Chapter 3: Investigation, Conflict III
Siberian Tundra, 5 kilometres away from Tower of Babylon Labs
A sneeze was heard from a woman wrapped in a coat and scarf, red hair tied in two pigtails, looking towards the tower in the distance. "Damnit, It's so bloody cold. Are we gonna wait here forever, Mophead? Let's just bust this tower and get it over with." This was Dr. Frederica Nikola Tesla, another enforcer of Anti-Entropy, speaking to her fellow enforcer and friend Dr Einstein beside her.
"There's virtue in patience, Dr Tesla. We have a good agent in that tower, we should wait for her news." Dr Einstein spoke to her colleague as Dr Tesla continued to moan about the cold. "Try to remember our Sovereign prefers solving problems peacefully." The blue-haired scientist added as the man she was referring to stood under a snow-covered tree with his arms folded.
Just then, Welt Yang looked to a certain direction. "Get ready. Someone is here." As the unknown person slowly trudged over the snowy hill, it was clear that she was holding a badly injured right arm. "Glad to see you, Pat." Anti-Entropy's Sovereign was quick to support her by putting the injured Valkyrie's left arm around his shoulders. "You did well in there."
"Sorry, Sovereign, the mission was a failure," Patricia Highsmith, mysteriously vanished from Schicksal surveillance, now reappearing with agents of Anti-Entropy, now calling its leader her Sovereign, meant that she was the agent the two scientists had previously mentioned. "She has awakened and is growing stronger with every moment. I barely escaped with my life… any more damage to my right arm would have made me have to amputate it to stop death from blood loss… Thankfully, I was able to sacrifice the mechs sent as backup for this mission by Schicksal and escape to give you this information."
"It seems that we're still too late." Welt Yang replied. "Don't worry, Pat. I'll handle this myself. How do I find her?" He slowly lowered Patricia so she could rest her back against the trunk of a tree. "I have a good idea where she might be, but I have intel to give and also need to ask you something first." Patricia told the man. "I'm listening, Pat." Welt Yang replied.
"The Second Herrscher is a purple-haired girl about 12 years of age, is currently absorbing Honkai energy from the Babylon Labs' reactor pile and fought me by manipulating spatial distortions… she surprised me at the start of out fight with them and turned my bullets against me… had I been alone instead of the bullets being redirected to destroy most of the backup mechs in the first few seconds, I feel that I could only have escaped with great cost."
'That power… this is sounds as if she has awakened as this era's Herrscher of the Void, like how my predecessor was this Current Era's Herrscher of Reason. The order of awakening seems to be following that of the Previous Era… curious.' Anti-Entropy's Sovereign thought to himself. "Continue, Pat."
"The reason she awakened is surprising… Apparently the Overseer was running an extremely classified operation in Babylon Labs. According to the files I was barely able to access, she and some other children the Overseer's adopted granddaughter and I unexpectedly found in the tower were all test subjects under the Advanced Systems Lab Division, part of the Honkai Adaptability Trials. Theresa is intending to take in all the children and house them in a school she's building in the Far East, but due to my cover as a loyal Schicksal Valkyrie to the Overseer I had to put up a protest of returning those kids to the scientists running tests on them. The Second Herrscher heard my statement and it enraged her when I later confronted her. According to her, the 'Honkai Adaptability Trials' were actually a ruse, the true purpose being that Otto Apocalypse was using the children to perfect artificial stigmata. These experiments were apparently fatal to some children, including the Second Herrscher's best friend, who she called Bella. The other children in the facility also called the Second Herrscher 'Sirin', I think. Because of her friend dying, Sirin has sworn vengeance against Schicksal, the Overseer and all Valkyries. She most likely somehow awoke her powers last night and used them to kill all the researchers in the facility, along with destroying the facility surveillance network, the spatial distortion also corrupting all surveillance footage to a certain extent. I think the footage from my bodycam before I got rid of it and my GPS tracker before coming here is also affected, meaning that Schicksal is still not aware of the Second Herrscher's identity."
"Sovereign… I have friends in Schicksal as well. Although they didn't know I was a double agent for you, I still cherished them… and they are unaware of this new threat about to wage war against them. A maelstrom of hate is rising against them… against us, when Anti-Entropy goes to stop her from killing innocents. But please… save my friends."
"Of course, we will, Pat—" Patricia suddenly interrupted again. "Sorry, one more thing. The Second Herrscher is not working alone." "Wait, what?" The scientists and Sovereign questioned.
"Sirin mentioned another person that would help her against the Overseer and Schicksal: a red-haired, gold-eyed boy named Shirou. His file in the facility database was the most redacted and censored I've seen, so much so that his past before he was placed with the other children is a complete mystery. What was readable in the file was his file name 'Subject HM-03-1204' and that he was the cook for the entire facility, including the scientists and researchers, since his very first day, somehow. I personally couldn't believe it until I saw him cooking dinner for the other kids last night… but I think he seemed slowed down by something, as if he was expecting to have an extra helper in the kitchen. He seemed to have known Sirin's friend Bella as well, and the Second Herrscher claimed he was her retainer and Knight. She also claimed that the boy killed the head scientist of the facility, and I happened to observe that this Shirou took care of the kids more than the scientists did, wrapping bandages for the other children and cooking meals for them… and that Sirin has a fear of Shirou betraying her for some reason."
Tower of Babylon Labs, Holding Cell Floor
Sirin sat in a corner of a random holding cell, hidden from Shirou, quietly giggling to herself, with a glowing cross appearing in each orange eye with her absorption of Honkai energy and further use of her Void powers.
"Kyahaha! I won! I can't believe it! I won!" She slowly stood, leaning against the wall and huffing lightly. "The Valkyries are no match against me! Time to drain the reactor… siphon it of every last drop of the Honkai… then I'll use it against every one of those Valkyries… I'll kill them!"
However, Sirin suddenly sighed in frustration. "Hngh… I spent a lot of energy in that fight. I can still warp a few times, but now I can't get close to the reactor with that white-haired lady guarding it after her friend fled from me like a coward. What to do…" Just then, the tiny Honkai cherub that approached Sirin while she was standing at Bella's grave floated up to her ear. "Oh? It's this thing again… I've never seen an insect quite like this before, and I feel drawn to it for some reason…" Sitting in the palm of her hand, the cherub made sounds that Sirin could somehow understand. "It's speaking to me… What? You'll lead those pesky Valkyrie guards away… and that there is a secret area here that I should see? Then lead me to it!"
The cherub transmitted a set of coordinates to Sirin, and trusting the small creature, the Void Queen warped to the location, arriving to see a large training room with loudspeakers, vents and shuttered doors in the walls. "Hold on… is the training room that Shirou told me about, where he had to go through those combat tests because of that Overseer? Why would you bring me here?" The cherub communicated again, explaining. "Something I can use… here? I have to search around close by, then…"
Some time later, Sirin found some sort of frozen storage area, full of something unexpected… "Are those… Honkai beast body parts? They're huge… and do they look like dragons? Is this what the Overseer was testing on Shirou for? But there's also a frozen casket over there…" Frost covering the exterior, some markings were barely visible on the side of the human-sized container: 'Test Subject HM-02-1015'. Sirin walked over, the Honkai cherub communicating with her again. "So I can use the dead body inside as part of a way to make an extremely powerful Honkai beast… because it had the big dragon Honkai beast genes in it? Sounds interesting, to have a great dragon worth serving this Void Queen! Let me see this dead person first." Sirin then threw open the casket… before staring in horror at the sight within it.
"A girl…? But…but why, that red hair… that face… she looks like—"