Chapter 48 – Y-You Are Revolting! Not Another Word Out of You!
Three Makinas, towing an improvised container loaded with five raiders as literal cargo, set course for Seldia.
The trip out had been tense. The return was quiet. No suspicious shapes drifting in the dark, no ambush to fear.
"-- All right, got through to the client and the corps."
Zein's voice came through the shared channel, noticeably lighter.
"The corps are going to meet us personally in the hangar. Destroying unregistered unmanned machines plus taking Blang's crew into custody - they've got a warrant out on those people. There's a sizable bonus headed our way."
"I'm not thrilled about the part where we rescued them... but if there's a bonus, then, well. Fine."
Fal's expression had been complicated for the last few minutes, but the very concrete prospect of money landing in her pocket softened it. Freelancers lived in the real world. There was no arguing with that.
"Ohohoho! Natural consequence, isn't it! They received a lady's mercy - the least they can do is compensate appropriately!"
Letaria gave her usual laugh - then settled back into her seat and opened a line to the container with a measured, serious expression.
"-- Now then. Blang. And the rest of your disreputable company. I would like to know: why were the lot of you cowering in a ruined shelter, surrounded by unmanned machines that you would consider your own?"
Twoin, riding silently in Yera alongside them, watched the exchange without comment.
After a moment, one of the raiders spoke through the container's speaker. Carefully.
"W-well... they're not ours! Those things started chasing us. We've been running through the debris field for days now..."
"That's right - they wouldn't just kill us. They kept chipping at our armor, blocking our exits... like they were drawing it out. Herding us in slow..."
Real fear in the voices. The kind that doesn't come from performance.
"-- It's all because Blang found that thing!"
Someone flung the name at him like an accusation. Letaria's eyes narrowed.
"So it comes back to you, Blang."
She kept her voice steady, but there was weight in it. None of the usual sharp haughtiness she aimed at the man who had called her a little girl and come at her like something unhinged. This was something else.
A long silence on the other end.
When Blang finally spoke, his voice was rough and halting, like something he was dragging up from somewhere he'd buried it.
"...After you people beat us down, we were hiding in the junk deep in that debris field. And then - I found it. A Makina I'd never seen before..."
A faint tremor in his voice now.
"All of a sudden, there was a voice in my head. Direct. Said, 'Don't you want to be stronger?' Said, 'With this, the world bends to you.' ...It was a woman's voice."
"...!"
A woman's voice. Not the voice she had been hearing. Or was it? Letaria turned it over in her mind.
"It - that thing - told me to use it. So I did."
He said it in a rush, then went silent, like a wall had come down.
A beat. Then something shifted, and he grabbed at the container wall and shouted.
"But I'm different now! Back then - yeah, losing to you, I was furious, I was taking it out on everyone, I wasn't thinking! That's not me now, I swear! I genuinely - honestly - I am so grateful you came for us. I mean that. I really, really mean it--!"
Letaria listened to his desperate plea. And through the magic that spread out from her through Arden, she felt it - the man's relief, his terror dissolving, the sincerity underneath. No lie in it. She would have known.
Which made it all the more deeply, profoundly uncomfortable.
"Y-you are revolting! Not another word out of you!"
Letaria recoiled with a full-body shudder and said what she felt.
"That's so..."
The sound of Blang utterly deflating came through the speaker. But the other raiders, apparently reassured by the sight of their leader completely defanged and groveling before a lady, seemed to let go of something - quiet relieved sounds started drifting through: "heh, we made it, didn't we," "well, at least we're alive."
Fal cut their line temporarily and turned to Zein with a weary exhale.
"Honestly. Relaxing already, and they're about to sit in a Seldia cell."
"Well, whatever they went through was bad enough to do that to them. Those people were raising hell not so long ago - and look at the state they're in."
Zein said it lightly - but his eyes were sharp, fixed on the dark ahead.
(... Something doesn't add up. Whoever was behind those unmanned machines was using these people, that much is clear. So why cut them loose? And not just cut them loose - leave them alive in a container with a distress signal still running. That's not discarding them. That's putting them somewhere to be found.)
"...Well. Not our puzzle to solve. That's what the corps are for."
"Something on your mind, Zein?"
Letaria looked over at the Rigune with mild suspicion. Zein put his usual easy grin back in his voice immediately.
"Nah, nothing. Hey - look at that."
On Arden's main monitor, ahead in the black: the solid outer wall of Seldia's residential sector, familiar and unmistakable. The great entry hatch was already beginning to open, and ranged around it, waiting - several vigilante corps Rude-frame Makinas, standing by to escort them in.
Home.
Letaria felt it settle over her. But the cold thing that had come with Blang's words - the mention of that voice, the woman's voice that had reached into his head - sat in her chest without melting away, as Arden glided forward into the guiding lights and the familiar dark opened to receive her.