Φ

Chapter Foreword

I decided to rewrite the first chapter. Pardon me for being slow, I'm currently building a buffer in addition to having to handle two Genshin accounts and a struggling ruined Honkai one (and now Punishing Gray Raven's Global launch).

Herrscher and Support, and now the Prinzessin der Verurteilung, basically saved my physical and lightning teams. Now, if only I started by grinding for Delta instead of Night Squire so long ago… ah well. I just hope Hot Tuna can solo carry.

(And hot damn I broke through and was instantly faced an insurmountable Abyss wall called my nonexistent Ice Team)

Φ

Chapter 2 – Standing

2013

"So, where are you from?"

Noah looked up from the Beef Stroganoff he most definitely hadn't paid for. Schicksal bases worked mostly out of credit accounts and he hadn't been able to register himself on the base yet.

At the very least he had to entertain his debtor before he gets his things settled.

"Russia."

"Where in Russia?"

"Ugh." The boy took a scoop of his hot meal with a spoon. "Galestone."

"Is that a city or a province?"

Noah put the chunk of sour cream beef into his mouth. Truth be told, he didn't exactly know how to answer that. He knew the name of the mountains where the FOB had been built on, he knew the forests where he had gone out and hunted and fought Honkai in like the back of his hand, but he didn't have a name for the place, or at least, not in English.

He settled on the name of the base. "FOB Winter Gale," he told Wendy.

The girl sitting across from him at the lunch table at the Eastern cafeteria frowned. She was quiet for long enough that Noah began to wonder if she was suddenly willing to drop the subject. She didn't.

"You were born there?"

Noah froze mid-slurp, but only for a fraction of a second. He put his spoon into the bowl and looked the girl in the eye.

"Yes."

Wendy raised a brow. She would doubt it, he knew that the way he delivered it made it so, but he wasn't going to accept a different answer.

"Your parents?"

He pursed his lips. "Dead." Or they might as well be. It was an answer that was typical for someone who had come from the devastated frontier.

Wendy covered her mouth as her eyes widened. "I'm sorry," she said.

Noah hummed in response and picked up his eating pace. The cafeteria was an open-air establishment that was built under a gaudy resting area with a full view of the sea as its main attraction. The cold air from the sea was making quick work of the heat left in his meal, and he would rather not let it cool. Food like that was rare in Winter Gale and practically nonexistent during attacks unless you were one of the wounded.

He glanced at his new guide and thought about his old one. Claire was likely to get in trouble for leaving him alone, but he didn't feel the need to think guiltily about it. He thought the opposite—that he would obtain a disciplinary intervention for leaving his guide. New arrivals usually had a one or two-day grace period before they can become liable for anything short of a major infraction, so he wasn't actually that worried. Still, the base was so different from anything that he knew, so he'd rather be prepared for the worst case.

One of the things that were so different was how unbelievably nosy the girl was being. Or the other girls that had joined his table, for that matter.

"Do you have any hobbies?" the short-haired blonde called Aimee—or was it Ally?—asked. Before he could spit out a "no," another girl had asked the next question.

"Favorite actress?"

Noah didn't know any actresses, mostly because they didn't exactly have any television. There were no cables that survived the Second Eruption in FOB Winter Gale and the satellite signals had to be completely dedicated to military communications to get through the remaining ambient Honkai energy surrounding the region.

"A girlfriend?"

Wendy and two other girls immediately perked up at that word. In response, Noah wolfed down the rest of the meat in his meal and picked up the bowl to quickly drink up the broth. He placed it back on the table in a manner that was dangerously close to a slam. Suddenly, no one was talking.

Noah looked at the four total strangers at the table. They all watched him back except for Wendy, who was looking between Noah and, presumably, her friends with an increasingly pale expression. Then Noah looked beyond them, at the rest of the cafeteria crowd. There was a large number of women that had their eyes trained at the scene and most of them did not look away even when his gaze landed on them. None felt any intimidation from his sudden act of rudeness. Instead, they watched him like vultures, waiting to see if he would do something stupid; waiting to see if he can give them a reason to be jumped on.

Friendly gazes were absent there. Only ones that judged him.

Noah placed his utensils back on the tray and stood.

"Noah?" Wendy asked.

The boy ignored her and instead picked up his bag. From the corner of his eye, he saw Wendy move as well, only to be pulled back by the other Valkyries, particularly the one named—he remembered now—Aileen.

"Wendy, I don't think you should look for a boyfriend just yet."

A Valkyrie's senses were enhanced as well, though not as much as their physical fitness, so it came to no surprise that he heard what was said. Noah ignored it anyway and walked out of the cafeteria. Only when he was around twenty-five steps out from the entrance of the building did he finally let go of the breath he'd been holding.

"It's all the same," he muttered.

He sighed again and brought up what little he remembered of the public base schematics he'd seen on the walls around the dining facility's lobby. The Valkyrie Dormitory was the white-colored building next to the Seaside Cafeteria. Its architecture was vastly different from the templated architecture of the rest of the base and looked like a mix of a cathedral and a manor, with fancy-looking concrete spires and a court-of-honor kind of courtyard leading to its marble entryway. Judging by the second set of chimneys, the building probably also had an inner courtyard as well.

Valkyrie Dormitory, room 203, guest wing.

Noah glared at the wrought iron gate separating the road and the garden leading to the building. Past the oaken double doors were even more Valkyries. Just the thought of more of that brought him biting his nails into his palms and gritting his teeth, and perhaps the throbbing behind his eyes as well.

Ironically, it was the last point that made him admit he was tired. His body had yet to adapt to the change in day cycle and there was already an appointment early the next morning

"Noah!"

He didn't need to turn around to see that Wendy had followed him out of the cafeteria. Sure, he had long strides, but he didn't run. An average Valkyrie was capable of moving upwards of 60kph, and Noah had heard from one of the survivors of the Second Impact that Cecilia Schariac, the top Valkyrie at that time, was capable of Mach 1 just from pushing off a vertical platform with only the flimsy strength enhancements of a First Generation battlesuit.

She died in the Second Eruption like many others.

"Noah!" Wendy said again, coming to a stop maybe two paces away from him. "I-I'm sorry! May is just—"

The words died in her mouth upon seeing the boy's withering stare. She wrapped her arms around herself, head bowed. Noah sighed.

"I am just tired," he told the girl, then gave her an out: "Can you show me through the dorm?"

The girl went from dejected to blindingly happy in the span of a heartbeat. The smile she had was bright enough that Noah suddenly found it hard to look at her.

"Sure, sure! Just follow me!"

She grabbed his wrist—Noah had to physically stop himself from wrenching his hand away—and led him to the den of powerful women. He didn't really dislike her. Her childish enthusiasm in making the people around her happy reminded him of someone from long ago. Noah supposed it was alright to go along with the girl's whims, and so he looked up and—

—suddenly picked up his pace, speeding up quickly enough that he overtook the bounce in Wendy's steps.

"Noah?"

Noah didn't look back. "It's nothing," he said.

Wendy looked at the boy with worry and looked around. Her eyes met with that of a girl about as old as herself. The watcher quickly looked away, making Wendy frown.

Surely, that had nothing to do with the young Schariac heir?

They entered the building. Noah's suspicions about the cushiness of the inside of the dorms were confirmed as soon as he smelled the aroma and felt the air conditioner. The lobby of the Valkyrie Dormitory reminded Noah of his—no—someone else's summer villa, complete with the entire floor covered in soft red carpeting and the dozens upon dozens of classic and abstract paintings decorating any space on the wall. The selection in furniture didn't seem to conform to one style; some, like semicircular sofas populating the commons, were modern while the polished oak grandfather clock at the reception counter seemed to be made in the time before the Plague of Europe. The only thing that they did agree on, however, was how much quality had been put into each and every piece of furniture.

In short, everything was expensive.

Which didn't seem to mean anything to Wendy since she lived there.

"That's Mrs. Hawthorne," Wendy said, happily pointing at the woman in red at reception. "She's the one in charge of the keys and bookkeeping. She's a little mean, though."

Noah shrugged and walked forward. Distasteful behavior from superiors was common enough even back in the frontier. It was nothing new.

Mrs. Hawthorne looked up as they approached. The woman took exactly one second to observe Noah before turning a pair of somber eyes towards the teenage girl walking behind him.

"I didn't think this kid would bring a man home so quickly," she said.

Wendy's ears turned red from the tips at the accusation. "No! Wrong! I didn't bring him here—well I did, but not for that reason!"

"Then what reason is it, girl? He looks like you just picked him off a field…"

The woman's eyes widened as she turned back to Noah. She scanned him from head to toe, then made the sign of the cross, ending with a kiss on her knuckles.

"My goodness, it's going to be one of those years, isn't it?"

Noah raised a hand in protest.

"Ah, don't answer," she waved him off. "Just talking to herself. Now, where was I?"

Noah glanced at Wendy, who had covered her face, and turned back to Mrs. Hawthorne. "My key," he answered. "I am Noah Abrams. Valkyrie. I was told my room is 203."

The woman brought out a spiral-bound book full of flashing cards with names and a list of details under them—labels. "West Wing?" she asked.

Was that what they call the Guest Wing? "Yes ma'am."

"Here."

Instinct was the only thing that allowed Noah to catch the keycard before it could hit his eye. He glared back at the woman. She gave him an insincere smile.

"Well, what's holding you? Go ahead and find your suite! Wouldn't want you to miss your beauty sleep!"

Without another word, she went back to accounting. Noah pocketed the keycard and turned back to Wendy, who was playing with her fingers.

"Um, thank you."

Noah tilted his head. The girl made a weak smile and sighed.

"Okay!" She reached out to him with a sudden energy as if to grab his hand then stopped. Her ears reddened again.

"The West Wing is this way!" she said, pointing down a hallway before walking quickly in the same direction.

Before following, however, Noah took a glance around him. He counted seven people and judged their demeanor. Thin smiles and silence. He was pretty sure that by the end of the day, every Valkyrie in the complex would know of his address.

It turned out that the West Wing had its own lobby and was far more commercial than the main lobby. Instead of a single counter, there were three. Noise suppression technology must have been used as it would have been hard to miss the soothing selection of Jazz that echoed throughout the room. The crowd that occupied the hall was also denser and a lot more balanced between sexes. Wendy greeted the Valkyries guarding the connecting corridor to the main building before leading Noah to the elevator.

Along the way, Wendy gave him a basic rundown on the differences in layout between the West Wing and the Valkyrie Complex. His wing was organized much more like a hotel because it actually did double as one for the delegations and other foreign entities that Schicksal has to deal with regularly. The Valkyrie Complex, meanwhile, was made of multi-occupant rooms ranging from six to single beds. The higher one's rank, the fewer people in their room. Noah wasn't surprised.

The girl bade him a final farewell at his doorstep. The frontier-raised boy spent a minute in confusion to figure out where the key was supposed to go before he finally managed to tap it flat against what he initially thought was a doorbell and heard the door click open. He hurried inside, then paused to admire his residence.

The suite was surprisingly spartan. It had all the furniture to make it qualify as a suite with a living room-and-pantry for guests and food, a bedroom, and a bathroom. All the walls were white while the furniture an asphalt shade of grey. No paintings, no plants or other decorations, no distractions.

It was still more lavish than any residence in FOB Winter Gale, but he supposed it was inevitable since that place was just a frontier among many after the devastation caused by the Second Eruption.

He locked the door behind him and walked to the bedroom and began unpacking his belongings onto the bed. He didn't have many belongings; two sets of civilian wear, four sets of sportswear, four sets of his uniform, a basic hygiene kit, NREs, and a tactical knife. There were seven manuals of mostly military disciplines, three of which he had yet to read. There was an old but unopened cigar pack that had been placed in a plastic box and a stained outdoors cooking kit. Noah went over these with a slight upward tilt on his lips, then as soon as he finished, he began putting the items where they were appropriate. The whole procedure was done in ten minutes.

Suddenly, he found himself with more free time than he thought. At the same time, he was tired; tired from the flight, tired from being surrounded by Valkyrja, tired from being so far away from the snowy wasteland he called home.

He lay down on the bed. After a few seconds of pondering, he took off the sports jacket and stuffed it in a drawer. He closed the lights before depositing himself back onto the mattress. Like a good soldier, he was asleep in seconds.

Φ

Noah stepped out of one of the Guest Wing's backdoors and paused. There was a heavy blanket of fog that, when paired with the cool darkness of the morning, made for very poor visibility. He held a hand out for a good ten seconds before remembering that he no longer needed to check for snow. Sighing, he began making his way through the fog around the building. His destination was the courtyard in front of the Valkyrie Dormitory.

It was no real surprise to find that there were already several squads assembled there in the morning. One of them proceeded to the main track as he was heading in, so he stepped aside. Several faces passed him by, most of them curious, a good number wearing disdain. A voice shouted for the group to move from the front, prompting the rest to start running. They were gone within seconds.

"Hey! You lost?"

Noah looked towards the voice, but no one in the crowd stepped forward.

"If you're looking for the general barracks, it's on the other side of the base!" said another.

Noah turned to respond. "No, I am not—"

"Ain't no easy girls here, loverboy!"

What are you—

"What do you mean? Of course, he's here to comfort us ladies~"

Noah felt a tremor on his skin, like a thousand icy spiders crawling up from his lower back up to his ears. A new sensation quickly overtook him: indignation. It welled up from within him like acrid fumes rising from a burning tenebrious pit. It drove him to open his mouth, a scathing retort developed through his days of having to put up with the spoiled, superhuman women in the snowy wasteland, yet he stopped.

This wasn't Winter Gale. Here, he was no superior to the only Valkyrie squad in the frozen valley. Here, there was no Colonel Mikhail to back him; there was no Sergei to threaten the rowdy women with sabotaged equipment; no Dresden to shoo them away by making a fool of himself. Retaliation here meant nothing but an invitation for destruction from a stronger opponent. Besides, they weren't actually talking to him. None have yet to identify his name, not to mention his face. These warrior women were just talking at a perceived man in the middle of the morning fog. They would do that to any man entering their presence as he did. It was a maddening thought, but the truth nonetheless.

With practiced ease, he blanketed the fire of his thoughts with ice and deposited it into the pit of his consciousness. He let his attention return to his surroundings, eyes opening with only frozen steel.

"Err, Noah?"

The boy turned to find his former guide, Claire. The woman walked up to him and froze once she was within spitting distance. Alarmed by her reaction, Noah quickly schooled his expression into his resting poker face. Valkyrie Campbell blinked, took a second to study him, and smiled uneasily.

"The, ah, rest of the squad is this way," she said, waving.

Claire set off at a brisk pace, which Noah happily followed. The two of them quickly left the courtyard and took a right, following the sidewalk to a spacious waiting shed annexed to the residential building's perimeter fence. Three members of Squad Zero were already there: their teenage Captain; her older adjutant; and a young woman with pale hair that had a dull shade of purple, someone he had never spoken to. Noah had missed the area since it lay opposite the side he had passed when he left through the kitchen's fire exit. Hopefully, that was where the squad would meet permanently—he wouldn't want to be passing by the crowd at the front any more than once.

"Rita," Bianka said upon seeing the two. "Who else is left?"

"Only three people, miss Durandal," the woman replied before listing off their names. Durandal? Noah didn't know why the girl was being called such, though he didn't have a reason to go and look for one. He noted absently that she wasn't in maid attire but in a black and white dry-fit jacket and leggings. Bianka wore similar attire, though hers was a branded jacket and shorts. Now that he thought about it, Valkyrie he had seen this morning was in sportswear. It just didn't occur to him as important.

"I'm heeere!"

The group turned to see Wendy bounding down the sidewalk, speaking clearly despite having a slice of toasted bread in her mouth. Noah realized quickly that he was in a direct collision course with the girl and stepped away just in time. Wendy had barreled into Claire instead.

"I believe that we are complete now, miss Durandal," Rita said.

A pair of women with equally disheveled brown hair walked into the shed. Both of them wore a white shirt and jogging pants, which they had clearly slept in. Noah's resting frown deepened, but he said nothing and turned as Bianka spoke.

"Alright! Since everyone's here, we'll first do twenty laps around base!"

"Fuck," Noah heard Claire mutter behind him.

Bianka made a roguish grin befitting her age. "Last one has to clean the girls' bathroom for the day—and yes, I've talked with the Overseer with this!"

"Fuck."

This time, Noah joined the cursing.

"Well then, to me!"

The girl leaped into the street with enough speed to kick up the air behind her with Rita close at her heels. The scene reminded Noah of his own first month in the snowy fields, of how his Sergeant had dragged a then twelve-year-old boy through an uneven mountain circuit every day until he could finish all ten laps by himself with full gear within a morning, an experience that had become the basis of FOB Winter Gale's Winter Morning Flight Valkyrie training. Reliving the memory dislodged any remnant of sleep from his mind as he broke into a full-on sprint. His incentive inspired the other Valkyries who were still dumbfounded to follow his example.

Schicksal headquarters had a track that was perfectly flat and was wide enough to let a fighter jet use it as a runway. Perhaps that was the point; that Valkyries can have free reign to run as much as they want without worrying about crashing into buildings like they would have if they had trained in a more metropolitan venue. To Noah, who had grown used to navigating deep snow and steep mountains, a run in a city would have been considered child's play, and the open runway didn't even strike him as anywhere within the "difficult" spectrum. No, he had much more trouble following after Squad Zero's increasingly apparent prodigy.

Bianka ran with enough speed to create a palpable wind tunnel behind her. It was odd. Noah had longer legs, more mass in his muscles, and more experience at running, yet he still found it incredibly difficult to catch up to the girl. Worse yet, he was falling behind. Heat wormed its way into his head as his face warped into a snarl. His breathing changed: his breath coordinated with his cadence and took much air as if he was back on the mountains, his form taking on the movements that had been created while running through a dense blizzard. His mind slowly took itself away from the eyes of those around him, from the ground beneath his feet, from the salt in the air.

One foot in front of the other.

One breath after the next.

Nothing but the tunnel of wind that had been carved out before him, teaching him, goading his steps into the right way. He felt lighter, faster, stronger. The air began to sing a tune no human throat could sing, a song of the mountains, of the cold winds, of the water swept up from the frozen wasteland that made its way to the sea, and the sea that would bring it back to the land, and the land that would bring it to the Great Tree.

"Hey, twenty laps are up."

The sudden voice startled Noah enough that he missed a step and pitched forward. His training kicked in and he tucked his body into a roll instead of a fall, but his momentum kept him moving forward unexpectedly and kept him rolling for four more rotations before coming to a full stop. Head spinning, he looked up and saw an outstretched hand offering to help him up. He looked at his helper and found—

—a doomed, patchwork world held together by a brilliant sword of light named—

"You alright?" Durandal asked, hand still outstretched.

Noah looked at the girl's outstretched hand and took a second to note the dull throbbing in his head and the dozen minor aches throughout his body.

"Da," he said, taking her limb. She pulled him up to his feet with a surprising amount of strength with a wrist he was sure he could hold with his pinkie touching his thumb. She beamed at him.

"You wanna spar?" she suddenly asked.

Rita, who Noah found was hot on the younger girl's heels, protested. "Miss Durandal, I think it's too early for that yet."

Bianka turned to her adjutant and frowned. "He's strong, you know."

"Not strong enough to withstand your strikes now unprepared."

Noah grit his teeth and, ignoring the throbbing in his head, stepped forward.

"I will spar," he said. The two women turned to him, with Bianka growing a smile and Rita forming a frown.

"That's great!" the girl said. "We'll do it here."

Noah took a few more seconds to calm his breath before bringing his fists up. He only had a second to see her form blur before he found himself on the floor with a stinging on his cheek. He blinked. He blinked again.

"Is that it?" the girl said. Noah turned furiously to Bianka. Her shoulders were trembling and her hands were balled into fists. Her eyes wouldn't meet his gaze but her face wore a scowl.

A combination that only made Noah's anger flare.

"Again," he said, jumping to his feet.

The girl's face relaxed a little and she took a stance.

Noah launched himself at her, leading with a right fist. It sailed through nothing but air and he felt a countering punch against his other arm that had been tucked to his chest. It stung enough that he temporarily lost feeling in his fingers. He wrung his fist back but not before Bianka hopped backward with the grace of a cat. The first exchange.

He feinted a dash. The young Squad Captain tilted her head and gave a look that asked, 'really?'.

Incensed, he stepped forward and snapped his leg towards her side, which met her guarded arm. He quickly retracted the limb and stepped away, but at the same moment, she charged forward. He barely had time to put his arm in the way of a tiny fist that zoned towards his nose, which left him with none to block the following blow to his stomach that had him reeling half a dozen steps backward. He huffed and glared at the frowning girl. The second exchange.

Bianka sighed and bounced on her feet as if to tell him to get ready, then she suddenly turned into a quickly growing blur. Noah's eyes went wide as he ducked under a punch that whistled audibly over his shoulder. There was no time to savor his evasion—a series of equally quick strikes quickly followed and he wasn't sure which ones he was able to fend off as all of them rattled his bones and caused his ears to ring. Bianka pushed Noah like a blizzard, her flurry of fists steadily shaving away at the ground he held until a blow made him pitch too far backward and left his legs open to be swept from under him and he fell on his back.

Noah grit his teeth against the dozen new aches throughout his body. He turned over. It took everything he could muster to push himself to his feet. He looked up to see the girl. She looked away when he did, which only brought a fresh wave of blood up to his head.

"Again," he said, yet the word faded into a wheeze halfway.

A hand suddenly landed on his shoulder and Noah turned to find Rita. "I do not believe this should continue."

He pushed her away.

"Again!"

Bianka's face suddenly morphed into a scowl. "No," she said, her voice, Authority, "You will stand down and apologize to your Vice-Captain then go stand on the sidewalk and do nothing. Is that clear?"

Noah's fists clenched as he opened his mouth. He stopped. Then he gritted his teeth and grunted.

"Is that clear," Durandal repeated, "Valkyrie Adams?"

Noah glared at the little girl that had thrown him into the asphalt. "Crystal."

"Then go."

Noah slowly turned towards the Vice-Captain and brought his hand against his brow, his expression now stony.

"Ma'am, I apologize for pushing you away rudely, ma'am," He said, his words enunciated deliberately.

Vice-Captain Rossweisse crossed her arms. "Apology not accepted—", Noah had to stop himself from falling back into a scowl, "—but you may go."

He dropped his salute and marched briskly off the road where he would watch the rest of the Valkyries of Squad Zero perform their morning training. They were eventually dismissed once the clock displayed 0800 and left him to stand in the sun. Eventually, the Squad Captain came back and dismissed him at 1700.

Ω

CHAPTER END