Alright, double digits. Also, this is going to be the last disclaimer, so cheers.

Real events, methods, or people described in this shouldn't be taken as solid fact even if they are.

All copyright credit goes to their rightful owners.

Next time, pre-chapter ramble will be something different. Enjoy.

Evan Carvey, File Entry 1

The situation of Evan is rather complicated, none of his history points to any place on Terra. In addition, his medical records suggest an impossible Originium blood density of 0u/L. His vitals, anatomy, and physiology are all remarkably ordinary which does not suggest any unique racial ability. This could be because Evan has no racial features to speak of, no tail, ears, horns, scales, teeth, or anomalies that suggest anything. In fact, his racial appearance is akin to that of Ægirians who have transformed their appearance for terrestrial life.

Despite being closest in racial appearance and originium blood density to Operator Skadi, Evan insists he has no connection to the mysterious Ægir region. His physical and fitness assessment make it abundantly clear that beyond appearance and blood density, Skadi cannot be compared to him. His physical strength is, in fact, more on par with Operator Weedy who has struggled to pass fitness tests as a Field Operator and is still struggling to pass the Combat Operator exams.

Furthermore, Evan has shown extensive understanding of scientific principles never before tested and principles with cryptic origins and little explanation. He even mentioned 'Atomic Theory' which has only been mentioned by Operator Saria's mentor in Rhine Lab, Doctor Wernhoff. Wernhoff himself was a very enigmatic figure within Rhine Lab with an equally mysterious origin to Evan Carvey. He was notable in introducing Terra to much more precise methods to measure substances as well as their makeup. It's thanks to him we can now define what elements exist within substances and measure them with incredible precision. He also gave Terra the concept of chemical structure which has allowed the creation of new materials to propel Terra further into the modern age.

From all this information, it can be concluded that Evan Carvey shares an origin with Doctor Wernhoff. Wherever they hail from, it can be concluded Originium does not exist in enough quantities to be useful, and the residents had to study the world in much greater detail to approach our level or higher in technological advancement. Operator Ptilopsis will continue investigation with the new insight.

"Thank you so much for getting me out of there."

"It was nothing, besides, we left Closure alone in there, so it is a little cathartic," Weedy responded with a small grin on her face.

After Ptilopsis had asked to take shifts in Engineering, she had begun hounding both Evan and Closure relentlessly. Well, it was more like intense inquiry for Evan and nagging Closure to allow her to spend time in engineering. In the chaos of Closure and Ptilopsis having a very heated discussion on bureaucracy and Closure's periodic disregard for it that was borderline blackmail, Evan and Weedy snuck out. After all, Evan had plans to go speak with Saria about yesterday, and he knew where she would be thanks to Ptilopsis.

Weedy led Evan to an elevator which they took to the first floor and down a hallway not too far away from medical. At the end was a door which was well sealed off and even contained a biohazard warning on it. Before heading in, Weedy handed Evan a full face gas mask with hers already on.

"Don't worry, it's my spare."

"A spare gas mask? Well, whatever," Evan thought to himself as he placed the device on his face. After that, the flying robot named 'Leaf' opened the sealed door and they walked inside. The door was resealed afterwards, and he got his first glimpse at the Bio-engineering department. Unlike the messiness of the Engineering Department which mostly existed on the lower fourth floor, every surface was clean and various lab equipment laid organized as various people in white coats did their experiments. "Just like chemistry labs back in university."

Near one of the fume-hoods, Saria in a lab coat with protective goggles over her eyes and a clipboard jotted down some notes of a petri dish which clearly had bacteria growing on it along with a number of small black crystalline structures forming from it. As soon as Evan was behind her, she held out her hand with a single finger up. Shortly after, a miraculous event took place within the fume-hood. One of the crystals began glowing and after light obscured and bent, it grew a small bit. Notes were jotted and the fume hood was opened. A small beaker of mysterious clear red fluid was poured on the petri dish and the fume hood sealed once more. Shortly after, a sharp set of hissing, cracking, and other odd sounds came from the hood as a black powder emerged from the dish.

"Thank you for being patient, I-" Saria began as she turned around. Once her eyes sat on Evan, she stopped speaking and set her clipboard down on a nearby table. "Hello, what brings you to Bioengineering today?"

"Could I talk to you when you have time?"

"Is this about yesterday?"

"Yes."

Saria gave the first sigh Evan had seen from her and she picked up her clipboard.

"Come with me."

Somewhat surprised, Evan obliged and they walked out of the room and down the hallway until she opened up a door which led to what looked like a small conference room. Evan removed his gas mask once they were out of the lab and Saria placed her goggles down on the table. Then she immediately turned around and asked, "How is Ifrit doing?"

When she asked that question, her eyebrows arched upward slightly and her eyes seemed to glimmer sadly. It didn't last for long, but it showed Evan that Saria did indeed care.

"She's shaken up about it. She and Silence got in a fight, and she spent the night in my dorm."

"Really?" Saria asked with a slightly higher tone and her eyes going wider. "Ifrit must trust you then, which is unusual."

"Maybe...I guess I do have an understanding of kids like her. I was one of them, troublesome and resistant to authority."

After saying that, Evan saw Saria smile for the first time since meeting her. It was a warm smile, a loving one that he could tell meant she was happy for someone she loved. Truly, it looked as though she had transformed completely in that moment.

"I see, it's wonderful to know she has someone like you to depend on."

"You really care for her, so why are you avoiding her?"

Any joy once seen on Saria's face snapped off and was replaced with a brief look of pain before she looked Evan in the eye with her regular stern expression, but with her eyebrows pointed in further and her lips tighter.

"I know about the incident, I heard Silence's side of the story."

"Then you should know what she said is true," Saria replied, pausing for a while before she walked a couple steps forward and straightened up. "I failed Ifrit, I couldn't protect her. Silence has that much right, I failed as Rhine Lab's Head of Defense, and I failed Ifrit herself."

"Ifrit doesn't see it that way, she misses you."

She paused, a brief look of shock washing over her face like a wave, a single ripple that was gone in a moment. She closed her eyes, expression softening.

"Then, you may tell Ifrit this: No matter what happens, I will always protect her." Saria picked up her clipboard and walked to the door. Before she left, she added one more thing. "You don't have to play mediator to the problems of Rhine Lab."

The door shut, leaving Evan alone in the conference room.

"I see…" Silence replied while staring into the library table. "I never thought Saria…" Her head turned, and Silence's eyebrows arched upward as her pupils seemed to quiver. It was clear there was a lot going on in her head, so Evan just retreated into his own book. This particular book was given to him by Silence, and it was really quite interesting. A text on various life on Terra and their infected counterparts. On the other side of the table, Silence had Evan's own biology text. Of course, comparing notes was just an excuse for them to talk about Evan speaking to Saria.

"Even though I am under a non-disclosure agreement, I know almost nothing about the actual incident. I was just an unfortunate observer to its results. Perhaps I was too harsh on Saria, when she came to me with Ifrit, her clothes were in tatters and burn marks were visible. I'm honestly surprised she herself didn't end up infected like Ptilopsis or I."

"Why would the fire be infectious?"

Silence's gaze snapped up to Evan, and she looked at him without a word for several seconds before answering, "I'm afraid that would violate the non-disclosure agreement."

Evan gave a short 'tsk' in response then looked back into his book, replying, "Sounds to me like Rhine Lab was experimenting irresponsibly. Clearly they messed with something until they couldn't control it and it blew up in their faces. Then to try and sweep all that under the rug, it's damn shameful."

Silence's gaze returned to Evan from her book, and she watched a little before commenting, "You sound like Saria, she was always concerned with that kind of thing."

"You mean Ethics?"

"Ethics?" Silence asked curiously, tilting her head. "What does that mean?"

"It's about applying morality. How does research or development affect those around it? Asking oneself whether or not going through with a plan is worth the cost in lives and livelihoods in the people or the environment. It's a pretty common concept where I come from."

"Your world sure is fascinating. That certainly explains some of the talk of habitat destruction or human interference in your book. It must be a peaceful place if you can think about something like 'ethics'."

"No," Evan replied, earning Silence's gaze once again. "Just because we don't have originium and have moral codes in science doesn't mean we're peaceful. We're all still plagued by greed, political strife, oppression, and all forms of disasters all the same. It took over a century before we realized ignoring irresponsible industrial practices or disasters would harm others on a massive scale. Even with ethics, we still turn a blind eye to some of those problems for our convenience."

"If that's the case, why bother worrying about it?"

"Because doing something is better than doing nothing. Just because it's not a perfect solution doesn't mean it should be thrown away."

Silence merely nodded and hummed before they returned to their separate books. Of all the things Evan read, this had to be one of the most fascinating. He could tell that creatures evolved their own defenses to originium and oripathy, and they could even use it to their advantage in unique circumstances. One creature mentioned a lot was the Originium Slug, a strange being that was surprisingly adaptive. Mentioned in the book was that the slug had two physiologically separated components to its body. An outer infected shell and an interior uninfected shell separated by an odd membrane organ which was rich in chemicals capable of suppressing, absorbing, or even processing originium. It was also highly adaptive, and anomalous specimens were reported to be able to utilize the originium for defensive purposes. Specimens capable of reaching high levels of arts usage were about as rare as siamese twins however.

Beyond the slugs, the defenses against oripathy became more subpar and less effective. More complex, mammalian life had little more than an immune response to the disease which was ineffective to say the least. Due to this clear gap, originium slugs seemed to be the most well-researched specimen.

What was rather concerning was the fact that oripathy infection opened a window into the infected creatures for casters to control with arts. It seemed that the capacity to control an infected creature was related to its intelligence.

In the midst of his reading, Evan felt someone yank his shirt and he looked over to see Ifrit. Behind her was a younger girl with braided blonde hair and a lot of tails behind her. Aside from the many, fluffy, cute little tails, he took notice of the young girl's left arm which had oripathy lesions lining it.

"Ifrit, who's your friend?"

At that question, the little demon crossed her arms and pouted away from both Evan and the little nine-tailed vulpo who giggled cheerfully at Ifrit being a tsundere.

"Hello, my name is Lisa, I'm also a combat operator in training under the codename Suzuran. It's a pleasure to meet you, Evan-san," she greeted with a bow.

"I think I just got diabetes," Evan thought to himself as he watched Lisa introduce herself. His brotherly and parental instincts were going into hyper-drive, and he had to resist the urge to touch the many, many floofies.

"Nice to meet you too, Lisa," he replied with a little bow of his own. "Why did you and Ifrit come to see me?"

"Ifrit-chan said you're very good at math Evan-san. Our regular instructor is out on a mission, and we didn't get a substitute. Since you've been helping Ifrit around this time, I thought that...maybe you could help the rest of us...please?"

The small, adorable being bowed again as she fidgeted with the staff in her small hands.

That did it, he would protect and nurture this precious little cinnamon bun all he could. He didn't entirely know why either. Something about Lisa called to him. If not for the fact he was completely heart healthy, he swore he got heart palpitations.

"It would be my pleasure, lead the way."

"Thank you very much!" Suzuran exclaimed with a deep bow and a beaming smile. Without much else being said, the three of them wandered off to another part of the library, leaving Silence to just stare into empty space for a while, trying to process what she had just seen.

Never before in his life did Evan ever imagine he would be in this situation. Sure, he was in his mid-twenties, but he could never ever have imagined that today, he would be sitting at a cafeteria table, listening to a girl who was technically his boss, complain to him like a broken record.

Closure didn't often come to the cafeteria, but today was special. The vampire was sick and tired of the day, and had decided Evan was the perfect outlet to vent all her problems into. Sure, he knew how to listen, but that didn't mean he enjoyed being Closure's outlet. Her problems seemed downright selfish or silly. Right now, she was telling him about how Ptilopsis basically blackmailed her into requesting those shifts. Apparently Doctor Kal'tsit had to greenlight the transfer since the computer owl answered to her. This combination was just one reason why Closure was beyond herself this lunch break.

"Then, I hear that one of our contracts in Ursus got sliced, again! This is the fifth time this year that we've had that happen. If this keeps up we won't have any foothold left in that frozen wasteland. Sourcing that crap from Columbia is expensive, and Victoria's tariffs make buying from there out of the question. At least with Columbia I get what I pay for, but we don't need that much bang. I might as well just rip apart some Raythean machinery and cobble it together myself to get the necessary dependability."

Honestly, he had lost track long ago what she was complaining about. Sadly, there seemed to be no escaping this situation. After lunch, he had to go work in engineering again. Not to mention today was the day he had to work with some of the other engineers to further advance the engine and battery prototype. It was honestly kind of fun to work on an actual project, even if it wasn't nearly as advanced as he would have liked.

Of course right now, he missed having access to the internet. Anything Evan could do on his phone would call for way too much of his attention, and he had tried only to get chewed out by the vampire. Now, he was only left praying for divine intervention to give him an excuse to not listen or to forcefully change the subject.

"Evan-san," a young voice sweetly called. Closure finally shut up to see its source, and Evan turned his head to see Lisa holding a small mini cake wrapped in paper. Once she had his attention, she gave a big, joyous smile and handed him the cake. "Thank you for helping us yesterday, you were a really good teacher."

"Oh, it wasn't that big of a deal. I'm happy to help."

"That's wonderful, do you think you could help us again?"

"I'm in the library most evenings, so just come look for me if you or the other children need help."

"Thank you very much," Lisa graciously replied with a deep bow. "We all look forward to seeing you again."

With another set of thanks that ended up in a small bowing match, Lisa took her leave and Evan turned to see Closure looking at him with a really cocky smirk that had both her pearly white fangs poking out like snake fangs.

"So, little Suzuran, huh? First Ifrit, and now her. How many little girls are you going to become friendly with, hm?"

"I regret praying for divine intervention now!"

"Well, it's about time to go, so take my tray over and get started. I have to go to the Blood Bank and grab a little after-meal drink."

Did God treat his prayers like a damn monkey paw? He really had to wonder since anytime he actually asked for help from a higher power in this world, it seemed to have a sick sense of humor in giving him that help. Everything from Ch'en and Swire arguing in his first week to now just seemed to be met with a twist that harmed him. It certainly didn't help that Closure was still treating him like an errand boy.

After taking Closure's tray over along with his own, Evan left the cafeteria and made his way to the first floor's engineering section which contained several workshops, including one that was almost always noisy with its refining and crafting. Certainly, he had to admit he was impressed with the materials engineering of Terra. Carbon bricks and carbon-based building material was so common that he had to wonder if this really was a world without Atomic Theory. Sadly, that seemed to be the case as when he was talking to some engineers about allotropes of carbon, they seemed completely dumbstruck that diamond and graphite were barely different from the carbon blocks they used in construction.

Speaking of engineers, Evan was assigned to work with two in the workshop. One specialized in moving parts and structure, and the other in electrical engineering and power generation. The latter greeted him after recovering from the shock of him walking in unannounced.

"M-Mister Carvey, good day. I-I was just going over the capabilities of the batteries. D-Don't worry, I didn't destroy any more research materials," a young boy stuttered at the start of every sentence.

"It's fine Greyy, so long as you remember that we don't use arts to control the devices. Has Harald popped in at all?"

"No, I haven't seen him yet. Maybe Miss Closure is having him assist her in lower maintenance again?"

"Not possible, the vampire decided to give me a headache during lunch. Find anything new with the batteries?"

"No, but I'm still struggling to understand the principles behind them. Your devices are very strange. It would be much easier and efficient to just use arts to create a polarized rod, but you've insisted we cannot use originium at all."

"I'd rather not mess with a magic rock with cancer as a side-effect, thank you," Evan remarked as he walked over to a table with a bunch of engine components as well as a partially constructed combustion engine. Some of the parts, especially the pistons were taken out and a ruler was sitting by them. "Well, the beaver was here, so maybe he's doing some metalwork?"

Almost as if on cue, the door was slammed open, giving the perro shota such a startle he visibly discharged electricity into the test circuit. The smell of smoke immediately alerted Evan who had decided to keep the fire extinguisher out and ready at all times since this kind of thing happened a lot now. Thankfully, all that seemed to have burned out in the circuit was a disposable fuse.

"Oh, hey Evan," an oddly high, but very much adult male voice spoke to Evan. Turning around, he saw Harald in all his beaver glory. Brown fur, orange teeth that were chipped on the end, and a large paddle tail. Goggles were pulled over the forehead, and his stubby rodent hands were holding a box with metallic clinking sounding every time he moved. "I got a great idea for the engine. Since it creates electricity by spinning, what if we also upped the size and power to be comparable to the originium dynamos found in cars?"

"You don't say," Evan remarked sarcastically, with his voice completely monotone. Clearly, the rodent man didn't hear him as they began outfitting the newly made parts into the engine. That was when Evan noticed him hooking the pistons up to an axle. "Yup, that's how cars work where I'm from."

"Are you serious?!" Closure's voice sounded from an intercom speaker. The result was a bunch of spilled lubricant and greasy engine parts spilled on the floor which was then ignited by Greyy's static. "You can make cars like this?! Hold on I'm clearing my schedule for a bit."

"I really have to watch my mouth," Evan told himself as he switched on the fire extinguisher he was already holding.

I'm honestly surprised I got this out. The last month and a half has been rough. My sense of time feels like it's inverting on itself through five different dimensions to the point that the last month has felt like a blur, a blink, an eternity, and nonexistent at the same time. I'm getting help, but bear with my writing schedule as I work through this first true experience of grief for me. When I started writing this story, I said Evan would be a reflection of me. For me at the time it was a reflection of a possible future that has become and still is becoming a reality: A dead mother, and a man who earned his undergrad in his mid-twenties. At the start of the writing, I had hope. I was hopeful that there was a chance this future wouldn't come to be exactly.

Don't get me wrong, I adore writing this story. Maybe I can make it a source of inspiration for my own life.

Anyhow, time for some impromptu unnamed responses to reviews.

As for racial traits of Evan. Yes, I described him as caucasian (white) in chapter 1, but beyond that I'm leaving all forms of race out of the story. That just seems like red alarms to me. Hell, I'm not even a 'normal' white guy. I'm an introvert who has no social life to speak of. I've never been to a bar with friends for the two years I've been of drinking age, my entire body including lips has their V-card, and I consume no media besides animated shows, games, and online writing. Not to mention this story takes HEAVY inspiration from Japanese writing (namely anime and Lite Novels), so please, leave all racial stuff to rot on the highway like Evan's existence on Earth. Poof.

The fact people can compare my work to Dr. Stone is something I never thought of. Maybe I did take a smidge of inspiration, but as the writer that seems so far-fetched a comparison. Like, holy shite, people comparing my work to that masterpiece? All I'll say is that comparison is entertaining, but Terra has plenty to teach Evan as well. I've made passing notes on what Terra seems to clearly lack: Modern perspectives on psychology and sociology, epidemiology as a whole, an understanding of physics beyond basic freshman chemistry, ethics or similar branches of philosophy, and global conflicts that show the folly of overzealous nationalism.

As for lore and stories, hah! Arknights Lore is so convoluted and poorly explained I'll just write with it as it goes. I'm far, far, far away from any of this grimdark original sin level conspiracy that Terra is wrapped up in. I'm just here to have fun with the setting and a cliched idea. The vast majority of event stories are so well-contained I only have to worry about basic timeline stuff so easy to plan around my dreams might do it. I could even have Evan involved in Maria Nearl towards the end if I wanted to. Though, the recent event does give me an idea with the Emperor's Blade...if this story doesn't die before I can even touch that.

Thank you for reading, see you all later.