“… just because someone can recognize the symbols on a keyboard doesn’t mean they can run a computer,” Yuuno explained after the girls had confronted him in his office. “If I can—”
“We’ve been over this!” Teana exclaimed, sweeping her hands out in a stopping gesture. The room was silent for a moment before Teana continued.
“I’m telling you, the only way to stop this loop,” she said, touching the holographic window in the room and bringing up an image of the Lost Logia’s tablets, “is to figure out how to run this stuff!”
Yuuno glanced at the screen, then back at the redhead. “Look, if we really had this conversation before, then I probably pointed out to you that there’s no way I can translate this entire text in less than a day,” he said, pointing at the screen.
“Oh, I am so ahead of you!” Subaru growled, pulling out the stored form of Mach Calibur from around her neck as she stepped forward. “I made sure to record the whole thing last time! Play it, Mach Calibur!”
“Buddy?” the Device asked in an unsure tone of voice. It had no clue as to why her partner was acting in this manner.
“C’mon, Mach Calibur, I asked you to record this when this last happened!” she exclaimed.
“… if what you said is true,” Yuuno spoke up, “then when the loop started again, that recording never happened. Yet.”
…
“Right,” Subaru said defeatedly.
“I told you that that wouldn’t work, Subaru,” Teana said, flinching when Subaru rounded on her.
“Don’t wanna hear it!” she exclaimed. Turning back to Yuuno, she looked hopeful. “What about notes? Indelible ink?”
Teana only shook her head exasperatedly.
“Look, if you girls are the only ones with memories of these loops, then you’re going to have to help me by learning and remembering all this,” Yuuno said, causing both girls to freeze.
After a moment, Subaru picked up a printed image of the Lost Logia’s tablets from Yuuno’s desk. “Fine,” she said. “How hard can it be?”
Yuuno gently removed the picture from her hand, and flipped it around for the proper angle before handing it back.
“… we’re doomed, aren’t we, Tea?”
==========
“According to Teana, in a previous loop we attempted to block the Lost Logia by trying to connect to its transfer array,” Shari explained to Hayate as they stood in the briefing room, by a large holographic window. “But we were unable to connect to it. I think what’s happened is that it’s taken over a network of transfer arrays to create this time loop effect.”
“So what you’re saying is…?” Hayate asked, unsure as to what Shari was getting at.
“I had Vita try and do a transfer to a large number of different transfer arrays that we know about,” she informed her. “Out of all of them, we were only able to connect to a select few of them. I did some research and I’ve concluded that if we try the feat Teana mentioned, it’d fail even if we connected from a different world. The system’s become out of synch with the majority of the network, and it’s making the system entirely useless. Right now, there’s no way anyone from Mid-Childa can transfer off-world using the old Belkan Dimensional Transfer Array here.”
“How did you find that out?” Hayate demanded, startled by the revelation.
Shari motioned to the screen, showing a starmap of Administrated and Non-Administrated Worlds that the TSAB had encountered. A number of them were highlighted with a red dot, arranging them in an uneven circle. “All of these are the worlds that Vita was able to connect to,” she said. She gestured again, and red lines fanned out towards the center. “At the center of this group, however, is Non-Administrated World #42. I think when the Lost Logia activates, it somehow establishes a connection to all of these arrays, and starts opening up random dimensional transfers all across the worlds. It’s creating some kind of dimensional bubble!”
“So what you’re saying,” Hayate said, “is that everything inside this dimensional bubble is… cut off from the normal flow of time? It’s not just Non-Administrated World #42 and Mid-Childa? Just what’re the implications of this?”
“Well, ma’am, it means that we could be living the same day over and over thousands of times, and none of us would even know it!” Shari exclaimed.
“… what can we do?”
“Unfortunately, not much,” Shari lamented. “By the next time the loop starts, we won’t even remember we had this conversation. It’s up to Teana and Subaru.”
==========
“Auch. Aus. Werden. Dass. Nach. Oder. Aber. Vor.”
Subaru listed off the words in the book—Old Belkan For The Novice—robotically, her mind quickly going on autopilot. She and Teana had been at this for a couple hours now, attempting to learn what was in the books that Yuuno had ordered from the Infinite Library on short notice. Across the table from them, the head librarian of the facility was working on a holographic screen, doing what he could to translate the text he’d chosen to work on, writing both the old Belkan script and the translated text below it.
Finally, Subaru gave up, letting the book fall to the table as she rubbed her eyes. “This is a bad idea,” she groaned.
“We don’t have any choice, though,” Teana said, still reading from her own book.
Subaru sighed, and shortly thereafter an alert rose through the base as an incoming dimensional transfer was detected. Neither girls even made any motion to go see the commotion—they knew their time was up on this loop.
“You know the worst part about this?” Subaru asked, turning to her best friend.
“What?”
“Every time we loop, Vice-san asks me a question and… I wasn’t listening the first time.”
Teana gave her a suffering smile. “You’re not the only one who has to endure some discomfort, Subaru.”
===flicker===
As usual, it came without any warning—the nature of the time loop placed Subaru and Teana back to what they were doing that exact second it restarted. They are never given a time to react.
The door swung before Teana could do anything, slamming her right in the face with a sharp crack.
“Oh, sorry ensign Lanster!” the personnel squeaked fearfully as Teana recoiled sharply from the blow. “I didn’t—realize you were there…!”
After a second, Teana recovered and looked straight at the man. “You’ve said that on many occasions now,” she muttered flatly.
“I—”
“Next time, I don’t think I’ll be so forgiving,” she growled as she stepped around the door and continued on her way. The personnel could only watch in confusion as the girl stalked off.
==========
The alert was going off again inside Yuuno’s office as they worked. Subaru was leaning against Teana’s shoulder as they read, a pair of papers crumpled up into balls held against her eyelids as she goofed off.
“Section twenty-three ends with a reference to ‘Staude Ankunft’,” Yuuno explained as he marked his translation on the window, having not seen Subaru’s current activity. The girl looked over and let the balls fall over her fingers to the floor as she spared a brief glance at the screen.”
“We’ve been over this,” she announced, causing Yuuno to look back.
“I believe it means the approaching disaster,” Teana explained, not looking up from her book. Subaru looked at her watch, checking to see how many seconds they had left before everything reset.
“Oh,” Yuuno said, “Well… good.”
===flicker===
“… the machine itself,” Yuuno continued in another loop. “With recurring use, the machine… surrenders to the rigors of time.”
“That’s incorrect, Yuuno-san,” Teana blurted out, shaking her head. He looked back, surprised.
“The word, obviously ‘sich ergeben,’ means to give up,” Subaru impatiently explained. “Not ‘surrender’.”
===flicker===
“Okay, this section of the text seems to deal with their arrival to Non-Administrated World #42,” Yuuno explained to the girls.
Subaru continually pushed off the table, spinning her chair rapidly as Teana read, bored out of her mind. Yuuno had yet to see this time, and she wondered how long she could go without getting caught. Grabbing the table, she pushed off the other way, changing her direction. A new game to play!
===flicker===
“Okay, this section of the text seems to deal with their arrival to Non-Administrated World #42,” Yuuno explained to the girls.
Subaru eyed the papers in her hands, each crumpled up into little balls. Teana looked up from her book as the girl tossed one into the air, then another. Soon enough, Subaru found herself juggling.
“SUBARU!” she shouted, scaring the wits out of both her and Yuuno, causing the paper to fly.
===flicker===
Teana gave up reading this time. Subaru was too distracting. She folded her arms beneath her breasts and watched as Subaru stood, skillfully juggling a trio of golf balls she somehow had procured.
===flicker===
Give me those! Teana exclaimed as she snatched the golf balls away from Subaru for the fifth time, preventing her from renewing her juggling practice.
Tea? Subaru responded back telepathically as the other girl eyed the balls in her hand. The redhead bit her lip, resisting the temptation—
The first ball flew up into the air, and she knew she was doomed as she too began juggling.
===flicker===
“… foundation of a colony,” Yuuno finished, turning back around to see the girls.
He didn’t expect to see the two of them standing up, masterfully juggling ten golf balls between them. The spheres twitched and flowed through the air, often jumping jugglers from Teana to Subaru, Subaru to Teana, and back. He stared for several moments, incredulous at the display.
“Girls, are you getting this?” Yuuno interrupted disapprovingly, though neither girl flinched when they saw him turn around. “This is important.”
The alert went up through the base, klaxons ringing.
===flicker===
Teana sat in the commissary, her feet propped up on the table in a rude manner. She was staring at an empty plate, and had a yellow bottle of mustard in her hand. Hearing someone approach, she looked up to see Subaru, looking at her concernedly.
“Tea?” she spoke up. “Shouldn’t we be assisting Yuuno-san with the translation?”
Teana looked back at her plate, her other hand now holding a red bottle of ketchup. “I’m taking this loop off,” she said, holding the ketchup bottle upside down over the plate and giving it a squeeze. A slight movement followed, and another squeeze.
Blinking, Subaru took a seat across from her as Teana removed her feet from the table and lifted up the bottle of mustard. “I’m telling you, Subaru, if we don’t find a way out of this soon, I’m going to lose it,” she muttered.
“What do you mean, Tea?”
“Lose it,” she explained, looking up. “It means ‘go crazy’.”
She started making seemingly random squeezes of the condiments onto the plate. “Nuts. Insane,” she growled, her squeezes getting more violent. “Bonzo. No longer in possession of one’s fact that she’s three fries short of a happy meal.
Up went the place, displaying the image of a grinning happy face made of ketchup and mustard as she screamed.
“WACKO!”