Ex Lacrima Remnant

Track #76 – Coda

“…earlier today, a small breach in the Zonta perimeter caused widespread panic. The swarm’s outbreak was stopped before it could spread outside of the buffer zone. The authorities have ordered an in-depth investigation of the defective hardware that facilitated the breach and its supplier, which is currently held under state secret…”

Mal groaned, swiped left with his finger. The PV channel on the flat display turned from the newscast to a more colorful animated show for children with cute unicorns, much to his relief. A bare, passing mention of the swarm made him act automatically to avoid every single scrap of news about it. Because, of course, that Anthony Whazzisname messed up big time. When his last message was broadcast, the micros in the direct range of Lagash’s comms were disabled, plus all those that were reached by the signal through satellite hoops of sorts – including the two offshoot Pangean outbreaks. Though, not all of the micros were affected. Some isolated swarms that already left the area of influence weren’t touched at all and went on in their ommy-nommy sound-driven rampage. Fortunately, though, the so-called Zonta perimeter was built in record time to deal with it and contain the damn micros - first, just by blasting ultrasounds with drones and other automatic flying systems, then by physically building a bulky network of broadcasters. Mal didn’t linger too much on those thoughts, though. He stretched a little instead, turned around to glance at the small number of patrons in the venue. Middle of the afternoon, the deadest hours. Still, more than enough people to justify keeping the café open. A kid’s voice caught his attention, a bright, excited voice that echoed all around the room.

“Unicorns! Unicorns! They’re so fluffy! Fluffy! Fluffy! Fluffy!”

It was a small girl, slamming her hands on the table. Ice-blue eyes, long brown hair arranged in a braided ponytail. And small roots clacking around her neck, right as her short back tendrils were dipping into a glass of iced water.

“Mom! Can I have a new unicorn plushie?! Please! Please!”

“You have already two of them, Spina!”

The mom in question was an adult rhizome, with ash blond hair, the same blue eyes as the kid and a scar running through her cheek, wearing a white t-shirt and a leather jacket.

“But… but other mom told me I can!”

At which point the gaze of the first rhizome landed on the second – one with brown eyes and a long brown ponytail of hair, styled much like that of the little girl. She was wearing a pink dress and was reading a paperback, a novel that Mal categorized immediately as ‘romance crap’ just by looking at its cover. The blond rhizome almost punched the table, while keeping the child at bay with her arm.

“You told her what, Callie?”

“…she was sad because her favorite character lost her wings in the show and…”

“Lagash take me, those plushies cost a lot money! Do I look like I’m shitting eas?”

“But Dee! We could always sell our lymph on the… umpf!”

The first rhizome pushed her hand on the latter’s mouth, suffocating the last few words, nervously glancing at the kid that was sitting with them as if to say ‘don’t say this in front of her’. Mal smirked, shook his head, went back to the counter, rested his elbows on it.

“I was shocked when I saw that blond gal, you know? She looks just like you!”

Another rhizome was standing behind the counter, a rhizome with similar ash blond hair and blue eyes, one Mal knew all too well – none other than Prim, staring at him while voicing her retort.

“I style my hair and my roots in a slightly different way. I don’t have a scar on my cheek. And she doesn’t like bunnies as much as I do.”

She was cleaning three glasses at the same time, putting her tendrils to good use, all while wearing a classy shirt with an open back that gave her enough mobility to exploit her rhizome biology. Of course, all while surrounded by at least five fluffy rabbits, jumping all around Café Riri. Mal couldn’t stop watching that scene. Prim, in her natural habitat, smiling. Crazy to think that there was a time in her life where she didn’t know how to do that. Now, every one of their days together was alike and relaxing in a similar way – feed the rabbits in the morning, groom their fur, open the café right after, start the coffee machines, let the small pests roam around the tables while Mal takes the orders. Their combined allowances and bonuses for, well, contributing to containing the swarm netted them enough to make true of their mutual promise. Away from the military, away from weapons, war, conflict. Serving coffee and cappuccino in a safe haven, a small Neodutch town close to the Pangean border, surrounded by rodents. The bunnies, of course, kept multiplying. First, it was just Nunu. Then, Sunu, Minu, Munu, Zinu and, last but not least, Rinu. Prim had taken care of naming all of them and, of course, Minu and Munu were twins from the same litter. The only name that she wouldn’t give was Riri – there could only be one Riri – the emotional support plushie that sat always with her when she was at the counter, when she went out for commissions and even when she went to the cinema to watch a movie with Mal (it was their bi-weekly tradition). Sharing a flat to keep costs down had been a good way to keep the ship afloat at first, but more than once Mal had to pay the price on living with a rhizome – including, but not limited to, plumbers being called on Sunday to unclog the toilet from her excess lymph. Now, they finally managed to get each their own small separate two-rooms apartment, with all the privacy and comfort it entailed. Prim nodded at him, waving one of her free tendrils, pointing it in a direction behind his back.

“Mal, could you bring this Riri Special and the chips to the kid? I still need to put together two Sweetie Buns, but the whipped cream is giving me a headache.”

Mal grabbed the tray, looked at the content: a bunny-shaped mug filled with chocolate-flavored oat milk and a bunny-shaped cookie on top of it, accompanied by a small bowl of chips – one of which was being stolen by Prim right under his gaze. Mal chuckled at the sight of the rhizome munching and crunching with puffed cheeks, all while preparing the missing sweet-flavored sides.

“Old habits die hard, huh?”

“…I love the texture and the crunchiness. This brand has a perfect mix of both. I needed to test twelve of them before finding the right combination.”

“I know, I know…”

Mal patted her hair, before grabbing the tray from the counter.

“Say, which movie are we watching tomorrow? It’s your time to choose.”

“Is that girl you like coming with us?”

“…nah. I don’t want you to third-wheel, you know? It’s, like, our ritual!”

Prim clapped her hands together, her eyes shone bright.

“No, no, no! Bring her, please! We go and watch ‘Silentium’ all together! The reviews say it’s super scary, even more than ‘The Face Collector’! I can’t wait!”

Mal’s mouth almost fell on the counter.

“…wait, how is that…”

“I read on the comnet that horror movies are super good for first dates! If the girl you are dating is scared, you can directly go for the hug and score first base! And maybe go for the kiss too! It’s the perfect situation, right? Right?”

Mal blinked for a long second. A plant girl playing cupid with second hand information. That was so Prim. He chuckled, shrugged, patted her hair again.

“Alright, but on two conditions: one – we invite Edera too, so that there’s at least four of us and, two – if my gal dumps me, you’ve gotta pay me dinner. Deal?”

Prim nodded, grinned from ear to ear, slammed her fist on the table.

“Deal!”

Mal took the tray, left the counter behind him, moving towards the table with the overexcited sapling, humming a cheerful tune. There was still a long way till closing time and wanted to enjoy it at its fullest.

**

“…and that’s who Graham Zonta was: a visionary! A man that knew what he wanted! In other words – his words… a true, unadulterated chad.”

Applause in the room, as the Assistant finished his speech. That was it, the inauguration of the Zonta pavilion of the local science museum. Data on rhizomes, notes on rhizome biology, sketches penned by Zonta himself (some rather crude erotic drawings too, in a room that wasn’t open to kids). The man, the legend was finally recognized as such. A man that gave his life for science. When he received the invitation to chair the ceremony in honor of his former mentor, the Assistant couldn’t feel more honored. True, Graham Zonta was a pervert. A man that thought with his private parts. A man that had an unhealthy obsession with feet, being stepped on, lesbian plants and no melanin. That man, though, was the reason why they were all standing there, alive, all while massive arrays of loudspeakers were confining the swarm inside a circular area known as the Remnant. Many called it Lagash’s Cradle instead, as the remains of the seedship were once hosted there – before the swarm itself, repulsed by the Zonta Wall, ate them all. Still, it was a pleasure to retread the history of such an illustrious master, one he served till the very end. He stepped back from the podium, meshed with the crowd. Zonta did something incredible to him – he gave him purpose. Purpose to follow his dreams, no matter how weird or impossible they sounded. So, the Assistant smirked, giggling inside. Graham Zonta managed to create sexy plant girls out of nothing but bunches of cells. There was no reason why catboys were out of his reach. Perfectly fit boys with six-packs and chiseled pecs, with fluffy cat ears, long tails and claws. That was his goal, the goal he set his sight on. Catgirls were overrated, but catboys – or, even better – cat femboys? That was a niche that needed a true chad. He pulled out sunglasses from his tuxedo’s pocket, wore them with a grin, while still inside the room. While he loved being stepped on too and stopped denying it, catboys would have made his hot, tall, muscle-laden Pangean best gal friend go on a gushing spree. He foretasted the moment of truth, the moment his name would join Zonta in the almanac of the great. His gaze met the hologram of his former boss, donning his trademark lab coat and shorts fit, his circular glasses always resting on his nose. The Assistant snapped his fingers at him.

“I’ll be the chad you wanted me to be, doctor! No, no, no! I’ll be even chadder!”

The Assistant couldn’t help but feel a little emotional, his eyes getting wet behind the sunglasses. He turned around, before that made him a coward, before his mind raced wild again.

In his chad-driven stupor, he thought he’d seen the hologram of his mentor smile, as impossible as it sounded.

**

“…and now we raise our glasses to our new Niteowl! One hurray for Agave!”

“Hurray!”

Ten voices echoed all together, all while Lenarea Mariakidis raised her glass, pushing the rhizome towards her, wrapping her with her massive arm. Agave basked in that moment, as alcohol flowed down her throat, with her new, shiny prosthetics giving her enough grip to gulp down a jug of beer. Mariakidis patted her head, laughed from the bottom of her heart.

“Look at you, gal! You shredded that test! I told ya, you’re a natural with a Seraph!”

“Zaiken! I want my Seraph to be called a Zaiken!”

“Of course, of course! Your Zaiken! Well, Owl Twelve ‘Zaiken’ sounds good, ain’t it?”

“It sounds awesome!”

Agave giggled, poured down more beer, all while being hugged and pushed and pulled by eleven humans. Her new squadmates. Her new family. She tried not to leak water from her eyes, but it was hard to contain her excitement. She was going to fly like Zaiken in a real-life Zaiken-like suit. Even if there were no active wars were she’d be deployed, there were several escort missions and general clean up operations to keep her occupied – all while soaring the sky in a mech. Mariakidis also told her that the Niteowls were in charge of inspecting the Zonta Perimeter and fly at supersonic speeds to report breaches as soon as they were found. That sounded super exciting, it was something that she couldn’t wait to be doing. She grinned from ear to ear, tapping her foot on the floor at the rhythm of the music. Sirtaki, it was called, a West-Pangean typical dance that came from old Terran documentaries. She liked how it started slow and then went faster and faster and faster. So, they were all together, dancing, eating and drinking, celebrating her entry as the new recruit. She couldn’t be happier if she wanted. When Felce told her about that opening, she didn’t know she could managed to do it – yet, she was there, on the top of the world. The tune went on and on, all while Captain Mariakidis made her dance with all of her new comrades, one by one. As the music stopped, Agave breathed deeply, tried to calm down. She wouldn’t have slept, that night. It was impossible, as excited as it was. So, why not partying longer?

She stared at the moon outside of the windows with dreamy eyes. Soon, she would have flown in the sky like she never did before.

**

“As much as I would love to say the opposite, ‘Prime Minister Geiger’ sounds unbelievably preposterous.”

Kamilou Papanastasis moved his knight on the chessboard, capturing a pawn. Vettor Geiger glanced at the remaining pieces, at the slight black advantage, took his sweet time thinking about a move that could restore the balance. He heaved a sigh, before grabbing his queen and moving it a couple squares farther.

“It does. I hate it.”

“But you, my dear friend, are indeed the prime minister of the Neodutch Republic.”

“Just a happy accident.”

Papanastasis moved his pawn one square forward, tapped the clock.

“Indeed a happy accident. Despite our differences, I cannot fathom how your nation could choose another, more suitable figure.”

Geiger stared at the pawn a little longer than usual, tapped his finger on the table.

“It’s all thanks to Commander… wait, no, Defense Minister Rysas. I didn’t even want to care about the elections, until…”

“Allow me to take a gander: until you received news that Max van Barens was running for office too?”

Geiger moved his bishop capturing the pawn that had just advanced.

“That guy has no decency. He’s a spineless brat that sold our country as soon as the Eastcol came knocking at the door. Nobody in the army liked him at all. Even more of a worm than Van Perens. So, Alessandra contacted me and… huh…”

Papanastasis smirked, placed one of his rooks in the middle of the board.

“…check.”

Geiger groaned, groomed his beard. He didn’t see that coming.

“Since when you’ve become so good at chess, Kamilou?”

“I doth wonder from whom I have learned, old friend.”

Geiger clapped his hands, before moving the chessboard aside, much to Papanastasis’s consternation.

“Pray, that wasn’t checkmate yet! You could have escaped my gambit at a moment’s notice…”

“Yes, but we’ve got some stuff to discuss, right? I wish we could settle everything with chess. It’s elegant and involves no bloodshed.”

He rolled out a staple of papers from a plastic folder, spread them on the table.

“Here’s the treaty I wanted you to read. I want this to be ironclad solid.”

Papanastasis snapped his mechanical fingers, crossed his hands under his chin.

“You do realize that we work for different countries, don’t you?”

“Oh, I do, I do, but see… if not even a stuck-up rules lawyer like you can find an issue in it, then it’s bombproof enough for the Eastcol jackals. ‘Sides, I’m sure your spies in my entourage have already scanned and sent it to Pangea – or are going to do that soon – right?”

Papanastasis chuckled, shook his head.

“Alright, then. Checkmate will wait. May I offer you a mug of tea, Vettor?”

“Only if you add some whisky in it and remove the tea.”

“Some things never change, huh.”

Papanastasis filled two glasses, gave one to his guest before taking his.

“To your new endeavor, old friend.”

“To the mess I’ll have to deal with.”

**

“Come on, seriously? Can’t you take a better look at it?”

“Listen, if I saw a man with a metal face and just one eye, I would have remembered him, right?”

“But he was spotted here!”

“Well, then good luck with finding who saw him.”

Felce growled, crunched the photo she held in her hand, left the man behind while chewing curses. Another failure. Nobody had seen the beefcake, even if the rumors on the comnet pointed at that remote refill station on the border with the Eastcol. She slowly walked back to her SUV, stepped into its driver seat. Her antlers were going to be a nuisance in a couple weeks, she should have started pruning them gently. Still, her target wasn’t waiting. Wherever that giant meatloaf ended up being, he couldn’t escape forever. She opened her folder, pulled out a couple printed sheets. The man known as Dobriovchka was an absolute cryptid. No real name given, no exact fingerprints match. A man that answered to his previous name was found dead years before, in weird circumstances that included a head transplant. Dobriovchka was more evasive than a Sasquatch, in an age where the comnet recorded anything and everything. Some claimed to have seen him driving delivery trucks in the Eastcol plains. Some swore to have witnessed him riding a motorbike in the night in the Southern Fringe. And some posted black and white abs and dick picks in explicit dating forums that looked like his – Felce never forgot that shape, after their single night together on Kaitos. Still, all attempts to track him down had been vain.

Which, if possible, made her search for him even more exciting. A true, living mystery. One she knew for sure that existed. One that she knew she could crack before anyone else on the planet. The metalhead with one eye. The anomalous, gray-skinned bodybuilder cyclops with an exhaust port on his neck. Stories about him spread like wildfire, after his sudden disappearance from Panopticon. Yes, everything started there – after the first rod hit Lagash. Nobody expected it to work, but Rysas wanted to try her luck anyway. As soon as the first rod struck and everyone started to cheer, the paranormal being known as Dobrio quietly disappeared – and took their armored ATV with him. After that, his tracks were lost completely, in a cloud of smoke and misdirection. If that weren’t enough, not even one day later someone (or something) broke into the living quarters of Father’s Assistant while he wasn’t around – only to steal a cage with two hummingbirds. Just that cage, nothing more. The same hummingbirds old man Geiger gave Lacrima as a gift, which were left under the Assistant’s care before the suicide mission to the seedship. No, that couldn’t be a coincidence. That six-pack-bearing giant had to be involved in that event too, somehow. She was sure of it.

Felce donned her sunglasses, checked her files one more time. The next rumor was about a massage parlor in Komezia, where a massive guy who always kept his face covered worked for a couple of weeks. She charted the route, looked at how many days it would have taken and how many cans of her lymph she would have had to sell on the BM to fund the trip. Thanks to her dealings with druggies, she had no shortage of eas, which made it extremely easy for her not to care about money. She penned a first route, marked two refill stations on the road and a couple cheap love hotels where she could rack up some more eas as a freelancer.

The mystery called Dobrio was still evading her attempts at tracking him, but not for long. Even on Neon, even on the other side of the universe, she would have found him. That was her new goal, one she would have pursued with all of her energies and resources: snatching the first real cryptid to add it to her collection.

“You ain’t gonna escape forever, meatloaf. You still owe me a full course of your water, from entrees to dessert.”

She set up the navigator, revved up the engine, floored the throttle.

Driving away in the desert, under the setting sun.

**

“Red mom, red mom! Look! Look! Is it a dolphin?”

“No, no. Dolphins are much bigger.”

The seagulls flew all over the beach, peeking from above at a peculiar scene. A small child, with roots around her neck, fiery red hair and red eyes, was splashing water all over the place, almost to the point of starting to swim but stopping just one meter before her little feet lost touch with the solid ground. All under the vigilant gaze of a rhizome with the same, fiery red hair, one whose right eye was replaced with a lily. That same rhizome that was pushing a wheelchair, occupied by a taller woman. Said woman was a rhizome too, with a white rose peeking out of her left eye socket, holding her partner’s hand in hers while watching the small kid play. Her vine arm was bringing an ice cream to her lips, one she was tasting slowly, with small bites all over its fluffy texture.

“So, Li? How does it taste?”

“Disappointing. But it feels good on the tongue.”

Oleander chuckled, pushed a straw hat on Lily’s head, almost making her spit her ice cream.

“Whyyy?”

“Because you’re being a dork again! ‘We should eat ice cream together’ here, ‘we should eat ice cream together’ there and then, spoilers, you don’t even like ice cream!”

Lily groaned, shoved the remains of the wafer in her mouth. True, she had never tasted ice cream before, but everyone said it was good. So, in her picture of a perfect family, ice cream was a must. Now she realized how bamboozled she had been by humans. Ice cream was just mediocre, but at least Cattleya seemed to like it.

“Dolphin! Dolphin! I wanna see a dolphin! Or a shark! Or a whale! Mooooms! Is a whale bigger than a shark? Spina says that whales are bigger, but she tells a lot of lies!”

Cattleya tiptoed back to the shore, pulled Lily’s hair in one hand, Oleander’s root scarf in the other.

“So? So? Whale or shark? Which is bigger?”

“Whale.”

“Shark.”

Oleander looked at Lily. Lily looked back at Oleander.

“Li, sharks aren’t that big. You know that, right?”

“…but in that movie, the shark ate a Wolstein whale in one go.”

“Jeez, Li! ‘Megalodhorror’ is not a documentary! It’s fiction, you absolute disaster!”

“You’re just salty because you screamed all the time while watching it and forced me to hug you.”

“That was your plan all along, right?”

“I’ll neither confirm nor deny it.”

Oleander rolled her eyes, almost tempted to release the lock on Lily’s wheelchair and let it roll down into the ocean. Only, of course, to rescue her bravely from the waves and snatch a kiss from her, before taking her prize in the comfort of their large bed. Still, taking advantage of her prosthetic leg felt wrong. Lily had never recovered completely, never managed to run again. Walk? Yes, albeit limping, but running was completely out of the question. Nevertheless, Cattleya didn’t seem to care. She was happy sitting in her taller mother’s lap, while her shorter mother was pushing the wheelchair around. That lazy bum of Lily could pull it herself, by simply rolling the wheels, but no – leave it to her wife to do the dirty job. Oleander glanced at the ring at her finger. Wife. That was a strange word. One she didn’t expect to hear referred to herself. At least, not until that white-haired dork playing with their kid proposed to her, just after exiting rehab. One yes later and one hasty amendment of the Eastcol laws to allow rhizomes to marry each other and here they were – taking their kid to the beach while chilling in the sun. Lily was relaxed, enjoying every second of the sea breeze, with a calm, a quiet that didn’t belong to her. The Lily that was saved from the remains of Lagash wasn’t exactly the same Lily who entered it. They shared most of their traits, but the current Lily was finally at peace with herself. Forced to rest and sit on a wheelchair, she wasn’t expected to be a hero. She wasn’t expected to fight. She wasn’t expected to slash humans open. That let her leave her military leader persona behind and allowed her more carefree, relaxed self to emerge. That was also why Oleander had her canes and acid gas glands surgically removed, so that she didn’t accidentally melt anyone around her. Both retired. The Captain Commander. Her Deputy. Now just a happy couple with a child to grow.

Lily hugged Cattleya in her vines, looked at the horizon. One mystery still clouded her mind. One she couldn’t make heads or tails of. Oleander seemed to read her mind, pushed her straw hat down on her again.

“You’re not thinking about Lacrima again, are you?”

“…yeah. I wonder what happened to her.”

“She’s dead and buried, If you ask me. Or was eaten by the swarm. Or both”

“I wish.”

“White mom, who’s Lacrima?”

Cattleya climbed Lily’s artificial leg, her back, her shoulders, peeking at the side of her flower, touching it with her short tendrils. Lily closed her eye.

“Your despicable aunt from whom you have absolutely nothing to learn. She looks like me, but she’s short. Very short. In fact, she’s so short that she used to wear high platform shoes to look taller.”

“And where is she now?”

Yes, where was she? After Oleander and her rhizome team rescued Lily from Lagash, they made the rounds looking for survivors. They only found corpses, including that of the preacher, that weird girl they fought in Aralu. Yet, the bodies of Mimi LeFou and Lacrima were nowhere to be seen. Either a rod vaporized them or… something else happened. What that ‘something’ was, she couldn’t know. There were rumors, of course. Rumors that, within the twenty-two hours that the rescue operations needed to extract the survivors, an armored ATV with Peacekeeper colors had been spotted roaming the Remnant with huge loudspeakers strapped on it. Rumors, of course. Neither Oleander nor the other rhizomes in her group saw that. No videos of it were found, except a couple that depicted a blurry spot that moved at high speed through the field. Everyone was so focused on the search and rescue operations that might have missed that vehicle and its driver, whoever that was. That, though, really felt like the stuff Felce liked reading – baseless comnet conspiracy theories. Still, there was a chance that Lacrima was alive, somewhere in the world. And, if that was the case, she had to prepare for her return.

Lily grinned, patted on Cattleya’s head.

“She’s nowhere close. If she were close, she’d be already dead.”

No matter when, no matter where, if that birch came back to break her quiet, she’d give her the beating of a lifetime – wheelchair be damned. After all, she was the perfect rhizome. No way an inferior prototype could give her a beating again – not with her family life on the line. With that thought gone, she leaned on Oleander’s shoulder, enjoying the delicate scent of her roots. All while her back tendrils and her silently joined, knotted together.

And they finally shared a kiss, hugging their precious future in their arms.