The waiting was the killer. Only one full day had passed since Drache and Arratoi had vanished into the air, just hours after the hunt was cancelled, but there was still no trace of either. Cavall would not admit to being worried, but Hebi could still tell that she was—at the very least, to the degree that it negatively impacted their graduation qualifications if they lost their subs.Hebi didn't know what she would do. It was her childhood goal to graduate and take a well-paying career that would have her set for life. Losing a whole person meant the likelihood of that happening was a mere fraction of what it was.
At the same time, the retreat had taught her some disturbing things about life, the universe, and everything—first, she no longer wanted to major in Base-JP. It was a fine base, certainly, but her natural fires gave her little comfort and instead only served as a reminder of her fiery temper, something she could never temper.
Second, she was ill-prepared for what she DID want to do, which was healing. At every turn, what she tried to fix ended up broken. It was as though it was in her very nature to destroy, rather than build, which was depressing on so many levels.
Third, she lacked the maturity she needed to become a graduate—or, in the absence of maturity, even the mere self-confidence to strike off on her own. Even though Hebi had a part-time job, her own prior Batta still handled most of the day-to-day dealings of their home rental and important paperwork for her. She would be lost without Batta, as much as she had stressed the seriousness of these instructions on Drache over their time together.
Fourth—and this was what got to her the most—she hated to see Drache grow up.
It was strange how her attitude had changed from a mere nine days ago, when his childish antics were obnoxious and detrimental. The Brigade had forced the both of them to do things neither wanted to do, however, and it only made her feel worse the more adult they were required to be. To then ask him to chase after Arratoi to who knows where...
"Hebi," murmured a calm voice.
She didn't look up, not eager to hear what bad news the captains had to tell them was coming next. "What is it."
A warm hand laid on her shoulder. "I brought her back."
At once she realized this was not a voice she knew. Slowly, in shock, Hebi looked up to see someone familiar but not.
"It's me," the young man standing over her greeted, "Drache."
Her jaw dropped to see this person, like Drache but twice as old, standing before her with the expression of one who had weathered more sorrows than he could bear to tell. "What—" It was almost too much to conceive. "Drache?"
He smiled weakly. "You haven't sold my Rock Band, have you?"
Tears welled in her eyes, and she had no idea whether to be happy or sad. "What in the world happened to you?"
Drache turned to face a young woman standing behind him, red in embarrassment. "Arratoi and I were in another plane of existence, where time passed seven years in what was a day for you. We both did what we needed to do in order to return, but we could not get here any sooner. Or, we could have saved a little time, but Arratoi hates travelling with me when I run at top speed."
"Because the friction stings my eyes!" she complained, looking more disappointed than glad to be back.
The words were difficult for Hebi to form, as she was still trying to process this new information. "That's – okay," she coaxed, more to herself than Drache, as she took him in a warm embrace. "You're both back, and that's what matters. Have you told Cavall?" Here, she turned to see where Cavall had gone. "Cavall!"
"It's not what matters," Drache continued. "We're in danger here."
"Huh?" Hebi gave him a confused look. "What's wrong?"
"The way we travelled, planewalking, is Base-DK," he explained. "However, it is the intermediate base between all other bases and the base of the crown."
"...what is the base of the crown?"
"It is the base that whoever is to win the crown must know in order to achieve it. This is important because the person who has been kidnapping others is trying to find the key to this base."
"You know who's behind the kidnappings?"
Drache nodded. "His default is Aghvesi, but he was with the Brigade briefly as Sionnach."
Sionnach! "But – he seemed so nice..." She thought of how well-mannered he treated them when paired off in their final prior-sub match. "Why does he pose a threat to us? What are his plans?"
"He means to claim ultimate dominion over all of creation."
Hebi fell backwards, tumbling over her seat in astonishment at the concept, before Drache dashed forward and caught her. She felt the blood rush to her face for multiple reasons, but – just what had they gotten themselves into by joining the Brigade? "How is such power granted to the winner of a silly treasure hunt?!"
"It wasn't meant to be, but there is a loophole that he means to exploit." It was bizarre hearing such words from Drache, delivered with such seriousness. "We can't let him win!"
"But – how do we stop him?"
"There are only two ways: Defeat him, or be the first to the crown."
She wasn't sure about the first—Aghvesi was surely the top tier of the fighters at the retreat, possibly of the whole world. "How do we win the crown? The hunt has been called off."
Drache shook his head. "The prize is still there, whether we search for it or not."
"What must we do?"
Whatever answer he was going to give, Drache was interrupted by a tearing sound in the fabric of reality.
- *VWORP*
Before she could begin to comprehend who the girl was, all three of them froze in place, held fast by an indescribable force. She was barely conscious of a conversation taking place somewhere on the edge of her perception:
Let us go.
I really need you.
What do you want? We won't help you.
But I'm finally awake.
It doesn't matter. You can't do this.
I'll give to you if you'll give to me.
No, this won't work, I promise. I'll show you.
I'm tired of waiting.
I will take you where you want to go, but let them go.
I always want to hear what's on your mind.
Let them go, and I will take you there.
Forget me.
The last was to Hebi, and she felt awareness of the events vanish.
She looked up to see a young woman standing in front of her. Hebi started to see her—it was though she had appeared out of nowhere. "Where did you come from?"
The young woman seemed just as confused. "I – don't know."
"Who are you?"
"I'm Arratoi, duh."
"Arratoi!" Hebi cried, astonished. "Cavall's been looking for you! What happened? Where have you been all this time?"
She began to speak, stopping short as she did. Panic crossed her face as she realized something frightful. "I – don't know..."
"Well, come then," she insisted, leading the girl back into the hotel proper. "We'll try to get this sorted out."
"What happened to me?" Arratoi bawled, freaking out. "I don't remember anything!"
"What's going on?"
Cavall stomped up to them, looking just as overbearing as usual. "Arratoi's back," Hebi announced, since it wasn't obvious, "but – something's happened."
"Where is she, then?"
"HERE!"
Cavall glowered at them as though they were idiots, then it slowly started to dawn on her that the girl was indeed Arratoi. "What did you do?!" she shrieked. "How did you get SORAS?"
"I don't—"
"No, I see," she interrupted. "Orne was telling the truth. That other realm you entered is indeed disconnected in time from this one. How long were you there?"
Arratoi stared, not comprehending. "I – don't—"
"She's scared, Cavall," Hebi pointed out. "Something happened, and she doesn't remember."
"Nonsense," Cavall protested, looking over Arratoi as though taking a fine-toothed comb over her code.
- CTRL-Z, step 1
Arratoi looked around again, panicking anew. "Where am I? What's happening?"
- CTRL-Z, step 10
- CTRL-Z, step 41
"What were you doing just now?"
She put her hands on her hips in protest. "You told me to go back to my room because we were going home. Why are we still—" At last Arratoi noticed the time of day. "Why is it not yet top-sun? And – Hebi, where's..." Her voice trailed off, as though she was expecting something but wasn't sure what, staring at Hebi as though something was missing.
- CTRL-Y, step 52
"I will need a second opinion on the matter," Cavall concluded. "I'm not sure what has happened, but I will not permanently undo whatever she has experienced until we have divined its nature."
"That seems appropriate," Hebi noted.
Cavall stared at Hebi, also seeming to expect something that wasn't there. She furrowed her brow at being unable to discern what.
"What is it?"
"I thought..." She shook her head. "Nevermind. We'll take Arratoi to see Nutria and have her talk with Orne. Maybe their combined information will give us a clearer picture of what's happening."
Hebi nodded, but Arratoi seemed uncertain. "Don't worry," she coaxed, taking the girl by the shoulders, "we'll take care of you."
"It's like—" she began, shivering, "something's been taken from me, something dear to me, and I can't remember what."
Again, Hebi wanted to console her, but – she realized she felt the same way. What was missing?
They returned to the hospital wing where Orne was still recovering from his psychosis. "We've got another," Cavall announced.
Nutria looked up from his clipboard to examine Arratoi. "Ah," he greeted, "you as well? I admit I'm a little surprised."
"Sire, I'm afraid my amateur diagnosis was inconclusive," Cavall continued. "Could you check her code?"
"Of course." He beckoned Arratoi to sit down. "This will only take a bit and won't hurt in the least." She took a seat, gulping with nervousness all the same as the healer brought up her history. "Ah, Arratoi. I – see."
"What is it?"
"Rather – I don't see." He pointed to the cluster of pop-ups that represented the span of time of Arratoi's SORAS. "Something – or someone – has tampered with her history. Where I should be able to see a clear storyboard of events is rather indistinct. For instance, here—" He pointed to part of the timeline where she seemed to be talking excitedly to herself. "—this doesn't make any sense at all. Is she schizophrenic? Speaking to someone invisible?"
"What happened to you at this point in time?" Hebi prompted.
Arratoi stared at the scene in question. "When was this?"
"Her memory's been erased," Nutria deduced. "She remembers none of what happened to her in this other realm."
"Is this what happened to Orne?" Hebi asked, concerned.
"Not at all. Orne remembers everything, but it has overwhelmed him, pushing his mind to the brink of insanity. Arratoi's memory is simply – gone."
"Can you restore it?"
"Not directly. I would have to determine the signature of the person who erased it, besides the extent to which the erasure was done."
"How do we find out who did it?"
He scratched his chin. "I'm inclined to say we ask around, try to figure out what – or who – has been erased, but from the looks on your faces..." Here, he motioned Hebi forward. "Please, my dear, indulge me for a bit."
"Huh?"
Nutria brought up her history as well, skimming over the past few days. "I was afraid of that. It appears you've also been affected. Look here—" He indicated the first day of the retreat. "You're in a prior-sub match, but you're battling alone."
Hebi felt the blood drain from her body. "How..." A vast emptiness loomed where she hadn't known it was there. "What... Where did this whole part of me go?"
"I think this is where you start. Who was your sub? This is who was erased from all of your memories."
The three females exchanged worried glances, even Cavall. The mystery surrounding what was supposed to be a casual affair was growing darker at each turn.
Arratoi stared at the empty space on Hebi's pop-up, reaching out to it with a sense of longing. "I've liked you for a thousand years," she murmured to it. "I can't wait until I see you." At first Hebi thought her actions strange, but – it felt familiar somehow. Yes, her sub was a young boy about Arratoi's age.
With this realization, Hebi felt as though she could almost pull his memory from within whatever oblivion it had been banished, but – she was always just at the brink of remembering. How could she just forget a whole person—a whole lifetime? Just what power was capable of doing this to ALL of them?
"We have to figure this out!" Hebi insisted, clutching her head in disbelief. "I can't—it's just..."
"It's okay, my dear," Nutria hushed, taking her hand in his. "This can all get sorted out, a piece at a time. It's impossible for one force acting alone to erase such a large influence completely. Just take it a few steps at a time. What was your sub like? What did he do? The pieces will take time to find, but that's how you must progress."
"Why is this happening, sire?" she pleaded. "I was just supposed – to graduate! It wasn't supposed to turn out this way!"
"Of course not. It never is."
From his bed, Orne stirred a little, muttering some gibberish. At this, Nutria returned to his side.
"What's the matter with him?" Hebi ventured, still not clear on the details of his affliction.
"From what I've been able to gather, Orne has gone through what Arratoi has, but on a grander scale. By comparison, she has gone on a light holiday where he has had to endure the worst of trials."
"Like what?"
He shuffled through the still-active pop-ups, pointing to a dark carnival full of hundreds of – what they could all best describe as some kind of monster, lunging at Orne as though out to eat him alive. "He spent an indeterminant amount of time avoiding these – THINGS at every turn. It wasn't simply the natives having severe territorial issues or fearing alien invasions—these 'nzambi' things literally hunted down anything that moved with the intent to destroy it. An entire plane populated with creatures out to consume all life."
"How horrible!" Hebi cried, clutching her hands to her face.
"Nevermind all that," Cavall barked. "You! Orne! What can you tell us about other planes? What happened to Arratoi?!"
Nutria moved to stop her, but – to their surprise – Orne met her eyes, a peculiar glassy look to them as he spoke. "She's a day tripper," he answered cryptically. "Got a good reason for taking the easy way out, now."
"How's that?"
"It took me so long to find out, but I found out."
"He's been like this for the past two days," Nutria continued. "There's something possessing him, bending his words to something almost like normal speech but not."
"Sounds like normal speech to me," Hebi noted.
"Here I mean normal in the sense that he's responsive in the way we would expect. Did he answer Cavall's questions? Yes, and no."
"Why can't we revert him—"
"NO!" Orne screamed, sitting up in hysterics.
Nutria motioned for him to relax. "No one's going to revert you, sire," he insisted. "It's fine. You're home, not in another nightmare realm. Everything's okay."
"Never – forget..."
Hebi wasn't convinced this was a good idea. "Never forget what?"
Despite his seeming agony, Orne appeared to struggle with the answer. "Have to... Boi..."
"Boi?" Cavall and Hebi exchanged glances. "What happened to Boi? Can you tell us?"
"He still has a disconnect between his thoughts and his memories." Nutria reverted farther in his history this time. "I found that he and Boi went to her home at fifth face, where they were ambushed by this man." He pointed to someone that looked like Sionnach. "This woman who was fighting must have been Boi's prior, and the—"
"What is that?" Hebi interrupted. "What is she doing that made half the building vanish like that?"
"I believe she is Base-DK, but I am not familiar with its work. Orne is also Base-DK now—I believe he had to learn in order to return from wherever they vanished."
"Boi, though! Where is she?"
"Hmm. THAT I can help you with."
- NutriaHU
"Shield?"
"My sub. I've explained this before to Arratoi, but whoever is behind the disappearances might now have Boi as well. I'm afraid that Orne's mission may be in danger, as well."
"What mission?"
Nutria bit his tongue in thought. "Earlier, he said something about her prior being – gone. That must mean this man she fought and took with her and Orne must have brought her down. I hesitate to say what this means, other than the Brigade is in serious danger if he will not hesitate to kill those he views as a threat." He clapped his hands together in earnest. "I implore all of you to return home at once—it is not safe anymore, possibly anywhere."
"If that's the case, it's useless going home," Hebi protested. "We'd just be waiting to be captured – or even killed! I'd rather take my chances staying with allies!"
Arratoi cheered, "Me, too!" After some hesitation, Cavall nodded in agreement, glowering.
Nutria raised his eyebrows at them but conceded that he couldn't change their minds. "I guess I can't tell you what to do, but please speak with the captains about what your best course of action would be. They may even be able to help you find your sub, Hebi."
She gritted her teeth, still feeling a profound emptiness where she'd never—to her knowledge—known. "We will, sire."
"Do come back and visit if you have any new information that may help everyone," he added, waving goodbye to them.
"What do you think?" Hebi asked as they left the hospital, en route to the remnants of the last Brigade meeting grounds. "That man in the history—didn't that look like Sionnach?"
"It did," Cavall agreed. "I don't see why he would erase your sub from our memories, though."
Arratoi could only whimper her sadness, rather than being able to put it to words.
"Are they related?" Hebi wondered. "I mean, is there really only one villain in the world?"
"True. It might just happen that the erasure coincides with the information we discovered about Vepar/Orne."
"And that's not really coinciding. We just happened to find it out when we found ourselves where we were."
They looked at Arratoi, still mopey over her lost time with their mystery boy.
"Well," Hebi wondered, "can we work this out ourselves first?"
"What?"
"Arratoi, what do you like in boys?"
She looked at Hebi with a flush of embarrassment. "Well..."
"Please, it's to help us find out what he was like. Can you think of anything? What kind of fur, what base, what personality? That kind of thing?"
Arratoi bit her tongue in embarrassment, fingers clenched and tail between her legs. "Cute?"
"Not exactly helpful..." Hebi wondered, herself. What sort of trials had she endured being a prior to a Base-...? She closed her eyes, trying to picture what sort of—
—picture.
"Arratoi!" she blurted. "Do you have some kind of memento of him? Surely you'd have gotten some trinket of his!"
"Ummm...!" Chagrined, Arratoi tapped out the contents of her emblem: a strange seedy disc of some sort, a coin of unknown denomination (from the alternate plane?), a large book with the words 'Don't panic' on the cover, one and a half pounds of melty butter, a thin black notebook with odd illegible white text on it, a rolled-up photo of—
"That's it!" Hebi cried, grabbing the photo with greed.
"Hey!" Arratoi whined, snatching it back. "That's mine!"
"Of course it is, but just let us see!"
As the three of them looked at the photo in unison, it was like a spell had been lifted... "Drache!" they shouted at once.
Hebi felt a knot in her throat. Coerced or not, it filled her with an unbelievable guilt to have forgotten the little furball so completely.
"Let's take this back to Nutria," Cavall ordered, prodding Arratoi.
"Can he help us?" Hebi asked.
"Maybe he can track Drache, now that we know who to look for."
"But this is a job for the captains now."
"Do the captains have a tracker?"
Hebi frowned, trying to think of who among them was Base-HU.
"We'll bother him one last time, then we'll return to the captains, who will most likely send us home anyway."
How could she argue? "Okay."
As the three of them raced back to the hospital, the ground started to shake. A quake? Those weren't natural—this was the ground work for an IT or ID, for certain, but who?
Screams erupted from the hospital, and the trio continued their rush to get to Nutria. At that moment, two things happened:
And from the other side, can you still answer me?
I can.
Life's such a beautiful mistake.
Hebi felt a familiar presence—THAT was who erased her memory! That child... She started to make a move—
- *VWORP*
*VWORP*
"Aghvesi!" cried an angry voice, bursting from one hole in the sky and landing with a crash.
The man in question ripped through the other hole, lighting the atmosphere on fire—
No. Plasma. He was turning the star in on itself.
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