Chương 285: Book 4 Chapter 42: Unintentional Lepidopterist's Association

The scent of fresh croissants heralded the newest arrival. Vell opened the door to his dorm and was delighted to see the smiling face of his old roommate, Renard.

"Renard! Man am I glad to see you," Vell said.

"Yeah, how long has it been," Renard said.

"A year?"

"Three, actually," Vell said.

"Oh. I'm not good with math," Renard said.

"Anyway, I brought some croissants, I hope I got enough for-" A horde of hands reached out and snatched the freshly baked croissants right off the tray Renard was holding.

"-everyone," Renard said.

"How many people you got in there?"

"Too many," Luke shouted. Renard stepped inside to greet the rest of his friends -all of them at once. Leanne had arrived ahead of Renard, along with Himiko, Kanya, and Sarah. With Kraid putting graduation on the line, Vell had opted to ask for help from friends who had already graduated, though Luke, Cane, Hanifa, Freddy and Goldie had insisted on helping anyway. Joan and Dean Lichman, who likewise had nothing to lose, were also present to lend a hand.

With the present batch of loopers and Skye in the mix, the dorm had moved past cramped and into crowded.

"I believe Luke might have a point," Lee said.

"We're already well beyond capacity."

"Literally as well as metaphorically," Dean Lichman said.

"You're not supposed to have more than ten people in these dorms. Fire codes, and whatnot."

"Are we at ten already?" Renard said, staring at a room that definitely had more than ten people in it.

"The point is, we need to relocate," Harley said.

"We're not getting anything done stacked on top of each other like sardines." Cane was the first to raise his hand.

"What about that secret room you guys go to that we all pretend we don't know about?"

"It's not that secret," Vell said. Luke even knew the door code, they just never had a reason to have anyone else inside.

"It's also not that big." The loopers lair was not that much bigger than a dorm, and had less seating. It might've made for a good overflow room, but Vell wanted to keep everyone close at hand for communication purposes.

"Kraid's got everybody relocated into his spooky facility now," Joan said. The imposing metal structure dominated the entirety of the view the window of Vell's dorm -no doubt an intentional placement on Kraid's part.

"And all the classes are canceled. We could probably use a classroom or a lab, those are pretty spacious, and they're designed for research."

"I don't think any of the professors would like us getting in their spaces," Vell said. There were a lot of people in the room, and all of them turned to stare at him at once.

"Oh, right."

Vell dropped his box of supplies on Professor Nguyen's former desk. It was barren now, as was the rest of the office. Kraid's brief tenure here had stripped it of any useful research materials, but he'd at least left it intact. Lee and Alex were doing a quick sweep for any unpleasant surprises Kraid might have left behind, but it seemed as though the rune tech lab would be their new base of operations.

As his final touch, Vell removed the multicolored elephant from the box and placed it back in its old spot on the desk. Even returned to its home, the ceramic trinket didn't make sense. Vell didn't let himself ponder it too long. He had other things to worry about. Vell left the desk and the elephant behind and stepped back into the central lab.

"Everybody getting set up alright?" He got a chorus of affirmations in response. With more room to set up and more tools to work with, his friends could actually get some meaningful work done.

"Good."

"So now that we've got some actual room to maneuver, Vell," Luke began.

"What's our overall strategy here?"

"Well, Quenay wants us to figure out the meaning of life, and right now our only real clue to that is, well, the rune," Vell said.

"Every rune means something, some simple concept like 'push', 'shield', 'separate'. We find out what this rune means, presumably we find out the meaning of life. Or at least a very strong clue to it."

"Sounds incredibly complex and obtuse," Luke said.

"So I'm sure it'll be no problem." He set up a few more testing implements before looking up again.

"Not sarcasm, by the way," Luke clarified.

"We figured," Kim said. Incredibly complex and obtuse was their specialty.

"We do need to get this done fast, though. We have competition." No one needed the reminder. It turned out the view from Vell's window was not all that unique -Kraid's giant new lab was visible from every point on campus.

"Speaking of the giant evil elephant in the room," Goldie added.

"What's our plan for, uh, after? Not to be pessimistic, but what stops him from killing us all and taking what we've discovered for himself?" Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"Well, I, uh..." Vell said. He rubbed the back of his neck nervously.

"In the simplest possible terms, I'm, uh, going to kill him first." Even under the urgent circumstances, everyone took a second to stop and stare at Vell Harlan.

"Once we have the rune, we should theoretically have power over life and death," Vell said.

"So I'll, uh, hit the off switch, you know, on Kraid. He won't see it coming, and he won't have any defenses for it, so, uh... yeah."

"That's still a pretty big thing to do," Joan said.

"Look, I'm not going to feel good about it, but I'd feel worse about not doing it," Vell said. Kraid's entire life was dedicated to causing misery and suffering to as many people as possible as often as possible. He was the one and only exception to Vell's pacifistic nature.

"Let's change the subject. Is the lab working for everyone? Do we have enough room?"

"We've got plenty of room now," Lee said.

"We could even invite a few more people, if we were so inclined."

"No, this is fine," Vell said.

"Come on, Vell," Harley said.

"What about Isabel? Bruno, Cyrus, Adele? There's a lot of people on campus who'd help if you asked."

"I'd be asking them to give up their futures," Vell said. Anyone who helped Vell was risking expulsion by Kraid, undoing their entire academic careers in the process. Vell didn't believe many people would take that gamble for his sake.

"Besides, we'd have to spend time getting them up to speed, everyone here already knows what's going on. A small, focused, knowledgeable team is better than throwing dozens of random people at the problem." Towards the back of the room, Kanya cracked open a window to let in some fresh air. She also let in three butterflies, all of which flitted to different vantage points in the room to perch. Impossibly-patterned purple wings fanned up and down as they stared down at Vell.

"Yeah, keep the windows and doors closed, please," Vell said. Kanya slammed it shut before a fourth butterfly could flap its way in, and then looked out the window.

"I didn't realize how many of those things were out there," Kanya said. An entire wall of a nearby building was all but covered in the purple observers. Lee and Harley both looked up at Vell. He gave them a subtle nod. He'd already figured it out himself. The butterflies watched on behalf of the enigmatic Butterfly Guy, the great observer of time. They watched people of great importance, the kind of people who were rare, powerful, important.

They had watched some of the most momentous individuals in history, and now they watched Vell. because even among the great conquerors and inventors of history, Vell was unique; there was a moment in time only he could experience, a question only he could answer. They watched him now, more than ever, because that moment, that question, was fast approaching. Vell sure hoped he'd answer correctly.

Kraid could barely walk between the rows of research desks in his new lab. That suited him just fine. They were designed for efficiency, not comfort. The only thing that perturbed him was the literal horse's ass sticking into the aisle.

"Out of the way, centaur," Kraid snapped. He could've gotten past by magical means quite easily, but it was about control, not convenience.

"Ah, Mr. Kraid, I was hoping to talk to you." Kraid raised an eyebrow at the sheer audacity as Orn turned around to face him.

"I can't help but notice there's a lack of seating accommodations for centaurs," Orn said.

"Oh, and students with other body types, of course." Grigoris the minotaur and Dimitra the harpy sheepishly raised their hands from their cramped seats, as did many other non-human students -as well as a few human students in wheelchairs. Kraid took a moment to examine every single raised hand so he could scoff at them all in turn.

"You're supposed to be the supergeniuses, I'm sure you can manage to invent a comfy chair," Kraid said.

"Figure it out. Now move." Even Orn was self-aware enough to not defy Kraid twice. He stepped aside and let Kraid pass, then returned to his seat to get back to work. Kraid's shadow passed over every student he passed, sending a chill down their spines -some more than others. Isabel kept her head down and said nothing as Kraid passed behind her. As soon as he was gone, she put down her pencil and went back to not working, unlike her boyfriend.

"Why are you actually doing things?" Isabel whispered.

"Do you want to help Kraid?"

"I want to graduate," Cyrus said.

"I spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours working to get here. I can't blow it all in one day."

"It's Kraid! Just pretend," Isabel said.

"It's Kraid, so he's not going to fall for that," Cyrus said. Kraid's security systems had, in fact, already tagged Isabel's noncompliance and marked her for expulsion. Kraid just wanted her to let her feel like she was getting away with it for a while, to make it more devastating later.

"Besides, it's the literal meaning of life. Knowing that is going to do some good, even if it is through Kraid."

"Nothing good goes through Kraid," Isabel hissed. Cyrus shook his head and got back to work. Far above their heads, in a sequestered area of the newly built lab, the actual work was being done. Kraid watched as a small army of drones assembled his containment device. Powerful sealing runes were arranged in a ring around a cylinder of carved diamond etched with magic sigils and imbued with powerful spells.

He'd consulted every source of knowledge in existence on the arcane and the divine, all to build a vessel capable of containing a God of Life.

"Should be done in about ten hours," Helena said.

"Fourteen, if you want to do an in-depth inspection and review."

"Lets consider it fourteen," Kraid said.

"Can't be too careful." Though he adopted many of their traits to enhance his villainous aesthetic, Kraid was not a saturday morning cartoon villain. He was not going to rush himself to an early defeat by being overly ambitious.

"Besides, what is Harlan going to do with those extra hours?" Kraid stepped to the side and checked some screens he had set up. Various camera feeds and data flows all fed through to his central console, giving him eyes on the situation all around his new lab. He seemed displeased by what he saw. Helena started to get nervous the more agitated Kraid got.

"What's happening?" Kraid crossed the inner lab and threw open a set of doors on the far side. There were no windows anywhere near the central lab, to minimize any risk of spying, so Kraid had to walk quite a ways to get a view of the outside world. When he did, he saw a wall of purple.

"Butterflies," Kraid said.

"Lots and lots of butterflies." He opened the window and then reached out to grab a butterfly. It sat in his skeletal palm for only a moment, never looking in Kraid's direction. before taking wing and flying off. Kraid snatched it out of the air again and crushed it -or tried to. In an imperceptible shift, the butterfly moved out of his hand as if it had never been there at all, and continued on its way. Kraid scowled. Anything subverting his power drew his immediate ire.

"These things have been following Harlan almost as long as I have," Kraid said.

"Did he and his friends ever tell you anything about them?"

"Nothing," Helena said. Just another thing she'd been left out of.

"Every now and then they mentioned something about the butterflies watching Vell, though."

"Well, I hope they came to watch him lose," Kraid said. The horde of butterflies continued to ignore Kraid entirely as they flew by.

"It's all they're going to see." Kraid ignored the butterflies as studiously as they ignored him, and headed back to his lab. Helena followed for exactly two steps, and then took a quick look back. A single butterfly had landed on the open windowsill, and was looking right at her. It flapped its wings once, then took off and carried on its way. Helena had no idea what that meant. Probably nothing important.