Chapter Text
The factory was as silent as a tomb.
Like a tomb, ambient echoes moaned through each floor. There was the low hum of refrigerators. There were the soft clucks from the chicken coop. Distant wires sparked irregularly in the darkness above, letting off sudden flashes of lancing light.
Gears in Xephos and Lalna's old machines shifted and settled, continuing the long process of shutting down from lack of use. Motes of dust swirled and caught in the stream of moonlight. This moonlight came from a large hole in the side of the factory, and the dust escaped through the great gap.
This gap was where Nano sat. In the cold blue shades of night, she balanced precariously there on the factory's edge. Her legs hung suspended in the dark of the night, her feet swinging against the moonlight.
In her lap Nano gripped her ruby sword. No longer was it a pristine and shining thing. Little scratches were strewn across the surface of the blade. There was a nick on its side. Stains of blood rolled along the edge to the tip of the blade, balling up into a red blot that slowly grew and grew as gravity pulled at the blood. Finally nature’s laws overtook surface tension and the blood detached from the sword and fell.
Nano could almost imagine the plop as it struck the earth four floors below.
The breeze whispered past her again, murmuring and pulling painfully at Nano's hair. She didn't move even as her clothes whipped around her. Slowly the wind died, leaving the girl silent and still once more.
Another drop of blood fell away from the blade. Without any real cue or seemingly any moment of decision, Nano began to move. Bit by bit with numb determination, Nano slipped out a piece of cloth and began to polish the ruby surface. It wouldn't do much, not until she had a chance to fix the sword, but it was something.
'Might need to replace the blade,' she said regretfully. Her voice echoed long and loud through the empty floors. It rolled along wires and swept past the corpses that lined the room behind her. Finally the sound hit the walls, falling silent.
Soon she managed to sweep the blood from the blade. Nano glanced at the cloth, grimaced at the drying stains, and dropped it over the side of the building. As it fell, a stray wind caught the cloth and sent it billowing through the sky. Nano watched it vanish around the side of the building.
Nano stood. The sword she kept raised, swaying lightly.
Her footsteps were shockingly loud in the factory. The rolling echoes were not noticeable during the day, with the shouts of her, Xephos and Honeydew and the roar of machines swamping the sound. But in the darkness and the quiet, the footsteps were the ones to drown the rest of the noise.
There was a pause in the steps.
The ruby sword moved in a short stab, straight through the skull of a zombie. It was probably already dead. Well, deader than dead, she had made sure of that. Overall it was better safe than sorry. And dead. Nano wiped the dry, clotted blood from the sword on the remnants of the zombie's clothes. Her sword then sliced, shredding away a hunk of the fabric.
This fabric she slowly tucked under her sword sheath. She was going to need that. Nano slipped further into the darkness of the factory, soon returning to the hole in the wall. There was a clatter of metal as she dropped her supplies on the floor.
It was an odd pile of gear. Nano’s eyes flicked across each item, nodding to herself. Tension still crept inside Nano’s every movement as she began to get ready.
First were the two boots, long and white, that Nano strapped over her feet. Hopefully her shoes would help keep the large Long Fall Boots in place and not falling off.
Next was an alchemical bag Nano tied under her sword with the zombie fabric. Into this she scooped a charging array and a number of dried food.
Nano grunted and pulled herself into the strap of the mining laser, checking twice that the handbuilt solar panel was pointed up. The laser looked fully charged. Hopefully it would last. The klein star ein she eyed warily, then slung around her neck.
Finally, the flying ring slid onto Nano's finger. She wriggled her fingers, feeling the rush of lightness roll through her. She reached out and held the side of the hole, the thick tears of metal rubbing against her bare hands.
Nano shifted her weight off her right leg. Her eyes tracked something in the distance, and she breathed in deeply.
Memories bubbled in her. The day plunging into night, the sudden scream from far above her as she abandoned her pumpkin farm. The waves of creepers and zombies and notch knew what else swarming all around her. The glimpse of clarity in the chaos of panic and pain and fear, looking up as the whole world shook. Light and sound spilling from above as the wall had ripped apart and then the light vanishing...
...Running upwards through the packs of mobs, cutting and killing until she reached the hole...
And then the man. The pale faced man with the reptilian face of a creeper leering at Nano, him silhouetted in the flickering lights of the factory.
The lights had flashed again and he was gone.
Nano touched the second sword. The sapphire blade was badly cracked, barely held together by tape and the spare sheath she had found. Tucked deep in Nano's pocket was a small piece of flint.
Nano shut her eyes, focusing hard on the ring. She let go of the wall and jumped up, soaring into the air with her eyes open and fixed on the horizon.
She had no idea where she was going.
She had no idea what she was going to do.
She had no plan.
She had no information.
And she had no backup.
But she had friends - mentors - to find. And that scrub that stole them was going to pay .