"Humph... 'didn't need my help' you said. 'Can't let me ride on your back' you said. Now look at vat's happened to you!" The doctor jokingly complained. "Now ze smart thing to do vas to bring ze person called ze 'Medic' to battle vith you. I am the Medic for a reason, you silly girl! I even said good luck to you!" He then teasingly bopped Fubuki on top of the head as a sort of punishment for getting damaged. "Never waste my good luck!"
"Ow! I'm sorry, but you know we couldn't do that." The Destroyer said in her defense, glad the doctor wasn't seriously mad or anything as she worried he was going to be upset that she got hurt.
However, she did worry about two things: there was a pile of fresh smoking ashes outside the infirmary along with a smashed window, and the inside of the infirmary was severely trashed. The Sendai sisters came along with Fubuki since most of them were damaged, and Hibiki and Ikazuchi left to join up with their sisters until Hibiki was called back here. The Light Cruisers were standing behind Fubuki while she was talking to the man, and other than questioning why the infirmary looked like Hell, they smiled at seeing he was actually quite friendly so far.
"Why is he acting like Fubuki's dad...?" Naka asked, but then Jintsuu hushed her down.
"Eh, well I suppose it couldn't be helped zen..." Sighed the man, looking past Fubuki to see even more new faces today. Faces who happened to be hurt but smiling. "Und look. Your friends are hurt as vell!"
"Well that's why I brought them here. So you can help us get better." She smiled, glancing back at the sisters who still had no idea how the doctor could help. The doctor understood what Fubuki was getting at right away, complete with the girl giving him a wink.
"Ah, yes. I am not blind, my dear. I can see zat."
"Oh, wait! They haven't introduced themselves yet." The Destroyer said, stepping aside to allow the Light Cruisers to do their thing. They quickly and politely did so in their own ways. Naka being happy and proclaiming herself as the fleet's idol, Sendai introducing herself as a lover of battles especially at night, and Jintsuu introducing herself quietly and gladly.
"Guten Tag, girls. I am Doctor Ludwig. Now, please follow me und I vill have you out of here in no time."
Medic led them into his office where the girls still can't ignore how it looked like wild animals had been let loose inside the building. The doctor himself looked like he had been attacked by something as his clothes were ripped i some places and his hair was a little messy, but the scratches and bruises seen by Akatsuki and co earlier were already gone. Of course Fubuki and the Sendai sisters wouldn't have known about that, but it was still worth pointing out. Anyways, Fubuki was going to question the man about what happened here as soon as they stepped in that door had the man not immediately hassled her for getting damaged as seen above. Now seems like a good time as any to ask him.
"Uh... sorry for asking, but what happened here?" Sendai of all people asked, easily noticing that the doctor's office was little better than the rest of the infirmary. In fact, the office may have been the most wrecked room in this entire building just by looking at the mess.
"Ugh... some idiot I know teleported bread to me. Dummkopf..." Hissed the doctor rather unexpectedly, scaring them a bit even thought they had no idea what he was talking about. "Then ze bread came alive and attacked me. As you can see, I have successfully killed zem all except for zat one. Speaking of which, do not touch him." He warned, pointing at the harmless loaf of bread tied to a chair in the office. Naka was about to poke it right when he said that, and she nervously smiled while backing off from it as the doctor stared at her. Understandably, this weirded them out with what they saw as the doctor being crazy.
Anyways, so instead of having the girls sit down as the Light Cruisers thought he was gonna have them do, he merely told them to line up and stand still. Except for Jintsuu since she was fine, but she was expecting the man to be putting bandages and medicines and whatnot on them like a normal doctor. Her sisters were expecting the same as well, and they thought the man was only here to keep them from getting sick instead of actually healing them. That's what the Docks were for.
Well, he was far from a normal doctor as they will soon find out...
"Whoa! What's that?" Naka curiously asked as the man put on a backpack with a cannon-looking device connected to it with a hose. Medic merely glanced at her and then at Fubuki, both grinning. While Naka seemed childishly curious about it, her sisters didn't look so hot about it. Worriedly, they glanced at Fubuki who merely smiled as if nothing was wrong.
"Just wait..." The Destroyer told them, nodding toward the doctor to do what he needs to do. He nodded back and started chuckling evilly as he aimed the device at them all, an eerie red glow with electric sparks cracking as he pushed a lever forward.
"W-what are you doing!?" Sendai cried out, but it was too late.
A red beam of energy with red crosses sparkling about shot out of the cannon-looking device and struck Naka first, getting a startled yelp from the girl. Her sisters panicked and shouted out for him to stop, but then they froze solidly in place when they saw that Naka was getting better. All her injuries taken during battle had instantly started to heal at a rapid rate so long as the beam was trained on her, and in only ten seconds, Naka was perfectly fine.
Her sisters were quite surprised, but Medic didn't give them any time to voice their surprise when he began healing Sendai too. Not much else to say about this other than the end result was the same as with Naka. Sendai was healed to perfect condition in no time at all, and on that note, Fubuki as well.
"Zer we are! All better!" He smiled, powering the beam down. The man gave Fubuki a little fistbump in mutual satisfaction of seeing the surprise and excitement on Sendai and her sisters' faces. The Light Cruisers were at a total loss for words to describe their wonder at what just happened to them, frantically looking over their whole bodies to see that every injury was gone. Interestingly, even their clothes were all fixed with not even a tear in sight.
"Well? What do you think?" Fubuki eagerly asked them, being a little in wonder herself at how well it worked on something that was a little more than just bruises.
"Wow! Naka-Chan's feeling all better!" Said girl happily cheered, striking a cute little pose.
"T-this is incredible!" Her older sister Sendai gasped in delight.
"Amazing... how did you do that?" Jintsuu asked in wonder.
"Just with the help of a little invention of mine..." The doctor chuckled, holding up the Medigun.
"Oh, thank you so much doctor! Now Naka-Chan can perform tonight!" The little idol continued to cheer in her signature way, even throwing herself onto the doctor and hugging the tall man in thanks. Her sisters were thankful as well, but they did have to pull Naka off of him when the doctor started gasping for air.
"Oof! Ah... you're welcome, my dear..." He wheezed with a smile. After taking a moment to catch his breath, he laid the Medigun down on a table and took the backpack off. "Now, you three may go now. Fubuki and I have much to clean up, so I vill see again for your checkups after we are done."
The Sendai understood right away, voicing their high gratitude one last time with a bow before leaving, their spirits significantly raised for the day. Fubuki herself was very delighted to see that the Medigun worked just as well as the doctor said it would, and only even more so with the happy faces on her friends. She was an honest girl who wanted to do good indeed.
"Zat vent well.. now, where is Hibiki?" The doctor asked, noticing the absence of his adorable little blue assistant.
"Oh, she and her sister went to find their other sisters. Do you want me to get her?" Fubuki asked.
"Eh, no. Zat's fine." He sighed, handing Fubuki a broom. "Now we must hurry. Let's clean up as much of this as we can."
"What even happened here anyway?" The Destroyer asked as she started sweeping.
"I already told you. Some idiot I know began teleporting bread when he already knows vat happens when you teleport bread!" He hissed again, glaring at the load of bread tied to the chair. "Who knows how many more of zose disgusting things are running around here..."
"Uh... but... that's just a loaf of bread, doctor." Fubuki pointed out.
"I KNOW IT IS!" He shouted out of nowhere, scaring her. "BUT ZAT IS PRECISELY WHY IT IS EVIL! BREAD AND TELEPORTATION DO NOT MIX! AT LEAST PURE WHEAT BREAD AS ZAT IS HOW THE SELF-AWARE BEAUTY MARKS FORM!" Also out of nowhere, he randomly screamed and kick the chair with the bread down. "Zis bastard vill tell me how many more bread creatures are here!"
Fubuki yelped in fright as the doctor's strange more insane part of his personality was showing itself. She still couldn't get over how he could go from very polite to very crazy in an instant like that, but she was too frightened to question him lest he go crazy on her too. The doctor noticed his little assistant's fear and let out a sigh as he calmed down.
"I apologize my dear, but zese things are not to be trusted..."
"W-why do you hate bread?" She asked fearfully.
"No no no no, I do not hate bread. I hate bread creatures. Zis one is hiding it, but it will show its true form sometime soon. It happens to all bread zat has been teleported."
"Why do you keep talking about teleportation?" Fubuki asked, calming down a bit now that the doctor was relatively calm himself. That wasn't saying much since she already knew how he could instantly switch at any time.
"Well, maybe it's because zat's how I got here in the first place, my dear..." He sighed. "Not only that and the idiot who sent this bread here, some friends of mine have sent me a box full of 'supplies' and my own doves as well. Still vaiting on zat box..."
"Huh?" Fubuki blinked as she naturally didn't know a single thing he was talking about. "What doves?"
"Those doves." He merely pointed towards the window where a flock of doves she has never seen before were flying around outside.
She found it strange since entire flocks of doves like that were not a common sight at all, but she dismissed it as some kind of coincidence. Fubuki figured the doctor was still being crazy, and dismissed everything he was saying as just his delusions. Still, Fubuki was getting highly uncomfortable with being alone in a building with a person she knew was crazy.
"Uh... I think I'm going to get Hibiki-Chan anyway. S-so we can clean up faster!" She said as an excuse to leave. The doctor saw through it right away, but he decided to let her go anyway. Having Hibiki here would speed things up.
"Fine. Bring her and please come back."
"I will, doctor!" The girl assured him before hurriedly leaving the Sick Bay.
(...)
Right then, so Tenryuu led her little bunch of Destroyers into the factory as that was the closest place for secret box opening they can find. Currently there was no one here except Yuubari, and although they didn't see her, they could definitely hear that girl somewhere in the building working on some equipment like she usually is. Chances are that Yuubari is too distracted with her work or 'hobby' or whatever you would like to call it to come bother them, so they were clear.
"Alright... put the box down here." She ordered them, the tired girls plopping the heavy crate onto the floor. Grinning, Tenryuu picked up a crowbar and approached the crate. "Let's see what's in this thing..."
With a thump, the crowbar was jammed into the top of the crate. A little bit of strength on the Light Cruiser's part and then the lid popped right open, she then completely removing the top to reveal...
...another box. Technically it was a safe that snugly fit into the crate, but it was still a freaking metal box when it comes down to it. No wonder why this thing was so heavy...
"What the!? Who puts a safe in a crate?" Tenryuu frowned, somewhat annoyed that even a box was trolling her. Absolutely true considering the safe had a dial and a keypad that both had to be unlocked to open the safe.
"Oh, look! There's a note on this one too!" Inazuma then grasped another note and found that she couldn't understand a single thing on it. The letters were in the Roman alphabet, but the language was not English. The others gathered up to see too, but the only one who understood anything was Lebe since the writing was in German. She began translating shortly after reading it.
"Are you sure that you are Doctor Ernst Ludwig? You cannot open it if you are not him." Lebe read the first half of it but wasn't able to read the other half for the following reason. "Uh... and the rest of it is in Russian. I don't think we can open this safe Frau Tenryuu."
"We'll see about that..." Tenryuu growled. There's no way a simple note on a safe was gonna defeat her! Grabbing a sledgehammer laying nearby, she mustered up all the might she could into slamming the thing down onto the safe. She hoped that it would at least pop it open, but no such luck since the damn thing was perfectly fine without even a scratch.
"...are you really that weak?" Akatsuki couldn't help but ask, earning a fierce glare from Tenryuu that made her regret saying that right away. "S-sorry!"
"Should we really be doing this, Tenryuu-San?" Inazuma nervously asked the older girl. "What if the doctor gets mad at us?"
"He won't." Tenryuu plainly answered, readying up for another slam on the safe which was just as ineffective as the last. She gave it another few solid hits where she increasingly got annoyed with how the safe wasn't budging. The only thing she managed to do to the thing was finally chip off a little of the black paint on it. "Ugh! Come on! Why is this thing so tough!?" She shouted.
"M-maybe we should try something else?" Lebe suggested. She and the other Destorywrs had covered their ears as every loud whack on the safe made an ear ringing metallic clank sound that hurt their ears.
Right when she suggested that, Yuubari peeked her head out from behind a wall. Apparently, the loud clanks were enough to distract her from work and she decided to see who else was here. At first she startled the Destroyers since she had been wearing a welding mask, but they quickly calmed down when she flipped it up to reveal her familiar face.
"Oh, hello! I didn't know you were in here too!" She smiled politely, noticing Tenryuu with the sledgehammer and the safe in the box. "Hmm? What are you guys doing?"
"Trying to get this stupid safe open..." Tenryuu grumbled, but then she had an idea. She slapped herself mentally for not thinking of it any sooner even though it was so obvious. "Hey, mind giving us a hand with this? This is my safe and I uh... forgot the code to it!"
"Oh, of course I'll help! Give me a second, I'll be right back!"
Yuubari's always is up for stuff like, and as such she excitedly left to get a blowtorch to cut straigt through this thing. The Destroyers were kinda just standing around patiently waiting for the thing to be open, but they increasingly got more paranoid that the doctor will be angry at them if he finds out they opened it before he did. Tenryuu had no such worries. In her mind, she could easily crush this man in a fight, crazy or not.
Then, quite a surprise came when Hibiki and Ikazuchi entered the room.
"There you are! We've been looking for you!" Ikazuchi went upon seeing the rest of her sisters here. The two Destroyers wandered in and immediately noticed that they were doing something with a safe. "Huh? What's that?"
"It's a safe belonging to the doctor." Lebe began. "Frau Tenryuu said we were going to open it and surprise him with what's inside."
"Yeah, but only if that stupid note wasn't written in two different languages..." Tenryuu groaned, still disappointed that she could only chip the paint and nothing else.
Ikazuchi and hibiki went to join up with the other Destroyers when Lebe passed them the note. She wasn't really expecting them to make anything out of it, but it looks like she forgot that Hibiki was a little versed in the ways of Russian writing. The stoic girl calmly took the note, stared at it for a bit, and simply went to the safe where she suddenly started dialling the combination and punching the code numbers in. In only a few seconds, the safe was open, shocking everyone.
"It's open." She calmly said. A complete contrast to everyone else who lost it at seeing it opened so easily.
"EHHHHHHH!?"
"H-how did you know the combination!?" Demanded Tenryuu who was embarassed that it took such a short amount of time for Hibiki to open it. Yuubari had come back by this point with a blowtorch, but she was a mix of both pleased and displeased to see that they got it open without her.
"I can read Russian." She plainly answered. "I suppose the doctor can too if this was supposed to be for him..." Well, that made sense. Hibiki's kind of known for her strange affinity for Russian things.
So with the safe finally open, the girls all gathered around to see what items were worthy enough to be placed in something as secure as a safe. First things first was that there was a tape recorder as the very first thing one would see if they looked into it. Tenryuu took it first and looked for the play button on it.
"Oh, there you are Hibiki!" Fubuki unexpectedly entered the room as well. "Shimakaze said she saw you come-"
"SHHHHHHH!" They all aggressively hushed her, gathering around the tape recorder to hear what was on it.
When Tenryuu finally pushed play, the words that came out of it were spoken by a man in a French accent. Naturally, none of them had ever heard this man before and had no idea who he was.
"Bonjour. If you are hearing this recording, then you are either Doktor Ernst Ludwig, could read Russian and German, or cracked the safe open. I will assume that you are the first option. Ernst, we have sent you this safe containing a Reanimator, your Maschinenpistole that you forgot to take, several first-aid kits, ammo, and a lunchbox full of Sandviches. We would have sent you a Teleporter, but I decided against it lest you are not the one who opened this safe."
Some of the Destroyers kinda cringed at hearing that last part for obvious reasons.
"Oh yes, and Soldier has also stuffed your doves into the portal and sent idiotic amounts of bread as well. I hope you receive the doves and not the God forsaken bread... Engineer is working on a way to make the portal stable so we can safely come looking for you. I can only hope that you are still alive in wherever you are in, mon ami."
The recording stopped there, leaving the girls very confused and wondering just what the connection between the new doctor and whoever sent this box to him was. Speaking of which, they immediately got to work picking apart the contents to see the things sent to Medic.
"Whoa..." Lebe gasped at taking hold of a modified MP40, the 'Maschinenpistole' mentioned by the Frenchman in the recording.
Of course she would know what this was since she's seen it many times before back in Germany, but there was something about this particular gun that was different from the standard MP40. The trigger was replaced a sort of lever thing that functioned as the trigger instead, the framing and sights were painted white, there was what looked like some kind of battery messily taped on the bottom of the frame between the trigger and magazine, and perhaps most strangely of all, there was this strange arrangement that she didn't know the purpose of with a vial of reddish-pink liquid connected to a thing on back the receiver and to the bullet ejection port. The magazines for the weapon for rather strange too. There were the standard stick magazines albeit painted white and a red medical cross on them, and unusual drum magazines that had a similar red medical cross on them as well.
As for the other items, they pulled out this large blocky rectangular device which they guessed was the 'Reanimator', a lot of first-aid kits and pill bottles painted white and cyan with a medical symbol on them, and a lunchbox full of sandwiches as the Frenchman said there was.
"I don't get it. Who is this guy and why did they send these things to him?" Tenryuu wondered, all thoughts of getting back at the man replaced with just pure investigative instinct.
"W-where did you find this?" Fubuki stuttered, noticeably looked paler than usual. The doctor did mention something about teleportation and stuff being sent to him, and she was terrified to find out that he was not just being delusionally crazy when he said that.
"It came out of nowhere and landed right in front of us!" Akatsuki answered, Inazuma backing that claim up as well as Lebe. Oh and before I forget, Yuubari was still in the room as well for she wondered what this was all about. She had absolutely no idea what was going on nor did she know that this involved the base's new doctor that she hasn't met yet.
"S-so... you're saying it... it teleported?" Fubuki gulped frightfully.
"It certainly sounds like it did..." An unmistakable male voice said from seemingly nowhere, startling all of them so much that they screamed.
"AHH! DOCTOR!?" Fubuki cried out in terror, frantically looking around for the man as did the others. Of course everyone else was startled and scared too save for the Light Cruisers. Tenryuu was scared a bit by the surprise, but she otherwise kept a fierce lookout for wherever he was while Lebe and Destroyer Division Six crowded around her for safety, shouting in fright. Yuubari was just kinda standing there, still having no idea what's going on or what's wrong.
"Where are you!? Show yourself, coward!" Tenryuu shouted, ready to send fists flying at the first sign of the man.
"Ugh, I'm right here! No need to yell!" Said the man as he covered his poor ears, rather anti-climatically entering from the entrance where he stood next to Yuubari, giving her a nod as greeting as neither of them had seen each other before. "Guten Tag, everyone..." He trailed almost menacingly, glancing at each of the startled faces in the room as he casually walked to the safe. "I see you have found ze supplies my friends have sent me."
"H-how did you know we were here?" Fubuki shivered, now almost as pale as an Abyssal girl. Nearly all the girls turn that level of pale when the man picked up the MP40 and inspected it.
"I didn't. I was simply taking out ze trash when I saw Hibiki walk in here with her sister." Shrugged the man, making everyone cringe in fear as he snapped the charging handle of the weapon back to check if there was a round a chambered in it. "I decided I'd come and get her myself when I zen saw you come in here as vell..." The man smiled evilly.
"PLEASE DON'T KILL US!" Ikazuchi blurted out in sheer terror, not being able to handle it anymore.
The other Destroyers soon broke down into the same behavior and started begging the confused man to not kill them, which he found completely unnecessary. Tenryuu on the other hand was not in such a state of fear, and the Light Cruiser instead threw herself at the doctor with a fist ready to place itself firmly on his face. She had let out a battle cry when doing so, but that cry soon turned into a regular cry when the doctor simply sidestepped her and allowed her to trip over an extended leg.
"Ah! Was ist los!? Has everyone lost zer minds!?" He shouted in confusion, wondering why everyone was behaving so strangely and treating him like he was an enemy or something.
"Lost our minds!? You're the one who's lost their mind!" Accused Tenryuu as she got back up and assumed a fighting stance.
"Ja, I know zat! I told you zis less than an hour ago, but vhy is everyone begging me to not kill zem?"
"Y-you're... not going to kill us?" Inazume sniffled, tears flowing down her cheeks.
"Oh, Heavens no, my dear girl..." Sighed the man, pulling out a handkerchief and wiping the tears off of the poor cutie's face. "I already told you zat I would never dream of hurting you unless exact conditions are met!"
"Then why were you acting so evil just now!?" Tenryuu demanded to know. To be fair, the doctor did seem pretty menacing when he showed up.
"Evil? But zat's just how I look by default, my dear! My facial expressions typically range from polite and friendly to smug and evil when I am in situations like this. I even studied my face a mirror for a whole month to know zis!"
"Oh, well... how much of that did you hear?" Wondered Fubuki who had significantly calmed down. The others had calmed down too, but they still had their guard up considering this man still had a gun, albeit an unloaded one, in his hand. Then there's Yuubari who still had no idea what was going on here or why this man was so weird.
"I came just in time to hear Spy's message to me." He answered, setting the MP40 down and looking through the things that were sent to him. Huh, and I was wondering why zose three had a large crate earlier..." Softly chuckled the man, glancing at Lebe and co as he remembered getting thrown out of the infirmary window and seeing them standing outside.
"Spy? Is that the name of the French person?" Asked Akatsuki, breaking away from the 'defensive formation' of huddled together Destroyers.
"Zat's both his job title and 'code name' if you will. His name is actually Jacques Moreau, and he's a good friend of mine. Oooh, zis looks good..." Whistled the man as he inspected the device which was apparently a 'Reanimator'. "Ah, and of course my Russian friend would send me Sandviches. Mikhail's a good man..."
"Hey, who are thees guys and why did they send you all this?" Tenryuu asked as she was prying for more information. The Light Cruiser honestly didn't even know how to feel about this guy anymore. She wasn't sure if she should despise his guts for being weirdly evil crazy, or if she should be curious about his mysteriousness. The man himself didn't seem that secretive at all, but there was still practically nothing known about him despite this.
"Because zey are my friends and I have not seen zem ever since a Teleportation accident sent me here." The man shrugged, saying that whole sentence in the most casual way possible even though that was far from a normal thing. "Now... Hibiki, Fubuki, let's get back to ze infirmary. We really need to clean ze place up!"
There were still tons more questions that they wanted to ask him, but the doctor insisted that he'd get going now alongside his assistants. He had Fubuki and Hibiki help him with carrying the safe back to the infirmary while leaving the rest in wonder of his talk about teleportation and stuff. That man was crazy and there was no denying that, but all of a sudden, some things that he's said don't seem that outlandish anymore...
Oh yeah, and Yuubari needed to be filled in by the others with what's going on still. Can't just leave her own questions hanging like that just because all the other questions are about the doctor.
My man Medic literally got sent a care package. Woooo! Also, it seems like the mystery of the Medic just gets more complicated as the more the girls find out, the more questions they have about him.
So I do not have a lot else to say other than expect something big to happen next chapter. What it is I can't say because I don't know myself, but we'll all see what I come up with whenever it does appear.
Review Responses:
A Special Kind of Stupid: Really now? What made you laugh?
FuryFire - The Easiest of 8: It's a little more than paranoia, my man...
Fantasyranger645: JUST YOU WAIT!
Doctor Homicide 157: Now you know.
The Mercenary Prime: Turns out it was a care package, so yeah it was a good thing.
Caddy: Ayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
GhettoZorcress: Blocked for spam again.
FalconHockey102: Thanks my man.
Cpl. Asylum: Well turns out you didn't need to wait long for it's already updated my guy. Enjoy your own day as well!