Editing BlazBlue:Spiral Shift - Hyokujin no Eiyu (section)

===Part 2===

──in!!

The sound revived him.

The roaring sound of flames receded like a wave and in its place is now the dull drive of machinery along with the sound of human voices flooded Jin's consciousness.

“Jin!! Hey, Jin! Stay with me!"

"......ah... what is...?"

As if with a click of a switch, Jin's vision became clear and fixed.

The area was dimly lit and surrounded by achromatic colors such as black and gray. The small lights were pale, and the air was cold as metal. Before his eyes, stood a figure of a man with a large high stature. He grabbed Jin by both his shoulders with his large hands and shook him.

When Jin blinked a few times and looked up, Grimwood, the man who had been holding his shoulders, dropped his broad shoulders and breathed deeply.

“Don’t give me that. You suddenly stiffened and stopped moving in a panic. What in the hell happened to you?”

“...No, I was...”

As he tried to answer, Jin lost track of his words. He had no idea what had happened.

(A hallucination?)

He hasn't been snapped back for a while now, but he still had a numb feeling in the back of his head.

“I'm sorry, I'm fine. I just got dizzy all of a sudden..."

Holding his cheek and forehead with the palm of his hand as if to confirm that he was really here, Jin let out his voice along with his choked breath.

He suddenly felt a sharp gaze on him and turned around, and there was Karenjina, glaring at Jin with a face that was clearly in a bad mood. Her deep navy eyes collided with his gaze and Karenjina blatantly looked away.

(...She's like a jealous child.)

She likely didn't like the fact that Jin had worried Grimwood, but he didn't have the time to point it out and get himself in trouble. Letting out another sigh, he shook off the annoyance and looked around with eyes that finally reflected a sane reality. While Jin was in a daze, the soldiers had apparently gone to check on the equipment they had lined up. The three who had dispersed came running back to Grimwood.

“Captain, all the equipment's been destroyed. It's unlikely we'll be able to see the data inside."

“No luck here either. What is the cause of all this violence? Communications and recording facilities are also dead."

“I see..."

Grimwood's face twisted in bitterness. One of the last to return opened his mouth, his words and expression muddled, as if he was having trouble saying it.

“Err. There's one thing that's been bothering me...”

“What is it?”

“Aren’t the corpses in this room too "clean"? I didn't check all of them, but compared to the ones before we went down here, they are completely  uninjured. It's as if only their souls have been pulled out... It's creepy."

With these words, he must have remembered some of the faces he'd seen while checking the equipment. The soldier shuddered and rubbed his arm vigorously. Without saying a word, Jin approached the nearest body. It was the one that had fallen right next to the entrance. It was lying with its arms outstretched in a desperate attempt to find a way out. When he turned the body over from its prone position, he saw that it had died with a miserable expression on its face, twitching with fear.

Honoka, who peeked in with Jin, let out a twitching scream and backed away to escape.

Indeed, there was no resemblance of any injuries. In fact, there was no reason for the corpse to have died, as if only the soul had been extracted.

(The soul... You don’t mean the hallucination I just had was-)

With a tingling headache, Jin remembered the head of the Black Beast that had popped out of the Cauldron earlier.

The monster that sucked up the souls of humans just by touching them. The black head that absorbed the human of that time was probably the seithr from the Cauldron. Jin wondered if that scene had actually happened here. If so, what the hell was that black head?

“Tsk…..”

As he thought about it, another sickening sensation crawled up his spine and he shook his head, trying to stop thinking about it. He didn't know what's going on with him, but he needed to get rid of any signs of strangeness. He was on a mission as one of the 9th squad.

Grimwood looked around again and placed the great axe he was carrying on the floor.

“...I heard that Kokonoe of Sector Seven was here, but... it seems that she escaped.”

The giant captain muttered while pondering something.

Honoka looked up quickly at his words.

"Does Kokonoe mean the Dr. Kokonoe? Isn't she the famous Grimalkin of Sector Seven?”

Jin had heard that name before. She is a scientist belonging to Sector Seven, and her genius mind is said to be unrivaled. She has the blood of a beastkin, and the ears and tail of a cat, which gives her a special appearance.

Grimwood looked down at Honoka and nodded.

“Yeah. I've heard that she was taking part in the Nox Nyctores research that was being conducted here. I was told to 'politely' take her in if I found her. ...... but there's no sign of her."

“If Kokonoe of Sector Seven was here, no wonder they deployed so many troops.”

Jin said quietly as he moved away from the corpse and looked at the large device at the back of the room.

You could say that Kokonoe was the brain of Sector Seven itself. If Kokonoe could be eliminated, it would be easy for the Librarium to overpower Sector Seven. That's how important she is and that's also why she is considered as so troublesome. With this in the picture, it could be seen that this was not just a usual laboratory.

If a person of Kokonoe's talent had been in and out of this place, she must have been doing some kind of special research. What it was, though, was something they had no way of knowing now.

“What do you think, Karenjina?"

Grimwood turned and asked Karenjina, who had been crouched down for some time and was just about to stand up.

Jin didn't understand the meaning of Grimwood's question. What is the "What" here? But despite Jin's small doubt, Karenjina's expression clouded over.

"...No. There are no survivors. Underground's wiped out."

She clearly said so.

How did she know? Jin was puzzled further. Grimwood not so. Why were they asking her? It was another group of soldiers who had been searching the room to check the equipment. Before Jin could ask that, Grimwood looked around at his men and said in a thick voice.

“That's it for the investigation. I'm going back upstairs. I'll contact headquarters."

“Oh, if so should I contact them? There are some things I haven't checked yet. If you want me to go back to the car and call them, I can do it by myself.”

Honoka put his hand on his chest and stepped forward, but Grimwood shook his head with a difficult look on his face.

“No. Let's all go back. I have a bad feeling about this place. We should get out of here as soon as possible-"

In the middle of his words, he suddenly heard a noise.

The sound, which was neither a rumble nor a thud, sounded like a creature crawling out from under something and for a moment everyone held their breaths and fell silent, then Grimwood turned and raised his axe that he just picked up from the ground earlier.

“Who's there?"

“Grimwood, t-that can't be!”

“I know."

Trying to calm Karenjina with his hand, who called out to him in panic, Grimwood stared at the area where the sound had come from in alarm. The sound came from the area where about five people were folded up and dead, slightly in front of a large device in the room.

There was no immediate reply. Honoka slowly retreated, and Jin prepared to move at any moment.

There was no sign of life. None. But...

The pile of corpses stirred, and one of the people underneath sluggishly got up.

“Wha…!?”

Karenjina choked out in astonishment at such absurdity.

"A Survivor?"

“No. Wrong.”

The soldier's words, shouted in an expectant but trembling voice, were dismissed with alarm by Jin.

“He's not alive anymore.”

It was a corpse. The corpse had suddenly risen and was heading straight towards them with the awkward movements of a puppet.

"W-WHAAAAA!! Lieutenant! Lieutenant!!"

Before they could fully comprehend the current situation, Honoka screamed and shouted. He shuddered exaggeratedly and pointed to a room with a lift in the back.

He could have guessed what was going on without looking, but he still looked back.

Just as expected. On the other side of the square entrance, countless corpses that were supposed to be lying in the room had all risen up and were heading towards them. Indeed, each corpse, one after another inside the room were starting to rise. It was not a number they could count on the spur of the moment.

"Wha-what should we do, Captain!?"

In dismay, one of the soldiers asked the obvious.

The first corpse that stood up was almost upon them. After slashing the body in half with a swinging axe, Grimwood turned around and shouted.

“Everybody, run!! Get to the lift!"

At that moment, as if he had been pushed back, Jin ran, knocking down the moving dead corpses that had been positioned between the room swith a single swing.