Jeanne didn't have a clear picture of what kind of crisis had gripped Babel. Still, tracking the synchronized, frantic patter of boots echoing down the distant corridors, she could comfortably guess that whatever was happening was far from a routine drill.
But Jeanne wasn't one to pry. She spent the better part of her day acting as a temporary babysitter for the missing leadership trio—or rather, just keeping quiet company with little Amiya. The girl was so incredibly well-behaved it almost broke your heart; there was absolutely zero need to worry about her causing trouble or acting out.
In fact, the little rabbit spent the entire day pinned to a small stool in her room, entirely buried under a mountain of homework. Jeanne took one look at the staggering volume of assignments and couldn't help but wonder if Kal'tsit was pushing the kid a bit too hard. She was fairly certain that if she had to grind through that much paperwork, her own brain would have short-circuited within the hour.
Yet, watching little Amiya scratch away at the pages with a relaxed, almost effortless focus, Jeanne suddenly experienced a profound wave of existential dread: Wait, is this child's academic baseline actually higher than mine? No... that has to be a delusion.
Jeanne shifted uncomfortably. Deep down, she possessed a very grounded, entirely realistic understanding of her own literacy level—high school sophomore at best, and that was assuming she was aggressively pushing herself to study.
With little Amiya deeply locked in the academic zone and nothing better to do, Jeanne casually reached onto a nearby shelf, grabbed a random volume to pass the time, and settled in to read. Two pages later, she was staring blankly at the ceiling, her expression carrying a profound sense of psychological damage.
What heinous sin had she committed for her own Lord to punish her with something this deeply unhinged? Jeanne felt a pressing, desperate urge to locate the nearest washroom and aggressively flush out her eyeballs with industrial soap.
Was this seriously intended for children? Would a kid even survive the night without suffering a catastrophic series of night terrors after reading this garbage? Why on earth would someone take a perfectly beautiful, classic fairy tale and mangle it into something so thoroughly twisted that it caused literal cognitive dissonance?
The reason Jeanne reacted so violently was likely because her own fragmented memory banks still harbored the pure, untainted original versions of those classic stories. If someone were to read this mess without that historical context, it would simply register as a poorly written, thoroughly uninspired book. But to Jeanne, it was a crime against humanity.
She fiercely suppressed the righteous, burning desire to summon her Holy Fire and incinerate the volume into microscopic ash. Her personal code maintained a strict, fundamental reverence for literature; she wouldn't easily destroy a book, regardless of how offensive its contents were.
After all, why else do you think those agonizingly brutal advanced calculus workbooks that Talulah routinely used to torment her were still sitting intact on her desk? It wasn't because she enjoyed the math; it was simply because Jeanne refused to burn knowledge, believing that even the most torturous texts possessed some inherent societal value.
If it weren't for that rigid moral boundary, she would have let the flames cleanse those cursed math books a long time ago. There was no way she would have allowed a blatant vulnerability to remain in her orbit, occasionally giving Talulah the ultimate tactical leverage to completely lock her down.
"Forget it... let's see if there's anything else in this room that won't give me a stroke. At this rate, I feel like I could happily read through those calculus equations just to cleanse my palate."
The sheer psychic damage inflicted by the Doctor's literary work was so severe that Jeanne was actively willing to embrace her absolute worst academic nightmare just to escape it.
Over at the desk, little Amiya caught the look of absolute existential ruin on Jeanne's face and felt a wave of genuine concern for the older girl's mental stability. At the same time, a deep, silent sense of awe bubbled up in her chest: Wow, Miss Jeanne actually managed to read two pages before tapping out!
Amiya herself had only survived one page before throwing in the towel. That night had been plagued by such severe insomnia that a thoroughly enraged Dr. Kal'tsit had literally hung the Doctor from the landship's communications tower for two straight hours. It took a massive amount of tearful begging from Amiya to finally get the strategist hauled back down.
Realizing the danger, Amiya began keeping a very close eye on which volume Jeanne's hand drifted toward next. If the older sister accidentally grabbed another piece of the Doctor's custom literature, she was firmly prepared to stage an immediate intervention.
"What's this? Why does a book this massive completely lack a title?"
Jeanne's fingers brushed against an exceptionally thick, heavy tome. Peering closer, she noticed an entire row of identical, unnamed volumes sitting beside it, distinguished only by a sequence of stamped numbers on the spines.
Driven by curiosity, Jeanne hauled out the very first volume and flipped it open. The initial pages were filled with ancient Sarkaz folklore and a collection of localized fables from antiquity, reading very much like a traditional bedtime collection.
But as she delved deeper into the text, the realization hit her: this wasn't a collection of fiction at all—it was a comprehensive, unvarnished history of the Sarkaz race. This immediately snagged Jeanne's undivided attention. She had always harbored a deep, natural curiosity regarding the historical trajectory of this ancient, misunderstood people.
Furthermore, her own inner circle was practically teeming with individuals tied to the Sarkaz bloodline. Beyond Mudrock and Buldrokkas'tee—two textbook examples of proud, old-guard Sarkaz heritage—even the entire nation of Laterano shared a deep, inextricably tangled history with them.
Even if Jeanne had zero intention of steering her faction into a geopolitical conflict with the Sarkaz nation, she fiercely desired a deeper, more empathetic understanding of their cultural roots. After all, history remained the single most authentic gateway to understanding the soul of a people.
It was a shame Buldrokkas'tee was perpetually buried under frontline logistics; Jeanne never felt right about pestering the veteran general to give her a detailed historical lecture. And while he would occasionally share fragments of the old days during quiet evenings, his spoken accounts lacked the sweeping, meticulous precision preserved within these pages.
As she read the elegant, flowing script, Jeanne quickly put the pieces together: this entire historical record had been painstakingly written by Theresa's own hand. Beyond the Lord of Fiend herself, Jeanne couldn't think of a single scholar in Terra who possessed the profound insight and access required to document the race's agonizing timeline with such flawless, exhaustive detail.
Once Jeanne sank into the pages, the external world completely ceased to exist. She remained glued to the text for the entire day, and if Amiya hadn't physically shaken her to announce dinner, she likely would have bypassed her meals entirely.
Her reading pace was deliberate and measured; by the time the artificial lights dimmed, she hadn't even cleared the halfway mark of the first volume. But considering the book easily clocked in at over eight hundred pages, her progress was actually remarkably swift.
Yet, throughout the entirety of this twenty-four-hour cycle, neither Kal'tsit, Theresa, nor the Doctor had stepped foot in the residential wing. Not even once.
If their complete radio silence regarding Amiya was simply a testament to how much they trusted the disciplined little rabbit, then leaving an international guest entirely stranded in a room suggested something far more serious. There had to be an extraordinary reason for them to abandon her like this.
Did Theresis launch a full-scale assault with his main army? Jeanne wondered, staring at the metallic ceiling as she sat alone with the borrowed history book. But why would an operational crisis of that magnitude ignite the exact day I arrive at Babel? Don't tell me I possess some hidden, passive trait that automatically manifests war and disaster wherever I go?
The more she rolled the thought over in her mind, the more plausible it started to sound. Looking back at her track record, the sheer density of catastrophic battles she had stumbled into was statistically absurd. Incidents that a normal civilian wouldn't encounter once in a lifetime seemed to happen to her on a weekly basis. Maybe she really was a walking catalyst for geopolitical chaos.
Knock, knock... clack.
Just as Jeanne's internal monologue was spiraling into pure superstition, a distinct rap at the door shattered the quiet. A moment later, a flat, slightly modulated voice drifted through the panel.
"Jeanne? Are you still awake? Do you mind if I come in?"
It was the Doctor. But compared to the explosive, high-energy antics she had displayed that morning, her current tone was absolutely dripping with a profound, bone-deep exhaustion—sounding exactly like a corporate salaryman who had just completed a straight month of forced, twenty-hour overtime shifts.
"Ah, I'm still up! Hold on, I'll get the door—" Before Jeanne could even push herself out of her chair, the pneumatic lock hissed, and the heavy door slid open from the outside.
Right. She had completely forgotten that the supreme strategist possessed the master keycard for the entire residential block.
The Doctor dragged herself into the suite, immediately reaching for her collar to switch off the electronic voice modulator. Looking at Jeanne now, the frantic, hyperactive energy from their morning encounter was entirely gone, thoroughly burned away by a long day of intense administrative warfare. Her standard, razor-sharp logic had finally returned to the driver's seat.
"I must offer my most sincere, unreserved apologies," the Doctor began, her natural, soft voice carrying a heavy layer of guilt as she looked at Jeanne. "To have you arrive at our facility only to leave you sitting in complete isolation for an entire day... Theresa, Kal'tsit, and myself are all deeply embarrassed by this turn of events."
Even though Jeanne's expression didn't betray a single hint of frustration, the Doctor made it her absolute first priority to voice her regret. Leaving an influential figure completely stranded in an unfamiliar fortress without so much as a local guide was a diplomatic blunder that crossed the line from standard negligence into outright disrespect.
"I am aware that Kal'tsit has likely already run a comprehensive screening on your profile," the Doctor continued, her posture shifting as she fixed her hidden gaze onto Jeanne. "But as a fellow thinker, I must ask you directly. Are you truly... that Jeanne d'Arc? The legendary Holy Maiden preserved within the ancient archives of history?"
Even with the living, breathing woman standing less than two paces away, the strategist's analytical brain was still struggling to accept the reality. The sheer concept of a historical figure shattering the boundaries of time and mortality completely defied the fundamental laws of nature.
In all her years of exploring the anomalous secrets of Terra, she had never once encountered a verified instance of true resurrection. To pull a historical icon back into the physical realm wasn't a simple matter of medical resuscitation—it required the literal reversal of the temporal stream.
Jeanne, long accustomed to this exact flavor of skepticism, didn't find the interrogation strange in the slightest. She simply offered a calm, perfectly tranquil nod.
"I am indeed that Jeanne. Of that, there is absolutely no doubt," she replied softly. "As for the exact mechanics behind my return... I remain entirely in the dark myself. The only true explanation I can offer is that it was a miracle."
The Doctor fell into a heavy, profound silence at the word. She lowered her head, her visor dipping toward the floor as she let out a microscopic, thoughtful murmur.
"A miracle...? To think something like that could truly exist..."