Hearing Jeanne put it that way, the Doctor fell into a quiet silence. To be fair, before this conversation, she really had been facing the very grim possibility that dropping all this forbidden lore on Jeanne would trigger a massive, catastrophic blow to her mental stability. The heavy cocktail of medications Kal'tsit had personally dropped off was meant to act as a desperate, last-minute safety net to keep her conscious.
But as she took a moment to mentally scan her internal baseline, the strategist realized her current state was actually several steps above even her most optimistic projections. Her mind felt a bit sluggish and thoroughly drained, but it was nothing a solid, unbothered night of sleep couldn't fix.
Once the Doctor brokenly explained the underlying mechanics of what she had just done, a chill ran down Jeanne's spine. If things had gone sideways by even a fraction of a percent, the white-haired girl could have easily slipped into a permanent coma, never to open her eyes again.
"But look at things now—this is already a massive victory," the Doctor murmured, leaning her head back against the pillow with a tired but genuine sigh of relief. "It seems that being within your immediate perimeter really does create a passive dampening field against that ancient corruption. I honestly can't remember the last time my head felt this remarkably light."
The strategist didn't seem the least bit bothered by the fact that she had just been balancing on the razor's edge of a systemic collapse. Now that the immediate crisis had passed, she was recovering at a remarkable rate—or at the very least, she looked infinitely healthier than the ghost-like specter who had collapsed into the room a short while ago.
"You're still dodging my primary question, though," Jeanne pressed, leaning forward and locking eyes with her fellow baseline human. "Why were you in such a frantic hurry to dump all of this classified history on me today? Was it purely because we share the same biological lineage?"
While that certainly provided a logical emotional anchor, it still felt remarkably reckless. In Jeanne's estimation, the Doctor was acting with an intense, uncharacteristic impatience that completely bypassed her role as a calculating, detached commander. Had she forgotten she was supposed to be Babel's prime strategist?
"You're not wrong to call it rushed," the Doctor admitted, her casual smile fading as a dead-serious gravity settled across her delicate features. "The reality is, I have a specific operational sequence planned for the near future. And based on the calculated parameters of that action... there is a highly probable outcome where a total, systemic memory wipe will completely scrub my consciousness clean. If that trap snaps shut, every single piece of data I just handed you will be permanently erased from my mind."
She held Jeanne's gaze, her voice dropping to a sharp, intent whisper. "So, if the day ever comes where you cross paths with a version of me who looks at you with completely blank eyes... please, promise me you will drag me kicking and screaming into a corner and repeat every single syllable of this conversation back to me."
"A deliberate memory erasure?" That was the immediate conclusion that flashed through Jeanne's mind. Given how rapidly the Doctor's physical form was wasting away under the weight of her fractured psyche, it made tactical sense that she would engineer a clean, surgical factory reset to shed the cognitive corruption and preserve her remaining lifespan.
The Doctor offered a light shrug, confirming the core of Jeanne's theory. However, she deliberately refrained from mapping out the specific operational details of her upcoming project. In truth, looking at the girl sitting at the edge of her mattress, the strategist was already wondering if her joint blueprint with Theresa needed a radical, last-minute overhaul.
As things stood, the grand tactical moves she and Theresa had meticulously charted for the landship might not survive contact with the rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape of Terra—and the definitive wildcard sitting at the center of that global equation was the blonde maiden right in front of her.
The Doctor was absolutely certain of one thing: Jeanne wasn't the type to sit quietly in the freezing Ursus wilderness forever, playing defense against Buldrokkas'tee's elite forces. Even if she couldn't predict the exact trajectory of Jeanne's intent, a powerful strategic intuition told her that this girl was destined to trigger a massive, earth-shattering event across the continents.
Since she had already deduced that much, wouldn't it be a massive operational waste if Babel didn't find a way to actively embed themselves within her upcoming trajectory to secure a few long-term advantages? Her only silent prayer was that Jeanne would delay her grand entrance onto the global stage until the dust from Babel's internal shifts had settled.
At the very least, she desperately hoped the girl wouldn't make her move until after her own scheduled awakening—though there was no telling what kind of role the rewritten version of herself would play in those chaotic future events.
Regardless of how those grand calculations played out, the current version of her—the strategist who held the authentic memories of the Babel era—wouldn't be around to witness the climax. These theories were destined to remain nothing more than isolated projections locked inside her current mind.
"Tell me something, though... is it really true that absolutely no one else on this planet holds these records?"
Jeanne's curiosity flared. Was it truly possible that the entire memory of an advanced global civilization existed solely within the fragile gray matter of this one girl? If that was the reality, what would have happened if Jeanne had simply refused to listen? How could the Doctor risk letting the definitive history of the world hang by such a terrifyingly thin thread?
And more to the point, out of all the trusted inner circle members currently operating on this landship, why had the strategist chosen to dump this catastrophic burden onto a total stranger first? Why hadn't her immediate instinct been to confide in Theresa or Kal'tsit?
"No, you're not the sole repository of the truth," the Doctor replied, shaking her head with a faint, wry smile. She wasn't the type of commander to foolishly pack every single high-value strategic asset into a single basket—even if, prior to Jeanne's arrival, she had only possessed one reliable basket to begin with.
"Kal'tsit is fully aware of the reality behind everything I just told you," the Doctor explained, her expression shifting into a highly complex, deeply layered look at the mention of the ancient physician. "But her specific operational status is... unique, to say the least."
The sheer volume of unspoken history bleeding into the Doctor's features when she spoke of Kal'tsit didn't escape Jeanne's notice. It looked like a volatile mix of profound intimacy, deep-seated guilt, and a strange, sheepish embarrassment over how heavily she had relied on the Feline in the past. It was blindingly obvious the two shared a history that ran incredibly deep.
"Wait a minute... what exactly is the deal between you and Dr. Kal'tsit?" Jeanne blurted out, her internal gossip radar pinging wildly. "Every time the two of you are in the same room, the atmosphere feels a thousand times more complicated than the bond you share with Theresa!"
Jeanne's curiosity regarding their dynamic was entirely justified. You had two individuals whose entire identities were practically constructed out of classified red tape and buried history; watching them interact was like witnessing a pair of ancient tectonic plates grinding together. The potential for dramatic entanglement was off the charts.
From Jeanne's perspective, their relationship defied standard social definitions. If you tried to map out the overlapping threads of their history, the sheer complexity wouldn't look like a simple network—it would look like an impossibly tangled, multi-layered knot.
She had caught the specific way Kal'tsit looked at the supreme strategist when she thought no one was paying attention; it was a deeply volatile gaze that seemed to balance perfectly on the razor's edge between a life-long comrade and a bitter, resentful enemy. The moment the Doctor brought her up, Jeanne couldn't resist digging for details.
Faced with Jeanne's sudden interrogation, the Doctor's confident composure crumbled into an intensely awkward, flushing grimace. She shifted uncomfortably on the mattress, completely at a loss for how to articulate the exact nature of her bond with the ancient lynx.
Friends? Calling themselves friends felt technically accurate on paper, yet the sheer weight and coldness of their day-to-day interactions didn't fit the casual warmth of the word. Enemies? That was clearly wide of the mark too; their mutual loyalty to the landship's core survival proved their relationship hadn't deteriorated to that level of toxicity.
After wrestling with the vocabulary for a few agonizing seconds, the strategist finally settled on a thoroughly vague defense. "We... go back a very long way," she mumbled lamely, offering a thoroughly unhelpful, half-hearted shrug before instantly trying to shut down that line of inquiry.
Jeanne watched the shifting emotions cross the Doctor's face, thinking that if the strategist ever decided to abandon military command and pursue a career in the grand theaters of Leithanien, her facial expressions alone would carry a ten-part tragic opera series. The evasive answer only made her ten times more intrigued.
According to what she had gathered from the ship's medical staff, the Doctor had technically been brought into the organization as a specialist recruited by Theresa, and she was classified primarily as Theresa's personal confidante. Logically, her history with the Sarkaz Queen should run circles around her bond with anyone else.
Yet, whether it was the unspoken subtext behind their clinical arguments or the specific, defensive tone they used when addressing one another, Jeanne couldn't shake the impression that the sheer, exhausting complexity between the Doctor and Kal'tsit belonged to an entirely different league—a depth of history that Theresa couldn't even begin to compete with.
A wild, intrusive thought flashed through Jeanne's mind: I wonder if Theresa ever stands outside the office door, listening to them bicker, and thinks to herself, 'Hey, I was the one who found her first!' Then again, based on what she knew of the Sarkaz monarch's incredibly gentle and elegant disposition, Theresa probably wouldn't waste time pouting like a character in a romantic tragedy; she was far more likely to simply exercise her authority as the Lord of Fiend and seize what she wanted directly.
But if Theresa actually staged a dramatic intervention... who exactly would she be trying to claim? Would she be fighting to keep Kal'tsit, or would she be rescuing the Doctor? Surely she wasn't doing all of this over little Amiya...
Realizing her highly active imagination had just taken a massive, wild detour into an imaginary soap opera, Jeanne quickly caught herself and forcibly dragged her internal thoughts back onto the professional track before she completely lost the plot.
"The reality between Kal'tsit and myself is an incredibly tangled, highly classified mess," the Doctor groaned, cutting through Jeanne's silent space with a pleading look. "Please, just let it drop. If I actually sat down and unraveled the entire timeline for you from start to finish, we would be sitting in this exact room talking for a literal year."
The sheer exhaustion in the Doctor's voice effectively silenced Jeanne. It was clear the relationship was a massive source of personal stress, carrying a level of historic intensity that the strategist was fiercely determined to keep locked away from prying eyes.
"Just how many years have you and Kal'tsit actually known each other?" Jeanne asked, adjusting her angle of attack slightly. "You don't look like you've clocked enough biological years to justify this kind of ancient, worn-out dynamic. Why does it feel like you two have been locked in a cosmic stalemate since the dawn of time?"
In truth, what Jeanne was desperately trying to fish for was Kal'tsit's definitive, unredacted age. However, she possessed enough baseline social awareness to know that demanding a woman's true birth year directly—or even gossiping about it behind her back where her vast network of surveillance eyes could find out—was a fast track to a very painful clinical end.
Hearing the underlying direction of Jeanne's question, a flicker of memory seemed to spark behind the Doctor's eyes. Her expression fractured into a highly complex, deeply amused look as she mentally weighed whether the secret she was about to drop was worth the potential fallout if it ever got back to the medical wing.
"Kal'tsit... yeah, she's an entirely unique existence," the Doctor murmured, a mysterious, highly mischievous smirk suddenly playing on her lips. She cast a paranoid, dramatic glance toward the heavy pneumatic door, checking the corners of the ceiling before beckoning the blonde maiden closer with a quick flick of her fingers. "As for the exact number of years we've been running into each other... to be completely honest, my conscious mind has lost track of the timeline entirely. But if you want a ballpark figure on her actual age... lean in a bit closer."
Though slightly bewildered by the sudden cloak-and-dagger routine, Jeanne's intense curiosity won out instantly. She leaned her ear right down toward the mattress, eager to catch whatever top-secret intelligence the supreme strategist was about to whisper.
"I'm telling you this as a medical fact, Jeanne," the Doctor whispered into her ear, her tone dripping with mock conspiratorial dread. "Kal'tsit's chronological lifespan is basically identical to the age of this entire civilization. I can't give you the exact month and day, but her continuous existence tracks back at the absolute bare minimum... to over ten thousand years!"