Chapter 309: What is it about fireflies and memories?
“Naaausicaa…why are you just standing around kid? Don’t you want to help me prep?”
“Of…course…pa…pa…”
“Godsdammit, I gave you that name like five minutes ago because you said didn’t have one! Why the fuck would you think your presumably dead father would call you that?! It’s clearly trap, stop listening to the stupid siren voice! Gah!”
Zhen Liu was in a mild panic as Nausicaa was now slowly walking towards the ominous looking door, like the mind controlled victim that she was, complete with weird looking, vacant eyes.
Realizing that just calling out to her was probably gonna be pointless, Zhen Liu decided that it was time to get physical.
“Nepherage! Hurricroak! Try to stop Nausicaa from getting through that door, I have a really bad feeling that things won’t go well if she does.”
“At once, milord!,” Nepherage nodded before rushing to hold Nausicaa back. Hurricroak on the other hand, had a follow up question.
“What about you, maestro?”
“I’m going to try and shut that door. With Frosttusk helping me, we might be able to brue force it closed. Now go! I ain’t having someone in my group die on me and I refuse to let whatever is in there the satisfaction of doing so!”
“Come on… Nausicaa…”
“Fuck you, magic voice!”
But while Zhen Liu and friends were dealing with some Pied Piper/Siren bullshit, Nausicaa was going through a bit of a flashback sequence.
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‘Fire…flies…why am I seeing…fireflies?,’ Nausicaa thought to herself as her brain began to dig up memory after memory as a strange force compelled her to take an action she normally wouldn’t take.
There’s this funny thing about memories, in that even if someone claims they completely forgot or suppressed it in totality, the lingering remnants and details are still enough to influence what actions they may or may not take or their behavior in general. Additionally, some memories have a habit of blurring together in strange, unexpected ways.
In the case of “Nausicaa”, she knew she was just given that name recently, but why did it seem to span so much further than that?
As she continued with her dream-like state, the fireflies began to swarm, taking her back…back…back…
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Bottom of Insect Hell, decades ago.
“Waaah! Waaah! Waah!”
Crying.
Crying and fireflies.
These were the very first memories of hers that she could recall, at least, somewhat vaguely.
There was one other memory, but it was more of a strange sensation, where something that was once warm and pleasantly soft, was for some reason growing colder and stiffer by the second.
Perhaps this cooling sensation was why she was crying in the first place?
Regardless, as the growing cold and stiffness became more and more unbearable and her cries became louder and louder, the rustling of nearby vegetation signaled the arrival of a party of interest.
Which in this case, was a young man in some rather worn looking adventuring gear.
“Yeesh! That was the third time tonight someone got dropped into this hell pit. I really hope that society didn’t collapse into chaos while I was down here…damn I miss eating burgers,” the man mumbled to himself.
This man was known as Rocko.
Now, Rocko was once the member of a adventuring party known as the Howling Beetle Boys, and they had decided to explore Insect Hell based on an old rumor of some unclaimed Sacred Beast Essence in order to make it big.
Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances and a horrible, traumatic, nightmare-inducing monstrosity, most of the party was wiped out except for Rocko…who was horribly internally injured after the incident.
At least he thought that was the case…now.
About a week or two prior to this moment, he was under the assumption he was infected with some kind of plague due to all of the purple blood he had been coughing up. It didn’t help that he heard a bunch of sensationalist rumors about a killer plague that would kill a man in three weeks prior to entering Insect Hell, but he forgot the detail that this plague could only be transmitted via rabid racoon bites.
Once it dawned on him that this “plague” wasn’t that plague, Rocko went to work on trying to survive this shitshow of a jungle.
He had thought of returning back to the surface and heading back to civilization, but there were several miles of desert between here and the closest town, and that road was lousy with bandits, aether beasts and severe dehydration.
“Yeah…fuck that, I’m just gonna be a bushman now.”
Maybe it was due to sheer survival instinct or the desire to not end up as insect food, but Rocko had managed to set-up a pretty decent survival camp in this hellish jungle pit’s depths via a mix of scavenging from the poor dead sods that get dumped down here and developing a taste for insect meat and eggs.
Evidently, it gotten to the point where he could rank the taste of giant insect eggs, so far his favorite were giant centipede ones.
“Damn, that is a really loud cry. Either the Mimick Wasps or-”
“Wah! Waaah!”
“Or someone threw a fucking baby, what the fuck?”
Rocko was confused when he saw a baby of all things being somehow okay when most people thrown down here would end up dying on impact or end up in the maw of a giant mantis.
It wasn’t until he looked a bit downward, beneath the crying baby, that he realized why the baby was okay.
“Oh…oh that’s fucked up.”
Rocko looked to his left and right, with the vague hope that someone else might come along and adopted this crying mass. Unfortunately, no one else lived down here…except for him.
“Never been with a girl, and now I’m raising a daughter…it’s like a bad play,” Rocko grumbled as he bent down to pick up the baby.
“Waah! Wah!”
“Shh, shh, there, there… Rocko’s here. Rocko’s here…,” he said quietly while comforting the crying baby.
“Wah! Wah. Wah…”
The warmth, the patting and the soft bouncing motion helped to calm the baby until she finally fell asleep.
Comfort.
This was the third thing she (w/c)ould remember.
Comfort.
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Orders given, Zhen Liu immediately made his way over to the ominously large door that had cracked itself open and began to try and close it shut. However, it turned out to be a bit more resistant than either he or Frosttusk had anticipated.
Both Zhen Liu and Frosttusk were used to throwing boulders around made by Nepherage as part of their dialy exercises, so something like a stone door should have been incredibly to close.
Instead, it felt like trying to move a mountain.
‘What in the hell?! It can’t be that heavy, can it?”
While this was happening however, Nepherage and Hurricroak were trying to stop Nausicaa’s walking with…mixed results.
[Alright, we just need to get her stop moving…that shouldn’t be a problem since we’re like way stro-gah!]
Hurricroak had attempted to very straightforwardly grab Nausicaa by the arm and pull her back, but was instead knocked to her ass as she felt as if she was pulling against a rather strong dog and lost the tug of war.
Not that her counterpart knew this bit.
[Hurricroak quit fooling around, we have no time for antics.]
[I am not, Nepherage! She’s like an unstoppable force right now! A weirdly gentle one.]
Rolling her eyes in disbelief, Nepherage attempted to do same thing Hurricroak did, assuming her strength was higher than the frog woman’s…only to also get knocked on her ass by the unexpected resistance.
[See?!]
[Shit…okay, plan B. We do it together.]
[Shouldn’t that have been plan A?]
[Not the time!]
Hurricroak and Nepherage got up from their seated positions and proceeded to both grab an arm in an attempt to stop Nausicaa’s movement, digging their heels into the ground in order to stop her.
This had the intended effect of stopping Nausicaa temporarily, but as she kept walking, the distinctive sound of grinding could be heard coming from the kaijin’s feet as they were dragged through the carpace flooring.
[Either bug meat is higher in protein than anticipated or this creepy voice is giving a stat buff, because of course it does!,] Hurricroak complained, [what do we do now?]
[Plan C!,] Nepherage said as she slammed a foot into the ground, injecting the area with Terraqi aether.
A solid, circular wall of rock manifested before the three of them, serving as an obvious obstacle for forward movement.
[Yes!]
*SMASH!*
[Dammit!]
Only for the wall to be immediately broken as Nausicaa just straight up walked through the damn thing.
“Nausicaa…”
[Hold up.]
When the creepy voice did it’s call again, Hurricroak realized something important.
[I think I can…fuck it, let’s try it!]
Hurricroak proceeded to let go of Nausicaa’s arm and stood her ground.
She took a deep breath as aether infused with her lungs and vocal chords.
[Try fighting sound with sound! Mimic song!]
