Dianetics Another Day: Chapter 2
Dianetics Another Day
Chapter 2: Until Morale Improves
It was a busy morning for Dr. Gojyou Shiouji (PhD, ScD, Super Genius), particularly once the explosions started. Iwata's cameras showed the passengers' heroic effort to overthrow their masked hijackers, and indeed, he tried not to look directly at those screens, knowing all too well which side he would be rooting for. Instead, he watched the uneventful chase scene of the ACROSS blonde through Ropponmatsu's eyes, and he pondered. He had been debating all morning how he would take such an opportunity, should it arise. He had Ropponmatsu delaying the footage to Kabapu, and if everything went well, he could...
"Do it," said the devil on his shoulder, who also happened to be his mother. Far from lifting the weight on his mind, she added more weight to the top of his head.
"MOTHER!" Shiouji flailed uselessly under her smothering D/E/F/Godonlyknows cup.
"What are you watching, my shy little boy? Do you like that girl~?" Miwa practically sang as she wrapped her arms around him.
"She's just a coworke―MOM DO YOU MIND?"
"I meant the other one." Miwa tapped the monitor. "I wouldn't mind if you brought more girls home, Gojyou-chan."
"No," he grumbled, "I expect you wouldn't."
Misaki's voice cut into the touching family dysfunction (or rather, the dysfunctional family touching). "Shiouji, are you still there?"
Shiouji crawled out from under the maternal bosom and picked up the microphone. "Yes. Sorry."
"She doesn't seem to be hurt, but she's out cold. Are you going to send the helicopter?"
Shiouji shot one last suspicious glance at his mother before saying, "No. Just wait there; I'll send the Full Automobile MK II."
Miwa smiled. "My adventurous son~♥"
"I wish you would just tell me what's going on, Mother."
"I know," she said. "I'm sorry."
* * *
"Man," said Iwata, "Did you guys see that explosion?"
No one seemed particularly enthusiastic to answer him. It had been a long morning. Sumiyoshi was the one who bit the bullet. Which one? he asked.
"The freaking huge one," Iwata said. He said this as a severed head, hanging by a cord dangling from his few-remaining scraps of his neck (upside-down, as he had insisted that Misaki carry him). "Did you guys see it?"
"Yes," his coworkers replied in unison.
"Where's the helicopter?" asked Watanabe. "Wasn't there a helicopter?"
Shiouji's voice cut into the intercom (everyone's, this time), "Since we've established that everyone remembers the explosions, would anyone like to venture a guess as to what happened to the helicopter?"
"Then how are we supposed to get home?"
"Have you considered the benefits of public transportation?"
There was something about riding a train in brightly-colored, skintight sentai suits that was far more humiliating than walking around in brightly-colored, skintight sentai suits. Iwata began the journey under Misaki's seat, but this was quickly deemed by her to be a drastic mistake. As there was not enough left of him for her to maul in retribution, she rectified the error by transferring him into the safekeeping of Sumiyoshi's lap, where he wept for the loss of his body.
Debriefing took the rest of the morning. It was eventually determined that Iwata's disembodied head had sustained enough injury to earn a sick day, and Ropponmatsu was dispatched to take him back to the lab for repair. Everyone else got a fresh batch of menial labor to work on for the rest of the day, and the Daitenzin suits were returned to the locker room.
* * *
ACROSS morale was at an all-time low, and there weren't a lot of things that could clear a limbo bar set by low ACROSS morale. Like their enemies, they had seen the explosions; in fact, Hyatt saw one quite closely, and had been even more dead than usual for the majority of the morning. Between the corpse and the fear of sirens, Elgala lost no time in distancing herself and her senior from the airport. All in all, a halfway successful escape; on one hand, no one caught them, but on the other, they hadn't managed to catch Excel.
"She probably got away," said Elgala, once Hyatt had returned from the cold-yet-slightly-charred grip of death.
"Probably," Hyatt agreed.
"She might be waiting for us back at the base right now!"
"She might," Hyatt agreed.
"There's no reason to think that the government caught her and is drugging, torturing, and violating her even as we speak!"
"Probably not," Hyatt agreed.
"How wonderful would it be if we lived in an apartment that wasn't charred and infested with enemies. I, Elgala, wish nothing more than to go home to a place like that!"
"I as well," Hyatt agreed.
Elgala tore at her hair, albeit not enough to mess it up. "What are we supposed to dooooo? There's no way we can just find Senior Excel without knowing where to look, and we certainly can't go to Lord Il Palazzo looking like stewardesses!" (I, Elgala, also think we should take some time to relax before hunting down Senior Nazi-I-Mean-Excel.)
"I am a bit tired," Hyatt agreed.
"Good. Let's find a nice public place to sit and regret the events of our life that led up to this point." As they walked, they passed a sandbox full of playing children. "That's strange," said Elgala. "I don't remember this park. Have we ever lived here?"
"I don't think so. Senior Excel says this park contains an unsavory element."
"Well, I see an unsavory park bench with our name on it!" Elgala sprawled out on the bench, letting out a loud sigh. "I, Elgala, wonder if the kids playing in this park know that their adult life is going to be fraught with failures and misery and woooe. What did you want to be when you grew up, Senior Hyatt?"
Hyatt looked thoughtful. For several minutes straight.
"Never mind."
For a few moments, they were at peace (and resting in peace, respectively). The only sounds were of the rustling leaves, chirping birds, and laughing children. One of the children, singing louder than the others, cheerfully swung a bowling ball case as she approached the park.
"Hey, wake up, Senior Hyatt." Elgala gave her a nudge. "Does that little girl look familiar?"
Hyatt revived, squinted, put on her glasses, and squinted through her glasses. "Is that the little girl who was chasing us around with the rocket launcher earlier this morning?"
"Right. I knew I saw her somewhere." Elgala closed her eyes again. Warm sun, gentle breeze― "AAAAAAH!"
Oblivious to her shouting, or perhaps drawn to it, Ropponmatsu approached the bench. "Hello~! Big sis kidnappers must really want to be my friends! Master, Master! Are you there? I caught them all by myself! Masterrrr?"
"I think you're mistaking us for someone else," said Elgala, grabbing Hyatt by the wrist and pulling her away from the bench. She noticed the muffled noises coming from the bowling ball bag, but she didn't really register them, having nothing to register them as.
"Oh, what do you want?" Ropponmatsu asked, pulling out a severed head.
Elgala screamed and ran.
"Whoa! It's the red butterfly!" said the head.
Elgala screamed louder and ran faster.
"Say, Iwat-chiiiii, do you remember that time we were chasing the big sis kidnappers and you threw my arm?"
"Yeah, that was pretty good. Why do you aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa―"
Iwata rolled with deadly accuracy, smashing directly into Elgala's ankles, which caused her to drag Hyatt down with her. "Steeeeeeeeee-rike~!"
With the loli Terminator bearing down on them, Elgala had no choice but to cash in one of her turbo boosters (which is to say, a burst of adrenaline) and scramble back to her feet, yanking Hyatt after her. In her state of panic, there was only one Elgala could think to go. With a little prayer of forgiveness to Lord Il Palazzo, she headed downwards.
* * *
Misaki found Shiouji on his park bench, looking frazzled. Feeling pretty frazzled herself, she took a seat beside him. "You're ready to call it a day, too, huh?"
"If only," he scoffed. "Hearing shouting outside my lab, I leapt to a gentlemanly rescue; but arriving outside, all I found was this lovely day~" He did not need to mention or even look at the children for a chill to hang over the air, and prudently, he changed the topic. "In any event, I'm still waiting on some repairs I have to do. I'm surprised the Doctor let you out."
It was her turn to scoff. "Lunch break."
"Ah, then I should offer you some lunch!" He flounced off the bench and offered his hand, sparkling slightly. Misaki got up and walked directly past him. "Ah. Good thinking. Wouldn't want people to start talking about us."
Misaki shrugged. "It's not like I told anyone the truth about where I was going."
"Oh? What did you tell them?"
"That I was having lunch with a friend."
"Cold... so cold..." They headed inside, and Shiouji tapped the intercom. "Umi?"
It took a second, but her voice finally replied, "Yes, Professor?"
"Could you make up some lunch after all? With some extra, for Ms. Matsu―" A loud crash cut him short, and he depressed the button. "She really usually is much better with company..."
"I'm not that hungry, anyway."
Shiouji nodded. "Shall I show you to the back room, then?" They headed through a gamut of doors, stopping for a password here and a scan there. "A good lab is as difficult to escape as it is to enter," he told her cheerfully. "It makes a nice prison in a pinch."
"Did she ever wake up?"
"Not to my knowledge. Mind you, I haven't had time to watch after her."
The prisoner was held in a small lab in the back with a wide, glass window, and was indeed sleeping, still in her dirty airport uniform.
"I wonder how old she is," Misaki mused. "She looks like she could be a teenager."
"That seems likely. All she had on her was a cell phone and some candy." Misaki frowned at Shiouji when he said this, but he pre-empted anything she might have said. "Don't be ridiculous. She's not my type."
"Actually, I was thinking about your mother."
"Ah. Yes." He coughed slightly. "I haven't told Mother yet. Umi helped me move her in here. If help is what you can call it." He let out a long-suffering sigh.
"What are you going to do with her?"
Shiouji considered. "For now, I'll leave her to dreamland, but I would like to talk to her. I'll wake her up in the evening if she doesn't come to on her own. You're invited, of course."
They headed back to the main house in silence. As they walked through the last door, Umi came by as though on a kamikaze mission. She would have plowed directly into Shiouji had he not sidestepped; as it was, she plowed directly into the opposite wall.
"Pro- pro- profess- pro-"
"Yes, Umi?"
"I was― lunch, and― the thing― with the lights― and the noise―"
Shiouji tapped one foot impatiently. "The phone? The car? The television?"
"Nooooo, the shiny― loud― bad―"
"We've been over this, Umi. You need to use nouns. Nouns."
"Th-the alarm! The alarm is going off!"
Shiouji rubbed his nose under his glasses. "What did you spill on it this time?"
"I― I―"
With another put-upon sigh, Shiouji brushed past her to where alarms were, in fact, sounding. he flicked them off as he approached the central terminal, Umi and Misaki following behind awkwardly.
"Umi," he said.
"Yes, Professor?"
"Where is Ropponmtasu?"
* * *
Il Palazzo's finger hovered over the button. It was a large button, shiny and red as such buttons ought to be. Il Palazzo had long since transcended such meaningless concepts as right and wrong, and yet he could not bring himself to push it. It seemed such a waste to kill Excel now.
"Do it before it's too late," he told himself, but he withdrew his finger. He hated being told what to do, even by himself. Especially by himself.
He did not have time to argue. One of his agents slid in the door on the opposite end of the hallway, slamming it behind her and leaning up against it.
"Which one is that, again?" he asked himself.
"Elgala," he replied.
"Ms. Elgala," he called out, "May I ask what is behind the door?"
She looked sheepish for a moment, opened the door, pulled Hyatt in, and slammed it again. Il Palazzo pulled the rope.
"Ms. Hyatt. May I ask what is behind the door?"
"Um..." Hyatt looked thoughtful as the door blew into the room.
"Watch out, Lord Il Palazzo!" Elgala cried, head emerging just in time to be stepped on.
"Wooow~ this the enemy base?" Ropponmatsu peered up at Il Palazzo. "Are you the final boss?"
Il Palazzo descended from his throne. "I'm delighted to see you again," he said, offering his hand. "You remember me... don't you?"
Chapter 2: Until Morale Improves
It was a busy morning for Dr. Gojyou Shiouji (PhD, ScD, Super Genius), particularly once the explosions started. Iwata's cameras showed the passengers' heroic effort to overthrow their masked hijackers, and indeed, he tried not to look directly at those screens, knowing all too well which side he would be rooting for. Instead, he watched the uneventful chase scene of the ACROSS blonde through Ropponmatsu's eyes, and he pondered. He had been debating all morning how he would take such an opportunity, should it arise. He had Ropponmatsu delaying the footage to Kabapu, and if everything went well, he could...
"Do it," said the devil on his shoulder, who also happened to be his mother. Far from lifting the weight on his mind, she added more weight to the top of his head.
"MOTHER!" Shiouji flailed uselessly under her smothering D/E/F/Godonlyknows cup.
"What are you watching, my shy little boy? Do you like that girl~?" Miwa practically sang as she wrapped her arms around him.
"She's just a coworke―MOM DO YOU MIND?"
"I meant the other one." Miwa tapped the monitor. "I wouldn't mind if you brought more girls home, Gojyou-chan."
"No," he grumbled, "I expect you wouldn't."
Misaki's voice cut into the touching family dysfunction (or rather, the dysfunctional family touching). "Shiouji, are you still there?"
Shiouji crawled out from under the maternal bosom and picked up the microphone. "Yes. Sorry."
"She doesn't seem to be hurt, but she's out cold. Are you going to send the helicopter?"
Shiouji shot one last suspicious glance at his mother before saying, "No. Just wait there; I'll send the Full Automobile MK II."
Miwa smiled. "My adventurous son~♥"
"I wish you would just tell me what's going on, Mother."
"I know," she said. "I'm sorry."
* * *
"Man," said Iwata, "Did you guys see that explosion?"
No one seemed particularly enthusiastic to answer him. It had been a long morning. Sumiyoshi was the one who bit the bullet. Which one? he asked.
"The freaking huge one," Iwata said. He said this as a severed head, hanging by a cord dangling from his few-remaining scraps of his neck (upside-down, as he had insisted that Misaki carry him). "Did you guys see it?"
"Yes," his coworkers replied in unison.
"Where's the helicopter?" asked Watanabe. "Wasn't there a helicopter?"
Shiouji's voice cut into the intercom (everyone's, this time), "Since we've established that everyone remembers the explosions, would anyone like to venture a guess as to what happened to the helicopter?"
"Then how are we supposed to get home?"
"Have you considered the benefits of public transportation?"
There was something about riding a train in brightly-colored, skintight sentai suits that was far more humiliating than walking around in brightly-colored, skintight sentai suits. Iwata began the journey under Misaki's seat, but this was quickly deemed by her to be a drastic mistake. As there was not enough left of him for her to maul in retribution, she rectified the error by transferring him into the safekeeping of Sumiyoshi's lap, where he wept for the loss of his body.
Debriefing took the rest of the morning. It was eventually determined that Iwata's disembodied head had sustained enough injury to earn a sick day, and Ropponmatsu was dispatched to take him back to the lab for repair. Everyone else got a fresh batch of menial labor to work on for the rest of the day, and the Daitenzin suits were returned to the locker room.
* * *
ACROSS morale was at an all-time low, and there weren't a lot of things that could clear a limbo bar set by low ACROSS morale. Like their enemies, they had seen the explosions; in fact, Hyatt saw one quite closely, and had been even more dead than usual for the majority of the morning. Between the corpse and the fear of sirens, Elgala lost no time in distancing herself and her senior from the airport. All in all, a halfway successful escape; on one hand, no one caught them, but on the other, they hadn't managed to catch Excel.
"She probably got away," said Elgala, once Hyatt had returned from the cold-yet-slightly-charred grip of death.
"Probably," Hyatt agreed.
"She might be waiting for us back at the base right now!"
"She might," Hyatt agreed.
"There's no reason to think that the government caught her and is drugging, torturing, and violating her even as we speak!"
"Probably not," Hyatt agreed.
"How wonderful would it be if we lived in an apartment that wasn't charred and infested with enemies. I, Elgala, wish nothing more than to go home to a place like that!"
"I as well," Hyatt agreed.
Elgala tore at her hair, albeit not enough to mess it up. "What are we supposed to dooooo? There's no way we can just find Senior Excel without knowing where to look, and we certainly can't go to Lord Il Palazzo looking like stewardesses!" (I, Elgala, also think we should take some time to relax before hunting down Senior Nazi-I-Mean-Excel.)
"I am a bit tired," Hyatt agreed.
"Good. Let's find a nice public place to sit and regret the events of our life that led up to this point." As they walked, they passed a sandbox full of playing children. "That's strange," said Elgala. "I don't remember this park. Have we ever lived here?"
"I don't think so. Senior Excel says this park contains an unsavory element."
"Well, I see an unsavory park bench with our name on it!" Elgala sprawled out on the bench, letting out a loud sigh. "I, Elgala, wonder if the kids playing in this park know that their adult life is going to be fraught with failures and misery and woooe. What did you want to be when you grew up, Senior Hyatt?"
Hyatt looked thoughtful. For several minutes straight.
"Never mind."
For a few moments, they were at peace (and resting in peace, respectively). The only sounds were of the rustling leaves, chirping birds, and laughing children. One of the children, singing louder than the others, cheerfully swung a bowling ball case as she approached the park.
"Hey, wake up, Senior Hyatt." Elgala gave her a nudge. "Does that little girl look familiar?"
Hyatt revived, squinted, put on her glasses, and squinted through her glasses. "Is that the little girl who was chasing us around with the rocket launcher earlier this morning?"
"Right. I knew I saw her somewhere." Elgala closed her eyes again. Warm sun, gentle breeze― "AAAAAAH!"
Oblivious to her shouting, or perhaps drawn to it, Ropponmatsu approached the bench. "Hello~! Big sis kidnappers must really want to be my friends! Master, Master! Are you there? I caught them all by myself! Masterrrr?"
"I think you're mistaking us for someone else," said Elgala, grabbing Hyatt by the wrist and pulling her away from the bench. She noticed the muffled noises coming from the bowling ball bag, but she didn't really register them, having nothing to register them as.
"Oh, what do you want?" Ropponmatsu asked, pulling out a severed head.
Elgala screamed and ran.
"Whoa! It's the red butterfly!" said the head.
Elgala screamed louder and ran faster.
"Say, Iwat-chiiiii, do you remember that time we were chasing the big sis kidnappers and you threw my arm?"
"Yeah, that was pretty good. Why do you aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa―"
Iwata rolled with deadly accuracy, smashing directly into Elgala's ankles, which caused her to drag Hyatt down with her. "Steeeeeeeeee-rike~!"
With the loli Terminator bearing down on them, Elgala had no choice but to cash in one of her turbo boosters (which is to say, a burst of adrenaline) and scramble back to her feet, yanking Hyatt after her. In her state of panic, there was only one Elgala could think to go. With a little prayer of forgiveness to Lord Il Palazzo, she headed downwards.
* * *
Misaki found Shiouji on his park bench, looking frazzled. Feeling pretty frazzled herself, she took a seat beside him. "You're ready to call it a day, too, huh?"
"If only," he scoffed. "Hearing shouting outside my lab, I leapt to a gentlemanly rescue; but arriving outside, all I found was this lovely day~" He did not need to mention or even look at the children for a chill to hang over the air, and prudently, he changed the topic. "In any event, I'm still waiting on some repairs I have to do. I'm surprised the Doctor let you out."
It was her turn to scoff. "Lunch break."
"Ah, then I should offer you some lunch!" He flounced off the bench and offered his hand, sparkling slightly. Misaki got up and walked directly past him. "Ah. Good thinking. Wouldn't want people to start talking about us."
Misaki shrugged. "It's not like I told anyone the truth about where I was going."
"Oh? What did you tell them?"
"That I was having lunch with a friend."
"Cold... so cold..." They headed inside, and Shiouji tapped the intercom. "Umi?"
It took a second, but her voice finally replied, "Yes, Professor?"
"Could you make up some lunch after all? With some extra, for Ms. Matsu―" A loud crash cut him short, and he depressed the button. "She really usually is much better with company..."
"I'm not that hungry, anyway."
Shiouji nodded. "Shall I show you to the back room, then?" They headed through a gamut of doors, stopping for a password here and a scan there. "A good lab is as difficult to escape as it is to enter," he told her cheerfully. "It makes a nice prison in a pinch."
"Did she ever wake up?"
"Not to my knowledge. Mind you, I haven't had time to watch after her."
The prisoner was held in a small lab in the back with a wide, glass window, and was indeed sleeping, still in her dirty airport uniform.
"I wonder how old she is," Misaki mused. "She looks like she could be a teenager."
"That seems likely. All she had on her was a cell phone and some candy." Misaki frowned at Shiouji when he said this, but he pre-empted anything she might have said. "Don't be ridiculous. She's not my type."
"Actually, I was thinking about your mother."
"Ah. Yes." He coughed slightly. "I haven't told Mother yet. Umi helped me move her in here. If help is what you can call it." He let out a long-suffering sigh.
"What are you going to do with her?"
Shiouji considered. "For now, I'll leave her to dreamland, but I would like to talk to her. I'll wake her up in the evening if she doesn't come to on her own. You're invited, of course."
They headed back to the main house in silence. As they walked through the last door, Umi came by as though on a kamikaze mission. She would have plowed directly into Shiouji had he not sidestepped; as it was, she plowed directly into the opposite wall.
"Pro- pro- profess- pro-"
"Yes, Umi?"
"I was― lunch, and― the thing― with the lights― and the noise―"
Shiouji tapped one foot impatiently. "The phone? The car? The television?"
"Nooooo, the shiny― loud― bad―"
"We've been over this, Umi. You need to use nouns. Nouns."
"Th-the alarm! The alarm is going off!"
Shiouji rubbed his nose under his glasses. "What did you spill on it this time?"
"I― I―"
With another put-upon sigh, Shiouji brushed past her to where alarms were, in fact, sounding. he flicked them off as he approached the central terminal, Umi and Misaki following behind awkwardly.
"Umi," he said.
"Yes, Professor?"
"Where is Ropponmtasu?"
* * *
Il Palazzo's finger hovered over the button. It was a large button, shiny and red as such buttons ought to be. Il Palazzo had long since transcended such meaningless concepts as right and wrong, and yet he could not bring himself to push it. It seemed such a waste to kill Excel now.
"Do it before it's too late," he told himself, but he withdrew his finger. He hated being told what to do, even by himself. Especially by himself.
He did not have time to argue. One of his agents slid in the door on the opposite end of the hallway, slamming it behind her and leaning up against it.
"Which one is that, again?" he asked himself.
"Elgala," he replied.
"Ms. Elgala," he called out, "May I ask what is behind the door?"
She looked sheepish for a moment, opened the door, pulled Hyatt in, and slammed it again. Il Palazzo pulled the rope.
"Ms. Hyatt. May I ask what is behind the door?"
"Um..." Hyatt looked thoughtful as the door blew into the room.
"Watch out, Lord Il Palazzo!" Elgala cried, head emerging just in time to be stepped on.
"Wooow~ this the enemy base?" Ropponmatsu peered up at Il Palazzo. "Are you the final boss?"
Il Palazzo descended from his throne. "I'm delighted to see you again," he said, offering his hand. "You remember me... don't you?"