Day 48: Sun Room [Second Shift]

[perfectrecord]

Hmph. While this Rude was the proverbial "man of few words," von Karma found more potential use from him than a number of the other patients he had met put together. He would still ask Franziska about the man... as well as the other people he had learned that she had been spending time around. Many of them were utter fools, especially that

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[number_crunch]

And there was just the man he wanted to speak to - what was a Composer without a Producer? If Joshua was any indication, still alive. Still, one case out of one was hardly a relevant sample size, so he was willing to let Hanekoma stay for now. He'd make a note to keep an eye on him though.

"You'll be glad to know my preceding number went out with a bang!" laughed Sho, not thrown off at all by Hanekoma's casual act. Whether or not he knew how the man really felt, he was feeling too good to bother being anything but grins with obtuse-angle measurements. "Nothing as fancy as complex chemical compounds, just a little O2 and combustion. Tossed the kid an open oxygen tank and he caught it with his back, gave him some parting words before catalyzing the whole mixture with a bit of flame, courtesy of my lighter and aerosol can. Add it all together and the end sum is 0 gray-haired yoctograms left alive."

Sho couldn't help but cackle in triumph at the memory, though it broke off into a fit of coughing and cradling his ribs after .5 minutes. Ah, he was gonna savor this for a while.

[catstreetblues]

Well, it wasn't like Sanae's job description included in the fine print "You Must Knock Off The Composer Occasionally". He'd probably set quite a few unpleasant precedents for what he'd done, actually. Producers were supposed to just keep to themselves and handle any issue the Composer needed resolved - but then, most Producers hadn't dealt with Composers who had taken issue with the entire Game before.

He nodded slowly as he digested Sho's explanation. If he'd heard right, it sounded like the Reaper had just made his own O flare in typical Minamimoto-resourcefulness - which, Sanae had to admit grudgingly, was a good use of Imagination. "I see." Minamimoto's apparent injury didn't escape his notice, but that was something to bring up later. First he had to drag all the facts out into the open. "I thought your Game wasn't supposed to end until tomorrow night. Looks like...going against the schedule actually worked out this time."

Out of the corner of his eye, Sanae watched as Neku walked into the Sun Room and began stomping toward him and Minamimoto - only to be intercepted by the girl from yesterday. He breathed an inward sigh of relief. Much as he probably deserved to be punched in the face, he wanted to get everything straight first.

[number_crunch]

"So I rotated my cycle a few circles ahead," replied Sho with a shrug. "It was just the first wave; not my fault if the Players can't make it to Day 7."

A quantifiable and certifiable falsehood. If the exploding oxygen tank hadn't worked, Sho's only other plants were to liberally apply force and leverage with various tools until Joshua could no longer be considered a solid. As for the time schedule, while facing him on Day 7 might have been more beautiful, sometimes form had to bow to function. Just like how Sho could never get that bus to balance on the traffic cone, here he had to accept that he wouldn't always be able to reel in Joshua for a fight at his will. No convenient timers, no Noise to command. So when given a choice between going early and being accused of cheating, or missing his deadline and having to put up with that smug smile, it was obvious to the mathematician which choice he should make in that binomial function.

"Well, now that my first order of operations is taken care of, I can move on the the outer problem: the institute itself," said Minamimoto, a grin spreading across his face. Hex, he'd just erased the Composer. How much harder could some imaginary number like Landel be to crunch?

[catstreetblues]

"Mm..." On the other hand, acting out of order was Minamimoto's M.O.; maybe he should have expected this sort of surprise attack. But how had he found out where Joshua would be? Had it been just luck? Maybe Josh had slipped, given out too much somewhere. The bulletin - ah, that was where it had to have been.

And then Sanae remembered abruptly that now he didn't need Alvin anymore. Poor kid, he hadn't even gotten a chance to make any kind of report.

He listened to Minamimoto's second phase plans and nodded vaguely, having heard this all before when Sho had first shown up. Taking over the institute and disposing of Landel had been his plan with Joshua as well, so even now nothing there had really changed - except that he wasn't jumping for joy at the thought of having to work under the Heaper. But...he'd prepared for this scenario long before. Might as well stick with it for now. "And what's the plan for that? Have you thought that far ahead?"

[number_crunch]

Admittedly, Minamimoto hadn't really thought that far ahead. He'd been focused on the problem at hand - a chance to kill Joshua while the inequality was in his favor was a once in a lifetime opportunity and he wasn't about to let it get away. Everything else was on the backburner. Besides, Landel wasn't about to run away, or if he did, all the better. Sho could care less about killing him an inheriting the position of "crazy doctor". This Game just wasn't his style, so his only objective was plotting a vector back to Shibuya. Of course, he wasn't going to just tell Hanekoma he was empty handed, though he didn't doubt the man would get the real data anyway.

"Eh, still formulating those equations," he said with a shrug. "Unlike with ol' variable J, f of L is presenting a much harder challenge to even locate, much less calculate an accurate line of attack. There's a lot of unverified data floating about on where his coordinates might be, but..."

Okay, so maybe this would take a bit of time. All works of art did.

[catstreetblues]

"Naturally," Sanae said lightly. Nope, looked like Minamimoto, in typical fashion, was doing things as they happened to pop onto his agenda - but for a minute beforehand, he had actually been a little terrified by the possibility of Minamimoto asking him for psyches to help with his grand schemes, partly because that would have led to yet another terrible moral quandary. He was, after all, obligated by his position to oblige the Composer's requests. At the same time, though, Sanae didn't really want to give Minamimoto the satisfaction of knowing that he could reliably call upon him like that.

"Well, tell me how that goes," he added, examining one hand and noticing that there were still a few paint flecks on it. "That girl last night did present some interesting possibilities to be explored."

[number_crunch]

The idea of getting psyches from Mr. H hadn't even occurred to the Reaper. Seeing as how his own powers were locked, as were the Composer's, he assumed that CAT was just a normal feline of no extraordinary ability here as well. Besides, he was doing plenty fine with tools of his own design so far.

"Girl?" It took Sho a few minutes to figure out what he was talking about - his own radio had been gutted for the far more glorious purpose of serving as the mouthpiece to his megaphone and he had been far busier with other matters last night than listening to the airwaves being broadcast. "Ah, right, the radian on the radio. Handing out free toys? The numbers on the board aren't very impressive though; it seems even the average hectopascal isn't too enthused about her."

And it wasn't like Minamimoto was one to dance to another's tune. Maybe if he saw some results, but until then, he'd be solving this by his own methods.