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6.3 - Legacy Part 1
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The face of a young boy swelled in her vision, their bulbous eyes glowing a bright green shade. The bloodless face still held an expression of shocked disbelieve, as though eternally surprised - Surprised to be dead.
"No, no, I don't-- Don't make me..." Said the voice. It wasn't that lonely head's voice, that severed face that floated endlessly through the sky, never quite landing next to its stricken body. No, the voice came from that haziest of places we all know, a place inside, a part of us that burns and cries and dies with age, although we may never know it - A voice with no true tone or pitch, yet more familiar to us all than any other.
"Please don't."
The face seemed to come closer, the girl raised her hands, desperate to scramble back, to move away from it. Her vision suddenly jeered back from the head, a wave of relief overcoming her - Until she saw it. The head wasn't lonely anymore; a body now lay beneath it. An older body than befitted that young pale face slouched against the blackness that was so hard to fix your eyes on. The blackness that seemed to urge you back, to look at the body, a body missing one leg. The centre of the body made the head look almost whole. It dripped with dark, sticky fluid over the top of a sickly hand, desperately clutching to it. The girl tried to move further away, to tear her eyes away from what she knew was next. The head moved or maybe spasmed, with an awful creaking of bones and depleted, withered skin.
'No smell, there's no smell, why can't I smell that, th-that thing in the air...'
It looked her straight in the eyes. It controlled her gaze, refused to let her break from it. A hand rose slowly, tediously up from the body beside the overlapping layers of black pus pooling out of its midriff. The hand was an older man's, more covered in singed flesh and bone than that of its blackened left-over skin. It pointed slowly, from her eyes down to its stomach, if it could still be called one.
She didn't want to follow that gaze; she wanted nothing more than to do anything but follow that gaze - But follow it the little one did. Above the body, the miss-matched head's jaw twitched into something between a smile and a scowl - Until finally, the mouth simply fell away - Dropping from what had maybe once been the face of a young man, to the ground with a quaint splash that seemed to echo endlessly.
'I know him… Of course, how could it not be him...'
The girl wanted to scream, but her voice was gone now, a new voice emitting, vomiting from the now jawless face. The black, bloodied hole left by the jaw screamed the words at her, "What's my name?! Why, why won't you tell me my name. What's your name?”
It was a pleading voice in a way; once you got past the terrible screeching that seemed to come with it, the accent was non-existent, instead replaced by a TV-static sound, winding its way into her ears, into her being - But beneath it all was clearly a plea for answers.
"Are you the Houkai? Then what was I? Who am I?"
The hand holding its stomach fell away with a start, the head tilted forward before rolling straight off its perch atop those decrepit shoulders and down to the ground - Towards the helpless, frozen girl. A dark wave of black gore poured from what now revealed to be the slashed and sliced open remains of the body's stomach, lapping and flowing around the once more severed head, pushing it closer and closer and closer and----
The eyes seemed to follow the girl as it neared ever further, pushed on by an arc of mucus blood, its jawless stare ever fixed on her, always asking those same questions, "Are you the Hokuai?"
Hoki opened her eyes.
She slowly, carefully pushed herself up from her bed, taking in her whole room;
"I'm one minute late," she scowled, glaring at the time.
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It didn't matter whether it had been at private schools, the insistence of personal tutors, her father, or any of his retainers - Hoki had always been implored to wake up daily at six in the morning. And indeed, she had done so, to the point that it had been so many years now since she had needed the aid of an alarm clock that she'd forgotten what they sounded like.
The device in question was her wrist handheld - The placid screen lying upon her bedside table flashed insistently with the sound of some bird she didn't quite recognise, tweeting repeatedly. It occurred to her she had probably never heard this particular tone before, having only received the new handheld model recently - She had always been awake and dismissed the alarm before it had ever had the chance to ring - Now, the sound struck her as markedly irritating.
Getting up a minute late might not have been too problematic for most, but Hoki found herself solidly in a bad mood. She made her way around the room, following her usual morning routine with a slight cloud to her actions. She couldn't help but feel groggy, sick even; "This is ridiculous. I slept just fine. A minute more than usual, in fact," she said to her reflection in the wardrobe mirror, as though it had suggested otherwise. With some reluctance, Hoki exited the room and began a course for the hangar.
It had been a few days since the 'big meeting'. In the intervening time, things had, by all rights, gone relatively smoothly. Despite her initial confrontation with Kolme, Scarlet refrained from attempting to cause any more trouble, even continuing to tutor Una on the daily. This wasn't to suggest she had actually tried to smooth things over with Hoki herself; instead, the two had returned to simply ignoring one another.
'Then again, it's not like I've tried to put amends to the situation either...'
There had been more meetings, detailed discussions about the mission, weapon tests and the like, but all told, time had flown by from Hoki's perspective. It was hard to imagine Una had already been aboard the ship for nearly twenty days now (yet equally hard to imagine her not being around) or that the date of the 'big day', as Kolme and Nate phrased it, was already upon them.
The Tristan-Flotilla had moved a fair distance, now just as planned, sitting outside the scanner range of the secretly aligned 'Commercial-Mobile-Repair-Vessel', CMRV - 001 - Clover. Just last night, Lt.Tomo and 2nd Lt.Erfu had been dispatched in the forward party to go and hide aboard the Clover in their own non-custom Neos as a precaution for if the main plan failed - Sleeper bodyguards of a sort.
As Hoki entered the hangar bay, walking along one of the raised gang-ways overlooking the bustling area below, she noticed signs of change. The main hangar was a space that monstered any other aboard the ship; across from where she stood were the massive doors, stretching the length and height of the warship. Currently sealed shut, their metres-wide segments made for impressive scenery.
Even more noteworthy was the space directly below her; the on-board foundry took up a third of the hangar's total area. The massive piece of floor plan was as ever lined with machines and engineers, welding, hammering and programming all sorts of ship and mecha-based equipment. The foundry was surprisingly alive for the time of day, and Hoki could not determine if those down there had been working some sort of all-nighter or simply started early to do final checks, considering the day in it. Of the most note to her was the two mechs which stood outside the foundry, facing the shuttered doorways nearer the centre of the hangar. While a few blue-clothed individuals still buzzed around these machines, the final checks were, for the most part, complete.
The first was a slightly discoloured Neo-Vijaik, with its regular armour and humanoid shape coloured in cyan greens and light blues, with a large muted backpack of sorts on its rear and a unique rectangular visor in place of the regular flat face: AF-NV-002.
The other was such a departure from a regular 'Neo' that it might have been mistaken for a completely different model. Over the torso region was large, bulky black-armour plating, rounded shoulders of a similar make to either side matched this rotund core. To top it off, a large triangular-shaped head with a circular band to its lower section that wrapped around the hole head unit - Finishing this bizarre design was the dark red and emerald shades of its colour scheme - The AF-NV-003.
It was thinking about the duo of disparate machines that brought Hoki's mind back to Scarlet. '002' and '003' - The first person she had recruited on Commander Nate's behalf - A living legend, or so she had thought. Hoki sighed with her arms leaning against the railing in front of her; 'The Scarlet Scourge, huh? Pirate, pioneer pilot, veteran of two world-ending wars and absolute bi--'
"Lady Hoki, that you miss?" The calling of a familiar voice broke Hoki from her line of thought, and she found her face flushed at the juvenility of where she had left her mind drift towards. The voice could only belong to one person, that bouncy, slightly 'exotic' voice of a younger woman than the one that owned it - Yet with the edge of someone who was hoarse from years of smoking (or from shouting orders at hapless subordinates).
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Hoki did her best to recompose her expression & posture as she leaned fully over the railing to get a proper look at who she knew would be there. 'Chief Mechanic and Head of Fluchtig's Development Project' - Tsole Pele - Or as Hoki and most others simply knew her, 'Chief Pel'. She was the sort of woman who left an impression whether you liked it or not, heavy set with muscle almost exclusively from years of graft, a tanned complexion with shaggy black hair and plain rounded glasses atop her nose that had clearly seen some wear. A smile from eye to eye permeated her face, and she wore a pair of navy blue overalls with a peaked hat of much the same make as her compatriots.
Chief Pel had something of a storied history; it was one of those tales Hoki had been told at tedium when she had been younger. The woman was supposedly quite famous among academic circles back in her homeland. Apparently, the youngest person ever to be made a doctorate in physics and weapons technology back in some country on the continent of Western Bhaile. Despite this high standing and job offers of all kinds, Pele had insisted on joining the military like her younger brothers when The First War had broken out. Running away to Hoki's homeland in the East, she had joined up under an alias and became a regular mechanic in the army.
As fate would have it, during the invasion of Bhaile by the Abhailen-Revolutionary-Forces, the chief would end up in the company of Hoki's father, who was known at the time as 'Captain Bachika'. The famous hero of the Eastern Theatre, the man who'd commanded a tank battalion to succeed against the overwhelming power of the enemy Vijaiks and later would use the first 'Ground-Type Casnels' to win back the lost territories of Eastern Bhaile. He was arguably only second in Bhaile-piloting-stature to the person who had been pilot of the legendary 'First Casnel' in the war's final months.
The Hokuai, who now sat under house arrest alongside most of those who had served with him in the war - All for their combined role in the formation of IAFS.
‘Former Hokuai, that is sort of my title now, technically...'
It had taken some time to convince Chief Pel not to keep calling her by the word, she'd eventually settled for just 'Lady Hoki' which still seemed excessive to Hoki but better than not. Pel's unit in The First War had been obliterated, only for its handful of survivors to be rescued by Captain Bachika's group. Her father and his friends had told the story many times of the arduous trip to return to friendly lines, of how frequently Pele had worked through the night under enemy fire to keep the armoured divisions moving.
Suffice to say that after this dramatic introduction, the chief had become Bachika's head mechanic until the war's end, and while after she had finally returned home to a university position - Pele had never been absent for long - Frequently rooming at Hoki's home every few months and working on many of her father's developmental projects during the 'peace-years'. And so she had volunteered to join IAFS. As luck would have it she was one of the only ones not to get arrested. So, for all Hoki wanted to avoid being around those who knew her 'history', there had clearly been no better option for the Fluchtig's customisation project-lead when Nate had asked, than for it to be Chief Pel.
That didn't mean, however, that she appreciated the unwitting reminder of her 'title'.
"Hello there, Chief. How are you this morning?" Hoki shouted back as politely as one can shout.
"I'm quite alright miss, that I am. Big day today, of course. And I suppose you'll be here for the rites you will? Well, don't mind me, Lady Hoki, you work away and best of luck. No doubt you won't need it," the woman seemed to bounce and almost jump around as she spoke, her bellowing, light-hearted voice carrying impressively, (if embarrassingly) throughout the entire room. Her slightly awkward use of the language still apparent even after the many years since the Great Homogenisation has phased out her homeland's native dialect.
Before Hoki could reply, the chief was already turning on her heels and shouting a slew of instructions towards some unknowing engineer in the background, who, out of surprise, seemed to almost fall from his place atop some scaffold.
Hoki sighed and began to step away from the platform's edge, Pel disappearing from view with a curt bow (that Hoki recognised as being from back home) as quickly as she had arrived.
'Lady Hoki.' It sounded so unnatural from the woman she had first met when only a young teenager, from someone who had scolded her and even her father when the situation had called for it. From someone she saw as a gran-aunt rather than some 'royal retainer'.
And then there had been mention of the ominous 'Rites'. In reality, they were a fairly mundane affair. Traditionally speaking, senior 'warriors' would go to inspect the blacksmiths and stables before the day of a battle. Hoki's father had apparently kept up this tradition by always personally overseeing any final adjustments made to machines within his command on the morning of any known upcoming battles. Along with the bow and the use of the word 'lady', it was another of the oddities Chief Pel had picked up during her tenure in the East and seeing these things mentioned and displayed now did nothing to improve Hoki's mood.
She had most certainly not come down to inspect anything; rather she had simply been wondering about the ship; 'No, maybe that's not quite right. Maybe I did want to be like ‘him’, just a little.'
There wasn't much remaining for her to see. In the confines of the foundry was a 'Field Camp', the generic name of the air-tight containers pilots used when waiting for an enemy outside of their mother-ship. After all, a Vijaik had only limited facilities, some food and basic amenities. Sure, one could sleep in them, but ultimately, it was preferable to have a field camp.
The thing in question was an ugly, bare-bones contraption. A lifeless blue-grey rectangle with a clasp mechanism to the top that allowed its safe and air-tight attachment to Vijaik cockpits, along with various pipes and tanks containing supplies.
In essence, it had the look of a tram car, with the rails on its topside. Currently, it was being moved from the foundry to be out alongside the two Vijaiks by the old MB-type that the foundry kept. The older Vijaik had an odd degree of personality about it with all its experimental modifications, making it both look like some oversized robot and causing it to be entirely useless for combat.
Seeing it clomp its way through the hangar, with the awkwardly shaped burden of the field camp repeatedly colliding against the jutted-out cockpit, made Hoki smile for a moment - However, as she rounded a new doorway back into another drab corridor, her face turned to a frown. Thinking about the quant MBT had only reminded her even more of the nostalgic memories of her father and his retainers.
She didn't know what childhood was like for other children, only what it had been like for her, and she by no means felt resentful about that, but she knew on some level it hadn't been 'normal'. As a girl, she had been tutored to a level that'd make most royalty blush, fluent in five separate languages, most of which weren't even used anywhere anymore, deeply studied in history & politics and from a more practical standpoint trained in the family arts: Foremost of all was archery, the combat form her family had been bestowed its title for centuries ago - But additionally in hand-to-hand combat and even swordplay.
It had all seemed very inconsequential as a child. The Bachika clan had no actual noble blood so to speak, and there had been no true wars for them to 'prove themselves in' for years. She had always known she would enlist as a soldier someday, but no one had seen the so-called 'First War' coming, certainly not the then twelve-year-old Hoki. But like all things, the war had ended, and so began those heady days of peace.
As she continued through the ship, with a course set towards the familiar canteen for a light breakfast, she wondered even further into the hazy memories of the past. She had been fifteen when the war ended, old enough to think hanging out with a load of old soldiers was 'cool' and still naïve enough not to see the intense pain behind their eyes - To really understand why a whole room of laughing people could suddenly fall quiet when one mentioned the wrong, seemingly arbitrary day of the year - She had heard every story imaginable in her father's club room; a space in the grand house's basement, with its own bar, tables, monitors and the like. A place that had always been packed to the rafters with second-hand smoke. 'Mother always used to say, 'If you lot keep smoking so much, it'll come out through the floorboards!'.’
That was something else Hoki knew she always did - Much like getting up with clockwork accuracy or striving to be treated as a 'normal woman' rather than her father's daughter - She knew very well that whenever she was worried or concerned over something, her mind would near automatically try to change the topic to something lighter or more nostalgic.
'...For Sun's sake, what am I thinking about at a time like this? I need to focus, it--'
"--Was just a dream!" Hoki finished aloud, slamming down a tray of food she had absentmindedly acquired, onto her familiar back corner table of the canteen.
A whelp of surprise from her left immediately caught Hoki's attention. Looking over, she saw the pale-mousy face of Una O' Conchabhair, the so-called Rookie - Her hands raised in alarm at Hoki's sudden verbal outburst.
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