Andrew stared at the pile of Energy Drink bottles that, by his original estimation, should have been more than enough to last.
Every single one of them was empty.
The excitement that had surged through him upon learning they'd found the Rift gradually quieted into something heavier.
Beside him, Belle had already noticed where his gaze had landed — on the small graveyard of empty glass bottles scattered across the floor, carelessly tossed there in the frenzy of data comparison and then completely forgotten in the euphoria of their success.
The bright, giddy triumph on her face evaporated in an instant.
Facing Andrew's death stare, she immediately let out a somewhat nervous laugh and tried to play it off.
"W-well... the thing is, the Energy Drinks you gave us got less and less effective the more we drank, so Stinky Bro and I may have accidentally had just a tiiiiny bit more than planned."
As she said it, Belle raised her right hand and pinched her thumb and index finger together until the gap between them was barely a hair's width — the universal gesture of 'just a smidge' — while watching him with careful, cautious eyes.
"You're not going to blame us for drinking too many, right? You wouldn't be that petty about a few bottles... right?"
Andrew nearly laughed in sheer disbelief.
If he remembered correctly — and he was absolutely certain he did — he had told them this explicitly, right after he'd made the first batch. The Energy Drinks could replenish your energy and keep you feeling like you were running at full capacity, yes. But sustaining that artificial peak would inevitably squeeze and burn through the very reserves it was drawing from. No matter what, there was no substitute for actual sleep. That was the whole point he'd made.
Every bottle was one more round of wringing yourself dry.
As a Hunter, Andrew had the physical constitution to handle it — burning hard during a pursuit was simply part of the job. But Wise and Belle were completely ordinary people in terms of baseline physiology. And they'd done this?
Were they not even a little afraid of just dropping dead in front of their computers?!
Watching Andrew's expression darken by the second —
Belle could read the room well enough to know that if she didn't find an exit right now, the odds were not going to be in her favor. She immediately pivoted and pointed the finger elsewhere.
"I... I barely had any! If you're really upset, don't blame me — blame Stinky Bro!"
"He's spent his whole life cooped up at home watching video tapes, so his stamina is basically non-existent! For the same amount of all-nighter time, he drank way more bottles than I did!"
As she said it, Belle turned to glance at Wise — who, at this point, had the unmistakable appearance of a man whose soul had already evacuated the premises.
Sorry, Bro. It's come to this. I have no choice but to sacrifice you.
Looking at the way he was slumped there — completely vacant, clearly unconscious on some fundamental level — there was no way he'd even register her throwing him under the bus. And by the time he came back around, it would already be too late for him to do anything about it.
Belle's plan was, by any measure, flawless.
What she hadn't anticipated was that in the act of throwing Wise under the bus, she had committed one critical, catastrophic error.
The moment the word 'non-existent stamina' reached Wise's ears — a phrase guaranteed to produce a reaction from any man on the planet — the figure who had been slumped lifelessly in his computer chair like a man two steps from the afterlife snapped upright.
He shot to his feet, looking absolutely bristling and wide-awake, and fired back without a shred of hesitation.
"Nonsense! Stop spreading lies about me!"
"I am incredibly fit, thank you very much! Just the other day I was fishing down at the docks and reeled in something that weighed several hundred jin with my bare hands — completely effortless! My stamina is perfectly fine!"
As if to prove the point, Wise flexed his arm, doing his best to display the muscle on it. And thanks to the consistent Felyne Meals Andrew had been feeding him over these past weeks — which had meaningfully improved his overall constitution — he did actually manage to produce a faint, visible contour of muscle this time.
He looked at his own arm, gave a satisfied nod —
And then, in the very next second, he glanced up and caught Andrew's expression.
With more than enough years of sibling experience to read Belle's every micro-motive at a glance, it took him approximately zero effort to piece together exactly why she had suddenly started throwing him under the bus: she'd promised Andrew they'd rest, neither of them had, they'd been caught, and now she was trying to change the subject.
And as her older brother, naturally, he could only do one thing.
He began dismantling her story with cheerful, merciless efficiency.
"I told her multiple times to go sleep on the couch for even just a little while — and she refused every single time, banking on the fact that Andrew had given her enough medicine!"
Feeling the momentum and deciding to press further, Wise turned up the heat.
"And another thing! We drank exactly the same number of Energy Drinks — the same! And on top of that, because you decided the later ones weren't doing enough anymore, you went and took one of Andrew's Max Potions that he left behind!"
Belle watched Andrew's gaze shift toward her — and watched the look in his eyes grow increasingly, unmistakably wrong.
The fact that she had never slept, not even once, from start to finish — it was completely, thoroughly exposed now.
Fury blazed up in her chest so hot it nearly choked her. She turned to look at her brother, who was still piling it on with no signs of stopping.
She couldn't fight back against Andrew — she was clearly in the wrong and she knew it. But Wise?
That's a different story entirely.
In the very next moment, without a single word of warning, Belle's hand slid silently toward the strip of soft flesh at Wise's waist.
And grabbed it.
"Gah?!"
Wise — who had been monologuing at full volume mere seconds ago — cut off instantly, like a duck that had just been grabbed by the scruff of the neck. He looked down at Belle's ambushing hand in pure, uncomprehending disbelief.
Feeling his skin pinched and gathered between her fingers, Wise began to tremble.
"S-sis... I'll never throw you under the bus again, I swear. Whatever you say from here on out goes — deal?"
But the fingers at his waist showed no intention of letting go. If anything, they were tightening.
On the verge of tears, Wise attempted one last desperate appeal:
"Okay, okay — maybe I got a little carried away just now. But... but can't you cut me some slack, just this once? We've been grinding through this together for two whole days — doesn't that count for something? Doesn't your dear older brother deserve just a little mercy?"
"Oh, so that's your parting words, is it, Stinky Bro?"
Looking into her eyes — blazing, absolutely unswayed by the begging — Wise understood, with quiet resignation, that he was probably done for.
Belle's expression twisted into something that could only be described as a smile with intent to commit violence.
"You want mercy? Give me back my excuse first!"
In the next instant, her fingers clamped down and wrenched the pinched skin through a full three hundred and sixty degrees.
"AAAUGH!!"
The shriek that tore from Wise's throat was the kind that would make strangers within earshot instinctively wince in sympathy. Already running on fumes, with this finishing blow to his waist landing on top of everything else — Wise crumpled to the floor and went still.
Eyes shut. Whether he was asleep or simply dead was genuinely unclear.
Once she confirmed that he was, in fact, and truly, completely down — Belle dusted off her hands with the air of someone who had concluded a perfectly reasonable piece of business. And then, with a smoothness of transition that defied all physical law, she immediately cycled back into looking small, pitiful, and deeply sorry.
The whiplash was so instantaneous that Andrew didn't even have time to react.
He looked at her — still performing her most helpless, guilt-ridden expression at full wattage — and he couldn't bring himself to say anything harsh. When it came down to it, the reason she had pushed herself this hard in the first place was because of him.
With a long, helpless sigh, Andrew let it go. He reached into his Item Bag, drew out a Max Potion, and pressed it into Belle's mouth.
Then, as an afterthought, he crouched down and slipped one between the lips of Wise — who was lying motionless on the floor with his eyes shut, doing an extremely convincing impression of a corpse.
Max Potions couldn't restore actual energy. But the surge of vitality they provided could, at least in the short term, partially offset the kind of thoroughly wrung-out exhaustion that Belle had managed to inflict on herself through sheer, bloody-minded refusal to stop.
Reading Andrew's intentions in that single gesture, Belle — understanding that she had somehow, against all probability, gotten away with it — cooperated completely and swallowed the Max Potion the moment it touched her tongue.
"Mmh..."
The moment it went down, the surge of vitality hit.
The pallor that had crept into her face over the course of too many sleepless hours began to recede at a visibly accelerating rate, color rushing back into her cheeks like a tide coming in. Even the heart that had been pounding too hard and too fast against her ribs gradually settled into something steadier, more even.
What was done was done. Andrew knew there was no value in belaboring it further — the longer he drew this out, the later Belle could actually rest. So he silently chose to move on, and turned to what actually mattered.
"Alright, Belle — how did the search go? Did you find a suitable Rift?"
The moment Andrew steered toward her area of expertise, the act Belle had been putting on evaporated instantly. She straightened up, and a wave of uncontainable pride surged across her face.
"Obviously! Do you even know who you're talking to?!"
Belle planted both fists on her hips, puffed out her chest, and tilted her chin up at an angle that strongly suggested her nose was attempting to reach the ceiling.
"I am Phaethon — the one and only legendary Proxy of New Eridu, standing alone after the original Proxy vanished! Finding one special, stable Rift in the Hollows? That's practically nothing!"
The deep, dark circles carved beneath her eyes didn't exactly support the 'practically nothing' framing — but Andrew gave her a warm, genuine round of applause anyway.
Watching her person of interest cheer her on so earnestly over something she was actually proud of, Belle's chest somehow puffed out even further.
"Now, here's the thing," she went on, her tone shifting into the cadence of someone who had been looking forward to this explanation.
"The Nineveh rampage was connected to the world you came from, sure — but because it wasn't the actual monster's main body, I couldn't collect the specific Ether wave signature I needed from it directly."
"But did that stop me? Absolutely not."
The love of sharing hard-won knowledge was simply human nature. As she continued, Belle's already triumphant posture elevated into the unique stance that could only be described as 'nose pointed directly at the sky.'
"I went back through all the historical Ether data archives and pulled the readings we'd collected directly from the Diablos that attacked Astra's concert and from the Gore Magala we hunted on the outskirts of New Eridu afterward. Those signatures were clean, accurate, and exactly what I needed."
"By cross-referencing that data, Bro and I located a beautifully stable spatial Rift inside Hollow Zero!"
"But —"
Professionalism kicked in immediately after the good news, and Belle turned to Andrew with the tone of someone who needed him to understand this clearly.
"Andrew, you need to hear this part. Even the most stable Rift won't last more than a month before the volatile fluctuation cycles inside Hollow Zero dissolve it entirely."
"Based on our readings, this one appears to have just formed yesterday — so it's fresh. But if you want to use it to come back? To be absolutely safe, you have a maximum window of twenty days. That's the hard limit."
Andrew gave a firm, immediate nod.
"Don't worry. No matter what, I'll be back before that deadline."
He met the faint, undeniable thread of worry running through Belle's eyes and held her gaze steadily.
"I promise."
"Mm-hm."
Hearing those words from someone she knew had never once broken his word, Belle let the needless worry dissolve. She gave a small nod.
"If Andrew says so, then I trust you."
"Still, though..."
His promise had put her at ease — but she was his Proxy. She wasn't the kind of person who would stake everything on a promise alone and call it enough.
With the air of someone who had prepared this long in advance, Belle reached under the desk beside her and produced Eous — currently in sleep mode — and pressed it firmly into Andrew's hands.
"Take Eous with you this time. Keep it in sleep mode in your Item Bag."
The Rift itself was stable enough to hold for a good while — but the path through Hollow Zero leading to it was a different story entirely. Even half a day's worth of Hollow Zero's relentless spatial shifts would be enough to render that route completely and utterly unrecognizable.
Over a span of twenty days? Not even a Carrot could do its job. No navigation aid in existence could keep up with that kind of drift.
Coming back out of the Hollow would require calculating an entirely new route from scratch.
When Andrew returned to this world, he would find himself in exactly the same situation as when he'd first arrived — lost inside the Hollow's labyrinth with no way out.
Except that this time, everything was different.
Andrew had a Proxy now. One who would pull him out of that maze regardless of what it took.
Before Andrew had even begun to think through all of this himself, his Proxy had already worked through every angle and arrived at the solution.
Belle tapped her chin thoughtfully, running through the numbers.
"Based on Eous's current charge and the fact that it'll be in continuous sleep mode the whole time — it has more than enough power to reconnect to the H.D.D System directly from inside the Hollow the moment you get back. Plenty of margin to spare."
She wasn't done. Every other contingency had already been accounted for, and she walked through them with the brisk, practiced certainty of someone reciting from a checklist she'd memorized.
"If you find that the Rift has closed unexpectedly before you can use it, activate Eous. It's equipped with New Eridu's most advanced detection array, loaded with the reference data I've pre-installed — it can scan for and locate a new viable return Rift from inside that world."
"And don't worry about where you end up when you enter the Hollow. Anywhere inside the Hollow works — the moment you're in, the H.D.D System will establish a link with Eous automatically."
Belle looked up at Andrew. Her face was warm and open — the brightness she always wore — but the look in her eyes was something else entirely. It was absolute, unwavering, bone-deep serious.
"As long as I'm here, no matter what happens — I will bring you home."
Andrew looked at her — at Belle, who had already thought through every single thing that could possibly go wrong on this side of the journey, accounted for every variable, and prepared an answer for each one — and the question he had been about to ask quietly became unnecessary.
He'd been about to ask what she expected of him as her client now that she was handing over Eous, what the proper commission looked like.
He didn't need to.
He could see it clearly in her eyes.
For her, until the moment he came back — guiding him home was the most important thing she had. It was her only mission.
Handing over Eous was the greatest guarantee she could give him, as an ordinary human being.
She had never once forgotten the promise made the first time they met.
She was his Proxy. She had promised to bring him out of the Hollow.
And so — she would.
____
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