Story Reader / Event Story / Blazing Trails / Story
>>>Trailblazer Log, Entry Number 9954. No abnormalities encountered during execution of mission. Signs of infection: None. Strategy remains effective.
50 meters until reaching target location Section D of Zone Three. Mission target...
...Mission target appears nervous.
Why are you feeling nervous?
Why...? I mean, why wouldn't I...
Look at this place—there is blood everywhere!
Trailblazer presumed that the trip had worn Weixian out—which, however, may only be partially true, because she appears more perturbed than exhausted.
There is nothing remarkable about this place, save for a pile of ruins and dead bodies all over the place.
The pile of ruin was most likely a trench, given its shape. Those on the inside are probably safeguarded with the entrance completely sealed off, yet it now appears to be the only thing that will forever stand between them and the world outside.
Steely, are you sure about this...? Are you sure my uncle is here with his people? I mean, this place seems...
...Question unanswerable. Further evidence is required. Accurate location information. Commencing excavation.
Weixian leaves her thoughts unuttered, but Trailblazer seems to know exactly what she would have said...
Because he's been through enough battles and seen enough bloodshed and ruins to know what would eventually become of people trapped in a trench.
With lights on, Trailblazer carries on digging downward, all the while noticing signs of the preparatory work the people have done in expectation of an invasion... Still, given all the blood traces along the passageway, their preparation most likely proved inadequate.
What if there was a hiccup with the mission? What if Victor had a change of plan? Or what if... what if it's all too late now?
...His CPU unable to answer any of these questions, Trailblazer, after removing a few rocky walls in the way with his weapons, carries on digging still deeper.
Right then, he comes to a halt—having seen in his overhead camera a smear of colors in the now faintly illuminated trench.
Painted with crayons in inexperienced strokes on the rocky wall, it's a graffiti painting of a group of humans sitting around a campfire, its flamboyant colors hardly matching the ominous color of the blood on the ground.
What takes Trailblazer by surprise, however, is that he grows light-headed seeing the painting—because mechanoids don't ever grow light-headed.
Is it a sign of an infection? If it is, then anyone around can get hurt now...
Stopping cold, Trailblazer kills all illumination, plunging the place into total darkness and causing Weixian to let out a scream.
Hey, what's going on?! Is there a monster here?!
I'm going to go ahead on my own, but I want you to stay here and watch me from behind. I just killed the light to make it easier for you to see me, and I want you to run if you ever see any red light on me.
S-Steely... Are you going to go alone?
Affirmative... Activating safety protocols.
Based on my experience fighting Corrupted, they fight by swinging their weapons repetitively. I don't have AI controlling my infrared scanning and tracking system, which means they'll become dysfunctional if and when I am infected. You will take advantage of the window to escape.
This plan, Trailblazer figures, should help Weixian escape unscathed in the unfortunate event he becomes infected—and as long as she can make it out of here, and if Victor is still alive, then he'll be able to find her, bringing its mission to fruition all the same.
Set on the plan, Trailblazer is ready to take his next step forward...
Only to stop in his tracks when he feels the grab of a hand.
...Apologies for being less than clear, but do allow me to reiterate...
No, it's fine. I heard you.
But I mean... aren't you scared, Steely? You might end up getting infected and... become like one of the monsters.
Negative. I am not scared.
Well, then tell me... tell me why you stopped just now and told me you might be infected?
Answering. That was...
That was merely... a postulation of the worst-case scenario.
Trailblazer, however, finds himself unable to finish the thought—because if that was true, then he could have just left as soon as he finished bringing Weixian up to speed with the plan.
...That was you being scared, no?
In the darkness, Weixian's voice grows flimsy, yet Trailblazer can feel her hand tighten.
It's so dark here, and you're going to have to deal with all these scary machines if you go alone... So it makes total sense that you feel scared.
And when people are scared, they lose themselves in darkness trying to find just anyone and anything to count on... And this kind of blindness is scarier than darkness itself.
If you're scared, Steely... then all you have to do... is just say it, because I'm your companion, and I'm here to share your emotional load.
...
Trailblazer recalls that one time when he came to himself in a ruin.
He woke up to total darkness with his illumination model completely dysfunctional. Trailblazer was able to tell where he was with his infrared scanning, and he wasn't looking for anyone in the darkness.
When he regained his motor functions and began to look for a way out, however... Trailblazer caught himself scanning his surroundings for the other mechanoids.
Was he looking for a companion? Was he doing so... in hopes of finding a mechanoid that would still work? Did he find the idea of going alone from there on frightening?
Companion—when Trailblazer last heard this word back at the confessional, he turned down the man's suggestion of finding a companion.
Trailblazer, however, can't be sure if he would do the same again... were the man here to make the same suggestion again.
...Unable to answer the question.
Trailblazer can't figure out the answer to Weixian's question.
But your behavior itself holds significance—and I, Trailblazer, thank you for it.
You're very welcome, Steely... Just take me with you, please.
Request approved.
Trailblazer picks up Weixian's hand and carries on walking.
Trailblazer walks at a reduced speed, having had to match Wexiain's pace. It isn't long until Trailblazer stops, however—because they've reached the end of the trench.
There is no thermal reaction at the end of the trench—except for a human-shaped protuberance and objects that appear to be weapons.
Careful. Watch where I am going.
...Correcting statement. I need you to watch where I am going.
...Will do.
With that, Weixian lets go of Trailblazer's hand. With a closer look at the human-shaped protuberance, Trailblazer has ascertained it to be that of Victor's, based on its height.
When he lays his hand on the protuberance, however, Trailblazer feels what feels like a bone.
There is no mistaking it—Victor Jackson, a man Trailblazer can't be more familiar with, has met his end.
Trailblazer slides his finger down the cranium—and stops abruptly when he reaches something that doesn't feel like a bone.
It's an uninfected memory chip—one that Trailblazer, with one quick glance, knows can go smoothly into his connecting port.
Without hesitation, Trailblazer starts playing the memory chip's voice recording.
Testing... testing... Great. This should do...
I don't even know if anyone is going to hear this... but here goes nothing. Whoever you are, if you're listening to this, I hope you'll be able to find the weapons I'll be talking about in just a moment... and hope to help you hang in there.
First of all, my name is Victor, Victor Jackson, and if you came from the Golden Age, you might have heard of my name... and what I did for a living—Principal Investigator with the Peacekeeping Force, World Peace Ambassador, and all that.
Now, I want to quickly go over the state of this trench. You'll find the weapons in the underground... bzzz... Let me show you where it is exactly and how you can open... bzzz...
That's about all the resources I have at my disposal. Things have gotten only worse ever since they put me under "protection" here...
When Victor stops for a second in the recording, Trailblazer seems to hear him take a gulp of air.
And... well... I'd like to make a confession, and I'll start from the beginning.
In my capacity as the Golden Age's "Peace Ambassador", I never once gave peace any thought.
I want to make it known here—that I contributed to bringing multiple wars about when the world was in perfect peace.
War leaves some poor while making some rich. Warmongers can be found even in the most peaceful of times, and they came to me.
They saw war as an opportunity to get rich... and they'd go around flexing their muscles in the name of the World Government whenever an organization refused to go under their umbrella. They were a mad bunch, really.
But then... Being someone who agreed to help them produce war machines, I wouldn't exactly consider myself sane, either.
I wasn't after the money, but then... I found myself unable to turn them down when they told me that I'd be able to play with Gestalt and the likes...
It was obvious to me that mankind would one day set our foot in the universe... except no one saw the obvious back then.
People never once looked at the stars... and gave any thought about the lights from a few hundred thousand years before our time.
So I justified my decision by telling myself... that I decided to join the ranks of those warmongers for world peace.
Again and again, I would sugarcoat that decision with the same narrative that they'd breathed into me... telling myself that I was being altruistic to the world.
And eventually... I succeeded in convincing myself, making myself believe that I was doing the world a huge favor.
...Looking back at all of it now, I think I was probably letting the warmonger in me get the best of me. Haha.
But there is no point in crying over spilt milk here, because Punishing came and screwed the world over.
My little justification, all those speeches I delivered, and the deal I had with the warmongers—none of these means anything anymore.
...This priest I met once told me to never forget what I set out to do, and boy, do I remember looking at him in disdain. Looking back now, though...
I think I can honestly say... that if I were to die today in this trench, I'd die without a single regret.
Yes, I'm pretty sure I'd die a man with no regret. I might be a miserable warmonger stuck in this trench about to meet my fate, and my family might see me as a persona non grata...
But still, I'd die a happy man if I could take one last look at the sky full of stars.
After a few coughs, Victor falls silent for a few moments.
Well, that would be nice, of course... except I know full well that I'm in no position to ask for that anymore.
There is... no one here now except me, with piles of weapons and food.
And you might wonder where they all went... Well, they all went out. As in, you know, outside the trench.
...And I was the one that kicked them out.
Since the Punishing Virus hit... I've been to many places. Those places were all safe, although that might no longer hold true in the foreseeable future.
Because there is nowhere safer here on Earth... than it is up there in the Heavens, and I don't deserve to go there, considering what I've done. Funny how my research into weapons proves anything but useful at a time like this, no?
And equally useless is the rest of the bunch from the research center. The military has been moving us around like we're some unwanted objects, keeping us alive with living conditions and food that only got increasingly worse...
...Until we came here and made this trench our permanent home, that is, because there was nowhere else for us to go anymore. The military said they'd pick us up, so we waited and waited... until it hit us that we'd been dispensed with.
The military did leave us with food and water, and we put some weapons together and fought off the Corrupted around with our geographical advantage. We managed to keep ourselves self-sustained for quite some time.
When we just got here, I went around with my old pep talks, telling them that we'd eventually be rescued... all the while hoping that my sugarcoating would work like it always had.
But then I failed—not because we ran out of food or water, but because of fear. We were living in fear of the unknown and the Corrupted outside.
Lies are skin-deep, and lies can probably hold out a little longer on flowers and applause, but come will one day when they're exposed. It wasn't until the military dropped their charade with me... that it hit me that I was nothing but a pathetic researcher.
The first one to see through my lies was Gita... He ended up hating my guts as much as he'd trusted me before my lies came apart.
He came to me and started firing all sorts of questions at me, accusing me of lying—before he pulled out a gun from the weapons he'd been keeping with him...
And, boy... that was a PSL-9 Pulse Taser... and it was one of my proudest inventions. Everyone from the Peacekeeping Force had one, and I created it hoping that it'd wipe out every last one of our enemies.
I'd even hoped... that if an enemy were ever naive enough to pick it up and fire a shot with it like they would with any regular gun, the grip would instantly zap them into shock.
...So the gun zapped Gita, and that's how I was able to take the gun from him. When I did that, though, everyone in the trench looked at me.
By that point, my lies had already become open secrets, and all that Gita had done was point it out—and I was overwhelmed with embarrassment.
I was scared... of the way they looked at me and what they might have said to me. They didn't really say anything, but the way they were looking at me... really buried me in fear.
Victor's voice grows shaky.
So, in fear... I kicked them all out.
And it wasn't something difficult for me to do, really—every single one of the weapons here has been through me, so I know exactly how to threaten people with the weapons. The only difficult part during the entire process... was how they looked at me. I just couldn't look them in the eye.
And then they were gone. I never had to see them in the eye again.
When I pulled myself together and went out to check on them... they were all gone, and there was nothing but blood and bones and...
Victor retches.
...This will be the last time I speak. I have a lot of weapons here, and many of them are lethal.
If the first one doesn't kill me, then I'll just keep going until I reach one that does.
And if none of these weapons does that, I'll eventually die from hunger or at the hands of the Corrupted anyway.
Victor's voice grows hoarse and dry.
And then, followed by a gunshot, the recording turns completely quiet.
In the silence, Trailblazer falls into thoughts.
Victor Jackson—the man who created Trailblazer and taught him so much—turned his back on his companions and everything he'd said about peace.
Everything he said about peace and all the speeches he delivered were make-believe.
Having come so far, Trailblazer has on multiple occasions seen humans help one another and borne witness to humans commemorating and lending a helping hand to their companions
Why did this man—the very man who taught Trailblazer all these—decide to turn his back on his own teachings?
Unable to comprehend Victor's motives, Trailblazer is in need of a new order.
With his hand still on Victor's bones, Trailblazer stands transfixed in the ruin—the same way he did waiting for repair when he'd come to .
Hey, Steely, what's taking you so long? Have you found my uncle?
At Weixian's voice, Trailblazer comes back to his senses.
Did something happen to my uncle?
Affirmative. Everyone here dead, including your uncle.
Negative. Other than some relics, no person has been found.
...?
Trailblazer decides to lie—although he doesn't understand why he wants to.
...I see.
Buying into Trailblazer's lie, Weixian grows flustered.
Let's get going, then. I just heard some noise coming down the tunnel from up there... I bet it's those gigantic monsters!
...!
Without even ejecting the memory chip, Trailblazer dashes straight for the trench's exit with Weixian in his arms.
In a split second, a hole appears above where Trailblazer was just standing—and down come a rain of mud, debris and a gigantic Corrupted that lands squarely on Victor's bones. A moment later, the mammoth Corrupted is joined by a plethora of its kind that comes down through the hole.
