After hearing Butler Arnold's explanation, Geno — who had barely managed to make peace with it all — suddenly seemed to think of something, and snapped his head around to look at Twiggy.
"Did you already know about this?"
"Not that long ago — just this morning, actually. The old mas— er, Grandpa Tai told me himself."
Twiggy had instinctively almost let "old master" slip out again, but one look at Arnold's expression — that unmistakable you say it and I'm going straight back to report you, and then you can deal with a sobbing, tantrum-throwing old master all by yourself face — and she quietly swallowed the title back down.
Recalling how it had all gone, Twiggy's expression dimmed slightly.
And Geno, for his part, had now worked out exactly why Twiggy had been acting so strangely.
"Oh~ so that's why you used TOPS as an example. I see how it is now."
Geno figured that since Twiggy already knew about the whole arrangement, she must have decided to swallow her pride and willingly share a husband with Alice — all because this way, she'd have far better prospects and backing for herself.
My beloved consort! Your emperor has wronged you!
Twiggy took one look at Geno's face — that flash of I totally get it followed immediately by an expression of spectacular seediness — and knew without a doubt he had thoroughly misunderstood something. But she couldn't be bothered to deal with him. She gave him a single withering glance, then turned away and went back to checking on the laboratory's construction progress.
It was nearly evening by the time the two of them finally decided to leave.
But just as they were about to head home, a call came in from the Wise-and-Belle siblings.
"Hello? Belle? What's up?"
"Twiggy, where are you and Geno right now?"
The moment the call connected, Belle's voice came through the line — frantic, barely holding together — and Twiggy immediately knew something had gone wrong.
"Calm down, Belle. Tell me what happened."
She needed to know what was going on before she could actually help.
"Okay — huff — it's Grace! Grace collapsed! Koleda and the others couldn't reach you, so they came to the video store — just get over here, please!"
Grace collapsed?
That brought both Geno and Twiggy up short. Could something have gone wrong with that bracelet? After all, Grace's body was already half-Etherealized — it was only natural that her situation would differ somewhat from Geno's.
With that thought, Twiggy didn't dare waste another second. She jumped in the car and floored it toward Sixth Street.
Such a rare experimental subje— ahem, such a dire situation. She had to get there fast.
They swung by home on the way to grab a few potentially useful little gadgets, and before long the two of them arrived at Random Play.
The door had barely opened when they nearly ran straight into Belle — a walking portrait of barely-contained panic.
"Geno! Twiggy! You're finally here! Grace is in a really bad way! Come look, quick!"
She grabbed them both by the hand and took off running toward the back studio.
The moment they walked in, they found several people from Belobog Heavy Industries clustered around the sofa — Grace had clearly been laid out there.
"Out of the way! Let me take a look!"
Twiggy swept the group aside with effortless authority, then crouched down to assess Grace's condition.
Grace lay motionless on the sofa, face etched with faint pain, her whole body intermittently crackling with arcs of electricity — like a robot with a short circuit.
Having taken stock of the situation, Twiggy gave Grace a look with a rather hard-to-read expression, then glanced over at Geno and Koleda, and finally turned to Belle.
"Belle, where's your power outlet?"
"Huh? Why do you suddenly need that?"
She had no idea what Twiggy was planning, but Belle dutifully tracked down what she'd asked for.
Twiggy took the plug, then — without so much as a word of warning — jammed it straight at Grace's fingers and connected the two together.
A crackling bzzt-bzzt-bzzt rang out, a few bolts of electricity flashed across the room, and then the only sounds left were a collective sharp intake of breath from everyone present — and a strange, drawn-out moan.
Hm? A moan?
The group turned as one to look at the big blue eye on the computer screen.
Fairy's entire eyeball was rolling in pure, unfiltered bliss. The expression on her face was exactly that of someone who had just finished a full-body spa treatment — utterly, deeply satisfied.
"There. She'll come around shortly." Twiggy plugged the cord back into the wall, face perfectly blank.
Everyone stood there a little dazed — but sure enough, they watched as Grace gradually began to stir.
When she opened her eyes, she blinked a couple of times, looking completely lost.
"Where am I? Why is everyone staring at me?"
"Thank goodness, you're finally awake. You scared us half to death."
With their Sleeping Beauty revived, the folks from Belobog Heavy Industries finally let out a collective breath — then turned to Twiggy with their thanks.
"Don't mention it. Just remember not to go sticking your fingers in live sockets again. Not exactly a crisis, is it."
"Sticking her fingers in a socket?"
Koleda heard that and turned a suspicious look on Grace.
Grace, for her part, looked thoroughly embarrassed.
"Um, well — I just wanted to see if my body could charge directly, like the kids can — I mean, look, I can already put out electricity, right?"
It turned out that after returning to Belobog Heavy Industries, Grace had gotten extremely excited and immediately started experimenting on her own condition. Since she'd previously been able to discharge electricity, she'd figured she might be like the mechanicals — able to draw power directly from a source to fuel herself. And so, in a moment of inspired impulsiveness, she had stuck her hand into an outlet.
Grace said this while rubbing the back of her head, attempting to brazen it out — but Koleda leapt up and delivered a firm thwack to her skull.
"I'm so sorry! My idiot big sister has caused everyone so much trouble!"
Koleda pushed her big sister down and made her apologize to Wise and Belle on everyone's behalf. This was, after all, the kind of stunt that any person with an IQ above six would know not to pull.
And yet this particular mechanical maniac had gone and done it anyway.
"It's really not that serious — as long as she's okay, that's what matters."
Belle felt a little awkward being apologized to so solemnly, especially when the person in question was someone she actually knew — that made it all the stranger.
"Alright, since Grace is fine, we'll be heading off then."
"Hold on, President — since you're already here, we might as well bring up that other matter too."
Koleda, who had been about to make a straight exit, stopped short at Ben Bigg's words — something had just come back to her. She reached into her bag and produced a hard drive.
"Nearly forgot — Proxy, this is a black box we found on the prototype, but it seems Dad put some kind of special encryption on it. Could you give us a hand?"
With that, Koleda held out the hard drive.
Belle took it and gave it a once-over, then slotted it into the HDD to run a diagnostic.
"Fairy, we pay five times the electricity bill to keep you fed — surely you can crack this, right?"
[Master, I would be most happy to assist — however, given your system's current spare processing capacity, and your requirements around decryption time and power consumption, I would not recommend having me undertake this work alone while you are away from home.]
Hearing Fairy say that, Belle's mind immediately flashed back to the time Fairy had single-handedly devoured three months' worth of electricity bills during that one Hollow run.
Her face drooped accordingly.
____
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