Stars Shining O'er The Coast

Author's Note: This is my contest piece for the WriteBaeRys2022 competition! It's crossposted on AO3 and FFN~! Enjoy!

...

Prologue - Cairns, QLD

For as long as Bae could remember, she was just another cog in the corporate machine.

It was a quarter to five on Friday night. Hakos Baelz was but a humble nine-to-five corporate drone who plugged away at an onslaught of a never ending workload, counting the precious few minutes left before the weekend. Her employer, the Royal Regency Australian Trust, was a government-owned company, a so-called 'crown corporation'. It gave her a steady income, a dental plan and a company car, but those pros hardly outweighed the cons.

The only thing really royal about this place is that it's a royal pain in the ass!

The work was a monotonous, boring and meaningless exercise of keyboard ASMR. Every workday threatened to turn Bae's brain into mush and whittle away at her spine for the benefit of the local chiropractor. Her coworkers were apathetic to her existence at best, and the apathy was mutual. Her bosses were more concerned about their promotions than Bae's welfare too. Personal and professional development was a foreign concept, it seemed.

Her only trusty companion was Mr. Squeaks, a rubber stress ball in the shape of a rotound red rat with googly eyes.

If I keep working here, my grip strength'll rival a gorilla when I retire.

Only three years into working with RRAT, Bae had dreams about returning to monke. She already had a plan in mind! She would hurl furniture across the office, flip the bird to her bosses and coworkers and blast Hololive idol music in the PA system at full blast. She had a collection of their CD albums in the glove compartment of her car, ready to roll.

But alas, Bae was too timid to even think about going against the flow. She was used to the rigid regimen. She hated the hamster wheel that she was in, but it was all that she knew. Thus, she kept her primate thoughts to herself and kept finalizing expense reports like the good worker rat that she was.

Chaos just wasn't her thing.

Like clockwork, at five o' clock, everyone in the Cairns office rose up from their open-concept cubicles and started punching out. To Bae, it was like watching birds migrating at the chance of the season - a force of nature almost.

Bae saved her file and prepared to join the flock. Just as Bae was about to shut down her computer, whispers started spreading through the homebound crowd. Those whispers turned to panicked cries and shouts.

Was it the zombie apocalypse already?

If it was, it would have been a welcome change of pace for Bae. Zombies were more alive than the typical RRAT employee after all. She even heard rumors that Hololive Indonesia was going to have a Zombie Idol debuting in the near future.

Wouldn't that be nice? But, I digress. What the hell's going on?

Unfortunately for her, a different kind of apocalypse was taking place at the Cairns office of the RRAT.

The rumor mill reached Bae's cubicle before long: whispers about an official email that hit the inboxes at five o' clock sharp. The migratory flock of corporate drones reversed course and scrambled back to their cubicles. Others scrambled for their work phones to hear the rumored scheduled news.

With a flurry of keystrokes, Bae opened her own inbox and saw a brand new unread email sitting there for her eyes. Before she could even open it panicked cries started erupting throughout the office. Some were turning into full-on doomers saying that the end was nigh. Others got furious and threatened to turn the office into a revolutionary scene from Les Miserables.