World, meet Null
At first glance, the scene is nothing strange: a teenage girl sitting on a chair, waiting impatiently for the makeup artist to finish the job.
It becomes interesting when you think that the girl is Noriko Null, also known as the world's smartest person, and the artist is Deena Zylberman, current flame of Noriko's father.
Noriko pouts.
Deena smiles. It's one of those rare moments where Noriko lets down her guard and acts like the eighteen year old girl that she is.
Noriko answers with deadpan voice.
Noriko steps up, putting on the green leather jacket. She looks at herself in the mirror, specifically at the white symbol on her black T-shirt. The symbol for a null set: Ø. Now her symbol.
Her silver eyes glow suddenly. She's feeling the moment.
"And it gives me the creeps every time you do that" – Deena adds without saying it out loud.
The press room is lit by tens of flashes when Noriko walks into the room. The five feet tall teenager steps on the blue podium with the large Ø symbol and turns on the microphone.
Backstage, Deena chuckles thinking that, for Noriko's standards, it was kinda funny.
Noriko places a cylindrical object on the podium, something that looks like fancy camera lens.
When she turns it on, the air is filled with a spectacular tri-dimensional projection of the schematics of this device. She needs to raise her voice above the sudden chatter in the audience.
Noriko presses a few buttons on the dedicated remote, and the hologram changes form. Now it shows an outside view of the skyscraper where Noriko is keeping the presentation, but with one major difference: the big Ø symbol added on top.
She pauses. Right now, you could probably hear all the jaws hitting the floor.
Every single hand in the room goes up.
White House Situation Room
Washington, D.C.
A live feed of the press conference is playing on one of the many flat screens. Others show stills from the Talos attack; others yet focus on Vesta and Quantum. A man breaks the silence:
the President repeats, incredulous.
The President leans back, sighing. This is going to be one of the days when he whishes somebody else had this job.
The screen now shows a very old black and white picture, showing a smiling man shaking hands with a Nazi officer.
Tokyo, Scion Corporation R&D labs
The day after
Leiko Tanaka hasn't said a word the whole meeting. The scientists across the table have dreaded her voice for some time now: they know she can destroy their lives with a sentence.
They know what happened to the people who questioned her orders, or who dared to leak any sort of information to outsiders. They know that, at Scion Corporation, Leiko's voice is law.
Leiko inhales sharply. The scientists wait for her lead.
"The robot didn't mention the Heart of the Universe. That means that Hephaestus wasn't the one that enhanced my daughter's intelligence. How needlessly sentimental of me to keep her alive".
A dark haired woman dressed in green, the only Caucasian in the room, stands up.
The woman's body quickly splits in two, and a second body of the Many walks towards Leiko.