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"Mini-moto."
The sudden static of Noise thrumming through the Taboo jolted him upwards as a groove metal mink twisted through the air before him. Leaping back from the artpiece on which he'd coiled up, he scanned the topology of his surroundings: the thin alleyway that he pegged as the one behind WildKat, the twisted-up sculpture of washing machines and dryers still shiny with their do not remove from the laundromat stickers—a message pieced together from the various torn-apart ones—the double-cosine standing towards the alleyway's orifice with her arms crossed at slightly acute angles over one another, and the bright purple Noise spiralling towards him in Fibonacci fashion.
Himself, too. With an unusual pain throbbing at his brow and pulsating into a parametric equation around the back of his head. His neck: stiff. His movements: about a decipercent slower than usual.
But his velocity still far outstripped the mink's.
Sho's hand dove into his jacket to retrieve the Leo Armo pin he could discern by the slightly different weight and distribution from the other pins in the pocket. His displaced vector, perfectly calculated, shot his trajectory forward onto a hypotenuse until he sailed downwards, the acceleration due to the force of gravity his guide. His boot crunched through the mink's midsection. Static spilled from its broken skin while it writhed beneath him for a moment before it fizzled into sound and fury.
He staggered back towards a wall but managed to lean against it with his side, stylishly.
The double-cosine applauded as she called the groove metal mink back into the ornate three-dimensional topologies that she used for pins: the flowers in her crown. "Feeling better, Mini-moto? Got it aaaaaall outta your system? Ready to do the impossible and say some words with your numbers? 'Kay, class, let's do it all together. 'Good mor'—"
When he turned his head towards her the pain shooting through his skull worsened. The agony he didn't give a digit about: same as it ever was. But the subtle slowness in his motions, the slight disorientation, made him slam his fist into his palm. "That anti-obtuse angle weapon of yours packs an exanewton punch," Sho observed, grinning.
"WTF are you—"
The time. Too much light in the sky. "What the fractal?" Sho pushed his palm against his temple.
"Uh, duh. You, like, totez overslept, sleepyhead. Don't worry your nerdy little head about it. Fuzzface and I had a—" Her smile sharpened. "—charmagical, wondiferous time this morning. We simply get along soooo swimmingly. So, like, how's the hangover?" The double-cosine moved towards him with that variable that she had defined as 'prancing' or 'flouncing' on separate occasions despite having no significant differences between them that Sho could have attested. "Did you do anything fuuuun? TBH when the cleverest fairy princess in all of Shibuya—"
Her mouth turned down into a scowl before she batted her eyelashes.
"—which is me in case you can't add two and two together—"
"Four," Sho interjected smugly.
The double-cosine burst into giggling laughter. "You are suuuch a super dee duper stupidummy."
His eyes narrowed. "I'm not miscalculating."
"'Kay, 'kay, obvz two plus two equals four. Anywayz, when I sleuthy-sleuthed it out that you went cray-cray on choco-liquer, I totez unalived myself laughing except, whoopsie-daisy, I'm already dead in the UG, tee hee!" She waved her hands back and forth as Sho tucked Leo Armo back into his pocket, then folded his arms over his chest. Hmph. He'd brought the hood back up over his face at some point during the vague, unfamiliar stretch of time that wouldn't align its vectors neatly. Crooking his fingers around the circumference, he pulled it back down and shook his head to bounce his hair free of its confines. "Soooo, did you figure it out?"
"The mystery ingredient—" Sho stopped. "This deceleration can get derived." Then he pointed at her while she rolled her eyes.
"It's called a haaaaaangover." The double-cosine clapped her hands with each syllable. "Ready, class? Say it with me! I know this one's a big word! Hang-ov-er!"
Sho hmphed. "This decelerating hangover can get derived."
She threw up her arms and wriggled her fingers. "Like, yaaay! He said the thing! Waow! No wai!"
"It affects radians in the UG and RG differently," Sho began, while the double-cosine's arms dropped to her sides. Her eyes' radii had increased. Heh. "It causes deceleration of thought and movement, and it leads to a division of a radian's perception of the world. Heh heh heh. Zetta unfun times." He motioned towards himself. "The pain doesn't make a difference to me. But even with it subtracting itself from my system of equations right now, my maximum velocity, acceleration, jerk, snap, crackle, and pop—"
The double-cosine blinked. "The cereal?"
"—have all decreased. No, you ignorant integrand: the higher derivations. I can tell the values are increasing again, but with this 𝑡-interval of effect, any obtuse angle under this 'hangover' status will end up cruuuuuuunched."
His fist slammed into his palm with sufficient newtons to audibly crack his knuckles. Just as calculated.
"But it's still experimental—am I right? Took a higher mass of it to demonstrate the effects than we could hit 'em with in a combat situation. But for a proof you're still working out—" Grinning, Sho tilted his hat up. "—I zetta dig your style."
The double-cosine's jaw hung open.
He smirked. "This variable is impressed that I derived the truth."
"A proof I'm still working out?" She dragged her hands over her face. Not impressed. He'd miscalibrated? "The only proof here is, like, 10% or whatevz was in that choco."
Sho pinched the visor of the hat. "The fractal? A percentage? The percentage of how far the anti-obtuse angle development has—"
"Mini-moto." Her eyes sparkled; her grin grew teeth. "Did you srsly think that that was some kinda super ebin sekrit weapon of angelic-ass destruction? That I made it to pwn birdrains?"
He nodded decisively. "Naturally."
"Oh em gee. You deffo don't need the motherflockers around to pwn you, because you pwn yourself every single day. That was just alcohol, you hungover 'hectopascal'!" Her fingers curled rhythmically on either side of her head.
"Check your work. I'm not a hecto—"
"Whatevz! You just got drunk! You hit the bottle! Sake for sake's sake! You got buzzed, tipsy, twitterpated—" The double-cosine rotated around on her tiptoes. "—and then drunk outta your mind. That wasn't a weapon. That sake-obsessed 'fraidy four-eyes in Shinjuku passed them onto me and, like, I do not accept his 'peace offerings'. I offer them in pieces. So I passed the buck onto you because I thought it'd be totez hilar." Giggling, she clapped her palms against her cheeks and framed her beaming face with her hands. "And I was totez right, like I always am."
Sho scrutinised her.
She stuck her tongue out at him. "IDFK what you mean by peeps in the RG and UG having dif effects. I swore off getting drunk off my ass when I quit college by dying. Fun fairy princess fact of the day for you. Which, like, wasn't a totez adorbz way to die at all. Talk about unsplendiferous."
"What the factor are you talking about?"
The double-cosine's eyes rolled again through the sclerae. "And before you get the wrong idea, I did not go kaputty out of drinking too loud. At least that would've made for a totez interesting story."
Sho studied her. Her hands had stayed around her cheeks. Her rolling eyes had ended with her line of sight pointed towards the alleyway wall, at a stray do not remove from the laundromat sticker. Her shoulders squared forward. Her variable was...heh. "Hmph. Enough irrelevant chatter. I could use another few iterations of Noise reductions." He grasped a handful of air. "Make these movements smoother."
Immediately her gaze recurred onto him and she straightened up. The spines on her headband perked skyward. "ROFLMAO if you're ready to get rekt like the scrub you are! And afterwards, you totez gotta tell me all about the stuff you did while soooo drunk that you couldn't even figure out it was alcohol, LOL!"
He flicked out three pins held between the fingers of his left hand. "Hardly even a practise test."
The future funkeys, groove metal minks, soulfuleon, scratch 'n' spinners, and parapara boomers that she sent out made for quick work. The double-cosine recalled each before complete erasure, but Sho didn't hold back. Displacing his vector beside the soulfuleon, he slammed a firestorm down. The flames sparked along the future funkeys' fur, burning smoke off of the chittering primate Noise, and sent the wailing soulfuleon into a flickering existence. The invisibility oscillating back and forth let him launch the soulfuleon up with a pillar of darkness—the disorienting darkness dodecahedron dropped it into dizziness—before his trajectory cast him above the leon. Sole to Soul, and leon to asphalt. Its violent violet graffiti spine cracked and bent beneath his weight.
One of the scratch 'n' spinners bristled its web towards him. So zetta slow. As he displaced himself, he aligned himself at an angle between the arachnid Noise and the groove metal minks coiling towards him.
Another displacement, and the scratch 'n' spinner's immobilising web trapped the minks against the ground. Their purple tails thrashed against the lattice.
Ignoring them, he grabbed the scratch 'n' spinner's abdomen wholesale and scratch-and-spun it around until the writhing Noise flew from his grip into the sky. The centripetal force accelerated its mass into the parapara boomer that had miscalculated and attempted to leap down onto him. The inertia cascaded the Noise into one another. The arachnid's abdomen would have swelled from the hectopascals of impact—from the sudden impetus of the boomer's graffiti feet, then exploded into a cloud of monochrome static if not for the double-cosine calling it and the boomer back.
The remainder: the minks. He sensed them twisting in his direction behind him.
A bifurcated approach: an upwards slam of darkness to dizzy them, then a downwards crush of heel that rebounded their broken cylinders from the concrete, and finally a circumferential perimeter of flame.
The inferno brought the stench of burning spraypaint: sharp, pungent, acrid, and dusty. Congruent to the smell of an activated refinery sigil, the smouldering graffiti curling in on itself. The minks snapped their jaws at each other, yet the darkness-derived dizziness kept them curling and coiling onto one another.
He reached for the first, to put his fist directly through its skull where the fire had blazed off its fur into blackening purple graffiti, but they dissipated into violet light as the double-cosine returned them to her pins.
"Good girls," she crooned. "The goodest of girls. Your fairy princess thanks you so ever much, my darlings, my precious babies." The double-cosine stroked the floral topologies on the headband. "Oh, I am so delightelated that my babies got their exercise in today! And you weren't a totez scrub, Mini-moto."
Sho flipped the pins back in. "Perfect calculations lead to perfect results."
"So, like, the tea." The double-cosine smacked her palms together. "Spill it."
"There's no—"
Her fingers wrapped around his arms. She shook him. "What happened last night? Start from, like, whenever you started om-nomming the choco."
What happened last night? Heh. The vectors aligning...
Sho and the odd function had run an experiment. The double-cosine had shared the cases of chocolates which had had a mystery ingredient that neither he nor the odd function had been able to identify, so they had made a competition out of it. Eating at the same quantity of chocolates per second, they would race to see who could identify the ingredient first. Yet neither of them had.
Instead, the mystery ingredient—now defined as 'alcohol', but then unknown—had gradually decreased both of their mental capabilities. Sho's perception had become increasingly divided out into the component vectors that he had learned to painstakingly add together when 𝑡 < 10𝑦. Now their individual lines, splines, and slopes had jumped out at them.
Their movements had slowed. Their thoughts had slowed, as well. Sho had determined that the mystery ingredient subtracted free will. And it was garbage if it wasn't from free will.
So when the odd function had sought to osculate their orifices together, he'd declined.
Trash for the odd function to do something outside of her free will. But he wouldn't have bound her freedom, either, even if she hadn't acted in her own free will. Heh. What a complex equation. She'd asked him to stay adjacent. But he couldn't have stayed adjacent without either limiting her, or watching her do something not from her own free will. And if he had stayed adjacent, as the mystery ingredient—the 'alcohol'—had gradually taken over a larger and larger fraction of his mental processing power, he would have eventually ceased functioning of his own free will, too. Neither of them working on their free wills: garbage summation.
So he'd displaced his vector out somewhere to be a monomial. Other than K6. K6 had remained under his hat. Letting the double-cosine locate him and contacting the double-cosine if he'd gotten completely out of his vector.
And the double-cosine had watched over him after K6 had ribbited at—
The double-cosine waved her arms. "STFU, that's enough of a recap. I'm wise, clever, and kyoot enough to understand WTF you're saying. So, like, let's fricking GTFO and go rip 'n' tear some haloheads. We only have a few hours left, but that's a whole lotta feathers we can skin off and turn into wing covers!"
Heh heh heh. Zetta fun times.
By the time Sho recurred to the odd function's dorm at the scheduled endpoint, he'd sigil-cleaned himself free of obtuse angle ichor and the stench of their higher vibes. Checking the nameplate on the door—Nagi—he turned towards her with his hand outstretched. "Nagi—"
The odd function, seated at her dorm desk, rotated around in her chair. For the first interval of time she gasped and grinned, her lips forming the topology that would begin his name. But then she steepled her fingers under her chin, cleared her throat, and inclined her head. "Sho, ere we continue, I have a few words."
He retracted his arm back to his side. "Your free will's operating at maximal capacitance."
"Thus it is." She had hunched forward in her chair. Her left elbow remained on the desk, while her right was tangent to the arm of her chair. Her eyes had narrowed and tilted down slightly, while her mouth remained a line. "Zerothly, are you well? You appear to be, but I shan't make any assumptions. Furthermore, I wish to inquire whether you have any thoughts on what transpired. You have the floor in this parlay."
Sho watched her features. "This variable's...what?"
"'Tis the expression of a serious conversation in which I believe that I may have wronged you," the odd function said, then intercepted her own function. "Nay...permit me to rephrase that. I wish to glean your side of the situation first, that I might not presume or project anything, particularly given my faulty memory. This morning I—" She shook her head. "Please, Sho. Your thoughts?"
He jammed his hands into his pockets. On the situation? Heh. "Didn't derive the mystery ingredient. Double-cosine told me. Load of garbage. Alcohol." He huffed, especially when the odd function nodded. "Heh. What, you factored it out?"
"This morning," she remarked. "'Twas not last night, but rather when I reflected on what had occurred that I realised."
So she had worked it out when he hadn't. "Not half-bad, odd function. Heh. Nice derivation." The corners of her mouth briefly turned upwards before they flattened out into a linear function again. "That 'mystery ingredient' is in a different quadrant from you. It's garbage. It's not a weapon meant to bisect obtuse angles. It doesn't even change its effects based on the radian's vibes. Random radians just have different vectors when their 'inhibitions' get decreased."
She waited without saying anything. Then: "Any other thoughts that you might wish to share?"
"Hmph. Define the problem."
"For instance," the odd function explained in slightly softer than usual timbre of voice, "on the reason that you decided to leave."
"Thought it was a weapon that crunched the free will outta radians. Alcohol's garbage too. Doesn't subtract free will like I'd calibrated it would, but it's along the same vector. Like the masked zeptgram's trash Noise." Or Megs's Red Skull pins. "I wasn't going to limit you, and I wasn't going to observe you acting without your free will. Or myself. So I displaced my vector."
The odd function's features had twitched as he had spoken, her features briefly taking on different emotions, but passing by with such velocity that he couldn't calibrate her changing emotional state even with all of his scrutiny. Trash that she could obscure those variables from him. "I see," the odd function added after 5.26 seconds of silence. "And in your mind, 'tis better for me to act without my free will whilst in solitude than with another."
"Ninety degrees. Hmph. All of your actions had a minimum of free will during that interval of the number line." Sho demonstrated the imaginary number line with his hands, cutting off the section that he and the odd function had spent under the effects of alcohol, with the 'hungover' status.
No, wait, the double-cosine had redefined the variables. They had first had the 'drunk' status, followed by the 'hungover' status, although she had given him an ambiguous definition for how to calculate the threshold between 'drunk' and 'hungover'.
He'd just have to factor it out himself.
She frowned. "A query. What difference would it make whether I was in solitude or with another at this moment? As in, if my actions had stripped themselves of their free will regardless of whether or not I were 'adjacent to your coordinates'—"
Sho laughed, and the odd function's variable briefly became—amusement? Heh!—before returning to the same neutrality as before.
"—then would I not be continuing actions without free will in your absence?"
He shrugged. "Correct. All of your actions lacked free will. But inanimate objects have zero free will. Not even most fettering finite groups can subtract from zero. Free will can't go negative or imaginary. Animate objects have free will. That free will can increase and decrease in value. If you're the only animate object in the room, you can't decrease any other object's free will. But if there are two animate objects in the room, you could decrease the other's free will or vice versa."
"I...see." The odd function brought her hands up to her mouth. The interlaced fingers covered her lips. "I see...I see. I suppose that that factors—"
Sho grinned.
"—out if you are calculating the totality of free will." The odd function kept her mouth obscured. "Does this mean that I would have taken away from your free will if I had continued to do what I was doing?"
"Your free will was zero. Didn't matter to me."
Her eyes, too, ended up hidden behind the refracted light that kept her light brown irises from his vision. "What is the difference betwixt this and when I am so overwhelmed that I lose the capacity to speak intelligibly? Does one count as of my own free will while the other does not?"
"Different substance in your system, odd function. One's integrated into you," Sho elaborated, "and the other isn't."
"P-pardon the inquisition, but could you, hghrk, rephrase that?" She tilted her head. "I did not follow."
"Taboo and the masked zeptogram's trash Noise. I took the Taboo. Acted out of my garbage instincts when I first showed up to WildKat and trashed the coordinates looking for H. The higher vibes of an obtuse angle had pushed me into quadrants I hadn't prepared calculations for. But that was still my free will to follow my instincts. The masked zeptogram's trash Noise—sure, I integrated it to my Soul later, sure, but that first contact? Heh. My perceptions were miscalibrated. I couldn't make choices of my free will if I didn't even have enough calibrations to tell what choices those were. Can't play Conway's angel problem if you can't even see the coordinate plane."
The odd function nodded. "And thus how you accept the responsibility whatever occurs to you even as a result of the Taboo, but you do not believe that the 'berserking' of Soul Pulvis falls to your shoulders in the same manner." She hmmmed. "Because, whilst you may have willingly integrated Soul Pulvis, you hadn't anticipated that it would cause you to lose your free will."
"Correct." Sho angled his cap up. "My free will wouldn't have been to subtract the zeptograms trying to keep my 428 from getting factored by obtuse angles."
"In the same manner, if I were to drink now, knowing what would happen to me, then perchance that would arise from my free will. After all, I am making the decision knowingly. We both ate of those chocolates without knowing the potential consequences." She moved her hands: one of them curled around her chin while the other lowered down to her knee. Her uncovered mouth allowed him to see the squiggle of her lips. "I could see arguments in the opposite direction, that you must take responsibility for whatever occurs to you regardless of whether you or not you intended it. But I suppose that 'free will' implies some degree of intentionality. I suppose that multiple things are true at once."
"Sure. Plenty of axioms." He eyed her. "What's the endpoint of your function?"
She leaned back. The shine over her lenses decreased to the yoctocandela. Perfect for a zeptocandela like the odd function. Like that pillar of darkness, but without the disorientation. "Zero: if someone was hurt, then they remain hurt regardless of the intentionality of the action. And that hurt ought to be addressed in some manner. It need not be in revenge, but something ought to happen. Even if unintentional, one can trace what led to the harm. Such as you no longer integrating stray Soul Pulvis in front of us given what might occur."
"Naturally."
The odd function beamed.
"Now I only plug unknown Noise into my equation in front of radians who won't get subtracted by the consequence like the double-cosine." He smirked. "She's got the hectojoules to handle it."
She sighed. "As much as I appreciate your vote of confidence for my present psych abilities..." The odd function's fingers continued to wriggle around her chin. "But I suppose that your method is indeed better than what you were doing before. Now, as for the axioms I mentioned...zero: the harm stays and ought to be addressed. One: the intentionality matters for considering the free will of the participants. They are separate and unrelated."
Holding up both forefingers, the odd function brought them together in front of her.
"In other words, not having had free will does not absolve one of the responsibility towards the harm that was caused. But not having had free will does change the nature of the responsibility. In other words, if one acted maliciously, then the nature of the responsibility becomes to comprehend the malicious nature of the act and to shift one's values." Her head drooped. "As I did, 'pon our very first...encounter of the ninety-second kind, shall we say."
Sho hehed.
"If one did not act maliciously, but rather unintentionally, then one's values do not necessarily need to change. But one ought to change one's actions such that the same harm is not inflicted again. Or, at least, to decrease the—" Her pupils flicked up towards him, the glint in her eyes briefly taking on the variable of...heh, mischievousness? "—probability thereof."
His smirk widened. "Probability."
"Indeed. In my case—" The odd function interrupted herself as she brought down hands tangential to her knees. "Before I continue, do you have any other thoughts on what happened last night? Such as about what I nearly did to you? Nay, what I would have done, if you hadn't intervened?"
Sho rolled his shoulders. "Doesn't make a difference to me. Wasn't in your free will. Don't give a digit. If you did that out of your own free will, heh, I would've zetta dug your style. Taking what you wanted and getting what you wanted."
"Hnnannnnngh." The odd function shook her head. "I shan't ever agree with you on this, but I need not do so. I respect your thoughts on the matter and I fear that you shall have to contend with not zetta digging my style when I refuse to simply 'take things' from you."
"Sure. You still take what you want, through whatever algorithm you want." Sho leaned back against the door. "Doesn't make a difference to me."
She nodded. "On one hand, it gives me cold comfort to hear that you view me asking you what you want and me doing something to you in the same vein. And I cannot understand how you hold this view, and the view of free will, simultaneously. Nonetheless..."
Sho flicked the rim of his visor up. "It's my free will to watch you take what you want, you hungry hectopascal."
"I suppose so." The odd function's features scrunched up. "It gladdens me...that you didn't allow me to proceed yesterday. And I would request, if you wish to respect my free will, that you never allow me to do so whilst not in control of my actions. I believe that I shan't ever do so again maliciously..."
Her fingers interwove with one another again. A tremor ran through her spine and down her lower limbs, her legs seizing as her heels braced back against the chair.
"Any other thoughts, Sho?"
He gestured towards himself. "Show your work, odd function."
"Very well. When I woke this morning, I was beside myself with guilt and shame once more. I thought to myself that when you returned, perchance I should simply let you go entirely and such-like. But then I grasped hold of myself. Whether or not you chose to return, and whether or not you thought whichever way about it...I would accept your feelings on it and mine. I do not wish for you to reassure me. What I thought to do instead, then, was to ascertain your feelings on the subject and to ask how you would like for us to proceed from here." Her fingers splayed on her knees. "Would you like for me to do anything differently in the future, Sho?"
Sho shrugged. "It was zetta fun to try to factor out the ingredient. You won, odd function."
"Verily. Then," she said slowly, "there is nothing that you would ask for me to change?"
"Ninety degrees."
The odd function bowed her head. "Then I have ascertained your feelings. Should you wish for me to do differently in the future, please let me know posthaste. As for myself...I wish to take responsibility by minimising the possibility of this occurring in the future. Most obviously, I shall evade the devil's drink."
"The helix?"
"Alcohol. It seems that alcohol and I do not mix. I shall keep my spirits light by avoiding spirits." She smiled slightly at herself. "In addition, I would ask that you displace your vector and depart if you believe me not to possess free will, even if I ask you to stay. I shall trust in your judgment on the matter."
"Sure." He glanced at the nameplate again. "Same algorithm I've been using. Heh. I won't try to bind you at all. Not even for an attosecond. I'll just displace myself."
The odd function dipped her head. "Thank you. Now, Sho—"
"Nagi."
She bolted up in her chair as though he'd cast her up with that piercing pillar from below. "Sho."
He reached out his hand. "You done showing your work?"
The remaining shine had faded from her glasses when she'd sat up, and now the linear function of her mouth broke into an even function, the polynomial with both eyes pointing up to squinch the corners of her eyes. "I am. And though the guilt still brings with it enough nausea to have had me praying to the porcelain gods for mercy earlier, I feel as if I have handled this version of events with greater deft." Her face paled. "Though I hope that I shan't ever have to handle it again, with any hectojoules or not. Now..."
Her arm unfolded, her fingers a centimetre away from his.
"Nonzero touch, Sho?"
His fingertips contacted hers, their incongruent grooves and callouses brushing together in tangents and divergences both. "Nonzero touch."