Chapter 35: Chasing Jena

"Do you read me?" Olive's voice came in over the comms. I had connected the channel right after entering this time. "Cmon I was just telling you to not do that. But since you already dove in, you may as well try to find Jena. I can't find her signal, this might be a trap."

Jessica wanted to follow me in, but Olive and Yoseph managed to convince her to wait outside in case Jena leaves the Plane. The real reason Yoseph isn't letting her go though is because he doesn't want all of his eggs in one basket, as a calculating villain. So I'm stuck here adventuring on my own.

The Astral Plane is actually full of shitty puzzles like "hit the floating object to drop or raise the wall" but it's so tedious and boring that I've been jumping over every obstacle. I'd have to carry Jessica the entire time if she wanted to follow me. Actually, that mighta been kinda nice. Ah well.

Just as I jump another puzzle, I see Jena standing in front of a gate, turning to look at me, probably to taunt me. She's supposed to get away for us to properly meet later, but screw that. I run at her full speed and my fingers just barely scrape her neck before I'm smacked away by something from the side.

For once, I actually noticed the thing ambushing me. I just kinda assumed I'd reach Jena before it'd reach me. It's weird because this thing didn't show up this early in the game, but I guess it had always been there in case she needed it, and she didn't before now.

What attacked me is a human shaped chimera, with warped and twisted grey skin, with purple flesh underneath. It's right hand naturally forms into a blade. IRIS doesn't actually know what it is right away, but I do. It's a protolegion, literally the prototype, unrefined form of a legion.

Astral Chain actually opens up with the protagonists' sword legion being made, and it first looks like this guy. It was so brutal it broke through heavily strengthened, thick glass and nearly killed Yoseph. And they've made a few of these guys, too, which means that even every preparation they know to make still isn't enough to safely contain one.

The protolegion leaps at me like a beast, and I meet it's sword with my Rebellion. It pushes against me like a wild animal, not caring that it isn't gaining any ground. I focus all of my strength to push it backwards, and throw a Drive at it while it's landing.

It manages to twist in the air, dodging a fatal wound but losing it's right arm in the process. It stubbornly charges at me with it's other hand clawing towards my face. I catch it by the wrist, and kick it in the chest so hard it goes flying backwards, while I'm still holding onto it's left arm.

As expected of a brute like this, I simply runs on back and bites at me this time, so I stick my shotgun in it's mouth and blow it's head off. Seeing it dissolve again, the thought about my redshift absorption goes through my head, and I immediately face palm. I never paid a lot of attention before, but it was clearly dissolving *in my direction*.

It does that in the game too, but the big difference in there is, that's your legion absorbing it's gene codes, which can be used to upgrade them later. So, where in god's name is it going for me? I really screwed up by not paying attention to that earlier. Olive interrupts my train of thought with her call.

"Well, I can't trace her in the Astral Plane, or anywhere in the Ark for that matter, so come back for now. There's a gate nearby." I head to the gate and exit, conveniently coming out where I entered earlier. Near where we parked the motorcycle earlier, a rendezvous point has been set up and Jessica, Akira, Jin and Alicia are waiting there.

"Jeez, you gotta be at least a little more careful man." Jin admonishes me, but we both know how little it'll actually do. Alicia pipes up, "Hey, let's go get Jena. She may have gotten away from us before, but she can't get away from all of us." "Not to be that guy, but adding all of you together to me is like, a five percent boost in performance."

Akira glares at me a little. "Are you saying that we're only worth a fraction of what you are?" "Combat wise, I'm one hundred percent certain on that. Last I checked, someone got choked out by they own legion, only for me to choke slam and beat the shit out of it." Akira grits his teeth at the reminder, but I really don't feel like being nice and catering to him, so I won't.

Everyone then talks over the clues we found earlier, that I sit out on because even without future knowledge, it's kinda obvious. Our next destination is the abandoned Ark mall, where a lot of suspect shit has been reported to go down, to the point where the gangs who hung out there dipped.

(Yo, you should totally pull up the Ark Mall theme, and especially it's combat version for this next part. Shit's a goddamn jam.)

Instead of getting on the cool motorcycle again, we just walk there like plebians. Once we get there, it's dimly lit with a few flickering lights and displays. The eight officers that are here move into their assigned positions to clear the front entrance. I just walk straight through the middle because it doesn't take a SWAT team styled entry to confirm nothing's in here.

Four of the more inconsequential officers are sent in ahead of us, where they are most certainly gonna get their asses kicked. No seriously, I'm pretty sure one of them gets heavily concussed from this. No idea why these idiots thought they should go first instead of me, but whatever.

The place is in disarray, because it's been abandoned ever since a major chimera attack happened here. But more than that, scattered about here and there are these thick puddles of purple goop, and usually some gray fleshy mass not too far behind. I didn't think about it much before hand, but this place is gonna be gross. Oh shit the tentacles.

As the five of us left run ahead to where the others went earlier, a small shake occurs and bits of debris rain down upon our heads. I've seen post war veterans with PTSD have more stability than this place. It's a wonder if it doesn't come crashing down on our heads.

As we step out into a giant open area, with a spiraling staircase in the middle used to access the upper floors, Jena's demeaning voice sounds out from above us. "Welcome! Nice of you to join me, UNION dogs. I suppose you think you have me cornered, but let me assure you...You're here because I want you to be. This is all according to plan."

She then monologues a bit, not so subtly hinting at Yoseph being the villain, before mentioning the 'entertainment' she has planned, before leaving. As we run up the staircase in pursuit, it collapses ahead of Jessica and I, since we were trailing behind everyone else.

I could theoretically break the obstructions to let us come up normally, but Sparda style demolition is not suited for a place like this that's barely holding together. Akira tries to offer to stay behind and help us, but Yoseph orders us to continue tailing Jena, like the Shinji Ikari looking motherfucker he is.

Seriously, theres a scene where he sits in his secret basement and talks to a holographic screen that shows no faces, about the secret plans he has that no one else in the underground secret base knows about. He's totally inspired by Evangelion.

But anyway, this place smells horrible, and from the ceiling, two tentacle monsters with X shaped mouths that open in all directions show up. They spit some sticky goo at us, but I just blow it away with my shotgun, jump up to them on the ceiling, and cut them in two with Rebellion. The good thing about these tentacles is, their defense is garbage, and that's great because I'm not having any of this hentai looking BS to happen on my watch.