The Forest of Memphis

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A little device on his right shoulder appeared, revealing itself as a flashlight, to allow everyone to see more clearly, than it was nothing by an abyss of darkness. The smell was a wretched one, as of mountains of bodies have been dumped for years without any sense of removal. Each step felt like their feet were sinking in—it was unknown if it was mud or amount of feces, but it made a sluggish sound every time they took a step on the stairs.

“Show us the way, Magician.” Mecha Samurai asked Aquario to lead the way. He turns to Eleanor. “According to my device, there are some life signals in here, but they’re blinking rapidly; it means that they’re in critical conditions, but it doesn’t tell us if they’re the missing women nor the band that supported the Queen.” Mecha Samurai said. “But I wouldn’t rule out the women being mooks now, considering what occurred with this Queen and this young lady. Make sure you’re ready to strike at any moment’s notice.”

In the distance, the cries of women can be heard, but it was weak and sluggish. One of them uttered a few words out. 

"H-help me..." 
 
As the group walked through the area, the Dark Gunner seemed to almost pause hearing the cries of the other women. Looking with concern to his floating cat companion, he considered something.

"Angela here can heal any more wounded we find, given enough time to recharge in between abilities. I believe she might've healed us earlier. I, could be wrong. Memories aren't well." He said, glancing to the unconscious Magiana as she was being carried. "It should come in handy, though she can only heal physical damage. I know for sure she can't do a thing about mental or emotional problems. I tried." He explained. Though his voice box like the rest of his physiology was warped by the dark fires that brought him to Booga, the more he spoke the more it became clear he still spoke in a higher range for a male despite the warping.
 
"I'm not sure why they picked Magiana over the other girls or why there wasn't an army of women fighting you..." Aquario sighed, answering Olivia. "But perhaps it was for the best. If these women came out to fight, your team might have been in much greater danger, or worse, the girls themselves."

Aquario, still a little weak from being held up in a cell, lead the group down the muck of the prison they were held in. He was careful where he walked, fearing that there could be traps. The light coming from Mecha helped guide both him and the group closer to the possible source of all this mayhem. When he heard a voice coming from the direction they were talking in, he shivered slightly.

"There, we must hurry." Aquario picked up his pace, Blazrin hot on his tail. 

"Hang on bro!" Blazrin whispered.

"Hurry up, don't drag your feet and everyone else!"
 
"We can try, but if they're that bad, maybe they're beyond saving." Eleanor continued to follow behind the brothers, although her pace was slow since she didn't want to touch whatever substance was clinging to the bottom of her boots by accidental tripping. "If they've got the freaky disease too, it would be better to just put them out of their misery."

"Let's hope it isn't so tragic..." Olivia said with a scowl. "I can't do extensive healing of my own, but I'll try to help her where I can," she tells Dark Gunner, referring to Angela. "You were barely conscious until recently, so it might be too early to try that much healing in such a short span of time."

Hearing the voice, Eleanor got on the defensive and readied a kukri blade in case they were walking into a trap. Magiana lay limp under Eleanor's arm, although her breathing was steady enough to suggest she was just under deep sleep.
 
“Let’s hope your healing can provide some aid, but… if they’re beyond saving, we have to make the hard decisions. At the least we can do is bring back the bodies to the Coast of Cleo, so they can have a proper burial.” Mecha Samurai said as he readied his weapon upon hearing the sound of a young woman’s cry.

Aquario lead them to the dungeon—it was filthy, sluggish and the smell was incredibly foul like a rotten corpse. Beyond the appearance, there were dozens of women, some of them nothing more than skins and bones, lay on the ground, with their weak, brittle hands trying to reach for the air. “He-help me…”

Some of them reacted negatively when Mecha Samurai’s light shine on them, causing the robot to shut it off to avoid sudden scares. Sweats of oil dripped on the side of his head; their appearances frightened the robot.

Few women were at the corner of the dungeon, wrapping their arms around their fragile legs, rocking themselves back and forth of the horrors that fell upon them. Their skins were melting off their backs, revealing their spines—as if their fluids inside them were drained completely dry; it is a miracle that they were still able to move around—let around, still be alive.

“My god…” Mecha Samurai is taken aback from this. 

One of the women, seemingly had enough strength to move, latched onto Blazrin with tears rolling down from their eyes. “They’re coming, and they won’t stop! They never stop! Please, are you the ones that will kill us and set us free?!"
 
"K-Kill? I don't wanna kill ya'..." Blazrin was a little taken back by the woman, looking towards his brother who was just as shocked. "We wanna save you ladies, but..."

"I think there is no helping them," Aquario said bluntly. "If we take them out into the world, they will most likely die before reaching the medical help they need. Some of them can barely even move. We can't carry all of them to the surface and most of them are too fragile to touch. There's really not much we can do..."

"So you're saying we have to kill them?!" Blazrin seemed hesitant about the idea. 

"There isn't much of a choice left for us, Blazrin."
 
"Just look at 'em. There's no way they'll recover from that." Eleanor agreed with Aquario, although she herself was disgusted with what she saw.

Olivia was peeking at them through her fingers in horror. "How does something like this happen?... How did they end up like this?..."

"Hold her for a minute." Eleanor handed Magiana over to Olivia before unsheathing both kukri blades. "If you lot aren't going to do it, I will." She said, walking slowly towards the emaciated woman.

"You, can't! Are you really going to?!" Olivia objected.

"What else can we do? I've killed people before. It'd be pretty fucked up if I made you guys do it." Eleanor said in a flat tone. "It's easier for everyone involved if it was me." She was an ex-con, a murderer, but she got the feeling that the others hadn't ever taken a human life before. At least, not the life of an innocent person. "You got enough magic left in you to make them at least numb to it?" She asked Aquario as she aimed the sharp side of one blade toward the woman closest to Blazrin. "Or even fall asleep. They deserve to at least not feel it."

Olivia turned her head to look away. It took everything in her not to cry, but she still did anyway. "We're so sorry..." she whispered. "I can't..." She felt the nausea creep up her torso as she resisted the urge to vomit.
 
The Dark Gunner followed the rest to the group of women at a quick pace, at least as quickly as he could get. The eldritch-like tall gunslinger did have a bit of a speed problem. Looking to the mutilated forms of the women, he didn't really have much of a reaction.

"Typical mutilations from dark magic. Unsurprising given the circumstances, still disorienting. Disgusting abnormal bodies, damage could last for decades without a miracle." He stated in an extremely calm tone. Every part of his being was focused. This was a time of crisis, this was his element. What he had been made for. He looked around the others of the group.

"While I know I just met you all, with the exception of the two mages who attacked my Opera House, as it stands we may not need to kill these women." He suggested, turning to Aquario. "We don't need to take them out into the world if we can get them to a hospital in Empire State directly from here. Hopefully, their magical healing tech could help them. In the meantime Angela would be able to stabilize their conditions, I hope." He said looking to the black cat. "Think you're up for it?" He asked, his question answered with a inquisitive meow. He then turned to Elanor.

"Or, I can kill them now. I too don't have much of a problem with taking life. Even innocents. This damage will leave psychological effects for years, even if we could heal their physical forms. If they're begging for death, my morality tells me I can't refuse them. A single blast to the head, instant, painless death. But I'll need a consensus from the rest of the group."
 
Mecha Samurai narrowed his eyes when Dark Gunner, Aquario and Eleanor converse the indication of actually slaying these women. “Have some of you gone mad? We are here on an operation to recuse these women, not butchered them. We have to transfer these women out of this place to a facility that stabilized their conditions.” However, Dark Gunner’s remark about the lingering effects on their mental strength bothered the machine; this woman, drained of energy, by the off chance that they survived this experience, their mental psyche is beyond repair. 

He was a machine, a machine with a purpose to calculating the best option for a successful mission. In his head, he was going through many logical conclusions of what is best for these women, but it all falls on putting an end of their life. He drew his sword halfway, but paused, turning to the others. 

“I cannot do this.” Mecha Samurai’s voice cracks. “It is… against my programming to take a life of another of those with innocence… even if the decision is logical and sound.” He was a nervous wreck; hid mind is processing so much data but his inner emotions are interfering it. 

The woman gently grabbed Blazrin’s hand and presses on her rigid face; you can feel her literal bones. Realizing that they were making a decision to what to do with them, she gives them a smile, a smile that views the sweet ending of her life but it is a blessing, free from this despair.

Mecha Samurai, distraught by the woman’s actions, turned around to face the other direction. “I cannot make a decision to kill; there has to be another way to save these women without resorting to that. How else we’re going to face the man who sent us to save his daughter, only to show up his footstep and bring the body of a dead girl?”
 
"You say that like it's a decision we get to make. The reality is they're just waiting for us to carry out their decision." Eleanor countered, gesturing towards the woman's expression. "Is that the face of someone content with living out the rest of their life reminded of what happened here? There may be magic to heal their injuries if we can even get them that far. But there definitely ain't a magic that can heal any of this trauma." She tapped her temple with her index finger.

"...Alright. Say we get them back to their families safe and sound. How are we going to tell them what happened? How will we explain that their daughters were turned into husks of their former selves?" Her pessimism was clear, but she was asking questions that needed to be addressed if they were going to deny the option to kill the women. "Being told that your daughter died is probably less painful than learning how she lived as a victim. Living in filth. Starved. Sacrificed by cultists in a ritual we know nothing about. Then spending every waking moment wondering if there ever will be a way to bring the light back into her eyes. Knowing she won't ever go back to normal. Her family will never understand her suffering. The only thing we should really do is minimize the amount of grief their families will have to deal with."

"I refuse to make any decision! ABSOLUTELY NOT!" Olivia's voice quivered as her face scrunched up full of tears that she couldn't hold back. "I can't do it. I don't want to make that decision!" She took Magiana and turned away to stare at the direction they came from, hyperventilating. "Why do we have to kill them?!" Her frame was shaking from holding in her despair.

"Because it's the merciful thing to do. I'm not completely heartless," Eleanor said quietly. "I'd rather not bring a father their daughter's body in either circumstance. His last memory of her should be her smiling face where she was happy and lively. Not... this." The more she talked about it, the more of a whisper her voice became from the reality of how painful the scenario is.
 
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