Chapter 3: Waiting

“What if it hits, say, San Francisco first before here? That monitor is empty too you know.”, said Margret.

“Then they will just have to make due Margret. The tachyon manipulator is inordinately expensive. Even *I* could only make the one, and it’s here in Kramston. Besides, this is my home city, if I can only be there for one attack, I’d rather it be the one here.”

Laura moved over to the tray of food, intending to take a sip of the orange juice Margret was so kind to bring. She succeeded, taking a decent gulp of it that she nearly spit out when she looked up at the monitors.

She turned to Margret whose eyes were wide and her hands lightly trembling.

“It’s happened”, said Laura.

She turned back to the monitors to be sure. There, on the screen with the displayed label of “Kramston” were a bunch of white dots. As the software dictated, the date was also frozen at the time said particles were detected in the city.

Laura started typing away at the console near the desk.

“Let’s hope I was detailed at dictating this event.”, she said.

“I do hope I took good notes.”, said Margret.

Laura opened up the logs from the tachyon manipulator which, in reality, was just a fancier more precise tachyon detection protocol. The more minute sensors associated with it and scattered about the city allowed the complex software to search for patterns in the particles. Many such patterns were disrupted and incomplete due to the defilement of the time. Thankfully, the manipulator utilized redundancy to avoid this exact issue.

In less than a few seconds, the most repeated series of patterns were conveyed. They were the notes Margret had inputted, which were word for word on every spoken thing she could hear over the communicator. The maid also added her own descriptions of things, which Laura noticed.

“Good on you.”, said Laura after pointing it out. “Seems the Leopard Cave caved in at the end.”

With the way the logs were assembled and displayed, it started at the end. Laura quickly scrolled to the top and started reading. It wasn’t even past the first few lines of logs that she cocked a brow, utterly bewildered by what she was reading.

“A giant attack. Really?”, said Margret, who was looking over the heroine’s shoulders.

“Miles tall apparently. Japanese. Purple hair.”

“Are you sure this isn’t just a glitch or something? I mean, this all seems so far fetched. Maybe by chance the ‘tachyons’ of yours scattered like this, and the real logs are elsewhere.”

Laura paused, then shook her head as she kept scrolling.

“No. Even if the redundancy didn’t cover that, the odds that particles would be scattered to something intelligible, even if nonsensical, are beyond abysmal. This is what happened. It doesn’t make believing it any easier though.”

Laura scrolled through the logs, committing it all to memory. Her face trembled at parts given the descriptions of the devastation. Absurd as it was, she did believe every word of it.

Laura sat back, composing herself.

“Margret.”

“Yes Mistress Laura?”

“Make arrangements for a flight to Japan on the Yeal company jet.”

“Er of course, but, where in Japan exactly.”

Laura was already leaning back in, typing furiously as she searched a few things on the internet.

“Let’s see, peach emblem. Peach emblem.”

She saw some images pop up, one of which of a large school building situated within an on-city campus. An emblem of a pink peach fruit hung over its entrance.

“Tokyo.”, she said. “That’s where Momo University is. Its the only university with a peach on its official emblem.”

Laura swiveled the chair around and already started gathering up a few things. She had a suitcase prepared for emergency travel like this, and she took it by the handle and started walking to the elevator back to her manor. She’d take her normal car to the runway.

“Wait, Mistress Laura you’re, just going to fly on over so soon. I mean, if this being could destroy all of Kramston in a few steps--”

“Then she, or it, is extremely dangerous. I can’t wait much longer to handle it.”

“It?”

“No human has that much power. It’s probably some reality warping thing in human guise. In any case, I want you to keep me up to date on any news regarding that university, or Tokyo in general. If some purple haired university student appears in a photo anywhere, I want to know about it.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

Laura smiled, then stepped into the elevator as the doors closed.

--==--==--==--

Etsu finished her classes for the day and took the bus off campus into the city proper. She stayed at the arcade long enough to rack up a few more high scores at the popular dancing game they had. As the sun started to set, she left to grab some noodles, then ice cream.

--==--==--==--

Laura sat down in the jet. It would be a long flight over to Japan from the Northeastern United States. The plane had to fly west first with a small stop to refuel.

Her laptop was open on the table before her. Sadly, despite her connections, she had little if any inside information on Momo University. She didn’t have access to the student records or anything, and the thought of hacking her way in didn’t cross her mind. If this powerful entity didn’t want to be found, it could have some sort of detection built into the servers for anything like that.

So, she kept a tab open on the university’s student journal site and kept refreshing. As the sun started to set, Laura realized there probably wouldn’t be an update on anything for at least another day. The student journalists were probably studying, doing homework, or out for the evening.

Laura sighed. She knew quite a bit, but still not enough. She spent a lot of time researching the region’s culture, though. Alas, the heroine wasn’t fluid in Japanese, but she had a cursory knowledge of it, as well as her browser’s built in translator: inept though it was.

“Purple hair.”, she said to herself. “Probably a first or second year student then: third at most. Most students start looking into companies to work for during their third year in Japan, which means they typically ditch the dyes to try and seem more ‘professional’.”

Laura relied this guess to Margret via phone, as though it could possibly help, then laid back in her chair.

Everything had been arranged accommodation wise. She’d transit from the airport to a hotel under the guise of an important business meeting in the city for a week. Much as Laura disliked it, it did indeed look like she’d have to wait at least a day to find this mysterious purple haired time-bender.

--==--==--==--

The night just arrived and the streets of Tokyo were lit primarily by the myriad and many street lamps and signs everywhere.

Etsu sat down at a bench. Her brown loafers tapped against the ground as she waited for the bus to arrive. Her belly full of noodles and ice cream, she wanted to just head back to her dorm and relax for a bit.

The streets had a decent level of busyness to them, with all the salary-men and such briskly walking to catch their train or bus or whatnot. Plenty of other people around too.

One man walked towards the bench, clad in more casual garbs. A shop-clerk perhaps, Etsu had guessed. As he passed by the sidewalk, one step of his had come down on the toe of the young woman’s left loafer.

He profusely apologized right away.

“Oh, kehehe. It’s fine.”, said Etsu in her native tongue. She gave a small bow of her head to weakly mirror his much more pronounced genuflection.

The man took a few more steps along the sidewalk. Just a few. Then, a car sped by. The university student saw the driver fall asleep right when the vehicle passed into her gaze.

A loud skirtch rang out as the car, out of control, swerved left straight into the man and a few others on the busy street. The car only came to a stop once the front of it was thoroughly squished into the cement wall of the nearby building.

Blood and body parts flew out from the scene. Many nearby were splashed. One young woman was hit in the head by the shoe-stepper’s arm and knocked unconscious. Etsu, sitting close by, watched as a mist of red blood stopped just short of her left shoe as it tapped against the ground.

Without so much as a glance at the wreckage, she rose from the bench and crossed the street: an easy feat now that all traffic had halted from the horror everyone just witnessed.

The purple-haired woman decided to walk back to campus today. It’s not as though she had to get to bed early for a class or anything tomorrow.