Jason and the normal friendship

Jason, I need you at the lab ASAP. This is non-negotiable. I will leak THAT to the police should you fail to arrive promptly.

I blinked a few times at the notification on my phone. Layered over my pornography was a text message that seemed entirely foreign to me. In all the years that I knew Mitsuru she had never let me into her "lab". Even when I offered to help move her equipment in there she said she couldn't let me pollute the air with my smell. A sentiment weakened when she hired a moving company anyway. Furthermore, I had no idea what the fuck THAT was. I dismissed the notion as I went back to what I was doing what I was doi-

Jason, cease your masturbating at once, I need you at the lab, NOW!

And a gif of what appeared to be a chibi Mitsuru dancing appeared on my screen, a novelty I would've appreciated were it not for the fact that she has evidently hacked my phone and has locked me out of using it until I go to her lab, if you could even call it that. As outrageous as this was, it seemed oddly typical for her. One time she installed ransomware on my computer until I gave her a video game back that I borrowed. And pay her with interest.

I sighed and began getting dressed. Though I cobbled together clothes I had lying around I'm somewhat particular about my fashion. I only wear dark colors and adorn it with darker accents. Various grays, browns, dark greens, purples, and blacks line my closet, and I haphazardly mix them around. My phone buzzes with an additional message from Mitsuru. I pan the camera around me to show I'm dressed, and she takes down the gif as I leave my apartment.

Mitsuru's "lab" is a run-down warehouse in the warehouse district of town. She converted a small portion of it into a home, which is the only part I've ever been in, but she specifically said I'm to enter her lab. I pulled up to the dump she lived in and proceeded to knock on the big warehouse doors, looking around for bums or Cujo or something.

Mitsuru is a genius, and likes making sure everyone (or maybe just me, I've never seen her with anyone else really) knows. While I was getting my Bachelor's degree she was getting her 4th PHD alongside me. That was her idiosyncrasy. She wanted to brag to me, so she threw her weight around so I'd get into an Ivy League school alongside her. She's a true friend... it just felt so backhanded sometimes. I expected to hear her talk out of an intercom and ask me for some bizarre password.

What I did not expect was the turret.

A large machine gun appeared out of the seemingly ordinary wall of the steel building, causing me to nearly shit myself. The door then proceeded to open next to it, revealing my """""""friend""""""". Mitsuru is short, like 5'2" or something. A feature further exaggerated by her wearing flipflops and (faded) pink pajamas, like the kind an eccentric schoolgirl might wear on her shool's pajama day. Finally she wore a white labcoat, and I use "white" a bit liberally. That thing might as well be an apron with how stained it is, between the machine grease and what appear to be stains from wiping various snack residue on it. Her sickly blond hair was disheveled and her glasses poorly fit her plain face. Her actions belie her NEET-like appearance.

"You're late, Jason Isaacstein. Lives could have been lost if you took much longer. I had to make the traffic lights green for you because you drive so slow." I didn't know if she was being serious.

What I did know is I was somewhere between pissed and annoyed, "Really, Mitsuru? A turret? Why?!?"

She sighed and began walking inside, revealing the inside of the lab for the first time. "I already told you, to punish you for being late. You should know my methods well enough by now that I wouldn't invite you into my lab unless it were urgent. I need to train you to come immediately when called. Things have changed." She may be a narcissist, but she would've apologized by this point if she were joking. Sensing a lull in the conversation, I took in my surroundings. The inside of the lab reflected the outside. It was rundown and had various mechanical parts everywhere with brandless machining. No doubt Mitsuru made some of these tools herself.

We arrived at the back of the warehouse, wherein there was an extremely conspicuous phone booth. Literally, a classic red phone booth with a payphone inside. Mitsuru turned toward me, looking proud of herself.

"Now, Jason, I'm sure you're curious as to why there's a phone booth here. Well, if you must kn-"

"It's an elevator," I interrupted her.

"What?!?! How could you tell? I covered up the railing perfectly!" She seemed genuinely confused. "Regardless," she said, clearing her throat, "Yes, this is an elevator, and it descends into the various lab levels properly. This ground floor, as well as my home, are merely fronts."

She entered the phone booth and gestured me to squeeze in with her. She dialed 1337 and the phone booth began to move. We passed through several floors, implying this lab of hers is multiple storeys deep. I observes pristine labs, bizarre observational equipment, and, most ominously, a floor which was just a concrete hallway. And that's where we stopped.

"Since you deduced the nature of my elevator, Jason, perchance you understand the nature of the lab entire?"

I decided not to think about it too hard. "You have some serious top-secret research going on in here and keep multiple defense systems (like a turret) and layers of camouflage to prevent people from finding out about it."

"Yes, and no," she replied in an unusual straightforward manner "Yes, I am doing exactly that. My research can't be wantonly picked up by some corporation or government without cluing me in, but also..." she looked... unusual. Scared? Guilty? "Jason, I messed up," she said meekly, as we walked through the concrete hallway towards a mechanized security door. She scanned her finger prints and looked back at me. "I really, really messed up."

The door opened and revealed... something. We entered directly into some kind of viewing room. An observation deck like one might sit in while watching Mission Control in an old NASA movie. There were some controls everywhere and scattered snack bags, likely from Mitsuru sitting here, observing, and eating. But what the observation deck was looking onto was... incomprehensible.

It was a black hole. Well, not really, even I knew that much. Black holes have gravity, are bigger than stars, and a bunch of other shit I couldn't think about at the time. But the thing I was looking at looked like every CGI depiction of a black hole I had ever seen. It was a massive (about the size of a truck) sphere that seemed to bend reality around it. I saw light orbiting it. I saw things that... I think were behind it, and the longer I stared at it, the more I realized I wasn't staring at it. No matter how much I attempted to look at it, I was only looking at its edges. It was as if this was a hole in reality that the developers wouldn't let me look at.

On the ground around the black hole was the corpse of an animal I had never seen before, a huge, horned, scaly beast the size of a moose and riddled with bullet holes.

"Mitsuru..." I asked, all hostility from the turret having left my mind, "What did you do?"

"Well, you see..." she chuckled meekly, "I was trying to get you a girlfriend, and got a bit ahead of myself."