Not!A/N: So... guess what we have today? It’s been a while since anything from RIVER has updated, but we have a new installment in store. Funnily enough, this log is being posted exactly a year after the previous one. This is written by one of my beta readers,
Titi, who is the lovely writer of
Hallucination. I hope you enjoy!
Stupid Sexy Acchan and Stupid Maxwell’s Demon
SSA Log #9 – Entered 7/5/13 by Titi
A/N: Hi.
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It was a hot day. Summer had climbed the stairs of ascendency and engulfed all areas under its dominance in torpor, cloaking the azure, cloudless sky with visibly swaying heat. Bearing the relentless, brilliant rays of the sun, the outline of Akiba Base transformed to a wavy distortion, seeming ready to float into the firmament any moment. One could elucidate it as an illusion of the desert, though, despite there being no land of sand in the vicinity.
On days such as this, even the roof of the building could not manage to deliver a rescue to the personnel working in this heat. Unfortunate incidents were guaranteed to happen, such as—
“Major Takahashi!” At the mention of her name, a person of modest height turned on her heels. She, being relieved of her duty, was making her way to the so-called “common room,” namely so for the reason that there being no other use for a certain large room. Her ribbon now lay neatly in her right hand, as it was unbearable to have extra weight on her head with this temperature.
Takahashi Minami looked at Matsui Rena, both of whom had equally flushed faces and equally drenched clothing. “Yes, 2nd Lieutenant Matsui?”
After a moment of hesitation and fidgeting, Rena proposed her intention. “Major Takahashi, may I…” she paused, licked her bottom lip, and continued with a discerned worry, “may I request permission to leave duty?” Furrowing her brows, she added, “For an hour?”
The short major raised her eyebrow. “And for what reason?”
“2nd Lieutenant Matsui Jurina hasn’t perspired for the past hour. I believe it is a case of heatstroke.”
“Ah,” Minami made a simple noise of recognition, pondered about it for several seconds, and smiled. “Permission granted. You’ll escort her to the infirmary, I take it?”
“Yes, thank you,” Rena gave her a smile of her own in appreciation.
“Before you go, though, call someone on duty to take over your post. Also, don’t make her drink too much water. Let her drink something like tea.”
She grinned as Rena, who was already on her way down the hall, shouted another “thank you”, and resumed her short walk to said ‘common room’. As she rounded a corner, voices mixed in an unrecognizable din reached her ears, and she shook her head and mumbled, “Who has the energy to talk so loudly in this kind of weather?”
Arriving at her destination, Minami grabbed the doorknob, turned, and pulled the door, creating a gap through which cold air from the other side escaped and the voices went on a crescendo. Another smile made its way to her face as she entered the room, closing the door behind her, glad to avoid the heat.
Her target was the colossal sofa dwelling in the center of the room, where some of her friends occupied. Her eyes scanned the ‘paradise’ while her feet carried her to the target. At the far end was Yokoyama Yui, sitting on a rather comfortable chair and reading a book. Several other chairs decorated the room. Next to her, in the corner stood a bookshelf, replete with books on technology, dotted here and there with some comic books. “Who brought mangas in here again?” Minami groaned. In another corner was the air conditioner, breathing blasts of chilly air throughout the room.
In the middle was the aforementioned sofa, on which sat Shinoda Mariko and Minegishi Minami, who were obviously watching the thin LCD monitor lying in front of the wall. Beside them were Oshima Yuko and Watanabe Mayu, their eyes glued to the screen, their hands smashing some small objects, occasionally yelling and jerking their bodies to the motions on the screens. From their hands, small black cables protruded and led to the black box before the TV. There was some space left on the sofa.
Kojima Haruna was sitting on a wooden chair near the sofa, between the sofa and the entrance, with her back facing the door. A PSP had her focus. Yuko would occasionally cuss, followed by Haruna’s “Language, Yuuchan!” Mayu would shriek when her character was attacked by whatever thing which was her enemy, and the two audiences continued cheering. Another object, however, caught Minami’s attention more than the source of noise. An Xbox lay a few feet behind Haruna. “Who did this!?” Minami growled.
Everyone here was off-duty. As Minami approached the sofa, a soft click sounded from the door, and she turned to find Maeda Atsuko entering, which prompted a smile from the midget. Atsuko smiled back and walked over to stand by her side. Minami decided against sitting on the sofa, seeing there was only enough space for one. She deemed it better to stand with Atsuko.
The taller girl pulled at the collar of her shirt and began fanning herself using it. She was trying to dry the sweats, which drenched her uniform in a darker hue. Hair clung to her face in a manner that made Minami aware of the scorching temperature despite being in a cool room. Drops of clear, transparent liquid slowly crawled along Atsuko’s well-defined face, travelling down her neck and hiding behind the collar. Dabbing her nose with the sleeve of her uniform, Atsuko’s eyes met Minami’s.
Minami nervously smiled at Atsuko and, reproaching herself for being caught staring, averted her eyes. She felt Atsuko move in closer and slightly lean on her shoulder.
“Ah hah! Take this! Kamehameha! The power of fantasy!” Yuko shouted as she jumped up slightly from her seat, pushing the controller down for further emphasis of said “power of fantasy.”
Mayu raised her voice to match that of Yuko. “There is no such thing as the ‘power of fantasy’! There’s no other explanation to Goku’s power than Maxwell’s Demon!” As she finished her line, both hers and Yuko’s characters died, eliciting a cry of dismay from Yuko, who tossed the controller to Mayu and leaned back against the soft surface of her seat.
“I give up!” Yuko whined, rubbed her eyes, and proceeded to move closer to Haruna. “Nyan-nyan, what are you playing~”
“What is this ‘Maxwell’s Demon’ you speak of?” Yui lowered her book and directed her attention at Mayu now.
“You definitely took it from another one of your physics books, didn’t you?” Miichan grinned.
“Don’t make Yukirin mad with your physics talk, or else she’ll incinerate them books of yours.” Mariko snickered as Mayu gave a painful moan at her statement and continued, “Let’s see…” She put an index finger on her chin and pretended to be in deep pensiveness. “Last time she burned two of your books on hand grenades. Yup, this time she’ll burn the rest.”
“Boo!” Mayu pouted.
“So are you gonna explain? Or are you gonna leave us in the dark?” Yuko asked from her position of having her head on Haruna’s laps, with the lower half of her body still on the sofa and most of the upper half hanging in the air.
“Ah hah! So you’re interested! Good, Professor Watanabe shall teach it to you!” This brought a chuckle out of Minami, who was directly behind Mayu, which made the younger girl jump to her feet. When she realized it was the major, she sighed and threw Minami an accusing glare.
“I didn’t mean to. I mean, I didn’t know you were that much of a scaredy-cat,” Minami said as she smirked. She turned toward Atsuko, who quietly giggled, and at times like this remembered the uniform was---or at least the shirts were—almost see-through.
“Ya-hoy!” Miichan half yelled with a smirk. “Or was it ‘Yay-hoy’?” she asked and half yelled again at ‘Yay-hoy.’
Mayu mumbled a “boo” and quickly brightened once again as she moved on to the topic that recently caught her interest. As the team’s cyborg and an explosives maniac, her frequent love for physics was inevitable and understandable.
“Well, there’s this thing called the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which basically says that heat flows naturally from an object at a higher temperature to an object at a lower temperature, quoted physics for dummies. It has more, but we’re not physics maniacs, so I’ll leave it there. You get it?”
At everyone’s nod, Mayu carried on. “Well, there is this guy whose name is Maxwell. He proposed this hypothesis where this Second Law could be violated—”
“Violated! Woot!” Yuko cheered, interrupting Mayu, and earned a smack to the head from Haruna.
Mayu grinned at Yuko and slapped her palm against Yuko’s. “Anyway, in an isolated environment, like a room separated from the universe, the Second Law will occur. It’s mostly impossible. But say we split the room in two with a door in-between, guarded by a being—the demon—that can follow the motion of individual molecules moving in the room. Now suppose that this demon allows faster molecules to pass to one side, and slower molecules to the other, he will, without exerting energy, raise the temperature of one side and lower that of the other.
This decreases entropy and thus will generate energy.” Seeing that most eyes had gone blank, Mayu explained, “Entropy is a measure of disorder, and energy must be invested to reverse it. For example, Yuko has to untangle her earphones whenever she takes them out of her pocket, which requires energy. So, because the demon doesn’t need to use energy, entropy is defeated, and this generates energy. Like I said, it’s proven impossible.”
She paused and took a breath. “And that’s why I told you Goku must have used the power of Maxwell’s Demon! ‘Cause Kamehameha’s a blast of heat and energy!”
“Hey! No fair! It’s totally the power of fantasy!” Yuko complained.
“No! Maxwell’s Demon!”
“No! Fantasy!”
“No! Maxwell!”
“No! Fantasy!”
“No! Demon!”
“Who says Goku’s a demon?”
“I do!”
The girls continued their bickering, causing others to shake their heads. “Remind me how old are they again?” Minami sighed.
“Love-struck teenagers,” replied Miichan as she and Mariko bet on who would prevail over the silly argument. “Ice cream.”
“I’ll give you my signature if I lose,” Mariko smirked.
“Deal’s over, yo dawg!”
“How about one of Mariko-sama’s fantabulous sunglasses?”
“I said deal’s over, man!”
“Oy, no betting in the military,” Minami jokingly scolded. Then she looked at Atsuko and asked, “What’s wrong?” Her partner was unusually quiet.
“Hmm…” she hummed and after a while answered in a quite naïve manner. “I wish that demon were real.”
“Hah?” Minami thought her eyes must look like those of a dead fish, in fact, like Kashiwagi Yuki’s eyes whenever the latter put on her reaction queen’s face.
Atsuko nodded and asserted her previous statement by another hum. She now faced Minami, who suddenly noticed the unfastened button on her partner’s collar button and her slender neck that moved in vibration with each word. “I want that demon. It can open that ‘door’ so that the hot air will go outside and the cold air will stay in the base.”
“Uh, Acchan, I, uh…” Minami trailed off, gulped as if thirsty, and scratched her cheek, which felt flushed under her fingers. “I don’t… uh, think it works that way.”
“But certainly someone looks like she needs to cool off her head,” Yui announced her presence, which unfortunately had been rather dim due to her silence, and grinned as her target of teasing snapped her head to glare at her.
“True! True! So true!” Miichan and Mariko nodded sagely. Another “So much truth!” could be heard amidst the still bickering girls’ shouts.
“What! You guys—” About to rant on how she would never be or do this and that, the short major stopped in her track as she felt something trickle down her nostril. Quickly sniffing and pushing her index finger against her nostril, Minami could tell from the others’ faces that she was rather late in her attempt and wiped her nose with her other hand, which came away with a red streak on it. “Damn.”
“Yo~ You think Takamina’s demon opened the door to let all the blood to her head, while her feet are cold? She has too much blood running to her head for what~ever reason, it looks like~” Yuko teased.
“No, no, her demon opened the door to let her hormones out~~” Mayu sang.
“Her demon?” Miichan mused, “Oh, you mean her manhood? Oh my gosh, you’re so manly, Takamina!” Atsuko ssexy beasted at Miichan’s statement, furrowing her eyebrows in a comical way and scrunching up her nose.
“Then don’t you think Acchan is the demon? I mean,” Mariko smirked, nudged Minami, “I mean, she’s why you’re opening up your hormones dam,” and laughed.
“You guys, give her a break!” Haruna finally looked up from her PSP-meditation and fended off a certain midget who kept singing “Nyan-nyan~.” “It’s fine, you know? It’s understandable, because her heart has a man’s thing.”
“No! That is not fine! I do not have a man’s thing in my heart! Absolutely not!” Her cheeks flushed further with the teasing.
“You don’t have to be shy; we understand,” Yuko said, which drew a laugh from everyone.
Said manly person pouted and mumbled to herself. “Stupid sexy Acchan. Screw her! Screw stupid sexy Acchan! Stupid sexy Acchan and stupid sexy collar. Stupid sexy neck.”
While she immersed herself in her rant of a list of “stupid sexy” things, Atsuko smiled sweetly and reassured her, “Don’t worry, I don’t mind if your hormones run amok.”
“No! I said that is not fine!” As the room was filled with laughter once more, the poor girl grimaced and grumbled. “Stupid what's-his-name's demon!"
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