Chapter 7 Alternium

“Oh right, I’m Haru Raikou. Nice to meet you!” Haru replied while sitting up straight.

“Haru huh? Nice to meet you too, I’m Nodoka Aiko, I’m in charge of basically everything here at Atomos 7th Extermination Branch and she’s Ryoko Hajime, our top-notch engineer” Aiko said as she pointed towards Ryoko with her thumbs.

“Be careful though despite being in charge of everything, she’s a bit of a nut job, a mad scientist if you would say” Ryoko’s face worryingly looks at Aiko and the rest of the girls.

*Ahem* “Now Haru, the first question in your mind must be… “

“What in the hell is going on here!?” she couldn’t help herself but said that loudly eager for answers.

“Exactly!, first of all, what’s your favorite fruit juice?” Aiko suddenly brings up a question that is so out of topic for some reason.

“Uh… Orange Juice?” Haru was very confused but she answered anyway.

“Alright then watch carefully” Aiko gets up from the chair to grab something from the cabinet above the workshop area.

She heads back to the table with an advanced metal white drink can, it has a small transparent window showing the content inside, a gray color substance with an unstable flow despite having very little force acting on it.

“An orange juice right?” Aiko then pressed the touch screen on the can several times.

“Hey, Aiko? Are you sure about that…” Nodoka said concerning another of Aiko’s mad inventions.

“Here you go have a drink and taste the power of science” she placed the can in front of Haru before smiling confidently.

“Uh…? It’s not poison or it’s going to blow up inside me right?” Haru asked worryingly.

“Don’t worry, Probably...” looking away from Haru’s face to hide her nervous face.

The orange hair stared at the can for a few seconds, thinking about what a drink offered in a futuristic can from the so-called “Mad Scientist” would do to her body. Eventually, her curiosity leads to an inconsiderate of her safety, she drinks the can with a full gulp.

“Wait? It’s orange juice?!” To her surprise, what she just drank isn’t a poisonous chemical but a nice refreshing orange juice that she always loves.

“Alternium, in summary, is a substance that can turn into anything with the right information” the mad scientist takes a seat while beginning her explanation.

“The technology research and development corporation “Atomos” created that just about twelve years ago and as you can guess we have benefited a lot”

“So that means...” Haru drags her words waiting for the obvious answer.

“Yes, all of the technological advancement that you see around Tokyo and many other cities are all possible from using Alternium, even the flying train I presume you used to come to Tokyo” Nodoka continues the explanation.

“Most of the stuff people wanted to make wasn’t possible before just because we didn’t have the material capable of doing it but Alternium changes everything…” The serious tone Nodoka is slowly shifting to is telling Haru that she finally is going to have her answer. The interest peaked in Haru’s facial expression.

“That’s right, alongside the huge progress in technologies we also encounter or rather created humanity's worst enemy yet, and the one you encountered first hand Haru.” Nodoka opens her tablets and shows analytics about the monster that Haru fought against.

“Phantom, it’s a project created five years ago by Atomos with the sole purpose of achieving 100% control over Alternium. However, it backfires causing all of it to escape and become what it is today.” Aiko explains her serious tone while pointing at Nodoka’s tablets.

“We have lost all of our control over it, now the only goal it has is to consume more Alternium at all cost, even harming humans for it. It is also why they exclusively appear in cities that use Alternium technology.”

“It’s exactly why you have never heard of them before despite being such a big deal. The government forces all the talks about Phantom to be excluded no matter what, they just label it as another hazard of Alternium” Nodoka adds on.

“So they just brush it off like that?! That’s going to cause so much harm especially to those who just came to this city!” Haru stood up from her seat and slammed her hands on the table, unable to control her frustration after hearing Nodoka.

“H-Haru calms down and please…. just listen to Aiko-san first” Riku recovers from her fear and tries to calm Haru down.

She realized herself and apologized before sitting back down.

“Don’t worry I’m just as frustrated as you. However, this is where we come into play. Atomos isn’t just going to sit around after their biggest failure, they have collaborated with countries with Alternium technology around the world to create the Extermination Branch to fight against the Phantom” Aiko continues.

“Alongside the creation of Phantom a similar project called the Phantasm Project was developed as a countermeasure against it. Remember the wolf you encountered?” Nodoka asked while tapping on her tablet.

“Yea… It said something about being linked or something like that.” Haru answered.

“Those are called Phantasm, unlike a Phantom which functions by itself, a Phantasm’s main goal is to link with a human and work alongside them to consume a Phantom’s Alternium. They are on the frontline of this battle including you now Haru” the engineer continues on.

“Of course they escaped just like Phantom but slowly but surely more and more Linkers emerge in different countries and it’s our job to assist them in the fight against the Phantom”

“However, this responsibility isn’t something to be taken easily despite how great the benefit and payout linkers can get.” the scientist chimes in.

“You are putting your life on the line against a force of self-regenerating AI with the sole objective of destroying whatever gets in the way. That is the simplest way I can summarize it. With that being said we can give you the option to remove the Phantasm from your body and return you to normal life”

“Although, we might need to delete your memories because this whole thing is classified… mfm!” a pair of hands suddenly arrive to close Aiko's mouth.

“Aiko! You weren’t supposed to say about the whole memory thing” Nodoka reminds Aiko but it’s already too late. She lets go of Aiko's mouth shortly.

“Oh… right. Um…. we aren’t going to do anything weird we swear we won’t ok? So just give it some time to think about it first” Aiko is speaking nervously, contrasting her character just a moment ago.

“I’ll do it.”

“Eh?”

“Huh?”

Those are the only words that left the scientist’s and the engineer's dropped jaw after Haru answered.