March 29th, 1820, Ulrich's Study, Burmecian Royal Palace.
01:00 A.M.
"... I've been thinking... must we stoop so low, Maggie? We could easily crush them with the strength of our armies alone, we don't need this!" Ulrich the dragonslayer said, staring somberly at the elegant human woman sitting in front of him.
"Don't you dare tell me that you're getting cold feet right now, Ulrich!" she shot back, pointing a warning finger at him, "We've spent our entire lives preparing for this moment! We're literally hours away from finally winning!"
"Cold feet? What we're doing here is downright disgraceful! There's no way the Allfather would approve of such trickery!" the regent of Burmecia barked, getting up from his seat with his fists clenched.
"Oh, so you're honorable all of a sudden! That's rich coming from you, who have poisoned your own king instead of challenging him to a fight for the throne like you barbarians do." the woman retorted with a disdainful grimace
"It just doesn't work that way, Margaret!" Ulrich roared, utterly offended, "To invoke the right of trial by combat, one must gain Father Berlioz's favor first! Until the Obsidian Star is retrieved, I'll never be a true king!"
"That's entirely your fault. You should have put Puck under tighter surveillance." Margaret Bishop stated, completely unimpressed by her adoptive brother's tantrum, "I told you that he probably had allies in the shadows."
"He was so close to Freya that I thought... I thought that she was his right-hand woman..." the usurper spat, trying to calm himself down, "... I realize now that she was only a mere decoy. Sly bastard..."
"Forget about Crescent, brother. By tomorrow morning, her charred remains will serve as a warning to those who dare oppose us." the president of Treno affirmed, "However, after we're done with Alexandria and Lindblum, we'll have to deal with these... domestic traitors immediately, lest they threaten the stability of your regime with that stupid box."
"They are already at it, mind you." Ulrich said, finding his own choice of words humorous for some reason, "Last night, one of our dreadnoughts came under attack by a particularly powerful dragonslayer. The ship was destroyed from the inside out and its... cargo was stolen, but we now have a pretty good idea of who we're dealing with."
"You lost a dreadnought to a single rat? Does your incompetence know no bounds?!" Bishop hissed, irritated by the loss of one of her beloved warships.
"Calm down, Maggie, this incident is far more useful for us than it is for them." the usurper stated with a satisfied smile. He had always enjoyed getting a rise out of his perpetually scornful step-sister, "I know every man and woman who could have done that, and guess what? At least three of them have ties to two annoyingly outspoken detractors to our cause."
"Hmph... it's a good opportunity to make an example of them." Margaret commented, regaining her composure, "Even if it wasn't them who attacked your ship, punishing high-profile dissidents in the most spectacular way possible will act as a powerful deterrent against would-be traitors."
"A team of our finest Jägers is already working on the case. Defeating them won't be easy, mind you, for they are some of the deadliest warriors alive, but I have confidence in our soldiers' skills and experience. It's only a matter of time before we take them down." the dragonslayer said.
"Excellent. The stage is set, then. Soon we'll see the rotten aristocracies of this continent crumble and fall. We shall build a fairer world order on the ashes of all these decadent rulers, brother."
"Hmph... I sure hope that these disgraceful acts truly serve a greater purpose, sister." the burmecian regent commented, staring at the agonizing embers on his fireplace, "This is not what I imagined when you told me that we would liberate Gaia."
"Ulrich, think of your family for a second, your biological family I mean. Think of all the families that these greedy nobles have murdered in their unending quest for power. Don't they deserve justice, Ulrich? Wouldn't the world be a safer place for everyone if we destroyed these genocidal dynasties once and for all?" Bishop inquired.
"... You're right. Justice has to be administered, even if we must get our hands dirty in the process. No one has ever been in a better position to challenge their hegemony than us..." the dragonslayer said, baring his teeth like an animal, "If we don't seize this chance, we will become accomplices of their atrocities!"
"Exactly. You have the heart of a hero, dear brother. Father would be proud of you." Bishop declared with a devious smirk.
"I'm not so sure about it... but at least we're trying to do the right thing. Thanks, Maggie, I can see things more clearly now." Ulrich replied, offering her a genuinely grateful smile.
March 29th, 1820, Town Square, Alexandria.
11:00 A.M.
"Um... hello, Ms. umm... soldier..?" Ari stammered, trembling before the imposing castle gate guard.
"Hmph. What do you want?" the sentinel grunted. She definitely wasn't in the mood to deal with a pair of kids with too much free time on their hands.
"Uh... yeah, I'm A-Ari and this is Soren... we w-wanted to..." the burmecian girl said, trying and failing to stop stuttering.
"Speak clearly, kid, I don't have all day." the soldier rudely interrupted her.
"We want to see Freya Crescent! We know she's in there!" Soren blurted out, irritated by the way the guard was mistreating his friend. He immediately covered his mouth with both hands when the soldier glared at him with a mixture of outrage and shock.
"I don't know what you're talking about, brat. Go home now or I'll arrest you two for vagrancy!" the sentinel barked, sending the burmecian duo running for their lives. They were so scared by her threat that they failed to remember what their parents had always told them about going into dark alleyways.
"Well, that was a total fiasco..." Ari said, huffing and puffing with her back pressed against the wall.
"Can we go back to the hideout now? I've never been so scared in my entire life..." Soren squawked, trying to catch his breath.
"But you saw it, didn't you?" the girl in red replied with a shrewd glint in her eyes, "She flinched when you yelled at her! She was lying!"
"So what? I'm absolutely not going to jail just because you want to meet your hero, Ari." the boy asserted, glaring at his friend, "If dad finds out that I escaped with you AND got arrested as a result, I'm getting grounded for the next ten thousand years!"
"But Soren, this is not just about me or you! This is bigger than us! We could be the ones who solve the greatest mystery in both burmecian and cleyran history!" Ari exclaimed enthusiastically.
"Nuh-uh! Not in a million years! Nice try, but I'm not falling for that!" Soren shot back, crossing his arms, "If you want to get convicted that much, go ahead, but I'm not going to jail!"
"Fine! I'll do it by myself then!" the girl in red huffed, angrily extending him a key.
"What's this for?" the boy asked, confusedly grabbing the small bronze item.
"It's for opening the storage shed, dummy." she grunted, "Do as you want. I'm staying here until I figure out a way to crack... this... case..."
"Ari..?" Soren mumbled when his friend stopped talking to him. She was paralyzed, staring at something behind him with a trembling jaw. The boy slowly turned around and recoiled in fear when he realized that an elegantly dressed albino burmecian was standing too close to him for comfort. His face was mostly obscured by his wide-brimmed hat and his only eye, redder than blood, seemed to glow in the dark.
"White fur... missing eye... could he possibly be..?" Ari thought, a trickle of sweat running down her spine.
"A-ah, hello, s-sir... c-can I help... you..?" Soren stammered, noticing the savage scar over the stranger's closed right eyelid.
"Heh... glad you asked, kiddo." the man replied, pulling a length of mythril wire from inside his coat sleeve.
March 29th, 1820, Airship Dock, Alexandria Castle.
11:15 A.M.
"Huh..?" Mikoto muttered when her airship's radio started emitting the same buzzing noise that she had heard earlier on. She tried tuning the receiver to different frequencies, but all she got from it was an unending stream of white noise. "This is inconceivable..." she squawked as she pushed buttons and turned dials to no effect, "What on Gaia could possibly interfere with a terran communications system like this?".
The genome sank into the pilot's seat and thought for a moment, utterly frustrated by her inability to solve what should have been a trivial technical problem. After a few seconds of irritated contemplation, she turned on her ship's main computer.
"GOOD MORNING, MIKOTO. WHAT CAN THIS UNIT DO FOR YOU TODAY?" a robotic voice inquired. It seemed to come from everywhere at once.
"Hi, Kal. I need you to analyze something for me..." the scientist replied as she unplugged the radio receiver from the PA system and connected it to her computer's audio input jack. She then opened a sound processing program and started recording the white noise signal with it, "Here, take this sequence and scan it for any kind of hidden information that you can find: speech, music, data, Mu mating calls, don't discard anything without asking me first, okay?"
"UNDERSTOOD. SCAN MODE ENGAGED. PROCESSING. ESTIMATED TIME: TWENTY MINUTES" the artificial intelligence replied in its bored monotone.
"Twenty minutes? That's an awful lot of time..." Mikoto said, biting her lower lip, "Alright, Kal, I'm leaving you alone but I'm taking the beeper with me. Ping me whenever you have results, please."
"UNDERSTOOD. PROCESSING. ESTIMATED TIME: TWENTY MINUTES." the AI answered.
March 29th, 1820, Royal Comms Room, Alexandria Castle.
11:45 A.M.
"Wind Rose, this is Home Base, do you copy?" Zidane said, trying to contact Garnet's airship to no avail, "Wind Rose, this is Home Base, do you copy?" he yelled in frustration, but he only got a loud stream of white noise as a response, "Dammit! What the hell is going on?!" he shouted, suppressing an urge to kick the radio station.
"Hi, brother." Mikoto said, entering the room without knocking, "Any news?"
"Nope. This piece of shit has been blaring out that fucking buzz non-stop and it's getting on my nerves." the king answered, "Any luck on your side?"
"Not really. My ship's radio is doing the same thing, so we can conclude that our problem is external to the castle." Mikoto explained, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, "Kal is analyzing the signal right now to see if we're dealing with some sort of high-powered broadcast or if it's just random electromagnetic interference."
"And what do you think it is?" her brother nervously asked her, "Do you think that someone's causing it deliberately?"
"If this was Terra on a sunny day like today, I'd be inclined to say yes." the scientist replied, "But this is Gaia, brother... communication technology on this planet is way too primitive to perform such an effective radio jamming... however, after seeing the mass produced soul core's inner workings, I don't know what to think anymore. We might be dealing with an intellect far ahead of its time."
"Should I send someone to warn Garnet and Rusty about this? What if they are in danger? What if..?" Zidane blurted out, getting more nervous by the second.
"I think that we're assuming the worst without enough evidence to support our theories, brother." Mikoto interrupted him, trying to calm him down, "We should wait at least until Kal finishes analyzing the signal before making a decision. Causing a diplomatic incident over a gut feeling seems way too impulsive and risky to me."
"I dunno, Miko... if Garnet is blindly heading towards an ambush, a couple of minutes could be the difference between life and death..." he said, anxiously rubbing his temples.
"Well, you're the king, brother, not me... the choice is yours." the terran scientist replied.
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!
"Huh..?" Mikoto muttered as she drew the beeper from her pocket, "Brother, look! Kal has completed the analysis! I must to go back to my ship right now, wanna come with me?"
"Yes, please. I need to find out what the hell is going on pronto." Zidane answered, following his sister out of the comms room.
March 29th, 1820, Airship Dock, Alexandria Castle.
12:00 P.M.
"WELCOME BACK, MIKOTO." the resident AI said as the genome siblings boarded Mikoto's ship.
"Hello, Kal! Tell me what you've got, please." The terran scientist replied, taking the pilot's seat.
"WITH PLEASURE." the digital golem replied, displaying line after line of unintelligible code on the main computer's screen. "THIS UNIT HAS FOUND AN ENCRYPTED DATA SEQUENCE HIDDEN WITHIN THE SIGNAL."
"Oh, dear..." Mikoto muttered to herself, staring at the monitor in utter disbelief.
"Wait, what does this mean, Miko?" Zidane exclaimed, scared out of his mind, "Are we under attack or not?!"
"Do you think you can break the encryption today, Kal?" the scientist inquired, ignoring her brother.
"UNLIKELY." the AI dryly replied, "SHOULD THIS UNIT PERFORM A CRYPTOGRAPHIC ATTACK?"
"Yes, please..." the scientist sighed.
"UNDERSTOOD. PERFORMING CRYPTANALYSIS. ESTIMATED TIME: UNKNOWN." Kal said in its infuriatingly indifferent tone.
"Brother..." Mikoto said in a little voice, looking at Zidane with a mixture of fear and sorrow. He stared back at her for a moment, his expression changing from anxiety to bitter resignation.
"... We are under attack, aren't we?" he asked.
"I can't find another explanation for this..." she confirmed.
The genome king buried his face in his hands for a moment, trying to clear his mind.
"... Can you find out who's doing this and where is this signal coming from?" Zidane asked after a short moment of silence.
"Hmm... this kind of radio jamming requires a big, highly visible antenna and a powerful energy source to work. Given the type of antenna that this castle has, such a structure should be logically located between us and the Southern Radio Tower in order to block all communications like this..." Mikoto said, crossing her arms, "Well... that is if our enemy isn't actually using the tower itself to broadcast the signal..."
"I get it now... these bastards must be using the tower to cut the city off from the rest of Gaia!" the king said, "What we're hearing is none other than their own coded transmissions! It's almost like they're taunting us... using our infrastructure against ourselves! Do you think that you can find out what they're saying?"
"Well... Kal is already working on it, but we have no way to predict when will he manage to crack the code." the scientist explained, "It could be in five minutes or in five days... it's mostly a matter of luck."
"Dammit... well... let's give it a shot at least..." Zidane said, "Miko, I'm gonna get Beatrix and Freya; we need to secure that tower immediately or we'll be left wide open for a full-scale attack."
"What about Garnet?" Mikoto asked.
"I'll send our fastest ship, the Quicksilver, after her. It will reach the Wind Rose in no time." her brother replied, punching a red button next to the door to deploy the airstair, "Miko, I can't thank you enough for all you've done for us. I'll think of a way to repay you once we get this mess under control."
"Brother..." the scientist muttered as she watched the king leave. She turned around and stared at her computer's screen. An unending stream of terran characters flooded it as the AI tried its hardest to decipher the mysterious transmission, "To think that we could have been enemies..." she thought, shuddering a little.
March 29th, 1820, War Room, Alexandria Castle.
12:40 P.M.
"Send me in." Freya requested, all of a sudden, "If this has anything to do with Ulrich or Burmecia, I am your best bet and you know it, Zidane!"
"We have no idea what will we encounter out there, Crescent." Beatrix intervened, "What if it's a trap? If you die, there might be no peaceful resolution to our conflict with Burmecia. Thousands could die a senseless death!"
"I've been a dragoon for most of my life, Beatrix! I've even fought Ulrich himself and survived, for Reis' sake!" Freya shot back, "No one in this room knows better than I do how burmecians fight! If there is a trap waiting for us in that tower, I could help you detect it before your troops spring it!"
"Your Majesty, letting Crescent leave the castle is way too dangerous! My soldiers alone can handle this situation!" the general confidently affirmed.
"Zidane, please, I know what I'm doing! Let me help you protect your people!" Freya exclaimed impatiently.
The king nervously looked at both warriors for a moment, unable to make a choice. They both had a valid point and wasting time arguing was a luxury that they couldn't afford.
"You're so hellbent on protecting them from all harm that you're smothering them without even realizing it."
Sir Wulfweard's opinion on the matter hit him like a hammer, finally tilting the scale in Freya's favor. If they held back now and lost control of the entire communications network, hundreds of thousands of innocents would be left at the mercy of whoever was attacking the kingdom.
"As much as I hate to admit it, Bea, Freya is right..." he said, letting out a sigh, "We don't know who or what we're up against and doing things halfway right now could lead to tragedy."
"B-but... yes, sir." Beatrix reluctantly complied.
"Get a strike team ready and prepare to evacuate the surrounding area, Bea. We need to secure that tower ASAP." Zidane ordered, "Freya, I had your armor repaired by our best blacksmith. You really thrashed that thing, but somehow he managed to fix it."
"Thank you, my friend." she replied with a grateful smile, "Leave this in our hands. We'll stop whoever is doing this!"
"I know you will, but please be careful out there. Both of you." the genome sternly said, "Any news about the Quicksilver, Beatrix?"
"It's already on its way to intercept the Wind Rose." the general stated, "It will surely catch up with Her Majesty before she leaves Alexandrian territory."
"Awesome. Thanks Bea." Zidane said, "Alright, girls, let's do this! I'll send out the Pluto knights to gather intel and to prepare the barrier in case we need it. If we discover anything, I'll let you know immediately."
"Yes, sir!" Beatrix said, performing the Alexandrian salute, "Come with me, Crescent, we'll get you ready for combat."
"Just like old times, huh?" the dragoon quipped, following her out of the room.
"... I hope this isn't a huge mistake..." Zidane thought, nervously scratching the back of his head, "Garnet... please, come back... I need you..."