A/N: Schools going great, what are you talking about? Oh look, suddenly I'm back from the dead, here to throw another chapter in your faces and deliver some Helldiver goodness upon your souls. Well at least until the next almost year milestone passes.
To square some stuff away, Lumox is currently very busy being a soldier and is more often than not off doing his duty but he still stops by from time to time to tell me I'm doing something wrong so thats good.
Oh and here's the chapter! Enjoy!
Nikolai and Wulff made it to the mess hall with relative ease. The salutes and curt nods from the crew, helped by the corridors and windowless rooms, welcomed them home. They sat down at the table in the corner, the designated Helldiver table, with their trays. Hastings had said he was going to the armory so they waved goodbye and let him slip away, with his speech now found the crew would probably not encounter the same issues they had with the totally mute Hastings.
They ate quietly, an awkward silence taking hold. Nikolai wiped his mouth and put his fork down. The mess hall was rather empty with only a few crew members walking around here and there, enjoying the mediocre food.
"You think he's alright?" Nikolai stopped scanning the room and turned back to Wulff, his hand on his chin.
"Probably, it was just a little knife anyways." Wulff sighed at Nikolai's response.
"No, I mean… mentally…" Wulff lowered his voice as Nikolai widened his eyes a little in realisation before composing himself.
"Yeah, I'm sure the Major has everything under control. Though I understand your concern, he just has his own way, right?" Nikolai finished with a gulp from his water glass.
"I guess." Wulff replied hesitantly as he picked up his tray, the helmet closing around his face.
Nikolai followed suit, his helmet closing too. They dumped their trays off at the chute by the entrance to the mess hall. They turned down the hallway, coming face to face with Simmons.
"Simmons, how was you checkup." Nikolai mocked with a chuckle.
"Just a few stitches and medical magic here and there." Simmons chimed as he patted Nikolai and Wulff on their shoulders looking around, noticing Hastings absence.
"Hastings?" Simmons questioned.
"Armoury." Wulff and Nikolai replied simultaneously as Simmons just hummed in understanding.
"Then I guess we should grab him. Best not keep Kane waiting too long." He finished, clapping the two of them on their shoulders before turning towards the armoury.
Wulff and Nikolai found comfort in their leaders newly restored bravado. It was a bit refreshing to say the least. Nikolai and Wulff watched Simmons take the lead, the air about him felt different.
As they neared the armory they could hear the rattle of casings on the floor and the crack of gunfire. Entering they saluted the Range Master who quickly stood, saluted back and returned to his seat and magazine.
"14 out of 14, 15 out of 15… rounds complete." The robotic voice announced as Hastings pulled the charging handle, inspected the receiver, ejected the magazine and placed the rifle on the table.
"Should I even be surprised?" Simmons gave Hastings a firm clap on the back.
Hastings responded with a grunt and the shrug of his shoulders still obviously pleased with himself.
Simmons entered the lane next to Hastings, a Breaker already on the table. Several other soldiers on the range were casting glances down to Simmons station. Seeing a Helldiver flaunt their skills was always amusing.
The magazines were loaded with slugs as per Simmons request when practicing on the range. However, in combat the choke on the shotgun and tight pattern of buckshot could easily be accurate out to 150 feet. Simmons rammed the magazine home and chambered the first round.
A few beeps echoed out before the first target sprung up from behind a pile of sandbags. The slug knocked the metal target back behind the cover as two more sprung up in the distance. Target after target met a similar end as Simmons expertly lined up each and every shot. At the end the score read 15 out of 15.
Wulff and Nikolai clapped slowly, nothing new there.
"A perfect score, though Hastings was still more accurate." Wulff pointed out as they looked to the second score, the accuracy score.
Simmons stood at a solid 135 out of 150 but Hastings measured a perfect 150 out of 150. All center mass or headshots. Simmons gave a small chuckle as Hastings nodded at him. Clearly, Hastings position as the designated marksman was uncontested.
"Now, lets not forget whos waiting for us on the bridge." Nikolai mumbled as the for of them gulped, their break now over.
The Hall of Nations always felt longer when they didn't want to go to the bridge. The flags that lined the walls seemed to stare them down as they passed. With each passing nation they got closer to assumed verbal annihilation. They stopped just before the door, Simmons turning to face his men.
"Remember, she's probably gonna string us up by our necks so keep your best face forward." The other three nodded at Simmons words as the door the the bridge opened.
The first thing they noticed was Garry. They hadn't really taken the time to look at him before. He had deep green eyes and a mane of greying blue hair that spread to his chin forming quite an impressive beard. A few scars here and there but nothing too severe.
"Gentlemen…" Kane' voice distracting them from the Atlesian scientist, "First off I might have been a bit too harsh, you know… stabbing Arthur and all." The Helldivers reeled slightly, thinking they misheard the normally angry Chief Engineer.
"Oh stop it…" Kane exclaimed as she noticed the slight change in the body language of the four.
"I can be nice, and sometimes regretful. However, we still have a mission. We have to get Hastings back to normal, that is why Garry is here." She motioned to the scientist beside her who nodded to the group.
"No yeah, but let's just take a moment to realise that Erika just apologized." Simmons quipped as he pointed towards Kane.
Kane let out a deep sigh as she placed her hands on her hips. Garry looked at her and then back to the Helldivers in slight confusion. Kane took a few more deep breaths before looking back to the scientist.
"As I was saying. While you three were gone, romping around on the planet's surface. Garry here made a little discovery." Garry perked up a little bit, taking the verbal microphone from Kane.
"Your friend Hastings," He started, walking over to the named Helldiver, "is currently surrounded by what we call an Aura, a manifestation of the persons soul. What I gathered from your operations center was that he had no aura before but ingested Dust on the planet's surface." He received a few nods from the Helldivers.
"This would normally leave your average person crippled with pain and possibly kill them. However, contrary to all testing and scientific reasoning he seems to have absorb its power and developed an Aura. The Aura part has never been documented but absorbing the power of the Dust has been observed in a select few individuals before." Garry took a moment to collect his thoughts and let them absorb what he had just said.
"Although there is no real way to provide an explanation as to how the Dust affected his genetics and body on the ship, yes your friend here explained your cloning process which has me quite intrigued… I'm getting off topic… the dust appears to have move through your cloning network and returned to him while at the same time overwriting his cloned DNA with the dust infused DNA. Even I can't make heads or tails of it…." Garry continued to ramble as he stroked his beard, still deep in thought over Hastings Condition.
Kane motioned to Simmons and his squad. They left the rambling scientist and stood around the strategic map. They watched as Kane moved the map and zoomed in, displaying a few localised structures in a mountainous region just southeast of Vale.
"What's this?" Simmons questioned as Kane zoomed in on the city.
"This is what the locals call Mountain Glenn. From what we could gather it was once..."
"A doomed experiment, destined to fail from the beginning." Garry interrupted, seemingly broken from his Dust obsessed ramblings. "The underground portions of Mountain Glenn make up a large part of the city though you wouldn't be able to tell an underground existed from up here." Garry motioned with his hands towards the window, the continent holding steady below them.
"But…" Simmons started, his hand resting on his faceplates chin. "There is something I wanted to ask about, something I've been thinking about these past few days, and more recently these past few hours. Those people we fought in the forest could camouflage, and that woman could use the dust in a weird way. Is there any kind of power, urm what do you call it down there, doctor?" Garry scratched his beard for a second.
"A semblance. An ability that naturally occurs within people and is unique to each person and as it is unique, can vary in power from person to person." Simmons nodded at Garry's explanation.
"As I was saying, is there a semblance that could allow someone to take on another person's appearance? Perhaps create clones, or duplicates?" Simmons finished as Kane sat down at a nearby terminal and started typing away, rummaging through files.
The doctor grumbled, stroking his beard with his hand as his eyes darted behind closed lids. The four Helldivers all remembered the time that the mimics has attacked the Vale police right in front of them before disappearing a second later.
"Found it." Kane said with a smirk as she pulled a video onto the main screen.
The video was of the intersection they had been on when the mimics had appeared. However, there was only one mimic attacking the police van and swat officers. They stood there in a confused haze.
"But there were two of them…" Nikolai blurted as he pointed to the screen, he was sure of it.
"You think there were two of them, you all did." The doctor began. "Only one of the mimics attacks, because the other only existed in your heads." They all stood there, including Kane, with a look of realization.
"Two semblances working together?" Wulff half guessed as he watched the clip play over and over.
"Precisely. One, a hallucination based semblance, and the other some form of physical camouflage. The second mimic moves with such speed that it looks like the first mimic also attacked the officers when it didn't even exist." Garry nodded as he analyzed the data and checked it in his mind.
They had been duped, two people, one having not even been close to the sight, turned a whole police force against them in an instant. But what about the recordings, the footage. Simmons turned it in his head.
"But the footage… how have they not seen this?"
"The footage was scooped from a scrambled network, someone was jamming the cameras remote feed to the collection point meaning the footage never reached the police. This is the only copy of it that exists." Kane crossed her legs in the chair and leaned back.
Simmons was about to speak but Kane raised he hands, telling him to stop.
"If you're gonna ask, 'why didn't you just send it in hurr durr' then I'll tell ya that the footage was only just now stable enough to be viewed, about a week ago." Simmons nodded solemnly.
They all knew it would be pointless to send in the footage at this point. Not mentioning the fact that months had passed since then, and their little attack on the Atlas convoy and involvement in destroying Atlas research. Though that last part would only hold bearing on their Atlas relations as the public would likely never hear of such a vulnerability.
"It seems like out next course of action is quite obvious." Nikolai stated in a dry monotone as the others looked in his direction. "We find out who exactly these two assholes are and we start making some new ones." Nikolai finished with a shit eating grin as Kane turned back to the console, picking up a radio off its hook.
"This is Chief Engineer Erika Kane, I want every techie and communications officer scanning for anything regarding hallucinations and robberies involving people seeing different things." Kane put the radio back on the hook and held her arms out to her side.
"Now… we wait, unless you four have been doing a little too much sitting around with your heads up your asses down on the planet's surface." Kane smirked as the four Helldivers moved to the map, Simmons zooming the map out.
The four started talking, their hands pointing to different quadrants, different cities and points of interest. One caught Hastings eye, and as a result everyone else's as he zoomed the map in on a large city isolated to the furthest south-eastern reaches of the globe.
"Menagerie? The home of the Faunus?" Garry noted in slight surprise as the four Helldivers looked back at him. "Nothing its just that the islands only main city is Kuo Kuana, you won't find much in the way of information…. Well you might just." Garry continued, changing his mind midway through his thought.
"Kuo Kuana is home to Ghira Belladonna, the previous leader of the White Fang." The four of them looked at each other, their visors blank but the look said it all.
"I should have packed my swimsuit." Wulff quipped as they moved towards their Hellpods.
Where there were White Fang, there would surely be answers. Or so they all hoped.
A/N: A new chapter a new journey... lets see where this one takes out fearless Helldivers shall we?
This took longer than it should and I hope all of you enjoyed it as much as I hope you will. Remember to leave feedback and a review if you want to see more within the next 38 and a half years.