Happy Holidays, I managed to get a chapter out.
As Saria stared into the mirror, she stared back at herself intensely. She looked at her face as though she were trying to bore into her own soul, as though she was interrogating herself. In some ways, she was. She never thought that after a few mere months after leaving Rhine Lab, she would be attending a meeting with them in this hotel again. She trusted Evan, he reminded her a lot of her mentor. At least minus that weird stare he was giving Vigna last night, honestly, people would misunderstand him staring at a young girl like that.
Yesterday was rather eventful by her standards since coming to Rhodes Island. Most days, she worked in Bioengineering or Medical as another researcher. This was her first outing to a meeting where she was part of negotiations, and she had learned the origins of her mentor. She didn't quite know how to think about it. Another world, it sounded too outlandish to be true, but all signs pointed to that being a possibility. No one bothered to cross the ocean and see what other land was out there, but according to Evan, that was not the case. In his case, he claims to have been literally teleported to a different universe entirely.
She had managed to convince Ptilopsis to peek into some of his more restricted information once, and his origin and race were of a clearance level so high only the top four administrators could possibly open it. The medical information, however, was impossible to make sense of. From the archive, not even Warfarin could make sense of his blood entirely. Yes, all signs pointed to his claim being true no matter how she looked at it. All the more reason she had to protect him.
If Rhine Lab ever learned of his condition, they would do everything in their power to take him in. After that, experimentation was the only possible option left. No, Saria would never allow that road to be traveled again. It's one reason she joined Rhodes Island to begin with: Kal'tsit and Amiya forbade human experimentation. They would never condone it under any conditions without proper clearance and safety measures. It was also absent from every contract except those receiving experimental treatments.
No, she would not allow Evan to suffer Ifrit's fate. She would not fail again as she failed Ifrit.
"We're going out!" Vigna shouted to Evan who was sitting on the couch playing on his switch.
"Context Vigna, don't shout vague terms like that," he casually remarked as he thought about the various memes born of what he was doing right now, especially one specific mashup song.
"W-What are you thinking?! I obviously mean we're going shopping!"
Evan chuckled to himself. It felt like this sort of mild humor he could indulge in was unique to Terra's residence. Then again, he didn't spend too much time with other people in general. It used to be that him not caring translated to an unspoken pact of non-communication when it came to other people.
"Hey, don't tease me," Vigna pouted.
"Then don't make it so eas-" Evan started before releasing a hefty sigh. "Goddammit Ornstein."
Casually, he set his switch aside without noticing someone had been looking over his shoulder while playing the whole time. He was happy enough to have Dark Souls on the go, but he honestly missed the jolly cooperation. Sure, he could summon Sun Bro, but boy did he want to try proving himself against the Super Londo Bros.
"Now then, where are we going?"
"Dunno, we'll find out."
"I need more than that, a reminder we're on a time schedule. We have to meet Rhine Lab and Columbian Auto's representatives after lunch," Evan flatly declared, remembering the school trip to D.C. where he was the only one who bothered paying attention to time in his group once. He was happy to see the museums, but they had to rush through as though they were speedrunning the sights.
"I was planning to go look at some local shops, buy stuff for my guitars a certain Procurement Department Head is shite at getting."
"Ok, sold, you had me at calling Closure shit at her job," Evan agreed with a cheeky grin.
"I'll join you, for your protection of course," Sideroca stated from directly behind him. Mildly surprised, Evan leaned to see the busty minosian leaning comfortably in a position where she was clearly watching him play. It seemed to him from the mild amount of steam and wet hair she had just gotten out of the shower.
"The more the merrier," Evan replied with a shrug. The blacksteel trio had already left to take care of their own business, and Saria could put two and two together to figure out he was with some of them. If she wanted to check anyway, she could always call them. But there was another problem. "Do we have transportation?"
That ended up being answered rather quickly as the next thing he knew, Evan was behind the wheel of a car he didn't know how to drive and didn't have a combustion engine.
"Did you really think this through?" Evan asked as he tried to interact with the originium circuit, failing miserably.
"It's a universal originium circuit, can't everybody use those?"
"Ok, but that's only assuming you know how to input commands into the damn thing. How do I start it?"
"The switch on the dash panel...don't you have a car?"
"A different kind! I have keys for it which serve as the starting switch, and...I'm used to having some vibration upon starting it. This thing sounds like an electric vehicle."
"You live in a weird place…" Vigna stated. "Maybe we should just walk…"
"No, no, I got it now. So acceleration is the pedal, and put it in reverse…"
The car jolted and Vigna squealed in fright, grabbing the handlebar by the passenger window.
"Sorry, normally not used to a car being that responsive," Evan stated as he backed out and turned to the exit. Thankfully the brake was just as responsive when he needed to stop.
"Eek!" Vigna screamed as the car stopped, nearly flinging her face forward and down if it weren't for her seatbelt.
"Ok, I should get a handle on this quickly," Evan reassured, driving out of the parking lot. True enough, he did. Out on the road, years of driving once more kicked in and he didn't seem out of place at all. Road systems seemed to be the same in Columbia as in his country, and people were doing the same general thing.
While Vigna gave directions, he took notice of something a little odd around the retail areas. A vast majority of them had signs that said things like 'No Infected', 'Infected keep out', 'Infected not welcome' on many shops. While he had indeed heard about the discrimination in passing, he had to admit his time in Rhodes Island didn't do much to show how bad it was outside. These were practically Jim Crow signs with how they worked. It made him feel sick.
"Are you ok?" Vigna asked, concerned. "You look a little angry."
"Just seeing the bigotry of this world for the first time, damn 'No Infected' signs everywhere…"
"Just keep your eyes on the road, we'll get out of this high and mighty district soon enough."
Sure enough, they got out and into some very different looking districts per Vigna's directions. Even sooner, they had entered what could be called a middle class district where some local shops in the commercial section.
With more and more instruction, the three of them arrived at their destination, some sort of vintage rock store. After having to parallel park, they entered to hear some classic style rock being blared on the background radio and a few memories hit Evan, distracting him for a moment until someone spoke.
"What are you doin' here?" an old man asked crudely as his eyes scanned them. "I don't want no trouble."
Evan looked back to his two companions, then he raised an eyebrow at the man and traced his line of sight to Vigna.
"Hi, I've heard a lot about the store from magazines! I'll just be looking around for now," Vigna happily greeted as though this were the most normal thing in the world. The old man huffed.
"You can look, but don't take unless yur' gonna buy it."
"The hell is his problem?" Evan thought to himself. Vigna affirmed then walked off to see the rest of the store. That's when the old man glanced at Evan and Sideroca.
"Are you two her chaperones or something?" he asked rather differently, but his malice was still apparent. "Make sure she doesn't take anythin' or I'm calling the guard department."
"What is your problem anyway? Do you treat all your customers this way?" Evan spat back.
The old man sneered and said, "That's rich. Do you live under a rock or something? She's a Sarkaz."
"And? What does that have to do with Vigna coming here? She's a customer, do you not want her money?"
"If some grubby Sarkaz hands touched the money, I bet you it's covered in blood."
"You're just a bitter old bigot aren't you," Evan chastised before turning around. He went to go find Vigna who was ogling a rather pricey guitar. When he looked at the price tag, he felt his blood pressure increase past one fifty. It looked like a nice guitar, it had all sorts of gadgets on it alongside an old fashioned whammy bar, but 100k LMD was a lot. "Do you even have the money for that?"
"Yes, actually, I've been saving up for something nice for a while. This and a guitar pick would make great souvenirs. You know what, it's exactly what I've been looking for. I've been trying to find a great affordable guitar like this."
"Hey, if you have the money, treat yourself. Just make sure you don't dip into any necessary spending money."
"I've been saving for something like this since I joined Rhodes Island, but Closure never has one appear because it usually goes outside her budget."
"What a greedy vampire."
"Right?"
The small sarkaz rock enthusiast grabbed the guitar off the rack it sat on and walked up to the counter. Looking at the rather expensive guitar, he raised an eyebrow. "You sure you can buy this?"
"Yes."
"That'll be 150k LMD."
"What?!" Vigna shouted. "Last I checked the sales tax for the infected was fifteen percent!"
"I say it ought to be fifty," the old man grumbled. "But, sure, I can pull it down to 140k, I thought you said you could afford it. If not, put it back."
"This is highway robbery."
"I'm the one who should be saying that, your infected devil hands touching something they can't even afford."
"What's going on here?" a new voice asked from the door to the backroom. Heads turned to the source, a middle aged man who took one look at the situation and sighed before saying, "Dad, are you harassing customers again?"
"They were the ones harassing me!" the old man barked.
"Go in back, I'll take over the register for now."
The old man got out of his seat and grumbled some obscenities before slamming the backroom door shut. Once he was out, the manager or owner turned to them and said, "I apologize for my father. He wanted something to do out of retirement, but every time a sarkaz customer enters he does stuff like this."
"It's fine, so long as I don't have to charge his 150k."
The manager laughed, "Yeah, he tries to get sarkaz, especially, to pay outrageous sums. That will be 120k LMD."
"Did they raise the tax again?" Vigna grumbled, handing over the money. "Why did they do it by a whole five percent?"
"Didn't you hear? Trade routes through Ursus have been treacherous from some band of infected wandering the tundra, and Ursus has tariffs on imports. Sucks that I have to charge my customers more because the likes of Rhine want to offset paying taxes to export more equipment."
"So why just tax the infected?" Evan asked, earning a rather bewildered look from the owner.
"He's…not from around," Vigna uneasily stated.
"Ah, well…I'm not entirely sure, isn't it natural that the infected are the first to be burdened when things go south? Not that I personally agree with all of it, but it's just natural."
"It's also called oppression where I come from. A pretty shitty gear of society, putting down one group so the other can benefit a little more."
At this point, Evan was used to the weird stares he got, after all he had a lot of ideas never before heard of on Terra run out of his mouth it seemed. The fact oppression was one of them was especially concerning.
"That is…interesting to say the least. Do you come from Leithania, I hear they're very tolerant of the infected there, much more so than Columbia. Not to mention the universities there are known to focus on philosophy and art."
"W-We have to go now, thank you very much for the guitar!" Vigna hurriedly pushed Evan out. As soon as they were out of sight of the store, she pointed to Evan harshly and whisper-yelled, "Are you trying to blow this up in your face?! We're going to meet with Rhine Lab and you almost blew it to some random shopkeep that you're not from Terra."
"How did you know I was going to blow it?"
"It doesn't take a genius to see the dumb look on your face when he mentioned Leithania. At least try to hide your curiosity for places you've never seen or heard before or we may have serious trouble."
"Ok, yes ma'am."
"Hmph," Vigna huffed before turning her head away and walking off back towards the parking lot. Did she really have to word it that harshly?
After entering the car and starting to drive back, Evan thought about what just transpired.
"Vigna, are you treated like that regularly?"
"Not all the time, but as an Infected Sarkaz, I do have to deal with those kinds of assholes on a regular basis. It's normal for us to be treated like shit, so fighting for our dignity is an everyday battle."
Evan didn't really want to know anything at that point as he felt something dark swelling deep in his soul. Why was humanity cursed to treat its own so badly? He could understand reasonable dislike, but hatred for someone you never met or known of before seemed stupid to him. He had to wonder after that, who else was treated unfairly? Were all infected treated the same way or did it depend on race as well?
Any dark continuations were stopped when some string plucking was heard and Evan got to see Vigna with a big smile on her face, maybe everything wasn't so bad as long as he stayed where he was. If it took him this long to see such a divide in the world, maybe that spoke more to Rhodes Island's character.
"Alright, time to take a nap. Too much people for one day," Evan muttered as he flopped onto the couch. Minutes ago, their first meeting in one of the hotel's conference rooms had ended. While Saria said that the meeting went well, he just felt exhausted and wanted to punch something from how exhausted he felt.
"If you'd like, you can use my lap as a pillow," Franka offered, patting her thighs on the other side of the couch. Evan had slumped from an end of the furniture and his legs were angled off the armrest of his side. He looked up to see the smiling vulpo with her fluffy tail offering her rather well endowed thighs and said, "Screw it…" before he crawled lazily over to plop his head on them.
"Well aren't you bold when tired~" Franka cooed, rubbing his head and wrapping her tail over his shoulders.
"The ego depletion in my prefrontal cortex right now is no joke, I don't think I could resist an offer from you now. Well played, Franka."
The vulpo giggled and gazed with slanted eyes to Liskarm who had a rather mixed expression that screamed of something between disapproval and envy. She turned away and gave a small huff.
"If you want, I could give you one too," Franka teased her partner whose response was to just sigh and walk off to her room, clearly done with Franka's shenanigans.
"She's missing out, I could fall asleep, and I just might," said Franka's current lap pillow customer lightly with his eyes closed.
"We'll enter negotiations tomorrow, so please rest up if this is your limit. Actual negotiations of the finer points and establishing a contract will be far worse than the introduction of the device," a certain quad-horned Vouivre stated flatly.
"Well we worked our way into that somewhat, but I get what you mean. I'll share what I have in mind…" Evan responded with his head still in Franka's lap. It was quite comfy after all. "I say we do the bulk of research and Rhine Lab can fine tune it and manufacture necessary parts. Columbian Auto can then build the finished product for cars. Rhine Lab could be in charge of making and distributing generator versions that we'll come up with in Rhodes Island. Selling the product through recognized companies would ultimately be the better choice I think."
"There are several problems with that, but I see where you're going. Rhodes Island doesn't have the necessary facilities for mass production of industrial equipment, but Rhine Lab does. In order to prevent Rhine Lab from doing the majority of the work, you want to make Rhodes Island the central R&D facility for these projects?"
"Well, not to brag or anything, but I am the only one in this world that remotely knows anything about the core principles of these engines. So long as I stay in Rhodes Island, Rhine Lab doesn't have the necessary knowledge of the core principles."
"I see, so you're suggesting that Rhine Lab has limited R&D capacity due to their lack of knowledge of the subject, interesting. I think that is enough to start with tomorrow. I'll leave you to…rest now."
The last portion was said with a good deal of uncertainty by Saria whose eyebrows knit in confusion seeing the sight of Evan using Franka's lap as a pillow. It certainly was a strange way to rest. That aside, she was satisfied with his thoughts on the matter. It seemed he had given it more thought than she assumed and was truly just tired.
After returning to her suite room, Saria put some thought into Rhine Lab's representatives, Gregory and Frieder. Those two were accomplished engineers specializing in moving parts, especially those related to vehicle production. They were also somewhat clean compared to others of their statute, minus a few illegal workshop modifications. It didn't seem to her that they were trying to gain anything, and even if they did it was swiftly forgotten during Evan's presentation as they asked loads of questions. If anyone could learn the basic principles of the engine though, it would be them. They were obsessed with cars, and a new form of running them would certainly prompt them to understand the core principles behind it.
Of course, she could be looking into it too much, and Saria was worried about what would happen if Rhine Lab wanted to send people to Rhodes Island. After all, Ifrit was in Rhodes Island with Silence as her guardian. There were very few people they would be comfortable allowing near Ifrit among their former colleagues. Hopefully if people did have to spend time at Rhodes, it would be someone they could trust. That would have to be a problem for tomorrow though.
So, Christmas is in a couple days. Tomorrow I'm giving blood, so IDK what the anemia induced by the power red will do. I'll also be going to the schlong of America, so I'll be busy. I might do writing. Right now, I'm tired from preparing for Christmas today, so this AN is gonna be short. Thanks as always for reading and supporting the story.