Work Text:
Date: June 17th
Time: 9 AM
Subject: Wielder of Unknown Relic.
On the other side of the one way glass was a simply furnished room, a table, some lights, and two chairs. Currently the only occupant was a girl, with a short brown ponytail and lightly tanned complexion. On her face she wore an anxious, worried expression, and on her wrists were a pair of heavy handcuffs. She had spent much of her time glancing around the white tiled room, not saying a word but a worried look on her face. While she didn’t look like much, she had a hunch as to why she hadn’t been let go.
Eventually, a door behind her opened, and in walked a mountain of a man with red hair, and a smaller, slender man, both dressed sharply and wearing serious looks on their faces. They took a seat on the opposite end of the table from her, the larger of the two leaning back and crossing her arms.
Then the smaller, brown haired man, “thank you for waiting miss, we understand you must be somewhat scared about what is going on, as long as you cooperate with us, we’ll do what we can to help you”
“Ask away then, not like I have anywhere I can go” she mumbled gruffly, placing her chin in her hands as she continued to warily eye the two up.
The brown haired man said something in a language she didn’t understand to his compatriot, the other one nodding and responding. “We would like to introduce ourselves, this is our commander, Genjuro Kazanari, and you may call me Ogawa, might I ask what your name and age are?” He said in accented English. His eyes watched her intently, as if studying her for any slight movement. “Preferably your full name, just for the records”
She was silent for about a minute, face contorting in quiet contemplation. “Stella Olivia Nata, are you happy?” she said sharply, practically hissing as she replied, a palpable distaste for it in her voice. "and I'm 18, since you asked so nicely"
“Thank you for being honest with us Miss Nata, if you continue to do so we will do everything in our power to explain the situation and see you home safely” Ogawa replied politely, despite the intensity of his gaze never softening.
The basic identification questions continued, each time the girl answered honestly, telling them exactly what their background check had told them. She was 19 years old, and had never left America, living along the great lakes all her life.
“So Miss Nata, would you like to explain how you came to possess this pendant?” The large red haired man pulled out the crystalline object, dangling it from his hand before setting it on the table.
“To put it simply, it fell out of the sky and nailed me on the head” she flatly replied. The two men gave each other a look, she couldn’t understand them, but she could tell they didn’t believe it.
“To clarify…” She cleared her throat, leaning back in her seat. “It was about two, maybe three weeks ago, during a Noise attack” she looked down at her cuffed hands, thinking back to the attack of the supernatural beings that plagued humanity. “I was trying to make my way to a shelter, a hiding place, anything to get a break from dodging Noise”
The red haired man said something to his compatriot, who nodded in response. “I know the Noise are something one should try to avoid, but your phrasing in that statement is odd. Would you care to explain what you mean? If not please resume relaying the events that led up until now”
“I just spend a lot of time watching how they move, so I figured if I got caught… I’d try to buy time for someone who deserved it more than me, that’s all I’m comfortable saying on the matter”
The men shared a concerned look, before facing back towards her. “Then please continue your story”
She let out a sigh, but nodded. “Well, I had taken temporary shelter under an overpass, but I heard commotion up above, especially when I heard an explosion, so I started running. When I came out from under it, this weird red pendant nailed me in the head, out of habit or reflex or something I grabbed it, and then I heard the Noise and started running again, but by some stroke of luck they didn’t catch me that day.”
The man in red said something again, followed by what the girl assumed was a translated response. “Did you see where that pendant might have come from? Some kind of transportation or courier?”
“I remember an explosion, from a truck of some kind, with an insignia I didn’t recognize, a weird multi headed bird, but it was being attacked by the noise, so I ran like hell, and didn’t stop until I couldn’t go on any longer, and by some stroke of luck, I had escaped the noise”
“That’s rather impressive, given the Noises typical tenacity for pursuing their targets”
“I thought the same thing, but given they attacked three more times in the time since I got that damned necklace, but I couldn’t make myself get rid of it, I don’t understand why”
“You did the right thing, I unfortunately cannot provide more information than that at this time, for now, please continue”
She simply shrugged. “Well there isn’t much to tell, besides Noise attacks in a general area around me seemingly getting more frequent the longer I held on to it, which eventually lead to what happened the other night, if you don’t mind me skipping over the days that didn’t have anything out of the ordinary save a few days having Noise attacks”
Her request seemed to give the two men a pause, speaking with each other for a few moments before giving their answer. “We would prefer you leave nothing out, but if you are being honest we can discuss those dates at a later time”
“Thank you, I realize that I’m in no position to be making requests like that” she said, the sharp tone in her voice softening for a moment. “Now, for the night you probably actually wanted to hear about, let me begin”
The brown haired man nodded at one of the walls, she figured he was signaling to whoever was on the other side to begin a new recording or something. She didn’t know, but she wanted this over with. “It all started yesterday, when the Noise alarm sounded off, and I had put on my skates so I could get to safety faster. But this time it was different, like they wanted ME, instead of just going after whatever people they found, instead of leading them away, they chased me. I was barely keeping ahead of them, and my skates were getting wobbling, I was tired too, but I managed to duck into a warehouse, even if my skates got wrecked in the process” She closed her eyes as she thought back to it, slightly pinching the bridge of her nose. “I tried to hide inside the warehouse, hoping they would lose interest or stop tracking me, but in the end I was surrounded, and figured I’d try to take as many down with me as possible, and that's when I thought I heard my grandmother's voice, telling me the last words she ever spoke to anyone”
“What would those be? If you don’t mind us asking” Interrupted Ogawa, who had been intently gazing at her, evaluating every word.
“Be the flame that will warm the world, do not let anyone extinguish you” She answered after a moment. “That’s what she told me, she always talked about how fiery I was, even when I started keeping away from people, she would always tell me how warm my heart and soul were”
“I see, thank you, she sounds like she was a wonderful woman” he nodded, gesturing for her to continue.
“Anyways, I thought I heard her voice, and as the Noise were preparing themselves to attack, I felt this fire start burning deep in my gut, my frustrations with everything that had been happening lately reaching a fever pitch. I could feel something deep inside me trying to force out, like my temper was about to explode and I was going to spend my last moments screaming out all my frustrations at those stupid, unthinking, unfeeling monsters” She clenched her fists. “But when I finally let it all out, it wasn’t screaming, it wasn’t the sound of someone's last desperate action in their life… it was a song, and then I found myself enveloped in light, and I could see this weird, almost craggy looking armor forming on top of me, that heat burning inside of me getting hotter, until that light faded, and the Noise crashed into me” She steadied herself, closing her eyes for a moment. “When I realized I wasn’t a pile of dust on the ground, and that the Noise had been destroyed, part of me snapped I guess, and I charged the Noise headlong without even thinking, all I cared about was getting revenge on them for all the distress and misery they had caused me, I thought I was crazy for singing while I did it, but the words just kept coming out. I almost started enjoying tearing those damned things apart for a while, until my memory started getting fuzzy. The last thing I really remember were flashes of blue, yellow, and red coming at me, before it all goes dark, and I woke up here” she closed her eyes as she finished, and she placed her hands in her lap. “I hope you got what you wanted from me”
“Thank you Miss, I can’t imagine it’s been an easy few days for you, wait here for now” Ogawa said, as he and the man he called Genjuro got up to leave the room.
Genjuro placed a hand on her shoulder as he passed, giving her a reassuring look. Despite the fact she was still basically a prisoner, something about the man's demeanor put her at ease.
About an hour later, Ogawa returned by himself, a few voices audible from outside the room. Stella still had no idea what they were saying, Spanish class at school wouldn’t have helped her here.
“Well, Miss Nata, given the details of your story, and what has been corroborated from our field agents, we believe you have an exceptionally rare ability, to call upon that armor you described and fight against the Noise with the power of song”
That made her eyebrows raise a fair bit, she didn’t say a word for a few minutes after that. “So what you're saying is, you want me to work for you, am I in the ballpark?”
“Yes, there has been an unusual amount of Noise attacks in this part of the world lately, so having someone more familiar with the territory would be even more valuable in addition to being able to fight, so, can we count on your support?”
Stella closed her eyes, mulling it over quietly again. “I’ll might as well… this feels like something grandma would want me to do, maybe this was what she meant, and it felt good, finally making those damned Noise feel helpless for once” she clenched her fist. “So yes, for now at least, I’ll work with you people”
Ogawa smiled. “That makes dealing with all the property damage you caused so much easier,” he smiled cheerfully. “But for now, let’s get you introduced to the rest of S.O.N.G. They’ll be eager to meet a new recruit”
“What was that about property damage?” She had flinched on hearing that “and what was that about a song?”
Ogawa had stood up and walked around the table to help her to her feet, the girl still handcuffed. “The former you don’t need to worry about in the slightest now that we can handle it, the latter is simply the name of our organization, it stands for ‘Squad of Nexus Guardians’, I promise the name wasn’t my idea” he said with a small chuckle. The door unlocked, and he led her out.
Stella grumbled under her breath at how her first question wasn’t really answered, but wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, as she was led down the hallway. She heard him say something into his phone, but just quietly followed behind him. Eventually he opened up a door, and the last thing she heard before a blur of blonde launched forward to hug her was a group of people shouting “WELCOME TO SONG” in cheery voices.