Well howdy.
More and more people are jumping on the follower count, which is pretty nice. Thanks. And now that we're finally out of the Fuyuki Singularity – which I hope didn't come off as rushed at all – we can get some more of Helmuth's world connected to this universe's Chaldea. This chapter will be focusing on the injuries sustained by Helmuth and Hertzog, as well how the Arcadius Project works. The veil won't be entirely lifted, of course, but some understanding will be reached by Helmuth.
Also, sorry for such the long wait. I know I'd said that I'd be putting a chapter out every week, but life managed to kick me in the nuts for like, the fourteenth time this year. Depression was a major writing block this month. And plus, ya know, the holidays showed up. So, I am a bit sorry about that.
Oh yeah, and the ARL thing with Director Animusphere. That'll be explained as well.
But now, reviews!
To the Guest: Thanks! I'm happy that you're enjoying my work! I felt that, you know, after like 7 years of work on Helmuth's world of Terra Solis, I felt I could get some shenanigans going. Hope you keep enjoying!
To Slayer-410: Welcome back, thanks for another review. And yeah, I totally agree with the Servant's Resistance thing. I mean, it works well enough for a gacha game like F/GO, but in a real-life scenario it just… Wouldn't make sense, right? Oh, and you're going to love some of the things I have planned for dimensional interconnectivity between Terra Solis and Chaldea. Keep an eye out!
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"What did you expect?" – Talking
'A war like no other?' – Thought
"Der Teufel selbst?" – Very bad Google Translate, or emphasis on speech
'Or just a bad dream?' – Written word
~ Maybe it was nothing at all. ~ – Radio Chatter
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Where was he?
This place was… empty. A white expanse. He couldn't hear a thing. He could move his limbs, he could feel those. The movements of his head as it swivelled this way and that. The dull pain on the cuts and bruises that adorned his body. All of these he felt. The place around him? He couldn't feel that.
It was like this place was… An emptiness between where he needed to be, and where he came from. Completely formless.
And he was the only one here.
His scrambled brain reached for anything it could in his memories.
He had been with someone, he was sure of that. An ally, wounded in battle. A battle he couldn't recall, but judging from the wounds he felt along his body it was a taxing battle nonetheless. And then he had…
He had…
Verdammt.
Blankness.
That damned pins again, only they were… knives…?
The world warped around him, the blank, white expanse morphing into bright lights that forced him to close his eyes, lest he go blind.
He fell. Hell, he felt like he was falling for quite sometime. And then he wasn't.
He landed, splashing into something, a liquid that was equal parts putrid and vile smelling to him. Gathering himself, he wiped his face of the liquid, and opened his eyes.
He gagged.
Blut. A pool of it. Foul, vile, putrid smelling blut that assaulted his senses tenfold. Surrounding behind and in front of him were strange, hexagonal-shaped stalagmites, and to his left and right were sheer expanses of nothingness. All of this was centered around an odd-looking device. He stepped closer, examining it.
Ubersprengen, it read in bold acrylic.
"Huh," he whispered to himself, "'Flashover', eh? Odd name choice."
He glanced around, and then back towards the machine. Walking around it, he shrugged, before unholstering his sidearm.
"Wouldn't hurt to try it, I suppose…" He muttered, placing the weapon onto the tray on the top of the machine.
Looking around it, he hummed in satisfaction upon seeing a lever, sticking out just below the tray on the other side of the machine. Giving it a might throw, he grinned as it whirred to life, raising an eyebrow in surprise as the pistol rose in the air, suspended by two beams of light emanating from either end of the tray. Staring in amazement, he watched as the beams slowly met, connecting with the gun, before a large clunk echoed from the machine. The pistol remained floating in midair as the beams disappeared, and he gently reached forward to grab it.
It weighed the same, not that he had been expecting the weight to change at all, honestly. The only differences he could see were to the finish on the weapon. Instead of the deep blued that usually dominated the steel of the revolver, it was a weird, shimmering blue/white colouring to it, that shone differently in the light.
"Odd…" he murmured, inspecting the weapon's gleam. "Sehr merkwürdig…"
Another flash exploded behind his eyes had him quickly holstering the revolver, before he slipped into nothingness once more…
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A soft, steady beep – that of a heart monitor – greeted his ears when he awoke once more. He was in a hospital, that was for certain, but he couldn't remember how he had gotten there in the slightest. Bandages were wrapped around his head, and his eyes, as well as other key points on his body. Points where he remembered being hurt. He moved to unwrap his eyes, before pain blossomed from his left eye socket, and he shifted uncomfortably in place with a groan.
"Operative von Trotha?" A voice asked through the haze, "Are you awake?"
With a groan, Helmuth managed to prop himself up, turning his head towards the voice.
"Ahavniel?" He asked, "I'm back in GKI?"
"Yeah, the hospital wing," Ahavniel ben Sherry, the technician who had kept contact with Helmuth and Hertzog alive throughout their mission, answered with a smile. "You guys had us worried there for a hot minute. Here, lemme get those bandages outta your eyes, just don't open them. Doctor's said you gotta give'em time to adjust."
"Time to adjust…?" Helmuth asked groggily as ben Sherry slowly unwrapped the bandages. "Why…?"
Ben Sherry hummed, "Well, the doc said it was something about the difference in light levels between here and that dimensional singularity you and Hertzog were in. You guys both were knocked out when you got here, and you'd been operating in low light level area for a while. You also sustained a few blows to the head, Herr von Trotha, so that is also a factor."
Helmuth winced as the bandages were fully removed from his face, the light from the florescent lights above piercing through his eyelids. Slowly, ever so slowly, he opened his eyes, blinking the brightness away from his sight, before he settled on a slightly disturbing sight.
Or rather, lack thereof.
"Ahvaniel…?" He murmured softly, silently praying in the back of the mind that he was wrong, "Why can't I see to the left…?"
Ben Sherry flushed red, looking away. "Ahrm… Well…"
The poor techie was saved, as Dr. Schiessman herself entered the wing, glancing around before spotting – and briskly walking towards – Helmuth and ben Sherry. She had, surprisingly, forgone her usual lab coat, and just had her turtleneck and khakis on. She quickly made her way over to the two men, pulling up a seat from an empty patient bedside, and placed herself to Helmuth's left – ironically enough.
"Helmuth, good to see you awake. How are you?"
"Funny you should mention how good it is to see me, Frau Doctor," he snarked in response, motioning to the left side of his face, "considering I can't see from this side."
"Ah," came her intelligent response, "Technician Ahvaniel hasn't explained it to you yet?"
"I, uh, I was trying to get to that gently, Doctor." Ahvaniel explained sheepishly, before he turned back to Helmuth. "Helmuth, uh, quite simply you've lost that eye. I can't really explain it any other way."
Helmuth gaped.
"Wait wait, before you get mad, let me explain!" Ahvaniel rushed, holding his hands up, "The Arcadia Project is still very much a, uh, a beta test. A whole bunch of things are unknown variables when the project is engaged, and not a lot of people know what'll happen if even the smallest thing gets missed in the equation. The means of teleportation is still an ever-distant idea, and Hell, I barely understand how it works myself, and I've been a part of the project since a year after it started!"
Pausing to wet his lips, he glanced to Schiessman, before continuing.
"Listen closely Helmuth, because this is some confidential stuff. The kind of stuff that'll get the three of us killed if anyone found out." He explained, glancing around the ward nervously. "I've looked over the notes about this thing, Arcadia uses a type of energy that's never been seen before on the planet. It, for a lack of better terms, breaks things. It breaks things and makes them different in different ways. So far, we're only using the energy – Geistkraft – to power Arcadia, nothing else."
Helmuth groaned, cricking his neck, "Spirit power? Really?"
"Yes, really, there's reasons we call it that. Now, geistkraft works as a sort of bridge between the fabrics of reality, and somewhere else. Project Arcadia harnesses that energy, and uses it to rip people from our world and allows them to be displaced elsewhere. Other dimensions."
"Come on Ahvaniel, what're you getting at here?"
"Right, I'm getting there Helmuth, no worries," Ahvaniel responded, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "Now, our ability to use geistkraft as an interdimensional teleportation system hinges greatly on our ability to, uh, calculate, the movement of both the energy and things being moved. Basically, we need time to calculate – properly – for a safe transport. What occurred with you and Elma was that you gave us five seconds to triangulate your position and get you back here. Five seconds. Usually we have a good thirty. Anyways, with a rushed equation like that, sometimes things happen. Thankfully nothing happened with Elma, but uh, with you…?"
"I lost my eye."
"Ja. The dimensional warp that was used to bring you and Elma back here caused you to lose your eye."
Here Ahvaniel paused, flinching even, as he seemed to remember yet another piece of important information. Fidgeting once again, he ran a hand through his hair, before he spoke once again, even lower.
"We, uh, we also lost you. For a bit there." At Helmuth's blank stare, he continued, sputtering awkwardly as he tried to explain, "Like, the dimensional warping technique isn't perfected, so sometimes – it's an incredibly slim chance – sometimes we, uh… Sometimeswelosecontactwiththingsthatgothrough!"
Helmuth stared blankly at the technician, slowly taking in his appearance as his brain tried to process what had just been said. Truth be told, Ahvaniel ben Sherry wasn't what Helmuth had been expecting when he had heard the young man's nasally voice over the radio.
Clad in a simple lab coat, black tee shirt, and blue jeans, one thing was abundantly clear: Ahvaniel was tall. Even though he was sitting, Helmuth guessed he was at least six and a half feet tall, which was quite uncommon in modern times. The last person that had been that tall in Yytuskian had been Kaiser Fredrich the Fourth, the father of the current Kaiser, Ottokar the Third. Sandy blonde hair, slick with grease that looked like he hadn't showered in several days, hung loosely in front of his face, and down his back in a ponytail. Wireframe glasses hide a pair of pale blue eyes, whose gaze darted around the room. And to even it off, the young man was fidgeting with the holy relic tied to his wrist.
The Cross of the Holy Emperor. Das Kreuz des Echtkaiser. A sure-fire sign that the wearer was a follower of the Holy Order.
"Helmuth?" Dr. Schiessman asked quietly.
"Sorry," he hummed in response, "I was just… this is a lot to take in."
"Understandable. It's not often that one gets lost in space and time for a half, nor lose an eyeball at the same time." Dr. Schiessman replied, nonchalantly.
"I'm sorry, what?"
Ahvaniel squeaked. "A-a half hour. You were MIA for a full half hour after we pulled you and Elma out of the Singularity."
Helmuth could only look blankly at two, before slumping back down in the hospital bed.
A half hour. He had – for all intensive purposes – been missing from this existence for a whole thirty minutes. Where had he been? What had he seen? He closed his eyes, trying to remember.
"Helmuth?"
"Hush, gimme a second, bitte."
He tried to think, to recall what had happened. He had bid farewell to Ritsuka Fujimaru and Mash, and had managed to secure teleportation with Hertzog's unconscious form as the cavern collapsed around them. There was the flash of light, the knives and pins, and then…
Blut und stahl…
More lights…
And then…?
His mind was foggy. Like a… Like a thick, blanketing fog that hid things that no mortal should experience. Something popped in his mind, abruptly. A campfire in the fog. There had been people around it, yes. He had met people in the fog, they warned him of the things out there, hadn't they? And then, he…
He…
With a blink, he opened his eyes – EYE, he reminded himself – and turned to Dr. Schiessman.
He pulled a blank. There was something he had forgot, or had been forced to forget, but after that bonfire he awoke here. He explained as much to the two.
"A campfire surrounded by fog?" Dr. Schiessman asked, perplexed. "I don't recall any after action reports mentioning anything like that."
Helmuth merely slumped further into the hospital bedding. "That's all I can remember, sorry. I wish we could keep this going, but I'm feeling sore and tired Doctor. I don't think I should try and force myself to remember these things."
Dr. Schiessman hummed, nodding towards Ahvaniel. "Fair enough. We should let you get your rest Helmuth, we'll need you in tip-top shape when you return to the help Chaldea out."
"I'll be returning?"
"Naturally. At the moment you're the only person on our active roster with information on the place, as well as with some ties to the people there." Dr. Schiessman explained. "You'll be back on the rotation at the weeks end."
"Even without my eye?"
"I can promise you you'll have a new one by the end of the month at the latest. Have a good rest Helmuth, you'll do just fine."
Helmuth merely grunted, cursing the woman as he laid his head back. The IV drip – and the painkillers pumping through him – slowly lulled him to sleep.
He could still smell the ashen stench of that damned fog…
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Three days later drew a pleasant surprise for Helmuth, who had finally been cleared for release from the special hospital down in the crater. As he had been lounging in his apartment, plucking away at his Bachmann II/L guitar, he had been startled by the sudden ringing of his doorbell, and – naturally confused – peered through the peephole.
Standing outside his homely little apartment were his father, his older brother Kilian, and his twin younger sisters Jutta and Bridgette. Throwing the door open with gusto, he was almost immediately beset by the twins, who launched themselves at him, hanging from his waist. With a laugh he hugged them, ushering them, his father, and his brother, into his apartment. Settling the two girls down, the hyper twins giggling, he settled himself down onto the couch in the living room, where he had been playing moments prior.
"Good to see you again father, Kilian," Helmuth greeted, watching the twins with a smile as they rounded the apartment, "What brings you and the twins?"
"Well, we heard about your eye, and Dad and I decided we should come visit. The twins announced they were coming the moment they heard you had been hurt, so we couldn't exactly leave them either." Kilian said with a grin before adding in a jab at both himself and Helmuth. "And oh my, seeing you now feels like looking in a mirror."
It was true, in a sense: Kilian, the second-born of the Von Trotha's, was missing his right eye compared to Helmuth's left one, although he was much more heavily scarred. The story behind his missing eye was much different then Helmuth losing his to interdimensional bullshit.
Five years before, the Yytusche-Talion Conflict broke out between Yytuskia and its northwestern neighbour, the Talion Union. Talion had – for several years before the whole thing cooked off – been trying to push the Yytuskian borders back off their own, which they had lost decades prior during the 1984 Revolution in Yytuskia. When talks broke down in early 2025, the Talion Union's dictatorship decided to take matters into its own hands, and funded a terrorist attack on the capital town of Mannerheim, Mannerheim, which was the province bordering Talion the closest. The attack – which targeted the town's nuclear powerplant – was both a success and a failure, due to the heroic actions of the guards on duty, as well as the three massive nuclear bunkers under the city, which had been completed a month prior. This attack forced the Yytuskian government, along with its allies Helvana and Ormata, to declare war on the Talion dictatorship, marking the official start of the conflict.
Kilian, who had been eighteen at the time and was still in his Compulsory Military Service (CompServ), had been pushed to the front. The 5'7" tall Von Trotha managed to survive the whole war, up until the Siege on Markus Creek, where the Talion government deployed a tactical nuclear weapon. It was, thankfully, shot down ten kilometers from the center of the city of Markus Creek, but the blast still slapped Kilian and the other troops in the city around quite a bit. It was here where he had lost his eye, after getting blown back by the shockwave that ripped through, when his glasses shattered and sliced his right eye. He returned home into welcome arms at the end of the conflict in 2028, and was now taking their uncles place as the treasurer of the Von Trotha fortunes.
And now he sat across from Helmuth, along with their father, wearing both his wireframe glasses, and the black eye patch that he wore over his right eye. He was dressed rather casually, blue jeans, a white tee shirt underneath an unzipped hoodie, and had managed to gel his chestnut brown hair off his face.
His father, on the other hand, wore a black, three-piece, pinstriped suit, similar to what mobsters would wear in the old-fashioned movies from the 40s and 50s.
"I'd be terrified if I looked in a mirror and looked like you," Helmuth bit back with a smile, "After all, I still have my roguishly good looks without my eye."
"Bah, chicks dig scars, you know that Helmuth." Was Kilian easy response.
The three of them shared a laugh, before the twins finally came back into the room from the bedroom.
"Großer Bruder! Großer Bruder!" the two sang, launching themselves onto either side of him, "Why didn't you tell us you were a secretary here?"
The two were eight years younger than Helmuth, thirteen-years-old, thus being much shorter than him too, at only 4'3" in height. Born just minutes apart from each other – Jutta was older by three minutes – the two sisters were identical twins, in almost every way, and were never far from one another. It was a running joke in the family that if you spotted one of the brunettes alone, the other was just around the corner. Their personalities were extremely similar as well, with Bridgette being the more hyper of the two.
"Ah, that's easy, meine Kleinen," Helmuth replied, poking both of them on the nose, "This is a super secret job I have here, for super secret reasons! So, I can't exactly blab about it all the time, could I?"
"You could've at least told us you were hurt," Jutta pouted, crossing her arms.
"My apologies, it's rather hard to write or call when one is in a medically induced coma," Helmuth jokingly replied. "Speaking of, how'd you guys know I got injured anyways?"
"My old friend, Ess Schiessman," Helmuth's father replied with a knowing grin, "She and I go way back, and I had her promise to give me weekly updates on you."
Helmuth made a face. "Weak."
"Yeah, well, how were we supposed to know you lost an eye due to some idiot scientist testing some top-secret device when you were trying to deliver documents?" Kilian said.
Helmuth sighed, hugging his sisters. "Fair enough point."
"So now that that's out of the way," Kilian began, "we're here for the day, so why don't you show us around the neighbourhood? Points of interest, and whatnot, eh?"
Helmuth gave another shrug. Why not? He had nothing better to do for the day.
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Another four days later – and a promise to his sisters that he'd have them over to visit sometime – Helmuth was back in the Arcadia building, standing outside the teleportation chambers.
He was dressed quite lax: combat boots, feldgrau trousers, a white tee with a Fizz Soda logo emblazoned on the front, an unbuttoned M56 field tunic, and a M56 field cap perched on his head. Strapped underneath his left should was the Mitternachtskönigin¸ and under his right was his service pistol, while double strapped on his back were both the Eberkönig and a G4 rifle. And finally, strapped to his right leg in its special holster was the P-15A, the elemental pistol that had managed to save his life against Rider back in Fuyuki. Set around him were ammunition cases, military-styled crates with equipment and food, a semi-permanent 'locator' pole that would be setup in Chaldea, a guitar case holding Helmuth's Bachmann II/L, and an amplifier for said guitar.
And now he was waiting for the all clear to go from Dr. Schiessman and Ahvaniel, who had been selected as his handler for future excursions. They, along with three others, were in the staging room to his left, discussing the operation to Chaldea, and hopefully the long-term problems they could work out and solve. It was all mumbojumbo that Helmuth didn't want to partake in, thus he waited instead, checking his baggage carefully before the trip.
And hadn't that been a hassle!
He had argued with Dr. Schiessman for half a day to get her to agree to allow him to take his guitar and amp. Her reasoning was that it'd be an unnecessary bring-along, tying Helmuth down in case of an incident. He responded with the fact that he'd only be using it on his downtime, or evening times when he wasn't doing anything of importance. Schiessman jabbed back, saying that he would be on duty the entire time, and that in the end she was still his superior. Helmuth merely hung a threat over her head: if I don't get my guitar, I'll tell my dad – Schiessman's close friend – that she lied to him about his job, and that he was, in fact, in a very dangerous line of work.
A low blow, sure, but she caved all the same.
Helmuth hummed to himself, scratching his nose. She really hadn't thought that he would do that, did she?
"Oi, is that you Helmuth?"
The shout came from down the hall, and Helmuth squinted his good eye. Was that…?
"Bei den Göttern oben!" Helmuth yelled back, "Is that you Elma?"
"You bet'cher ass it is!"
Whisking herself over at an alarming pace, the wheelchair-bound Elma Hertzog grinned manically as she gained speed towards the stunned Helmuth. Clad in a simple white shirt, and khaki slacks, the rainbow-haired soldat laughed as she skidded to a stop, mere feet away from Helmuth.
"Good to see you're alive and kicking Helmuth! How's everything going? Holy cow, did you lose an eye?"
Helmuth merely shrugged, shaking his head at the bubbly woman. "Yeah, it's fine. Everything's alright, all things considered Hertzog. Gonna be heading out in few. But that's not important, what're you doing in a wheelchair?"
Elma blushed, chuckling awkwardly.
"W-well, it's funny," she began, trying to hide her left arm from his view, "not only did I, uh, lose my arm here, but I also broke my ankle. Doctor's say I'll be wheelchair bound for a couple weeks as it heals."
"I wouldn't exactly call that 'funny', Hertzog," Helmuth muttered, clucking his teeth, watching as his two-time battlebuddy wince, "but I am glad to see you alive and well. Truly. That was a pretty fucked up scenario we had to go through, and I'm happy we made it out alive."
"Not all of us…"
A silence grew between them, as Helmuth and Elma remembered their CO for the fateful mission, Erhardt Muhlkampf, and his sudden demise at the hands of Archer.
"… Some of us only made it out in a philosophical way too," Hertzog continued, after a pause.
Helmuth's face scrunched in confusion, "What?"
"Well, you remember Director Animusphere? She's here too."
"That's, that's impossible Elma," Helmuth explained, "I, I gave her mercy before she was killed. There's now way that she survived. Besides, her only chance, the ARL, didn't work."
"Oh no, it totally did though!" Hertzog exclaimed happily, "The doctors were just putting her in her new body just before I left! I managed to get her to tag along, although I think I lost her somewhere…"
"What the hell do you mean 'putting her in her new body'? She died, I killed her Hertzog!"
"Then what does that make me?"
Helmuth looked up from Hertzog to see one of GKI's many robots that made up the mechanized workforce of the scientific community. They were usually VI-powered hive bots, just steel skeletons programmed for repair and building work, but this one was different. There was an inflection to its robotic voice that bespoke a much higher intelligence than a simple worker bot. Plus the way it walked…
"Nein," Helmuth murmured softly, eye widening as realization dawned on him, "It can't be… Marie Animusphere…?"
"Correct!" The – now realized – skeletal body of the late-not-late Director of Chaldea answered, walking up to Helmuth and Elma.
"I have managed to cheat death, thanks to you." She spat, striding closer to the two, "Thanks to you, I am now a thankful resident of this world's hospital system. Thanks to you, I will eventually be able to get back to Chaldea and my rightful job as Director. However, thanks to you, my soul is now housed in this metal contraption! Thanks to you, I look like some freaky metal skeleton! Thanks to you, I will never know the feeling of food, or drink, ever again! And most importantly, thanks to you, I CAN NO LONGER PRODUCE MAGEKRAFT!"
She swung at Helmuth, slapping him across the face as he was too stunned by the revelation of her being alive to move. The slap tilted his head, shaking the cobwebs in his skull loose as he quickly returned his gaze to the skeletal form of Marie Animusphere.
"The ARL… It worked…?"
"Apparently so," Animusphere responded coldly, servos whirring as she clenched and unclenched her fists.
Helmuth stumbled over his words, too shocked to properly form sentences. He glanced at Hertzog, who only winced sympathetically. He was alone in this.
"D-Director, please understand, I had no idea that, that this is what would happen when you used the ARL…" He explained slowly, trying to calm the irate woman down, "I was under the impression that it acted as a miniature teleportation platform. I thought it'd whisk you away to safety, body intact. When it failed in the singularity, I though it was just a faulty device! You have to understand, I didn't mean for this to ever occur to you!"
There was a brief pause of silence between the two, Animusphere's yellow optics glaring at Helmuth as he anxiously twitched, waiting the stern Director's scolding. While still slightly shorter than him, the skeletal husk that Animusphere now inhabited still somehow managed to produce and air of importance and anger.
That anger slowly disappeared, however, and she deflated, sighing in a weird way through her vocal processors.
"It's alright," she murmured, "I understand that you were trying to help, Helmuth, and… Thank you."
"I, yeah, thanks Marie," Helmuth replied solemnly, "Sorry that you had to go out that way."
"I just, I can't believe Lev would do something like that," she hissed, clenching her fists in anger again, "After all that we've been through, he'd go and kill – no, murder staff at Chaldea? Murder me? Why would he do such a thing?"
Helmuth winced, scratching his arm. "I think," he began slowly, "That Lev was leading you guys on for a long time. The way he spoke back in the singularity, it sounded like he had been planning this for a long time, and something like that – placing bombs and such just to kill you – makes it sound like there's something bigger we're missing here. He spoke of serving a 'King', but I don't think it was the one that Miss Shuten managed to curb stomp. Someone much more sinister is at play here Director."
"But that's all speculation," Hertzog interjected, looking between the two, "We don't know for one hundred percent that this Lev was working for someone else. It could just be a diversion."
"That may be true… But still, we need to focus on the future and present." Helmuth agreed, nodding to Animusphere. "Director, Marie, when do you think the scientists will let you return?"
The robotic director shook her head with a huff, "I don't know. Those bastards aren't saying anything. I don't have a definite answer for you."
"Then I best not mention that you're alive for now," Helmuth mused, "Keep you a secret trump card in case things are really bad."
"Wait, you're going back?"
"Yeah, leaving with three others to set up a relay point," he explained, giving a small smile, "That's why I got so much equipment behind me. We'll be heading to Chaldea soon, set up a relay point between here and there, and hopefully manage to get Chaldea in tip-top shape for your return Marie. I'll be sure to tell Doctor Archiman and Fujimaru the good news about your wellbeing, if you'll allow me though."
"Denied," Dr. Schiessman announced as she entered to the trio's left, "Unfortunately Director Animusphere is still KIA there. Until she's at one hundred percent again, I'm not risking any breach of security."
Hertzog coughed. "Really Doctor? I'm sure that the news could at least be a small morale booster, and a show of good faith to them."
"Once again, denied. Or do you not remember what happened with D-003, Elma Hertzog?"
The retort bit into Hertzog, who flinched deeply. "My apologies Doctor."
"Nevertheless," Schiessman continued, turning her gaze to Helmuth, "I see you've kit up. Good. You'll be meeting the new recruits in the Hive. Try to keep them alive Helmuth, I'd rather not send home more letters to families. As for you, Hertzog, Director Animusphere, I'd suggest the two of you get back to the sickbay, before anyone learns of your 'escape', hm?"
There was a pause.
The trio glanced at each other as Dr. Schiessman walked off, uncertainty in their eyes. Quietly, Elma and Marie bade Helmuth good luck, and safe travels, before slipping away themselves. As the two slowly skulked away, Helmuth said nothing, merely waving as they looked back. He then gathered his gear, slipping silently into the Hive behind Schiessman. Another adventure awaited him, and he was going to need his wits about him once more.
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God, writer's block is such a dick.
Anyways, hope you enjoyed the chapter! Please remember to review, if you feel you need to. Have a good one!