Draco: As per usual, my first few chapters are coming in quick. We'll see how long this particular starting surge lasts. Quick warning; we're going to start off with several chapters of mostly Starlet-unrelated backstory just to establish a few things.
Characters, weapons, origins, locations © Square Enix. Monsters © Akihisa Ikeda.
Now Is The Winter
"I hate the cold."
The squadron of soldiers on the march through the icy snowfields was in a generally foul mood. At the head of the troop, the two co-commanders, known as Biggs and Wedge, were very irritable. Wedge was lacking in behaviour to show for it; Biggs, not so much.
"Oh, come on," Wedge mused, trying to lighten his partner up. "You're in seven layers of warm clothing and you put on your skinsuit earlier, it's nothing you can't put up with for another ten minutes."
Biggs growled. "Knock knock."
Impressed by his compatriot's sudden change in attitude, Wedge gladly played along. "Who's ther-"
"I hate the cold," Biggs interrupted.
Wedge sighed in exasperation, glancing back at the squadron - every soldier bore a face that said enough of this. "You're not the only one," Wedge muttered. "Don't worry. We get to Narshe, we'll warm right up - one way or another."
Biggs sighed. "Fine," he mused, "but I'm not taking point in this weather anymore."
They could see the settlement ahead of them. The city of Narshe, deep in the cold northern regions, was their destination, always with a lookout ready to approach anyone newly come to its borders, and as the soldiers continued to march on, they found themselves approached by a guard, warmly bundled. Though his hand was buried in cloth, from it protruded a sharpened cane. "Halt," he called.
Wedge raised a hand, causing his company to slow to a stop; then he and Biggs stepped forward, each of their hands on their hips - where a pair of revolvers lay waiting.
The guard looked over them. "Your faces..."
"You do not recognize us, by our appearances," Biggs mused.
Suspicion was to be expected. His left ear, and Wedge's right ear, were tapered to points; their other ears were ringed with spikes of flesh. Another such spike protruded from each of their jaws, pointing to right from left, and left from right, respectively; above Biggs' left eye was a triangular edge that buried in his hair, and a similar edge was raised over Wedge's left eye. The soldiers, likewise, bore faces covered in fleshly distortions.
Anyone would look at their faces and say they were monsters.
Mostly because the rest of their bodies were bundled for the chill.
The guard shook his head. "I do not, " he said firmly.
"And because you do not recognize our appearances, you suspect us," Wedge continued.
"I do," the guard admitted.
Biggs and Wedge exchanged glances. "Were we to say 'monstrel'," Biggs mused, turning back to the guard, "what would that name bring to your mind?"
The guard raised his cane at his side. "That would bring to mind a desecration," he replied.
Wedge smirked. "And were we to say we bore that identity...?"
"I would see no reason not to sound the alarm," the guard insisted, reaching for a nearby switch with his empty hand.
A moment of pause; their gazes locked on one another.
Then an incredibly irritated - yet incredibly relieved - sigh emerged from both leaders; Biggs raised his left hand, and Wedge raised his right, fingers splayed, before turning the palms towards one another. A collective groan sounded across the squadron as they cast their packs to the ground.
"Lady Luck smiles at us," Wedge sighed, reaching for the sharpened ear on his right side. With a minor wince, he pulled - and the tapered edge pulled itself away, revealing the ordinary, unadorned ear that it had obscured. "We were afraid Narshe had already been occupied. We're from the Empi-"
He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence; for the guard raised his empty hand towards the soldier, and a bolt of fire launched from his palm, slamming into Wedge and sending him and his seven layers of clothing flying back. Biggs swore, leaping back as the guard swept his cane through air only just vacated - and his bundled clothing began to burn, revealing a jet-black suit and tie beneath it, and five tails rising around at his waist.
"He's a yoko!" Biggs roared as the troops pulled themselves to their feet. "Shiva maneuvers, NOW!"
The men reached for their backs, drawing and loading a collection of machine guns as the yoko at the city entrance cast his cane to the snow. Biggs leapt away as his soldiers panned out, so as to not strike their compatriots as they began to fire at the monster before them; yet the flaming fox only lashed his tails forward to catch the bullets.
He was genuinely impressed when the bullets began to freeze the flame of his tails in place, leaving his movement forward hindered by his own body.
The soldiers emptied their clips into his tails, freezing them nearly to the point where they met his humanoid flesh; the moment their weapons clicked empty, each soldier released his trigger, pried his empty clip into the snow, and pulled a fresh Shiva clip from his belt to load into his weapon. Biggs himself had a rifle in his hand, having just loaded a Shiva round, and he took three paces to the side so as to get a good shot at the yoko's center mass.
"Regiments disguised as monsters," the fox mused, his gaze on his tails, "and armed with weapons for specific targets..." He turned to Biggs. "You must be Gestahlian troops."
"What the hell is wrong with you!?" Biggs demanded. "You turning away other monsters?!"
"Monstrels are a desecration upon monsterdom," the yoko said to him, his voice trembling with anger, "and not welcome into this occupation. Were you to bear that identity, I would sound the alarm - for monstrels are the very definition of diamonds scattered in a pile of gravel, and I would rather not take the risk that a diamond withstand my blows. But humans are still less welcome here - yet I need not sound the alarm to such opponents."
He raised his hand towards his tails - and the ice upon his tails instantaneously melted as he lashed his tails back.
"For no human, no matter his armaments, is a match for a yoko in the winter of a war!"
The soldiers began to fire upon him; yet his hand lashed forward, and a stream of fire lashed out before him, melting their bullets and freeing the coolant within. The wall of ice that forged upon the vanguard of his flame melted against the wave, and the troops quickly abandoned their weapons and leapt away as the flames melted six feet of snow beneath where their feet had been.
No sooner had he relaxed his stream of flame than Biggs took the opportunity to fire his rifle. The Shiva round caught his chest, and he gave a shout of pain as the ice quickly wrapped his torso. The men quickly raised their weapons again, this time in a staggered fire; the troops at front emptied what remained of their clips into the yoko's body, spreading the chill further across his flesh, before falling to their knees to reload, clearing the path for the next set to fire.
When the last group had emptied their clips, the yoko was frozen in what was nearly a block of ice.
Biggs kept his weapon, reloaded, braced to fire for ten seconds; then he lowered it and stepped towards his fallen partner. When he had neared Wedge's still form facedown in the snow, he prodded it with his foot.
No response.
He nudged it again. "Wedge, get up."
Still no response.
"Come on," he echoed, "you're in seven layers of warm clothing and you put on your skinsuit earlier, it's nothing you can't take."
Wedge chuckled, rolling over - and revealing the yoko's blast had burned a clean hole through five layers of fire-retardant winter garments. "Just about," he admitted, pulling himself to his feet. Glancing at the frozen yoko, he mused, "The Shiva rounds worked."
"Only just," Biggs countered. "We'll have to tell the techies to get a stronger coolant if we wanna-"
A scream of melting ice caused the two of them and the rest of their squadron to turned. The yoko's encasement was melting from the inside, and as Biggs raised his rifle again the yoko reached towards the co-commanders with two fingers extended to form a finger gun.
The commander fired.
The demon fox fired.
The inferno melted the bullet's casing and the coolant within before it had a chance to freeze the fire, and the blaze continued towards Biggs; the soldier had only time to open his mouth, a scream forming in his lungs, before the flame connected with his face and his cranium melted, the liquified bone flying in every direction.
"Biggs!" Wedge's roar was filled with horror, even as he grabbed the weapon before it could hit the ground, raising it towards the yoko; yet the fox had already fired another bolt, which seared through the hole in the first five layers, burned through the last two, and tore through his heart.
And then blazed out the back of the seven layers.
Wedge was suspended in place before falling to one side, landing upon his partner as the soldiers, panicked, began to fire - knowing they stood not a snowball's chance in hell.
+x+x+x+
"Data back from the troops sent to Narshe."
A heavy sigh emerged from the man sitting at a desk in the weapons lab. "Automatic, or manual?" His voice was heavy with knowing depression.
The messenger set the file upon his desk. "Automatic, as per usual," he replied in a like tone.
Emperor Gestahl, leader of the Gestahlian Empire, could only nod solemnly for the messenger to depart as he picked up the file. The war between mankind and monsterdom had been going on for years now, and they had reached what the Emperor considered to be the "winter" of the war. His family had long classed its wars by seasons; spring when the war begins to bud, winter once full conflict has been reached, autumn if and when it turns sour, summer if and when it turns sweet.
This particular war had been in winter for a full year - and was growing no warmer. Every attempt for mankind to fight back against the monsters had ended with great unfavourably. Other armies had tried armaments of increasing power; but Gestahl and his scientists continued to attempt new methods, weapons specialized for each monster on which they had information.
Not power nor strategy had yet borne any fruit.
He looked over the files for a long moment before casting them on his desk for the next passing lab hand to pick up. Each soldier was outfitted with a hidden camera upon their uniforms, so as to gather data on their opponents even should their bearers fall in combat - yet even with this, they had been able to get little more than scraps of information.
"The war's autumn will be upon us before long," the Emperor mused grimly to no one.
The door nearby swung open, and Gestahl turned to see an ever-welcome face step into the lab. "Father, are you in here?"
"My son," he called, "what brings you here?"
The young Gestahl shrugged, approaching the desk at which his father sat. "How are things coming along?" he asked.
"Not well," the Emperor confessed, turning back to the file. "Everything we develop - none of it stands a chance."
A grim silence filled the air at that observation.
"Say, Father..."
The Emperor turned to him. "What is it?"
"Humans... we don't stand a chance against monsters." Young Gestahl turned to his father. "Do we?"
"No," the Emperor admitted grimly. "We do not."
Another pause.
"Well..." Young Gestahl held his teeth against his lip for a moment. "What if we were to fight them... with monsters?"
Now, that was unexpected, if nothing else. "What are you saying?" the Emperor asked.
"Perhaps, if we were to capture monsters - any monsters - we might be able to stand a chance," young Gestahl explained. "Imprison them, find some way to put their abilities to our use. Then we work our way up. If we-"
"The risks you're talking about are astronomical," Emperor Gestahl reminded him. "We would be more than vulnerable if they were to turn on us in the field of battle."
"Do we have another choice?" young Gestahl countered. "If we don't do something, they'll overpower mankind as a whole."
The Emperor shook his head. "We cannot," he insisted. "I'm certain that, given enough time, we'll be able to devise something to counter these creatures."
Young Gestahl winced. "We may not have that time."
"The alternative is too risky," the Emperor replied. "I'm sorry, son, but we cannot."
A long moment passed; then young Gestahl turned and departed from the lab, leaving his father deep in thought.
+x+x+x+
"Alert! Monstrous presence detected in Epsilon Sector! Identities unconfirmed! Defensive units, move out! Alert! Monstrous presence..."
The advantage to having the Emperor for a father is the ability to position oneself wherever, whenever, without question. Young Gestahl, intent on studying their opponents up close, had always accompanied the soldiers stations as defense for the city of Vector. On the true field of war, mankind had won no battles (unless sniping the succubus leader when she had called for the town of Maranda to surrender qualified as a battle); but when it came to home defense, humans had been capable of nearly matching the monsters - and none were better at matching the monsters than the Gestahlian Empire.
The Epsilon Sector housed the everyday businesses for the people of Vector - grocery, garments, and bars - and it was at the doors to one of the bars that the soldiers found the monstrous attackers. It was astonishingly small for an attack group; only three, and women at that. Young Gestahl was at the lead of one set of soldiers as they approached the group head-on, with two other units pinning them from ether side.
"Only three?" Gestahl murmured. Then, realizing what had happened; "It must be a diversion." Turning to the nearest soldier, he shouted, "Put the squadron for Iota Sector on alert. Rear troops, take guard!"
The back half of each set quickly turned, weapons prepared to fire on any monsters that might take form, as Gestahl turned his attention back to the monsters. One of the girls, who seemed significantly younger than the others, was making no effort to disguise herself; a pointed hat and a rod tipped with a crescent moon made her stand out as a witch. Another girl was less obvious to unattentive eyes, with a lollipop in her mouth; her hair was the only giveaway, the unnatural icy blue of an abominable snowgirl. The third girl looked nearly human; but her figure was impossible, and her very presence seemed drawing, the only indications that she was a succubus.
The succubus and snowgirl were back-to-back; the witch had her wand before her as she glared right at Gestahl's set of soldiers
The Emperor's son held his hand out to one soldier, who handed him a six-shot revolver; Ghestal took two steps forward, levelling the weapon on the witch - who seemed to be the youngest.
"You are surrounded, and a thousand bullets are braced to fire should you make the slightest offensive action," he called to the girls. "Witch, put your wand down."
Slowly, the girl at the front reached down, setting her wand on the ground.
"Snowgirl, remove the candy from your mouth, slowly."
The girl of blue hair reached for her lollipop, drawing it from her mouth - revealing it to be cherry-red - and held it in her hand.
"All of you, put your hands in the air."
With the slowest of movements, the girls raised their arms skyward.
Ghestal beckoned for his soldiers to maintain their stance while he stepped towards the girls, his revolver still raised. "Pretty young to be fighting in a war," he mused. "Either you're a diversion for a real attack... or you're kids goofing off."
"Would you believe me if I said we were here looking for dates?" the succubus mused.
The witch elbowed her in the side, only to panic and duck her head as her hands went back skyward. When no one fired, a shaky breath passed through her lips.
Gestahl shook his head. "What are you doing here?"
"We thought we could sneak in," the witch replied, "and break this army from the inside. Didn't expect you to be so defended."
A curious hum passed through young Gesthal's lips. "Cocky little things, aren't you?"
"Tell that to the soldier in the front row," the succubus mused, beckoning her head towards the troops she was facing. A couple snickers were heard in that direction, but no one lowered their weapons.
Curiously, the snowgirl was beginning to sweat - despite it being a fairly chilly day for Vector. "Can have my candy back?" she murmured.
Gestahl was confused for a moment; then he snapped his fingers in realization. "Right," he mused. "Abominable snowgirl. Temperature-sensitive. That sucker must be a coolant?"
The snowgirl nodded.
The Emperor's son turned away, not saying anything about the candy. "Well, ladies, I think it's safe to say that you are not the important threat here. It's actually kind of funny. I was speaking with the Emperor earlier, entertaining the possibility of capturing monsters - because humans, honestly, don't stand a chance against you. We were thinking of perhaps... using you as our main offensive troops."
The girls exchanged glances.
Young Gestahl sighed, turning back to them. "Sadly, he shot my idea down," he replied. "Said that it was too risky. Said that you could turn on us without a moment's notice."
He raised his revolver to aim at the witch.
"So, it would seem capture is out of the question."
The witch's eyes went wide.
A moment's pause; then Gestahl smirked, lowering the revolver again. "But you know... what data we get comes in few and far between. You're always killing us before we can get any good intel. Perhaps I can convince him to let me imprison you."
He snapped his fingers.
A soldier stepped forward, handing him a radio, and he raised the device to his mouth. "Father, it's me. We have the infiltrators. A trio of kids. Requesting permission to capture. Over."
"What monsters are they? Over."
"Succubus, snowgirl, witch. We're in the Epsilon sector. Over."
"I'll have containment prepared by the time you get back. Over and out."
Young Gestahl tossed the radio to its owner. "Well, that went lovingly. Come on - and no funny business. You make a wrong move and I'll fill each of you with a thousand holes."
The succubus raised an eyebrow. "You're not worried about firing on your own troops with a move like that?"
"There is not a human soldier in this world who is not willing to die if it means taking a monster with him," Gestahl replied.
At that, the soldiers closed in, and the monster girls had no choice but to be led towards the Imperial Palace.
Draco: I always mess up Gestahl's name. I want to write it Ghestal.