Seiji looked a little fused at Yuki's decration as did Yumi. She tried to run it through her head, what Yuki might be thinking of doing. ‘Phoibe’s business? She just has those holographic maes. But how will that help us?’ Yumi couldn’t fight her curiosity now that he brought it up. The only guess she had was those maes, but they only a programmed data. “What those maes do?”

  “Maes?”

  ‘ht, Seiji wasn’t there for it,’ Yumi remembered. Yuki already started to head down taking the lead. They had to quickly follow if they didn’t want to miss out on what he had pnned. “Phoibe’s busihat she runs is a virtual reality bar. Think karaoke, but repce it with virtual reality.”

  They made it down a flight while Seiji listened before questioning babsp; “That stuff you put on your head?”

  “No, her’s a lot more plicated and advanced. It’s closer to sce fi thay.”

  “How the hell she run a fake business!? Won’t it expose her powers?”

  “Her pce is pretty private and a selective tele.”

  “But anyone could just talk about any of this!”

  Yuki opehe door to the ground floor. “sidering what she runs here, I suspect she’s put measures into pbsp; Phoibe is a very cautious woman.”

  He still grumbled to himself. “And they call me stupid…” But he quickly silenced himself as Phoibe popped up in the lobby. In the rear keeping watch over the desk was Hanabira, she kept a casual eye out for them at the edge of her vision while still holding the door and desk in her sights.

  Staring at Yuki’s back with curiosity, she approached alongside as Phoibe stepped forward. There appeared to be a slight smirk on the woman’s fabsp; Yumi doubted that she knew what Yuki wanted, not that Phoibe didn’t py it like she knew everything. She was a mysterious, yet fident woman. It was something that she couldn’t help but have some admiration for watg her work. ‘I wonder if that es with age or something i…’

  “What are you needing?”

  Seeing how quickly Phoibe picked up on things made it easy for him. Yuki grinned a little and looked for a moment to his right at Yumi. “I’m wanting to borrow one of your rooms for a while.”

  “They’re not cheap if you recall.”

  “I think I find some suitable pensation.”

  “Is that so? My rooms are meant for eai, not what you have in mind.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short.”

  “Yuki? What’s going on?” Yumi still hadn’t pieced things together. She felt like she had a bit of it figured out. Yet the whole picture remained unseen. “I don’t think creating copies of them is going to get the results you’re wanting.”

  He broke away from Phoibe to face Yumi directly. “We aren’t going to be making copies. We’re going to be hooking the device straight up to your mind and projeg it through the holographic projectors.”

  “That’s not possible, it doesn’t work like that.”

  A smirk came across his face that Yumi didn’t follow. He looked away from her and back to Phoibe. “That’s not accurate. Your maes read surface level scious thoughts as a way to ize the simution.”

  “Yuki?”

  “Remember the first time we were here? When Jun recreated our neighborhood and…” Yuki choked on his words suddenly. She could tell that his memories still easily affected him. It wasn’t something he would get over any time soon. “What we saw wasn’t something pre-programmed. It was too specific to actually be there even with Jun pung it in. It wasn’t until ter that I realized it had to be reading our minds. In that case, Jun knew what he wanted and it created…it…”

  “Is this true?”

  Phoibe cpped her hands together at Yuki’s dedu. “I’m impressed you figured it out. Though giveime to think about it after the fact, it’s not that surprising you’d eventually put it together.”

  There was a biting tone of dession in her voice that broke Yuki out of his fog. It almost seemed deliberate on her part to cut to the heart of things. Sobered up, Yuki could focus on her clear minded. “So how about it? The thrill of the unknown and taboo payment enough for you?”

  “You know how to package up a gift, boy.” She snapped a finger summoning Ha to her side. “Get the room prepped.”

  “Yes, Mistress.” The normally spiteful and trary child immediately so attention and marched on her orders without a single question. She disappeared down the hall quickly before anyone could even follow or question what was happening.

  The Atntean woman gave a pyful smile to the group. “I’ve got just the room for your needs. But I’ll need some time to make adjustments. And this girl.”

  Chapter 384 – Reality

  Following Phoibe alone, Yumi still had a little bit of unease around the woman. She k would be fine, but she didn’t know what she had pnned. The adjustments required her. It surprised her to find that the room was just a normal room. ‘The way that she talked, I sort of imagihat she had something else in mind. Some secret room that we hadn’t seen before.’

  Without Phoibe taking a, the door opened on its own only to reveal Ha ihe standard VR room. “It’s been prepared, Mistress.”

  “Good. Make sure to grab the out of n for the room.” Phoibe stepped into the room inviting Yumi inside as well.

  In a bit of caution, Yumi poked her head inside first. The room looked no different from what she remembered before. She searched for differences, but couldn’t find any. ‘What does she have pnned? I feel like I’m missing something…’

  “ in, I don’t bite…much,” she added with a grin. Phoibe went around to the back of the couch stretg her arm down. If it weren’t for the out of pce devi the ter and the ck of a TV it would very easily pass for a karaoke room.

  Yumi didn’t really have much choibsp; She wao trol what existed inside her and if Yuki thought this was the best ce at it, she couldn’t turn away. It wasn’t as though Phoibe would do anything bad. There just remained reservations about the whole effort. Regardless, she stepped into the room, whi cue suddenly dropped a few timeters under her foot. Not enough to actually throw her off bance, but she still braced herself against the wall to find bance.

  After the initial drop, it evened out and steadily moved down. The entire room moved as the elevator. Yumi had trouble holding back her surprise. “A secret elevator?!”

  “You didn’t think I did all of my work up there did you?”

  She slowly turned around to see if there was anything she missed. It merely existed as a transport, a pletely inspicuous one. ‘There’s more that we haven’t seen…what secrets are down here?’ Yumi had little time to wonder about hoibe kept out eyes. The room came to an eased stop and a new hall opened up for them.

  Phoibe took the lead guidio their destination. The notion that everything that she wao keep private was hidden down here made Yumi more than a little curious. She wao know what sort of things she might have. Despite her helping them out and providing so much she kept everything surrounding her past a secret. Yumi k had to be for reasons, but she felt a strong urge to know what they were.

  However, the hall gave away very little to reveal anything about the woman. It held a simple, very Japanese design that felt a little out of pce given the underground tunnel aspect of the hall. Even the doors looked like rice paper doors rather than heavy steel ones. ‘She really likes Japanese aesthetics…’

  While they walked Phoibe closed a door that had bee open before Yumi got to it. The slightly hurried way she went about it while trying to look casual seemed a little suspicious. Her curiosity grew again wanting to know more. Yumi found herself stalled staring at it weighing her options with the sequences.

  “There’s nothing of io you ihat room. Yuki would find it more appealing.”

  “Yuki would…” she repeated making her even more curious. There were a lot of different things that came to mind when Yuki was brought up. She didn’t seem to be exactly hiding it, but she also didn’t want her going in. But knowing what Yuki would like about it made it an irresistible pulsion to know.

  She stretched out her hand to the handle. Araint she had couldn’t hold her babsp; She wao know. It was too hard to tease and not show. ‘Yuki…’

  A hand appeared out of nowhere and grabbed her wrist stopping her before she could even make a crabsp; Yumi yelped in surprise and looked at the hand, a disembodied hand that stopped just half the forearm. It had a feminine shape and delicate touch, she thought it hoibe. However, as she looked down the hall the woman still kept walking away from her. ‘Her powers are active?’ It was a question that she didn’t really get a good answer for, other than one. She wasn’t allowed inside.

  Secrets were meant to remain is what she was being told.

  Yumi hurried along to catch up to Phoibe to reach the end of the hall and their destination finally. A room not too uhe size and shape of the ohat they rode down. It just cked any of the fort and homelihe other provided. With solid gray metal walls and a pile of strange looking parts that Yumi could only assume to be spare mae pieces, it had the atmosphere of a workshop. A pce of work rather than py exuded through the air.

  “Wele to the soury business.”

  “The source?” That seemed like a strange way of stating it since Yumi khat the source of her business was her power, not some mae. She used her power like Yuki would to craft the maes. And like him, when he wao make something real, she used real materials to do it. “But you made the maes.”

  Phoibe pced a hand on the wall as a panel slid away to reveal a digital dispy. It had a familiar look to the ones in the rooms above that trolled the simutiram. “I designed and perfected the maes I made in this room. And all of my failures.”

  ‘…failures…’ Yumi thought, as her mind pictured the er she saw. However, she didn’t get much time to react as the ceiling opened up to reveal a rge mae. With cables running through the ceiling and orbs decorating with some unknown i, it started to look a little more like the inside of some alien ship rather than a workshop.

  At the ter a circur hole appeared in the floor allowing a chair access up. Phoibe walked over to the back of the chair with a holographic dispy appearing for her to interface with the mae. “This is the pleted prototype I made based on my inal design. After some py testing I ged my design realizing that this was both inve and signifitly more than I needed for a business.”

  The chair was offered to Yumi. She sloroached trying to figure it all out still, as she was getting information overload. This wasn’t the same sort of mae from above. She didn’t have the teical knowledge to uand any of it, though she wondered if someone like Phoibe even did either, given her homend. Even without that knowledge, she could tell this was on a pletely different scale and scope thahers. It felt powerful and overbearing in an unfortable way. ‘I uand why she ged her design…’

  “Sit, I o get the mae adjusted to your brain waves. This isn’t just going to be a surface level venture, so it’s going to o be calibrated for you.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Once I’m finished with the prep work, I’ll call them down. I won’t start the program until they are present.”

  ‘Walking through my mind thanks to virtual reality…it makes sense. How e Yuki didn’t think of that to rescue me? Wouldn’t it be safer on Yori than what he had to suffer?’ She didn’t have much opportunity to think about the what ifs. The past was behind her and she couldn’t ge it. Phoibe waited for her to get into the chair.

  Tapping away at the air, Phoibe kept focused on the mae that hadn’t seen work in more than a decade. “Just rex, it’ll make the process faster,” she anded once Yumi fit herself into the slightly oversized chair. As she tried to start the program an error fshed in front of it. “Rex, the mae ’t get a read on you.”

  “I am…as best as I …”

  “…hmm…” Phoibe typed away looking into the situation before stopping again. “Looks like I don’t have enough puting power to even peek into your brain.”

  “So it’s a dead end?”

  “I don’t have enough right now. Who do you think you’re talking to?” The Atntean immediately started work on correg the problem created by the unique superhuman abilities that Yumi presented. It wasn’t long before the entire room was filled with blinking lights that looked like they might be doing something.

  Ready tain, Phoibe activated the mae and a dispy of Yumi’s brain appeared floating in the air. Using the holographic projes, it looked to finally start eg and mapping her mental pathways, but with a worrisome low pertage. “.001%...this is going to take lohan I expected.”

  Suddenly, a fsh of light filled the room, blinding them. “Miss Phoibe? Is this normal?” she asked, not really sure what to be expeg.

  The light faded away giving Phoibe a view of the monitor once more to see the results. “Something’s wrong…there’s feedback…” She looked around the rge chair to see a woman standing before them in tattered armor looking like a variant on fourteenth tury samurai armor. “I’m losing trol of the system…”