Blessed Messiah and the Tower of AI

Chapter 4: Heroic To One

"Hello?"

Miku hollers out into her pitch black surroundings. No response.

An empty void is burying her in nothingness. With every twist and turn she takes and no matter where she runs, it's futile because whichever direction she heads leads into pure black. She tries shouting again but only a mere echo returns as a boomerang to the head. Resorting to other possibilities, she scurries around for a bit, yet lands in the same place she started.

It's pointless- whatever she does is getting her nowhere. Her voice is crushed into oblivion, and running off loops her to the beginning; her choices are limited at this point. What can she do?

Suddenly the floors give out and open up. Miku is being pulled downward, plummeting down a path that she feels no end to as the moment she began falling starts to feel like forever ago. She flails her limbs helplessly for the chance someone will be there to grab her hand and help her up.

But no one saves her.

"Do you really think you're fit to be the Messiah?" a disdainful voice echoes in the void. It's Mayu's.

"You're not the Messiah." She hears Luka's voice resound. "You're just a clumsy seamstress from a village."

Miku opens her mouth to scream at the top of her lungs but the words are unable to form a sentence that escapes her lips.

"How can we depend on you to save the world?" says Gakupo.

She's falling like a meteor crashing down to Earth. Sinking to the bottom- a weight attached to her foot and regardless of how hard she tries to shimmy out or find the key, she has no luck.

Falling...

Falling...

Falling...

The tealette blinks her eyes simultaneously and raises her head from the shoulder she was resting on.

"Did you have a nice nap?" Luka smiles.

Still adjusting to her previous dream, Miku replies weakly. "Y... yeah."

She shakes her head and disregards her friends' voices circling in her mind.

'What am I thinking? They wouldn't say that; they believe in me being the Messiah...' she reassures herself.

It's the second day of the trip and since the discussion during the rain yesterday, Len's speech is still jammed in her brain. The group continued their hike until hours of walking had finally pounded the two pairs of siblings into complaining. Rin started whining, Len attempted calming her down, Mayu agreed with Rin, and so did Ia.

The next thing they knew, they were setting up an afternoon fire to cook the meat from the food bag. Despite everyone's exhaustion, at last it was time to enjoy another bountiful meal. As little as it was, it'd sufficed Miku enough to fall asleep on Luka's shoulder for the past forty-five minutes.

Miku leans against the tree trunk, sighing as she reflects back on yesterday.

"Mmm-" The seamstress watches Luka stand up and fix her stiff posture. She's twisting her body left and right and outstretching her hands to the sky.

"Ah... you okay?"

"Mhm. You've just been napping on my shoulder for forty-five minutes, you'd expect someone'd be stiff from being still for so long," the dancer giggles.

"Sorry, Luka!" Miku frantically waves her hand.

"It's nothing to be sorry about. I understand you were tired and I just happened to be the closest person you could lean on," she winks. "Also can't forget how you and Rin were both napping on me at the same time."