Chapter Text
'Urgent notification for the Limbus Company Bus Department (LCB):
We regret to inform you that your department, along with the Limbus Company Clearance Department (LCC) After Team (LCCA) and Before Team (LCCB) have been rendered surplus to requirements.
As such, your contracts of employment as Sinners and Guide of LCB have been terminated, effective immediately.
We thank you for the time and effort you spent as employees of Limbus Company, and wish you luck in your future endeavours.'
...That is what is written here."
Faust's tone is far, far too clinical. I feel the sleeves of her coat brush against my own as she takes her seat again. She neatly pins her legs together and rests her arm over her knees; the folded paper is pinched lazily between two of her fingers.
Eleven pairs of eyes bore into us at once. I'm not sure if they're staring at me or her, but I don't think it actually matters. My hands grip my knees tight enough to hike the fabric over my ankles. I don't have the necessary biology to actually follow through anymore, but my stomach threatens to upturn and make me vomit. The atmosphere in Mephistopheles is stygian cold.
"...Bloody hell." Heathcliff is the only person brave enough to break the seal. “That’s a bit shit?”
"Let me see that." Outis leaps to her feet as soon as Heathcliff closes his mouth. Heavy boot falls storm across the aisle as she approaches Faust and myself and snatches the paper from her hand. "Surely there's more. There has to be more."
"There was one brief appendix I had not mentioned." Faust gazes dispassionately up at Outis as she unfolds the notice of termination and flexes it straight. "But no, I was not pausing for effect."
Outis meets Faust's eye with a withering glare for a second, only to look back at the paper. "There is another sheet."
I think I hear someone gasp for air but I'm not sure who, or if they're relieved or afraid. Outis turns her back on me and stands straight as she regards the other Sinners.
"Limbus Company will arrange for your safe retrieval three days from sending of this notice.” she reads. “Your department will be transported to Limbus Company Headquarters, at which point you'll be expected to... hand in your uniform jackets and... identification badges, as well as any other company property you still own."
...
"It didn’t feel immediately relevant." Faust says. Outis loudly crumples the paper up between her hands.
Multiple voices try to give their say at once, talking over each other.
“They’re— uh, not even telling us why?” Gregor sounds a bit more nervous than I think he’s trying to let on. “Fellas, that’s gotta be a breach of contract, right? Or just... not real?”
“Aye, it smells like a load of shite!” Heathcliff says. “Bet it’s those N Corp. blighters trying to get in our heads. Stop us looking for the Boughs.”
"Or it's a mistake?" Sinclair chances. "Just some kind of... heh, uh— insane clerical error...?"
"The notice's legitimacy has been confirmed." Faust blows out the dimmest flame of hope. "And similar notices have reached the other departments mentioned. The odds of all four departments in question receiving termination notices in error simultaneously are..." her eyes close gently and she pauses for a few seconds. "...are too small to seriously consider."
No one feels much up to comment.
"...May I ask...?" Yi Sang's voice is unsure and careful.
"<Yeah.>" My clock (still bowed low, pointed to my feet) ticks thrice in minor key. "<Go ahead.>"
"What of our job offers? Indeed, some of us are lucky to have 'taken our turn' already, yet are we to assume the wishes of those yet to go are—"
"Yes, ‘what of’ indeed!?" Outis cuts across the conversation in a sudden commanding voice. "We were told clearly that our wishes were guaranteed to come true!"
"...If—" Faust begins.
"Wait, what was everyone's wish?" Sinclair says. "Who hasn't had theirs?"
"There's—"
"I don't think I even bloody made one, to be honest!" Heathcliff says. "Feels like I was right not to bother now."
"Understand—"
"Everyone, prithee quell your voices!” Don Quixote holds her palms out. “Young Faust is trying to have her say!"
"<Guys.>" It's my 'voice' that finally shuts everyone up. They're used to listening to me. Silently, I tilt my head in Faust's direction and nod.
She draws a still breath, and speaks after a brief pause.
"...Unfulfilled wishes, due to the nullification of our contracts, can naturally no longer be assured by Limbus Company—"
It's bedlam, and everyone speaks at once.
I can't bring myself to look at Ryōshū or Meursault, but with her standing in front of me I can't avoid looking at how tightly Outis' fists are balled at her sides. I don't have eyes to close, and neither do I have ears to cover. I'm subjected, without repose, to the uproar that immediately follows.
I’m imagining the scene from my first day on the job: Ishmael and Heathcliff's heads rolling, and Ryōshū's head crushed by Don Quixote's lance.
This time, there's no guide to mediate. Phantom pains associated with every weapon aboard the bus crackle through my nervous system, down the invisible chains that shackle my heart to its anchor point deep past the gates of Hell.
But when I finally look up, no blood is spilled.
"We need to talk to someone about this." Ishmael's guiding the conversation now. "Does anyone know if District 8 has any Öufi associated Offices? Everything has to be in paper somewhere."
"Aye, let's do 'em!" Heathcliff's practically cheering her on. "We got an open and shut case, don't we!?"
"Please do not waste your money." Faust says a little breathlessly. "If your contract was not initially formed under Öufi supervision, there is nothing they can do to mediate. Your Ahn will serve your unemployed life better in a savings account."
Ishmael stops pacing, and looks straight towards Faust. "...You're loving this, aren't you? Hey, wait.” She takes a step her way. “Come to think of it, you probably know why this happened. ‘You know all,’ right? Want to spit it out already?"
“I’m afraid that information is classified to civilians.”
"...Condescending little shit." is the first thing anyone's heard Ryōshū say all day. "Aren’t you in the same boat?"
"...Yes." Faust nods. "Yes I am."
After ten or so seconds of silence, I realise it's been left up to me to break it.
"<Okay.>" I finally stand up. Ishmael looks at me and hesitantly takes her seat again. I'm staring right at Ryōshū as I speak, but I mean to address everyone. "<I think tensions are getting a bit high. We're gonna take a break and reconvene in half an hour.>"
Of course, I'm no longer the manager of anyone here. I don't have the authority to order any of them around, or adjourn our meetings. I half expect Ryōshū to point this out herself, but she just takes a long drag of her cigarette.
"<Faust.>"
"Dante." Faust's voice rises and falls in a familiar two syllable meter.
"<Can we talk in my office? Everyone else, just... stay calm, please. We're going to figure this out together.>"
"...It is as you suspect." Faust says. "My connection to Faust has been severed."
We're standing right by the door. I kind of lost my composure the moment we closed it and couldn’t even wait to sit down. "<When? Why? Has this been happening ever since the WARP train?>"
"No." Faust says. Alone with me, her voice takes on a hauntingly subtle affectation, and her shoulders look ever so slightly lower. She carries the slightest hesitation that makes me hyper aware of every thin breath she takes before speaking. "I last spoke with them— Faust,” she catches herself “right after receiving the notice, in a bid to confirm its authenticity."
The notice came through Vergilius first. I already felt something must've been terribly wrong when he suddenly called Faust and I alone to a private meeting. It’s not easy to recall his exact expression as he read the paper aloud to us; I think I expected him to look more angry, to glare me down with that paralytic wrathful shade of red. I felt such a horrible feeling that whatever got us fired was my fault.
But whether he felt the same or didn't, he just looked... defeated. Plaintive. His eyes never looked greyer. I asked him why this was happening and Faust translated, but he didn't give me a straight answer. Something about the 'flow' again, but I never learned what that was supposed to mean.
Only an hour later, he had already collected Charon and left the bus with her. He didn't come back this morning, so that was probably our final meeting.
We were co-workers until we weren't. Strangers, now. It isn't unusual that he left without so much as a 'thank you for everything.' Just left me desolate and alone without any clue how to manage this situation.
I suddenly realise how hopelessly unaware of the world I am, only functionally a little over a year old. I need Faust nearly as much as she does.
I only just notice my vision is obscured by my gloved palms, splayed flat against my clock. Still, wisps of white hair and one powder blue eye can be seen through the gaps between my fingers.
"Dante." Faust says. "Do you feel your head getting hotter?"
If only; my whole body is running ice cold. I slowly shake my head.
"Okay." Faust says, and her out-breathe is slightly affected by fear and relief. "I have a— well..."
"<What?>" I force my hands into my pockets, where my fingers tightly twist the seams connecting them to the rest of the coat. I feel a thread snap and come undone under my grip. "<What's going on?>"
"This is only a theory." Faust can tell I'm getting antsy. "Without Faust's knowledge, nothing can be confirmed with complete certainty. It is possible that a foremost reason for my disconnection is... there is nothing left in life worth observing."
I stare at her hollowly. She meets me in kind; expression as neutral as ever save for a slight uncertainty, which alarms me more than if she was outwardly sad or scared.
"Such may be Faust's view on the matter." she clarifies. "I was once one of infinite possible Fausts defined by their employment with Limbus Company and search for the Golden Boughs. Now that this no longer accurately describes me... indeed. I am, twice over, 'surplus to requirements,' with no interesting skillset or parity in life experiences to learn from."
"<So it's... because we got fired?>"
"...Well, it’s a possibility."
It sounded achingly unfortunate, but that understated resignation was all I could sense from Faust. If she held any grudges, furies or sadnesses over being deemed cosmically irrelevant, she must've swallowed them deep before she spoke to me.
"<Is there a way we can get you back, like, online?>"
“Faust has no interest in parasitical relationships. Symbiosis cannot occur without any Golden Boughs.” she closes her eyes softly.
"<So what, that’s— that’s just it? You're really just going to... abandon all hope? Lay down your sword?>"
"I don't have much of a choice in that particular matter." Faust glances towards the door. "The LCA department will confiscate my zweihänder in two days. It, too, is company property."
And she leaves the room, even though I'm the one who called her in here. Apparently she thinks we're done talking. I want to object, but I don't even know which of my questions she's capable of satisfying anymore.
The main one echoing in my mind is... 'what did we do to deserve this?'
Ten minutes later I'm at my desk, elbows on the table and hands balled together roughly where my nose should be. I'm still asking myself that. The flames on my head are the room's only illumination; faint ashy streaks of yellow trail across overdue papers on my desk that are, themselves, yellowed from exposure to Ryōshū's cigarette smoke.
At least I don't need to file those anymore.
I recall Outis' voice amidst the swelling of noise that overtook Mephistopheles just earlier. Everyone's wishes were 'guaranteed' to come true?
We'd been stopping at important locations in everyone's lives up until now and helping exorcise the demons of their past. That was... an element of their contracts, right? The singular, ‘central element.’ If that's suddenly off the table, it's probably not that Limbus Company has randomly decided to screw us over in the middle of our journey. ...It's just that, for some reason, that element can no longer be guaranteed, so our contracts are void.
I had a wish of my own, I half remember. Honestly, my first day is a little bit fuzzy, since I had only taken my old head off half an hour or so before agreeing to join the company. It took me a while to remember everyone's names and identification numbers because of that.
But there's a word in a haze that catches on my instincts.
Aspect.
Those were the terms of my contract. Join us, and you can 'engrave the Aspect.' Something I left far behind me in that dark forest rings in the back of my mind, and the thought of no longer having that guarantee pricks at that 'something' mercilessly.
My chest compresses and decompresses heavily like I'm hyperventilating, but no air escapes or enters my clock. Peripheral vision dances in pinprick lights, and the fine details on the wall across from me melt into a blurry haze.
But I'm thinking about this wrong, I’m thinking about this wrong. Limbus Company can no longer guarantee that I can engrave the Aspect. That doesn't necessarily translate as 'it's impossible to engrave the Aspect,' it just means they won't help me do it.
My vision stabilizes again, and my chest slows still. I've got something of an uphill battle ahead of me considering I don't even know what the (my?) Aspect is, but it's a single blue star of hope in an otherwise roiling red and black sky.
Okay, I find my heartrate lowering as I think about this logically. I'll follow this train of thought.
I take a pen in my hand and start scrawling my thoughts indistinctly on the back of a form I half filled out last week. I write in run-on sentences without punctuation and misspell half of the words I'm putting down, but I'm mainly just soothing myself with the feeling of pen against paper.
Why were we fired? That’s the big question, another being ‘what the hell are we supposed to do now’. Vergilius mentioned the flow; are the flow and the guarantee the same thing? It'd line up. The flow is 'wrong' somehow so the guarantee is 'wrong' too. Because the guarantee is wrong, it isn't a guarantee, so our contracts of employment are technically void.
Hohenheim played his hand too much and spoke about this during our check-up. The 'flow' of this world is that the manager isn't to come to harm. I wasn't injured in any major way recently, so that can't have damaged it.
...But if the flow is damaged, it stands to reason that I can now come to harm. Does that make me an unreliable element? I understand that LCB's whole operation seems (seemed) to run on the Bough inside my head, but it really feels self-sabotaging of Limbus Company to bulldoze the whole operation over one uncertainty.
Firing us is extreme. Something serious must've happened during our most recent mission. Something that means Limbus Company's ultimate goals are null and void, at least where the four terminated departments are concerned.
...In other words, the Golden Bough hunt. I circle those words a couple times.
We've messed up before. And honestly not even this time; we still got the Golden Bough and saw Jia Xichun to the seat of Family Hierarch, however reluctantly.
I’m more than a little frustrated, and my pen’s getting faster. Faust can’t possibly actually be okay with this? At minimum, it’s unfair.
I’ve never given much thought to the idea of Mirror World versions of myself, probably because I can’t extract them from the engine like I can for everyone else. A bitter, horrible envy tingles from the ventricles of my heart to the tips of my fingers for the hypothetical Dante that gets to continue their journey.
It’s not like it’s always been amazing fun, necessarily. The road to the Inferno was painful and tragic, and I’m sure a lot of people in my position would be fairly relieved at the lifting of this burden. But, I don’t know, I didn’t hate it either. I want to hear Rodion and Sinclair joke about something that doesn’t matter, and I want Don Quixote to tell me stories of Colors and Associations I’ve never heard of. I want to find out why Outis keeps staring at her watch, I want Faust to get on everyone’s nerves being an insufferable know-it-all.
I want Vergilius to put in a good word for me during an evaluation meeting. I want to wrench twelve incinerated corpses from the City of Hell and feel their blood pour boiling red from wounds I never received.
I was pretty damn good at my job, and it was the only purpose I’ve ever known.
What did I
My hand pauses as I become acutely aware of how much the tendons in my hand ache. I stare blankly at what ended up being four pages covered in meandering ramblings that resemble wild knife scars more than legible characters. Bleeding dark ink.
“...Your handwriting is shit.”
“<It’s private.>” I start at Ryōshū’s sudden presence and kind of sweep my arms across the table to cover up what I’ve written. The papers go flying and scatter themselves around the legs of my desk.
“Lock your door if you don’t want FREAKS.”
“<...I’m sorry?>”
“Yeah. Making us wait.”
I guess I look pretty pathetic as I look up at Ryōshū. My arms have fallen over my knees and I’ve hunched forward enough that I’m not touching the back of the chair. I stare up at Ryōshū and see myself reflected vaguely in her red eyes; it looks as though my clock is three times heavier than it really is, and my neck and shoulders sag under its weight.
I’m not sure what to make of Ryōshū’s expression, actually. She looks refreshingly normal.
“<You’re taking this well.>”
Ryōshū huffs amusedly like I’ve just told a joke. She turns to the door to head back out to the others, but says something over her shoulder first.
“Know why I came to get you?”
“<...It’s been over thirty minutes?>”
Ryōshū shrugs, and it makes the tails of her coat swing in place like drawing curtains. “Dunno. But if I stayed another second with White Hair...” she manufactures a dramatic pause for herself by taking a drag of her cigarette. “...you would’ve had to wind the clock.”
I went to see the others after that, but it didn’t really go well. We didn’t exactly fight, but the mood was at an all time low, especially since I failed to make good on my promise of ‘figuring this all out together.’ At the end of the day, we’re all still unemployed.
I didn’t tell them much of my personal thoughts. Yeah, I have a decent idea of why we were fired, but it’s nothing concrete. ‘We broke the flow somehow, somewhere’ is such a flimsy and vague conclusion anyway that I didn’t feel like it would do anything but frustrate everyone further.
If anyone caught the heat for withholding information though, it was Faust. I tried to mediate and advocate for her where I could, but didn’t feel like I could divulge her situation for fear of making things feel even more hopeless. I think some part of me feared that if we got onto that topic, Yi Sang might be smart enough to piece things together the same way Faust had: that our entire world was completely irrelevant (‘non-canonical’ is a word I’ve heard Don Quixote mention in another context) where the powers that be are concerned.
So... I kept quiet. Just bowed my clock like when we first met and apologised that I couldn’t do anything more, until eventually we split up and I went back to my room alone.
One night and half a day later, I jolt awake and smack my clock against the underside of a desk chair.
I’m not really sure when I fell asleep, or why I was doing it on the floor. My hands are braced against the cold metal flooring beneath me, lifting me up half-alert with my torso at a 45 or so degree angle off the ground.
It’s just my room, I realise, only after swiveling my neck wildly. There’s no need to panic. In the back of my mind I recognize that this must be the last day I spend here, but I know better than to indulge that thought right now. My head is killing me, and not in a way I can attribute to the blunt force trauma that accompanied my awakening. My clock is a fair bit tougher than a human skull.
No. There’s some kind of aching and ebbing from inside. I recall Faust’s concern over my head getting hotter, but I sit up and press a hand to the underside of my ‘chin’ and feel nothing but cold metal through the glove.
I’ve barely registered the pain before I realise what must’ve woken me up.
There’s a whimsical (annoying) rhythmic rapping at my room’s door, like the bombastic percussion line of a parade march. Someone’s trying to get my attention.
“Post-haste, Manager Esquire, harken to me!” I hear from beyond the boundary. “Harken to me post-haste!”
Don Quixote is trying to get my attention.
“Hear me, for good news awaits the brave and the righteous! The Manager need only apply!”
At that, I scramble to the door and unlock it. I’m in desperate need of some good news.
“<What’s going on?>” I say before I’m even done turning the handle.
“Oho!” Don Quixote bounces on her toes and beams brightly up at me. “The—”
“<Did— did another notice come in? Are we keeping our jobs?>”
In those short words, I’ve shot her smile down. There’s an audible thud as she falls off her tiptoes and Rocinante’s thick heels hit the ground again. “Pri— prithee,” she mutters, “how I hate to disappoint thee...”
I almost say ‘did Vergilius come back, then?’ but get a grip just in time.
“Thine expression hath... caught my tongue…” Don Quixote quivers nervously and cranes her neck around me to look inside of my office. The papers strewn everywhere and chair toppled on the ground clearly catch her attention, and her expression takes a melancholy bent. I feel a bit ashamed. “Is aught… alright? I had endeavoured to check upon thee ‘ere this afternoon, to… to little avail.”
“<Sorry.>” I shift my foot over a nearby paper and slide it under a bookshelf. “<I’m alright. I’ve just been asleep.>”
“...Ah, verily! In thine office?”
That’s not necessarily weird. I actually used to sleep at my desk a lot even in the best of times, because pillows don’t really work on me anyway.
Don Quixote isn’t wearing her coat, and neither is she parading around her lance. She’s just wearing a short sleeved dress shirt that she’s decorated with twice as many memorabilia pins as usual; likely an evacuation effort to save her precious merchandise before she has to hand in their old home tomorrow.
My gaze catches on the purple teardrop pin at her waist. She’s practically wearing more metal than cloth now, isn’t she. I briefly imagine a scenario where she’s fighting some kind of big magnet Abnormality and I have to send someone to prise her off it.
Don Quixote elaborately clears her throat when I vacantly stare at her instead of replying. “Manager Esquire, I hath quite the proposal for thee! Should thou wish… and only should thou wish... but might I add... ‘twould be an honour among honours to have thee attend…”
“<...Y— yeah?>”
“Thou art cordially invited to our ‘It Was Good While It Lasted! Let’s End It On A High Note Guys’ celebratory bash!”
“<Oh...! I… see.>”
“I, I understand tensions are indeed high in our company…” Don Quixote puts her hands together by her back pockets and swings gently in place. She’s glancing off to the side, apparently uncomfortable making eye contact with something that doesn’t have eyes. “But... ‘tis the very reason a ‘going away’ par-tay is so necessary. I can tolerate this gloomy atmosphere nary one second longer! Our last memory together as a team shan’t be one coloured over by sadness and regret! And... who is the centre keystone of our team but thineself? One need only look at the front of our bus to see... the face of our team is the Manager Esquire’s own...”
Our dishonourable discharge doesn’t feel much like something to celebrate, but I’m aware that if I turn into any more of a buzzkill than I’m already being it might become a serious problem.
“<You don’t need to convince me, I think it’s a nice idea.>” I speak quickly to ensure I don’t change my mind mid-sentence. “<Thanks for the invite.>”
“Oh! Oh-hoho! Forsooth, do mine ears deceive me!?” She hops back onto her tiptoes and grins up at me. I wish I could smile back. “Haha, well—! Truth be told, the credit is not mine to claim alone. The idea was young Rodion’s.” she says. “I valiantly vol-un-tee-yaahed to deck the halls and spread the word, of course.”
It wasn’t very long ago at all that it was Don Quixote’s turn; that we convinced her it was worth the effort to set her apprehensions aside and let the adventure continue. We didn’t end up ‘galloping on’ very far at all. If she were more crestfallen than me… if I had to cheer her up again instead, and found that this time I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be able to blame her at all.
I suddenly feel pathetic, stewing in my misery for however long sprawled out on the floor while she helped plan a party.
Wait, hold on.
“<Rodion’s okay?>”