Akkord

[Code Name] Akkord

[Gender] Female

[Combat Experience] None

[Place of Birth] Leithanien

[Date of Birth] Aug 11

[Race] Caprinae

[Height] 165cm

[Infection Status]

Confirmed Infected by medical examination.

[Physical Strength] Normal

[Mobility] Normal

[Physical Resilience] Normal

[Tactical Acumen] Normal

[Combat Skill] Normal

[Originium Arts Assimilation] Standard

Akkord, real name Tonia Klang, is a tuner hailing from a remote Leithanian town. She was referred to Rhodes Island for treatment after contracting Oripathy in a soundfield core overload accident caused by a snowstorm. She currently helps out with Rhodes Island's music scene, while assisting in battle as a caster.

Imaging tests show the indistinct outlines of internal organs, obscured by abnormal shadows. Originium granules detected in the circulatory system. The subject is confirmed to be infected with Oripathy.

[Cell-Originium Assimilation] 3%

Small traces of infection are visible on the surface of the body.

[Blood Originium-Crystal Density] 0.22u/L

Akkord contracted Oripathy early, and comes into contact with Originium components regularly in her work, but she observes proper protection and is diligent about receiving treatment. Her condition is currently stable with no sign of infection spreading.

Operator Akkord has a habit of 'listening' in her daily work and inspections. She explains it as capturing the specific frequencies of the target's soundfield, and adding 'tags' to them in her notes.

The relationship between this behavior and her tuning work is unclear, but maintenance logs across different cities show a pattern: When Akkord notices any changes in the subject's tags, she will instantly check the audio facilities in the subject's block, make necessary adjustments, or perform extra inspections around the area.

The Medical Department is reserving judgment on the uniqueness of her hearing. Assessors believe it is not absolute pitch in the traditional sense of the word, but an identification method based on perception and experience.

It must be noted that Akkord has never publicly discussed the specific relationship between her tags and the tagged subjects, and her notes contain no decipherable information.

On the whole, we do not believe there are significant risks associated with this habit at this time, though continued observation is recommended regarding why and how she uses this ability in special missions.

The town's train station was always noisy at dusk. Miners chatting and laughing as they return from work, children chasing each other over the tracks, and the fires of smelters roaring in the distance. Tonia slowly pushed her old soundfield tuner through the crowd. It was a heavy machine with creaking gears that sounded like they could fall apart at any moment. She was headed towards the broadcasting speakers at the town square, which had become distorted by age and sounded like they had been put through sand and rubble.

The people in town were not particularly hostile to her, nor were they particularly friendly. She was one of those people who don't do 'real work'. To the townsfolk, a little bit of Arts was all that was needed if some facility in town broke down, and they were not entirely wrong. As such, they did not bother to ask Tonia for help most of the time.

'Doesn't seem like her Arts got any better, even after she got infected.'

'I heard her grades were pretty ordinary. Didn't inherit her father's musical talent, I guess.'

'Then what's the point of getting infected—'

'Shh, don't say that...'

Tonia pretended not to hear these comments around town. She simply inserted her tuner's pin into the speakers, and turned the knob to minimize the noise while listening. Slowly but steadily, she tuned the sound of wind, furnaces, and footsteps into the waveform, until the screechiness was gone, and the broadcast sounded nice and smooth again.

Only a few nearby miners seemed to notice that the ambient sounds had become more pleasant. They nodded but said nothing to Tonia, as if they were simply acknowledging something that was always supposed to happen. Tonia put away the machine and pushed it away. She knew she was neither a scholar nor a smith, and she would not leave any signature or adage on her work, like the ones on the plaques hung up in the town hall. Even in such a remote town, in the most ordinary workshop, the people only spoke of the strongest and most worthy to be remembered. However, Tonia heard the weak and strong sounds just the same. Even the tiniest tremolo could not escape her.

Tonia felt herself stripped from familiar society and systems, layer by layer—on the results board at school, in the soundfield accident that snowy night... Sometimes she felt she had gotten used to the things that happened to her. What other choice was there? But she was happy, for the soundfield in the square was now in harmony, and she saw a few fowlbeasts perch on the station's window sill, a sight she had not seen for a while.

'How to get the musical Arts on the murals to resonate better with the cries of fowlbeasts... I should come back tomorrow and re-tune it.'

Tonia thought as she pushed the tuner on the way back.

'Is this... music theory? Or some kind of performance instruction?'

At the operator's question, Akkord realized she had dropped her old notebook. The operator who picked it up was reading through it with admiration in her eyes. The cover of the notebook was so worn that it had become glossy, while the edges of the pages had curled up from frequent turning. Akkord felt a tinge of embarrassment, unsure whether to take the notebook back, or answer the question.

'The wind swirling in the notches of the stone spires creates sounds that do not belong to the original tune. If they are not eliminated, they could spread through the town along the cracks of the spire.'

'Music flowing through the seams of copper tubes may become sharpened due to contraction in the cold. Mixing in wooden harmonies will make it less piercing.'

'In rainy season, the rhythms caused by water dripping at the old clock tower may distort the soundfield, requiring regular maintenance, or passages with a different texture to counterbalance it...'

Only a few wall lights remained on in the archives, casting their light on the paper. The operator read through the notebook carefully with curiosity: There was nothing like music theory or intricate formulae, but only casually written tips and guidelines, combining Arts knowledge and everyday experience.

'Just some informal adjustment tricks. Nothing significant,' answered Akkord.

'But these are really useful! They would be great teaching materials. Not that I know much about music, but I know you always use musical Arts in the right situations, without any clashing melodies...'

Teaching materials? Akkord was not listening to the latter half of what the operator was saying. She was thinking that such teaching materials were unneeded in Leithanien, as there were no special Arts in the notes, nor would they be considered musical creations. On this ship, however, someone was reading them quietly under the lights, even treating them as genuine knowledge.

Akkord recalled the nights in Zwillingstürme, how the nameless tuners restored the harmony of the city's soundfield. Now, on this behemoth far away from home, she realized that these experiences, which she thought nobody cared about, could at least make other tuners feel less lonely.

'Can I try tuning the musical equipment in my room by following your notes?'

The sound coming from beside her pulled Akkord back from the city's music to the Rhodes Island archive room. She smiled bashfully and nodded. Perhaps, these experiences she thought nobody cared about would spread even beyond the tuners.

[Audio Log]

'...On the count of three, we'll start singing together.'

'One, two, three—'

'Goodness, who just went up into the atmosphere?'

'It wasn't me... Wait, maybe it was? Sorry, I always seem to lose the key when I'm nervous.'

'Heh, I wish I brought earplugs!'

'Stop laughing, you sang even worse than I did! You dragged me off-key!'

'Alright, alright. None of you were especially in harmony just now.'

'Yeah, I know we're tone-deaf, Akkord...'

'I was talking about the hesitation in your voices. Try think it this way: When you're out of tune, you're just in different positions. Some go up, some go down, some go here, some go there. And that's what gives a song its range, right?'

'The audience must see us as a flock of squawking fowlbeasts.'

'Fowlbeasts seem so in harmony when they're together, don't they? I don't think they discuss how to sing beforehand, or care about how others want them to sing. They just sing the way they want.'

'Is it really the same thing?'

'Of course.'

'How do you want us to sing, then, Akkord? We're performing in front of the whole ship in one hour.'

'Sing what you can. It's my job to get these different voices in different positions together in the same place without stepping on each other's toes.'

'Isn't that... cheating?'

'No, I'm simply reigning in stray sounds and getting them to walk together. You have a bright soprano, but you're too scared to let it come out. You, you have a solid bass like a rock. No need to be scared, I'll catch it. As for you, you have a beautiful tone, and you're the one who put your heart and soul into these lyrics. All you need to do is sing what you want to express.'

'Are you really talking about us, Akkord? You make it sound as though... all of us could be useful.'

'Not just useful. Indispensable. You all enjoyed the process of writing the song, didn't you? You stand here now because you love it. All you need to do is sing what you love. Besides, Maestro Czerny wrote this song for you to sing together.'

'What if it still sounds bad?'

'All the more reason to sing out loud, so that no one can ignore how bad it sounds. Of course, I'll probably have to go with you to beg for permission to hold another event...'

'Haha... alright, let's try again?'

'Let's try again. All you need to do is open your mouths. Leave the rest to me.'

Tonia rarely participated in her class's creative showcases while at school. Her notebooks were filled with strange symbols, arrows, and overlapping waveforms, but rarely complete melodies. Her classmates used instruments or song to create musical Arts, but she preferred a little audio recorder, carrying it through streets, markets, and old workshops, collecting those authentic sounds around her—the knocking of hammer on metal, the low humming of winds gliding past the eaves on a snowy night, or the screeching sound of trains braking as sparks fly. She broke the sounds down into fundamental vibrations, and attempted to recreate their texture and temperature with Arts. To most of her peers and teachers, it was an act of documentation, not creation, a mosaic lacking in soul. Tonia never argued. All she did was put away her device and walk down from the stage after each showcase with her head bowed, through scattered applause and silent skepticism from the crowd.

Years later, Tonia was in the Rhodes Island workshop, testing a piece of audio equipment. She knocked it lightly with a tuning fork, listening to the echoes bounce inside the casing. The monitor next to it flashed; the curved line on the screen fluctuated. In a split second, it looked just like the waves she wrote in her notebook in her youth.

Tonia gazed upon the curved line. Her fingertip stayed on the knob, as though trying to capture a familiar feeling—neither melody nor rhythm, but a position that gave her certainty that the sound belonged to her. The equipment hummed, and she bowed her head again to record the sound in her recorder. Tonia was not sure what she could eventually do with the collected sounds, but was in no hurry to answer the question.