The door blasted open as a now revitalized Luna, having completely healed of her injuries, exited from it. Facing in front of her both the animals that slit her throat and the kids fallen to a fate worse than death, she clearly understood the destructive capabilities they had in store, for the low price of having their humanity discarded. Dozens of VSF bodies were scattered, same with more Failures, as both sides seemed to match each other, but frankly, now not being nearly close to Luna.
"This world changes rapidly, so do these powers...hmm.", Luna nodded, "I haven't practiced the full extent of what this 'Quantum Matter' can do, but this should be sufficient to deal with you all.", she faced them.
Behind her, yet another mob of Failures rushed right for her, getting ready to attack both her and the VSF soldiers eagerly waiting to finish their attackers off. hat she really thought before a plan of action, however, was the true extent of evil that those who hurt her went and how many more they hurt after. For so, so many innocent to exist in a perpetual state of agony like so. But it didn't matter anymore. There was no salvation. There was no way to negotiate anything with a bunch of enraged, humanoid-looking animals.
With a heavy heart, she lifted her hand as she materialized a scythe, "Sorry..."
An ion-gun behind her back appeared, shooting and eliminating the approaching mob, instantly killing anything that came into contact with it. It was then that like the animals they were, the Failures ran by her and onto the VSF, as if they had personally been offended by their presence, and Luna was never there to begin with. Yet another massacre ensued, so much blood added to the buckets that had been filled already, Luna now personally being able to stand tall, right in front of it all, with a first row seat to the carnage.
She approached the fight and slowly passed by Failures attacking to get a better look. Most of them were not that young and some were definitely not that fit for the 'Special Forces' title that they had upon them. And it only took her mere seconds to realize that from silhouettes alone, even before scanning them. Still, with her core drive and common sense urging her to protect humanity as a whole, and let no more meaningless blood spill, she very carefully came in front of the assaulted group and positioned herself between them and the failures.
"Your safety in this fight is assured. Now cover me.", she stood in front and took several hits, driving home the point that she was much more capable than what looked like at first glance.
In their desperation over the dozens fallen before them, the VSF switched their formation and began cover firing around Luna to utilize the hallway as a chokepoint, bottlenecking them right on her as she kept on taking the hits. Very few skilled soldiers actually fired at a closer distance with enhanced weaponry, not only funneling the Failures in but also killing some of them in the process. Luna herself began doing what she knew best, swiftly taking care and eliminating all threats in her way.
With a singular activation of her matrix state, the soldiers were almost dazzled to see that all their bullets, even their energy projectiles slowed significantly as Luna did the exact opposite, almost as if the distance they had to travel became significantly larger. A few swift swipes and some ion blaster shots later, Luna had successfully defended the group using her abilities, proving that they were much more threatening than before. Ascending above those who were deemed ascended. As soon as the conflict had restarted, as it did so many times throughout these hallways, it had ended, with all of them anticipating the next one to come.
All the soldiers halted shortly after, approaching the bodies of the dead and counting down right after before the head of the group approached Luna to give his most sincere thanks.
"Thank you, truly. Managing them ourselves was a possibility, but with how things went, I doubt I'd want to do that with more casualties than what we've already suffered."
Realizing very quickly that compared to before, her actions and current state were not as compromising as before, she hid the USB drive and played along.
"It's my duty.", Luna acknowledged.
The VSF soldiers moved around them to collect the bodies, slowly nudging and walking by as they held on to their weapons out of sheer fear, wanting to but unable to trust Luna and the massive amount of powers she had just showcased.
"Who are you, by the way? Clearly, not one of the subjects.", the head of the VSF took a look at her.
Luna grew hesitant to answer, "Doesn't matter. All you need to know is that it was my duty to save you."
The VSF head insisted, "Growing hostile besides that? We're Victorian Special Forces, there's no need to be afraid. That being said, how did you end in here? Are you another one of...them?"
"I am.", Luna answered with growing anger in her voice.
Just then, a massive shock was felt from her back as another soldier tried to subdue her with a strange device, being clearly unable to do so as he backed off. Looking around her, Luna realized that all the soldiers were pointing guns at her and ready to shoot at any moment, somewhat panicked that their near laughable attempt to subdue Luna backfired immediately. It was then that all the facade was dropped, the VSF head moved backward, mask still on as his body language conveyed surprise that Luna was still standing.
"Very nice try. However, I let you do that. Judging off of how you are all stupidly pointing guns at a supersoldier who just did all this in front of you, you ain't the brightest either.", she mocked them.
"Which one are you? 007 or 008? The only two successful ones.", the VSF head demanded.
"Does it really matter to you? You're just following orders. And I'm following a directive. However, unfortunately for you, I've got what you wanted when you got here and I'm leaving with it, period. Just in case you wanted to ask me why the previous team's location didn't have it.", her lack of emotional restraint let out all the pent-up bias she had against them.
"Give me the USB. Now.", he pointed his gun at Luna.
"Who are you?", she insisted, looking around at the other VSF soldier's device and analyzing it, "That device...it was supposed to subdue me by forcefully deactivating my frame via H.I.V.E.?", she turned her eyes back at the soldier with killing intent, "You didn't retrieve any information on H.I.V.E. or the experiments that happened here, I did. How did you know to prepare for this?"
The VSF soldier realized very quickly that all the power he had in this situation was completely gone, prompting him to fire a singular shot at Luna's head accidentally. Although it had more than enough power to pierce metal, let alone bone, it seemingly did not affect her one bit, causing further terror to spread among the group. Luna then forcefully removed the mask of the VSF soldier to reveal his face, where her scan quickly revealed him for who he truly was.
"Johnes Smith?", she was more than surprised to find him out, "The person responsible for helping Winston Falana open the Falana Orphanage, after adopting me and Lina in a show of good faith.
"You remember all that? The methods we used to seal memories-", he was interrupted.
"Was the same method that Drima used successfully, unlike you. Carrying that man's last name in my legal papers has always remained a shame, even after they were lost. Scolding you for anything you have done is a waste of time anyway. Nothing has changed at all. I may never find who my and Lina's real parents were, but I sure ain't submitting that to you.", she replied with her normal, blunt poker face.
For how much she wanted to end him right then and there, for merely being a link in a long chain of pain and suffering, she restrained herself. Not because she wanted to, but rather, because humanity's protection was a priority above all else.
"Getting personal, I see. But what I did, for the time I did it-"
"Don't confront me with your good intentions with bad execution, Hikari has already done that and we live every day to see it. All of the soldiers here...they're not VSF. They're a task force comprised of former personnel in this forgotten institute, aimed to finish the job, aren't they?", Luna quickly processed everything.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
"Seems the system works to make you awfully quick."
"Unlike you, when the Church came and took over that business you helped set up. I remember to this day, when you held a knife to my throat in front of that nun. I never would have yielded anyway. You downplay my little sister's existence. For how much it had actually played a key role in a new reason to wake up every day. Remorse also seems like a non-negotiable thing for you. But I need to know myself, how did you all do this, what urged you?"
John took a shot at telling her the truth, hoping in his twisted mind that Luna would come close or even right on the same goals he and many others who did this had. He wanted to gain nothing more than the grip back onto a weapon for him to fire.
"We were afraid of the way Corosta and Sandaco, even Insignia as a whole was advancing and needed a way to make this tilt to our favor. Hence this program. We had help from a man...Kikaro. I think he's described in religious texts that the Church hands out. But we were betrayed after he realized that, in his own words, 'Mere humans trying to play gods when not chosen for the job', and we were approached by that...thing. An amalgamation named Makaro. We thought that it hated his eerily similar-sounding colleague. And to avoid being sent to a new hell, we struck a deal with that devil. It provided us with the liquid from the Quantum Irregularity, and after that, the only thing we had to do was find sufficiently powerful Obsulyte users to be able to conduct it. We found none, so we swapped our research for M.O.D.s into the Ascension Program. We never logged any of this, for obvious reasons. Afterward, it was smooth sailing in trying to find the perfect genes to comply with the Obsulyte surge, but we were assaulted by the same army that once supported us. Kikaro was quick to exterminate the project when in periodic control of all his goons, but he lost control right after and we almost fell as a whole country."
"So Kikaro was the initiator of this war, that spread up to Dirunon when he lost control."
"Better than having Insinia and what wackjob, Thaddeus, do it. But then again, we fell. Thankfully, however, were bailed by the same soldiers that plagued us from Dirunon down, and we reestablished control."
"My databases, especially those available to the public, speak nothing of this. What are you aiming to do with this, exactly? To gain my trust for something more?", Luna stayed steadfast.
"Can't you see that humanity is plagued by all these fronts? So-called 'gods', Overseers like the ones Drima served, the monsters that slaughter without reason, the Obsulyte users that ended up becoming half human, half animal hybrids in the end. We need you, Luna. We need you to safeguard this world and humanity from all that plagues us."
Luna's main directive hit overdrive as the sneaky words of a monster tried to penetrate her tempered brain, knowing full well that her restrictions to pure human entities prevented violence, cornering her between deciding morality and the task given.
"You made a grave error. All of you. You had no idea of the extent of power contained within that liquid, within what you've made. Kikaro was right, and if anything, the training session to actually gain full access to this frame is ample evidence. Not to mention that...hngh.", she took a step back, "Despite H.I.V.E.s control-", she briefly grunted, "With the role of the Administrator and this pure computational power-"
Upon simply hearing that Luna had indeed gotten the Administrator role transferred to her, all of them backed out and headed behind John, who also sweat as he saw Luna fighting the demon he had planted inside her for so long.
"I get to choose the meaning of humanity."
Her cold words were spoken, knowing full well what those cowardly men and women hiding behind him were. She proceeded to activate her offensive matrix yet again, massacring every single one of them in a swift, humane, and undeserving manner, all of their heads simply detaching from their frail, human bodies as she materialized her new scythe behind their backs. But it didn't stop there. When she was released from the matrix, creating a multitude of weapons, blunt and sharp, guns to fast, light objects she forced into existence, whole chunks of flesh, scattered brains, and even parts of whole bones were left behind, with screams of pain mixing with the futile, panic shots of those suffering the blows. She then reset herself to where John could see her. Just as simple as the automated process for them to destroy a life, it was the same for her to get up and take it by the dozen. She grabbed John by the throat, digging one of her fingers right through it with ease as she pushed him against the wall. Knowing very, very well as to what he had created, he knew that this interrogation could turn horrific if she decided to act as taught.
He could hold on to the same hope, however, like how she was actively breaking through protocols, programming, and her inhuman state, that she would take a different course of action. That luxury of a hope that was not had by many, many others.
"You will talk when I tell you and for what I ask you. Otherwise.", she twisted her finger around, causing unimaginable pain to him as he struggled to let the screams out.
"O-Ok.", he softly mumbled as he was released by Luna.
"Where are the Falana's? Both of them."
"Dead, they died in the fire.", he answered.
"The assassins that were sent after me and Lina while remaining at the orphanage for shelter. Who were they?"
"Merchenaries we paid from Mireland."
"Who gave you the budget to do that?"
"The Grand Counselor.", he posed no match for Luna's cold, relentless, almost inhumane interrogation.
"She trained this task force too?"
"No, we hid the project from her. We masked it and she was desperate because of Sandaco. We got the training by attaching very basic mechanisms on our own bodies and programming them."
"So the way these...these kids, young teens, and the such succumbed to it...it was when you forcefully injected Obsulyte inside them, wasn't it? No, something ain't right. How did Alexandra, so obsessed with control, not find out about this?"
"Yes, it was the Obsulyte. And for Alexandra, she was being impeached at the time by internal conflict for how the war was going as she had to fend it off, she couldn't act as directly as she did now. As for our bodies, we only did the mechanical parts and training to get down here, we didn't do thaaagh-,", he got his throat drugged into.
"Obviously.", she relaxed her finger, "And now you'll tell me exactly what this program was. How did this all come to be? Because the vague explanation of war doesn't sell it. I want to know."
"We exchanged info with Sandaco for peace terms after we began the program, not needing to necessarily finish it to secure protection. But because we kept everything hidden, Victoria ended up invading Sandaco with Insinia as they both feared for their state of affairs, the only time they ever teamed up. The personnel from Corosta, when we gave them info, began to do their own program that mirrored ours with key differences that made it finish way faster, namely, actively creating their subjects instead of seeking them out. After that for a few years, it was just an informational back and forth until the breaking point of the Great War. That's when it went to hell for Sandaco, that's around when the Ascension Project was formally introduced and when it started being documented! I'm saying the truth!", he struggled to breathe.
"And the Church?"
"They slotted in via the Falana Orphanage in Insinia when Sandaco had fallen to internal turmoil, interested in the project. They just kept funneling war orphans through the Falana orphanage at a faster rate, that's why we didn't mind."
"Until their need for rapid progress made them unable to even hide their true intentions.", Luna pondered, "And the head of that place afterward? That woman?"
John looked at her with an awkward face, "What-ghgh!"
"The nun that was sent to watch over the kids at Falana Orphanage."
"You...you killed her. It's when the operation fell apart. We tried contacting the 'Martyr', some Talulah Elysia who also contributed to taking control of the orphanage but to no avail, she was deep within Veryta territory. They said something about a proxy war between them and the forgotten continent."
"And then we were brought here?"
"You seriously don't remember any of this?"
Luna momentarily paused, "You expunged the data from my memory, with the same method as with Dante? Hmm...no. H.I.V.E. did it for me, to better direct me towards the core drive of humanity's protection."
"What the hell have you turned into.", John got more and more frightened at the sight of her.
"Your viewpoint of me as a monster only makes my status as to what I've become even better.", she let him go, "Now. Here."
Not giving him a chance to repent or say anything else, after treating him as a faceless resource for her to discard once used, she connected all of her fingers together and with lethal precision, swiped her entire hand across his neck, decapitating him with ease. And though she wanted to do it the exact same way he once did to her, just leaving him for dead to be eaten by dogs...this wasn't how it should be.
Although she had set free of most of her bindings, being able to set her own terms behind the meaning of the same humanity she was forced and coded to protect, she herself shouldn't stray off becoming something else. Her hand was now tainted with blood and standing above the bodies of the same children she had lived with, and those that tormented her and them all together...she had her own dilemma about what she had done. But her cold heart, filled with more logic than feelings had but one thing to say.
It had to be this way.
Violence wasn't always going to be the clear course of action on every path, but this? Was there really another option for her to take? Who was she to tell for there to be a stop, when so many more who would benefit greatly from it would try to shut her down upon hearing it? How would she speak to a man who like so many others decided to enter an echo chamber that reflected his delusions into becoming reality? And to bring forth a final testament of her lack of humanity, where her feelings did not mix into her actions, the deaths caused were only swift and efficient.
Children died on this day. Monsters died on this day. And the one of few lucky to survive then, was reborn today. A task granted out of fear and survival's nature, for the continuation and protection of this world. Those she held dear to her so-called 'heart' she thought the world of, a base giving meaning to what the greater picture demanded of her.
"What do I...do from here? Lina...", she reminisced of that day, where like so many others...she hurt. That too, met without a tear. She could never shed any, even if she tried to.
This weapon of humanity had become more human than the hands that had forged it.
She snapped out of it, "This mission is still ongoing.", she clenched her bloody fist, "I'll have to do a lot more before I'm able to call it a day. That, for everyone's sake. This 'humanity' I need to protect...it extends far beyond what they forced me to believe."