As I mowed down a few entities that were standing in my path, I sprinted forward, ducking into a hallway away from the other monsters pursuing me. I looked up to see the hallway looked like on you'd find in a rather large house, many different doors lined up across it. I took a second to reload my gun and started walking forward.
"Hey Celeste, got any idea what's in here? ...Celeste? You there?" I asked, not getting a response back from my contractor. Hey, come to think of it, where was I anyways? It was clearly mid invasion, but I didn't actually know where I was and why I was here. Thinking about this, I popped open a door on my left and peeked into the room. The inside was just gray, a featureless void with nothing in it but a single person. A young child stood in the middle of the room, the same one I had healed earlier when the invasion first started. I walked over to him, extremely confused.
"Hey little guy, what's wrong? Why are you all alone?" I asked him, he turned and looked at me with a pained expression.
"I don't know. My dad was supposed to be here, but he's not. Did you see him?" He asked. I remembered back to the conversation we had earlier, and I sighed.
"I'm sorry buddy, but I don't think he's coming back." As I said this, the boy's expression turned to anger, his eyes filling with rage as he glared at me.
"You told me you'd help him! Why didn't you do something?!"
"He was already gone when you asked. I just, I didn't want you to have to deal with that and the invasion at the same time. I've been through something similar myself-"
"I don't care! He's never coming back, and you did nothing! I hate you!" The kid screamed. I went to put my hand on his shoulder, but as I did, something began pulling on me. I struggled against it for a moment, but I inevitably ended up getting launched back out of the room, as the door slammed shut. I brushed myself off and looked on at the hall. I realized something was strange here and quickly came to a conclusion.
"Alright, I get what this is. You want me to go through all these rooms, and everyone will say I'm an asshole and I should be dead. Not gonna happen, I'll just sit here and wait to wake up." I said to the empty air around me. This was obviously just some kind of nightmare, so there was no point in indulging my brain in this self hating fantasy. As I sat down and leaned against a wall, I looked around to see if there was anything else interesting happening. As I turned left, I heard a noise over my right shoulder.
"Can you help me?" I heard as a mangled cluster of voices whispered into my ear. I whipped around, seeing nothing to my right. As I did, I heard the same voices on the left.
"Stay safe out there!" It said as I turned again, seeing nothing. The walls began to fade away, leaving me in the same gray void as before. I focused on my ears, trying to hear any movements possible as I searched for the obvious Recorder that was stalking me. After a few moments, I heard footsteps behind me, and I spun around to see it charging at me, letting out another screech. I held out my right arm to charge up a spell and blast its head off, but as I did, I felt the mana push out into the air. I looked down and saw my right arm was missing again, a bleeding stump being all that remained. I lifted my head up just in time to scream as I saw a scythed hand slice through my head.
"Hey! You okay?!" I heard out of nowhere. I looked up to see Arc staring down at me, my panic slowly fading. I reached up and wrapped my arms around her, feeling her do the same.
"God, I just had the worst nightmare. There was a Recorder, and-" I was interrupted as Arc shushed me, putting my head on her shoulder.
"Hey, it's okay, it was just a dream. You just dozed off for a bit there. Now, you ready for this?"
"Thanks, I think I'm fine now. Wait, ready for what?" I asked her, backing up and looking around a bit. It looked like we were in some kind of high end clothing store.
"To try on all the stuff we picked out dummy! Come on!" She said, giggling and pulling me by the hand to a changing booth. She put a set of clothes in my hand and shoved me in, shutting the door.
"Hang on, I don't know if I'm super comfortable with this!" I yelled over the door as Arc just continued laughing.
"Don't worry, you'll look great! Just put it on!" I groaned in annoyance, but complied with her request, looking down at the clothes she had picked out. I stripped down first before pulling up the tights that went with the outfit, similar to the ones that went with my Guardian costume. I slid into the frilly black skirt, and then pulled on the dark blue short sleeved sweater. Finally, I put on a black jacket over it all and looked at myself in the mirror. Holy shit, I was gorgeous! Arc really knew her stuff when it came to fashion. I spun around a bit, giggling as my skirt swooshed around me. After a moment, Arc pushed open the door.
"Wow, you look incredible! You shouldn't have been so worried before!"
"You're right, that was stupid. I gotta take a picture of this!" I said, pulling out my phone. I tried switching to the camera app, but the phone just kept bugging out, tapping on other apps instead. I growled a bit and kept trying, looking up at the time. The clock on the phone just kept switching over and over again, going from 8:32 AM to 13:35 PM out of nowhere. Wait, I didn't have my phone in military time, there shouldn't be a thirteen in there! Come to think of it, didn't Arc go home early yesterday?
"Oh god fucking dammit, I'm still dreaming!" I yelled as Arc looked at me funny.
"What are you talking about?" She said. Instead of listening, I turned around and stared at a wall.
"Nope, not doing this! You're just a part of my imagination!"
"Inari."
"I'm not listening!" I yelled at her, still staring at the wall. I had gotten rather good at discerning dreams from reality as a kid, and I could clearly tell this was all fake.
"Inari!"
"I don't care what a fake person has to say!"
"INARI"!
----------------------------------------------
I jolted awake, falling out of bed and hitting my head rather hard. I sprang up, looking around the room to see the door had been kicked open. Blossom was standing there with someone leaning on her shoulder. After a moment, I remembered him as a Guardian I had met yesterday while healing civilians, but I couldn't recall his name. Blossom sprinted forward, dumping him on my bed.
"What in the absolute fuck is going on?!" I yelled, but she simply turned and dragged me over to him.
"Heal him, quick!" Confused, I looked down to see the man had no visible injures on him. Even his outfit, which was a sort of green spandex suit with a logo on it, was completely fine. However, he was twitching erratically, and he was foaming at the mouth slightly.
"Shit, is he having a seizure?" I said, casting Diagnose right away. As I did, I saw something that both confused and terrified me. The man was clearly dying, but the cause wasn't shown to me with the spell. Instead, as I looked, I saw he looked empty. The mana that I now could see permeating people's bodies, whether they be Guardians or civilians, was simply gone. I focused a bit more and saw it almost looked like he was trying to draw in more mana but couldn't. As I looked, I saw his heart suddenly slow down to a crawl.
"Give me some space! Celeste, figure out what's going on, I'll try to keep him alive!" I yelled out, shoving Blossom to the side as I leaned over the man. I could feel Celeste checking things in my mind as I began giving him chest compressions, trying to manually pump his heart, but it was as though his whole body had just frozen. Even as I cast multiple healing spells, nothing was changing. Without his mana, his body had simply begun shutting down. After a minute, I simply stopped, staring down at the man.
"Is he..." Blossom said, her meaning obvious. I nodded, blood rushing to my head in anger. I couldn't fucking do anything, and this was supposed to be my god damn job!
"What the fuck happened Blossom?!"
"I don't know! I just heard some people yelling while I was patching up a building, and when I walked over, I saw him on the ground with a crowd around him. You were the closest healer I knew so I brought him here! What even happened to him?"
"He didn't have any mana. I mean, none, not a single drop." I said, and Blossom looked at me horrified.
"That's not possible! Sometimes civilians can lose all their mana in an entity attack, but he's a Guardian! He should always have enough to at least stay alive!"
"I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to tell you Blossom! He doesn't have any mana, so his body just started shutting down, and now there's a dead man in my hotel room! How am I supposed to explain this when the police show up?!" I screamed. I had woken up two minutes ago, and I already watched someone die. As I was raging, Celeste spoke to me in my head.
"I already called law enforcement and explained the situation. They are busy due to the invasion, so we can either wait a long time for them to come and retrieve the body, or we can deal with this ourselves." She said. I sighed, realizing what I was going to have to do. I turned back to Blossom, trying my best not to look at the man.
"Alright, Celeste said the cops won't be here for a while, so we should take care of this ourselves. Does Fortress know about this yet?" I asked her, and she nodded.
"I called him on the way here."
"Good. Call him again and ask if he would be okay with delivering the body to the police."
"Okay, but what are we going to do?" She asked. I looked outside, seeing the crowd she had mentioned earlier standing on a street corner. Even from here, with my absurd hearing I could clearly tell they were discussing what had just happened.
"We're gonna go find out why this happened. I have a feeling this wasn't just some freak medical accident. Could be some kind of entity that absorbs mana, could be something else. Either way, we need to figure it out ourselves before someone else dies." I said, turning back to look at the body.
"I guess that's all we can do. Alright, Ivy, can you figure out who this Guardian, maybe where he was before all this?" Blossom said as her contractor appeared next to her. They looked like a little daisy with a face, and if there wasn't a dead man on my bed, I might have thought it was a lot more adorable. Ivy took a moment to look down at the body, clearly going through their database.
"Looks like his name is Greenwhip, he was an Aquamarine tier Guardian. The surveillance systems around here are mostly down right now, so I can't find much of him on the cameras." They said. I nodded and turned around back to the window.
"Then we'll have to just head down there and- ah!" I said, jumping back as Fortress appeared in the window. How the hell did he get here so quickly?!
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
"Sorry about that. Where is he?" I popped open the window and pointed at him on the bed. Fortress simply bowed his head slightly when he reached the man, then picked him up and flew out the window.
"He seemed, very casual about that, is this just normal for you all?" I asked Blossom. She stood up and nodded, before opening the front door and putting a hastily scribbled note on it.
"Unfortunately, yeah. Which way are we heading out?" She nodded over to both the door and the window. I thought about it for a minute before turning back to the window.
"You head out the normal way, I want to get down there before people start walking off."
"Sounds good." Blossom said, walking out the door as I hopped out the window. I heard a few people gasp before they realized I was floating down extremely slowly. I dropped to the ground, seeing the crowd was now staring at me. This was going to be a long day.
"Alright, does anyone have any information about the man involved in the incident just now?" I asked, and immediately the whole crowd began speaking frantically, making my ears ring as I took in all the information. Okay, this was getting me nowhere, and now my head just hurt. I needed some way to focus on specific noises, so I decided to try moving some mana into my ears. My hearing somehow got even better, but also I felt as though I could comprehend what I was hearing a little better. I pointed at the back of the crowd to a man in construction gear. The only people outside right now were there contributing to the rebuilding of the city.
"Everyone else, quiet down. You, repeat what you were saying." I said as I walked through the crowd towards him. I once again thanked my absurdly large stature as the crowd immediately parted around me.
"Uh, I work for a construction company, we got called in on overtime to help patch some things up. Last I saw that guy, he was with one of my coworkers helping him out."
"Perfect. Where can I find this coworker?"
"Well, his name's Kri, he's working on repairs in the entertainment district, couple blocks from here. I can give you directions if you need." He said while pulling out his phone. I raised my hand, stopping him.
"I'm already familiar with the area. Don't worry everyone, this has become official Guardian business, and we will have it handled shortly. My name's Inari. Oh, and my friend right here is Blossom." I said as Blossom finally walked out the hotel's main entrance.
"Is uh, is the guy gonna be okay? He didn't look too hot." The construction worker asked me. I tried my best to keep a neutral face as I looked at him.
"He's being taken somewhere at this moment. Now, let's go Blossom." I walked back past the crowd over to her as she looked at me confused.
"The hell did I miss?" She said, muttering under her breath. This enhanced hearing really didn't fuck around.
"Just getting us a lead. Now come on, we're heading back over to the area we were in last night, gotta find someone else." I said, walking alongside her towards the area.
"And how exactly are we going to find him once we get there?" She asked. I pointed up to my ears, noticing they actually moved a lot involuntarily. Shit, did I wag my tail too? I really hoped that wasn't the case.
"I got his name, we'll just walk around till I hear someone say it."
"How strong is that hearing of yours anyways?"
"Right now? I could probably hear a pin drop in the middle of time square from a hundred yards away." I said, and she just stared at me blankly.
"Is that like, a place?"
"Oh, right, you don't know much about earth. Yes, it's a place, and it's crowded as hell." I said, and I saw her realize what I meant.
"Ah, that does make more sense. All my transformation did was make my photosynthetic. Which I'm not complaining about, it is pretty awesome, but still. Also, I feel like you don't understand how this translator works."
"Eh? What do you mean?"
"I mean, when you say things that don't have translations in my language, it just spits them out in your language instead, so I have essentially zero clue what you are saying. Like, try turning off your translator right now." She said. Confused, I asked Celeste to turn it off as we kept walking.
"Alright, now what?" I asked her. She spoke again, but I didn't understand a word out of her mouth. The language she was speaking sounded nothing like any language I'd ever heard on Earth, with a lot of weird buzzing sounds I didn't know people could make. I turned the translator back on after a moment.
"Uh, yeah, I see what you mean. We speak very different languages."
"Exactly. I'm not saying stop mentioning them, but don't be surprised when people don't understand you."
"That's fair. Hey, how does it translate my voice anyways?" I asked her. I realized now I had never questioned that at all.
"Oh, it just automatically translates what you wanted to say and gives you the words in the language it thinks is needed. Then your body naturally handles the rest." She said. Man, technology was very odd. I took a look around the city as we walked, noticing a lot of Guardians around helping in the reconstruction efforts. There were people carrying giant steel beams on each shoulder, items constantly spawning into existence, and magic being used everywhere. I felt a newfound appreciation for Guardians that I hadn't felt before, before I very stupidly realized that I was one now.
"So, you at least get a good night's sleep?" Blossom asked me.
"Oh, yeah. Just a few weird dreams."
"What were they about?"
"Oh, hey look, I think that's the guy!" I said, ignoring her question as best as I could. I jogged over to another construction worker who was talking with someone. This guy appeared to be of some kind of bug race I hadn't seen before, with large mandibles on either side of his face.
"Excuse me, are you Kri?" I said. He turned to me, and presumably gave me a look of confusion. Well, it could have been anger or hunger for all I knew, I wasn't used to reading the faces of insects.
"That would be me, how can I help you?" he said, his voice sounding like he was vibrating.
"The names Inari, I just wanted to know if you have any information about Greenwhip. Some people said you were working with him earlier."
"Oh, that guy? Yeah, he was helping me rebuild a busted wall in that alley over there, when all of a sudden, he complained about something poking him. We both forgot about it quick, but a minute or so later he said he wasn't feelin great and went to head off to a medic. Is he okay?" He said, pointing over to a nearby alley.
"Listen, was there anyone else in the alley with you?" Blossom asked him, and he nodded.
"Oh yeah, tons of people. It connects two pretty major streets, so people cut across it all the time. He complained right when a group of people walked past." I made sure Celeste was copying all of this information down as I listened, looking over at the currently empty alley.
"Alright, thank you. If you remember anything else, we'll be right over there." I said, walking over to the alley. Blossom followed as I began searching around for anything specific. The alley was oddly clean, with no trash and just a bit of rubble everywhere. Guess this city really cared about its public image. Blossom brought out a few vines and had them sweep over the area for anything, before one came back holding something.
"Found something. Looks like a syringe." She said, sending the vine over to me so I could take a look.
"Well, I guess it could just be from someone using drugs, but he did say Greenwhip complained about being poked. Celeste, is there anywhere nearby where someone could get syringes?" I asked her. She popped out and took a moment to look over everything before coming to a conclusion.
"There certainly is, but not of this brand. Look at the logo on the side, Sepifora. They sell medical supplies, but they are a wholesale supplier. The only people buying these are buying them in the thousands. Also, I've done an analysis of the remaining contents of the syringe. There are trace elements of something I cannot identify whatsoever, but nothing else. " She said. I thought about that for a moment. That eliminated anything small, like a pharmacy. So really, it came down to two likely options for me, both of which might be working on unknown chemical formulas.
"Where's the nearest hospital around here?" I asked Celeste.
"Around seven miles away."
"Not too far. And the nearest research lab?"
"Well, it depends on what type of research you mean. There aren't any primarily medical research labs around here, but the nearest lab of any kind would be in the Starbound facility. They develop different military technologies, but they also have a small medical section. I believe that's where they make prosthetics, like your current arm." I looked down at my arm, moving it around a bit. I guess Starbound just knew how to make quality robotics.
"I'm pretty sure that's like, a block away at most. You think this is somehow relevant?" Blossom asked me, and I nodded.
"This needle is definitely used, and it had something in it that Celeste can't identify. That means it must be something experimental, and its being made somewhere that buys this specific brand of syringe. The only questions left are, what was it, and why would the person who had it use it on a Guardian?"
"Well, that Nianshi chick kept talking about how they wanted to make people less dependent on Guardians, and she worked for Starbound. Maybe this has something to do with it? I don't know, could be anything really." Blossom said, clearly not confident in her answer, but it made me pause for a moment.
"Hang on, that actually might be true. She offered to show you around their facility, right? She asked me the same thing." I said, and Blossom nodded.
"Yeah, only people she didn't offer it to were Fortress and Arc. I think she just didn't work with Fortress at all because he was out, and Arc hates dealing with the military, so she was kind of a prick to her."
"Okay. Call Fortress again and tell him we might be into some trouble soon." Blossom looked at me extremely concerned.
"Uh, can I ask why that might be?" She asked me.
"I think we ought to call Nianshi and take her up on her offer. Gives us a chance to take a peek around that facility. If there's anything related to this, we can find it."
"Investigating a private military company behind their backs? I can't see any way that this could go wrong." Blossom said sarcastically, tying her blue hair up into a ponytail. She was admittedly right, but at the time it seemed like the only option. We were tough anyways, I doubted things could go that poorly.