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Almost everyone dies when Oma Zi-O attacks. Most that didn’t are severely injured. Tsukuyomi supposes she’s one of the lucky ones, uninjured enough to help carry the survivors away to the nearest settlement.
How could they ever possibly have been prepared for Oma Zi-O himself? Oma Zi-O lets his minions do his dirty work. He doesn’t even have to deal with things like spy work. And yet… and yet…
He knew they were coming.
They’d gone that way on Woz’s suggestion. It’s a chilling thought. Everyone else is dead, even - no, especially Woz, because they must have forced him to provide the information, would certainly have killed him afterwards.
Why had he ever thought it was a good idea to go undercover like that, right under Oma Zi-O?
Tsukuyomi sits across from Geiz in a tent at one of the settlement’s shelters. There are ten more beds - six sets of bunks per tent; she knows how to order one of these tents in a twenty minute time period with a team of four - but all are empty, at the moment.
“I’m going to kill Oma Zi-O with my bare hands,” Geiz growls. It’s not possibly something he could back up, not even with the belt and RideWatches which Woz had given them the information to help find, before…. “I don’t know how, but I’ll do it. Not just for our friends - for everyone in this fucked up world he’s made!”
“That’s not possible,” Tsukuyomi replies, immediately. “He’s been more powerful than we could ever match since… since before we were born.”
(Something sounds odd in those words, and she wishes she could place what.)
Silence echoes, for a moment. Time for Woz to get a reply in. But Woz isn’t here, not for months.
Not ever again, more likely than not.
“You’re right,” Geiz says, when the pause passes. It’s slowly shortened, will fade with time, surely. The words are still growled, of course, but Tsukuyomi can hardly blame him for that. “But what can we do?”
“I don’t know,” she says, reaching into her small bag for her datapad. It’s the one of the most expensive but useful things she owns, along with her Faizphone RideWatch, stolen years ago with the team, before she’d met Geiz. It’s also, therefore, ten years out of date, but it was built to last. She looks again at the quintuple encoded message Woz had sent her, written in a code only their team knows. No sign of any coded, no warning. Just the locations to move, the plan of attack.
Travel slowly, to the statue of Oma’s advent.
I cannot provide a proper explanation, I apologize.
Make sure to beware hidden dangers.
Engage with as powerful a force as possible.
Make several plans of escape—
And bring medical suppliez
I think this may be our only chance to stop Oma Zi-O, truly assure his en
Everyone… I’m sorry////
(Route included.)
She doesn’t know why she’s reading it again, she’s read it five times at least. Surely she missed a code, right? The misspellings, the odd way it was written must hint at some obvious trick she should know.
She looks…
“What if Woz left a clue?” She asks. Geiz looks up.
“What?”
“The message was spaced strangely,” Tsukuyomi says. Geiz immediately comes to sit next to her, and for once Tsukuyomi let’s him see the information.
“That’s English, right?” He asks. Tsukuyomi nods.
“The version I presented was in Japanese, but the first two cyphers came out to English,” she says. “Do you see something?”
Geiz hmms.
“The first paragraph,” he says. “See the start of each line? T-I-M-E.”
Tsukuyomi nods.
“But the second paragraph doesn’t spell anything,” she says. “Unless…”
A dash could mean a pause, add the misspellings…
“M-A-Z-I-N-E,” she says. “Time Mazine.”
“Like the ones they say Oma Zi-O is making?” Geiz asks. Tsukuyomi takes in the details again. She thinks…
“I’ve got a passcode, possibly,” she says. “Didn’t we pass a factory on the way to…”
“We did,” Geiz immediately confirms. “But… what do we do with this?”
Tsukuyomi sighs.
“Now that I still don’t know,” she says. “But it couldn’t hurt very much more to check, if it’s just the two of us.”
Geiz nods.
“Guess we should get going,” he says. “Our ‘commander’ gave us one last mission.”