Prompto Argentum (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hashtag_chocobro) wrote2022-06-23 08:52 am
hashtag_chocobro) wrote2022-06-23 08:52 am
First Imperial Magitek Base; Niflheim, Eos. ???????, ??/?? ET. [06/23 FT].
It didn't take long for exhaustion to start creeping up on Prompto as he made his way through the next facility, wondering just how extensive and deep this place really ran. Bust-a-Bases sure were easier with the porta-fortresses and with the others at his side, and it didn't help, with the extra weight of what this particular facility was.
This was where it happened. This was…where he came from. Where it all began…
And the more he made his way through the building, the more there was to uncover…
…and the more he didn't want to hear, but still, littered around like little breadcrumbs for him to follow out of the woods, no doubt left for him with intention, he found more recorders, their buttons begging to be pressed, their messages waiting to be heard.
"Research log. Year 736. Day 123. It seems my laboratory is not nearly as secure as I once believed. Some thief--likely a Lucian--made off with one of my experiments. Absconding with a single infant will do nothing to enlighten them to the grandeur of my research. That said, i will see to it that an incident never arises again. I've posted magitek troopers around the facility and instructed them to keep a vigilant watch. This is their home, after all."
A Lucian thief. Making off with an experimental infant. Prompto shivered, despite being in the warmth of the facility again. That infant….that must have been….him. It was all falling into place now, wasn't it? Everything he'd known from that one time in Fandom, when he was older, when he could remember having learned all of this already….This was the recording of when it happened, when the whole trajectory of his life changed, where if it hadn't been for the Luciens breaking into this very facility, he would have been…
Just another magitek soldier, existing just to serve the Empire. Serve the Empire or die.
Just like all the soldiers he'd killed, just to be standing here right now. Like all the ones he was going to kill in order to get out of here.
It didn't take him long to find another recorder. Clearly, Prompto had stumbled into a treasure trove of information. Information that he didn't want to know, and yet, somehow, he couldn't help listening anyway, he couldn't help almost yearning for the answers, to fill in all those terrible gaps, as much as he hated every second of hearing it.
To finally know, once and for all, the true extent of who he really was.
"Research Log. Year 723, Day 70. I pondered how I might find the necessary number of infants. and then it dawned on me."
Prompto felt his stomach drop, knowing what came next, wanting to turn it off, but unable to.
"Why not make them myself? If I clone them from my own genes, I can eliminate the pesky process of breeding them. Mass production remains a pipe dream for now, but I'm confident I can create a massive infantry once the process picks up.If everything goes according to plan, the Empire will boast a million man army in no time at all."
So this was it. This was him, the man who did it all, the man from which he….and all the other magitek soldiers, all the ones he'd been fighting this whole time…had come from. His…his father. His…brothers.....
Of course he knew it already, thanks to Fandom's oddities, but to actually hear it? To have it confirmed? To learn all about it in real time and not just fuzzy memories from a fluke of a weekend? Prompto choked down some bile rising in his throat, but he had to move on. He had to get out of here.
And that was when he noticed the sensor, as he set down the recorder and, swiping the back of his hand against the tears in his head, turned to continue on. Just a small black box hovering in the next doorway, its scanner finding him with a little green burst of light.
"Target detected," a voice rang out through the facility's intercom. "Eliminate compromised unit."
Prompto closed his eyes in a desperate moment, gun on the ready, but his heart…. "I can't take this anymore," he whispered softly. But he had to.He trudge on, his aim set on more soldiers as they appeared, soldiers who, if you stripped away all their daemonic flesh, their armor, their enhancements….would they look like him? Would they be like him? Would they have liked video games and photography and puppy piles and skies scattered with stars? Would they be afraid of the dark and tight spaces and being left behind by those they cared about?
"Commence elimination of compromised unit," the voice continued, and Prompto knew he had no choice. It was eliminate or be eliminated. It was him versus them, and in in th end, he couldn't let it be them.
He fought his way through more soldiers, more rooms, more chambers, exhausted and drained and just wanting it all to end. Another door stood before him, another control panel, waiting for his barcode to allow access. One would think that, after so many of them at this point, he wouldn't think anything of it, but, thinking of the trail of bodies behind that bore the same mark on their wrists, each scan seemed to add up, to build weight on his shoulders, on his chest. And this one….the door in front of him now was large and round and oppressive. He was starting to get the feeling that, whatever was beyond this door, it was something he would never be able to turn back from. But, with a shuddering breath, a bolstering moment, he slowly reached out his arm toward the console.
The blue light shone, the control panel beeps, and the metal plates barring they door slid away. For a brief moment, Prompto hoped that this was it, that this was finally the last door that would lead him to his freedom from his hellhole, but it revealed instead a long, round corridor, leading to parts unknown. His shoulders slagged with his disappointment.
"Lucky me," he murmured out, and headed into the corridor, which started to slope downward, leading him down unground into who even knew what. He'd find out soon enough, though, his footfalls echoing heavily in the small tunnel like a heartbeat.
And into a chamber, where he was flanked by large tubes glowing softly with a translucent blue liquid, and there, behind the glass, inside each and every one of them, was his very own face.
Prompto suddenly couldn't breathe, and he wanted to look away, but he couldn't, staring at the pale forms within the tubes, copies of himself, in multitudes, stripped of almost all other features except for a strange dark festering swirling around in the water, climbing up their limbs, encroaching on their flesh. Barcodes stamped across their wrists.
"How could he…do this?" he whispered out, once breathing finally came, staggered and shaky as it was. "Who….what am I?"
Prompto pushed himself forward, through the line of copies and clones bearing his face, his barcode, but not his fate. He had to grip the railing of the stairs as he climbed up to the next level, but he pulled himself back as he approached the large windows looking into the next chamber, where a massive machine loomed, long, thick tubes like tentacles thrust into more of the containers with the clones inside. And there, before them, there were two figures moving about. Prompto pressed himself against the wall to better hide himself. Ardyn, strolling forward, toward an old man with long white hair, curved over and slouched. Prompto couldn't see his face, but he had the distinct feeling that he would not need to. He was fairly certain that the man's face would, like the face of the figures in the tubes, be his very own.
"...deep breaths," Prompto reminded himself, quietly, as the machine blinked and turned, and the clear blue liquid in the tubes began to slowly fill with a black miasma, clouding it until the figures inside were completely obscured. Was this….how it was done? How they made the magitek troopers? Their….daemonification?
Carefully, crouching down, Prompto weaved his way around control panels and desks, attempting to avoid detection as he passed by the chamber, but it was clear that Ardyn and the the man he could only assume to be Verstael Besithia, the man behind his own creation, had their attention elsewhere. Faint snippets of their conversation finally reached Prompto's ears as he skirted around underneath the large windows.
"My friend," Ardyn was greeting him with a pleasant and familiar warmth, "do you recall the child who was stolen from this facility?"
Prompto, despite himself, stopped, his breath halting once again, straining to listen over the pounding of his beating heart.
"Urgghch." The sound wedged out of Verstael was one of disgust and disdain, of a failure that weighed heavily on him even after all this time. "The one those Lucians absconded with?"
"Precisely," Ardyn confirmed with delight. "I thought you might like to see the fine young man he's become, these twenty-odd years later."
Prompto's blood turned to ice.
"So," Ardyn continued, "as thanks for bringing your pets to Insomnia, I've brought the boy to you. The time has come!"
Prompto winced back from the window, cowering in the shadows, as Ardyn turned toward him, gesturing dramatically with his arm. Did he see him there? How could he have? Was this just more of the Chancellor's particular dramatics, or did he realize they indeed had a very particular audience in that moment?
"To meet your maker."
Slowly, Prompto lifted his eyes, as Verstael turned his head slightly his way.
"Any questions for Daddy Dearest?" Ardyn continued, then grinned, spreading his arms out wide in a gesture of blessing. "Father and Son! Ohhhh! How I love bringing families together!"
Overcome, and knowing his presence was known anyway, Prompto closed his eyes tight against a sob and shouted out, "No! You're wrong, dammit!"
Not knowing what else to do, he took off, running the rest of the way along the control room, nearly stumbling when he reached the next small room beyond, sinking weakly down to his knees. Trying to control his emotions, the tears, the desperation, the onslaught of doubt and fear confront him now. "I don't care what he says!" he sobbed out, hand on a table for support. "This place will never be my home! My home is Lucis. Not here!"
And even as overwhelmed as he was, steeling himself for what he knew awaited him ahead, he couldn't help but notice something else on the table that supported him. Something else that seemed to have been left there as if on purpose, taunting him with more of its terrible promises. Another recorder. They couldn't have been coincidental. Ardyn must have left them all here for him. Breadcrumbs through the woods. But that story might have started looking pretty bad for those kids, but in the end, it wasn't them who ended up in the oven, now, was it?
He reached out and, reluctantly, but decidedly, pushed play.
"Research Log 756," said Verstael, and it didn't pass Prompto's notice that this was the year it was here, now, on Eos. "Day 98. Finally, my daemon-infused magitek armor is complete. I have christened my creation Diamond Weapon. It has exhibited an extremely unstable psyche, immediately unleashing unmitigated horrors upon activation. It's destructive capabilities, however, are indeed beyond compare. Not even the 'impenetrable' Insomnia could withstand its onslaught." He gave a soft, self-satisfied laugh. "Why, the Crown City would fall in a mere matter of minutes! The Stone of legend will soon be mine. To think! That in less than a month's time, the Crystal will be mine to play with as I please!"
Prompto wondered if his breath would ever cease to be shay anymore. "So he's the one behind the attack on Insomnia," he realized. "He planned the whole thing…Everything…everything we've lost since that day…" His home. Fandom. Liz. Lucis. Lunafreya. Ignis' sight. Hope. Joy. His future! "...is gone...because of him."
Which meant he no longer had a choice. Gripping that last recorder tight in his hand, Prompto pushed himself back up to his feet, determination mixed heavily with dread.
Sins of the father, indeed.
[[ Part 2 of 4! Gotta love a good spicy lore drop before a final confrontation! ….not even halfway through the episode! ~to be continued~,, and heavily, heavily cribbed from Episode Prompto, as one might expect! NFB, NFI, OOC lovely~]]
This was where it happened. This was…where he came from. Where it all began…
And the more he made his way through the building, the more there was to uncover…
…and the more he didn't want to hear, but still, littered around like little breadcrumbs for him to follow out of the woods, no doubt left for him with intention, he found more recorders, their buttons begging to be pressed, their messages waiting to be heard.
"Research log. Year 736. Day 123. It seems my laboratory is not nearly as secure as I once believed. Some thief--likely a Lucian--made off with one of my experiments. Absconding with a single infant will do nothing to enlighten them to the grandeur of my research. That said, i will see to it that an incident never arises again. I've posted magitek troopers around the facility and instructed them to keep a vigilant watch. This is their home, after all."
A Lucian thief. Making off with an experimental infant. Prompto shivered, despite being in the warmth of the facility again. That infant….that must have been….him. It was all falling into place now, wasn't it? Everything he'd known from that one time in Fandom, when he was older, when he could remember having learned all of this already….This was the recording of when it happened, when the whole trajectory of his life changed, where if it hadn't been for the Luciens breaking into this very facility, he would have been…
Just another magitek soldier, existing just to serve the Empire. Serve the Empire or die.
Just like all the soldiers he'd killed, just to be standing here right now. Like all the ones he was going to kill in order to get out of here.
It didn't take him long to find another recorder. Clearly, Prompto had stumbled into a treasure trove of information. Information that he didn't want to know, and yet, somehow, he couldn't help listening anyway, he couldn't help almost yearning for the answers, to fill in all those terrible gaps, as much as he hated every second of hearing it.
To finally know, once and for all, the true extent of who he really was.
"Research Log. Year 723, Day 70. I pondered how I might find the necessary number of infants. and then it dawned on me."
Prompto felt his stomach drop, knowing what came next, wanting to turn it off, but unable to.
"Why not make them myself? If I clone them from my own genes, I can eliminate the pesky process of breeding them. Mass production remains a pipe dream for now, but I'm confident I can create a massive infantry once the process picks up.If everything goes according to plan, the Empire will boast a million man army in no time at all."
So this was it. This was him, the man who did it all, the man from which he….and all the other magitek soldiers, all the ones he'd been fighting this whole time…had come from. His…his father. His…brothers.....
Of course he knew it already, thanks to Fandom's oddities, but to actually hear it? To have it confirmed? To learn all about it in real time and not just fuzzy memories from a fluke of a weekend? Prompto choked down some bile rising in his throat, but he had to move on. He had to get out of here.
And that was when he noticed the sensor, as he set down the recorder and, swiping the back of his hand against the tears in his head, turned to continue on. Just a small black box hovering in the next doorway, its scanner finding him with a little green burst of light.
"Target detected," a voice rang out through the facility's intercom. "Eliminate compromised unit."
Prompto closed his eyes in a desperate moment, gun on the ready, but his heart…. "I can't take this anymore," he whispered softly. But he had to.He trudge on, his aim set on more soldiers as they appeared, soldiers who, if you stripped away all their daemonic flesh, their armor, their enhancements….would they look like him? Would they be like him? Would they have liked video games and photography and puppy piles and skies scattered with stars? Would they be afraid of the dark and tight spaces and being left behind by those they cared about?
"Commence elimination of compromised unit," the voice continued, and Prompto knew he had no choice. It was eliminate or be eliminated. It was him versus them, and in in th end, he couldn't let it be them.
He fought his way through more soldiers, more rooms, more chambers, exhausted and drained and just wanting it all to end. Another door stood before him, another control panel, waiting for his barcode to allow access. One would think that, after so many of them at this point, he wouldn't think anything of it, but, thinking of the trail of bodies behind that bore the same mark on their wrists, each scan seemed to add up, to build weight on his shoulders, on his chest. And this one….the door in front of him now was large and round and oppressive. He was starting to get the feeling that, whatever was beyond this door, it was something he would never be able to turn back from. But, with a shuddering breath, a bolstering moment, he slowly reached out his arm toward the console.
The blue light shone, the control panel beeps, and the metal plates barring they door slid away. For a brief moment, Prompto hoped that this was it, that this was finally the last door that would lead him to his freedom from his hellhole, but it revealed instead a long, round corridor, leading to parts unknown. His shoulders slagged with his disappointment.
"Lucky me," he murmured out, and headed into the corridor, which started to slope downward, leading him down unground into who even knew what. He'd find out soon enough, though, his footfalls echoing heavily in the small tunnel like a heartbeat.
And into a chamber, where he was flanked by large tubes glowing softly with a translucent blue liquid, and there, behind the glass, inside each and every one of them, was his very own face.
Prompto suddenly couldn't breathe, and he wanted to look away, but he couldn't, staring at the pale forms within the tubes, copies of himself, in multitudes, stripped of almost all other features except for a strange dark festering swirling around in the water, climbing up their limbs, encroaching on their flesh. Barcodes stamped across their wrists.
"How could he…do this?" he whispered out, once breathing finally came, staggered and shaky as it was. "Who….what am I?"
Prompto pushed himself forward, through the line of copies and clones bearing his face, his barcode, but not his fate. He had to grip the railing of the stairs as he climbed up to the next level, but he pulled himself back as he approached the large windows looking into the next chamber, where a massive machine loomed, long, thick tubes like tentacles thrust into more of the containers with the clones inside. And there, before them, there were two figures moving about. Prompto pressed himself against the wall to better hide himself. Ardyn, strolling forward, toward an old man with long white hair, curved over and slouched. Prompto couldn't see his face, but he had the distinct feeling that he would not need to. He was fairly certain that the man's face would, like the face of the figures in the tubes, be his very own.
"...deep breaths," Prompto reminded himself, quietly, as the machine blinked and turned, and the clear blue liquid in the tubes began to slowly fill with a black miasma, clouding it until the figures inside were completely obscured. Was this….how it was done? How they made the magitek troopers? Their….daemonification?
Carefully, crouching down, Prompto weaved his way around control panels and desks, attempting to avoid detection as he passed by the chamber, but it was clear that Ardyn and the the man he could only assume to be Verstael Besithia, the man behind his own creation, had their attention elsewhere. Faint snippets of their conversation finally reached Prompto's ears as he skirted around underneath the large windows.
"My friend," Ardyn was greeting him with a pleasant and familiar warmth, "do you recall the child who was stolen from this facility?"
Prompto, despite himself, stopped, his breath halting once again, straining to listen over the pounding of his beating heart.
"Urgghch." The sound wedged out of Verstael was one of disgust and disdain, of a failure that weighed heavily on him even after all this time. "The one those Lucians absconded with?"
"Precisely," Ardyn confirmed with delight. "I thought you might like to see the fine young man he's become, these twenty-odd years later."
Prompto's blood turned to ice.
"So," Ardyn continued, "as thanks for bringing your pets to Insomnia, I've brought the boy to you. The time has come!"
Prompto winced back from the window, cowering in the shadows, as Ardyn turned toward him, gesturing dramatically with his arm. Did he see him there? How could he have? Was this just more of the Chancellor's particular dramatics, or did he realize they indeed had a very particular audience in that moment?
"To meet your maker."
Slowly, Prompto lifted his eyes, as Verstael turned his head slightly his way.
"Any questions for Daddy Dearest?" Ardyn continued, then grinned, spreading his arms out wide in a gesture of blessing. "Father and Son! Ohhhh! How I love bringing families together!"
Overcome, and knowing his presence was known anyway, Prompto closed his eyes tight against a sob and shouted out, "No! You're wrong, dammit!"
Not knowing what else to do, he took off, running the rest of the way along the control room, nearly stumbling when he reached the next small room beyond, sinking weakly down to his knees. Trying to control his emotions, the tears, the desperation, the onslaught of doubt and fear confront him now. "I don't care what he says!" he sobbed out, hand on a table for support. "This place will never be my home! My home is Lucis. Not here!"
And even as overwhelmed as he was, steeling himself for what he knew awaited him ahead, he couldn't help but notice something else on the table that supported him. Something else that seemed to have been left there as if on purpose, taunting him with more of its terrible promises. Another recorder. They couldn't have been coincidental. Ardyn must have left them all here for him. Breadcrumbs through the woods. But that story might have started looking pretty bad for those kids, but in the end, it wasn't them who ended up in the oven, now, was it?
He reached out and, reluctantly, but decidedly, pushed play.
"Research Log 756," said Verstael, and it didn't pass Prompto's notice that this was the year it was here, now, on Eos. "Day 98. Finally, my daemon-infused magitek armor is complete. I have christened my creation Diamond Weapon. It has exhibited an extremely unstable psyche, immediately unleashing unmitigated horrors upon activation. It's destructive capabilities, however, are indeed beyond compare. Not even the 'impenetrable' Insomnia could withstand its onslaught." He gave a soft, self-satisfied laugh. "Why, the Crown City would fall in a mere matter of minutes! The Stone of legend will soon be mine. To think! That in less than a month's time, the Crystal will be mine to play with as I please!"
Prompto wondered if his breath would ever cease to be shay anymore. "So he's the one behind the attack on Insomnia," he realized. "He planned the whole thing…Everything…everything we've lost since that day…" His home. Fandom. Liz. Lucis. Lunafreya. Ignis' sight. Hope. Joy. His future! "...is gone...because of him."
Which meant he no longer had a choice. Gripping that last recorder tight in his hand, Prompto pushed himself back up to his feet, determination mixed heavily with dread.
Sins of the father, indeed.
[[ Part 2 of 4! Gotta love a good spicy lore drop before a final confrontation! ….not even halfway through the episode! ~to be continued~,, and heavily, heavily cribbed from Episode Prompto, as one might expect! NFB, NFI, OOC lovely~]]