Anby and Belle looked at each other before turning their heads back to Jabami, their faces betrayed a hint of disbelief. They've already been briefed by Fairy, an advanced AI that could calculate the layout of a Hollow with astonishing accuracy, on the approximate number of fissures.
What surprised them was that his own prediction almost matched their own, with only a single margin of error.
According to Fairy, there were indeed 416,2024 traceable fissures.
Anby furrowed her brows in turn, arms crossed tight against her chest. "Your guess is close, but you're wrong about something."
"Oh?"
It had to be said, his words were accurate, but they felt it was harder to trust him.
"Your prediction is off by one," she hummed, feeling smug about herself.
Jabami looked on, his eye twitching as he fought back a laugh, barely managing to reel it in. Little did they know, Great Sage was rarely in the wrong, even in the anime.
How would a simple AI compare to his omniscient partner?
[ ! ]
He deliberately said nothing in his defense and proceeded without correcting her. If words weren't enough to convince, he would just have to prove it to them.
"Ahem!"
Coughing, he turned away and walked 10 steps with his hands behind his back. With a slight wave, a spatial distortion suddenly appeared.
"See?"
Before anyone else noticed, a new fissure had indeed materialized.
The count had changed.
416,2025.
Exactly as he had told them.
"A fissure?" Anby quietly gawked.
"It's true..." Belle leaned over instinctively on the other hand, trying to glimpse it too. For a moment, she couldn't find the right words to say in response.
Even Fairy sounded shaken as it delivered the update: a new fissure had been logged.
There was no denying it at this point.
Jabami stood a few steps away, hands still tucked behind his back, looking as if he hadn't done anything out of the ordinary. The man had a slight smirk, projecting the aura of "I told you so".
This time, Anby had no choice but to accept it, albeit reluctantly. Slowly, she stepped closer, followed by Belle, peering at the distortion as if it might bite her.
"...Fine," Anby muttered under her breath, arms still crossed. "You were right about the fissure."
"But," Anby added quickly, jabbing a finger toward him, "you're wrong if you think that just because it appeared where we're headed, it's automatically the one we're looking for."
Belle softly nodded. "I would have to agree... It could still be a trap."
The two of them turned to face him, looking as if they had made a tacit agreement with one another.
Jabami could not decide whether to laugh or cry, unsure of what he had done to make them so wary of him. He's been uncharacteristically cooperative, being a former nuisance streamer and all.
He started to wonder if this is what they meant with no good deeds were left unpunished.
A second passed.
"That's why you're going in first," Anby said flatly, tilting her head toward the swirling distortion.
Belle gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up beside her. "Yeah. We'll be right behind you. Promise."
Jabami's eyes widened.
"Bullshit!"
He simply couldn't take it anymore with these two.
"Excuse me? Me, go in first? Why not you two? And who told you to enter if this wasn't the fissure you're looking for!?"
He paced back and forth, his hands gesturing wildly. "Hello? I'm also a proxy here! You think I'm some sort of guinea pig for you two to poke at while you wait for me to get eaten by whatever's lurking inside that thing?"
Anby simply crossed her arms tighter. She was not in the least moved by his antics. "I recall you said that you're also an agent, Jabami. You've made your claim—now prove it."
Jabami flung his hands out dramatically. "Prove what? Haven't I proven enough!?"
Anby simply rolled her eyes, then unceremoniously pushed him forward.
Seeing him vanish into the portal, Belle suddenly felt guilty.
"Umm..."
She scratched her cheek on the side.
"Was that an okay thing to do?"
On the other side...
The world around him bent and twisted violently.
His surroundings warped into a blur of lights, colors, and shapes, eventually fading into a dark abyss. For a split second, his mind felt like it was being stretched beyond comprehension, then—wham!
Jabami got planted into the ground harder than Yamcha.
He groaned, his hands instinctively reaching out to find something to lean on so he could stand.
As the dizzying sensation from the fissure began to wane, he groggily looked around and felt a massive deja vu.
For the second time, his surroundings were unlike anything he had ever seen.
Jabami found himself in a sleek, metallic corridor bathed in artificial light. The atmosphere was sterile, much like his forever second home—the hospital, that he had frequently visited in his days as a streamer, with the hum of distant machinery reverberating through the walls.
"Damn it, I'll have them compensate me when I get back..."
He dusted off his shirt, cursing under his breath as he took in his surroundings.
"But where am I?"
This wasn't what he had expected to say the least. There was no sign of Belle and Anby in the vicinity as well.
'They didn't ditch me, did they?'
As he steadied himself, trying to assess where he was, the distant sound of footsteps echoed down the hallway.
Someone was coming.
His heart began to race. There was a strange sense of inevitability in the air, as if he had been roped into something troublesome...
"Huh, who are you?"
Jabami snapped his head in the direction of the voice. A young girl stood in front of him, her long silver hair flowing like liquid mercury, her expression was deadpan.
"No, who are you?" he asked her back.
"I'm the one who asked first, you know." She didn't even flinch at his tone, still deadpan. "But that's not important right now."
Before he could question her further, the distant clatter of machinery intensified, and the corridor seemed to tremble. The entire station shuddered, a guttural groan reverberating across the room.
Jabami instinctively took a step back, realizing that something significant was about to happen.
The young girl turned, her gaze moving toward a nearby platform. Jabami followed her line of sight, his blood running cold as he saw a figure floating on the platform—a girl, seemingly unconscious, was glowing like a light bulb.
And there, situated not too far in the distance, was none other than Kafka.
"...Mommy?"
Jabami froze.
He now fully recognized the situation.
This was exactly the opening scene from Honkai: Star Rail.
The moment when Kafka implanted the Stellaron into Stelle.
"My, my," Kafka said with a not-so-subtle frustration in her voice, turning as if scrutinizing him.
"It seems you've arrived at an... interesting time."