Commander's Rounds

Entry 36-5: The Commander's Promise- Proof of Existence

It didn't take long for Enterprise to gather everyone who had received the commander's secret orders. The fact that Yuubari promised a method to bring their ailing commander back from the brink was enough to pique everyone's interest, even though Yuubari had remained secretive this whole time, only seeming to speak to Akashi and Marblehead, both of which had barely been seen outside of the lab since the commander was brought back from the battle with Purifier. The fact that she had spent all this time exerting herself to find some way to rescue the commander from what was more and more appearing to be mortal injuries that would, in time take his life despite the best efforts of his caretakers.

However, the other thing that all of them knew was that none of them had even the foggiest notion of what Yuubari had come up with, much less how it might bring the commander back to them, and Yuubari left them some time to stew in that. Though that was mainly because everyone arrived early.

Rossiya had the first question. "You know, if she has the means of saving commander, I wonder why she does not just do it?"

Nagato had her own response. "Probably for politeness's sake, though I have not known her to inform others on her research. If she feels the need to do so now, this must be some special circumstance, or there might be certain possibilities she may want us to be prepared for."

Yat Sen had her own words. "If I may say so, I think that there isn't much use to speculate other methods, as she is about to inform us anyway. The question is why the commander chose to keep it a secret from the rest of us. He may have had good reason, certainly."

Enterprise gave a nod. "It's a common procedure- the more critical or sensitive the information, the fewer people should know about it. Besides, this may have been some special-case, last resort maneuver that was simply pointless for us to know about until these specific circumstances came to pass. There was no need for us to know that such a thing existed until the specific need for its use came up. It wasn't that the commander didn't trust us with the information, it's just that there was never a reason for us to know about it."

Warspite looked between the others. "Agreed. It's not like we could have done much with the information- we had no real way of acting on "By the way, Yuubari has a secret plan that has an indeterminate chance to revive me in case I get shot by a Siren." Even if we knew, what would we do with it?"

Bismarck took her own seat. "Indeed. And it's not like the commander would allow us to get careless at any rate."

Vittorio Veneto looked to Bismarck. "I thought you said you might not make it on time?"

Bismarck shrugged. "Peter Strasser arranged my schedule- now I am here early. That's all there is to it."

And nothing more needed to be said about that. They generally knew what it meant to work by Strasser's clock.

It wasn't long after that Yuubari arrived, along with Marblehead and Akashi. Marblehead had put on her rarely-seen glasses, because, in her words, she needed to look more "science-y" if she was going to be a part of a presentation like this. Yuubari had brought a flower-decorated but rather sturdy laboratory case. Yuubari looked around. "Oh, everyone's here, then we can start immediately. I don't think I need to tell any of you what has happened to master."

Enterprise took the lead. "Yes. And you say you have devised some means of preventing his demise?"

"This may take some explanation." She put her case on the table, and opened it up. Inside was a cube, about six inches on each side, which glowed and gently flashed from the inside with a rainbow of colors.

Warspite blinked. "Is this some new species of Wisdom Cube?"

Yuubari responded. "It could be called something like that." She pointed to it. "This is what I and the commander have decided to call a "Promise Cube". It is something like a Wisdom Cube, but instead of being drawn from humanity, it is instead drawn from us. It is called this based on two meanings of the word "Promise". The first is that it comes from the meaning of promise that indicates an "oath" or affirmation. The commander made an oath to himself to always defend our humanity against those who would question it, and this- being a distillation of our dreams, ideals, imagination, and our own conscious will, is proof of that. The second is the meaning of promise, which means "potential". While we were made because of war, this is also proof that we are not merely tools and can exist beyond our purpose."