Rigid paradise: Rigid paradise

The day had been nothing but normal, thus far.

Suika was trying to balance finances a bit, in preparation for a hefty job she wanted to pay for. It was boring, but necessary.

It was another day, completely unextraordinary. Yuugi was doing whatever somewhere else, Suika couldn’t care – while Tuesday had headed out to spend time in the Ruins that sat below the space station city for the day.

 

At least, until a familiar voice came from down the hall.

 

“Suiiiiiikaaaaa! I hope you got your weirdo occultist stuff readyyyyy!”

 

Oh, Tuesday was back. Suika hadn’t expected them to return so early, so she was wondering what must’ve happened – and why they seemed so eager to request that she get her occult supplies ready.

 

Thankfully, Suika wouldn’t be left to wonder much longer – since Tuesday quickly made their way down the hall and into the space Suika was working in… carrying a dead body over their shoulder. They set the body onto the room’s couch, before gesturing at it.

 

“Ta-da!”

 

“Tuesday, what the FUCK?!” Suika exclaimed in response.

She was preparing to chew Tuesday out, but Tuesday seemed to predict she’d do so, and preemptively tossed her a lanyard they’d been holding.

 

The lanyard, from a rough visual examination of the ID picture, must’ve belonged to the corpse in the room.

 

Dr. Huo Qing’e

Chief examiner of technologies

Megalopolis

SECRET SERVICE MISSION 618

 

And Suika’s expression promptly went from disgust to one of confusion and intrigue.

 

“What the hell was a Megalopolis doctor doing in the ruins, completely unprotected? Under… a secret service mission order?”

 

“See!! It’s weird, right? I thought, I dunno… you keep talking about the tonansomething in the ruins… maybe she’d have answers?”

 

“...She’s dead, Tuesday.”

 

“Then what’s with all the crazy occult stuff you got laying around?! I dunno, I thought you’d be into making zombies, or whatever!”

 

Suika just groaned.

 

“Something like that is an incredibly intensive process of calling to earthen spirits and divine energy, whether or not I could even pull it off is…”

 

“Well… if it helps, I figure the body’s been laying where it was for a while, to a point where whatever divine energy was soaked in prevented decay. That’s gotta help, right?” Tuesday said.

“Plus, I think it’d be a neat way to spit in the face of that ‘old hag’ you have a hate-on for, proving her wrong, or whatever.”

 

Suika didn’t like other people telling her what to do.

But… Tuesday did make a compelling case.

 

“Alright.” Suika started, taking a sharp inhale and getting up from her chair.

“But you’ll need to cooperate. Try and find whatever you can about this ‘mission 618’, and unless you’re willing to let me get blood from you, grab some of Yuugi’s nihiline.”

 

“Won’t Yuugi be mad about that?” Tuesday asked.

 

“I can deal with however she wants to take that out on me if I can get this right.”

 

Tuesday nodded, and got up to grab what Suika had requested.

Meanwhile, Suika went to examine the body. Tuesday was right – it was in very good condition, appearing no more than freshly deceased – despite it being more likely than not that it’d been at least a few days of sitting out in the open.

 

Suika grabbed a canvas floor covering from a shelf, along with some surgical gloves, and got to work.

 

The basic sigil to call the earthen spirits was the same for everything, and was something Suika could replicate without reference at this point.

When Tuesday returned with some of the nihiline she’d requested, Suika made the cut on the palm of her own hand in order to get blood to mix in with it.

 

Nihiline, though more commonly used by Yuugi as a psychedelic drug, also had the unique property of containing very trace amounts of a divine conductor chemical due to how it was sourced. While Tuesday’s blood probably would have been a better option due to it containing more, Suika was well aware of how uncomfortable Tuesday was with getting their blood drawn.

So, all Suika could do was hope that enough of Yuugi’s stash would be enough.

 

With the blood and nihiline mixed, Suika now had a basis to continue drawing the sigil with, as well as the charms to conduct the energy through the corpse in order to reanimate it.

 

While Suika was busy drawing the sigils on the charms, Tuesday was sitting idly by on their laptop, checking their backdoor of the Megalopolian government’s archives for anything relating to ‘secret service mission 618’.

 

“Hmm…” Tuesday murmured.

“There doesn’t… seem to be much of anything about the mission. Like, at all.”

 

“Seriously, nothing?” Suika replied.

 

“Well, I mean, there IS an empty archive for it, under management of a ‘Dr. Hollyhock’… but the archives say it’s been left completely empty for sixteen years. Not a single recorded addition or edit.”

 

“That is… strange.” Suika huffed, before getting up from her crouched position above the corpse, and grabbing some dust masks from the shelf where she kept her supplies. She put one on herself, and tossed one to Tuesday.

“Put this on, it’s go time – and nihiline fumes are always nasty.”

 

Tuesday nodded, and followed Suika’s instructions.

 

At this point, the body had been moved to the center of the floor sigil, and was covered in multiple paper charms.

The ‘ritual’ itself was actually fairly simple, the hard part was more setting up the energy conductors correctly and even obtaining the amount of energy required in the first place.

 

With a deep breath in, Suika held up one of the paper charms and a lighter – she set the lighter up to the charm, and as the spark conducted the energy within, she quickly slammed it into the ground – and with an odd glow, the charm absorbed into the floor.

Starting a chain reaction, the charms over the body began to glow brightly as well, and the body convulsed slightly… before the glow dimmed, and the body ceased movement.

 

“Shit…!” Suika hissed under her breath, putting her hands in her hair with a scowl.

 

“Did… you do it wrong?” Tuesday asked.

 

“No, of course not, do I look like an amateur?!” Suika said in response.

“It… it was close. But there’s not enough energy…”

 

Suika sighed, and there was a period of silence before Suika faced Tuesday again.

 

“Bring me all of the nihiline in Yuugi’s stash.”

 

“All of it?! Dude, she’ll kill you!” Tuesday replied, in disbelief.

 

“She won’t. She can’t.”

 

“...Alriiiiiight, if you say so.” Tuesday said with a nod, and promptly walked off to go through Yuugi’s stash again.

 

So, the process repeated – Suika had to remake all the charms she’d initially prepared, as well as the ground sigil. It was getting difficult, knowing she couldn’t afford to draw the unique sigils on the paper charms wrong, yet her hand was beginning to cramp up from it all.

 

Try two.

 

Lighter to the charm, slam it into the ground.

 

The charm absorbed again, and the chain reaction began once more. The body resumed its convulsing, though much more aggressive this time. Then, without any warning…

A blood-curdling scream.

 

It was awful on its own, but it came alongside various parts of the body distorting physically in odd ways. The sight was too much for Tuesday in particular due to the complicated events of their past, and caused them to yelp and crunch up, hiding their face in one of the couch’s pillows.

 

Then, it ceased, and Dr. Huo Qing’e’s eyes fluttered open.

 

The final step. Suika placed another charm she’d been holding by on her forehead – intended to grant her control over her newly-reanimated subject.

 

“Goodmorning, Doctor. Mind telling me what you were doing in the Ruins?”

 

A pause.

Qing’e’s voice was a groan for a few seconds, before suddenly, the control charm Suika placed… disintegrated.

 

“What kind of question is that?! Who are you?! Where am I?!”

 

...Suika hadn’t considered the possibility of her subject managing to overcome her control through sheer force.

Still, Qing’e was locked into the position she was in on the floor until Suika unbound her.

 

“Alright.” Suika said with a bit of a groan.

“Let’s start with names, shall we? You are… Doctor Huo, correct?”

 

“I lost the rights to a title that official years ago.” Qing’e scoffed.

“As far as I’m concerned, you can call me whatever you want – but I believe I’m owed a good explanation.”