Chapter two, at long last! This'll be all-new stuff, even for those of you who read this story previously. I hope you enjoy it!
CHAPTER TWO—WE WILL DESTROY EVERY SHRED OF THIS TOWN!
Three months have passed…
Viral pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders, warding off the winter chill as he left his Ganmen and strode into Shikakkei Village. It was one of the many Beastman settlements that had cropped up on the surface in the last few years. This was one of the larger such villages; it sat beside what had been a military armory, and it had stayed open all this time. This was the case in many Beastman settlements: military outposts had kept their doors open, armories had kept operating almost as though nothing had happened. Most of them, including this one, had at least a few Ganmen standing like sentinels along their perimeter. Perhaps it was out of a sense of community, although there were certainly practical reasons for banding together and forming villages. The latter had brought him to Shikakkei—he needed more hunting ammunition.
He nodded briskly to an anteater Beastman as the two passed each other, but aside from that one, he didn't see much activity in the town; he guessed that most of its inhabitants were indoors, away from the chill. It was only foolish wanderers like him who were traipsing about outside, he thought with a wry twist of his mouth. He passed through town without speaking to anyone, breath fogging in front of his face and dry soil crunching underfoot as he walked.
As he approached the armory, the door swung open and another anteater stood in its threshold.
"What brings you here?" she asked tersely.
"I'm here to buy arrows," Viral told her. She studied him for a moment.
"I've seen your face before," she remarked, crossing her arms.
"Oh?" he muttered. The anteater looked vaguely familiar to him, too.
"Ah, yes, I remember now," she murmured. "You're Viral, aren't you?" His shoulders stiffened under his cloak and scarf, bracing himself for another round of scorn.
"Yes," he agreed, his voice guarded. "That's who I am."
"We met once in Teppelin, I think," she recalled, lifting her hand and tapping one long, hooked claw against her chin. He relaxed just a bit, and the memory came back to him after a moment's thought.
"Your name is… Michi. Isn't that it?" he asked. "You were an officer with General Guame."
"A communications officer, yes," she agreed, her snouted mouth curling in a slight smile. "And you were a commander under General Thymilph."
"Heh. That was me, in another life," he agreed dryly.
"Another life, indeed," Michi remarked. "Come, I'll get you your arrows. Let's get out of this cold." He gratefully followed her inside, where the dry air of the armory engulfed him.
"How have these last few years been for you, Viral?" Michi asked as she led him through the towering stacks of crates filling the warehouse.
"Uneventful, mostly," he commented. "I've been… traveling." Wandering would have been a more accurate word, but that was irrelevant.
"Ah?" Michi said. "I wandered too, at first. Then I came to this town. There were some from my old battalion here, trying to make this settlement a nice place to live, so I decided to stay and help them."
"Hnh. And how has it been? Living here?" Viral asked.
"It's not easy, but it's worth it," Michi said. "I feel… almost normal, living in this town."
"Hm. Normal," Viral muttered. That wasn't a word he knew very much about anymore. The things he'd once considered normal had turned out not to be, and wandering in the wilderness tended to make it hard to have a sense of "normal".
"Here we are," Michi announced. "Do you prefer black-feathered arrows?"
"Yeah," he agreed. He gathered up as many as he could and paid for them with some medical supplies he'd found in an abandoned Ganmen.
"Ah, this is good stuff," Michi said approvingly as she tucked the bottles into the burlap pack strapped to her waist. "Good luck, Viral. You can come back here any time."
"Thank you, Michi," he said, giving her a slight smile. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd had reason to give someone a genuine smile. "I'm sure we'll meet again, eventually."
After leaving the armory, he headed off towards his next stop, the butcher's shop. As he walked, a sound caught his ears: it was a low, distant rumble, growing louder. He'd barely had time to pinpoint its direction of origin when the flash of light erupted on the east side of the town—and less than a heartbeat later, the blast hit. A thunderous roar filled his ears and the ground shook under his feet, the shockwave hitting like a physical blow. He yelled and flung his arm over his eyes, bracing himself. A siren went off as the explosion faded.
The armory! he thought, sudden alarm flooding his veins. But no—that was on the south edge of the town. He turned to the east and saw a column of smoke rising up, heard the wail and clamor of terrified voices. Cursing, he turned and sprinted towards the disaster.
As he ran closer, the buildings around him showed more and more damage. The first fires appeared three rows of buildings away from the blast. When he reached the center of it, he stopped in his tracks, gaping at the devastation. The structures here were leveled, and the Beastmen that occupied the surrounding buildings rushed to drag the wounded from the wreckage. Many of them weren't moving at all. Those who could scrambled to fetch water, tossing it frantically on the fires.
"This… looks like a missile strike," he growled. He'd seen more than enough missile strikes to know what their levels of damage looked like. Before he could step in to offer his assistance, the familiar clanking steps of a Ganmen caught his ears from afar—first one, then another, and then still more. His head jerked up and he looked to the hills lying to the east of the town. The gleam of metal drew his eye; the head and shoulders of a mecha loomed up over the hilltop. Others quickly rose up behind it. The back of Viral's neck prickled with some strange premonition.
He could always just leave, he knew that. He could easily turn around and walk back to his Ganmen and not get involved. This wasn't his village, after all. But then he remembered Michi's face—the pride in her eyes, the simple contentment, when she'd talked about this town. And then there was this odd feeling in his gut, raising his hackles. Spinning on his heel, he tore off across town, heading for his Ganmen.
"Damn it! What the hell is this?!" he snarled under his breath as he sprinted, boots thudding against the dirt road. Clambering up into Enkidudu's cockpit, he piloted the Ganmen back to the eastern side of the town, just in time to see the six mechas that had been stationed at the town's perimeter joining him there.
"Who the hell are you?!" one of them, a crab-type, shouted warily at him.
"Viral! Former commander of General Thymilph's forces!" he barked back. "I came here to buy arrows from the armory." He huffed out a humorless chuckle. "I'm not the one you need to be concerned about right now."
The other Ganmen was silent for a moment, and then turned to look out towards the hilltop. "Ain't that true," the pilot agreed bitterly.
Seven Ganmen stood atop the hill beyond the town. Zooming in with Enkidudu's display screen, Viral saw strange, red markings splashed across the mechas' hulls, patchy and streaky as though they'd been painted with blood. Viral bared his teeth as he tried to read them; he didn't recognize any of them as written characters. Were they symbols of some sort?
The enemy Ganmen descended from the hilltop and started striding towards the town. One of them, a bird-type with damaged wings, stood out at the front. The crab mecha that had shouted at Viral jerked its left claw up and fired a small missile at the enemy, aiming it squarely into the dirt at the leader's feet.
"That's far enough! We can hear whatever you have to say from there!" the crab-type bellowed, hefting its pincers into the air. "What the hell are you playing at, firing missiles at our town?"
"What are we playing at?" scoffed the bird-type. "Oh, that's simple. We're going to wipe this disgusting town off the face of the map, you filthy furries!"
"Ah, so they're naked apes," Viral sneered. "How typical—they'll sit there and threaten us in the mechas they stole from us."
"Go ahead and try it, ya damn humans! We'll rip you apart, all of ya!" roared the crab-type. The other five Ganmen hollered and jeered.
"So be it. The more you fight us, the better our victory will be!" snapped the bird-type. The two Ganmen flanking it opened fire! A barrage of missiles launched from their shoulder armor as the enemy charged towards the town.
"Leave those to me!" screamed a Ganmen to Viral's right. Missiles exploded from its chest armor—they caught the others mid-air! The seven enemy Ganmen came barreling through the smoke.
"Let's go!" the crab-type shouted to the others. With a ground-shaking cry, the five from the town took off at a run. Viral thrust forward with Enkidudu's controls. It might not be his own village, but he'd sure as hell made this his fight just now. Snarling, he charged with them at the seven Ganmen.
The battle was over quickly; four of the enemy Ganmen were left on the battlefield and the rest fled, but not before they'd launched two final missiles at the town and set more of it ablaze. Once the survivors had gone, Viral turned his attention towards helping the townspeople douse the fires. Late that night, with the fires under control, he found himself with Michi and some of the other villagers at the town's tavern, sharing a round of drinks. Every table in the place was full, but near-total silence hung over the place. The villagers huddled together at their tables, murmuring words of comfort, grief, and anger. Some sat and didn't say a word.
"Damn naked apes…" murmured the crab-type's pilot, a tall and lanky canine. He growled and angrily ripped a bite off a skewer of grape-hippo meat. Viral frowned down at the skewer in his own hands, turning it around.
"Have there been other attacks like this?" he asked.
"Here? No, not at this village. We've had a few human troublemakers come through, but never anything such as this," the canine muttered. He lowered his food and pressed his knuckles to his forehead, his snout contorted in a grimace.
"Not at this village?" Viral echoed.
"We've heard about attacks on other Beastmen towns, not far from here," Michi explained quietly.
"And those attacks, were they from humans, too?" Viral asked.
"Hm. I- I think so," Michi considered, then she added sourly, "The naked apes are getting restless."
"Oho? Then we oughta find out where they came from and go give them something to keep 'em occupied!" the canine snarled, lips curling back. Michi nodded glumly.
"We were lucky—we didn't lose very many today," she pointed out, though her voice was strained as she said it.
"Losing even one to those naked apes is too many," the canine shot back. An uneasy, awkward feeling settled in Viral's gut, as though he were observing something he wasn't meant to. This wasn't his village, after all, and the ones who had died weren't his friends. It didn't feel right, listening in to the grief of these two. He quickly drained the last of the water in his glass and stood to leave, the rest of his meat skewer still in hand.
"Are you leaving here tonight?" the canine asked, glancing up at him. Viral turned it over in his mind. He didn't exactly have anyplace that he needed to be. There was no reason he couldn't stick around for a little while to help these Beastmen repair their town.
"If you'll have me a few days more, I think I'll stay," he replied. The other two seemed to understand. Michi gave him a tired, grateful smile.
"There's a spare cot at the armory if you need a place to sleep," she offered.
"I appreciate the offer, but no," Viral responded, bowing his head politely. He didn't plan on sleeping that night, anyway, and there was no need to explain that to anyone here. "I'll meet you back here in the morning." He started to leave the table, then paused and looked back at them. "Get whatever rest you can," he told them quietly.
As Viral walked back to Enkidudu, slowly chewing on the rest of the skewer, the conversation from the tavern churned through his mind. He couldn't help but think about how much things had changed in these three years. They had all lost friends in the war, naturally. Of course, prior to the human uprising, there hadn't been all that many casualties. What chance did the humans stand against Ganmen, armed with whatever light weaponry they could get their hands on? Rarely, a handful of rebellious humans would have luck on their side and take down a Ganmen—although, when casualties had happened, they were usually Beastmen caught off-guard outside of their mechas.
Nevertheless, any army was bound to suffer losses. It was never easy, but they had always dealt with it. But this, what he had seen in the tavern… this was different. These weren't soldiers dealing with the loss of comrades. These were villagers mourning the loss of friends, perhaps even ones they considered family. The Beastman villages that had cropped up all over in the past three years weren't just collections of former soldiers; they were communities.
And it sounded as though some humans weren't content to let those communities exist in peace. Well, that was to be expected. The Beastmen were the ones who had kept them underground for so many generations. They hadn't known it till three years ago—but oh, they knew now, and many of them were disinclined to forget it. The king who had commanded the Beastmen was gone, so what was left but to take out their anger on the remnants of his army?
Of course, if the humans believed that any self-respecting Beastman would simply sit back and allow itself to be killed for revenge… no, surely that wasn't the case. Viral had met many foolish and brash humans, but surely none of them were that idiotic. If they came around spoiling for some violence, they'd get it without a doubt. The only question that remained was whether this current of violence would burn itself out, or if it would boil up into another war.
Four and a half months have passed…
Weeks had passed since his visit to Shikakkei Village, and Viral had all but forgotten about the run-in with the angry humans. He likely would've forgotten it altogether, except that his next visit to a village would prove to be just as chaotic.
Enkidudu's heavy footsteps echoed as it trudged through a long, winding canyon. Viral checked the map display again; a glowing, green icon showed a village just beyond the canyon's end. And just in time, too; this time it wasn't his ammunition stocks, but his water supplies. Water was hard to come by in this region and being immortal didn't do much to stop him from getting thirsty. The residents of Shikkakei had told him to look for this village; it was a Beastman settlement, and it happened to lie in the general direction he'd randomly picked to continue his wanderings.
Finally, he reached the mouth of the canyon and Enkidudu emerged into the rocky plains beyond it. As the village appeared beyond an outcropping of rocks, the first thing he noticed was the smoke. It boiled high into the sky, thick and black and churning. Somehow, a sinking feeling in his gut told him he already knew where it was coming from. Picking up Enkidudu's pace, he rushed around the rock formation—and sure enough, the village he'd planned on stopping in was ablaze.
"Damn!" Viral snarled. These kinds of things seemed to be dogging his footsteps lately. Growling, he stared down at his Ganmen's controls. He knew he could just walk on by—this wasn't his village. He had no idea what had happened here; all he saw was a village on fire and nothing immediately obvious to suggest a cause. This wasn't really his business.
Then again, Shikakkei hadn't been his village either and he'd stayed a week to help with repairs. Well, it wasn't as if he had anyplace he urgently needed to be. Muttering a string of swears under his breath, he shoved Enkidudu's controls forward and thundered towards the burning village.
Leaving the Ganmen a safe distance from the blazing buildings, he darted into the smoke, tugging his scarf over his nose and mouth. Undying or not, he wouldn't be of much use if he was constantly passing out from lungfuls of smoke.
It didn't take long to find someone amid the chaos. Beastmen rushed through the haze, carrying buckets of sand and water. Viral spotted an eagle Beastman with soot-smeared feathers ahead of him, waving a bucket-carrier past. He strode over and laid a hand on the eagle's shoulder.
"Wha—who the hell are—" stuttered the bird Beastman.
"Doesn't matter. Tell me where to help," he urged.
The eagle's head jerked back slightly in surprise for just a moment, and then he rasped, "In that building over there—two are trapped!"
"Hnh." Viral nodded once and whirled about. Without another word he ran at the building.
"H-hey, wait!" the eagle shouted after him. "Careful! It's not safe in there! That's gonna collapse any second!"
Not safe, huh? Well then, a real use for this ability of mine, Viral thought grimly. He gritted his teeth, sprinted to the left of the flame-filled doorway and lunged through the window. The last remnants of its glass shattered against his boots and he hit the ground inside in a roll. Springing lightly to his feet, he winced and brushed burning embers off his arm.
Viral narrowed his eyes, peering into the thick haze. He stepped into the middle of the room, each footstep carefully placed. The floor felt hollow, thin—some kind of basement under it, probably. He'd have to be cautious. The last thing he needed was to step in the wrong place and crash through the floor. The two trapped in here would have precious little time to spare and getting them out was going to be tough enough already. From up above in the dense smoke, the groaning of timbers caught his ear—with a dry crack, wooden beams showered down on him! A nimble leap to the side got him clear of the burning wood.
He bared his teeth and refocused, shutting his eyes and straining to hear past the crackling rumble of the flames. There—the sound of coughing ahead and to the left! He carefully treaded across the creaking floor till he found a room tucked away at the rear of the building, even more choked with haze than the one he'd just left. Squinting into the smoke, a jumble of confused shapes met his eyes. He could see crates, boxes, barrels—all on fire already. Beyond those, he could just see two shapes huddled at the very back of the room—and he could see the smoldering beams from the ceiling barricading them.
"Y-you… you over there! He—help… please…" choked a voice from the shadowed Beastmen. A feathered hand reached out over the debris. Even through the smoke, he could see it trembling. Viral didn't reply—he kept his attention on the dry, groaning floorboards and sussing out the safest spots to place his feet.
Slowly, he picked his way over to the debris pile. He could see the Beastmen now—a young eagle and an older hawk. The eagle cradled her left wing against her chest, eyes wide with pain. He frowned at them, then down at the heap of singed wooden beams that spilled down from the ceiling and trapped them.
"Can either of you walk?" he asked as he knelt to examine the heap.
"I th… think I can," wheezed the hawk. "But my hands… are burned… I can't carry her…" Viral glanced at the eagle, whose beak dipped down to her chest as she fought against the pain. If he could clear away the fallen floorboards on the left side of the pile, he could lift her over it. Standing upright, he flexed his claws and braced himself. He took a deep breath and seized the floorboards. His claws sank into the brittle wood and he bit back a hiss as the heat from the crackling board seared his fingers. Gritting his teeth, he hauled on the board, heaving it up and off the pile, and then he twisted and wrenched his claws loose to send it clattering to the ground. He turned back and disposed of more and more ember-riddled debris.
Stepping into the space he'd cleared, he sidled around the rest of the pile and reached for the little eagle. She sat still as he gathered her up into his arms, mindful of her injured wing. Carefully holding her light-boned frame to his chest, he turned to the hawk.
"If you can manage it, stand and follow me. Step where I do," Viral told him, voice raised over the rumbling flames. The hawk bobbed his head, eyes wide with fear, and slowly began to lurch upward. He stumbled, leaning heavily against the wall behind him, and painfully hobbled around the rest of the debris. Taking one wary step at a time, Viral picked his way back to the other side of the storeroom, guiding the hawk through the burning barrels. The floor groaned dangerously under their weight, but he kept moving. The hawk faltered as a floorbeam beneath him let out a loud snap, but Viral glared back over his shoulder.
"Don't hesitate!" he growled. "We have only a minute or two left!" They pushed on, closer and closer to the window Viral had come in through—and then they were there! Viral pushed his head through the gaping hole and yelled into the smoke outside, "Here! We're over here!"
Tall shapes appeared in the haze, darting towards them, and several bird Beastmen rushed into view. They gingerly reached in through the window and took the eagle from his arms, then helped the hawk over the windowsill, and finally Viral vaulted easily out through the window.
Together, they bolted away from the building—just as the cacophony of snapping wood and shattering glass filled the air and the flame-riddled structure crashed down behind them! Viral dove away from the hail of splinters and debris that billowed out as the birds scattered and ran. He winced as the shreds of burning wood left cuts on him for a moment or two.
He stood and turned to glance at the remains of the building, and then he shifted his attention to the birds. The eagle he'd talked to before going in dashed over, feathers ruffled and splayed in all directions.
"You—you did it! You got them both out… and you don't even have a single scratch!" the eagle sputtered. "Amazing—your luck must be incredible!"
"Yes," Viral muttered. "Are those two all right?"
"It's hard to say right now. I think so," the eagle said hurriedly. "Please, you've already done this much for us, but these fires—if you'd stay just a bit more—"
Viral nodded tersely and followed as the eagle raced off deeper into the burning village.
When the last of the fires were finally under control, the eagle Beastman heaved a massive sigh and dropped the water bucket he'd been using. The bird sank to the ground, flopping onto his back.
"There's so much more to do next… but I can't go on yet…" he panted.
Viral sat down cross-legged next to the bird, hands resting on his knees. "So rest for a minute, then," he said. "You won't be helping anyone if you collapse, will you?"
"Hah… that's right," the bird murmured. He stared up at the sky and Viral did the same, tilting his head back and surveying the twisting plumes of smoke rising to the sky. That smoke, he knew, was the essence of a town that had been whole when its inhabitants awoke that morning. It was their livelihoods—and their lives.
"What happened here?" Viral asked, his voice low.
"I wish I could explain it," the eagle said wearily. He draped his left forewing over his eyes. "They just attacked us! Right out of nowhere—all these humans in stolen Ganmen!"
"Humans," Viral echoed, scowling.
"They said they were gonna wipe us out," the eagle whispered. "'We will destroy every shred of this town!' That's what they shouted at us as they fired their weapons." He choked out a bitter sound. "They damn near did it, too."
Staring around at the devastated village, Viral couldn't really disagree with that. He remained silent, at a loss for anything comforting to say. What could he say, after all, that wouldn't sound hollow? This wasn't his home. These weren't his neighbors or friends.
But that phrase the humans had said—it tugged at his memory. Hadn't he just recently heard something like it? Ah, yes—at Shikkakei Village. Those humans had made some similarly aggressive claims and they too had nearly done exactly what they said they would. He thought back to that fight, pushing himself to remember exactly what had happened. There had been something distinctive about those Ganmen, something that had stood out…
"These humans and their Ganmen," Viral said slowly. "Did their Ganmen have markings on them? Any symbols?"
"Ah—symbols?" The eagle drew his forewing away from his face, frowning. "I can't… ah, no, they did! There were markings painted on the hulls; I think they were red."
Viral sat forward slightly, his suspicions piqued. "Did you recognize them?"
"No… they weren't any written characters I've ever seen before, and I've never seen military symbols like them." The eagle rolled his head to the side to look over at Viral. "H-have you seen them before?"
"Yes. Once, in another village," he said gravely.
"Then—do you know who they are? Those humans?" the eagle asked urgently.
"I don't, unfortunately," Viral said. So, he thought, that now made two villages attacked by red-marked Ganmen with angry naked apes for pilots. What was this, some sort of gang? Did they want revenge for their generations of subterranean confinement? Attacking peaceful Beastman settlements… perhaps it was retribution of a sort. Then again, perhaps they were just fired up from the war and wanted to keep the battles going.
Viral scowled again. Whatever this was, he had the nagging feeling that there was more to come. Sighing harshly, he rose to his feet and offered a hand down to the prone eagle.
"Can you stand yet?" he asked. The eagle bobbed his head and took Viral's hand, allowing himself to be pulled upright. As Viral followed the eagle off to see where he could be of use, he resolved to ask the villagers some questions later. If they had anything else they could tell him about these marked Ganmen, he wanted to know about it.
Two days later, he hadn't learned much more about the marked Ganmen. They were older ones, typical low-grade models from Lordgenome's army. Their pilots were humans whose professed goal was to wipe out the entire village; their hulls were splashed with red emblems that no one recognized. That was all anyone knew.
Having nothing better to occupy himself with, he stayed for a while to help the villagers clear away the debris. He spent three and a half weeks there, laboring over the repairs of a village he'd likely never see again. It didn't make a difference to him; it wasn't as if he had anywhere else to be.
By the time he finally left the town, the marked Ganmen had receded to the back of his mind. Whatever connection this attack did or didn't have to the first one, he doubted this was anything more than some resentful naked apes with too much time on their hands and too many powerful toys to play with.
Of course, that didn't mean he was going to let them do whatever they wanted. Attacking Lordgenome's army had been one thing; it was a war and that was perfectly fair. Attacking peaceful settlements was another matter entirely. He'd see what he could do about spreading the word to other villages, so they could keep an eye out for this gang and defend themselves accordingly. If these humans wanted to pick a fight, they might just end up getting one.
CHAPTER THREE— THE LIGHT OF TRUTH WILL BLAZE ACROSS THE EARTH! In progress, so keep an eye out for it!