JULY 22nd, 2014.
“And with that, we’ve come full circle,” Liam states over the loudspeaker, sounding mostly satisfied with the development.
“Yeah… that’s everything,” Seth replies, still dangling from the ceiling. He’d been talking for hours, and his mouth felt dry. Sweat continues to drop onto the floor from his hair, down the chain links that bind him, and against the floor with a plopping sound. At this point, a small puddle of it had formed beneath him.
“Do you still want to kill me?” he asks, getting straight to the point.
Liam chuckles in response before answering.
“No, no. I never planned to kill you.”
“...What?” Seth replies, sounding very confused, “I thought you couldn’t lie?”
“I didn’t lie. I said, ‘My administrators have told me I should kill you’. That part was very true, they urgently stressed it. However, unlike them, I embrace change wholeheartedly… I believe you may become someone who can change this repetitive world.”
“Change the world…? Me…? I couldn’t even control…”
“Seth,” he juts in, quickly cuts off Seth’s string of self-pity, “what you experienced is called an ‘anti-synchronization’. A synchronization, by itself, is a pushing and pulling of two energy forces, resonating with each other to become something more. Though, when one force is much larger than the other… an anti-sync takes advantage of the inequality to allow the spirit control over the signer’s form.”
“Make no mistake,” Liam continues, trying to sound sympathetic but blunt, “there is nothing you could’ve done.”
“And I’m… I’m just supposed to live with that thing inside me, always capable of that…?” Seth replies, distraught. How could he even begin to feel comfortable in his own skin, if that was the case?
“Did you think these contracts were blessings, Seth? No. They’re far from it. Of course, some would label this as overly cynical, but through my eyes, and all they’ve seen… contracts are a mockery from God, cursed onto us because we dare to live as we do. They feed off of our insecurities, our fears… and then, they sink us even further down than the lowest points we know.”
Liam’s voice lowers, as a subtle hint of anger coats his tone.
“Do you want to know a secret? The reason Marionette chose me as its signer, is because I used to live as a compulsive liar. Not that I wanted to… I had no other choice to survive, all the disadvantages possible thrown at me… and yet, there I was, punished just for staying alive.”
The sweat from Seth’s body fills the silence that overtakes the room after Liam finishes speaking, as Seth parts his lips in response.
“...Yggdrasil chose me because I did something I can never forgive myself for. Even though it was the right thing to do. I… just wanted to turn everything back, and fix it all before it got even worse. Now, another person is hurt, or even dead, because of me.”
Liam chuckles to himself again, turning it into a sigh of relief right before he begins speaking.
“Ah, it’s impressive that you’re worried about others even in this situation… you know, when we found your body, Miyuki left you as cubes of meat on the floor. It took you a month to recover!”
I’m sorry, what? Cubes? Of… meat? Uh… how am I still alive here, exactly?
“You underestimate our medical wing,” Liam continues, though obviously not having heard what Seth said internally, “Miyuki purposefully left your brain intact, so we brought you back without issue… though, I would stay clear from her, if I were you…”
“I’m guessing that she hates me? Wants to kill me? Thinks I’m a threat to myself and everyone around me, probably?”
“It’s good that your personality’s livening up again… but no, it’s just, you hurt her ‘sister’ very badly.” Liam takes on a cautious tone of speech as if he’s uncomfortable with saying it aloud.
Her sister…?
Flashes of Rena, and then the fire that engulfed the orphanage sear themselves across Seth’s mind.
I understand that type of anger… I’ll do myself a favor and not show my face around her.
“With that out of the way…” Liam trails off as an audible button’s click is heard over the other end.
At once, and somehow without tangling up somewhere, all of the shackles and chains that suspended Seth’s body in the middle of the room released themselves, falling with him as the ones attaching to the side walls hit the floor alongside his legs.
“Ow, ow, ow, dammit…!” he exclaims, leaning forward and holding one hand on each leg as if that would ease the pain.
“...You’re officially, and might I add finally, a member of Those Who Resist! Congratulations!”
You sound way too happy to be saying that to a guy who’s been chained up for a month. Am I supposed to feel… happy? Excited, maybe? Well… whatever, I’ll play along.
“Thanks…” he says, trying his best to sound enthused, “...So, what now?”
“Before anything, please, go take a long shower. According to the last nurse, that room smells like a family of rats that died and rotted in it. Your suit and equipment have been retrieved, refurbished, and are waiting for you.”
Seth sniffs the air in response, testing that theory. Upon doing so, he slowly falls forward, right before he catches himself which doesn’t allow him to fully pass out.
Y-yeah, I’m pretty sure I get what they meant now.
Sluggishly standing up, he begins making his way to the door that had opened just moments before, being met with the blinding lights of the hallway outside.
. . . . .
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After a considerably long shower, Seth finished getting dressed— his neatly folded and washed clothes were waiting for him on his room’s bed— and suddenly heard a knock on his door.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Did Liam send somebody to fetch me…?
“Come in,” he responds to the knocking while tying his shoes.
As the door to his room slowly opened and then closed, he made the mistake of not looking up at who walked in as he found himself recoiling back after a feminine hand slapped the right side of his face. Holding his hand against it as it stung, he looked up with a confused and taken-back expression.
“Hey, who the—?!”
“That’s payback for almost killing me, asshole.”
As he looked up, he saw Kat’s figure, wearing a black hoodie with her hair down. She looked… annoyed, and not very happy in general.
“Oh, you’re okay. That’s…”
She interrupts him, pointing her index finger down at him.
“Yeah? I’m fine, but guess who didn’t even bother to come check on me, or anything?”
She moves her finger up and down in a swirl, continuing to point at him, making it very obvious who she’s talking about.
“I was… kinda chained up for a month.”
“...Chained?” she asks in bewilderment, not expecting that answer of all things.
“Yeah. I think they were worried about Yggdrasil going berserk again.”
Kat sighs and crosses her arms, still pretty mad, but a little more understanding toward his situation.
“Right… That makes sense.”
The mention of Yggdrasil makes her visibly uncomfortable as she avoids looking at Seth for a moment, but grabs his arm and pulls him up as he finishes tying his shoes, leading him toward the door of his room.
“Well, come on. Liam wants to talk to you, and it’s important.”
Yeah, I didn’t think she’d visit me just to say I should’ve visited her. Actually, he probably asked her to do it specifically… he really is a snake.
Internally, Kat was still questioning if he really would have visited her or not. Signers don’t make many friends, and despite her being scared of Yggdrasil, she enjoyed having Seth around. She’d rather be caught dead than admit that to anyone, though. They both hurriedly walked to Liam’s office, before Kat barged in holding Seth by the collar of his shirt.
“I brought him here,” she says, triumphantly.
“We walked here…” Seth replies, put off while staring at her fist pulling on him.
Liam lightly laughs to himself and presents the two seats in front of him with both hands.
“Thanks for not running and damaging the floorboards… come, both of you. Take a seat.”
Seth and Kat do as he instructs, as Seth sits down with both legs in front of him, Kat brings up her right leg and places it over her left, putting her right arm over the seat’s back.
She’s sitting like she owns the place…
Seth glances over at Liam, who’s clearly amused by her laid-back behavior.
“Right, then… Seth, now that you’re a full-fledged member of TWR… we need to go over a few things.”
“Here comes an exposition dump,” Kat retorts, “mine lasted so long that I felt numb.”
Liam, looking insulted after hearing this, sighs and places his hands on his desk. It seems he took it personally.
“Hm, if it’s so bothersome, you’ll just have to learn it on your own.”
Uh… teacher? She said that, not me. I’d like to…
“Moving on,” Liam changes the topic with a frown, “something interesting happened while you were in a coma.”
…Ah, it’s too late. Maybe I’ll ask him later.
Liam continues, pulling out a piece of paper from a yellowish binder that's laid on his desk in front of him. It’s a transaction receipt, compiled together with photos of various men… all of them have ‘No’ or ‘Wrong Person’ written beside them in red marker.
“I sent a team to fetch your belongings from the remains of your apartment, and they found that there was already a team working on repairs. When they asked the building’s owner, he said that an anonymous donor paid off the damages in full.”
Liam nonchalantly points his right index finger at Seth, raising both eyebrows.
“Do you have any idea who that could be?”
Feno’s gone… not like he’d pay for that anyway. One of my previous clients…? No, that doesn’t make sense. Yeah, it’s probably…
“...Seraphim, if I had to guess,” Seth replies.
“Hmm… and what makes you say that?”
I should keep my deaths to myself, who knows how they’d react to that?
“They sent me a letter; black on one side, white on the other. It called me a ‘progenitor’... whatever that meant.”
Liam’s pupils widen with intrigue as he clasps his fingers together, smiling. He’d finally gotten a decent lead that connected to Seraphim, for better or worse.
“Interesting, yes that’s quite…” he responds, trailing off, “...and you said that an Archangel attacked you? What was his name?”
“Vain.”
Liam’s eyes light up as he quickly writes the newly acquired information onto a fresh page of paper inside the binder, erratically but with a sense of control.
“This is wonderful. Thank you…”
After he finishes writing everything down, he reaches under his desk and pulls out a suitcase, setting it on his desk in front of him.
“...Now then,” he says as he clicks loose the two locks on each side of the front of the briefcase, inserting a key in the middle afterward, “you’ll be joining Yasu’s 14th Company today. Alongside Kat and someone Keith’s bringing back.”
As Liam pulls a pitch-black tie with a white horizontal stripe near the base where the knot would be, Kat raises an eyebrow toward him.
“We’re getting a transfer…? This time of year?”
“Not quite,” Liam says, unfolding the tie from the neat pile that it was, “apparently Keith found and tested her on his own. You’ll see, but at any rate…”
He trails off, handing the tie over to me as I grab it with my right hand… it feels like it's made of material so high quality that even one of these could’ve paid for a month of my rent.
“This is for you. I figured it’d be pretentious to give a Numet-class signer the entry-level rank… so I added one. Ties discern your rank, and if you earn two more of those stripes, you’ll be given…”
Liam takes a crimson red tie out of the suitcase, holding it up, and presents it to me.
“...One of these. My white tie here,” he points to his chest with his index finger, “is the highest rank you can achieve. Good luck getting to that point, though!”
I take the tie he gave me in my hands, now wrapped around the collar of my undershirt, and tie it with a standard knot. It fits snugly; not too tight, and not too loose. Liam nods his head approvingly.
“It looks good on you. Yasu is waiting in the 14th Company’s main room… right before you came in, we received a report of a spirit acting up in the east wing.”
Seth raises an eyebrow, put off by the pacing of his first official day on the job.
“Already? It’s only been…”
Kat stands up and grabs his arm, dragging him out of the chair as he stutters through his sentence, looking at her and then back at Liam.
“C’mon. Let’s get a move on,” she says, ignoring Liam’s chuckling in the background as she closes the door behind them as they begin to head toward the 14th Company’s office.
‘A spirit acting up’, huh?
Why do I have a bad feeling about this?