Chapter 05

The inside was a lot bigger than she expected, it seemed much less like a military stronghold and more like…

“Hey guys, party on the 3rd floor!”

“Has anyone seen my favorite jacket?”

“Is that pizza here yet?”

Yeah, it definitely felt more like a dormitory. The whirring of machines that likely kept this stronghold running were drowned out by the constant chatter of Gatekeepers going about their lives. It was certainly a strange sight, not like she expected, really.

‘Then again… judging by Sofia, this lack of decorum and order seems pretty normal.’

“HK-91?” One of the girls who ushered her into the base tapped her shoulder, seeing as how HK wasn’t listening to what was being said.

This blonde-haired-with-a-pink-streak girl seemed timid, much like a rabbit who was constantly on the lookout for predators. The parka she wore had an oversized collar that rose up to the bottom portion of her face, which she would routinely try to pull the hems of as if trying to encase herself in a cocoon of fabric with one hand.

“Um,” she started, locking her emerald eyes with HK, “Were you… listening?”

“...Sorry.” She apologized, bowing her head slightly in shame.

She withdrew a crescent-moon shaped silver pendant from her coat, she held it in both hands and closed her eyes, “It is better to prioritize fixing a problem rather than seeking to punish those who exploited it. Sala-57-19.”

“What?”

“Oh she’s just a follower of the Starlight Codex.” The other girl stepped forward with her hands behind her head, staring curiously at HK with her blue eyes.

She beamed at HK, showing off her pearly whites — her canines looked especially sharp. She looked much like the other girl, anatomically speaking and even work a similar parka but with the oversized collar replaced with an oversized hood. In addition, while the other girl’s hair was short and more blonde with pink streaks, this girl’s was longer and looked more like a mirror version of the color scheme.

Both girls had unusual decals on their outfits, with the pink-haired girl incorporating a chaotic spider motif, while the other chose to go with orderly butterflies.

The way they carried themselves couldn’t be more opposite, yet they seemed to get along well enough. Still, the first girl, Mariposa, as she introduced herself earlier, didn’t seem like much of a fighter. Could she really be counted on? Maybe she was closer to a support role?

The other girl, Kumoko, something about her… made HK feel like she could probably dismantle her with a smile on her face as she pulled out her innards. That impression was probably not helped by her taking a peek into her service record and seeing her unredacted confirmed kill count.

Kumoko glanced at HK, while she had Mariposa in a playful headlock. A mischievous smile spread across her face. “Find something interesting in my service record?”

Her spine stiffened as she hastily closed the file. “Sorry, I didn’t know you could see that.”

“Don’t mind it!” She cleared her throat, “anyways, like Mari was saying, Sofia says that you need to be debugged since your quality control checkers were…” she pauses, and then her eyes briefly change color to a familiar color.

“Lazy pieces of shit who likely just rubber-stamped your final touches without doing a basic once-over because they probably were busy trying to embezzle funds or some shit. Just take her down to Leon and he’ll get her combat ready.” She spoke that last sentence exactly as Sofia would. She seemed quite proud of herself.

“Good job, Kumo.” Mariposa smiled as she pat Kumoko on the head, apparently knowing what she was waiting for.

“Mariiii, you’re such a good sister, recognizing my hard work! One day you’ll make someone a very happy spouse~”

“We can’t get married to people, Kumo.”

“Well, if they want me to stop wanting to marry someone,” she started in a sing-songy voice as she merrily skipped down the hallway. “Then they better bring the whole Soluna armed forces.” She was obviously joking… right? HK wasn’t sure with her.

“Well,” Mariposa began while sliding a door open, “before we head down to Leon, I thought it might be best to get you registered in the Sparrow Regiment’s database before- woah!” She suddenly hit the deck!

Kumoko peeked into the room, “Claire, what are you doing?”

“Oh, hey, good time! Check it out, I can juggle!” A mysterious voice responded back.

HK stepped into the room, cautiously, and the first thing she saw was a short-haired girl with a striped-blue hairband. And this girl, Claire, was currently juggling what seemed to be a handgun, a knife, and a grenade. No wonder Mariposa was taking cover.

Claire, a girl in a loosely-worn jacket with a patch on the arm in the symbol of some balloons, leaned back in her chair behind the desk situated behind a mesh fenced area and behind her was a row of weapons of various shapes and sizes.

“Hey, BloodLass, what do you think you were in the past?” She gestured with her head to HK.

‘BloodLass?’ Confused, she pointed to herself.

“Yeah, you, like… I didn’t know I could do this, so maybe I was a circus performer or something? I am pretty agile, hilarious, and I’m literally the cutest girl here!”

“Yeah, yeah, you were a circus performer.” Kumoko said while drawing a knife from inside her coat, “last week you thought you were a party planner, the week before that you thought you were a cook, and then you tried to take time off to travel the Wards because you thought you might’ve been a musician before becoming a Gatekeeper.” She tossed several knives into Claire’s ever-growing list of juggled items — where was she keeping those knives?

Mariposa cautiously peeked out from behind her cover. “A-As the Starlight Codex says: “The past is an endless void’s distance away, while the future is just a step forward.” Tali-13-22.“

“Basically, none of us can remember who we were anyways.” She pat her chest, with a confident smirk on her face. “I mean, you’re cute now, but what if you were like… a gross old perv who died of something embarrassing like heart attack via jump scare from some game you were playing on the toilet.”

The room went silent at the possibility — Claire continued to juggle though.

Claire’s smile turned to a frown as she puffed out her cheeks, likely pouting. “There’s no way someone with a face this cute that wars are fought over her could’ve died in such an undignified way. I’m sure I was something cooler!” Claire remained defiant, while continuing to juggle, but even faster now.

“Um,” HK raised her hand, “you guys… don’t remember your pasts either?”

The other girls turned their attention to her, as if she just stated something obvious.

“Well, not really?” Kumoko started, averting her eyes while scratching the back of her head. “I… guess you weren’t told?”

“I… thought that my inability to remember my past was due to my malfunction, and I…” she trailed off.

Mariposa rose from her cover, stepped towards HK and brought her into a hug. “Sorry, I wish there was something else I could do for you.”

Claire briefly stopped juggling, instead suspending the objects in the air via some kinda device from her palm. “Sorry BloodLass, I wish I could tell you that our memories were backed up to a server somewhere, but I’d be lying.” She gripped the sleeves of her jacket and held them inwards. “Our connections to our pasts were severed when they turned us into Gatekeepers, even the forms we have now might not even be reflective of what we looked like. Honestly, it seems a bit cruel to me, to force us to live without a history, what if we had family, friends, people we needed to take care of. We’re told that our loved ones are taken care of, but without confirmation for ourselves, how can we be sure?”

Feeling her shoulders become heavy and her legs unstable. Her past being forgotten was not a glitch, but a feature. Why did this bother her so much?

“Perhaps it’s a mercy, in a way?” Mariposa started while patting the head of HK. “No memories means no sadness about those we left behind.” She closed her eyes, and buried her face in HK’s shoulder. “I want to believe that there’s no one crying over me, that anyone I left behind is happy and safe now. That’s one reason I fight, because the people who loved me, who raised me, who took care of me, might be there in the wards somewhere. And I want to keep them safe.”

Kumoko immediately joined the hug, “well, in any case, even if we can’t remember who we were, we’re all Gatekeepers now. So, big sister Kumoko has got your backs, no matter what!”

Claire snickered, and then continued juggling. “Although, you are smaller than most of us, so I don’t know if we can really call you a big sister?”

“Hah! Short joke, haven’t heard that today!”

“You do also have a habit of rushing out of advantageous positions to attack an enemy, Sister-Kumoko. Please give consideration to the technicians who have to put you back together!”

“Well, that’s how they earn their paychecks!”

“Wait, I have a question.” She remembered something odd that’s been happening to her, if her memories were truly gone. She had assumed they were just glitches in her programming, but what if there was something more. “I’ve been seeing, things, things like people, but not… people. I mean, it’s like… they’re ghosts. They sometimes appear in my field of vision but my sensors glitch, and they can’t detect anything there. What is that?”

“That’s a memory echo.” This was a new voice, not belonging to one of the girls. One of the lockers behind the counter opened up, and out tumbled a dark-haired girl with green streaks tied in a twin-tail style. She disappeared behind the desk where Claire sat.

A long, thin tail of black metal poked out over the desk like a periscope of a submarine surfacing from the ocean. Her hand lifted herself up, and she sat cross-legged on the desk while staring at everyone with her inquisitive golden eyes.

“Memories aren’t fully destroyed, just blurred. It’s impossible to truly destroy memories completely without destroying the subject as well, so it’s closer to building a foundation on top of an already existing one. Like the Steel Curtain itself for example.” She lazily gestured to the area around them. “It functions as a wall now, but it was once part of massive starships that ferried humanity across the stars. In the same way, our past selves were a convenient foundation that was repurposed for something else.”

Despite her long explanation, her body language didn’t match at all. She seemed almost bored by explaining it. “Therefore, memory echoes from the people we once were function as a literal ghost in the machine.” Seeming to exhaust herself, she slid off the desk and laid flat on the floor. “Eventually, they’ll fade. As new memories form, they’ll consume the old ones. Or something like that. Tiiiiired, don’t wanna explain anymore.” She actually closed her eyes and seemed like she was really sleeping!

“And that’s Naomi, our resident weirdo.” Claire said, resuming her juggling act.

“From my view, everyone else is the weirdo.” Naomi responded while waving her tail lazily in the air.

Mariposa seemed amused by this, but then she suddenly clapped her hands together, “OH RIGHT! We were supposed to get you entered into the system, so let’s just-

The door suddenly opened, and as if a switch went off all the girls — except Naomi — drew their guns and got into a shooting stance.

Unfortunately, all they saw was a very frightened man carrying several flat boxes. “P-P-Pizza, I’m the pizza guy, I have a pizza for-”

Within the span of a blink, Naomi had the pizza boxes in her hand. The pizza guy could only stare forward, dumbfounded, as a device on his wrist lit up from red to green. Before he could get a word in — likely about if Naomi wanted to sign up for some rewards program or something — the door shut in his face.

Naomi set the boxes down on a nearby table, opened it up, savoring the smell of fresh(ish) pizza. Then she started eating one of the slices. Looking positively pleased with herself as she did so.

Naomi scanned the room as everyone looked at her, apparently at a loss for words.

“. . . . .”

Naomi narrowed her eyes at everyone, and held the pizza boxes closer to her body.

“We’re not gonna take it from you!” Kumoko exclaimed, which elicited a nervous laugh from Mariposa as she was unsure what to do.

Claire just stared at the pizza that Naomi jealously guarded, “well, I might if you don’t share with me, your best friend Claire the Jester~”

Naomi turned her head away from Claire, apparently their friendship was not worth sharing pizza over.

The door slowly opened again, but whatever remained of her human instincts had her hairs standing on end. The killing instinct emanating from behind the doorframe seeped into the room.

“Naoooooomiiiiiiii…” A voice, barely holding back their anger, called into the room. A girl’s hands gripped the frame and door’s edges. Standing there was a very angry, long-haired girl with silver hair. She was smiling, but it was a ruse, and one that she was trying hard to hold back but failing. Her furrowed brow and tightly shut eyes were evident of her anger.

She bared her teeth in an angry grin, as her heterochromatic eyes opened up and rested squarely on the barely-concerned Naomi, now on her fourth slice of pizza.

She menacingly advanced towards Naomi, a pair of flying drones with red blinking lights following behind her, mirroring her obvious anger. “When you said that you needed to borrow emergency funds, I thought these emergency funds were gonna be repairs, or upgrades, or something to help with our duties. Not…” she slammed her palm on the table! “Pizza!”

“....” Naomi stayed silent as she absently gazed into the new girl’s eyes. “But Irene…” Naomi started, took a bite of her pizza, and then continued. “I was hungry.”

“We don’t have a digestive system, Naomi! We don’t even need to eat food, Naomi! If it was just ONE pizza box, then maybe I could let it go, but you bought 14 full pizzas?! Why?!”

She sheepishly started while chewing her pizza slice. “Technically we can still convert organic waste into energy via bio-”

“What was that, Naomi?!”

Naomi groaned in a mixture of annoyance and feeling emotionally overwhelmed. She didn’t seem like the type who could handle much.

“Um,” HK raised her hand, “I’m new here, sorry, but maybe if she were to share the pizza with others… then it could be considered morale boosting?”

“...” The girl, Irene, turned on HK. “What’s your name, BloodLass?”

“HK-”

“I said your name, what do you go by?”

“Oh, she doesn’t have one yet.” Kumoko stepped in. “Actually, we were gonna take a crack at a few. How about Caroline, you like that?”

HK shook her head, the name didn’t feel right. Though she was still curious about why they were calling her BloodLass.

Irene looked off to the side, “what, no, she needs to be taught a lesson, she can’t keep getting away with this.” She mumbled to herself. “Yes, I know, but still… alright alright fine, I can let it go if she agrees to this.” Who was she talking to?

Apparently sensing that her monopoly on the pizza was in-danger, Naomi instinctively guarded her pizza boxes with her arms, then quickly ate more slices, as if sensing that they were gonna be taken away!

“Oi! Stop eating all that pizza, you’re gonna overload again!” Irene’s drones inched closer.

Naomi said nothing, she just pulled an object from her belt, shut her eyes and tossed it.

“Are you serious?!”

Mariposa covered HK’s eyes, but nothing happened. All the girls had shielded their eyes from what they thought was a flashbang, but it was just a fake. HK briefly glimpsed Naomi’s metal tail exiting the room, also the pizza boxes were gone.

Irene just seemed more angry, “I’m gonna dismantle her into component parts when I catch her! Rim-Rim, Porin, after her!” And with that, Irene barreled out of the room!

“Please don’t use any lethal rounds!” Mariposa called out after her. “I mean, I know it can’t kill us, but it’s an inconvenience to fix the damage!”

“Is… is this a normal occurrence?” HK asked.

“What, that? Yeah, that’s just Irene and Naomi being Irene and Naomi. Tends to happen when you have two polar opposite personalities. Naomi is a loveable space cadet and Irene can be… a bit high-strung.” Claire responded while staring at where the pizza had once been, she seemed disappointed.

“Irene basically has two settings, annoyed and super-annoyed. She needs to find herself a friend.” She playfully elbowed Mariposa, “Eh, eh, eh~”

Mariposa cleared her throat, “If love is in Irene’s future, that’s for her to decide. We all have our destines.”

“I’d have several questions for someone who looked at us walking gun platforms and thought, “wow, she’d make a great wife!” Stranger things have happened though right, BloodLass?”

This was the third time now. “What does BloodLass mean?”

Claire blinked, and then chuckled, “It’s just a bit of gallows humor, it’s what we call the new recruits, ya know before they’ve killed someone.”