Beeeeerrrrrrr. Tapping filled the silence as the sole occupant of the room waited for the call to go through. It was a very large room, which formed an almost perfect circle. The well-equipped commander's chair in the room's epicenter was bordered on three sides by electronic equipment, providing the only light in the room, which was dim at best. In front of the chair was a map of the world, with glowing red points slowly pulsing.
He had thought of everything: no variable was too small to be excluded from his calculations; the weather was even being monitored for ideal conditions. He seriously doubted that the weather would play any factor at all in his plans but he was determined to leave nothing to chance. He had arranged all the pieces on the board in preparation… well, all but one. Rolling his eyes and sighing as he remembered that all but one was often a phrase heard frequently among mad scientists, most often when their plans had included everything- except for that one variable that had inevitably brought about their downfall. He was not going to fall into that particular trap: he might be considered a mad scientist or an evil genius or what have you, but this was going to be mad science executed correctly dammit!
Beeeeerrrrrrr. The restless tapping of fingers on armrest came to an abrupt halt as the phone was answered.
"Hello?"
"Is this Nina? I –"
"How did you get this number?" her voice hissed over the phone, sounding like it had been forced through clenched teeth. Undeterred, he continued in his pleasant tone of voice, trying very hard to keep any hint of mischievousness from his voice and most likely failing.
"Not important. What is important is that I have a job for you."
"This is ridiculous!"
"No, actually according to your file, this is quite normal. How else…" he said abandoning all attempts to hide the amusement in his voice "…Would a… freelancer such a yourself be able to make a living without having employers, hmmmmm?"
"…What's the job?"
"Simple smash and grab with a minimum of smashing. Your kind of thing I gather." He slipped a disk into a slot located in his left armrest while saying "I'm sending the information to you now: Means of extraction, the tools you will have at your disposal-"
"This is your idea of simple?" Nina cried, causing the man to wince.
And she went straight to the location He thought while rolling his eyes. This was going to be a long day.
He had no idea.
Breath of Fire:
Hunger
By
Jimborg
Author's notes: If this ever sees the light of day (Or the internet, whichever you prefer), I am going to be a happy man regardless of its literary caliber. On to the story:
It was mainly inspired by the Capcom game, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. It wasn't the most popular or made the most money, but the story and the mechanics made you think, and I'd like to thank Capcom for having the courage to ship something non-traditional like that and here's to hoping that some of that courage transfers over so I actually post the damn thing.
Nina, Ryu, and Momo are the property of Capcom. I do not own them in any way, shape or form. This story, as it is, is purely for entertainment purposes.
This is an Alternate Universe Fan fiction; as such any blatant break with Canon was most likely intentional.
Chapter 1The job
Again the tapping of fingers filled a room, although this room differed greatly in appearance from the room where the evil genius did his planning. How exactly, was difficult to determine at first: It could be that the rooms adequate lighting was not intended to obscure its occupant's identity. It could also be the fact that this room was home to benevolent scientific research instead of a hub for a world domination scheme. Or maybe what gave it away was the fish swimming outside the room's porthole.
It was difficult to tell.
The occupant pushed up her glasses and ceased the drumming of her fingers as she came to her decision, and entered a quick keystroke into the laptop in front of her. Her attention was then entirely centered on the printer as it spat out an answer. Carefully pulling the page from the printer she looked it over. Calmly setting the paper down she went over to a large mechanical apparatus attached to the wall, dropped to her knees and cried:
"Dammit! What in God's name do you want from me?"
A fifty something scientist who was rapidly losing what was left of his gray locks peered around the corner. "Is something the matter Momo?"
Momo looked back as dangerously as one can look while clad innocuously in a white lab coat with blue undershirt. She gazed back with venom in her brown eyes and calmly replied, "Nothing's the matter. I am merely trying to establish communication with the fish. Maybe they can tell me why the resonance scanner doesn't work!"
Chuckling the man walked up to the device Momo was trying to coax to action and replied, "Yep, the machine has been giving everyone a headache lately." Helping Momo to her feet he continued "Can't you figure out what's wrong with it? You are an mechanical engineer, right?"
Momo, a bit embarrassed by her previous outburst, looked relieved, as she actually did have something useful to say to compensate for drawing the busy man away from his work. Ticking off on her fingers she began "I did a thorough investigation of the internal workings via the maintenance hatch, manually sorted through the code for three hours with the debug program, and I just ran the whole gauntlet of sync tests. As far as base AI is concerned…" indicating the scanner with her thumb "…there's nothing wrong with it."
"And yet it doesn't work" he supplied.
"Well…"
"Yes?"
"Technically it's working fine…" Momo continued hesitatingly, handing him the sheet of paper she just printed out "It's just that the resonance signal it picks up makes no sense."
He peered at the paper for a long moment with his eyes squinted, then handed it back to her, saying "I have no idea what this means. I'm an archeologist, not an engineer. However, I have no doubt you know what you're doing, so just stop banging your head against the glass for a second and I'm sure you'll figure out something."
Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the sublevel…
"How do you people come up with these schemes?"
To any normal person, the scientist talking to herself would seem a bit… mentally unbalanced. Although those who knew Nina would say that was not too terribly far from the truth, the normal person would only be partially correct because:
Nina was technically not a scientist (The anatomy course she took was only to familiarize herself with vital striking points on the human body) and
She was not talking to herself; rather she was speaking in a voice barely above a whisper that was sufficient to carry to the communications unit snuggled tightly in her ear. The other end of the conversation was received by a woman in a van parked in a non-descript alley.
"We have lots of spare time" came the answer. Nina rolled her eyes. Getting a complete conversation out of her controller was like pulling teeth. However, conversation was not the point of this exercise: achieving her employer's goals (and thus the subsequent payday) was.
"Keep moving" the voice prodded. "You just made it past the second security checkpoint, your target's at the other end of this hallway." Nina looked in the indicated direction. At the end of the metallic gray hallway there was a small aquarium set up so that it seemed like the sea life in the aquarium mingled with that outside. In reality a thick panel of glass overlaid with the metal that made up the rest of the hull of the station separated it from the ocean proper; to the left of the glass was a locked door. Nina looked left and right, something seemed eerily familiar, like smelling something you haven't smelled in years and you're trying to call up the associated childhood memory.
"Miss Nina…" she began, irritation begging to creep into her voice.
"I'm going." Nina replied. Squaring her shoulders, she set off down the hallway. Her controller continued "The room is locked but there is a slot for the ID card around your neck. Inside will be two people: an elderly man and his security guard. You will give the elderly man the report we have provided for you. If he says anything try to be polite and leave. Then you shall receive further instructions" Nina walked down the hallway to the door, admired what a nice shot the photo was on the ID card, and then swiped the card.
Inside was a huge contrast to the sparse hallway. Books were cluttered all over the table; pages of text and diagrams were sticking out of the books and covered a good portion of the table. At one end of the room the previously described elderly scientist was working furiously at the computer, the obligatory white coat seeming to seamlessly merge with his white hair, muttering something under his breath. Sensing movement out of the corner of her eye, Nina saw a blue haired man wearing a black jacket and tie leaning back in the corner opposite the scientist. The card clipped to his suit read "Ryu". His blue eyes flickered to her once, and then judging her not to be a threat, resumed his previous activity of scanning the room.
"Hello?" the old man turned to face her, his eyes visibly bloodshot from staring at a computer screen too long. "Here's your report," she said handing him the document. He grabbed the report from her, not once verbally acknowledging her presence, scanning it quickly and setting it over to the side and continuing his frenzied typing. She looked at the figure hunched over the keyboard then looked at Ryu in the corner with a 'What-the-hell? Honestly. What. The. Hell?' look and he responded with an apologetic smile and a shrug. Turning back to the muttering figure she gave a quick nod and left the room.
"What was up with that guy?" Nina questioned.
"Who? The scientist or the security guard?" came the question in her ear.
"The guard was cute. I can handle cute. But…" A sigh escaped her controller.
"The man thinks outside the box. So far away from the box in fact the use of a strong lens would set the box on fire and he wouldn't know or care."
"…Huh?" was Nina's only response.
"That's how it was explained to me. Turn down the east hallway here and go into the restroom there. Inside you'll find a stall labeled 'out of order'."
Nina walked into the restroom, noting with distaste the metallic gray color still prevailed in here. "Once inside the stall you will notice a grate above you. Inside this grate is the access to the air filtration system, but more importantly, the cables to the security network run directly parallel to the air duct. From there it is a simple matter to -"
Nina touched the door to the stall and froze. There it was again, that sense that defied identification. What in the world could play such havoc with her mind?
Nina's eyes snapped open as she finally recognized what she was feeling, her emotions shifting from mortification to embarrassment to anger in a blur. How could she, of all people take so long to recognize something so obvious? Nina weighed the options, decided that it really wasn't a choice at all, did a quick 180 walking back into the hallway and broke out into a sprint, all in the space of three seconds.
"Nina! Return to the mission! Ni-" her words died on her lips as the quick squeal of static was the only answer to her demands. She rolled her eyes upward as if seeking guidance from heaven and tabbed a switch. "Sir, Miss Nina –"
"I heard." He interrupted.
"Sir, if you give me just a moment I can take her out before she reaches the surfa-"
"Correction, Ms. Crowne, you will do nothing except stick to your task. As we speak, the juice in the ink will have started triggering Dr. Campbell's allergic reaction by now. You need to be here to take the call that his security guard will put in on his behalf. At that point you and your sister will arrive on the scene in your medic uniforms, take the professor and go to the extraction point. Please keep in mind that his affliction is genuine and will require treatment."
"And" he continued, "if you used your God given eyes, you will notice that Miss Nina is not even bothering to return directly to the surface."
Looking towards the laptop resting on the front dash, she noted that indeed Ms. Nina's tracking device was in the elevator going down to the third sub level. "Why in the world would she be going there?"
"I don't know. But I'll find out."
"How?"
"I'll ask her. Insistently"
End Chapter 1
Authors notes: Thanks for reading. I need your reviews! Please!