For the scrappers, militiamen, and citizens of Sector 07, this was a day worth celebrating. The Machines had come for them, the forces of DespoRHado seemingly hung them out to dry. Yet they triumphed, and without a single casualty to boot. People would probably be partying late into the night, already making the most of the peace they’d earned, for however long it lasted. With that peace came a bounty of new material, carved from the wrecks of the fallen by the salvage corps. Later on, they could motor on over to the battlefield outside Detroit as well, where plenty of loot no doubt awaited in the aftermath of that much larger-scale struggle. While Susie soon found that these Machine parts were almost unilaterally a lot lower quality than her own, they would suffice for the cityfolk down here just fine. For them, things were looking up.
For the Seekers, however, it was a hollow victory. They might not have known the two fallen members of the Rust Crew all that well, but the death of any brave soul fighting for the sake of others hurt. The loss of Poppi, however, was a different story. Tora’s partner had been there from the very beginning, preceding each and every member of this team by a long shot in their quest through Galeem’s dominion. She had been an indispensable ally, sometimes an indomitable protector, sometimes a breathtaking force of nature, but always a friendly, helpful face. Some of the others took the news hard, especially Zenkichi, who seemed rather close to despair for a moment. Of course, even compared to everyone else combined, Tora was crushed. The Nopon refused to speak to anyone, accepting no sympathy and offering no information about what happened to her. That duty fell to Pit , and he recounted the events of their pursuit as best he could for Susie and the others. Though they wove a grim tale, it ended on a positive note: Tora’s stated intentions to save Poppi. His plans to create a cure for the logic virus, find Poppi again, and fix her up offered a ray of hope, but the clouds that hung over the assembly of heroes were terribly dark and thick. To Tora, it felt like the weight of the world.
Before much longer, Giovanna decided to make an executive decision. Victory or no victory, this border-line boneyard was a miserable place out in the open, cold and dreary, full of foul, industrial smells and harsh noises. Everyone was tired, sore, dehydrated, and wounded to some extent, either in body or soul. She couldn’t forget about her soaked clothes either, and the combination of stares and shivering were beginning to get old. They all could use a warm place to rest and, should they be of age, a stiff drink. Something she’d seen just that morning seemed like just the ticket.
“Let’s blow this joint already,” she announced to everyone, raising her voice. “You treating us, Clarke? How about Seventh Heaven?”
The engineer waved. “Good choice. I’ve got work to do, though. Just tell the boss to put it on my tab.”
Giovanna nodded. “Sounds good. Let’s move, everyone.” As the troop started to get underway, bound through the rest of Scrap Boulevard into the slums proper to reach the bar, she noticed one member failing to move. “You…coming, Tora?”
He did not respond. One hundred percent of his focus lay on his computer as he struggled furiously with the profound intricacies of the Logic Virus. Giovanna sighed; she couldn’t just leave the poor guy here. “Can someone carry him?”
As they prepared to move on, Pit’s mention of the Walkie Talkie spurred her to finally do something she very much didn’t want to know. “Don’t know if it’ll reach,” she muttered. “But I’ve got a way to get in touch with them.” On the way to Seventh Heaven, with the team’s situation settled for better or worse, she made a second call. This time she contacted Goldlewis, and they exchanged a few minutes’ worth of terse conversation catching one another up. Her expression had not gotten happier by the end of it, and as the group neared the bar she steeled herself to spill the beans.
Once inside, the Seekers were greeted by a jovial atmosphere. People here were happy that Sector 07 had lived to fight another day, and as with any good celebration, alcohol was a hot commodity. Some of the defenders who helped hold the robots off at Breaker were here, and among them Giovanna spotted Tifa of all people behind the bar. The black-haired young lady looked every bit as stunning and composed as she did when the team spotted her that morning, as if she hadn’t just spent a solid half an hour crushing machines like beer cans with her bare fists in a fearsome display of martial arts prowess. She filled up the patrons’ beers and crafted their cocktails with well-honed expertise, serving with a smile, and when any eligible Seeker approached for a drink they received a warmer smile than most. While Seventh Heaven didn’t feature the biggest menu, it did offer some simple foods, so the team could indulge in some late lunch after their hard-fought battle as well.
Uninterested in anything and everything but his work, even food, Tora sat himself down in the corner by the jukebox. Once everyone else situated themselves, Giovanna relayed what she’d heard. “We’ve got some bad news,” she told them flatly. “Goldlewis and his team met Sakura and Raz in the tunnels outside Sector 05 during the Psych-OSF operation. However…” The secret agent lowered her voice a touch. “By the time they arrived, Peach had been transformed…into an Other. They didn’t realize at first and fought her for a while, but people from Seiran teleported her away. Then they ran into Karen Travers -the biggest name in the OSF- who said the Psych-OSF is to blame and Seiran might be able to cure Peach.” She paused for a moment to let that sink in. “Goldlewis also said Karen warned him not to tell any non-Seekers about Peach’s ‘metamorphosis’. So…y’know, take that how you will.” If Giovanna had been on the fence about getting a drink before, she sure wasn’t anymore. Losing Poppi hurt, but Peach was the de-facto leader of the entire operation. Key word ‘was’. After what happened, was she gone forever? Could the Seekers bounce back from this? Well, they didn’t really have a choice, she supposed.
What a shitty day, she thought, waiting in grim silence for her drink.
Once the sandwiches had been distributed, Goldlewis took a seat in the kitchen-slash-dining room. With the windows beside the table, the presence of warm light versus the other half of the former clinic’s harsh technological blue, and the bedroom just an open door away, it formed the hideout’s most liveable space. After all that running around through both the Stilt Village outside Seiran’s reservoir and the labyrinthine tunnels themselves, not to mention the constant fighting, the big man was plumb tuckered out. He seated himself at the table for a much-needed breather, although he didn’t take any sandwiches himself. While he’d be the first to insist that the others needed to eat to keep their strength up, he ironically didn’t feel very hungry at all himself. Tempting as it might be to go out and buy a case of beer for the team, the veteran needed his wits about him to tackle the matter at hand, so he settled for nursing a cup of coffee as the Seekers began to grapple with the day’s events.
Blazermate launched the discussion with a flurry of questions. She seemed pretty overloaded by what happened, and Goldlewis couldn’t blame her. That collapsed parking garage -or whatever it had been- had been mayhem from start to finish, even when it had just been a fight with a big Other. Sina’s revelation forced the Seekers to switch gears right in the middle of a dangerous battle, with almost a dozen competing voices piercing the monster’s smokescreen as it continued to attack. Then the thing that had been Peach was suddenly spirited away, by members of the OSF’s Seiran garrison no less, and the Septentrion First Class showed up to drop a cluster bomb of poignant information that, in the end, just led to more questions. It all happened so fast, and Goldlewis could barely keep it all in mind himself.
Benedict summed it up, though. This wasn’t just random criminal or terrorist activity, no way. Something big was afoot. Luka’s analogy back in the underground nexus had been spot-on: Goldlewis felt like a fisherman aboard a boat in stormy waters, stricken by fear at the vague sight of something massive stirring beneath the surface. And right now, that something looked like Psych-OSF, although maybe not quite in the way Benedict described. “It ain’t the OSF actin’ independently from the Administration,” he pointed out after a slurp of coffee, nodding at Geralt. “It’s Seiran, and Travers it seems like, goin’ against the rest of Psych-OSF. An internal division…” That realization invited all sorts of conjecture, and none of them good. If the Scarlet Guardians, arguably Midgar’s mightiest armed force, were splitting into factions, that could mean a whole lot of trouble, with a whole lot of crossfire for innocent people to get caught up in.
Like Peach. “Travers seemed mighty pissed about what happened. Maybe it’s the OSF proper that’s behind this metamorphin’ business–and why Seiran’s goin’ rogue in the first place?”
The reality of what Karen called ‘metamorphosis’ was one that deeply unsettled everybody. As Geralt pointed out, the ability for any faction -much less agents of a corrupt Administration- to permanently turn people into Others out of the blue, meant that anyone could be a target. The only question was how they did it, but only Sakura, Sina, and maybe Raz could even begin to answer that. The possibilities didn’t end there, either. Geralt even offered an outlandish hypothesis that this metamorphosis might be the Origin of all others, and Goldlewis quickly stepped in to set him straight before that could inspire any terror.
“Unless they’re somehow flyin’ thousands of folks all the way up to the Extinction Belt, turnin’ ‘em, and throwin’ em out across the city on the regular without anyone noticin’, that can’t be it,” he declared, pretty confident in his reasoning. That said, when it came to explaining the difference, he drew a blank. Other biology was an utterly foreign field to him. “Ain’t got a finger-lickin’ clue,” he admitted to his chagrin. So far he’d assumed the Extinction Belt was the source of the Others in the same way the Astral Plane was the source of the Chimeras, but the eyewitnesses' testimonies -and even the word ‘metamorphosis’- implied a transformation. “But if Others come from the Extinction Belt, maybe ‘they’ reverse-engineered the process?”
Some guesses were made about the motivations behind both sides. Even as the former Secretary of Defense, Goldlewis couldn’t say. With Shinra at the helm, his hand-picked cabinet on the job, and Konoe in particular as the veteran’s replacement, this Administration was a far cry from Vernon’s. One thing Geralt mentioned did seem like a certainty, though: that Karen Travers planned to act. “That man’s the strongest doggone psychic in Midgar, and a candidate for strongest, period. If anyone can get some kind o’ ball rollin’, I’m guessin’ it’s him.” He looked over at Blazermate. “That’s who the masked man was, by the by.”
External conflicts weren’t the end of the Seekers’ problems, though. Geralt had done some reflection, catalyzed by the spirit-suppressing light of the Cleansers in the subway, and spoke about his experience. “That ain’t good,” Goldlewis remarked when he was done, aptly -if a little offhandedly- summarizing the situation. “I never messed with one o’ them spirits myself, but Giovanna did. She didn’t change all that much, but she changed, and I noticed. Both the differences, and the fact she didn’t notice herself.” If these were changes Geralt didn’t anticipate, Goldlewis could only hope that the team could get a better idea of what they were getting into with fusions going forward. “Y’are whatcha eat I guess, so I reckon y’all oughta be careful,” he added unhelpfully.
When Karin thanked him for the food, he nodded absently. “You’re welcome, miss.” While some of the others were devastated by what happened to Peach, Goldlewis was no stranger to loss, and only a little less than a stranger to the princess herself, so he viewed her loss through a more practical lens. One casualty wasn’t that bad in the greater scheme of things, but the loss of a leader was a huge blow, and as Karin pointed out, losing defusion was a big deal too. In fact, he couldn’t help but wonder if Peah’s metamorphosis wasn’t a coincidence. How this happened didn’t seem as important as
why. Sakura wanted to know as much as anyone, but her plan to find out more from the perpetrator had one fatal error: a detail she overlooked.
“...You mean, this one?” Goldlewis placed the spirit of the sniper on the table. When Karen threw it at the Seekers’ proverbial feet, likely as a peace offering, the veteran had been the one to pick it up. “We ain’t gettin’ much outta her like this, sadly.” He tugged at his whiskers. “...Still, the fact she’s with Psych-OSF is a start. No way in hell she was actin’ alone. ‘Why Peach’--that’s the million-dollar question.” Hopefully, Karin was right, and as long as the Seekers kept pushing forward, they’d find the answers -and the Guardian- they sought.
Before the conversation went any further, Goldlewis heard a magical tone, and reached up to answer his communication glyph. “It’s Giovanna! Scuse me a li’l bit while I take this.” He pushed up from the table and strove powerfully past the kitchen table, farther into the hideout. The SOU members engaged in a quick, concise relay of facts, with no time spared on sentimentality. After a few minutes, Goldlewis returned. He stood by the table, arms crossed, and gave his report to the waiting, expectant team.
“Good news is that Gio, Zenkichi, and the rest of ‘em succeeded in drivin’ off a Machine invasion. Workin’ with the locals, they managed to keep Sector 07 safe.” He took a deep breath through his nose. “Bad news is…well, they had a casualty, too. Poppi got infected by some kinda Machine virus. Flew deep into the Valley of Ruin, fell into a lake or somethin’. Details ain’t exactly clear. Tora’s beside himself, of course. Gio says he won’t do anythin’ but try and crack the virus to find a cure. The others are fine, and they picked up a new feller named Partitio on the way, but they’re takin’ the loss pretty hard. Headin’ over here after a stop in at a local bar, Gio reckons.”
A few minutes after that, something else confronted the team. They heard a knock at the door, but when they answered it, nobody was there. Instead, they found only a nondescript, honey-yellow shipping envelope Given the day’s events, even a sight as mundane as that got Goldlewis’ heart racing. “Careful!” he warned. “Could be anythin’ in there. Let’s do this right.” With utmost caution, and Goldlewis standing by with his energy shield ready, the package was felt. Nothing seemed to be in it other than a handful of plastic cards, similar to credit cards, and possibly some cloth. Given the unlikelihood of some sort of weapon, Goldlewis went ahead and opened it. Inside he found six plastic press badges, already imprinted with pertinent information. “Shinra v. Armstrong Final Presidential Debate,” he read aloud, both eyebrows raised. “Date, today. Time, nine o’ clock. Location, the Dendenmille Showcase Theater, Sector 06.” He turned a badge over in his hands, noting the bar and QR codes. “Sounds like someone wants us to be there.”
He put it down on the table beside the others, then tried to gauge the thoughts of the team. “I had half a mind to go myself some way or another, owin’ to who’s gonna be there. This just makes it easy. It’s a risk, but one I think we oughta take.” If the others had opinions on that, he’d be happy to hear them.
“Still, it’s a good seven hours ‘til then, at least,” he mentioned at the tail end of the discussion. “Surely there’s somethin’ we can do in the meantime.”
Hearts raced and chests heaved as the soldiers’
black armored truck got underway, burning rubber as it raced to leave the scene of the collapse -not to mention the Other’s metamorphosis- in its dust. Even as today’s extractions went, this had been an especially dangerous one, with plenty of confused, angry combatants on hand, and that barely scratched the surface of its abnormalities, or the day’s horrors in general. The back of the truck buzzed with conversation, totally oblivious to the presence of any stowaways, as it rumbled down an
underground highway in a vast subterranean space beneath Midgar.
“Mercy me, did you see the size of that thing!?” One of the soldiers exclaimed in a husky female voice. She reached up and removed her helmet, allowing a huge amount of thick hair to fall down all the way to her thighs, a sky blue to cotton candy pink gradient. Her skin was pale, almost gray, and narrow white pupils stood out against black sclera. “Biggest one so far today for certain, the poor soul. You going to be alright, Crenshaw?”
The tall-headed man who banished the Other with his Transport powers lay sprawled against the front wall, his head lolled back. “...No,” he gasped after a moment. “I’m…completely wiped out. Can’t do any more. The rest…are on their own..”
“Damn bastards, how the hell can they do this to anyone, let alone their own!” snarled one of the brawny men who’d helped grab the one called Crenshaw. His scarred lips were curled, and his fists shook with anger, as if he couldn’t wait to tear the ones responsible limb from limb. “At least we have our answer. If they’re so scared of a Seiran rebellion they’re willin’ to go to lengths like these to put us down, we’ve got no choice. We’ll give ‘em all-out war!” The others voiced their vehement agreement in reply.
Another man had removed his helmet, his long, well-kept, gray-streaked hair complimenting a trimmed, point beard. “We can’t do anything just yet,” he cautioned them. “Especially after today. We’re scattered and broken.” He gave a dry smile. “Got to hand it to them. They’re every bit as well-organized and ruthlessly efficient as we feared. A massive operation like that, called in and set up in what, two days? Didn’t even give us time to pack.”
“How much do you think, Angelo?” the pastel-haired woman asked quietly. “Our losses, I mean.”
The patrol captain sighed. “Aside from the subway system itself? It’s impossible to say.”
“It’s terrifying,” a small female soldier piped up in a squeaky voice, clearly shaken. “The whole thing. We came down here in the first place because the Others would keep people away, but once they realized, a ‘clean up’ was the perfect excuse.” She held her head with both hands. “First the scouts to metamorphose entire squads, filling the tunnels with even more Others. Then the main platoons for extermination. God…”
Angelo put a hand on her shoulder. “Easy, Bennie. We saved as many as we could.”
The big man from earlier closed his eyes, leaning against the truck’s wall. “We shouldn’t be fooling ourselves, what we’re doing isn’t saving them. Alive or dead, they’re still Others at the end of the day. That isn’t livin’. We’ll have to step up shipments to even keep ‘em lucid, for pete’s sake.”
“Then we’ll find a way. The least we can do is keep them as safe and comfortable as we can until someone finds a cure,” the first woman murmured sadly.
Stern-faced, Angelo crossed his arms. “We’ll get there, no matter what it takes. Instead of doom and gloom, we should be focusing on what we have, which is all thanks to Crenshaw here. If he didn’t defect too, we wouldn’t even have a glimmer of hope.”
“It’s nothing. After seeing for myself what Suoh was becoming, there was no choice.” Finally recovered somewhat, Crenshaw hauled himself up onto one of the benches, holding on tight as the truck went around a corner. “I just hope none of the poor initiates from last night got caught up in all this,” he sighed. “First day on the job, and faced with their own allies turned into monsters. What a nightmare.”
Bennie glanced at Angelo, her eyebrows squeezed together. “Are…is Bruno taking us to Supernatural Life, then?”
He shook his head. “No. There’s no telling what people the OSF has snooping around, and we can’t take even the slightest chance of accidentally compromising it to the enemy. We’re regrouping at an emergency rally point to take stock of the situation, then dispersing. They need to believe they squashed us.”
The long-haired woman smiled bleakly. “Good, since that’s exactly what happened. If half of the survivors haven’t deserted by tomorrow morning, I’ll be shocked.” The comment elicited a nervous titter from Bennie.
“Patience, Luminita,” Angelo said, trying to keep a stiff upper lip. “We still have Karen. Once he makes his move, we’ll have all the people we need. The truth will set them free.”
After a while longer, the truck came to a stop at the rally point at the edge of the huge hollow, a
collapsed expressway fortified into a sort of outpost on the borders of the Sectors 05 and 06 undergrounds. There were a number of Seiran garrison members there, and more would trickle in over the course of the next few hours -many on foot- before heading upside through secret, roundabout passages, mostly to their homes. At one point, a trooper arrived with a half-conscious
Booger Sabbat suspended in the air by Aerokinesis, claiming it was his brother. Crenshaw, who had stayed behind with Angelo to recuperate while the rest of the squad dispersed, set back his recovery with the Transport of another Other. Then he laid back down to rest again, even more dispirited than when he started.
While at first the atmosphere of Terminal seemed more creepy than cozy with all the dead around, Nadia quickly got used to it. Though a little dim in here, it was warmly lit, with hanging lanterns and lightbulbs suspended inside urn-shaped baskets. The skeletons and zombies in here seemed to be friendly. For most of them, the coffee seemed to be an afterthought to the simple act of conversing; eager to chat, they talked with the eagerness of people eating their last meals, or perhaps saying their last words. All these living dead, the sort of monsters that a typical hero might kill without a second thought, just seemed like…ordinary people. Well, give or take a few unnatural eccentricities. Still, Nadia couldn’t help but be interested, both in the dead and whatever stories they might have to tell. Her eyes shone and her ears pointed every which way as she looked and listened in.
An
undead blademaster recounted old war stories with a
long-dead king, while nearby a a soft-spoken, purple-robed
skelevangelist engaged a
smart-mouthed skeleton in a friendly debate about the gods. Colorful
Mariachis occupied most of the bar seats, downing espresso like tequila as they joked and laughed. A trio of zombie siblings,
Rottytops,
Abner, and
Poe Cadaver, sat together on the second floor regaling anyone who’d listen with incredible tales about the lands they’d seen from their family caravan as long as they got coffees in return. Nadia spent a while listening to them, often smiling at the trio’s dynamic of energetic-but-mischievous, rough-but-responsible, and polite-but-weird. Two unusual zombies, the good-natured, huge-clawed
Hsien-ko and the wise-cracking, guitar-strumming
Lord Raptor, seemed to be on a date of some sort. Even
Sargassos and
Skuskets floated up by the lights around the second story, listening to the Cadavers or chattering amongst themselves.
The constant drone of the voices from all over melded together with the ever-present roar of rain outside, creating a shroud of peaceful white noise that Nadia found very relaxing. On top of that comfortable ambiance played the music of an old gramaphone, the soft, wistful, and hauntingly melodious voice of the singer, and her long, slow guitar notes, floating around and through the silent feral. Sitting there, with a warm coffee in her hand and the sounds of calm filling her, Nadia felt wonderfully at peace.
”We’re not dead
Suspended in a place of hush, not upset
Just puzzled by the sense of bemusement
It’s amusing losing all of our direction, now we’re lost…”Nadia wasn’t sure how long she spent sitting there in Terminal, her tails gently swishing and curling behind her. She didn’t bother to count the seconds, and she did her best not to worry about P, or his powers, or the other Consuls, or the long road ahead. When the time came, her spirit would be shining bright, her smile fortified and made ever-present by moments like this. Her underwater siesta in Heaven’s Edge, had been one of these too, and the time she just stood there on a high-up boardwalk in Little Innsmouth, just feeling the heartbeat of humanity. Just the ambient feeling of life around her -even from the dead- filled her soul back up whenever anything got her down. This was what she was fighting for.
Of course, everything was better with company. At length Nadia found herself joined by a lady of stunning beauty, and at first the feral really didn’t recognize her. Only after a couple seconds did things click, enough commonalities gleaned from the woman’s appearance to hazard a guess. “Oh, Primrose!” she exclaimed with a slight laugh. “Eheh, I…I mean, you look good!” Having never seen the dancer before they made one another’s acquaintance in Twilight Town yesterday, she’d never gotten the chance to think of Primrose as anything but a brawny, primarily brunette street performer, clad in bright red, white, and gold. The sight of a high-society socialite, the pinnacle of elegance in a murky red dress and black feathers set against ginger-blonde hair, had therefore thrown her for a loop. “How’s it goin’? Since we last met, I think I became a cof-feline!” Primrose’s new changes brought Nadia’s mind back around to something she’d been considering earlier, and once the dancer received her coffee, she engaged her in conversation.
“I’m purr-etty sure I used to hate water,” she began, propping up her head with her arm. “Y’know, like a cat? But ever since fusin’ with the Oceanid and Massachusetts, I’ve been all about it. When I’m in the water, it’s like I’m in my element. Just feels natural.” She narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brows slightly. “But I know it ain’t. Makes me wonder, how much else about me isn’t…well, me? I can’t tell. Even havin’ three tails only felt weird for, like, a minute. There’s…uh, I don’t remember, but I’m pretty sure there’s a word for not feelin’ right in your own body. But it’s like this fusion smooths everythin’ over. Better than feelin’ weird about it, I guess, but we don’t wanna lose sight over who we are, right?” She shrugged, smiling. “Right meow though, the thing I’m mostly losin’ track of is everythin’ I can do. My powers are already super open-ended, and now I’ve got a couple different Strikers on top of ‘em, plus these new weapons, and don’t even get me started on the Copycats! Whenever I gotta coordinate somethin’ with ‘em it feels like my poor brain’s gonna combust.” After a hearty chuckle she took a swig of coffee. “Gonna need to sort my shit out if we’re goin’ after more bozos like P, right? Can’t be satisfied with the consul-ation prize”
Eventually the Koopa Troop happened to pass by. Between the music, the rain, and all the undead talking in here it was pretty loud, so rather than chase after them, Nadia took aim and launched one of her arms on a rocket of blood. It sailed past the Koopas and plopped down on the ground in front of them, then turned around to point behind them. When they looked in the indicated direction they found the feral waving them over, and motioning for one of them to collect her arm for her on their way over. “Hey, guys!” she hailed them. Though grateful for some one-on-one conversation with Primrose in the cafe’s tranquility, she didn’t mind more company. Hopefully Bowser wasn’t too big for this place, and the kids didn’t make a scene. “Some of you went explorin’ or somethin’ earlier, right? Well get this: my map got bigger!” She spread out an
updated map of the Under on the table for everyone to look at. If her break was coming to an end, then it was time to plan out the team’s next steps with its self-proclaimed leader.
