Being careful was another matter.
The ideal way to deal with a situation or most anything was to have a plan—preferably more than one—and to be prepared.
No matter how much he could prepare himself to keep up the act of prime manipulation target in front of Baron Baldroy Harloch, he was essentially going in blind. All he could do was follow the traitor and hope either he or Brunilda would realize if Harloch was leading him to his death before Mattheus actually died.
What he could prepare for were contingencies and measures in case he was forced to retreat (Plans C and D). In other words, he could make arrangements in the chance he would take a loss, so that he could still come out smelling like roses.
"Do you know if the car is back in one piece again?" Mattheus asked.
Feline ears flicked and swiveled. "It looked like it was being put back together when I checked it early in the morning while you were getting ready. I'm still not sure if Honoria Crown is suspicious of Marcel or even Harloch… or if she's just this paranoid because of your position as Court Healer."
It was his mother that was behind confiscating the car, his father willingly stepping up as an excuse. While Mattheus would not realize this normally, it was pretty impossible to keep a secret from a certain fluffy cat that could disappear into the shadows and had supernatural senses.
"You think she knew about the Crown Prince's bullying and abuse?" Mattheus voiced a question that he had been harboring for a while. Since Honoria had acknowledged how she noticed the two men never seemed to get along (in contrast to Edgar and Illarion Snowe).
"No," Brunilda answered without even contemplating the question. "She lacks the guilt that knowledge would result in. Your predecessor must have hidden it a bit too well. I mean, did you not say he had a slight limp and permanent hearing loss in one ear from Artorius Morgaine's violent assaults?"
Mattheus nodded. "Yes. The kind of damage he had as a nineteen-year-old would have been alarming in our old world. Though I guess he did suffer a mental breakdown and snapped, considering he wanted to flip the country around just to get even with Prince Artorius."
"Then why did no one remark about it when you revealed to Endlewood and your family about your healing magic?"
His eyes widened and his lips parted in surprise. "I… I never noticed…"
Brunilda was right. If they had known about the injuries, they would have remarked about it or showed an expression if the topic was sensitive to the Original. He would have noticed something wrong… but there had been nothing.
After a moment. Mattheus heaved a sigh. "He shouldn't have kept everything to himself."
"Ahem," Brunilda coughed purposefully.
"What."
"Do you not remember how long it took for me to pry your family issues from you?" she wryly reminded. "I think it took until you were nineteen and living in the dorms for you to admit to something being wrong."
Ah.
Mattheus fidgeted, loosening his tie in discomfort at the reminder of his Dark History back in the old world.
It was also a bit uncomfortable to realize the only real difference between Theodoric He and Mattheus Crown was that the former eventually shared his burdens while the latter—
Actually, no, that was wrong.
The only difference was that he chose to confide in an adult that he trusted and deserved such trust.
While the Original… who was it that the Original confided in that resulted in him joining the Eulerian Circles Society?
Who was it?
It was on the tip of his fingers. He could feel the memory right below the surface—
"Mattheus, are you alright?" Brunilda's voice pierced through the veil.
The twenty-year-old suddenly realized his hands had grabbed at his temples and were tugging his hair and pressing hard against his skull. He was giving himself a headache.
"Ah…" He dropped his hands after running fingers to straighten his hair out, squinting a little as he waited for the migraine to pass. "Sorry, I was trying to recall something from his memories but it wasn't willing to give me a good image. Or even sound."
"You really shouldn't force it, though I understand not enjoying being left in the dark. A trigger will probably bring it up. What is it you were trying to recall, exactly?"
"How exactly he was invited to the society," Mattheus replied.
"Oh."
Oh, indeed.
…
Considering the reforms passed a few days ago, Albert IV was very busy implementing the changes even if most everything had been prepared. As Mattheus was aware of his father's rather loaded schedule, he had sent Vincent to arrange a meeting through Sir Wenht.
As family, he could technically skip such a formality, but neither did Mattheus want to distract Albert IV if he had been in the middle of doing something nor was it exactly a personal issue he wanted to discuss.
Instead, he finally took a look at his new automobile that his mother informed him he could use over dinner. It was a dark blue with silver detail and had his personal coat of arms on the grill rather than the Marcel brand logo.
"Ah, sir?" Vincent piped up when Mattheus finished observing the frame and body of the automobile and moved to open up the hood.
"Just looking, Vincent," Mattheus reassured him.
"Do you know about automobile engines, sir?" his valet asked while holding up a sleepy-looking Brunilda in his arms.
Well. The engines of this world would be easier to figure out than the ones in his old one, right?
"I know about the theoretical application of mystical energy and elements, so it's not too far a stretch," Mattheus reasoned. To the valet or to himself, he wasn't sure.
It took him a few minutes, where he had to take some guesses, but the baron did figure out how the engine generally worked. And that his mother totally lied and his father somehow found the time to get one of his assistants or engineers to improve upon whatever the original version of the engine looked like.
The top was down on the convertible right now, though Mattheus also knew he was the only one that referred to such a style as "convertible." All cars at the moment had a rather low top speed and were generally built for riders to enjoy the open air. There was only a roof in case of needing to travel in bad weather.
Since the automobile designs in this world had larger but thinner wheels and a lot of open space between the ground and the chassis itself, Mattheus took the time to test out the smoothness of opening the driver's side door since he couldn't exactly vault into the front seat.
At least, not without having his mother lecture him over proper behavior and actions after.
"Do you want to learn to drive, Master Mattheus?" Vincent asked.
Mattheus paused from looking at the wheels and multiple gauges, pedals, wheels, and levers to meet the brunet's eyes. "You know how to drive, Vincent?"
"It was one of the reasons I was hired to be your valet, sir."
"Huh." A moment passed before he spoke up again. "Can you tell me what is what? The large wheel is self-explanatory."
"Of course, sir," Vincent replied as he closed the distance and set the cat gently on the passenger's seat before starting to point out what each pedal, switch, and lever did.
"Oh no," Brunilda started as she sat up on the buttery leather seats. "Please do not try to drift in this box-like antique until you've had the System switch out the wheels and… pretty much the entire frame."
Mattheus twitched. Just because he enjoyed drifting in video games did not mean he would do it in real life.
As if she could read his mind, the cat exclaimed. "You drifted through the streets in my electric car!"
In his defense, the streets were practically empty at night considering the pandemic. It was an easy car to drift in too since he didn't have to shift gears and just needed to increase the throttle.
Brunilda just stared at him.
Alright, fine, he might have a thing for being in a car and just driving to nowhere in particular but he wasn't an idiot! He was not going to try to do anything strenuous with this automobile until he could replace… everything.
Mattheus was aware this automobile would disassemble itself like a six-year-old child's toy if he put it through its paces by the standards of cars from his old world.
Ignoring the judging green eyes, he looked around the area before hopping on. "Come along, Vincent."
"S-sir?" The brunet quickly climbed onto the passenger's side as Mattheus started the ignition.
"The best way to learn is through experience!"
"Oh, good lord…" Brunilda groaned.
…
"Mattheus, Hugo said you wanted to see me?"
"Yes, Father."
"Is it about that automobile the Countess Marcel gave you?"
"Oh, no, Father. Actually, I've been thinking about telephones and telegrams lately."
"Oh?" There was a hint of curiosity in the earl's own set of pale eyes.
Unsurprising, as it was Albert VI who invented the current communication system.
"Yes, each time I'm away from the capital, it somehow ends up being an issue of being unable to contact someone in an emergency easily. Well, for my short trip to Mecane a few days ago, it was more that I would essentially be unreachable during the train ride to and from."
He wanted to start getting the ball rolling on some improvements of preexisting technology that was part of his contingencies, in case everything threatened to go up in a mushroom cloud. For this meeting he arranged to talk to his father, it was for communication and to pad out his family's wealth a bit more (it was true that the reforms did take a small chunk of the Crown fortune to outfit the airships and boats from models that weren't Crown-manufactured, along with giving those "rival" manufacturers funds to update their engine making to the new standard).
Mattheus had to brainstorm with Brunilda to come up with a believable reason that the twenty-year-old mystical energy theoretician and medical doctor could come up with an idea they technically took from their old world's history of the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). Their trip to Mecane and Brunilda wandering around the city helped give them the perfect excuse, since the city of inventors seemed to have created their own private lines to each other.
"So the current telephone network works by operators acting as the middle-man connecting to other lines that have a telephone installed, right? In that sense, it is more secure than the radio used in airships and seafaring vessels. The model is untenable for mass production, though, and communication between regions is limited to the main switchboard operators. Am I understanding this correctly so far?"
"You are," Albert IV affirmed, his eyes blinking slowly.
"Father, I saw the automatons in Mecane and found that a lot of the citizens had private lines to others. Then I thought… what if you can automate the operator?"
Mattheus didn't explain more, since he saw the light of epiphany light up the earl's eyes around the time he mentioned "automatons."
It was always easy to nudge a genius toward an idea and Mattheus was sure his father could solve the logistics and technical bits himself.
Now he just had to worry about his own nest egg…