Unwanted Overnight Stay (4)
The place the monster had brought me to was one that lived in my memory.
The only real difference was the wreckage: the barbed-wire fence ringing the building had collapsed, and the front gate hung shredded open like a sheet of paper.
In short—yeah.
It's the first shelter I ever walked into.
A shelter built aboveground, with the fifth floor as the most reinforced section—an utterly ridiculous design for something meant to keep people safe. The monster carried me inside, and I took my time looking around.
Anyone with eyes could see there was no path leading underground. So why had this creature come looking for this place?
Creak. Screech—
"Here?"
A corner of the first floor. Nothing but bare concrete, yet the monster was pointing straight at the floor.
There was a passage here?
I tilted my head and asked. The monster nodded.
"Hmm..."
Thud. Thud—
I gave the floor a light stomp. The sound that came back was unmistakably hollow underneath. Just wide enough for a single person to slip through, maybe. I lifted my foot, ready to put a little more force into it, when the monster's hand slid under my sole.
"? What is it?"
Screech. Screech—
What? Don't do anything crude—use that instead?
It pointed at my neck. I slowly set my foot back down.
Ah. The card key.
So that's why the kid's mother was separated from her child...
Disappearing from the shelter, disappearing from the mart—same story. She had left the kid alone and gone into the underground lab, so of course they had ended up apart. Showing a child the monsters down there would have been impossible.
Beep—
"Got it...!"
Pulling out the card key didn't open anything right away. I still had to find the reader. I wandered the floor for a good ten minutes before I finally located it.
Fast enough, all things considered.
"Thanks for showing me the way."
Screech, screech, screech!
Before I stepped into the passage I offered the monster a proper thank-you. It bounced on its feet and waved both hands side to side.
Seeing me off?
I didn't know if we would meet again, but it had brought me this far. I decided to remember the favor.
All right. Time to pick up the exploration I couldn't finish last time.
The starting point was different, but given how none of the city's surface buildings had been designed with underground access in mind, the tunnels were probably all connected. Even if they weren't, it didn't really matter.
Especially not the underground lab. Down here I could do whatever I wanted without anyone getting in my face, which I liked a great deal.
There's a reason most villains build their bases underground.
If they ran those experiments up top, the lectures about human rights and crimes against humanity would never end. Looking at it that way, humans were far more vicious than any monster. Monsters at least killed you cleanly. The people here left their victims in states worse than death. No comparison at all.
"Oh, the atmosphere's different from last time..."
The place was still packed with machines whose purpose I couldn't begin to guess, but where the previous section had mixed monsters and humans half and half, this one held nothing but pure monsters.
Or not pure, I supposed, the moment human hands had touched them.
What should I call them, then... farm-raised monsters?
Yeah. That worked.
Still—what kind of glory did they think they were going to earn by researching monsters on this scale in secret? Did they want to become monsters themselves?
The sight was so incomprehensible I let out a dry laugh.
"Knock knock. Anyone home?"
Grrrrk—
Oh, it answered.
There was a warning sign telling people not to touch the tanks, but that had nothing to do with me.
"Want me to get you out?"
Humans never inspired a shred of sympathy in me, yet looking at the monsters I felt a little sorry for them. Different shapes, same team—something like that. However different we looked on the outside, we were monsters all the same.
Anyway.
"I'll break you out, so do me proud."
Craaack—
The glass looked fragile enough that something inside should have been able to smash its way free, yet none of them had. Maybe external force was the only thing that worked.
I hummed under my breath as I watched the spiderweb of cracks spread across the tank. One down, at least.
Feels like I just accepted a quest to rescue civilians kidnapped by a research facility.
Calling them civilians was a stretch given the shapes they wore, but still.
I waited while the liquid inside the tank sloshed and poured out. A hand burst free first with a soft thok, and then the monster hauled its entire body into the open air. If I said it looked like a chick cracking its way out of an egg, that might have been a little too sentimental.
Grrrk...
"What's wrong? Something you want to say?"
Even free of the tank, the creature didn't leave. I tilted my head, and it slowly bowed toward me.
I couldn't understand the words, but the intent behind the cry was clear enough. It looked almost like a believer worshipping a god.
...Probably just my imagination.
Grrk, grrrk, grrrk—
"You want to come with me? Or is it that you want to free the rest of your kind here?"
I didn't mind it tagging along—actually, if it was going to follow me anyway, having company might be better. Killing humans with my own hands wasn't really my style. A monster willing to do the dirty work for me sounded useful.
Fine. We had a deal.
"I'll look around a bit. You free the others if you want."
Grrrrk—
Freeing the monsters wasn't the main goal, of course. My primary objective was sightseeing in the underground world.
I left the creature enthusiastically smashing tanks and started exploring. The first thing that caught my eye was a beaker filled with human despair in liquid form.
Is this safe to drink?
It was far lower quality than the magical-girl essence back in the Doctor's lab, but despair this dense still looked promising. The whole place was starting to feel like a supermarket free-sample corner.
I eyed the despair of various humans stored in containers, then raised the beaker to my lips.
Gulp. Gulp—
"Mm. Delicious."
My Despair Circuit practically sang with joy at the thick concentration it hadn't tasted in so long. If this wasn't heaven, nothing was. Down here I could leave the circuit wide open without anyone dumping hope on me, so I could indulge as much as I liked.
I still hated humans, but I would give them credit for this one thing.
Screeeech— screeeeech— grrrk—
...Their numbers ballooned fast.
One monster smashed one tank; the two that emerged smashed two more, and suddenly there were four. What kind of genius thought packing this many into a single room was a good idea? Even this small area held a small army. I couldn't begin to imagine how many more waited in the rest of the complex.
"The city's basement is basically a monster farm. A full-on monster farm."
I doubted the creatures down here could survive on the humans living underground alone. They would probably have to go outside if they wanted to eat their fill. Still, Emerald was up on the surface, so it shouldn't matter. Monsters of this level would be nothing to her.
Grrrrk...
"All right. Let's head deeper."
I had seen everything nearby. Who knew—maybe further in they were experimenting on magical girls.
The monsters beside me croaked and rumbled, urging me to hurry.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm going. Stop pushing."
I was starting to feel like some kind of monster matriarch. Funny, considering I was one of the youngest things down here by creation date.
"Intruder ahead, intruder ahead! Multiple test subjects confirmed escaped! Requesting backup! There are too many of them!"
The moment the monsters raised a racket, humans came running. The difference from the mart underground lab was that this time the pack was pure monsters—no human hybrids mixed in—and the numbers were far greater.
"B-bullets aren't working!"
"Fall back, fall back, fall back!"
The humans' pathetic bullets couldn't even scratch the monsters. Unless those rounds had been forged from hope itself, throwing them was about as useful as tossing pebbles into a river.
Ah. Thinking about hope bullets suddenly made me remember Sapphire.
I pictured the cool-type beauty casually sniping monsters with that sniper-rifle-shaped weapon of hers. Come to think of it, did the other original protagonists not have memories of the previous world? I wondered about it from time to time. Lucky for me that only Emerald—the easiest one to manipulate—had retained hers.
If Sapphire or Ruby or Diamond had kept their memories...
Ugh. Just imagining it made me shudder.
I shook off the pointless thought. That wasn't what mattered right now.
Grrk? Grrrk, grrk.
"Oh, you're asking what to do next?"
What was there to decide? Just do whatever you want.
I tipped my head with that meaning, and the monsters waiting at my side charged the humans.
The feast had begun.