It had taken the driver nearly an hour to find the place, and even then, she’d have to go under the rain for several minutes until she arrived there.

  Maran tried to curse under her breath, but she was too mentally exhausted to muster the energy to actually do so. Instead, the tightened her hooded raincoat and made her way through the overgrown weeds until she reached the door and, after no one heard her knocking, she pushed it in.

  When Rull had chosen to meet in a place this remote, she had commended him as something rather smart. He knew the place, apparently some kind of hideout he used in the past to get away of his more unpleasant duties whenever he knew that whoever was demanding his presence could just go to his private residence to pick him up. However, Maran was already regretting it.

  The place in question was an old semaphore tower, built in now faded red brick, with a pointy, black, pyramidal roof and an added office on a side. He had the tower fixed enough to be able to live in, and conduct some of his studies, even if the place was nowhere near as comfortable as his villa or as well-equipped as his laboratory. In fact, it was cluttered and annoyingly dusty. There was also no bathroom, as far as Maran could tell, which raised a few questions that she mentally refused to even entertain the idea of asking.

  She called to him from inside and his head showed up, upside down, from a hole in the ceiling.

  “I was thinking that you might not come.” He said, a bit loud, which made sense given how much the rain sounded even inside. “See that old screen over there? There are stairs right behind it. Come up.”

  She sighed and went through the clutter, careful not to step or trip on anything, which was difficult, and then approached the old wooden screen. It had a beautiful picture of several ladies taking a bath. Beautiful in the sense that it was well made, of course, she found the topic to be the kind of thing to be found in the living rooms of some of the tackiest nobles. He probably got it for cheap. And moved the thing to a side, revealing a narrow, old, partially rusty iron staircase. She climbed it, with some difficulty, and arrived at the second floor of the tower. Which greatly surprised her since it was a proper magical laboratory.

  Well, no, proper was stretching it, but she was sure there were some professional laboratories out there that were significantly less equipped. All the basic instruments, at least the ones she knew about, were there. There was a desk with books and notebooks that, judging by the speed he was scribbling in one, had to be full of notes, and sheets over sheets of spellpaper on the floor that had complicated patterns drawn in them. It was surprisingly less messy than the villa’s laboratory, although that might have been because there were far less items in general.

  “Alright. I do not have the solution, but I have a hypothesis of what could have happened.” He said, rising from his notes and sitting in an old, painful-looking wooden chair. “That said, it is a bit out there, so to say, so it may be wrong.”

  “Are you talking about the locket incident?” She asked, in response. And then she groaned when he simply nodded. “I thought that you had called me because this Eyes person that is part of the government had discovered who had visited Rose’s house and made that article. You know, our current big problem.”

  “I know, but he said that something had happened that complicated the case and he needed at least until the end of the week.” He sighed. “And still, I think the locket may be more important.”

  “Why?” She asked, taking off her raincoat. “Last time we talked about this, our consensus was that if she turns out to be the villainess, we should just work in minimizing damages and making sure she does not go full cackling evil.”

  “I still do not think that that would be the case. But as I was saying, the locket may be more important.” He rose from his chair and went to pick up what by all means looked like a normal toolbox.

  Maran arched an eyebrow and then shrugged. Sure, she’ll entertain him for a couple of minutes before scolding his ears out over wasting this much time when they could have potentially caused untold damage, her own personal fault in the matter notwithstanding.

  “Until yesterday I was working on the assumption that the locket must have, somehow, failed its mission.” He began to explain. “Even if by all means, as we saw, it should have been completely impossible. My theory was that maybe the mechanism had not failed internally, but somehow it had been an external failure. It is the logical thing to go to right?”

  “I guess.” Maran replied.

  “However, when testing that, I ended up running into a problem. As it happens, that was not the case either.” The prince picked up the locket, which he had on top of a desk. “Now, this is not the real locket, just the prototype, not as refined as the one we used but good enough for the experiment.” He blinked then, sensing that he probably needed to explain. “Using the real locket is not good for experimentation because-”

  She cut his explanation, silently, and gestured for him to continue with the point. Then he put the locket in one of her hands and opened the toolbox, pulling out a device that looked like an overly large fork, with a leather handle and a few wires coming from its bottom.

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  “Now, Maran, I am sure I do not have to explain what this is but-” He began, becoming annoyingly excited.

  “You do, please.” She knew what it was, more or less, but the more he got into this the more cathartic her rant would he later. “Explain what the ManaEmitting Experimental Pulsor is.” She had decided to disguise the sarcastic tone in her voice, that way, he would surely not realize it. It was a bit mean, but she rationalized that she just needed the later release after the stress of the previous days.

  “What this does is collect atmospheric mana and then releases it in controlled magical pulses. The thing is, this is done by imitating the pulses of the way a soul shifts in the metabolizing of magic.” He explained. “I have modified it so it imitates the shifts caused by the 'Becoming' process.”

  “That is the name you have come up with?” She sighed.

  “All the ones that you were coming up with were, how do I put this… kind of horrifying.” He retorted. “The concept is scary enough, there is no need to talk about it as if it is some kind of deadly thing.”

  Maran groaned but she could understand the idea. Technically they wouldn’t really stop being themselves, and in any case, they could barely remember who they were before, so it wasn’t that big of a loss. But she didn’t like it one bit. Still, she did the same gesture as before, silently asking him to please continue, this time without digressing, please.

  He activated the emitter and, unsurprisingly, the locket pulsated in the way it was supposed to.

  “Alright, and this means?” She asked, placing one hand on her hip.

  “That the device itself does work. I have tried different configurations and it still works without issue. Which has let me to my current theory.” He placed the emitter back in the toolbox as he explained. “There are two Roses.”

  Maran blinked. And didn’t say a word.

  “I know it sounds quite insane, but hear me out.” He pleaded. Then again, she didn’t even open her mouth, and just stood there, quietly staring at him. Finally, after what felt like several minutes, she sighed, and simply, in one word, asked him to elaborate.

  “The idea is this: Those of us who have reincarnated are actually two people, who we were before, in the other world, and who we are now.” He grabbed a piece of paper, scribbling a small diagram into it and then he showed it to Maran. “Let us say that the former is ‘Person A’ and the latter is ‘Person B’. What if you and I are in fact mostly ‘Person A’, but could be slowly becoming ‘B’, but she is mostly ‘Person B’?”

  Maran scratched her head, in thought. On one hand, that would upset, although not necessarily contradict, what they knew about the whole process of reincarnating into this world, which may be too much of a leap given that, without a doubt, he had no proof at all of that being the case. But on the other, she couldn’t really refuse the idea that it might actually be a possible explanation, and not only that, one that could have the way into a solution for their problems.

  “So, to summarize: You claim that it did not react because her original self is mostly gone?” Maran said, arching her eyebrow, although less than before.

  The prince nodded, and then lowered his head a bit. “I know it sounds fairly alarming, given our situation.”

  “I do have a caveat to this, though.” She answered. He arched his own eyebrow in response. “You were arguing this the other day, back in the palace, and we both shut the thought down. So, why do you bring it up again as your current theory?”

  “It was not really the same thing, but yes, close enough.” He sighed. “We shut it down out of fear for ourselves, not for any rational reason.”

  He was right, and she didn’t really want to admit it. They did shut it down out of fear, and she was quite close to shutting it down again. But she didn’t.

  “Can you prove it?” Maran asked, a strange sound in her voice, not quite panic but still sounding anxious enough.

  “I am not quite sure. Maybe we should just work on the assumption of it being the case. And correct our wrongs. Because if she is a villainess like you say, we are in for a world of trouble.” He sat on a nearby box.

  Maran opened her mouth and then blinked. Something had popped into her mind. “If we assume your theory is the correct one, your Highness, there seems to be quite a bit of a problem with it, is there not?”

  He blinked too. “Miss Rabineau, if you think that is the case, you may adress the elephant in the room, because I cannot seem to see it.”

  “Becoming ‘who we are supposed to be’ in this world is a process that takes place by what we could call ‘plot points’, the more of them we live through the more we change into who we now are. Correct?” Upon seeing the prince nod, she pointed at him and then at herself. “Going by that, the problem is as follows: Why has she mostly changed into her archetype and we have not?”

  The prince opened his mouth to answer but no sound came out. He didn’t have one.

  It could be many things. They knew this process happened because there is recorded folklore and a handful of memoirs of other people who had also reincarnated into that world, many in pivotal moments of its history and have played major roles in it both as powerful heroes, as brilliant young ladies who revolutionize countries for the better, or sometimes into slow lives in times that are less interesting. Maybe it didn’t advance as rapidly for some as for others, maybe they were not correctly considering that counted as a ‘plot point’, after all, in any study, the conditions of it can be quite important, there are so many variables that they were probably not even entertaining, least of all considering. Maybe the whole idea was wrong, after all, he didn’t have any real, experiment-sourced proof that his idea was the case. Or maybe he was right. Maybe he was right and that was the answer.

  Maybe she had a very eventful childhood.