SR - Chapter 3 - Scouted
Gura's consciousness slowly came back to her. The first thing she became aware of were the bright lights focused on her. The second were the restraints that had been put on her arms and legs. These weren't cheap little police handcuffs, they were thick metal blocks and large chains tied to the ground.
She pulled at the with the energy she had, but was unsuccessful at getting them to even budge. Even if she wasn't as tired as she was now, she doubted that her strength would be enough to break free. She was trapped.
The third thing she noticed was the metal table and person in front of her. It was the woman she'd seen with Ina just before she passed out. The katana she was wielding was holstered on her side.
"Hello Ms. Gawr," the woman said. Her voice was calm and collected, as if she'd done this hundreds of times before.
"Where the fuck am I? Who the hell are you?!" Gura felt a distinct rage build up inside her. The weight of her current situation fully crashed down on her. She felt cornered, like an animal being herded into a slaughter pen. She started to pull on her restraints even harder now. Her frantic attempts at escape made the woman react.
"I have orders to kill you if you attempt to escape.," as she said this, she started to pull the katana out of its sheath. Gura gave one last good pull at the chains before relenting. If she was going to make it out of here alive, she would have to listen for now.
"Answer my questions then," she growled. The woman put the katana back away and leaned forward on the table.
"You are located in a containment room for our safety. As for who I am, I'm Emersyn Monroe, a manager for our talents here." Besides finding out her name, everything Emersyn said only brought up more questions for Gura. But one stood out from all of the rest.
"Are you going to kill me?" Emersyn's expression relaxed, like she was trying to put Gura at ease.
"No, at least if you cooperate." This only calmed the Atlantean slightly.
"Where's Ina? What did you do to her?!" Gura asked the other questions that stood out in her mind. Emersyn looked over at the mirror-like surface on the wall next to them.
"She's safe, don't worry. You'll see her again if you cooperate."
"Well then what do you want from me?" Emersyn's expression rehardened as she looked back at Gura.
"Why do you kill people?" Gura gritted her teeth.
"I-I," she stuttered. How the hell was she supposed to explain this? A human couldn't understand what she was.
"Just explain it how you explained it to me," a voice echoed over a sound system. It caught both Gura and Emersyn off guard. Emersyn rolled her eyes and mumbled something to herself.
"I-Ina…" Gura said with shock. Her friend's voice sounded like it was pleading with her. Should she trust her? It was her best shot…
"I can't control it," Gura started, "If I get too hungry, I enter a state called Primal. It makes me eat whatever is around me and keeps going until I'm full on food." Emersyn just stared at her with judgemental eyes.
"Can you control when you enter it?" Gura shook her head.
"I just need to keep myself fed, but it's hard." Emersyn stared for a little longer before finally leaning back and looking away.
"And it seems like Ms. Ninomae has been successful in helping you with that," she sighed, sounding like she was relieved at Gura's answers. The Atlantean didn't relax yet. "Bring her in. Let her explain the rest," Emersyn called out to no one Gura could see.
"Who are you talking to? Are you talking about Ina?" Gura pulled on her restraints as Emersyn stood up from the table.
"Yes, but don't try and escape when she's here either. She'll paralyze you like before." Gura remembered the feeling of helplessness she felt every time that Ina's magic coursed through her. The door buzzed and Emersyn left, being quickly replaced by none other than Ina.
"Ina!" Gura was initially excited to see her friend, but other emotions soon took over. "Why did you do that?" she asked before Ina even sat down. The Priestess took a seat before answering.
"I'm sorry that I lied to you, Gura." Gura became incredibly worried.
"What do you mean?" She sounded desperate.
"Our meeting on the beach wasn't by chance. I work for an agency called Hololive and they wanted me to bring you in or kill you trying." The words pierced through Gura's chest.
"Then what was the last few months? A sick set up?" Rage took hold of Gura's body again, worrying Ina. But the worry wasn't for herself.
"Listen, ok. They're giving you one chance here. If you don't listen to them or do something stupid, you're as good as dead. You don't want to see the place they'll take you," Ina pleaded with her. Gura stopped pulling against the restraints again, but didn't calm her attitude.
"Then you have a lot of fucking explaining to do Ina!" Ina sighed and prepared herself for the speech she was about to give.
"Hololive is an agency that gives anomalous creatures a new chance at life by letting them work in the entertainment business. They're giving you a chance to work for them instead of being imprisoned or killed. Emersyn is our manager and directly oversees our work."
"What kind of entertainment?" Gura partially interrupted.
"You could sing, play games, hang out with other coworkers, or talk to your audience," Ina explained. Gura finally allowed herself to relax, as she began to think about what Ina had just said.
"So we're caged animals," Gura assumed. Ina shook her head furiously.
"No, absolutely not. We have plenty of freedom and one of the main goals of Hololive is to integrate us into the larger world. They want us to be treated more normally." Ina specifically seemed to hang onto the 'normally' part of her statement. Gura knew how much that meant to her. It would be nice for them to be treated more normally.
"Alright, alright. So they want to help us, but why me? I've killed people and don't really have any skills that I can think of relating to 'entertainment'." Gura put air quotes around the word 'entertainment'. Ina looked at her with an intense gaze.
"When we first met, I was supposed to just paralyze you and take you in. However, I decided to talk to you first. Turns out, you didn't just kill people because you wanted to. I convinced Hololive to leave us be for a while and see where the food experiment went. It went well, so they agreed to give you a chance to join as a talent."
"Oh.." was all Gura could say to that. Ina, out of the good in her heart, had probably saved her life. Not only that, she'd given her a chance that had probably put her own chance at normalcy at risk.
"So, I'm sorry for lying to you. But please, take this opportunity with me," Ina once again pleaded with her. Before Gura had a chance to collect her thoughts to answer, Emersyn's voice came over the room.
"Ms. Ninomae appears to be too nice to mention this, but if you do not accept this job your only other option is getting sent off to the foundation." The mention of the foundation made Ina stare bullets through Gura.
"Please, Gura." The Atlantean took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"I kinda don't have any other choice, Ina." The other girl reacted to Gura's answer by slamming her hands onto the table loudly, and standing up.
"Thank you!" Gura's eyes widened in surprise which Ina noticed. "S-sorry…" she mumbled.
"Don't worry about it," Gura responded, avoiding eye contact. Ina sighed sadly and walked over to the exit door. It buzzed and opened, but she stood for a moment before turning.
"I do value our friendship, Gura. None of that was fake," she said before quickly shutting the door behind her.
Gura was left alone in the room with nothing but her thoughts. Her entire life had just been upended and now she was going to join a weird agency because the only other option was something terrifying.
But she didn't feel anxious about it. In fact, she felt excited, a feeling she'd only felt for her meetings with Ina until now. Even though Emersyn seemed scary at first, it seemed like she never wanted to hurt Gura. Hopefully she could work with Ina, too.
The door buzzed and opened again to reveal Emersyn. Gura only tensed a little out of instinct. The woman sat down in the chair again and stared at her.
"I'm glad you've accepted to work here, but I must make you aware that your employment won't be the same as Ms. Ninomae's for now." This wasn't good.
"Is it because I've killed people?" Emersyn nodded.
"84 killings that are directly related to you with another 38 likely being you as well. It isn't a number we can just sweep under the rug, unfortunately." Gura became angry at herself for her inability to control her Primal instincts properly. If only she could go back to Atlantis. Even just the thought made her sick.
"I understand," she said quietly. Emersyn placed a manilla folder on the table and pulled out a form of some kind.
"You will be under constant watch by me or someone of similar capabilities to ensure you don't go 'Primal'." Emersyn began to write on the form. "So what are you?" The question gave Gura pretty bad mental whiplash.
"U-uh, I'm an Atlantean," she answered. For the first time since she'd met Emersyn, an expression other than cold crossed her face. A slight look of surprise flashed on her face.
"I see," she said to herself. Gura looked around, feeling a little awkward as Emersyn just wrote down information in front of her.
"Umm, who else do you employ here?" she asked hesitantly. Emersyn looked up at her for a moment before grabbing a smart phone from her pocket. After a little bit of scrolling, she pushed the phone over to Gura. A video of a fairly normal looking girl played in front of her.
"Who is that?" she asked. Sure the girl did have some weird looking green hair and a funny looking dress, but there was nothing outstandingly weird about her.
"That is Ms. Uruha Rushia. She is a necromancer who can talk to and bring back the dead for a time." Nevermind, this girl was very weird.
"I guess I'm just going to have to believe you on this one?" Emersyn nodded while continuing to write things down.
"There are some more crazy looking members, but she's the one that showed up first." The video continued to play on the table. Rushia was playing some kind of game, though Gura had no idea what it was. Her experience with the internet and video games began and ended with a short conversation she'd had with Ina a while ago.
"I can't really understand what she's saying…" Gura said quietly. Emersyn glanced at her.
"She is speaking Japanese. Don't worry about a language barrier, you'll be working with people who speak English like you. Which I assume is your first language?"
"Technically, since I don't speak my native language much at all anymore." Emersyn looked up at her again and held her gaze this time.
"Mind if I hear some of it?" Gura thought for a moment, deciding what to say.
"Um, Γεια το όνομά μου είναι Gura." Emersyn just kind of stared at her for a bit, making her think that the other woman didn't understand her. But before Gura could say something, Emersyn spoke.
"Ah, it's some kind of Greek dialect. How did that get out into the Pacific?" Emersyn wrote something else down on the form, grabbing the phone on the table on her way back.
"I'm not from this ocean here," Gura explained, catching Emersyn's attention again. "I'm from the sea on the other side of this land mass. The Atlantic, I think you call it?" Emersyn nodded, writing down some more things.
"So what brought you over here?" Emersyn touched on a subject she didn't know she shouldn't have.
"Um, I kinda lost my home a few hundred years ago," Gura said pensively, "I'm the last Atlantean that I know of. The rest are dead from a lost war against a Priestess." Once again, a look of surprise ran its way across Emersyn's face.
"It wasn't Ms. Ninomae, was it?" A hint of concern danced on her words. Gura shook her head as hard as she could out of defense for her friend.
"No no no no, it wasn't her. Even though I never saw that specific Priestess, I know that AO-chan swaps them out every couple hundred years." Emersyn nodded and went back to writing.
"Do you hold any grievances towards Ms. Ninomae? It can be about either your past or current circumstances." Gura closed her eyes for a second, thinking deeply about what her current feelings towards Ina were.
"No, I don't," she settled on, "She had her reasons for doing what she just did and even though I don't agree with her methods, I can understand them. She's also my only friend, I don't want to lose her." Gura opened up slightly to her future manager who nodded at her.
"And nothing about your past?"
"It wasn't her fault. If anything I'm happy she's containing that damn creature inside her," Gura gritted her teeth a little in anger. The emotion faded as silence descended on the room again. It stayed that way for a few minutes before Emersyn finished writing.
"I think we're finished here," she said sternly.
"What were you writing down?" Gura questioned hesitantly. Emersyn picked the sheet up and turned it so the Atlantean could read it.
"It is your application to join us. I needed a little more information to fill it out and I assume you also had questions for me." Gura agreed with her manager's thinking. "Now, I'm going to unlock your restraints so you can sign the paper," she tapped the blank space at the bottom, "Try anything and you won't be working here. Understand?" Gura nodded.
"Yes." Emersyn stood up and pulled out a set of keys. She unlocked the restraints one by one until Gura was free again. The first thing she did was stretch. It had been seriously uncomfortable with them on.
"I'm sorry that we had to leave them on for so long. It was just a precaution," Emersyn apologized. Gura shrugged.
"I kinda understand, but what is keeping me from just running away now. I could probably break through that door and get out of here before you even noticed I left," Gura taunted, jokingly. Emersyn huffed and crossed her arms across her chest.
"I am here to stop you if you try that." Gura felt insulted.
"Just because I'm small, human, doesn't mean that I'm weak." Emersyn smiled menacingly at Gura's declaration. Gura felt like she was being hunted for a moment.
"If you would like, we can have a light spar after this," Emersyn challenged. Gura didn't want to hurt her manager, but if she was going to act this cocky around her maybe she should knock her down a few pegs.
"Alright, deal." Gura signed the paper and was led out of the room by Emersyn. The building was actually nice outside of the room. Instead of grey bricks and bright lights, it was nice brick pillars and flat concrete walls. Dozens of rooms were on either side of the hallways.
She was led to a large room with large pieces of equipment having been moved to the sides. This left it completely empty in the center.
"Here we are, Ms. Gawr," Emersyn presented the room to her.
"Alright, when can we start?"
"Whenever you want." Emersyn turned to face her with the same menacing smile as from before. It gave Gura the creeps, but she ignored it.
"Ok," she said simply before charging her manager. She planned on only missing by a little, maybe grazing her hair, just to show off her speed and strength.
She didn't expect to miss her entirely, though.
Emersyn stood a ways away, hands on her hips. The taunting smile still on her face.
"I won't try to miss this time," Gura warned.
"I won't just dodge then!" Emersyn seemed to be enjoying herself. Gura charged and slashed at her opponent, but the strike was blocked by a blade.
Somehow, Emersyn had pulled out her katana so fast that Gura hadn't noticed.
A lightning fast strike whizzed by her face, giving her very little time to dodge it. The two separated and stared at each other.
"You sure you want to insinuate that I'm weak, Ms. Gawr?" Emersyn taunted directly. Gura pulled her lips back into a toothy grin.
"Maybe you aren't, but neither am I!" She lunged back into the fight, dodging several swings in the process. The two engaged each other for another few minutes, neither landing a definitive strike.
Eventually, Gura jumped back and sat on the floor of the room. She was incredibly tired. Emersyn had barely even broke a sweat by this point.
"Are you too tired to continue?" she asked. Gura nodded weakly.
"I mean, I could keep going, but I know I'll just lose since I'm slowing down," Gura panted. Emersyn acknowledged this and put the katana away.
"Congratulations, you are now a part of Hololive," Emersyn said as she helped pull Gura up from the ground. The Atlantean looked at her.
"Was this some test of my strength? To see if I was the real deal or something?" she asked while catching her breath.
"Not exactly. I wanted to see if you could control your Primal side during a fight. We can safely assume that it is tied to hunger." Gura shook her head.
"If you wanted to know about that, you should've just asked. It is my hunger, but if I'm slightly hungry and something threatens my life, I have a good chance at going Primal." Emersyn's eyes widened slightly.
"I see. Thank you for that explanation." Gura slowly walked her way back to the exit with Emersyn.
"Thank you for this…" Gura said quietly as they walked down the hallway again. Emersyn turned to look at her.
"It was the least we could do. I believe that we can actually help you overcome your issues here."
"Yeah…" Gura was so tired by this point. She didn't even know what time it was, but it was probably late.
"I'll show you to your room. It is nearby Ms. Ninomae's and my own. If you have any questions about how to use anything or if you want to sleep underwater, just contact me." Gura sleepily nodded.
"Thanks, but that's going to be-" she yawned, "to be tomorrow. I'm really tired." Emersyn hummed an 'ok' and they continued up to her room.
Gura hit the mattress and fell into one of the nicest sleeps she's ever had.
A few weeks passed by without much happening around. So far it was just Gura and Ina in "holoMyth". That was what Emersyn had told them their generation was called. It was going to be a group of five debuting at the same time. Apparently the other three had been picked out, but they had yet to be approached.
Gura during this time had tried her best to make friends with all of the employees who she saw in the hall. Some of them didn't want anything to do with her, while others actively engaged in polite conversation.
Ina mostly sat in her room and drew or wrote lyrics to songs. The two mythical girls hung out quite a bit and were definitely best friends again. They both needed someone who understood them and accepted them.
"I'm heading out, don't cause trouble." Emersyn poked her head into the main lounge area to speak to Gura.
"Where are ya going, Enma?" The nickname no longer irked Emersyn that much, but her face did twitch a little.
"I'm going to grab the newest member," she said matter-of-factly. Gura was interested immediately.
"Oh, can I come?!" she asked with extreme enthusiasm.
"I don't believe that would be wise. You'll see her in a few hours anyways," Emersyn rebutted, earring a pout from Gura.
"Awww, come one," Gura whined in vain. Emersyn shrugged it off and left the room. "Just don't knock her out, either!" she called out one last time.
Gura continued to sit on the couch in the lounge for the next couple hours, waiting for Emersyn and their new recruit to return. When she heard her manager's familiar voice drift in through the closed door, she perked up.
"Ms. Gawr normally likes to sit down here and bother the staff-"
"I told you that you can just call me Gura, Enma!"
She turned over and looked over the arm of the couch and saw an unfamiliar person standing next to Emersyn.
"She nicknamed me Enma and now Ms. Ninomae has started to use it, too," she complained slightly. Gura smirked, she was very proud of the nickname. "Ms. Gawr, I would like to introduce you to your new coworker, Ms. Amelia Watson."
She moved over far enough for Gura to fully see the new girl, Amelia.
Author's Note: Atlantean's have a very very fast metabolism and a natural resistance to corruption. How do you think they lasted so long against multiple Priestesses? However, she can only eat that rotten stuff so much before her body needs something else to satiate her hunger.
The foundation is something that I knew had to exist in this universe of myths and legends. They won't play too much of a role, but they will exist to be a threat when one or more of the girls' powers run out of control. Especially in the later parts, that will happen more than they would want.
The first half of the next chapter is going to be a retelling of chapter 10 (the end of RFY) from Gura and Ina's perspectives. There was a bit missing and I wanted to show what they were truly thinking. It isn't much of a recap and it launches right into the next conflict of the story.
Next Chapter: The New Girl
Any feedback/criticism is appreciated!