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<br/>​</div>Shiro exited the library, glancing over to a notice which had been posted up on the wall along with a phone number and time. He smirked slightly to himself and took note to make use of that later. Sometimes it was the little things in life that made it worth all the noise. For now though, he had work to do...<br/><br/>A short while later he was in the lab, making use of the advanced tech Vale had in their science and sigil studies department. In the back was a isolated room which was specially warded and shielded from the rest of the facility, and for good reason. It was a blast chamber of sorts, where dust and semblance could be experimented with and tested in a safe environment. The data from said experiments was then collected and broken down by some of the most sophisticated computers in the world. Maybe not Atlas computers, of course, but reasonably close for Shiro's needs. Once he was done here he would port over the data to a personal storage device and then enter the maintenance subroutines within the lab's system to delete all record of what transpired. Easy enough to spot and trace back to him, but few ever looked very closely.<br/><br/>Inside the room he had laid out his books on the ground around him, standing and raising his hand to grasp at that invisible clock in midair. With his other hand he gestured to the floor and a collection of golden rings flared into being on the ground around him, each with runes and forgotten languages etched within the very light they were made of. They each turned in alternating directions, the boarders where they touched seemingly sparking and burning from an ethereal friction on some plain of existence mathematicians only speculated about in their most drunken stupors.<br/><br/>Had the room not been so shielded to protect the outside world, whole portions of the school might feel a nauseating sensation that something extraordinarily<i>wrong </i>was taking place. Natural laws were being pushed, strained, fractured, and if not for the wards in the room all sentient minds would have recognized, at least on some deeper level, that this should not happen. The universe had specific safeguards in place to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening, but one by one those were walls were being broken down. No<i>sane </i>individual would ever continue past this point, it was the equivalent to stepping through that old cellar door. The one with the lock on it that your parents never talked about except to warn you to never<i>ever </i>go near it. Shiro had ventured down into that moldy darkness before. His madness wasn't the refusal to listen to those warnings in his blood, it was knowing exactly what lurked down there...<i>and going down anyway. <br/>
</i><br/>Four large clock faces materialized in the air around him, effectively boxing him in. Their glow began to intensify as he divided his focus between them and the sigils on the floor. The rings were spinning faster now, their words a blur, the air in the room beginning to whip at his jacket and hair. There was a sound from everywhere within the room as if a planet sized table was being dragged across the fabric of reality without casters to slide on. Outside the room the protective warding began to heat to the point where a faint smoke started to rise from the symbols and the containment protocols began drawing additional power from the rest of the school. Lights would flicker, thankfully unnoticed at this late hour. Inside the room a maelstrom threatened to tear apart fundamental principles. The universe attempted to lash out with immutable truths, the paradox rushing in like a flood, but<i>Second Chance</i>was, as always, close at Shiro's side, and the curse it represented also acted as a buffer. This one owed a debt. That debt would not go unpaid. The pocket watch seemed to pulse with a sickly purple color, redirecting the broken laws and adding them to Shiro's tab. He was aware of this. He didn't mind. He'd pay it all once his work was done. For now, it was a matter of finding the right combinations and loopholes. How to not just turn fate, but to deny her altogether.<br/><br/>Absently he realized that he was tired... no... exhausted!<i>Starving</i>! It had been days! His body threatened to wither under mounting entropy, trying to eat itself from within. It seemed the universe found some loopholes of its own. Shiro had to stop or there wouldn't be anything left of him to even continue. His hand weakly slipped from the clock face it had gripped and reality with the room slammed back into its proper shape, his body no longer malnourished, only out of breath and tapped completely dry on aura. He checked his watch and confirmed what he already knew. Only a minute had passed since the experiment had started. Another failure. The 238th failure on record. The new runes he had found in the old text had done nothing.<br/><br/><i>'...No... that's not entirely true.'</i>He thought to himself,<i>'I had containment for four more seconds than before.'<br/>
</i><br/>Shiro smiled. He was making progress.