Chapter Text

Chapter 1: Project Planet Earth

Scene 1: Library, Miload mansion, evening

Sub-scene 1: Random rant about racism

Subaru fell into his chair in the Miload mansion's library. He has been exhausted after holding himself back from punching an infuriating noble lady in the face all day long.

Subaru: "Everytime I start to feel good about this world, someone looks at Emilia-tan weirdly and reminds me the kind of world this is, you get what I am talking about Beako?"

Beatrice: "I do in fact, they are small minded people who can't get past the fact that she has a resemblance to the witch in fact."

Subaru: "Yeah... actually, I never asked, what did she do exactly? destroy half of the world, yes, but how?"

Beatrice: "She was an incredibly powerful practitioner of Yin magic in fact, likely to be the most powerful to ever live."

Subaru: "Yin?"

Beatrice: "Yes, and she used that magic, enhanced by her witch factor and her insanity, to plunge the world around her into darkness, literally. Some say the people fell into the shadows, some say it was some kind of black fire. whichever it was, it happened quickly."

Subaru: "...scary."

Sub-scene 2: Let's talk about Earth

Beatrice: "Of course! I too have been curious, you seem to get horrified by quite a few things in our world, what was your "Yearth" like?"

Subaru: "It is called "Earth" Beako."

Beatrice: "That's what I said in fact."

Subaru raises an eyebrow... well, he tries to, he doesn't have that level of facial muscle control.

Subaru: "I can feel the 'y' you put in front of it."

Beatrice: "Hearth?"

Subaru: "'Earth', silence everything before the 'ea' sound like in 'Earn' but it sounds like 'Urn'."

Beatrice: "Earth?"

Subaru: "Perfecto! that's my Beako! come here you"

He picks her up a twirls her in the air before putting her in his lap.

Beatrice: "Hahahahaha pat me more in fact!"

Subaru: "Take it, take it all my beloved spirit!"

He's pats her gently on her head and her cheeks, remarking how soft they are. Then hugs her gently and lays his chin on her head.

Beatrice: "So getting back to the topic,"

Subaru: "Right, no, Earth never had a calamity of this scale, we have had some pretty big disasters but not something that killed half the world. Also, it should be noted that Earth is just quite a bit larger and older than The land of Laguna so proportionally, none of them ever harmed too much of the total human population even if the numbers themselves were insane."

Beatrice: "What's your population then?"

Subaru: "it was over 7 billion when I came here.

Beatrice: "PREPOSTEROUS in fact! It is impossible to sustain that many people at all! The world would run out of food and other resources! And that's on top of having no magic!"

Subaru: "It is with a world as vast as mine, what is the size of this world Beako? I think it's roughly Europe sized if I am right."

Beatrice: "I don't know what that is but it must be a gigantic country for you to compare it to our whole world."

Subaru: "yeah so Japan is 378 thousand square kilometers so I guess Europe would be around 10 million square kilometers or something. the entire Earth is... uhhhh... wait I remember it's radius is 6371 so... surface area formula was... ... ... ... so 510 million? yes about that much in square kilometers."

Beatrice: "..."

Subaru: "Shocked you that badly eh? well we don't use all of that area, vast stretches of it is covered by oceans and deserts and forests."

Beatrice: "Wait a second, let me get a book and a pen in fact."

Subaru: "You want to document this? you sure? Surely there are better uses for your ink and paper."

Beatrice: "Yes it is in fact! The paper will be honored to hold information of such importance. There could be nothing more important than my contractor in fact!"

Subaru: "Stop. Stop, I will cry."

Beatrice: "Never in fact. I know you like it."

Subaru: "You evil little loli!"

Beatrice: "HAHAHAHAHA! you can't be the only one who sings praises now can you? it's only fair, and it's only the truth in fact!"

While Subaru's self loathing was too deep to be cured by a few words, encouragement from his cherished ones always help him feel ever so slightly better about himself, feel like he mattered. Even if he would likely suppress that little fact when he needed to use his cursed gift. He, whether he admits it or not, liked being appreciated, especially by his adopted little sister and daughter.

Beatrice: "Okay, I am ready in fact. Let's start again, tell me more about this ocean?"

Subaru: "They are gigantic bodies of water that cover the majority of Earth's surface, that's why it's called the Blue planet."

Beatrice: "At least you don't have a thirst problem out there I suppose."

Subaru: "Oh no no no, the Oceans are too salty to consume, potable water is less than 1% of all water on Earth, wait no, well technically there is more but most of it is locked in glaciers and ice caps."

Beatrice: "Then what about the rest of the water, does it just lie around?"

Subaru: "Well, just because humans can't doesn't mean creatures don't live in there, in fact the vast majority of life lives in the oceans. Heck, it is believed that life started out there in the first place and then came to land. an uncountable number of fish species, sharks, whales, turtles, plankton, we could talk about sea life for days on end."

Beatrice: "WHALES IN FACT?!"

Subaru: "Whoa whoa, calm down, our whales aren't magical, they're just gigantic, majestic animals, some of the largest to ever exist! the Blue whales are the largest that we know of."

Beatrice: "Even bigger than the white whale?"

Subaru: "Oh no, that thing was too big, Blue whales are up to 28 meters in length, that bastard was easily double that! Also, the big blues are gentle filter feeders, which means that instead of hunting big prey, they eat tiny creatures called krill, they open their ginormous mouths, take in many million of them at only, then filter them out of the water. It's cheating, what they do!"

Beatrice: "Big animals usually have some kind of cheat or advantage that allows them to accumulate resources. These are the biggest you say?"

Subaru: "Yes, without mana to support themselves with, it's just muscle and bone and physics. All Earth life is bound to size limits. like the largest land mammal was quite huge but it couldn't get any bigger because it had to give birth and all, and fall from that height would damage the baby. Dinosaurs were able to circumvent that problem by laying eggs and having air sacs. And whales, well, they live in the oceans, the water supports their bodies for them, allowing them to grow HUGE."

Beatrice: "Dinosaurs?"

Subaru: "Basically ground dragons but magic-less, they came in many shapes and sizes and also they're all extinct, they all died out over 66 million years ago."

Beatrice: "You throwing around numbers in the millions like that is hurting my head in fact!"

Subaru: "Hahahaha yeah, Earth is about 4 billion years old, the first life came quickly after, around 3.5 billion years ago, first complex life like animals came around about 1 billion years ago, so on and so forth. Dinosaurs were around from 250 million years ago to 66 million years ago, Humans are pretty recent only several million years in age as a species. Though it took some time to form the first cities and stuff, the oldest writing we have is roughly 5500 years old, though there probably were older ones that have been lost to time."

Beatrice: "Even that much is incredible in fact! we lost almost all information after the Great Calamity, other than this library, you won't find many sources of older information in fact."

Subaru: "Like the library of Alexandria huh"

Beatrice: "What is that?"

Subaru: "It was a great library situated on a big trading route, they recorded all forms of knowledge, every bit of information that went through the route was copied and stored. It was at it's time, the largest compilation of knowledge of it's kind. It was unfortunately, burned to the ground but a bunch of idiots, it was a great loss. Fortunately, the world is so big that nothing can harm all people at the same time. While we lost a lot that day, we quickly bounced back thanks to many other contributors around the world."

Beatrice: "It would indeed be comforting if there were others in my profession of keeping knowledge alive, since before the calamity in fact."

Subaru: "Calamity huh... we have had several pretty big disasters, plagues, famines, etc. which might rival the great calamity in the number of casualties but like I said, very few things are capable of harming half the world."

Beatrice: So there are things?

Subaru: "Humans themselves, really, we have reached a stage where illnesses and famines are no longer an issue, the thing most likely to end the world would be human on human violence, especially with the weapons of war that we have created. Sorry Beako, but I don't like talking about that stuff."

Beatrice: "It's alright in fact, I know how much these subjects hurt you."

Subaru: "Thank you, Beako."

Beatrice: "So, about the age of your world, how did you know about such things if there are no spirits, if your world isn't alive and doesn't talk with it's people?"

Subaru: "Science. There are many branches of them, one of them being Geology, the study of the Earth. Then there are many branches within that too. I am more of an astronomy guy myself but I watched a lot of documentaries on the internet. So basically there are different types of rocks, Igneous rocks that are formed in volcanoes and such, these are primary rocks. Secondary rocks are composed of other rocks, there are Sedimentary and Metamorphic. Sedimentary are just dust, sand, mud, etc. getting accumulated over time and turning into rock. Metamorphic is when any rock get's subjected to pressure and heat and chemistry and turns into something else.

Now, there are methods to date rocks by using a variety of methods, a common way to do it is look at the animals buried within. another is by using some advanced chemistry to check how much of an unstable substance is left within the rocks. Like, there's Carbon-14, which degrades into Carbon-12 over time. and we know the rate at which that happens, we also know the ratio in which they occur naturally. So we can estimate the age of rocks by measuring the ratios of Carbon 14 and 12 within them."

Beatrice: "Earth's science is quite advanced, in fact. And this is how you know how old the Earth is?"

Subaru: "Pretty much, yes. Well, the 4 billion number we got from asteroids instead as it is incredibly hard to find anything from the time of the creation of the planet on the planet itself. So instead we dated the space rocks, which we knew were made at the same time."

Beatrice: "Incredible. And you dared to say this is not worth documenting?"

Even Subaru had to realize he was being stupid when confronted by such sound logic. Of course it's worth documenting, people spent their lives dedicating themselves to studying the natural world, over many millennia and this fool dares to say it's not worth talking about? What an idiot.

Subaru: "Hmmmm, you know what, I have realized the errors of my mindset, that was a foolish thing to say. I would like to talk about and document more of my world, if you would like to."

Beatrice: "Of course! anytime you feel like, in fact! It brings Betty great pride to be entrusted with such important knowledge!"

Subaru: "Ohohoho, thank you so much Beako! but I think it's dinner time so sometime else, okay?"

Beatrice: "Very well in fact. Tell me more about this Chemistry and Astronomy next time."

Subaru: "Very well, it's a promise then. Tomorrow after I am done with my duties we shall convene again and continue with Project Planet Earth!!"

Beatrice: "Let's go then, will you tell me another one of your stories when we sleep?"

Subaru: "Sure thing."

Scene 2: Hallway, Miload mansion, night

Subaru: "Oh by the way, birds are also dinosaurs, they're a sub-group of them."

Beatrice: "Interesting, I do see the resemblance between birds and dragons. So that means they didn't go extinct then?"

Subaru: "Yes, i should've specified, specifically the Non-avian dinosaurs went extinct from the impact, birds, and a small subset of birds at that, 'avian birds', or 'avian dinosaurs' were able to survive."

Beatrice: "Impact?"

Subaru: "An asteroid hit the Earth. it was 10 to 15 kilometers in diameter, it wiped out nearly 75% of all species alive at the time. I lot during the impact itself, and then due to the debris that was thrown into the atmosphere, sunlight was blocked out and the world was plunged into a winter that lasted many years. this meant that anything bigger than a chicken went extinct."

Beatrice: "That's totally a Calamity! you said there weren't any in fact!"

Subaru: "Yes, my bad, there haven't been any calamities of that scale while humans have been around but throughout Earth's billions of years of history, several Mass Extinction Events have occurred, which were then quickly followed by periods of great biodiversity as survivors rushed in to take advantage of empty niches."

Beatrice: "It makes sense I suppose, for a world that ancient. It still freezes the mana in my veins to think about the life cost."

Subaru: "I think more people died from natural cause each year on Earth than the population of Laguna."

Beatrice: "What an insane thing to say! but yes, it makes sense, if the population is three magnitudes bigger then so would be the death rate."

Subaru: "Yeah. Well, here we are."

They reached the dining hall and went inside. At night Subaru briefly recites the tale of Hercules to Beako. He feels a lot lighter after finally being able to connect with someone on this level, being able to talk about his old home. He's glad Beako managed to get him to open up.