Chapter Text
It was the dawn of a new day in Perdita, setting aside her nightmarish perdicament Cissal got on her knees and took to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She didn't really think that she could the target of some displaced demon, could she?
She looked down at her pajamas and then to her exquisite dress and staff. Sure the horned helmet was a bit extra but it was just the clothes that had apparently been part of her heritage, one that had become rather blurry like there was some dark secret she'd be scarred by if she went too deep. Maybe that's what the nightmare was about? She was an inheritor of -something- for sure.
Still, it'd be useful to tap-tap-tap this down in her phone's journal just in case Horn or someone else could do anything about it, and maybe she start doing some more magic and Tech practice if that nightmare wasn't just surreal nonsense. With that she took a mighty step out of the inn and into the band of hooligans.
*yawwwwwwwwwn* "Man, when was the last time I rested in a good ol' pillowy bed? Was it when we were getting lynched?" Neifirst babbled after having a rather deep sleep that not even a midnight banshee could wake her from. Nei was still snug as a bug while Neifirst looked out the window to a sky that didn't dwell over a world of ruin, today was a new day and they were going to make the most of it.
Amy could barely even rub the sleep off her eyelids before the blue blur barged the door open and marched into the dome's light. "Uuugh.... slow down a bit you dunderhead!"
It took for a couple of minutes for the gang to re-adjust but the four were soon up and running for whatever task was up next as Horn stared blankly into the horizon with her arms folded behind her back.
"MORNING TO YOU, ORGANIC BEINGS. ANOTHER REPORT HAS BEEN ISSUED WITHIN THE LAST 24 HOURS. A LARGE WHITE CREATURE, MOST LIKELY A BIOMONSTER, HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED WITHIN THE FOREST NORTHEAST OF GEHENO. IT IS RECOMMENDED TO DEPART TO GEHENO AS SOON AS POSSIBLE."
Shir was still half asleep and a bit dazed. "Wha... another biomonster so soon? Give me a break!" Nei fumbled out last, her eye still half shut from being woken up suddenly in the night. *yawn* "Is that all we ever do these days?..."
Regardless of their protests they still had a job to do, and so they set out again on to the next town of Perdita in hopes of upping their reputation a bit.
For how big the dome was outside there wasn't too much to take in internally, only a measly 3 towns decorated the dome though to be fair it was meant as a part of a larger connected structure that had since left them for dead.
A rather expansive forest was spread across the land to Gehono but they took the nearest route next to the shore while keeping an eye out for any chirpers. The keen numan eyes able to disable a threat when not as cluttered as the Tophe incident, almost like some bonus training.
*SWIPE* *CLASH* *CLAW*
Shir smiled uneasily at how Nei and Neifirst were almost 1-to-1 in sync with each other while they eliminated the rogue Chirpers, for being polar opposite halves of a personality it seemed they were really starting to bond together in a way that Nei actually liked for once. It reminded her of what she saw on that tape all the way back when she first met the two.
Shir mumbled in her own head at why they were even a thing. "Hmmph... can't believe how recklessly some people were just playing with life like that, and to think Mother Brain just allowed it... and that guy with the glasses..."
It didn't take that much longer than the first trip for the gang to finally arrive at Geheno, the town rather large compared to the other two in the dome. It seemed like this is where a few of the brains of Palm had coalesed & completed their look with sleek grounds and roads that better resembled a noisy bustling city, but that didn't stop Horn's voice from taking presence over everything else as she did a clean 180 turn to the group at the town's edge. "GEHENO IS CONSIDERED THE MAIN CITY OF THE PERDITA DOME, SECURITY IS MUCH HIGHER IN COMPARISON TO NEW TINYVILLE AND TOPHE. KEEP ALERT AND BEHAVE."
"You hear that?" Amy asserted as she straightened up her back to try and make her stature as tall as possible, an array of faces ranging from annoyed to confused confirming that they weren't dozing off when her- er, their lives were possibly on the line.
Stepping into the town gave them goosebumps of the good kind, tall buildings decorating the sky like Mota but with a much more relaxed yet bustling structure that reminded Amy and Shir the times before Mota had been dulled into a semi-apocalyptic hellscape. Many shops and stores took place between the citizen's houses that ranged from sweets and delicacies to entertainment media and cool gadgets.
But there was one that looked out of place, so old-looking that you'd expect to find a medieval knight in its walls. It simply hanged the words "Fortune Teller" with a pair of green eyes flickering subtly behind the somewhat tacky doors to the place, nothing else of note to even decorate the place on the outside. Naturally this was a curious spot for a certain someone.
"You gals see that tacky building over there? We sure could use a premonition right now..." Shir tried to nudge the others but they simply mumbled under their breaths, so she took a big sprint over to the place and through the doors that Amy had to go after like she was some sort of babysitter.
By the time Amy had rushed into the building herself Shir had already started rustling in her pockets for pocket change, the pair of green eyes watching over them like hawks.
"Oooh... are you interested in knowing your fates?..."
"HELL YEAH I AM!" "Give me... 200 meseta... and the fate of the world will be yours to know." Neifirst seemed to be with Shir on the deal, though 200 meseta seemed a bit pricey for what it was. "Eh, you got any sorta deals?" But it was too late for the blue gal to butt in when Shir had already forked over the money. Before long the mysterious orb on her desks started to glow a blue and purple like a portal into an unknown universe, a bright glow of rotating colors that illuminated the rest of building while the fortune teller's eyes dilated in enlightenment.
\//\\//\()()()()===---===---===---()()()()/\\//\\/
"Hmm, I can see it already. A demon already roams, more than the ones you know. Lives will come and go, even mine."
"A doctor of the future, much different from his doppelganger."
"Dark secrets are locked away in the coldest heart of this world. The sins for whom are no longer with us."
"The one who comes as a lucifer, profound darkness seeping inside its veins as it insanely wanders a bastard land."
"What is half and half becomes whole, as it was always meant to."
"A beast with seven faces, all pointed at the one who should've never came."
"A fate rejected will be given to someone else. Cherish her while you still can."
"Hmm, my vision wanes for there is none left they want to give me."
"Remember this final vision... X marks the spot."
\//\\//\()()()()===---===---===---()()()()/\\//\\/
"...what kinda horseshit was that?" Neifirst sneered in a plain disgust at what could've been a good few monomates or SOMETHING better than this malarkey! And 'a fate rejected'? If it had anything to do with her then she's sure as hell happy that she'll live longer than a single year.
"LANGUAGE." Shot bursted everyone's ears clean open at Neifirst running her mouth expect for the oddly calm fortune teller and Cissal who had her ears prematurely covered, sorta dozing off too much to really notice what had happened but thankful she didn't get blasted at close range.
"Seemed worth the 200 for me!" Shir shrugged at Neifirst, the cryptic nature was just part of the game though who exactly which part was referring to seemed up in the air. A firm grip nagged at Shir's shirt as Amy dragged her out for wasting their time with such a foolish detour, wanting to get some good supplies before they engage with whatever the white creature was.
-==========----------==========-
-==========----------==========-
Neifirst went on a merry walk to Tinyville, a spring in her step as her large stature was hard to adjust to when dealing with such a lanky form, but she persisted.
"Now where could that purple smoothbrain be?" she thought, sensing that her sister was somewhere around the area. You'd think that being so tall would make it easy to find her but it seemed rather crowded this afternoon with Polebots pointing and signaling in all sorts of directions. Nevertheless she persisted.
It only took a few more minutes before she could witness a pair of almost horn-like ears point above the crowd, the chip on her right ear being a one-of-a-kind identifer. How delightful to get this over with!
The purple-haired numan almost jumped a bit at the lanky blue one. "Ay! What do you need from me now? I'm trying to blend in here!" She scowled with her wrinkled face noticably more than what you'd expect for a girl such as her, teeth bared out enough like she was going to take bite out of you with her long sharp fangs.
The blue one stared patiently. "Speaking of blending, a certain... someone... is still roaming right in this very dome. YOU wouldn't have happened to 'forget'... did you?..." The slow question was finished with what looked like a red light barely escaping the large plain-black pupils, giving a little 'insistence' for Nei to explain herself.
"N-no! I was just giving a little build-up before she gets skewered for good! I've already got the specific place in mind, just give me a day or two!" the purple one shouted back, truly the speech of a mastermind. The blue one's gaze did not falter one bit, she was given a simple job and it seemed she had already let it slip.
"I mean it!" Nei spat out again to try and satiate the growing irritation she could feel growing behind those big ol' pupils "Besides, they'll be done with soon. I can sense it already." "Alright then, but I'll be taking center stage myself soon... don't hog all the attention..." Neifirst remarked with a wide smile decorated with sickly yellow teeth sticking up like sharp needles.
-==========----------==========-
Behind the buildings of Geheno stood a sturdy bounty hunter, lurking in the shadows as her prey babbled on to her allies. What was it that drew them to befriend the beast? The behavior of the blue lookalike besides it was a dead giveaway that a nasty personality surely hid deep within, or was the purple creature really that good at convincing people that it didn't mindlessly slaughter that poor woman? It didn't help those people crowding around her seemed to very much empathize with her, whatever it was that made them so trusting made things way more complicated than they had to be. Besides, she had a hefty bounty to claim and this current assassination gig was being stretched far longer than it needed to, just a simple thought ran in her mind...
"It's only a matter of time..."