Shattered Skies: The Morning Lights

CHAPTER 28: Behind Enemy Lines

Chapter 28: Behind Enemy Lines

La Fin de Toute

(formerly Galactica Palace)

Energy Conduits

With every step she took, Nagisa Misumi, Cure Black, felt energy thrumming through the metallic floor of the corridor, a deep, rumbling, constant vwoom that traveled up her ankles and nestled somewhere in the base of her spine. It wasn't only the floors, either; a quick examination of the curving, ridged walls confirmed that massive amounts of power ran through their structure as well. Something burning this much energy in Dead End's hands couldn't be anything but bad news. She and Fortune had been wandering for what felt like most of an hour, following the corridor to try to locate its source. This entire area was like being inside a gigantic power cable... Black couldn't shake the fear that if they took one wrong step in here, they would be fried to a crisp. So she and Fortune crept cautiously ahead, keeping their heads low and their senses on alert, taking care not to make any unnecessary contact with the walls or ceiling.

Still no sign of the others. Fortune kept calling them on her Emergency Survival Device at intervals which grew less and less frequent as time went on. Some kind of jamming signal, she surmised. Their test of the ESD's emergency transport feature was a failure, probably for the same reason. For now, it looked as if the only way back to the Miller-Meteor and out of this nightmare was to rejoin the rest of the group and return to the surface on foot... but as long as they could do some damage while they were there, so much the better.

Doing damage. Black demanded herself to focus on that short-term goal, because letting her thoughts wander in the slightest inevitably brought her back to her hallucination. God, every few minutes she still needed to check her arm to make absolutely sure it was still there. The feeling of being so alone, so lost in darkness that she rotted to pieces and didn't even care... it stood out as vivid and sharp as any true memory. That all-consuming sorrow, that deadening apathy as to whether she lived or died...

Black had never thought about clinical depression before. There were rumors that a few of the girls in Verone Academy were diagnosed, but no one ever talked openly about it. That wasn't the Japanese way. Now she had cause to wonder if being depressed, not just having a bad day or feeling sad once in a while but being depressed depressed, felt anything like her hallucination. Not losing an arm, of course, but being lost in that endless fog of perfect, uncaring numbness. If it did... she gained an entirely new level of sympathy for those who suffered from it.

Ahead, Fortune kept going, as strong and unstoppable as ever. Black wondered what she saw in her hallucination, and how it was she was handling it so well.

Iona Hikawa, Cure Fortune, plowed forward with all the stubbornness she was known for. Putting up a strong front, just as she used to when she worked alone for all that time with only Glasan, her fairy partner, by her side. It was easy to slip back into that mode... a little too easy, if she were honest with herself. That Iona, that Fortune, was the one who sent the Phantom Empire running whenever she appeared, the one who was the idol of the school, the one who never faltered and never failed. Right now, becoming that Iona, that Fortune, was the only way she could keep going.

The alternative was to go to pieces and sink into helpless anxiety, for she still wasn't certain whether or not her hallucination had any basis in reality. Maria, Cure Tender, her sister, was brainwashed into her dark form. A puppet for Dead End, along with Mirage and poor Lovely. Who knew what kind of sick torture someone like Joker would visit on them if they were unable to resist? Once he tired of them, would he dispose of them? And Princess or Honey... were they still held prisoner, or...? If she stopped moving, fear would devour her alive.