Season 1, Episode 5 - The Boxtops XLV - "Underground Army, Part 2"
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Considering he was in a subterranean lair deep below the city, the first thought that came to Shokahu’s mind as he hid within the small room could be considered odd.
He wondered how the Combat Simulation went. It would’ve ended a few hours ago, the students all on their way home now, if they weren’t already. Audrey proudly informed him they would be going out for ice cream after, so maybe they were still out, playing kick the can or whatever kids did nowadays.
He briefly pondered which team won, but the sudden noise of a buzzsaw brought him back to reality. The room they holed up in was a small stone structure built in what looked like an old concession stand. Planks of plywood had been added to the counter to build a table; a few rotting mattresses could be found in the back of the single-room structure.
The young officer put out the flashlight. The men didn’t want to draw any attention to themselves. And it’s not like they had any further use for it, considering the patchwork of floodlights that covered parts of the arena-turned-smuggling center.
The four huddled below a large opening in the front wall. Shokahu peered over the top, the officers following suit. Now that they had adjusted to the unexpected sight in front of them, they got to work on getting their bearings. The construction within the arena seemed rather slipshod, with random corridors and walkways creating a maze of movement. Unsurprising, considering they were built to connect ruins from two hundred years ago, one hundred-eighty years ago, and the new constructions.
All the sounds meant people down there, of course. The lead officer brought the binocular to his eyes while Shokahu used his own vision to observe the situation below them. The laborers who normally would be working in the dockyards could be found down here, using the buzzsaws, operating those cranes, carrying planks of wood and sheets of metal, welding it all together. At the far outskirts of the arena, more tunnels could be found, presumably leading into the rest of the city. Men moved to and from these areas, either carrying smuggled goods by cart or hand.
Guarding over these laborers stood men with rifles patrolling the catwalks. Shokahu frowned - the way these men patrolled, the way they carried their weapons with care - they had to have been trained. These weren’t your average, every-day New Englander revolutionaries armed with makeshift uniforms and weaponry - these guns were slick, their uniforms sharp, their facial expressions knowledgeable.
“Look at those rifles,” the lead officer whispered. “Those are Type 11s. Asian-made.”
“Considering how many guns New England manufactures, I’ve never heard of an Asian rifle smuggling ring,” Shokahu whispered back.
The lead officer shook his head. “The only groups using Type 11s around here are the mercenary groups brought in by the Pan-Asian qiyejituan to protect their investments here. Whether they’re selling excess weapons or excess soldiers, we certainly have an ambitious qiyejituan on our hands.”
Shokahu looked at the cranes. “The primary qiyejituan in New England are financial and construction companies, right?”
The lead officer understood Shokahu's line of thinking. “They arrived in droves after the Fort Edward Incident when Pulaski accepted Pan-Asian settlement of the Occupation of Naugatuck Valley.” He wiped his face. “Looks like things got more interesting.”
Shokahu glanced back over at the tunnel they arrived in. “Let’s look for some more information,” he suggested. “But we shouldn’t stray too far from how we got here.”
“Agreed,” the lead officer said. “Just finding this is enough evidence as it is.”
The men looked around for anything nearby that might provide any sort of help. The layer of the arena they currently snuck around on consisted of a long platform made of crumbling stone and rotting wood; apparently, the recent renovations hadn’t quite made it here yet. To their right, the platform kept going past the entrance they arrived in until it curved as stadiums do. At the center of that curve stood an imposing stone structure, a large balcony overlooking the entire arena. Shokahu supposed that was the command center; mercenaries armed with sniper rifles stood at their posts there.
Moving silently, the four men snuck forward to their left, where the platform continued in a straight line. Random catwalks jutted out of it, leading to other structures elsewhere in the arena or overhead. As the group’s Rddhi user, Shokahu concealed his own signature while scanning for others. A few Rddhi signatures on the other side of the arena suggested that local Rddhi users augmented the foreign mercenaries.
Shokahu told the men to halt behind a stone barricade.
“A massive Rddhi signature just entered the command center,” Shokahu whispered to them. Considering that they were moving away from the command center, the men continued onward, though the signature’s presence made Shokahu’s skin crawl. The Class system that organized Rddhi users based on strength only went to 5. That’s what the Rddhi schools had been telling the public, at least. There was another dimension to the power ranking system, a rarely found aspect, and this presence certainly included that other dimension.
Nevertheless, the men shifted forward. The floodlights didn’t reach up here; they relied on their own navigational skills. As they approached another stone structure, Shokahu brought the men to a halt once again. They hid behind the barricade.
Shokahu gestured with his head. Unseen to the men behind the barricade, but visible to his mind’s eye, was a mercenary patrolling up ahead of them. He walked slowly, scanning around for any signs of activities. The barricade was parallel to the direction of the platform; as long as they kept quiet, he would walk right past them.
The men slowed their breathing; Shokahu silenced himself to such a degree that he could hear his own, slow heartbeat. The mercenary arrived near the barricade, his boots making soft sounds on the concrete. He looked over in the direction of the barricade, but could only see shadows.
The men watched as the mercenary continued down the platform away from them. Once he was out of sight, they got to moving again, sneaking around the platform until they arrived outside another structure, this one looking slightly patched up by recent construction.
They arrived at the bottom of the structure’s wall. A small candle illuminated the area inside; they could hear the rustling of papers, indicating someone’s presence. Shokahu searched through the Rddhi, then held up a single finger to the lead officer.
Only one man inside. The officer nodded, then crept up to the door, which had been left slightly ajar. No mercenaries patrolled nearby. Nobody else was nearby, period. Shokahu waited with the other officers while their leader did his dirty work. The door looked newly-installed; he gingerly, quietly pulled it open, with not a single squeak or creak.
Shokahu could visualize the picture in his mind’s eye. The lead officer snuck inside, taking silent footsteps as he crept up behind the mercenary inside, who was too busy sitting at a chair, looking over documents and notices, to wrapped up in his own work to notice the intruder. Then the garrote wire slipped around his neck. His eyes bulged, his hands shook and clawed, but not a single sound came from inside the structure.
When the fight (and life) left the mercenary, Shokahu gestured at the other officers, and they all entered the structure. The lead officer deposited the body in the back of the single room - that’s all the structure was. Just a single room filled with little more than dozens of filing cabinets and a long desk.
Shokahu and the lead officer peered over the desk. Multiple documents were strewn across it; Shokahu shifted his hands through some of them and saw fine-printed Chinese characters written on them. When he looked closer, he saw those same papers consisted of schematics for buildings and walkways, no doubt used for the construction of the current arena lair.
As the men looked around, they found more of the same - just construction schematics with Chinese letters. Mercenaries with Asian weaponry and documents in Chinese writing provided all the more evidence for a qiyejituan’s involvement. As to which corporation in particular - the men tucked away some of the schematics, hoping a translation would help.
Looking for further leads, Shokahu knelt down next to where his superior killed the mercenary and saw that a slip of paper had fallen underneath his chair. He picked it up and frowned when he saw more Chinese letters.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
自我毁灭 it simply read. The men scratched their heads at that; Shokahu tucked it away.
Then he immediately motioned for the men to get down. They ducked behind the front wall and regrouped.
“Three more Rddhi signatures just entered,” Shokahu whispered, “Along with a force of soldiers. One of the signatures is almost as powerful as the one in the command center.” He kept sensing the signatures’ movements. “They’re actually all heading to the command center.”
“Too bad we can’t hear what they’re saying over there,” the lead officer said. “You got any Rddhi powers for super seeing or hearing?”
Shokahu actually did. He brought his hands together - he could still use the weakest of his Zodiac powers without giving himself away.
“Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog!”
Rddhi flowed into his ears (and, by the way, he only forcefully whispered that last part). He aimed an ear toward the command center and relayed the audio to his comrades.
He first heard the footsteps of the returning party heading toward the command center. One of the party members wasn’t stepping, though - the others dragged him or her along. A prisoner? Had someone else been snooping where they shouldn’t have?
As Shokahu listened closely, he realized that the returning user with the powerful signature was the one being dragged. Since the Academy or Navy hadn’t sent anyone else to investigate, he wondered what faction that user belonged to.
A door opened; the party brought the user inside. Rustling sounds indicated the person’s body being dumped on the floor, right near the most powerful Rddhi signature in the building.
“A tripwire to a grenade caught her one of the upper floors,” a mercenary explained. “She was trying to find a way into the arena.” He laughed. “When we found her, she said we were…what was your phrase? ‘Same revolutionary team?’ Restorationist and Dorrite.”
The captured girl was a Restorationist? Why would they investigate the Dorrites - well, that actually made sense. If the Restorationists and Dorrites competed for the same target demographic - the city’s lower class - with the same methods - smuggling and other criminal operations - then conflict between them seemed inevitable.
The strongest Rddhi user - the presumed commander of the whole operation - spoke with a calm voice. “You’d be wise to hold your tongue before giving away information like that. The fool only becomes the fool once she opens her mouth. Now, tell me your name.”
“Alcyone,” a young woman’s voice responded. Then she groaned. “Sensei always said I needed to improve my impulsiveness.”
“Impulsiveness is why you got caught,” the commander supposed.
“I wanted to get caught,” she corrected. “You’ve shown me exactly where your base is.”
“You’re blind-folded,” a mercenary pointed out.
“You think a blindfold can simply stop the vision of a Rddhi user?” Alcyone answered with a laugh.
That mercenary shut upon hearing that that. From the way his breathing quickened, he must have realized what he had done by bringing a girl to the center of their operations.
But the commander remained calm. “If you’ve found my base, then more power to you and your organization. I have no fear of people that so blindly follow an ideology.”
“Don’t you people blindly follow an ideology, too?” she questioned.
The commander let out an amused exhale. “They don’t blindly follow an ideology. They blindly follow me.”
The girl didn’t answer that. Shokahu heard footsteps; from the power emanating out of them, the leader must’ve moved around the room. He heard the tiniest hint of a rustle.
“This string of Rddhi, stretching from your fingertips,” he said, presumably holding the string in hand. “Is this your power?”
“You bet!” Alcyone exclaimed, then Shokahu heard a tugging noise.
Several grenades went off near the command center; the officers didn’t need Shokahu’s help to hear or see that. The fireball looked like it came out of the roof from where the party entered the arena; this Alcyone of the Restorationists must’ve placed explosives down before being caught, and used that Rddhi line to pull the pins.
An alarm blared; mercenaries rushed over to the sight of the explosion.
“Now’s our chance!” the lead officer exclaimed, rallying the men. The two other officers scooped a handful of random documents and stuffed them into their uniforms before following their superior out the door. Shokahu did the same, stepping out behind them, but a sudden power activation within the command center sent a metaphysical shockwave around the arena. The officers - and many mercenaries and laborers - stumbled to their knees; Shokahu remained standing but wiped his face.
The command center had a few windows; all of them were now covered in a black void. The presence radiating from inside the void felt overwhelming, as if urging the entire population of the arena to fall asleep. To dream.
No mistaking it. The girl had used the Thousand Arms and Eyes within the command center.
“I’ve never felt Rddhi like this,” the lead officer wheezed out as he struggled back to his feet. “What the hell is it?”
“Classified,” Shokahu mumbled, nearly in shock from its power. Perhaps that commander should’ve feared Alcyone; she would have total power over everything, not in terms of merely people, but over any sort of dimension within the Thousand Eyes - width, length, volume, time, sound, life. The commander was as good as dead if she wished it.
Shokahu made a mental note that this arena would soon likely fall to the Restorationists if the entire command structure of the Dorrites had been wiped out in one fell swoop-
An explosion blew Alcyone and the dozens of guards with her out of the command center. Rubble fell the long distance to the arena floor, along with all of the guards' corpses. Their faces depicted looks of pure shock, horror, and agony.
Alcyone herself gripped a Rddhi-charged fishing rod in her hand. She swung it toward the ceiling, the hook catching a pipe; she swung herself to the top of a building, landing among heat ducts in a heap. From someone who just took out the entire command structure of a rival organization, she looked concerned, wiping blood off the corner of her mouth.
The commander stood at the edge of the wall where the explosion blew through. The metaphysical shockwave blew out a nearby flood light, keeping the commander in the shadows. From the vague outline of his figure, Shokahu knew this man carried himself calmly and confidently - he must’ve broken through Alcyone’s pocket dimension, though unfortunately not before she killed all his men. But if he could do something like that…then his Thousand Arms and Eyes must’ve been even stronger than hers. And judging from the way Rddhi sparked from his boots and concrete extended out beneath his feet, giving him a bridge toward Alcyone, he must’ve been an Earth user. Perhaps the Earth user from yesterday.
Shokahu involuntarily let out a sigh of relief that the commander hadn’t used the Thousand on him back then. If he did, Shokahu most likely would not be standing here now.
Since the fight moved, neither of them would have access to that power anymore. Alcyone seemed to recognize the writing on the wall, since she swung her rod towards a tall chimney, the top connecting with the ceiling. The hook and line sliced right through the chimney; a crowd of rubble and fast-moving smoke covered her, giving her room to escape.
Escape. That’s why the lead officer tugged on Shokahu’s arm. They needed to get out of here. The four men rushed off, with most of the mercenaries firing in Alcyone’s direction. With a quick shot from his pistol through the dome, the lead officer took down the mercenary patrolling up ahead of them from before. That earned the attention of a few other mercenaries, who opened up with Type 11s in their direction. The bullets whizzed behind the four as they ascended up the old subway staircase.
When the men made it to the top of the staircase, the two other officers and Shokahu remained on guard as the lead officer prepared some explosives. They heard the approaching sounds of footsteps and shouting getting closer and closer; the lead officer finished his work just in time, detonating the explosives right as the mercenaries arrived at the bottom of the stairs.
Even though they blocked the path, the four men wasted no time as they retraced their steps, surging up the steps of the other subway station. “Let me lead the way,” Shokahu ordered, taking point, and for good reason.
Anticipating trouble, he clapped his hands, bringing up the Ox right as they arrived at the top of the staircase, back in the original building. Several Fore River Military Police officers awaited their arrival; however, it seemed like they had been waiting for a while, since they were lounging around right when the men burst out of the ruins into the building.
Before they could draw their weapons, Shokahu knocked over several of them with the Ox. The officers took care of the remaining MPs using hand-to-hand combat. Killing MPs would cause a diplomatic and moral headache - giving them a good thrashing, not so much.
With the MPs disposed of, Shokahu brought up the Ox again as they led the way out of the building. The MPs inside must’ve been every MP assigned to the building, since the coast was clear. The men sprinted down the winding avenues, earning a few odd stares from civilians who very much didn’t like the presence of uniformed men in their district.
The men ran and ran and ran until they arrived in a wider street, finding an unmarked van belonging to Naval Intelligence awaiting them. The lead officer jumped into the passenger seat while Shokahu and the young officer slid into the back; the other officer stepped on it and the van peeled off.
The men calmed themselves as the adrenaline wore off. They all caught their breath as the officer drove the van down a long street, then merged onto the highway that would take them out of Fore River. Only then did they truly relax - relax would still be a strong word, though.
The lead officer wiped his face. “Did we really answer any of our questions down there?”
Shokahu reflected on what they found. A likely Fore River Military Police-Dorrite alliance dedicated to smuggling, especially drugs, at the expense of their traditional allies - the mob - and their new enemies - the Restorationists. The involvement of a qiyejituan, with untranslated documents and papers to boot. An entire underground base of operations hidden below Fore River with likely connections to the rest of the city. One seriously powerful commander.
“We only found more questions,” Shokahu supposed as the van headed down the highway.