Seed 2
Veronica Schariac knew her previous life. She knew things without being taught, had habits seemingly formed from years of experience, and had the mental fortitude of someone much older. Perhaps it was a blessing; without it, she herself wasn't quite sure she would have survived handling Veronica's abandonment.
It was her previous life's memories that told her there was something special about being born a Schariac. Something dangerous. It was Veronica's dearest wish that she was wrong and she wasn't sent into the world of a certain game.
That letter dashed those hopes to the ground and danced on it.
Valkyries, Veronica began on her notebook. Schicksal. Stigma. Honkai.
The first three, individually, were things that could have been nothing on their own. A Valkyrie could have been just an army division, a private corporation, or even a specific group of socialites and not genetically modified women with superhuman bodies and immunity to a type of radiation from an eldritch entity. Schicksal could have been a German tech company that specialized in data analytics and artificial intelligence and not an international religious military organization. Stigma could have referred to weird prodigious talents like math or music the descendants of the Schariac family tended to develop and not an indication that you were a prospective super-soldier. Combined, all three formed a context that resonated with a specific game that Veronica had played in His life: Honkai Impact 3.
Veronica frowned as she wrote, an eldritch entity that hates humanity, sends disasters, plagues, and even monsters against it, but will somehow only do so in the difficulty appropriate to human progress?
The girl still held many doubts. It was ridiculous to assume that she was reincarnated into her old life's favorite gacha game. Still, with the proverbial death bells ringing over her head if what she assumed about the whole Awakening ceremony was correct, it didn't hurt to be prepared mentally.
"Are you alright… miss?" Margaret asked, glancing at the butler on the driving wheel. "It isn't too cold?"
Veronica looked over to her nanny, who was sitting beside her in the limousine and smiled. "I'm fine, Nana."
Margaret looked unconvinced but conceded. "If you say so."
Veronica went back to her notebook and began with the first thing she could work with.
Schariac. Apocalypse. Kaslana.
The Schariacs were wealthy and powerful, but ultimately loyal dogs to the Overseer, Otto Apocalypse. It was to the point that if the Overseer were to command the Schariac head to slice his throat, he would do so in pleasure. Veronica had no doubt that standing out would only lead her to be roped into that man's plans— something she certainly wanted to be no part of since his track record included rampant imperialism, Valkyrie eugenics, and systematic unsanctioned human experimentation. Hopefully, she would be ignored or treated as a non-factor— she was a bastard, after all— but she wouldn't place her bets on that since she hadn't been careful not to show her quick (re)acquisition of basic life skills thanks to the memories.
Likely, her best bet was to make contact with the Kaslanas. That posed a problem, however; beyond the individual known as Siegfried Kaslana, the game didn't really provide any information about the family. Veronica would only be relying on the fact that Siegfried was relatively free to do about as he wanted to assume that the family was relatively more carefree and about the spirit of the duty and not the duty itself.
She paused that train of thought and put an asterisk on that plan. Can't really operate on just guesswork.
Unfortunately, most of what she was working with was guesswork.
Veronica wrote a new entry instead: Gather information.
"We're arriving in ten," the driver said, jolting her out of her thoughts. Hesitantly, Veronica added an extra note on that.
If I live long enough.
Veronica knew she hadn't been paying attention, so she wasn't surprised to find that the landscape had changed from snowy city streets to a base with low buildings, large runways, and giant satellite dishes gawking at the sky. She looked towards both ends of the road. There were about five other limousines parked on the road. Two were being attended to by women in uniform, two were in the process of leaving, while the last had just arrived. She looked back to the side of her own street and, sure enough, found her own uniformed officer approaching.
Margaret disembarked first to help Veronica out of the car. Afterward, she went to retrieve what little necessities they had brought while Veronica turned to her greeter.
The woman was tall and looked to be of Egyptian descent. She looked at Veronica with half-lidded eyes and a slight frown. Veronica returned the expression, which made the woman's own frown deepen.
"Veronica von Schariac?" she asked.
Veronica nodded.
"Valkyrie Sergeant Hassan. I will guide you to the site," the soldier said.
"Danke," Veronica said, equally laconic.
The greetings ended there. Margaret finished and saw their driver off, which began their march through the base. They made five turns, passed two hangars, and went through three checkpoints before arriving at a hallway with five women dressed in black dresses that Veronica now recognized as servant attire sitting quietly at a bench outside a door.
"The miss will enter alone. Servants will have to wait here," Sergeant Hassan said.
Veronica gave her surrogate mother's hand a squeeze before she went ahead and followed the soldier inside. In the five days that they had been given, both Veronica and her nanny had done all they could; things like procuring the appropriate gear, attempting to cram years of Schicksal operating procedures and policies into single evenings, and reaching out to as many possible contacts with letters so that she could at least have a decent social network within the military. Unfortunately, the world didn't operate on the internet; outside of sending a telegram, which was a move meant to be considered only during emergencies or matters of absolute importance— at least in her household— logistics operated largely on physical mail.
Which meant that she was still waiting on all of those by the time they had left for the procedure.
No use worrying about the coin toss now, Veronica thought.
She was a gacha gamer, damn it!
They entered a gallery of large booths. Many of them already had their curtains drawn, while others clearly displayed glass chambers large enough that it didn't take a child prodigy to tell that they were meant to host people in them.
"Miss Veronica?" the sergeant asked. When had she paused to gawk?
"Ah," Veronica replied. "Sorry."
Sergeant Hassan ignored the acknowledgment and gestured towards one of the booths. Veronica took a peek at the glass chamber's plaque and found that it had her name inscribed on it.
She took a peek at the officer. Sergeant Hassan remained stone-faced and gave no further instruction. Veronica took a deep breath and entered the booth, her heart in her throat. The officer closed the curtain behind her. Veronica spotted a chair as she continued to scan the booth and went to sit on it.
To pass the time, Veronica counted the different footsteps she could discern. Three pairs of small feet had entered after her, each accompanied by pairs of heavy boots. Surprisingly enough, the room was quiet despite being a location with many children. Either the children of the Schariacs were raised to be quiet or they were cowed into silence just for today.
It took a total of ten minutes— Veronica counted that as well— before the professionals that were to attend to her procedure arrived. Two of them entered her booth: an Asiatic brown-haired woman in glasses and a Caucasian man with close-cropped hair that looked like he starred in several "sexy doctor" commercials.
"Veronica von Schariac?" the man asked, flashing her a smile. Veronica had a distinct feeling that his pearly-white strategy had been used many times before her to calm down the nervous little girls that had come to the facility. Likely, it would be used many times after her as well.
Veronica frowned but nodded. "That is me."
"Well, Veronica, I'm going to explain some of the things that will happen during this procedure," he began. "We are going to be subjecting you to an increasingly potent exposure of Honkai Energy to awaken your Stigma. Now, there is nothing to worry about— we'll pull you out as soon as we see something wrong and get you to the right treatment as quickly as possible. That's why I'm going to ask you: will you be a good girl and do what we tell you to?"
Veronica wanted to roll her eyes. There was so much sugar-coating in the way he phrased the entire procedure that it was hard to believe that he was asking her to be obedient while being subjected to radiation to help her develop superpowers. Still, she had to pretend to only be a slightly precocious child and not a full-blown prodigy, so she scrunched up her face into a serious expression and nodded.
"Good," he smiled almost gleefully. Suddenly, Veronica found that her hands had turned clammy as her mind raced to remember if there had ever been a Schariac that hadn't inherited the Holy Blood trait.
There wasn't, right?
She didn't have time to worry for long. The two doctors were soon taking her blood levels, weight, heart rate, and other biometrics. She was asked to change into a tight bodysuit before stepping into the glass tube, had strapped on the breathing mask from within the machine, and found it ironic that it was that the first time she swam in her new life was in a vat of basically radioactive nutrient fluid. Then her mask flooded with anesthetic gas and she was claimed by darkness.
Then came the pain.
It started as a numbing warmth that she felt in her drug-induced sleep. Slowly but surely, the heat began to grow in strength, going from feeling like standing under a particularly hot summer sun to standing in front of an open volcanic valve. The heat seeped into her bones, boiling not just her skin but also the marrow underneath. It reached her lungs, her heart, and her brain, which brought with it a head-splitting pain that had her crying for her mother in both lives.
No.
Veronica wasn't going to lose there. The girl mustered all her willpower, glared hatefully, abstractly at the pain, at the infection, at the Honkai, and screamed.
Suddenly, the pain was gone.
Veronica's heart was beating against her ribs, pushing a song of pain and defiance through her blood. She opened her eyes and peered through the glass chamber and found the female doctor gawking at her. A quick scan showed that the male doctor had left, likely to bother some other prepubescent girl. Veronica looked back at the female doctor, saw that the woman was still standing there in a daze, and raised an eyebrow.
Fifteen minutes of nutrient fluid draining and a shower later and Veronica was back in her own clothes, being led out of the hall. Her shoulders sagged with relief when she saw that Margaret was still waiting for her outside and didn't fight against being scooped up into the woman's breast and being hugged like a long-lost puppy.
"I'm fine, Nana," Veronica told the woman. Margaret responded by sniffling twice before putting her down and holding her hand.
"Let's go home now, shall we, miss?"
Veronica nodded.
As they walked back outside, Veronica couldn't help but observe that there were noticeably fewer servants waiting for their respective scions at the waiting area, with the rest staring at her with a mix of trepidation and resentment. In fact, there was even a woman who was sobbing into her hands. Veronica increased her pace until they were far enough from those people before she let out a rueful chuckle.
Looks like I won the gacha, she thought, darkly.
