My great battle against the Scion entity was complete. Now, I was lost, not merely in time and space, but for purpose, for destiny. I had achieved my destiny, defeated the greatest foe possible... what was I to do now? Soon, I would begin my search for an answer.
Super Dimension Magical Girl Lyrical Skitter, Episode One, hajimarimasu!
--- * --- 1 --- * --- 1 --- * ---
I've woken up in enough hospital beds to know what they're like. Cheap white sheets, bleached and washed too many times. Thin mattress. Sensor pads and IVs. The soft, plaintive beeping of a heart monitor. I actually had to pause and think for a moment, remembering how I'd gotten here. Was it Behemoth? The oil rig? No, wait, that's right. The empty Earth. My power out of control. I'd just been getting a handle on speech when Contessa found me. "Having our own pet Endbringer puts us in the 'too dangerous to live' category," I mumbled. Gunshot. Pain. Darkness. Cheap, scratchy sheets. No bugs.
No bugs.
I couldn't feel -anything- in my radius. No humans. No bugs. No other animals. Either I was in some sort of ultimate isolation, or whatever Contessa had tried had worked. I was alive, at least somewhat lucid, and - seemingly - without my powers.
It was time to get up and get moving, find out where I am and who's holding me. I started to roll to one side to push myself up and off the bed, only to discover that I was stuck to the mattress somehow. Okay, this was new.
It also meant that whoever had found me didn't want me moving. Which might mean that they knew who I was, and assumed I was dangerous even without my powers. Or that might be why I couldn't sense anyone, they were keeping out of my range to avoid being taken over.
Smart of them.
I kept pushing myself up, maybe I could break free of it, or tear the mattress free of the bed. Just had to get out of the room, find out where I was....
The door opened.
Wait. What? I hadn't sensed anything, no one in my range, but the door was open, and someone was coming in. Tall, vaguely asian, light brown hair, male. I narrowed my eyes to focus on him.
"Please, just lie back and relax, miss. Don't try to sit up. You've been through some pretty serious injuries and you're still recovering." He had an odd accent, slightly fluid, but with some strange tones. Like something Eastern European filtered through Chinese. It was actually kind of nice.
"Where am I? What is this place? And who are you? And can I get a glass of water?"
With a casual shrug, he sat down on the chair next to the bed and waved his hand at the frame. The mattress moved with a slight hum, repositioning itself so I could sit up to talk with him. I sighed softly and laid back against the pillows. He set a cup of water in a cradle near my head, with a straw that let me sip at it when I wanted to.
"Well," he started. "To answer your questions in order, you're in the infirmary at the Baerzen Memorial Research Institute. Which, to address your second question, is a research facility assigned to investigate the dimensional anomaly we call the Baerzen Wall. As for me, I'm the Institute's chief medical officer, Doctor Hiram Yamada."
I blinked. Stared at him.
"... What?"
He repeated the explanation. More slowly. And added, "I -am- sorry, miss. We had hoped you wouldn't suffer any reduced capacity from the injury. I'm going to need to run a series of cognitive tests, I hope you don't mind."
Injury. Right. I'd been shot. Twice. In the head. By fucking Contessa. "How - how serious was the damage?"
"Obviously not unsurvivable. You seem to be lucid, if slightly confused, but that's understandable." He paused for a moment, then asked, "If I could ask your own name, to start with?"
The tests took several hours, actually, and I considered myself rather fortunate that they also provided me with a meal while we worked. I was asked to solve math problems, recite poetry and tongue-twisters, answer questions about passages I'd read, and more. "Damn, I'd thought I was done with school," I muttered at one point.
"You're never done learning," Doctor Yamada told me. "Not until you're dead. And since you are clearly not dead...."
He'd mentioned a dimensional anomaly before, but I hadn't put it together yet. If they actually have people that study dimensional physics, though, then... they've got to be familiar with alternate-dimensions to begin with. Which means I'm probably nowhere near Earth Bet. Which ... might be a good thing. First things first... "I'll wait, then, Doc. You're the medical type, just how bad off am I?"
He consulted his clipboard, settling back in his seat. It wasn't really a clipboard, some sort of tablet computer.
"The biggest issues when you arrived, well, I'm sure you were aware of the amputated arm, that seems to have been some time ago?"
I nodded.
"And of course the gunshot wounds to the head. Those seemed to be much more recent," he said. "We've gotten those taken care of, mostly; they seemed to be fairly clean wounds to begin with. The cognitive tests don't show any noticeable degradation, of course, we can't really compare it to your previous state, so we can't be fully certain on that. We did have to completely remove the remains of the augmented node, however. I'm sorry, but it was unsalvageable."
Augmentation? What in - oh. My powers. Not working. Fucking Contessa must've shot me right in the Corona Pollentia. That explains that.
"It's - well, uhm," I said, then my stomach rumbled, rather loudly. "It's going to take some getting used to, operating without it."
"Well, don't worry," he said. "We may not use that kind of internal augmentation for magic use here, but we're not unfamiliar with the principles."
I paused. Blinked. Set down the water cup. "You call it magic?"
He shrugged, leaning back a bit in his seat. "I really don't know what else we'd call it. It's been the basis of our technology for centuries now."
I closed my eyes for a moment to think about it. Centuries? Magic?? I held up a hand to stop him talking while I thought about that for a minute. Magic. I suppose if we'd gotten our first parahumans before we knew enough science to understand what was happening, we'd have decided that was what was happening. But if it's the basis of their technology... yikes. And he mentioned a dimensional anomaly earlier...
After another sip of water, I asked, "So, what do you do? Or is it, uhm, rude or something to ask?"
"No, no, not at all." He made a few notes on his clipboard-tablet and nodded. "I'm a medical specialist, so of course I focused on useful spells and procedures for that. Diagnostics, tissue scanning, trauma treatment, that sort of thing. I can do basic shielding and offense - " he lifted a hand, there was a swirl of weird writing around his wrist, and a forcefield gleamed into existence in front of his hand. "Got that in 'Principles of Thaumaturgy'. Almost everybody can manage a low-level like that one."
Everybody? Powers weren't supposed to be that neat and simple. If everyone could learn everyone else's - Part of me imagined what I could've done with Tattletale's Thinker powers, or Vista's space-warping. If I could've learned anyone's powers, like some kind of new Eidolon? Damn. I'd have had the PRT and the gangs in a bidding war, or worse. And here they took it for granted. That meant I had to assume that anyone I ran into on this base would be able to pull off something like that. That upped the game considerably, and without my own powers... best to just play along, for now.
"It's... very different from what I'm used to," I said, cautiously.
"Well, don't worry," he said. "Security will issue you a basic Device; it's standard for guests. With your permission I'd like to have it include a medical monitor, so we can keep track of your vital signs in case you have any further complications."
I'd been expecting that, for certain. No way they were going to let a complete stranger walk around a secure facility.
"Tell you what, Doc, show me how to run the program, and interpret the readings, so I can see what's going on myself, and you're on."
He looked up at me for a moment, tapped something on the tablet, then said, "I'm afraid that's not a metaphor I'm familiar with, but may I assume it implies consent, subject to the caveat you named?"
"You may," I assured him, and anything else I was going to say was interrupted by my rumbling tummy.
"At the very least, we can get you a meal," he said, with a paternal sort of smile. "I don't see any reason why you shouldn't have something right away. I'll send someone down for it."
A few minutes later, courtesy of a chipper girl in a white and blue uniform, I was eating a pleasant lunch of soup, bread, cheese, and fruit, with a promise of something more substantial for dinner if that stayed down.
- 1 --- * --- 1 -
We didn't talk much while I ate. I was focussed on eating, he was contemplating whatever the medical sensors were telling him about my condition, and gofer-girl was standing guard out in the hall, apparently. (Yamada explained, when I asked, that she was Security, not Medical, and was there to keep an eye on me. Which was just good planning on their part. Not that I planned to get up to No Good, unless this "Time-Space Administration Bureau" of theirs turned out to be some sort of dimensional-conquering-army conspiracy like we'd thought Cauldron was.)
It was time to start poking around and learn what was really going on here. "Any chance I can get up for a walk around, Doc?" They'd had me walking a line down the hall during the tests, just to get a feel for my balance, and that had seemed fine. I hadn't been in bed long enough for my leg muscles to atrophy or anything like that.
"No problem at all, certainly. You will allow the Lieutenant to escort you, though, won't you? We'd appreciate it greatly. Minimizes any chance of misunderstandings."
And minimizes any chance of me getting into places they don't want me to. Which is okay, for now. I'll play along, let them trust me, and then, if I need to... "Sure, Doc, sure. No problem."
- 1 --- * --- 1 -
The all-too-chipper gofer-girl's name turned out to be Takamachi, which was a bit of a surprise as with auburn hair and blue eyes she didn't look the least bit asian. I put it down to weird dimensional shenanigans and walked on, listening to her describe each area I was going to be allowed to visit. I got to see the gym, at least, which didn't look particularly unusual. Miss Takamachi told me the medical types didn't want me stressing my system until they'd had a bit more observation time, though, so all I got to do was look. There wasn't a library; all the books were on electronic texts that could be accessed through the base computer network "and we'll get you access to that right away, soon as we get to the security office, okay?"
"Sure, sure, Lieutenant," I answered her. "When do we do that?"
"Well, the rec room's right down here," she said, "that and the cafeteria, and security's right past that."
"Why don't we do security first, then you can show me how the rec room really works, rather than just standing around looking cool?"
"Great idea!" She grinned and, practically bouncing off the walls in her eagerness, lead me down the hall to the security office. Better to find out just how secure this place is, first...
- 1 --- * --- 1 -
"... and this is my boss, Major Lanster, he's head of security for the whole facility."
I nodded and smiled. "A pleasure to meet you, Major. Do I bow, salute, or shake your hand?"
He rose from his seat with a welcoming smile. "Well, you aren't in uniform, so a salute's out of the question. And Nanoha here is the only one that bows, apparently that's how they do it where she comes from." He shrugged. "I've never heard of shaking hands before, how do you do that one?"
Right. Alien culture. Be on your toes, watch for assumptions. "Not much to it. We just clasp each other's right hands, shake briefly, and that's it." I stuck out my hand, he shrugged again and stuck out his, and we shook hands. He didn't have much trouble figuring out what to do. "What do they do where you're from?"
"Oh, it's sort of like your shaking hands, but we just touch the palms together." He sat back down and brought up one of those holographic screens I'd been seeing all over the place, this one showing my photograph, so I knew he was looking at my file.
"I'll keep that in mind," I said, taking a seat across from him, while Takamachi slipped into the other chair.
He took a few minutes to review my file, most of which consisted of information I'd provided them in the first place so it wasn't as if I was going to contradict myself and tell him it was all lies. (Most of it was, conveniently, true.)
"So, Ms. Hebert, since it looks like you're going to be our guest for a while, the director and I have authorized you for access to the base network." He produced an object from a desk drawer, once I had a clear view it looked to be some sort of wide bracelet, the sort that covers most of your forearm, made of white plastic. "This is a basic storage device, we keep a few on hand for guests or temporary replacements. If you'll press your thumb to the screen there?"
Frowning slightly, I did so, and a light passed over the screen, like a photocopier scanning a page. They're actually just handing me one of these things? Okay, it's probably minimal capabilities, security locks, and so on... I'll have to experiment, find out what I can do with it. Still... they seem to be trusting me awfully much.
"New user acknowledged," a mechanical voice stated from the armband. "Please state user name."
"Taylor Hebert." That was the other reason it disturbed me. It was a lot like the armbands Dragon used to hand out at Endbringer fights. But apparently these people used it for, well, just about everything. And, again, trusted me with one. Me who they barely know.
"New user initiated. Thank you, my master." it said.
"And there you go, it's yours for the duration of your stay with us," the Major told me. "It will serve as your primary access terminal for the base network, communications, facilities access... all you need. It will open any door you're cleared to enter... if the door won't open, please don't try to get in."
I nodded. "I wouldn't want to make more work for your department than I already have, Major. Thank you for this." I bit my lip briefly, then slid it around the stump of my arm. It locked in place with a click.
Lanster and Takamachi both eyed that for a moment, then the Major spoke up. "And I'll talk to Doctor Yamada about seeing what we can do about -that- as well, Ms Hebert. Prosthetic limbs are not cheap, but the technology is pleasantly mature. We'll get you fitted and functional within a week, I'm sure."
That would certainly be pleasant. I made sure to let them know I'd appreciate it.
- 1 --- * --- 1 -
The rec room turned out to be about what you'd expect - table games, a lounge area with holo-screens for movies and video games, that sort of thing. I spent about twenty minutes learning to play Pajang, which seemed to be some sort of cross between air hockey, ping-pong, and golf.
When my stomach started to rumble again, I promised myself I'd come back to check out the video games later. Most of them probably needed two hands anyway.
It was kind of ironic for someone who'd just woken up from a coma a few hours before, but I was actually rather tired. Takamachi walked me back to my room, pointing out her own quarters along the way - she'd been moved to a room right down the hall from mine so she could keep an eye on me, although the official story, of course, was that it was so she could take care of anything I needed.
"And these are your quarters, Ms. Hebert," she said, indicating another door (numbered four-seven-two, in that odd font that they seem to favor here). "Just hold up your Device to the lock," she said, after entering a code on the keypad. "They should synch together and it'll automatically open for you from now on."
I did as directed, there was a 'beep' and a green light, and the door slid open. "Thanks. Guess I'll settle in... any chance of some clean clothes for the morning?"
"Already taken care of," she chirped. "I had someone bring by a few spare sets of fatigues, sweat pants, and such, in your size. Just pile your laundry in the hamper by the door."
I nodded. "I assume it's all automatic from there?"
She grinned. "A lot better than cadet barracks, I swear. One crease out of place, and... brrrr!"
"I guess drill sergeants are the same no matter what the universe you're in, hm?"
"You better believe it! Well, here you go." She showed me around the small suite - I had a little sitting room, complete with a television-equivalent; a bedroom, and a bathroom with a generous tub and shower fittings. There was some art on the walls, too, a nice beachscape on one, and a planet (clearly NOT Earth) as seen from space, on another.
My friend the Lieutenant was also kind enough to take a few minutes to show me how to run things, both manually and through the Device they'd loaned me. (I could hear the capital letters on that word. And they talked back. AI's? Not on Dragon's level, certainly. But more sophisticated than anything else I'd seen before.)
"Thank you for everything, Lieutenant," I finally said, walking her to the door. "I just want to sit down and relax for a while right now, do some reading, then go to bed. I'll be fine, you can pick me up for breakfast, alright?"
"Sure thing!" Such a cheerful girl. Reminded me of Vista. They'd probably get along great.
With my helpful guardian gone to her own room, I settled into the surprisingly comfortable chair. A few taps on the Device wristband's keyboard, and I brought up the library function. A quick search later, and I had two texts to read through. One was titled A Brief History of Dimensional Civilization, by Antonin Scrya. The second was Nimue Emiya's Principles of Magic for Beginners.
-- tsuzuku
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
Super Dimension Magical Girl Lyrical Skitter, Episode One, hajimarimasu!
--- * --- 1 --- * --- 1 --- * ---
I've woken up in enough hospital beds to know what they're like. Cheap white sheets, bleached and washed too many times. Thin mattress. Sensor pads and IVs. The soft, plaintive beeping of a heart monitor. I actually had to pause and think for a moment, remembering how I'd gotten here. Was it Behemoth? The oil rig? No, wait, that's right. The empty Earth. My power out of control. I'd just been getting a handle on speech when Contessa found me. "Having our own pet Endbringer puts us in the 'too dangerous to live' category," I mumbled. Gunshot. Pain. Darkness. Cheap, scratchy sheets. No bugs.
No bugs.
I couldn't feel -anything- in my radius. No humans. No bugs. No other animals. Either I was in some sort of ultimate isolation, or whatever Contessa had tried had worked. I was alive, at least somewhat lucid, and - seemingly - without my powers.
It was time to get up and get moving, find out where I am and who's holding me. I started to roll to one side to push myself up and off the bed, only to discover that I was stuck to the mattress somehow. Okay, this was new.
It also meant that whoever had found me didn't want me moving. Which might mean that they knew who I was, and assumed I was dangerous even without my powers. Or that might be why I couldn't sense anyone, they were keeping out of my range to avoid being taken over.
Smart of them.
I kept pushing myself up, maybe I could break free of it, or tear the mattress free of the bed. Just had to get out of the room, find out where I was....
The door opened.
Wait. What? I hadn't sensed anything, no one in my range, but the door was open, and someone was coming in. Tall, vaguely asian, light brown hair, male. I narrowed my eyes to focus on him.
"Please, just lie back and relax, miss. Don't try to sit up. You've been through some pretty serious injuries and you're still recovering." He had an odd accent, slightly fluid, but with some strange tones. Like something Eastern European filtered through Chinese. It was actually kind of nice.
"Where am I? What is this place? And who are you? And can I get a glass of water?"
With a casual shrug, he sat down on the chair next to the bed and waved his hand at the frame. The mattress moved with a slight hum, repositioning itself so I could sit up to talk with him. I sighed softly and laid back against the pillows. He set a cup of water in a cradle near my head, with a straw that let me sip at it when I wanted to.
"Well," he started. "To answer your questions in order, you're in the infirmary at the Baerzen Memorial Research Institute. Which, to address your second question, is a research facility assigned to investigate the dimensional anomaly we call the Baerzen Wall. As for me, I'm the Institute's chief medical officer, Doctor Hiram Yamada."
I blinked. Stared at him.
"... What?"
He repeated the explanation. More slowly. And added, "I -am- sorry, miss. We had hoped you wouldn't suffer any reduced capacity from the injury. I'm going to need to run a series of cognitive tests, I hope you don't mind."
Injury. Right. I'd been shot. Twice. In the head. By fucking Contessa. "How - how serious was the damage?"
"Obviously not unsurvivable. You seem to be lucid, if slightly confused, but that's understandable." He paused for a moment, then asked, "If I could ask your own name, to start with?"
The tests took several hours, actually, and I considered myself rather fortunate that they also provided me with a meal while we worked. I was asked to solve math problems, recite poetry and tongue-twisters, answer questions about passages I'd read, and more. "Damn, I'd thought I was done with school," I muttered at one point.
"You're never done learning," Doctor Yamada told me. "Not until you're dead. And since you are clearly not dead...."
He'd mentioned a dimensional anomaly before, but I hadn't put it together yet. If they actually have people that study dimensional physics, though, then... they've got to be familiar with alternate-dimensions to begin with. Which means I'm probably nowhere near Earth Bet. Which ... might be a good thing. First things first... "I'll wait, then, Doc. You're the medical type, just how bad off am I?"
He consulted his clipboard, settling back in his seat. It wasn't really a clipboard, some sort of tablet computer.
"The biggest issues when you arrived, well, I'm sure you were aware of the amputated arm, that seems to have been some time ago?"
I nodded.
"And of course the gunshot wounds to the head. Those seemed to be much more recent," he said. "We've gotten those taken care of, mostly; they seemed to be fairly clean wounds to begin with. The cognitive tests don't show any noticeable degradation, of course, we can't really compare it to your previous state, so we can't be fully certain on that. We did have to completely remove the remains of the augmented node, however. I'm sorry, but it was unsalvageable."
Augmentation? What in - oh. My powers. Not working. Fucking Contessa must've shot me right in the Corona Pollentia. That explains that.
"It's - well, uhm," I said, then my stomach rumbled, rather loudly. "It's going to take some getting used to, operating without it."
"Well, don't worry," he said. "We may not use that kind of internal augmentation for magic use here, but we're not unfamiliar with the principles."
I paused. Blinked. Set down the water cup. "You call it magic?"
He shrugged, leaning back a bit in his seat. "I really don't know what else we'd call it. It's been the basis of our technology for centuries now."
I closed my eyes for a moment to think about it. Centuries? Magic?? I held up a hand to stop him talking while I thought about that for a minute. Magic. I suppose if we'd gotten our first parahumans before we knew enough science to understand what was happening, we'd have decided that was what was happening. But if it's the basis of their technology... yikes. And he mentioned a dimensional anomaly earlier...
After another sip of water, I asked, "So, what do you do? Or is it, uhm, rude or something to ask?"
"No, no, not at all." He made a few notes on his clipboard-tablet and nodded. "I'm a medical specialist, so of course I focused on useful spells and procedures for that. Diagnostics, tissue scanning, trauma treatment, that sort of thing. I can do basic shielding and offense - " he lifted a hand, there was a swirl of weird writing around his wrist, and a forcefield gleamed into existence in front of his hand. "Got that in 'Principles of Thaumaturgy'. Almost everybody can manage a low-level like that one."
Everybody? Powers weren't supposed to be that neat and simple. If everyone could learn everyone else's - Part of me imagined what I could've done with Tattletale's Thinker powers, or Vista's space-warping. If I could've learned anyone's powers, like some kind of new Eidolon? Damn. I'd have had the PRT and the gangs in a bidding war, or worse. And here they took it for granted. That meant I had to assume that anyone I ran into on this base would be able to pull off something like that. That upped the game considerably, and without my own powers... best to just play along, for now.
"It's... very different from what I'm used to," I said, cautiously.
"Well, don't worry," he said. "Security will issue you a basic Device; it's standard for guests. With your permission I'd like to have it include a medical monitor, so we can keep track of your vital signs in case you have any further complications."
I'd been expecting that, for certain. No way they were going to let a complete stranger walk around a secure facility.
"Tell you what, Doc, show me how to run the program, and interpret the readings, so I can see what's going on myself, and you're on."
He looked up at me for a moment, tapped something on the tablet, then said, "I'm afraid that's not a metaphor I'm familiar with, but may I assume it implies consent, subject to the caveat you named?"
"You may," I assured him, and anything else I was going to say was interrupted by my rumbling tummy.
"At the very least, we can get you a meal," he said, with a paternal sort of smile. "I don't see any reason why you shouldn't have something right away. I'll send someone down for it."
A few minutes later, courtesy of a chipper girl in a white and blue uniform, I was eating a pleasant lunch of soup, bread, cheese, and fruit, with a promise of something more substantial for dinner if that stayed down.
- 1 --- * --- 1 -
We didn't talk much while I ate. I was focussed on eating, he was contemplating whatever the medical sensors were telling him about my condition, and gofer-girl was standing guard out in the hall, apparently. (Yamada explained, when I asked, that she was Security, not Medical, and was there to keep an eye on me. Which was just good planning on their part. Not that I planned to get up to No Good, unless this "Time-Space Administration Bureau" of theirs turned out to be some sort of dimensional-conquering-army conspiracy like we'd thought Cauldron was.)
It was time to start poking around and learn what was really going on here. "Any chance I can get up for a walk around, Doc?" They'd had me walking a line down the hall during the tests, just to get a feel for my balance, and that had seemed fine. I hadn't been in bed long enough for my leg muscles to atrophy or anything like that.
"No problem at all, certainly. You will allow the Lieutenant to escort you, though, won't you? We'd appreciate it greatly. Minimizes any chance of misunderstandings."
And minimizes any chance of me getting into places they don't want me to. Which is okay, for now. I'll play along, let them trust me, and then, if I need to... "Sure, Doc, sure. No problem."
- 1 --- * --- 1 -
The all-too-chipper gofer-girl's name turned out to be Takamachi, which was a bit of a surprise as with auburn hair and blue eyes she didn't look the least bit asian. I put it down to weird dimensional shenanigans and walked on, listening to her describe each area I was going to be allowed to visit. I got to see the gym, at least, which didn't look particularly unusual. Miss Takamachi told me the medical types didn't want me stressing my system until they'd had a bit more observation time, though, so all I got to do was look. There wasn't a library; all the books were on electronic texts that could be accessed through the base computer network "and we'll get you access to that right away, soon as we get to the security office, okay?"
"Sure, sure, Lieutenant," I answered her. "When do we do that?"
"Well, the rec room's right down here," she said, "that and the cafeteria, and security's right past that."
"Why don't we do security first, then you can show me how the rec room really works, rather than just standing around looking cool?"
"Great idea!" She grinned and, practically bouncing off the walls in her eagerness, lead me down the hall to the security office. Better to find out just how secure this place is, first...
- 1 --- * --- 1 -
"... and this is my boss, Major Lanster, he's head of security for the whole facility."
I nodded and smiled. "A pleasure to meet you, Major. Do I bow, salute, or shake your hand?"
He rose from his seat with a welcoming smile. "Well, you aren't in uniform, so a salute's out of the question. And Nanoha here is the only one that bows, apparently that's how they do it where she comes from." He shrugged. "I've never heard of shaking hands before, how do you do that one?"
Right. Alien culture. Be on your toes, watch for assumptions. "Not much to it. We just clasp each other's right hands, shake briefly, and that's it." I stuck out my hand, he shrugged again and stuck out his, and we shook hands. He didn't have much trouble figuring out what to do. "What do they do where you're from?"
"Oh, it's sort of like your shaking hands, but we just touch the palms together." He sat back down and brought up one of those holographic screens I'd been seeing all over the place, this one showing my photograph, so I knew he was looking at my file.
"I'll keep that in mind," I said, taking a seat across from him, while Takamachi slipped into the other chair.
He took a few minutes to review my file, most of which consisted of information I'd provided them in the first place so it wasn't as if I was going to contradict myself and tell him it was all lies. (Most of it was, conveniently, true.)
"So, Ms. Hebert, since it looks like you're going to be our guest for a while, the director and I have authorized you for access to the base network." He produced an object from a desk drawer, once I had a clear view it looked to be some sort of wide bracelet, the sort that covers most of your forearm, made of white plastic. "This is a basic storage device, we keep a few on hand for guests or temporary replacements. If you'll press your thumb to the screen there?"
Frowning slightly, I did so, and a light passed over the screen, like a photocopier scanning a page. They're actually just handing me one of these things? Okay, it's probably minimal capabilities, security locks, and so on... I'll have to experiment, find out what I can do with it. Still... they seem to be trusting me awfully much.
"New user acknowledged," a mechanical voice stated from the armband. "Please state user name."
"Taylor Hebert." That was the other reason it disturbed me. It was a lot like the armbands Dragon used to hand out at Endbringer fights. But apparently these people used it for, well, just about everything. And, again, trusted me with one. Me who they barely know.
"New user initiated. Thank you, my master." it said.
"And there you go, it's yours for the duration of your stay with us," the Major told me. "It will serve as your primary access terminal for the base network, communications, facilities access... all you need. It will open any door you're cleared to enter... if the door won't open, please don't try to get in."
I nodded. "I wouldn't want to make more work for your department than I already have, Major. Thank you for this." I bit my lip briefly, then slid it around the stump of my arm. It locked in place with a click.
Lanster and Takamachi both eyed that for a moment, then the Major spoke up. "And I'll talk to Doctor Yamada about seeing what we can do about -that- as well, Ms Hebert. Prosthetic limbs are not cheap, but the technology is pleasantly mature. We'll get you fitted and functional within a week, I'm sure."
That would certainly be pleasant. I made sure to let them know I'd appreciate it.
- 1 --- * --- 1 -
The rec room turned out to be about what you'd expect - table games, a lounge area with holo-screens for movies and video games, that sort of thing. I spent about twenty minutes learning to play Pajang, which seemed to be some sort of cross between air hockey, ping-pong, and golf.
When my stomach started to rumble again, I promised myself I'd come back to check out the video games later. Most of them probably needed two hands anyway.
It was kind of ironic for someone who'd just woken up from a coma a few hours before, but I was actually rather tired. Takamachi walked me back to my room, pointing out her own quarters along the way - she'd been moved to a room right down the hall from mine so she could keep an eye on me, although the official story, of course, was that it was so she could take care of anything I needed.
"And these are your quarters, Ms. Hebert," she said, indicating another door (numbered four-seven-two, in that odd font that they seem to favor here). "Just hold up your Device to the lock," she said, after entering a code on the keypad. "They should synch together and it'll automatically open for you from now on."
I did as directed, there was a 'beep' and a green light, and the door slid open. "Thanks. Guess I'll settle in... any chance of some clean clothes for the morning?"
"Already taken care of," she chirped. "I had someone bring by a few spare sets of fatigues, sweat pants, and such, in your size. Just pile your laundry in the hamper by the door."
I nodded. "I assume it's all automatic from there?"
She grinned. "A lot better than cadet barracks, I swear. One crease out of place, and... brrrr!"
"I guess drill sergeants are the same no matter what the universe you're in, hm?"
"You better believe it! Well, here you go." She showed me around the small suite - I had a little sitting room, complete with a television-equivalent; a bedroom, and a bathroom with a generous tub and shower fittings. There was some art on the walls, too, a nice beachscape on one, and a planet (clearly NOT Earth) as seen from space, on another.
My friend the Lieutenant was also kind enough to take a few minutes to show me how to run things, both manually and through the Device they'd loaned me. (I could hear the capital letters on that word. And they talked back. AI's? Not on Dragon's level, certainly. But more sophisticated than anything else I'd seen before.)
"Thank you for everything, Lieutenant," I finally said, walking her to the door. "I just want to sit down and relax for a while right now, do some reading, then go to bed. I'll be fine, you can pick me up for breakfast, alright?"
"Sure thing!" Such a cheerful girl. Reminded me of Vista. They'd probably get along great.
With my helpful guardian gone to her own room, I settled into the surprisingly comfortable chair. A few taps on the Device wristband's keyboard, and I brought up the library function. A quick search later, and I had two texts to read through. One was titled A Brief History of Dimensional Civilization, by Antonin Scrya. The second was Nimue Emiya's Principles of Magic for Beginners.
-- tsuzuku
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.