Slowly but surely, the weather was finally beginning to take a turn for the worse after several weeks of stronger winds and cooler temperatures that were sweeping the wasteland.
During the day, grey clouds had started to gather despite there being no presence of any water or steam to create that many of them. The sheer amount easily blotted out the sun, preventing its rays from reaching the ground and heating it up like it was supposed to.
Because of that, the temperature dipped even further to approximately 5 to 10 degrees Celsius, and the minimized presence of sunlight plunged the wasteland and its surviving settlements into a gloomy darkness, like an incoming storm with no rain.
Once the people around the world took notice of the change, they quickly began to prepare for the upcoming extreme weather phenomenon that was about to hit their homes hard in the next few days: The Deep Freeze.
The terrible and aptly nicknamed winter storm did not just include way below-zero temperatures for the whole day and continuous snowfall for several weeks without end, but also persistent blizzards and the occasional hail, effectively trapping them in any sheltered area they could reside in for the entire duration.
In this period, stockpiling became not just a hobby but a genuine need, with many settlements shutting off their trading with others and gathering as much food, water, and kindling materials as they could.
While sharing was common among the more peaceful towns, some of them, mostly the resource-poor ones, often went so far as to have inner conflicts and fights within themselves to see who would get enough resources to survive the storm, with only the strongest coming out on top.
With precious time running out for everyone, it was most imperative that they had to find some form of refuge, especially one that had the large resource stockpiles that they could live on, before it was too late.
“Fuck… I knew it…”
For that reason, Blake was only growing more and more impatient as he trekked through the empty wasteland with the companions he had not expected to go along with in the first place.
If he had been travelling alone, he would have already found an ideal place ahead of time and settled down as comfortably as he could for the weeks ahead, which would have reduced his worries as much as possible.
However, no thanks to the fiasco that went down in the Church of Enlightenment, the Apocalypse Cleaners had not only been set back in their path by several weeks, but the chances of them residing in the compound had most likely been dashed for the foreseeable future, seeing as how the followers there would still have negative impressions of them for a while.
Hence, as the winds grew stronger, and the temperature grew lower, his complaining only grew even louder than before, creating a negative atmosphere that gradually enveloped the entire group as the days only ticked closer to the first snowfall.
“Anything?! Any place that might be suitable for us?!”
“As far as I can see from here, still no!”
“Damn it!!!”
With only the rough directions they were given, Anten’s Particle senses, and his own orientation skills guiding them to a possible destination, the entire group did not know whether they were even going in the right direction, or they were completely lost and not able to make it in time.
Due to the howling winds blowing around their heads, whipping their hair and clothes all over the place, and limiting their overall visibility as a result, all of them had been forced to uncomfortably raise their voices if they wanted to speak. This included the normally soft-spoken Yuu, who had to muster up everything she had if she wanted them to listen to her.
With nothing but the slight hope of reaching a sheltered town or even a natural cave formation, they only stayed in one spot for a few hours each night before moving off once again, leading to reduced rest and therefore a growing exhaustion, which inadvertently caused Blake to drastically increase his strength output in order to even keep up with the others.
“What’s the likely forecast this time around?” Anten asked him after the group had settled down in the middle of the night for another one of their impromptu short rests.
“I’m not really sure,” he yelled back at her as he sat down and shielded his one eye from the stinging gusts, “I’ve never been outside during this period, but I would guess that the snow will be coming in about two to three days, give or take a few!”
“For god’s sake!” she exclaimed before attempting to come up with a compromise, “do you think you can bear with it for a day or two? I think with your resilience—”
“For your information, angel, this weather will be affecting you and the devil as well, not just me. Do you really think you can move around when the visibility is absolute shit and people don’t want to come out?” he sardonically snapped.
“I… yeah, I guess so!”
“… I think we should give it up, honestly,” Dauma jumped in before speaking in a grave tone, “if we can’t find it, the best thing we can do right now is to stay where we are and make sure we don’t waste too much energy.”
“Hah?!”
“Dauma! What are you saying?”
All of them already knew the last option they could take, and since most of their other safer options were becoming less likely to happen, the devil had already resigned himself to that fate and willingly accepted it, much to Anten and Blake’s visible displeasure.
Despite their loud objections, he began justifying his reasoning, “at this point, we’re just running out the clock here. How are we so sure we can make it before the storm hits? What if we’re just walking into a dead end? What if hunkering down is the only option we have left?”
“Then, what do you suggest?”
“We go underground,” he continued as he tapped his foot on the firm sand, “if we can make a holed space big enough for us to hide in, I’m sure we can probably wait it out. With our combined strength, it can also be done within an hour, I think.”
“That is literally the stupidest fucking idea I have ever heard.”
Without wasting time to give it any thought, Blake immediately rejected the suggestion with a harsh response, possibly even the harshest he had ever given to him as far as he knew.
“In that case, what do you suggest, Blake? I’m open to any ideas that are still possible, you know.”
“We can… ugh… I don’t fucking know!”
No matter how hard they tried, the entire group had found themselves still stuck at the first square on the game board, with no possible way to advance. There were no good ideas, there was no solid plan, and there was no universal agreement between any of the members at all.
Even though Blake’s thoughts to call it quits with them and go his own way were currently at their absolute strongest, it would be rash if he went off by himself at this stage.
Without any help, he knew that he would freeze to death as soon as the brunt of the storm hit, and the safest bet he could take would still be with the largely invincible beings with him, even if they infuriated him with their poor decisions at every turn. The only thing he could do now was to complain incessantly to deaf ears.
“I swear to god… if we don’t—”
However, right as he was about to do so for what felt like the hundredth time, he suddenly stopped before he could finish. Without warning, he turned his head rapidly to look to his left, his neck cracking ominously almost as though it was going to snap off by the sheer force exerted.
“Mister Blake?”
“Hold on,” he raised one of his fingers up before he closed his eye and began to loudly sniff the air, “just give me a minute.”
“Wait…”
As soon as they noticed his strange action, everyone quickly recognized it and tensed up on their own, their eyes automatically turning to the same direction he was facing before narrowing in suspicion.
“… what do you sense, Blake?”
If there was anything about him that could be relied on, it was the incredibly sharp attunement of his five senses, much greater than Anten’s or Dauma’s, that allowed him to sense disturbances from the furthest distances. That trait, useful enough by itself, was also greatly increased by his current strength output, allowing for more accurate readings.
They had all seen it before, during the hunts he normally did and on occasion during their overall journey as a safe precaution, and therefore the fact that he was doing it now meant only one thing, that someone or something was close to them in the empty wasteland.
With the sudden presence of the mysterious person or thing also came the quick realization shortly afterwards, that whoever or whatever they were most likely had somewhere they could be heading back to, giving them a faint sense of hope once again.
“I’m not sure,” he responded as he concentrated harder on his sniffing, furrowing his brow in the process, “I might need to go check it out.”
“Do we need to come?”
“Not necessarily. Based on the intensity, they’re coming right towards us as we speak. Keep your voices down and stay low.”
“Oh… ok…”
As they did what he told them to do and patiently waited, he quietly stood up before grabbing a knife from his nearby bag and going back down, lying prone on the sand as he began to swiftly crawl in the direction of the unknown thing by himself.
“… GOTCHA!!!”
“Mff! Mff!”
After just a few moments, he had seemingly hit the jackpot as he grabbed something in the inky darkness, who let out muffled cries in response, before triumphantly heading back towards the group with his acquired prize.
“It’s some masked weirdo that sounds like a chick! Probably someone from a clan, which means that they are probably camping out nearby!” they could hear his yelling in the distance as he dragged the person he caught along the ground very roughly, prompting more muffled protests to come out of their mouth.
“Mff! Mfffffff!”
“That’s good! But please make sure to carry her more gentl…” Anten began shouting back with uncontained excitement and slight worry, but she abruptly trailed off as a sudden realization hit her.
A masked… weirdo?
Almost immediately, she switched gears and continued to shout, this time with much greater alarm, “what is she wearing, Mister Blake? Can you see her mask? What does it look like?”
“Eh? It looks kinda like… a pointy-eared animal. I think it’s a fox? And she’s wearing some kind of cloak, like me.”
“Damn it… let go of her now!!!” she frantically yelled in response; her suspicions being confirmed all at once as she quickly stood up.
“What?! What are you talking—gah!”
As a stunningly bright light suddenly flashed in front of their eyes, followed by a loud and startled grunt of pain from him, Anten wasted no time in running towards his location, with Dauma and Yuu soon following behind.
“What… the fuck are you doing, you fucking bitch?!”
“I could ask you the same question, you know!”
“Oh, I’ll answer your question once you’re—"
“EVERYBODY STOP!!!” Anten shouted as soon as she was close enough, and the two faint figures, who had both put their hands and respective weapons up and were already fully prepared to duke it out, stopped as soon as they heard her voice.
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“What? Why?!” Blake, the figure closer to them promptly responded, but he was not the person she was most concerned about.
“… eh? That voice, isn’t that…”
Skidding to a halt right before her, Anten composed herself before bowing down to the second person, the so-called ‘masked weirdo chick wearing some kind of cloak’, who she, Dauma, and Yuu knew all too well.
“Don’t worry, it’s us! I am truly sorry that we attacked you, Miss Kara!”
“Hold on… you guys know her?” a greatly startled Blake remarked incredulously as he slowly lowered his knife down in surprise.
“… yes,” she lowered her head and muttered.
“Ue he…”
And that was all she needed to say to him, as the cheeky inventor quickly removed her mask to reveal her grinning face and confirm her already-known identity to them at the same time.
**********************
“Well, talk about a welcoming greeting, ue he he. You’ve certainly picked up an… interesting person while I was not around, haven’t you?”
Once the misunderstanding had been cleared up, and both Kara and Blake were introduced to each other for the very first time, the Apocalypse Cleaners quickly relocated to her pitched-up tent and motorbike where they finally could reconnect with her after what felt like a long time apart.
“Hmph,” Blake turned up his nose and openly sulked in response to her jab, unwilling to properly address her.
Even though he had already stopped his attempted attack a while ago, he still did not seem to be ready to trust her at all, as he was deliberately sitting a fair distance away from the group, while constantly keeping a wary gaze on her.
“Again, I really am sorry about Mister Blake,” a worried Anten apologized repeatedly to her in the meantime, “I didn’t tell him about you or the Silver Foxes, and I promise we won’t attack you again!”
“Ue he he,” Kara lifted her hand up to her mouth and stifled another silly-sounding chuckle before coolly replying, “there’s no harm in being on guard, so it’s quite alright. In fact, I should be praising him for his instincts. If I had been a genuine threat, I would have been dead, and you guys would have been much safer thanks to him, so you should be more grateful if I’m being honest.”
“… you hear that, Mister Blake? She likes you! Maybe you should rejoin us!”
“Ngh,” they got a disinterested grunt back from him in response, and Anten shrugged with a more relaxed smile before she casually switched to another important topic she wanted to discuss with the inventor.
“Anyway… what’s going on with the Silver Foxes right now, Miss Kara? Is everything okay over there with Chief Claine and Chief Aleby?”
“Mmm…” Kara stopped to think for a while before she cheerily responded, “I think we’re doing pretty well, all things considered.”
“Oh? That’s nice.”
“Yup. Putting aside our main objective for now, we are all rather busy during this period, especially with the Deep Freeze coming. There’s the main issue of finding a shelter big enough to fit us all, then we have to gather enough resources for everyone too. It’s troublesome, but I’m sure we can probably pull through it if we work hard enough.”
“But what about… what happened in the abandoned city?”
“You’re still on about that?” she raised an eyebrow and remarked, “for the last time, what happened over there was our fault, not yours, and you guys were the ones who saved us after all. So, don’t beat yourself up about it, ue he he.”
“…”
“You are seriously carrying too much unnecessary weight on yourself, Miss Anten. Don’t dwell long on the mistakes of the past, that’s my humble suggestion as your dear friend,” she insisted as she pointed a stern finger towards the angel, causing her to instinctively flinch.
“Geh…”
“You better keep that in mind, 100%, no objections allowed. Anyway, I wanna talk to the big D-man now.”
“Huh? Er, yeah sure,” Dauma blurted out a quick reply as Kara turned her curious eyes on him and waited in anticipation for him to respond.
“Actually…”
The second he gave his approval, the inventor, who had been poking her head and hands out of her tent the entire time, suddenly beckoned for him to come closer out of the blue.
“… I want to talk to Mister Devil alone in my tent, if you guys don’t mind.”
“What? Why?” Anten blinked in confusion.
“No particular reason. Call it a special private session where no one else is allowed to snoop, that’s all.”
“It’s no big deal, Anten,” Dauma readily shook off the angel’s present concern and agreed to the demand as he stood up and slowly walked over to the tent, “chances are it’ll probably be some long conversation about food bars again.”
“I won’t confirm or deny that, ue he he.”
“Well…” Anten mumbled, her face still filled with intrigue and slight suspicion, “have a good talk, then. I’ll go talk to Mister Blake, see if I can improve his mood.”
“… I’ll join you…” Yuu weakly chimed in.
“You know I can hear you guys, right?” Blake quickly remarked as he watched the three of them head towards their respective destinations, “I don’t need you to fucking—”
“There, there, Mister Blake. All will be fine, so just hush,” Anten tried to soothe him with a calming voice, only to be met with more disgusted noises from him.
Well, I certainly don’t want to see this, Dauma thought to himself as he immediately shifted his gaze away from whatever the girls were going to do to him and instead focused solely on Kara as she moved away from the flap, allowing him to enter her tent.
**********************
“So, what is it that you want, Kara? Is there something wrong?”
As soon as he had sat down on the tent floor, his head dangerously close to reaching the top of the small shelter, Dauma quickly began to question the inventor who was so stubbornly insistent on speaking to him personally.
There were indeed empty food bar wrappers littered next to her sleeping bag as he had expected, but as she swiftly answered his question, it was clear that her objective this time was not to give a boring lecture about their qualities and benefits again.
“I’m sorry for springing this on you, Mister Dauma,” she spoke with a more serious expression now, “but I need you to give an update about yourself, if that’s okay with you of course.”
“… ah, right.”
He had almost forgotten about it after everything that had happened to him over the past few weeks, but upon her reminder, he recalled what he had been doing with her in the short period before the Cleaners had left the Silver Foxes’ last hideout altogether.
Under her own request, he had willingly obliged to have a couple of private conversations with her regarding his nature as a devil, and to get some helpful feedback about his inner thoughts and feelings in general.
These conversations typically ranged from how he felt about others such as Anten and Yuu to the very nature of his being a devil, but most commonly, they would discuss the recurring dreams he had about the mysterious soldier in the snowy field.
After he remembered those interactions, and basing his memory of them on Kara’s next question to him, it was apparent that she was interested in exploring the last topic once again.
“So, Mister Dauma… have you had any more of them?” she spoke in a formal voice as she mimed pushing a pair of glasses on her face, almost presenting herself as though she was a psychiatrist treating a patient.
“Erm… not really.”
“Are you sure? I can’t help you if you don’t tell me the truth, you know.”
“…”
It was indeed the truth as far as he knew himself. Ever since what had transpired during the underground city fight with General Masse, and he had accepted his role as a devil, he had stopped having that strange dream, or any other painful memory flashes that used to periodically occur as well.
“Yes, I am sure.”
“Well then, I guess it can’t be helped,” Kara huffed, her shoulders slumping in disappointment at his confirmation.
As she put it, for someone who had been interested in learning about them from the very start, the dreams were supposedly his ‘key to unlock himself’, and by not having them anymore, he had lost the opportunity to ‘learn about his past’ and would therefore ‘suffer in the bliss of ignorance’, as she had poetically worded it for him.
“You know,” she quickly followed up with a suggestion, “maybe you should doubt yourself again. Be the failure of a devil as you were when I first met you, then maybe we can have another chance. What do you say, Mister Dauma?”
“No thanks,” he bluntly shot her down almost immediately.
“But… what if this is your chance at learning about your past? Huh? Do you really not want to learn more about why you became a devil? What about the soldier, or the field, or the gunshot? Are you not the slightest bit curious about them?”
“… of course I am,” he replied after a short pause, “of course I want to learn more. It’s just that since Michael was not willing to give me my memories, I can only assume that he did not do it for a good reason.”
“Who?”
“Michael. He’s the God that Anten has been talking about. We met him shortly after we parted ways with your group.”
“You did? As in like, the real God himself? I mean…” Kara began to wildly stammer, her face completely flabbergasted at the sudden information that had just been thrust on her.
“Regardless,” Dauma nonchalantly continued, ignoring her shocked reaction, “if he did not want to show me my memories, I guess I can’t question it. Or rather, I can question it, but I can’t force him to reveal it to me. That’s just not logical.”
“…”
“Why are you acting so shocked? It’s not like it’s impossible for there to be a God, you know. Although I must admit, it also had to take me a while to acknowledge his existence, so I guess your reaction kind of makes sense.”
“… just… give me a minute… please…”
After she finally grasped the real concept of there being an all-knowing deity watching over them, and once she had caught her breath, she tried her best to calm herself down before resuming their discussion.
“So… God is real.”
“Yes.”
“And he told you that you cannot have your memories back?”
“Yes.”
“That is… interesting,” she murmured, her curiosity quickly increasing once again, “then, that must mean something. Obviously, there’s something in your past that he doesn’t want you to see, and I bet your snow soldier dreams and memory flashes have something to do with it.”
“Hm.”
“I don’t think that’s all there is to it either. What if… what if what you did in the past somehow all ties back to him? That could mean that… that you are seen as a devil in his eyes, and maybe that’s… that’s why you’re like this? Amazing…”
Dauma watched as she gabbled on and on, her mood reaching an intense peak of feverish excitement as she came up with theory after theory before trying to deduce which one made the most sense to her.
“… Kara.”
“Of course, it must mean that he was offended by his actions, but what constitutes such a serious offence that you were turned into a devil instead of anyone else? Truly fascinating…”
“Kara!”
It took a bit of time, but using a loud shout and clap to get her attention, Dauma was eventually able to snap her out of her zone, forcing her to speak coherently to him again.
“Do you have anything else you want to say?” he continued, getting slightly impatient with her at this point.
“Well, yeah,” she instantly admitted before lowering her register, “but I guess I need some time to collect all my thoughts first before I get back to you. What you have told me is very helpful by the way, so thank you for that.”
“So, this session is over?”
“Yes yes, I suppose it is. Very good work today, Mister Dauma, I’m proud of you,” she distractedly mumbled, brushing him aside as though she was a parent loosely praising her child out of necessary obligation and not of complete willingness.
“Tch, forget it.”
And so, feeling that she had not been particularly helpful to him at all, Dauma left the tent dissatisfied with the discussion.
“What could it be? Ooh, this is exciting!”
On the other hand, Kara continued to talk to herself, seemingly on cloud nine as she happily analysed every new possibility that she was coming up with about him and the god Michael, one right after the other.
As it appeared to be, it seemed that for the moment, who he was as a devil was still going to be unresolved.
**********************
Surprisingly, the Apocalypse Cleaners’ problem of finding a suitable shelter to hide in during the Deep Freeze ended up getting solved in no time with a small and helpful piece of information from Kara.
“I believe there’s actually a ghost town not too far away from here,” she had casually suggested once the group had reconvened again, and Anten had explained their stressful predicament to her, “the residents left it abandoned after their resources ran out, and the ever-so-helpful Paradise forces encouraged them to relocate. There’s quite a bit of Paradise propaganda left over, but regarding the lack of resources, I’m sure you guys, maybe except for Mister Blake, can take refuge there, if it’s still around of course. Here, let me draw a map, and you can see it for yourself.”
“Thank you, Miss Kara.”
“Devil and angel popsicles, ue he he…”
In the end, the original plan for all of them to stay in the same place for a mere few hours had quickly went out the window when the first rays of dawn had illuminated the grey clouds above them, and the freezing temperature had eased up a little for her to continue on her way.
“Alrighty then. Time for me to take my leave, guys,” she announced as she finished packing up her stuff and starting up her motorbike before promptly waving goodbye to them.
“See you again, Miss Kara!” Anten energetically returned her farewell with a smile.
“Yeah, goodbye Kara,” Dauma spoke with more doubt in his tone, having not fully gotten over their seemingly pointless discussion just yet.
“… bye…” Yuu gave her usual soft response, nothing that anyone needed to take a special note of.
“Well, if there’s anything else, I’ll always be ar—"
“Hang on a fucking minute.”
However, a sudden and loud objection quickly interrupted her departing words. Blake, who had not said a single word to her ever since their violent first encounter, had finally opened his mouth and began to speak again.
“Ah,” she shot him back with a cheeky remark, unfazed by his rude interjection, “so you can talk after all. Nice to meet you, Mister Blake.”
“Mister Blake… what are you doing?” he could hear Anten ask out of worry, but what she thought did not matter right now.
What was important to him at that specific moment was to clarify a burning doubt that had been simmering in his mind and bugging him for the past few hours, and it was one that he knew he needed to clarify with her before it was too late.
“No matter how I look at it, something doesn’t add up. Why are you really here?” he swiftly began his probe, determined to find out what exactly it was about her that was unsettling him the most based on his gut instincts.
“… I’m sorry?” Kara laughed with an expression of pure confusion on her face, giving him the feeling that she did not appear to know what he was talking about at all, but he did not relent.
“If you can’t answer it,” he persisted as he began to close the distance between the both of them, only stopping when he was directly next to her bike, “then what exactly were you doing out here? Huh?”
With their faces just a couple of inches away, and with blue eyes staring into each other, Kara slowly leaned sideways on her bike such that he was not too close to her before calmly responding to his question.
“If you really must know, I was doing some reconnaissance work for the Foxes. There have been rumours of the Paradise soldiers gathering soldiers and strength to threaten those who oppose them, and we wanted to assess them as soon as possible. I was heading back when I bumped into you guys, and that’s why I was out here. Boy, I really didn’t expect a grilling, ue he he.”
“…”
“Are you okay, Mister Blake?” Anten asked him with much greater concern than before, “maybe you should—”
“Shut the fuck up, angel. I’m not done yet,” he angrily retorted, clearly appearing to have been unsatisfied with the answer.
“But… what more is there to say though? I don’t feel that there’s anything wrong with Miss Kara’s response.”
“No, no, no. You’re wrong,” he shook his head before fiercely pointing at the inventor, “it simply doesn’t make any sense to me. Where did she come from? Why is she travelling alone if it’s an important recon mission for her clan? And just how the fuck are we so lucky that we just happened to bump into her out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“… are you… are you seriously questioning luck right now?”
After a tense moment of silence, Kara suddenly smiled, appearing to have been amused instead of threatened by his accusations as she came back to him with another sarcastic reply. The others were also completely quiet, unwilling to back him up even if he was sure on his suspicions.
“You can’t fucking see it? Come on! I’m telling you, something is fucking off here!” he tried his best to appeal to them as best he could as he turned around to look at them, only to be met with blank or concerned looks.
“… I’m sorry, Mister Blake,” Anten muttered, “I think maybe you’re being a bit too paranoid. Please just take a deep breath and calm down.”
“But… but… fuck…”
Eventually, with no support at all from the others, he slowly slunk away from Kara, mumbling quiet curses to himself as he stomped off into the distance, too angry to even look back at them.
“Wow, seems like I really pushed his buttons,” Kara mused in response, “although I suppose his paranoia might also be helpful to defend against any incoming threats, so good job for him on that as well.”
“I’m really, really, really sorry this time, Miss Kara. I hope you were not offended by him,” Anten pleaded, unflinchingly throwing him under the bus in an attempt to make sure the two parties were still on good terms.
“Again, no harm done,” the inventor waved it off, “although, I think you might want to bring your friend back as soon as you can. Seems like he’s probably going to get lost in the darkness.”
“Right, thank you so much for understanding.”
“I’ll be going now then,” Kara continued as she revved up her motorbike engine, “see you guys in the future.”
“Goodbye again!”
With a powerful roar from the engine, and a thick cloud of sand kicked up by the weathered wheels, she was soon gone, bringing her unexpected surprise return to a close.
Once she had disappeared into the rising sun, Anten sighed before turning and running towards the direction that Blake had stormed off to.
“Come on, Mister Blake, she’s gone! You can come back now! Please?”
No matter what, it seemed that there was simply just not a complete day for the Apocalypse Cleaners without another argument that was started for no discernible reason or another troublesome misunderstanding that they needed to fix.