Book 10 Chapter 3
Part 1
The truth was, no one could say anything for sure.
“Paris’s catacombs were originally developed as a mine, not as a graveyard,” said Maxwell. “The full extent of the tunnels is unknown. After digging a veritable labyrinth, the mine was abandoned and bones of the deceased were gathered and methodically stored there, creating the catacombs known today.”
“The tourist route follows a single, straight path, but they’ve blocked off all the branches with chain link barriers to make sure no one wanders into the other tunnels,” added Anastasia. “What lies beyond those barriers is a mystery. And they’ve been abandoned for centuries, so a digital search won’t turn up anything. We seem to have made a historical discovery at a pretty shallow area earlier.”
This sounded like trouble.
But at least we knew it was trouble going in. It really helped to have Maxwell with us. Instead of feeling our way around in the dark, we had a map and a compass to go on.
We were about to enter unknown territory.
You could look up maps and photos of the moon and the south pole with a search engine these days, so it was surprising to find an entirely unsearchable area directly below France’s capital. But that did make it sound like a place you would find Absolute Noah lurking.
Anyway…
“Enter if you must, but I do not recommend an aimless search,” said Maxwell. “Your odds of encountering Amatsu Yurina by chance are exceedingly low.”
“I know that.”
We weren’t even sure if my stepmom and the warehouse guardian were there right now. If they had agreed to bring the attaché case to a specific point at a specific date and time, then we could search the catacombs forever and never find anything.
It was possible they couldn’t move whatever it was, like it was a cursed doll that had to power up over time in the catacombs like wine or cheese being aged in a cellar, but we had no guarantee of that.
Which meant…
“All we know is my stepmom and the warehouse person are going to meet somewhere inside the catacombs. And that we need to stop that from happening.”
“Umm. What if they gave up on meeting and left?” asked Anastasia.
“That would be great because it means Absolute Noah’s war preparations failed. I don’t like the idea of leaving JB unchecked like that, but it would at least mean no direct conflict.”
However.
I doubted that was the case.
“My stepmom’s group would never back down after that kind of preemptive strike from JB. They had already been preparing to retaliate for last time and now they got hit again. I can guarantee you that Amatsu Yurina is pissed. I don’t see how she could return to Japan with her tail between her legs.”
The meteor shower might have destroyed their treasure, but assuming that would be overly optimistic. We didn’t even know if it was an item, money, a heavy metal weapon, an electronic virus, a human, or an Archenemy.
So what could we do?
For all we knew it could be something as bizarre as Satan, Leader of the Demon Lords, or the Gate of Cocytus leading to the bottom level of hell. A physical attack might have no meaning here.
We had to assume they were still working to retrieve whatever it was.
So if my stepmom was allowed to contact the warehouse guardian, we were looking at the end of the world.
So…
“If we can’t find them right away, then I want to lay a trap.”
My line to Maxwell was finally back up, so I was going to use his search function to its fullest.
“Maybe we can’t see the entire massive dungeon that is the catacombs, but we can still cover the entrances and exits. France has security buzzers, right? Hopefully they have CCD models that contact the authorities and link with a map app. I can’t think of a more economical device that packs a camera, a transmitter, and a battery into such a small package.”
I explained my plan to Maxwell.
“We need to acquire a large number of them and set them up at the entrances and exits. That way we’ll know the instant my stepmom walks by.”
“You cannot know you have covered every entrance and exit when the full extent of the tunnels is unknown,” said Maxwell. “How many locations would that even be?”
“Anastasia, you said the catacombs have the other tunnels blocked off with chain link barriers so people don’t wander in, right? Not with solid metal doors?”
“Yes? Why?”
“So no matter how complicated the layout, the light, sound, air, and heat will pass through.”
I explained what sounded like a dream.
It was Maxwell’s job to make it all work in reality.
“We aren’t pointing the cameras toward the outside of the entrances and exits. We point them inside the catacombs. We send light into all of the entrances we know of and pick up the faint bit of light that necessarily comes out the other exits. Then we repeat the process at as many entrances and exits as possible. By monitoring the light level with all those cameras, we can put together a program to determine the location of anything moving around there and blocking that light. Think of it like an optical test program used to find cracks in pipes. Not all light is strong enough to detect with the naked eye.”
“Umm. You’re talking about something that would take hundreds of engineers and programmers years to develop. We aren’t a Silicon Valley corporation with rows upon rows of workstations!”
“Maxwell.”
“Sure. I have already compiled and debugged the program. You were saying?”
Small Anastasia sprang at me.
She had drool dripping from her mouth.
“Sell that demon to me right this instant!! I’ll pay anything! Why are we wasting our time trying to make quantum computing practical when we have a true demon right here!?”
“Sigh. Need I remind you that I am no more than 1400 defective handheld game system motherboards sold at a discount and stuffed inside a container?”
“Fine, I’ll buy Truth too, since he’s the genius behind building this nonsensical simulator!!”
Ugh, this rich elementary schooler. Although she was technically a super college girl who owned several patents already, so she was talking about money she had earned, not her parents’ money.
I had worked so hard to get this “weapon” back.
Paris had been hit by so many disasters already, but Absolute Noah and JB were trying to make matters even worse for this city and the entire world. Why wouldn’t I make the most of my weapon?
“Anyway, we need a lot of security buzzers. Maxwell, what model did you base your program on? The kind that sounds its buzzer when you pull the cord isn’t enough. It has to photograph the suspect’s face and use a map app to relay is location to the authorities.”
“The Blanc Ange 052. It is two generations out of date, but just barely still being sold. And the pink color appears to have been unpopular, so they are being sold at a discount.”
“There’s nothing wrong with pink,” insisted Anastasia. “France just hates it because they associate it with the kind of femininity forced onto them by culture when they prefer to define femininity for themselves.”
“If you would like to purchase them in bulk, visit the prepaid phone shop 500m ahead of your current location. You can purchase a dozen for 25 euros there.”
“With the power out? It’s almost 9 at night and don’t stores close really early in foreign countries?”
“It is an unmanned store meant to promote the technology being used. The response manual does not cover what to do in a long term power outage, so there is an exceedingly high probability no one knows what to do and it is sitting open. The unmanned register will not respond, but I have searched the entire text of French law and have found nothing making it illegal to make a purchase during business hours if an unmanned register does not respond. As long as you do the math yourself and leave the appropriate payment on the counter, it does not qualify as theft.”
“Marry me, Maxwell!”
Anastasia was clasping her hands in front of her small face and making a strange proposal. How the hell did I develop a computer capable of catching a drooling 11-year-old in a honey trap?
The idea of an unmanned phone shop was wild to me. That could never happen in Japan with all the annoying processes needed to sign up for a phone contract.
Once we arrived, I found it was true.
The shop’s doors sat wide open even in the blackout. The other places had their shutters down or had collapsed, so the ordinary open door actually looked weird. I sensed some movement in the darkness and jumped, but when I shined my phone’s light that way, I saw a few young men and a woman huddled together in a corner. The rain had stopped outside, but they may have been taking shelter here.
“You wait here, Anastasia.”
“What? Why?”
“Just do it.”
Those people could always have a weapon and they might attack if they had decided this store was their turf. Had they known each other to begin with? Hopefully they hadn’t developed an odd dependence and decided to surround any girl they saw in order to protect her.
We had already heard looters and the police having a shootout at the Louvre. I doubted things would get that bad so easily, but it was always a possibility.
Money had been the trigger at the Louvre, but that wasn’t necessarily the only one.
Anastasia was a cute 11-year-old in a short red dress so soaked she could wring out the skirt. The visual alone could be enough of a reason. Furthermore, she was (to the Parisians) a foreigner, a genius girl, rich, and an Archenemy. Perversion, an inferiority complex about education, desire for money, and discrimination against her nationality or species – there were a lot of risks there. And there was no rule saying someone could only be motivated by one thing on that list. Someone might hate rich foreigners specifically or might feel belittled by an Archenemy in higher education.
“Maxwell.”
“Sure. I believe you made the correct decision.”
People’s thoughts were complicated, so it probably wasn’t possible to perfectly predict their actions. Maxwell could only view the past patterns, so there could be any number of different answers. That was what was so scary about entering a dark, enclosed space without multiple exits. I would visit on my own with the small girl waiting outside.
“Where are the buzzers?”
“Shine your light to the side of the register. The bargain bucket would not be hidden away in the back. Because they want to sell them as soon as possible.”
There they were.
I saw a ton of plastic eggs a little bigger than golf balls. Hmm. I normally wouldn’t choose pink myself, but they didn’t look that bad. As for the price…
“Maxwell, how much is 1.99 euros in yen?”
“Why not just round that up to 2 euros? Based on the real-time exchange rate, that is about 300 yen. I would not recommend attempting forex trading with such unstable connection speeds, however.”
Why would I do that? That’s a job for the STEM types like Anastasia. It’s way too much for someone like me who asks the machine to do all the work.
Anyway, that was really cheap. Just like with hard drive capacity and price, computer-related products dropped in price as time passed.
We needed as many cameras as we could get, but I had to remember I was paying for this myself. Paris wasn’t so far gone you couldn’t spend euros, was it? If I was going to buy them in bulk, would 2 dozen be good? Damn, I didn’t have any small bills. Why now of all times? Just to be safe, I left 50 euros, with the extra as a tip.
“Warning: that is approximately 7500 Japanese yen.”
“Gh, it really hurts when you put it like that!”
I couldn’t pay with my phone with the power out, so I left a damp bill on the counter.
And when I grabbed the big box with both hands…
Something exploded.
That something being my eardrums.
It happened so suddenly I didn’t understand.
When I looked over hoping to calm my racing heart, I realized someone was shouting at me. It was just the woman at first, but then the men around her turned toward me.
I didn’t speak French, but I could tell this was bad. My heartrate remained elevated and wouldn’t go back down. What happened? What rule did I break? They had been so calm just a moment before, so what changed!? Did they see my money? Did they hear me speaking Japanese? I wasn’t sure what had set it off, but they definitely held some kind of bombshell!
“Warning!”
“I’m…aware!!”
My hands were full thanks to the big box, so I was in serious trouble if they had a knife or a gun. As a distraction, I kicked some phone batteries scattered on the floor by the earthquake or something and made a beeline for the exit.
I was pursued by a deluge of destructive noises I could only imagine were the shelves being knocked over behind me.
“What in the world happened, Truth!?”
“Run!!”
I heard something whizzing past my right ear.
They had thrown something at me! Was that one of those fire axes you rarely see in Japan!? The heavy object had rotated right past my head. Another 30cm closer and it would have lodged itself in the back of my head. My life was seriously at risk here!!
My heart hurt from the tension.
I felt dizzy.
A lot had happened with the meteor shower, the earthquake, and the flooding, but this was the first time any actual malice had been directed my way. Even at the Louvre, the guns hadn’t been directly aimed our way.
I didn’t understand what set them off and I didn’t understand their language.
I didn’t understand what they had done and I couldn’t predict what they would do. They were entirely unpredictable. The core of their being was a giant question mark.
This time, it was a human disaster. It was so meaningless, silly, and disgusting! I didn’t sense any kind of destiny here. I didn’t want to die for other people’s convenience or greed!!
After turning a corner, we hid behind an abandoned car and held our breath.
We waited a while.
Where were their footsteps?
My heart was beating too loud to hear them.
The axe scared me, but throwing that meant they didn’t have a gun…right? In fact, people don’t just walk around with guns in France, do they? It’s not like the US, is it? Argh, I just want a clear answer! Not knowing only makes it scarier!!
“(Truth, what happened?)”
“(Shh.)”
What did happen?
I could hear sounds of destruction and shouting voices in the distance, but they weren’t coming this way. Were they still inside the shop? So had they been upset with me encroaching on their territory? I didn’t understand any of it. They had been so calm when I first entered the store.
“An analysis of their French suggests they mistook you for a looter,” said Maxwell.
“They what?”
“Leaving money at the unmanned register is perfectly legal, but not every French citizen is familiar with all of their country’s laws. In other words, they mistakenly thought they were protecting the store. You have not memorized all of Japan’s laws, have you? They simply thought you were a thief even though you paid. You did nothing wrong, so do not worry.”
The text wouldn’t enter my head for a while.
Um, hold on.
So you’re saying…
Really?
I was nearly killed by people thinking they were doing the right thing?
“What the hell?”
“It is the truth.”
It was all meaningless.
It was all so stupid and foolish.
So they weren’t even selfish tyrants.
“You kicked some phone batteries when you escaped, but that qualifies as self-defense. Now that the threat has passed, I will also let you know that, given the circumstances, fighting back and killing them would not count as murder under this country’s laws.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
Things were so different overseas. Did the concept of excessive self-defense not exist here?
I felt so exhausted I could only lean against the car. So I was chased and nearly killed by a fire axe and fire extinguisher over nothing more than that? I didn’t believe in destiny, but if that axe had hit me, my death would have been so meaningless I would’ve had to question why I had been born in the first place.
But I had been careless too.
I hadn’t even considered that possibility. Focusing on the bad people as the only threat and obeying all the rules wouldn’t necessarily keep you safe.
Bad people weren’t the only ones with violence as a card in their deck.
It was possible to be killed by “the good guys” too.
Anyway.
“We have the equipment now.”
“Sure.”
“So let’s get to work on the catacombs.”
Part 2
We had set up cameras and lights at all of the entrances we could think of.
Even the faintest light shined in would repeatedly bend and reflect and eventually reach another exit, even if it had weakened too much to be visible by the human eye.
The cameras could detect those faint waves.
If anyone stood in the path of the labyrinthine catacombs, they would obstruct the light in some form.
By combining the signals created by those “shadows” detected by the 20 or 30 cameras, we could calculate out where in the labyrinth the person was.
Think of it like the labyrinth is a giant fiber optic cable and we were searching out the location of some sand rolling irregularly through the bent fiber.
The catacombs were quite large.
Simply setting up the cameras from the surface made for quite a walk.
But we had managed to get it all more or less finished.
We peered through the metal door covering one of the entrances. The door probably meant this area had gotten in the way of construction to expand some kind of tunnel or another.
“Is that good enough?”
“Sure. However, this does not give us a full view of the catacombs, so there may be a margin of error. We can detect the general direction and distance, but it is possible the location I give you is actually two or three floors above their location or that a chain link barrier blocks the way we thought was clear.”
“Do you detect any movement?”
“I do.”
The answer came so suddenly it barely felt real.
Anastasia jumped up.
“Does that mean Absolute Noah is still trying to extract whatever they have in storage!? They’re still intent on waging war!?”
“That is unknown. I have merely detected a humanoid shadow. Determining who exactly it is would be nigh impossible from this data.”
“So it might not be my stepmom?”
“I am not sure if anyone really would want to visit the catacombs on a day such as this, but there are a number of possibilities: someone seeking shelter from the disasters, someone hiding looted items, or a homeless person who was already sleeping in the catacombs.”
Also, hadn’t Anastasia pulled out a tarp to try and protect the catacombs from the acid rain? A labyrinth full of human bones terrified me, but some people might be worried and checking the place for damage.
And that could lead to disaster.
What if someone like that ran into Absolute Noah? Absolute Noah was doing something they wanted to keep secret and they were being obstructed by JB. If they had grown paranoid, they might choose to “eliminate” anyone they ran across to ensure their own safety.
We had to act before that happened.
We had to either let the innocent people know of the danger or drive them out of the catacombs before they stepped on the tiger’s tail.
“There is still a risk if this person is not Mrs. Amatsu Yurina,” said Maxwell. “Entering the catacombs at all is unnatural, so they might find you suspect for being there.”
“I get that.”
I had just had an axe thrown at me for buying things at a store like normal. What people thought was right wasn’t necessarily actually right. Some people even made wrong decisions while fully convinced they were right. Your motives being good and honest did not guarantee your safety.
And what if we ran into someone who knew very well what they were doing was wrong while deep underground with no one else around?
In other words, what if we ran into a true criminal?
That was always a possibility.
“Anastasia.”
“Oh, no you don’t. I’m going this time.”
She didn’t even let me say it.
She even puffed out her cheeks.
“That wasn’t the first time you got yourself in trouble while I wasn’t around, Truth. Remember what happened near the Eiffel Tower? So I’m going. I’m sick of other people making my decisions for me.”
“Sure. I am unable to physically stop you if you do something stupid, so I strongly recommend bringing someone with you. And there is no guarantee Miss Anastasia would be safe waiting up on the surface.”
They didn’t think very highly of me, did they?
But it would be a problem if more “righteous people” like the ones in that store came across Anastasia while she was alone. I had heard the difference between rescue and kidnapping was paper thin at a disaster site.
“Fine. Stay close to me, Anastasia.”
“I’m going to protect you.”
With that highly reassuring comment, she took my hand and led me the first step into the catacombs.
They were a damp place.
They were chilly if not downright cold. I recalled how soaked with rain I was.
I aimed my phone’s light and saw white objects covering the walls just 5 steps inside.
They were human skulls.
“…”
“Truth?”
Anastasia was confused.
I wasn’t afraid of the bones. I was surprised how fast I was getting used to them. Instead of encountering a corpse at a murder scene, it felt more like seeing a model skeleton in a biology classroom.
Was that a good thing?
It made this all more efficient, but I feared I was scraping away parts of my invisible soul without realizing it.
If I ignored what it was made of, it felt like walking through a hand-dug tunnel or an air raid shelter from a movie. The damp tunnel was narrow enough to touch both sides if I spread out my arms and water occasionally dripped from the ceiling.
“This doesn’t look very well preserved. This is supposed to a historical location.”
Anastasia sounded exasperated.
The tunnel took a right-angle turn and branched out a bit from there. There was even a white stone stairway leading down.
“Maxwell.”
“The reading came from below.”
My phone would still have a signal down there, right? This probably wasn’t on the tourist course and I didn’t want to be trapped in a labyrinth of death deep underground without a signal.
“Should we leave a trail of breadcrumbs or Ariadne’s thread?”
“Don’t litter. I said this is a historical location, didn’t I?”
There was a problem with graffiti in Mount Fuji’s Sea of Trees too, wasn’t there?
I kept a close eye on my phone’s signal while descending the stairs. The place really was a dungeon.
“Did you know the word dungeon comes from French? Donjon meant a castle’s main tower and they supposedly had creepy prisons in there.”
I really didn’t need Anastasia’s insistence that it was a legit dungeon.
Fortunately, the signal looked fine.
The rusty chain link door blocking off the tunnel was shut with a thick chain and a padlock, but if someone had gotten in through here, either the padlock would be unlocked or the chain would be cut. I checked the hinges just to be thorough, but the red rust didn’t look disturbed. Could we ignore this door since no one had moved it?
“What if we have to get through one of those doors to keep going?”
“The locks were added by the city after the fact, so we can break them no issue,” said Anastasia. “They probably cost 5 euros at the hardware store.”
“I meant how we would do it.”
“Hit one with a softball-sized rock and it’ll probably break. They aren’t installing locks to protect diamonds and gold bars down here. It’s just to keep tourists from wandering off, getting lost, and dying.”
If we could do it, then Absolute Noah would have no trouble at all. It would be best to check every lock we came across to see if there were any signs of them passing through.
Fortunately, there weren’t any weird bugs or rats. There may not have been any food for them despite how damp this big underground space was.
The tunnel took several more turns and I completely lost track of which way we were going.
It was like walking on and on through a giant subway station with no signs to show you the way.
After some more walking, something changed.
“Warning.”
“…”
I switched off my phone’s light. The screen’s backlight too. I held Anastasia’s small hand in the pitch darkness.
I held my breath.
Something wasn’t right. Was it the pressure? Or was it the temperature or an air current? I wasn’t sure, but something seemed to be standing in our way.
I couldn’t judge the distance, but there was someone here.
Fear clutched my heart. It was unusual for someone’s presence to be this unpleasant.
“(Anastasia, don’t use your phone.)”
“(I get that light is a bad idea, but what else are we supposed to do?)”
With the artificial lights off, we were surrounded by pure darkness.
I didn’t see any light from up ahead. We would be screwed if it was a human with night vision goggles or an Archenemy who could see in the dark, but either we were too far away or they had also shut off their lights to wait and see what happened. I had shut off my phone’s lights, but they must have shut off theirs first. And this was a single tunnel. If they started firing blindly with a gun, there was nowhere to run. A flamethrower would be even worse.
I wanted more.
I wanted more information than them.
We had placed the security buzzers and lights at the entrances, but we had just taped them up, right? Modern digital cameras were more sensitive than the human eye, so would this work as long as no light leaked out?
“Hm, I’ll have to get it in focus first. Anastasia, a real hacker like you keeps a tool kit with her at all times, right? With tools to open a phone’s cover and mess with the chip inside?”
“What are you doing, Truth?”
“I want to borrow a loupe used for precise work. Hurry.”
“Hyah? Wh-where do you think you’re sticking your hand, Truth!?”
“Shh.”
She started making a fuss in the darkness, so I quieted her.
My idea was simple: tilt my phone on its side, place it over my eyes, and tape it in place such that the tape covered the gap between it and my face. I would be adding a lens in the mix to help focus it. Then I would link a simple VR app with a modern phone camera with superior sensitivity to the human eye.
“Maxwell.”
It was grainy, but I could see.
I only had one lens, so I could only really see with one eye. But I could still see the walls full of bones and the tunnel continuing on ahead of me. It was really blurry when I moved my head, but it was still far better than complete darkness.
My DIY night vision goggles were working!!
“Truth? Explain.”
“Bff!?”
I looked over without thinking and nearly yelped. Not only was she not waring much and soaking wet, but the night vision let me see right through it all for some reason. Her thin dress might as well have been transparent!?
The oblivious girl tilted her head with her long hair miraculously covering her.
“Truth???”
“It’s nothing. Anyway, I can see in the dark now, so hold my hand and I’ll lead the way.”
Having her standing in front of me would be really bad for my heart. And I couldn’t let any light escape if we were to stay safe. That meant I had to take the lead, moving her outside of my field of vision.
Now, the night vision gear did nothing to help me stop a bullet. And even if they couldn’t see us, blind firing would still be a threat. I kept toward the wall and crouched low while moving slowly to make as little noise as possible.
The next corner was about…100m away? My tension grew as we approached.
What if there was someone around that corner? We had no way of knowing if they were an ordinary person or with Absolute Noah. And even if they were an ordinary person, wouldn’t they find us unusual? Not only were we inside the catacombs, but we had no light and were sneaking around with makeshift night vision goggles.
Had I made the wrong decision here?
But Amatsu Yurina – Archenemy Lilith and the leader of Absolute Noah – had a secret hidden here. We were already in enemy territory. Trying to look as harmless as possible would just get us killed if this was an Absolute Noah elite.
Maybe there wasn’t an absolute correct answer.
At any rate, we had reached the corner.
I gulped and peeked around.
“There’s…no one there?”
“Truth, can you see?”
I had definitely sensed something here. Had it just been the placebo effect? Or had they vanished down a different tunnel while we were being so careful?
I felt silly, which relaxed the tension.
Was this what it felt like to pull the trigger and have no bullet come out in a game of Russian roulette?
I felt relief, but the ball of suspicion in my gut was still there.
I didn’t dare look directly at her, but I heard Anastasia doing something right next to me.
“Oh, I get it. You used your phone camera and screen to make some night vision goggles. You should have told me, Truth.”
“Ah!”
Oh, no. Did she have a spare loupe!? Without that, I didn’t have to worry about her focusing the image between the screen and her eye!
“Interesting. So this is what it looks li-…………………………………………………………………………”
She fell silent as soon as she realized what I had earlier. She must have looked down at herself and seen what the night vision did to her dress. So, um, uh, Anastasia? Your long hair just barely covers you up, but shouldn’t you start wearing a bra soon?
I tried to sneak away, but she stopped me by physically biting my hand.
“Grrrrr!! Truth!!”
“Ow, ow, yowch!? That wasn’t my fault! I didn’t know it would do that until I tried it!!”
“That doesn’t excuse taking such a nice, long look! You didn’t tell me so you could leer at me this whole time, I bet!”
“Please, Anastasia! I’m trying my best not to look at you, so could you not move in front of me! Your hair is only barely covering you!!”
C-could we safely assume there wasn’t anyone else here when all this shouting received no response? Where had Absolute Noah vanished to?
I heard some kind cursed voice muttering next to me.
“No fair, Truth. No fair, Truth. No fair, Truth. Why am I the only one who gets spied on?”
“Can you keep it down?”
“Only after I get payback!”
“Eh? Why would you want to see my chest? Well, if you insist, you selfish girl. Now, you aren’t going to get any milk out of daddy’s teat, but you can still suck on it if you’re feeling lonely. …There, satisfied?”
“What is happening here? You don’t even have your hair to cover you, so why am I the one taking damage? Since when were you such a pervert?”
“Since forever,” supplied Maxwell.
Yikes, that text is big! I guess that’s unavoidable when the phone is taped right in front of my eyes.
Eventually, the speech bubble shrank.
But the text it displayed could hardly have been worse.
“We are talking about the person who built a VR disaster environment simulator because he wanted to see his Class Rep dancing in a swimsuit. His name deserves to go down in the annals of perversion.”
“Maxwell, use your speech bubbles to cover Anastasia’s body. Hurry.”
Meanwhile, Anastasia was tearfully working with the tape. And her hands were inside her dress.
“Oh, geez. I’ll just have to tape up the parts I don’t want you seeing.”
She might as well have been using bandaids for underwear, but I kept tha
