she might do to me." Reaching up just a little, that brief kiss was enough to set his heart racing for two polarising reasons.
Akiza used the bathroom first while the house-bound partner prepared a fresh cup of coffee to be waiting when she emerged. Technically, Yusei had free roam of the city – even country – as long as he cleared his schedule with Trudge first. However, undercover reporters cluttered Stephanie's coffee shop from sunrise to sunset and less surreptitious investigators flooded the city beyond. For now, he was content to remain inside with his family and the latest mystery.
After another risky kiss – Akiza keeping it going until she could feel Yusei squirm in fear of her daughter – the good doctor would go to work while Yusei enjoyed a relaxing shower. Once dressed for the day, he was free to pursue whatever projects he wished. He had intended to continue his scientific conversation from the day before as he walked down the first set of stairs. His plans changed in a hurry as he began the second set.
Facing one other in low crouches, Jack and Crow were already wearing their jackets and egging each other into a fight. Normally, he wouldn't have even blinked at the act. However, Jack was holding a potentially lethal measure of rebar in his hands and showed every intention of using it.
"What are you doing?!" Whatever crazy acts of retaliation that his brothers had carried out over the years, they had never gone to such a level of brutal violence before. Beatings, black eyes. bruises and one incident of accidentally cracked ribs yet never the raw brutality that he was seeing now.
"You've got to try this!" Swinging the metal pole as hard as he could, Jack smashed it into Crow's arm with enough force to shatter bones. Diving after his shorter brother, Yusei managed to catch him just before he could smash into the far wall. "Want a go?"
"What is wrong with you?!" Fully certain that they were driven mad by the sitting figure, he wrenched the pipe from Jack's hand and pushed him back a distance.
"Where do you want to start?" Sprawled across the ratty couch by the ramp as the pair had pummelled one another, Musume had decided to take acceptance of their faults to the fatal extreme as she poured through dozens of scientific textbooks. Enough reading of the reports had taught her which areas she needed to learn first and she was anxious to move back to the real goal.
They are quite safe. Hoshi was napping on her lap as Phantom sat just in front of the sofa like a docile pet herself. Both hands were folded on her knees as she apparently meditated on the mysteries of the universe. Your brothers wanted to try out my armour. I lent them the... my arms to do so.
As his brothers rolled up opposite sleeves to reveal the freezing mesh covering their limbs, Yusei noticed the gauntlets placed on Phantom's knees weren't attached to empty sleeves.
"We wanted to see what it could really do." While their brother had been fascinated by the science behind it, Jack and Crow understood the words 'armour', 'indestructible' and – shockingly enough – 'impact dispersion'. "And, well, we were bored." While Crow scratched his head in mild embarrassment, Jack tried to hide the bent and rusty pipe behind his back.
"Because my brothers were bored," Too much insanity was clouding his life at one time and something was going to have to give. "You took off your arms, handed them a rusty pipe and told them to hit each other as hard as they could?" Pausing to think over the extreme repercussions of telling a lie to get out of the immediate danger, Phantom slowly nodded as if it was the sanest thing in the world. "Did it occur to you that they might miss and hit each other in the head?"
Considering that they are aiming for the middle of the arm, Carefully walking him through her unfathomable thought process, she was very aware of how Yusei's blood pressure was starting to rise. The bulging veins in his head were a dead giveaway. It would be quite difficult to hit each other in the head. Even on purpose. As his brothers had been exhaustively proving, the armour was incredibly resilient. They could have used a chainsaw without any major danger.
"And you just sat there," Finding himself running out of both logic and sanity, Yusei turned to the one source of preservation left in the world. "Letting them?" Looking up from her quiet reading on the sofa, Musume examined the situation.
"What'd you expect me to do?" Considering their lack of trust, there was little reason for Yusei to assume she would take any responsibility. "I made sure that they didn't use the sword." Insulting centuries of tradition, artform and craftship, she carefully placed the legendary blade between two pages and closed her book with a pointed snap. "We're not idiots." Those words reminded him that he was in an argument with people who couldn't even understand what they did wrong.
"Have you all gone mad?" Between his brothers, guest and even (especially) Musume, Yusei was starting to feel his grip on sanity increasingly strained. An array of confused and insulted looks met the question.
Not more than usual. With such an honest gaze looking up at him, Yusei struggled to remain infuriated. I cannot speak for the others but it is possible. A sharp smack to the back of her head resulted as Musume took offence to the statement.
"Hey!" Even Jack felt it might be a step far.
No need to worry. Twisting to one side slightly, she peeked over her right shoulder with that invisible smile ready. No arm done. Seeing one hand reach for the sword, she hurriedly began shuffling away across the floor in the worst getaway in history. It was difficult to move at any speeds without disturbing the slumbering creature keeping her company.
"Don't be a coward." Retrieving her page, she still made sure to keep the handle where she could reach it in a hurry. "I'm just reading." Keeping her attention fixed on the sword, Phantom carefully edged back to her former position.
"Here," Scooping up her gauntlets from where they had fallen, Yusei held them out with a pointed look at Musume. "You dropped these."
Silent laughter filled the building as she looked down at the appendages and realised what he was trying to do. Still running on adrenaline highs, Jack and Crow quickly joined in. Even the surly researcher on the couch looked up from her book and loosed a few chuckles at his expense.
Would you mind leaving them there? Nodding to a spot beside her, she kept that annoyingly sincere smile going as he dropped them with a flushed face.
"This stuff is really neat." Curling his thumb in, Crow easily slid his piece of armour free while Jack struggled slightly to repeat the move. "Do you think we could borrow it again later?" A stern look from an unsmiling scientist told him that he wasn't to wear any part of the outfit again.
I do not think that would be a good idea. That look hadn't gone unnoticed. Pining the arm between her knees, she was able to slide her cuff over the top and reach down to slip through to the other end and pull it back into position. By the time she had grasped a hand, Jack had managed to pull the other piece free to return.
"Can I ask a question?" They hadn't exactly had the greatest of starts and he was making an effort to avoid offending her.
Of course. Tucking her other arm into place, she secured the joints with the barest touch.
"How come they don't just fall off the entire time?" Pausing as she reattached her left arm, Phantom was caught unprepared by the question. It wasn't exactly the most gripping subject.
My armour... draws power from thermodynamic generation. Her original evaluation of Jack's intelligence had been a bit lower than it should have been. She had been expecting to have to deliver a more detailed explanation but he appeared to understand. The mechanisms used to keep it connected take priority. It can remain intact with minimal ambient heat.
"Huh. Is that why you're cold all the time?" Crow sidled away as he gave his brother a suspicious look. "What?"
"You're too smart to be the real Jack. Imposter!" Pointing an accusatory finger, his excitement was curtailed as Yusei smacked him in the back of his head.
"I swear, I would almost prefer to be locked back up." For an instant, as she reattached her left hand, Phantom's grip fumbled as her right gauntlet flared each digit to the extreme. It was over as soon as it had begun and none of the three brothers even noticed. That was okay. They didn't need to know.
Pressing her other thumb into the palm until it formed a fist, she instinctively rubbed the covering as watchful eyes turned back to reading.
Situated in a tiny maintenance cupboard around the corner of the lab Akiza shared with Din, what looked like a handful of tech wizards were crammed in with at least a dozen security guards. Realising the inevitable minefield that would come with actually interacting with them, she silently continued towards the constant culprit without interacting.
"Morning." Stepping into the lab, she was greeted with wild eyes and wilder hair. Then she noticed the rest of the room. "How long was I gone?"
"Thought you went back on holiday." Limping around the room on his bloodied knee, Din was unusually calm. "None of the morons outside would tell me where you went when I asked a couple of days ago." It also appeared he didn't remember seeing her the day before.
"You asked about me?" Ducking under a swinging light, she tried not to let the fact that it was usually four times higher than him bother her. She was more preoccupied with the fact that Din might have remembered her when supposedly nobody knew she existed.
"What day about is it?" Cocking his head as the words filtered through his brain, three days constant warfare with the boundaries of science were starting to take a slight toll. Anything other than crunching numbers was receiving negligible amounts of brainpower. "Friday?"
"Tuesday." How he had ended up either three days ahead or four behind wouldn't have worried her as much as a massive welt across one cheek indicated the possibility of a concussion. "How did you get that?" The longer that she observed the room, the more concerned that she became.
Three new burns were on the walls, fresh holes were in the ceiling and a transparent whiteboard had been improvised from a window. While any number of scientists had scribbled the odd equation on the window in passing, few of them had ripped the entire frame from the fitting first. How he had done it without cracking the glass was unknown.
"Revising the theory of non-linear bifurcated chronology on my own time. I'm on the verge of a breakthrough." Taking that under consideration, Akiza tried to figure out exactly where the numerous amount of sand timers fit into the situation. It appeared Din was closer to a breakdown than a breakthrough.
"And when was the last time that you got a full night's rest?" People on extremes of the intellectual spectrum had similar habits. Food and sleep fell by the wayside as the mind focused on whatever the latest problem was. According to the horror stories that she had heard, Din had supposedly snacked on the preserved rats kept for Vella and stayed awake for weeks on end until she had been assigned to keep an eye on him.
"What does that matter?" Distracting the question with one of his own, he continued to switch attention between surfaces as he tracked different trains of thought.
"Uh-huh." Unconvinced, a head tilt turned crazed scrawls into more understandable physics formulas. She could only guess that it related to Din's latest transcendent scientific theory. "And can you explain the guards outside?"
"Here already, are they?" Reaching to the rear of his tattered belt, he came back with a lumpy club which ended in jagged spikes on the handle. "How many of the bastards are there this time?" Growling the words in an aggressive tone, he headed for the door until she darted over to block him.
"What did you do?" The amount of simply nasty things he could have done was uncountable. Right until he had that one uncomfortable look which she had come to dread. "Oh." A slight pause went as she tried to find an adequate word to sum up her feelings. "Scheiße." One particularly daring report she had read detailed an attempt involving a makeshift catapult, faux wings and excruciatingly precise trigonometry. It had been the highlight of a thick folder. "How did you try this time?"
"Stole credentials from one of those ICC arseholes." Knowing he had been caught out, Din was keeping his curses words to safe levels. "Library counts as an unsecured area. I managed to get through the doors before they stopped me this time." Another shifty look pointed towards the corridor outside.
While the library was counted as a low priority area, that was only by the government forces who ranked the immediate fallout if people got their hands on SRC projects. Yusei – along with the majority of scientists and staff he worked with – recognised the long-term danger of people getting even a glimpse at certain books and constantly stationed two full squads of security in both buildings which constituted the library.
Although nobody should have normally been able to enter the SRC library without extensive background checks, the ICC had been given access to aid with their investigation. It was how Din had managed to get past the front doors.
"Do you remember the arrangement? You tell me the books you need and I can go and get them." In an effort to staunch the attacks on the library, the librarians had agreed to let Akiza act as an intermediary for Din. Rarely did he need to see the texts in person but the man had an almost addictive need to roam the stacks of information. "Why didn't you just write a list?"
"List, list. That sounds familiar." Patting himself down, Din eventually tore loose a sheet of paper which had been stapled to his coattail. "Would you be a dear and go collect these books from the library for me?" An evil grin split his face apart. It was the face of a man who had seen the worst humanity had to offer and laughed. "I have the feeling I'm about to have some company."
"You know I went to the library yesterday." Folding the paper into a pocket, she couldn't be properly angry with him for long. No matter how irritating he proved to be, his unique combination of wit, sarcasm and genius had a way of bringing people back for more. "Why not just ask me to get them then?"
"Because," That evil smile widened. "They'd think you already got what I needed yesterday. They didn't expect me to try breaking in right after. Besides," And then he revealed the real reason for his antics. For a genius, it was annoyingly simple. "I'm going to win one of these days."
"What are they going to do with you once they've caught you?" The SRC took security very seriously. Akiza had been investigated twice before even setting foot into the SRC: once as a relative of their representative Senator, again for being a friend of Yusei. Both had been extremely thorough probes into her life. If anything had been seriously amiss in either, she wouldn't have been able to so much as look at the buildings. Attempting to break into a restricted section was like asking for a life sentence.
"Probably keep me in a comfy cell for a few days." He let out a bitter laugh. The holding facilities in the basement were possibly the most humane in the world. Having a leader with a chequered past meant they treated their prisoners with respect as human beings. "But they'll have to catch me first."
"They've got security just down the hall." Her reminder pulled Din up short. His limited attention had strayed from the information soon after she shared it.
"What are we talking?" Eyeing his club, he was reconsidering the value of it as a choice of weapon. "Close or ranged?" He knew all about the weapons they carried. Partly from designing a couple and partly from being a target.
"I didn't see any batons." Akiza had heard a few of those exploit when they shared lunch with the rest of their friends. Projectile weaponry could be ranged from blunt stun rounds to tranquilliser darts which could stop a small horse with only three shots.
"Huh." Din could shrug off the blunt rounds without a shred of concern. The bruises healed quickly enough. Security was likely to take that into consideration. "Don't suppose that you would mind sticking around to make sure they don't screw with my work?"
"Or I could tell them you'll come quietly?" If his gnarled face could have darkened any further, it would have. "I mean, you could probably catch them off-guard." Sardonic laughter filled the air as Vella fluttered in from the window. Looking at the room and realising her chances of getting fed were slim, she gave a harsh scream and plunged back into the open sky.
"I swear that nobody else in this world gets me like you do, you flabby cow." Limping towards the door, it was possible to hear the sounds of bodies milling around in the hallway outside. "Tell our idiot boss that I didn't break too many of his toy soldiers." Hefting the club in one hand, he had the most vicious look that side of... well, probably the corridor. The professional vendetta he had against the librarians was matched only by his bloody feud with the security personnel.
Prying open the door a slim amount, he recklessly stuck his head out into the hallway. A peculiar tactical advantage to his twisted form was being a confusing target. When the door opened, a round of darts cropped exactly where the average torso would have been. Instead, they sailed gently over his head as he smiled down the corridor.
"Aw, fuck." Seeing a bundle of raw ferocity come charging towards the group was enough to send a fresh spray of darts down the hallway. As a trained physician, Akiza understood the meaning of a doctor's 'opinion'. Even with years of training, a proper medical diagnosis was occasionally a hit-and-miss business. Whoever had assured the guards three darts would be enough to stop a full-grown man hadn't anticipated the crazy strength of an enraged academic running on obsession. It was seven darts before the fight finally stopped.
Shuffling their feet and averting their gazes, a chorus of crudely faked coughs failed to cover the additional dart shot into one leg. To be fair to whoever had made the darts, bones had stopped breaking after three. Stunningly, there was also a case of friendly fire and Din was snoring in matching harmony with one of the guards.
"Hey." Sticking their heads out from the laboratory across the corridor, Tom, Chiyoko, Vlado and the rest of her friends had been watching the brawl with glee. "Did he give you the list of books he wanted?"
"Barely." Keeping a safe distance inside her lab, she noted the group had not been as careful. "What about it?"
"Nothing." Tom seemed to shrug only to let the tension continue to drain from his shoulders. "He jus' arsked us to mke sure you gotsit." Vlado gripped the back of Tom's jacket as he started to sprawl towards the floor. In his eagerness for a good view, he had accidentally stepped into the firing range of the darts. One had impacted his thigh and the cocktail was quickly setting in.
"He should be okay in a few hours." Before Akiza had started working there, Haruka had covered three shifts with Din. Two had ended in incidents. "They dun larshlog." Chiyoko caught her small friend and plucked the dart which had embedded in a shoulder.
"Was anyone not hit?" Looking herself over in the event of ricochet, Akiza half-expected the group to start falling en-masse.
"Lunch?" Slinging their friends over a shoulder each, the pair seemed unnecessarily accustomed to carrying bodies. "Chris unbanned us." Akiza couldn't figure out which was stranger: that the amazing cook had apparently overcome his hatred of the group he held responsible for burning down his other business or Chiyoko was speaking. She couldn't remember the pale-haired beauty saying more than a dozen words since they met.
"Sure." Tucking the list of books into a pocket, she doubted her workload would be excessive for the rest of the day. She could at least get in an early lunch before figuring out what to do while Din was left to cool off.
Slightly more information had joined the wall that evening. Unlike the carefully precise handwriting of Phantom or Yusei's ornate cursive, the new notes were messy and scrawled. If she didn't know better, she might have believed they belonged to his brothers.
"Hey." A highlighter was perched behind one ear as Musume chewed on the tip of a pen. Numerous parts of the books before her had received treatment from one or the other. Just like that morning, Phantom was sitting at the end of the couch and gently stroking the snoozing feline. "Anything interesting happen?"
"Din's been placed in a holding cell for a few days. A couple of my friends got tranqued by accident. Nothing exciting." It took her a moment to realise that her new definition of normal was far above what many would think of as wildly exhilarating. "You?"
"This idiot," Outrage sounded as she jerked a thumb at the pointedly innocent outline. "Started explaining things to the other idiots."
"What's the problem with that?" It was difficult to see an issue. Even Jack and Crow had to start learning after a certain point.
Slowly folding her book, Musume's face was perfectly still. "Let's take a look." Pointedly heading towards the stairs, she exuded the expectation her mother would follow her. Nodding affably as she adjusted the cat into the crock of one arm, Phantom joined Akiza as they went up the stairs.
Jack and Crow were quietly seated at the kitchen table while Yusei lay face-down on the couch with a despairing air. Two things instantly grabbed Akiza's attention;
First, she had always thought their fighting was proportional to the amount of time spent close to one another.
Second, they had laptops and pages of handwritten notes strewn about them. It looked suspiciously like research.
Reading a few of the errant sheets from the distance, she came to yet a third realisation. This was research and looked dangerously close to an area they barely used. "Why are they suddenly interested in science?" Just the word 'science' usually induced fake snores. Crow had once faked a heart attack simply because Yusei was holding a thick book.
"This genius," Pure sarcasm explained that she meant the complete opposite. "Told them they only needed to learn the science for their goal." While technically true, it was far riskier than having a firm foundation of understanding. There were dozens of mistakes which would take longer to recognise with one.
Well, At least she had the decency to sound partially embarrassed. They have made significant progress. She caught the filthy look Musume threw her way. For them. They have made significant progress for them.
"Yusei?" Looking up from his laptop, Jack was displaying a grasp of science at least four, maybe even five grades above what people assumed he possessed. "Do you have an orbital satellite running graphene processors, layered solar panels and capable of multi-vector refraction?" It appeared that Jack had gone towards 'global domination' for his goal.
Staying downstairs hadn't been an option. A pen is supposedly mightier than a sword and Musume had both with plenty of rage. Then again, upstairs hadn't been much better. "No, I don't have a space laser." Gritting his teeth, Yusei tried to remind himself that his brothers were nearly the only human company he had during the day.
"Told you." Crow didn't even look up from his computer. "What about a spare synchrotron? Wouldn't need more than five teraelectronvolts."
"Why," Rolling off the sofa as the question was asked, relief spread across his face at seeing Akiza followed by mild despair at seeing Musume right next to her. "Do you want a particle accelerator?"
"Tachyons." Being able to pronounce 'teraelectronvolts' was nothing to the blasé attitude he had for 'tachyons'.
"How about this," Soothing Yusei with a touch of his elbow, Akiza aborted the growing aneurysm just in time. "If you ever develop time-travel, you'll just come right back to now and tell yourself?" Everyone stood in silence for a few seconds as an aged crow failed to emerge from the future.
Why do you want the ability to travel through time? Confused already by the desire for advanced scientific knowledge, she couldn't understand the reason Crow would want to travel the ages. For one, it was nigh impossible. For another, it was so illegal that even asking too many questions had a way of ruining careers.
"Don't worry about it." Musume was careful not to let any of them mention the danger soon to reach into the past. Just because Crow might be joking now didn't mean he couldn't slip up. "Just go sit in your cupboard." Handing the cat over to Yusei, she happily departed without a single word of contention as Musume glowered at the irritating ginger.
"Can you do that to everyone?" Rubbing away the headache caused by his brothers, a sudden desire to leave the room gripped Yusei as he received another intense glare as her eyes began to glow.
"Stop it." Stepping between the two, Akiza could have sworn her head felt hotter for a moment before the eyes dimmed again. "How did your studies go today?"
"Studies?" That raised a couple of heads with evil grins. "You're studying?" They had, of course, noticed the books but had assumed she was simply trying to find clues about the creatures inside her. Actual studying was another matter.
"Isn't that precious?" Jack knew a little of the turmoil going on inside Musume. He had endured it himself. Which is why he knew she wouldn't surrender to it. "Does she have a little bag for all her little books?"
"With little crayons and tiny pencils?" Neither flinched as she slammed both hands onto the table and actually growled at them.
"Ten to one says she gets pigtails before the day is out."
"Guys." Seeing his brothers get pounded into a pulp would have been immensely cathartic except that Yusei couldn't easily replace the laptops they were using. "Maybe drop it."
"Maybe." Crow agreed. "After the little darling has a nap."
"How would you like a little nap?" Dragging him upright with one hand, the other pressed the side of her sword to his throat. "Permanently."
"Okay, interesting philosophical question." Hurriedly gesturing behind her back that Yusei and Akiza not intervene just in case she stabbed him by accident. "If this sword kills anything evil and I don't die, doesn't that mean it's okay to mock you?"
"You do realise that I'd have to stab you to find out?" Calling her bluff might not be the smartest plan. Then again, he wasn't the smartest man in the room. Possibly the most reckless.
"Can I do it?" Standing up, Jack held out a greedy hand. The chance to stab Crow without any repercussion was too good to pass up.
Looking between the pair and her sword, Musume was barely able to believe that Yusei wasn't even the biggest irritant in the room.
"Oh no." Watching the stand-off develop, Akiza was struck by a horrific realisation. "I can see the resemblance." There was no denying the impossible levels of stupidity on display. Nobody could doubt where Musume learnt it from.
"Look on the bright side." Please let there be a bright side. With scarce seconds available to think, Yusei leapt right to the worst option. "She definitely has your temper." All eyes turned to witness the crowning of the stupidest man alive.
"Pardon?" No, Musume didn't have Akiza's temper. Even she couldn't make them all chill with a single quiet word.
"I'll go and," Swallowing his overwhelming fear, he could practically taste the bleakness of his future. "Check on Phantom?" Multiple eyes watched him carefully edge down the stairs while trying not to exist or show his back.
"Wow." Realising that they were next unless their attitudes sharpened up in a hurry, Musume dropped her victim while the brothers quickly returned to their fruitless pursuits of science.
"Uh-uh." Not having a non-violent activity to return to, Akiza quickly turned the focus on her daughter. "Time you started earning your keep. What can you cook?" Cooking was – surprisingly – one area Crow had talent in. Skills which had hopefully been passed on.
"Ramen?" Or not. She'd have to remind him to fix that mistake.
When in doubt, mock. If mocking fails, mock harder. If that doesn't work, you're not mocking hard enough. Should all else fail, review.