//------------------------------// // Arrival // Story: Caelum Contortum: Snarled Stories // by JapaneseTeeth //------------------------------// Omniscience in the sense of the god is a tricky subject. First and foremost, omniscience obviously only applies to the universe created by the god, and even then, it is not strictly omniscience. Say a person in the universe wears a blue shirt. The god may not know that the shirt is blue even if the other persons are aware of it. So if someone asks the god "What color is the shirt?", they do not know per se. Yet, if the god responds with "The shirt is red", they would be correct. But that is more omnipotence than omniscience. In the case of the god, knowledge and truth are directly intertwined. Whatever the god knows about his universe is the truth of that universe, even though it may be contradictory. Reality is whatever the god says it is. Chapter 4: Arrival The mysterious figure's arrival in the bath was not synonymous with his arrival at Mahora. As a matter of fact, his arrival on the campus had occurred several minutes before he burst into the bathroom. Chisame sat at her desk, trying not to fall asleep as she finished photoshopping the acne out of her latest set of photos. Normally she would probably have just left if for tomorrow, but Chiu-chan's website was long overdue for an update. Her fans had been promised an update before the end of the day, and they were damn well going to get one. She took a tired glance at the clock. Okay, so the update would be half an hour late, but not for lack of trying. She hadn't even bothered to change out of the elaborate maid costume before sitting down at the computer to fix up the pictures, despite how uncomfortably warm it was getting. "Aaannnd...done!" She pounded her finger down on the Enter key and the pictures began to upload. It felt so good to get that whole mess out of the way. Now all that stood between Chisame and her bed was the arduous process of untying the two dozen or so knots in the corset on her costume. With a groan, she leaned back in the chair, feeling too tired to even bother going to bed. She would have fallen asleep in the chair if not for the fact that there was a rather loud disturbance behind her. Something like a wet thump followed by a squeaky rustling. Her neck cracked as she worked up the motivation to look over her shoulder. Noting the cause of the noise, she turned her head back to a more comfortable position and closed her eyes. Then her brain finally got the signal from her eyes concerning the cause of the racket, causing Chisame to leap to her feet, spin around, and scream, all at the same time. Flapping around on the couch was a person of unidentifiable age and gender. Whoever they were, they were wearing a black full-body wetsuit and scuba diving equipment, complete with flippers, tank, and mask. The person ceased their scrambling at the sound of Chisame's screaming. They slowly looked around the room, apparently taking stock of their surroundings. "Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my room!-?" Chisame shouted. The figure mumbled for a moment before beginning to fumble around with the scuba mask, moving the rebreather out of the way and revealing the bottom half of a stubble-covered face. The voice was unmistakably masculine, but simultaneously sounded rather childish. "Sorry, I seem to have taken a wrong turn somewhere. I-uh...didn't mean interrupt your little…uh..." he waggled his fingers as if it was supposed somehow inform her of what word he was attempting to come up with, "...thing. So if you could direct me in the general direction of Geneva..." He resumed his struggle to get off of the couch. There was a thunk as he rolled off the couch. He hopped back to his feet, and began to scramble across the floor, catching his flippered feet on anything and everything between himself and the door. "...I've got a- uh- rendezvous I have to make so if you could just tell me where the-" "GET OUT!" "Okay!" The man spun around and stumbled towards the door, the flippers hooking on the various wires that Chisame had scattered across the floor of her room. There was a crash as he dragged several speakers off of their shelves and onto the floor. He stopped. "Oh, sorry about that!" He unzipped a pocket on his wetsuit. "I can pay for that, I can pay for that! What kind of cash you want? I got Euros, and-" "OUT!" He turned and shuffled awkwardly out the door, dragging the speakers along behind him. Chisame put a hand to her chest as she tried to slow her breathing to a rate that didn't qualify as hyperventilation. Her heart was beating so hard that she could feel it through the corset. And now she was the most awake that she had been in the past week or so. Apparently the shock of a scuba diver seemingly materializing out of nowhere onto her sofa could clean the cobwebs out of her brain in a way that a case of Red Bull could only dream of. Unfortunately for Chisame, her newfound lucidity of mind allowed her to begin working through the implications of what had just happened. Her door had definitely been locked. Ever since the Negi incident she had made sure of that. Yet the scuba diver had somehow appeared on her sofa. The window was closed and on the second story of the building, and there were no holes in the wall. So there was an unidentified man, and against all reason, it was vaguely plausible that he had teleportation powers. Chisame was rather loathe to admit that last point but the fact that there was a dude running around a dorm full of teenage girls was more important than calculating out the exact means of his arrival. She rushed out of the room after him. About a minute later, the five girls and two ponies in the bath found themselves staring in confusion at the scuba diver who had burst through the doors. The equally confused intruder stared back for a moment before speaking. "Oh, wrong room. I'll uh- be going now." He turned around and took a step towards the door, only to stop as Chisame's voice came through it. "There's a man in the dorm! He just ran into the baths! Get back here, you pervert!" "On second thought, this way." The flippers made a slapping noise as he goose-stepped across the bath towards the door on the far side of the room. He was halfway there when the main door burst open a second time. This time it was Chisame who stood in the doorway, still wearing her overly elaborate maid costume. She froze for a moment as she noticed the presence of the two ponies. Neither one of them were the proper colors for ponies and one of them seemed to be floating. But her classmates were there, and the presence of the ponies didn't seem to faze them nearly as much as her own presence. In any case, her brain lacked the processing power to deal with the ponies, so for the moment she was just going to pretend that she didn't see them. "That man snuck into my room! Stop him!" Asuna rushed forward. Catching up was easy; the flippers had reduced to the man's running speed to roughly that of a two-year-old. Tackling him was similarly easy, for the same reason. Holding on to him, however, turned out to be impossibly difficult. Apparently the combination of the man's wetsuit and the layer of soapy water that Asuna was still coated in resulted in a level of slipperiness comparable to a slapstick-grade banana peel. The redhead face-planted onto the floor as the man wriggled out of her grip. "Don't worry, I'll get him!" Haruna shouted. Unfortunately, the sound of her own voice drowned out the sound of Rainbow Dash yelling from the other end of the room. "I got this!" The blue pony blasted towards the intruder. Haruna charged towards the scuba diver. She may not have been quite as fit as Asuna, but catching up was still a piece of cake. "Tackle a burglar" was up there on her list of things to do before she died. This wasn't quite the same, but it was close enough that she could count it. With the loudest war cry she could muster, she made a final dive at her target. "EYAAAAAAAEGHE-" About halfway through her battle cry, the shout turned from one of intimidation to one of surprise. The intruder had tripped on his own fins and gone down, sliding across the soapy floor. His absence allowed Haruna to see that Rainbow Dash was barreling right towards her. Haruna's cry was stifled entirely as Rainbow Dash crashed straight into her midsection. She could feel her feet lifting off the ground. The world shifted into slow motion for a few seconds as the two of them flew backward, ultimately landing in one of the plants at the edge of the room. Yue rolled her eyes as the scuba diver scrambled to his feet and continued his run for the door. She stuck out a foot as he ran past. He fell flat on his face. In a moment, Nodoka, Twilight, and Konoka were sitting on his back. He finally stopped floundering. "Chisame, what's going on here?" Yue asked. "I could ask you the same question!" Chisame snapped. "What are you doing in the bath at this time of night? And what's with the horses? Let me guess: Haruna ordered them off the internet and dyed their fur? And come to think of it, they're some weird looking horses. The proportions are a bit off..." "You're the one who barged in here dressed as a maid, chasing a man in a scuba suit," Yue answered. "That's not as weird that!" Chisame said, thrusting a finger at Twilight. "A purple pony? Seriously?" She put a hand on Twilight's head. "You guys even put a horn on it? What, did you superglue it or something?" "I suppose we should introduce you," Nodoka said. "This is Twilight Sparkle." "Twilight Sparkle?" Chisame's eye began to twitch. That was the best name they could come up with? Even Haruna could do better than that. "Twilight, this is Chisame," Nodoka said to the pony. "She can be a little abrasive, but she's nice when you get to know her." Chisame groaned. She had thought that Nodoka was more intelligent than this. Talking to a pony as if it were a person. Of all the ridiculous- "Nice to meet you, Chisame." "Huh?" She looked down to see the horse staring up at her. "Are you one of Negi's students? I'd really hoped that I'd get to meet more of you." The voice was unmistakably coming from the pony. "Y-you can talk?" Chisame stuttered. "Yeah, we can talk!" Chisame spun around to see another pony, a blue one. But the fact that it was blue was rather overshadowed by the fact that it had wings protruding from its body. And it was using said wings to hover above the bush that Haruna was clamoring out of. "I don't get why you guys are so surprised by that." "F-flying pony?" She looked back to Twilight. "You can fly?" "No, I don't have wings. I can do magic though." "M-magic?" "Sure, watch!" The pony closed her eyes. Chisame watched in horror as the horn began to glimmer. A purple aura began to radiate from it. There was a sudden flash, and Chisame felt that something had changed. She slowly lifted a hand to her face. It was unmistakable. She now had a mustache. "Magic...pony...flying..." Under the best of circumstances, Chisame's brain would have had difficulty coping with the amount of new information. Under the current circumstances, that capability was cut by a fair amount. Her fatigue was starting to catch up to her, and the adrenalin rush was rapidly wearing off. Unable to keep up, her brain went into shutdown mode and she keeled over in a dead faint. "Okay, now what do we do?" Asuna asked. "Go get Negi-sensei," Yue answered. "We have to do something about all of this." Konoemon sighed. He had hoped to be dealing with this disturbance during the day, after a good night's sleep, not at two in the morning. But Negi had informed him that yet another unidentified subject had arrived on campus, and even at his most lazy, the old man couldn't put off addressing the matter any further. He drained a final cup of coffee and stepped into his office. As per his instructions, all the involved parties were present. Negi was sitting on one of the chairs, waiting patiently. Haruna and Chisame sat behind him, waiting somewhat less patiently, still clothed in their respective bathrobe and maid outfit. Behind them, Evangeline paced back and forth even less patiently. The strange wet-suited man sat next to Negi, held in place by several high-quality binding spells. The two ponies were curled up on the couch against the wall. "About time you showed up," Evangeline grumbled. "If you're going to drag me out of bed at this time of night, you could at least have the decency to show up on time. What the hell do you need me for, anyway?" "Because you're one of the most experienced mages on campus. You've probably come across something relevant to our discussion in your hundreds of years of experience." "Wait, she's magic too!-?" Chisame said. "What do you mean 'hundreds of years'!-?" "She's an immoral vampire!" Haruna chipped in. "I think. I'm kinda new to the whole magic thing. But that's what Konoka told me!" "A what?" "Girls, please be quiet." Konoemon banged on the desk with his hand. "Yes, Evangeline is a vampire. She's very evil and has been terrorizing the world for several centuries. But at the moment she's mostly depowered and not too evil so don't worry about it. I'll leave it to your teacher to explain the whole magic thing in greater detail later on. At the moment we have more important things to take care of. Chisame, can you tell me exactly how this man…" he nodded towards the man in the wetsuit, "…appeared in your room." "Not really," Chisame said with a shrug. "He just sort of appeared out of thin air." "You didn't see him appear?" "No." Konoemon sighed once again. "And here I thought we might have had a witness..." "Witness to what?" Chisame asked. "Well," Negi began, "a few days ago, the astronomy club noticed an anomaly in the sky. Shortly afterward, Twilight and Rainbow Dash appeared on campus. We questioned them and confirmed that they came from another world." "They came from a town called Ponyville in a magical land called Equestria!" Haruna interrupted. "They had some weird hole in the sky too. So when they went to look at it, they showed up here!" "How the hell do you know that?" "Rainbow Dash has been living in my room for the past few days. I found her in a tree. So I snuck her back into the-" She stopped as Konoemon cleared his throat. Even though the old man's eyes were completely hidden beneath his eyebrows, she could tell that he was glaring at her. "Anyway..." Negi continued, "…Twilight has been looking through a few of the astronomy books she had with her. We believe it's possible that the hole in the sky may be a sort of portal between our world and theirs." "Well, that's sort of true," Twilight said. "None of the books really say anything about being able to go between worlds like this, but one of them had a brief section on portals that let you teleport. The description of the portal is similar to the disturbance in the sky. They might be related, but I don't know." "Then why don't I just fly up there and see if I can go through?" Rainbow Dash asked. "We don't want to be too rash about this," Konoemon said, barely even fazed by the fact that he was addressing a flying pony. "And due to the arrival of mister scuba diver here, we can't assume that this portal between worlds thing will lead back to where you came from. I assume that he doesn't come from...Equestria, was it?" "Yeah, I've never seen anybody like that," Rainbow Dash answered. "Ask Twilight about it. She's the one who's read like every book ever." "I've never seen any record of humans in Equestria," Twilight said. "A similar sort of being shows up in a few ancient Equestrian legends, but I've never seen anything to indicate that they actually existed anywhere." "I suppose we should go straight to the source then," Konoemon said. He turned to the scuba diver and snapped his fingers. The magical seal that had been keeping the man quiet vanished. "I DIDN'T SEE ANYTHING, I SWEAR! I KNOW NOTHING! My girlfriend just dropped some car keys down a storm drain, so I was going to just go down and get them, so I figured that I'd put on my suit and-" Konoemon snapped his fingers again, and the man was silent. "Please just be quiet for a moment," Konoemon said, rubbing his forehead. "We're as confused about all of this as you are. We just want to ask you a few questions about where you came from, alright. We don't mean you any harm. Just try to calm down a bit, okay?" The scuba diver nodded. "Okay, let's start with something simple," Konoemon said. "What is your name?" Once again, the old man snapped his fingers. The scuba diver cleared his throat and furrowed his eyebrows before answering with an exaggeratedly deep Scottish accent. "My name is Steele. Samuel Steele." "Who do you think you are, Sean Connery?" Chisame said as she stared incredulously. "You are a terrible liar." Konoemon massaged the sides of his eggplant-shaped head. "Evangeline, would you mind?" "Gladly." She stomped to the front of the room and faced the diver. "Oh, hello," he said, dropping the accent in favor of a much more friendly tone. "What's a little girl like you doing up so late?" "I am no little girl!" As she spoke, the entire room seemed to become a little darker. Her entire body somehow looked as if it were wreathed in shadow. Her mouth was contorted into a toothy, fanged grin, and her eyes had gone black. Despite the fact that they were inside, her hair billowed as if she were standing in front of a fan. "I am the Gospel of Darkness, the scourge of the entire magic world! I'm an evil freaking immortal vampire who can make children cry just by existing. And now I had to get out of my nice warm bed in the middle of the night and traipse all the way across this stupid campus because of you. I am not in the mood for your feeble attempts at giving us false information. Got that?" The scuba diver, who had wilted under her gaze, nodded weakly. "Good!" She jumped onto the diver, straddling him. She seized a handful of his hair and pulled his head back. "I'm only going to tell you this once: If you don't cut the crap and answer the man's questions, I'm going to..." She leaned forward and whispered the rest of the threat directly into his ear. Whatever it was she said was apparently so forceful that it nearly caused his eyes to pop out of his head. "Now then, I'm only going to ask you one more time. Who are you and what are you doing here?" "M-Morgan Grimes!" he stammered. "I'm a spy for the U.S. My team was trying to keep terrorists from doing something weird with the Large Hadron Collider and the next thing I knew I was here! I don't even know where here is! Just don't do that to me. I don't really like puppets. They creep me out." "Thank you, Evangeline," Konoemon said as he took his seat at the desk. "You can get off of him now." Evangeline hopped off of Morgan, and resumed her pacing at the back of the room. "Now then, can you tell me where you're from?" "My operation was based out of Burbank, California. I mean, my real job is being the manager at the Burbank Buy More, but sometimes I get called up for secret missions and stuff. You know, just in my spare time." "I see..." Konoemon didn't really have any idea what Morgan was talking about. "It seems that you're actually from our world." "What do you mean?" "Well, unless you have talking ponies in your world, I think it's much more likely that you're from our world." "Talking ponies?" Konoemon pointed towards the back of the room, where Twilight and Rainbow Dash were resting on the couch. Morgan managed to twist his neck far enough around to see them each waving a foreleg at him. "Oh, them. Right." He turned back to Konoemon, figuring that it would be best for his sanity to think about the ponies later. "So, uh...where am I? Is this like some embassy or something? Because I really need to get going. Gotta meet up with the rest of my team in Geneva." "You're in Japan." "Japan. Wow. That's uh- I've never been to Japan before, so that's cool, I guess." Morgan nodded his head as he spoke, trying to sound cool and composed. "Where in Japan, exactly?" "Mahora Academy." "And that is...where, exactly?" "You've never heard of Mahora Academy?" Chisame couldn't keep herself quiet any longer. "It's the largest boarding school in Japan! It might even be the largest boarding school in the world? The freaking school festival gets more visitors than the Olympics! How can a freaking secret agent have never even heard of it!-?" "More than the Olympics? Really?" Morgan asked, totally ignoring the actual question that Chisame had intended to ask. "That's impressive. I'll have to Google that festival when I get home." "Make sure you look up the cosplay contest!" Haruna said. The expression on her face made it evident that she considered the whole ordeal more entertaining than anything else. "If you make it to this year's, make sure you stop by the manga booths. I've got a bunch of stuff I'm going to be selling." "Oh, like he'd be interested in any of the smut you write," Chisame grumbled. Unlike Haruna, she was totally un-entertained by the events unfolding around her. More than anything, she just wanted to be curled up in her bed. "Hey, I make an effort to appeal to all sorts of audiences," Haruna retorted. "My comics include something for everyone." "I'll...keep that in mind..." Morgan mumbled. He turned back to Konoemon. The old, eggplant-headed man seemed to be the only person in the room who wasn't either crazy or utterly terrifying. "So, can I go now, or what? I sort of need to be on my way." "I'm sorry, but that's not going to happen," Konoemon answered. "It's not that you seem particularly dangerous, but I can't really have you running around campus until we figure out what's going on." "So what, I'm like your prisoner now?" "No, no, nothing like that. We're just going to have to keep track of you until we confirm that you aren't psychotic or anything like that." Konoemon turned to Negi, "Would you be so kind as to inform Mana that we have a job for her? Normally I wouldn't bother her for something like this, but I can write off her pay as a business expense." "Uh, can I at least borrow a phone or something?" Morgan asked. "I really should get in touch with my team. It's been like an hour or so since I checked in last, and well...one of them is going to get real worried about me, and one of them is probably going to kill me for not letting them know what's going on. And you all seem like such nice people, so I'd really kinda hate for them to go and, how should I say this, take extreme measures to ensure my- oh crap." The eyes of everyone in the room (except Konoemon, who was facing the wrong direction) widened as they began to register the presence of two roughly-human shaped shadows that were rapidly descending towards the window. The Konoemon's eyes widened as the two figures burst through the window, showering him with glass as they landed on either side of him. "See?" Morgan said. "This is exactly what I was talking about..." "How about this one?" Nodoka held up a flash card with a series of foreign characters on it. "Hmmmm..." Yue furrowed her eyebrows as she tried to remember what the word meant. "If I remember correctly, it's...'to be engaged in warfare? '" "No." Nodoka flipped the card around. "'To do, to make'." She stuffed the card back into the stack. "Why do you want to learn this so badly anyway? Wouldn't Latin be a more logical starting point? According to Negi, only the most high-level spells are in Greek, after all." "Latin may have superseded Greek as the primary language of magic, but the foundations of modern magic were first laid down in Greek," Yue answered. "The reason the ancient spells are more powerful is that they aren't as far removed from their original forms. As such, it is prudent to be knowledgeable about the language." "Even though you're barely able to do any Latin incantations? Shouldn't you get the easier ones out of the way before you try to learn the advanced material?" "I'm sure that our training sessions with Evangeline will cover that." Yue took the stack of cards from Nodoka and began to shuffle it. "I'm merely preparing myself for when we get to the more difficult incantations. If I can at least grasp the basic grammar and vocabulary, it will be easier later on." "That's true, I guess," Nodoka said. "But still, do we have to do this now? You should probably go to bed." "You know as well as I do that neither one of us would be able to sleep," Yue said. It was an accurate assessment; both girls were stuck in that awkward position where they were utterly exhausted, yet too cognizant to have any hope of actually resting. "Are you worried about Haruna too?" Nodoka asked. Despite that both she and Yue had been let in on the secret under seemingly more dangerous circumstances, she couldn't help but feel apprehension about the situation. The fact that Haruna had basically been hauled away with that weird scuba diver person didn't help much. If she actually had any idea what was going on, it would be tolerable. But she had no idea what her friend was experiencing, and that was cause for worry. "A little, I suppose." Yue was more than a little worried, but letting that show would only make Nodoka more anxious. "Although I'm more worried about what's going to happen to everyone else now that Haruna is aware that magic exists." "You're probably right," she said. Thinking of how Haruna would react to whatever it was Negi would tell her made her smile. "She'll be fine." "As long as Chisame doesn't go mad from the revelation and start stabbing people. I don't think she'll react well." "So you think it'll be okay?" "Yes. Negi-sensei has let so many people in on his secret by now that I'm sure he knows how to deal with it. "I guess you're right. It wasn't like that strange man was all that threatening. And Negi said that Evangeline was going to be there, anyway." Nodoka glanced at the clock that sat on her dresser. 3:02. "We really should go to bed. Negi did say that he didn't know how long it would be before they got back. And we have class tomorrow." "Fine, fine. Let me just go over the definite article chart one more time and then I'll go to bed." Nodoka sighed as she looked out the window. She could just make out the outline of the middle school building in the distance. Something was slightly off; the gentle glow of the World Tree didn't seem as bright as it usually was. Still, after the talking ponies and the mysterious scuba diver, it barely seemed abnormal. In fact, the entire night seemed unusually mundane. That spatial anomaly in the sky was still there, as far as she knew, but she was hardly familiar enough with astronomy to tell that anything was wrong. Everything looked so normal; it was almost impossible to believe that there were magic ponies on campus. Then again, her teacher was a mage, a talking ermine lived in a room down the hall, and her immediate circle of acquaintances included a vampire, a robot, and two half-demons. She was even helping her roommate study her incantations. Maybe things were weird, and she was just so used to it all that she didn't recognize it. She could feel her eyelids beginning to droop. She was too tired to think about this kind of thing. She just needed to get to get some sleep. When she got up in the morning, everything would make more sense. Elsewhere on campus, a student hurried furtively along one of the many paths between the dorms and the University buildings. There were half a dozen or so paths that would get her to her destination quicker than the one she was currently on, but she couldn't risk those. Getting caught outside of the dorm after curfew wasn't an extremely serious offense, but there was no reason to deal with that issue if she didn't have to. The last thing she wanted to do was arouse suspicion, and sneaking into one of the laboratory buildings after hours would raise a few questions. She could, of course, use the Mahora tunnel system like she normally did when she needed to get across campus in a hurry, but in this particular circumstance that option yielded its own set of problems. Security in the tunnels was typically non-existent, since roughly half the campus didn't even realize they were there, and of the remaining half, most of them didn't have any inclination to go down there. Tonight was different. Her sources had told her that security around campus had inexplicably been beefed up recently. Chances are that it was related to that "astronomical anomaly" that the astronomy club had picked up. She couldn't be sure though. The most recent information had indicated a second boost in security only an hour or so ago. Even she couldn't figure out whether that meant that they were actually watching the tunnels. In any case, getting caught down there would cause far more problems than just taking an extra ten minutes to get to where she was going. Going down the alleys wasn't a big deal, though. She didn't like to brag (not too much anyway), but on the occasions when she did, she was perfectly capable of putting her money where her mouth was. Anything powerful enough to actually give her trouble would have tripped the school barrier. At least getting into the building wouldn't be a problem. She knew most of the security codes, at least for the buildings that it was worth getting into. In this case, it was the University science building, specifically the labs. At the moment there was nothing she really needed from the lab itself, but she still had her reasons. She punched in the second security code and the lab door slid open. "What is it, Hakase?" Chao grumbled as she lowered her hood. "I'm going to assume that it's somehow related to our plan, as there really isn't anything else that would merit calling me at this time of night, so the only question is exactly what aspect of the plan is involved in this emergency. So what is it?" "Oh, Chao! Good! You made it!" Hakase stumbled out of one of the closets where she had set up her makeshift bed. "There's been a major complication! A major anomaly has occurred in the magical energy surrounding the-" "This isn't about that thing the astronomy club noticed, is it?" Chao asked. She hoped it wasn't, partly because it didn't actually affect the plan anyway, but mostly because it was one of the few variables that she had no way of predicting. That fact scared her a little. Not that she let it show. "I already heard about that. As it is now, it should have no impact on our plans." "No, no, that's not the problem," Hakase said. She paused for a moment as she tried to think of exactly how to break the bad news to her associate. Then she remembered that she really had no concept of tact. It was just a social construct anyway. "There's been a major fluctuation in the energy of the World Tree." "What?" Hakase had never really noted how disturbing it was when Chao went pale. It took a lot to get the blood to drain out of her face. Come to think of it, she had never actually seen her experience such distress. It wasn't a pretty sight. "Well, I awoke due to a pressing need to relieve myself, and on the way back from the lavatory, I noted a discrepancy in the readings," Hakase said. She pointed to one of the many monitors that lined the back wall of the room. The top half of the screen was taken up by a slowly-moving line graph. Near the end of the graph, the line took a sharp dive. "A 90% drop!-?" There was so much skepticism in Chao's voice that it was obvious she couldn't believe what she was saying. "There is no way that's right. There must be a problem with the sensors." "I already examined all the information coming in from the sensors, both primary and secondary. All of it is internally consistent, so unless every sensor malfunctioned simultaneously, it appears that the incoming information is accurate. Since the initial drop in energy, the levels appear to have stabilized." "Is the level constant?" "No, it appears to be increasing at a rate comparable to that of 29 days ago. My calculations indicate that at the current rate of magical accumulation, the World Tree's mana level will peak roughly a month later our initial calculations indicated." "So what you're telling me is that a large amount of magical energy simply vanished without affecting the rate of accretion? Where on earth did all of that energy go?" Chao scratched her head. It was the first time in a long while that something had puzzled her. She was almost feeling worried. Or at least she was now conscious of the feeling. There was always that gnawing sort of doubt in the back of mind that she didn't have everything lined up quite as nicely as she thought she did, but she had buried that feeling under layers of preparation and stubbornness. Now it was threatening to come back to the surface? "Perhaps the tree dissipated the energy naturally." "No. That's never happened. Not in the entire recorded history of the World Tree." She lowered her voice to a growl. "Not even in the history from my time. Someone or something drained that energy." She took a deep breath. It was fairly obvious that her life was going to get even more chaotic than it had been for the past two years. Most of the plan was already in ruins, and it was going to take all the effort she could muster to salvage what was left of it. Not to mention that there was now some completely new variable to contend with; that amount of energy didn't just disappear. Someone was using it for something, and she had no idea who it was. Apologies for the comparative lack of ponies in this chapter. I realize they don't get as much focus here. They come back in the next chapter, though. The scuba suit guy is Morgan from the (now completed) television series Chuck, which I definitely recommend.