Where chaos stops and more chaos ensues. Where Filia plays the electric keyboard.
Where anything goes.
-//o_O\\7 *Home of the Awful, Mediocre and Pathetic* -//u_u\\7
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Where chaos stops and more chaos ensues. Where Filia plays the electric keyboard. Where anything goes. -//o_O\\7 *Home of the Awful, Mediocre and Pathetic* -//u_u\\7 |
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Sunday, April 24, 2005 (Ready!) - The Wayward, Part XII - "The diary of Uaeouue ... page one..." Aei intoned, dramatically waving a hand over the book as if conjuring up some arcane spell. Given that it was the diary of the Princess of Va World she was reading, it was no surprise that to us three commoners it seemed a very enchanting tome indeed. "Quick! What does it say?" I yelped, exhilirated at our reckless plunge into the world of royalty and courtly intrigue. That I had a prospective career (I'd have agreed, if only she would ask me...) as the Princess' body double served only to whet my appetite for tasting the her deepest, most secret thoughts. "I..." Aei murmured as she gazed deeper into the book, her face taking on a more worried expression, while I craned my neck, peering over her shoulder at the lines of intricate runes which decorated the page with their flowery patterns. Saliva creeping over my lips as the runes, swimming before my eyes, seemed to take on some intelligible shape, Aei suddenly threw up her head and stared at me, straight in the eye, with the most serious of expressions. "I can't read it..." she gulped guiltily as she eked out a contorted smile, "It's in some kind of code, or something..." "WOT?!" I shot upright in shock and indignation, at having my dreams of delving into the Princess' secret diary so brutally quashed ... annihilated by nothing more significant than a child's ignorance? Pausing only to swipe away a trickle of drool on my chin with my sleeve (even though I happened to have a bib around my neck handily placed there for such a purpose) I felt like bellowing forth some kind of rebuke, even though, on hindsight, I realised that it wasn't Aei's fault that we weren't able to decipher the book. Not that we were entitled to be able to, given that its contents were absolutely none of our business. "See, it's as I said" Io Aoi mocked jeeringly, folding his arms over his bib, which, being not dissimilar to the ones Aei and I were wearing, served as an emasculating blemish on his otherwise male supremacist image. "I told you all of this was a bad business!" Though, in actuality, given that it was his responsibility to ferry the classified materials he could salvage from the ruin to the Palace of Va World, he ought to have prevented us from even opening said diary, but seeing as to how it was I, the ignorant foreigner, who had even thought of retrieving the book (and the lovely mirror-like portrait ... *grin* ... of the Princess), we had the rights in our hands. And besides, it was only the three of us who had seen the book open. Judging from his stolid but undrifting gaze, it was clear that he was hardly disinterested in seeing the contents of the tome. "But so what if we can't understand it?" sniggered Aei, a cunning, mischievous smile spreading across her endearing primrose complexion, "That shouldn't stop us from reading through. It is the diary of the Princess , after all!" "You're right, we shouldn't give up!" I laughed, my unsettled spirits buoyed by her ambitious declaration, prompting me to throw myself over her shoulder to get a better look at the diary. The saliva of anticipation was building in my mouth again. The sight of Io Aoi staring questioningly at me for my apparently random mood swings prompted me to quote a line, a rather trite one at that, but one that he would be proud to utter. "Aei, you've got the spirit of adventure!" On hindsight, it was one of the few times that I remembered, given her atrociously disrespectful behaviour towards her elders and betters, ever encouraging her in such a sisterly manner. "Alright, then! Onward, fellow quester!" chuckled Aei, similarly in the mood of exploration, for if she couldn't understand anything beyond the front cover, then I was on an equal footing with both the locals as far as deciphering the contents went and could assist them to some capacity. Returning my encouragement with that sincere, beautiful and oddly familiar smile which had first endeared her to me (oh, curse the day...), she placed a hand on the first page of the illegible runes and drew it back with confidence. "So what if we can't read the words?" she observed with a grin, greedy for knowledge as she was, "We can still admire the pictures!" If there are any, of course. And sure enough, with the luck of the beginner, she was right! Beyond yet another page of indecipherable scribble there was, emblazoned all over the page, an odd series of lines, circles, and grossly mutilated geometric figures. That unusual arrangement of symbols in erratic, seemingly random assortments which appeared, even, to have some significance in their peculiar positions, served to remind me of a certain image which I had become so familiar with from my studies at school ... "Is it ... some kind of chemical formula!?" I burst out in a fit of epiphany, though I should have said it was an alchemical formula since none of the symbols seemed to fit the usual series of carbon bonds or benzene rings which I had been acquainted with during chemistry lessons. "That's some quick thinking, kid!" smirked Io Aoi with a raise of his eyebrows as he looked upon the patterned scrawl with new eyes. It was clear that, despite his claims to the contrary, he was more interested in deciphering the book's contents than ... than the simple task of calling me by my proper name. "Now, could you tell us just what in the world it means, eh, little miss cleverclogs Charlotte?" Wow, great. He got the name right, thanks a million. Me and my big mouth. "I ... how am I supposed to know what this means? I can't even read this stuff!" I protested, for once more keen to display my ignorance than to run the risk of betraying it accidentally, "Why don't you ask Aei? She's a smart girl, surely she's learned something like this in school before!" "Look here, you wannabe princess," Aei retorted with a petulant huff, "I haven't lived on this earth, let alone attend school long enough to know anything beyond farm life and Ouaiie. You're somewhere around twice my age! More surely so, you must be the one who cannot claim to be smart if she doesn't know anything about this!" Hmph. From what I've seen of her (and her vocabulary) so far, I judged that she was more worldly-wise than a girl her age ought to be, for the good of society in general. "Hey, I ..." I stammered as I attempted to divert Aei's penentrating glare, "Um, well, excuse me! What about ... oh say, mister Io Aoi here! He's at least twice my age, and he's a ... an intrepid explorer who has seen the world! He's got to know something about ... about stuff like this!" You know, Aei, it's too bad that I'm a moron because my teachers never saw it fit to instruct me in the written language of Va World, and even more so the cryptic cipher used by princesses in writing in their diaries. "Don't ask me!" exclaimed Io Aoi in self-defence, waving his hands frantically to disown all knowledge of the topic at hand, "It's precisely because I'm an intrepid explorer that I won't know anything about what that stuff means! I'm an explorer, not a scientist!" "Oh, fine ..." interrupted Aei, desirious to break the circular conversation before it turned back to her, she now for once one to break the tension rather than create it, "Let's just settle that it's a kind of chemical formula (not some pretty piece of abstract art, unfortunately) and leave it at that. Alright?" "But wait! Surely you must know something!" I insisted, only to keen to put my art of deduction to the test in deciphering the contents of the Princess' secret diary, and thus put one over my companions who seemed content to remain utterly clueless over the issue at hand. "Just what was that secret government laboratory used for? If you could tell me that, maybe ... just maybe I could guess what chemicals it is she's writing about in her diary and we'd be able to find out what the Princess was doing there!" "I ..." His eyes seemed to cross for a moment before relaxing again, "Then it wouldn't be a secret government laboratory any more, would it? I can't tell you. It's classified stuff." He waved a quivering finger of rebuke, hardly a convincing attempt to discourage us from venturing into uncharted territory. "Really ...?" I inquired, raising my eyebrows and rolling my eyes to appear as unimpressed as I could possibly be. "Really," Io Aoi insisted with a well-practiced appearance of truthfulness ... merely an appearance, for it was a lie that was so easy to see through. "It's confidential. A Palace secret. If I told you, I guess I'd have to kill you, or something like that." "So nicking the Princess' personal autographed copy of her portrait and her super-secret diary filled with all manner of details of her secret research isn't as serious a crime?" I questioned slyly, "The Palace sure has got their priorities all wrong if they would allow documents this important to slip into the wrong hands." Assuming, of course, that they knew of the existence of it, something which Io Aoi did not originally have the privilege of. "Which is why, dear girl, I'm taking it upon myself to stop you before you get yourself, and us, any further into this mess!" exclaimed Io Aoi, avatar of truth, justice, and all things male chauvinistic, "Stop, now, before you discover something you're really going to regret knowing!" "Oh shurrup, Uncle Io! Stop trying to fob us off!" snapped Aei, hitherto silent during my attempts to wrench the necessary information out of her 'uncle', as she banged an item of cutlery against her cream-covered plate. That gesture enunciated my thoughts exactly. "The truth is that you don't know anything about that secret government laboratory! You're merely doing what the Palace paid you to do, simple, unthinking mercenary that you are! What, do we look like we were born yesterday? Please!" Yeah, and I'm twice her age, so was I born the day before yesterday? How do you think I feel, being brushed aside like some snivelling child, eh, mister? "All right, fine, if you insist! Though, should anything happen, on your own heads be it!" sighed the exasperated adventurer, almost seizing his silly straw hat off his head and slamming it onto the table before he realised doing so would mean exposing ... exposing whatever it was that was under his hat. "I really don't know much, but from what I've managed to gather so far, I'm pretty sure that they were doing some work with chemicals in that old laboratory ..." We stared at him as if he had just discovered the wheel. Several hundred thousands of years after the first wise guy to have done so. "Well, yeah, I guess you figured that one out already..." stammered Io Aoi sheepishly as he reached a hand to his head to scratch whatever it was that was under that hat, probably already aware that the stock of our trust in him had already punctured the bottom of its graph, "But get this! The Palace didn't tell me this, but I've heard rumours during my adventuring career that they were actually conducting research on new kinds of weapons in there." Weapons? Now that set my heart pounding. "Are you talking about ... chemical weapons?" I burbled, my eyes as large as the dinner plate I had been eating out of. Such creations seemed quite a leap for a country which still featured the adventurer on horseback and the happy farming town, but given the paranoia associated with them back where I came from, one couldn't be too careful where chemical weapons were concerned. "That's deadly stuff!" "That's possible ... it might be just what you're talking about," considered Io Aoi, taking part in the speculation now that his 'knowledge' about the matter at hand had been exposed as unfounded rumours, "Anything deadly would be an asset in our endless war against those villains from Consonance. A vial of poison, used strategically, could put away a crafty minister or fearsome general. A barrelful in the river could waste any township or barracks located downstream. I wouldn't be surprised if someone in the Palace was working at some kind of chemicals which could do that." "Well, yes, kind of, but ..." I murmured, but the adventurer's words didn't quite get at the gist of what I was conceiving. It didn't need scientific explanations, graphs, equations or formulae, to explain to a commoner in medieval times why the extract of nightshade or belladonna or hemlock would kill. It simply killed, as merely a part of the established fact that it was already recognised as a deadly poison. The diagrams emblazoned across not too few of the pages of the Princess' diary seemed to point at something more complicated ... and sinister. "I've an idea ..." Aei piped up as she put a finger to her nose to serve as a focus for reflection as queer little wrinkles rose in her forehead, "I don't know if you've seen anything as strange as this before, but once, in school, our master brought a flask of something like water to class. Like water, in that it was clear, and flowed easily in its container, but when he poured it on a bar of solid iron ... the 'water' vanished as it touched the metal, and it left a mark there, as if the iron bar had been branded or engraved!" Obviously, whatever Aei's teacher had brought to class had been some kind of fairly concentrated acid, which reacted with the iron upon contact to produce hydrogen and some salt compound which the students failed to notice. Such a basic chemical reaction would arouse little interest in any student from my land with a basic knowledge of science, but to these unknowledgeable townsfolk, it must have seemed a miracle. So astounded and amused was I with how Aei seemed to marvel over something so simple, I chose to remain silent and listen further instead of interrupting her immediately and stating my knowledge of the truth behind the situation presented. "Really? Is that so?" gasped Io Aoi, doubtful of the truth behind little Aei's words, "If so ... then you're saying that a warrior in a full set of shining armour, with a gleaming weapon in his hand, could be defeated merely by ... by wetting them with this mysterious chemical?" "Maybe ...?" Aei replied ambiguously with a little shake of her shoulders. My guess would be that it was unlikely such "chemical warfare" would succeed, given that metal armour and weapons which retained their gleam would probably have been made not out of pure metal but of an alloy, else they would have long rusted away, and such alloys would be less reactive with the concentration of acid that would normally melt pure iron. And how likely would it be that an army would haul massive and easily breakable beakers of such corrosive acids into battle for the sole purpose of dousing their enemies? Applied judiciously, however, it might serve as a rather effective defence during a castle siege. Nevertheless, it was clear that neither of them were aware of what I was thinking of when I mentioned deadly chemical weapons ... stuff like mustard gas, or sarin, where multitudes of humans could die merely by inhaling such chemicals. Perhaps Io Aoi was wrong ... that the chemicals depicted in the Princess' diary were not meant to be used as weapons? Or, given the mystical nature of the world I had just recently entered, were these chemicals to be used as weapons in more unorthodox ways than humanity had previously imagined? I cast my mind back, searching for the most unusual event which had happened to me ever since I arrived in this land of Va World ... and was quick to come to a conclusion. "Maybe we're wrong." And that was the simple answer which relaxed rather than tensed the already knitted brows of my contemplating compatriots. But it was also the most likely answer, for all we had to build our speculations on was the unsubstantiated rumour Io Aoi provided about how the building was a research laboratory for weapons. That, and how it had exploded in a most utter and complete fashion unlikely to be achievable in medieval times, were our only hints. Our scavenger hunt on the ground revealed only smashed furniture, shattered glass chambers, that stack of as-yet unread research notes and, of course, the diary itself. Not to forget the portrait of the missing princess, in its depiction beaming yet seductive. But there was also one more thing ... "But wait ..." I murmured as I struggled to gather my thoughts, while shooting Io Aoi an anxious glance, "What about ..." "... huh? What? What did I do?" the adventurer stammered as he met my searching gaze. "What is it?" He sat bolt upright in his seat as Aei scanned this new development from her own. "What about ... you know ..." I half-asked, half-pondered, not so much directing the question to him as considering it myself. The world seemed to blur for a moment as I searched my thoughts and experiences of the last several hours, and while there seemed to be one clear option I did not feel confident enough to put my finger on it. Or was it that I feared to do so? "The ... that thing ..." "The ... that ... that thing?" Io Aoi repeated dumbly as he too seemed to be similarly paralysed by this new suggestion. "Maybe ..." "There's only one way to find out. Let's go." I intoned in an expressionless, clearly disturbed fashion, a temperament far different from my usual animated nature, as I mechanically undid the bib and placed it on the table (I suspect, upon hindsight, that in my blank state of mind I might have actually put the relatively clean bib right in the centre of my strawberry and cream-splattered plate, thus unnecessarily troubling Aei's dear mother with an extra item for washing). Drawing back my chair, I flipped the barely-explored book shut and lifted it, along with its accompanying portrait, into the deep pockets of my skirt. "What? What?! What is it?" exclaimed Aei with the petulance of an ignored child as she observed her uncle Io doing the same, removing the bib and rising from his seat to follow this stranger to the door, all the while preserving a silent, mysterious, but no less uneasy tension. "Tell me! Tell me now!" "Maybe it's better that you didn't know ..." stated Io Aoi flatly as he turned to stop her, while I opened the front door of the homestead. The cool, salty air of the windswept cliffside seemed to revitalise the stale and humid interior of the house, perhaps calming our senses, which had been on tenterhooks ever since we opened this discussion on weapons. "This stuff is classified, and besides, I really don't think your parents would approve ..." "Oh, cut out this big brother nonsense, will you? We've already opened the book which we weren't supposed to, and started talking about things we shouldn't be talking about ... as long as her parents don't find out about what's been going on, it shouldn't matter. She's a growing girl, come on!" I berated mister adventurer as he once more tried to play the moral hero, which really got on my nerves. And besides, I did sympathise, having experienced so many similar instances of unreasonably obstinate adult obstruction to my youthful inquisition in years past. "Oh, and she had better not touch it ..." "Touch it? Touch what?" squealed Aei excitedly, glad both to find a supportive sister in what might have turned out to be her latest adversary, and to be let in to something of which she had the satisfaction of keeping a secret from her parents. To see those child's eyes light up in anticipation brought a pleasant but uneasy warmth to my heart, especialy after having experienced first-hand the kind of havoc she was capable of. "It must be something fun and exciting if it can't be touched! Or ... something deadly!" "Whatever. We'll show you," I shrugged as I ushered the enthusiastic child and the doubtful adventurer out the house, almost closing the door behind us, before turning to Aei once again. "But first, I need to ask something of you." "What?" "Give your mother my thanks for that breakfast." With that, I shut the door. Oh Goddess, it's been months since I put pen to much paper? And just who do you think is getting to choose what happens next? 35. And just where did you put your carriage, Io Aoi? 36. And just what were you expecting now, dear Aei? - And just who was thinking that I would forget to include to customary ... oops, no space - posted by Charlotte | 4:37 pm
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Disclaimer : The Slayers and Filia Ul Copt and all images thereof are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi. I don't own any of them, although if I had a choice I would want Filia ... ~//n_n\\7 |
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