GadielMay 2, 12:42 pm, Canberra, Australia
Gadiel was torn. On the one hand, Medina didn"t seem like the most reliable person. Her first impression was not great. She revealed that she almost killed them because she forgot to disarm a trap, then went on to ruin the lunch she was making. Gadiel was also feeling quite petty about how the pizza man was able to get in without much trouble.
On the other hand, this was really good pizza.
"I got just all the pizzas cause I didn"t know which toppings you liked," said Medina worriedly. "I can be indecisive like that sometimes."
Gadiel"s mouth was too full of cheesy, bread-y goodness to respond.
"And you"re apparently rich enough to afford to be indecisive," said Tarik in his stead. Not that he was above pizza.
Medina smiled sadly.
"Yeah...well, there"s not much of us left anymore, so all the money is just..."
She trailed off, looking out to the backyard. Tarik and Gadiel shared a look. Gadiel reluctantly put down the slice of pizza he was holding, and swallowed his food.
"When you say us..." he began.
Medina blinked in surprise, looking back at the two of them. Suddenly, she stood up, and walked over to the room the boys came in from; the reading room.
"Right! Yeah! Us, the team. The gang," she said, going in there.
"We didn"t actually have a proper name for our group," she called out from the other room. "Mostly because everything we came up with was pretty dumb."
"That sounds about right," Tarik muttered. Gadiel raised an eyebrow, making a face that said "you"re right, but be nice."
Medina came back from the other room with a large, blue, leather-bound book, and dropped it on the table with a thud. She opened it up, to reveal a picture of seven people, all smiling for the camera, sitting around this very table.
"This was us," she said, and sighed.
"Was?" Gadiel noted as Medina sat down.
She nodded, and began to tell them about the fall of their group.
"First, you have to understand what we are," she said. "We"re a group dedicated to protecting the world from the monsters coming from the other world until the Vestiges of the Sun and Moon reappear."
She then went on to explain that their group was actually quite new. They had been founded by someone by the name Jonny Xiu; an Australian born Chinese man who grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne.
"Apparently, his family had a history of fortune tellers," said Medina, taking a slice of pizza. "He didn"t believe in the supernatural at the time, but he was brought up on it since he was a kid."
Growing up, he hadn"t believed in any of the mystical beliefs of his parents, but he always held a certain respect for them. He found it interesting the way superst.i.tions and mystical remedies were preserved and kept alive. As such, he started to look into them, and soon became an academic on the relations.h.i.+p between cultural beliefs and modern practices.
His research into how ancient practices became modern-day superst.i.tions was interesting enough for him to be offered a place as a professor at the ANU. Using their resources, Jonny made a startling discovery.
"He was looking into old myths and the usual, when he stumbled across the legend of the Sun and the Moon," said Medina. "So, the story goes-"
"We know," interrupted Tarik.
Medina blinked.
"About the families and stuff?"
"And they ripped the heavens out of spite and all that, yeah we know," said Tarik.
"What did you think? Their relations.h.i.+p is sooooo sweet, isn"t it?" Medina suddenly gushed. "The way their romance slowly grew was just so romantic!"
Gadiel raised an eyebrow at this sudden display of fangirling. He looked over at Tarik, who seemed to be torn between wanting to flip the table over, and join Medina in fangirling.
"...it was really cute," said Tarik, giving into his love for the story in the end. Medina went on a little more about her favorite parts of the story, until Gadiel coughed loudly.
"Um, right, yeah," she blushed before continuing with the story.
The startling discovery was the awakening of his powers. Coming in contact with the story had triggered a vision, showing him the future.
"The world was in chaos," said Medina, her solemn expression completely at odds with her previous mood. "Entire landma.s.ses, countries had been razed. The Demon Lord had destroyed the world"s fragile peace with a single attack."
Horrified by these visions, Jonny rejected them at first. He explained it away as hallucinations, as a stroke, or something that wasn"t the supernatural.
But the more he denied it, the more world seemed to conspire to prove it was real. He started getting visions regularly. He went to the doctors, but all of his tests said that he was healthy. He went a therapist and psychologist, but neither of them helped.
Finally, as a test, he decided to try and test one of his visions. Needless to say, when he went to look for what the vision showed him, he found it.
"A monster," said Medina. "A foot soldier, but a monster nonetheless."
After barely escaping with his life, Jonny was forced to realize that none of this was a fake. All of this was real. The end of the world was coming, and only he could stop it.
It was at this point that Gadiel realized that he had stopped eating. Somehow, he had gotten sucked into the story. He sneaked a glance over at Tarik, who seemed similarly entranced. Well, he was frowning in that way that meant he was listening.
"He started to research into his own family history," Medina went on, oblivious to Gadiel"s realization. "Looking into the power he awakened, and started to prepare."
From his research, he knew that the Vestiges would appear in about a year, once things started to get worse. Therefore, his goal was to make things as easy as possible for them once they appeared.
"He tried to find other people with supernatural abilities," said Medina. "He figured that if he had powers, and that if there were some truth to this whole Sun and Moon thing, there would be some other people with powers on Earth."
"So you all have powers?" Tarik suddenly interrupted.
Medina blinked in surprise, and adjusted her gla.s.ses.
"We did," she said. "We hunted monsters together."
"If you don"t mind me asking," said Gadiel, "what"s your power?"
Media coughed and looked away.
"I do mind, actually," she said. It was Gadiel"s turn to blink in surprise. He hadn"t expected her to refuse. It seemed like she really didn"t want to talk about her power.
"Sorry," he said reflexively.
"It"s okay. You don"t-" she caught herself before going on. "Anyway, he got a group of us all together."
With a little practice, it wasn"t too difficult to use his power to find other people with powers. Together, they had pledged to find monsters and prevent the creation of Monster Nests.
"It started really well," she said, looking out the window once more. Outside, a breeze blew over the gra.s.s, the skies vast and blue.
"So the group fell apart?" asked Gadiel. "We can ju-"
He suddenly felt a hand on his arm; Tarik had reached out. He shook his head, telling Gadiel that it wasn"t the case.
"Kind of," said Medina, oblivious to this interaction. "They all died."
The silence was deafening. Gadiel felt like the world"s biggest idiot.
If the group had simply broken up, then they probably would"ve heard from someone after the Shopkeeper Incident. No petty grudge would overcome the purpose of the group (probably). The fact that no one went by the store was proof enough that they couldn"t.
"It was a new monster. We found her about a month ago," she said. "She created a Nest at the Riverside Plaza, in Queanbeyan."
"Probably cause no-one wanted to go there in the first place," said Gadiel automatically. Both Tarik and Medina gave Gadiel a look.
"Sorry," he muttered, face burning in embarra.s.sment. This was not the time for Queanbeyan jokes.
Medina smiled sadly.
"Daisy said the same thing," she said. "She was always making Queanbeyan jokes."
They sat in silence for a while.
"Was the shopkeeper Jonny?" asked Tarik.
Medina looked up, shaking herself out of her daze.
"Yeah, he had a shop," she said.
She then explained that they had found the pendants at a Monster Nest, and Jonny decided to open a shop to make it easier for the Vestiges to find.
"He used to say it would be easier to find there than in Wagga Wagga," she said, smiling at the memory.
"So you all went around Australia finding these Monster Nests?" asked Tarik.
She confirmed it, explaining that one of their members was the daughter of a mining magnate. She had apparently opened an account for the group that gave them access to millions.
They talked a little more about the group, before Tarik finally steered the conversation towards what they had actually come for.
"We"re the Vestiges," he said plainly. "You probably figured that out."
Medina nodded.
"We came here because we think a monster is targeting you," he said. "And judging from your story-"
"You"ve already been in contact with Ai?" said Medina, surprised.
Gadiel and Tarik exchanged a look.
"She"s the one who killed the team then?" Tarik asked.
Medina nodded.
"She was the monster at the Queanbeyan Nest," she said, balling a fist. "How does she know about me? I never went to the nest."
"She probably found out from Jonny," said Tarik. "When she found the library under his shop."
"Jonny had a library under his shop?" said Medina, shocked.
Gadiel frowned. She didn"t know about the library under the shop?
It was their turn to explain, and they told her everything they knew. Medina listened to their story without interrupting.
Once they were done, she fell into a deep contemplation. As she was thinking, her hands slowly moved towards the pizza, seemingly autonomous from her thoughts. Slowly, she began to eat pizza, her expression grim.
The entire scene was somewhat comical to Gadiel. It seemed weirdly at odds with the situation. Then again, he did empathize with Medina"s apparent need to eat pizza right now. In fact, if she didn"t mind, he was going to take a slice right now…
"I got it," said Medina, dropping her half-eaten pizza to the floor. "You came here because you wanted our group to help you defeat Ai, right?"
While Gadiel was busy screaming internally from the fallen pizza, Tarik answered affirmatively.
"Then please, let me help," she said, eyed burning. "I know I"m not very reliable, and you just met me, but I"ll do my best to support you guys!"
Gadiel couldn"t help but feel for the girl with pa.s.sionate eyes in front of him. He felt a bit like an interviewer, like he was taking in applications for something.
"I mean, this is what we came here for," said Tarik casually. "You"ve been at this for a while; you probably know more about monsters and their weaknesses than we do."
"Then it"s decided!" she declared, striking a pose. "I will be your Coach Medina, training you on how to fight monsters!"
Gadiel and Tarik shared another look. This girl was seriously uncool. Would she really be able to teach them anything?