Wowee, has it been a while or what? Oh sorry, that wasn't the correct introduction. Hello everyone and welcome back to HellFall!
IMPORTANT STUFFS: For those of you who don't normally read these (which you should), now is as good a time as any. So first of all, sorry about how long it took. I was working on another story that I had to finish by the beginning of April, and I could get a scholarship from it if I do well enough, so I put a lot of work into it and thus couldn't focus on anything else nearly as much. I'm happy it's finally over, but I've got some other news as well. For those of you who don't know (which is basically every single one of you) I'm moving on to bigger and better things in a few months aka I'm graduating and as such I haven't had much time to work on this, nor will I in the future. So as much as I'd like to continue with HellFall, I do plan to move on to more writing projects. I'm actually planning to get a book published next year, so while that probably won't take off, it might, meaning HellFall will take a backseat once again. Plus I'll be focused on that, so that means less time for this. And furthermore, I'm honestly getting kind of bored with HellFall. The story is actually super easy to write for me, which has been great up until this point for some reason. Right now I only have a few chapters written, so I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep this up. But I do plan on finishing it, I just don't know when.
tl;dr: I was busy with another story that I could get paid for and I'm moving on soon and HellFall won't be my main concern, so I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to update it. I'll try to keep the schedule, but I can't make any promises.
I've had a lot of big plans for this story, including further sequels, but at this point I doubt I'll ever actually get around to those.
I know this isn't exactly the most upbeat exciting way to re-enter the story, but I just thought it'd be reasonably important to give ya'll this news. Anyways, without further adieu, here is the first chapter of Part 3: The Neon Trio (yes, that's the title).
The military base was in a flurry of activity, people running this way and that, calling the various cities scattered about the kingdom, pouring over extensively detailed maps. But some stood still, watching the organized chaos erupt around them.
"Weiss, anything?" I asked, walking up behind her as she scrolled through a computer, reading recent news articles, searching for the smallest of details.
"Nothing." She replied, "I haven't seen them anywhere"
I pat her back, "Keep working" I said.
"Gazini, I really don't think that this is an effective way to spend our resources" She said as I turned to leave.
"What?" I asked, "Why would-" I paused, realizing that she was mostly right, "No, we already have people on all the logical things. We need to look everywhere, Weiss, and I mean everywhere"
She stumbled over her words for a second, "Well," she finally got out, "can I at least have a break. Put someone else on this, please"
I looked around, specifically for one of the hunters leaning against the walls or patrolling the area who weren't doing anything. My eyes fell on Anchor Franco, the mute member of Nicole's team. He wore a gas mask at all times because he couldn't breathe without it. His grey hair was as shaggy as always, with his curving horns barely poking out.
"Anchor!" I called. He turned. I raised my hand above all the workers and gestured for him to come. He made his way through the crowd and stopped to stand before me. I showed him Weiss's computer, "Look through all these articles." I said, "See if you can find anything"
He nodded, then started throwing his arms all around him.
"I don't understand sign language, Anchor" I said.
He pulled out his scroll and started typing. An automated voice spoke the words "What if I find something?"
"Then tell me." I replied, "Message my scroll or something"
He nodded as Weiss stood. He sat down and started working in the same way the pale woman had.
"Thanks" she said, then started pushing her way through all the people. I assumed she was going to the gym to train. I looked around for a second, then continued my patrol, asking various people if they'd found anything. By the end of the hour I found that not one person had found anything.
We'd been working for a few days now, first brainstorming ways in which we could locate those who went missing during the HellFall mission, then just recently set out to find the information we were looking for. Finding where they could have gone on a map, calling cities to see if they'd found anyone resembling Ember Bronze, Octavia Strom, or Wintanweorth Coal, and as Weiss had been doing, searching through recent articles to see if they came up in any of them, whether they be in images or some other form of report.
My patrolling was entirely useless, considering everyone knew that if they found anything to inform me immediately, so I decided to leave. I went to the back room first, hoping to talk to the people with the maps. Multiple men and women were gathered around a large table with detailed maps of the mountains spread across it.
"Anything new?" I asked.
"Nothing" Al Simms, a police inspector who had assigned himself to this missing persons case and brought in his team as well, replied.
"Are you sure you were here?" Redmond MacGrory asked, not letting his gaze fall away from the map.
I walked up to it and looked it over, "Again, I'm quite certain that it is" I replied.
Redmond scratched his chin and rubbed the stubble that slowly spread across his cheeks. "Okay." He said, "We'll keep looking"
"Thanks" I said, disappearing out the door. I allowed them their own room simply because they needed the space for the map itself, as well as themselves.
I made my way through the people, then entered the hallway leading to the provided rooms. As I made my way to my own room, I glanced through one of the open doors and saw Azure Blaze, fast asleep on one of the beds. It looked like she'd just fell onto the bed and fallen asleep, as she had no blankets or anything. The odd thing was that she didn't even have a room here. I thought about waking her up, but ultimately decided against it. She had a lot on her plate with the search. She'd worked feverishly in the hopes of finding her last potentially living teammate, Octavia.
Instead I kept walking until I entered my own room, finding Steam lying in bed. He had come to inhabit the dead, mostly destroyed body of Dennis Soldier. He had two robotic arms and a robotic leg now, and he hadn't completely gotten used to any of it yet.
"Morning" he said through a yawn when he saw me walk in.
"It's evening" I said.
"Is it really?" He asked, looking around the room, as if confused as to where he was.
"How's the rehab going?" I asked, referring to the classes he took as he attempted to adjust to his new body.
"Fine." he replied simply, "How's the search going?"
"Fruitless" I replied.
"Why don't you just head out there? Search the mountain base again?"
"We did that the first time, remember? When they first went missing we went searching everywhere"
Steam shrugged, "Maybe they came back" He suggested.
I sighed, falling down into my soft bed, "Maybe." I replied, "I'll get a team together to head out in a little while, whether we find anything or not"
"There you go" he said, yawning again. He stopped talking, and I silently thanked him for it. I was tired, so I fell asleep.
So there you have it. The chapter (I promised myself I wouldn't summarize anymore).
There really isn't anything else to say I don't think, so I'll just get into my regular outro. As usual, favorite, follow, review, tell your friends, tell your enemies, or don't if you don't want to, and I'll see you all in the next chapter! Or if you feel motivated, feel free to PM about stuff, HellFall related or not. I'm happy to talk more about questions you may have or whatever you people think about if you actually want to.