The next update is, well, not quite done. Christmas things. But since I've been working on another interlude for a while, I decided I could post this now; I hope it makes up for some of the delay.
Some of you will know exactly what is going on here. For everyone else, it's worth noting that Nocturne and Devil Survivors 2 semi-canonically takes place in the same timeline, at the same time, but only one at a time.
ooOOoo
As the shaking subsided, Kanno Fumi let go of the console in front of her and sagged to the floor. The ground still rumbled beneath her, but she barely felt it through the intense throbbing that pulsed in her head. She felt dizzy; all she wanted to do was lie down. Her head hurt. It hurt so much. The final wave of the earthquake had slammed her against the metal desk, and her whole right side ached and throbbed painfully, while the ringing in her ears made everything seem impossibly distant and slow. The room was silent save for occasional coughing from somewhere near where she had been sitting when the attack hit. Her chest felt tight, almost suffocatingly so.
She touched a hand to her forehead. It came away wet and sticky, her skin covered in blood from her wound, though thankfully she'd felt no bone fragments or worse. Head wounds always bled like crazy, and there could be a concussion. The lack of bone fragments didn't mean the wound wasn't bad; this one felt pretty bad indeed. She needed to bandage it ASAP. She needed–
The ringing in her head became irrelevant, as it occured to her that she'd yet to check on Hotsuin. Where was everyone else anyway? What had happened after the Demiurge had attacked them? The dragon seal had clearly worked, so–
A burst of adrenaline helped her lever herself to her feet. The room swam into focus. She was underground, beneath JPs, in the core of the dragon seal.
The ceiling above the thaumaturgical focus had caved inwards, bringing multi-ton components crashing down on the workbench behind her. The air stank faintly of something burning—could the headquarters be on fire? No, someone would be fighting it by now. The seal was– She glanced at one of her monitors, and that slight movement made her head feel like someone was twisting an auger into it from above.
A small crack marred the monitor, which showed nothing but static at first. Fumi frowned at it for several moments, trying to discern anything useful in the pattern, but then another cough reached through the ringing in her ears.
Fumi turned just in time to catch Airi Ban pushing herself up into a seated position.
The young girl, although she shouldn't have been here at all, seemed more dazed than injured. Perhaps she'd gotten lucky, or perhaps the summoning program she'd been testing had helped her escape harm, somehow. The concrete slab lying broken at her side should certainly have killed her, had it hit, which it plainly had. She only looked a little unsteady.
"Airi!" Fumi called over the noise of settling masonry. "You're all right?"
The girl—provisional JPs member, whatever—gave a shaky nod and managed a thin smile. Her gaze wandered aimlessly for a few seconds, then froze on something that made her stiffen. "Fumi, there's–"
"Not now."
It had to wait. The monitor had chosen that moment to flicker back to life, and Fumi got her first look at the state of the dragon seal. It was terrible news. The core of the seal was built into the sub-basements of the Diet, and should have at least kept everyone in the building safe, but Fumi had needed to run it at ruinous overload to have any chance at all of surviving the Demiurge's assault, even for the few minutes necessary. Now the projection machinery was largely ruined, its intricate internal structure melted away and exposed. The majority did not respond.
She flicked through camera feeds. A large portion of the Diet's main floor and a lot of the walls were collapsed or otherwise badly damaged, all her equipment running on battery backups and wireless links, but worse than that was the thaumaturgical state of the seal. Everything outside its physical extent had been shattered, the energy dissipating uselessly into the environment. Except for the very core itself—the room they were in—it was largely failing at its job of maintaining normal physics.
Kagutsuchi's brute-force assault on reality had left them trapped, the laws of nature outside her bunker in a thoroughly unstable and potentially explosive new equilibrium. Worse, for anyone within kilometers of them, they would be experiencing an immediate, massive influx of energy, likely killing everyone in Tokyo instantly in the same way the attack had crushed them and their machinery.
But if it had managed to destroy everything beyond those physical components of the sealing circle, what had stopped the demiurge before it finished breaking everything to smithereens, thus ending everything and everyone in sight? That would, at least, have given Tokyo a chance at survival. Had it truly grown that weak? Or was she missing something?
Her memories didn't say. Fumi had an unclear memory of Nyarlathotep flooding the dragon seal with its own corrosive power; hardly a credible recollection. If that did happen, it would scarcely have chosen to assist her. If it had chosen to do so–
Well. It would not have done so.
She took her hands off the keyboard. She couldn't fix the damned thing now, and the whole idea was a bust. She didn't want to die, but neither could she imagine there was much hope of avoiding that. If she so much as stepped outside this room, she'd disintegrate into exotic radiation, which made no sense by the way. In the middle of Japan? Stored energy was sustaining the seal for now, but that'd run wild and fail as soon as her laptop battery did. Bloody hell, Hotsuin was probably–
"Kanno-san?"
Her eyes snapped up to Airi. The teenager's voice was trembling and ragged, her eyes wide. A coughing fit seized the poor girl, who bent over, hacking hard enough to send droplets of spit flying, sputtering on the floor. The dust in the air must be choking her. She had the look about her of someone trying desperately not to cry, and succeeding miserably.
If there was nothing left for her to do, then she might as well comfort the child in front of her.
Fumi made herself smile reassuringly. She went and knelt beside the distraught girl, placing a hand on her shoulder. Airi reacted instantly, burying her face in Fumi's sleeve and clinging like a limpet. Her tears were hot and painful.
"It'll be alright," Fumi told her firmly, squeezing her hand gently to try to encourage her. "Everything will work out fine, I promise."
Then, she saw what had made the girl act up like this. Hotsuin's corpse lay in the center of the seal, half in shadow. His face had taken a severe battering from the collapsing ceiling, making it difficult to see his expression clearly, but she thought it would be something like satisfaction. He thought he'd succeeded, at least at helping his only friend survive.
Fumi swallowed, trying to make sense of a world that had suddenly lost all coherent meaning, and her hand on Airi's shoulder started trembling. She felt tears pricking at her eyes. This wasn't– he couldn't–
"Hotsuin," she managed after several more convulsive attempts to swallow down grief, "he was so..."
So coldly competent, so determined to use that ruthlessness to get what he wanted, but what he wanted was a better world. So driven, so willing to accept sacrifice in order to reach the next step forward. He hadn't hesitated for a second when it was his own.
A tremor ran through her body, but the feel of Airi still clinging to her, her shoulders shaking violently, drove all other thoughts out of her head. There was one more important matter to attend to, before Fumi could let herself dissolve. She helped Airi to her feet. The girl was unsteady, obviously suffering some sort of shock. She swayed, nearly falling. Fumi caught her by her upper arms.
"You okay?" Fumi asked in concern. Airi managed a faint nod, eyes widening.
"You're bleeding!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, but not too badly." She thought about it, then decided she should ask Airi to bandage the wound regardless. It would keep them occupied, and it wouldn't do to upset the girl more than she already had. "I've got a first aid kit. Do you know how to use them?"
The teen looked confused, still dazed and unable to cope at this point, but the prospect of doing anything was apparently far better than the idea of standing there and doing absolutely nothing. Fumi led the way towards the storage locker that held their first aid supplies, dodging fallen concrete blocks, while Airi looked around, staring wide-eyed at the damage. They reached the locker without mishap, but Fumi frowned when she tried to open it with shaking hands, and her gaze flicked briefly back to the dead youth on the floor. She was reminded of the first time they met; the same expression of steely resolve and cold anger on his face as the end drew near. He'd saved her life then.
And... now once again?
Fumi shook off those dark thoughts. What would he have said, or done differently if things had been reversed, with her lying dead in front of him? Would he have given up this easily? No, Hotsuin would have fought to his last breath to save whatever person had come within his grasp. That was the sort of person he'd been.
"Here," she said, pulling the first aid kit out of the closet. "I'll show you what to do."
It didn't occur to her until later to wonder at Airi's presence, and by then there was no reason to dig. Whatever had driven her to sneak down into the core room, it had left no traces on Airi herself. She was simply there, with her, taking charge of bandaging the young scientist's injuries, which turned out to be extensive but manageable. She didn't know if the girl even realized how improbable her presence was.
***
It was days later, as Fumi was hip-deep in an electrical cabinet jury-rigging another lightning mana converter, that the next two members of their little group appeared.
Fumi barely glanced up, absorbed by her task, as a few rocks came tumbling down the collapsed elevator shaft. The sounds made the hair stand up along her spine, but the whole Diet seemed poised to fall apart and it wasn't the first rock or the second she'd heard plummet from above. It hardly bothered the two of them, nor did they stop working.
A few minutes later though, there was a plaintive, high-pitched "Ow!" from the elevator shaft, followed by an indignant "That was my favorite shirt!"
Fumi and Airi fell silent immediately. They froze, listening to the sound of footsteps approaching the basement door, accompanied at some speed by rapid, heavy knocking, that sounded as though the door were being banged upon hard enough to break the metal frame.
Then silence returned.
It was a curious thing, that noise. No-one else should be alive in the entire city. Let alone here, climbing through an absolute death zone on top of a malfunctioning thaumaturgical apparatus buried deep underground. Fumi slowly got to her feet, stretching cramped muscles and wiping her face with trembling fingers, then turned back towards the armored door.
It swung inwards, banging heavily against the wall. Two girls—two children, younger even than Airi—crowded inside, smeared in dust, their clothes torn and seeming close to falling apart. They immediately sank to the ground in a huddle, staring at Fumi and Airi like deer trapped beneath human eyes for the first time in centuries. Then one of the girls started to cry, softly but uncontrollably, and the other hugged her friend tight, burying her face between dusty ginger curls and crying too.
Fumi could scarcely believe it herself. She was so stunned, the words just wouldn't seem to flow out, her jaw hanging stupidly a moment longer.
The older of the two girls on the floor, a thin creature who might have stood about Airi's size had she been standing up straight, finally recovered enough to look up at Fumi and smile shyly.
"Told you I felt someone down here, Yaya!" she blurted. "I'm Lulu de Morcerf Yamamoto," she continued in reply to Fumi's quizzical stare, gesturing at the other girl, "and this is my– friend, Yuiki Yaya. We found a ladder, we were trying to get down." Her tone was urgent and breathless, but her eyes glittered at Fumi. "The whole place tried to fall on our heads! Did you know it's all crumbling away above you?"
She spoke like an idiot, with none of the caution due one about to walk uninvited into an underground facility run by the military, where the very floor could collapse under her foot. As Fumi looked from face to disheveled, filthy face of this odd couple, she saw the utter shock and joy that was written clearly on both of them. Fumi couldn't begin to process it, but then Airi stepped forward.
Her hand shook when she extended it towards the children in confusion. "How... did...?" she stammered.
The smaller of the girls, Yaya, shook with silent giggles of pure glee.
"Lulu could feel you down here!" she declared. She got up and hugged Airi around the middle, lifting her off her feet, then let her down and just clung onto the girl for support. "It helped that there's... no-one else up there. At all." The way she said it, there were faint echoes of exhaustion in her tone. "I missed... feeling people."
"I'm not surprised," Fumi said.
The three girls turned to her then, Airi struggling free from Yaya's tight grip in order to take a step closer. It was obvious that she wanted to ask something, but didn't have the words for it.
"I think you know, Airi," she said at last. "If we were getting rescued, it would've already happened. I told you the outside of this sub-basement was lethal." She drew a breath, looking at the children who'd inexplicably made their way through an absolute death zone. "I was expecting we'd be stuck here. What does it look like up there? Yuiki-san? Yamamoto-san?"
The two children exchanged glances. Yaya pulled a jeweled necklace over her head, handing it to Lulu, who quickly hid it away before nodding solemnly at her.
"Not good, no." The little girl looked a smidgen less cheerful now, her lower lip trembling. "The building's in ruins, but at least it's a building. We were camping on top before Lulu noticed you down here."
"—The rest of Tokyo?" Fumi interrupted her, trying to understand what had driven them there. "Is it still there? How far's the edge of the suppression zone?"
Lulu looked doubtful about this question, but Yaya took charge again. It occurred to Fumi later that she might have tried to either way. She simply had too many thoughts, all crowding to get past her lips at once, and at no time after she got to know her had Yuiki Yaya ever kept them on the inside. Lulu, at least, knew how to pretend.
"There's nothing up there but desert. And ruins."
That seemed... less plausible. Fumi started thinking, but Yaya went on. Her voice was hoarse and thin with exhaustion, yet nevertheless excited to be talking to, well, anyone. She was starting to lose it now, though, her eyes dull, a dark bruise beneath the smears of grime across her cheek.
"Lots of ruins," she mumbled in response to Fumi's questioning stare. "There's nothin'... the sun's wrong. Everything's wrong! And you're the first people we've seen. Or heard," her voice caught a little on the second word. "In a week. Except for monsters. I was talking to Lulu's mom when it happened, since she was leaving. One second, the world tried to crush us to death. Then– nothin'. We were standing in a crater."
Airi suddenly reached out and put her small, dirty hand into Fumi's own, squeezing it hard.
Fumi felt almost relieved. How perverse was that? But this didn't– this felt far too large-scale to be caused by her own experiments. Was the world truly coming to an end then, like in the less plausible prophecies? She could scarcely begin to think it through. It hardly even mattered, did it? All that mattered now was these strange, disorienting kids, who might have a clearer understanding than anyone about just what was going on.
Kids that were crumbling in front of her eyes. That's right. She thought a bit more calmly. Airi, with her usual lack of sense, was one thing, but those two were obviously exhausted beyond all measure. Yaya, Lulu, however they'd gotten here, they looked like they still belonged in grade school. Yaya couldn't be much more than ten years old. If there really was some apocalyptic cataclysm unfolding, Fumi had no doubt that they needed help, badly, or they wouldn't have taken the risk of climbing down somewhere like this. Then, how– oh.
"Do you need food?" she asked. "Or water? We have–" A near infinite amount, now. "We can share. You must be hungry." The other members of JPs would no longer be needing any, but the children looked like half-dead, famished wolves, barely hanging on to consciousness by the strength of sheer stubborn will alone. She should have mentioned it immediately.
"Water..." Yaya nodded faintly, glancing around the dusty basement and its cracked walls, "and food?" She swallowed thickly, blinking as though fighting back tears. "Some clothes, too, if you have them? Please."
Fumi nodded.
***
It wasn't quite a feast, but there were MREs enough for four people, for a week or two. Plenty of time for the two of them to recover their health, for Airi to tear some JP's uniforms apart to make a couple of new outfits for the kids, and for Fumi, now armed with the knowledge that they weren't necessarily going to die, to make the start of a plan.
There was food for hundreds more in the rest of the building, now that they could access it. Enough for months, with four of them.
But that first day they all sat huddled together in a sort of silent vigil. All of them, even Fumi, had been starved of human contact, but Yaya seemed unable to stop hugging each and every one of them in turn, weeping quietly and burying her face in the others' hair.
The three children fell asleep in a loose circle, curled up close, and Fumi found herself watching them sleep.
She'd never thought of herself as good with children. Her only real girlfriend, Makoto, hadn't wanted children. Even the ones in her family were all grown and gone by the time she came along. She knew she'd always felt an aversion to their helpless dependence. Yet this trio...
As a scientist, she knew it was the lack of human contact speaking. As a person, she found herself oddly charmed. These children might very well be doomed to die. There was no way she could change that without risking their lives. But that night, sitting together inside their cramped, stuffy space at the heart of JPs, a room built within the guts of a now broken machine that she'd intended to prevent this exact scenario...
She didn't want to let them die. She really didn't.
It wasn't clear to Fumi how, exactly, she would succeed in keeping them alive. Even staying here in the protected core itself was impossible. The whole structure could easily fall apart and crush all four of them to death, so they would have to leave sooner rather than later. For now, she had no choice. Tomorrow, when they'd recovered a little, she'd be asking Yaya and Lulu how they'd come to survive this long.
She might have failed everyone else, but she was certain that Hotsuin would have wanted her to do everything she could to fight back anyway, if for no other reason than pure bloody-mindedness. Fumi, watching Airi curl protectively around Yaya and Lulu's sleeping forms in the flickering light from the damaged computers, decided she had at least a few more reasons than that.
