Chapter 29 - Backstories and Discoveries
After catching up with the others, the party travelled through the Dungeon and came to a 2-way crossroad. One lead left, which went to another corridor, and the other lead to another room which looked to be a storage area. At first everyone wanted to go to the Corridor to check it out, but Nico requested they check the storage area. His reasons were that they might find something out that would explain more about how these Zombies came to be and what kind of virus was used to make it.
He wanted to know what they had dealt with, because there was a high likelihood that more of them could have been developed in secret, thus if they new how they came to be, they could not only defeat them quicker, but also deal a decisive blow against Avenir, weakening their hold on Lastation long enough for Chain and the others to get their shit together and find a way to combat them themselves. In addition, if Avenir had gone this far, what else had they done behind closed doors? A full on carnival of horrors had been unleashed on their asses when they first discovered Umbrella's secrets, so this would be no different, he assumed.
In the end, the Party decided to do so, so that they could get a better idea of what is going on in this place. They entered the storage room, which seemed to rival the open area where they fought the Ogroman in size. There wasn't much in it, save for a series of crates on the left side of the room as they made their way in.
"This place… it has a different feel to it than outside…" IF noted, she looked around, her eyes gazing across the room. Something about this place felt… off, disturbing even. Her instincts told her that something bad had happened here, especially since there were dozens of markings on the walls and the ground. Those markings… they looked like claws and fangs, which gave her a sense of unease that didn't go away.
Compa hummed in agreement, worriedly searching the area with her eyes but in a frantic manner not like IF's careful gaze. She looked like a frightened rabbit that was aware of a dangerous predator nearby but unsure as to its position. "Y-Yeah… there's this eerie sensation here… reminds me of when I'd visit my parents' graves with my Grandpa…" she mused, shuddering at the memories of her parents.
"Oh, I didn't know that… I'm sorry about them, they must have been good people." Neptune gasped, a hand over her mouth with wide eyes as she gave a sympathetic gaze to the saddened Nurse-In-Training.
Compa turned to look at her, her usually bright eyes slightly dimmer as she remembered her parents. "Well, I didn't know them all too well. My momma and papa died shortly after I was born from monsters attacking the hospital. My momma was too weak to move, so she was killed shortly after the attack begun…" she paused to take a deep breath, shaking as she remembered what she had learned about that particular incident. "Momma had placed me in a protective cloth and hid me where she could, making sure to have it so the monsters would eat her and move on, not minding me. She did it by… taking pills that would make her irresistible to the monsters by heightening her pheromones… limiting their senses to her only… she got eaten alive to protect me."
By this point Compa was struggling to breathe as she tried to retain her composure. Neptune quickly realised how bad it must be for er to remember this information, and quickly placed a hand on her shoulder in comfort as she spoke with an urgency one wouldn't expect from her. "Whoa there, girl, no need to get all sad and miserable recalling the past. You don't have to tell us anything." She said with more seriousness than normal. Her eyes held comfort and sympathy for the girl before her, knowing that this was difficult for her to recall.
"I-it's okay, Nep-Nep, I'm a big girl, s-so I should get it out of the way… a-anyways, Papa managed to fight them off after momma died, bringing my infant self to safety. Though just when he managed to hand me to the doctors to put me in a safer place, a m-m-m-monster pierced him through the chest from behind. H-He was barely able to kill it in time, but… he didn't s-s-s-s-survive."
At this point Neptune embraced the grief-stricken girl as she began to sob, remembering what had happened. "Hey-Hey-Hey, shhh, it's okay, girl, here…" she muttered softly, holding her close and being the supportive friend for once, much to the surprise of IF and Noire. While they had been willing to help the girl, hell IF had been about to do the hand thing before, but Neptune beating them to it and showing this side of her was not what they expected to see on their agenda.
After a few moments of silent tears, Compa took a deep breath and tried to calm herself down from digging up bad memories. "Th-thank you, Nep-Nep… I needed that." She said, sniffing while summoning some tissues from her Inventory to deal with her runny nose before wiping away the tears in her eyes. "G-Grandpa told me about my parent's deaths when I was 14. He wanted me to at least know who they were and that they loved me even though they didn't get the chance to raise me. I'll always be grateful to my grandpa for telling me, I-It was something I wanted to know about for a long time." She ended finally, smiling in a sad yet beautiful manner as she thought about her deceased grandfather.
Nico overheard them as he searched through the confines of the Crates, doing his best not to how furious he was. Nico remembered that case well, it was one of the Cases that he himself had volunteered for. When he had heard what had happened to Compa's parents that day, most of him was livid, livid at the tragedy that had befallen her before she had even reached a day's age.
However, a small part of him couldn't help but be doubtful. The Hospital that had birthed Compa... he knew which one that had been because he'd checked her birth certificate, had been knee deep within Planeptune's main city, well within the defences of the walls. He'd Investigated the reports and had found that no damages had been done to the gates, no signs of them even hitting it. it was like one second they weren't there, and the next they were. No matter how much he tried though, Nico never got to the bottom of the case. He'd been chasing leads on it for years, but always came up with a dead end.
Everything about him screamed that that incident was a setup of some kind, but he could never prove it. Not with how dead and cold the leads were.
Nico's thoughts halted when, while searching through a crate, he stumbled across something amid the old looking documents, something that quickly caught his attention. "Hey girls, I think I found something." He called out to them as he brought the items he'd found in the crate out of it and turned away from the mess he'd made.
"Eh? That was quick…" Neptune remarked, before she sweat dropped when she noticed the mess that Nico had left behind. It looked literally like the remains of a site where a bomb had detonated, crates were split apart, documents were thrown everywhere and empty shards of grass littered the ground around the crates. "… Nevermind, so anyways, what did you find, Nicky?"
Everyone walked up to him, crowding around to look at what the male had found while Compa had told them about her parents and their… demise. The items that he'd found were a couple files that had the words CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET written in blood red lettering while there was a vial filled with a strange liquid in his other hand. Nico had already begun Scanning it with his Bracers by the time their minds registered the appearances of the items in his hands.
The male answered them without looking up, using one hand to open one of the files while the other files were held in-between the fingers of his other hand. "Hmmm… well, this confirms it, Avenir HAS been digging into Umbrella's research. Judging by what I'm seeing, this has been so for a significant amount of time." He remarked, using one of his fingers to point at a specific part of the File. It had a list of dates and times deliveries were made, deliveries between Avenir and Umbrella. "From the looks of it, they've been secretly trading their research since... 4 years before the Racoon City Outbreak. Makes sense, considering the complexity of this new virus can't have been made in a month, or even a year."
Using his right foot, Nico flicked it back to catch an open crate, bringing his leg around to bring the crate to his side so he could toss the file onto it. He read the next file, and his eye narrowed darkly as he realised what this was. "… this seems to be a file containing the results of their experiments. Hmmm, let's see… "Results on the Chrysalid "C" Virus, have been largely successful Subjects exhibit reactions and tactics that confirm that they have retained their baser intelligence, as opposed to the subjects of the T Virus. Future experiments prove to be promising."" He read the file, his tone indicating how his disgust was rising each second.
He wasn't the only one either, as the girls were steaming from what they were hearing, and not from embarrassment. "Now this is just evil!" Neptune huffed while her nostrils released two trails of steam, her fists raised to her chest level as she glared at the file like it was a farm of eggplants. "Avenir have just gone from Bleh to URGH, in my professional opinion."
None of them disagreed with her there, as they were thinking similar thoughts themselves. Nevertheless, Nico flipped the pages till he found something else of noteworthy intent, having already began scanning the files with his Bracers and saving what he found in their Databases. "Ah, here's some more info on this C Virus…" he muttered under his breath as he and the girls read the file, though only Nico read out loud. "Chrysalid Virus, abbreviated as the 'C' Virus, is a result of merging the enhanced version of the "Veronica virus" with the "G-virus" variant within Spec Ops Agent Sherry Birkin's blood. Experiments show that the hosts retain some intelligence, enough to operate firearms like rifles or pistols."
"The method for producing common Zombies is gas related, as it can spread through the air, however the range of the spread is determined by how much is released initially. To spread further, the virus is transmitted from one host to another, through the conventional methods of physical contact with fluids. However, an incident happened during testing that was nor foreseen by our original predictions: the J'avo." Alongside this info was a few pictures of the J'avo, and none of them looked particularly friendly.
Once again flipping the pages, Nico continues. "These J'avo are proven to be superior to the Average Zombie, able to take on moderate sized BOW's for a significant time length. This takes effect almost immediately, causing rapid increase in the subject's strength and speed and causing the subject to develop several eyes. These Fully-intelligent humans infected with the C-Virus can cause spontaneous regeneration and mutation. However, tests show that if the subject is injected with a more advanced strain, subjects injected can immediately enter a Chrysalid state before erupting into a Complete Mutation. These mutations can vary, but have been classified as the following results: Napad, Strelats, and Mesets. Other mutations are listed below."
Pictures were attached by pins to the side of the file page, showing the pictures of the creatures mentioned as well as various statistics that weren't worth mentioning. Nico and the others could only stare in appalment and disgust at what Avenir had been doing. Preaching about humans being weaker than Machines, but behind closed doors they're doing this?!
Flipping through the files, another noteworthy subject caught Nico's attention. "... Hello..." he muttered, stopping on a page that contained even more information. "BOW Research has been going slower than this year's estimated inquiries from our analysts. More and more BOWs are failing to defeat the weakest of Spec Ops Agents..."" Nico bristled at that, and the girls couldn't blame him. Considering how he was one, this felt like seeing his own kind being treated as if they were cockroaches. ""In the field. Attributes allocate these failures to be due to dwindling intelligence within the BOWs brains. This is likely to do with how we administer the virus, however modifications to it will be too costly to be an effective solution. To accommodate this unexpected development, we have been investing in tamed BOWs, BOWs who can control themselves such as...###### and Sherry Birkin." One name seems to be ineligible. That, or they managed to scratch his or her name's out of their records for some reason."
"A tame BOW? Can such a thing exist?" Neptune questioned, getting the others to think about it hard for a moment. From what they had learned, BOWs may have greater powers than normal, but it came at the cost of their intelligence, for they relied on their instincts alone like animals. It should be impossible for the C Virus to make BOWs that can control themselves like that... but then again, this was Avenir they were talking about. They would likely keep trying anyways, sacrificing an untold number of lives to do so. One thing was firmly burned into their minds:
Avenir had a LOT to answer for.
After they had learned about that… admittingly horrific information about the C Virus, what it did, how it did it, and the creatures that were born as a result from it, Nico and the others made sure that the information would be stored in his Void Storage. This Evidence would not be enough to Condemn Avenir, but given enough time they would have enough to grind them to a halt for good. Hopefully the CPU of Lastation would see reason once they have enough facts.
Several beeping sounds alerted them to the Bracers on the male's forearms, which were showing the data that they had gained from scanning the Vial. Raising the date to his eye level and glancing down at the Vial for a few moments, Nico hummed in satisfaction before lowering his arm and facing them all. "Whelp, my Bracers tell me this is a sample of the C Virus, apparently an enhanced formula. When this place was abandoned for whatever reason, Avenir must have forgotten this while they were packing up." He theorised before disposing the Vial into his Void Storage.
"I guess that would be considered sloppy of them to leave such information in this place." Compa mused, frowning. It didn't seem like these guys would leave this behind if they could help it, it wouldn't make sense. This information may not be able to do much to them on its own, but still it was worrisome that they would just leave it here to rot till now.
IF pondered this while rubbing her chin, turning her head to look at the area once filled with the living dead, before turning back to them as a theory formed in her mind. "Well, they may not have needed to, this place had so many of those things, right? They must have been a major deterrent to snoopers, and anyone stupid enough to get in there… well, they'd likely never come back out again."
The vagueness and ominous meaning of her words there was not lost on the Party as they all looked where IF had before. If the horde had been that size before, then it would make sense for those that would have tried sneaking into this place to meet such a horrific end. Noire finally shook her head, she was done with this place and all the horrors that they had to uncover, she wanted to get out NOW. "We should continue on to find an exit guys, we can think of our next plan of attack afterwards."
Everyone nodded in agreement as they began to leave the area to find an exit to this hellish place.
Not seconds after the recent revelations that had been made to them, the group were heading down the corridor that they had discovered previously, though it didn't take long for one of them to fall to the ground in exhaustion. Guess who that was? If you can't, here's a hint, purple hair, likes pudding and fourth wall breaks.
"Iffy, are we there yet?" Neptune moaned as she fell face first onto the ground, twitching randomly as she took a breather, a heavy breather at that since her breathing was laboured like she'd been run ragged at a slave camp. "My legs are like jelly…" she complained as she kicked her legs in the air. Even that action seemed weak and sluggish, giving point to Neptune's claims.
Apparently, she wasn't the only one though as Compa fell onto her backside shortly after Neptune did, using her arms as support as her Syringe cluttered on the ground beside her. The sound echoed across the corridor although it was only them now with the other habitants being… dealt with. "I'm tired, too…" she moaned weakly and in protest, heaving and heaving while placing a hand on her chest to calm down her heart beat.
The others, hearing their complaints paused their walking and turned around to face them. It was IF, who sighed in dismay at the familiar sight, who responded to their comments first as she gazed at them with disappointed in her features. "This again? You girls really need to exercise or something." She remarked to them, earning dissatisfied looks from the duo on the ground.
Though in her mind she couldn't blame them for being exhausted so much. She felt mildly winded herself, considering the events that have transpired today, although she still stood by her point. She looked at them both, and saw that like before, they seemed to be genuinely tired.
"Exercise?" Neptune ran the word over her tongue like it was a foreign concept to her, earning raised brows from IF until an idea came into her mind. "Well, I play games, so is pushing buttons exercise?" she asked the Guild Agent hopefully.
However, her hopes were mercilessly shot down when IF stated in a sharp, stern tone like it was a blade. "Stop being stupid and be more active like Noire and Nico." She said, pointing over to the blackette and Spec Ops Agent… who were examining one of the walls ahead of them curiously, like they had just found something interesting.
"Everyone, can you come here for a bit?"
"You guys may wanna listen to her, this is weird."
Following the duo's words, IF walked on over while Neptune and Compa, groaning and moaning as they heaved themselves back onto their feet, walked over to stand by the brunette's side. "It's unusual for both Nicky and Noire to be calling us. I wonder what's up." Neptune wondered as they walked closer to IF's rear flanks. She had to admit, that if something could spark the interests of both Nico and Noire, two people who had the auras of someone who'd seen a lot, could be very interesting.
Once they had all caught up to the brunette, IF looked over at Noire with a small apologetic smile on her face. "Kept you guys waiting there. What's up?" she asked them with a hand on her hip.
Noire turned away from her and pointed her right hand at something that looked to be pinned to the wall by something from the opposite side. "This on the wall… isn't this the Disk you showed me…?" she asked them.
Getting a proper look at it, the girls realised that it was exactly the Disk that they had indeed shown Noire earlier, but this one wasn't theirs, not by a long shot. "You've got to be kidding… Two in the same location?" IF whispered with a disturbed look creeping onto her face as a trail of sweat rolled down her cheek, showing how nervous she was feeling right now at this new piece of information.
Neptune, surprisingly although she had been surprising them a lot already, had a similar expression to IF's as she soon realised what this meant. "So that means there's more around?!" she shouted in alarm. She remembered the monsters that spawn regularly, and their numbers were usually very high with one Disk. For there to be multiple Disks in the same location… "Planeptune had one and Lastation has two. That's not fair!"
"While I don't think the second point is relevant, this does pose a problem for us."" Nico remarked thoughtfully as he gazed intently at the Disk, his eye moving over it with the gaze of a Hawk. "If there's more than one Disk in the same location, then the amount of Monsters here could very well exceed the military's power to suppress. They could be overwhelmed potentially."
Leave it to Nico to come up with a logical, yet scary, scenario like this. Compa made another realisation as she looked worriedly at the Disk in the wall. "No wonder the monsters don't go away." She added into the conversation. Like the masked male said, the numbers were bad with just one Disk, but multiple Disks in the same place would spike Monster Populations beyond the Military's ability to suppress them.
"Well, no use leaving this as is." IF admitted thoughtfully, before flicking her hands out as her Qatars slid into place. She then began advancing predatorily towards the Disk, the lights above the Corridor reflecting light off the blades to make them both gleam menacingly and showcase what she had planned for the object. "Lets's break it."
She made to break it, when suddenly an exclamation from Neptune broke her concentration harder than a ball. Neptune literally 'came in like a wrecking ball' and smashed the tensity in the atmosphere. "Oh, oh, oh!" she bounced up and down and raised a hand to the skies, as if trying to get the teacher's attention in a classroom full of rowdy children. "Wait, Iffy! If we're going to break it, can I?" she then began shuffling nervously, closing her eyes with her hands behind her back. "I always wanted to break a Disk, but I don't want to do that to my music CD's. but if it's this, then I can have fun breaking it."
"Um, Neptune since when do you own Music CDs? If anything, its Compa or myself who own them?" Nico pointed out. Neptune was an amnesiac, so how would she know about CD's or know she had any?
However, Neptune ignored the male, making him growl in annoyance as she stared pleadingly at IF, said Guild Agent feeling a twitching in her brow. 'I can tell this is going to give me a migraine.' She thought while rubbing her temples with her thumb and index finger, before giving an annoyed stare to the preteen as she tried to remind her of what the situation was. "This isn't supposed to be "fun", you know."
"Yeah, but all work and no play makes Nep a dull girl, and we've deviated from the usual action/adventure genre of this game long enough if ya ask me. So, C'mon, I can have fun breaking it, right?"
"… sometimes I have to doubt your actions…"
While Neptune and IF quarrelled, Nico glanced at Noire for a moment, and when he glanced at the others, he realised this could be a prime opportunity. 'Noire may not be comfortable talking about this in the open, so I'll get her to come with me to somewhere private where we won't be heard. Originally, I would have done something sooner, however Noire hasn't done anything hostile to us since she joined this group, and it feels like whatever weight she had been bearing up until last night has been lifted from her shoulders. Now would be the time to get her alone so we can talk.'
His goals set, Nico walked over to the blackette, who had been silently watching the exchange between the two so she didn't notice his approach. When he was close enough, Nico tapped her shoulder, getting her attention. Before she could show her sudden shock at him being so close to her, Nico made the 'shush' motion with his finger before mouthing 'we need to talk privately' to her.
Curious on what he wanted to talk to her about, Noire took a glance to the trio of girls, who were completely absorbed in their own little worlds with regards to the Disk, before looking back at him and nodding. Together, they walked back down the way they came, making sure that nobody noticed that they were gone which was easy considering the way that the girls were squabbling with regards to who should break the Disk.
The two walked till they were back at the original Corridor they had been trapped in when Ganache locked the doors behind them earlier. Noire grimaced as she saw the corpses, but thankfully her nose had gotten used to the stench by now. She wasn't sure that was a good thing though, getting used to the smell of the dead. Turning to the male, she saw he was leaning against a wall with his arms crossed below his chest, his lone eye narrowed at her to show how serious he was. With a sudden surge of nervousness, she couldn't place, Noire started this off. "So, um, what do you-?"
"You can drop the flimsy act now, I know who you are now Noire, or should I say Black Heart?"
Noire jumped in a startled manner, and when she made to deny his words like she had done with Chian, the male raised a hand to silence her, something which made her bristle inside a bit, before he continued. "Before you try to come up with those weak excuses, I have evidence to this conclusion. There were many things that gave you away, for example your knowledge of the Land while claiming to be an amnesiac, and hell your disguise was flawed even then. Your state of apparel was also an indicator, you were dressed like someone of high class. That cosplay response you made would have been convincing, however your actions when making that response didn't douse my suspicions in the least. But the major thing that tipped me off to your identity was when we met for the first time. You got injured with my demonic energy, remember? That energy was still present when we encountered you for the second time in West Wind Valley."
Slowly, Nico stepped away from the wall and stepped towards her, placing one foot on the back of a shredded Zombie torso. "Finally, your wounds were the same as the white-haired woman's when we fought her before. Don't worry, I doubt the girls know, not so sure about IF for reasons akin to my own, though. I never said anything since you haven't had any intent of attacking Neptune after we clocked you. So, you best come clean because I'm pretty sure nobody's in the mood for lies right now."
Noire tried to open her mouth, raising a hand to correct him when she realised that she didn't have anything to counter with. He had several good foundation points that he has literally shoved into her face with blunt force and zero tact whatsoever. She had nothing to get herself out of this situation, something she hadn't expected whatsoever. Although, now that she thought about it Noire should have realised that this would have happened, as Nico wasn't as foolhardy as the others. No, that would be an insult to him, Nico wasn't foolhardy one at all. He had caught her, exposed her, though he had done so without letting Compa and Neptune more importantly realise what was going on, something she was thankful for. Though, part of her felt that she wouldn't want this secret to be kept so for long, anyways.
Therefore, with a resigned sigh, Noire gave him a hard look as she was engulfed in the light that came to HDD, with the place that they were in the light shouldn't be seen by Neptune or the others, which made her realise why Nico had brought her here. When the light faded away, it revealed the white haired swordstress known as Black Heart, CPU of Lastation, staring at him with a fierce glare on her features.
"Alright, I'll admit the disguise was flawed from the start. In hindsight, I should have expected you to figure it out." She reluctantly admitted, both to Nico and herself as she remembered the flimsy excuses she had made back in the past. She should have realised that Nico would figure it out swift enough. "Now that you know this, I'd like to know something." She then raised her large sword, the blade gleaming darkly as she pointed the tip at the male. "What will you do now that you know the truth about me? Will you finish what you started in that form of yours? Will you rat me out even after all we've been through?"
As she expected, Nico never even flinched at the sight of her sword poised to strike him down. Not even with how he didn't have his weapons out. "You already know the answer to that, Lady Black Heart." Nico replied as he stepped forwards, while Black Heart tightened the grip on her sword but made no move other than that. "I said I've known this entire time, yes? The fact that nobody has called you out on that, hell even my attempt to better hide your identity helps you get an answer to that question of yours."
He then released a sigh as his shoulders slumped and his body relaxed from its tense state earlier. "But if it'll help you get some form of closure then I'll say it: I have no intention of selling you out to the Basilicom, Avenir or any shit like that. The fact that A: you've obviously been trying to do all you can even by sneaking around, and B: haven't attacked Neptune since that time to instead focus on helping your people by learning what's going on, and C: found a way to come to some form of common ground, makes my respect for you increase by leaps and bounds."
As she heard his reply, Black Heart's face remained the fierce gaze of the warrior queen she was, and when Nico was finished, she held it for a moment. It then crumbled into a resigned sigh as she lowered her sword from his face and looked to the ground. "Your loyalty to Neptune surprises me… hmhmhmhm, it's almost impossible to believe that someone like her got someone like you as an ally." She chuckled, but it was without mirth, without anything, just an emptiness. She looked up at the ceiling and made a sound that seemed like a mix of a sigh and a groan. "Look at her, she has next to everything, friends, warmth, happiness, and what did I get for my insolence? A Nation that has lost faith in me, an Organisation harming my people, and a life of a caged bird." Once again, she chuckled, but this time it sounded like she was close to breaking even though she wasn't crying. "I guess its Karma for me, huh. Thinking only about something so selfish as being the True Goddess, ignoring what had happened while I was away…"
"True, I'm loyal to Neptune, but not because she's a Goddess. Probably don't realise this, but I hold no faith towards any Goddess." Nico interrupted her, causing Noire to look at him in bewilderment as if what he said was spoken in a foreign language. "We Spec Ops Agents hold faith in nothing but one thing: our own abilities. It may seem narcissistic, but many of us have suffered to the point where the only thing we can believe in was ourselves. We only work because we have no other path we'd like to walk on. We don't wish to live normal lives, but a life on the battlefield, for its our way of coping with what has happened to us."
As he said this, Nico closed his eye and remembered his fellow Agents, Agents who had their own baggage on their shoulders and dealt with it on their own. They, including him were the first and probably last showcase of human perseverance. Everyone else believed too much in the CPUs to be classed as an individual. After pushing those thoughts back, Nico looked back at Black Heart. "My point is, Comradery is an important role in our culture, and any who break it are the ultimate scum in our eyes. I consider Neptune my Comrade in arms, along with IF and Compa. They are good people, people I wish to see alive when this is all over. I would do anything for them, even something as cliché as risking my life for them… that includes you too, by the way,"
"E-EH?!" Black Heart shouted when she heard that part. "R-Risk your life for me?! Because of comradery?!" she exclaimed in shock with her eyes nearly bulging out of her sockets. She almost did a double take at that having not expected something like that to come out of Nico's mouth. "You're saying that if I was in danger, you would pr-protect me?!" his determined nod combined with how he looked at her with a fondness only someone would with a brother-in-arms, made traces of pink form on her cheeks. "W-well, don't! I can protect myself, you know!" She said this… but when one looked at her face, her true thoughts were seen on her abashed expression and the small smile tugging at her lips.
As he watched Black Heart react to his words, Nico thought about what he had said. Nothing would make him take those words back, for Nico treasured his word highly. It was something that made him feel like he was different to all the lying, cheating and deceptive scum of Gamindustri that he had been used to seeing for so many years. It was his code of honor that had garnered him the trust of most of the female population, as since he always kept his word when he gave it, showed no signs of treating them unlike how they should be treated, made him a secret popular favourite within the Guild.
He wasn't lying when he talked about the Spec Ops Agents and their values on Loyalty, either. Most, if not all, Spec Ops had their own burdens to carry, their own reasons why they forgo the life of a citizen or even a Guild Agent, to commit themselves to an eternal battlefield. Because of this, though, they all learn the value of true comradeship while fighting. Most saw each other as brothers and sisters in arms, fellow fighters and warriors. There were a select few who didn't see it that way, and they were usually shunned upon for it.
Neither was he lying about their beliefs, but that was for another time.
With this confrontation over, another flash almost blinded the male had he not closed his eye in time, and when it died down, Noire once again stood in the place of her Goddess Form Black Heart. 'Huh… I just realised that the CPUs have names for their HDD forms… if Noire's is Black Heart, then the others must be Purple, Green and White Heart respectively. Then… should I name my DPU form as well? Maybe, I'll have to think on this later…'
Dismissing those thoughts for another time, Nico looked to Noire, and found himself caught by surprise. He'd been honest with her, but Noire looked like she was having a fever as she shuffled around nervously, her eyes flicking to him then going away even faster. He made to ask her what was wrong, when she beat him to it as she yelled out. "D-Don't think I was touched by those words! Th-they're just words after all, they don't mean anything on their own, I-Idiot!" she cried, eyes closed as she turned away and began making her way back to the others.
Rolling his eyes at this, Nico realised the problem almost instantly. 'Ah, the typical Tsundere trope. Best not say it to her face though, girl looks like she's struggling enough as it is.' He thought as he soon followed her, gazing fondly at the back of her head. He wasn't lying about being willing to help her either, Noire had done the previously mentioned things, plus been the bigger person by talking to Neptune instead of killing her when she had the chance. Those things earned her his respect, he could tell she would be a fine leader.
As they were making their way back, both jumped when they heard sounds of lasers firing and explosions ringing out in the distance. They came from where Neptune and the others had remained arguing over the Disk, according to Nico's Motion Tracker. The two, who stood side by side, glanced at each other… and face palmed in unison. "10 Credits says Neptune was the one who did it." Noire challenged him. Nico groaned at this, he realised that, With Neptune's personality she was practically guaranteed a win here, before he got an idea.
"20 Credits says your right, now let's go."
