Act 2, Chapter 6 - The Past Made Present (Part 4)
"They're all high school girls." Kinuho and Maaya proclaimed in shock.
"I was expecting to find a Jedi that's somehow preserved in a bacta tank." Articho jokes, earning a deathly glare from the two girls. "Too soon?"
"You've been playing way too much Jedi Survivor, honey." Kinuho deadpans.
"Hey, at least those events actually happened in real life." He pointed out, slapping her ass from behind.
However, she caught his hand just in time at such reaction speeds. This earned her a chuckle from him.
"Too slow." She flirted.
"I was going easy on you." He flirted back.
"Oh? Careful now." She teasingly warns. "Or someone might think you've learned humility."
"I thought I already have." He shrugs.
"Only in your mind, Articho." She clicks her tongue.
"Could you both stop with the flirting already?" Maaya intervenes, getting more annoyed enough as it is. "Let's not forget to address the elephant in the room. Right in front of us."
"Doppelganger?" The Pathfinder asks.
"There are no signs of any mental or physical damage on their physiology." The Doppelganger addresses. "However, it would appear that they're in some form of stasis."
"Recently?" He further asks.
"Unknown." Was her honest answer. "The current state they're in has also halted their physical aging, making it difficult for me to determine the duration of being trapped in said stasis."
"Halted their aging?" Maaya questions, unconvinced with the AI's answer. "That's oddly suspicious, don't you think?"
"Not the first time we've seen this happen on a small group of people." The Pathfinder nonchalantly recalls. "Can you make out any ID on who these girls are?"
"Negative, Pathfinder." The AI says. "As I said earlier, we're too deep for any comm signal to pass through bedrock, which means I also cannot access any Japanese or Academy citizen records."
"Right." He shakes his head. "Let's get them out of there. I've a few questions I wanna ask them."
"You cannot simply remove them from the stasis field that you see on your HUDs." She warns the trio. "Any forceful attempt will trigger a failsafe, resulting in their brains to be bombarded with microwaves and killing them."
"Gotta be something we can do to free them." He mutters.
"Perhaps a scan of the room could hold the solution to what you're looking for." She suggests.
"Good idea." He agrees. "Let's look around."
And so, Articho, Kinuho, and Maaya began searching the entire room for anything useful in freeing the teenage girls that have been in stasis for who knows how long. Based on their scans with their Omni-tools, it looks to be a small storage room with the multiple crates lying around.
Maaya opens one of them, revealing to be several Jedi Holocrons. Much to her disappointment, her Omni-tool scans tell her that there's zero ancient knowledge within these cubical devices. Still, it wouldn't hurt to salvage them as spares for either Kai or Cassus to use to store any knowledge of their own that they would possess the last time she and her friends have seen the two powerful Force users.
Meanwhile, Kinuho found a crate full of lightsaber parts. However, they all appear to be too rusted and decayed for any spare usage on the late Jedi Master Ainu's lightsaber - now in Articho's possession for the time being.
"Well, this is a bust." Kinuho frowns as she examines the old lightsaber tech she's found. "Not even sure if any of this can be restored."
"Any luck on your part, husband?" Maaya asks while closing the Holocron crate and carrying it by the handle.
"I found out how they got inside the Observatory." Articho points at a crack large enough for a person to move around in. "Other than that, no. I haven't found anything that could get these girls out of stasis."
"Damn." The shinobi princess curses.
"Wait." He notices something on a workbench and approaches it. "What is that?"
Picking the object up in his hands, he uses his helmet's HUD to scan and analyze it.
"That looks like one of the tuners that was used during the High Republic." Maaya recognizes, as she and Kinuho approach their husband. "But this one looks different from what we saw in Jedi Survivor."
"Could be an older model." Kinuho guesses. "I wonder if we can use this to lower the stasis field. Unfortunately, it looks badly damaged."
"Articho?" Maaya questions, wanting to hear the boy's input.
"This..." He says with hesitation at first but became one with determination. "...can be repaired."
"Oh, thank Kami." Both girls sighed in relief.
"Our Omni-tools are still useless against Star Wars tech, however." He adds. "See if you can find a compatible hydrospanner. If there is one in perfect condition, that is."
"Found one!" Kinuho raises her hand up excitedly, holding the tool her husband needs.
"That was quick." He comments, graciously taking it from his light chestnut haired wife's hand. "Let me see what I can do about this thing."
"We'll give you some space to work on the repairs then." She nods, but didn't receive any response from him as he has already begun fixing the tuner.
"Come on." Maaya says to her childhood friend, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Let's see if we can find something else useful in here."
"Right back at you, Maaya." Kinuho nods at the indigo haired girl.
Later...
"Hey." The Pathfinder whispers, shaking the napping girls that are sleeping by the wall together. "It's finished."
Both of them stirred as their eyes slowly opened up.
"What's finished?" They cutely yawn beneath their helmets.
"The tuner." He answers, showing them the working device before getting up from his crouched position. "Now we can see if the fruits of my labor have paid off."
"Then what are we waiting for?" Kinuho got up, eager to free the girls in stasis. "Sooner we get them out of there, the sooner we can go home."
"I'm lowering the field." He informs. "Be ready."
Holding the repaired tuner in his right hand as his wives stand on opposite sides of him, Articho raises the device up towards the circular machine that's generating the stasis field over the trapped girls currently in place. Just as soon as the field was down, one of the girls began to slowly blink her eyes.
"Was that supposed to do something?" A coral orange haired girl curiously wonders before finally noticing the trio in space armor.
"Hi." Articho casually greets with a lazy wave of his hand.
"Waaahhh!" A girl with long navy blue hair with a high bun on the right side of her head and also bears pink eyes. "Demons from the underworld! Not to worry! The angel Yohane will protect you from these blasphemous creatures!"
The Pathfinder and his team blankly stare at her, dumbfounded and confused.
"Uhh, what?" The Pathfinder questions, breaking the awkward silence from the overly-dramatic girl.
"Is it me, or does she remind us of a certain someone whose name shouldn't be mentioned?" Maaya whispers through their helmet comms.
"Don't remind me." He deadpans.
"Calm down, Yoshiko." A girl who is around the same height as Kinuho - sporting long, brownish-gold hair and amber eyes - sighs in annoyance.
"Bu-" The now named Yoshiko begins to argue.
"No buts." She cuts her off with a blank expression. "They definitely don't look like demons at all, zura."
"Zura?" Kinuho tilts her head confusingly.
"Oh no, did I say that out loud?" She covers her mouth in embarrassment. "I'm so sorry."
"Hey Kinuho, I think that girl's voice sounds a lot like Arisa's." Articho telepathically informs.
"So I've noticed." Kinuho telepathically responds back. "Though you can't deny how gorgeous she looks."
"Kinuho..." Her husband warns at.
"Yeah, yeah." She nonchalantly acknowledged. "Don't need you to spell it out for me."
"Sorry, but who are you?" A girl with long burgundy hair and yellow eyes questions suspiciously. "How is it we didn't notice you standing there? And what's with the cosplay?"
"Cosplay?" The trio thought in unison, taking complete offense at how disrespectful and ignorant her latter question is.
"Perhaps they are indeed-" Yoshiko attempts to dramatically presume the mysterious trio's identities again but was karate chopped on the head by her childhood friend.
"They're not demons." Hanamaru blankly says. "I won't say it again, Yoshiko."
"It's Yohane!" The dramatic girl exclaims at her.
"We were about to ask you the same question, except that we don't know what all ten of you are doing in a decrepit place such as this one." Articho remarks as he crosses his arms.
"Decrepit?" A girl with long black hair and turquoise eyes - who conveniently resembles that of Miyuki Shiba but bears a mole on the bottom right side of her mouth - raises an eyebrow curiously but as well as suspiciously like the burgundy haired girl in their all female group. "It's rare to hear anyone use such a profound word in their vocabulary."
"Not as rare as your friend using an outdated term like 'zura'." He casually shot back.
"Touché." She admits. "But who are you really?"
"Think of us as adventurers." He shrugs. "Historians, treasure hunters, and so forth."
"Oooh." A blonde girl with lime green eyes smirked. "The cryptic type, I see."
"Not helping, Mari." Her black haired friend deadpans.
"Whatever you say, Dia." She sticks her tongue out in a cute manner.
"Right then." He clasps his hands before making his way to the door he and his wives come in from. "As much as I want to keep asking you more questions, I think this is the best time to get back to the surface. Wouldn't wanna stick around for too long with that giant behemoth of an apex predator still running about outside."
"Sorry, what?" A girl with mauve hair tied into twintails and crimson eyes.
Suddenly, the ground starts to shake around everyone.
"What was that?" A girl with short greyish-brown hair and blue eyes questions nervously.
"ROOOOAR!!" Everyone heard the sound of the Rancor and the girls - except for Kinuho and Maaya covered their ears from the loud noise.
Kinuho and Maaya then noticed the ceiling in the Observatory's central chamber beginning to crack. And then, something large broke through and landed hard on the stone floor. Articho whips his head around and sees that the Rancor had found its way inside the Observatory.
"Well, that's something you don't see everyday." The Pathfinder quips.
The Rancor then sniffs the air and trains its eyes on him.
"Uh oh." His two wives paled, knowing that things are about to get hurt for their husband.
"Ah, crap baskets." He sighs, slouching in annoyance before the Rancor started throwing hard punches that would kill any normal person, damaging his N7 Pathfinder armor's energy shields and causing the door leading outside the central chamber to crack multiple times.
Raising its fist up, the creature then punches him hard, sending the boy crashing through the number of doors till his flown body eventually made it back outside of the Observatory, in which he rolled on the city ruins' streets.
Thanks to Articho's hybrid Saiyan biology, that punch didn't even do any inflicting damage to him other than the head trauma he was given.
"Shields have been compromised, Pathfinder!" The Doppelganger warns in his helmet comms, as he gets in his feet. "Armor integrity down to seventy percent!"
"I've noticed." He groans, shaking off the throbbing headache. "Guess my shields aren't gonna recharge anytime soon."
The Rancor emerges from the Observatory and roars triumphantly.
"Oh great." He sarcastically comments.
Meanwhile, Kinuho and Maaya ran out of the Observatory with the other girls following closely behind.
"Shouldn't that have killed him?!" A girl with midnight blue tied into a ponytail named Kanan worriedly questions.
"Other than a splitting headache, it'll take more than a few punches to put him down." Kinuho rolls her eyes. "Good luck with that by the way."
"That large creature looks familiar." Mari squints her eyes, as she has an American heritage much like the light chestnut haired girl does. "Wait! Isn't that-"
"Shhh." Maaya shushes her. "I hope he knows what he's doing down there. We couldn't even take it down without the risk of cutting loose."
How wrong she is, as Articho is struggling to avoid being smashed to pieces or grabbed to be eaten alive. Evading the Rancor's foot by rolling to the side, he pulls out his M-7 Lancer and opens fire upon the persistent beast.
This only annoyed the beast even more.
"Oh, come on." The Pathfinder muttered under his breath, lowering his assault rifle in disbelief.
"What the hell are you doing over there?!" Kinuho yells through the comms. "Bullets are useless against a persistent bastard of a Rancor!"
"Gee, thanks for telling me that at the last second!" Articho sarcastically shot back before using his armor's jump jets to evade backwards from an incoming attack that missed its mark.
Articho continues to shoot the Rancor, hoping to find a weak spot. The Rancor, however, has had enough and swiped its claws at the Pathfinder's modified Lancer - slicing the assault rifle in two. He groaned that his favorite primary firearm got destroyed, and threw away the broken halves before pulling out his Carnifex heavy pistol and fires at the creature.
"Really?" Kinuho comments again.
The Rancor snatches the Pathfinder in its hand before slamming him across the metallic street.
"What an idiot." The Shinobi Princess rolled her eyes in annoyance.
"Overconfidence can be his weakness sometimes." The light chestnut haired girl facepalms.
"Damnit." Articho groaned while dusting himself off. "Okay, Plan B."
He then notices on his HUD that his helmet's domed visor had cracked. Slowly getting back up, he looks up at the Rancor. The Pathfinder is now pissed off. His two wives sensed their husband's emotions rise from within himself. Whenever someone has managed to get a good hit on him, it means that they've just written their own death sentence. Holstering his sidearm, Articho pulls out the recovered lightsaber hilt from the back of his waist and grips the weapon with two hands before igniting its yellow blade with a medium humming sound.
"A lightsaber..." Mari's eyes widened.
"Now we get to see him in action." Kinuho smirks.
The Rancor claws at Articho, only for the latter to sidestep each incoming attack before chopping off its left arm where the dismembered limb drops hard on the ground. It roared in pain, holding the cauterized stump, giving the Pathfinder the opening he needed to slide under the beast and swiftly slashed one of its legs. He then jumps in midair and holds the lightsaber in a reverse grip with both hands, aimed downwards, and lands a fatal stab in the Rancor's head. The Rancor roars in pain again until it collapsed face flat on the ground, finally killing the creature. Articho then pulls out the yellow lightsaber from said creature and hops off its corpse, striking a triumphant stoic pose afterwards.
"Guess those lessons on the Absolution with Kai and Cassus aren't completely useless after all." Articho mutters before deactivating the yellow blade and holstering the hilt.
The young girls that were frozen had their jaws dropped in disbelief.
"You're... a Jedi." Mari gasps, approaching the boy and his deceased prey down the steps of the Observatory entrance. "A real one."
"Yeah, no." Was his response, not turning to face her as he scans the dead Rancor's body with his Omni-tool. "Even if I was, having a lightsaber wouldn't prove that I am one."
"Been awhile since Maaya and I have seen you wield one." Kinuho comments, walking up to him as well.
"That's more of Kai and Cassus' line of work, not mine." He shakes his head. "Though, I never would've thought I'd resort to using one again."
"Well, beggars can't be choosers." Maaya shrugs, joining in on the conversation. "Find anything on this breed of Rancor?"
"DNA analysis suggests this Rancor was artificially created." He explains, reading through the data he's gathered with a suspicious and confused tone in his voice. "Not much of a clone, but rather built from scratch by the looks of it. I guess we'll never know to be sure."
"Reminds me alot about the whole dilemma with the Zillo Beast." The light chestnut haired girl points out.
"Yeah." He nods. "Except Rancors don't feed on electricity that makes them grow in size and increase their strength."
"Um, you got a..." The indigo haired girl points at the crack on her husband's helmet visor.
"Thanks." He notices, using his Omni-tool to remove the crack completely.
And as luck would have it, his armor's shields flickered blue, meaning that they've been fully restored.
"What sorcery is this?" The long navy blue haired girl exclaimed.
"Not sorcery. Skill." Articho deadpans. "Watch awhile longer and you might learn something."
"Hmph." She scoffs, crossing her arms.
"Say, why don't we introduce ourselves?" The coral orange haired girl suggests before introducing herself. "My name's Chika Takami, and these are my friends: Yō Watanabe..."
"Ahoy!" The greyish-brown haired girl named You greets with a salute, a smile, and a wink.
"The optimistic one with burgundy hair is Riko Sakurauchi..." Chika adds.
"No comment." Riko crosses her arms, avoiding eye contact."You've already met Yoshiko Tsushima."
"Yohane!" Yoshiko objects, more annoyed as it is.
"The short one with gold brown hair is Hanamaru Kunikida."
"It's nice to meet you, zura." Hanamaru bows respectfully.
"The other optimistic girl is Leah Kazuno."
"Charming." Leah rolls her eyes.
"Mari Ohara and Kanan Matsuura."
"Nice to meet you/How's it going?" The laid back duo smiled.
"And lastly, this is Ruby Kurosawa and her big sister Dia."
"I-It's nice to meet you, sir!" Ruby nervously greets.
"Come on, Ruby." Leah sighs. "You're making our first impression with these strangers look bad in front of us."
"It's alright." Articho raises his right hand in assurance. "No hard feelings."
"Thank you." The young girl smiles with a bow. "I know you said to hold off with the questions, but could you at least answer a few of them before we go?"
"Make it quick." He warns. "My team and I have overstayed our welcome beneath Mount Fuji long enough, and we're kinda in a hurry to report in our findings here."
"What exactly is this place?" Ruby questions, looking at her surroundings.
"Ancient city ruins." He simply answered. "Turns out the largest volcano in Japan isn't really a volcano at all. The old tech here might explain Mount Fuji's eruptions in the last few decades."
"Are you from Academy City?" She further questions.
"What makes you think that we are?" He crosses his arms.
"The armor and weapons on you gave it away." She points out. "Especially since it's the only civilization with technology that's three decades ahead of the rest of the world."
"You're right about us being from Academy City." Maaya says. "But the gear we're wearing is... well, it's complicated."
"And why's that?" Leah raises an eyebrow with a distrustful tone in her voice.
"You wouldn't believe us if we told you." The shinobi princess shakes her head.
"That lightsaber behind your waist says otherwise." Mari points out. "I don't how, but I highly doubt Academy City is advanced enough to build one with the right parts."
"You mean that laser sword this guy just used to slay that 'Rancor' or whatever you call it?" Chika tilts her head curiously. "You sure know a lot about it."
"Well, I was born in America and it's from one of the greatest movie franchises in all of pop culture." She shrugs. "When we get back to Uchiura, I'm gonna have to school you all on what I'm talking about."
"Uchiura?" Kinuho questions. "Isn't that a small countryside town by the eastern shoreline out in the middle of nowhere? I heard that business there went into bankruptcy last year."
"Oh, that's silly!" Yō laughs it off. "The economy in Uchiura mostly runs on growing and selling oranges. No way the town would run out of money like that."
Articho, Kinuho, and Maaya became confused at those words as they look at each other.
"Articho, something's not right here." Maaya telepathically warns.
Of course, her Pathfinder husband was already aware of this suspicion and didn't telepathically respond back to her before looking at the ten girls in question.
"What year do you think this is?" The Pathfinder asks.
The ten girls were completely confused at his question. He could've just look it up on whatever advanced communication device he uses, but it wouldn't hurt to at least humor him since he saved them from being eaten by the Rancor he singlehandedly slew.
"2017." Chika smiles.
The armored trio flinched beneath their helmets, shocked at what they've just heard from the coral orange haired girl's mouth. But her answer rings truth, unfortunately. Left with no other choice, Articho decides to bear the bad news to the clueless girls.
"2017 was almost ten years ago." Articho revealed to them.
The girls before the trio all thought that he was joking.
"It's joke!" Mari laughed. "Didn't know you have a sense of humor!"
"Maybe this'll change your mind." He sighs, projecting a holographic image of the current date via his Omni-tool in front if their eyes.
Then, their expressions became those of disbelief and shock. Leah, however, refused to believe it.
"Bullshit." Leah frowns, as what look to be tears forming in her eyes. "This has to be a joke as Mari said."
Kinuho and Maaya shook their heads in disapproval, confirming that it's not a joke but the truth. Chika became distraught the most and immediately dropped to her knees as she tries to put on a fake smile, also refusing to believe the truth that's slapped in their faces. However, she could no longer keep up her poker face and then breaks down in tears, crying. Articho then shuts off his Omni-tool, and he and his two wives turns around to give the girls a brief time to take it all in.
"If those girls have been in stasis for that long, they're in for a shock." Kinuho whispered, feeling sorry for them.
"I know." Articho says. "Let's get these girls back to Academy City."
Both of his wives nodded and Maaya pulls out her sheathed high frequency-bladed katana from her back and generates ki within the blade before slashing the air, creating a portal that caught the distraught girls' attention.