Alex was standing over the corpse of the faceless creature we had killed an hour before. "How are you all holding up?" She looked at our group, scanning us one by one.
Tel and Jack raise their hands, Tel speaking for both. "I'm feeling light-headed, but I'm generally better compared to how we were an hour ago."
"You all will be taking a break then."
I raised my hand. "I'm able to keep going. I think that there might be a bigger TULPA involved in this."
"Something producing Apostles?"
"Y-Yes." I nodded.
"Okay, you and Chris will go with the other group since they're more readily available compared to Tel and Jack here." Chris rolled her eyes, immediately downtrodden by the sudden decision. "Just find out where they're coming from and come back to me so that I can cordon off the area. After that, we'll take an official break, all of us."
"Yes, ma'am."
It was now six of us, excluding Tel and Jack, of course.
Along with Dorothy, there were three others whom I hadn't gotten familiar with before the mission. The one that stood out the most amongst the group was a young woman with long silver hair wearing knight's armor over their uniform. The girl wasn't too much taller than me, and went by the name of Peredur, carrying a bizarre-looking spear at her side that looked to have had metal wrapped, or bent around the blade itself, acting as both a guard and a blunt physical instrument.
There was then the largest of the current group, Logen Nine. He had stringy black hair and similarly olive skin to Tel, but was much more built than he was, refusing to wear our uniform's coat over his dress shirt. He had no weapons on him.
Away from us was a young man with dirty blond hair pulled back with a hairband. He seemed normal compared to us, brandishing a Mercury-mandated pistol, with the only peculiar thing about their gear being that, for close-quarters, they seemed to have an axe instead of the actual Mercury-mandated swords that we were all provided.
He noticed that the group had gotten larger, crossing over to us before putting a hand out to Dorothy and me, "Pascal."
We shook his hand individually, "Ariel."
"Dorothy."
"Pleasure to meet you all, what's the sitch?"
"We're to look for the origin of the Apostle my group found, and then bring back what we did find to Alex so that she can lock down the area and end our day."
Pascal looked at the dead creature on the ground. "Surprised it didn't fade away."
"A biological instance, it's not too unusual."
"No, it isn't. Just my first time seeing something like this in person." He said that, but he didn't look all too phased by the sight.
Peredur raised her spear slightly above her helmet, "Where are we to venture off to?"
I pointed down the river, "We'll most likely find something if we follow along-- if there's one out here, where that creature came from shouldn't be too far, no?" I shrugged, "Don't know why I'm asking, I'm probably the only one that can actually see the Kismet Energy it can produce."
Pascal rubbed his chin. "That explains it. Shall we go?"
"Yeah."
We continued down the path, Chris breaking the silence. "You still mad at me, Glasses?"
"No, I just don't trust you."
"You hate me now?"
"Hate is a strong word. If I hated you, you'd know it."
"I'm just wanted to tell you, by the way-- not sure if you feel it or something but I can see a massive stick up your ass from here so--"
"Being concerned that one of my dumbass teammates thought it was a genius idea to abandon us in a fight that we could've won isn't me having a 'stick up my ass', Chris!"
"Yeah, but you seem pretty stuck up about it." She laughed, then put on a mock voice of me, "I'm just concerned that she's gonna keep riding my ass in the future~."
"Well, I'll tell you this now, Chris, that if you pull something like that again, I'm clubbing you over the head with my fucking bow, how about that?"
"Oh~, scary~! I'd like to see you try, munchkin woman!"
Pascal put both hands up, rushing in between us. "Alright, alright, we don't need this bad blood right now, okay? Enough with the threats and jabs, we have a mission."
I sighed, "Yeah, sorry." Then shook my head ot regain my cool.
Peredur shook her head in sympathy, clicking her tongue rhythmically, "Tsk, tsk, tsk. What a pathetic display from our comrades! We should be gathered together, ready to rejoice! This is our retaliatory siege against the enemy itself! We do not need such a dour mood! But hark, for I am here." She ran in front of the group, "I will be the light in our path if any of you feel sallow! Never fret! For since I am here now, I can guarantee that we will get out of this alive! It is never cowardly to run away!"
"It sounds like you're trying to be a martyr."
"I am willing to do so as it is on my knight's honor that my comrades are to make it alive out of any ordeal they find themselves in with me!"
"Don't be a martyr."
"Yeah, don't do that."
Logen huffed.
Some time had passed, and we had gone through about three or so bridges before coming across a specific large one in Block H. By now, the sun was beginning to set, and as we approached, we could see a half a dozen people gathering around what looked to be a man staring out from the bridge.
The closer we got, the clearer the picture became, his mouth slowly moving, eyes wide and dilated whilst concerned passerbys slowly backed away. I held up identification showing that I'm from Grief. "Clear the way, we'll see to this."
The instant they saw us, they became more concerned, one civilian saying, "Shit, if Grief's here, I'm not staying for this shit." Before absconding from the scene, the other civilians there began to create a wide berth from the man.
Logen pointed down the hill leading to the area beneath the bridge. "I'll go check this out, you go confront that guy," And he gestured vaguely to the disoriented man.
"I'll be behind you," Pascal commented, giving us a succinct nod before following Logen.
Peredur, before we were even ready to speak with the man in question, approached him first, keeping at least 3m away before raising her spear, "Sir! Are you alright to approach!? Are you in a state of duress!?"
I pulled Peredur's shoulder back, "Don't run in without us." Then looked up at the man as they turned to face, mouth still moving, no sound coming out before pausing. It looked like he said something, but once again, we couldn't hear it.
A beat, "Hello."
His voice was out of sync with his mouth, the sound becoming grating to the ears.
Chris grabbed a steel ball from her coat. "Fuck this!"
Dorothy put a hand out, "Don't!"
"And why shouldn't I--"
"Hi? Where--?" The man's voice cut out as a sound, or a mimicry of someone else came from their mouth. "Do you know where my home is?" His mouth moved faster than he should've spoken before his body snapped into our direction.
Pascal and Logen made it back from down the hill. "There's something down here!" He shouted as he fired a shot into the monster's body, Logen jumping up to where the man is on the bridge to get to us quicker, missing with a swing.
Dorothy ran to the other end of the bridge itself, yelling for her dog to charge forward, but the creature stepped out of the way, arm contorting and jostling in a variety of different directions before being split at the seams, a massive spiked spine coming out from the arm.
The spinal whip shot out, slamming straight into Logen's body, the bone wrapping around his waist. He was drawn in almost immediately as a tentacle shot out from the man's body, inserting itself into Logen's arm, eliciting a violent cry.
I fired into the monster's arm, dislodging it by just a smidge, causing it to elicit a faint yelping noise before fire bellowed out from under it. It jumped up, only getting somewhat burnt by the small pillar of flame, but the fire had not disappeared. As its feet planted themselves back onto the concrete below, it continued to burn, maintained by maybe some sort of ability Chris had, but she was visibly sweating to maintain it.
With that, Peredur joined in to subjigate the monster as well, but her swings only met the air, its body contorting and bending in inhuman ways to avoid any sort of cumulative damage.
Dorothy and Pascal continued an onslaught of bullets on the monster, the creature remaining generally unscathed, seemingly absorbing the bullet fire as it side-stepped Dorothy's hound.
"Damnit..." Logen growled, pulling the spinal whip away from his body and sprinting straight to the rest of us, falling into a heap on the ground right beside me.
A sickening squelch could be heard. I didn't get a good look at what happened, but all I could see was Peredur wrapped up by that monster's whip, bleeding profusely from the stomach as a tendril slowly siphoned the life from her unconscious body before it proceeded to run straight toward the ranged fighters of the group, including me.
"Shit!" I grabbed my Anchorbow by its handle and swung it as hard as I could into the monster in front of me, being sure to have reloaded it just beforehand, as I, just before making contact with its body, activated the pressurized chamber, causing it to explode outward, throwing me back and blasting the monster's chest open.
"Holy shit!" Chris exclaimed, stepping back from the now pile of gore splayed out against the bridge before us, mouth open wide, head, like a mannequin or doll, searching for some semblance or grasp of survival that they had left. "God damn, Glasses!"
I watched as blood pooled out from the exposed ribcage.
I let out a long sigh before kneeling near the unconscious Peredur. "Shit..." I attempted to remove the spinal whip, exposing a deep gash in the girl's stomach. "Can someone help me cut this section of the tail off? I need to get it off quickly or else she'll bleed out."
Pascal nodded, "I got it!" Taking his axe, he hacked at one end of the whip.
Dorothy held a phone in her hand. "Alex and the other two should be coming soon."
Pulling the axe over his head, Pascal slammed it back into the segmented sections of bone, speaking, "I should mention right now that, below the bridge... I think Logen and I found the source of the Apostles we've found."
"Source?"
An amalgam of overlayed flesh on top of itself, slowly expanding and deflating as if it were some sort of lung, an open cavity sat right in the middle, holding some kind of gateway, a thin bit of some membranous film acting as a door.
"What the hell...?"
By now, the entire team had reconnected with one another. I exited from the bottom half of the bridge, watching as a dejected Peredur was laid out on the grass hill leading back up to the bridge itself. "I've been humiliated... defeated by some abhorrent beast."
"You shouldn't have run up to it so recklessly."
She shot up, "I need to train more, clearly!"
"Or you need a better strategy."
Peredur attempted to stand in full before keeling over in pain, clutching her injured stomach, groaning.
Alex sighed, flicking through her own phone, "A team should be here soon to close off the area."
Tel let out a sigh of relief, "Thank god, we'll be able to rest..."
"Yes, we'll be returning to base very soon so that you guys can all rest up for the next mission."
I approached Alex from behind, "We're not gonna handle the rest of this?"
"Can you all?"
I scanned the group, looking at the state they were in. "No, probably not. I was just curious."
"We'll have a higher-ranked team handle it soon. We just need people to monitor the anomaly so that more of those bizarre creatures escape and cause any trouble for the populace here."
I rubbed my face, brow knitted as I attempted to speculate what could have caused such a phenomenon.
Alex appeared to have noticed, and she had an answer prepared. "Most likely a personal myth developed throughout the Blocks here."
"Hm?"
"Some sort of Urban Myth probably spread about creatures lurking in the dark or something. The Gardners will have a field day investigating this after containment."
Chris raised a hand. "You guys wanna get some drinks? Think it's appropriate to do so, y'know? Especially after our first successful mission without any deaths, right?"
Alex looked Chris up and down, "Alright," A sigh, "If anyone wants to, when we get back to Mercury, we can get some drinks. How's that sound for everyone?"
I guess it's not a bad suggestion... I thought to myself, attempting to flex the soreness out of my fingers.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You Know What" by N.E.R.D played over the airwaves of a local Mercury bar closest to SHIVERS. Ariel entered with their team, soon realizing that they weren't the only ones to get the memo, as the other team was there to greet them, practically renting out the entire bar for the entire Goat Zodiac.
Alex crossed over to Nora, "How did it go on your end?"
Nora scanned Alex's team. "Looks like they got pretty lucky. I can see the signs of some pretty serious injuries. Didn't let them clean up?"
"More like, they insisted that they get to the bar first."
"One of ours was severely injured, not dead, luckily."
"How did that happen?"
"Ran into the most mentally ill fucker they could find and got rocked. I don't think they're lasting wrong-- one of the others was shaken up by it."
"If they were shaken up by it... what really happened?"
"I had an ampule. I didn't need to use the watch. Didn't change the fact that they were mutilated in an instant. Kae, I think their name is? They watched the whole thing go down."
"God."
"Lucky first day, however..."
"Yeah, no one died."
"Don't forget what I said."
"I won't."
Ariel sat by the bar counter, running a single hand through her hair, stuffing her cap away into her coat pocket. Chris rested against the counter, looking at Ariel with a smug look on her face. "That was some brutal work out there, Glasses."
"Not my name." Ariel groaned, quickly calling for the bartender to get herself a drink.
"Oh? So you drink." Chris's smile widened.
Ariel shook her head, "No... this is the first time."
"Well, sorry. You just looked so confident." She chuckled, sitting beside Ariel, "Yo, bartender! Can I get a Gin!?"
The man responded with a succinct, "Yes, ma'am!" Before continuing on their way.
"You're really impressive, y'know that, Glasses?"
"Ariel!" She snipped back, brow knitted tight, "It's fuckin' Ariel..."
Chris put her hands up, "Sorry, sorry. I'm just playin' around, okay? I never meant any harm, okay? Eyes a sensitive subject or something?"
"I'd just prefer it if you didn't call me that. I have a name."
"You don't like nicknames?"
"Not if they're based on an intrinsic trait that I can't control, no."
"Come on~! What's wrong with 'Glasses'? It's cute~!"
"What?"
"It's the cutest part about ya! You and your freckled little nose. It's a good combo. If I were a dumb, I'd say that it was a good choice of aesthetics, y'know?"
Ariel looked dumbfounded, "Aesthetics I can't control."
"Like I said, if I were dumb." Chris snickered. "I truly mean it, by the way, you've really caught my eye, girl. To be honest, I didn't give a rat's ass about the group but... I couldn't help but at least try to after seeing ya."
"And why would that influence any thought of yours?"
"'Cause you're cute."
"By the Mother's Light, what the hell are you talking about?" Her ears ran flushed as a Long Island iced tea landed in front of her. "Thanks for the compliments, but you can keep 'em."
"Look, you've impressed me so much, I'll never do what I did today, ever again! Okay?"
"How am I supposed to trust you?"
"I'll prove it through action. Even when you expect nothing from me, I will make sure to at the very least help in the best way I can. I won't run away unless there is no other option, or if I'm commanded to."
Ariel sipped her drink, recoiling slightly, not out of displeasure, but out of surprise as she began missing the drink with a straw.
"Too strong?"
"It's why I'm doing this."
"I know-- crazy by the way,"
"What?"
"What the hell are those weapons you carry with you? Is it not crazy? Blowing the chest of an Apostle wide-open like a fuckin' egg!"
"You're so crude..."
"It's your personal Instrument, right? Nobody has shit like that unless they found a loophole, or are backed by someone powerful, y'know? Wouldn't Grimm normally tear ya limb from limb for having something like that?"
"Well... they didn't."
"What do you call it?"
"They're called Anchorbows."
"Powerful shit."
"You're strong... your ability is strong, you know that?"
"Yeah."
"So why did you belt it so quickly after our first encounter with an Apostle, huh?"
Chris shared an incredulous look, "Just got scared shitless and ran."
"It definitely isn't that simple though..." A beat, "You didn't want to deal with it. You didn't want to deal with the fallout, so you booked it as fast as you could cause it'd be easier to run than to be forced to drag a bunch of bodies out of the gutter or to become another victim if the monster happened to be too strong for us to handle, yeah?"
"As I said, I got scared."
"But you're more competent than you let on, and if you were with us from the start, we could've had it handled without Tel and Jack almost dying." Ariel took another sip of her drink. "Anyone experienced enough in fighting-- and especially one from the Impetus Circle-- would know when to pick their fights, right? You didn't bother to look. You didn't bother to assess the situation because you didn't care."
"Yeah, I said that, huh?" The bartender placed the gin in front of Chris, who took a sip of it. "But like I said, if I can prove with my actions that I won't do it again, will you trust me?"
"Do you typically run to abandon your allies because you don't trust them yet?"
Chris considered her answer for a moment. "Yeah. I didn't give a single shit about you guys, and I didn't want to get caught up in the shitstorm that would've followed."
"Why did you come back?"
"'Cause I wanted to see what you'd do..." Chris smirked.
Jack, having seemingly left at some point, returned with a guitar. "Hey, everyone! Want to hear some tunes?"
Tel perked up, "Oh shit? You sing?"
"Yeah! Uh... originally, actually, I wanted to become a musical artist before joining Mercury!"
"What made you change your mind?"
He put a finger over his mouth. "That's a secret."
Peredur raised her spear into the air, drink in the other hand, laughing hysterically even though there is no feasible way for her to drink with her helmet still on. "Sing for us, Jackie!"
Jack chuckled, "My name is Jack, not Jackie, but okay." He nodded to himself, tightening the grip on his guitar, hand sliding across the fret.
He plucked at the strings, his melodic ambience spreading across the room, as the other members of the Goat Zodiac bickered amongst one another.
Tel stood near Jack, thumbs placed into his pockets. "What are you gonna sing?"
"A tune from where I came from... I'm just warming up..."
Chris watched from over her shoulder, nursing her drink. "Jackie knows how to play some tunes, huh?"
Ariel's eyes scanned the bar, noticing in one of the corners, the giant woman from orientation. What's she doing away from everyone else? She paused her thoughts for a moment, glancing at Chris, then back at the woman. "I wonder what she could like under all those clothes..." Ariel mumbled.
Chris cocked a brow, giving an odd look to Ariel, "What?"
"Hm?"
"Are you undressing one of our comrades with your mind, dear, Ariel?" Chris dramatically put a hand over her mouth, "How perverse~!"
"I'm not! I was just curious about what they look like."
"So you like them giant, huh? I'm pretty tall myself, y'know-- also, you're so small~! You sure you can handle all that?"
A strum cut through the cacophony of chatter, "♪King of Shadows~... King of shades~.♪" Jack's singing quieted the entire bar, singing what seemed to be some sort of ballad of an existing world figure. "♪La, lalala la la la~... La~ lalala la la la~!♪"
"He can really project, huh?"
"He's good at singing... Ballads, though, interesting. You don't hear stuff like that in modern times, really, do you?"
"It's about Enver... isn't he the Underworld's leader?"
"He is..." Ariel paused. "Apparently, he was originally the mouth of the Primum before Gabriel took his place. That was decades ago, however." Chris watched Ariel, who finally took off her coat and started rolling up her sleeves.
"Getting hot?"
"That's how drinking more and more goes, no?"
Chris kept an eye on Ariel's progressively reddening face, "I'd suppose. You've gone through two of those Long Island iced teas by now. You know they have a bunch of alcohol in 'em, right?"
"That's why I ordered it."
"Are you tryin' to get hammered?" Chris chuckled.
"I'm trying to get drunk, that's for sure."
"What? Did today take a toll on you?"
"Why are you so curious about me? You calling me 'Cute' won't get you anywhere, by the way. I can see what you're doing."
"Pft." Chris laughed, "And what am I doing?"
Ariel clicked her tongue, "It's whatever, but you aren't fooling me tonight."
Chris scoffed. "I wanted to ask, by the way."
"What?"
"Do you work out? You seem pretty fit under that uniform."
"What about it? Isn't that the standard?"
"Not necessarily. How much do you work out?"
"I warm up every morning to keep myself fit. I don't want to fall behind in the stamina department."
Chris shrugged, "I see... I am more invested in being durable than energetic. Suppose there's one way I fall behind." She sighed, walking away from Ariel.
Guess she realized that she wouldn't get what she wanted from me. Ariel thought to herself, which frustrated her after a moment of consideration. I'm just gonna focus on drinking today. I want to sleep well after all. Ariel told a small lie earlier, saying that she had never tried alcohol before.
She had never had it recreationally before, but she would force herself to drink it back in the palace she had lived in before coming to Mercury to fall asleep when certain medications weren't readily available.
I need to get stronger.
Chris stepped outside, placing a cigarette between her lips and lighting it with a finger. I really messed up, huh? She looked around, spotting another ginger in the bunch, quite a bit taller than Ariel, almost Chris's height, even, looking up at the stars. That girl looks like a wreck. She sighed, No luck today, I suppose.
The day progressed, and the bar was soon clear of most members of their Zodiac, leaving only a scarce few behind, including Ariel.
Alex watched the girl slumped at the counter, completely flushed from ear to ear, getting too carried away with her drinking, unable to function on her own. She sighed, looking to the larger employee amongst them that stayed, propped up against a wall in the corner of the bar.
"Carmela, could you take her to your place for now?"
The woman stepped up, nodding silently.
"Alright, I'll take my leave now. Keep her safe, okay? We'll be relying on you from here on."
Another nod as she picked Ariel up with one arm, leaving just before Alex.