Chapter 36: Breaking News
Listening to the sounds of construction outside, Suwako sighed.
It had been two weeks and four days since their visitor from beyond the Boundary had come crashing down the mountain, and repairs to the Moriya shrine were still ongoing. The bulk of the work had been completed at least, with a...relative lack of disaster, considering the chaotic nature of the kappa builders.
Twice now she'd had to step in to stop them from becoming a little TOO enthusiastic with their work, made worse by the fact that Kanako had left instructions for several new...upgrades that had led to A considerable number of minor casualties in the argument over who would get to build what. Added to that the fact that Nitori, the project leader, had taken to vanishing mysteriously without explanation from time to time, things were...well, 'interesting' would be an understatement.
...on that particular subject, she made a note to herself to see if she couldn't find out where Nitori was disappearing to, and what she was doing. There was something oddly suspicious about her behavior...
And then there was the fact that even Suwako had no idea exactly what her fellow goddess was up to. The few answers she'd gotten out of Kanako were cryptic and short, the war goddess distracted and distant in the midst of piles of paperwork and complicated diagrams...Diagrams and reports that Suwako could make little sense of, but enough to know that Kanako's passion for science and technology was in full swing, whether their new guest knew it or not.
Following the events of the red and black machine's crash, and Kanako's subsequent success at negotiating a repair agreement with the canny intellect that still resided within it, the war goddess had thrown the entirety of Youkai Mountain into a fervor of new, frantic activity. To satisfy the mistress of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, Lana Nielsen, one of the controllers of the machine, had agreed to work at the mansion to help make up for the damage caused by their crash. And the machine itself would be taken under Kanako's mantle, to undergo the necessary repairs as only she possessed the knowledge and resources to do so.
Surprisingly, despite the extensive damage to the Moriya Shrine, Kanako had asked nothing in return...and given the mountains of notes, sleepless nights, and fierce devotion to those repairs, Suwako suspected she knew why.
Kanako's interest in the extremely high level of technology displayed by both Lana Nielsen as well as the ruined hulk of Hustler One had been abundantly clear from the moment she had encountered the gold-haired administrator. Even as wrecked as it was, the ruined hulk of...Hustler One, as the intelligence seemed to be named, was still a veritable treasure trove of scientificc and technological wealth. For someone who was herself a bit of a scientist, simply repairing Hustler One would be all the reward Kanako needed, already attempting to reverse engineer even the smallest of details as she oversaw its' reconstruction. The technological revolution she had tried to jumpstart with the rebirth of Reiuji Utsuho as a walking fusion reactor was now within her grasp once more, locked in that shattered steel hulk...and this time, she wouldn't be as careless.
Which was good, because the tengu lords were significantly more protective of their mountain than Satori had been of the underground reactor. A second Subterranean Animism incident would not be tolerated on the surface, much less on the sacred Youkai Mountain. Devout vassals they might be, but even loyalty as strong as theirs would likely be tested if Kanako's 'science project' blew a hole in the mountain.
So in the end, there had been a lot of grumbling, and no one had really gone away from the negotiations completely happy which, to Suwako, was a pretty good sign.
The tengu had grudgingly agreed to allow a section of the mountain to be excavated to make room for the facilities the kappa would need to rebuild and restore the mighty machine, a hangar meant to house Hustler One during his repairs. Fortunately, much of the construction would be inside the mountain itself, meaning that its' appearance at least would remain intact, not to mention the fact that the Hisoutensoku Project, of a similar scale, had already led to many of the necessary facilities and so forth being built already, and now it was merely a matter of expanding on them.
Sanae had been...unusually eager to oversee that part of the proceedings, going on about launch bays, acceleration catapults and armories and the like. She'd already been responsible for a lot of the ideas going into the construction of the Hisoutensoku and its' support infrastructure...but there was a manic gleam in her eye these days that frankly worried the frog goddess.
In exchange for allowing Kanako to expand her base of operations, the tengu had assigned them an overseer. Two, in fact: Hatate Himekaidou, the notoriously reclusive tengu reporter, known best for her snarky attitude, antisocial nature...and Momiji Inubashiri, a common face around the mountain's border patrols, as well as an unwilling sidekick for most of Aya's escapades.
Momiji, at least, wasn't too much trouble, as the wolf tengu tended to keep to herself most of the time, and took her duties seriously. Professional, if a bit on the stiff side, had always been Suwako's opinion of her.
Hatate, on the other hand...
The frog goddess of Moriya sighed and looked down at the newspaper in her hand.
If Hatate Himekaidou possessed one flaw, it was her intense rivalry with Aya Shameimaru.
Even despite her responsibilities as the crow tengu's representative, from day one Hatate had made it abundantly obvious that 90% of her personal purpose here was to find some kind of scandal, scoop, report, anything she could blow out of proportion into front page news. She'd already been irritated at losing the first encounter with Mr. Hustler and Lana to her rival already, but this...
Well, after this latest issue, she suspected the poor girl was going to need to go somewhere quiet to lie down until the red mists cleared from her vision.
Reaching up, she knocked on the door in front of her, before reaching out to slide it open.
"Hoi, Kanako, I think you might wanna-"
She stopped dead at the sight in front of her.
Kanako has always historically been the tidiest member of their household, filing all her notes and research texts in meticulous order.
Now, that order was in complete disarray, piles of hastily scribbled notes and diagrams scattered all over the room, swaying precariously in the breeze. A chalkboard covered in numerous equations creaked faintly as Suwako gingerly edged her way into the maze of paper.
"Look at all of this..." She whistled.
She knew how...intense Kanako could get if she threw her full intellect behind a project, but this made the Kappa Revolution look positively tame by comparison.
"Huh, Suwako? Is that you...?"
A pile of blueprints and financial reports shifted and the war goddess of Moriya surfaced, blearily blinking sleep out of her eyes. Her blue hair disheveled, dark circles under her eyes and, most jarring, a business-like pair of glasses perched unevenly on the bridge of her nose, Kanako Yasaka looked, quite frankly, like she'd been hit by a truck.
"Son of a- Kanako, have you been here since yesterday?!" Suwako demanded, hurrying forward in alarm.
"I think?" The other goddess hedged shakily. "I don't know...when was it Hustler compiled that schematic for his wing units...?"
The smaller goddess stared.
"...that was two days ago."
"...er..." Kanako gave a nervous laugh. "Well...I...may have lost track of time a bit...?"
"Kanako, you're wearing the glasses again." Suwako deadpanned. "You and I both know that you're a goddess, you don't HAVE eye problems and the last time you put those on, nobody saw you for a week until you blew up the storeroom."
"H-hey, that's not true!" Kanako bolted to her feet in indignation, "I'm fully capable of managing myself, and I know my limits...oooh..."
Her indignant look melted into an expression of discomfort and she staggered, dropping back into her seat with a grunt as the world spun around her, papers sliding to the floor with the disturbance. Seeing her compatriot shaking her head woozily, Suwako sighed and rested her hands on her hips.
"I swear...Sanae's my descendant, but sometimes I wonder if she inherited a thing or two from you as well."
"I-I just got up too quickly, I'm fine! Really!" Kanako protested. "I just...got up too quickly..."
"Oh no you don't!" The frog goddess snapped, flicking the older woman on the forehead hard enough to stop her next attempt to rise. "You've got that mirror bouncing around on your chest and you still have no idea how bad you look. And let me tell you, you'd better freshen up, because we've got trouble coming."
"Owwww..." Rubbing her forehead, Kanako looked up in surprise. "Wait, what do you mean, trouble?"
With a grimace, Suwako slapped the latest issue of the Shameimaru newspaper down.
"This is what I mean, 'trouble'."
" 'Another Giant Machine Arrives?!'" Daiyousei bit her lip, eyes flicking over the lines of text. " 'Strange new figure appears in Chireiden, confirmed to be of Outside origin', 'Is this another of the strange 'Armored Cores'?! See page 5 for the pure and honest interview with the mysterious Dr. Shirakawa!'"
Closing the paper, she looked up in consternation.
"Cirno, most of this is the usual silliness Aya writes, but something definitely happened in Old Hell..."
"I know, right?" The ice fairy replied in excitement. "I heard from Mr. Hustler that something really big happened down there, and he thinks it's another machine like him! He used a lot of words I didn't really get, but just think, another Mr. Hustler!"
Daiyousei looked mutely at her friend for a moment, then back down at the few pictures Aya had managed to snap of the strange newcomer. Blurry they might be, due to the high speeds involved, but as she looked again at the scenes of the fierce battle that had pitted it against one of the most fearsome of oni...
"...I hate to break it to you, Cirno, but I don't think this is anything like another Mr. Hustler..."
"Eh? How come?"
A shadow fell over them both, an enormous, black metal hand with long, slender claws reaching out to delicately pluck the newspaper from Daiyousei's grasp. The strongest ice fairy looked up in surprise as a dull yellow glow came to life somewhere above them.
"Oh, you're awake, Mr. Hustler?"
Several optic cluster flaring behind his partially restored mask, Hustler One, the animating intelligence of Nineball Seraph gave a slow, creaking nod.
The last eighteen days had been...eventful for him, to say the least. Much of his frame had yet to be fully restored, as the peculiar engineers under the employ of Kanako Yasaka had needed to reverse engineer almost everything they encountered in order to be able to start going about constructing replacements. And that wasn't even beginning to approach the problems of the gap between the advanced technology that comprised every fiber of his being, and the significantly lower level of technology these...'kappa' possessed. To give them credit, though, Hustler One had never seen anyone or anything learn to surpass such a problem quite so quickly. What they didn't have, they substituted, using their own unique brand of mechanical engineering. Crude at first, their works had steadily become more and more skilled as they grasped the key points of his construction. Not identical to his original designs, but neither were they solely kappa engineered results either. A strange hybrid of the two schools of design, the results were, nonetheless, quite satisfactory to the Master of the Arena.
Indeed, they'd actually managed to reconstruct some semblance of his lost right forearm, grafting it on to the original stump of an elbow with little to no rejection issues. Granted, it was little more than bare bones and wire at the moment, unfinished metal gleaming silver, but he had regained full functionality in the limb, with replacement armor already being argued over by several other kappa in the corner of the huge hangar, near to what seemed to be a replacement for his missing left shoulder. They'd already duplicated another forearm to use on his left, after first accidentally making it a second right arm, and then forgetting that they had yet to build the upper arm to which it would be attached in the first place...but he had grown used to their somewhat erratic approach.
The actual order of progress was completely unpredictable, the kappa teams basically working on whatever caught their attention at that point in time...but the rate of progress continued at a startling speed nonetheless. With his newly restored optics, he was capable of seeing his new leg already being assembled over to the far left, the flashes of welding arcs casting stark shadows across the hangar floor. Much of his facial plates had yet to be restored, but at the very least, they'd cut away the worst of the damage, and had done their best to patch back up the sensitive circuitry and sensors that had been broken beneath it.
His live feed from Lana continued unabated, and had indeed led to several entertaining moments during his stay here, but for the most part, he had focused his attention on the weapon systems that had yet to be restored. He had gained much time to think during his forced downtime here, and after looking over the combat data of his final battle with Leos Klein, along with much of what he'd learned from his diminutive new friend...well, he believed that it was time for an upgrade.
Particularly considering that Kanako Yasaka's kappa and their new technology had given him several exciting new avenues of research and modification to pursue...
That aside, it was his newly restored sensors that had first clued him in to the existence of the underground, and of the tremendous forces being unleashed down there. Alarmed at first, it had been Cirno who had filled him in on its' existence, and later Daiyousei and Kanako that had given him a more detailed explanation. From what he'd learned, it was only reasonable to assume that the culprit behind such a colossal disturbance was an oni...but the question was, if there was an oni involved, then who was it fighting?
Hustler One was no fool. The undisputed Master of the Arena longer than any Raven could remember, he knew the sounds and shocks of battle better than anyone, and what was unfolding thousands of miles belowground was most certainly a battle of a magnitude he could scarcely believe. Only an oni could put out that kind of force...but what kind of enemy would cause an oni to fight so seriously?
Another oni was the obvious answer...But there was something peculiar about this, traces of a powerful energy signature, an artificial energy signature...and that meant there was something else down there.
As he scanned the black and white text held delicately in the tip of one finger and thumb, he stared at the blurry images and felt a flicker of unease. The monstrosity captured in the crow reporter's lens matched no known Armored Core specifications and indeed, no kind of machine he'd ever seen before. Equal parts organic and artificial, it sent a peculiar chill through his circuits to think there might be some kind of technology out there that existed outside of his knowledge.
Hustler One had experienced many rude awakenings since his arrival in Gensokyo, and he was beginning to get the unpleasant feeling that no matter how much he thought he'd finally gotten some kind of grasp on it, the so-called Eastern Wonderland would somehow find a way to catch him off guard again.
"Friend of yours?"
His vision of the tiny newspaper obscured suddenly, Hustler One blinked and reduced magnification, the curious face of his blue and white compatriot coming into view.
"C-Cirno, don't go so close! It's rude!" Daiyousei protested from somewhere below.
"Naw, it's fine! The kappa said they fixed some doohickey of his, so now he can see stuff both near and far!"
"That wasn't what I...oh never mind."
Shaking his head in amusement at the ice fairy's typical obliviousness, he moved his working hand around and, in a precise, carefully calculated operation of motor controls...dropped the newspaper on her head.
"ACK! HELP! I'VE GONE BLIND! DAI GET IT OFF!"
After several moments of panicked flailing, Cirno finally yanked the wide, fluttering mass of paper off her head to see the odd gleam in her large friend's 'eyes' that she'd figured out to mean amusement.
"...Okay, fine, that was actually an okay trick." She admitted eventually. "Not bad."
"...jokes aside, I take it that means this isn't anyone you know?" Daiyousei sighed, folding up the papre again.
Hustler One shook his head again, creaking as Cirno flew back up to eye level, something like a troubled expression crossing her face.
"You're...worried about it?"
The great red and black helm of Nineball Seraph was silent for several moments, appraising the tiny ice fairy. Worry...another peculiar sensation he had developed over his time here, another of those odd 'emotional' impulses. Perhaps it was his inexperience at handling such things which led him to be so readable by Cirno...or perhaps it was her remarkable adeptness at reading him in particular.
Either way...
Hustler One nodded reluctantly.
"How come?"
The blunt curiosity of the question caught him off guard. Yellow optics blinking, the AI looked back at her in surprise.
"I mean...well, you're strong, aren't you? Even if that thing downstairs decides to come up and pick a fight, I know you can beat it!" Cirno grinned. "You and miss Nielsen are almost as strong as me, after all!"
"Cirno..." Daiyousei looked taken aback. That wasn't the kind of thing her friend said too often, but more than that...
"Um, Cirno...Mr. Hustler might be strong, it's true, but, um..."The green haired lake fairy gave a sheepish grin, and pointed at the half completed arm they were currently standing on.
"What is it?" Cirno tilted her head, looking confused for a moment, glancing down at it.
Then back up.
Then down again.
Then she slowly turned around to look at where most of the mighty Armored Core was still missing or being rebuilt.
"...ooooooooooooooh. Um. You, uh...you kinda need arms and legs for that, right..." She scratched her head awkwardly. "Er...sorry..."
In response, Hustler One merely extended one finger slowly, and carefully rested the tip of it in her head twice, the nearest, awkward representation of a pat on the head he could manage in his current state. At least he even HAD an arm now, and his restoration was well underway. Soon, he would be back in fighting condition, and then...
Then, he promised, he would show her just how strong Nineball Seraph, the Master of the Arena, actually was.
A/N: Well, this has probably kept you waiting a while, huh?
Sorry for the delay, life's been...interesting. Firstly I discovered Steam, along with the AWESOMENESS THAT IS MEGABYTE PUNCH, followed by Dust: An Elysian Tail, and THEN followed by me being made a member of staff for the League of Legends group I joined, and thus helping out with art, troubleshooting interactive game events, and then also helping to brainstorm possible story/lore routes based on the players' choices.
And let me tell you, considering said player decisions are basically Spacebattles tactics with actual gameplay involved, THAT SHIT IS NOT EASY
And don't even START with jobhunting...DX
So yeah, somehow, by getting OUT of university at long last, and getting more free time...I am even busier.
I have lost the ability to even.
That aside, this took a bit longer even by those standards, as I had to sort of sketch out the general flow for this new arc again. It's gonna be a lot more complicated, considering that this is where the past two story routes begin to come together and I'll have to write for both Beowulf and Nineball, and their various allies.
Setting the stage with further development for Kanako and Cirno, a heaping dose of Hustler One to make up for his past absence, and setting the stage for the flow of this story arc.
Don't worry though. Just because he's still in for repairs doesn't mean he'll be out of the action completely.
Not to mention I hinted at yet another plot thread near the beginning, as well as Hustler's worrying thoughts on...upgrades.
Hostilities will indeed be commenced once he gets back in the game. 8D
I think that's enough of an author's note for now, though.
Tl;dr: My apologies for the delay, and here's Hustler and Cirno back in the spotlight again, kickstarting the next arc! Expect Beowulf, Lana, Yuugi and even some Meiling again before it's over!
See you soon!