⚠️ N O T I C E ⚠️
This chapter gets pretty serious. We're starting to go into the darker parts of Symbol's Rising, and this is the only time I'll give a warning — I'll be going into some terrible things that could happen to anyone at any time, so please beware. I'm sure that if you've been reading this long, you've prepared yourself for things to get heavy, but I figured I'd give one last warning just in case.
Things won't be too crazy this chapter, but... yeah. Proceed with a steeled heart.
—=—=—=—=—=—=—=—
Rain had just begun to pour heavily over Gotham. The asphalt streets glistened as puddles and sheets of water reflected the city lights. Their surfaces were constantly disturbed by rolling tires and hurried footsteps, one of which belonged to a very nervous woman.
Carrie was her name. A name that held no meaning, belonging to a face that nobody would remember.
Her speed-walking came to a stop as she passed by a television display, inconsequentially protected by an appliance store's floor-to-ceiling window. The electronics were obscured as heavy rain pelted the glass. The sound was muffled by the downpour, but the news channel currently playing could be heard all the same.
"—again to the disturbing amount of disappearances in the city," said the news reporter, who was mirrored across a dozen television screens.
There it was. The reason for Carrie's fear. Despite her better judgment, she stopped to listen.
"While our city is no stranger to such crimes, an alarming number of women has disappeared in the Bowery in the last few weeks — a trend that seems to repeat every few months."
That was the district that Carrie both lived and worked in. Over forty women, all gone like a vapor in the wind. Two more were added to their numbers just that week, according to the news. She could have been one of them. She could still become one of them.
A chill ran down her spine, and she abandoned the television display to continue her rush back home. She pulled her jacket tighter around herself, heavy, warm, and dry, as she half-walked, half-ran. Too bad it didn't have a hood to protect her head from getting soaked.
While doing that, she passed her hands over her pockets, comforting herself with the objects within: pepper spray, a pocket knife, and a taser — all manner of protection that she could afford to get. Her jacket was even the type that she could easily slip out of in case she was grabbed and couldn't escape any other way.
Unfortunately — putting it uncomfortably lightly — some evildoers were particularly resourceful when they really wanted something.
Carrie, clueless to what would happen to her, hurried along. She had been mindful to stick to bigger crowds and well-lit areas. She even checked behind herself quite frequently. The last thing she expected was for her to-be captor to just... confront her out in the open.
A man appeared in her way, blocking the path home. The passing crowds parted around the two of them. He started laying into her as if he knew her, yelling about being out too late and 'drinking' too much. She went to argue, starting to raise her own voice and reaching for her pepper spray. She had to run.
Someone came to her rescue.
He was the prettiest young man she had ever seen, bless her heart. Dark hair and olive skin, tall enough to make her swoon, but not so much as to feel imposing. He carried an umbrella to protect from the rain.
"Is this man bothering you, miss?" he asked in the sweetest, most caring voice. He reached for her, wrapping his free hand around her own.
"Y-yeah," she confirmed for him, closing her own digits around his. "I-I don't know him...! He's—"
Her eyelids suddenly began feeling heavy. There was this... fuzziness in the back of her head, and she—
'Maybe I did drink too much,' Carrie thought to herself.
Wait... that wasn't—
"See?! She can't even stay upright!" The stranger Her husband argued. She...
Yes. Maybe he was right. Her head felt heavier than ever, the fuzziness almost itchy in the back of her skull.
"Is he telling the truth, miss?" asked the young man, his face once again appearing in Carrie's hazy vision.
"Y-yeah... sorry, I just..." Her head stung, on both upper 'corners.' She reached up to soothe them. "I was so drunk I didn't recognize him at first. I'm so sorry for the misunderstanding."
The sweetest smile formed on her would-have-been savior's face, and he finally let go of her hand. "You'd best let your husband take you home, then," he said.
"You're right... thanks for the concern..."
How did he know that J̷͉̭͠ặ̷͔͝m̸͔̘̿e̴̼͓̍s̶̪̏ was her husband?
'It doesn't matter, I guess...'
Carrie was lucky that her husband came to find her on her way home... she really did drink too much with her friends, didn't she? And what a nice guy that stranger was. He was a rarity in Gotham.
Thank goodness her husband had a car.
◎ ◉ ◎
The factory's command center was finally neutralized. The Manticore confiscated and destroyed the factory managers' personal equipment, while Nightwing took some time to use the factory's computer systems. Using that, he collected an accurate real-time picture of the goings-on within.
The first floor of the factory contained the armory. There were also resting quarters in that floor that a couple dozen people could use to rest, as well as other amenities and conveniences. That floor was also where completed products were being stored, in the spacious back areas. Crates upon crates of weapons and drugs, as well as the occasional exotic animal — from colorful snakes to big cats that had no business being brought to a city like Gotham.
The second and third floors housed the arms assembly lines. The second floor handled mundane equipment — kinetic weapons and tactical-type armor that were commonly accessible. On the third floor was where the production of much more expensive equipment was handled. Energy weapons like the Manticore's new sword such as plasma blasters and electrified blunt and bladed weapons. It was also one of the most heavily-guarded levels.
The fourth and fifth floors were both drug labs. A myriad of products were being made 24/7, but the most standout item was one that Nightwing particularly loathed.
'They're producing Venom out here...'
The factory's Venom wasn't the exact formula that Nightwing was familiar with. The type he had always known was acid green in color; Bane's formula. The variant being produced in the factory was seafoam green, almost turquoise. He had also been exposed to a yellow variant before, but he decided that dwelling on that was unwise.
The factory's Venom production scale was pretty small. Their dedicated laboratory was only a single room, and it was infinitely more sterile than the rest of the fourth and fifth floors. Only high-clearance chemists, guards, and couriers seemed to be allowed inside. Considering the equipment they had on hand to make it...
This definitely wasn't the main production branch. Still, it was enough that if anyone other than Nightwing or his family had found it, it could have been assumed to be the root source.
As for the command room that Nightwing and the Manticore were in: it occupied the factory's mostly-empty sixth floor. Beyond that, there also seemed to be a basement level in the building. Unfortunately, the camera system didn't extend down there, and there was neither physical nor digital documentation on them and whatever might lie within.
"Manticore," Nightwing called out.
"Yo."
"It's time to handle the rest. Let's make sure these guys are tied up good, and let's barricade the room as we leave."
The two of them doubled-up on the bindings just to be safe, and made sure there was no means for anyone to call for backup. By the time all was done in the command room, every single communications device had been destroyed, handheld or otherwise.
[ Luce, ] Penny chimed for the first time in a bit. [ I've run diagnostics on your new sword. Its blade can run plasma hot enough to weld steel together. I've also assigned it to your single weapon slot. ]
'Wait, you could've just scanned it yourself the whole time?'
[ I waited until you fully acknowledged it as your own. ]
'That's... really thoughtful of you.' Lucian wasn't sure what to say.
In response to that, Penny emulated the sensation of a hug from behind, which encouraged him to get a move on.
"Yo, Nightwing," he said. "We wanted to seal this busted doorway, right?"
Nightwing stopped just outside the threshold. "Yeah. You got an idea?"
"I've got a mystery mousekatool that'll help us right now!" The Cloak of Distortion's voice-altering effects dropped, allowing Lucian to make a decently convincing Mickey Mouse impression while waving around the sheathed sword.
Nightwing had to suppress an amused snort, and gestured for him to go ahead. The sword was drawn out of its sheath, and Lucian took advantage of his adaptive-accelerated perception to admire the sci-fi-styled blade.
'Fuck, this thing is cool,' he thought.
The sword's profile was like that of a slightly longer kriegsmesser, with a gun-grey handle and a silvery-gray crossguard that was thicker than it might ordinarily be. The blade itself looked almost normal, if not for the barely-visible seam where the spine and edge met.
[ There's a mechanism in the handle, Luce. I've highlighted it for you. ]
There was an imperceptible click when Lucian activated it, and the faintest humming noise rang in his ears. As that happened, the sword's edge began to glow with an electric blue color.
"It's welding time," quoth the Manticore in his distorted voice, and he welded all over the place.
He retrieved the two busted doors first. Because of how abruptly he had punched them during his entrance, they only caved in slightly as they flew clean off their hinges. As he was dragging back the two heavy sheets of steel, he could feel the glares of fear and hatred directed at him — not that it was a bother in any way.
The first step was to flatten the deformed doors, which was quickly handled. Lucian then used some concrete nails that he was keeping in his pocket — trinkets that he hoarded from when he was fortifying his apartment — to jam them back against the metal doorframe. Then, the next step was to weld the doors together where they met.
The plasma-hot blade pressed against the seam between the two doors. The weapon then slowly slid down along the gap, partially melting the metal as it went. Its brilliant blue edge was trailed by radiant red-orange light, which faded as the metal cooled. The two doors were made to become one, and Lucian took one last step of insurance and welded the fused doors to their very frames.
"Really thorough," Nightwing commented, "but I feel kinda bad for the police officers that we'll call in later."
"Ah" was the only utterance that the Manticore could make, but his worries were assuaged before they could fully form.
"Don't worry about it so much.," said Nightwing. "You can just come back around later to break down the door, then sneak away. Now, come on. We'll destroy the Venom drug lab first, then the assembly lines."
The Manticore was already following, and as he did, he asked, "What about the regular drug labs?"
"We'll leave those to the cops as evidence," was the answer. "Leave it to me to make sure they actually get disposed of after they've outlived their use."
...
From that point on, the raid felt more comfortable, in a way. Lucian settled into a steady rhythm with Nightwing — they would stealth their way towards their targets while incapacitating anyone who detected them, ensuring that nobody else was alerted to their presence. After that, Lucian would take the role of the opening act: he would make a sudden entry that would startle and confuse the enemies, before downing as many of them as he could in one go. Any stragglers would be handled by Nightwing while Blackwhip pinned everyone else down.
Unlike the sixth floor, however, there were a lot more people in the levels beneath it. Lucian's sudden entrances had to become a lot more subdued, leading to less certainty in his and Nightwing's safety.
The Venom lab was the first to fall. A good twenty or so people were inside, a majority of them being chemists, while the rest were the factory's enforcers. Some of them landed a few good shots on the Manticore with automatic rifles and small arms, but he was mostly fine.
"Shit..."
After the Venom lab had been cleared, Lucian took a second to sit down and inspect his wounds. He felt the pain as he fought, but he powered through it until he got this free moment. It could have been worse — without [Danger Sense] and his enhanced perception, he would have taken thrice as many bullets.
Penny gave a status report as Lucian thought it up.
[ You've been grazed in your extremities — six shots total. The worst one is on your left bicep, but it's already scabbing. Your worst shot overall is a puncture in your abdomen, just above your large intestine. ]
She paused, giving Luce some time to confirm the information for himself.
[ The bullet's still in there. It couldn't go all the way through because of your toughened skin and hardened muscles. The wound is sealing up, and I advise you to have the object removed. ]
'Thanks for the account, Penny... if I circulate Ki around the wounds, will that speed up my regeneration?'
[ Positive. Effects will be minimal, but that's because it'll be your first time doing it. You'll heal faster with Ki the more practice you get. ]
"Hey, are you okay?"
In the three seconds that it took for Lucian to have that exchange with Penny, Nightwing had moved to his side. In his hands was a medical kit that was taken from the lab's cabinets.
"I'm fine," the Manticore replied. "There's still a bullet in me, though. If you can take it out, that'd be great."
"Alright, hold still. I'll have to open your jacket."
There were tweezers in the medical kit, thankfully. Nightwing unzipped the Manticore's protective jacket and lifted the grey shirt underneath, both of which were soaked in blood.
"It's already closing up..." Nightwing couldn't help but gawk at the sight.
"Ah..." the Manticore brought out one claw and made an incision himself. "Yeah, I heal fast. Insides take longer, though... pull that bullet out before the wound closes again. It still hurts like hell."
Nightwing didn't need to be told twice. With surprising speed and accuracy, the bullet was out of the Manticore's abdomen with minimal pain and resistance.
"You do this a lot?" Lucian couldn't help but ask.
Nightwing huffed an amused breath, almost nostalgic. "Yeah. It's life-threatening work that we do. It's basically routine by now." He also took a minute to disinfect the wound just in case, and then asked, "Is this your first time fighting this many people at once?"
"Metty pruch. I'm not even a week old in this life... only started doing this two weeks after I got my job at the diner. I usually ambush armed groups before they even realize I'm there, so I've never actually been exposed to concentrated fire until now."
Nightwing couldn't help but hiss at the realization, sucking air through his teeth. "Jesus... if you didn't have your powers, I'd drag you to a private clinic right this instant."
The Manticore just chuckled and used a clean cloth nearby to wipe the blood from his skin and jacket's lining, and as much as he could out of his shirt. "Thank fuck I'm what I am, then," he said while getting up from where he sat. "And thanks for looking out for me. You didn't have to do that."
"That's where you're wrong," Nightwing countered. "People like us look out for each other. It's the only way for us to keep going."
After packing up the medical supplies, the two of them gave the lab a final once-over. Everyone was tied up and disarmed. Those who were conscious either glared or looked on in fear.
"Alright," Nightwing began. "I'll just take a sample of Venom here, then we'll storm the rest. You good to go?"
Looking over, he saw that the Manticore had his hand over the wound in his gut. He was worried for a second, but noticing the faint glow in the space between his palm and midsection, he quelled the feeling.
"I will be in a minute. You go get your sample; I'll accelerate my healing in the meantime."
After the brief setback in the Venom lab, their teamwork grew tighter than it was just earlier. Nightwing had the experience and adaptability; the Manticore had prodigious learning and instincts.
The rest of the fifth floor went down in minutes, and the fourth was overtaken even faster. The two vigilantes were finally detected by then with the whole facility getting alerted, but Nightwing had accounted for that.
"It's alright; I put signal jammers up while we were going around, even outside. I just turned them on," said Nightwing, patting a yellow pouch on his belt. "We'd better be quick, though. You break out of one of the windows and swoop in from the entrance, and I'll stay here in this bottleneck corridor. We'll pincer them."
"Don't die on me now, man," the Manticore told him. "I've already taken enough bullets for the two of us."
The pincer strategy was effective. Since the factory's inner forces were alerted to enemies already inside the base, nobody accounted for a frontal assault in the scramble to purge the invaders — much less a frontal assault from someone with superpowers.
Sticking mostly out of sight and in the darkness, the Manticore made quick work of everyone and everything that was armed and actively hostile. People dropped like weeds to a scythe in his first go-around, and a lot of the stronger forces that were being reserved as backup or a Hail Mary were taken out in the process.
He used Blackwhip to drag the unconscious and heavily-wounded into a hard to reach area — it was amusing seeing how people reacted when he dragged their allies into the abyss like a horror movie monster. All the while, he destroyed light sources as he moved. Once secure and sure that nobody was following, he destroyed the equipment on the people he had dragged away and bound them up before going back in for another assault.
In the second go-around, the factory's forces had gotten wise to what was going on. Unfortunately for them, they were now even more painfully outmatched than they were before.
Once again, the Manticore lashed out and tore at their forces with his tendrils. The dark masses struck out like whips, latching onto people and flinging them at objects. Even objects had been flung at people, and people were occasionally flung at other people as well.
Nightwing, meanwhile, finally broke out of the bottleneck that he'd holed up in. With over a third of the enemy forces downed in the Manticore's first attack from earlier, the rest was easy. He mainly used his talons — his patented Nightwing-version of the batarangs — alongside smoke bombs, flashbangs, and eskrima sticks. His 'body count' made up for just under half of the rest that needed to be taken care of.
In a short few minutes, the two-on-dozens was settled, with the vigilantes as the obvious victors.
"That all of 'em?" the Manticore called out from across the mass-assembly chamber. He had just crushed an automatic rifle's main bulk in one hand, while the other strangled one last desperate enemy into unconsciousness.
Nightwing answered from the other end of the space, dragging unconscious bodies into a warm snuggle pile. "That's everyone. Get them all tied up and bunched together while I see if I can extract any information from the machines. After that, we'll destroy everything here."
Lucian did as he was told, but... something bothered him. [Justice Sense] wouldn't stop with this constant humming, even after taking down everyone in the facility so far. It couldn't have been pinging because of the presence of a vigilante, either — in never acted like this with Batman, and it certainly hadn't pinged when he first met Nightwing, either.
'That leaves the basements,' Lucian concluded.
"Hey, Nightwing."
"What's up?"
Lucian was already beginning to stalk away towards the basement entrances. "You said there was a basement earlier. Mind if I check ahead?"
Nightwing deliberated for a moment, not stopping his search for data. "... alright. But be careful. Here." He took something tiny from his utility belt and tossed it to the Manticore.
Lucian caught it, and his eyes lit up behind his cowl. "This earpiece still work with the jammers up?"
"Yeah," Nightwing confirmed. "It's a package deal with the jammers, but let's test them just in case."
Lucian popped the device into his ear. After confirming with Nightwing that it was working properly, he was on his way to the basements.
'Yeah... [Justice Sense] was definitely pinging for the basements.'
Lucian was now standing at the top of a stairwell that led into the factory's underground sections. The darkness seemed thicker down there, like the light actively avoided entering it.
'Full Cowling, just in case... Ki circulation, too.'
With his entire body lit up by fire and lightning, the Manticore descended into the dark world beneath.
◎ ◉ ◎
Carrie's head stung like hell. Was it a migraine...?
She pushed herself up from the hard floor, trying to get upright. In the end, all she did was stumble and fall back down. The side of her face slammed painfully against the cold concrete.
Her first thought was that she must have passed out from exhaustion when she got home. She had just finished overtime, after all. Not like the extra pay was worth it, but it was all she could do to avoid losing her job.
She finally managed to sit up slowly, leaning against the cold wall beside her. When she opened her eyes, her vision was hazy. It was like looking through frosted glass. Oddly, she could see something moving towards her. A fuzzy, blurry shape that was hard to discern in the dark.
She lived alone, though... was she seeing things?
"-ey... hey, are you up...?" a woman's voice called out.
Carrie winced when she heard it — it made the pain in her head spike up. The voice didn't belong to her or anyone she knew. Did she... bring someone home with her...? She was out drinking, after all...
'Wait...'
No, she wasn't! The fuck would she go out drinking for??
The blurriness in Carrie's vision subsided, details slowly sharpening. She realized then that she wasn't home, and this woman now sitting beside her wasn't anyone she knew. She shrank back on instinct, trying to shuffle away.
Thankfully, the other woman backed off herself, just a foot or so.
"Hey, it's okay," said the woman. She had a bruise on her cheek, and her lower lip was split. Her hair was also a mess.
The woman continued speaking. "I'm not gonna hurt you... just checking."
"Checking what...?" Carrie asked. She almost regretted it — her throat was as dry, and it very nearly hurt to speak.
The bruised woman must have noticed, because she took out a mostly-empty water bottle from her dirty cardigan's pocket. "Here," she said. "It's the last of my water, but... you need it more than me."
Tentatively, Carrie took the plastic bottle. It carried such a pitiable amount of water that she might have felt insulted had she been in any other situation.
She twisted off the cap and drank it all slowly, tiny sip by tiny sip, to avoid choking and to thoroughly coat her throat.
She gulped emptily once, after the water had run out. It was a small relief, but it was the best she had. After all, once she had gotten a good look around, she realized that she was in some sort of cell. From where she was, she could see two others. She had no doubt that there were more.
Memories also came flooding back at that point. False ones. Ones that helped her piece together what had happened.
'Some sort of mind control...?'
Carrie felt disgusted at the thought and shoved it aside. She looked back up at her apparent cellmate even though the action made her head throb.
"Where are we...?" she asked.
The woman — the only other person in her cell — answered with a hard expression. "Hell. Or, well, underground, at least. It's as close as we can get to the real place."
Carrie creased her brows. "How did we get here...?" She had a terrible feeling brewing in her gut.
"Kidnapped, like all the rest. News of it has been going around for a while now... I'm sure you've already figured it out."
She could only gulp at that. Really, Carrie had been half-expecting this to happen. She even expected that she'd cry, scramble for an escape, or... anything.
Now that she had actually been captured, all she felt like doing was slump back and stare at the floor.
"Good attitude," said the bruised woman. "At least, like that, you wouldn't end up like me."
Carrie didn't say anything back. Didn't even look up from the floor. She stayed like that for who knew how long.
"Thanks," she finally rasped out after some time.
"For the water?" asked her cellmate.
"Yeah..."
With a hum of understanding, the exchange ended there.
...
Carrie would be held in that cell room for three days since the night she was kidnapped. She could tell because Melissa, her cellmate, knew their captors' patterns and could tell the time from that.
'Melissa's pretty smart,' Carrie concluded. This only made more sense when it was revealed that Melissa was a teacher. Not that all teachers were smart smart, but many would be surprised how people could be blind to some things.
During the three days that Carrie spent in that underground prison, she would come to learn of things that she loathed and feared. Things that she both wanted to forget, and to remember so long as she could think.
As she suspected when the first of the news spread through the city — when there were only ten or so victims — she and the women captured before her were going to be trafficked. Sold off, rented, taken, whatever. It was all the same thing in the end.
Of the forty-four women who have been abducted, seventeen had already been sold, thrown away, or given freely by their captors. That very fact filled Carrie with a hot and hollow emotion that she couldn't quite place.
At present, she and twenty-six other women were being held in the first basement level of what she learned was a factory in her district. Fourteen small cells were occupied out of twenty, each holding a pair of women except one. That exception was isolated to the far back of the basement because she had gotten sick.
Carrie wouldn't soon forget the reasoning she was given, when she asked her 'keepers' why it was so.
"Oh, you know," said the broad man with greasy hair. "We can't have our merchandise being contaminated. Until she's better, she's not moving back near everyone else."
And then he just left after having given Carrie and Melissa their paltry meal and drinks for that day.
She also learned of some of her fellows' experiences down there.
Unlike Carrie, not everyone was so lucky to have been brought there unconscious. Well, unconscious and uninjured.
Occasionally, some of the new arrivals would be brought in bruised, cut up slightly, or tied up. Sometimes, it had been a combination of those three. Whenever those types were brought in, their handlers would warn the rest of what would happen if they got any funny ideas.
Melissa got her own injuries from trying to stand up for someone else when she was still fresh. She was brought in like Carrie was, around a week ago. When the incident happened, both Melissa and the girl who resisted were beaten up.
There was no way to sugarcoat or dance around it. They were hurt for trying to resist.
Thankfully, none of them were 'used' in their time there. Melissa explained that these people didn't do that to their own merchandise.
That was why Carrie just kept her head down for the past three days, even as a handful of her unseen 'companions' were dragged out of the basement kicking and screaming.
...
On Carrie's fourth day being held prisoner, something... changed. She could hear gunshots and shouting upstairs.
"What's going on...?!" she heard someone cry out from the other cells. It was the voice of someone who had been kept there for at least two weeks now.
"Is this new?" Carrie asked her cellmate.
"Yeah," Melissa answered. She had finally gotten up from her thin mattress after days wallowing in apathy.
Carrie didn't miss the alertness in Melissa's eyes. Word got around, even down there — nobody ever seemed to have experienced this before.
The gunshots died down after some time, but nobody could tell how long it went on for. Then, after some more time, they picked back up, just quieter. Less frequent. Eventually, the sounds of gunfire died out for good.
Every second of waiting from then on was tense. Nobody dared move a muscle, even as they heard heavy footsteps descending the steps to their prison.
God, they hoped it wasn't one of the people that took and kept them there.
The footsteps stopped just at the door. The steel doors rocked loudly, clanging and creaking from the force.
It couldn't have been their jailors, then. They would have used a key.
SLAM! Went the doors, and they caved in partially. Odd purple light began seeping through the widened gap between them, accompanied by the sound of electricity.
Everyone feared for their lives now. Whatever this was, they knew it was worse than the people that stole them off the streets of Gotham. Some of them even started begging for their kidnappers to come to their aid, bargaining with anything they could give.
Carrie, from her position, could see two clawed hands gripping the dent where the doors parted. In one slow motion, those hands tore the doors from each other, then swung them open.
The source of the light was a human figure, wreathed in purple fire and electricity. They were masked, like the rumored caped crusader, and their frame dominated the doorway from which they stood — all despite actually being smaller than some of the men that had passed through that very same entrance.
Then, there were the eyes behind the mask. Two pinpricks of light that seemed to pierce through anything they looked at. Those who couldn't see this image kept crying out for help, but not Carrie. Not Melissa. Not anyone within eyeshot.
When they looked into those grotesque eyes, they didn't feel fear as they should have. Instead, they felt... hope. At peace.
The world would change for them that day. The sound of humming electricity and crackling fire would become a new source of comfort, and they realized that maybe... maybe some monsters were there to save people, rather than prey on them. That hope could come from a source of fear.
—=—=—=—=—=—=—=—
[A/N]: Hi, hello, I'm back
Sorry for the delay, I got kinda busy this week, on top of this chapter being tough to write in a way that felt right
How did it turn out? I hope I did the scenario some justice, at least. Justice is coming soon, coming for the rest of this organization
Anyway, again, point out any mistakes I made in narration, any inconsistencies with things I've established before
I'm just one guy, after all
Anyway, toodles~
I know some of y'all would've seen it already from the story's cover, but here's Lucian's "final look" after he's finished building his mainstay equipment for the foreseeable future
—=—=—=—=—=—=—=—
I forgor to put this in when posting, so I'll edit it in now
I tried my best to keep this fic weekly until now, but starting today, I really can't keep that up
I'm 'boutta go job huntin' soon, and when I get one, I'll have a lot less time to work on this and my art
I won't be dropping the fic at all, by any means, but... well, yeah
My schedule is cooked, burned, vaporized
Gone... reduced to atoms