Thankfully, the rest of the day went by reasonably uneventfully. We departed the train quickly so no one could question us about all the broken glass, attended classes as usual and finished the school day without further issues.
What's more, it seems like there was a bit of a buzz around school that both Yokoshima-senpai and Shiko-senpai were off at the same time with "headaches." Considering they were known to be quite close and had both called in sick with the same excuse, theories about them playing hookie or getting involved in a fight circulated quickly.
Considering my concussion had already practically disappeared by the time I woke up this morning, I must have given them more of a beatdown than I expected. I'll have to learn how to control my own strength. I'd prefer to avoid killing anyone if possible.
As the school's resident chemistry prodigy, it wasn't hard at all for Sunao to get permission for the four of us to stay late and use laboratory equipment. I thanked my lucky stars that Yokoshima and Shiko were away today. If they figured out what we were trying to do, there's no way in hell they wouldn't show up and try to stop us.
"So, Nao, what'cha need us to do first?" In a rare reversal of roles, it was Saki waiting to take orders from Sunao for once.
"We need to get all the equipment ready first. You three grab the bits on this list from the unlocked cupboard. I need to open the locked one with my access code quick."
She handed Saki a piece of paper with a bunch of equipment listed before disappearing to the large locked door at the back of the room. The list was I pretty much exactly what you'd expect for a distillation procedure. Some beakers, a heat mat and gloves were the main things. I assumed that the actual distillation column was likely in the storage room that Sunao was accessing. Something surprisingly missing from the lost, however…
"Hey, Nao? Aintcha gonna need one of these Bunsen burners too?" Saki beat me to punch noticing the suspiciously and very important component.
"Those ones plug into the gas taps, which are switched off after school hours are finished," called Sunao from the storage room. "Besides, we'll need something more like this for what we're doing today." She then emerged from the previously locked door, not carrying a few components by hand, but wheeling an entire trolley with what looked to be a very expensive distillation setup. Among the bits on the trolley, I spotted a Bunsen burner that was quite a bit larger than the ones we usually used. It also looked much less simplistic, and was attached directly to a tank of butane.
The rational human being I am, I immediately questioned the safety of this
"You just… keep a bottle of highly flammable gas tucked away in a cupboard?"
"We have pipes filled with flammable gas that we regularly expel out of taps and set fire to, and you're worried about my little butane bottle?"
"…okay, fair point." Maybe I mixed up 'rational' and 'paranoid'
Still, Nao's equipment was of a far higher quality than anything we ever used. Everything from the burner to the distillation column told me that it was not meant to be used for high school chemistry practicals.
"Okay, now we need to get everything set up. I'll put the column up on its stand, so Saki, set up two beakers at the end of the tubes that come off it."
"On it."
"Mai, lay out the testing kits I have have here and put a little bit of the indicators in the remaining beakers."
"Aye aye, cap."
"Sora, the serum is kept in a black thermal container in my bag. Bring it over here and transfer it to this flask. Be extremely careful about it."
"Sure thing, Nao."
Setup took far less time than I expected, and before I even realised it we were already preparing to light the burner. With Sunao's expert guidance, the four of us worked like a well oiled machine.
"Okay, I've triple checked everything, we should be ready to go. I'm only using a quarter of the serum that we have, so even if we mess up the first time, it's not the end of the world." She spoke with the air of someone who saw this all as child's play. As if it was as routine and simple as brushing one's teeth in the morning.
"It's nice to see you so confident, Naochan." As if reading my mind, Amai spoke the words I had been thinking since we first entered the laboratory. "Now that we're in your domain, you're like a whole new person."
"A-Ah. I don't think I'm all that, really." At the mention of her sudden character shift, Nao's speech returned to its usual stuttery self. "It's just… when I try to carry a normal conversation, there's… so many things I could potentially say wrong. I could say something stupid or hurt someone's feelings without having an idea why. It's so hard to tell what's right to say. But with chemistry, I always know what's right. There's always a well defined solution, something tangible and real. So when I talk about chemistry, all my fears about saying the wrong thing go away."
I was almost taken aback at this sudden look into Nao's mind. She rarely opened up much, and most of the time she just let herself get swept along with the flow of conversation. It made a nice change to hear her speak frankly for once.
"Well, let's put that big brain of yours to good use, then. Chemicals ain't gonna separate 'emselves." Saki's words seemed to catch the other three of us off guard, as if she was the only who remembered why were actually here in the first place.
"R-right! I'm lighting the Bunsen, so everyone keep your distance. This thing reaches about 1800 kelvin at its hottest." As soon as she confirmed the rest of us were at a safe distance, Nao lit the burner and began making extremely small adjustments to the air control vent, letting the temperature of the flame increase in easily manageable increments. As I was watching her, I realised that her Bunsen's vent system had tiny markings, likely corresponding to the approximate temperature of the flame at certain degrees of openness. The scale wasn't one I could read, but Nao seemed to calculate it in her head effortlessly.
After roughly a minute of Nao slowly adjusting the temperature of the flame, the liquid began bubbling and vapour began to appear in the distillation column. As it reached the cooler top of the column, it began condensing back to liquid, allowing it to be extracted through the pipe leading out of the column and into one of the beakers that Saki set up. Nao kept the temperature of the burner constant for several minutes it was certain that all of that particular chemical had been vaporised and re-condensed, taking note of its apparent boiling temperature, before once again slowly increasing the amount of air going into the burner.
The initial vaporisation had removed roughly a quarter of the liquid in the flask, so I assumed that the stuff that had been siphoned off was the harmful agent while the "magical girl serum" was what remained in the flask. To tell the truth, despite my lack of interest in chemistry, I was quite excited to see what properties a drug that bestowed magic blowers would have.
Fate would immediately throw a wrench into that plan, however.
"How is it still not…" Sunao's mutterings confirmed what I had already assumed. The temperature of the flame had already exceeded the upper bound of her expectations, and yet the liquid showed no signs of vaporisation whatsoever. Before long, the vent on the burner was completely open, the flame at its maximum possible temperature, and there still wasn't even the faintest sign of bubbling. I could tell from her expression that this result completely threw Sunao for a loop, and after confirming that the liquid wasn't even close to boiling, she sighed and shut off the gas.
"Guess I'll come back to that one later…" she grumbled under her breath.
As the flask containing the serum was left to cool, Nao got to work testing drops of the other liquid with a number of different chemical tests, from acid-base indicators to chromatography, meticulously noting every result without sparing any detail.
After a while, she seemed satisfied with whatever conclusion she had drawn with the first chemical, and moved on to running the same tests with the second (the rest of us had moved the flask to an ice bath to stop her burning herself).
Much like with the vaporisation process (or lack thereof, technically), Mai seemed completely confounded by the results of this second round of testing. After quite a long time spent doing and redoing tests, she turned to us and spoke with a barely hidden twinge of irritation in her voice.
"Well, I have good news and… less good news. The good news is that I've identified the drug that the magical girls added to turn people into slaves, and it happens to be one that I know how to neutralise."
The rest of breathed a collective sigh of relief, glad in the knowledge that we now had some tangible way to undo some of the evil these 'heroes' had committed against innocent parties. Nao, however, still had a look of frustration and irritation plastered on her face.
"The bad news is this. The 'magical girl serum,' the things that seemingly gives people powers… it's a chemical that does no exist." Saki, Mai and I all looked confusedly between each other. Were it coming from practically anyone else, we'd have written off what Sunao had just said as nonsensical. I mean, a chemical that doesn't exist? What does that even mean.
"Let me clarify. This liquid right here, it defies every conceivable law of chemistry." She held up the beaker of yellowish liquid, looking at it with what an expression of scorn. "It gave a negative result for every single test I ran. It's neither basic nor acidic. It's not organic. It has no reasonable boiling point, and yet it's a liquid at room temperature. I tried testing for positive ions, halogen ions, hydroxide, carbon-carbon double bonds, no matter what I tried, every single test came back negative. There is no identifiable functional group. No reactivity to any common reactants that I have on hand. Nothing. No sign whatsoever as to what the chemical makeup of this bastard thing is. It simply mops the floor with the laws of chemistry, and spits on physics while it's at it."
As she continued to speak, Sunao's tone went from frustrated to outright angry. As if the very existence of the chemical in that flask was an insult to her very being. And in a way, I suppose it was. Just a few hours earlier, Mai had expressed how the rigid laws of science brought her comfort, and now here was some blasted formula that wiped it's shoes all over those laws like a doormat.
"That being said…" she heaved a heavy sigh as she began speaking once again, "I have confirmed that there's no known harmful agents in the formula. There's no known anything else either, but that's neither here nor there at this point. The point is, the harmful drug is gone. I can't say the serum is 100% safe, but it won't turn you into a mindless slave anymore."
She held the beaker out for us all to see, and I saw Mai's eyes grow wide immediately.
"Then what are we waiting for?! Let's take it no-"
"I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Maichan." Mai's ecstatic voice was cut off by one dripping with malice and faux-friendliness.
All of us looked to the door, only to be met with the sight we were hoping to avoid the most. There in the doorway stood a girl wearing the uniform of Flame Of Time.
The research we had just spent hours on was suddenly under threat.