By noon the next day, Adam was looking like a crack-addled alligator, running around all over the place, grabbing bits of the hundreds of machines he had disassembled down in the cavern and screwing parts together with no clear goal or objective, at least none that Kofuku could see. But that was the process he needed, and since he had diagnosed her mother with a magical venom gland tumour five years ago, everyone was hesitant to interrupt probably the smartest person on the planet.

“Where the fuck did you find this guy?” Falano asked, leaning on the railing next to her, looking down into Adam’s work area. “He’s insane.”

“Why, never met a Saurian with ADHD?”

“I’ve never met a Saurian, period. One of my friends went to Xilotaph for an op and just never came back. I think he started a family over there. That or maybe he’s some kind of drug dealer now, I’m not sure.”

Kofuku made a face. “When was this?”

“Before all the Multiplex stuff. There was a time when I was part of a PMC, believe it or not. Didn’t have as many electronics back…what are you doing?”

Kofuku had taken a step back and was just looking him over, head to toe. “How old are you exactly?”

“I know this is your line, but you should never ask me that.”

“Seriously though. Isn’t it a bit hard to gauge if your organs are failing if you barely have any flesh? You still age, right?”

“Of course I age. Don’t got any of that fancy water fountain the Empress hands out.” He looked away. “Immortality is overrated anyway. Do you know how many vampires kill themselves just after two hundred years?”

“I haven’t met a vampire that old.”

“That’s because by that point they’ve got nothing to live for anymore. You’ve seen and heard everything. There’s nothing that’s exciting, so why live?”

“Is that why you’re a mercenary? You like it when things are exciting?”

He sighed under his mask. “When I was paramilitary, I used to think there was nothing worth living or fighting for. That one day on a deployment someone would just show up with an ambush and kill me. But after I got transferred to MobiusCorp…” He shook his head. “There’s just a lot out there to see.”

“And now?”

“Now I am in danger of dying thanks to you instead. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that pardon you kept promising. Maybe I’l settle down somewhere…not here though. Too much kami-sama this and that.”

Down below, Adam was hopping in place, waving both arms at them. “Guys! I got it! It’s awesome!”

Kofuku leaned in to whisper in his head. “You don’t have to hide the fact that you’re having fun.” She walked straight past him, not giving him a chance to reply, and met Adam at the bottom of the ramp. “What? What did you get?”

“Here!” He hopped over to his computer console, tapping at the old analogue keyboard - Saurian fingers struggled with human-calibrated touchscreens, after all - and brought up a series of messy waves on the screen. “Here, this is the old, old data from Shuu’s server! The windchime, stuff, yeah?”

She nodded along with him. “Okay, yes.”

“And here.” He tapped more keys, bringing up a similarly messy set of data beside it. “This is the stuff I’ve extracted from-” He motioned to the cyborg behind her.

“My name is Falano Duran,” Falano said, crossing his arms. “Didn’t I just send you a video feed and some readings?”

“Yes! Well, not exactly. This is data cross-referenced with your entire sensor suite. Very high-dimensional. I found out that a lot of the patterns in the magnetism and in the light intensity actually aligned with the wind chime stuff. It took a lot of adjusting, but there’s repeated…how do you say…patterns?” Adam has a big stupid grin on his face.

“That was fast.”

“Motifs,” Kofuku said, sitting down in Adam’s chair. “I don’t really see it but okay.”

“Yes, but the pattern in the wind chimes was very sparse. Didn’t see a lot of patternable stuff, but once I knew what I was looking for…” He tapped more buttons, shrinking the wind chime data. More data cropped up to fill the gap. “I tried looking over a longer timescale, and look at these parts.” Several sections of the first dataset became highlighted, then the second. Several of them matched, though there were far less in the first set. “So the old data was very unfocused, and it was slow. I looked for patterns in the new one and there’s way, way more information.”

“Okay, so what does this mean? The Tidekeepers were right about there being something in the wind?”

“Yes, but very little. You guys were just getting little whispers coming off that thing in the mountain. This though, this is focused. With a little more time, I think I can translate it to sound, but what are the chances some eldritch god is going to sound like us?”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea yet,” Kofuku said. “I’ve worked with Division Five for a bit and there was a case where someone tried to translate an ancient, unknown language and it turned out to be infohazardous - as in it harms you to have that information in your head. There’s no way to make sure that doesn’t happen here.”

“Gonna call your friends in the government, then?” Falano asked. “Can’t say I’m too thrilled about that.”

“Tell me this,” she continued, pointing over at the dodecahedron on the table. “Was I right? About that? If there’s a big enough piece of Orochi in it, then there’s a fragment of his consciousness too.”

Adam nodded. “Yup! But this happened last night!” He grabbed a pistol-looking device cobbled together from electronic scraps and pointed it at the object.

Both Kofuku and Falano took several steps back.

Adam pulled the trigger, and while nothing seemed to be happening, a bolt of lightning suddenly shot out of and hit the device, melting all the plastic-coated components on it and setting it on fire. He dropped it with a shriek.

Falano stomped out the fire. “What was that?”

“So I did this a few times - we’re out of fuses now, by the way - and I just kept shooting it with a bunch of different signals from the patterns I isolated. Turns out, the thing responds every single time. But as you can see it sort of fries most instruments I can get close to it, so there’s not really any way to take a proper reading.”

“So I was right.” Kofuku exhaled. “He knew.”

Adam blinked. “Uh, something you’re not telling me?”

“The guy on the video I gave you,” Falano said. “He’s a Venator. Magic literally doesn’t work on him, not directly, and that includes mindfucking stuff. There’s a good chance we don’t actually need to translate any of the data…we can just plug him in.”

“Falano, go get him,” Kofuku said.

“I’m not babysitting a lightning baby. If he sees me he’s gonna zap me too, you know. I’m probably even more vulnerable to lightning.”

“...please?”

Falano groaned. “Urgh, fine. But you’re paying for replacement parts.” He stalked off, muttering to himself in a way she couldn’t understand.

Adam watched him leave, and then he snapped back to look at the dodecahedron. “Not gonna lie, I genuinely thought the guy in the footage was dead.”

Richard stared at the dodecahedron on the table in front of him, his eyelids drooping. “What is this?”

“I told you he doesn’t remember,” Falano said. “Lucky you.”

Kofuku sat down opposite him. “You really don’t remember last night?”

“I remember a party. So many people in robes and stuff. Did we go drinking on Halloween or something?” Richard tilted his head and yawned. “I must’ve blacked out. Can you get me more of what we had?”

“It’s March,” Falano said. “But you touched this artifact, and it…uh…”

“There was a lot of lightning,” Kofuku said. “You got really, really drunk, and you were shouting about how great a time it was.”

Richard narrowed his eyes. “I remember…fried chicken. Not eating it though, just the smell. Dammit now I want fried chicken. This hangover is killing me.”

Kofuku and Falano exchanged awkward glances, remembering the tengu Richard had inadvertently obliterated. “We’ll get you some,” she promised. “I just need to test what happens when you touch this thing again.”

“For fried chicken? Sure, boss.” He reached out and took the dodecahedron in his hands. It remained there, still and unmoving, unlike in the previous night. “Okay? Are we done?”

“Just keep holding it right there, keep still, really focus on it.” Kofuku got up and moved away from her chair, eyeing the inverted transmitter dish that Adam had assembled and pointed directly at where the object was. “Adam, do it!”

The Saurian flipped a switch on a generator somewhere, transmitting a powerful pulse into the dodecahedron.

“What’s that supposed to-oooouuughhhhhaaaaaa-” Richard’s head was thrown back as he sat in his chair, lightning arcing from the object and into him, and then around the room, though all of it discharged into the grounded pillars they had set up around the table. Once more light burned out of the Venator’s eyes, leaking out through his mouth and nostrils. He stayed there, locked in that position. The dish hanging above was undamaged, even though some bolts raked across it.

Kofuku walked right up to the line of the floor between the pylons. “Can you hear me!?” she shouted over the buzzing of electricity and snap-snap-crackle of lightning blasts. “Chained serpent! I…I am the daughter of the serpent-blade! You will answer my call!”

In the background, Falano snickered.

Kofuku scowled at him before refocusing on the possessed Richard. “Eight-headed serpent King of Izumo-no-okawa, scourge of the gods, I beseech you, Yamata no Orochi!” She practically screamed those last words.

At that the stray lightning suddenly intensified, and “Richard” lowered his head, gazing at her with his glowing eye sockets. "A storm remembers its winds, but not its sky." Another voice was layered on top of Richard’s a low and raspy one, like she had heard all those years ago. "The hunger is gone. The fire has cooled."

“You are incomplete!” Kofuku shouted back. “I wish to undo the fracture! I wish to make you whole again!”

"The hunger is gone. The fire has cooled." Orochi’s voice stuttered as it said those words.

“Oh, shit!” Adam shouted. “The thing’s losing power!”

“You want to survive!?” Kofuku called to it. “I will return what is yours! You can be a god again!”

Richard’s body twitched. "No name, no shape, no burden."

She thought for a moment, before speaking again, this time in a hushed tone. “Lord Orochi. Lend me your power as you did my father, so that I may strike down my enemies.” She reached through the pylons, ignoring all of the electricity firing around her.

“Hime, no!” Adam shouted, lurching towards her.

The lightning ceased for a second, and then a singular bolt shot out from Richard’s chest, connecting with her arm and sending her fling backwards through the air. She felt her back slam into a metal cabinet, her vision just as colourful as when the real Richard had electrocuted her…but this time, there was something else. She she felt her muscle spasms return, not only in her arm but all over her body, she found herself falling through different storm clouds, lightning forking around her, and in her half-lidded vision, the clouds parted and she saw, on the bank of a rushing, flooding river, a little girl trying to trudge against the wind, her feet slipping on the mud and wet sand. She called out, but Kofuku heard nothing, only the storm.

“YOU.”

The voice was clear as day in her head this time, with no Richard in it whatsoever. Kofuku tried to reply, but her lips were paralysed.

"It is done. It is over. Let the wind carry me away."

With a gasp, she was back in the lab, scrambling on the floor to find anything for purchase. She gripped Adam’s arm as she was shaking her.

“Hime! Are you okay?”

Kofuku took a few deep breaths, focusing on his scaly face. “I…what…I heard it. In my head.”

“Orochi?”

“A piece of him, I think, Is Richard…?” She leaned to look past Adam.

Richard was slumped against the table, snoring, but rising from him was a dark mist, forming into a serpentine shape, fangs and all, before it scattered into the air.

She tried to get to her feet, but her legs felt weak, slipping on the rock floor just as that little girl had.

Falano caught her before she could crash into Adam, and lifted her upright with her servos. “That was really, really dumb.”

“Trans…transmit,” she managed, through gasps. “Use all…the phrases. It…will answer.”

“I got it, Hime!” Adam said, rushing over to his computer. “Just gonna take a few days! You should rest!

“He’s right,” Falano said quietly, taking one of her arms around his own shoulders and helping her up the ramp, towards the tunnel leading to the main foyer. “You don’t look good. We need to get help.”

“...uh…up?” she whimpered, fading in and out of darkness.

“Yeah. Up.” He pulled her up the entire way for what seemed to her like an entire hour, emerging out of the doorway and to the bewildered expressions of the palace attendants, who immediately rushed over.

The flickering of her vision gave her a veritable montage of scenes: the shoes of the staff as she toppled towards the floor; the ceiling lights moving past her as she laid on her back; the lord Regent’s horrified face as she looked over her.

Then everything went black.