Johannes Volkner bid farewell to personal space. The mysterious Binah class Spirit he had managed to summon was following behind him as they made their way through the corridors, clearly intent on coming along to the workshops with him. For the beginning of their walk, she had been intent on walking at his side, almost a little too close. He couldn't tell if it was to tease him, or if she was really bad with boundaries, or if she was coming onto him, but after one too many near-miss bumps with others walking through, she relented and followed one step behind him. As he threw open the door to the main workshop, he could hear an astonished gasp from behind him, even though the workshop was fairly standard, without any particularly interesting or large-scale projects.

  "Whoa... Johannes, this place is cool~!"

  Before he could even respond, she had stepped past him to go inside, walking through the workshop and beginning to look at and touch several workspaces and projects... None of which were his. He had expected it to take about ten minutes before she was bored enough to start trying to interfere with the projects of other people, but she had surpassed his expectations. He had wanted to start on his work immediately, but this was a more pressing issue. Besides getting him in trouble for not keeping watch over the Spirit he summoned, if she touched the wrong thing, she could cause serious damage to the equipment. He followed her closely, and when she reached her hand forwards to grab part of a jewel array that seemed to be relying on igneous crystals for some nefarious purpose, he gently grabbed ahold of her wrist. Not strong enough to stop her hand moving forward, even if she hadn't been a Spirit, he simply needed to remind her.

  "Now then, what did I say about interrupting stuff that isn't mine? It's not just the people here, but their projects, too. My workstation is this way."

  "Huh-? A-ah, sorry, I got a bit carried away! There's just lots of cool stuff here~!"

  He gently tugged her along towards his workstation, where the suit of armor lay resting with his coat, ready for him to move from plating repair and hardening to something a bit more advanced. He pulled off his glasses and popped the lenses out, the slightly tinted sapphire-glass showing the runes carved into the surface when the light hit them just right. To his left, some vials of blood rich in magical energy, which he could now suspect were likely from the human Spirit vessels. To his right, a thin yet solid steel stylus with a sharpened tip that he would need to use carefully. Behind him, the young woman spoke up again, as she stepped around to try and look over his shoulder.

  "Mm... Johan, are you a mad scientist kind of mage?"

  ...Shit, she caught him red handed. He could feel his face flush as he backed towards the counter and to the side, away from her prying gaze. "Well, that's... Certainly one way to put it, but I'm not sure I'd describe myself as one. I have a lot of ideas, but Heliopolis can only give each Caller so many resources, so I often have to combine my projects... And blood happens to be renewable, and holds a lot of magical energy."

  He didn't want to admit it, but... Yeah, when he put it that way, he really did sound like Victor Frankenstein's crappier cousin. She let out a small giggle as he was thrown off-balance, a chirp in her voice as she quickly stepped forward, putting herself on the tips of her toes and reaching up with her hand to... Pat the top of his head.

  "Well, in that case, you're not mad, silly~! You're just resourceful. It's a good trait to have; nothing to be embarrassed about~★"

  He sighed, stepping closer to the counter as he tried to get away from the sudden, uncalled-for touching. "Well, hopefully. But all mages run the line between kindness and madness, I think. That's just the reality of being a mage, or really being human at all. You have to know when to take, and when to be merciful. It's a brutal world, and even more so when you're in the middle ground where you can affect the world, but don't have real power." He paused to huff lightly.. "It's fine, though. I think balancing out 'good' with 'efficient' is one of the things I'm pretty good at. So, please don't worry too much, okay?"

  Her tone changed a bit as she replied. "Mm... You're right, it is a brutal world." With a sudden, sobering change in inflection, she casually hopped up onto a stool, watching him pull the stopper from a vial of blood as her three swords clanked together lightly. "Y'know, outside of dangerous situations around enemies, I don't mind you calling me by name."

  He dipped his stylus into the vial, drawing blood across the pointed tip before beginning to write into the engravings, coating the interior of each one slowly. He resolved not to look up to her as they talked, as one small mistake could cost several minutes and a lot of annoyance. Well, he had resolved not to look until she mentioned her name, wherein he stopped the stylus's movement entirely and looked up.

  "Really? I'm relieved you trust me like that. A lot of Heliopolis's other Spirits can be more... Secretive, about their names. If you prefer it, I wouldn't mind calling you by name around the station."

  He could see her eyes widen a little as he focused on her. Was she not expecting him to be attentive the second she dangled something like that as an option? She suddenly dropped off the stool, leaning her head back with her wolfish grin returned in full force.

  "I am the princess of the Suzuka mountain range, cast from the heavens themselves to live and dance among humanity. You may know me as one of the Tennyo most capable of combat and of appreciating the world's beauty. Princess Suzuka, pleased to meet you."

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  With a snap of her fingers, the thin shawl that every Spirit of Heliopolis was summoned in found itself covered with a much more beautiful and extravagant garment. A multilayered, beautiful robe adorned her, holding tight in some places and incredibly loose in others to pull along her and flow majestically even with small movements. Given the way that it came out of nowhere, it seemed that this Princess Suzuka had a fourth Artifact, but it seemed far weaker than the three swords did.

  Four artifacts despite being a Binah class... It was incredible, so much so that he almost forgot about the blatant horns on her head, making it clear that there was more to the story. He didn't know much about Oni myths, but he was pretty sure that they didn't come from heaven, and weren't any form of 'Tennyo'.

  "Princess Suzuka... I'll make sure to remember it from now on, then. I... Don't think I know your story, Suzuka, so please tell me if something important comes up, okay? I won't know it's related otherwise."

  He glanced back to the plate he'd been working on, finally ready to resume, and inwardly lampooned to himself about the fact that he had totally failed in keeping the stylus still during all the commotion. He would need to take some time later to fix it.

  Before he could move, though, Suzuka had jumped forwards. "What?! You know that horrible Shuten Dōji, but you don't know me?" Her face was slightly flushed, but she didn't seem truly angry, just very annoyed. There were certainly worse missteps he could've made.

  "Ah, it's not your fault. I suppose I can't expect you to know everything~!" Soon enough, she'd pointed her hand towards the rune he was placing on the gauntlet, and began asking questions. He knew that it wasn't something particularly enjoyable, but she was trying not to offend him...

  Still, he found himself enjoying her company a surprising amount, as much as he had initially resisted her 'intrusion' into his workshop time. Maybe having someone keeping him company as he worked wasn't such a bad idea. The two carried on, and he quickly moved the topic off to something more casual once he saw a good opportunity. It wasn't that he minded discussing his magic and the intricacies of it, but he had a feeling that she didn't want to listen to a thirty minute lecture she couldn't particularly add much of her own input on.

  As they talked, he had been working to combine the layers of his magical items together, making a single, more cohesive defensive armament that was similar to what he had done in creating Beissende Hunde. He grinded the eyeholes in the helmet down some, fitting the lenses from his glasses into the helmet itself to allow him to utilize their effects in tandem, before getting to work on the undersuit, coat, and plating. Thankfully, there was already an analogue to the two layers he was trying to fit under the plating, in the form of the gambeson that plating was meant to fit overtop normally. With enough cutting, he had what could reasonably be called a cohesive set of armor, though Suzuka had left the workshop sometime in the interim period to go check out the rest of Heliopolis.

  After his work was finished for the day, he checked his mail account to see the list of the Callers that were expected to be on duty and ready to return to, or in some cases, first be deployed to, the Distortions. The notice was already posted, and the list had a few familiar names.

  Himself, Wilhelm, and Miss Takahashi were all there. Additionally, Martin and Aylin, though they were not quite Callers, were listed as personnel being officially assigned again to enter the Distortion. They hadn't particularly done much in the way of combat last time, at least from what he could remember, but both supposedly had the full power of Spirits, so he wasn't particularly worried. Lastly, there were actually two names he did not recognize on the list. Lazarusa, who was designated as a Caller but not even given a number for reasons he had no idea of. She wasn't in the same list as Aylin and Martin, so he didn't think she was a similar case of being a living human acting as a vessel for a Spirit.

  The other one, however, was Caller candidate 011, Quinta. No last name, not because he 'had never had one', or was hiding it, but because he had been disowned. He had an incredible reputation around the station already, one that Johannes himself had even caught onto. He was an immense prodigy with several forms of Egyptian and Hellenistic magical foundations, but was unreasonable even by Mage standards, almost like a living black hole that sucked away any ounce of charisma. Suffice to say, he was rather unpopular, though management had great hopes for him. Apparently he had helped to directly tune the systems used in the communications arrays, and in return, the Director had given him personal leeway to manipulate the summoning process far outside of normal bounds, intentionally warping a summoned Spirit as part of his own experiment to see if he could call Spirits from within the simulated timeline of the Distortions.

  That thought sent a shiver up Johannes's spine. There was nothing necessarily wrong with the people or Spirits in that simulated timeline, but their entire goal was to ultimately remove it so that the ritual it was being used for, whatever its end goal was, would cease to exist and could not harm the real world. Didn't bringing Spirits from that simulated timeline go against that very idea? Or was he planning to dispose of whoever, or whatever, he summoned at a predetermined time? The idea was repulsive, bringing something or someone back to the world of the living, with an intentional, predetermined death for them.

  Admittedly, there was also the chance that there was some other method at play, that he was misunderstanding things. But given the attitudes of the Director and the other higher management, he had little faith in that idea. Glancing through the records of summoned Spirits, he saw that both the classification and name of the Spirit summoned by him were already recorded - he had performed the summoning not long after Johannes had summoned Suzuka. Briefly, the actual class and name made Johannes stop, bewildered. Joan d'Arc, summoned as a Gevurah class. For a minute, none of it lined up in his head. Even in the Distorted timeline, Joan d'Arc was a holy woman and a saint, and it took a second to make the connection. Quickly, though, Johannes remembered how she had gotten that reputation and become known as a saint.

  After a little more snooping through the records, Johannes went to his room, with Suzuka having shown up at his door soon after. He couldn't help but frown slightly when she had suddenly appeared at his door, but he said nothing against it. He was still trying to figure her overly bright demeanor out, and how much of it was real, or a mask over darker intentions. After she had thoroughly rifled through his room, he was finally able to take the time to sleep, actually doing so at a reasonable hour for once.