The Birth of the New World

-Chapter I-

Magical Girl Mercenary Lain, Reporting for Duty!

Sledgehammer in one hand, corpse in another, and a nasty looking head held by my tail, I walk through the airport and towards Security, the section of the airport that is being turned into the center of our new Forward Operations within the city. Walking through the halls, past workers and soldiers busy welding metal sheets and bars, reinforcing chokepoints, most of them simply glance to look at what I am dragging behind me while others openly gawk and stare. It makes it easy to tell who has more experience in the city and who doesn’t when they are able to simply shrug off the strangeness of the stuff they see. As far as most of them are concerned, the thing is dead. What I am doing with it is my own business.

As I head down the halls, I make a point of avoiding walking through all of the blood stains on the carpets. The carpets were nasty to begin with, but after we came through and killed everything living here, the carpet has become quite a mess. Thankfully, getting all of the corpses out and burned had been a top priority, so after the first couple of days, this place isn’t as bad as it used to be. Still smells like shit though…

Arriving at Security, I head up to the entrance and the guards wave me in after a quick explanation, there is only two of them here, just like there is supposed to be. Giving them both a smile, I walk in with the corpse dragging behind me, the both of them grimacing from the smell coming from it but having the self-control to not cover their faces while on duty.

Heading into one of the offices after a polite knock and getting permission to enter, I head inside and throw the corpse on the ground before shutting the door. Walking over to the desk, I set the head down before my boss and wait for permission to sit as I watch the man work on some paperwork. He doesn’t even look up as he busily writes, just simply throwing me a question. “What is it Lain? Come to show me a trophy and get blood on my carpet?”

“No, Lieutenant Colonel Roberts Sir, I’m not a cat... No, we have a problem.”

He finally looks up from his paperwork, looking at the head and then at the body laying behind me on the floor. “Doesn’t seem like much of a problem. Looks dead to me. Ugly as sin and smells like shit though, what is it? Take a seat and report.”

“Thank you, Sir. I don’t know what it is, but for the sake of brevity, I am going to call it a doppelganger. During my patrol up on the roof with Larry, this thing managed to sneak up on us and was following us around on our patrol. It has some sort of mental ability to make people think that it is a person, a friend... We didn’t even question why it was that we had a third man with us. We just assumed that he was there the entire time. I didn’t start to question it until I started to realize that I couldn’t properly remember any details about him. Name, face, eye color, even what he was wearing. My mind just kept trying to fill in the gaps and reason that I knew the person in front of me. I ended up killing the thing when it tried to touch me. My body acted on its own, and I ended up spearing it through the chest, but that wasn’t enough to kill it. I’m honestly not even entirely sure if this thing has proper organs, but ripping its head off was enough to kill it. Lastly, the mental effect seemed to have a lasting effect from what I am assuming is prolonged exposure. Larry was thrown into a fit after I killed it, thinking that I just killed his friend, while Ben and Daniel, who had only been around it for a short while, only seem mildly affected and quickly broke from its influence.”

By the time I finish my explanation, he has the bridge of his nose held in his hands as he works on rubbing away a growing headache. He looks over to me and tiredly asks, “I am right to assume what it is that you are worried about?”

“Yes Sir… I’m sorry, but we need to consider the possibility of there being more of these things amongst us or potentially showing up in the future. I don’t even know how it got past the snipers, we have every side covered and I have no idea what the range is for their mental abilities…”

“Haaa… I had hoped that we were far enough away from the center of the city, but something similar was mentioned in the report from Sgt. Lenz’s team, from when they scouted this place… I guess the threat of mental attacks here is higher than we assumed. You were briefed on them, yes?”

“Yes sir, besides this thing, I haven’t met any yet. I was told that the further one goes into the city, the more outrageous the monsters get. Some even driving people crazy just by looking at them for too long.”

“Is it safe to assume that you have some form of defense against these mental attacks?” He asks.

“Ehh… I’m sorry, but I can’t honestly say that I do. It was working against me too. Maybe not as well as against the others, but it had me fooled right up until it touched me. It could fool my head, but my instincts smelled danger and attacked…”

“Wonderful… There is currently over a hundred people stationed here, from soldiers to staff. While that isn’t too many people, it is enough that this could be a problem… Not to mention this place is huge, even if we were to have everyone gather up for inspection, one of these things could simply find a place to hide and we would never even know… Just more headaches on top of all of this. As if building a base in the middle of enemy territory wasn’t hard enough.”

“Sorry Sir…”

“Don’t be. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. For now, I am placing you in charge of sniffing these things out. Go and find Lieutenant Dale in his office. He has a list of everyone here, with pictures. Explain the situation to him, grab some soldiers and comb over this place from top to bottom until you are sure that we are clear of any intruders. Try to keep the details about this from spreading to much, we don’t want it to effect moral.”

“Yes Sir. One other thing.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Those Kobold totems I built on the west side, I don’t want to make any assumptions, but I think they might be working at keeping stuff away. West side has been pretty quiet for a while now. I’ll probably try making some more and see if they would work on the other sides as well.”

“Hm?” He looks around at the stacks of notes on his desk and manages to fish one out after some searching, giving it a quick read, he nods his head and looks to me. “Oh, yes. I remember now. People were saying that you were mounting heads on poles… I had simply assumed that you were getting bored with nothing to fight… While I am not going to put all my trust into some scarecrows for keeping monsters away, I’m not going to tell you to stop. If you think it helps, then feel free to make more. Just try not to freak anyone out…”

I mean, ya. I was pretty bored. But it wasn’t because I was wanting to fight or anything. Just not much to do except patrol duty and reading. I don’t even have Rookie, Sanders, or Thomas out here to hang out and bullshit with. Gods, I wanna go home and hug Sky…

I don’t let my thoughts show on my face as the Lieutenant Colonel continues.

“Was there anything else Lain?”

“No Sir, besides Larry being out of it, but I already told the medics, and they sent some people up to get him. I have nothing else to report.”

“Good. Get to it then. You have your orders. When you report to Lieutenant Dole, you will be under his direction, but you will be left mostly to follow your own discretion on this matter.”

I stand and pop him a salute, “Yes Sir.” and turn to leave his office only to stop at the door as he clears his throat.

“Lain?”

“Yes?”

He nods to the thing sitting on the table in front of him, his eyes looking tired. “The corpse?”

A flash of embarrassment goes through me as I rush to collect up the dead thing and drag it out, dropping apologies as I go. “Sorry Sir!”

As I am closing the door, I swear that I can hear the man let out a tired moan and a small complaint about the smell. On the way over to Lieutenant Dole’s office, I make sure to ask the guards to send someone by to clean his office and help with the smell. This corpse really is smelly.

Wait… Why am I even dragging around the body? All I really needed was the head…

Deciding that I don’t want to keep dragging this thing around with me anymore, and quite certain that it isn’t going to get up and walk away, I go ahead and leave it with some soldiers that I walk past and ask them to throw it away with hardly an explanation. I have to hold back my laughs as I walk away and leave them flabbergasted with what to do with the random corpse I just handed them out of nowhere. I choose to keep the head with me though. Tossing it around and catching it as I walk. It’s ugly as sin and looks like a gaping asshole. Smells like one too… Oh well, when I am done with it, I’ll mount it on a stick outside and the monsters outside can be the ones to deal with its stank.

A short walk latter, I arrive at Lieutenant Doles office and deliver the orders. He is a serious man and takes the possibility of infiltration and breaches in security very seriously. Within moments he is putting out orders for a team of trusted men to assemble as he gathers up some folders and holsters his sidearm.

Watching him check his pistol makes me think of my own, currently just sitting holstered on my side and collecting dust.

I still haven’t gotten too really use it yet… Except for in training, it just sits there. Honestly, I haven’t really been put into a situation that would warrant me using it over my hammer. Hells, even my big ass knife hasn’t seen much use lately. I’ve just been using my claws for cutting everything nowadays if I need to. Still, I like having them on me. It’s reassuring to have some extra options in case I need them. Speaking of, I wonder if my request for those heavy-duty hand axes and the holsters for them and my sledgehammer have been finished yet. Hopefully they will be ready by the time I get home. It would be cool to dual wield hand axes, and I can even use them in close courters when swinging around a sledgehammer isn’t the best option...

I get pulled out of my thoughts as I see a group of soldiers come walking over and snap a salute to Lieutenant Dole. He quickly briefs them on our mission for the day while I hold the doppelgangers head and show it off to the men in all its disgusting glory. Once the lieutenant is finished, I give them a quick briefing on what signs to look out for and to be extra careful of those that these things were hanging out around. We don’t want to scare any soldiers into pulling the trigger on us, thinking that we are killing their best friend or something. I already had enough guns pointed at me for today and I would rather not test if I am bullet proof or not yet...

With my explanation given, one of the soldiers turns to Lieutenant Dole and asks him, “Sir, if we do find any more of these things. What is our course of action for dealing with them? I understand that we do not want to cause a scene and drop moral.”

He nods and responds, “Yes, we would like to keep this matter under control if at all possible. Of course, there is also the possibility that this thing was acting on its own, but we can’t rule out the possibility of there being more of them. We do not want people worrying about potential doppelgangers mixed in with everyone else and causing problems. If we do manage to find any, we will try to separate it from the others and then eliminate it quietly. If that is not possible, then we will have to simply try our best to handle the situation as it comes. Should it come down to a situation where we need to deal with one surrounded by controlled friendlies, leave elimination to Lain and focus on keeping everyone under control.”

The soldier nods, “Yes sir.”

“Lain, you stick by me and focus on seeing if anything seems wrong or out of place while I go over the records and confirm identities. Everyone else, fall in. Let’s try and make this look professional and planned. Just a normal inspection.”

We all snap a quick salute and fall into line behind the Lieutenant as we head into the airport. As we go about our patrol around the place, we make sure to stop anyone that we run into and perform an inspection. Name, rank, serial number. Is all your equipment in order and a quick but lazy check for contraband. Nothing but a quick inspection that most soldier would be mildly annoyed by, but think of as normal army bureaucracy. As we work, I will scan over the soldiers or hired workers and try and see if anything about them comes off as weird or if I suddenly get the feeling of knowing this person my whole life. They will throw me awkward looks as I do so and look at the head that I am holding. One guy had the brilliant idea of asking why I had it, only to end up getting reprimanded by the Lieutenant and told to mind his own damn business. I had to hold back some giggles as he got chewed out.

Some people actually got caught with contraband while we were doing our fake inspection. One guy had gone and brought an old Gameboy with a copy of Pokémon Yellow of all things. He really should have left that at his bunk, but he was probably planning on finding a corner to slack off in and play or something. He ended up having to do pushups while singing the opening theme song to the anime. He’ll get it back when he returns to base. Another guy, he got caught trying to sneak off to the restroom with a Playboy magazine. While he was getting reprimanded and made to do mountain climbers, I was taking a peek at the centerfold and was left blushing. The lady on it was a very cute red head with freckles and wearing basically nothing. While I was enjoying looking at the magazine, the poor dumb guy decided to complain about why it is that I get to look at it, but he doesn’t.

The Lieutenant yells at him, “Because she is a mercenary, and you are a soldier! As long as she kills what we tell her to kill, she can do whatever the hell she wants. Be it mounting monster heads on poles or looking at porn. You, on the other hand, will follow the rules and do as you are told. If we end up having a repeat of this incident, you will be on latrine duty for the next three months. Do I make myself clear soldier!?”

“Yes sir!”

He ended up having to do a bunch of burpees on top of everything else. As we walk off to our next destination, I contemplated keeping the magazine for myself, but I didn’t like the idea of Sky potentially finding it, so I gave it back to the Lieutenant. I don’t want to risk upsetting my girlfriend over a dirty magazine of all things. Gods forbid if my family ended up finding it either. That would be way to embarrassing.

Walking through checkpoints, inspecting barricades, receiving reports from guards. We slowly make our rounds around the new base. I even begin to slowly allow myself to relax, our search soon coming to a close, and the list getting mostly crossed off. Thinking that this will all thankfully be getting written off as a false alarm. Something that I would honestly be very happy about. I would much rather freak out over nothing and end up being wrong, than end up being right and having to deal with a big problem.

Unfortunately, I ended up being right…

As we round a corner, we hear the sound of someone screaming for help. Sharing a quick look with Lieutenant Dole, he gives me a nod and I take off at a full sprint to investigate.