System Hunt: Regalia

Sam woke with a start, his entire body violently surged from a slumber deeper than any he’s ever experienced. The thick, rising smoke of Manila’s apocalypse was the first sight to greet him. He was on a chopper’s long floor and looking down at the prickly sensation stemming from his chest, Sam found a needle sticking out of his torn shirt.

He was sat in the corridor between a bench of individual seats on the otherwise large helicopter and had people seated around him. Glancing up at them Sam found looks of consternation on Alex, Yoko and two other DSF agent he didn’t recognize. The jolt pulsed through his body quickly made sense as Alex helped him up and snatched the needle away.

“You couldn’t have just slapped me awake?” Sam gasped, his heart still beating with an arrhythmia, “Where’s Nyx?”

“Meow.” His beloved made herself known and felt, leaping out of Yoko’s clutch to pounce in his. She had a bandaged cut above her brow but was otherwise fine. Sam sighed, his body, head and mind all aching. Alex shoved a headphone with a mic in his hands which he quickly put on to hear her voice over the choppers loud rotary blades.

“Sorry about the rude awakening but there’s no time to waste.”

Sam heard Yoko’s voice next, “Where are we going? Sam? Where are they taking us?” There was a fair bit of panic and uncertainty in the way his fellow Regalia Wielder spoke and he couldn’t blame her.

“Don’t worry Yoko, Alex is one of the good guys.” Sam found himself saying even though when the enemy were literal monsters, just about every human qualified as a good guy, even if those humans were dead-set on recruiting people like them for a war the world was being reminded of.

“We’re with the Doom Suppression Force, Yoko and we’re excited to finally meet you.” Alex set out her hand for a shake but Yoko simply hugged her jacket over her, eyes darted out at the world of chaos they were leaving behind.

“What happened to those boys and their father!?” Sam exclaimed, his memories of the past hours returning as the swirl of the adrenaline injection waned.

Alex made a fist of her greeting but nodded at Sam, “We’ve got them. You two did a service protecting that man and his kids but we can’t stop there.”

Sam didn’t like the way she looked at them one bit. “What do you mean? I’m drained, I can’t fight anymore Belua and Yoko,” he looked over at her, she’d found a corner and tucked herself into it as much as she could, “She obviously can’t either.”

As usual, Sam’s words did little to deter Alex. She leaned in, placed a hand on both Sam and Yoko’s knees, “The DSF is calling in reinforcements from every branch but the facts are, this has been a Kappa level threat and it’s about to graduate to Iota level. General Sir’s predictions aren’t positive; we weren’t prepared for a Tower Surge this soon before we’ve found Regalia Wielders.”

She squeezed their knees for attention, punctuating her point, “Listen, if we don’t send a Regalia Wielder into Manila’s Doom Tower, it will not only keep spitting out Belua of Kappa and potentially Iota level threats but the longer this keeps up the more Doom Towers sync to its surge.”

“Sync?” Yoko muttered.

Alex seemed pleased, excited even to have her speak at all, “Yes, the fallen Doom Towers across the world are all linked to each other. They will respond and attempt to sync their threat levels to one another.” Alex nodded at the Doom Tower we were now circling around, the ominous thing stood in the middle of a massive crater, a forest spontaneously growing around it.

“Those things you fought, the Tikbalang. They’re summoned by to Doom Towers and this one is in surge, it will continue to be in surge unless a Regalia Wielder enters it. We need you and Sam to conquer it. Like right now.”

Sam gulped at that. “Alex, I am not even kidding, I couldn’t lift a glass cup if I wanted to right now.”

She shook her head, “We are prepared to fuel you both. Most of our operatives have been killing and extracting Nuclei from the Belua here, the General Sir believes it will help reenergize your powers.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

The scarred Sergeant bit her lip, eyes torn away from Sam’s for a moment before being lifted to meet him with an emotion he could only recognize as pity, “I’m sorry. If the Tower doesn’t have a Wielder walk into it, challenge it then…the surge will spread across the globe and the apocalypse will truly begin. It’s the fate of the world Sam, its-”

“It’s what I signed up for, yeah…I know.” He wasn’t sure why or how but for a moment there he thought the DSF would take them home, or to a place to rest, recuperate and make a plan of action that somehow guaranteed the safety of everyone involved.

Yoko sat up, her head shaking vigorously in refusal. No, no, no. I didn’t sign up for anything. I have a life here to live. All I did was stop to help someone and now…now you’re saying I have to…no, I am not doing this.”

Sam didn’t know what to say to her. He couldn’t comfort his fellow because there was no comfort in the truth they both had to face. If he could not fight right now he would.

Instead Alex took to Yoko, clasping her hands in hers, “I know this is tough, heck it’s hell on earth and we’re not even sugar coating the fact that you and Sam are our only hope…”

Zoned out from the ‘fight for humanity’ speech Alex was cooking, Sam bothered to take a good long look at his environment. They were benched in the back of a rather large and long helicopter, so much so that calling it the generic name possibly didn’t suit it. There were crates and containers half as tall as Sam and half as wide, he sensed a pulsing energy emit from them, the kind he would have felt from—

“Are those all Belua Nuclei?” Sam asked, pointing over to the set of containers hoistered first to the floor and then to each other, there were at four of them.

Alex stuttered, broken from her pleading words with Yoko to Sam standing, albeit shakily, and approaching the boxes. Sam heard her gulp over the mic, “They are.”

Sam turned and blinked at her, “Is that what the DSF’s priority mission was all this time? Harvest Belua not save lives?”

Her eyes softened a tad but her lips formed a thin line as she said, “We are the Doom Suppression Force, Sam. We hunted and harvested the monsters that would have killed the idiots that ran back into the chaos.” Before he could ask what idiots she meant Alex turned to Yoko who was swaying back and forth in some sort of pending breakdown, “Yoko, stop pretending, I know you’ve known about your powers for as long as Sam has, you can’t believe that you would have such abilities and not have a responsibility. This is it.”

“Sam, I know you’re still unsure about everything but you understand better than Yoko does, we need you to-”

“Stop pretending? Excuse me?” Yoko’s hiss was long as harsh but also sudden. Sam found her sneering up at Alex, her fingers digging deep into the metal of the bench. “How am I supposed to react to foreign soldiers telling me I’m going to sacrifice my life for the world because I happened to have some power I didn’t ask for?”

She tossed equally scathing glares at the two DSF agents besides Alex who sighed and massaged her temple just as the aircraft began descending close to the Doom Tower.

“Listen—”

“No, you listen, if Sam and I are going to risk our lives savings lives again, then the least you could do is join come in with us.” Yoko seemed to have lost all signs of timidity and was standing to face off against Alex, a scarred, hardened woman with more weapons on her body than Sam could be bothered to count.

But that fact alone seemed to make Yoko’s argument all the more worthwhile. Sam nodded, “You should, at the very least a five-man squad or yknow, a healthy battalion? This is the Doom Tower we’re talking about; do you know what’s in it?”

Alex sighed and shook her head, “You’re right in that. And we are willing, we have always been.” She looked at her fellow agents nodding along with them, “We’ll follow your lead, the General Sir insists the Doom Towers are exclusively Wielder territory and it’s not like we haven’t tried entering but…if you’re the Wielders we’ve been given then we have no choice but to keep trying.”

The radio on everyone’s headset crackled as the pilot’s voice cut through, “Brace for landing.”

Sam, Yoko and Alex quickly found their seats. Buckling down and bracing as they landed. Sam looked between Yoko and Alex, the former still glaring daggers, and prayed to the clearly non-existent gods that he’d come out of the Tower alive. Somehow.