Nixie, Angel From Hell

Viata, Part 2

It was 2:30am. Viata had just woke up in a cold sweat... a nightmare. She kept having them nowadays... Ever since the entire incident with Yoavmal and Cliff, she'd been having them. She unplugged her phone from beside her and unlocked it. She opened her call log and let her finger hover over her most recent call... Ravi. She had called him at 11:00pm last... If she called him now, he'd probably not sleep again. He'd probably pull an all-nighter to make sure he'd pick up instantly if Viata called again... She closed her call log and navigated to her contacts. Who would be awake right now? She looked around and saw a photo frame on her bedside table... It was a picture of her friends and her. Ravi, Akki and Nixie to be precise. Wait... Nixie would be up right now. Her medical conditions kept her up at night... Akki might be up as well. She scrolled down to Nixie's contact and pressed call.

"Hello?" Nixie's voice rang out from the phone. "Can you talk right now?" Viata answered back. "I can talk right now... Did anything happen?" She then said. "Only a nightmare... How are you holding up?" Viata responded. "Another nightmare? What even happened to cause this many... Hey, Akki's up! I'll add him here, wait a little bit." Nixie said, her voice becoming cheerful for the second part. After all, she and Akki had known each other since they were children... Viata then remembered that Akki and Nixie did not know what was causing the nightmares... She, Ravi and Magma had agreed not to tell that to anyone. "They'll be added to Yoavmal hit list as well." were Magma's exact words. Eventually, Akki's voice came from the phone. "Hiiiii Viata!" He spoke. He had a habit of drawing out his 'hi's. "Guess who's here with me?" He then said. "Who's with you?" Viata asked, now curious. Ravi's voice then came from the phone. "Hi Viata, Nixie. I heard you had a nightmare again." he said, his voice devoid of emotion. He would call her again after this call ended now. "Oh yeah, I forgot to answer your question... The medical reports, as usual, were purely depressing, but the medication you and Ravi gave me is working its magic and the doctors are so confused as to why an obscure medicine named 'Shastri's Magic Platelets' is murdering my conditions much better than the branded medicines, so yes, I'm holding up just fine." Nixie said cheerfully. Viata started laughing and Ravi started complaining. "The medicine isn't that obscure you know... It won fourth place in the competition, you know... Even though it actually should have won third. Also, can we please not talk about my horrible naming skills?" He spoke.

The competition... The one that happened six months ago. "Yeah, yeah, we know the story. Dappy bribed the judges with ten million each, so they put him in first. Your source is the headmaster's extremely hot female bodyguard, Magma. We've heard it a thousand times Ravi, please not again." Akki quickly said, cutting Ravi off before he could start. "Extremely hot? Someone has a crush..." Nixie teased Akki. "She is hot you know..." He trailed off in response. "I'm telling Magma you said that." Viata interjected. Akki started pleading her not to, but she was distracted by a text message from Ravi. 'I'll come pick you up at 8am today alr? You seem shaken up... Anyways, I say that you're the hottest girl I know.', it read. Viata gave a small chuckle at the last part. She texted back a thumbs-up emoji then went back to the call. "I'd like to meet Magma one day though..." was the first thing she heard Akki say, causing her to laugh again. Another text message from Ravi then popped up. 'I just checked, Magma's awake. Add her to the call for funni ;)', he texted. She then did so. Soon enough, Magma's voice came from the phone as well. "Viata, why'd you call at this hour - that too a group call with two other people?" She asked. "Viata, who's that?" Akki and Nixie both then chirped in unison. Ravi's voice then came from the phone. "Akki and Nixie, I'd like you both to meet Magma. Magma, drop the act. You know very well who these two are." Instantly, the four of them started bickering back and forth, with Magma as audience.

"Viata, how much money do you have left by the way? You won second place in the competition but rightfully first so..." Magma asked. "More than nine-hundred million dollars are left... Ravi knows the exact value." Viata responded. "904,371,192.87 dollars is how much money Viata has left from the billion dollars of funding she got." Ravi said proudly. She had managed to finish building a device with under a hundred million dollars... Now all she could do was hope that it was deemed more useful that what Dappy or Darpinger built. Actually, if Darpinger's invention was deemed better it wouldn't matter. Their inventions were meant to be used together anyways. Her prototype she had made to qualify in the top three from the top hundred had also been powered by Darpinger's prototype... Now he was making an efficient fusion reactor and Viata was going to use it to power her invention: A genome editor. To qualify in the top three, Viata had made a device that emulated a ribosome but millions of times quicker - it would take in a genome and output what it created... It could do the opposite as well. It was powered by Darpinger's nitrogen battery, a device that could harness the 'strong force' that held nitrogen ions together and make it usable. Or as Ravi described it, 'pointing the middle finger at entropy'. They had then used Viata's device on one of Nixie's blood samples and isolated the gene which was causing her Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura... Nixie's name of 'suicidal blood' was just better. Ravi then made immunosuppressants with her help... and jokingly used his last name to name his invention 'Shastri's Magic Platelets' even though his invention actually just increased platelet production and discouraged the immune system from killing platelets. They had tried the same for Akki, but his condition was nothing like anything recorded - they were working on it right now.