2022-06-21: To Grasp The Sky

   Cutscene: To Grasp The Sky

   Cast: Character :: Alteur Steinbeck

   Where: UltraM.E.N. Corporate Headquarters Vessel Muramatsu

   Date: June 21 2022

   Summary: An obsession, a cycle, and a milkshake, all to drive endless heroic ambition.

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Alteur always thought his best over a milkshake.

It was an awful habit. The day he and Melissa went on their first date at the fanciest restaurant a Lieutenant's severance could afford, he'd ordered a milkshake, right there in his nice suit. Melissa's face had contorted so much in disgust that she actually asked 'are you joking right now? Are you taking me seriously?'

'Of course I am,' he'd said, 'I need to be thinking at my best to keep up with you.'

So here he was, sipping away at a thick chocolate shake, staring down at his desk. The musical blinking lights and tape-deck computers around his office whirred and beeped and hummed as they always did, but the stack of papers he had meant to get to today had been shoved messily aside, scattered to the four winds. This was so very much more important. It was so important he'd cleared all his calls - all his budgetary meetings, all his proposals, all his political obligations - for months. All the mundane realities of the world had been pushed off on his secretaries, his staff, the people he had trained for just such an occasion. He was a man of obsession, and he knew it, and he planned around it, and now, he was deep in its grip.

His finger traced along the device. It was red and white and black, with a gold crest atop it. Two slots for capsules sat on either side. He had slid his finger into those slots carefully to test the  exact shape of the interlock. He had traced the device in pencil, sketched it on graph paper. Drawings of the device were taped around his office. They covered the window out of the ship. They covered the ceiling. Pins were stuck in various drawings to link them together. From every angle, from every position, Alteur Steinbeck had examined the device, except one.

He had not yet cracked it open.

It wasn't as if he didn't understand how. He had made his own - the Abaturiser sat even now on the desk nearby, three of the four medals placed atop his personal computer. The fourth medal, with the silver giant's heroic face, he rolled between his free hand thoughtfully in between his sips. Another habit that helped him think. Inspiration.

Like the milkshake. A habit, one he couldn't shake. A cycle that kept leading back to where it began.

A big sip. His temples started to ache. Cold headache, probably.

Wait.

He stood up. Frantically, he scoured the room for a piece of paper and a pencil. How is it that he always lost those things when he needed them most? Everything slipped through his grasp so easily if he wasn't juggling it all at once. The minute he started to get close to a goal…

Aha.

He threw it down on the desk and began to sketch. He sketched the insides of the medal he had made, all the circuitry, all the power, all the essence he had captured in the Zehirut Crystal, essence that he had forced into this little circular shape. And it was essence, wasn't it? It was essence. But it was an incomplete essence. It needed three pieces to work. A first medal, to shape. The silver giant's, to stabilize. Zehirut, to project.

At least, that was his working theory, and since he had made the thing, he was fairly sure he was right.

Then he sketched out a capsule. Alteur's pencil flew across the paper, a man possessed. No, no. That didn't make since for the boy's Riser. It only had two slots. So it couldn't need a third. It couldn't contain a third.

The boy himself was the projector. Or the stabilizer.

The design of the capsule began to take shape. Two capsules, intertwining. Two lights, intertwining.

Helix.

Double helix.

DNA.

Alteur stood up. He stared down at the paper his hands had produced as if he had just seen it for the first time. A moment of pure awareness. A moment of perfect understanding.

His fingers flew to the Riser. Carefully, carefully, like cracking a safe, he opened it, bit by bit unraveling the damaged device. Now he knew. Now he understood. It was DNA. DNA was the secret. Three medals were essential for him, but two helixes combining in the boy…

It was the only thing that made sense to him.

His temples throbbed. Flick, flick. The cover of the device opened. Broken, burned. The insides were melted. Heavily damaged. As if sparks had erupted within it. Another pulse against his head. Maybe…

No, no. The Abaturiser's fundamental structure was utterly different. He couldn't use its spare parts to repair this. The Abaturiser's structure was built for Alteur Steinbeck. Not for Riku Asakura.

So he sat down, his head still pounding. He rubbed his temples as he removed the centerpiece of the Geed Riser - half-blasted open, utterly useless. Still…if it was indeed DNA that was the source of Riku's power, then there would have to be some trace of Riku's DNA in the center. Some trace of…

Hm.

Yes. That might be useful.

Without a second thought he tucked the central mechanism into his desk and locked it. He sat back in his chair as the headache vanished. A little victorious laugh. Then he raised the milkshake to his lips and took a long, long, long sip, draining it until it bubbled.

Alteur stood up and grabbed his orange jacket, opened the door, and headed out. He had reached the limits of what he could do here. Now he had to find…other samples to work with. Not his own patch-job work. Masterpiece though the Abaturiser may have been, it was just a stepping-stone, Earth technology imitating something so, so much bigger, so much grander, so much more heroic.

He needed to find another source of that technology. To get closer to fixing the Geed Riser - to get closer to his own ambitions, his own desires - he needed more samples.

~To grasp the sky, stand on the shoulders of giants.~