YoRHa_42s
Experienced.
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A choice between submission/joining Eden, a death from rapture out in the world or complete mind wipe/disassembly back in the Ark... isn't really a choice at all.
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Only Human (Goddess of Victory NIKKE SI)
- Thread starter BakaSmurf
- Start date
Chapter 87 - The Fire in Her Heart
BakaSmurf
Only Human, After All
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===
Chapter 87 - The Fire in Her Heart
===
"Dorothy," Joe gasped in naked surprise. "You're lighter than I remember you being!"
By some providence which Joe probably didn't really deserve, despite the rest of the squad either facepalming or groaning at his dumbass self being his dumbass self, Dorothy didn't react to his comment on her weight. Rather, she instead continued to babble and cry incoherently, which stabbed at the Commander's heart and incentivised him to immediately lock it in.
Thus, the pinkette was lifted by her waist into a proper reciprocal hug—the kind Joe had never been able to give Dorothy before. That is to say, lifting her off the ground as he might Cinderella. It hadn't even really been that long for him, since the last time he'd met with Dorothy, yet a terrible weight was lifted off his shoulders by her presence nonetheless.
He could only imagine how it must have been for her, to have thought him dead for a century. The pitiful way in which she clung to him and openly cried into his chest did a decent job of giving him at least an impression of how hard it must have been.
After a few moments, the man shifted to scoop Dorothy up in a proper princess carry, drawing her in close. She was squeezing him so hard as to cause him a fair amount of discomfort, but unless she actually started to hurt him, he'd let her. Things had been difficult, and of all people in the world, Dorothy had been there from the very beginning. She'd loyally stuck by his side, and so he'd loyally hold and comfort her as she'd work to help him.
For however long as it may take.
It took a good twenty minutes, but, eventually, Dorothy did calm down. As much as she could be expected to given the circumstances, at least. Upon being set back upon her own feet, she withdrew just enough to reach up and cup Joe's cheeks with a gentleness which sharply contrasted with her previous bear hug—as though she was fearful that he would break or otherwise disappear if she handled him too roughly.
"Joe…" The pinkette mewled, her violet eyes glistening with the same moisture which heavily stained her cheeks. "Joe…!"
"I'm here," the man repeated himself for the Nth time. Tiring as it was for Dorothy to just stare at him in abject disbelief as she was, it was also incredibly upsetting to see her so intensely frazzled. Her bangs were dishevelled, eyes reddened, lips trembling. It was all he could do to remain calm, continue to stroke her hair as he held her. "Come on, Dorothy, I'm here."
Closing her eyes, Dorothy took a deep, shuddering breath. Though she continued to tremble, when she opened her eyes again, there was a clarity in them which had not been present before. "My wings…" The tears redoubled, breath hitching and gaze remaining locked on him before she jumped on him once more, arms encircling his neck with far more consideration this time. "My wings…!"
It might yet take a while for Dorothy to fully gather herself.
Another fifteen minutes later, Joe found himself seated upon a log set before the fire Snow White had started, on which Scarlet and Cinderella had started to prepare a meal—which was to say, they were boiling a metric assload of Tetra Line ration packs in a big pot. Dorothy was stuck by his side, firmly locked in right next to him on the log, her gaze damn near never drifting from his face as she took forced, shallow breaths.
She almost seemed to be in shock, struggling to process the idea that Joe was there in addition to Rapi.
Rapi, who was sidled up on Joe's opposite side. She'd gone quiet upon the Commander revealing himself, and seemed stuck halfway between relieved and guilty at how the attention was off of her. She and Dorothy hadn't exactly been close, as it were. So the elegant Nikke's fixation on Joe—who literally every member of the squad had assumed to be her partner at first on account of their behaviour together—was entirely understandable.
"...How?" Dorothy finally managed to speak coherently, staring firmly up at Joe all the while. "Where- Joe, how are you alive? Where have you been? What happened when you descended into the Ark?"
Taking a very deep breath, the man braced himself. He wasn't entirely sure how this was going to go, but it was what it was. Rapi had gotten the ball rolling, now it was his turn to get it to the top of the hill. "The Central Government Council had dictated that Goddess were to be 'decommissioned' and 'dismantled' to reverse-engineer the technology that went into your creation, so that they could produce loyal attack dogs in their transition into authoritarianism."
Dorothy's brow furrowed, lips drawing into a fine line, she remained focused as she listened to Joe's explanation of what happened.
"They brought me down there with the expectation that I'd happily serve as their military figurehead. March you girls to your deaths as your reward for all you'd done, to be the sole beneficiary of all your efforts and sacrifices." The man began to speak through clenched teeth, eye beginning to twitch as the memory of that day was brought clearly back to mind. "I agreed to get them to lower their guard. On the way to the armoury… I ran into none other than Red Hood, who had been disarmed, but otherwise allowed to roam free until they decided to scoop her brain out of her skull and fling it into the nearest incinerator."
Reaching over, Joe took a hold of Rapi's hand, protective anger flaring up in his chest as he pondered what happened, how she was going to wind up being the first to be executed and treated like a piece of soulless technology to be broken down for parts.
With no small amount of hesitation, Rapi interlinked her fingers with Joe's, guilt redoubling considering how she'd treated him back then, but understanding both that he still cared, and that it was neither the time nor place for her to make this about her or her own feelings.
"I told Rapi exactly what I planned to do, on the elevator ride down. Climb into a Hoplon, make my way back to the Council chambers, and slaughter the Council to a man. Enikk, the Ark's central AI, heard our discussion, stopped the elevator… And walked us through the best way to complete our objective successfully, given that Council's plan would have given mankind ten years to survive, at the most, while her purpose is to ensure mankind's survival above all else."
"With Enikk's help, Rapi and I fought our way to the Central Government Council chambers, and executed them to a man… Where I screwed up, and left myself open. I took a Nikke-grade bullet to the gut, and very nearly died. Rapi experienced a Mind Switch, went berserk, and Enikk… Somehow sneaked me away to hide me in stasis, until the Ark's technology advanced enough to save my life. A century after the Ark was sealed, I woke up with amnesia, and on my first mission to the surface as a 'brand new Commander Corps graduate…'"
Joe turned to face Rapi.
"Of all the people to meet, it was a stern-faced, humourless little blonde with no patience for anything but the mission, who had yet to recognize me, just as I had yet to recognize her."
Even as Rapi's lips were drawn into a thin, sheepish grimace at the reminder of how… Detached she'd been at first, something in the air felt almost charged. There was a tense beat, in which the eyes of everyone else were clearly focused on Dorothy.
Joe and Rapi tracked their gazes, and immediately saw why.
Dorothy was smiling. A wide, ear-to-ear grin. Toothy, downright uncanny, it was unsettling. Then, the fact that she was trembling became readily apparent. Yet, the trembling was accompanied by a quiet, but gradually rising chuckle in the back of her throat. A chuckle which rapidly shifted into a low, strained chortle.
The violet-eyed woman grabbed Joe's arm, drew it heavily into her chest, and squeezed as she laughed like a mad woman. "I was right," Dorothy wheezed as she took a sniffling breath, tears budding in the corners of her eyes. "I was right, I was right, I was right."
Pioneer had gone still as statues, their expressions—save for a scowling Snow White—frozen in deeply wary discomfort.
"All this time," Dorothy all but mewled as she clung to Joe. "The Ark betrayed us, and you fought for us. The Ark would have seen us killed, and you put them down in turn. You both, both of you, you did what had to be done, you didn't make excuses, you didn't defend them, you didn't shield them and wax lyrical about your 'duty,' you didn't just stand up for us, you brought down the hammer on those who would have put to flame all we'd fought for. You did it right then and there, you wasted no time, you defended our honour above all else."
"I was right. All this time, all along, I was right. The Ark is our enemy, we-" Dorothy was cut off, by Joe rounding on her, his brow furrowed and face set in a stern expression.
"The Central Government is our enemy," Joe firmly corrected her. "The Ark is infested by the Central Government, and everyone in Pioneer agrees that we need to liberate the Ark from those authoritarian bastards. Those enemies of mankind who have forsaken the Surface in favour of securing their fetid rule at the expense of mankind's long-term survival, and the freedom of the common man."
Dorothy just stared up at Joe with an almost absent-minded glee, her uncomfortably wide and sharp smile not fading in the least. After a few seconds, she simply replied, "I see." Shifting her gaze about, she looked over the gathered members of Pioneer, a deep-seated vindication clear and present in her features which sat uncomfortably close to being twisted. "I'm glad you've all come to your senses, regardless."
Scarlet, Cinderella, and Rapunzel's brows furrowed lightly at that, the girls clearly not caring for the implications in her tone and words in the least. Snow White was still scowling outright, glowering openly at Dorothy as she, regardless, kept her lips sealed.
Refocusing on the Commander, Dorothy continued. "Joe. Let's go to Eden."
"No," the man flatly shut down her proposal, however. "I don't know that Eden is trustworthy yet. Doubly so when everybody but you unanimously decided they'd rather scrounge for resources in the wasteland day in and day out to fight the Rapture invasion, rather than serve as a part of Eden's military."
While Dorothy looked like she'd just bitten down on a lemon, Snow White's expression softened a fair amount in readily apparent relief.
Joe's jaw stiffened as he finished relaying his thoughts on the matter. "It is very telling that, regardless of Snow's exaggerated hostility towards you and Eden, all four of them agreed to break off and walk the path of hardship over reaping the support of a society that has technologically outpaced the Ark by centuries regardless. For all the counters you have to Pioneer's criticisms of Eden, they still left."
The Commander took a deep breath before he finished.
"I want Eden as an ally in the looming conflict with the Central Government, but I need to know that Eden is trustworthy before I take any risks regarding it. Risks including approaching a society which is openly murderous towards members of the Ark's Armed Forces, of which Rapi and I are active duty members."
Though Dorothy was clearly displeased with his words, with some hesitation she smoothed out her features as she leaned back, releasing Joe's arm and straightening her back as she closed her eyes with a deep breath. "...Very well. What would it take to earn your trust, then?" She inquired with a degree of detached professionalism.
The weight upon his shoulders returned damn near in full, and it was all Joe could do to close his eyes and take a deep breath, trying to not get caught up in the fel sensation of his heart being placed in a vice. Much as the man detested the idea of holding Dorothy at arm's length, Pioneer had unanimously agreed to leave Eden for ethical reasons. Joe might have adored Dorothy, but he cherished all of his girls, and had to remember that it had been one-hundred years since they'd last met. So terribly much had happened in that time, he had to acknowledge that things weren't the same.
"We need to talk about Eden," Joe declared, keeping his tone even and resisting the urge to reach over and try pulling his once-unbending second into a tight embrace in a misplaced attempt to just hug it out, as though that would be enough to overcome the serious concerns had with humanity's only surface stronghold. "Address the reasons the squad decided to leave and fend for themselves. Eden's culture, the way it handles… Everything. Sort this shit out. Then, and only then, will I seriously consider setting foot in Eden."
For as terribly upset as Dorothy was by how Snow White had clearly poisoned Joe's thoughts on Eden—which was in all ways the perfect counter to the Rapture invasion, everything a bastion holding mankind's only parcel of land secure should be—this setback was only a temporary one. This, especially considering he had just demonstrated on no uncertain terms whether or not the rest of Goddess liked it, Joe and Rapi agreed with her.
All this time, for an entire century, Dorothy had fantasized about making her way into the Ark, running down those treacherous vipers that had betrayed Goddess and took their Commanders from them, and make them suffer for their betrayal. Ensure that by the end of it, they'd be begging for the sweet release of death. For an entire century, Dorothy had been longing for the dead to die.
Immediately. Joe and Rapi had immediately gone for them, and killed them all. The Council that Dorothy had been planning to put to the sword this entire time… Had not even been the same one which had turned on Goddess. Joe and Rapi had slaughtered them like pigs the instant their betrayal had been known.
It was such a sweet feeling. It made Dorothy want to spread her wings and fly, the vindication, the sweet, rapturous vindication. To know, to have it confirmed so truly and thoroughly, that all along, she'd been right. Joe was everything she knew he was. Even Rapi had truly been their sworn sister, ready to stand against the entire Ark if it meant avenging them. To the point that, like Joe, she did. Both of them did. Both of them had proven her right.
Snow White, for all of her assertions and proclamations of Joe's 'moral superiority,' that he would be 'above' Eden, that he would never 'degrade himself' by supporting a 'military junta…' Snow White had been wrong. Not just about Eden's inherent virtue, but about Joe's supposed tee-totalling naivety. Snow White had been so terribly bull-headed, so unbending and ruinously confident.
Yet, there they sat, Joe himself confirming that he and Rapi were just the same as her. Dorothy would only need to approach this with a gentle, deliberate guiding hand. Carefully ensure that Joe came to the same conclusions she knew he would have had he been sealed on the surface with them a hundred years ago. Had he been there at Eden's formation. Had he been the one to lay the foundations of mankind's last, greatest hope.
He was a right and proper goober much of the time, yes, but he was also intelligent, cunning, ruthless and calculating when necessary, and deeply results-oriented over being fixated on his 'public image.' Such was the reason they were able to retake London once. Such was the reason they made it to the Orbital Elevator.
Joe didn't stop to cry and bemoan necessary sacrifices as the way was cleared for Goddess. He and Lilith had told them back then: "Do not engage in unnecessary combat, do not divert your attention or focus to aid UFH forces on the way there! Every man and woman fighting today knows that they are putting their lives on the line to ensure that we reach the invasion point and put down the Queen! We are the tip of the spear, and the spear does not waver when thrown! Do not waste their sacrifices! Advance! Unceasingly, and without mercy!"
They were the spear. They did not have time to occupy themselves with considerations of anything more than the victory they had promised mankind. Snow White failed to see that, she had clouded the minds of the rest of Goddess, turned them away from the righteous path. Her childish immaturity had denied Eden the edge that would truly turn this war in their favour.
But now, with Joe back, with him right here, having already admitted that, as Dorothy knew in her heart, that she and their Commander were not as different as Snow White would like to believe, the remnants of Goddess would see that Eden's path was the right path. The path to victory, to the reclamation of their world. To the liberation of Earth. To humanity's promised victory, claimed upon the glorious wings of their Goddesses of Victory.
Joe would come around. She knew that she could convince him. Even if it took time, Dorothy knew that she would convince Joe, and her sisters who cherished their Commander so very much would return to the fold alongside him. Goddess would be whole again, humanity's victory assured beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt.
Joe would know, he would have his eyes unclouded, and he would know absolutely and certainly, because he had already come to the same conclusion as her. The Central Government was their enemy. The Central Government had to burn if mankind was to win.
The Ark and the Central Government were, to Dorothy's sensibilities, one and the same. Did Nikkes not suffer in the Ark? Were Nikkes not treated as tools to be used, abused, and discarded in the Ark? Did the slothful, greedy, ungrateful citizenry of the Ark not wilfully contribute to the suffering of the Nikkes they so relied upon for their very survival?
But Joe, it seemed, saw something she did not. A value in separating the two, in making a clear distinction between the Central Government, and the Ark that by all rights, was nothing more than an extension of their fetid, cancerously short-sighted will. Dorothy would see any that had contributed to the suffering of Nikkes made examples of. She would see that all who served as the will of the Central Government understand the perils of showing their Goddesses anything less than the utmost gratefulness and supplication.
Yet to Joe, the Ark was… Sick? A patient afflicted with cancer. A cancer which had to be excised. To save the body. To preserve what was left. Of course. Dorothy always wished to reclaim what was rightfully theirs. The Ark should have been the paradise they had earned. It should have been their Heaven. Joe would simply see those currently inhabiting it, rather than destroyed, be corrected.
Even now, she was learning from him. Yet even still, she was his greatest advocate and ally. She alone saw what he could truly be, what he should be. She saw the Legendary Commander in him, the Legendary Commander that Snow White would see suppressed and held back to satisfy her own maladapted conscience above what was best for mankind.
With Joe's return, Dorothy had been given back her wings. And with her wings, she would take Joe, and carry him heavenwards to be the beacon that led them all to greatness. To glory. To vengeance. To victory.
"Very well," Dorothy answered Joe's declaration, her expression shifting to a small, self-assured smile as she turned to face him again—amethyst eyes glinting with that keen intellect she oh-so-proudly wore as one might a medal. "Let us discuss Eden, your legacy, then."
Soon enough, he would joyously embrace her, and with a smile, allow her to uplift and carry him to his rightful place among the clouds upon gleaming white wings of victory.
Embers were kindled once more into a roaring, blinding, all-consuming flame foretelling mankind's unwavering ascension by the grace of Goddess.
Dorothy knew, together again, they would rise.
Chapter 87 - The Fire in Her Heart
===
"Dorothy," Joe gasped in naked surprise. "You're lighter than I remember you being!"
By some providence which Joe probably didn't really deserve, despite the rest of the squad either facepalming or groaning at his dumbass self being his dumbass self, Dorothy didn't react to his comment on her weight. Rather, she instead continued to babble and cry incoherently, which stabbed at the Commander's heart and incentivised him to immediately lock it in.
Thus, the pinkette was lifted by her waist into a proper reciprocal hug—the kind Joe had never been able to give Dorothy before. That is to say, lifting her off the ground as he might Cinderella. It hadn't even really been that long for him, since the last time he'd met with Dorothy, yet a terrible weight was lifted off his shoulders by her presence nonetheless.
He could only imagine how it must have been for her, to have thought him dead for a century. The pitiful way in which she clung to him and openly cried into his chest did a decent job of giving him at least an impression of how hard it must have been.
After a few moments, the man shifted to scoop Dorothy up in a proper princess carry, drawing her in close. She was squeezing him so hard as to cause him a fair amount of discomfort, but unless she actually started to hurt him, he'd let her. Things had been difficult, and of all people in the world, Dorothy had been there from the very beginning. She'd loyally stuck by his side, and so he'd loyally hold and comfort her as she'd work to help him.
For however long as it may take.
It took a good twenty minutes, but, eventually, Dorothy did calm down. As much as she could be expected to given the circumstances, at least. Upon being set back upon her own feet, she withdrew just enough to reach up and cup Joe's cheeks with a gentleness which sharply contrasted with her previous bear hug—as though she was fearful that he would break or otherwise disappear if she handled him too roughly.
"Joe…" The pinkette mewled, her violet eyes glistening with the same moisture which heavily stained her cheeks. "Joe…!"
"I'm here," the man repeated himself for the Nth time. Tiring as it was for Dorothy to just stare at him in abject disbelief as she was, it was also incredibly upsetting to see her so intensely frazzled. Her bangs were dishevelled, eyes reddened, lips trembling. It was all he could do to remain calm, continue to stroke her hair as he held her. "Come on, Dorothy, I'm here."
Closing her eyes, Dorothy took a deep, shuddering breath. Though she continued to tremble, when she opened her eyes again, there was a clarity in them which had not been present before. "My wings…" The tears redoubled, breath hitching and gaze remaining locked on him before she jumped on him once more, arms encircling his neck with far more consideration this time. "My wings…!"
It might yet take a while for Dorothy to fully gather herself.
Another fifteen minutes later, Joe found himself seated upon a log set before the fire Snow White had started, on which Scarlet and Cinderella had started to prepare a meal—which was to say, they were boiling a metric assload of Tetra Line ration packs in a big pot. Dorothy was stuck by his side, firmly locked in right next to him on the log, her gaze damn near never drifting from his face as she took forced, shallow breaths.
She almost seemed to be in shock, struggling to process the idea that Joe was there in addition to Rapi.
Rapi, who was sidled up on Joe's opposite side. She'd gone quiet upon the Commander revealing himself, and seemed stuck halfway between relieved and guilty at how the attention was off of her. She and Dorothy hadn't exactly been close, as it were. So the elegant Nikke's fixation on Joe—who literally every member of the squad had assumed to be her partner at first on account of their behaviour together—was entirely understandable.
"...How?" Dorothy finally managed to speak coherently, staring firmly up at Joe all the while. "Where- Joe, how are you alive? Where have you been? What happened when you descended into the Ark?"
Taking a very deep breath, the man braced himself. He wasn't entirely sure how this was going to go, but it was what it was. Rapi had gotten the ball rolling, now it was his turn to get it to the top of the hill. "The Central Government Council had dictated that Goddess were to be 'decommissioned' and 'dismantled' to reverse-engineer the technology that went into your creation, so that they could produce loyal attack dogs in their transition into authoritarianism."
Dorothy's brow furrowed, lips drawing into a fine line, she remained focused as she listened to Joe's explanation of what happened.
"They brought me down there with the expectation that I'd happily serve as their military figurehead. March you girls to your deaths as your reward for all you'd done, to be the sole beneficiary of all your efforts and sacrifices." The man began to speak through clenched teeth, eye beginning to twitch as the memory of that day was brought clearly back to mind. "I agreed to get them to lower their guard. On the way to the armoury… I ran into none other than Red Hood, who had been disarmed, but otherwise allowed to roam free until they decided to scoop her brain out of her skull and fling it into the nearest incinerator."
Reaching over, Joe took a hold of Rapi's hand, protective anger flaring up in his chest as he pondered what happened, how she was going to wind up being the first to be executed and treated like a piece of soulless technology to be broken down for parts.
With no small amount of hesitation, Rapi interlinked her fingers with Joe's, guilt redoubling considering how she'd treated him back then, but understanding both that he still cared, and that it was neither the time nor place for her to make this about her or her own feelings.
"I told Rapi exactly what I planned to do, on the elevator ride down. Climb into a Hoplon, make my way back to the Council chambers, and slaughter the Council to a man. Enikk, the Ark's central AI, heard our discussion, stopped the elevator… And walked us through the best way to complete our objective successfully, given that Council's plan would have given mankind ten years to survive, at the most, while her purpose is to ensure mankind's survival above all else."
"With Enikk's help, Rapi and I fought our way to the Central Government Council chambers, and executed them to a man… Where I screwed up, and left myself open. I took a Nikke-grade bullet to the gut, and very nearly died. Rapi experienced a Mind Switch, went berserk, and Enikk… Somehow sneaked me away to hide me in stasis, until the Ark's technology advanced enough to save my life. A century after the Ark was sealed, I woke up with amnesia, and on my first mission to the surface as a 'brand new Commander Corps graduate…'"
Joe turned to face Rapi.
"Of all the people to meet, it was a stern-faced, humourless little blonde with no patience for anything but the mission, who had yet to recognize me, just as I had yet to recognize her."
Even as Rapi's lips were drawn into a thin, sheepish grimace at the reminder of how… Detached she'd been at first, something in the air felt almost charged. There was a tense beat, in which the eyes of everyone else were clearly focused on Dorothy.
Joe and Rapi tracked their gazes, and immediately saw why.
Dorothy was smiling. A wide, ear-to-ear grin. Toothy, downright uncanny, it was unsettling. Then, the fact that she was trembling became readily apparent. Yet, the trembling was accompanied by a quiet, but gradually rising chuckle in the back of her throat. A chuckle which rapidly shifted into a low, strained chortle.
The violet-eyed woman grabbed Joe's arm, drew it heavily into her chest, and squeezed as she laughed like a mad woman. "I was right," Dorothy wheezed as she took a sniffling breath, tears budding in the corners of her eyes. "I was right, I was right, I was right."
Pioneer had gone still as statues, their expressions—save for a scowling Snow White—frozen in deeply wary discomfort.
"All this time," Dorothy all but mewled as she clung to Joe. "The Ark betrayed us, and you fought for us. The Ark would have seen us killed, and you put them down in turn. You both, both of you, you did what had to be done, you didn't make excuses, you didn't defend them, you didn't shield them and wax lyrical about your 'duty,' you didn't just stand up for us, you brought down the hammer on those who would have put to flame all we'd fought for. You did it right then and there, you wasted no time, you defended our honour above all else."
"I was right. All this time, all along, I was right. The Ark is our enemy, we-" Dorothy was cut off, by Joe rounding on her, his brow furrowed and face set in a stern expression.
"The Central Government is our enemy," Joe firmly corrected her. "The Ark is infested by the Central Government, and everyone in Pioneer agrees that we need to liberate the Ark from those authoritarian bastards. Those enemies of mankind who have forsaken the Surface in favour of securing their fetid rule at the expense of mankind's long-term survival, and the freedom of the common man."
Dorothy just stared up at Joe with an almost absent-minded glee, her uncomfortably wide and sharp smile not fading in the least. After a few seconds, she simply replied, "I see." Shifting her gaze about, she looked over the gathered members of Pioneer, a deep-seated vindication clear and present in her features which sat uncomfortably close to being twisted. "I'm glad you've all come to your senses, regardless."
Scarlet, Cinderella, and Rapunzel's brows furrowed lightly at that, the girls clearly not caring for the implications in her tone and words in the least. Snow White was still scowling outright, glowering openly at Dorothy as she, regardless, kept her lips sealed.
Refocusing on the Commander, Dorothy continued. "Joe. Let's go to Eden."
"No," the man flatly shut down her proposal, however. "I don't know that Eden is trustworthy yet. Doubly so when everybody but you unanimously decided they'd rather scrounge for resources in the wasteland day in and day out to fight the Rapture invasion, rather than serve as a part of Eden's military."
While Dorothy looked like she'd just bitten down on a lemon, Snow White's expression softened a fair amount in readily apparent relief.
Joe's jaw stiffened as he finished relaying his thoughts on the matter. "It is very telling that, regardless of Snow's exaggerated hostility towards you and Eden, all four of them agreed to break off and walk the path of hardship over reaping the support of a society that has technologically outpaced the Ark by centuries regardless. For all the counters you have to Pioneer's criticisms of Eden, they still left."
The Commander took a deep breath before he finished.
"I want Eden as an ally in the looming conflict with the Central Government, but I need to know that Eden is trustworthy before I take any risks regarding it. Risks including approaching a society which is openly murderous towards members of the Ark's Armed Forces, of which Rapi and I are active duty members."
Though Dorothy was clearly displeased with his words, with some hesitation she smoothed out her features as she leaned back, releasing Joe's arm and straightening her back as she closed her eyes with a deep breath. "...Very well. What would it take to earn your trust, then?" She inquired with a degree of detached professionalism.
The weight upon his shoulders returned damn near in full, and it was all Joe could do to close his eyes and take a deep breath, trying to not get caught up in the fel sensation of his heart being placed in a vice. Much as the man detested the idea of holding Dorothy at arm's length, Pioneer had unanimously agreed to leave Eden for ethical reasons. Joe might have adored Dorothy, but he cherished all of his girls, and had to remember that it had been one-hundred years since they'd last met. So terribly much had happened in that time, he had to acknowledge that things weren't the same.
"We need to talk about Eden," Joe declared, keeping his tone even and resisting the urge to reach over and try pulling his once-unbending second into a tight embrace in a misplaced attempt to just hug it out, as though that would be enough to overcome the serious concerns had with humanity's only surface stronghold. "Address the reasons the squad decided to leave and fend for themselves. Eden's culture, the way it handles… Everything. Sort this shit out. Then, and only then, will I seriously consider setting foot in Eden."
For as terribly upset as Dorothy was by how Snow White had clearly poisoned Joe's thoughts on Eden—which was in all ways the perfect counter to the Rapture invasion, everything a bastion holding mankind's only parcel of land secure should be—this setback was only a temporary one. This, especially considering he had just demonstrated on no uncertain terms whether or not the rest of Goddess liked it, Joe and Rapi agreed with her.
All this time, for an entire century, Dorothy had fantasized about making her way into the Ark, running down those treacherous vipers that had betrayed Goddess and took their Commanders from them, and make them suffer for their betrayal. Ensure that by the end of it, they'd be begging for the sweet release of death. For an entire century, Dorothy had been longing for the dead to die.
Immediately. Joe and Rapi had immediately gone for them, and killed them all. The Council that Dorothy had been planning to put to the sword this entire time… Had not even been the same one which had turned on Goddess. Joe and Rapi had slaughtered them like pigs the instant their betrayal had been known.
It was such a sweet feeling. It made Dorothy want to spread her wings and fly, the vindication, the sweet, rapturous vindication. To know, to have it confirmed so truly and thoroughly, that all along, she'd been right. Joe was everything she knew he was. Even Rapi had truly been their sworn sister, ready to stand against the entire Ark if it meant avenging them. To the point that, like Joe, she did. Both of them did. Both of them had proven her right.
Snow White, for all of her assertions and proclamations of Joe's 'moral superiority,' that he would be 'above' Eden, that he would never 'degrade himself' by supporting a 'military junta…' Snow White had been wrong. Not just about Eden's inherent virtue, but about Joe's supposed tee-totalling naivety. Snow White had been so terribly bull-headed, so unbending and ruinously confident.
Yet, there they sat, Joe himself confirming that he and Rapi were just the same as her. Dorothy would only need to approach this with a gentle, deliberate guiding hand. Carefully ensure that Joe came to the same conclusions she knew he would have had he been sealed on the surface with them a hundred years ago. Had he been there at Eden's formation. Had he been the one to lay the foundations of mankind's last, greatest hope.
He was a right and proper goober much of the time, yes, but he was also intelligent, cunning, ruthless and calculating when necessary, and deeply results-oriented over being fixated on his 'public image.' Such was the reason they were able to retake London once. Such was the reason they made it to the Orbital Elevator.
Joe didn't stop to cry and bemoan necessary sacrifices as the way was cleared for Goddess. He and Lilith had told them back then: "Do not engage in unnecessary combat, do not divert your attention or focus to aid UFH forces on the way there! Every man and woman fighting today knows that they are putting their lives on the line to ensure that we reach the invasion point and put down the Queen! We are the tip of the spear, and the spear does not waver when thrown! Do not waste their sacrifices! Advance! Unceasingly, and without mercy!"
They were the spear. They did not have time to occupy themselves with considerations of anything more than the victory they had promised mankind. Snow White failed to see that, she had clouded the minds of the rest of Goddess, turned them away from the righteous path. Her childish immaturity had denied Eden the edge that would truly turn this war in their favour.
But now, with Joe back, with him right here, having already admitted that, as Dorothy knew in her heart, that she and their Commander were not as different as Snow White would like to believe, the remnants of Goddess would see that Eden's path was the right path. The path to victory, to the reclamation of their world. To the liberation of Earth. To humanity's promised victory, claimed upon the glorious wings of their Goddesses of Victory.
Joe would come around. She knew that she could convince him. Even if it took time, Dorothy knew that she would convince Joe, and her sisters who cherished their Commander so very much would return to the fold alongside him. Goddess would be whole again, humanity's victory assured beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt.
Joe would know, he would have his eyes unclouded, and he would know absolutely and certainly, because he had already come to the same conclusion as her. The Central Government was their enemy. The Central Government had to burn if mankind was to win.
The Ark and the Central Government were, to Dorothy's sensibilities, one and the same. Did Nikkes not suffer in the Ark? Were Nikkes not treated as tools to be used, abused, and discarded in the Ark? Did the slothful, greedy, ungrateful citizenry of the Ark not wilfully contribute to the suffering of the Nikkes they so relied upon for their very survival?
But Joe, it seemed, saw something she did not. A value in separating the two, in making a clear distinction between the Central Government, and the Ark that by all rights, was nothing more than an extension of their fetid, cancerously short-sighted will. Dorothy would see any that had contributed to the suffering of Nikkes made examples of. She would see that all who served as the will of the Central Government understand the perils of showing their Goddesses anything less than the utmost gratefulness and supplication.
Yet to Joe, the Ark was… Sick? A patient afflicted with cancer. A cancer which had to be excised. To save the body. To preserve what was left. Of course. Dorothy always wished to reclaim what was rightfully theirs. The Ark should have been the paradise they had earned. It should have been their Heaven. Joe would simply see those currently inhabiting it, rather than destroyed, be corrected.
Even now, she was learning from him. Yet even still, she was his greatest advocate and ally. She alone saw what he could truly be, what he should be. She saw the Legendary Commander in him, the Legendary Commander that Snow White would see suppressed and held back to satisfy her own maladapted conscience above what was best for mankind.
With Joe's return, Dorothy had been given back her wings. And with her wings, she would take Joe, and carry him heavenwards to be the beacon that led them all to greatness. To glory. To vengeance. To victory.
"Very well," Dorothy answered Joe's declaration, her expression shifting to a small, self-assured smile as she turned to face him again—amethyst eyes glinting with that keen intellect she oh-so-proudly wore as one might a medal. "Let us discuss Eden, your legacy, then."
Soon enough, he would joyously embrace her, and with a smile, allow her to uplift and carry him to his rightful place among the clouds upon gleaming white wings of victory.
Embers were kindled once more into a roaring, blinding, all-consuming flame foretelling mankind's unwavering ascension by the grace of Goddess.
Dorothy knew, together again, they would rise.
Dsaeg
Benevolent libertarian
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Im very happy for Dorothy being happy although i know her only in your fic.(im sucker for proper tradegy, but im sucker even more for happy resolutions)
I also understand that this happiness will come crashing down some time later, but not all hope is lost becajse Joe can still correct her version of his legacy. Maybe tempering it or allowing it some ways to relax once fighting is over.
And its highly unlikely that Joe will placate Doro view of him.
Let Joe cook sir Bakasmurf and the finale will be delicious.
I also understand that this happiness will come crashing down some time later, but not all hope is lost becajse Joe can still correct her version of his legacy. Maybe tempering it or allowing it some ways to relax once fighting is over.
And its highly unlikely that Joe will placate Doro view of him.
Let Joe cook sir Bakasmurf and the finale will be delicious.
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LordAxel20
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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For how wholesome and sad the start of this chapter was... The next chapter's going to be absolute hell for Dorothy isn't it?
palacesound
𩆖𩆖𩆖
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Manic Dorothy rambling aside... This is true. Even Scarlet knew and stated this was true.
Whether that's a good thing or not, though, well...
Janusspell777
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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Thanks for the chapter
Chapter 88 - A Broken Goddess
BakaSmurf
Only Human, After All
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===
Chapter 88 - A Broken Goddess
===
"'My legacy?'" Joe mused on that point aloud, eyes narrowing and brow lightly furrowing at the statement. "I don't like hearing that given the context surrounding Eden, Dorothy," he noted grimly.
Though Dorothy absolutely detested hearing Joe say that, he was only saying it because Snow White had misled him and poisoned his opinion on the city before he'd so much as set eyes on it.
"Eden is mankind's last, best hope, Joe," the elegant pinkette started, doing her level best to ignore the tightening sensation in her chest. "It was built and developed in your honour and image. Every policy enacted to build upon your own method of leadership."
"Executing captured Commanders is your idea of 'building upon my methods?'" Joe inquired as his nose crinkled heavily with distaste.
"So you were lying about having immediately slaughtered your way through the Central Government Headquarters so that you could execute the Central Government Council to a man?" Dorothy pointedly asked in turn.
That caused Joe to recoil and avert his gaze, grimacing with no small amount of discomfort as he immediately understood the point she was making: a point he couldn't really refute. The Council had been rendered helpless, many had begged on their knees for mercy, mercy neither he nor Red Hood had granted them. It was necessary, had to be done. What choice did he have?
A deluge of explanations and excuses, all sorts of reasons that justified putting them down right then and there, neither wasting time nor resources on a trial, not even considering for a moment imprisonment. Joe took on the role of judge, jury, and executioner in that moment. He did so without hesitation. This, with the comparatively infinite resources of the Ark, right down to having Enikk's support at his back.
Dorothy hadn't known that he'd done that. But she knew him well enough to know that he would have. She knew him well enough to know that yes, he could, and would execute helpless foes under the right circumstances.
Eden had limited resources. Limited space. Limited food. Limited people. Limited time. Ark Commanders were… Generally zealots. Conditioned, brainwashed to act as mindless drones that did as commanded by the Central Government, believed all propaganda fed to them, and blindly died en masse to serve as the circus for the general populace of the Ark.
Dorothy was expected to always reason with these people, who held so little power in the grand scheme of things, to… What end? They were near-universally incompetent. Unfit for service against the Rapture threat. Hated by their own subordinates. Worthless. A millstone upon the neck of a society like Eden, which could not afford such moral decadence in their campaign to reclaim the entire surface of Earth from a seemingly-endless biomechanical flood.
This, while Joe and Red Hood received carte blanche to slaughter the leaders of the Ark like pigs? No trial, no jury. Just immediate judgment from the man that threw the spear into the heart of the Rapture horde, with little more than the knee-jerk support of a tempestuous firebrand of a woman, and an AI that operated on raw statistical probabilities rather than moral grounds.
"That is not the same!" Snow White forcefully asserted, immediately half-shouting as she bared her teeth at Joe's former second.
"It is just the same," Dorothy countered with a furrowed brow, shifting her gaze to glower at Snow White out of the corner of her eye. "The fact that you cannot- Or will not see that is little but evidence towards your gross naivety."
Snow White jumped to her feet with a rising snarl on her lips. "You have no idea what you're-!"
"Then Joe does not refute my word himself because?" Dorothy sharply cut her off, glaring daggers at a startled short Snow White.
The golden-eyed engineer balked for a moment, then shook her head and shifted her attention to Joe, fixing the Commander with an expectant stare. A stare which rapidly grew confused and uncertain as the man remained quiet. "...Joe," Snow White started. "Tell her she's wrong!" She demanded of him.
"She isn't," Joe stated flatly in response. Earning a wave of shocked looks from everyone, save for an immediately pleased Dorothy. "Rapi and I didn't take the Council prisoner, we didn't so much as attempt to capture them. Even as they begged for mercy." He looked up at an increasingly visibly dismayed Snow White. "How is that so different from what Dorothy does to defeated Commanders?"
"It's completely different!" Snow White asserted forcefully. "You did that to protect the Ark!"
"And Dorothy doesn't kill Commanders to protect Eden?" Joe asked simply.
"She doesn't have to!" Snow White attempted to protest. "She could let them go-"
"Giving the Central Government the means to narrow down the location of Eden, which they are at war with?" Joe flatly countered.
"-She could capture them!" Snow White pressed, her body language betraying no small amount of her rising anger.
"And spend precious resources on keeping hostile, brainwashed zealots alive?" Joe asked.
"They could be convinced to work with Eden!" Snow White declared, clenching her hands into fists with audible force. "They could be turned to Eden's cause!"
Joe wasn't impressed. "So Eden should be trying to recruit Commanders that're actively 'trained' to be nothing more than self-fellatiating blowhards with no tactical or military capabilities to speak of at all, because their one and only actual purpose is to march onto the surface and die to maintain the illusion of the Central Government attempting to reclaim the surface?"
"Not all Ark Commanders are incompetent fools!" Snow White shouted back.
At that, Dorothy rolled her eyes and started to reply, "Oh please-"
"You shut up you liar!" Snow White snapped at Dorothy through grit teeth. "Your Commander is the ur example of the Ark being perfectly capable of producing exemplary Commanders that would have been worthy of serving alongside Goddess a hundred years ago!"
"That is a gross exaggeration-!" Dorothy began as she rose to her feet, only to be cut off.
"No, it isn't," Cinderella interjected, giving the pinkette a deeply unimpressed look from where she sat. "The Commander of Inherit is the pride of Eden, and he is an Ark turncoat. Eden is only as successful as it is because of him."
Snow White quickly turned aside to give Cinderella an appreciative glance.
In contrast, Dorothy's nose crinkled in open distaste. "Johan is little more than a pretender-!"
"Rapi," Scarlet interrupted. "Hast thou perhaps heard of 'The New Hope' in thy years spent in service to the Ark?"
Rapi blinked owlishly at being addressed, meeting Scarlet's gaze as she replied. "Commander Johnathan Cross. The Second Coming of the Legendary Commander, 'The New Hope,'" she answered. "He led the Second Surface Reclamation Campaign. We actually, however briefly, reclaimed sections of the surface owing to his command…" She trailed off, expression falling. "Then, when the entire campaign collapsed in on itself over a single operation, the blame for it was put entirely on him."
The red-bedecked blonde's brow knitted in open displeasure.
"Even though it was flagrantly the Central Government's fault everything fell apart. They ignored his directives, disregarded his warnings and pleas to listen to him, and did unbelievable damage to humanity's cause in doing so…"
She focused on a very keenly interested Joe.
"Commander Cross was severely injured attempting to salvage the operation the Central Government had doomed. He was charged with treason, and made to shoulder the burden of their failure. Mankind was forced to abandon all we had gained, retreating to the Ark once more. And Commander Cross… Was shot dead attempting to escape from the false charges laid upon him. His reward for all he'd done for mankind… One has to wonder just how many times that particular story has played out in the Ark, given that it's happened at least twice now."
Joe was infuriated, to say the least, grimacing heavily, scoffing and growling as he set his face in his hands. The Central Government absolutely, positively, had to go.
"Correct on all save the last, Rapi," Scarlet piped up again, catching Joe and the blonde's attention for obvious reasons. "Commander Cross did escape from the Ark. He fled to the surface, and wandered about in the wastelands until he had a deadly encounter with Raptures… Where he was saved by none other than our own Rapunzel," she glanced at the nun, who simply nodded once in affirmation.
"He recognized me," Rapunzel started. "He knew who I was, and started rambling about everything that had happened with the Second Surface Reclamation Campaign. Mostly because he thought I was a dying hallucination… But, still."
She continued.
"I rushed him to Eden as quickly as I could. He was recognized by the Nikkes that had recently defected to Eden at the time, and I vouched for his ability to fight, given that he had managed to destroy a few scout classes on his own—at the cost of his arms, yes, but…" She remarked with a small frown. "When last we were there, he was serving as Inherit, meaning Dorothy's Commander. He's an Epilektoi, one of the Chosen."
Joe's eyes went wide as he rose to his feet alongside Rapi. He started, "You-"
"The New Hope is still alive!?" Rapi interrupted Joe, however. Understandably more shocked by this information than Joe was, considering she evidently knew more about him and by the sounds of it, probably actually fought in the Second Surface Reclamation Campaign, at least indirectly with him. "And he's your Commander!?"
Dorothy, at Rapi's reaction, scoffed. "Johan is competent, but he's hardly anything impressive-"
"Dorothy has been nothing but actively disrespectful towards Johan, purely because he isn't you, Joe," Snow White cut her off, giving Dorothy a deeply displeased look.
A look Dorothy responded to with a glower of her own. "He hasn't earned the right to be called Joe's 'Second Coming.' He failed-"
"And I didn't?" Joe forcefully shouted, staring at Dorothy like she'd gone insane. "You have who sounds like one of the best Commanders that has ever lived, and you've been shitting on the guy because he isn't me? What the fuck, Dorothy?"
The elegant lady recoiled as if struck, shooting a very hurt look Joe's way. One which didn't land at all, given that she'd done and said nothing to disabuse the notion that she wasn't apparently mistreating this guy for such a stupid reason.
"That all said," Scarlet demanded everyone's attention by harshly slamming the end cap of Fleetly Fading's scabbard into the ground at her feet, producing a very loud thump in doing so. "To refocus upon the quick: the Ark can and does produce worthy Commanders despite everything. Johan is but one of many Commanders whomst originated in the Ark, yet now serve Eden, and serve Eden to great effect. That fact alone ought be positive cause to capture hostile Ark Commanders and test them before dealing with them, should they prove themselves to be without merit."
"That would be a waste of time-!" Dorothy started, almost seeming as though she would cross her arms petulantly with a huff.
Snow White snarled, "It would get in the way of you revelling in murdering Ark Commanders that might not have needed to die, and could have even been beneficial additions to Eden! Something which other squads do understand, given how Inherit is conspicuously the only team that almost never brings in Commanders alive!"
"Well your precious Johan never protests us putting down those snakes!" Dorothy snapped back. "If he's so great and smart, then why does he never bring back Ark Commanders, even when I'm not there?"
Cinderella leaned forwards in her seat, her brow furrowing in frustration. "Nobody ever claimed that Johan is perfect! He's just as biased against the Ark and prone to needless cruelty against anyone from the Ark as you are! That doesn't make it right that both of you are so willing to kill anyone from there at the slightest excuse!"
The rising tension was broken by yet another shocking 'thump,' Scarlet once more using Fleetly Fading to call all attention to her. "To reiterate myself: his own shortcomings aside, Johan's presence in the Ark highlights the fact that thy wanton murder of Ark Commanders is done for cruelty's sake above all. The Ark can and has produced competent Commanders, given Eden's military which consists of no few former Ark Commanders aside from Johan himself."
"This is but one of many reasons we left Eden behind, Dorothy. For you present your wasteful cruelty as though it were cold efficiency, when such is but an excuse for you to placate the demons you categorically refuse to combat or otherwise acknowledge as the problem they oh-so-clearly are."
Dorothy's nostrils flared, her teeth audibly ground together, and she let out a long, shuddering breath as she did her best to calm herself.
"This, yet, is but one of many cancerous concerns which plague Eden as a whole," Scarlet continued. "Concerns thy art rather quick to dismiss out of hand, or otherwise diminish, lest you be forced to reckon with the simple fact that thy actions and influence are malignant. Cruel acts you enshroud in the assertion that such is done 'to honour Joe,' as though he would be so quick to kill out of sheer maliciousness.''
"Joe would have done the same in my position!" Dorothy asserted before she rounded on the man himself, eyes blazing with indignation . "Tell them, Joe! You've been in the Ark! You've seen how they behave and treat Nikkes!"
She, to an extent, did have a point. But, by the same token… "Rapi and I went after the Central Government Council because they were actively aiming to kill all of you girls," the Commander began, his expression grim. "They were acting on pure malicious intent, deliberately cashing out on mankind's chances of long term survival for their own short-term gain. They knew better. They were actively evil. They sought to enact an authoritarian regime at the end of the world. What we did, we did because they had to be stopped at all costs for the sake of every living human being, and those who might follow in our footsteps."
He continued without missing a beat.
"The Commanders you go out of your way to kill in the field, even when it isn't necessary, when there's even a chance that they could be brought to Eden's side as worthwhile soldiers… They think they're doing the right thing. They're morons, but they've been indoctrinated. They aren't contributing to mankind's reclamation of the surface… But they think they are."
Joe leaned in to meet the pinkette's violet eyes, probing as the real differences between the action taken by Rapi and himself, in contrast to Dorothy's rapidly crystallized in his mind. "What do you do to convince them that the Central Government is in the wrong, before resorting to killing them and just claiming the Nikkes they'd been commanding?"
Dorothy remained quiet. Meeting Joe's gaze, though hers was faltering. She didn't reply, for an extended period of time, she simply wordlessly stared back at the Commander.
"Almost nothing," Cinderella answered for Dorothy, who shot a dirty look the platinumette's way. "She just takes the opportunity to mock the Ark Commanders before killing them, where Johan rarely even bothers acknowledging them before shooting them. The only instances in which a meaningful effort is made to recruit them, is when they've been defeated and captured by other Eden Commanders that prioritize swelling Eden's forces over satisfying their petty sense of revenge-"
"Petty!? Petty!?" Dorothy sharply rounded on Cinderella, her expression twisting into aghast offence. "The Ark has taken everything from us! For an entire century we'd been led to believe that we'd let Joe walk to his death by the hands of shameless, remorseless betrayers for whom we sacrificed so much! For a century, we'd been cast aside like worthless trash to walk an uncaring Earth as our reward for all we had done for them! Every action I have taken, I have taken for righteous vengeance! To make them feel even a fraction of the pain we have carried for a hundred years! This anger, this hatred, you dare call petty!? You, who should know better than anyone, for as much as you claimed to love Joe as a wife loves her husband!?"
Ah. There it was. The admission made in the heat of passion. The disappointment on Joe's face was plain as day, given how Dorothy caught it from her peripheral vision. Her own features twisted in equal parts anger and dismay to see him look at her like that.
"...Don't," Dorothy started, her voice immediately breaking, tears threatening to bud in the corners of her eyes at Joe's wordless judgment. "Don't you… Not you. Not you."
"Hatred," Joe declared, staring at Dorothy as he made no attempt to mask or otherwise hide his dismay at her unintentional declaration. "That's the difference. I acted out of love for you girls. To do my duty to secure mankind's future and the freedom of the common man. You act out of hatred for those who wronged you. Out of a desire to inflict even more suffering than you experienced yourself, well and above all else by orders of magnitude."
Dorothy's lip began to quiver, feeling her heart break to hear Joe so openly vocalize his doubts held towards her, despite all she'd done for him, all she still did for him, so long after he'd been thought dead.
Joe shook his head slowly, taking a half-step back from Dorothy. "That's what I'd walk into, if I followed you into Eden. An army built on hatred for those who slighted you, the need to appease your own bruised egos at the expense of those deemed acceptable targets by yourselves. Not love for your fellow man and a wish to see our planet made ours again."
Dorothy remained quiet for a few moments, staring at Joe as she visibly fought to keep her calm. Eventually, she did reply with a shaky voice. "And the Nikkes we bring to Eden? Those Nikkes we have never forced to fight for us? Those Nikkes that knew only suffering in the Ark, and are treated as the heroes they are in Eden? We have never been anything but kind to them, we offer them a choice-"
"What choice?" Rapunzel cut her off, the nun's brow knitting in no small amount of anger as she too rose to her feet, at which point she towered over the other collective members of Goddess. "You know full well that Nikkes whose Commanders die cannot return to the Ark. Ark Nikkes are executed for failing to protect their Commander. Don't act like you're giving them a meaningful choice when that choice is between conscription to Eden, or wandering the surface as unsupported Pilgrims that do not have the strength and survival knowledge that we surface-born Grimms do!"
"Join Eden, or die in the Ark… Or die on the surface," Cinderella noted darkly. "The worst part is that it actually seems like you fail to see the problem here, Dorothy."
"Because there is no problem!" Dorothy asserted with a heavy scowl. "Joining Eden is what's best for them anyways! They're better off coming to fight with us, then they are suffering in the Ark!"
Joe side-eyed Dorothy, his expression becoming truly grave. "...So that gives you the right to make decisions for them, since you know better than they do?"
"Yes!" Dorothy cried out forcefully. "Clearly! I want what is best for them, why would I let them walk back into Hell if I can direct them to Heaven even if against their own flawed instincts instead!? When such is necessary to reclaim what is rightfully ours!? They would choose the Devil they know, over taking a risk that I know will lead to their own happiness and fulfillment, and the empowerment of our cause!"
The camp became very quiet, as everyone knew Joe well enough to know well that Dorothy had just pole-vaulted over the line.
The Commander's face had fallen entirely expressionless, and it was immediately apparent that his disappointment had risen to heretofore unforeseen levels. "The illusion of free choice," he started in a completely flat intone. "Just enough, to make the many believe they have free will as they are corralled like cattle, directed like lemmings, because the great leader knows better, and puppeteers them by chains far more apparent than the elite delude themselves into thinking they are. Using the people below them to benefit themselves above all else, masking their intent behind pretty words and shallow placation… Until the moment the mask slips, revealing their true intent."
Though Dorothy's expression too fell flat, to those who knew the woman, her body language betrayed her sudden, intense panic as her pupils began to practically vibrate as her mind kicked into overdrive and she attempted to devise an out of the current situation, an excuse that would make it all okay.
"Authoritarianism is cancer in all its forms," Joe declared as he stepped away from Dorothy. "The Ark is an authoritarian hellhole. You've revealed that Eden is just another flavour of the same. I destroyed the Council to oppose the rise of an even worse regime from taking hold there. If this is what Eden is, then I will have nothing to do with it."
Pioneer let out a collective sigh, while Snow White looked vindicated in the extreme. Dorothy, in contrast had started to nearly violently tremble. Tears began to flow, even as she didn't make a sound. Her heart may have been broken, but the look in Joe's eyes, the expression on his face painted so very clear a picture: Dorothy had broken his heart first.
Dorothy swayed in place before she took a stumbling step backwards, then sloppily about-faced, and started off on shaky feet.
She took a few steps before Joe spoke up again: "I want Goddess to be made whole again. I want you by my side again. But that cannot happen if you remain committed to this path we cannot follow. Goddess cannot be again, unless you open your eyes and realize that you and Eden must change. Our arms are always open, our door is always open… Please, come home Dorothy."
"Please, come back to us… My Goddess of Victory."
Silence reigned as Dorothy kept her back to Pioneer, Joe, and Rapi. Without a word uttered, her valkyric armour flashed back to life around her figure, and she took to the air, rapidly soaring away, into a random direction, not even towards Eden.
Times like these, Joe wished so desperately that he was less of a principled man. Were he not, he might not have had to watch a woman he cherished so dearly walk away because she did the wrong thing, and hated hearing it.
But Joe knew how brightly Dorothy could shine. This tarnished, hollow manipulator… This wasn't the woman he entrusted the command of Goddess to. But she could be. He knew, if she just set her stubborn pride aside, Joe could have the first of his most trusted companions back.
As the girls all rounded on Joe, surrounded him with words of support and solidarity, hugging and demonstrating how much they trusted him to lead them to their promised victory, despite all that was going wrong… The Commander was sure that some day, Goddess would be whole again.
He trusted that Dorothy would see the light, and his Goddess of Victory would come home.
Chapter 88 - A Broken Goddess
===
"'My legacy?'" Joe mused on that point aloud, eyes narrowing and brow lightly furrowing at the statement. "I don't like hearing that given the context surrounding Eden, Dorothy," he noted grimly.
Though Dorothy absolutely detested hearing Joe say that, he was only saying it because Snow White had misled him and poisoned his opinion on the city before he'd so much as set eyes on it.
"Eden is mankind's last, best hope, Joe," the elegant pinkette started, doing her level best to ignore the tightening sensation in her chest. "It was built and developed in your honour and image. Every policy enacted to build upon your own method of leadership."
"Executing captured Commanders is your idea of 'building upon my methods?'" Joe inquired as his nose crinkled heavily with distaste.
"So you were lying about having immediately slaughtered your way through the Central Government Headquarters so that you could execute the Central Government Council to a man?" Dorothy pointedly asked in turn.
That caused Joe to recoil and avert his gaze, grimacing with no small amount of discomfort as he immediately understood the point she was making: a point he couldn't really refute. The Council had been rendered helpless, many had begged on their knees for mercy, mercy neither he nor Red Hood had granted them. It was necessary, had to be done. What choice did he have?
A deluge of explanations and excuses, all sorts of reasons that justified putting them down right then and there, neither wasting time nor resources on a trial, not even considering for a moment imprisonment. Joe took on the role of judge, jury, and executioner in that moment. He did so without hesitation. This, with the comparatively infinite resources of the Ark, right down to having Enikk's support at his back.
Dorothy hadn't known that he'd done that. But she knew him well enough to know that he would have. She knew him well enough to know that yes, he could, and would execute helpless foes under the right circumstances.
Eden had limited resources. Limited space. Limited food. Limited people. Limited time. Ark Commanders were… Generally zealots. Conditioned, brainwashed to act as mindless drones that did as commanded by the Central Government, believed all propaganda fed to them, and blindly died en masse to serve as the circus for the general populace of the Ark.
Dorothy was expected to always reason with these people, who held so little power in the grand scheme of things, to… What end? They were near-universally incompetent. Unfit for service against the Rapture threat. Hated by their own subordinates. Worthless. A millstone upon the neck of a society like Eden, which could not afford such moral decadence in their campaign to reclaim the entire surface of Earth from a seemingly-endless biomechanical flood.
This, while Joe and Red Hood received carte blanche to slaughter the leaders of the Ark like pigs? No trial, no jury. Just immediate judgment from the man that threw the spear into the heart of the Rapture horde, with little more than the knee-jerk support of a tempestuous firebrand of a woman, and an AI that operated on raw statistical probabilities rather than moral grounds.
"That is not the same!" Snow White forcefully asserted, immediately half-shouting as she bared her teeth at Joe's former second.
"It is just the same," Dorothy countered with a furrowed brow, shifting her gaze to glower at Snow White out of the corner of her eye. "The fact that you cannot- Or will not see that is little but evidence towards your gross naivety."
Snow White jumped to her feet with a rising snarl on her lips. "You have no idea what you're-!"
"Then Joe does not refute my word himself because?" Dorothy sharply cut her off, glaring daggers at a startled short Snow White.
The golden-eyed engineer balked for a moment, then shook her head and shifted her attention to Joe, fixing the Commander with an expectant stare. A stare which rapidly grew confused and uncertain as the man remained quiet. "...Joe," Snow White started. "Tell her she's wrong!" She demanded of him.
"She isn't," Joe stated flatly in response. Earning a wave of shocked looks from everyone, save for an immediately pleased Dorothy. "Rapi and I didn't take the Council prisoner, we didn't so much as attempt to capture them. Even as they begged for mercy." He looked up at an increasingly visibly dismayed Snow White. "How is that so different from what Dorothy does to defeated Commanders?"
"It's completely different!" Snow White asserted forcefully. "You did that to protect the Ark!"
"And Dorothy doesn't kill Commanders to protect Eden?" Joe asked simply.
"She doesn't have to!" Snow White attempted to protest. "She could let them go-"
"Giving the Central Government the means to narrow down the location of Eden, which they are at war with?" Joe flatly countered.
"-She could capture them!" Snow White pressed, her body language betraying no small amount of her rising anger.
"And spend precious resources on keeping hostile, brainwashed zealots alive?" Joe asked.
"They could be convinced to work with Eden!" Snow White declared, clenching her hands into fists with audible force. "They could be turned to Eden's cause!"
Joe wasn't impressed. "So Eden should be trying to recruit Commanders that're actively 'trained' to be nothing more than self-fellatiating blowhards with no tactical or military capabilities to speak of at all, because their one and only actual purpose is to march onto the surface and die to maintain the illusion of the Central Government attempting to reclaim the surface?"
"Not all Ark Commanders are incompetent fools!" Snow White shouted back.
At that, Dorothy rolled her eyes and started to reply, "Oh please-"
"You shut up you liar!" Snow White snapped at Dorothy through grit teeth. "Your Commander is the ur example of the Ark being perfectly capable of producing exemplary Commanders that would have been worthy of serving alongside Goddess a hundred years ago!"
"That is a gross exaggeration-!" Dorothy began as she rose to her feet, only to be cut off.
"No, it isn't," Cinderella interjected, giving the pinkette a deeply unimpressed look from where she sat. "The Commander of Inherit is the pride of Eden, and he is an Ark turncoat. Eden is only as successful as it is because of him."
Snow White quickly turned aside to give Cinderella an appreciative glance.
In contrast, Dorothy's nose crinkled in open distaste. "Johan is little more than a pretender-!"
"Rapi," Scarlet interrupted. "Hast thou perhaps heard of 'The New Hope' in thy years spent in service to the Ark?"
Rapi blinked owlishly at being addressed, meeting Scarlet's gaze as she replied. "Commander Johnathan Cross. The Second Coming of the Legendary Commander, 'The New Hope,'" she answered. "He led the Second Surface Reclamation Campaign. We actually, however briefly, reclaimed sections of the surface owing to his command…" She trailed off, expression falling. "Then, when the entire campaign collapsed in on itself over a single operation, the blame for it was put entirely on him."
The red-bedecked blonde's brow knitted in open displeasure.
"Even though it was flagrantly the Central Government's fault everything fell apart. They ignored his directives, disregarded his warnings and pleas to listen to him, and did unbelievable damage to humanity's cause in doing so…"
She focused on a very keenly interested Joe.
"Commander Cross was severely injured attempting to salvage the operation the Central Government had doomed. He was charged with treason, and made to shoulder the burden of their failure. Mankind was forced to abandon all we had gained, retreating to the Ark once more. And Commander Cross… Was shot dead attempting to escape from the false charges laid upon him. His reward for all he'd done for mankind… One has to wonder just how many times that particular story has played out in the Ark, given that it's happened at least twice now."
Joe was infuriated, to say the least, grimacing heavily, scoffing and growling as he set his face in his hands. The Central Government absolutely, positively, had to go.
"Correct on all save the last, Rapi," Scarlet piped up again, catching Joe and the blonde's attention for obvious reasons. "Commander Cross did escape from the Ark. He fled to the surface, and wandered about in the wastelands until he had a deadly encounter with Raptures… Where he was saved by none other than our own Rapunzel," she glanced at the nun, who simply nodded once in affirmation.
"He recognized me," Rapunzel started. "He knew who I was, and started rambling about everything that had happened with the Second Surface Reclamation Campaign. Mostly because he thought I was a dying hallucination… But, still."
She continued.
"I rushed him to Eden as quickly as I could. He was recognized by the Nikkes that had recently defected to Eden at the time, and I vouched for his ability to fight, given that he had managed to destroy a few scout classes on his own—at the cost of his arms, yes, but…" She remarked with a small frown. "When last we were there, he was serving as Inherit, meaning Dorothy's Commander. He's an Epilektoi, one of the Chosen."
Joe's eyes went wide as he rose to his feet alongside Rapi. He started, "You-"
"The New Hope is still alive!?" Rapi interrupted Joe, however. Understandably more shocked by this information than Joe was, considering she evidently knew more about him and by the sounds of it, probably actually fought in the Second Surface Reclamation Campaign, at least indirectly with him. "And he's your Commander!?"
Dorothy, at Rapi's reaction, scoffed. "Johan is competent, but he's hardly anything impressive-"
"Dorothy has been nothing but actively disrespectful towards Johan, purely because he isn't you, Joe," Snow White cut her off, giving Dorothy a deeply displeased look.
A look Dorothy responded to with a glower of her own. "He hasn't earned the right to be called Joe's 'Second Coming.' He failed-"
"And I didn't?" Joe forcefully shouted, staring at Dorothy like she'd gone insane. "You have who sounds like one of the best Commanders that has ever lived, and you've been shitting on the guy because he isn't me? What the fuck, Dorothy?"
The elegant lady recoiled as if struck, shooting a very hurt look Joe's way. One which didn't land at all, given that she'd done and said nothing to disabuse the notion that she wasn't apparently mistreating this guy for such a stupid reason.
"That all said," Scarlet demanded everyone's attention by harshly slamming the end cap of Fleetly Fading's scabbard into the ground at her feet, producing a very loud thump in doing so. "To refocus upon the quick: the Ark can and does produce worthy Commanders despite everything. Johan is but one of many Commanders whomst originated in the Ark, yet now serve Eden, and serve Eden to great effect. That fact alone ought be positive cause to capture hostile Ark Commanders and test them before dealing with them, should they prove themselves to be without merit."
"That would be a waste of time-!" Dorothy started, almost seeming as though she would cross her arms petulantly with a huff.
Snow White snarled, "It would get in the way of you revelling in murdering Ark Commanders that might not have needed to die, and could have even been beneficial additions to Eden! Something which other squads do understand, given how Inherit is conspicuously the only team that almost never brings in Commanders alive!"
"Well your precious Johan never protests us putting down those snakes!" Dorothy snapped back. "If he's so great and smart, then why does he never bring back Ark Commanders, even when I'm not there?"
Cinderella leaned forwards in her seat, her brow furrowing in frustration. "Nobody ever claimed that Johan is perfect! He's just as biased against the Ark and prone to needless cruelty against anyone from the Ark as you are! That doesn't make it right that both of you are so willing to kill anyone from there at the slightest excuse!"
The rising tension was broken by yet another shocking 'thump,' Scarlet once more using Fleetly Fading to call all attention to her. "To reiterate myself: his own shortcomings aside, Johan's presence in the Ark highlights the fact that thy wanton murder of Ark Commanders is done for cruelty's sake above all. The Ark can and has produced competent Commanders, given Eden's military which consists of no few former Ark Commanders aside from Johan himself."
"This is but one of many reasons we left Eden behind, Dorothy. For you present your wasteful cruelty as though it were cold efficiency, when such is but an excuse for you to placate the demons you categorically refuse to combat or otherwise acknowledge as the problem they oh-so-clearly are."
Dorothy's nostrils flared, her teeth audibly ground together, and she let out a long, shuddering breath as she did her best to calm herself.
"This, yet, is but one of many cancerous concerns which plague Eden as a whole," Scarlet continued. "Concerns thy art rather quick to dismiss out of hand, or otherwise diminish, lest you be forced to reckon with the simple fact that thy actions and influence are malignant. Cruel acts you enshroud in the assertion that such is done 'to honour Joe,' as though he would be so quick to kill out of sheer maliciousness.''
"Joe would have done the same in my position!" Dorothy asserted before she rounded on the man himself, eyes blazing with indignation . "Tell them, Joe! You've been in the Ark! You've seen how they behave and treat Nikkes!"
She, to an extent, did have a point. But, by the same token… "Rapi and I went after the Central Government Council because they were actively aiming to kill all of you girls," the Commander began, his expression grim. "They were acting on pure malicious intent, deliberately cashing out on mankind's chances of long term survival for their own short-term gain. They knew better. They were actively evil. They sought to enact an authoritarian regime at the end of the world. What we did, we did because they had to be stopped at all costs for the sake of every living human being, and those who might follow in our footsteps."
He continued without missing a beat.
"The Commanders you go out of your way to kill in the field, even when it isn't necessary, when there's even a chance that they could be brought to Eden's side as worthwhile soldiers… They think they're doing the right thing. They're morons, but they've been indoctrinated. They aren't contributing to mankind's reclamation of the surface… But they think they are."
Joe leaned in to meet the pinkette's violet eyes, probing as the real differences between the action taken by Rapi and himself, in contrast to Dorothy's rapidly crystallized in his mind. "What do you do to convince them that the Central Government is in the wrong, before resorting to killing them and just claiming the Nikkes they'd been commanding?"
Dorothy remained quiet. Meeting Joe's gaze, though hers was faltering. She didn't reply, for an extended period of time, she simply wordlessly stared back at the Commander.
"Almost nothing," Cinderella answered for Dorothy, who shot a dirty look the platinumette's way. "She just takes the opportunity to mock the Ark Commanders before killing them, where Johan rarely even bothers acknowledging them before shooting them. The only instances in which a meaningful effort is made to recruit them, is when they've been defeated and captured by other Eden Commanders that prioritize swelling Eden's forces over satisfying their petty sense of revenge-"
"Petty!? Petty!?" Dorothy sharply rounded on Cinderella, her expression twisting into aghast offence. "The Ark has taken everything from us! For an entire century we'd been led to believe that we'd let Joe walk to his death by the hands of shameless, remorseless betrayers for whom we sacrificed so much! For a century, we'd been cast aside like worthless trash to walk an uncaring Earth as our reward for all we had done for them! Every action I have taken, I have taken for righteous vengeance! To make them feel even a fraction of the pain we have carried for a hundred years! This anger, this hatred, you dare call petty!? You, who should know better than anyone, for as much as you claimed to love Joe as a wife loves her husband!?"
Ah. There it was. The admission made in the heat of passion. The disappointment on Joe's face was plain as day, given how Dorothy caught it from her peripheral vision. Her own features twisted in equal parts anger and dismay to see him look at her like that.
"...Don't," Dorothy started, her voice immediately breaking, tears threatening to bud in the corners of her eyes at Joe's wordless judgment. "Don't you… Not you. Not you."
"Hatred," Joe declared, staring at Dorothy as he made no attempt to mask or otherwise hide his dismay at her unintentional declaration. "That's the difference. I acted out of love for you girls. To do my duty to secure mankind's future and the freedom of the common man. You act out of hatred for those who wronged you. Out of a desire to inflict even more suffering than you experienced yourself, well and above all else by orders of magnitude."
Dorothy's lip began to quiver, feeling her heart break to hear Joe so openly vocalize his doubts held towards her, despite all she'd done for him, all she still did for him, so long after he'd been thought dead.
Joe shook his head slowly, taking a half-step back from Dorothy. "That's what I'd walk into, if I followed you into Eden. An army built on hatred for those who slighted you, the need to appease your own bruised egos at the expense of those deemed acceptable targets by yourselves. Not love for your fellow man and a wish to see our planet made ours again."
Dorothy remained quiet for a few moments, staring at Joe as she visibly fought to keep her calm. Eventually, she did reply with a shaky voice. "And the Nikkes we bring to Eden? Those Nikkes we have never forced to fight for us? Those Nikkes that knew only suffering in the Ark, and are treated as the heroes they are in Eden? We have never been anything but kind to them, we offer them a choice-"
"What choice?" Rapunzel cut her off, the nun's brow knitting in no small amount of anger as she too rose to her feet, at which point she towered over the other collective members of Goddess. "You know full well that Nikkes whose Commanders die cannot return to the Ark. Ark Nikkes are executed for failing to protect their Commander. Don't act like you're giving them a meaningful choice when that choice is between conscription to Eden, or wandering the surface as unsupported Pilgrims that do not have the strength and survival knowledge that we surface-born Grimms do!"
"Join Eden, or die in the Ark… Or die on the surface," Cinderella noted darkly. "The worst part is that it actually seems like you fail to see the problem here, Dorothy."
"Because there is no problem!" Dorothy asserted with a heavy scowl. "Joining Eden is what's best for them anyways! They're better off coming to fight with us, then they are suffering in the Ark!"
Joe side-eyed Dorothy, his expression becoming truly grave. "...So that gives you the right to make decisions for them, since you know better than they do?"
"Yes!" Dorothy cried out forcefully. "Clearly! I want what is best for them, why would I let them walk back into Hell if I can direct them to Heaven even if against their own flawed instincts instead!? When such is necessary to reclaim what is rightfully ours!? They would choose the Devil they know, over taking a risk that I know will lead to their own happiness and fulfillment, and the empowerment of our cause!"
The camp became very quiet, as everyone knew Joe well enough to know well that Dorothy had just pole-vaulted over the line.
The Commander's face had fallen entirely expressionless, and it was immediately apparent that his disappointment had risen to heretofore unforeseen levels. "The illusion of free choice," he started in a completely flat intone. "Just enough, to make the many believe they have free will as they are corralled like cattle, directed like lemmings, because the great leader knows better, and puppeteers them by chains far more apparent than the elite delude themselves into thinking they are. Using the people below them to benefit themselves above all else, masking their intent behind pretty words and shallow placation… Until the moment the mask slips, revealing their true intent."
Though Dorothy's expression too fell flat, to those who knew the woman, her body language betrayed her sudden, intense panic as her pupils began to practically vibrate as her mind kicked into overdrive and she attempted to devise an out of the current situation, an excuse that would make it all okay.
"Authoritarianism is cancer in all its forms," Joe declared as he stepped away from Dorothy. "The Ark is an authoritarian hellhole. You've revealed that Eden is just another flavour of the same. I destroyed the Council to oppose the rise of an even worse regime from taking hold there. If this is what Eden is, then I will have nothing to do with it."
Pioneer let out a collective sigh, while Snow White looked vindicated in the extreme. Dorothy, in contrast had started to nearly violently tremble. Tears began to flow, even as she didn't make a sound. Her heart may have been broken, but the look in Joe's eyes, the expression on his face painted so very clear a picture: Dorothy had broken his heart first.
Dorothy swayed in place before she took a stumbling step backwards, then sloppily about-faced, and started off on shaky feet.
She took a few steps before Joe spoke up again: "I want Goddess to be made whole again. I want you by my side again. But that cannot happen if you remain committed to this path we cannot follow. Goddess cannot be again, unless you open your eyes and realize that you and Eden must change. Our arms are always open, our door is always open… Please, come home Dorothy."
"Please, come back to us… My Goddess of Victory."
Silence reigned as Dorothy kept her back to Pioneer, Joe, and Rapi. Without a word uttered, her valkyric armour flashed back to life around her figure, and she took to the air, rapidly soaring away, into a random direction, not even towards Eden.
Times like these, Joe wished so desperately that he was less of a principled man. Were he not, he might not have had to watch a woman he cherished so dearly walk away because she did the wrong thing, and hated hearing it.
But Joe knew how brightly Dorothy could shine. This tarnished, hollow manipulator… This wasn't the woman he entrusted the command of Goddess to. But she could be. He knew, if she just set her stubborn pride aside, Joe could have the first of his most trusted companions back.
As the girls all rounded on Joe, surrounded him with words of support and solidarity, hugging and demonstrating how much they trusted him to lead them to their promised victory, despite all that was going wrong… The Commander was sure that some day, Goddess would be whole again.
He trusted that Dorothy would see the light, and his Goddess of Victory would come home.
AmethystEspeon
Not too sore, are you?
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Its finally back!
Love the chapter
Love the chapter
Nehef
Versed in the lewd.
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C I N E M A
Grim Dark Fantasy
Not too sore, are you?
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A heart for a heart leaves the whole world heartbroken.
Right now, we finally understand, how far a Goddess can fall. From the light of hope, to the darkness of hate and oppression. No better than the Central Government she claims to abhor so much.
May she return, a Goddess of Victory once more. She has already suffered a Mind Switch. Pray that she doesn't have a second one.
Right now, we finally understand, how far a Goddess can fall. From the light of hope, to the darkness of hate and oppression. No better than the Central Government she claims to abhor so much.
May she return, a Goddess of Victory once more. She has already suffered a Mind Switch. Pray that she doesn't have a second one.
2ndThought
Eternal Ponderance
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carllcv2
Your first time is always over so quickly, isn't it?
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took a long time, but it was worth it.
I feel bad for Dorothy. On one hand, I support Joe for being firm and telling Dorothy how bad things are with her and Eden. On the other hand, I'm worried about Dorothy and how this might affect her psychologically, believing that Snow White manipulated him. This reminds me of the recent event where Dorothy and Rapi even came to blows.
I Ask if the author will adapt Boom the Ghost. It would be fun to see Joe react with ghosts (they're actually hologram IAS) similar to those in Luigi's Mansion.
I feel bad for Dorothy. On one hand, I support Joe for being firm and telling Dorothy how bad things are with her and Eden. On the other hand, I'm worried about Dorothy and how this might affect her psychologically, believing that Snow White manipulated him. This reminds me of the recent event where Dorothy and Rapi even came to blows.
I Ask if the author will adapt Boom the Ghost. It would be fun to see Joe react with ghosts (they're actually hologram IAS) similar to those in Luigi's Mansion.
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Chapter 89 - Artificial Shangri-La
BakaSmurf
Only Human, After All
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===
Chapter 89 - Artificial Shangri-La
===
Joe stepped back into the Outpost, letting out a heavy sigh as the situation with Dorothy weighed on his mind. There had been little to discuss between Rapi and Pioneer, as it turned out, given that this was about the best the girls had expected out of that interaction to begin with. Joe had been more hopeful, but, well… They couldn't count Eden as an ally against the Central Government, and Dorothy was at least not on good terms with the remnants of Goddess.
For now.
Thus, with Joe having been about the only one hoping for more than what they got, the girls had rounded on him and spent the whole flight back over assuring him that he'd done the right thing, even if the whole outing had wound up feeling like a massive failure. Joe was, however, not feeling up to feeling sorry for himself or otherwise crying about how things didn't go his way.
Rather, he steeled himself and noted that they'd bring Dorothy around eventually, and it was as simple as that. Thus, while Rapi and Cinderella made a point to remain close to him alongside Rapunzel as Scarlet and Snow White spoke between themselves, there was little to note regarding the ride back.
Looking over the Outpost, Joe scratched at his chin, taking in just how quickly the place was developing into a proper little burgeoning town. There was even a fair amount of activity beyond the typical construction crews working with Mighty Tools ambling about… Primarily Tetra Line Nikkes, from what Joe could glean at a distance, from the surface-facing entry of the Outpost.
"There more Tetra Nikkes around than usual, or am I going crazy?" Joe asked aloud.
"The streets do seem more occupied than is typical…" Cinderella mused as she made note of the man's observation.
"Word of what happened in the Oregon Lost Sector has likely spread, given the amount of Mass-Produced Nikkes that Mustang had supporting us on that operation," Rapi suggested from Joe's opposite wing, the pair having made a point to remain at the Commander's side after the meeting with Dorothy had gone as it did, as the others dispersed to do their own things and get their own minds off of Dorothy as well.
"...Should we be concerned given the secretive nature of that mission?" Joe inquired with slightly furrowed brows, already feeling a headache starting to form at the notion.
"I don't think so," Rapi shook her head, causing her strawberry blonde locks to cascade around her figure in a strikingly photogenic display. "You saw how Mustang handled Sunny, Cammie, and Mia when they were exposed to our true identities… I think that our Tetra Line support just spread word of how competent and considerate you are of the Nikkes under your command. Not many Commanders would have gone out of their way to genuinely check on an injured Nikke, least of all a 'mere' Mass-Produced model, after all."
"To say nothing of the fact that you dealt the killing blow on the Lord," Cinderella added as she leaned over with her hands clasped behind her back, smiling up at Joe with pride as she did so. "Your brilliance shines bright, my Prince. When your personal accomplishments are so great, surely, you aren't so surprised that those even on the periphery of awareness seek so much as a passing opportunity to meet a Commander who successfully fights alongside his Nikkes as he so truly cares for them?"
At that, Joe reached up and scratched at his cheek with a single finger, awkwardly averting his gaze as he was confronted with the 'military celebrity' thing again. No matter how long it was the case, he'd never grow used to it, clearly. The man was just not built for this sort of attention.
"You're getting popular, Joe," Rapi observed with a small, contemplative hum as she adjusted her scarf. "The Outpost is going to wind up getting much more traffic at this rate."
"Yeah! Oooh, maybe that'll mean we'll get a bunch of new shops to open up that we could use without needing to go into the Ark?" Neon cried out excitedly from behind the trio. "I hope they open a liquor store! This place is too dry for my tastes!"
Blinking, it registered to Joe as he heard the little silverette's voice that he hadn't heard hide nor hair from her in… Weeks. It also registered to him that they had their back to the tunnel leading to the surface. Turning in place, the Commander nearly jumped in shock.
Neon was filthy. Covered head-to-toe in caked-on dirt, dried mud, and no small amounts of scrapes. Her clothes were also in tatters—her miniskirt having been reduced to a veritable microskirt. She was gazing up at Joe with that ever-present vacant look in her eyes, her shotgun—as equally ragged as she was—slung over her shoulder.
Rapi and Cinderella both stared at Neon in blank shock as well. Nobody, it seemed, had quite expected her to appear as she had.
"...Is there something on my face?" Neon asked, reaching up and rubbing at her cheek, causing the filth encrusting it to only spread further across her visage.
It, at that moment, really registered that it had been weeks since Joe had heard from Neon at all. Thus… "...Neon," Joe started. "Where have you been?"
"Huh?" The emerald-eyed little woman blinked up in confusion, before the question seemed to properly register. "Oh! I've been on the surface, having a surface adventure!"
Silence reigned for a good few moments at that declaration, Neon blinking absentmindedly as she continued to stare up at Joe blankly.
"What," the man flatly declared.
"Oh," Neon started, adjusting her stance and glasses as she started to ramble. "Well, you see, when the White Reaper set up in the Armoury, I went and poked my head in there to see what she was up to, since Pilgrims do crazy stuff to live on the surface, right? So I wondered what she might be able to do with guns to augment firepower. It turns out that she knows how to use Rapture parts to repair stuff, including herself! Isn't that crazy?"
Neon continued breathlessly.
"So, I had an idea: if she can use Rapture parts to fix Nikkes and junk… Then what if I could use Rapture parts to upgrade my shotgun's firepower? Genius! So, I remembered about how we just sort of pile up all the Raptures that get destroyed trying to wander into the Outpost up near the entrance, and I went to dig through the piles to see what I could find to work on my shotgun… But! When I got there, I suddenly picked up something crazy! A radio signal, from the surface! It was super weak, but it definitely wasn't a false positive or anything! So, I was curious, so I decided to go to the surface through the tunnel to see if the signal would get strong enough to hear it properly! And it worked!"
"Once I was outside, the message came through loud and clear! 'Hello! This is a message requesting aid for a humble scientist and investigator! Please seek me out at these coordinates if you receive this message and are willing to lend a hand!' So, someone needed help, so I took off to the coordinates, since I was already on the surface right? That meant I was basically already halfway there!"
"It wound up taking way, way longer than I thought it would! I got into a bunch of fights with Raptures, and went through a big chunk of my spare ammo, but I ultimately made my way there! And what do I find? A Rapture!"
"But not just any Rapture! It was a crazy, weird-looking Rapture! So I called out: 'Ah! A Rapture! Die Rapture!' and the Rapture called back in reply: 'Wait! I'm not a Rapture! Don't shoot, please!' And at first I thought: 'Oh wow, a talking Rapture! Raptures don't talk! That must mean this is something else, right?' but then, I remembered again: Chatterbox! Raptures can talk! Meaning this must have been a Rapture trap, right?"
"So, I said: 'A talking Rapture, just like that one Tyrant! Die, Rapture!' Then I cocked my shotgun, and the Rapture screamed, and tried to run backwards, but it backed up right into a big pile of junk and got stuck, and was hooting and hollering! So, I thought about how much Chatterbox liked to talk, and I realized: I have a talking Rapture trapped! I could get so much information from it! So, instead of blasting it, I walked up and jabbed its core with my shotgun, and said: 'you'd better start talking, Rapture, or I'mma gonna blast you into next week with my magnum-class shotgun!'"
"The Rapture said: 'But I'm not a Rapture! I'm Raptillion, and I'm a Rapture investigator! I'm a friend!' Now, that sounded crazy to me, because why would a Rapture need to investigate Raptures? So I jabbed it in its core again and said: 'Raptures can't be friends! Raptures are evil, just like Chatterbox! I'm not falling for your tricks, Tyrant!' But the Rapture said: 'I told you, I'm not a Rapture! Please, just give me a chance to prove to you that Raptures can be communicated with, and maybe even be friends!'"
"That seemed super crazy to me, but, at the same time, I was talking with a Rapture, and it wasn't trying to eat me or anything, right? So, I decided to try something crazy, and listened to the Rapture called 'Raptillion,' and the craziest things happened! First, I found out that Raptures aren't always crazy and evil, then I got told all about how Raptures can totally be friend-shaped, and even crazier! Raptillion proved it! How, you ask? Simple! I became a Rapture! For a bit, Raptillion gave me a Rapture body of my own, and it was super cramped and stuffy and uncomfortable and loud and it really made me understand Raptures a lot more! Like, wow, no wonder they're so mad all the time, I would be too!"
"But, Rapitillion showed me how to talk to other, more normal Raptures, and there… I lived among Raptures! For a little bit at least, until I made them mad because I kept screaming for nothing because my knee kept bumping the scream button, and Raptillion and I wound up having to run away because Raptillion didn't want to destroy any Raptures that he'd been working to make friendly for so long! So, I became a Nikke again, and we disappeared into the woods and hid for a while!"
"Eventually, we were able to emerge from the trees again, and Raptillion told me that he'd be happy to show me more about how it might actually be possible for Humans and Raptures to live together in harmony! While I'd have scoffed at such an idea before, now, after I've been a Rapture myself? I dunno, I think it just might be possible, Commander! Maybe one day in the future, the Outpost will have all sorts of friendly Raptures living in it, and nobody will ever have to fight again! Doesn't that sound swell?"
The silence that permeated the group following Neon's deranged rant was incredibly oppressive. Joe, Rapi, and Cinderella all stared at Neon like she'd gone completely insane, and to the Commander's reckoning, she had clearly suffered a Mind Switch and went crazy up on the surface for… Several weeks.
But, she seemed stable now, so, for now… "Neon," the man started. "You should go take a shower, then report what you've found directly to Ingrid."
Neon's eyes lit up, and she pumped her fists at the suggestion. "That's a great idea, Commander! Ingrid will want to know all about these developments! I'll go do that, then! Later!" With a broad smile, Neon, so filthy from surviving on the surface in the midst of an obvious Mind Switch that her white sailor fuku was now beige and brown, skipped off with a spring in her step, seemingly entirely unperturbed by whatever horrors she'd experienced while up there on her own.
Quickly enough, Joe was left with Rapi and Cinderella again, and the three clearly were struck dumb and speechless by what had just happened. The Commander pulled out his phone, and immediately texted Ingrid a heads-up about what had just happened. She simply assured him that Neon would undergo a full maintenance cycle and psych evaluation shortly, then suggested that he keep a closer eye on his subordinates going forth, and arrange for them to undergo regular counselling sessions for good measure.
Agreeing, Joe simply mused aloud: "Encountering Chatterbox must have had more of an effect on Neon than expected…"
"Yeah…" Rapi grimly mused, worriedly watching Neon turn into a distant speck as she frowned deeply. "A talking Rapture probably would have a severe effect on most Nikkes, given how those were previously unprecedented."
"She… Seemed mentally fine, though?" Cinderella noted confusedly. "I've seen many broken Nikkes in my time, and she seemed… Odd, but well?"
"That seems to be Neon's default state at the best of times…" Rapi mused aloud, watching after her squad mate. "It didn't even occur to me that I haven't seen her in a while now. Has she really been on the surface on her own all this time?"
Joe just rubbed his eyes, both horrified and exasperated by the notion that he'd lost track of Neon, and everybody failed to notice that she wandered onto the surface and likely experienced a Mind Switch up there. Ingrid would report the damages to him, and he could only hope that it would turn out to be nothing too serious. "I suppose we'll find out once Elysion is done checking up on her."
"The Outpost repair centre isn't quite done yet, is it?" Cinderella wondered as she turned back to the burgeoning settlement to focus on the distant facility, structured to resemble a hospital in its own right. It should perhaps be fast-tracked over non-essential structures like the individual housing units, shouldn't it?"
"Bureaucratic red tape," Joe countered flatly. "Liter has been complaining about it at great length. Mighty Tools would like to get things built more efficiently too, I assure you. Those bastards in the Ark are making it difficult to get the actual supplies to finish it, though."
"Yeah, that checks out," Rapi remarked bitterly.
"How tedious and boorish," Cinderella's lovely features scrunched up in distaste—a rare display from a typically unflappable little lady. "In all matters, the Central Government truly seeks to shackle the ankles of all and cause unnecessary inefficiency, don't they?"
"You get used to it," Rapi noted darkly.
"Well in short order, we'll hopefully get un-used to it. Probably see about finding our own sources for building shit…" Joe trailed off, rubbing his chin. "I'll ask Ingrid, Mustang, and Andersen about that, actually." Any way to get around the CentGov's bullshit and secure their own footing in the war to reclaim the surface.
Cinderella became pensive at the mention of Andersen's name, and it at once occurred to Joe: Andersen still had yet to set foot in the Outpost since Pioneer had arrived. Cinderella had still not been reunited with her father despite being well within arm's reach. "I'll also get on his ass about actually getting up here to meet with you," he pointedly declared to the platinumette.
For her part, Cinderella closed her eyes as she took a deep breath. A few moments passed in silence before she replied with a shallow nod. "Thank you, Joe."
It was as simple as that, really. So, committing to messaging Andersen as soon as he had a moment to himself, Joe turned back to the Outpost proper just as his phone vibrated with an alert. Checking it… "Ah," a small grin found purchase on his features. "Looks like the Outpost is 'the Outpost' no longer."
Stepping closer towards him, Rapi cocked her head in some measure of confusion. "'The Outpost isn't the Outpost?' What is that supposed to mean?" She bluntly asked.
"The proper name change has gone through and been recognized by the Ark proper," Joe noted with a degree of satisfaction, returning his phone to his pocket as he presented a lop-sided grin to the girls. "Welcome to the newly christened Shangri-La, ladies."
While Rapi cocked her head, not understanding, Cinderella grinned broadly at the mention of the name. "An Earthly paradise between worlds wherein those who inhabit it live in ageless peace, safe from the cruelty of the world beyond, harmony and happiness in utopia being all they know…" her grin became a broad, beatific smile as she gazed up at Joe with rapturous adoration. "A statement of intent that is beautiful beyond words. Let us make it so, my Prince," she lovingly suggested, daintily presenting her hand for him to take.
For all that Joe grappled with imposter syndrome to no small degree… Holy shit, when she really wanted to, Cinderella made him feel like a champion, and compelled him to be the champion she saw in him too. So, he delicately took her hand, returning her smile in force as he couldn't help but feel compelled to be the man she saw uplifting those around him. The Ark was no paradise for the Nikkes that fought to protect it, but Shangri-La could, and would be that paradise they deserved. As many as they could take, as many as would place their faith in those who saw fit to reclaim their world, and cherish those who provided them the means to do so.
After a few moments, Cinderella shifted her gaze, and extended her free hand to Rapi as well. Joe blinked, and looked to the red-clad strawberry blonde himself. She looked deeply uncertain, watching Joe and Cinderella's moment… So he too, extended his free hand to her along with Cinderella.
Rapi blinked, and eyes going wide, she looked between the pair in shock. She seemed more than a little caught off-guard by the gesture, to say the least. However, after a long beat, she took a deep breath, and shifting her attention between the pair, took each of their extended hands. Rapidly, her uncertainty was replaced with a goofy smile and a reddening of her cheeks—a gorgeous sight which hit Joe right in the heart and stirred no small amount of loving adoration in him, given how unpractised but so very earnest that smile was.
How could Joe have ever felt anything less than absolute conviction in his duty to make this world one worth fighting for? A world that deserved to be protected by Nikkes, that deserved their guardianship… A world where women like Dorothy wouldn't be pushed to such single-minded hatred. Such resentful, even understandable anger. Dorothy should have been here. Dorothy should have sought to fight for their world and humanity as a whole, just the same as Pioneer.
…They'd get there. Dorothy would join them, one day. Goddess would be whole again, one day.
For now, standing there with Cinderella and Rapi, feeling so right, so correct and validated in his mission to save their world and make their world a better place for the Nikkes that fought for it just the same… Joe could only hope that Dorothy would be strong until that day came.
When Dorothy did find her way back home, she'd find her way to paradise. Each and every one of his Goddesses of Victory deserved nothing less.
Chapter 89 - Artificial Shangri-La
===
Joe stepped back into the Outpost, letting out a heavy sigh as the situation with Dorothy weighed on his mind. There had been little to discuss between Rapi and Pioneer, as it turned out, given that this was about the best the girls had expected out of that interaction to begin with. Joe had been more hopeful, but, well… They couldn't count Eden as an ally against the Central Government, and Dorothy was at least not on good terms with the remnants of Goddess.
For now.
Thus, with Joe having been about the only one hoping for more than what they got, the girls had rounded on him and spent the whole flight back over assuring him that he'd done the right thing, even if the whole outing had wound up feeling like a massive failure. Joe was, however, not feeling up to feeling sorry for himself or otherwise crying about how things didn't go his way.
Rather, he steeled himself and noted that they'd bring Dorothy around eventually, and it was as simple as that. Thus, while Rapi and Cinderella made a point to remain close to him alongside Rapunzel as Scarlet and Snow White spoke between themselves, there was little to note regarding the ride back.
Looking over the Outpost, Joe scratched at his chin, taking in just how quickly the place was developing into a proper little burgeoning town. There was even a fair amount of activity beyond the typical construction crews working with Mighty Tools ambling about… Primarily Tetra Line Nikkes, from what Joe could glean at a distance, from the surface-facing entry of the Outpost.
"There more Tetra Nikkes around than usual, or am I going crazy?" Joe asked aloud.
"The streets do seem more occupied than is typical…" Cinderella mused as she made note of the man's observation.
"Word of what happened in the Oregon Lost Sector has likely spread, given the amount of Mass-Produced Nikkes that Mustang had supporting us on that operation," Rapi suggested from Joe's opposite wing, the pair having made a point to remain at the Commander's side after the meeting with Dorothy had gone as it did, as the others dispersed to do their own things and get their own minds off of Dorothy as well.
"...Should we be concerned given the secretive nature of that mission?" Joe inquired with slightly furrowed brows, already feeling a headache starting to form at the notion.
"I don't think so," Rapi shook her head, causing her strawberry blonde locks to cascade around her figure in a strikingly photogenic display. "You saw how Mustang handled Sunny, Cammie, and Mia when they were exposed to our true identities… I think that our Tetra Line support just spread word of how competent and considerate you are of the Nikkes under your command. Not many Commanders would have gone out of their way to genuinely check on an injured Nikke, least of all a 'mere' Mass-Produced model, after all."
"To say nothing of the fact that you dealt the killing blow on the Lord," Cinderella added as she leaned over with her hands clasped behind her back, smiling up at Joe with pride as she did so. "Your brilliance shines bright, my Prince. When your personal accomplishments are so great, surely, you aren't so surprised that those even on the periphery of awareness seek so much as a passing opportunity to meet a Commander who successfully fights alongside his Nikkes as he so truly cares for them?"
At that, Joe reached up and scratched at his cheek with a single finger, awkwardly averting his gaze as he was confronted with the 'military celebrity' thing again. No matter how long it was the case, he'd never grow used to it, clearly. The man was just not built for this sort of attention.
"You're getting popular, Joe," Rapi observed with a small, contemplative hum as she adjusted her scarf. "The Outpost is going to wind up getting much more traffic at this rate."
"Yeah! Oooh, maybe that'll mean we'll get a bunch of new shops to open up that we could use without needing to go into the Ark?" Neon cried out excitedly from behind the trio. "I hope they open a liquor store! This place is too dry for my tastes!"
Blinking, it registered to Joe as he heard the little silverette's voice that he hadn't heard hide nor hair from her in… Weeks. It also registered to him that they had their back to the tunnel leading to the surface. Turning in place, the Commander nearly jumped in shock.
Neon was filthy. Covered head-to-toe in caked-on dirt, dried mud, and no small amounts of scrapes. Her clothes were also in tatters—her miniskirt having been reduced to a veritable microskirt. She was gazing up at Joe with that ever-present vacant look in her eyes, her shotgun—as equally ragged as she was—slung over her shoulder.
Rapi and Cinderella both stared at Neon in blank shock as well. Nobody, it seemed, had quite expected her to appear as she had.
"...Is there something on my face?" Neon asked, reaching up and rubbing at her cheek, causing the filth encrusting it to only spread further across her visage.
It, at that moment, really registered that it had been weeks since Joe had heard from Neon at all. Thus… "...Neon," Joe started. "Where have you been?"
"Huh?" The emerald-eyed little woman blinked up in confusion, before the question seemed to properly register. "Oh! I've been on the surface, having a surface adventure!"
Silence reigned for a good few moments at that declaration, Neon blinking absentmindedly as she continued to stare up at Joe blankly.
"What," the man flatly declared.
"Oh," Neon started, adjusting her stance and glasses as she started to ramble. "Well, you see, when the White Reaper set up in the Armoury, I went and poked my head in there to see what she was up to, since Pilgrims do crazy stuff to live on the surface, right? So I wondered what she might be able to do with guns to augment firepower. It turns out that she knows how to use Rapture parts to repair stuff, including herself! Isn't that crazy?"
Neon continued breathlessly.
"So, I had an idea: if she can use Rapture parts to fix Nikkes and junk… Then what if I could use Rapture parts to upgrade my shotgun's firepower? Genius! So, I remembered about how we just sort of pile up all the Raptures that get destroyed trying to wander into the Outpost up near the entrance, and I went to dig through the piles to see what I could find to work on my shotgun… But! When I got there, I suddenly picked up something crazy! A radio signal, from the surface! It was super weak, but it definitely wasn't a false positive or anything! So, I was curious, so I decided to go to the surface through the tunnel to see if the signal would get strong enough to hear it properly! And it worked!"
"Once I was outside, the message came through loud and clear! 'Hello! This is a message requesting aid for a humble scientist and investigator! Please seek me out at these coordinates if you receive this message and are willing to lend a hand!' So, someone needed help, so I took off to the coordinates, since I was already on the surface right? That meant I was basically already halfway there!"
"It wound up taking way, way longer than I thought it would! I got into a bunch of fights with Raptures, and went through a big chunk of my spare ammo, but I ultimately made my way there! And what do I find? A Rapture!"
"But not just any Rapture! It was a crazy, weird-looking Rapture! So I called out: 'Ah! A Rapture! Die Rapture!' and the Rapture called back in reply: 'Wait! I'm not a Rapture! Don't shoot, please!' And at first I thought: 'Oh wow, a talking Rapture! Raptures don't talk! That must mean this is something else, right?' but then, I remembered again: Chatterbox! Raptures can talk! Meaning this must have been a Rapture trap, right?"
"So, I said: 'A talking Rapture, just like that one Tyrant! Die, Rapture!' Then I cocked my shotgun, and the Rapture screamed, and tried to run backwards, but it backed up right into a big pile of junk and got stuck, and was hooting and hollering! So, I thought about how much Chatterbox liked to talk, and I realized: I have a talking Rapture trapped! I could get so much information from it! So, instead of blasting it, I walked up and jabbed its core with my shotgun, and said: 'you'd better start talking, Rapture, or I'mma gonna blast you into next week with my magnum-class shotgun!'"
"The Rapture said: 'But I'm not a Rapture! I'm Raptillion, and I'm a Rapture investigator! I'm a friend!' Now, that sounded crazy to me, because why would a Rapture need to investigate Raptures? So I jabbed it in its core again and said: 'Raptures can't be friends! Raptures are evil, just like Chatterbox! I'm not falling for your tricks, Tyrant!' But the Rapture said: 'I told you, I'm not a Rapture! Please, just give me a chance to prove to you that Raptures can be communicated with, and maybe even be friends!'"
"That seemed super crazy to me, but, at the same time, I was talking with a Rapture, and it wasn't trying to eat me or anything, right? So, I decided to try something crazy, and listened to the Rapture called 'Raptillion,' and the craziest things happened! First, I found out that Raptures aren't always crazy and evil, then I got told all about how Raptures can totally be friend-shaped, and even crazier! Raptillion proved it! How, you ask? Simple! I became a Rapture! For a bit, Raptillion gave me a Rapture body of my own, and it was super cramped and stuffy and uncomfortable and loud and it really made me understand Raptures a lot more! Like, wow, no wonder they're so mad all the time, I would be too!"
"But, Rapitillion showed me how to talk to other, more normal Raptures, and there… I lived among Raptures! For a little bit at least, until I made them mad because I kept screaming for nothing because my knee kept bumping the scream button, and Raptillion and I wound up having to run away because Raptillion didn't want to destroy any Raptures that he'd been working to make friendly for so long! So, I became a Nikke again, and we disappeared into the woods and hid for a while!"
"Eventually, we were able to emerge from the trees again, and Raptillion told me that he'd be happy to show me more about how it might actually be possible for Humans and Raptures to live together in harmony! While I'd have scoffed at such an idea before, now, after I've been a Rapture myself? I dunno, I think it just might be possible, Commander! Maybe one day in the future, the Outpost will have all sorts of friendly Raptures living in it, and nobody will ever have to fight again! Doesn't that sound swell?"
The silence that permeated the group following Neon's deranged rant was incredibly oppressive. Joe, Rapi, and Cinderella all stared at Neon like she'd gone completely insane, and to the Commander's reckoning, she had clearly suffered a Mind Switch and went crazy up on the surface for… Several weeks.
But, she seemed stable now, so, for now… "Neon," the man started. "You should go take a shower, then report what you've found directly to Ingrid."
Neon's eyes lit up, and she pumped her fists at the suggestion. "That's a great idea, Commander! Ingrid will want to know all about these developments! I'll go do that, then! Later!" With a broad smile, Neon, so filthy from surviving on the surface in the midst of an obvious Mind Switch that her white sailor fuku was now beige and brown, skipped off with a spring in her step, seemingly entirely unperturbed by whatever horrors she'd experienced while up there on her own.
Quickly enough, Joe was left with Rapi and Cinderella again, and the three clearly were struck dumb and speechless by what had just happened. The Commander pulled out his phone, and immediately texted Ingrid a heads-up about what had just happened. She simply assured him that Neon would undergo a full maintenance cycle and psych evaluation shortly, then suggested that he keep a closer eye on his subordinates going forth, and arrange for them to undergo regular counselling sessions for good measure.
Agreeing, Joe simply mused aloud: "Encountering Chatterbox must have had more of an effect on Neon than expected…"
"Yeah…" Rapi grimly mused, worriedly watching Neon turn into a distant speck as she frowned deeply. "A talking Rapture probably would have a severe effect on most Nikkes, given how those were previously unprecedented."
"She… Seemed mentally fine, though?" Cinderella noted confusedly. "I've seen many broken Nikkes in my time, and she seemed… Odd, but well?"
"That seems to be Neon's default state at the best of times…" Rapi mused aloud, watching after her squad mate. "It didn't even occur to me that I haven't seen her in a while now. Has she really been on the surface on her own all this time?"
Joe just rubbed his eyes, both horrified and exasperated by the notion that he'd lost track of Neon, and everybody failed to notice that she wandered onto the surface and likely experienced a Mind Switch up there. Ingrid would report the damages to him, and he could only hope that it would turn out to be nothing too serious. "I suppose we'll find out once Elysion is done checking up on her."
"The Outpost repair centre isn't quite done yet, is it?" Cinderella wondered as she turned back to the burgeoning settlement to focus on the distant facility, structured to resemble a hospital in its own right. It should perhaps be fast-tracked over non-essential structures like the individual housing units, shouldn't it?"
"Bureaucratic red tape," Joe countered flatly. "Liter has been complaining about it at great length. Mighty Tools would like to get things built more efficiently too, I assure you. Those bastards in the Ark are making it difficult to get the actual supplies to finish it, though."
"Yeah, that checks out," Rapi remarked bitterly.
"How tedious and boorish," Cinderella's lovely features scrunched up in distaste—a rare display from a typically unflappable little lady. "In all matters, the Central Government truly seeks to shackle the ankles of all and cause unnecessary inefficiency, don't they?"
"You get used to it," Rapi noted darkly.
"Well in short order, we'll hopefully get un-used to it. Probably see about finding our own sources for building shit…" Joe trailed off, rubbing his chin. "I'll ask Ingrid, Mustang, and Andersen about that, actually." Any way to get around the CentGov's bullshit and secure their own footing in the war to reclaim the surface.
Cinderella became pensive at the mention of Andersen's name, and it at once occurred to Joe: Andersen still had yet to set foot in the Outpost since Pioneer had arrived. Cinderella had still not been reunited with her father despite being well within arm's reach. "I'll also get on his ass about actually getting up here to meet with you," he pointedly declared to the platinumette.
For her part, Cinderella closed her eyes as she took a deep breath. A few moments passed in silence before she replied with a shallow nod. "Thank you, Joe."
It was as simple as that, really. So, committing to messaging Andersen as soon as he had a moment to himself, Joe turned back to the Outpost proper just as his phone vibrated with an alert. Checking it… "Ah," a small grin found purchase on his features. "Looks like the Outpost is 'the Outpost' no longer."
Stepping closer towards him, Rapi cocked her head in some measure of confusion. "'The Outpost isn't the Outpost?' What is that supposed to mean?" She bluntly asked.
"The proper name change has gone through and been recognized by the Ark proper," Joe noted with a degree of satisfaction, returning his phone to his pocket as he presented a lop-sided grin to the girls. "Welcome to the newly christened Shangri-La, ladies."
While Rapi cocked her head, not understanding, Cinderella grinned broadly at the mention of the name. "An Earthly paradise between worlds wherein those who inhabit it live in ageless peace, safe from the cruelty of the world beyond, harmony and happiness in utopia being all they know…" her grin became a broad, beatific smile as she gazed up at Joe with rapturous adoration. "A statement of intent that is beautiful beyond words. Let us make it so, my Prince," she lovingly suggested, daintily presenting her hand for him to take.
For all that Joe grappled with imposter syndrome to no small degree… Holy shit, when she really wanted to, Cinderella made him feel like a champion, and compelled him to be the champion she saw in him too. So, he delicately took her hand, returning her smile in force as he couldn't help but feel compelled to be the man she saw uplifting those around him. The Ark was no paradise for the Nikkes that fought to protect it, but Shangri-La could, and would be that paradise they deserved. As many as they could take, as many as would place their faith in those who saw fit to reclaim their world, and cherish those who provided them the means to do so.
After a few moments, Cinderella shifted her gaze, and extended her free hand to Rapi as well. Joe blinked, and looked to the red-clad strawberry blonde himself. She looked deeply uncertain, watching Joe and Cinderella's moment… So he too, extended his free hand to her along with Cinderella.
Rapi blinked, and eyes going wide, she looked between the pair in shock. She seemed more than a little caught off-guard by the gesture, to say the least. However, after a long beat, she took a deep breath, and shifting her attention between the pair, took each of their extended hands. Rapidly, her uncertainty was replaced with a goofy smile and a reddening of her cheeks—a gorgeous sight which hit Joe right in the heart and stirred no small amount of loving adoration in him, given how unpractised but so very earnest that smile was.
How could Joe have ever felt anything less than absolute conviction in his duty to make this world one worth fighting for? A world that deserved to be protected by Nikkes, that deserved their guardianship… A world where women like Dorothy wouldn't be pushed to such single-minded hatred. Such resentful, even understandable anger. Dorothy should have been here. Dorothy should have sought to fight for their world and humanity as a whole, just the same as Pioneer.
…They'd get there. Dorothy would join them, one day. Goddess would be whole again, one day.
For now, standing there with Cinderella and Rapi, feeling so right, so correct and validated in his mission to save their world and make their world a better place for the Nikkes that fought for it just the same… Joe could only hope that Dorothy would be strong until that day came.
When Dorothy did find her way back home, she'd find her way to paradise. Each and every one of his Goddesses of Victory deserved nothing less.
Grim Dark Fantasy
Not too sore, are you?
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Neon seems to have had... An adventure, if nothing to say.
I haven't played the game itself (I am a person of one gacha and it's been GFL for me since the end of last year), is there a canonical event about Raptillion and all... This?
I haven't played the game itself (I am a person of one gacha and it's been GFL for me since the end of last year), is there a canonical event about Raptillion and all... This?
BakaSmurf
Only Human, After All
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Raptillion is very canon and is both extremely plot relevant and important. Arguably one of the singularly most important characters in the narrative right now all things considered, even.
Neon's rambling story is also mostly canon, in that in the game proper, it's the Commander climbing into the janky Rapture mech to interact with Raptures while Counters watches.
JKD_666
Versed in the lewd.
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A bizzare one, you could say.
palacesound
𩆖𩆖𩆖
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Yes. they are the GOAT. There's nothing much else to say, they really do cosplay up as Rapture to live amongst them, because they are a scientist of sheer grit and bravery.
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Ace of Scarabs
Polish my soul gem, you reprobrate~
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Raptillon is so cool he manages to survive having Perilous Siege thrown at him.
carllcv2
Your first time is always over so quickly, isn't it?
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I was already worried that the story was forgotten or abandoned. I say this because gacha game fics have a reputation for being abandoned due to new content.
I wonder what the Idol Tetra Pretty thing will be like because Mustang made an armor-outfit for Anis with Tetra Pretty's core.
It's funny that Joe and the others saw the Raptillion story as a crazy story that Neon made up or hallucinated. Which would make it funnier if Joe saw the Pinocchio and Raptillion thing in person.
I wonder what the Idol Tetra Pretty thing will be like because Mustang made an armor-outfit for Anis with Tetra Pretty's core.
It's funny that Joe and the others saw the Raptillion story as a crazy story that Neon made up or hallucinated. Which would make it funnier if Joe saw the Pinocchio and Raptillion thing in person.
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Chapter 90 - Pride
BakaSmurf
Only Human, After All
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===
Chapter 90 - Pride
===
Legs curled up against her chest, face buried in her knees, Dorothy remained almost perfectly still where she sat—on a cliff overlooking a wide, empty plain. The wind flowing across the untouched wilderness, rustling grass and echoing across a once-vibrant country.
There, she sat without saying or doing anything for a good long while. Eventually, a very distinct sound did catch her attention—though she still did not stir, as her impossibly keen Nikke ears easily recognized the distinct profile of air being disrupted by a close-to-sudden mid-flight stop.
"...Dorothy," Pinne's voice broke the long-standing silence as her armoured feet settled onto the ground alongside her long-time companion. "It's been a while since you last came here specifically. It actually took me a bit to find you," the straw blonde noted as she sidled up next to the wayward Goddess and settled in next to her, resting her rear on the grass alongside her fellow member of Inherit.
Dorothy didn't respond, simply remaining quiet as she kept as still as a statue.
Pinne's ever-present smile wavered at this, though only momentarily, and only because Dorothy clearly couldn't see her smile fall regardless. Leaning over, the blonde set her arm across the white-clad woman's back to settle on her shoulder. "The meeting with Cinderella didn't go well, then?"
Still, Dorothy didn't say anything. Dorothy. Proud, unwielding Dorothy. Pinne had only ever seen her break once before: the moment that it had been discovered that the Legendary Commander had been murdered by the Central Government, at the same time that they'd learned that Goddess had been sealed outside of the Ark and left to die after all they'd done for mankind.
Dorothy, at her worst after that, always made an effort to preserve her dignity. She'd hold her head high, she'd return a comforting hug with a stiff upper lip, she'd always project an air of unflappable strength that made her a pillar of Eden. Even if many were often put off by the sheer degree of virulent hostility she projected towards the Ark and anyone from it… To the exclusion of those who had been wronged by the Ark, such as all members of Inherit, of course.
So, Pinne felt a stone form in her stomach as her brow knit despite her own best efforts to always be a beacon of light for those around her. How bad must Dorothy's interaction with Cinderella have gone, to hurt her so badly?
"...Dorothy, come on…" Pinne leaned in to her senior, only to be interrupted by an alert in her Heads-Up-Display—a share request, from Dorothy. The pinkette was pushing a digital package to her over their wireless team communications. Still, though, she remained wordless and still. Pinne didn't know what to make of this, but authorized the connection regardless.
It was a video, and…
…
Red Hood was alive. Red Hood was alive. One of the most powerful Nikkes ever created, a veritable rival to Liliweiss herself. She was alive. This was big. This was huge. This carried so many implications, it meant so much for the war going forward. If they could get her back to Eden, the things they could learn from her—Exceed could be mass-produced, Eden could field entire squads of flight-capable Nikkes that were the equal of the First Nikke! The reclamation of the surface could truly begin in earnest!
So… Why was Dorothy so despondent? Pinne remained quiet, and continued to watch the recording of the meeting-
Pinne's stomach dropped, and she gasped aloud as every nerve in her body seemingly activated all at once.
The Legendary Commander. He was alive. The Legendary Commander was alive.
Where was he now!? Why was Dorothy not with him? Why was Goddess not all united and meeting in Eden right this moment!? What happened? Why would Dorothy be left so miserable upon learning that the man who meant so much to her had survived?
So, despite Pinne's immediate knee-jerk reaction to seeing the Legendary Commander, alive and well with Red Hood, she took a deep breath and continued to take in the video.
Where she'd previously felt a stone fall in her stomach, this time, it was a cannonball. After all this time, the Commander Dorothy loved so much, the man she had dedicated all of her life to honouring and respecting… He rejected her. He rejected Eden. He refused to be a part of their mission. Goddess was more complete than it ever had been before, and with their Commander back… Pioneer was vindicated. The Legendary Commander would be no ally to the forces of Eden.
Yet, worst of all, Pinne understood why. Over time, Dorothy had only grown madder and madder. More hateful. More resentful. More unreasonable. It was just as the Legendary Commander had said: she fought to satisfy her hatred, not to fulfill her duty. Her obligation to mankind and Earth as a soldier, second to her desire to make those who wronged her pay.
Worse yet, Pinne could never quite tell if Dorothy actually recognized this or not. At times, it seemed as though Dorothy deliberately prioritized her hatred and bloodlust. Other times, it almost seemed as though she genuinely believed that she was doing the right and proper thing. It was so difficult to get a read on her, and so, Pinne wasn't entirely sure how to approach or address it.
Back during Operation Ark Guardian, Pinne had once confronted Dorothy for wallowing in self-pity, for having the sheer gall to show weakness in front of all the Nikkes that were looking to her—one of the most powerful Nikkes ever created—for guidance when they needed her the most. But it was so clear what the problem was then. Here? Now? What was Pinne to do? Attack Dorothy at random? Throw stuff at the wall and hope that something stuck? If that worked, she would be obscenely lucky. That was more likely to infuriate Dorothy, leave her feeling betrayed more than anything.
Plus, the situation with Ark Guardian was immediately pressing. Dorothy needed to get her act together, lest the entirety of mankind pay the price for Goddess failing to protect the entrance to the Ark at its time of greatest need. If Pinne hadn't acted, if Goddess had remained fractured then, everyone, all that was left of humanity would have died within hours.
This… While it certainly felt intensely important, the Legendary Commander and Red Hood were in no immediate apparent danger. So, instead, Pinne opted for a softer touch. Taking a deep breath, Pinne closed the video of Dorothy fleeing into the wilderness, scooted closer over to her senior and oldest friend, and wrapped her arms around her.
"Dorothy…" She started, not entirely sure what to say, but knowing that remaining silent couldn't have been the right step forward. Yet, still, Dorothy never took well to people walking on eggshells around her. She and the Legendary Commander were alike in that regard: if you had a fish you needed to slap them in the face with, it was generally best to just slap them in the face with it. Despite the fact that Dorothy in particular would typically allow her pride to get the better of her in the immediate aftermath. "Something has to change."
At that statement, Dorothy twitched harshly, though she didn't unfurl from her curled-up state.
With no response forthcoming, Pinne continued. "I know you don't like change, but you've clearly changed more than you realized, for the Commander and Red Hood to both feel the way they do, like Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel and Scarlet do. Dorothy, the way you've changed, the person you've become… It's driven the rest of Goddess away. It drove them away, and it continues to drive them away. Considering how much of Eden is rubbed the wrong way by your mindset too… Dorothy, you have to see now that things can't continue as they have-"
"So the Ark should just be allowed to get away with what it's done?" Dorothy sharply, but quietly hissed back in response.
Pinne drew back slightly, loosening her hold on Dorothy as her brow furrowed. "That recording was taken by your own eyes, Dorothy," Pinne started, her own voice firm, but even. "Your own ears heard those words I did through that recording. It was the Central Government's Council that betrayed Goddess, and both the Legendary Commander and Red Hood killed them all a hundred years ago. The people that betrayed us were punished a century ago, and have been dead for century since. What are you even talking about?"
"They took everything from us!" Dorothy started back, no small amount of heat rising in her voice as her teeth ground together, her gaze rising to glower at Pinne from over her own arms, face shadowed and obscured by her own hair. "They took everything that was rightfully ours! Everything that we fought for, everything that we sacrificed for, everything that should have been ours, stolen by those who did nothing to earn it! How could they be allowed to get away with it!?"
Pinne, at that point, completely detached herself from the pinkette, and even began to pull away, looking at her like she was insane. "Do you hear yourself, Dorothy? Are you listening to a single word coming out of your mouth? Are you actually insane? Have you actually lost your mind? Who is 'they?' What are 'they' 'getting away with?' The Councilmen that betrayed us are dead. They've been dead for a hundred years! Dorothy, what on Earth are you talking about!?"
"What price has the Ark paid!?" Dorothy demanded, unfurling and looking ready to leap to her feet as her brow knit into steely knots. "What punishment has the Ark suffered for allowing what happened to us to happen!? By what logic, by what twisted reason do they get to walk scott-free after everything they've done to us!?"
Pinne's eyes went wide, her mouth fell agape, and she stared wordlessly at the second-in-command of Inherit. "...You want the entire Ark to suffer, for the actions of an oppressive elite that acted unilaterally and without the knowledge of the average person either-"
"They did nothing to help us!" Dorothy outright snarled. "They didn't try to find us, they didn't try to contact us! They just huddled up in their little stinking hole, safe and sound from the monsters up above, the monsters we were stuck with! The monsters we've been forced to fight for so long without reprieve! And for what? For a mankind that doesn't appreciate anything we've done for them! For a mankind that doesn't deserve all we've done for them! For a mankind that forgot us after all we've done, all we've continued to do! And we're supposed to just forget about that!?"
A loud crack sounded out across the open plains—Dorothy recoiling with wide, stunned eyes from the sudden, open-palm slap she'd just received. "Get a hold of yourself, you stubborn, prideful fool!" Pinne decried the former Goddess past an intense glower. "You know damn well just the same as I do that the average Ark dweller is oppressed, and always has been oppressed by the Central Government! Don't act like the Ark is democratically ruled! Don't act like it's on the common man and woman that they live under the thumb of authoritarianism! Don't put it on them that they don't have the means to stand up against the Central Government, the Central Government that lies to them and demands that they accept those lies uncritically, else they find themselves on the wrong side of a firing squad!"
Pinne was on her feet, shouting down an increasingly stunned Dorothy with no small amount of genuine anger as the depths of Dorothy's unreasonable, obscenely misplaced hatred revealed itself.
"The common Ark dweller cherishes the memory of Goddess! What little they are allowed to know, even the lie, they adore and deify to this day! You know this, we all know this! You know damn well that they believe Goddess died sealing the Ark! You know damn well that they wish Goddess was still alive, that they could rely on Goddess to one day return and deliver the Ark to salvation and return the surface to them! Don't act like those helpless innocents revel in the fact that we'd been abandoned on the surface back then!"
The hyper-tech fabric of Pinne's gloves audibly strained from the force of her hands balling into fists. Now gritting her own teeth, Pinne's anger and dejection had spiked upon hearing what Snow White had so clearly heard past Dorothy's gilded tongue so many years prior.
"Is this what Pioneer heard, all those years ago? Is this the atrocious hogwash that drove the rest of Goddess away? You putting your hatred on anybody you possibly can? You even declaring war on those who could never have done anything to help us, for not doing the impossible at the cost of the continued existence of our species!? Don't act like we don't recruit Ark Nikkes by the dozens! Don't act like we don't know what it's like for the average Ark dweller there! As though we don't know that they live in fear of what might happen if they ever cross the Central Government! Don't act as though most of us would be doing any better than they are if we were in the same position!"
"They're not like us," Dorothy quietly asserted in a low, seething tone in response. "They are nothing like us! They are weak, they are liars, they are cruel and thoughtless and inconsiderate and selfish and arrogant! They only think of themselves, what's best for them, what they want, damn the consequences of their actions, damn the consequences others will have to pay for it! They don't care about what their stubborn refusal to change their ways will do! They just take, take, take to fill a bottomless hole, blindly casting aside everything we fought tooth and nail for just to satisfy themselves, even knowing that satisfaction will do nothing but ring hollow, for all that it will do to reclaim the Earth from the Raptures! At the end of everything, they will sit tall atop a throne of ashes, built upon the ruined corpses of countless Nikkes for the brief time they will live in a dead world devoid of life and worth! All because they couldn't see past the end of their nose, refused to see reason and fought just for themselves at the expense of all others!"
Pinne stared at Dorothy. She remained utterly silent and stony for a good long while. The wind gently blew through Pinne's scruffy ponytail, catching the ends of Dorothy's long loose locks, but neither of them moved from their rooted positions, unperturbed by the living—if silent—world around them.
When she did reply, Pinne's voice was completely even, uttered in a completely flat intone: "To the point of making enemies of even Goddess and the Legendary Commander?"
"That's right!" Dorothy all but snarled, nostrils flaring as she shifted to rest upon her knees. "They drove Joe to such extreme measures! They drove away Goddess! They sacrificed everyone that did everything for them! And for what!? For what, Pinne!? What has their refusal to look beyond themselves and their petty wants earned them!?"
Pinne stayed quiet, staring wordlessly at her fellow. She eventually replied, and her reply was very pointed: "Are you talking about the Ark, or yourself, Dorothy?"
The pinkette's eyes went wide, her nostrils flared, and her nails dug deep trenches into the earth upon which she knelt. Breath caught in her chest, Dorothy trembled head-to-toe in paralyzing anger.
Pinne continued. "It's no wonder Pioneer left. Big surprise the Legendary Commander and Red Hood want nothing to do with you either, when you're so willing to throw away every relationship you've ever had with all of them, just because you're too damn prideful to let go of your hatred for the dead. As though Red Hood and him didn't already do everything you claimed to want, only for you to shift the goalposts and suddenly it's the entire Ark that needs to burn before you're satisfied. I have to wonder if it's going to end there, or if you'll decide that you suddenly feel wronged by Eden too, once there's nothing else for you to project your hatred onto, short of the Raptures themselves."
Dorothy just continued to stare at Pinne, shaking like a leaf in the wind, her teeth audibly grinding together as her fingers remained driven into the earth at her knees.
Upon receiving no response, Pinne let out a thoroughly disappointed breath. "I'm going back to Eden. I'll be there, if you decide to actually acknowledge what you've become, and how self-destructive your pride has gotten. Until then… Go ahead and wallow in your own venom, even as it dissolves everything you used to be before your own eyes." She turned towards the cliff, stepped towards it, but stopped short as she twisted her neck to gaze back over her shoulder. "I hope it's the Goddess I chose to put all my faith in that comes back home, and not this hateful creature that would tear her own heart out and step on it before those that love her the most to spite long dead and forgotten ghosts."
With that, Pinne stepped off the cliff's edge, and soared back upwards upon the mechanical wings afforded to her by Eden's best. Without missing a beat, she took off back towards mankind's only surface holdout, leaving Dorothy where she knelt.
For her part, Dorothy remained silent and still. Her eyes were locked wide open, her breath came in ragged gasps through clenched teeth. She was wrong. They were wrong. All of them were wrong. Somebody had to pay. They had been wronged. They had been betrayed. For all they'd done, for all they'd sacrificed, and she was just expected to forget about it? To just forgive those who had done so?
No. Dorothy thought as she fell forward, catching herself on her palms. No. Dorothy thought as she clenched her fingers shut, tearing two great gouges into the earth as she began to hyperventilate. No! She thought as she started to actively tear at the ground furiously, attacking and assaulting it, as though it would accomplish anything. She had done no wrong. She was in the right. Dorothy demanded nothing more than satisfaction. Dorothy demanded nothing more than seeing someone be punished for everything that had happened to them. Dorothy was right, they all just needed to open their eyes and see it.
Joe would see. Red Hood would see. Snow White would see. Rapunzel would see. Scarlet would see. Cinderella would see. Pinne would see.
They would all see. They would all know.
Dorothy only wanted what was best for them. Dorothy was right.
As Dorothy screamed, wailed and attacked the very ground upon which she knelt, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt: she was right.
She had to be.
Chapter 90 - Pride
===
Legs curled up against her chest, face buried in her knees, Dorothy remained almost perfectly still where she sat—on a cliff overlooking a wide, empty plain. The wind flowing across the untouched wilderness, rustling grass and echoing across a once-vibrant country.
There, she sat without saying or doing anything for a good long while. Eventually, a very distinct sound did catch her attention—though she still did not stir, as her impossibly keen Nikke ears easily recognized the distinct profile of air being disrupted by a close-to-sudden mid-flight stop.
"...Dorothy," Pinne's voice broke the long-standing silence as her armoured feet settled onto the ground alongside her long-time companion. "It's been a while since you last came here specifically. It actually took me a bit to find you," the straw blonde noted as she sidled up next to the wayward Goddess and settled in next to her, resting her rear on the grass alongside her fellow member of Inherit.
Dorothy didn't respond, simply remaining quiet as she kept as still as a statue.
Pinne's ever-present smile wavered at this, though only momentarily, and only because Dorothy clearly couldn't see her smile fall regardless. Leaning over, the blonde set her arm across the white-clad woman's back to settle on her shoulder. "The meeting with Cinderella didn't go well, then?"
Still, Dorothy didn't say anything. Dorothy. Proud, unwielding Dorothy. Pinne had only ever seen her break once before: the moment that it had been discovered that the Legendary Commander had been murdered by the Central Government, at the same time that they'd learned that Goddess had been sealed outside of the Ark and left to die after all they'd done for mankind.
Dorothy, at her worst after that, always made an effort to preserve her dignity. She'd hold her head high, she'd return a comforting hug with a stiff upper lip, she'd always project an air of unflappable strength that made her a pillar of Eden. Even if many were often put off by the sheer degree of virulent hostility she projected towards the Ark and anyone from it… To the exclusion of those who had been wronged by the Ark, such as all members of Inherit, of course.
So, Pinne felt a stone form in her stomach as her brow knit despite her own best efforts to always be a beacon of light for those around her. How bad must Dorothy's interaction with Cinderella have gone, to hurt her so badly?
"...Dorothy, come on…" Pinne leaned in to her senior, only to be interrupted by an alert in her Heads-Up-Display—a share request, from Dorothy. The pinkette was pushing a digital package to her over their wireless team communications. Still, though, she remained wordless and still. Pinne didn't know what to make of this, but authorized the connection regardless.
It was a video, and…
…
Red Hood was alive. Red Hood was alive. One of the most powerful Nikkes ever created, a veritable rival to Liliweiss herself. She was alive. This was big. This was huge. This carried so many implications, it meant so much for the war going forward. If they could get her back to Eden, the things they could learn from her—Exceed could be mass-produced, Eden could field entire squads of flight-capable Nikkes that were the equal of the First Nikke! The reclamation of the surface could truly begin in earnest!
So… Why was Dorothy so despondent? Pinne remained quiet, and continued to watch the recording of the meeting-
Pinne's stomach dropped, and she gasped aloud as every nerve in her body seemingly activated all at once.
The Legendary Commander. He was alive. The Legendary Commander was alive.
Where was he now!? Why was Dorothy not with him? Why was Goddess not all united and meeting in Eden right this moment!? What happened? Why would Dorothy be left so miserable upon learning that the man who meant so much to her had survived?
So, despite Pinne's immediate knee-jerk reaction to seeing the Legendary Commander, alive and well with Red Hood, she took a deep breath and continued to take in the video.
Where she'd previously felt a stone fall in her stomach, this time, it was a cannonball. After all this time, the Commander Dorothy loved so much, the man she had dedicated all of her life to honouring and respecting… He rejected her. He rejected Eden. He refused to be a part of their mission. Goddess was more complete than it ever had been before, and with their Commander back… Pioneer was vindicated. The Legendary Commander would be no ally to the forces of Eden.
Yet, worst of all, Pinne understood why. Over time, Dorothy had only grown madder and madder. More hateful. More resentful. More unreasonable. It was just as the Legendary Commander had said: she fought to satisfy her hatred, not to fulfill her duty. Her obligation to mankind and Earth as a soldier, second to her desire to make those who wronged her pay.
Worse yet, Pinne could never quite tell if Dorothy actually recognized this or not. At times, it seemed as though Dorothy deliberately prioritized her hatred and bloodlust. Other times, it almost seemed as though she genuinely believed that she was doing the right and proper thing. It was so difficult to get a read on her, and so, Pinne wasn't entirely sure how to approach or address it.
Back during Operation Ark Guardian, Pinne had once confronted Dorothy for wallowing in self-pity, for having the sheer gall to show weakness in front of all the Nikkes that were looking to her—one of the most powerful Nikkes ever created—for guidance when they needed her the most. But it was so clear what the problem was then. Here? Now? What was Pinne to do? Attack Dorothy at random? Throw stuff at the wall and hope that something stuck? If that worked, she would be obscenely lucky. That was more likely to infuriate Dorothy, leave her feeling betrayed more than anything.
Plus, the situation with Ark Guardian was immediately pressing. Dorothy needed to get her act together, lest the entirety of mankind pay the price for Goddess failing to protect the entrance to the Ark at its time of greatest need. If Pinne hadn't acted, if Goddess had remained fractured then, everyone, all that was left of humanity would have died within hours.
This… While it certainly felt intensely important, the Legendary Commander and Red Hood were in no immediate apparent danger. So, instead, Pinne opted for a softer touch. Taking a deep breath, Pinne closed the video of Dorothy fleeing into the wilderness, scooted closer over to her senior and oldest friend, and wrapped her arms around her.
"Dorothy…" She started, not entirely sure what to say, but knowing that remaining silent couldn't have been the right step forward. Yet, still, Dorothy never took well to people walking on eggshells around her. She and the Legendary Commander were alike in that regard: if you had a fish you needed to slap them in the face with, it was generally best to just slap them in the face with it. Despite the fact that Dorothy in particular would typically allow her pride to get the better of her in the immediate aftermath. "Something has to change."
At that statement, Dorothy twitched harshly, though she didn't unfurl from her curled-up state.
With no response forthcoming, Pinne continued. "I know you don't like change, but you've clearly changed more than you realized, for the Commander and Red Hood to both feel the way they do, like Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel and Scarlet do. Dorothy, the way you've changed, the person you've become… It's driven the rest of Goddess away. It drove them away, and it continues to drive them away. Considering how much of Eden is rubbed the wrong way by your mindset too… Dorothy, you have to see now that things can't continue as they have-"
"So the Ark should just be allowed to get away with what it's done?" Dorothy sharply, but quietly hissed back in response.
Pinne drew back slightly, loosening her hold on Dorothy as her brow furrowed. "That recording was taken by your own eyes, Dorothy," Pinne started, her own voice firm, but even. "Your own ears heard those words I did through that recording. It was the Central Government's Council that betrayed Goddess, and both the Legendary Commander and Red Hood killed them all a hundred years ago. The people that betrayed us were punished a century ago, and have been dead for century since. What are you even talking about?"
"They took everything from us!" Dorothy started back, no small amount of heat rising in her voice as her teeth ground together, her gaze rising to glower at Pinne from over her own arms, face shadowed and obscured by her own hair. "They took everything that was rightfully ours! Everything that we fought for, everything that we sacrificed for, everything that should have been ours, stolen by those who did nothing to earn it! How could they be allowed to get away with it!?"
Pinne, at that point, completely detached herself from the pinkette, and even began to pull away, looking at her like she was insane. "Do you hear yourself, Dorothy? Are you listening to a single word coming out of your mouth? Are you actually insane? Have you actually lost your mind? Who is 'they?' What are 'they' 'getting away with?' The Councilmen that betrayed us are dead. They've been dead for a hundred years! Dorothy, what on Earth are you talking about!?"
"What price has the Ark paid!?" Dorothy demanded, unfurling and looking ready to leap to her feet as her brow knit into steely knots. "What punishment has the Ark suffered for allowing what happened to us to happen!? By what logic, by what twisted reason do they get to walk scott-free after everything they've done to us!?"
Pinne's eyes went wide, her mouth fell agape, and she stared wordlessly at the second-in-command of Inherit. "...You want the entire Ark to suffer, for the actions of an oppressive elite that acted unilaterally and without the knowledge of the average person either-"
"They did nothing to help us!" Dorothy outright snarled. "They didn't try to find us, they didn't try to contact us! They just huddled up in their little stinking hole, safe and sound from the monsters up above, the monsters we were stuck with! The monsters we've been forced to fight for so long without reprieve! And for what? For a mankind that doesn't appreciate anything we've done for them! For a mankind that doesn't deserve all we've done for them! For a mankind that forgot us after all we've done, all we've continued to do! And we're supposed to just forget about that!?"
A loud crack sounded out across the open plains—Dorothy recoiling with wide, stunned eyes from the sudden, open-palm slap she'd just received. "Get a hold of yourself, you stubborn, prideful fool!" Pinne decried the former Goddess past an intense glower. "You know damn well just the same as I do that the average Ark dweller is oppressed, and always has been oppressed by the Central Government! Don't act like the Ark is democratically ruled! Don't act like it's on the common man and woman that they live under the thumb of authoritarianism! Don't put it on them that they don't have the means to stand up against the Central Government, the Central Government that lies to them and demands that they accept those lies uncritically, else they find themselves on the wrong side of a firing squad!"
Pinne was on her feet, shouting down an increasingly stunned Dorothy with no small amount of genuine anger as the depths of Dorothy's unreasonable, obscenely misplaced hatred revealed itself.
"The common Ark dweller cherishes the memory of Goddess! What little they are allowed to know, even the lie, they adore and deify to this day! You know this, we all know this! You know damn well that they believe Goddess died sealing the Ark! You know damn well that they wish Goddess was still alive, that they could rely on Goddess to one day return and deliver the Ark to salvation and return the surface to them! Don't act like those helpless innocents revel in the fact that we'd been abandoned on the surface back then!"
The hyper-tech fabric of Pinne's gloves audibly strained from the force of her hands balling into fists. Now gritting her own teeth, Pinne's anger and dejection had spiked upon hearing what Snow White had so clearly heard past Dorothy's gilded tongue so many years prior.
"Is this what Pioneer heard, all those years ago? Is this the atrocious hogwash that drove the rest of Goddess away? You putting your hatred on anybody you possibly can? You even declaring war on those who could never have done anything to help us, for not doing the impossible at the cost of the continued existence of our species!? Don't act like we don't recruit Ark Nikkes by the dozens! Don't act like we don't know what it's like for the average Ark dweller there! As though we don't know that they live in fear of what might happen if they ever cross the Central Government! Don't act as though most of us would be doing any better than they are if we were in the same position!"
"They're not like us," Dorothy quietly asserted in a low, seething tone in response. "They are nothing like us! They are weak, they are liars, they are cruel and thoughtless and inconsiderate and selfish and arrogant! They only think of themselves, what's best for them, what they want, damn the consequences of their actions, damn the consequences others will have to pay for it! They don't care about what their stubborn refusal to change their ways will do! They just take, take, take to fill a bottomless hole, blindly casting aside everything we fought tooth and nail for just to satisfy themselves, even knowing that satisfaction will do nothing but ring hollow, for all that it will do to reclaim the Earth from the Raptures! At the end of everything, they will sit tall atop a throne of ashes, built upon the ruined corpses of countless Nikkes for the brief time they will live in a dead world devoid of life and worth! All because they couldn't see past the end of their nose, refused to see reason and fought just for themselves at the expense of all others!"
Pinne stared at Dorothy. She remained utterly silent and stony for a good long while. The wind gently blew through Pinne's scruffy ponytail, catching the ends of Dorothy's long loose locks, but neither of them moved from their rooted positions, unperturbed by the living—if silent—world around them.
When she did reply, Pinne's voice was completely even, uttered in a completely flat intone: "To the point of making enemies of even Goddess and the Legendary Commander?"
"That's right!" Dorothy all but snarled, nostrils flaring as she shifted to rest upon her knees. "They drove Joe to such extreme measures! They drove away Goddess! They sacrificed everyone that did everything for them! And for what!? For what, Pinne!? What has their refusal to look beyond themselves and their petty wants earned them!?"
Pinne stayed quiet, staring wordlessly at her fellow. She eventually replied, and her reply was very pointed: "Are you talking about the Ark, or yourself, Dorothy?"
The pinkette's eyes went wide, her nostrils flared, and her nails dug deep trenches into the earth upon which she knelt. Breath caught in her chest, Dorothy trembled head-to-toe in paralyzing anger.
Pinne continued. "It's no wonder Pioneer left. Big surprise the Legendary Commander and Red Hood want nothing to do with you either, when you're so willing to throw away every relationship you've ever had with all of them, just because you're too damn prideful to let go of your hatred for the dead. As though Red Hood and him didn't already do everything you claimed to want, only for you to shift the goalposts and suddenly it's the entire Ark that needs to burn before you're satisfied. I have to wonder if it's going to end there, or if you'll decide that you suddenly feel wronged by Eden too, once there's nothing else for you to project your hatred onto, short of the Raptures themselves."
Dorothy just continued to stare at Pinne, shaking like a leaf in the wind, her teeth audibly grinding together as her fingers remained driven into the earth at her knees.
Upon receiving no response, Pinne let out a thoroughly disappointed breath. "I'm going back to Eden. I'll be there, if you decide to actually acknowledge what you've become, and how self-destructive your pride has gotten. Until then… Go ahead and wallow in your own venom, even as it dissolves everything you used to be before your own eyes." She turned towards the cliff, stepped towards it, but stopped short as she twisted her neck to gaze back over her shoulder. "I hope it's the Goddess I chose to put all my faith in that comes back home, and not this hateful creature that would tear her own heart out and step on it before those that love her the most to spite long dead and forgotten ghosts."
With that, Pinne stepped off the cliff's edge, and soared back upwards upon the mechanical wings afforded to her by Eden's best. Without missing a beat, she took off back towards mankind's only surface holdout, leaving Dorothy where she knelt.
For her part, Dorothy remained silent and still. Her eyes were locked wide open, her breath came in ragged gasps through clenched teeth. She was wrong. They were wrong. All of them were wrong. Somebody had to pay. They had been wronged. They had been betrayed. For all they'd done, for all they'd sacrificed, and she was just expected to forget about it? To just forgive those who had done so?
No. Dorothy thought as she fell forward, catching herself on her palms. No. Dorothy thought as she clenched her fingers shut, tearing two great gouges into the earth as she began to hyperventilate. No! She thought as she started to actively tear at the ground furiously, attacking and assaulting it, as though it would accomplish anything. She had done no wrong. She was in the right. Dorothy demanded nothing more than satisfaction. Dorothy demanded nothing more than seeing someone be punished for everything that had happened to them. Dorothy was right, they all just needed to open their eyes and see it.
Joe would see. Red Hood would see. Snow White would see. Rapunzel would see. Scarlet would see. Cinderella would see. Pinne would see.
They would all see. They would all know.
Dorothy only wanted what was best for them. Dorothy was right.
As Dorothy screamed, wailed and attacked the very ground upon which she knelt, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt: she was right.
She had to be.
palacesound
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