"Don't you think Kony's been acting a little strange today?"
In the laboratory, Newton sat beside a lab bench, staring at the piles of kaiju tissue on it, though his mind was on something else. He turned toward Hermann, who was writing and sketching on the blackboard, and asked the question.
Kony's behavior today had really been rather unusual.
"So what?" Hermann replied casually without turning around. He was still correcting his formulas, trying to determine the reason for yesterday's double attack.
"People's moods fluctuate."
He wasn't particularly concerned about Kony Albert's unusual behavior. He cared more about the numbers on the blackboard in front of him.
"That's why I always say numbers are more reliable than people."
Newton couldn't help rolling his eyes at that.
The guy's emotional intelligence was frighteningly low...
"I shouldn't have bothered talking to you," he said helplessly.
As he spoke, he scanned the laboratory for someone else to talk to.
He looked around for two seconds.
Then sighed again.
There was only one other living person in this room he could talk to.
Just my rotten luck...
Finally, his gaze settled on a jar containing a kaiju's secondary brain. The green liquid reflected his slightly grimy, disheveled face.
It's not like I can talk to a kaiju, right?
That was what he thought.
Just how crazy would someone have to be to consider talking to a kaiju?
Well... actually...
No.
This is all Hermann's fault. If it weren't for him, how would that idea even occur to me?
"God, I really am losing it." Newton stared at the kaiju's secondary brain in the jar and gave a self-deprecating laugh. "I'm actually considering talking to a kaiju to relieve my boredom."
Hermann raised an eyebrow when he heard him.
He stopped writing, turned around, and pointed his chalk at Newton. "Then you really are crazy."
"Talking to a kaiju? That's simply impossible."
"All you have in front of you is a pile of rotting flesh. Are you planning to talk to its cells?"
Trading verbal jabs was part of their daily routine.
Being crammed into the same laboratory only created more friction between their already incompatible personalities.
"Just because you can't imagine something doesn't mean it's impossible," Newton shot back.
As he spoke,
something suddenly seemed to occur to him.
"Right, isn't Kony a living example?" Having found something to support his argument, his voice grew more confident. "Have you forgotten? All his knowledge about kaiju came from their brains."
"He said he'd Drifted with a kaiju's brain, just like two Jaeger pilots."
"Maybe I could Drift with a kaiju's brain, just like he did."
Newton's eyes lit up as he spoke. He thought it was a perfectly workable plan, and he wanted to learn more about kaiju, too.
His words reminded Hermann of that as well.
"How could that possibly work?"
"When Kony first mentioned it, I already doubted whether it was true."
Leaning on his cane, Hermann limped over to Newton.
"Let me ask you something. How big is a human brain?" he asked, looking Newton in the eye.
"Uh..." Caught off guard by Hermann's sudden intensity, Newton froze for a moment, but recovered enough to answer. "About fourteen centimeters in diameter."
He gestured with his hands. Smaller than a soccer ball.
"Then take a look at this." Hermann lifted his cane and tapped the large glass jar beside them that held the kaiju's secondary brain.
The brain submerged in the jar still retained some activity. It displayed characteristics commonly associated with both a brain and a heart, while several thick blood vessels beneath it writhed like tentacles.
Colossal creatures like kaiju were controlled by both a primary and a secondary brain. What they had here was only a secondary brain.
"This secondary brain is bigger than half an adult human!" Hermann told Newton loudly. "Even two incompatible pilots can suffer accidents during a Drift. Now you want to connect your brain to a kaiju's. What do you think will happen?"
"Boom!"
He gestured as he spoke. "Your brains will explode inside your skull like fireworks!"
To Hermann, connecting a human brain to a kaiju's was utterly absurd. It was practically suicide.
No sane person would ever consider connecting to a kaiju's brain.
"Then how do you explain Kony?" Newton refused to concede.
"The first time we met him, he even mentioned information we'd never released publicly. He knows more about kaiju than I do, and I work with them every day."
The only way to explain why Kony Albert knew so much about kaiju was that he had Drifted with one.
He had even volunteered that explanation himself.
"That's what I can't figure out either." Hermann lowered his cane and stood there, frowning in thought. "He hasn't shown anything resembling aftereffects."
"Logically, if he'd really Drifted with a kaiju, there's no way he could be walking around perfectly fine like he is now."
"I'm more inclined to believe he never Drifted with a kaiju at all. That information came from some other source, one we know nothing about."
Newton merely laughed at that.
"How would that make any sense?"
"If he has a source of information about kaiju, why wouldn't he just tell us?"
"In this fucked-up, apocalyptic world, aren't we all just struggling to survive?"
They were all in the same boat. At a critical time like this, there was no reason to keep secrets.
"Who knows..." Hermann wanted to counter that perhaps they weren't all in the same boat, but reality made him swallow those words. If the kaiju took over Earth, none of them would survive.
Hermann's suspicions weren't without reason.
Kony Albert was simply too mysterious to him.
Even though records covering everything from his birth to the present could be found, they still couldn't explain why he knew so much about kaiju and the Precursors.
"I'll prove you wrong." Seeing that Hermann had no comeback, Newton grinned. "If he's conducted an experiment to Drift with a kaiju, the equipment must still be somewhere."
"Once I find it, I'll be able to prove you wrong once and for all."
When geniuses took action, it was often simply because they wanted to prove each other wrong.
This was exactly what people meant when they said there was only a fine line between genius and madness.
"I'm going right now!"
Like a child who had found a way to embarrass his friend, Newton sprang into action, unable to wait.
He pulled off his gloves, tossed them onto the lab bench, and jogged toward the laboratory door.
"I'd like to see how you find something that doesn't exist!" Hermann called after him, unwilling to concede either. Then he turned and walked back to the blackboard to continue correcting his formulas.