Story:The Day Hanji was Happy/3

&lt; Previously

Yet again, and still against her wishes, Iae found herself being carried around.

After that emotional outburst it was hard to be angry at Hanji, especially as this version of her definitely seemed more self aware than usual, but this wasn’t exactly how the lalafell had planned to spend her afternoon. If anything, this was one of the last things she wanted to spend her afternoon doing.

Worst part was having to watch Hanji wander aimlessly until she reached her destination. They hadn’t been looking for anyone in particular, worse enough, just seeing who they’d come across.

“Hey! I know who’d probably enjoy it!” Hanji blurted out upon noticing one of the doors. Iae got a worried look as she was put down, knowing exactly how this was going to go.

Reni sat in his office, enjoying himself some ice cream on a slow day. They were his favorite kind of days, as nothing was happening -- especially not anything dangerous -- so nobody needed healing. Best part of it all was that, since the place was a giant library, he could always find a good book to read.

A book he was interrupted during by a knock at his office door.

“Come in.” The miqo’te answered, putting a marker in his book and looking up.

There he saw one of the last people he wanted to.

“Hey Reni!” Hanji cheered, a happy smile on her face and a very annoyed Iae in her arms. That kind of look was familiar to him, as a mixture between “help” and “kill.”

“Uh, hey…” Reni pursed his lips and quickly thought of what she could possibly want with him. Certainly nothing good, she never does. Reni didn’t even want to think of how many people had ended up in his care cause of her antics. “What can I do for you?”

“Well I was thinking of-” Was all Hanji got out before Reni stood up and backed away.

“Oh no. Absolutely not.” Reni had been through this song and dance before. Her ideas were the last thing he needed on a good day. Be it manikins, some weird scifi nonsense, or whatever else it happened to be; Reni wasn’t dealing with it.

“Reni, please calm down.” Iae asked, managing to speak through her ever growing anger at the unfortunate situation she’s found herself in.

“W-Wait, you’re in on this too Iae?” He asked, looking between the two in front of him as his tail twitches nervously.

Hanji put down the lalafell and smiled to Reni, her now freed up hands behind her back, and nodded. “Express permission!”

Reni found himself growing more distrusting of this, despite that normally Iae’s words would reassure him. In just about any other situation maybe knowing that one of the less crazy people here, nevermind a close friend, had condoned such things might had even gotten him to relax.

However, there was one big problem with that: He was already well assured that not only was everyone in the Society insane, but clearly such an illness was contagious.

Which lead to his next question: Why was Hanji slowly approaching him?

His question would find itself answered in the form of a hug, causing him to stiffen from fear and his tail to go straight. Truly today had turned into a terrible day.

“I just keep bothering you with stupid shit, don’t I?” Hanji asked, causing a bit of confusion to come from the fear. “Sorry about that. Really, I can’t help but to imagine how much time you have to spend on my dumb ideas already.”

''A hug, apologies, and Iae’s consent? Reni asked himself, giving no reply. Am I dreaming, or did I wake up in some strange reality where this is considered normal?''

“We’re putting on a concert.” Iae explained as Hanji let go of the team medic, smiling to him.

“Art’s playing! We figured if his music can make me into how I am right now, who knows what it could do for everyone?” Hanji explained, holding her hands in front of her as she swayed slightly.

“Oh, well, that’s certainly better than what I thought was going to happen.” Reni spoke.

“Or what it could do to my manikins!” Hanji blurted out, catching a glare from Iae and Reni’s panicked look returning almost immediately after he was started to relax.

“W-What!?” Reni asked, more out of shock than anything else. “This concert is going to happen there?”

“Of course not, silly. Concord’s deciding where it’ll be, and then we’re going to find a way to remotely play music for my manikins instead of bringing everyone near there.” Hanji explained.

“Trust me, I’m not letting her do this anywhere near her pen. Last thing we need is for her crazy schemes to come back once this wears off.” Iae’s elaboration upon the plan seemed to relax Reni, even though he still had a really bad feeling about this.

“Alright, I’ll join in. Hopefully it’ll just be a nice moment to relax.” Reni let up, sitting back down and going back to his -- now melty -- ice cream with furrowed eyebrows. Deep down he knew this wouldn’t end well, and that there was little he could do to stop it.

Down in engineering Xaras was looking over the various artifacts that had been collected recently. The nature of Sundry made each of them stand out of place with each other, even if they weren’t unusual among the surroundings they were found in. It ranged from pieces of ancient tech that ran off of seemingly nothing, to cybernetic devices that were clearly meant to interface with computerized electronics.

In truth, she was more choosing what to work on. Being between projects can be rough, as everything looked appealing. Unfortunately, even in a place as backwards as Sundry there were only so many hours in the day.

“Hey!” A joyous voice called out, causing Xaras to turn and look at her visitor. She grinned at Hanji, relaxing her stance and walking towards the crazy manikin buff.

“Hey. Come to take my stuff again?” She teased, pointing back towards the table full of artifacts. This immediately got Hanji’s attention, causing her to gravitate towards it. Xaras looked over with a smile before turning back to see Iae had came along as well. “Hey, you decided to tag along too Iae?”

“Yes. I figured someone needed to watch over her.” Iae admitted, getting a confused look in return.

“You mean more than usual, right?” Xaras asked, looking back to double check inventory. Hanji was pouring over everything, picking stuff up and examining it, but no digitization as of yet.

“Well, yes, but we’re also here because of an idea she had.” Xaras gave a curious squint at that, turning back to Iae. “Hanji’s attempting to convince everyone to come to a live concert for Artemis’ music.” Xaras had thought over it a short moment, but Hanji seemed to have a eureka moment before either of them could speak further of the concert.

“Hey! This could probably be holding some kind of power source.” Hanji thought out loud, holding a black box with blue circuitry running along it’s outsides. It was only the size of her hand, and had no noticeable ways of opening up.

Hanji waved her left hand over her face, then held it out to the side. A mask digitized on her head, sleek and black to conceal her expression completely, as a matching glove appeared on her hand. The glove had a small opening on the palm, with a faint blue light inside of it. A blue light that grew to become a precise flame of plasma.

“Hey, wait a minute!” Xaras called out, quickly rushing over to Hanji’s side. Though she could do little to stop the inevitable. Even a mood altered Hanji was still a scientist, and running her experiments continue to be top priority.

With one face of the box having been seared off Hanji closed her hand, harmlessly putting out the flame. She waved her hand over her face again as the Digitizer claimed back what had been taken out of it. All that was left was to see what was inside the box, with Hanji pulling out a blue crystal.

“Yeah… I was expecting a battery.” Hanji admitted, looking over the odd crystal. It was long, thick, and tapered off at both points. Though the sides were smooth, the top was jagged and had many small stalactites and stalagmites sticking out either end.

“Can you stop doing that!? What if you had broken it?” Xaras asked, looking over the crystal herself. “What do you keep in that Digitizer, anyways?”

Hanji looked over to Xaras. At first she was about to answer, but instead her head hung low. She just simply put down both parts of the artifact while softly speaking. “Sorry…”

“Hey, don’t put it like that. You’re making it out to be worse than it actually is.” Xaras assured, growing confused at the sudden shift in character.

“Now if you’d actually broken it, maybe, but it looks like you were pretty quick to figure out that it had a hidden gem.” She continued, picking up the crystal herself. “This baby’s gonna be fun to work with, if you’re right about it being a power source.”

“Well maybe we should work on it together, then!” Hanji bounced back to her cheerful mood rather quickly. Before either of them could get to work, however, Iae clearing her throat would catch both of their attentions.

“Wouldn’t it be better to help each other build the equipment for the concert?” Iae asked. Xaras and Hanji looked towards the lalafell before staring at each other with excited grins. Rather than give any verbal answers, both of them joined hands with an exaggerated high five and got out their tools.

Hanji and Iae catching Xaras up to speed only got their brains thinking, leaving Iae assured that -- at least for the time being -- she could leave the two alone peacefully.

&gt;&gt;&gt;To Be Continued