Floor 36 – Chapter 1: Out of the Frying Pan…
Not for the first time, Koharu found herself being genuinely concerned for her boyfriend.
Since the mess on the Thirty-Third Floor, he had almost completely thrown himself into his hunt for the group that was now known as Laughing Coffin whenever he wasn't on the frontlines. She could understand that, and if anything, she was just as angry at them – not only had they made their first major move, having ambushed and killed Diavel, not only had Albion been able to murder Eydis in cold blood, but now he'd been able to infiltrate the palace and murder Ronie, alongside a large portion of the staff there… and he had made it abundantly clear it was him who'd been responsible.
She had felt physically sick to see the image of Ronie paralysed on the floor, her eyes begging for her life, whilst Albion wrapped his hands around her neck and took it away from her, and she knew Jet had taken that as a slight against him.
The note left with the image hadn't helped either – it simply said, "do you feel like a hero yet, Knight?", a message that, if it hadn't been clear already, was explicitly pointed to him.
And yet, he seemed to be coping well with the knowledge that a complete sociopath was taking pot shots at them… and more specifically at him.
That was what concerned her – that, outside of his search, he didn't seem to be taking the threat too seriously…
Then there was Asuna, who she felt was doing the exact opposite to Jet – she was acutely aware of the fact that they were likely to be Laughing Coffin's number one target, should things get more heated… and she knew they would be; it would only be a matter of time until that was the case. As a result, both had been at each other's throats at a level that even Sanya was wincing at…
Which meant they'd agreed to split into two groups: one would handle the frontline duties in investigating leads for the floor quests, whilst the other would be working to train up any new recruits into the Assault Team, in order to give them the best chance to improve their chances when the inevitable fight came to their doorstep…
That had meant they'd been rotating around after about two weeks at a time, so as not to get rusty themselves, but today wasn't one of those times.
Asuna's group had been following a lead from Argo, that had pointed them in the direction of a foundry that ran from the base of the floor, all the way to the base of the next floor that was encircled by the town of Bessemer, a name Jet had rolled his eyes at, much to her confusion.
He'd then explained that Bessemer was an inventor back in the Victorian era, who had invented the Bessemer steel smelting process, something that was no doubt used in the foundry they would be looking into.
"So, what do you think she's found?"
"No idea, but if Asuna of all people is calling for help… it can't be good, can it?" Jet admitted as they walked into the foundry. The first thing they both noticed was the change of atmosphere from the outside world, the temperature soaring upwards as they moved further inside.
"It's like a sauna in here…" She thought aloud, thinking of a much happier… and less horribly stuffy environment.
"Knew there was a reason I didn't like it…" Jet muttered, wiping away the emerging sweat off his head. "And not just because Sheffield scares me."
"Why? What happened in Sheffield?"
"Oh, nothing, just a slight PTSD response to watching Threads."
"What's Threads?"
"Err, you don't want to know. Trust me, I wish I didn't." That wasn't a good sign, she knew that much. If even he wasn't willing to say what it was, she could only imagine how messed up it was… "Oh fine, it was a film about World War 3." He answered, responding to her raised eyebrow…
"Oh…" She didn't need to imagine what that would have entailed – it wasn't as if much would be left in that case anyway. "Umm, why does this remind you of that?"
"Just an association, that's all." He answered with a shrug.
"Jet, I know you'll just say you're fine, but seriously, you've been more…" She tried to think of the words to describe it, eventually settling on… "cavalier about everything. "
"I'm always like this, aren't I?" He responded, though she could tell he was trying to play it off as nothing more than his usual semi-hyper-active attitude, rather than some kind of defence mechanism.
"You're only like this when you're trying to pretend you aren't scared of something. Otherwise, not really?"
He wiped away some sweat again and sighed. "Ronie shouldn't have died. That was on me for allowing Asuna to pull us away when I knew something was wrong."
Ah.
Of course he still blamed himself for that – more tellingly, he didn't blame Asuna too much for her insistence that it wasn't their problem, even though it could have been only halfway through the quest.
Before she could answer, he carried on. "And please don't tell me it wasn't my fault, Koharu. I know it wasn't my fault she died, but it was because of my inaction she did."
The worst part was that he was right about that. He hadn't directly caused her death - no, that was 100% on Albion – but he had set in motion the events that led the young queen into the firing line, though she knew he'd never even considered that Albion would use her as a way to get to them.
"I let the fucker live, and someone else died." He held his head low in shame, his teeth grinding together. "I won't make the same mistake next time."
For the first time, she was legitimately terrified of what he was becoming. She'd seen him swear death upon someone, and he hadn't snapped in the usual way, cursing and shouting, but rather a cold and detached promise to right what he perceived as his own wrongs…
"Jet… we'll stop them, we'll stop him. I promise that much." She promised herself as much as she did him. For all the people Albion had hurt, and for all the people he and Laughing Coffin as a whole had hurt and killed, they would make sure they were stopped.
"I don't like this, you know. Constantly looking over my shoulder for threats like this, reminds me too much of my dad." He shook his head. "I thought I'd left all that behind… I guess not." He laughed sadly and she placed his hand in hers to reassure him.
The moment of peace between the two of them, a shared understanding of their pasts and presents, wasn't as long as she'd have liked, before the first mobs started to show up in the foundry again. "Guess we'll have to have the heart to heart later, eh?" He commented, before retrieving his sword and shield, and she did the same with her dagger.
The mobs that approached them weren't the naturally occurring (albeit often bizarre) creatures they spent most of their time fighting, but rather, hulking mechanical golems covered in rusted steel plating that resembled smaller versions of the Fifth Floor boss, the Vacant Colossus…
Unlike the Vacant Colossus though, these weren't made of stone, and the steel used in their armour was badly rusted to the point of failure at even the most basic of strikes, though she had an unpleasant feeling that these would be the easiest of mobs to defeat…
"Well, that's over at last." Jet sighed in relief, retrieving his sword from the fading carcass of one of the Rusted Golems.
"They were the small fry though, so what are the-" Before she could finish, the ground started to shake, as if they were caught in a tremor. The pipes on the wall shuddered, straining under the vibrations, and a small number of valves burst out of place, spraying compressed air across the corridor ahead of the source of the shakes…
A mob labelled Large Golem – an understatement if ever she'd heard one, given the creature reached nearly ten metres in height. Unlike the other golems that walked on their hind legs but used their arms for stability when they moved, much like a gorilla did, the Large Golem more closely resembled a giant toy robot. Its body was blocky, and it walked like an old clockwork robot might as it closed ever closer to them…
"I had to ask…" She shook her head. "Any ideas?"
"Just one – run! That thing's big, but I doubt it's quick!" She hoped he was right, but she found herself agreeing with the logic – big things often weren't as nimble as something smaller, and today, they found themselves as the smaller of the two objects…
With just a nod between them, the couple split up to race around the Large Golem in their path, and as they reached about one stride of the mob ahead of it, she noticed its head rotate on the spot, its beady red eyes glaring at them before its torso rotated around too.
"Oh that's just unfair!" Jet cried out, before noticing its arms seem to be spooling up for an attack… "It's getting ready for something!"
It soon became apparent what that something was, when the arms dropped straight to the floor and sent a shockwave across the area, throwing them both into the air, and off the open side of the corridor…
By sheer luck, she had managed to catch hold of one of the cooling pipes and reminding herself of her younger years, she executed a textbook swing to allow Jet to catch her as he fell, with him catching a hold of her legs just in time…
"Thanks…" He laughed awkwardly as he tried to get some kind of leverage.
"Never thought I'd be doing this again!" She smiled, reminding herself of the days of constant practice it took to become competent at this. "Still, how far down is it?"
Far enough to kill them both instantly, she knew that much, and even if it wasn't, friction damage was just as effective at killing them.
"Far enough I don't want to try it." Jet told her as he looked for a ledge of some kind, or some kind of surface large enough to break their fall without breaking them… "Ah hah! I see something, about ten metres down. Looks like a platform of some kind?"
"It'll take our weights, right?" She asked, having seen enough movies to know that it was a common trope for the platform to give way as the hero fell onto it…
"Only one way to find out!" Jet told her, building up a bit of momentum in a swing, so as he wouldn't just drop like a stone, but rather that he would fall in the direction they needed to go, though not so much as to tear her grip away from the pipe that was keeping them both from plummeting into the abyss below… "Geronimo!"
She caught a glance as he landed, and the platform took the sudden addition of his weight and the force he exerted upon impact easily… even if it was possibly the least graceful landing that she had ever seen.
"It's safe!" She heard him shout, though at this distance, his voice was faint. She reminded herself mentally to prepare for the landing, because otherwise, she would be repeating his mistake and crashing into the platform, rather than landing on it.
Putting enough force in to give her some motion, like a human pendulum, she swung as cautiously as she could, so as not to overcook it and fly straight past the platform, before she let go and let herself fall.
What felt like an eternity in the air was probably only around five or six seconds, but in those seconds, she had managed to prepare herself for the landing, and upon impact, she was able to position herself to roll across the platform, dissipating the energy from the drop, before she stood up, and gave a proud bow.
"Blimey…" For the first time in a long time, Jet stood there with his mouth agape and a look of awe on his face.
"Heh, too easy." She adjusted her armour to be more comfortable again. "So, now what?"
"Well, there's two ways down – whatever's behind this door… and down there." They both looked into the void below and shuddered. "One way, I guess." He took a look at the door and began to fiddle with the wiring underneath the panel.
"So… I'm guessing Albion reminded you of something?" She asked, sat opposite him whilst he stared intently at a wire bundle.
"I never told you about my uncle, did I?"
No, he hadn't, and although he'd hinted that his uncle was a deeply unpleasant man before, she'd never really understood why. "He took over a PMC, Glowworm, Glomgold… oh I can't remember anymore, but the man's a right bastard. He enjoyed the strategy of it all, being able to play people off against one another…"
"He sounds awful."
"Yeah, he is." Jet admitted with a wry smile. "Best Christmas presents we ever had though. But yeah, we spent most our younger life with our parents worrying that one of his… err, dissatisfied customers would come a'knockin."
"How bad could that be?" She asked, unsure of what a lot of it meant – namely what a PMC was.
"Very, when the man's clients included dictators and warlords. Yeow!" Jet answered, having clearly shocked himself on the wire, given he was now sucking on one of his fingers... "Philia makes this look a lot easier than it is…" He grumbled.
"So Albion reminds you of him then?" She asked, and from what he'd told her of the man, she could see the similarities: both seemed to enjoy playing games with people, and she reckoned his uncle wasn't above firing warning shots in the same way Albion enjoyed doing.
"I'd have been concerned they were the same person, if it weren't for the fact Albion talks completely differently. Too posh, too much… I dunno, Canary Wharf." He admitted, and she draped herself over him in a hug from behind.
"Whatever Albion throws at us; we'll be ready for him… together." She told him, and she really did mean it. Albion was good at dividing and conquering - he'd proved that much – but he was a lone wolf, and those kinds of people weren't great at working as a team…
They were, and that would be how they won against him!
"Yeah, we will." He smiled briefly, before that smile contorted into a distressed look. "Found the live wire…"
/-/
Eventually, and after the equipping of rubberised gloves, the pair had managed to get off the platform above the abyss, and back into the main building. The smell of sulphur in the air was quite something, as was the torrent of rushing air that sometimes blew straight up the building; no doubt that was some kind of cooling system, he thought to himself.
Still, he couldn't help but feel uncomfortable around here, and not just because of the heat either. There was just an aura of malice that surrounded the place, as if anything built here was cursed by design to be evil incarnate…
"Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels this place might actually be some kind of hell, right?"
"How'd you mean?" Koharu asked.
"Like it's got an aura of evil to it." He explained. "As if the foundry's alive, but y'know, evil?"
"I doubt the building's alive, Jet." She answered with a reassuring smile.
"Bad example." He mumbled, kicking himself. "I mean, it just feels… malicious. I know it isn't alive, it's a building after all, but like something is possessing it…"
"I thought you didn't believe in ghosts…" She smirked a bit, and he rolled his eyes.
"I don't, but I've got a nasty feeling about this." He admitted. The last time he'd felt like this was inside the volcano, and that had resulted in them fighting a would-be god with serious casualties amongst the frontliners.
He really hoped his instincts were wrong this time, else he dreaded what Kayaba had in store for them…
"Yeah, I can see what you mean about that." She agreed. "This place is massive, right? So where are all the people if it's still creating things?" She asked, and he paused to look around. They'd been so focussed on everything else that he hadn't noticed the lack of people around – they'd seen the golems, but that was really kind of it for signs of life here.
Which made him equally nervous. A factory run by golems programmed to defend the place… which could only mean one thing:
What were they defending?
"I think we need to find the others ASAP." He answered with an uneasy look on his face.
"Well, that's the easy part. They've just sent us their location." He looked over at the message, and felt his gut drop…
"That's nearly twenty feet below ground, deep in the crucible!" He exclaimed in frustration. "How'd they get there?!" He asked before he looked up at the ceiling above them. The initial dull metal look of it, covered in pipes and what he'd assumed were metal studs of some kind, had gone, replaced by the contortion of the pipes into veins, and the studs into hundreds of beady red lights…
"You know I said, "I doubt the building's alive" earlier…" Koharu looked as if she was about to kick herself for tempting fate… "I might have been wrong. Now how do we fight a building?!" She asked, and he thought about it briefly, before settling on the only sane answer.
"We don't… leg it!" He shouted, and he was sure he didn't have to tell her twice! "I think we answered how they got there though; it bloody ate them!"
"I really wish I'd stayed in bed today…" Koharu grumbled, and if he was honest, he agreed with her. They had walked into the jaws (?) of a giant monster shaped like a factory and were now heading into the bit of the factory where it produced reinforcements… deep inside it.
"You know this place is alive, right, and its making golems in what's essentially its stomach…"
"Yeah?" She asked, whilst they continued running.
"Remind you of anything?"
"No-oh." And now she got it, he thought as he looked around for an escape route from the ceiling of eyes following them at every turn. Bingo, some kind of pipe leading down into the crucible!
Either that, or they were about to jump headfirst into an incinerator. Hopefully, it was the former, else he'd look very stupid for the next (and final) thirty seconds of their lives! "In here!" He shouted, as he crawled through the pipe, and hoping it didn't turn into a sudden slide; not that he could tell in the pitch-black interior. "Well, this is certainly a lot less-AGHHHH!"
It did indeed to turn into a sudden slide, he realised as he plummeted down the pipe for what felt like an eternity, before gravity reminded him of its presence… by clobbering him as he hit the exit of the pipe and flew face first into an angry pile of slag. "Oww…" He groaned.
"Could you not have landed on me?" He also landed on some solid metal too, one that wasn't known as Sanya.
"AHHHH!" He heard the echo of Koharu falling behind him, though she was able to land with a lot more grace than he had managed and picked herself up before he had managed to extricate himself from the tangle of humans that his sudden stop had caused. "That could have gone better."
"Tell me about it."
"As far as rescue goes, this is probably the least successful rescue in history." Sanya rolled her eyes. "You were supposed to get us out of the crucible… not get yourselves in it!"
"Well, at least we can all die together now." Philia rolled her eyes. "Found anything about this place?"
"It's alive, and I'm pretty sure it's a thinly veiled allegory for childbirth." Koharu explained to the grimaces of everyone present. "But nothing that helps us get out of here." She turned to him, with a curious look. "Umm, what is a crucible, anyway?"
"It's the part of a furnace where you melt the metal."
"Oh." She said. "So how do we get out?"
"Uhh…" He thought about it for a moment and looked around. That was weird, the crucible didn't look like it was made of metal, but rather made of clay…
"We're gonna have to smash our way out."
"How? That wall is not exactly thin enough for our attacks to do much damage to it."
"It's clay, so it's thick because that's the only way for it not to just shatter during the heating cycle. It's brittle as all hell, just very good as a conductor." He explained. "Like picking up a hot plate, and you know about it… but it still shatters when you drop it."
"Plates are made of ceramics, not clay." Sanya corrected him. "But the point stands… and I do feel like hitting something that cannot fight back..."
He rolled his eyes, and drew Caeldfwlch, carving an X into the sidewall with its point. "X marks the spot then."
Given the small space in the crucible, an all-out attack from all of them was ruled out for reasons of common sense, as even if it would probably have ripped a very large hole in the side of the crucible, it would likely have ripped a very large hole in one of them too…
Sanya, having clearly had enough of the heat, and looking slightly like a startled hedgehog with just how frizzy her hair now was, went first, releasing a three-hit combo against it. Not enough to crack it yet, but the clay was clearly weakened even from that, and Rain's volley of attacks weakened it further.
Koharu and Philia, both having shorter ranges on their daggers, went next and released a switch attack on it, an attack which left its mark in the form of hairline cracks along the X. Not enough to weaken it to failure yet, but he reckoned it was getting closer now.
He took the next shot and released a new skill he'd spent time practicing on it – a four hit star combo from Caeldfwlch, before kicking off the target of the attack. In his mind, he hoped it would further weaken it by introducing blunt force to the mix, and it clearly worked as well as he hoped it would – the hairline cracks becoming far more pronounced after his assault.
If he had made the structure weaker, then Asuna and Kizmel's attack had been enough for the cracks to overcome it, and without much warning, the structure gave way under the combined weights of themselves and the metal inside it, spilling them all out of the bottom of the crucible and into the cooling structure below…
"That was not what I would call dignified." Kizmel groaned from a heap that consisted of herself, Rain and Asuna.
"At least we're not going to burn to death now…"
"Wouldn't be so sure about that, Ginge…" He looked up and realised that the molten metal was starting to be poured into the new baseless crucible and decided that running was absolutely now the best idea in the world. "Try and get to higher ground!"
/-/
After a mad dash up the pipework on the walls, the group had managed to clear the danger zone of the molten metal, now forming a kind of lake of silvery, scorching hot ground less than five foot beneath them…
"Too close." Rain admitted, and no one found it hard to agree with that statement.
"What is that?" Off to one side, Kizmel had noted some kind of drawings on the walls, ones that Jet recognised the basic style of – they were blueprints of some kind.
"It looks like a leg of some kind?" Koharu thought aloud.
"Must have hell of a stride you need that much metal for it…" He joked, before considering it. What could they be making that needed that much metal for it anyway? It must have been absolutely enormous, and although he couldn't read the measurements on the drawings, they did look like big numbers to him…
"Found a door, c'mon!" Philia shouted from the mystery doorframe, and the group followed her into the room.
Far from the grungy and grimy aesthetic of the foundry, the room was clean; almost sterile even. It felt like walking out of a storeroom, straight into a hospital ward, the room was that clean…
"Okay, this does not feel like it should be here…"
"It's a clean room of a kind." Sanya added. "Though what kind is the important question, and why would you need a clean room in a foundry?"
He looked around, and spotted something bizarre off to one side, almost like a coffin of some kind. It was engraved with ornate markings, and a control panel beside it, written in the same script as the drawings had been. "This definitely doesn't feel like it belongs here."
"Is it a coffin?" Koharu asked, placing a hand on it. "Agh!" She screamed out, and he rushed over, pulling her hand away from it, his hand getting marked by it in the process. Far from any kind of burning effect on their hands, it looked more like it had taken a blood sample, given the small scratch on the palms of their hands… "Not a coffin, then."
Whatever it was doing, the control panel lit up with a red glow and a repeating sequence of numbers, as it did… something that involved a lot of smoke pouring from around the seals, and the engraving lighting up as it did so.
"What the hell is that thing?" Philia asked, genuinely unnerved for once.
"I really wish I had even a clue." He admitted, as the panel turned blue, and he walked over to it. One particular button stood out in particular, as it was now green; almost like it was a confirm button of some kind. "Big green button, let's hope green means go to whoever made this…"
He tapped the button, and to his surprise, the coffin like object began to release its seals with enough steam pouring out again for them to move further back and reach for their weapons, just in case.
When the steam dissipated, they advanced on it steadily, maintaining readiness for any kind of development.
What none of them were expecting was for a small child, around the age of ten to look back up at them. A young girl with black hair and sky-blue eyes, she was the spitting image of Koharu in most ways, except for her eyes, which were the same colour as his own…
Oh... that wasn't a blood sample it took, was it? It was a tissue sample… and if that's what it produced from the two tissue samples, then…
"Who is she?" Asuna asked in an unusually quiet voice, as if she'd just worked it out too…
Jet steeled himself to admit what he knew on an instinctive level… "I… I think she's our daughter."
{Author's Comments}
Sorry for this one being a little later than usual, life is hectic and searching for a placement is stressful still. Plus, this and ACES essentially swapped places this month, given a slight error in judgement made whilst trying to write two chapters of ACES (which led to the entirety of that chapter having to be completely rearranged to create a coherent chapter...)
As always, if you're enjoying this, leave a comment/review, and favourite/follow it if you're really enjoying it! Any and all feedback is welcome.
Signing off,
Midland 2541.