Book II, Part I: Outbreak - Vector's Gambit
Chapter XI - Loose Ends
[July 12, 2152 | Esthar, Business District, Vector Industries Main Complex | 3:41 PM]
"Alright, people - last checks. We're going straight in the front door, so get ready for anything."
Hikari Tanaka's voice carried over the comm network to the rest of her team as well as to the SeeD members along with her as she stepped off the ramp of the Kusanagi's cargo bay and into the small landing strip designated for personal aircraft.
"Good to go, ma'am," Butler replied, stepping off behind Hikari.
"Same, Commander," Hanley said, following Butler down along with the SeeD team.
"We're ready to go," Darius said, earning nods from all five other members of his squad. "Let's get this done."
"Baker Squad moving to position - approaching the rendezvous point," a voice said over the comm, one that Hikari recognized as the squad's commanding officer, Jacob Anderson. She could see what looked like an armored personnel carrier moving towards them as the voice spoke, carrying the rest of the Guard members that would be joining them.
"Butler, Darius, you're with me," Hikari ordered, the holographic visor that served as her heads-up display flickering into view. "We're going in first to initiate the proceedings. Hanley, mobilize the other teams equally into three and split them off, one team for each of the three divisions' laboratories. Once you're inside and everyone is in position, begin downloading Vector's mainframe for analysis."
"Copy that, ma'am," Hanley responded, saluting as the APC slowed to a stop beside the airship.
"Let's go."
Darius, despite his best efforts, was tense. Everything came down to this. He'd spent years tracking, searching, using everything at his disposal to find the truth only to have it unceremoniously dropped into his lap when he least expected it. It wasn't pretty, but nothing ever was, he knew. All that mattered now was getting inside, shutting Vector Industries down, and finding Lindsey...or whatever Lindsey had become.
Hikari stepped through the center set of sliding doors leading into the lush decor of the Vector Industries lobby, followed closely by Darius and Butler. Immediately, she got the attention of the receptionist at the desk, a young woman with dark hair dressed in the standard red and black attire of Vector employees.
"Oh, miss Tanaka!" the woman said, spinning in her chair to greet Hikari happily before noticing the two others with her. Her eyes went wide at the sight of Butler, clad fully in his Guard uniform and armor, and she looked to Hikari with a small amount of fear showing in her eyes. "Ma'am...what's going on?"
"Sorry, Rui," Hikari said, looking apologetic as she stepped up to the desk. "I'm here on business."
A small panel popped open on her own armor, and she reached a hand inside to retrieve an envelope that she then handed to the girl. Rui opened the letter with a trembling hand, taking note of what she recognized as the President's seal as she took out the papers inside and looked them over.
"By authorization of the President of the Commonwealth of Esthar, Vector Industries is hereby ordered to cease all operations, effective immediately. That letter serves as our notice and warrant to take possession of all materials on-site and to detain any relevant personnel for questioning."
"Ma'am...you can't be serious...!" Rui said, shock spreading on her face as she realized the meaning of Hikari's words.
"Don't worry, Rui," Hikari said, reaching out to put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "You don't have anything to do with this, so just keep calm. Please get in touch with Aiva, Miyuki, and Toia for me, as well as mister Wilhelm. They need to come down to the lobby and meet with my team here for questioning."
"Your...team? Miss Tanaka, what is all of this?"
"I'll explain once we're done here," Hikari replied coolly, turning to her two companions. "Fall in - we're going to First R&D. Rui, please ask the security chief on duty to assist my team in escorting all non-employees out of the building and off of the campus grounds."
With that, Hikari headed back the desk towards the door directly at the back of the room, Butler and Darius in tow as she headed through the door and into the hallway. She knew the layout of the entire complex intimately, and as such knew the fastest and easiest route to get to the main First Division laboratories. Contrary to expectations, Vector's main campus was not entirely above-ground - she had asked the company president about it once in the past, to which he had remarked that limiting the complex to nothing more than an above-ground building was "a great and terrible waste of potential," in his own words.
"So, where are we heading?" Darius asked. He remembered bits and pieces from his last experience here, but hadn't gotten to see the majority of the building before their mission was cut short.
"Down," Hikari replied simply, turning down another hallway and opening a door leading into a stairwell.
"No elevators," Darius said, nodding approvingly. "Easy to set traps in - good plan."
"The main labs are up here on the ground level, but what we're after is not. We're going down to level 5 - that's where we'll find KP-X."
"Ma'am, are you sure we should be looking for that project if it's as dangerous as you claim? What if it's already active?" Butler asked, concern tinging his face behind his helmet.
"Butler, if that thing's already active...we're probably all dead anyway, whether we look for it or not. If it's awake, it knows we're here already and exactly where we are. So if it's not awake, we need to find it and secure it before someone decides to wake it up."
"Her."
The single word from Darius' mouth cut into Hikari sharper than any blade on Gaia could have managed.
"...Her. I'm sorry, Darius."
"Let's just find Lindsey and get out of here before anything else happens."
No other words were exchanged as they made their way down the five flights of stairs to the B-5 sublevel. Hikari stepped in front of the heavy-looking sliding door as they hit the final landing, grabbing a keycard from another slot in her armor and sliding it through the reader. It chimed once, then raised a panel on the side of the wall.
"Please proceed with fingerprint and retinal scan verification," it chimed in a monotone robotic voice, to which Hikari moved over and bent down in front of the panel, letting it scan her eye as she put her index finger on the pad resting inside the panel area. A few moments passed as the computer processed the information, but the panel finally beeped a second time and flashed a green light, the door sliding open in front of them as the panel closed itself again.
"Let's move," Hikari said, moving through the door quickly and carefully as the pair followed behind. None of them had drawn weapons yet, as they didn't want to escalate the situation any unless needed. However, they had also not seen any employees either, which was both fortunate and troubling in Hikari's eyes.
"...I have a bad feeling about this," Darius said as they approached the door at the far side of the hallway they were in. Hikari stopped in her tracks, looking back at Darius.
"The lack of people?" Hikari asked, causing Darius to nod.
"It's way too quiet for the most secretive lab in Vector. We've been here less than 5 minutes, and everyone cleared out already? That's impossible. This smells like a trap."
Hikari had seen a lot of action, and nothing she could think of countermanded Darius' thoughts on the matter. She was having a lot of the same thoughts herself now, as a matter of fact.
"Weapons free. Check your targets, but I have a feeling you're right."
She reached to her back, popping loose one of the boxy shapes attached to her suit as it unfolded into the same squat-looking assault rifle she'd used back in the warehouse in Galbadia. Butler did the same, but instead of an assault rifle, the gun in his hands unfolded into a short, boxy shotgun that looked like a brick with a barrel. Darius withdrew the twin pistols he kept at his side, prompting Hikari to once again begin approaching the next room now that they were all ready. She brought her free hand up to her visor, pressing one of the holographic buttons on the side and stopping just in front of the door, sweeping her head left to right for a moment before pressing the button again.
"Thermal scans show nothing. Stay sharp - I'm going in."
Carefully, she stepped forward and triggered the automatic door, checking the corners of the doorway before breaching the room with her rifle at the ready. Butler came through behind her almost instantly, shotgun ready as his eyes swept the room. The room itself was enormous, rows upon rows of consoles and computer systems lining the walls and tables full of equipment in neat sections around corners of the room. In the center was a complex-looking assembly dangling from the ceiling some twelve or so feet above them directly over a large metal table, full of metal wires, claws, and other parts that Hikari couldn't fully make out from her position. For all the equipment in the room, it was completely deserted, with lit monitors showing displays of the Vector Industries logo and no one in sight anywhere.
"Nice big space here," Darius commented, lightning crackling around his hands and pistols. "It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it."
"Stow it," Hikari said sternly. "We need all this data if we're going to do anything about Vector."
"What was this room used for?" Butler asked.
"To the best of my knowledge, weapon assembly," Hikari replied, moving over to the table in the center of the room. "Lots of heavy weaponry came here to have the framework assembled once it was machined - including KP-X's own."
"Looks like they cleared it all out," Darius said, looking around the room at the distinct lack of weapon parts, machinery, or anything else besides the consoles themselves.
"They knew we were coming...somehow," Hikari said, frowning. "They would have never gotten all of these labs cleared in time otherwise."
"Of course we did~"
Weapons rose as a female voice carried through the room that didn't come from any of the three inside, each one scanning the room quickly for any signs of anyone besides themselves.
"Butler!"
"I've got nothing - thermal is clear!"
"Then where is that coming from?" Hikari said, eyes actively scanning for a threat that seemingly didn't exist in the room with them.
"You're just not looking hard enough, Fiona."
The voice carried through again, shifting slightly in pitch and tone as it went until it was completely different than the last time it had spoken. Hikari watched in a mix of horror and fascination as a console at the far end of the wall seemed to begin to melt, the metal shifting and warping in on itself as it grew taller, forming into a humanoid shape as the color faded from silver into a tan skintone.
"Kitaen. I should've known you'd be here," Hikari said, leveling her rifle at the homunculus now in front of her. "Nice to see this really was a trap."
The one now taking Lindsey Geneave's face.
"Well, I couldn't just let you waltz in here and mess up all of my boss's hard work, now could I?" Kitaen said, an obnoxiously and obviously false grin on its face. "It's just plain rude to walk in and try to do that, you know. Where are your manners?"
"I left them at Briggs," Hikari replied, keeping a cool gaze on Kitaen.
"You've got some nerve taking on her appearance..." Darius said, feeling the grip on his anger fraying a bit more every second.
"I actually really like this look," Kitaen said, twirling around in front of them. "You had such nice taste in girls, you know~"
"Quit mocking me, you freak," Darius growled, causing Hikari to raise an arm to stop him.
"Darius, calm down - it wants you to fly off the handle."
"And you're still carrying around that murder weapon, too! I thought you'd have tossed that relic by now," Kitaen said to Hikari, noticing something faintly showing from the back of her armor. "I think I remember you saying something about putting enough bullets in me to stop me from getting up again, right?"
"That plan hasn't changed," Hikari said, reaching behind her back and smoothly returning the rifle in her hands to its compact form and grabbing the piece that Kitaen was looking at. "The timetable just got pushed back a little, that's all." It unfolded in her hands into the sleek form of her customized PSG-1, and she propped it against her shoulder as Darius took a careful look at the gun that he'd been trying to track down for the majority of his adult life.
"Can't believe I'm looking at the gun I've been tracking for years now," he muttered. "It's not even that fancy."
"Even if you can't appreciate the beauty of this weapon, I'm sure your girlfriend would be able to, if she were here," Hikari remarked, sparing a glance over to Darius.
"Why don't you ask her?" Darius deadpanned, gesturing in Kitaen's direction.
"After putting a bullet into her from exactly one thousand and thirty-eight meters, I doubt she would care to discuss the intricacies of firearms with me."
"Now that's just mean, Fiona. Why'd you have to bring that up again?" Kitaen whined, pouting as it folded its arms. A loud 'crack' echoed in the room as Hikari let off a shot, rocking Kitaen's head back sharply as blood flew from the impact.
"Because I'm going to make it stick this time."
Kitaen's head slowly and gently moved back into a normal position as Hikari watched, red energy crackling around the bullet wound in its forehead that was rapidly healing up before her eyes.
"Now look what you've done," Kitaen said, reaching up to dab away some blood from its forehead with a finger. "You just had to go and do something stupid like that. I think..."
It looked at the blood for a moment longer, a wicked smile crossing its face as it turned its attention back to the trio before it.
"I think I'll have to kill all of you right now."
(Play: Chrono Trigger Corrupter of Time OC Remix - Joren de Bruin, Tweek; OverClocked Remix)
Kitaen shot forward with a speed that Hikari wasn't expecting, and in that moment Hikari realized that she knew next to nothing about the homunculus. The only thing she truly knew was that Kitaen wasn't invincible, nor was it unkillable. She also knew that Kitaen bled.
One of the things she had learned at Briggs was that if something bled, it would die if you made it bleed enough.
She raised her rifle with practiced speed and let off a volley of rapid shots from the semi-automatic weapon, blasting high-velocity rounds into center mass of the charging homunculus. Blood burst from the wounds as the rounds impacted, but Kitaen kept coming in a frenzy, not even slowing down as it plowed through the firepower. Darius' pistols joined in a moment later, rapid-fire shots adding to the heavier rounds Hikari was using, but Kitaen barely even flinched at the additional fire.
It did flinch, however, when Butler stepped up and pulled the trigger of his weapon nearly point-blank into its chest.
Butler's Claymore shotgun kicked in his grip as the tremendous blast of the weapon erupted from the barrel, a large and dense spray of pellets slamming into Kitaen's midsection with incredible force and almost throwing the homunculus off its feet entirely as the shot forced it back. The shotgun was a specially-designed model, built entirely for power without regards for such petty things as accuracy or ammunition capacity. One shot was all it held at a time, but with the stopping power that the weapon possessed, one shot was usually more than enough to drop anything he pointed it at from its effective range. Without his armor, Butler's arm likely would've snapped from the immense recoil of the weapon.
It worried him that Kitaen staggered back to a fully-upright position mere seconds later, the multitude of wounds from all three guns rapidly healing over in flashes of red energy.
"Oh, is it my turn now?" Kitaen said, the psychotic smile widening even further as Hikari and the rest watched in amazement.
'Its regeneration is incredible...' Hikari thought to herself even as Kitaen moved again. The homunculus' entire body suddenly burst into magical flame as it moved, lunging forward and rearing a fist back that slammed into Butler, sending him flying clear across the room to smash into a console in a horrible screech of wrenching metal and shattering glass.
"Butler!" Hikari cried, raising the rifle and snapping off another pair of shots to no effect before Kitaen was upon her. She quickly called up her gravitational manipulation abilities, leaping high into the air as Kitaen's flaming fist shattered the ground where she was standing. Darius' pistols peppered the homunculus briefly before Kitaen turned its attention to him, leveling another powerful strike that Darius managed to catch on crossed arms. The force crushed the tile floor under his feet, but he stayed standing thanks to his junctions, flames licking at his body from the proximity.
Of course, he semi-frequently sparred with one of the most powerful Flame Alchemists on the continent. These flames were nothing compared to his brother's, he thought to himself. The punch, however...that hurt. His arms were throbbing masses from just the one strike, and that was with his junctions.
"Darius, move!" Hikari yelled from above, still hanging in the air but falling in what seemed to be slow-motion. Darius took a step and vanished into a Planeswalk as Hikari let loose with a ball of dark energy that burst into the same gravity vortex the marksman had seen used against his summon earlier. Kitaen, however, didn't lose its footing - rather, it braced against the wild pull of the altered gravity and started to gather a ball of fire in its hands. Hikari watched the flaming orb in Kitaen's hands grow bigger and bigger as she floated gently downward, and Kitaen let loose with the orb at almost the exact same time that Hikari made her next move.
Tiny jets inset into the back of her armor pulsed to life briefly, pushing her in Kitaen's direction as she fell, and the nodes in her armor started to glow light blue as the energy shield around her armor shimmered a brilliant purple. At the same time, she altered the pull of gravity around herself to increase her effective mass many times over, falling with the force of a massive boulder towards Kitaen and the fireball rocketing at her. Her energy shield flared brilliantly as the fireball detonated upon it, sending an uncomfortable wash of heat across her body but thankfully not doing any real damage, and Kitaen's eyes widened before it jumped back in time to avoid being crushed by Hikari's descent, the force of the gravity around her shattering the tile around her in a large radius.
That was when Darius made his own approach.
Lightning sparked around his hands as he quickly holstered one of his pistols, casting a powerful Thundaga spell at Kitaen that jolted the homunculus where it stood even as he prepared for his next move. He knelt and pressed a hand to the ground as he called on his Alchemy, a flash of light erupting as his transmutation took hold of the floor itself and pulled. Tiles cracked and bent as the ground around Kitaen started to sink, the ceramic and concrete foundation around its feet gripping its legs as it looked down in surprise. It tugged, ripping one of its legs free for a moment before the ground stretched up to engulf it again, clawing and wrapping around it even as it tried to struggle free. Darius used the opportunity to continue pelting it with shots from his remaining pistol despite their limited effect as it tried to fight off the influence of the transmutation, until Kitaen finally found itself wrapped up in a thick cocoon of material that used to be a large swathe of the laboratory floor.
"This isn't fair...!" Kitaen whined, struggling to break free of the binding as the flaming aura around it went out.
"I'd say that your boss kidnapping and turning my girlfriend into some kind of superweapon is a bit more unfair," Darius commented, casually flicking the magazine out of his pistol and reaching into a pocket for a more...effective set of ammunition. "And taking on my girlfriend's appearance...that's just the last straw." He slammed another clip into the pistol's grip as he watched Kitaen struggle, taking aim as he put both hands on the pistol.
"Let's see how much you like this."
Darius' pistols weren't just any ordinary, run of the mill store-bought guns. The red-haired marksman had been a gunsmith for years, and he'd made the pistols he typically carried around from scratch. Most pistols only worked with rather small-caliber ammunition, bullets that would generally only stop human-sized targets and smaller animals.
Darius was a firm believer in the idea that he should be able to kill anything and everything with a handgun. Bigger guns were nice and all, but practicality was paramount.
The explosive-tipped ammunition he had loaded into the handgun blasted out with a ferocious noise, tearing a hole the size of a large fist into the homunculus in front of him and the stone and tile surrounding it accompanied by a howling scream of pain. Darius fired again and again, each bullet ripping chunks out of the freakishly-durable being until the gun clicked empty, the ammunition expended. The rubble fell away from Kitaen's body as Darius let the transmutation go, the battered homunculus slumping to the ground for a moment with nearly a dozen large pieces missing from its body.
"Still alive, huh?" Darius said, taking a breather from his momentary onslaught as Hikari watched, ready to help deal with any of Kitaen's tricks. "Pretty impressive...that regeneration you've got is really something."
Kitaen looked up at him again as he spoke, its blond hair streaked with its own blood and the smile no longer on its face.
"But we didn't come here to chat. We're here to find Lindsey," he said, sliding another clip of ammunition into the pistol. "So, you can be a nice little freak of nature and get out of our way."
Kitaen's head fell again.
"Wilhelm wouldn't like it if I did that."
Quick as a flash, it leapt from its slouched position and flew towards Darius, flowing blue energy surrounding it even as Hikari's rifle rose to track it again. The rifle cracked in the confines of the room, but Kitaen was moving faster than before and Hikari's shot flew wide, the marksman unable to swing the gun around fast enough to keep pace. Darius brought his pistol up again, but Kitaen was faster and slapped it right out of his hand, jolting his wrist violently in the process as he realized that the homunculus didn't have hands anymore - it had something that looked like knives in their place, extending from the wrists. Its 'hands' moved like lightning, and Darius took a dozen shallow cuts in the span of barely a second that forced him back, caught off guard by the suddenness of the assault and the ferocity coming from something that he'd blown an eighth of the body mass away from only thirty seconds prior.
Hikari slung the rifle back onto the back of her armor in one fluid motion, grabbing the assault rifle she'd had earlier and opening up with it as Darius fought to keep the homunculus off of him in melee. Bullets lanced into Kitaen's skin and drew blood, but it didn't seem concerned with Hikari's attack as it concentrated on rending Darius limb from limb. Darius brought a hand up and shoved against Kitaen's body, lightning crackling again as he drew on his Alchemy for a second time, but Kitaen ignored the motion and stabbed him in the side without hesitation. Darius' eyes widened as he tried and failed to complete the transmutation he was attempting, feeling the residual energy from Kitaen's strike wash over him, and Kitaen took the opportunity to drive the other bladed hand into his stomach, almost lifting him off his feet from the force. He gagged, coughing up a bit of blood from the violent strike before Kitaen tore the blades out of his body, hammering a kick into his side that threw him across the room and into a computer screen much as Butler had been sent flying earlier.
"Darius!"
Hikari's shout was half worry and half rage as she watched Darius go flying at Kitaen's hands. Suddenly, she didn't care about Kitaen suffering at their hands for everything it had done - she just wanted the homunculus dead by any means necessary. Her free hand rose as her suit's nodes shimmered again, Hikari calling up the altered gravity she was accustomed to using...but this time, it was around Kitaen and not herself. Kitaen's feet suddenly left the ground as Hikari lifted her off the floor and high into the air, the homunculus unable to do anything in the clutches of the gravitational power, and Hikari's face twisted into a savage glare as she used the energy to spin Kitaen in mid-air. She yanked her hand down suddenly, sending Kitaen rocketing into the floor headfirst with enough force to shatter the floor underneath her again. The rifle in her hands lit up again as she unloaded the rest of the clip into where Kitaen had fallen, and she snapped it back onto the magnetic mount at her back as it clicked empty instead of reloading, starting to walk forward and grabbing a third weapon from her back to continue the assault with. It unfolded into a sleeker-looking shotgun than the construct Butler used, and she opened fire the moment it was ready, pumping shell after shell into the debris from ever closer range without waiting for Kitaen to get back up.
But get back up it did.
It was slower this time, and the damage more noticeable, but Kitaen slowly removed itself from the hole that had been caused by Hikari's forceful slam and subsequent barrage. Its neck was still lolling at an angle that looked all wrong, and it had dozens of puncture wounds of various sizes from all the gunfire, but the telltale red energy of its regeneration was slowly knitting it back together one piece at a time.
Albeit, Hikari noticed, more slowly than before. It looked like it was getting tired...but she had no way of knowing exactly how much more they had to kill it before it would finally stay dead.
"You can't kill me," Kitaen rasped out as its damaged throat and neck started to heal up, the muscles and bones knitting back together and dragging its head back into proper position like a marionette on a string as she took a staggering step forward. "You're just a bunch of pitiful humans with fancy little toys. And toys, well..."
She lunged forward again with the same striking speed that Darius had fallen victim to, grabbing Hikari by the throat with one restored hand and squeezing tightly. Hikari's armor creaked under the impossible strength, metal and ceramics that had been built to resist heavy weapons fire groaning and giving way gradually under the strain of Kitaen's crushing grip. The shotgun rose to Kitaen's chest and fired once, blasting another fist-sized hole into its body before it clicked empty, and Hikari dropped her weapon as spots started dancing at the edges of her vision from the pressure on her neck. Kitaen picked her up by the throat with a wild grin, slamming her down into the tile hard enough to leave a small crater and sending stars dancing through Hikari's vision as her holographic visor flashed warnings about armor durability and biometric levels. Again and again, Kitaen smashed her into the floor, bits of ceramic armor flying loose and blood flowing freely from Hikari's nose and mouth as the homunculus battered her relentlessly before finally throwing her away like a ragdoll to slide across the floor.
"...toys are easily broken."
Hikari groaned as some of her senses started to return to her, shifting painfully on the floor. Even through her armor, she'd taken a beating - that homunculus' strength was absolutely insane. She tried to get back up, only to have a searing pain jolt through her left leg that caused her to slump back down with a stifled cry. Something in her leg was assuredly fractured or broken, she realized.
Which meant she wasn't getting away from Kitaen now.
She grabbed the twin pistols she kept mounted on her sides and shakily aimed at Kitaen, opening fire again with the only weapon she had access to at the moment, but the bullets didn't faze the approaching homunculus any more than Darius' pistols had.
"I'm going to take my time making you hurt," Kitaen said, one of its hands turning back into a sharpened, knife-like edge. "There are so many things we need to catch up on...wouldn't you say?"
"Go...to hell," Hikari choked out, wiping blood from her face as she tried to use her gravitational powers again. Kitaen just snatched her up by her arm and spun, throwing her back into the wall closest to the door she'd come in through and watching her crumple to the floor.
"I've got a better idea...I'm going to make you watch as I cut your little friend here apart, piece by tiny piece...let you live for a little while with the knowledge that you couldn't save either one of them."
Kitaen turned and started walking away from Hikari and towards Darius, who was still slumped over near the console she'd kicked him into earlier. Hikari could barely even move enough to turn her head and watch as Kitaen slowly approached Darius. She was out of weapons, badly beaten, and exhausted...there wasn't anything she could do.
And then she saw lightning arc across Darius' body.
"You gloat...more than my dad."
Darius slowly made his way back to his feet, crackles of lightning dancing around and over his body in ever-increasing amounts as Kitaen stopped and watched, suddenly wary.
"You made a big mistake, not finishing me off...sloppy, really. Anyone who knows SeeD knows better than to let one live when you've got them down."
The lightning arcs got stronger and more violent, cracking around him and pitting the ground as the electrical discharge started to try and ground out.
"But you wouldn't know anything about that. You're just some lab-created freak who's using Lindsey's face."
He brought one arm up, raising it above his head as an amber aura slowly started to build around him, the electricity gathering into a crackling storm of power above him at his command.
"And I told you to get out of our way!"
The lightning above Darius' head exploded into a raging storm of power as he brought the hand down towards Kitaen, the fury of his Limit manifesting fully as a tempest of electrical power that bore down on the homunculus like it was a lightning rod. The bolts blasted through Kitaen's body, electrocuting it with the full might of Darius' alchemical talent as the homunculus screamed in agony. Kitaen couldn't do anything, couldn't feel anything but the excruciating waves of pain rolling through its body from the immense electrical discharges, and smoke started to rise from its skin as it was scorched black from the force of the attack. Darius and Hikari both breathed a sigh of relief as they watched Kitaen sink back to the ground again, smoke still wafting from its skin from the intense heat of the electricity. Darius did the same a few seconds later, exhausted from the use of his Limit and still battered from Kitaen's earlier attacks. Slowly, he began to channel curative magic over himself to try and heal some of the worst wounds - namely, the two large stab wounds Kitaen had inflicted.
"That...hurt..." Kitaen rasped, its breathing ragged and labored as its regeneration tried to repair all of the damage that had been done to it in the last few seconds. Despite all the wounds it had suffered, it started trying to get back to its feet moments later, legs wobbling as fried nerves and twitching muscles refused to respond properly.
"What does it take...to kill this thing?" Darius panted, his mind racing as he tried to come up with an idea to put Kitaen down for good.
"More...than you have," Kitaen replied, taking a shaky step towards Darius, then another. Its steps got steadier as it slowly limped across the short distance separating it from the Lightning Alchemist in front of it, and Darius looked over at Hikari to see her trying to get back to her feet to help. It wasn't going to be enough, he knew - they were both barely able to stand, let alone keep fighting for much longer. He hated being helpless, and he silently lamented the fact that once again, he was helpless to do anything to save Lindsey Geneave.
A sudden thought flashed through his mind and broke him from his self-contempt - was it just his imagination, or was the room actually getting hotter? As he looked around, wondering what caused him to suddenly notice such a thing, he realized that it wasn't just his imagination after all.
The wall nearby him looked like it was heating up, the white metal and plastic coating over it starting to sizzle and bubble as the paint flaked away. Kitaen had enough time to notice what Darius was looking at before the wall gave way entirely to a blistering beam of blue energy that broke through it, and she howled in agony as the beam engulfed her entirely, having clearly been aimed at her from beyond the wall itself.
"What...?"
"...Looks like she found us," Hikari said, watching as a figure stepped through the new breach in the wall.
Blue and white armor resembling heeled boots covered the new figure's legs all the way to the thighs, melding into gray strips of metal that framed the light blue circuitry running all the way around the figure's torso and lower body like a shimmering leotard. More light blue and gray armor covered the upper part of the figure's chest and almost the entirety of their arms, ending in black glove-covered hands. But the face...
The long blond hair that cascaded down the figure's back...the striking red eyes that seemed laser-focused on the homunculus Hikari's team had been fighting...despite the different eye color, Darius held no doubt in his mind that this was the person he had fought so hard to save.
This was Lindsey Geneave...the woman he loved, now a living testament of biomechanical engineering at the hands of Vector Industries.
KOS-MOS.
(End: Chrono Trigger Corrupter of Time OC Remix; Play: Fighting KOS-MOS - Yasunori Mitsuda, Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht)
"Target locked on," KOS-MOS intoned, the mechanically-solemn voice still carrying an undercurrent of the familiar voice Darius knew as Lindsey's. "Commencing combat mode."
Kitaen started to move, but it was battered and weakened from all the damage it had taken fighting off the three assembled Guard and SeeD members. KOS-MOS, however, had no such restrictions. The gynoid moved swiftly towards Kitaen, spinning and delivering a kick that threw Kitaen almost all the way across the room to hit the floor in a heap before raising an arm towards the downed homunculus. Light shimmered around its arm as a tubular-shaped weapon of similar composition to its own armor engulfed it up to the elbow, ending in a wide barrel that glimmered with blue energy, and KOS-MOS released another series of short energy bursts that exploded at Kitaen's position and caused the homunculus' screams to reach a fevered pitch.
"Incredible..." Hikari breathed, stunned by the sheer amount of firepower that the former SeeD member was bringing to bear. KOS-MOS, however, wasn't finished.
The cannon around her forearm disappeared again, and she set her feet firmly in a wide stance as she lowered both her arms to waist level, bending them at the elbows as if she were about to pick up something from the ground. In another shimmer of light and energy, a pair of massive weapons appeared in her hands - weapons that Hikari recognized as the first weapons ever developed for the KP-X project. The three sets of three rotating barrels arranged in a triangular formation, housed in a massive casing with a grip on the top and a counterweight extending from the back towards the floor, were practically impossible to wield by anyone other than the specially-designed gynoid.
The F-GSHOT gatling guns in KOS-MOS' hands opened up as she reconfirmed her line of sight on the homunculus, the powerful weapons sending thousands of rounds of high-caliber ammunition across the room and shredding everything in the area in seconds. Darius shielded his eyes from the outpouring of dust from shattered ceramic and concrete foundation, awed by the sight of such overwhelming force.
"No wonder Hikari was so afraid of running into her," Darius thought to himself, a faint smirk stretching across his face. "That's the Lindsey I know and love, alright."
When the dust cleared, Darius could see what remained of Kitaen lying in a small crater dug out of the floor, and what he could see wasn't pretty. Pitiful sounds came from the homunculus' throat as it tried to speak through a body that wasn't capable of it any more - or capable of doing anything at all, for that matter. The sparks of its regeneration crackled and started to die out as the light left the homunculus' eyes, the overwhelming firepower finally overtaxing its regenerative abilities and sapping the last bits of the magical energy that sustained it.
"The enemy has been exterminated," KOS-MOS said, the weapons disappearing from her hands as she turned back to Hikari and Darius. "Returning to standard operating mode."
(End: Fighting KOS-MOS - Yasunori Mitsuda, Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht)
"Lindsey...?" Darius said, getting up from where he was still sitting to look at KOS-MOS. "It's you, isn't it?"
"Lindsey..." KOS-MOS said slowly, looking over at Darius. "I...remember that name."
"It's really you..."
"I am experiencing...confusion..."
KOS-MOS' eyes seemed to glaze over slightly, as if she weren't all there for a moment before she closed them again.
When they opened again, they were blue.
"...Darius?"
Her voice had lost some of the metallic qualities to it when she spoke again, and Darius had to fight back tears as he heard the one voice he never thought he'd ever hear again.
"It's me, Lindsey."
He didn't say anything else as he limped over and threw his arms around KOS-MOS...around Lindsey Geneave, making no attempt to stop the few tears that were tracking down his face.
Hikari wisely decided not to interrupt, instead turning her attention to mending her own wounds. The nodes on her suit responded as she channeled the limited curative magic that she knew, the effect enhanced by the armor she wore as she started to try and mend whatever was broken in her leg. She spared a glance over at Butler, having no time to try and check whether he was okay after the crippling blow he'd taken, and called up his vital signs on her HUD. To her relief, he was stable and still breathing, though she couldn't tell if he was awake or not from where she was sitting.
"Butler," she said over the comm, "are you okay over there?"
"I'm...alive, ma'am," Butler said, coughing as he spoke. "That thing packed a punch...felt like I'd been in an airship crash."
"You did the right thing, staying out of that," Hikari replied. "That thing almost killed both of us, too."
"Figured I'd have just...gotten in the way, ma'am. Glad that project of yours showed up when she did."
Hikari let the curative magic drop for a few seconds, putting some pressure on her leg to see whether she would be able to stand on it. It still ached incredibly, but she was fairly certain that she'd healed the bone enough to let her keep going until she could get some proper medical attention back at the Palace. If she made it through training at Briggs, she told herself as she got back to her feet, she could make it through anything.
"Darius, are you okay?" she asked, gingerly walking over and putting a hand on his shoulder.
"Yeah...for the first time in a long time, I think I'm okay," he said, reaching up and wiping his eyes. "We've still got a job to do, right?"
"Right," Hikari nodded, looking around the remnants of the room. "Though I don't think anything in here will be much use. Let's hope Hanley's able to get the mainframe secured."
"Sorry to interrupt, ma'am, but...I think I found something over here," Butler said from the far side of the room. He was staring intently at a section of damaged wall, tugging on one of the wall panels that had been ripped up by KOS-MOS' brief assault.
"What is it, Butler?" Hikari asked as she, Darius, and Lindsey all started to walk over towards her second-in-command.
"It's...a hole," he said, not sure if he had the right word. "More of a shaft, really. I can see a ladder here, and it looks like this wall section was meant to open up before our friend here tore it to pieces."
"Maintenance shaft?" Darius asked, picking up a piece of shattered wall and holding it over the hole before dropping it. They waited for a few seconds, listening to see if it hit the bottom, but no sound came from the shaft. Darius and Hikari exchanged a look.
"...I was head of security for this complex for a little over two years, and I can say with certainty that I have never seen this shaft on any of the complex blueprints or maps," Hikari said, looking down at the hole again.
"Something leftover from the building's construction that was covered up, then? Maybe an old mining site or such?" Butler suggested.
"Looks too new," Darius said, shaking his head. "It's maintained - whatever this is or was, it was being used fairly recently."
Hikari reached up to her visor, tapping her comm again. "Hanley, do you read?"
"Copy, Commander," Hanley's voice said. "Go ahead."
"Be advised - we're about to proceed into an unmarked area of this facility."
"Say again, ma'am?" Hanley said, surprised. "Unmarked area?"
"That's right," Hikari responded. "Get in contact with Baker Squad, have Anderson send a team over here, and see if someone can find a survey map of this area to check for old mining sites or other dig sites."
"On it, ma'am," Hanley replied as Hikari turned back to her team.
"I'll take point, then," she said, making sure all of her weapons were safely secured on their mounts again. "Let's go down and see what's there...if there's anything to see."
Nods came from everyone present - including Lindsey, surprising the Guard members somewhat - and Hikari swung her legs into the blackness beyond the wall, starting to descend the ladder as a pair of small lights on her suit started to shine to illuminate the shaft. She felt magic wash over her body a few seconds later as Darius started down after her, and she looked up at him curiously.
"Float magic - this place looks deep, and I'd hate to survive that fight just to die by falling down some elevator shaft," he commented. Butler was next down the ladder, followed closely by Lindsey.
The ladder they descended seemed to go on for an excessively long time; Hikari was sure they climbed for around two minutes before they started to see what could have been the bottom. At some point, the wall behind her had vanished to reveal open air beyond with the shaft becoming enclosed by a metal cage - presumably for safety - though it was far too dark for her eyes to see anything beyond a few feet even with the small light. She felt her curiosity growing stronger the further they went, surprising even herself, as she wondered what could have merited being hidden away in such an extravagant manner.
"I think I see the bottom," she called after what felt like a solid five minutes of climbing, likely less so. The last step off the ladder felt like a gift from Hyne herself to Hikari's aching legs, and she carefully moved aside to let the others descend as she took a look around, pulling a small flashlight from a slot in her armor. There were only sparse lights in the room, bits of glowing orange light that were scattered around, but she could tell from the positioning of some of the lights that the room was absolutely massive, easily several hundred feet from end to end from what she could tell.
"Butler, pop a flare," she said, shining the light on Butler so that he could see to retrieve one. He nodded before popping open a compartment in his own armor, pulling out two different looking flares and a small flare gun. He loaded one of the flares into the gun and pointed it skyward, firing it off with a trailing line of light that erupted into a large burst as it hit the apex of its flight to reveal more of the room. What they noticed with that burst of light was incredible - the room wasn't just several hundred feet, it was closer to several thousand feet lengthwise, with the width of the room several hundred at worst. They were relatively close to one wall, only a couple dozen feet away, on some kind of pathway leading around the edges of the room. At one corner was a small room with large windows making up most of the exterior wall, and Hikari pointed at it as the flare's light started to fade.
"There - let's check that out," she said as Butler lit up the other flare in his hand to serve as a torch.
"Doesn't look like there's anything down here," Darius said as they walked, "but this is one heck of a cavern. Think it really was a mine?"
"Maybe," Butler replied. "Room's all metal as best I can see so far, but it might open up into rock further down the other way. Maybe this was some kind of staging area for excavation."
Hikari peered at the windows of the room as they approached, checking to see if anything could be seen inside the room before they entered but finding only glare from the light source Butler was holding. A few seconds of examination revealed a door on the side of the room, and Hikari stepped up to it only to have the door slide open automatically as she did.
"Hope this isn't another trap," Darius said.
"I detect no other life signs in the immediate area," Lindsey replied from behind them. "If this is a trap, there are no people involved."
"Nice to know," Hikari said, shining the light inside the room. It was a fairly small room, only about a third the size of the lobby on the main floor, and it held several control panels with glowing lights underneath where the windows were positioned.
"Think you can turn on the lights, ma'am? If there are any to turn on in here," Butler asked, standing outside with the flare so as not to blind anyone in the tighter confines.
"Let's see..."
Hikari shone the light on the panels, looking around for anything that might serve as a light control before finding what looked like a breaker switch on one of the consoles. She grabbed it and flipped it back on, and was rewarded with the distinct hum of machines switching back on around her. The lights in the room came on a few seconds later, followed by rows of lights high above slowly switching on one at a time starting from above the room and moving back towards the way they'd come.
Hikari, Butler, and Darius' eyes all widened as they finally got a good look at where they were.
They could see the true depth of the room, and it was as the flare had revealed - easily several thousand feet long and several hundred wide, but they could now see that it was similarly tall as well, stretching up several hundred feet high - well beyond what would be considered normal for almost any use at all. The walkway they were on encircled what they could now see was a large pool of water, a pool which flowed towards the other side of the room and into a rocky opening in the land beyond the room in an underground river. Darius would've guessed the room for an airship hangar, given the size, were it not for the fact that they were quite clearly hundreds of feet underground.
"What in Hyne's name...?" Hikari breathed, taking a look at the gigantic area through the room's windows.
"Ma'am, this has to be the biggest room I've ever seen," Butler said, extinguishing the flare. "What in the world do you think was going on down here?"
"Well, it does look like it could've been an old mining operation, like you said," Darius said, taking in the room and its features. "Could've floated materials in and out down this river, and they set up shop here because it had the best concentration of ores. Vector bought the place out, started making sublevels and ran into this, and just walled it off."
"Computers still work - maybe we can find something on one of them," Hikari said, moving back to the consoles as she headed for the far side to what she could see as some sort of access terminal. She wasn't sure what to expect as she started accessing the system, but it looked like all of the files she could see weren't encrypted, or even password-protected for that matter. She started looking through some of the data files, and a few moments later glanced back up at the rest of the group.
"These files are recent."
"How recent?"
"Looks like...last entry was three days ago," she said, looking back at the file. "That's the most recent one I can see here."
"What's it say?" Darius asked, walking over to take a look as Butler and Lindsey did the same. She opened one of the files, nothing more than a document with the occasional diagram of something that looked like anatomy of an aquatic creature she didn't recognize, but it was the second file she opened up that made Darius freeze in silent shock almost immediately. She watched the video file play in fascinated silence, not recognizing what was on the screen but noticing a few details that chilled her to the bone.
Whatever she was seeing, it had been present in the room barely three days ago...it was large enough to nearly fill the entire space in and above the water in the center of the room...and it was alive.
"Holy shit..."
Darius' voice struck her from her focus, and she turned to face him with an apprehensive gaze.
"Darius...do you know what that thing is?"
Slowly, he nodded, and Hikari could see the nervousness on his face as he answered.
"Yeah...and I wish I didn't. We need to get out of here, now."
He grabbed his GLD from his pocket, fumbling with it for a moment before trying to open a line back to Trabia Garden, hoping that he could get enough of a signal to do so at the depth they were at.
"That thing...it's called Sin."