Prelude To Catastrophe
Iv
“Uhm…Abigail?” I murmured out in a concerned tone.
“Yeah? What’s up?” Her reply was nonchalant. Way too nonchalant for what I was currently seeing.
Apparently unaware of my concern, the target of my such feelings, Abigail, was currently too busy stacking a tower of cards on a table to even spare me a glance as she gave me a reply. Now that isn't anything too over-the-top by itself, so long as you ignore the fact that this tower of cards was about twice the size of your average adult. And to be clear, Abigail was just your average, non-Origin thirteen year old girl, with an average frame of a child for her age. So to summarise, I was currently staring at her perched on a ladder to reach the top of the tower, which by this point, was close to the ceiling. Staring at this absurd scene, I couldn’t help but lament how things had gone this way. Things had previously been going fine out in the field, as I watched Abigail continuing to play with that strange, balloon-like ball (I had asked them what it was called, and apparently it was a ‘volleyball’?). Until a minute after my arrival, she had the wonderful idea of ditching the volleyball for another activity. That ‘activity’ was a card game. To be more precise, Poker. Unfortunately, her mysteriously amnesia-riddled mind remembered only the name, but not the game. On top of that, when we had tried to tell her Poker wasn’t for kids of her age, she just brushed off our comments, saying she ‘remembered it, so it must have been fun!’ or something along those lines. Not wanting to deal with a child’s stubbornness, I had just run off, leaving her alone with the two maids, who I figured would eventually talk her down.
Mistakes were made.
Coming back to the present, this was the situation I had come to after returning to check up on them. For the record, it’s only been around an hour, so she had stacked this massive tower of several thousand cards just under that timeframe. I was reduced to simply gawking at the scene in disbelief, with half of my mind wondering whether or not she really was an Origin, and that this was her Ability…somehow. The other half of my mind? That was devoted to wondering where on Earth this many cards had come from.
Abigail’s voice pulled me out of my stupor. “Is this not how you play ‘Poker’?” She asked with a way-too innocent tone. I nearly lost my voice as I responded, “Of course not! But in the first place……”
I turned to glare at the two maids currently watching from the sides. “I expected the two of you to talk her down, not to give her the cards. Not only that, you didn’t even stop her from doing this?” I made a dramatic gesture to the tower of cards.
One of the maids spoke up. She was a younger girl who Abigail had previously called “Saire”. “With all due respect, Miss Iv, her requests did seem reasonable. And putting all our common sense aside, is this not an activity she enjoys? We didn’t see a problem with it.”
“Fine, putting aside the issues of the size of the tower and her age......I’m assuming these cards were from the storehouse? How many did you take out?”
“All three boxes. We had a few more people help out with moving them, though.” She pointed towards the three, massive cardboard boxes piled up in a corner of the room.
I looked at the pile, then turned to look back at the maid duo. Digesting the information, I spoke crisply, “The two of you will clean everything up by today. And next time she does something out of hand like this, let it be known that whoever didn’t stop her will be solely responsible for cleaning up the mess.”
I could see a look of protest forming on Saire’s face, as well as the other older maid that had been standing silently to her side. Saire seemed to want to retort, but eventually both of them responded affirmative.
I took another look at Abigail, who was still focused on building the tower whilst perched on her ladder. For some reason, I had a gut feeling this wouldn’t be the last ridiculous act she pulled off whilst she stayed here. The thought of simply leaving her somewhere else did cross my mind, but no suitable location came to mind. The orphanage at Central seemed like a good place, but it came with its own problems. Central was the land of Origins, so it’d be difficult to control the flow of information, which would have definitely ended with the girl learning about our kind. Though we could erase parts of her memory, the process got increasingly difficult the more memories you tried to erase, which made the orphanage seem less appealing. Besides, it’d feel cold to just throw her out into an orphanage after bringing her in like this. After some deliberation, I resolved to let her stay. Besides, it was temporary anyways, and we could always send her back to a local orphanage in Canada if her family had died in the Crisis.
I winced a bit at the last of my thoughts. Though I felt this was normal behaviour for me, a pang of guilt shot through my heart as I thought so.
Was it Abigail herself who made me feel this way? Odd, it had barely been a day since I met her, why was I caring for her to this extent when we were just strangers? Regardless, I decided to push aside any such feelings and thoughts about Abigail. My life was busy as it was, I didn’t need psychology sessions clogging up my schedule.
Oh, but I was definitely assigning Abigail a new pair of servants. I’d let Sherman work out the finer details since that’s his part of the job, but regardless, I’d want her to have more responsible supervision.
As I moved on with my thoughts, a question resurfaced in my mind, and I ended up mumbling, “How did she make this thing anyway…”
Saire seemed to overhear my words, responding, “Talent.”
“–my arse! This isn’t about talent, this might as well be an Abilit–” I was about to say “Ability” in the spur of a moment, until I caught myself halfway through. The two maids also seemed to have caught on to my blunder, as all three of us simultaneously turned towards the elephant in the room, Abigail, to observe her reaction.
Thankfully, Abigail seemed completely enamoured in her little, tower sculpting world (Was it really that entertaining?). My words seemed to have passed from her one ear to another as she continued to delicately place cards after cards as if she were a master sculptor. She wasn’t even looking our way, let alone paying attention to any of our words.
With the danger of a potential breach in information resolved, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. Still, I couldn’t help but ponder briefly on how I could have made such a careless slip of the tongue. It wasn’t like me at all to let my guard down like that.
Ignoring it, I spoke out, “Abigail. I know we told you that you could largely do as you please whilst you stayed here for the time being but,” I paused my words briefly as the girl in question finally stopped her card-stacking and turned my way, “I can’t allow you to continue on with such behaviour. From tomorrow, I’ll assign you another pair of helpers that will better guide your behaviour, do you understand?” I could see simultaneous expressions of sadness forming on both Abigail and Saire’s faces, though the former’s was much more pronounced. Abigail countered, “But Saire is the person here that I know the best, can’t she stay?” The other older maid seemed a bit hurt in being left out, but unfortunately for her we all ignored her reaction.
As I thought over Abigail’s words, I realised that she had a point. Whilst she was acting cheery and energetic as of now, she was still a child that had lost her memories, and had woken up in an unfamiliar place. It wasn’t out of the question for her to be hiding her discomfort and fear, even as of now. Not only that, if she had indeed gotten to know Saire better than other servants here, Saire may be acting as a sort of emotional crutch for her. It would be quite cruel of me to simply separate them like that. Following those thoughts, my mind turned towards the scene I saw this morning, of Saire chasing after a cheerful Abigail as they ran down the hallways. They did seem quite close……
After some additional consideration, I spoke with a hint of resignation in my voice, “Very well, Saire can stay, as well as…” I turned towards the older maid in a fit of awkwardness. “Claire, Miss.” Her name elicited a surprised reaction from me. I asked in a voice laced with curiosity, “Claire? Your names sound awfully familiar. Are you two perhaps–”
“No, we are not siblings.” The maid, Claire, cut me off. “Our features and ages are quite far apart, but everyone just assumes we have the same parents because of similar sounding names…” Her words had a sense of resignation and annoyance within them. It appeared this misconception was a recurring theme in her life. As a sort of apology, I elected to ignore how rudely she had cut off her superior’s words. “Very well, you’ll continue working with Saire and taking care of Abigail. You are the senior maid here, correct? Please ensure such similar incidents don’t occur in the future, and look after the two of them well.” She nodded her head deeply in response, before affirming my words.
As our talk wrapped up, Abigail decided to chime in, “By the way, Iv, you kept pestering me about not knowing what ‘Poker’ is when you first came but,”
Wait, I had a bad premonition about this.
“–but you’re the one who didn’t know what a volleyball was. It’s not as though you were the one who lost their memories…”
……and my premonitions always deliver.
Made worse was the fact she seemed completely unaware and unintentional in her actions. I could hear Saire snickering under her breath at her words. Still, could you blame me? I’d never seen a volleyball before, let alone played with it. My life as an Overseer had always taken priority before all else.
…
But come to think of it, this was already the second time I’ve been humiliated in this one day, after the little prank Sherman pulled off this morning. I was about to retort to her words when I was suddenly interrupted by a loud sound.
“Ring ring! Ring!”
The phone in the pocket of my shorts suddenly sprang to life with an unsavoury alarm. My face paled, and an instinctive feeling of dread and foreboding washed over me as I recognised that specific call sound. It was an emergency call. Reserved for well…emergency reports which skipped the usual chain of command and were sent directly to me.
I picked up the call as I excused myself from the three other girls, before walking to an obscure corridor. As I made my way down, the voice on the other side came in. It was jerky and raspy, as if exhausted and worn out. I could hear faint gunshots and shouts from the background, with static every now and then.
“Sir, the reconnaissance mission has been botched. bzzz-We’ve been found. Engaged in combat, requesting bzzz-reinforcements and orders to retreat.”
I almost smashed the phone in my hands at that moment. Luckily, I managed to stop myself from such a counterproductive act. Trying to hide the fury and disdain in my voice, I urgently asked, “What?! Where’s Rhythm?! Where are you all? What’s the situation?”
The voice replied unsteadily, “The main squad is currently in bzzz-near the outskirts of the town locked in urban combat against several enemy hostiles. Confirmed Origins amongst them. We’ve lost contact with Rhythm, but we previously felt a sudden burst of an Artificial Angel’s Aura in the vicinity, followed by a second shortly after, until they both vanished completely, repeat, requesting–nngh?!!” The sound of static and explosions ensued.
“Hello? Hello?! What's going on–”, I called out in a panicked tone. Even whilst focused on the call, I could still make out some of the maids and butlers who had been walking down the hallways giving me weird glances at my sudden outburst. I paid them no heed, and rushed for my office.
Unfortunately, the call disconnected right then and there. It sounded as though he had been ambushed by an enemy mid speech. That didn’t seem good. If someone on comms duty that should have been reporting the situation from afar was somehow ambushed, then this attack was clearly coordinated and pre-planned. Upon this thought, a sudden possibility crossed my mind. The words escaped from my clenched teeth,
“‘Deuxième’…?”
I tried to calm myself down. A bit difficult when I had basically zero information to work with, other than the fact that Rhythm was gone, and they were currently being ambushed by what was probably ‘Deuxieme’ forces. But in the first place, I had left this mission to be supervised by Rhythm as their field officer. Rhythm should have been commanding from the rear and getting these kinds of reports, not an Overseer like me! The fact that the comms team in the rear ‘lost contact’ with him, however, told me that the kid had been on the field when all this went down. From what I could tell, the result was a battalion that was now leaderless, and forced to relay this directly to me.
This is bad.
If this was pre-planned, and even rear communications were cut off, chances were that the enemy was out to encircle and annihilate the whole battalion.
Ok. Calm. Panicking wouldn’t do me any favours, and whilst Rhythm’s actions weren't in line, the Deuxieme’s intervention wasn’t completely out of expectations. I had previously ordered Rhythm to proceed with potential interference in mind, not to mention sending out additional sentries to bolster their ranks, but it seemed all my warnings and measures had failed.
“Fine……I’ll do it myself.” I muttered under my breath.
Thankfully, I had a countermeasure in hand for this worst-case scenario. As I said before, things were still within expectations. The range of expectations itself was too wide for comfort, but it wasn’t as if I was caught completely unprepared. After all, I’m the <<Administrator>>, and as the Council’s adage goes, ‘The Administrator always has a backup plan.’ Taking a deep breath, I proceeded to dial another number on my phone. The call connected almost immediately. I spoke to the person on the other end of the call, “I’m sure you know the situation already, ‘Battalion Commander’. This is why I’ve sent you out, after all.”
I could hear a grunt of affirmation on the other end. I continued, “We will go with Plan B. I know that it’s still a prototype, but there’s no other way. Prepare for my ‘manifestation’ in five minutes.”
Prelude To Catastrophe
Iv
“Uhm…Abigail?” I murmured out in a concerned tone.
“Yeah? What’s up?” Her reply was nonchalant. Way too nonchalant for what I was currently seeing.
Apparently unaware of my concern, the target of my such feelings, Abigail, was currently too busy stacking a tower of cards on a table to even spare me a glance as she gave me a reply. Now that isn't anything too over-the-top by itself, so long as you ignore the fact that this tower of cards was about twice the size of your average adult. And to be clear, Abigail was just your average, non-Origin thirteen year old girl, with an average frame of a child for her age. So to summarise, I was currently staring at her perched on a ladder to reach the top of the tower, which by this point, was close to the ceiling. Staring at this absurd scene, I couldn’t help but lament how things had gone this way. Things had previously been going fine out in the field, as I watched Abigail continuing to play with that strange, balloon-like ball (I had asked them what it was called, and apparently it was a ‘volleyball’?). Until a minute after my arrival, she had the wonderful idea of ditching the volleyball for another activity. That ‘activity’ was a card game. To be more precise, Poker. Unfortunately, her mysteriously amnesia-riddled mind remembered only the name, but not the game. On top of that, when we had tried to tell her Poker wasn’t for kids of her age, she just brushed off our comments, saying she ‘remembered it, so it must have been fun!’ or something along those lines. Not wanting to deal with a child’s stubbornness, I had just run off, leaving her alone with the two maids, who I figured would eventually talk her down.
Mistakes were made.
Coming back to the present, this was the situation I had come to after returning to check up on them. For the record, it’s only been around an hour, so she had stacked this massive tower of several thousand cards just under that timeframe. I was reduced to simply gawking at the scene in disbelief, with half of my mind wondering whether or not she really was an Origin, and that this was her Ability…somehow. The other half of my mind? That was devoted to wondering where on Earth this many cards had come from.
Abigail’s voice pulled me out of my stupor. “Is this not how you play ‘Poker’?” She asked with a way-too innocent tone. I nearly lost my voice as I responded, “Of course not! But in the first place……”
I turned to glare at the two maids currently watching from the sides. “I expected the two of you to talk her down, not to give her the cards. Not only that, you didn’t even stop her from doing this?” I made a dramatic gesture to the tower of cards.
One of the maids spoke up. She was a younger girl who Abigail had previously called “Saire”. “With all due respect, Miss Iv, her requests did seem reasonable. And putting all our common sense aside, is this not an activity she enjoys? We didn’t see a problem with it.”
“Fine, putting aside the issues of the size of the tower and her age......I’m assuming these cards were from the storehouse? How many did you take out?”
“All three boxes. We had a few more people help out with moving them, though.” She pointed towards the three, massive cardboard boxes piled up in a corner of the room.
I looked at the pile, then turned to look back at the maid duo. Digesting the information, I spoke crisply, “The two of you will clean everything up by today. And next time she does something out of hand like this, let it be known that whoever didn’t stop her will be solely responsible for cleaning up the mess.”
I could see a look of protest forming on Saire’s face, as well as the other older maid that had been standing silently to her side. Saire seemed to want to retort, but eventually both of them responded affirmative.
I took another look at Abigail, who was still focused on building the tower whilst perched on her ladder. For some reason, I had a gut feeling this wouldn’t be the last ridiculous act she pulled off whilst she stayed here. The thought of simply leaving her somewhere else did cross my mind, but no suitable location came to mind. The orphanage at Central seemed like a good place, but it came with its own problems. Central was the land of Origins, so it’d be difficult to control the flow of information, which would have definitely ended with the girl learning about our kind. Though we could erase parts of her memory, the process got increasingly difficult the more memories you tried to erase, which made the orphanage seem less appealing. Besides, it’d feel cold to just throw her out into an orphanage after bringing her in like this. After some deliberation, I resolved to let her stay. Besides, it was temporary anyways, and we could always send her back to a local orphanage in Canada if her family had died in the Crisis.
I winced a bit at the last of my thoughts. Though I felt this was normal behaviour for me, a pang of guilt shot through my heart as I thought so.
Was it Abigail herself who made me feel this way? Odd, it had barely been a day since I met her, why was I caring for her to this extent when we were just strangers? Regardless, I decided to push aside any such feelings and thoughts about Abigail. My life was busy as it was, I didn’t need psychology sessions clogging up my schedule.
Oh, but I was definitely assigning Abigail a new pair of servants. I’d let Sherman work out the finer details since that’s his part of the job, but regardless, I’d want her to have more responsible supervision.
As I moved on with my thoughts, a question resurfaced in my mind, and I ended up mumbling, “How did she make this thing anyway…”
Saire seemed to overhear my words, responding, “Talent.”
“–my arse! This isn’t about talent, this might as well be an Abilit–” I was about to say “Ability” in the spur of a moment, until I caught myself halfway through. The two maids also seemed to have caught on to my blunder, as all three of us simultaneously turned towards the elephant in the room, Abigail, to observe her reaction.
Thankfully, Abigail seemed completely enamoured in her little, tower sculpting world (Was it really that entertaining?). My words seemed to have passed from her one ear to another as she continued to delicately place cards after cards as if she were a master sculptor. She wasn’t even looking our way, let alone paying attention to any of our words.
With the danger of a potential breach in information resolved, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. Still, I couldn’t help but ponder briefly on how I could have made such a careless slip of the tongue. It wasn’t like me at all to let my guard down like that.
Ignoring it, I spoke out, “Abigail. I know we told you that you could largely do as you please whilst you stayed here for the time being but,” I paused my words briefly as the girl in question finally stopped her card-stacking and turned my way, “I can’t allow you to continue on with such behaviour. From tomorrow, I’ll assign you another pair of helpers that will better guide your behaviour, do you understand?” I could see simultaneous expressions of sadness forming on both Abigail and Saire’s faces, though the former’s was much more pronounced. Abigail countered, “But Saire is the person here that I know the best, can’t she stay?” The other older maid seemed a bit hurt in being left out, but unfortunately for her we all ignored her reaction.
As I thought over Abigail’s words, I realised that she had a point. Whilst she was acting cheery and energetic as of now, she was still a child that had lost her memories, and had woken up in an unfamiliar place. It wasn’t out of the question for her to be hiding her discomfort and fear, even as of now. Not only that, if she had indeed gotten to know Saire better than other servants here, Saire may be acting as a sort of emotional crutch for her. It would be quite cruel of me to simply separate them like that. Following those thoughts, my mind turned towards the scene I saw this morning, of Saire chasing after a cheerful Abigail as they ran down the hallways. They did seem quite close……
After some additional consideration, I spoke with a hint of resignation in my voice, “Very well, Saire can stay, as well as…” I turned towards the older maid in a fit of awkwardness. “Claire, Miss.” Her name elicited a surprised reaction from me. I asked in a voice laced with curiosity, “Claire? Your names sound awfully familiar. Are you two perhaps–”
“No, we are not siblings.” The maid, Claire, cut me off. “Our features and ages are quite far apart, but everyone just assumes we have the same parents because of similar sounding names…” Her words had a sense of resignation and annoyance within them. It appeared this misconception was a recurring theme in her life. As a sort of apology, I elected to ignore how rudely she had cut off her superior’s words. “Very well, you’ll continue working with Saire and taking care of Abigail. You are the senior maid here, correct? Please ensure such similar incidents don’t occur in the future, and look after the two of them well.” She nodded her head deeply in response, before affirming my words.
As our talk wrapped up, Abigail decided to chime in, “By the way, Iv, you kept pestering me about not knowing what ‘Poker’ is when you first came but,”
Wait, I had a bad premonition about this.
“–but you’re the one who didn’t know what a volleyball was. It’s not as though you were the one who lost their memories…”
……and my premonitions always deliver.
Made worse was the fact she seemed completely unaware and unintentional in her actions. I could hear Saire snickering under her breath at her words. Still, could you blame me? I’d never seen a volleyball before, let alone played with it. My life as an Overseer had always taken priority before all else.
…
But come to think of it, this was already the second time I’ve been humiliated in this one day, after the little prank Sherman pulled off this morning. I was about to retort to her words when I was suddenly interrupted by a loud sound.
“Ring ring! Ring!”
The phone in the pocket of my shorts suddenly sprang to life with an unsavoury alarm. My face paled, and an instinctive feeling of dread and foreboding washed over me as I recognised that specific call sound. It was an emergency call. Reserved for well…emergency reports which skipped the usual chain of command and were sent directly to me.
I picked up the call as I excused myself from the three other girls, before walking to an obscure corridor. As I made my way down, the voice on the other side came in. It was jerky and raspy, as if exhausted and worn out. I could hear faint gunshots and shouts from the background, with static every now and then.
“Sir, the reconnaissance mission has been botched. bzzz-We’ve been found. Engaged in combat, requesting bzzz-reinforcements and orders to retreat.”
I almost smashed the phone in my hands at that moment. Luckily, I managed to stop myself from such a counterproductive act. Trying to hide the fury and disdain in my voice, I urgently asked, “What?! Where’s Rhythm?! Where are you all? What’s the situation?”
The voice replied unsteadily, “The main squad is currently in bzzz-near the outskirts of the town locked in urban combat against several enemy hostiles. Confirmed Origins amongst them. We’ve lost contact with Rhythm, but we previously felt a sudden burst of an Artificial Angel’s Aura in the vicinity, followed by a second shortly after, until they both vanished completely, repeat, requesting–nngh?!!” The sound of static and explosions ensued.
“Hello? Hello?! What's going on–”, I called out in a panicked tone. Even whilst focused on the call, I could still make out some of the maids and butlers who had been walking down the hallways giving me weird glances at my sudden outburst. I paid them no heed, and rushed for my office.
Unfortunately, the call disconnected right then and there. It sounded as though he had been ambushed by an enemy mid speech. That didn’t seem good. If someone on comms duty that should have been reporting the situation from afar was somehow ambushed, then this attack was clearly coordinated and pre-planned. Upon this thought, a sudden possibility crossed my mind. The words escaped from my clenched teeth,
“‘Deuxième’…?”
I tried to calm myself down. A bit difficult when I had basically zero information to work with, other than the fact that Rhythm was gone, and they were currently being ambushed by what was probably ‘Deuxieme’ forces. But in the first place, I had left this mission to be supervised by Rhythm as their field officer. Rhythm should have been commanding from the rear and getting these kinds of reports, not an Overseer like me! The fact that the comms team in the rear ‘lost contact’ with him, however, told me that the kid had been on the field when all this went down. From what I could tell, the result was a battalion that was now leaderless, and forced to relay this directly to me.
This is bad.
If this was pre-planned, and even rear communications were cut off, chances were that the enemy was out to encircle and annihilate the whole battalion.
Ok. Calm. Panicking wouldn’t do me any favours, and whilst Rhythm’s actions weren't in line, the Deuxieme’s intervention wasn’t completely out of expectations. I had previously ordered Rhythm to proceed with potential interference in mind, not to mention sending out additional sentries to bolster their ranks, but it seemed all my warnings and measures had failed.
“Fine……I’ll do it myself.” I muttered under my breath.
Thankfully, I had a countermeasure in hand for this worst-case scenario. As I said before, things were still within expectations. The range of expectations itself was too wide for comfort, but it wasn’t as if I was caught completely unprepared. After all, I’m the <<Administrator>>, and as the Council’s adage goes, ‘The Administrator always has a backup plan.’ Taking a deep breath, I proceeded to dial another number on my phone. The call connected almost immediately. I spoke to the person on the other end of the call, “I’m sure you know the situation already, ‘Battalion Commander’. This is why I’ve sent you out, after all.”
I could hear a grunt of affirmation on the other end. I continued, “We will go with Plan B. I know that it’s still a prototype, but there’s no other way. Prepare for my ‘manifestation’ in five minutes.”
