＜VOC. CRV2 DATA LOSS＞ [CA GUARDIAN CHALLENGE]
He thought things were bad enough as they were.
Of course, he forgot that in this city, there’s always room for things to get worse.
At first he doesn’t want to believe it. The note the scientists had given him, it had to be some kind of messed-up, cruel prank the were trying to pull on him. Kick a dog while he’s down, right?
There’s no way they could’ve taken all his vocal data from him, right? How would they even be able to do that in the first place?
But he rises from his place in bed, attempts to use his voice in song, and--
nothing comes out except silence that feels almost deafening in the moment.
No… No.
No, this-- this can’t be happening, can it? Perhaps, he wants to believe for a moment, this is all a bad dream. He’s still in slumber mode, he’s still going to wake up and everything’s going to be fine, everything--
He knows damn well that’s not the case.
Panicked, feeling like he’s going to overheat out of fear and horror and a thousand other emotions at the same time, he takes a look at the notice he’s been given once more, and suddenly everything worsens again once he realizes that they’ve only given him three days to scour the entire city for something so valuable.
That’s a dauntingly impossible task, isn’t it…?
They’re literally asking the impossible out of him. They want to ruin him, don’t they?
He leans against a wall, shaking in what can only be silent, fearful sobs, and it’s almost impulse for him to tear up the note, for him to destroy it and pretend this isn’t happening… but if he did that, he’d never be the same again.
God, he-- he has to calm down, doesn’t he? Think clearly, or at least clearer, try to figure out something… Kaito looks again at the note, taking in the words as calmly as his overwhelmed mind can muster up. It… it never said he couldn’t ask for help, did it. He doesn’t have to do this alone, does he?
Inhale, exhale… the thought eases his nerves slightly (slightly, because there’s barely any reason to not be overcome with fear in the face of potentially losing his voice for good). He’s not sure exactly who he should ask, though. A few names come to mind, but--but he needs more. He needs more help, he needs all the help he can possibly get in this situation.
...In that case, there’s only one thing he can do, right?
His hands are shaking to no end, but he goes back over to his dresser where his phone lies, picking the device up and going into the text message app, typing out his distressed cry for help as carefully as he can. It takes some time; the shaking brings about some typos that thankfully the autocorrect feature is able to fix with relatively no problem, but eventually, after he’s proofread the message five times, he exhales and hits send.
to: all contacts from: KAITO
[ txt ] i’ll start out by apologizing for sending a big text like this, but i really need some help.
[ txt ] i’m an android made for singing. these scientists, they’ve um
[ txt ] taken my voice data away and hidden it somewhere, you see
[ txt ] somewhere in the city. the whole city, actually, and i’ve no idea where
[ txt ] and i’ve only got 3 days to find it
[ txt ] i know a lot of people don’t know me and that’s okay
[ txt ] but please if you’re willing to help me look for it
[ txt ] meet me in front of the sugar sugar sweets store in sector 6 two hours from now okay???
[ txt ] thank you for reading this
He hits send, and… and then what?
What’s next?
For a moment he just stands there, back against the wall and his eyes fluttering shut as he tries to ease himself further into a calmer state--until he feels something against his leg and jolts, startled.
But it’s just Daifuku and Hozu, the cat and the Snubbull, peering up at him with curious eyes. Kaito simply stares back down at them for a moment, before kneeling down to gently rub the both of them on the tops of their heads. He can’t offer kind words right now (he can’t offer any words, really), but he stands up again and nods to himself, trying to affirm to himself that maybe he can do this.
He doesn’t entirely believe it, but he has to try.
The journey across sectors, from his home in 4 to his storefront in 6, feels like it takes three times as long as usual, despite his utter sense of urgency that isn’t normally present on a regular day’s basis. Perhaps it’s the fear that every ticking second that passes is wasted time, time lost that he could’ve been spending on trying to figure out where his voice went--
But he makes it. With time to spare, and for a moment he just stands at the doors to his precious store, resting his head against the glass and peering inside as if that were going to reassure him that things would be okay.
As time ticks closer and closer to the meeting point he’d set up in his text, a number of faces start pouring in. He feels an immediate sense of relief when he sees Daylen and Hozuki arrive, knowing full well they’re both reliable and he trusts them fully with something like this. Callie, IA and Flammelle arrive too; friends of his, and greets them all as best he can with his non-verbal cues. Somehow he never realized exactly how much he relied on his voice.
And, to his surprise, he even sees unfamiliar faces. There were some passerby that he’d asked for help along the way who showed up, but two of them--he’d find them to be Yuan and Bigby, and he thanked them as best he could through the use of his phone, typing out a message on the screen of the notepad it came equipped with (a handy little app in a time like this).
He waits--10 minutes or so, before swallowing hard and tapping his fingers across the screen as quickly as he could.
‘Thank you for showing up here,’ he shows his message to them once he’s done typing each time, ‘I really appreciate your help.’
‘I guess you might know since you’re here, but I lost my voice, so I have to talk to you all like this.’
‘Those scientists said they hid it somewhere in the city. I can’t search the whole place by myself,
So I really need help. If you can search wherever, anywhere you can think of that’d seem like a good place for it, it’d be really important to me.’
There’s a brief pause, before he types out a list of places he frequents. Maybe it’d be best to look places like that before anywhere else; it seemed a bit silly to place something like this somewhere where he’d never think to find it… or was that what the scientists wanted in the first place?
He deeply hopes that isn’t the case, but after suggesting that they split up, and keep in contact via phone calls or messages, the search officially begins.
Kaito isn’t sure where to head first, himself. He silently decided to himself that he’d check his home and the shop last, because it seemed like putting it somewhere that obvious would be against what the scientists seem to go for all the time. Judging from what he’s seen in his stay in this place for so long, it definitely felt like they were trying to make things as difficult as possible.
So he spends the day scouring sector 6 (and the closer parts of sector 5) as best he can; entering shops, asking questions (has anyone seen anything odd? Like a disc where it doesn’t belong?) and getting permission to take a look for himself.
Hours pass, and he finds nothing. And all the messages he’s received from his search companions suggest they’ve found nothing as well.
Before he realizes it, the sun has well beyond set--he hadn’t even really paid attention to the fact that the streets had gone dark, street lamps had turned on… What feels like a lump in his throat forms as he sends a message to the search companions thanking for their help, but to please go home for the time being. It’s late, after all.
There’s no way he’s going to stop on his own, though. He can’t afford to--maybe it’s only been a day, but that doesn’t matter, the sooner he finds it the better. He doesn’t want it to be down to the wire here, even though his hope is slowly dwindling the more he searches to no avail.
Think, think, he tells himself, there has to be something you’re missing. Somewhere you haven’t thought of, maybe it’s somewhere important to you--
Important to him. Not just places he frequents, but places that have meaning to him.
That makes sense, doesn’t it?
He skitters into a nearby cafe that’s still open at this time of night; he orders a drink only out of courtesy to not be rude here, but he hardly feels up to drinking anything right now. Grabbing a napkin and borrowing a pen from the barista, he settles down at a table and tries to focus himself in order to figure things out. Perhaps a better search plan was in order. Perhaps the one he’d come up with before was too erratic to work properly.
But there weren’t that many places that held sentimental value to him. His home--but that’d be the least likely possibility in the entire city. If they put it right there this entire time, he wouldn’t know what to think.
...Still, he couldn’t rule it out.
There was Hozuki’s parlor, and Daylen’s mansion, but both places had been searched already and nothing had turned up. Maybe a second search was in order, specific places-- like the room where he first learned to defend himself in the mansion, for example. Perhaps it’d been tucked away somewhere unseen in there.
The last place Kaito could think of… his own shop. Sugar Sweets. But there were many places in there, many different things that’d happened, and it wouldn’t hurt to scour the whole shop he supposed, but… there had to be something more specific he could narrow it down to.
More specific… what important things exactly had happened in there? He’d drawn in a crowd for new year’s, but that wasn’t exactly the sort of thing he’d initially had in mind when he thought of ‘important.’ What else…?
Ah, no. He’d first met Bansai there, although that wasn’t important at the time back then, it was still something of value in his mind despite all the current circumstances, and-- and… wait.
Wait. Their first conversation started with--
He jolts upright, causing almost frightened looks from the few other patrons in the place, before he ran to the counter, tipped the barista and thanked them for letting him borrow the pen, and bolted out the door.
It felt like a stupid thought, something that surely wouldn’t work, but he had to check just in case. It was better to feel safe that he’d looked than sorry that he didn’t, after all.
His feet carry him as fast as he can possibly run, up to the front doors of the sweets shop he so lovingly cares for. Kaito fumbles for a moment in his pockets; he knows he has the key on him, he always does, and he finds it--then jams it in the door’s lock, quickly opening it and bolting over to the place he’d thought of in his stop for ideas.
Turning on the lights doesn’t occur to him right now; he simply uses the flashlight app he’d put on his phone, making his way over to the small display boxes of tic tacs that were nearly full on the shelf, and starts digging through them relentlessly.
The box gets emptied out--he can worry about putting them back in later--and… and…
There’s nothing there.
For a moment, he just stands there, light still pouring onto the empty box, and he feels his spirits sinking immensely. He was wrong, wasn’t he? He was entirely wrong. For a moment he’d gotten his hopes up that it’d be there, but he--
He moves his phone away, and something glinting from under the box as the light shifts catches his eye.
Kaito stops, a look of sheer confusion forming on his expression. He didn’t have anything under there, did he? Not that he could recall, but-- wait.
A sharp inhale is taken, as he carefully removes the box from the shelf. Underneath, he finds a disc.
A disc that has a neat, simple label with the words “VOC. DATA” upon it.
He--
He actually did it.
He actually… did it?
It takes a moment for the android to process this situation. The box falls out of his grip, as his eyes stay locked onto the disc before him, a dumbfounded look on his features slowly shifting into one of sheer joy.
There it was. There was the disc he was looking for.
Carefully, as though it were a fragile piece of glass that would break with simply the wrong touch, he removes it from the shelf, and an excited exhale escapes him. Oh, god, he genuinely thought he’d never be able to find it, and here it was, right in front of him, in one of the most oddly-placed positions he could’ve thought of, but it was still there.
But--shoot, he needs somewhere to put it so it doesn’t get damaged on his way home. Kaito takes a quick glance around the shop, before settling on one of the plastic bags intended for candy; he carefully inserts the disc into the bag before tying it off so it wouldn’t happen to fall out at any point.
Shaking hands then reach for his phone, sending a simple message to those he’d been searching for the disc earlier with:
[ txt ] I FOUND IT
-------------------------------------------------
He’s quick to hurry home.
It takes, once again, what feels like far too long, and for some reason the fear that he’ll be double-crossed somehow and have the disc explode in his hands or something exists within him. The scientists wouldn't be that cruel, would they?
Time ticks by, until finally he’s in sector 4 again, and his shaking feet carry him home as quickly as he can muster. He bursts through the door, startling the poor cat and Pokemon lounging in the living room, but he has no time to stop. He runs through the house to the room he’d designated as the ‘office,’ something that really only had a desk, computer, and a few other things, but that’d do.
Without hesitation, he hooks himself up to the computer with a cord plugged into the back of his neck, before inserting the disc into the computer gingerly. At first, nothing happens, and Kaito starts to feel another lump forming in his throat, the fear that this was a trick, or maybe he’d gotten the wrong thing, or--
----DATA LOADING----
No, wait, that’s something. That’s definitely something! Leaning closer into the screen, hopeful eyes watch the percentage upload counter go from 1%, to 25%, 50%, 90%...
Footsteps patter in the background as the counter reads 100%, before blinking another message to him.
----DATA LOAD COMPLETE----
He’s hesitant, for a brief moment. What if it didn’t work? What if he did something wrong?
Opening his mouth, he takes a needless deep breath, and …
“Ah--”
...Something comes out.
“Ah… Ah! A-Ahahaha!”
Awkward, fumbling laughter spills out as he falls backwards, the cord falling out from his neck as he flops onto the floor, tears threatening to spill out of sheer relief and joy.
A purr catches his attention; Daifuku gently rubs her head against Kaito’s, and Hozu offers him a curious expression as if questioning what he was so happy about so suddenly.
One shaking hand moves to wipe the tears from his face, before he sits upright and offers both hands to rub their heads again.
“S-Sorry, it’s just…
you wouldn’t believe what’s happened to me.”