Cold, Cold Heart
Is there anyone out there? Anyone but me? Am I the only thing that exists? To anyone who is reading… Please respond. From my heart to yours, I am calling.
In the Summer of 2013, a chain of events would occur that would eventually lead to the launch of the very first intercontinental ballistic missile, armed with all the terror of humanity's most monstrous weapon. Not a moment later, humanity would launch its very last—and seal the fate of all things that have ever and will ever live on Earth. Exercising power that would bring even the gods to their knees, humanity engulfed their one and only cradle in a hellfire never before seen, purging the surface and eradicating life as they knew it. A divine climax—for the tired history of humanity.
But before the final bomb detonated, the people of Moscow, stubborn and wretched as they were, went to ground for shelter. In droves, they pushed their way into the extensive metro system that sprawled under their city, not knowing that their shelter…
Would also be their tomb.
It is 2036, now. Since the very first huddled masses of Moscow made their way underground, they have carved out a life for themselves in those dark and damp tunnels—within the stations. It's hard living, but it's living nonetheless.
Koishi Komeiji is just a normal girl. Well, as normal as a girl can get in this dark new world, that is. She was born and raised in Polis, a well-known central station that lies directly under the Moscow State Library. She grew up hearing stories from her mother about the world that came before the metro—clear blue skies, the warm sun above, and endless fields of green—always tinged with a distant longing. Her mother always wanted to return to the land that she had long since abandoned—Japan. The land that survived only in her memories.
Her mother took her own life when Koishi was just a child. It was a complicated affair that Koishi felt was best left to the past, but it galvanized Koishi to pursue her mother's dream—and to spread her ashes upon the coastline of the homeland she missed dearly. So as soon as she was able, Koishi trained to become an independent Stalker—brave (or stupid, depending on who you ask) men and women who stepped out of the metro into the frozen wasteland above in search for the untouched stash of riches and supplies the old world had left behind.
Up there—with the bitter cold, the everpresent radiation, the mutants that stalked around every corner, and the haunting memories of a dead world—Koishi would make her fortune and plot a safe path out of Moscow. It would be a perilous journey—one that would cut through the treacherous frozen landscape of Siberia, across the expansive steppes of Mongolia, down through the irradiated hellscape that was China, into the Korean peninsula… and across the sea to a land that might've long since been consumed by the ocean or blasted to glass. But for now, Koishi had yet to plot a path out of Moscow, as perilous as it was on its own.
As Koishi sat crouched upon the roof of a ruined apartment complex, a gentle pip of her watch brought her out of a brief reverie. She popped the filter off of her gas mask and replaced it with a fresh one from her pack. With a gloved hand, she reached down to her harness and pulled out a pair of worn binoculars, and pointed them to the snowed-in and iced-over cityscape below.
She had spent all morning, as she usually did these days, touring the surface in search for valuables. She pushed along her usual route, wading through the snow and climbing across makeshift bridges that she had laid down in the past. The mutants were quiet today, but the demons, massive winged creatures that terrorized the surface, were restless for one reason or another. Even on the way here, a demon had taken a pass at Koishi, almost hooking its claws into her and carrying her away. Luckily, she was able to shoot at it enough with her rifle to scare it away.
Koishi shrugged. What were the chances of lightning striking twice? Usually demons don't attack Stalkers, so long as they keep to themselves. Keep… to themselves.
Suddenly, there was a loud, indignant shriek just behind Koishi. Her entire body whipped around to see a massive winged creature, entire body covered in a tough, leathery surface. Most importantly… it had an eye freshly shot out, by what Koishi could only surmise to be a rifle round. It put its talons forward, smashing into Koishi's shoulders, digging into her uniform, and carrying her off with a beat of its powerful wings. She was swept off of the top of the apartment complex in a single motion. Now dangling by her shoulders in open air, below her had to be a drop of no less than a hundred feet from the ground.
Koishi, without so much as a cry of pain, instantly went for her knife holster. She drew her dagger and thrusted it upwards, plunging it in and out of the beast's flesh in a vaguely panicked fervor. With a cry of pain, the demon let go of Koishi, causing her to go into an uncontrolled freefall down to Earth. But then, at the last possible moment, the demon came back, this time talons digging into one of Koishi's legs.
Koishi took in a sharp breath as the talons dug in and drew blood, which trickled downard from the wound to her head. Arms slightly numb, she willed every ounce of strength she could muster to unholster the revolver she had at her hip. She drew the weapon and pointed it upwards toward her feet… and then toward the head of the demon. She pulled back the hammer and squeezed the trigger, sending a bullet towards the beast's head with a resounding bang. And then she did it again, and again, and again, until the demon let out a pained cry and decided she was too much trouble for what she was worth.
The beast let go and flew away in a hurry, letting Koishi fall the rest of the way to the ground, where she tumbled and rolled across the hard stone and concrete below. Then, as she rolled, she felt her entire body lurch again as it fell into another free fall. Into a blast crater she fell, and into the icy waters collected in it.
Bogged down by her heavy equipment, she thrashed around in a panic, each desperate wave of her arms only making her sink deeper in the surprising depths of the crater. Her gas mask started to fill with murky water and she started to choke, until…
A gloved hand plunged into the water, seizing her by the collar and pulling her upwards and outwards. Dazed and barely conscious, Koishi could make out only a precious few details about her savior. Another Stalker, dressed in shabby, run-down gear. Covered in plate carriers and weapons, with their face completely obscured by what looked to be a ballistic mask with a filter fitted in.
"You really ought to be more careful on the surface." The figure knelt down as Koishi's vision started to fade to black. "You really should count yourself lucky that I was there to save you… Kaguya."
"If you've ever wondered why you and I are the only characters in this world…
It's because there aren't enough actors to populate the stage.
Not enough souls to occupy this wonderful world.
If you think about it, we only have a paltry few. A couple trillion, was it? More or less. Most of them with only a single cell to their names? Not enough. It's not enough.
That's too little for a proper world, Koishi. Much too little. Wouldn't you be afraid of running into repeat characters? That's no good.
So go out there and collect more."
The figure dragged Koishi along the ground. Blacked out as she was, Koishi could cognize the idea of a wicked, toothy smile, just behind that expressionless mask.
"Until then, I'd be happy to play these little games with you.
I'm not going anywhere."
"Pilot condition deteriorating. Administering combat stimulants."
"Ghrk…" Zhongmou's entire body tensed up as a fresh dose of a potent combat cocktail was delivered straight into her bloodstream. At this point, her blood had to be almost a quarter methamphetamine… and as a result, her hands shook and her vision swam. Really, she thought her heart should've exploded from the pounding, bloating feeling she felt in her chest. But regardless, she was still there, somehow conscious. Somehow alive. She looked through the array of camera feeds surrounding her pilot's seat, her eyes darting from side to side to survey the battlefield.
Around the Anti-Love Combat Frame was a graveyard of gold—severed limbs and headless mechs floated all around in slow, lifeless dances across the void. Really, it was only a brief respite. Already, Zhongmou was surrounded yet again by fresh Vijoka, which encircled and drew close with a painful, methodical approach. Her own frame, which spewed sparks from frayed wires and puffs of smoke from slashed open hull pieces, groaned from the stress of raising its weapons. Already the machine was pushed past its technical limits and into a dreadful territory where it ran on well-wishes alone. Left alive by pure luck.
And what a rotten turn of luck it was. In a hellish display, the remains of her enemy pulled themselves back together into mismatched variations of each other—pulled together by chains of satori, which crawled around and revealed themselves from every cavity of the severed parts. Piloting these Vijoka were not pilots… but satori. Colonies and colonies of third eyes, working in tandem to make the limbs move, to hold the machines together, to dispatch active threats to their homes. Across the cold expanses of space, they worked together to chain parts together and meld them back into position. Parasitic life forms. Born of… Zhongmou could only guess.
Zhongmou flipped some switches on the interior, causing the Anti-Love Combat frame to lurch in accordance. It cast away the outer pieces of armor that adorned its worn down orichalcum surface—a measure that would take stress off of its overtaxed reactor. A blade slid out of a wrist compartment. She postured herself to fight, but seeing the beasts that she had cut down not a moment ago put themselves back together, and seeing yet more to come… Zhongmou felt an overwhelming fatigue that soaked down to her very bones.
"... Tell me it's possible," Zhongmou said, hanging her head. As she sank into her seat, her eyes glazed over, staring straight ahead at something beyond her vision. The grip she held on the controls first tightened… but then loosened until her arms were propped against the control bars, slack and limp. "Tell me that I can do it."
"Zhongmou…" A voice called through the radio. Ethereal and ghostly. For the longest moment, Zhongmou could hardly even determine if it was real, or a product of her deteriorating mental state. But beyond a doubt, no matter fantasy or reality, it was Princess Kaguya's voice over the radio. "What's going on? Please tell me you're still safe."
"You once asked me why I cared," Zhongmou muttered. Her entire body shuddered with an inexplicable cold that chewed down to the most base fibers of her being. Of her nonexistent soul. She would've cried, or started to sob, if only she knew how. "I don't think I'm very much like other moon rabbits. I don't have any hopes or dreams. I don't have any ambitions or reasons to live. I do things because they are my duty… no. That's not right. I do things because other people are doing them as well. Because someone told me to do it—that's why."
There was silence from the other end. Zhongmou, for a moment, might've tricked herself into thinking that she was speaking to someone. That she wouldn't be dying here alone. But sitting there, drugged up beyond belief and completely robbed of any hope, she felt compelled to speak. Even if the person she was talking to was a delusion of an addled mind.
"Or at least, I did. Until I met you. Princess, I…" Zhongmou's voice caught in her throat. "I don't know if I have the will to say it."
"You might not get another chance…" Kaguya's voice rang in her ear. "Whatever it is, I would rather you let it out. Before it got the chance to tear you apart."
"I… love you. I love you so much it makes my heart ache." Dots and static started to fill Zhongmou's vision as she hung on the edge of passing out. "That's why I do it. That's why… That's why I need you to tell me that I can do it. I don't have anything else to live for. That's what it means to be a moon rabbit."
Dead air. Zhongmou's grip tightened. As enemies closed in on all sides, she slipped further and further into her own isolated reality. To her, the air grew thick. The walls closed in. The world to her became nothing but the confines of her mind.
"... Please. Give me directions. Tell me to work harder. Tell me that if I just try harder, that it'll be possible. Tell me that it's going to be okay… that if I keep going, I'll make it. That the day will be won." There was a brief pause. A deafening silence. When Zhongmou continued to speak, her voice was hoarse and weak. "It's an unreasonable request… but could you say it? Could you say you loved me, too?"
"Zhongmou…"
"Yes?"
The words that then followed had no substance. Though they were uttered, they had no form beyond the fundamental feeling through which they conveyed. And sat there in the cockpit of a failing machine, faced with poor odds and an impossible task, Zhongmou felt something break. Not her heart, or her mind—but her chains.
She let out a yell, and with an unnatural savagery, pushed herself to her limit. And further yet.
Her body. Her machine. They shall break long before she does.
Eirin gave the console a swift kick
"Damn this… who designed this piece of junk?" Kaguya opened her mouth as if to answer, but Eirin held up her hand to stop her. "Yeah. I know. I just never would have thought it could come to this…"
Kaguya blinked and did a double take. Eirin? Not expecting something? It could've been the eerie silence, or the suffocating darkness that only made way for the flashing emergency lights, but Kaguya felt that the entire situation had a bizarre, dream-like quality. "You can't fix it? Surely there is something you can do?"
Eirin shook her head as she skimmed through the diagnostics one more time. "No. In the most fundamental sense of the word, no. I thought I had taken proper measures to account for every possibility, but…"
"Something escaped your view?"
"Not quite." Letting out a heavy sigh, Eirin brought both of her hands to the control panel. Even here, floating in the zero-g environment of a station that was barely online through its backup generators, Eirin's fingers danced across the keyboard with a practiced grace. "It's more accurate to say that something was created from nothing. Someone violated causality—and by so doing, manifested something that is beyond observation. You can consider it an effect without a cause, or an agent that exists all on its own. A theoretical impossibility."
"... You mean Koishi."
"The clone, yes. Such flagrant disregard… she must be ready to do something drastic. That means we're almost out of time." Eirin nodded her head before tapping into the communication set in her suit. "Lieutenant. What is your status?"
"Busy!" The response over the radio was quick, succinct, and punctuated by the sound of heavy breathing and gunfire. As professional as Aina was trying to be, it was clear that her voice was shaking with a vague twinge of panic. "We've managed to take the bridge, but we're currently taking heavy fire from hostile boarding teams. We'll hold position for now, but there's no telling how much longer we can defend this location."
"Very well. The rail system is damaged beyond repair," Eirin said, her eyes flicking over to an emergency switch. She unlatched the plastic covering and pulled it down, into its active position. "Change of plans. We're jettisoning the rail system and switching to conventional delivery. What I want you to do is to change the targeting solution—from the Space Kaiju to the Mahavairocana. I need this station prepped to fire within the minute—can you make it happen?"
"I would, ma'am but… the bridge crew is dead. Captain, too. We're not sure what happened to them, but they are effectively KIA."
"Irrelevant. Spare anyone possible to work the targeting controls. The station AI should be able to handle most of the heavy lifting."
"... Understood. We'll make it happen."
"Good. Make it happen quickly, because I'm making my way to Engineering to overload the reactor, understood?" Eirin planted her feet on the ground, which made a small clicking sound before locking into place with the magnets built-in. She then pulled out the bow she had slung around her shoulder… and smashed it into the console again and again, before it was a useless heap of scrap electronics and shattered glass. She stowed her bow again and casted a quick glance over to Kaguya. "We're scuttling the station and everything on it. You'll have ten minutes, starting now. The Argo will extract us. Any questions?"
"Come again, ma'am? You said you're overloading the station reactor?"
"Indeed," Eirin responded. The magnets in her boot disengaged and once again she started to float. She seized Kaguya by the wrist before engaging her suit thrusters. "Is there an issue with that, Lieutenant."
"N-not at all." A deep breath could be heard on the other end. "By Chang'e… It will be done."
"See to it. Over and out."