To be ripped from one’s surroundings with neither an explanation nor any means of exerting control over one’s circumstances had to be a disconcerting sensation, but Shun couldn’t quite afford to harbor any sympathy for Ruri’s Synchro counterpart, impressive hand to hand combat skills or not.
“Be quiet for a moment,” he demanded, taking a firm hold of her shoulders, and nodded for one of Reiji’s female scientists to approach, the woman in question wasting no time patting her down – first, with her hands, then, with three different electronic devices.
“Sir, I have detected two bugs and one tracking device under the Synchro piece’s skin.”
“Remove them and perform an analysis- now.”
Shock and nervosity permeated the examination room, doctors and researchers alike bustling about, gathering their equipment and tuning it for the situation at hand, whereas Shun stepped behind the girl, twisting her hands on her back and holding her in place for the doctor approaching with an anesthetic spray and a scalpel to perform his task.
Having removed the foreign objects with one precise cut each, the doctor handed them to a researcher standing in wait right next to him, and only then dabbed the cuts with a cotton swab and covered them with a band-aid.
“Everything’s alright, Sir. The jamming levels of this room were high enough to intercept the transmissions attempted,” the head researcher ultimately announced, and Shun’s ears picked up on a collective sigh of relief, his own posture relaxing slightly as he released his iron grip on Ruri’s Synchro counterpart.
“Good. Keep the devices active and feed them false data. If we manage to fool Akaba Leo into believing we escaped to Synchro, that should buy us enough time to adjust our own plans.”
‘Now that we’ve obtained the Synchro piece in Ruri’s stead’ were the words left unspoken before he continued, “Once the devices are transmitting again, I want you to report the current state of affairs to Akaba Reiji- doesn’t matter whether in person or in written form.“
The staff responded with a firm “Yes Sir!” already bracing themselves for an inevitable all-nighter; anything for the sake of Standard’s war effort.
For now, an immediate crisis was averted, allowing for Shun to address the girl’s questions and concerns for the first time since her arrival. Had he been anyone else, he would be apologizing for having handled her so roughly, for not having offered a single word of understanding and comfort.
But war had bled him dry of compassion for strangers, and his priorities lay elsewhere. Instead, he motioned for her to follow him to an adjacent room containing a desk, a computer, and two chairs opposite one another.
“Have a seat,” he instructed, taking the chair facing the computer screen for himself.
“My name is Kurosaki Shun, second leader of Standard’s army, Standard being where we are right now. Let me warn you in advance that I’ve no comfort to offer. Eight weeks from now at the latest, this dimension will be in a state of war, and I won’t tolerate but a single instance of misconduct or disobedience.”
Rin yelped at first with the patdown before realizing what they were doing- then she begrudgingly allowed them to continue, wincing as the bugs were cut out of her skin. It didn’t particularly hurt, but the thought was the same.
Although she wasn’t sure where this was, beyond Standard, the atmosphere was the same, that of a military operation. She watched their surroundings as closely as she could manage to try and gauge what level of technology they were operating on. It seemed pretty fancy- the other had a keycard in his pockets, she noticed. Perhaps not out of the frying pan yet.
In the office, Rin leaned against a chair but didn’t sit. “War?” she had heard plenty of Academia propaganda on that subject- it was what substituted for entertainment in the Academia.
She grit her teeth. This guy didn’t mince words, but she couldn’t stand to be intimidated. “I understand. But there are things that I want too- and I think we can make this good for both of us.”
“The Synchro piece they called me, right? They said that at the Academia too; that I was part of some bigger whole that they needed to reunite the dimensions, and that it would likely kill me. I don’t want to be the Synchro Piece anymore. I want to fight on my own behalf, so I can keep living and protect my home.“ Her grip tightened on the chair.
“And there’s someone I have to find- his name is Yugo. He’s from Synchro too. If I’m not there to look out for him, he’ll get hurt. We’re a team,” she continued, “So if you can do that for me, I’ll share everything I learned from the Academia and fight against the Academia with you.”
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