Chapter Text
Zhu Yuan’s shoes were made to withstand plenty of things, as was the case with the rest of her uniform. From foot-chases, sprinting even after cars if need be, to encounters with some of the most dangerous Ethereals to be found inside just about any Hollow out there.
They were not, however, meant for skidding around corners after sleeping in on her ‘day off’, though such only pertained to her work at Public Security. She had put on her uniform out of habit, it only being Saturday and until last year had she always worked on Saturdays as well — in fact, she practically was never not working.
Her uniform was still as practical as it always had been, but now over her left breast was a single black patch of a poly-something material she'd never learnt the name for. It was stitched perfectly and didn't jut out at all, going from her shoulder to sternum and covering that half of her chest and no further down than her breast. On it were all her medals now permanently adorned, her Porcelume Arks, her Hero of Humanity, and nine others.
It looked absurd at times. It felt absurd to lug it around on patrol. It frankly was absurd. But she knew better now than to dare take them off. The moment she did, some formal event in which she’d be required to wear them would crop up, and that event, more than the necessity to have Wise help her stab all of them back on, would be...something. Thus, the stitch for the black material they were pricked to was easily undoable, and under it would be the remainder of her typical uniform.
Her sudden, instinctual wearing of her uniform was largely not helped by the fact that she had not been awoken beforehand; regardless of how close she was to the office, it still would have done her heart a favour had she not turned over in bed this morning, groggy and tired and still with a full stomach, only to stare at the clock and have refracted back into her eyes the numbers 10:29.
She was meant to be there when those numbers read 08:00.
Outside, she had spotted even in Sixth Street some posters for Public Security recruitment campaigns — an understandable, understaffed necessity. Upon them had various things, but replaced was the typical blue-haired, bobby-hat-sporting girl that had been Public Security’s mascot for as long as Zhu Yuan had seen the posters even in her youth. Now they were of either her own eyepatch-wearing face, Qingyi’s self, or Seth’s back and the still uninjured side of his face facing over his shoulder. Even as Zhu Yuan ran by the posters, she couldn't help the embarassed writhing of her face.
The front door to the office’s reception burst open per the captain’s lateness. Behind the counter stood Heddy, whom, in years past, was more typically found as a promoter of Random Play. A cute girl with a round face and fair figure and Schrodinger’s hair colour: she was perfect for the role of receptionist at a place arguably more busy than the soon to be made legendary video store.
Zhu Yuan passed with quick wave then returned by the girl, not that she looked to see it. Instead she booked it for the elevator on the right-hand side of the fairly small, clean, practically desolate room.
Once inside the elevator, Zhu Yuan tapped the fourth-storey button, tapping her foot in impatience as she waited for it to ascend never fast enough.
Not nearly soon enough, the doors opened to the office’s enclosed foyer. It was odd, she knew, for an office to have a foyer, as she oftentimes worked in one. Actually, pretty much always did she work in one — it was just whether it was the office at Lumina Square Station or if it was the one here; that was the question.
The foyer was a small thing, really; just an excuse to add another door, here behind which were certain things like umbrellas and a coat rack, because seemingly they couldn’t just have them on the ground floor.
Nonetheless, once she pushed through the foyer’s door, Zhu Yuan was greeted with a sight she did not expect to find on her first day, one even odder than her first day of work in Public Security.
“IT’S INTEGRAL TO THE STORY!!” shouted Belle, dark bags under her eyes as she motioned to the massive whiteboard beside a window, one with its shutters closed entirely. Actually, Zhu Yuan noticed that all the windows had their shutters closed, and the lights were dimmer than yesterday.
Wise stood on the right of the whiteboard, closer to the cork-board which too was on the whiteboard’s right. Wise as well had dark bags under his eyes, and both of the siblings’ hairs had clearly been wrought into their current states by sleep, or a lack thereof.
“NO, IT’S NOT! IT GETS IN THE WAY OF THE ACTUAL STORY SINCE IT’S A COMPLETE TONE-SHIFT!” Wise shouted back.
“NO, IT DOESN’T! IT’S CRITICAL TO UNDERSTANDING ‘FAUST’!” exclaimed Belle as she motioned again to the whiteboard. “IT ALL BECOMES SO MUCH MORE IMPACTFUL WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND LIGHTER’S STORY! IT CAN WORK WITHOUT IT, SURE, BUT IT BENEFITS SO MUCH MORE WITH IT!”
“SO IT’S NOT INTEGRAL!”
“IT’S STILL IMPORTANT!”
Zhu Yuan meandered, her eyes never leaving the sibling spectacle. The layout ought to be explained rightly to make any sense of this scene:
From the elevator, upon exiting, of which was at the south-most part of any of the four storeys and the basement, one would see a large open office space ahead, illuminated by dim, warm-tone lighting, bringing out the mostly wooden furniture and maple floors. And the left was about five metres length between elevator and the outside-facing wall, and ahead stretched on for about twenty metres more so. On the direct right when exiting the elevator, for perhaps eight metres ahead, stretched the break room and its door leading in. Belle and Wise were arguing some distance ahead on the left, a sofa and comfortable chairs near them. There were no cubicles as the office hardly had a need for them — not on this floor, anyway.
On the right side, facing the bickering siblings and near the door to the break room, stood Evelyn, with Astra sitting atop a chair beside her. Both seemed tired, Evelyn more than Astra, but such was only the case because Evelyn was visibly hungover more than she was tired, with her jacket slightly askew on her shoulders and a perpetual scowl on her face as she stared across at the siblings. A tower of brown cardboard boxes the height of Zhu Yuan were stacked haphazardly against the side of the break room, with Evelyn and Astra just past them. It was them that Zhu Yuan leaned against, most boxes full enough of papers and props to support her weight, and she talked in a far gentler tone than the siblings across the room from them.
“I’d say ‘good morning’,” said Zhu Yuan, then having leaned against the boxes. “But from the look of it, you’re simply having a morning, not exactly a good one.”
Evelyn shrugged tiredly, enough to make her jacket seem on the brink of tipping off her shoulders. “Well… It hasn’t been a bad morning, yet,” she replied, her voice groggy and filled with a raspy gravel, “but it’s getting there… Oh, is it getting there…”
“What happened after I left yesterday?” asked Zhu Yuan.
Astra chimed in. “Well, Miss Haufner dropped by with some presents to celebrate ‘Signal’s’ success. As for the presents in question, you can probably guess as to their alcohol percentage,”—Astra motioned to Evelyn as the bodyguard lightly held her head whilst the incessant voices of Belle and Wise actively were killing her—“and then Belle and Wise started writing up more draft scripts for the series to come now that the whole project has been greenlit. But as you can see, they’re currently arguing over the importance of ‘Losstime’, with Belle wanting it to be made into its own movie since apparently it holds great value to understanding ‘Faust’.”
“To be honest,” said Evelyn, “I don’t even remember what happened in Signal, or what’s even in the Losstime script. I mean, Astra and I were only starting to get involved in Losstime to begin with.”
“Want me to explain?” Zhu Yuan asked, receiving nods from both Astra and Evelyn, the former of whom had only ever been on Signal's set to give acting pointers to Zhu Yuan herself and the rest of the cast, but otherwise having no knowledge of the script's details.
“So, first: Signal. In the first act, we had Seth meeting with Belle, explaining that he found out about her and Wise’s identity as Phaethon but also that he doesn’t care enough to let it overshadow a greater problem, that being Jane’s issues with infiltrating the terrorist group ‘Genesis’. Anyway, he gets reconciled, and on his way back to the dorms, the call of an active terrorist threat comes in. It cuts to Jane a little while beforehand, being taken whilst undercover to the train tunnel where the attack would then occur soon after. Cutting past a bunch of stuff, it eventually comes back to myself, Qingyi, and Seth, and then is the introduction of then Oswald, the superintendent. Anyway, he’s introduced to be a bit of a hard-ass, but over the course of that one very early morning he becomes far less so, eventually becoming a trusted teammate during the counter-attack.”
“Right, right,” said Evelyn, nodding along. “And then there’s the small side story with Jane Doe and Jane Sharp, where Jane Sharp gets killed and that’s when Jane Doe starts attacking Genesis from the inside and the counter-attack begins from there, right?”
Astra shot a look at Evelyn. "When'd you read the script?"
"When you were busy molesting Eous," Evelyn grunted; "and while I had nothing to do on-set."
Zhu Yuan snapped her fingers a few times, bringing their attention back to the matter at hand. “Yes, there's Jane Sharp and Jane Doe's thing... But that’s skipping over Oswald’s call with the Commissioners Council — a council put together temporarily for as long as the Chief of Public Security would be in his coma, which is pretty much constant throughout the series. Basically, Commissioner Ignevillen is being quite loud and trying to sway the two on-the-fence commissioners into waiting for the terrorists to make demands since they’ve taken hostages. Commissioner Lucas Bailiwick, though he’s almost always referred to as just Commissioner Bailiwick, is pushing for a swift counter-attack, but Ignevillen is too bumbling and brash to hear him out and Lucas is losing steam, as with Oswald. So, Oswald asks Commissioner Leon Claude — an old friend of his — to talk some sense into Ignevillen, of which he does.”
Astra raised a hand, asking, "Aren't we having to recast Ignevillen's actor? To better fit how she was through the series?"
Zhu Yuan nodded. "Yeah; since the project wasn't greenlit back then, and no big-budget actors wanted to take the risk without the certainty of a longer contract, we'd settled for someone...who honestly did a bit of a disservice to Ignevillen as she was. But that aside, the rest is simple. The counter-attack goes ahead with myself, Seth, Qingyi, and Oswald; and Jane is obviously attacking from within the tunnel while we were pushing from the station."
Astra nodded with recollection's pride as she continued for Zhu Yuan. "Right, right; this much I remember from the actual news reports of what happened back then: attack goes well, Jane gets injured after getting utterly beaten-on by the boss of Genesis. Seth goes running over, ends up cutting the boss’ arms off by the elbow with his shield, putting him in a coma. Everything after that goes well until they find the two bombs, one of which gets defused by the actual defusing team, but since there’s a lack of time, your squad had to defuse the other one.”
“Right,” said Zhu Yuan; “and then the bomb we’re defusing trips, and the timer is set from nearly four minutes remaining to just one. Everyone runs, grabbing the hostages on their way out, except for Seth, who stays behind and uses a blast-proof closet or locker or whatever to shove the bomb into. He presses down on the door with his shield which is really the best character throughout all this; the bomb goes off, and Seth saves the residential area above the tunnel, as the explosion otherwise would have collapsed the tunnel entirely.”
Evelyn, just slightly, had a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth in remembering. “Yeah, I remember reading that in the script… No offence, but damn that was well-written.”
“No offence taken,” Zhu Yuan replied with a smile of her own. “I will happily take a stroking of my ego in such a regard. Anyway, he gets pulled out of the tunnel after falling unconscious, and that morning Commissioner Leon Claude holds a speech regarding the attack. He talks some, public opinion on him as a commissioner rises, yippee. That’s about all that matters in Signal. Oh, actually, forgot something: It’s just after Seth cuts off the boss’ arms (who survives but goes into a coma) that he ends up confessing to Jane about his feelings and later on when he’s in hospital, it’s reciprocated. Then they fucked. The end. And we may need to add a little something at the end after there, but that'll happen in the directors cut, I'm sure.”
Astra hummed a tune that turned into a groan as she creaked her arms over her head and did a classic old-man twisting of her torso, brightly smiling as she said, “Right, and I remember the story of Losstime, at least mostly: it starts with you and Wise at Port Elpis, then goes into a flashback wherein it’s at Blazewood. Wise and Belle are finishing a commission that is later revealed to be a precursor to the story of Faust, at least in passing. Long story short, Lighter tells Belle that he’s never accepted a confession since he doesn’t know how to date, and Belle’s solution is to do ‘pretend-dates’, I say in massive quotations since she’s doing this entirely because she’s massively into him.”
“AND I DON’T REGRET A THING!” Belle shouted from the other side of the room.
Evelyn leaned forward where she stood, her back hunching and knitting her brows as she looked to Belle. “OH, WHAT WAS THAT? I DON’T THINK I CAN HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF MY HEADACHE, YOU RAT-BASTARD!” she shouted back to Belle’s ever aggravating, slightly goblin-like giggling. “Anyway, as you saying, Astra?”
With a small giggle of her own, Astra continued on.
“After they do this, Lighter takes Belle on an impromptu ride to Lonely Canyon in the south of the Outer Ring and a fair distance from Blazewood, though not nearly so far as some other places. At Lonely Canyon, Lighter brings Belle to a place the viewer eventually finds out is one where he went to following a certain girl’s death, but I’ll get into that later. It’s there that there’s a bit of an optical illusion, where the gap over what’s pretty much just a cleaved mesa looks like there’s a bit of a natural bridge. There’s really not — like, not at all. They watch the sunset, and bing-badda-boom: that’s the first and second chapter of the long-ass script that’s honestly a lot longer than it needs to be-”
“IT’S THE PERFECT LENGTH AND YOU KNOW IT!”
“Glossing over a bunch of stuff that is wholly irrelevant and not pertinent to the overarching story because the writer is bad at writing fluff, Lighter effectively tries to tell Belle something over the course of the script, something which keeps getting interrupted in one way or another. On one of their pretend-dates, Belle takes him to Lumina Square’s mall where she buys him this military-looking peaked cap that only really comes up some time in the furthest reaches of later, though there are some details here and there that use it — it’s just a peaked cap that works really well with his outfit. Anyway, they have a good time, all the while myself, Wise, and you two are all stalking them-”
“Trailing.”
“Trailing.”
“Yeah, yeah, trailing, trailing… Anyway, the following day she takes him around fourteenth street. We have a quick scene where they meet with Jane and Seth as the two on-break officers are exiting the Janus Quarter’s Haufner Hotel — remember that name, by the way; I know it’s been a while since you’ve heard it, but I know you haven’t forgotten how important it is. So they chat a little, Lighter recognises Seth as the officer who saved the residential area (though Belle initially mistakes his recognising to be that of the time Seth thought him a fugitive, but that’s neither here nor there), and then it cuts to our conglomeration of poorly restrained rubbernecks as myself, you two, and Wise all watch the other four outside the hotel from across the street. Eve and I are kinda stuffed inside a phone-booth (foreshadowing), and Wise is outside it, but that’s hardly pertinent. Anyway, Zhu Yuan comes over, chats some more, you and Wise each eat a pie, and the scene ends with Eve and I watching the ever-compatible Wise and Zhu Yuan talk to one another with the utmost suspicion…”
Evelyn let out a humongous sigh as lolled her head forward with it. It was unlike her to be so tired, let alone so visibly tired and outright complaining — at least, such is what Zhu Yuan thought. She thought also of a rationalisation: Evelyn was hungover, and though it was good the star and her lover could drink together again, it was evident why they still generally abstained.
“Are we done yet..?” she asked, her voice a mere croak that rose into the air and subsequently stomped back down from whence it came as Astra answered a frank, “Nope! Not at all!”
Zhu Yuan shrugged, unable to keep a smirk at Eve’s expense. “I mean, you should know all this — you were there with all of us through pretty much all of it.”
“Well, excuse me for forgetting about the menial parts of that year considering everything else that followed,” excused Evelyn. “I mean, we’re getting into the war, right? ‘Faust’? With Markus, Henry — all of those guys?”
Again, Zhu Yuan shrugged, this time for more of giving leniency than a slight touch of mockery. “Fair, fair. But no, actually, not yet. After that part, if memory serves, it goes to Blazewood as Lighter is having his turn showing Belle around instead of vice versa as it was for the last few dates. Obviously, Belle’s already been through Blazewood aplenty, but it’s about who you’re with, right? Anyway, it’s while they’re doing their thing on the Lower Level that the regular four of us are spectating from the Upper, prone on the edge of the cliff face and looking down at them mildly bored, with nothing that we haven’t seen already not already happening.”
Astra raised a finger and she hurriedly added, “And that’s also the first mention of ‘Distant Horizons’ — the movie I was working on back then, meant to premiere on my birthday on the thirty-first! W-Well... It was meant to... And also, while I’m at it, it’s I think one of the earlier scenes in the script that I say something or rather about wanting to write a song, which admittedly I didn’t do, but what I ended up doing in ‘Die With A Smile’ worked out just fine in the end.”
Evelyn nodded along, this time actually remembering something for the convenience of this recap’s pacing.
“And when a storm comes over Blazewood — one that’d actually been looming over us for a while only then bursting — everyone moves into Cheesetopia for shelter. And with the gas station-like canopy over the front of the diner, there’s space outside as well to take aforementioned shelter. It’s there that Lighter stays while Belle goes inside, inadvertently meeting us for the first time, though she knew we were watching which...honestly made me rethink some things about my abilities... And afterwards it’s when she goes back out to Lighter that probably the second-best scene in that script happens.”
Astra and Zhu Yuan nodded in unison, already replaying the scene in their minds, that which was unique in eithers seeing as how not one of them but Lighter and Belle had actually gone through it yet; merely they had seen the scene as it was on paper and as it was on either biker/proxy’s tongue.
With a sudden click, however, one that though not literally louder certainly felt louder than all the other noise in the office space, everyone paused and looked towards its source. Peering through the door stood Heddy, slightly hunched to do so, and staring curiously and all the living legends therein.
However, her eyes rested upon two individuals more than anyone else.
“Wise? Belle?” Heddy opened the door in its entirety, showing the elevator doors still open behind her past the enclosed foyer. “The major general’s here to see you about ‘Under the Tree’? Said you had a meeting schedule today for ten-thirty. You…didn’t forget, did you?”
Zhu Yuan, Astra, and Evelyn all looked to the siblings. The siblings looked at one another, their bickering gone in a flash.
Yup, thought Zhu Yuan; they don’t have a clue…
Zhu Yuan sighed and nodded towards Astra and Evelyn, both of whom went through the door to the break room to rightly pilfer for food to cure Eve’s hangover. She spoke as she went to the siblings briefly, informing you to go read Chapter 7>11 of Losstime, seeing as how the recap would do a disservice to, as Belle said, an integral part of Faust’s story.
Nonetheless, as Wise fidgeted and scribbled down once more the inefficacy of Losstime’s script on the whiteboard before them, Zhu Yuan stepped behind him. Belle noticed and watched as the captain placed her hand on his hip and turned him round, cutting off a word he tried to escape from his lips with her own on his in a long kiss aided by a hand on his cheek.
By the short time they separated, Belle had meandered over to Wise’s scribble, wiped it clean, pondered a moment, and wrote down in its place beside Losstime’s title: REMAKE — DATE TBD.
“…Wise? B-Belle, at least…?” asked Heddy, growing visibly nervous. “The major general’s…scary…”
Zhu Yuan looked past her shoulder to Heddy and nodded to the poor lass before then stepping away from Wise. She looked back at her love with her lips curled pleasantly by the taste of his, and she gestured to Heddy.
“Get going, darling,” she said. “Don’t want to keep the city’s secret police waiting, do we?”
Wise’s shoulders deflated begrudgingly, and he nodded before walking off to Heddy, muttering as he did, “…No we don’t…”
With a comparative quiet returning to the office’s walls, Zhu Yuan stood beside Belle in front of the whiteboard. It was only now she got a proper look at it, and boy had it changed from last night: for starters, it seemed a rainbow had been used in terms of markers, a deduction aided by the eight black markers binned nearby and the bunch of nonuniform colours at Belle’s feet. From ‘Signal’ to ‘Dancing in the Moonlight, Act III — Crime and Punishment’, there was a host of various writings between. And judging by the boxes, this was merely the blanketed, unfinished overview.
“…So when’ll it be?” asked Belle suddenly.
Zhu Yuan looked to her, confused. “What d’you mean? ‘Faust’ or ‘Under the Tree’?”
“No, no,” said Belle. She took Zhu Yuan’s hand in hers, raised it between them limply, and peeled off the glove and tapped the diamond. “When’s the wedding?”
“…To be decided,” smirked the captain.
- Now Go Read ‘Faust’, Pretty-Please :) -