Finally got myself a SARS-nCoV-2 vaccine. Really knocked me down for two days, generalized body pains and chills being the predominant features. Still I'm hopeful for a light at the end of the tunnel for this awful, awful plague. (dear pharma companies: maybe stop hoarding for profit and start distributing outside of the imperial core countries? Thanks)
I hope you don't mind my text messages format btw
X-X-X
Chapter 31
The Siege of Hakone: Twelfth Hour
X-X-X
Having the world appear upside-down and blurry was a perfectly acceptable trade, in Mari's mind, for hanging one's head off the futon instead of getting up in the morning.
Break a siege on Thursday, afteractions on Friday, home in time for the weekend. Nicely done, if I say so myself.
Mari had never been a morning person, and the colder air didn't make it any easier for her to drag herself out of bed. It never got truly cold in Tokyo-3, or anywhere in Japan, really, since the second impact - but the city formerly known as Hakone was at a high enough altitude that as December approached, the scorching summer heat faded into a mild, cool season that often saw temperatures below 5° Celsius in the late night and early morning.
Soon it would be early morning no longer, though. That turning point was reached, in Mari's mind, when Shinji finished preparing breakfast; and from the sounds in the kitchen, he was already well underway.
Asuka was still sequestered in her bedroom, likely dozing. Perfectly normal. Asuka wasn't a morning person either, and often went back to nap longer after breakfast on days that allowed for it - more often than Mari, even.
Much more unusual, Rei was still asleep, curled up on her futon on the other side of the living-room-turned-bedroom. By the sound of it, her breathing was still deep and slow. Usually, Rei was up around when Shinji was.
Maybe she got wrung out by special afteractions. Can't be easy, being the commander's pet… or, maybe she was up later for other reasons…
Mari's thoughts were interrupted by the soft buzz of one of her cell phones vibrating. It was her current primary 'unofficial' contact number.
After a moment of fumbling, she positioned her glasses on her face and flipped the phone open.
[Princess]: hey, four eyes, you awake yet?
[Four Eyes]: I am, actually. Didn't expect you to be.
[Princess]: neither did I.
[Princess]: do you have time to talk?
[Four Eyes]: it's Saturday morning and my day's wide open. What's on?
Asuka didn't reply immediately, and Mari closed the phone, letting her head sink back down to hang back over the edge of the futon. The second child had always been a mess of intense thoughts and feelings; it was a fair bet that she would take some time to get her words in order.
Nearly fifteen minutes later, the phone buzzed again.
[Princess]: When did you realize you… liked girls?
Asuka was easy to tease, and her incendiary reactions were always amusing - at least in the moment. And Mari had teased Asuka so often in the past that sometimes, it could be hard for her to take her little sister seriously.
Well, for me, it was before I was kissing my crush in a bathroom after midnight, but everyone navigates these things at their own pace -
Shaking her head, she deleted the text. No, no. That was clearly a private moment. She doesn't need to know you saw that, at least not yet. It's too new to her for you to be poking the soft spots.
[Four Eyes]: imma cut straight to the chase and assume this is about Blue, yeah?
[Princess]: what? No. Why would you even think that?
[Four Eyes]: I'm going to pretend you didn't just make a pathetic attempt to lie to me. There's no way it's not Rei.
- [Princess] has blocked your number! -
A moment later, a muffled curse sounded from behind Asuka's closed door, and Mari chuckled softly. In her own futon, Rei twitched and shifted a little, but didn't appear to wake.
Mari reached under the futon, picking up one of her other phones.
[FourEyes2]: okay, so let's examine the impossibly unlikely scenario that it's not Rei.
[FourEyes2]: you wouldn't even bring this up if someone hadn't forced you to think about it in some way. Some girl at school, perhaps?
[Princess]: it could be. You don't know the girls at my school. Some of them are pretty cute too!
[FourEyes2]: sounds to me like you've made up your mind about girls already, princess.
Another long pause.
[Princess]: I don't know.
[FourEyes2]: you sure look at Rei like you know. Specifically, like you know you want to kiss her.
[Princess]: I do want to kiss her! But that's not the only thing here!
[Princess]: like, there are cute boys too! I never actually stopped thinking guys were hot!
[Princess]: and now I feel like I don't know which part is really me.
Mari sighed, briefly covering her eyes with her hand. It was only just after 10am - far too early, in her mind, to be dealing with this sort of silliness.
[FourEyes2]: this might sound like more heckling, princess, so just take my word that I don't mean it that way:
[FourEyes2]: you do know that bisexuality… exists, right?
There was another curse from the hallway, louder this time. Rei stirred again, finally lifting her head.
"Mm?" Though not quite a word, the sound was questioning.
"The Princess is having a minor freakout," Mari replied softly.
"Oh." Rei lowered her head again. "Please wake me again if it progresses to a moderate or major freak-out."
Mari couldn't help but chuckle. "Will do."
[Princess]: I hate you.
[FourEyes2]: I love you too.
[FourEyes2]: solid choice, Rei. Sweet, loyal, and super cute if you're into that half-drowned kitten kind of thing.
[Princess]: she's not like a drowned kitten!
[FourEyes2]: not anymore.
[Princess]: … Okay, yeah. That's fair.
[Princess]: and yes, I am 'into' Rei.
Mari let out another quiet chuckle. "Oh, really?" She murmured, amused. "And here I thought you'd meant all those affectionate touches and longing gazes platonically…"
[FourEyes2]: I'm happy for you. She seems to make you happy, and you definitely make her happy.
[Princess]: didn't realize I needed your blessing.
[FourEyes2]: well call me a priest, 'cause I'm blessing you anyway.
[FourEyes2]: can you unblock my other phone, please?
[Princess]: no, that number is still in time-out. Ask me again in a few hours.
X-X-X
There was something that always felt a little unreal, almost magical, about music stores. The kind that sold instruments, that is, not records. The latter merely carried racks upon racks of cassettes and CDs and tended to play loops of popular music in the background; the former, however, were more often half-organized displays of instruments placed wherever they would fit in a cramped, rarely purpose-built space.
And they were quiet. Sometimes as silent as the grave, unless a customer was trying something out. The fancier establishments might even have sound-absorbing material lining the walls, for maximum acoustic quality.
They were some of Shinji Ikari's favorite places on earth.
Cello strings, cello strings…
The store was fairly large, and well-stocked, but there was only a single till clerk and no other customers that Shinji could see. The artificial-city phenomenon reached even into niche stores, it seemed.
A soft twang and an unintelligible murmur from a back corner broke Shinji's train of thought. Oh, I guess there must be at least one other customer, then…
Finally identifying his preferred brand, Shinji reached up, standing on his tiptoes to reach the top of the wire-rack that held dozens of envelopes of coiled strings. He turned back to the cashier, but then stopped.
Well, it's early yet… I can take sometime for myself without making dinner late.
Practically skipping, Shinji turned away from the cashier, moving deeper into the store.
There was only one other cello in the place. It was cheaper than Shinji's own, and the strings were different; a slight scuff to the finish indicated it was second-hand. Still, it didn't look like there was any non-cosmetic damage.
None of the strings broke as he tightened them. He tuned the instrument about as well as he could by ear. Sharper, not as rich. Not my style. I could see someone else liking it, though.
There was another sound, a series of modulated plucked notes, strings on a fret-board. The unseen customer seemed to have moved on from… was that a banjo earlier? Can't tell… to one of the many electric guitars that seemed to haphazardly fill every leftover space in the store.
There weren't many other stringed instruments to catch Shinji's attention. He didn't have the first clue as to how to approach the double-bass, and the small shelf of violins were all out of tune, beyond Shinji's ability without an audio tuner or fork.
The soft whistle of a flute sounded, from somewhere Shinji still couldn't pin down. The store isn't that large, surely? I should have seen them by now, but…
He shook his head, dispelling the strange anxiety. I'm sure I'm just distracted.
In the center of the floor were the largest instruments: the pianos. Since tuning a piano was an arduous task that that not even all pianists would know, it seemed reasonable to assume they would be kept in tune by the store staff, right?
And, although he didn't really know how to play, the grand piano looked too beautifully regal to pass up.
Sitting down at one end of the grand bench, he pressed a sequence of keys experimentally, almost spooking himself with how loud the notes rang out. Still, the sound was bright and clear, the resonance as expected for the note scale.
Wow, okay. Hmm. I'm pretty sure I can read these keys…
He tapped out another series of notes, pecking each key with a single finger and releasing, his hands clumsy, his form a mess. Still, it kind of sounded like the piece he had in mind, a sonata he could have played with his eyes closed on a cello.
Of course, he soon fumbled, finger striking the wrong key, unable to correct.
"Oh, that looks like a difficult piece," came a voice behind him. "Certainly, I do not think I could stretch my own hand so."
Shinji bit back a squeak of surprise, shifting to look at the newcomer.
Standing at the other end of the keyboard was a boy about Shinji's age - or perhaps a little older. It was hard to tell, since he was quite tall, but had a trace of the awkward, gangly posture that came from one's body growing faster than one's motor skills. He also didn't look Japanese; the angular slant of his nose and chin seemed more Slavic than anything else.
Well, that, and the ashen skin and silvery-white hair.
I'd think he had albinism, but albino eyes tend to look blue in dimmer lighting, right? Shinji couldn't fathom why he felt such a strong sense of déjà vu. And his eyes are brown… right? Shit, well, they actually look kind of red at that angle - no, there's the brown again. I must be imagining things.
For his own part, the other boy looked surprised. It was only for a moment, and then it was covered by a neutral, vaguely friendly expression - but Shinji didn't miss it.
Okay, how do normal teenagers engage with conversation? "It isn't written for a piano," Shinji offered. "Y- you play, then?"
"Ah, yes, a bit," the stranger nodded. "My teacher encouraged me to learn, but it's been some time since I practiced."
"My teacher encouraged me to learn the cello," Shinji replied. "Still, I like it well enough now… why did you stop practicing, if I may ask?"
"You may." The boy's indulgent smile was captivating. "The pieces I wanted to learn need a partner to play correctly, and I had none on hand."
"O-oh." Shinji looked away. "Well, good, um, good luck finding one."
"Luck…" The boy's head tilted, and something strange shone in his eyes, there one moment and gone the next. "Such a funny thing, luck."
"Is it?"
"Oh, yes. They say it makes fools of us all. And yet -" he took a deep breath, leaning back slightly and looking up, away at some distant vision far beyond the walls of the store. "And yet I feel lucky. I just can't wait for what tomorrow might bring."
Shinji blinked, half of himself stupefied by the boy's strange behavior, the other half stupefied by his pretty face.
After a moment, the stranger seemed to come back to earth. "I'm Kaworu," he said. "Nagisa Kaworu. May I ask your name?"
"Ikari. Ikari Shinji." Shinji tilted his head.
"Does my name seem strange to you?" Kaworu's expression became serious, although his voice was still light.
"Ah, well… I didn't want to say it, but your name's Japanese, and…"
"And I don't look it, right?" Kaworu nodded. "I get that a lot. I was adopted very young by a Japanese father, but I was born in West Russia."
"Ah, that makes sense. I have another friend like that, actually."
"Oh? Perhaps you'll tell me about them sometime." Kaworu tilted his head, smiling again. "I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Ikari Shinji. I hope I'll see you around."
"Yeah," Shinji replied, smiling back despite himself. "I hope so, too."
X-X-X
This body is 10.68 years old and its heart has beat 448,694,502 times.
This vessel holds the heart of the great soul, the tip of the spear of Lilith's will, but every vessel is connected to her - as many branches of the same tree.
It had taken Rei several tries to willfully enter the strange, formless dreamworld that the vessel of Adam had brought her to before. It was harder than it seemed to direct one's mind while asleep. And it does not seem particularly easy on the surface level, either.
At present, she was alone, floating weightlessly in the LCL-like firmament.
No, there is something else here. I can feel it.
Her grip on the astral connection was tenuous, gentle by necessity. Grasping too tightly would break it and close the place off from her mind for several hours at a time.
This is not the soul of Adam; what I felt in his presence was very different, certainly not a connection. But he mentioned another…
It was like herself. Distinctly different from the toxic, cutting menace of One's presence, or the dying echoes of the various lost fragments - but clearly still kin.
Lilith knows her own.
Finally, Rei opened her dream-self's eyes.
A small red flame, perhaps twenty centimeters tall at the plume, hovered before her. It looked a little unreal, the red too rich to be a real flame, closer to rosey than fiery.
Rei wasn't exactly sure what she had expected, but this wasn't it. Is this what Adam meant by 'a tiny seed of a thing'? It is not fully formed yet, perhaps?
The flame bobbed, radiating confusion.
"I, I think I brought you here," Rei said quickly. "I apologize if I surprised you."
A flicker. Recognition.
"Yes… I am you. Or you are me, perhaps? You are much younger."
But why is there another me? Why is there a Four, when Three yet lives? Does the commander plan to end my iteration already?
The flame bobbed again, swaying gently from side to side. There was another impression - nearly a word, this time.
Three?
"Yes, I am Three." Rei found herself frowning slightly in confusion. If this truly is Four, why is it so childlike? It should bear my memories, if not my emotional development…
The flame flared, a brief sputtering blurring its edges. Nine.
"That is impossible. The next one down would be four."
Nine.
"That is truly the number on your back, then?"
?
Nine.
Name?
"Your name is Nine?"
?
Rei sighed. As Adam had warned, communicating with the creature was a chore.
"You do not exist to replace me."
Negative impression.
"Why, then?"
?
One of Rei's eyes twitched. For a moment, her mind was drawn to Asuka, and how she might, in Rei's place, be scowling and yelling with frustration already. A smile crept across her face at the thought.
"Who made you?"
A dimly lit room, white cloth, cigarette smoke-
Doctor Akagi, then, not the Commander. But why would she bring another one of me to life? And why would she not implant it with a memory backup?
"I suppose, then, that Doctor Akagi and I have much to discuss."
?
Sleepy.
The flame flickered, dimming slightly, and Rei almost laughed. Of course it cannot just leave - it never learned how to close itself off, did it?
Rei let go of the astral thread, and the strange spirit-space almost immediately began to grow darker. "Sleep, then, Nine," she whispered. "I am sure we will speak again soon."
X-X-X
The incredibly long elevator ride had been nerve-racking in extreme, and probably still would have been if Maya hadn't been using faked credentials.
Unfortunately, Terminal Dogma didn't get any better from there. The dim, dusty corridors, devoid of security cameras, signage, or even paint to cover the smoothed concrete, felt more like the passages of a crypt than anything comparable to the laboratories she was used to. There was no hum of ventilation fans, just an eerie, stagnant silence that hung like a heavy shroud over the slightly-too-warm air.
The haphazard, unmapped floor plan didn't help. It took several more minutes of progressively more anxious wandering before Maya found what she was looking for, a door marked AT Chromatography Lab.
Ritsuko had made a set of glasses marked with false iris-prints, to fool eye scanners; they worked well enough. The door slid open and the lights flickered on. One of the fluorescent bulbs kept flickering. It was a safe bet that no repairman had ever been down here.
The nearby walls were lined with many large machines. The schematics simply declared them chromatographs - apparently neither liquid-phase nor gas-phase - and all contained pieces of metal in varying shades of reds and greys in their intakes. Just to the right of the door, a desk with a computer sat beside a pad-shaped AT amplifier on the floor.
At the far end of the room, after a solid 15 meters of bare concrete, was what looked like an induction crucible shrouded in thick, semitransparent shielding.
"Well. Let's get to work, I guess."
Maya went over to the seventh chromatograph, pulling out her thick sheaf of notes and retrieving a sheet of handwritten scrawl from Dr. Akagi, now heavily overlaid wifh her own scribbles. A little surprising that the best alloy doesn't match the color at all.
Noting the test codes stamped on the ingot in the machine's intake, Maya pivoted, heading over to a large bin in the center of the lab floor. She pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves before opening it, then retrieved the appropriate rack within, straining to lift the weight as she moved it to rest on the bin's edge.
Rack of twenty, close to two kilograms per ingot? This rack is a damn workplace hazard - not that anything going on here was ever legal.
Maya frowned, peering at the stamped metal. There were three correct codes, each stamped with a different sub-code. None of the chromatograph specimens had sub-codes. She looked over her mess of notes again, finally locating the information deep in a multi-page spreadsheet of exact metallurgical data: minor variations of cooling rates in casting.
"Ugh, I'm going to have to run all three? Damn it, Senpai, you should never have been allowed to work entirely by your own rules," Maya grumbled. "Your work is fine, but your documentation skills need a lot more polish."
She made to pick up the ingots, but hesitated, remembering the thick layer of grey dust on the internals of the crucible. And these are alloyed with all manner of awful stuff - mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, nickel, thallium, probably every known toxic heavy metal and then some. Setting the tray down carefully, she changed out her gloves for a fresh pair and retrieved a filter respirator from the wall rack.
That done, she put the selected ingots on a transport tray and carried them over to the crucible, carefully opening the shielding.
The dust was even worse than she'd thought. Gradual oxidation had turned it into a more of a crust than a deposit. A suspiciously clean-looking wire brush hung from a hook under the central shielding latch.
And no respect for the equipment! Really, Senpai? Really?
Fortunately, the metallic grime wasn't too difficult to scrub away, and absent the hazard of organometallic toxins Maya wasn't too worried about incidental skin contact - she'd already decided she'd need a shower or three after being down in the dark with Gendo's evil secrets. Under the crumbling rust, the platform was peculiarly stained, the secondary gamma radiation bleaching the hard polymer white - except for a darker beige where the thicker metal pieces had been set.
Was she running every experiment with the same placement? Maya mentally thumbed through the crash-course on metallurgy she'd forced herself to read late into the night before. There's no way she'd note something as small as cooling rates, but then overlook anisotropic geometry, surely?
Then again, she never sleeps right, she works on lots of different things, and she has no assistant down here to catch mistakes…
Making some quick guesses, Maya canted the ingot at a rough angle, somewhere between 35 and 55 degrees off from the 'standard' placement. Let's see if this fixes your mysterious "insufficient diffusion" problem.
Closing and latching the shield, Maya changed out her gloves again before pressing the keypad. Nothing happened, and the control panel remained dark.
"What?" She muttered, muffled by the respirator. "What's wrong with you?"
The machine remain stubbornly inert. Maya leaned back, looking up and down the length of the massive housing, trying to see if there was any damage.
There was no obvious flaw. There was, however, two hazard-yellow cup-like plastic shields closed over large, disconnected plugs in the corner of the room.
"Of course." Maya couldn't help but laugh incredulously. "That's where she gets safety conscious, with the high energy radiation source… fair enough, I guess."
Fortunately, the lockouts were not keyed or padlocked, and it was little effort for Maya to free the plugs and return them to the wall sockets. As she pushed the second one home, the machine beeped happily to announce its startup and internal system check.
Neutron Crucible ready.
WARNING: ionizing radiation, EMF field, high temperatures. Eye and ear protection recommended. Do not operate the crucible without primary shielding fully locked into place.
With a long sigh, Maya changed out her gloves, doffed the respirator and replaced it with a less bulky dusk mask, then donned a set of tinted glasses and heavy earmuffs. Finally, she returned to the control panel.
Reuse prior settings? Y/N
There was a bewildering list of parameters. None stood out as obviously wrong, and Maya knew she didn't have the mental capacity to double-check each line against her notes. She pressed the Y key, then quickly scurried back to where the chromatography tables lay.
Although the induction coils and ingot did glow, distinctly visible even through the dark shielding, it wasn't nearly as bright as Maya was expecting. Hardly what one would think of as a hazard.
The noise, however, was intense. It was more likely cooling fans than mechanical parts; a constant, high-pitched howl that seemed to drill into her skull even through the ear protection. The metal filings on the floor shifted to align with the magnetic field.
A bright green light flashed on the far wall, and Maya looked over sharply. The blinking indicator lit up the words Neutron Dose Rate Monitor on the sign above it, as well as the two still-dark lights beside it: one yellow, the other red.
Before long, another one lit up, a few meters down , and then a few seconds later the first one switched to yellow. The third indicator, mounted just above the last chromatograph, blinked green just as the first turned to red.
Might have brought filtered binoculars, if I'd realized I would be watching from this far away, Maya grumbled, glancing down at the safety lines etched on the floor. Now to hope I don't get bathed in neutron radiation by a shielding malfunction…
Finally, the crucible finished its cycle. The bright glow of the ingot and coils began to fade as they cooled. The fans began to slowly downshift their speed until they were just a soft hum, safe without ear-pro. The neutron detectors blinked out one by one.
Wary of induced radioactivity, Maya elected to handle the treated metal with tongs instead of just gloved hands. Despite this, it didn't take her long to set up the machine to run again, with the same altered placement angle as before. After all, I came down here to experiment.
This time, she didn't linger in the lab. After activating the crucible, she hurried out of the room entirely, braving the unnerving stillness of the Terminal Dogma corridor over the chamber of screaming noise and radiation.
The door proved surprisingly soundproof, despite its automatic mechanism making it seem weightless. Maya relished the opportunity to take off the heavy earmuffs, and she shook her head, trying to work out the neck strain.
Barely a handful of seconds later, she heard the distinctive sound of hard shoes tapping on concrete floors.
She said no one else would be down here!
Quick as lightning, Maya ducked further down the side corridor, rounding a corner and flattening herself against the wall. The footsteps seemed purposeful, but there was always a chance they could -
Stop.
Maya held her breath. The only remaining sound was that of the neutron crucible, the concrete walls and steel door filtering down the earsplitting shriek, leaving only a soft buzzing to leak out into Terminal Dogma.
"Hmm."
It sounded like the Commander. Maya didn't dare move.
After a moment, the footsteps started up again, fading slowly out in the same direction as before.
Finally, Maya let herself breathe. She slowly collected herself, waiting out the crucible's cycle, then ducked back into the AT chromatography lab.
The third cycle was by far the most nerve-racking. Commander Ikari had ignored the noise once, but Maya had no guarantee he'd do so again. This time, instead of just retreating from the radiation zone, she sat down on the floor behind the desk on the back wall, trying to be as invisible as possible to the door's line of sight.
The cycle finished. No one else entered. Maya did her best not to break into a run as she retrieved her specimens.
No time to run them through the chromatographs. If they fail, Senpai can examine them more closely later; I'm skipping straight to tests.
Her hands only shook a little as she carried the tray of three ingots over to the test pad. Though the pad itself was inert, the control computer appeared to have been left on, and with a few keystrokes Maya activated the pad. A shimmering orange AT field appeared a few inches above the pad's surface.
Maya held the first ingot up to the elevation benchmark that was sharpie'd on the wall, and let it fall. It slowed as it struck the AT field, generating a bright flash of light, but then fell through it.
The second ingot cut through the AT field without slowing at all, and the flash was much more subdued. The third ingot behaved comparably to the first.
Whew. At least this wasn't wasted time and needless panic. Maya powered down the pad and carefully repackaged the first and third metal ingots in their storage tray. The second, however, she wrapped in a shroud of shielded polymer and dropped into the pocket of her lab coat.
Congratulations, Senpai, your artificial lancemetal is finally ready.
X-X-X
[Unknown Number]: No, he seems to have somehow not noticed a change in Rei's behavior.
[Misato]: That's a relief.
[Unknown Number]: Agreed. He also seems glad that you aren't as nice to me as you used to be. I think he trusts me more, now. It's useful.
[Unknown Number]: He's even been cutting me more slack for stonewalling the dummy plug program. Oh, and about that, I have something I need to show you soon.
Misato frowned at the burner's screen. Historically, anything Ritsuko 'needed to show her' hadn't been very nice.
[Unknown Number]: I also just recently learned, he's more suspicious of Kaji than you thought. You might want to put that man on a leash if you don't want him to end up mysteriously suicided.
[Misato]: Not Mari, though?
[Unknown Number]: Not to the same degree as Kaji at least. Our dear commander has a developed a bizarre blind spot about pilots.
[Unknown Number]: It's like he thinks his son's spinelessness is contagious. Or maybe he's just going senile early.
[Unknown Number]: Either way, his hubris is our opportunity. Kaji needs to sit on his hands for a while, but that's fine.
[Unknown Number]: Since Gendo seems to trust me again, and Mari's still in the clear, there's plenty that can be done without Kaji.
[Misato]: Thanks for the report.
[Unknown Number]: Of course, Major.
Misato frowned. She knew the formality was part of Ritsuko trying to give her space, but it was still an uncomfortable reminder.
[Unknown Number]: Have to go. I'm getting paged from the radiolab.
Misato closed the flip phone, and went to remove the battery, but hesitated.
No, don't call her, she's busy. Don't be a fool.
She pulled the battery out of the phone, reaching under her desk to drop both pieces into the concealed compartment, and reached for her 'official' phone to make a last check for other reports before leaving.
As soon as she touched the other device, however, its screen lit up with NERV's seal and the word EMERGENCY.
"Fuck."
X-X-X
X-X-X
I lied. It wasn't over.
I hope the arrival of The Boy(tm) makes up for the bait and switch a little bit.
Also can you tell I have strong feelings about industrial safety and PPE? Just be glad I didn't figure out a way to include forklifts lmao