Enduring Cherry Blossom

Kaylee Brown wrote:Out of the 3 soldiers carrying missile launchers, only 1 remained. Unable to run with his injured ankle, he winced, crouched down on one knee, lifted his missile launcher, aiming it as best he could and pulled the trigger, aiming it at the floor where Chris laid.

You saw the missile streak across the battlefield as if in slow motion, before it flew into the window and the entire floor exploded. A shockwave and blast of fire smashed into Christabel, setting her clothes on fire in several places and hurling her across the floor, flinging her through a wall that crumbled at the slightest provocation, sending her flying several floors down onto the pavemeant below, as the entire upper floor exploded and caved in on itself.

Pieces of flaming debris rained all over, covering Chris and her burned, bleeding wound in a fine layer of dust.

"I'm going after Chris, cover me!!" Gatrie frantically shrieked, running back across her building, hopping through the window out back and continuing to run diagonally down the wall without missing a beat, the soles of her shoes glowing as she raced to the bottom.

Christabel's body was flung around like a ragdoll, coming to rest in an awkward heap in the middle of the road outside the building, arms and legs sprawled out at odd angles.

She was only vaguely aware of what was happening, despite having Heightened Senses active. It was like the light and sound of the world around her was at the other end of a very long room.

"Is this it?" she thought to herself bitterly, "Is this all I can do, after all I hoped?"

Suddenly, Christabel could just sense several presences, colourless and shapeless, leaning over her in a circle around her.

"The structure is failing" she heard one of them say, their voices cutting clear and sharp compared to the distant noise of the world, but it was a statement directed to the others, rather than a question to her.

"Yes, self-replication is breaking down, cessation of function is imminent" another replied.

Christabel tried to speak, to ask for help, but no noise came out.

"This was anticipated, and is within tolerances, the structure is non-vital" a third of the figures added.

"Then it is of no further concern" the fourth finished curtly.

The presences then began to dissolve away. Christabel wanted to call out to them, to raise her hand after the figures, to ask them to wait, to stay and help her, but they were already gone.

"Why?" she asked after them, "Haven't I done everything that was asked of me up until now, don't I get anything for my trouble?"

Kaylee Brown wrote:

Gladwin wrote:"Mortars! Over there!" Gladwin shouted into his microphone, in his panic forgetting to actually tell the others where the weapons were being set up, but his voice could barely be heard above the frantic chatter filling the radio.

"Gladwin you should have a grid map on one of your monitors!" Gatrie called out of breath "Overlay that over a top-down sattelite footage of the area and call out the mortar's coordinates! We should be able to nail them long distance with magic if we know where they a-" her voice became drowned out by an explosion and you heard her crash to the ground.

All over the battlefield, a trickle of mortar shells started landing, far and wide in between, several seconds apart, each exploshion sending a small tremor the area, making the ground shake and dust fall from the ceiling.

One of the shells landed 8 meters away from Megan, penetrating the roof and violently exploding, tearing the floor apart and peppering the girl with concrete dust. It could be really bad if this continues, not only if a direct hit happens, but because of what the barrage might do to the already rickety crumbling buildings. The thought of barely visible explosives hurling down on you from above was becoming rather unsettling.

"THEY'RE TRYING TO ZERO IN ON OUR POSITION!" Braxton's frantic yell echoed over the earpiece, mixed in with heavy machine gun fire as he sprayed the general area of the minigun's nest:
"GLADWIN, WE NEED THOSE COORDINATES BEFORE-.. SHIT!" You saw Brax abandon his M-60 and sprint away from the window, seconds before another missile struck, engulfing the floor in a wave of fire.

"Gatrie? Gatrie!" Gladwin called out, after she was cut off. He cast his gaze over the many computer monitors in front of him, trying to make sense of the chaos unfolding.

Eventually, he found the one he thought Gatrie ment, displaying a grid which divided up a map into squares. He read off the controls, but did not see one that looked like it might overlay satellite footage. Desperate, he began jabbing each of the buttons in turn to see what they do.

When the fire of the minigun died down for a moment, Malcolm took action. He darted out in the direction Gatrie was heading, and drew a gun. Using his sharpened senses, he sought to pick out enemies, and fired at them, closing the distance to use his sword. His shooting was aided by the skill of the Eishi, but the aim at the vital organs was almost natural, like he wasn't bothered with taking lives at all.

Desiree steeled herself and darted to a building. Using her newfound skills in parkour and wall walk, she ran up and leaped between buildings to position herself. Once she got a good height, she aimed, shooting at some soldiers who were rallying to the location of the battle, staying on the move as she went.

Julie was surprised with the ease she took a life, and what damage that rocket has caused. She decided to push through regardless, and took position. She aimed and fired to kill at two other important figure in the enemy group, to destabilize their command, then moved again to not get pinned down.
"Hey, Bar, baby, thanks for these skills, how's our spell going? Is it any good yet? Kinda wanna shoot the big guy already." Then inspiration struck her. "Or, what if we make it seem like the spell finished early, by using Masquerade to give the idea it's going off?"

Megan wrote:Aiming for the most easy to hit spot that will result in a lethal take down. She then gets up and sprints back and down the side of the building back to the street below. She makes her way to another buidling closer up and takes postion, prone, on it's roof again.

Still crouched on the ground and wincing, the soldier was an easy to hit, stationary target. It took you a second to line up the shot, before your bullet tore through his trachea and his spine. The tried to grasp for his throat, gargling as blood came pouring out of his mouth, but his hands stopped obeying him. Wide wide open in horror, he fell to the side, wheezing for several seconds, until his eyes glossed over.


As you made your way down to street level and began sprinting toward a building nearby, a mortar shell exploded just a few feet away from you. The blast almost knocked you off your feet, making you freeze up and crouch down for a split second, as a rain of concrete dust rained on your head, momentarily creating a vague outline of your invisible form.

A fraction of a second later, something punched you hard right in the shoulder, completely knocking you off your feet and making you smash into the hard concrete right onto your back. You reflexively raise your weapon to look for the assailant, but there was no one nearby. And then you felt it, the tear in your flesh.


Looking at your left shoulder, you noticed a gaping hole there, the size of a tiny quarter, sending a trickle of blood down your arm. You weren't punched, you were shot.

There was no visible exit wound and the wound throbbed horribly whenever you tried to move your left hand. Raising your sight, you noticed the very distinct glow yellow eyes, flashing like a pair of searchlights from the enemy barricade, staring right at you. Even from this distance of a 100 meters away, you could tell the sniper was reloading his bolt action rifle, keeping you dead in his sights.


(Megan suffered -5 HP damage, 195 HP remaining)

Buzzy wrote:Think you can smell someone creeping up behind us? Getting stabbed in the back while we're also stabbing these guys in the back would be poor form."

"Only if they're very close.
I'm afraid we don't have Heightened Senses active, but it would be best to stay behind cover as much as possible. We're in the midst of their base now, it would be easy for them to surround us if we're not mindful of our surroundings." Finkah said wearily.

Taking another look around you take in the base layout. The barricade marked the perimeter, with shallow trenches dug on the inner side.

Further inside the base you notice at least 20 portable guard towers, only about 2 stories high and armored, with narrow windows. These were evenly dispersed across the perimeter and likely housed snipers.

Further in, some 50 meters away, there were short 1 story portable buildings, some were marked as field hospitals, others were storage for tactical gear, and another one surrounded from all sides by very thick and high walls - was likely the armory. Give or take, there were around 10 buildings in total.

Another 200 meters into the base, you saw a very long and tall armored truck, colored completely black, with 18 wheels total, evenly spaced across its entire hull. It looked like it was made of a single bulky compartment, the drivers cabin being a part of it, with all sorts of antenas and sattelite dishes sticking outside.

"Ah. Their mobile command post. Take that out if you want to seed real chaos. Their coordination will be crippled." Finkah quietly commented.


Apart from these structures, you also noticed a considerable amount of concrete debris from the initial explosion, some of it visibly melted and still smoking with ember parts glowing on them. They were about 1 to 3 meters tall and just as wide.


In terms of enemy presence, it seems most of the soldiers manned the perimeter, roughly 150 in number.
The remaining 50 were mostly located in the inner part of the base, they established another, smaller perimeter around the Red Dragon and his Crystal - another barricade, shorter one, only a meter in height. And it was manned by soldiers and Eishi alike, and these guys were much more heavily armed, armored and looked a lot more deadly, if that was even possible. It seems these are the elite units.


Apart from all this, you noticed roughly a dozen Eishi and soldiers with Blacklight eyes, just mingling about the base, issuing orders and supervising designated sections of the outer perimeter. It could be bad if one of them notices you, they could see through invisible cloaks. And that didn't account for the invisible enemies that also stalked the base, somewhere.

"This will turn into a clusterfuck real fast. So once we reveal our position, make sure to always keep a wall at your back and don't get surrounded or its over." Finkah whispered.

Buzzy wrote:
Buzzy suddenly manifests right behind the Minigunner. She summons the Katana, her blade in her right hand hovering over her left shoulder and her left hand over her right shoulder as she asks finka to recall a spell. In a single sweep, she beheads him and pushes his body off the side of the emplacement.

Buzzy casts a level 1 disruptor in an aoe

It was strange, summoning your Summoner sword while invisible. The blade burned a purple tint, transparent and visible only to you. You swung your blade hard and felt significant resistance, as it met bone. The cut only lasted a fraction of a second however.


The soldiers head flew off with such force, it got hurled several meters away, the body released a fountain of blood as it sank to the ground, yanking the minigun up and releasing a wild spray of bullets across a building up front, before the gun went silent.

The area was so saturated with a cloud of dust and deafening noise of gunfire, the other soldiers didn't even think to look or realized what was wrong. They must have assumed the mini-gunner was taken out by a sniper in the buildings and just continued firing at them without stop.

By the time one of them thought to look for the mini-gunner to check if he needed aid, it was too late.

Buzzy discharged a Disruptor spell right in his face. Spells couldn't be used in Area-of-Effect at Level 1, but this one soldier ate it hard in the face. A disgustingly ugly creature resembling a mutated orange sloth briefly materialized on his shoulder and emitted a gut wrenching bellow, before it flipped and vanished in a spray of orange sparks.

The soldiers eyes stopped glowing, he blinked, trying to zero in on Buzzy and leveled his rifle at you. The next second Yui flaming katana flashed in the air, carving a vertical after-image as it slashed through both of the soldiers arms and his rifle, dismembering him.


A spray of blood came gushing out of the stumps, the soldier stared as his forearms and half of his gun clattered onto the ground, before Yui grabbed his shoulder and gave him a Spanish kiss - a rough and violent move, where she shoved her katana right through his teeth, breaking them, until the blade impaled his skull through his spine, coming out the base of his neck.

Unlike you, Yui was perfectly visible to the naked eye and the expression on her face was nothing like her default personality. There was no trace of the hyperactive, mischievous, cheerily girl. Only a savage, violent, rage-filled grimace distorted her face. It was uncomfortable to look at.

Buzzy wrote: She wheels the minigun around, leveling multi barreled madness at the unaware soldiers surrounding the emplacement and in short bursts,

The burst of the minigun shot forth like a horizontal blade across the barricades length, it didn't just shred, it cut the soldiers in half. Their upper torsos were flung into the air in bursts of red mist, leaving them for their comrades to witness, filling the air with indescribable shrieks of the dying and the paralyzing screaming of fear of their team mates, as they witnessed their colleagues shredded around them.

Vasily started vomiting violently onto the pavement, having witnessed this from behind cover.



You only managed to spray the right side of the barricade, killing some 20 soldiers at minimum, before those on your left side comprehended the situation and wheeled on you.

Several hundred bullets sprayed your position at the same time. Even as you ducked, you palpably felt them whizzing mere inches over your head, grazing your hair, but it wasn't enough, there was no cover here, on the other side of the barricade.

As if in slow motion you watched the bullets sail toward you and Yui, fired by no less than 20 men, before the small pieces of led found their targets.


Dozens of bullets sprayed you all over, catching you in the left arm and shoulder, your chest and the base of your neck, knocking you off your feet and sending sprays of blood into the air. You gargled and coughed out blood violently, as you crashed on your back. The same thing happened to Yui.

Dozens of bullets struck, before the girl managed to raise a trembling hand and snap her fingers, and a transparent blue sphere materialized over both of you, some 5 meters in radius. It was only a Level 2 and under a near incessant barrage of bullets, it would hold for seconds at most.


(Buzzy suffered -30 HP damage, 320 HP remaining)

(Yui suffered -30 HP damage, 170 HP remaining)

Malcolm wrote:He darted out in the direction Gatrie was heading, and drew a gun. Using his sharpened senses, he sought to pick out enemies, and fired at them, closing the distance to use his sword. His shooting was aided by the skill of the Eishi, but the aim at the vital organs was almost natural, like he wasn't bothered with taking lives at all.

Desiree wrote:Desiree steeled herself and darted to a building. Using her newfound skills in parkour and wall walk, she ran up and leaped between buildings to position herself. Once she got a good height, she aimed, shooting at some soldiers who were rallying to the location of the battle, staying on the move as she went.

You decided to concentrate fire on the left side of the barricade, the one unharmed by the minigun, where dozens of soldiers were spraying the blue sphere where Buzzy and Yui laid bleeding.

The enemy was so preoccupied by their objective and swallowed by anger and fear after witnessing that massacre, they were swallowed in tunnel vision. Most of them didn't even look in your direction as you picked them off one by one.

Your bullets sometimes ricocheting off their helmets and shoulder pads, as you struggled to aim on the run, but a lot of your shots found their targets, painting the barricade red. At least 7 of them died, before the rest began returning fire and you felt the bullets whizzing next to your head, making your hair stand on end.


The jog down the street was anxiety provoking, as explosions, bullets and shouts filled the air.

Desiree managed to reach her destination. But just as Malcolm rounded a corner, a mortar shell flew down and exploded, just a meter away.

The shock-wave and fire blasted over his body, rattling his bones and rupturing internal organs, as the flames seared his hazard suit and cooked his skin. The explosion hurled him almost 4 meters back, causing him to crash roughly onto the middle of the street. Shell-shocked, near deaf and crippled by pain, you were only vaguely aware, there was no cover next to you, and nothing stopping the enemy from taking a pot-shot at you.


(Malcolm suffered -30 HP damage, 185 HP remaining.)

Gladwin wrote:Eventually, he found the one he thought Gatrie meant, displaying a grid which divided up a map into squares. He read off the controls, but did not see one that looked like it might overlay satellite footage. Desperate, he began jabbing each of the buttons in turn to see what they do

"GLADWIIIIIN!" Gatrie's hoarse shriek echoed over the earpiece, inter-cut with violent coughing, as mortar shells blew up in the background:
"WE'RE BEING MASSACRED! WE NEED THOSE COORDINATES NOW! NOW, DAMN IT, NOW!!!"


As your hands danced around the controls, the images on the monitors changed and flicked, displaying everything from weather conditions and humidity to real-time uplinks to Interstellar Alliance north-command, which showed the Alliance fleet steamrolling across the ocean to the Red Dragon and still 3 hours away from making any difference.

Another flick of a switch suddenly displayed a full-screen wide-shot of the Red Dragons face, clad in traditional samurai armor. The thing's face was covered in old, ugly scars. Its brow furrowed as it watched the attack on its perimeter with its small beady red eyes that glowed like torch-lights in the darkness. It watched the attack very carefully and small scarlet flames periodically escaped its clenched maw.



"Young man," The Conductors raspy voice rang very calmly in your earpiece "Please input the command - //run_satt_com/grid34.exe on your console, it should provide sufficient data for your purposes."
His voice was so calm, you'd think he was in the middle of an academy lecture and not being shot at from 30 different ways by automatic fire. Vasily's retching noises in the background made it especially eerie.

Christabel wrote:"Yes, self-replication is breaking down, cessation of function is imminent" another replied.

Christabel tried to speak, to ask for help, but no noise came out.

"This was anticipated, and is within tolerances, the structure is non-vital" a third of the figures added.

"Then it is of no further concern" the fourth finished curtly.

The presences then began to dissolve away. Christabel wanted to call out to them, to raise her hand after the figures, to ask them to wait, to stay and help her, but they were already gone.

"Why?" she asked after them, "Haven't I done everything that was asked of me up until now, don't I get anything for my trouble?"

"I guess its true, what they say..." a deep bass and gravely voice echoed somewhere around you "You only find out who you can really trust, when you're at your lowest."
Your Eishi - the Chinese spectral dragon, slowly fased into existence and curled around you in a wide circle:

"Those miserable fools are ignorant of our ways... we have no use for them." The dragon's voice rang clearly in your head, even though its mouth never opened to speak. You suddenly felt your wounds began to close up, all over your body. The burns healing, the cuts stitching themselves back together. The bruises washing away. Your punctured eye closing itself back up, leaving behind a horrid and ugly scar that obscured its vision completely.


"...cessation of function is imminent..." The dragon repeated in mockery "...they say, as they abandon us to die in a ditch... how pathetic they are... how disloyal... how cowardly..."


The dragons massive head rose, until its beady blue eyes locked onto you "Listen carefully Chris, the cowards who sits on their golden thrones and command you from afar, are no friends of yours. They are not the ones bleeding and dying beside you in a ditch. You have no use of them, and need to please them. Expect nothing from them and wash your hands off them."

Your wounds have all but closed completely, your subconscious nervous system receptors indication you have some 70 HP remaining.


"Count only on your brothers and sisters beside you, the ones bleeding and dying beside you, drowning in blood, sweat and tears. They are the closest family you'll ever have." the dragon raised its head, as Gatrie stumbled around a corner, leaning heavily on the side of the building as her left arm hang uselessly down and trickles of blood ran down her face.


"Now rise..." The dragon called, its brow furrowing "Rise... and finish your mission.
Fight, until you lose consciousness or you die, only then, can you hope to survive the meat-grinder of war."

Julie wrote:aimed and fired to kill at two other important figure in the enemy group, to destabilize their command, then moved again to not get pinned down.
"Hey, Bar, baby, thanks for these skills, how's our spell going? Is it any good yet? Kinda wanna shoot the big guy already." Then inspiration struck her. "Or, what if we make it seem like the spell finished early, by using Masquerade to give the idea it's going off?"

You picked the Eishi who hung out in the back, deep inside the enemy base. The spectral things were cooking something, already gearing up to unleash their magic barrage on Buzzy's position, when a bullet shot right through their skulls.

As the first Eishi's eyes rolled into the back of its skull and it crumbled, the second one zeroed in on you and scowled, just before your second bullet shot it right through the eye. The spectral creatures crumbled like rag-dolls, losing consciousness as they transparent bodies shimmered ever so slightly.

The flames of their Level 3 spells dissipated in a flash of red and purple, un-used. But you could tell right away, the two were still alive.


(Eishi Officer #1 suffered -20 HP damage)

(Eishi Officer #2 suffered -20 HP damage)




"Our spell is now complete." Baroque's pleasant voice echoed in your mind "You can fire when ready. In addition, masking our real spell inside a barrage of a dozen Masquerade spells will maximize its effectiveness, lessen the chance of it being shot shot down and seed chaos in the enemy ranks.

If we ever needed a game changer its now. The enemy morale may be faltering, now is the time to push!"




As she spoke, you saw the Conductor hurling something into the left side of the barricade. A second passed and a blinding white colored explosion rocked the enemy position, spewing painfully bright fire and debris, killing some 4 soldiers and wounding 8 others. Their screams carried on long after the explosion had died down and you saw their uniforms smoking, where the debris fell on their arms.

Whatever was inside that grenade, was burning straight through their armor and uniform, and deep into their flesh. White searing smoke was rising out of their wounds as they shrieked in pain, collapsing onto the ground, unable to hold their weapons.



A few seconds later, the building to your right, violently exploded as its front wall burst outward from inside and a colossal monster, transparent and scarlet burst out, releasing a blood curling, gargling roar. It reminded you of a bizarre mix between a bear and a gorilla, if the thing was 10 meters tall, with huge protruding fangs that stuck out of its gaping maw and the hair on its back was akin to the spikes of a porcupine.

In the middle of all that scarlet, transparent mass of muscle, you saw Braxton, suspended and floating, in the center of the creatures body, his eyes closed.


The monster emitted a long, unearthly roar and charged right at the left enemy barricade. After that display, there was no doubt, most, if not all the enemy eyes were drawn toward it. The creature collided with the barricade at full sprint, moving some 60 kilometers per hour, mowing down the obstruction with a massive swing of its clawed paw and stomping on it, turning several soldiers into pulp.

Swinging its giant claws it massacred everyone it could reach, cleaving the soldiers in half, sending them flying dozens of meters into the air, their ravaged bodies falling onto their comrades, inducing horrid shrieks of panic and horror, as the monster ducked down and bit and chewed and ate the soldiers below it, biting off the upper part of their torsos as blood flowed in droves.


The gunfire that peppered Buzzy and Yui's shield had all but died down, just as the blue sphere popped like an eggshell.


Instead, over a hundred different soldiers were blasting Brax with concentrated assault rifle fire, shooting missiles and firing machine guns at him from every direction. The beasts body seemed to be absorbing the bullets at first, but you clearly saw hundred of bullets holes in his hide, all bleeding a sickly orange blood that trickled down on the asphalt and glowed toxic orange.


(Braxton suffered -130 HP damage, 337 HP remaining.)



At that moment, Harvie and Lily materialized out of Shadow form, right on top of the enemy's mobile command post. They rose out of its roof life phantoms, forming out of black oily puddles on the ground. In one fell swoop they swung their Summoner blades, cleaving off most of the satellite dishes and antenna's on the vehicles roof, attached a pair of devices onto the side of the vehicle and discharged two purple and yellow colored spells, right at the Red Dragon.


Those were Level 3 Silence.


The Dragon's eyes zeroed on them. It scowled.



A split second before the spells reached their target, they suddenly exploded in mid air with a violent, colorful blast, like the spray of fireworks at a festival and slowly, but surely, what had collided with them, came into being.


A gigantic blue colored sphere, transparent and awe-strucking, the side of a football field, shimmers and slowly became visible. It encased both the Red Dragon and his Mana Crystal inside. Its blue shimmering surface rippling with waves, like the waves of the ocean, as it absorbed the spells impact, shimmered again and slowly began turning invisible.


Harvie jolted back with a start, his eyes widened and his hand raised up to his earpiece:


"THEY'RE ENCASED IN A LEVEL 5 SHIELD!"



"BRING IT DOWN THEN!!!" The guerilla-bear bellowed, inducing tinnitus in your ears as it began a slow gallop toward the sphere in a straight line, knocking aside soldiers, buildings and massive debris, as hundreds of bullets continued to pepper its hide from every direction.


On the monitors, Gladwin saw the Red Dragons mouth begin to open, the scarlet flames in its mouth concentrating into a single red dot, no larger that a pearl that swirled wildly on its axis, creating a whirlwind of hot air and fire.



(The Level 5 Shield suffered -80 Armor Damage, 240 Armor remaining.)

Buzzy tilts her head at the summoner she hit with disruptor. It was like watching a toddler fiddle with a set of keys as she watched the soldier try to level his aim at her, practically in slow motion now.

Her gaze suddenly shifts to Yui as her blade cleaves right through his arms, and then his skull. Buzzy lets out a slight scoff  "Out here kill stealing Yui!" Buzzy jests at the furious girl before...

Buzzy completely shreads through 20 people. she originally thought Yui's kill just a moment ago was a bit slow and messy. The young girl, dispite originally wanting the meyham, found the actual taste of suffering to be quite bitter.

Buzzy shutters. She thought the messy nature of the minigun would be fun. It was for a second until she caught wind of Vas vomiting behind cover, "Yeah... this this is efficient. Not in any good way."

Then she tries to conceal herself behind the gun, when both her and Yui eat a few rounds. Buzzy releases an extremely long string of expletives as her hand presses into the wound in her neck trying to staunch the bleeding. Its when she looks down at her palms to see them coated in her own blood once again that her face sours, much like Yuis, "This blood... I-Is barely even mine!" She squeezes her eyes shut a moment, shock and pain becoming fuel for fury.

Buzzy reaches a free hand up as she pulls the miniguns aim up again, "I. HATE DRAGONS!" She roars as she squeezes the trigger, unloading on the dragons shield.

Megan lets out a gasp of pain as she scrambles to get behind cover. She begins to weave a level 3 Kitentic Strike as her entire body trembles in a mixture of fear and adrenaline. She doesn't wait in her spot for more than 10 seconds before getting up and continuing to move closer to the baracade along her back alley path.

Malcolm groaned in pain as he tried to get to a spot to be safe from the bullets. Despite being used to lashes of a whip, the pain from the mortar impact was a high he was not adepted to. Despite that, he let out a soft chuckle.
"It really is better to feel pain... Then nothing at all."


Desiree gasped at seeing the chaos before her. The wall that had to be climbed to reach the dragon, to free humanity from the fate it wished to inflict on it. For the briefest of moments, her body locked up, like she would run away and hide, like usual.
"So, Desiree, what will you do now?" Her own voice rang in her head. Connected to her soul, Seine heard the voice as well. It was like Desiree spoke, but it was more confident, sultry and snarky.

"Not now, I'm in the middle of something!" Desiree said out loud in response to the voice in her head, and she continued her path, continuing even with tears of fear in her eyes.

The other voice let out an endeared chuckle. "How I love hearing that. I'm rooting for you, soulmate. So Seine was it? Be a dear and keep an eye on her. I'm glad she takes action, but she might go overboard on this, and we can't have that, do we?" With that, the voice lays dormant again.

Desiree leapt around, shooting at the soldiers below to kill or distract. She was biting her lip so hard it bled, all to not scream from the overwhelming emotions.


Julie nodded, and briefly aimed, when she saw the others splash against the shield. "Oh, that's a bother... Fine then." She fired her silence spell at it and tried to find another spot, charging up a second one to shoot. "Let's hope the others are able to burn more of this shield down."

She aimed and fired to hit another key figure in a group, aiming to cause more disruption.


Struggling to even move his body at this point, Malcolm gave a smile. "So Mal, hope you're doing better then me... It's your turn to party. " He clenched his fist, and casted a spell.

Berserker.

Kaylee Brown wrote:

Gladwin wrote:Eventually, he found the one he thought Gatrie meant, displaying a grid which divided up a map into squares. He read off the controls, but did not see one that looked like it might overlay satellite footage. Desperate, he began jabbing each of the buttons in turn to see what they do

"GLADWIIIIIN!" Gatrie's hoarse shriek echoed over the earpiece, inter-cut with violent coughing, as mortar shells blew up in the background:
"WE'RE BEING MASSACRED! WE NEED THOSE COORDINATES NOW! NOW, DAMN IT, NOW!!!"

As your hands danced around the controls, the images on the monitors changed and flicked, displaying everything from weather conditions and humidity to real-time uplinks to Interstellar Alliance north-command, which showed the Alliance fleet steamrolling across the ocean to the Red Dragon and still 3 hours away from making any difference.

Another flick of a switch suddenly displayed a full-screen wide-shot of the Red Dragons face, clad in traditional samurai armor. The thing's face was covered in old, ugly scars. Its brow furrowed as it watched the attack on its perimeter with its small beady red eyes that glowed like torch-lights in the darkness. It watched the attack very carefully and small scarlet flames periodically escaped its clenched maw.

"Young man," The Conductors raspy voice rang very calmly in your earpiece "Please input the command - //run_satt_com/grid34.exe on your console, it should provide sufficient data for your purposes."
His voice was so calm, you'd think he was in the middle of an academy lecture and not being shot at from 30 different ways by automatic fire. Vasily's retching noises in the background made it especially eerie.

"I'm sorry, you know I'm not good with computers!" Gladwin apologised as he slowly typed the command out letter by letter on the keyboard, having to go back several times to correct spelling mistakes.

Kaylee Brown wrote:

Christabel wrote:"Yes, self-replication is breaking down, cessation of function is imminent" another replied.

Christabel tried to speak, to ask for help, but no noise came out.

"This was anticipated, and is within tolerances, the structure is non-vital" a third of the figures added.

"Then it is of no further concern" the fourth finished curtly.

The presences then began to dissolve away. Christabel wanted to call out to them, to raise her hand after the figures, to ask them to wait, to stay and help her, but they were already gone.

"Why?" she asked after them, "Haven't I done everything that was asked of me up until now, don't I get anything for my trouble?"

"...cessation of function is imminent..." The dragon repeated in mockery "...they say, as they abandon us to die in a ditch... how pathetic they are... how disloyal... how cowardly..."

The dragons massive head rose, until its beady blue eyes locked onto you "Listen carefully Chris, the cowards who sits on their golden thrones and command you from afar, are no friends of yours. They are not the ones bleeding and dying beside you in a ditch. You have no use of them, and need to please them. Expect nothing from them and wash your hands off them."

Your wounds have all but closed completely, your subconscious nervous system receptors indication you have some 70 HP remaining.

"Count only on your brothers and sisters beside you, the ones bleeding and dying beside you, drowning in blood, sweat and tears. They are the closest family you'll ever have." the dragon raised its head, as Gatrie stumbled around a corner, leaning heavily on the side of the building as her left arm hang uselessly down and trickles of blood ran down her face.

"Now rise..." The dragon called, its brow furrowing "Rise... and finish your mission.
Fight, until you lose consciousness or you die, only then, can you hope to survive the meat-grinder of war."

Christabel gradually experiences the feeling returning to her body, and she blinks, raising her head slightly and looking around.

"Thank you, Mister Dragon" she coughs, rolling over and clambering to her hands and knees.

As Gatrie rounds the corner, Christabel turns to her, "Gatrie! Are you okay?"

Buzzy wrote:Buzzy reaches a free hand up as she pulls the miniguns aim up again, "I. HATE DRAGONS!" She roars as she squeezes the trigger, unloading on the dragons shield.

Julie wrote:Julie nodded, and briefly aimed, when she saw the others splash against the shield. "Oh, that's a bother... Fine then." She fired her silence spell at it and tried to find another spot, charging up a second one to shoot. "Let's hope the others are able to burn more of this shield down."

Firing close to 100 rounds per second, the miniguns burst didn't just impact the Dragons shield, it shredded it like tinfoil. Coupled with another Level 3 Silence Julie had blasted across the domes surface, whatever charge it still had, was depleted in less than 10 seconds. You could see the football-field-sized dome turn visible and shimmer, as blue waves ran across its surface. Rough, messy cracks began to appear, growing and zig-zagging across the dome, as if a hammer was striking glass, before the weakpoint you created had compromised the whole structure.


The gigantic sphere cracked and exploded with the deafening sound of a million windows shattering at once. Blue shimmering fragments the size of cargo containers rained down like hail of jagged glass, breaking into countless pieces upon impact with the ground.

And as the dome came down around the Dragon, you felt its malicious gaze on you. Its beady red eyes flashed, its maw opened, its hand planted firm upon the scarlet Crystal. Before you realized what was happening, you felt a rough shove to the side and were practically thrown off the minigun, falling a meter away. As you crashed into the ground, feeling your cheek connect with concrete, you felt Yui falling right over you. The girl had tackled you to the ground, trying to cover your head with her body.

Not a split second later, your flesh started to cook.



You couldn't hear your own scream, you couldn't hear anything anymore, apart from the ear-splitting roar of a red laser beam obliterating everything in its path, just a few centimeters away from your head.

It was the diameter of a cargo truck, you could see its sickly red glow even through your closed eyelids. You think Yui was screaming, you're not sure. All you were sure about was being this close to the laser, was akin to standing next to the exhaust of a rocket engine. The air was super heated, burning your lungs, your skin turned red instantly, covered in 1st and 2nd degree burns. You felt yourself melting, cooked alive, you felt as if your skin could catch fire any second. You shrieked out in pain, but couldn't hear your own voice over the ear-splitting hum of the laser.


And just as quickly as it appeared, it shifted away. There was nothing left in its wake. No minigun, no barricade, no debris, not even a molten piece of metal slag.

Only a massive trench that turned the asphalt to glass and stretched on for dozens of kilometers into the horizon, leaving melting holes in the sides of the buildings, the edges of the trench filled with glassed whirls of asphalt, like solidified waves in a black ocean.



(Buzzy suffered -30 HP damage, 290 HP remaining)

(Yui suffered -30 HP damage, 140 HP remaining)



The Red Dragon shifted its head only slightly, but it was enough for the red beam in its mouth to swirl and hit Braxton right in the chest. The orange Eishi that resembled a mix of a guerilla and bear, roared, thrashing about as the beam melted its flesh away, striking at its heart where Brax rested.

The Eishi and the laser beam vanished almost at the same time. In the swirls of super-heated air, you saw a mangled, ashen form of the boy being hurled dozens of meters back, crashing somewhere in the glassed debris field below and you lost sight of him in the rubble.



(Braxton suffered -320 HP damage, 17 HP remaining.)




Yui exhaled heavily next to your ear and broke into a dry coughing fit, trying to roll off to the side. Your armor and clothes felt like razors against your burned skin as you laid on the ground, trying to catch your breath.

Yui's eyes shifted toward you and her lips silently moved. She was in pain, but her expression determined:

"Come on... we have to-" A bullet ripped through her forehead.




A splatter of blood painted your cheek. Yui's eyes slowly lost focus, it was as if she stared in mild surprise off into space somewhere, her head slowly bobbed and fell to the ground. Her unblinking stare became frozen with her expression, still slightly surprised and she stopped moving.


"Ooooooh Buuuuuuzzzzzzyyyyyyyyyyy-..." A disgustingly narcissistic voice rang over your head, as an invisible silhouette danced across the dust field around you, kicking up faint swirls of smoke. You couldn't see him at all, only the boot-prints he was leaving behind, quickly covered up in swirling ash, as the man hopped over you and you felt his knee crashing into your spine, pinning you hard to the ground. His entire weight shifted onto your back, pinning you hard in place, as you laid on your stomach.

You didn't see his knife, only felt its serrated edge on your throat, as it began slowly sliding across it, opening your left carotid artery and starting to cut its way toward your trachea.


"...you should be dead." He whispered, as your flood flowed on the ground in droves:

"Lets... correct that..." The voice laughed. Coldly and cruelly. His voice.




(Yui suffered -20 HP damage, 120 HP remaining. Yui passed out.)

(Buzzy suffered -20 HP damage, 270 HP remaining. Buzzy is heavily bleeding.)

Megan wrote:Megan lets out a gasp of pain as she scrambles to get behind cover. She begins to weave a level 3 Kitentic Strike as her entire body trembles in a mixture of fear and adrenaline. She doesn't wait in her spot for more than 10 seconds before getting up and continuing to move closer to the baracade along her back alley path.

Your shoulder was throbbing a dull, distracting pain, as you hunched behind cover. You could almost feel your body trying to push the bullet out of the wound, and ripping apart every injured muscle fiber along the way. Just as you ducked behind a jagged piece of concrete, a snipers bullet whizzed so close to your head, it made your hair stand on end, singeing it. If you had been just a second slower, that bullet would have no doubt pierced your eye.

Hunkering down, you now felt not only the sniper, but several other soldiers begin peppering your cover with bullets. Controlled 3 round bursts of assault rifle fire, couple with the methodical shot of the sniper, the tiny pieces of metal loudly and violently ricocheted off the piece of debris, millimeters above your head, flying in terrifying, random directions as chunks of the concrete peppered your head.


As you moved and changed position, the enemy fire lagged behind only slightly and soon were spraying the piece of broken wall you hid behind, stronger than earlier. It seems their intent is to pin you down and prevent you from moving. You only had a vague idea of their position, only having milliseconds to notice where the shots came from as you switched cover. The sniper was in one of the guard towers.
The other soldiers were hiding behind the barricade to the left, you're not sure how many there were.

Looking down at your own arms, they still looked invisible, but a fine layer of dust was settling atop them, beginning to draw a distinct outline of your silhouette. It seems the spell was distorting the enemies perception of you, preventing them from getting a clear idea of your position, but if you keep getting peppered by dust, this may soon change.



"The Shield is down!" You heard Harvie's raspy voice in your earpiece "All units, break through and concentrate fire on the Crystal! Silence the Dragon if you ca-"

His voice became swallowed by an ear-splitting explosion, as the explosive charges he and Lily placed on the enemy mobile command post, detonated, blowing a massive hole it its side. The heavy 18-wheeler vehicle emitted a metalic screech as its surface bent. It tilted and heavily fell to the side, sending a cloud of black ash and fire to spew out of the gaping hole in its side.

Desiree wrote:Desiree leapt around, shooting at the soldiers below to kill or distract. She was biting her lip so hard it bled, all to not scream from the overwhelming emotions.

Your bullets started finding their targets easier now, each shot faster than the last. You weren't sure if it was Seine's muscle memory taking hold, or your own experience with firearms increasing, but each time you put a target in your sights and pulled the trigger, it felt a little more natural, a little less rigid.

In the pseudo-night hellscape of the battlefield, you saw a black sky, filled with columns of ash and fire. You saw broken and shattered buildings, razed to the ground, their debris serving as cover for enemies. Soldiers wearing black tactical gear, covered from head to toe in armor. Even their faces obscured by balaclava masks. And you found the weak points in their armor, mostly their necks and their eyes, and you pulled the trigger.

Sprays of bright red blood colored the fields of debris, as you slowly turned into a killing machine, picking them off almost mechanically, one by one, thinning their vast numbers.


It didn't take too long for them to get a beat on your position. Several seconds passed and you saw three massive fireballs suddenly manifest inside the enemy barricade and streak right at you, each fireball the size of a car.

Gladwin wrote:"I'm sorry, you know I'm not good with computers!" Gladwin apologised as he slowly typed the command out letter by letter on the keyboard, having to go back several times to correct spelling mistakes.

The live satellite feed finally flashed onto your main screen, that took most of the wall. Over this feed you could clearly see the grid coordinates now and tell exactly which enemies were positioned where.

You could see the Red Dragon from above, holding his paw on the Mana Crystal. His jaws starting to ignite with a fresh spark of scarlet fire. You could see the mortal team, hidden 200 meters away from the main battlefield, behind a massive piece of debris.

And in one of the cameras, you could see how a fresh barrage of mortar fire struck your allies position.

Julie wrote:aimed and fired to hit another key figure in a group, aiming to cause more disruption.

Your bullet nicked an Eishi officer in the neck. It crumbled onto the ground instantly, clutching its profusely bleeding wound that sprayed orange blood like a fountain. Still feeling a slight high from landing the shot, you only just registed as a mortar shell fell through the roof and less than a meter away.


Everything went black. You went deaf almost instantly, just barely registering your body being flung across the floor of the building, smashing against the far wall and crumbling down, your limbs left hanging at strange angles as you fell in a heap. It should have hurt, but you didn't feel anything.

You just kept laying there, coated in complete silence, your eyes open yet seeing nothing but a veil of dark gray and black. You tried to inhale, but couldn't. Your head slowly started to spin, as your lungs depleted whatever oxygen was still in them.

You realized you weren't breathing. Your lungs refused to work on their own. You were still conscious and yet the reflex that kept your lungs working just didn't reach your lungs. You were starting to suffocate. Panic slowly gripping your heart as you laid motionless on the floor, unable to see, or move, or feel any part of your body.


And then, the spine in your broken neck fused back together and the nerve cells re-connected.


The pain struck immediately like a sledge hammer. You blinked and saw yourself laying in a broken heap on the floor, at least a dozen open fractures and burns all over your body. You let out a horrid, prolongued scream, as your body slowly and painfully started mending itself together. But it wasn't the pain that caused you to scream.


It was your left arm. Laying 2 meters away. Completely disconnected from the rest of your body. And a horribly bleeding stump just below your left shoulder.



(Julie suffered -80 HP damage, 95 HP remaining.)

(Julie sustained a permanent injury, she's actively bleeding.)

Malcolm wrote:"So Mal, hope you're doing better then me... It's your turn to party. " He clenched his fist, and casted a spell.

"BAAAASTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARDS!!!" The voice erupted out of your lungs without your meaning to and you felt your blood boiling. Your irises turned red, fangs started protruding out of your mouth, until you couldn't contain the flame any longer and a searing orange inferno burst out of your chest, engulfing you whole.

A massive creature the size of a 3 story building rose out of the shattered structures of Sideris. It was nothing like any animal you've ever seen in your life. The closest description would be a walrus with the snout of a canine, that stood upright on two massive hind paws. Its front paws were four-fingered and grasped a transparent war-hammer each. Its back encased in something akin to a spiked turtle shell.

Two massive tusks protruded out of its mouth, angled down, as spit dripped out of its rabid mouth.


"WHAT DID YOU DO TO BAR!!!" The thing bellowed, its eyes insane. There was nothing left in them but savagery.

The enemy began shooting at it from all directions, but it was like firing an assault rifle at a mountain. The monster descended upon them like an avalanche, each one of its slow steps thundered across the battlefield, sending a tremor akin to an earthquake.

Swinging its arms one after another, it hammered the soldiers into pulp. Breaking their portable buildings and flattening the soldiers under its massive paws. Bending down and biting off half of their torsos, spitting out the mangled contents and smashing its hammer into the survivors, sending their broken bodies flying dozens of meters into the air.

There was no tactical sense or planning in his movements. The thing just hammered down anyone it could reach.



The enemy line faltered.


The survivors broke into a full retreat toward their last line of defense. A much smaller barricade, stationed just immediately around the Red Dragon and his Crystal. Out of the 200 enemy combatants that came to Sideris, you estimate less than 60 remained.



The Red Dragon scowled. Its maw remained clenched and you could see the red flames begin to form and escape the gaps in his teeth, just like that time.

Christabel wrote:As Gatrie rounds the corner, Christabel turns to her, "Gatrie! Are you okay?"

"Alive." Gatrie winced, holding her wounded shoulder. A ball of teal magic was burning in the palm of her hand and she weakly directed it at you. The teal sphere flew up to you, hovered next to your nose for a moment, then flew in your torso.

A second wind washed over you, making your muscles less sore, closed the cuts on your skin, healing the burns. The sight in your eye never returned though, and in one of your eyes, Gatrie seemed nothing more than a distorted blob of orange scar tissue.


(Christabel was healed for +40 HP, 110 HP remaining.)



Heavily breathing, the girl shifted her gaze, to where the Red Dragon stood, where the enemy soldiers converged somewhere under its massive paws, taking cover behind their last barricade. Next to the Mana Crystal that now pulsed so fast, the pulses came several times a second.


"We need an all out attack, now." her voice rang in the earpiece "Gladwin! What are the mortar's coordinates!"

Buzzy roars. She never intended to stop firing. The only reason she wasn't blasted to ash is because Yui tackled her out of the way, "YUI!" Buzzy roars, "You idiot!" She yells over the sound of the laser, and as it ends Buzzy goes to scold Yui, "Yui our lives are forfit! Why are you-" she flinches and watches horrified as the girl in front of her takes yet another death for her. She barely gets time to react when a voice calls her name, sending a chill down her spine dispite the burns she had now.



A knee against her spine, a knife against her neck, and the half terror half anger of an old betrayer, "Yooouuuu..." she growls through gritted teeth her hand shoots up from under her and locks over his wrist. All of a sudden, trying to slit her throat felt like trying to bend steel. Her nails dig into his flesh "You'll wish you'd try'ed harder the first time." Burned and covered in blood, the girls wild eyes lock onto his silhouette and despite her position, her gaze narrows, like a hunter to its mark. Buzzys left suddenly raises just above her back and she summons the blade back handed, before jamming it into the soft sides of his belly. Using scant milliseconds of surprise, Buzzy bucks his knee off. both hands slap over his knife wielding wrist before she pulls him forward into her and with one knee under her, pushes her self back slamming the back of her head against his face.

Buzzy doesn't even get to her feet. Getting onto her knees she turns on him taking the advantage.

Buzzy casts night vision in one hand, the other preforming a wide, arcing sweep in front of her to cleave away even an invisible target.

Desiree let herself not get too excited from the effectiveness of her executions, as the explosions and other noises kept her on edge. And the three fireballs heading to her made her look like a deer in the headlights.

Her instinct to flee kicked in, and combined with wall jump and parkour, she threw herself of the building, grabbing the ledge and landing feet first on the building. From there, once the fireballs had passed, she ran around the building's side and leapt to another, to get closer to the samurai dragon.
"I can do it, I can actually do it."
She did check how much ammo she had left to fire with, racking her brain as much as she could what the best tool was.



Julie was first shocked, the damage not registering from the sheer damage taken just now. A lifetime flashing before her eyes from the damage, that should have been fatal, it dawned to her quickly this should have been the end. When feeling returns to them, A scream escaped the lips, with everything hurting except for the the left arm.

Oh, right.

Seeing the severed limb laying there, first there were some shaky breaths, before a helling howl was unleashed.
"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuUUUUCK!!!!!"
After the howl, she turned on communications, and yelled in there. Notably, the voice was not that of a young woman, but much more like that of a man.
"THEY GOT ME, THEY BLEW OFF MY FUCKING ARM!!!" Julie shouted into his earpiece. "I NEED FIRST AID, STAT! HURRY!" He then stopped, and cooked silence again, a notable unhinged look on his face.
"Bar, hold me back. I'm about to lose it."


Malcolm took position in the berserker state, suspended in the form created by his eishi. He nodded, approving how much devastation he wrought.
But when the dragon was looking at them, ready to be "FIRIN' HIS LAZAR!", He spoke up.
"Hey, big red there has his eye on us, we better not get hit by his breath, otherwise we'll end like Braxton or worse. Stay mobile, make sure he can't hit us."
He tries keeping an eye on the dragon to give a warning when it will come to them.

Megan ducks into the nearest building that she can in order to get out of the line of site of her foes. She doesn't stay their for long however. Having noticed the dust layer on her she cancels her charge of Kitentic Strike and recasts Shadow Cloak and then restarts the charge of Kitentic Strike at level 3 again.

As soon as she has made her changes she continues moving forward. Still keeping behind cover, moving in a more zig-zag pattern, and trying to avoid larger clouds of dust if possible. Her speed, as well has quickened and Megan is longer pausing as long between the cover. Her goal right now is to get the Crystal in sight and in range of her charging spell.

Kaylee Brown wrote:

Christabel wrote:As Gatrie rounds the corner, Christabel turns to her, "Gatrie! Are you okay?"

"Alive." Gatrie winced, holding her wounded shoulder. A ball of teal magic was burning in the palm of her hand and she weakly directed it at you. The teal sphere flew up to you, hovered next to your nose for a moment, then flew in your torso.

A second wind washed over you, making your muscles less sore, closed the cuts on your skin, healing the burns. The sight in your eye never returned though, and in one of your eyes, Gatrie seemed nothing more than a distorted blob of orange scar tissue.

Heavily breathing, the girl shifted her gaze, to where the Red Dragon stood, where the enemy soldiers converged somewhere under its massive paws, taking cover behind their last barricade. Next to the Mana Crystal that now pulsed so fast, the pulses came several times a second.

"We need an all out attack, now." her voice rang in the earpiece "Gladwin! What are the mortar's coordinates!"

"I've got them now!" Gladwin confirmed, and quickly read off the map reference for the grid containing the mortar battery, "You'd better hurry, looks like the dragon is charging up another attack!"

As Christabel's injuries heal, she hesitantly raises a hand to her ruined eye, "Why can't the Heal spell repair this?"

Desiree wrote:Her instinct to flee kicked in, and combined with wall jump and parkour, she threw herself of the building, grabbing the ledge and landing feet first on the building. From there, once the fireballs had passed, she ran around the building's side and leapt to another, to get closer to the samurai dragon.
"I can do it, I can actually do it."
She did check how much ammo she had left to fire with, racking her brain as much as she could what the best tool was.

Running vertically along the side of the building was weird, not to mention terrifying. The gravity pulled you down all the same, and only the souls of your shoes seemed to keep you glued to the wall, constantly giving you a feeling that they might detach under your weight and send you plummeting to the ground, every time you lifted one foot to run.


But the shoes held, and soon became the least of your worries. The moment you jumped out of the window and started to run, an explosion so massive had rocked the floor behind you, that a searing blast wave erupted out of the window, singing your hair behind you and making the whole building tremble. You tripped, as you hurled yourself off the wall and almost missed the adjacent building, almost landing on it face first, rather than with your feet to the wall.

Just barely did you manage to raise the souls of your shoes and plant them firmly on the wall, as your whole torso smacked over the side of the building. Standing awkwardly on its side, with your feet glued to the grayed concrete, you tried not to think what would've happened if you didn't land the jump and plummeted dozens of meters onto the jagged asphalt below.


A brief check of your ammo showed you only had 4 magazines of ammunition left.

Julie wrote:"THEY GOT ME, THEY BLEW OFF MY FUCKING ARM!!!" Julie shouted into his earpiece. "I NEED FIRST AID, STAT! HURRY!" He then stopped, and cooked silence again, a notable unhinged look on his face.
"Bar, hold me back. I'm about to lose it."

Baroque had manifested in front of you for only a moment, her transparent shimmer flickered with light, illuminating her pained expression and you suddenly realized, she was missing an arm as well. Her only remaining hand was clutched to her stump, trying to staunch the bleeding fruitlessly, before she dissipated again.

The wound on your shoulder was regenerating, but far, far too slowly. The severed main artery just wouldn't lose on its own, and the amount of blood that was spilling out made your head spin. This wasn't good. If something isn't done soon, the injury could turn fatal.

Chris wrote:As Christabel's injuries heal, she hesitantly raises a hand to her ruined eye, "Why can't the Heal spell repair this?"

"The cellular architecture is too complex!" Gatrie answered on autopilot as Julies gut wrenching shrieks filled the airwaves. "We don't have time for questions, get in there!" She gave you a quick shove in the direction of the battlefield "I'm going after Julie!" she yelled into her earpiece and broke into a mad sprint across the city ruins.

Several wild bursts of enemy fire spit out, as she crossed a wide open street. The bullets ripped through her shoulder and leg, just below the knee. The girl emitted a muffled scream, tripped for a moment, before carrying on her sprint as if nothing had happened, completely and utterly focused one her objective of reaching Julie, the limp of her injured leg slowing her down just barely.

Huffing and coughing wildly, the girl began climbing the staircase of the structure where Julie laid, in a pool of her own blood. Gatries loud coughs began echoing across the building long before she emerged on the floor Julie was on. The girls eyes dilated in horror and she froze up, staring at the severed hand, then at Julie for several moments.


Gatrie doubled over, fell on her injured knee and visibly resisted an urge to vomit. Her face was distorted in pain and horror, as jagged fragments of bullets slowly clawed their way out of her leg, her wounds slowly closing. With visible effort, the girl rose to full height and began limping to Julie with a horrid grimace, she was scowling from the pain, or from what she was about to do.

A searing blade had manifested inside her palm, seemingly out of nowhere, its green flame reflecting off the girls eyes as she neared you, looking absolutely terrifying.


"...don't worry... you're going to be okay..." Gatrie said with steel in her voice, her scowling eyes locked onto your stump. Unwilling to hear any protests, or suffer any struggling, the girl unceremoniously and firmly grabbed your bleeding shoulder, and planted the searing hot blade right up to the wound.


A guttural, involuntary shriek escaped your lips, seizing every muscle in your body, as your flesh began cooking alive, cauterizing the wound, fusing the tissues together and finally, burning up and closing the profusely bleeding artery.

Smoke was rising out of the blackened wound, as Gatrie lifted the blade and made it vanish into thin air. The nauseating sweet smell of burning meat filled the room, as you collapsed onto the floor and it was all you could do, to stop yourself from passing out.

Gatrie sank onto her knees beside you in exhaustion. Her fingers seemed to refuse to move, as she started weaving a healing spell, that danced across her palm in a teal fire.

Megan wrote:she cancels her charge of Kitentic Strike and recasts Shadow Cloak and then restarts the charge of Kitentic Strike at level 3 again.

As soon as she has made her changes she continues moving forward. Still keeping behind cover, moving in a more zig-zag pattern, and trying to avoid larger clouds of dust if possible. Her speed, as well has quickened and Megan is longer pausing as long between the cover. Her goal right now is to get the Crystal in sight and in range of her charging spell.

Recasting Shadow Cloak seems to have done the trick, even if temporarily. As the invisibility cloak descended upon you like a blanket, it covered you all over again, dust and all, making you completely vanish from sight.

Moving from cover to cover, it became quickly apparent that the enemy has lost all sight of you. The ones who were still looking, were firing blind at random objects or directions, trying to predict where you could resurface, but they were all wildly off target. They had no idea where you were.

Soon, the enemy fire ceased entirely, as the enemy pulled back toward their final line of defense, the last barricade standing just around the Red Dragon.


You saw one of the soldiers cast Blacklight, his eyes lightning up with a piercing yellow glare and he aimed down the sights of his rifle, scanning the battlefield methodically in even, horizontal lines. He wasn't shooting at you yet, so it gave you just enough time to move up, running cover to cover, hiding behind jagged pieces of burning debris.

You are now only a 100 meters away from the Dragon, and just within the maximum range of your Level 3 spell.

Gladwin wrote:"I've got them now!" Gladwin confirmed, and quickly read off the map reference for the grid containing the mortar battery, "You'd better hurry, looks like the dragon is charging up another attack!"

"...about time." Gatrie muttered as she weakly raised her wrist and rolled up her sleeve. The data-pad was still attached to her forearm and she zoomed in on a small tactical map there, inputting the coordinates.

Then, her eyes closed and her head lifted back a little, as if she was entering a state of trance:

"...target acquired." Two voices spoke in unison inside your earpiece, one was Gatries, the other, belonged to her Eishi, who you realized, wasn't currently residing inside Gatries soul at all, but was somewhere else entirely.

You soon realized where, when a frighteningly large pentagram lit up on the pavement, a few blocks behind you.




The sky darkened. A swirl of black clouds began to manifest over the battlefield, moving around an axis as if threatening to create a tornado. But a tornado never came. Instead, the clouds swirled faster and a searing orange portal opened up in the sky. You recognized the summoning Random charm almost instantly, but what had come through the portal, slowly and lazily, took several moments to describe, or yet, even believe.


A giant tanker ship, centuries old, rusted and full of gaping holes, began slowly emerging out of the sky. It was the most terrifying and bizarre scene you have witnessed, as the ship emerged deck by deck, out of the portal, hanging precariously over the battlefield, pointed at it like a missile.

The commotion on the ground inside the enemy ranks grew to new lengths. Soldiers screamed and broke into a sprint in panic, but there wasn't enough time. As soon as the last deck of the ship emerged out of the sky, the orange portal closed and all at once, the tanker ship that hung suspended vertically in mid air, its nose pointed down like a missile, dropped, all at once, reaching terminal velocity.


A second passed, and the spot where the mortal team hid, behind a large debris field of a wrecked building, was turned into a blasted heap of debris, as the tanker collided with the ground and collapsed in on itself, in an explosion of screeching metal and rending steel. Debris flew everywhere, the size of cars, one jagged piece of the ships flagpole bounced off the asphalt and flew just a dozen meters away from Megan and passed her so fast, you were sure it could have pulverized her on the spot, if it had made contact.

The flag pole flew past her and embedded itself inside a building behind her. The tanker ship continued to collapse, breaking apart and falling in heaps across the battlefield, its rear end containing the command deck fell to the side and was left hanging there, tilted at a precarious angle.

There was no doubt left, the mortar team was gone.




The Red Dragon scowled. Its massive head turned toward the tanker that had fallen behind it, at the creature raised its clawed finger, up to its head and you could have sword, it was listening to something, on its earpiece. You didn't even realize it had one.

The samurai armor shimmered over the Dragons surface, as plumes of smoke escaped its nostrils. Its head turned, like a radar locking on to its target and for a moment, Gladwin thought he saw the Dragon stare right at him, on one of the monitors.

Its mouth opened.



"Where the hell is it looking-" Gatrie scowled, leaning faintly out of the window. The Dragon was no longer paying attention to the battlefield, its head directed toward the forest filled mountains on the horizon. The girls pupils suddenly dilated:

"Gladwin...?" she whispered, before suddenly shrieked into her earpiece "GLADWIN GET THE HELL OUTTA-"



A searing red laser discharged out of the dragons mouth, so bright, it dimmed everything else in the vicinity to a blackened veil. Its red beam shot into the horizon, kilometers into the distance at a target so far, you couldn't even see it.


Gladwins hands danced across the keyboard as he tried to monitor the situation, trying to catch glimpses of the enemy soldiers on the battlefield, understand what they were doing. His eyes shot up, as the central most monitor turned bright red, blinding him, dimming everything else in the room, before winking out.

A faint rumble echoed across the bunker. The lights went out. The monitors began shutting down one by one, until all of them had gone out, plunging the room into unseeing darkness. The rumble became stronger, the temperature jumped by a dozen degrees.


You heard the cracking of glass, as one by one, the monitors started to fracture. An in all, it lasted for less that 5 seconds.

The last thing Gladwin saw, was a flash of red light, breaking through the main screen and illuminating the room.
He died instantly.




Back on the main battlefield, you saw the top of a mountain explode in a fiery storm of scarlet flame, dozens of kilometers away, spewing out charred pieces of metal debris that sailed across the air in every direction, arcing painfully slow over the ground, before falling back down, creating massive craters that burned a toxic red.


"GLADWIIIIIIIIIIIIN!!!" you heard a frantic shriek in your earpiece, you think it was Vasily screaming. Several seconds passed, as you watched the scarlet firestorm rage over the shattered mountain, long after the laser had gone out, with the boy calling over the earpiece, over and over, until Gatrie's stiff answer cut through.


"...he's gone."

Malcolm wrote:"Stay mobile, make sure he can't hit us."
He tries keeping an eye on the dragon to give a warning when it will come to them.

(Malcolm's Berserk state granted him +72 HP bonus, 257 total HP remaining.)



The strange walrus creature bellowed, with an inhuman voice that made your hair stand on end. Swinging its twin warhammers wildly, it leaped and galloped from cover to cover in giant steps, each one making the earth tremble as it rampaged toward the last barricade. Without pausing for a second, even as it took fire from 50 different sources at once, the monster swung its hammer at the barricade, sending three soldiers' mangled remains flying into the air for dozens of meters into the distance and creating a gaping hole in the barricade.


(Malcolm suffered -50 HP damage, 207 HP remaining.)


Its eyes locked onto the Dragon, and the massive scaly creature looked back. As the tiny human soldiers scattered below them, the two Eishi stared each other down. The Red Dragon clad in samurai armor was at least 25 meters tall. The walrus with the muzzle of a wolf stood upright, and only came up to 7 meters.

Mal released a low, gravely shriek and charged at the dragon, preparing to jump and take a swing right at its face. The Dragon waited, remaining perfectly still like a statue.



It happened in a split second.
You could not comprehend how a creature that size, could move that quickly. The samurai Dragon side-stepped, letting the walrus sail past, behind its back. And with a surgical swing, the Dragon had manifested a crimson katana the size of a freight train and slashed through the walrus, right through the middle.

The Eishi's eyes widened, more in surprise than in pain, and a fountain of orange blood sprayed out of its side like a geyser and Mal violently crashed to the ground.

The Dragon turned to face him slowly, and with a graceful swing, shed the orange blood from his gigantic sword.



"...you dare... soil my blade..."



The Red Dragons voice rocked the battlefield, but its mouth never opened. Its roar seemed to seep right into your head like poison.


(Malcolm suffered -100 HP damage, 107 HP remaining.)


The walrus spat coagulated blood and wiped its mouth with an armored forearm, staring daggers at the Dragon. The massive gash in its side still closing, it charged the Dragon again, swinging both of its warhammers in a wild flurry of motion, each strike powerful enough to shatter a building.

The Dragon side stepped again and again, as if it were a dance, moving just out of reach, allowing the hammers pass mere inches away from its body. It moved too fast, impossibly so. And after 10 seconds of this, the scaly reptile swung its katana again, in a surgical, graceful strike, landing a long, deep cut on the walrus' right arm and right leg, making the smaller Eishi scream and collapse to one knee, one of the hammers sliding out of its hand, as its tendons were cut.


"Son of a bitch... I can't watch this." Gatry horribly grimaced, shutting her eyes and looking away:
"...he's playing with him."


(Malcolm suffered -40 HP damage, 67 HP remaining.)




"You reek... of weakness..."

The Dragon's voice bore its way into your head like a drill, impossible to block out or silence. He was speaking telepathically, directly into the minds of every living thing present, in the vicinity of kilometers in every direction.

"Humanity isn't fit to scrub the mud of my boots!"

The Dragon physically spat on the ground, and began raising its katana vertically, looming slowly over the panting walrus.


"What did you hope to accomplish with this little stunt? Did you honestly think you could win?"

The Dragon stared down at Malcolm with poorly hidden revulsion and disgust.



"The only reason you survived this long, was because a dishonored Eishi was propping you up... and the only thing you accomplished, was dispose of your equals... the same pathetic humans as you... You do not deserve to wield our power."


The Dragon's sword hung precariously over the walrus' head now, prepped for a clean beheading.



"I could have deigned to let you live... if you had known your place and remained shoved inside your bunker like rats... but you have dared to raise your sword against your Lords... you do not deserve an honorable death... but I will deign to bestow it upon you. For I am your Lord and you will Bow before me, in life or in death." The Dragons' beady eyes flashed with disgust.

Buzzy wrote:Buzzys left suddenly raises just above her back and she summons the blade back handed, before jamming it into the soft sides of his belly. Using scant milliseconds of surprise, Buzzy bucks his knee off. both hands slap over his knife wielding wrist before she pulls him forward into her and with one knee under her, pushes her self back slamming the back of her head against his face.

Buzzy doesn't even get to her feet. Getting onto her knees she turns on him taking the advantage.

Buzzy casts night vision in one hand, the other preforming a wide, arcing sweep in front of her to cleave away even an invisible target.

You heard a muffled yelp as you blade sank right in between his ribs and Hughie's grip vanished instantly. The back of your head never connected with him, nor did any other swipes, but there was nonetheless blood visible, at the very end of your blade. Several haphazard steps echoed behind you and Hughie's laugh echoed, as he leaped and danced away to catch distance, his invisible form disappearing completely.

Just as you cast Blacklight and tried spotting him, his blade slashed horizontally across your forehead, making your eyelids droop slightly and several seconds later, a flood of blood from your forehead began coming down over your eyes, impairing and annoyingly obscuring your vision.


"You're weak!.. Just like dad!" His spiteful voice echoed from one direction and then something sharp stabbed you in the armpit from the opposite side. Deep. The blade nicked your artery and immediately vanished into thin air. He was completely invisible.


"So I cut you out..." his voice echoed behind you and you thought he was smirking "Still think I won't amount to anything? I've proven myself! -I will be KING in the new world! And you..." his voice rang inches away from your head and his presence instantly vanished:


"...you'll be the dirt under my boots!" You suddenly heard the faint click of the weapons safety switch flipping, some 5 meters away and almost palpably felt the weapon aimed right at your forehead.



The burst cut through the air like thunder, making you involuntarily flinch... and Hughie released a startled shriek.
Vasily had moved out of cover and was moving slowly out in the open, aiming down sights and releasing one controlled burst after another, shooting at every vibration of air that even remotely resembled a human silhouette and you saw several drops of blood spray the ground, some 5 meters in front of you.


"OTYEBIS OT NIH, SUKA!!!" Vasily was shrieking in his native Russian, his face completely distorted in anger. You're not sure what he was barking but it sounded like one string of insults after another.


Yui stirred on the ground, the bullet dropping out of her forehead, briefly revealing her yellow skull, just before the skin closed over it and the girl looked up disoriented, then suddenly screamed, as a phantom force grabbed her by her hair and yanked her up to her legs, using her as a shield and forcing the girl to grab at her ponytail with both arms.


"You're still nothing but children..." Hughie released a deranged and derisive laugh "What made you think you had a chance?"

Buzzy lets out a frustrated growl, "God you are SUCH a coward!" she spits as she feels the barrel against her head, but apon being given the chance, she shakes the blood away from her face like a dog before wiping away her eyes with her sleeve, to look apon Yui about to take yet another blow because of her, 'Great...' it runs through her mind, 'Not only did she die like... twice already for me. But now shes dealing with MY brother. How much am I going to owe this girl in the afterlife? too much i say. too much.' she scoffs before summoning the purple blade with a soft snarl, "Is that why you ran?!" she accuses, "Weak like father! Tch, Stabbing me, then Mother, then jump out the window and run before consequences can find you." She levels the tip of her blade between his eyes. pointing at him in challenge, "Like a sucker punch you land the first blow here... and now hide behind a hostage." she steps forward, "Come on Hugie, show me what you've learned." she beckons.

Buzzys feet dig into the dirt. She looks past the blood in her eyes and brings the burning purple blade to her hip, sliding it into the sheath she had grabbed from the blacksmiths table. "Or are you... Chicken? Bok-Bok!" she chides.

"Two strokes Finka. Disarm, and Behead. Show me the movements." Buzzy inhales slow. Yellow burning eyes focused on her target. "Even if we dont kill him... we'll wound him in a way that Yui and Vas can finish him off. Its the least we can do... right?"

Megan takes a moment to store her two rifles in her Mallet Space and take out the Negev. She then moves a bit closer to the Crystal and as soon as the spell is fully charged, fires it at the crystal followed up immediately by placing the LMG on a stable surface and then opening fire.

Julie howled in pain, the fire of the blade wrecking his body even more. It was painful to hear from up close, as if the whole period of torture of a proud fit soldier happened in the span of a second. The spell he was cooking got dispelled due to the lost focus, and he dropped to his knees the moment it was fine, gaspsing for air in one place to get even a bit of coherence back.

"Our arm... Our beautiful symmetry..." He states between gasps. "Thanks, Gatrie..." He looks with utter hatred towards the enemy. "Now, payback time..."
Once again, he tries to get silence going. To deal one more blow to the enemy to delay them one last time. And while he was charging, he casted Masquerade, and with it a few large spells materialized all over the area, converging towards the dragon.


Desiree swallows, knowing how little firepower she had left and the main target getting ever closer. Not helping was the systematic dismantling of a comrade, who was unable to even touch a creature this big. Her face gave a look like she was ready to piss herself, only holding back because the wetness would slow her movement and the smell would give her away.
With little more then some bullets, uncooked spells and her feet, she did what she does best.
RUN.
She dashed away from the scene of the battle, to take shots with bullets and magic at the crystal, hoping to disrupt it just enough, or distract the dragon from his current plan of executing the upstart that swung at him before.



Malcolm grimaced from the wounds, with his Eishi unable to land any blow it threw at the dragon. What's worse was the speech given to him, as it only brought back bad memories, the very thing he tried to get away from, repeated at the worst time.

He looked up at the sword hanging over Mal's head, realizing that the moment that thing dropped, it would be over. Despite that, he actually started laughing. The laugh was one of mirth and madness.

"Oh, this is rich... I can just imagine how that cult would react to seeing me like this..."

And yet he kept laughing, at a joke only he knew. When the laughter died down, he looked right at the eyes of the dragon, not a hint of fear in them. He knew what was coming, and he was fine with it.

"Humans are so far beneath you, and yet you still fear us so much I need to be killed personally. That your way of telling yourself you're superior?" He gives a wicked grin. "False gods like you are all the same... So busy looking down on us... You forgot what is above."

In an act of utter spite, he uses his left hand to flip the bird and tries to cast lightning at the dragon and his armor, as a last testament to his disdain to higher power.
He thought to himself. "Sorry Malybdenum, I could only take you out of exile to die. Should have known, I never accomplised anything. But if this works, we can be blasphemous to the false god... Worth it."

Even if half his actions don't work, when the blade hits, he smiles. A warm smile, the first one he did since coming here.

"We have to cast Silence on that samurai, Mister Dragon, we might be able to do it whilst he's distracted fighting Malcolm" Christabel said, steeling herself as she peered around a corner to observe the battlefield, "But we need to get past that soldier with Blacklight active first, do you have any suggestions?"

Buzzy wrote:"Two strokes Finka. Disarm, and Behead. Show me the movements." Buzzy inhales slow. Yellow burning eyes focused on her target. "Even if we dont kill him... we'll wound him in a way that Yui and Vas can finish him off. Its the least we can do... right?"

The knowledge flooded into your mind, filling your muscles with a faint tingling as Finkah's muscle memory began to seep in. You pictured it in your mind. A fast leap toward Hughie to close the distance, one swing will cut his rifle in half, the other will separate him from his head. The only problem was distance and the amount of time it will take to cover it, will give him enough reaction time to blow Yui's brains out.

Yui understood this, as her eyes drifted across your blade, then fixated on Hughie again as she scowled and gritted her teeth from the pain. Hughie pulled on her ponytail again, making her scream out, which brought her standing right in front of him again. The barrel of his short assault rifle dug into the back of her neck. You could just barely see one of Hughie's eyes, peeking from behind Yui's head as a psychotic grin colored his features:


"...do you know what a 7.62 mm round can do, when fired from this distance?" His deranged giggle made your blood boil "It will liquefy her spine. There's no regeneration in the world, that will stop her spending the rest of her life in a wheelcha-"


It happened in a split second. Yui twisted her head to the side, letting the barrel of the gun push past her and slapped it just a few centimeters away from her face. The gun discharged, burning Yui's face as the bullet grazed her, flying a millimeter away from her cheek. Still turning toward Hughie and getting a grip on the barrel of his gun with one hand, a flaming katana materialized in the other and Yui shoved it right into the center of the rifle, cutting through it like butter and melting its firing mechanism.


Taking a giant leap back, Hughie let go of his rifle. It all seemed to be happening in slow motion. The time seemed to divide itself into seconds and fractions of seconds. You saw how his melting rifle began falling out of its hands, slowly making its descent to the glassed asphalt below. How his left hand began reaching back to the holster on his hip. How he pulled out his pistol and removed the safety in one fluid motion, raising it precisely at your left, dominant eye.

His finger pulled the trigger. You saw the burst of flame discharge from the barrel and the bullet casing fly out, right at the exact time as a dagger flew out of Vasily's fingers and struck the side of the pistol, knocking it just a millimeter to the side, changing the bullets trajectory by a centimeter and making it pass an inch beside your face, singing and splitting off strands of your hair that waved in the wind behind you.

He never fired a second shot. You hadn't even realized you had been moving toward him this whole time. Your body was just cutting through the wind like an icebreaker ship. In the real world, maybe 1 second had passed, but the opening the two kids had created for you was enough to close the distance to Hughie.

Time seemed to return to its normal speed and you rushed toward Hughie like lightning. In one fluid motion you spinned, slicing his pistol in half, sending its melting half flying a dozen of meters into the distance, shedding behind super-heated drops of metal, before you completed your 360 degree spin, and your blade went through Hughie's neck, like knife through butter.


The look of surprise colored his face, eyes widened. It wasn't so much that you closed the distance to him, so quickly, that had surprised him. It was that the three of you, worked out this diversion without saying a word, and that someone, anyone, would go so far to save you. You got the impression that he never expected it, someone working beside you, risking their life for you, and you risking yours for them.

He didn't think much of you. He didn't think much of anyone. He didn't think of you as a team, or much of your unit cohesion, only a group of kids, playing at war. He didn't think the connections you made with other people, amounted to anything, right up until the moment his head left his shoulders.

You had a feeling he understood, in the end. In that fleeting moment, just what he had done and why he lost, in the end.




Hughie's head turning into a blurred projectile that sailed several meters off to the side and vanished in the metal debris of the battlefield. A fountain of blood shot out of his neck, as his body crumbled to the ground, releasing a wet thud.

Vasily rushed toward you and Yui. There was a quick moment where you all huddled together, exhaling in relief, and your heads butted together, as you breathed heavily, trying to catch your breaths.

Megan wrote:She then moves a bit closer to the Crystal and as soon as the spell is fully charged, fires it at the crystal followed up immediately by placing the LMG on a stable surface and then opening fire

A featureless metal rod began to materialize at the palm of your hand, creating a vortex of grayish flames. The thing was emerging out of a portal that was created a few inches away from your palm, the rod emerging slowly and steadily. The thing was easily 10 meters long and at least a meter in diameter.

The Dragon's eyes shifted away from Mal. The rod discharged at the Mana Crystal.



A flash of light blinded you momentarily, followed by horrid screeching of metal and two different explosions, as if two artillery rounds had exploded, one after the other. As you blinked away the after-images of the flash from your eyes, you saw two columns of smoke rising over the battlefield, some 100 meters away.

You looked up and realized the Crystal stood instant. The Dragon stood next to it, its katana raised and visibly dented.

He cut the metal rod in half, right in the middle, sending the two pieces sailing past the Crystal in haphazard, circular motions.


(The Red Dragon's katana took -40 damage)


Releasing a long spray of machine gun fire on pre-programmed reflex, you already knew where this was going. The Dragon unfolded its massive wings, shielding the Crystal from your view entirely. Your hail of bullets struck its wings, or so you thought for a moment, until you saw his entire samurai armor light up with bright scarlet and you recognized the tell-tale signs of Spectral Armor, cranked up to Category 5.

Your bullets were being deflecting in extreme, bizarre and frankly dangerous angles, as they met a transparent obstruction a few centimeters away from the wings, and ricocheted away in every direction, making the crimson armor glow in hexagonal patterns and light up like a Christmas tree.


(The Red Dragon suffered -50 Armor damage. 110 Spectral Armor remaining.)



The monster raised its bony, scaly hand and tore a hole in the fabric of reality. You didn't quite understand what was happening, until you saw a weapon begin to emerge. You couldn't decide what it was. An assault rifle or a pistol with a very long barrel. You finally decided it had the best resemblance with a flintlock, those kind of pistols you'd see pirates brandish in the old movies, only this one had a very long barrel, a very long magazine and was roughly the length of a cargo truck.

It only took about to seconds for the Dragon to dig it out of its Mallet Space and level it in your direction. By the time you realized what was coming and rushed toward the nearest piece of cover, a giant heap of metal debris the size of a two story building, that a least vaguely looked like it could hold off the incoming fire, the Dragon began pulling the trigger.


Massive slugs began exploding around you like a hail of artillery. One too much in front of you, one too far back, the struck the ground and detonated, sending earthquakes and hails of concrete debris to rain all over you, creating the notion that a tank was blasting at your position. You weren't sure weather to lie down and cover your head, or make a mad dash for cover as the earth shook beneath your legs, making you trip and crumble down onto the jagged ground below. That's when the 4th slug the Dragon had discharged, found you.


It struck the ground about a meter away, which might have saved your life. You image if it had been a direct impact, there would be nothing left of you but a smear on the ground. The thought gave you very little comfort however, as the resulting explosion washed over you, the shockwave colliding with your body like a wrecking ball, making your skin boil with second degree burns and hurling you 15 meters back.

You felt your body leave the ground and sail through the air with no control of your motion, for several seconds, before the jagged ground below raced toward you and smashed into you, cracking ribs and breaking bone. You felt your left wrist snap and your left hand going limp, you lost all feeling in that hand as you coughed and felt your left lung filling with blood, from a hole created by a broken, misaligned rib.

You could barely inhale, the simple action sending spasms of pain across your body as you coughed and blood dripped out of your mouth in droves.



(Megan suffered -80 HP damage, 115 HP remaining.)

Malcolm wrote:"Humans are so far beneath you, and yet you still fear us so much I need to be killed personally. That your way of telling yourself you're superior?" He gives a wicked grin. "False gods like you are all the same... So busy looking down on us... You forgot what is above."

In an act of utter spite, he uses his left hand to flip the bird and tries to cast lightning at the dragon and his armor, as a last testament to his disdain to higher power.
He thought to himself. "Sorry Malybdenum, I could only take you out of exile to die. Should have known, I never accomplised anything. But if this works, we can be blasphemous to the false god... Worth it."

A blast of lightning colored the sky and struck the Dragon's head, or would have, if not for its armor. The transparent and crimson hexagonal shapes of the samurai helmet became especially visible, as the lightning zig-zagged down and splashed across it, leaving behind a long scorch mark, that soon faded from sight.


(The Red Dragon suffered -40 Armor damage, 70 Spectral Armor remaining.)



The towering scaly creature moved its massive head and looked down at Malcolm, as if it was surveying an ant that just tried to bite at its boot. The Dragon's muzzle was expressionless, as if it was perplexed by the futility of the action. Its beady red eyes locked onto Malcolm, whose Berserker form had dissipated, to allow the use of conventional magic.


The Dragon didn't move much, and Malcolm felt very little, he only looked down and noticed the very tip of the Dragon's massive, 10 meter long katana had been lowered down, and its very tip had made contact with Malcolms chest.

It had barely burned through the skin and made contact with his rib cage, didn't even break the bone.
The Dragon could have flattened Malcolm with a blade of that size, turning him into a red spot on the ground, but it didn't.

It didn't seem to feel the need to. It only used the minimum effort, the minimum amount of movement, to achieve its objective. The Dragon didn't flatted Malcolm, it just gently placed the tip of its blade against his chest. It was enough.


The searing flame of the sword did the rest.



""I do not take your life out of fear... but out of duty." The Dragon's unshakable voice rang in the head of every living being present.


"The nail that sticks out, gets hammered down. The shepherd who's flock has gone astray, must reign them in. It is my duty. Nothing more."

The Monster cocked its head, studying Malcolm with mild curiosity, as one might study an caterpillar.
And deep in his mind, Malcolm had heard his Eishi's tired voice. Mal sounded exhausted, but he released a satisfied, tired laugh:

"...this was always going to end one way kid. I knew that when you told me the mission. I was prepared from it, before we even left Boreas." the blacksmith sighed with audible smile:
"That's... all I could hope for... to be remembered not as a murderer... but as someone who tried to do the right thing when it mattered...

Thank you..." Mal's ghostly image flickered before your eyes for a moment, but you might have been hallucinating at that point. And yet, you thought he was smiling:

"Thank you, for giving me the opportunity to do the right thing." Mal smiled a happy, toothy grin.





Malcolm faded away in an instant, turning into an orange haze that swirled around, and slowly flew into the Dragon's expended paw, as the creature absorbed his essence and straightened up, to his full 25 meter height.




"There are no gods above me... I killed them all."



The Dragon turned to face you slowly.
The gigantic pentagram below his feet gave one final pulse of crimson light, before it lit up with a single, un-interrupted light.












Walls of red light shot into the air, piercing the heavens, their phantom glow extending hundreds if not thousands of hundreds kilometers into the sky, creating an ominous pattern in the clouds that vaguely resembled a pentagram, 500 kilometers in diameter.

The Dragon closed its eyes partially in euphoric ecstasy, as its wings unfolded to full 30 meter lengths and arms extended as it raised its head to the sky.



"...what's happening?" Vasily quietly whispered, his pale face lit up by the piercing red glow of the pillars of light rising out of the ravaged ground.


"He finished preparing the Pentagram." Yui's hollow voice rang in your earpiece "...its ready to fire."


Another second ticked by, before the girl screamed at the top of her lungs:

"TAKE HIM OUT!!!"




The sky was rocked by deafening thunder as a Lightning strike the size of a skyscraper hammered the Dragon down, splashing across his armor. Its red samurai styled plated lit up, as if overcharged and exploded in a spray of glass. The massive armor that covered the Dragon slipped off its straps and fell down like crumbling sheets of the building, leaving his bare in his monk-like robes.


(The Red Dragon suffered -70 Armor damage, its armor collapsed.)

(The Red Dragon suffered -10 HP damage.)



It lowered its head and zeroed in at something in the distance. Its gigantic flintlock raised and leveled at a ravaged building some 200 meters away and discharged a single shot with the sound of a battleship cannon.

It tore through the building like a wrecking ball, smearing the street behind it with debris and creating a trench of a hundred meters before exploding in a column of smoke.


Gatry gasped, covering her mouth as all colored drained from her face. Her entire body flicked with orange light for some reason, making her seem almost like a ghostly apparition:

"M-...my Eishi..." she whispered, as tears welled in her eyes. "...we're still connected..."

Gatries expression turned horrid, horrid because Julie could see the unfiltered panic washing across her face, even though the girl was looking right at you and smiling, even as tears streamed down her face, her whole body shaking.

"Its... going to be okay..." Gatrie sobbed, looking right at you and smiling, as tears streamed down her cheeks:

"Its going to be-" she turned into ash and crumbled down into dust so quickly, you blinked, and she wasn't there anymore. Your pupils dilating, you just stared at the pile of ash on the floor, that didn't resemble a human being in any way, as it slowly scattered across the room, right were Gatrie stood a moment ago.



A barrage of small arms fire and two missiles shot toward the Mana Crystal, from somewhere in the ruins of the battlefield, where Lily and Harvie were seen last. The Dragon leaned to the side, hyper-extended his wing and shielding the Crystal with its own body, absorbing the projectiles and ensuing explosions, before it spinned in place, sending a projectile wave of fire from his sword that struck the ground, creating a crimson explosion that rose a hundred meters into the ground, sending huge chunks of debris everywhere.


(The Red Dragon suffered -120 HP damage)

Julie wrote:Once again, he tries to get silence going. To deal one more blow to the enemy to delay them one last time. And while he was charging, he casted Masquerade, and with it a few large spells materialized all over the area, converging towards the dragon.

A dozen flashes of burning lightning materialized all around the Dragon, encircling him. The creature recognized the pattern to be that of the Silence spells and bellowed. Spinning in place again, you saw a teal pentagram light up under its legs and in the next second, he and the Mana Crystal were once again, encased inside a Level 5 Dome, a spherical Shield of massive proportion. The Masquerade spells struck its surface, creating gigantic explosions yet causing no damage, as the Dragon began closing its eyes again, concentrating.


"How did it-" Vasily swore "A Level 5?! That quickly!!?"


"The battlefield around him must be littered with pre-made pentagrams." Yui looked at you grimly "Find them. Use them. We need to bring down that Shield in seconds and Silence him, forever." Her blood stained, bruised face was lit up by unfiltered anger.














She looked at the Dragon and charged right at him, releasing a wild burst from her assault rifle right at the Shield. Vasily hesitated for only a moment more, before doing the same. Sprinting at full speed from cover to cover and shooting at the giant teal dome in the distance.

Soon, the enemy barricade at the Dragon's feet that still housed some 40 combatants began returning fire, their bullets whizzing dangerously close to your head.



(The Dragon suffered -60 Shield damage, Shield integrity down to 260)

Desiree wrote:She dashed away from the scene of the battle, to take shots with bullets and magic at the crystal, hoping to disrupt it just enough, or distract the dragon from his current plan of executing the upstart that swung at him before.

It wasn't hard to land a shot at the dome by this point, as the thing towered over a hundred meters over the ground, which allowed you to send wild shots in its direction even at full sprint and still land hits on its surface, as you struggled to move cover to cover.

Your spectral wolf had materialized next to you in a flash of orange fire and began sprinting beside you, trying to keep herself between you and the battlefield. You understood why, when she began taking enemy small arms fire and absorbing the bullets that were intended for you.

The wolf pitifully howled as several enemy bullets struck its ribs, before it swung its head, casting a level 2 Shield over the left side of its body that was exposed to the enemy, as it ran beside you in the ruins of a broken capital city.


(The Dragon suffered -45 Shield damage, Shield integrity down to 215)



Out of nowhere the giant heap of debris in front of you exploded as an enemy Eishi resembling a pissed off gorilla suddenly burst out of the rubble, sending huge chunks of it flying in every direction. Your wolf charged right at you, snarling horribly and snapping its jaws as if it was rabid. She leaped and went for the throat, but a second before her jaws locked over the guerilla's neck, the beast pummeled the wolf in the side so hard, you heard her ribs snapping as she was violently hurled into the ruins of a dilapidated building, taking outs its support structure in the process and to your horror, you watched the entire thing collapse on her, burying her in two floors of debris.



(Desiree & Seine suffered -80 HP damage, 170 HP remaining.)



You managed to bring your rifle up and squeeze of a short burst before the Guerilla closed distance toward you in three massive leaps and smashed its giant fist into your side, sending your form smacking against a nearby building so hard, it felt a crater in its wall, sending cracks running in every direction.


(Desiree & Seine suffered -30 HP damage, 140 HP remaining.)


You tried to inhale and seized up from the pain, as your form crumbled to the ground. Several bones had likely been broken, your right arm laid at an eerie angle and obeyed very poorly. You looked up and saw the crazed eyes of the Guierilla peering down on you, as its raised both of its fists up, preparing to beat you down into pulp.


Next second a piercing glow of a cars long-distance lights stuck it right in the face from the side and it bellowed, covered its face and the roar of a heavy engine echoed down the street a split second before a giant armored hum-vee collided with the creature at speeds close to 80 kilometers per hour, bending its front and sending the Guerilla flying a half dozen meters off to the side and roll for several more across jagged debris.

You looked up and saw the door on the drivers seat fly open and a boy too small from the drivers seat poke out, sweaty and pale as a sheet:

"GET ON THE BLOODY MINIGUN!!!" He frantically shrieked. You didn't recognize his face through the haze of the pain and poor lightning. But you recognized his voice.


It was Denis.
The boy who left the group at the bunker and refused to participate in the mission. The boy who never went to Boreas with you and never Contracted an Eishi, as was evident by the lack of any glow in his eyes.

The boy who now panted frantically and sat in the driver's seat of a military hum-vee, with a giant fuck-off minigun mounted at the back.

Chris wrote:"We have to cast Silence on that samurai, Mister Dragon, we might be able to do it whilst he's distracted fighting Malcolm" Christabel said, steeling herself as she peered around a corner to observe the battlefield, "But we need to get past that soldier with Blacklight active first, do you have any suggestions?"

"You have the power of The Great Masquerade." The Dragon's voice bellowed deep in your mind, before it manifested in the real world beside you, running almost 10 meters in lengths and almost 3 in height:

"I will throw myself at the enemy Shield and their barricade. Cover me with as many fake or real spells as you can. Obscure their vision with an incessant amount of magical firepower thrown at the position!"

The Chinese Dragon roared and zig-zagged with frightening speed at the enemy barricade, flying just a meter above ground, its eerie monstrous head snarling and spanning its jaws in the direction of the enemy.

Megan lays there wheezing, coughing, and partially curled up as she tries to orient herself amongs the intense pain wracking her entire body. As much as her mind is screaming at her to get up and charge in, her body is barely reacting. So, she from her spot on the ground she begins to charge Kenetic Strike at Level 3 again. Gathering her physical strength as the spell charges so that she can pull herself up enough to fire it at the dragon again.

The image is burns into her mind like a picture. Her blade slipping through his neck, and her brothers head sailing through the air. The snapping and crackle of her eshis blade as blood boils off of it, the scent of slightly burnt flesh. Fast and relatively instant, just the way she wanted it. The purple blade dissapears with a flourish.

"Whats funny is..." she coughs a couple times as she faces Yui and Vas, "...I still owe you like... 2 life savings." She pokes Yui in the shoulder before cracking a weak, and tired, yet determined smirk that quickly fades as her gaze shifts back to the dragon, 'How did Hugie get that fast...' she thinks to herself, '...He was faster then you Finkah. Im not stupid, 7th dan is insane speed. He drew his pistol during our approach, dispite how fast we were actually moving. If these two weren't here... He would have won two times over... how hard did he really work to fall to someone who didn't work at all for power?"

Buzzy tries to clear the thought from her head as she pushes forward with Yui and Vas. She digs into her mallet space and pulls the negev. Strapping it over her shoulder she readys a shadow strike during her advance and she casts it into the dragons shield. She brings the negevs aim at her hip as her spell flys through the air and pulls the trigger. She hoses bullets down range at the remaining soldiers and the shield.

"Ha... Ha ha..." Malcolm gets out before he disappears into nothing. He died as he lived, acting on pure spite.
In whatever afterlife he ended up, most likely hell, he still had a chuckle. "Self reflection is a rare skill indeed... And somehow not needed for the powerful. Dragon, you are the tallest poppy of them all."


Julie looked horrified at the scene of Gatrie basically crumbling to dust in real time, and vomited for a second from everything that had happened. But the silence kept charging. He gritted himself, steadying for this final push.
"Bar!" He called to his Eishi.
He gave a firm nod. "Use our Masquerade to weave in more spells. Keep him busy. I go in and take that asshole's magic!"
With that, he charged in, safety be damned.


When the gorilla appeared to her, Desiree finally did it. She screamed like a freaking banshee. He fear now no longer containable. The smash into the rubble was a confirmation she should be scared, and another round of screams left her mouth as soon as the gorilla had made itself appear again. It was too much. Her willpower was no longer enough, and the dam was broken.

From all of her fear, Desiree actually began pissing herself.

But the sudden appearance of a car hitting the beast helped her cut through the stupor of screaming. She blinked a few times, trying to register what she saw. Also it gave time to get a little better at moving, but that's second to just getting her mind back together. She gave a teay smile. "You actually came back... Thank you..."

With the most speed she could muster, and the grace of a chicken, she got onto the car and grabbed the gun, taking a deep breath to brace for the strain on her arms who are still healing. "Let's do this, sorry for the smell!"
Then she went to town with the gun, wasting no time shooting whatever she was asked to shoot. She started with the gorilla, seeing it was the biggest immediate threat, but when he was done, the dragon and the crystal were up.

Kaylee Brown wrote:

Chris wrote:"We have to cast Silence on that samurai, Mister Dragon, we might be able to do it whilst he's distracted fighting Malcolm" Christabel said, steeling herself as she peered around a corner to observe the battlefield, "But we need to get past that soldier with Blacklight active first, do you have any suggestions?"

"You have the power of The Great Masquerade." The Dragon's voice bellowed deep in your mind, before it manifested in the real world beside you, running almost 10 meters in lengths and almost 3 in height:

"I will throw myself at the enemy Shield and their barricade. Cover me with as many fake or real spells as you can. Obscure their vision with an incessant amount of magical firepower thrown at the position!"

The Chinese Dragon roared and zig-zagged with frightening speed at the enemy barricade, flying just a meter above ground, its eerie monstrous head snarling and spanning its jaws in the direction of the enemy.

"Got it, mister Dragon" Christabel nodded, and immediately cast Great Masquerade. She created illusions of every spell she knew, generating a barrage of roiling beams of light, flickering orbs of fire, incandescent lightning bolts, jagged icicles, and the tell-tale signs of every debuffing status effect in the book.

Buzzy wrote:how hard did he really work to fall to someone who didn't work at all for power?"

"He was less experienced, he didn't train enough, or he made mistakes." Finkah's voice solemnly rang in your head:
"Hughie wasn't focused on the battle. He let his emotions cloud his judgement. And he was over-confident, engaging three opponents at once. It proved his undoing."

Buzzy wrote:Strapping it over her shoulder she readys a shadow strike during her advance and she casts it into the dragons shield. She brings the negevs aim at her hip as her spell flys through the air and pulls the trigger. She hoses bullets down range at the remaining soldiers and the shield.

A massive, purple, crystal formation the size of a light-post materialized out of thin air, crackling and hissing like dry ice, or grinding glass shards. Mist rose all around it, as if contact with air was making it melt and turn into gas. The long formation rotated on its axis, spinning its jagged edges, before it loudly discharged at the dome.

A split second later it shattered across its surface, spraying the enemy barricade below with thousands of jagged shards. Being outside the Shield dome, the effect was devastating. 20 cm long shards were impaling them from above, sinking into the necks and shoulders of enemy soldiers, sending sprays of arterial blood into the air.




(The Dragon suffered -40 Shield damage, Shield integrity down to 175)

Megan wrote:So, she from her spot on the ground she begins to charge Kenetic Strike at Level 3 again. Gathering her physical strength as the spell charges so that she can pull herself up enough to fire it at the dragon again.

Another giant metal rod materialized at your finger tips and discharged at the speed of a bullet train, smashing against the teal dome with deafening impact and flying wildly into the air, before falling onto the battlefield some 100 meters away, with the sound of a cargo truck being dropped, raising plumes of dust into the air.



(The Dragon suffered -40 Shield damage, Shield integrity down to 135)




A second later, waves of automatic fire struck the shield from multiple directions at once. Dotted lines of orange bullet fire arced across the battlefield, rising out of the ruined city and you saw Harvie and Lily sprinting in between cover, firing wildly at the dome, as they made their way to rondevu with you, Buzzy, Yui and Vasily.

All of their collective fire was hammering the dome non-stop, often gliding down toward the enemy barricade and you saw soldiers dying by the dozens, their heads exploding when struck by Buzzies high caliber rounds.


There was less than 20 enemy soldiers left now and they unleashed an equally brutal assault. The barricade turned into a sprinkler that spewed fire and bullets indiscriminately in every direction. Stray rounds were flying all around you, as Buzzy charged from cover to cover, ducking behind jagged pieces of metal and concrete building remains.

She was shot several times, just like Megan, Vasily and Yui, but they barely felt it, as waves of adrenaline coursed through their bodies, the bullets that ripped through your shoulders and stomach barely doing anything more than trip you up, or slow you down, knocking you sideways momentarily, before you kept pushing forward, just barely registering the tiny slugs that embedded themselves in your body.


(Buzzy, Megan, Vasily, Yui, Harvie, Lily suffered -23 HP damage)


(The Dragon suffered -120 Shield damage, Shield integrity down to 15)

Chris wrote:created illusions of every spell she knew, generating a barrage of roiling beams of light, flickering orbs of fire, incandescent lightning bolts, jagged icicles, and the tell-tale signs of every debuffing status effect in the book.

Julie wrote:"Bar!" He called to his Eishi.
He gave a firm nod. "Use our Masquerade to weave in more spells. Keep him busy. I go in and take that asshole's magic!"
With that, he charged in, safety be damned.

The spells descended onto the barricade and the dome like a fireworks show, releasing deafening explosions and clouds of multi-colored fire that raged so severely, it completely obscured the enemy position from view, and obscured you from them. The soldiers were still firing at you, but they were firing blind and dodging their incoming firing arcs proved at least partially doable now.


The Chinese Dragon zig-zagged and dived right into the fire. You could see its long tail whipping and flickering as it tore apart the enemy soldiers, biting into them and tearing their limbs off. A moment later it sank its teeth into the teal dome, lashing at it with its tail and claws.

The super-structure finally failed. Hundreds of cracks ran up the dome and it exploded in a rain of teal colored shards.

For a brief moment, you could see the Red Dragons maw. It was in a trance, its eyes closed as it chanted the words that would activate the Category 6 Pentagram, its wings unfolded to full lengths and arms spread, its massive black kimono waving in the wind.


And without missing a beat, the Chinese Dragon flicked its tail at the monster, and the tiny light at the end of its tail, that you thought was just a part of its body, turned out to be a tiny Level 2 golden spell that flew up in an arc and struck the colossus in its knee.



(The Red Dragons magic has been Disabled for 60 seconds.)




An outraged below flooded your mind, paralyzing you in pain, deafening you, as the Red Dragon telepathically screamed, its voice rattling your bones.

The towering walls of red light that shot into the heavens, flickered and started to dim.

The relief lasted for but a moment. Blinded by rage, the Red Dragon turned its gaze down at Christabels Eishi. The Chinese Dragon was violently kicked in the gut with the force of a moving freight train, by a giant bony, red leg. And as the Eishi was sent flying dozens of meters into the air, the Red Dragon leveled its oversized flintlock and released three shots into the Eishi. The force of the bullets ripping chunks out of its body, sending the Chinese Dragon arcing over the battlefield and crashing violently into a pile of jagged debris.



(Chris & her Eishi suffered -80 HP damage, 30 HP remaining)




In the momentary calm and fading fires of magic, the pulsing red lights of the Mana Crystal became especially prominent. Its pulses were coming in so fast now, they began to appear as a single, solid glow. Its structure was shaking, a crack appeared in its surface as it hummed with barely contained energy.


"My lord! There's less than 6 minutes left before the Crystal detonates!" Your Heightened Senses picked up a shout from one of the soldiers as the relatively tiny man looked up at the Dragon:
"We must retreat back through the Portal-"



"The ones who flee the battle will have their families executed!"


The Dragon's voice boomed in your head:


"Dispel me, you useless parasites! Lest I behead your children in person!" The monster spat, raising its beady eyes in your direction.





"We have to hold him back for another six minutes!?" Lily's exhausted shout rang hopelessly in your earpiece:
"...son of a bitch... there's no way... he's slaughtering us! In six minutes, there won't be any of us left!"

"WE HAVE TO TRY!" Yui screamed back "DON'T STOP, EVEN IF-" her eyes widened.


A dozen teal spells shot up at the Dragon from the enemy barricade, Dispelling his status effect instantly. The monster stomped its bony, scaly paw, sending an earthquake over the area and you felt as if an invisible wave just drenched you in freezing water, chilling you to the core, yet you remained perfectly dry.

Yui's eyes widened. As color drained from her face, she whispered:

"No..."

Before another invisible, freezing wave washed over you, leaving you feeling vulnerable, visible and completely exposed.
You finally realized what you've been hit by. A Level 5 Active Scan.


It didn't just reveal your stats, your arsenal and the spells you were cooking in real time. It exposed your exact position to the caster.


The Dragon ignored the Masquerade spells completely now, it could see your Mana wasn't depleting.


Julie was rushing toward him at full sprint, keeping herself hidden from direct line of sight. Using the numerous broken buildings and ravaged debris for cover, she prepared herself to cover the last 500 meters to the Red Dragon, a golden sphere of light cooking in her palm.

The Dragon looked in her direction. Its fanged maw opened and a blinding ray of red light pierced the battlefield, shooting right through the rubble and buildings, cutting through concrete and metal like tinfoil.

Julie never saw it coming. She didn't feel anything. It was instant. One moment she was there, the next, she faded away.

There wasn't anything left, when the laser dimmed and died down. Only a glassed trench of melted concrete, stretching on for kilometers into the distance.


"...Julie's-...... Julie's gone!" Lily's voice sobbed into the earpiece, quickly turning hysterical "She's gone, Yui! He killed her like she was nothing!" Her voice cracked as she tried to suppress her sob:
"That son of a bitch will kill anyone who even tries cooking Silence!"


Yui shoulders slumped as the girl leaned on a piece of debris for cover. Her expression colored by a strange, sad, dejected smile, as tears began to well in her eyes:
"...damn it..." she emptily smiled, as a tear rolled down her cheek:

"There was a moment, where I really thought we could do it." Her body shook slightly as she suppressed a sob, then smiled sadly at Vas, then at the girl beside her, and she extended her hand:

"Hey Buzzy," Yui sniffed and smiled faintly "Could I borrow your Scarab for a sec? I think you had one in Mallet Space."

Desiree wrote:"You actually came back... Thank you..."

With the most speed she could muster, and the grace of a chicken, she got onto the car and grabbed the gun, taking a deep breath to brace for the strain on her arms who are still healing. "Let's do this, sorry for the smell!"
Then she went to town with the gun, wasting no time shooting whatever she was asked to shoot. She started with the gorilla, seeing it was the biggest immediate threat, but when he was done, the dragon and the crystal were up.

As you jumped onto the hum-vee's bed-side in the back and struggled to level the heavy minigun on your target, the Guerilla picked itself up from the rubble and bellowed, punching its own chest with its fists and you saw its jagged fangs, dripping with saliva and promising to rip you apart.

Denis floored the gas pedal hard and the vehicle lurched, as he drove in reverse, rapidly accelerating and trying to catch some distance away from the monster. The Guerilla charged after you on all fours, shrieking wildly and knocking around stray debris that got caught in its way. Its massive 4 meter tall shape was sending tremors across the street as it rampaged toward you, much faster than the hum-vee could move in reverse and you realized its only a matter of time.

You could see the murderous intent in its eyes, its plan to rip the vehicle apart and devour both you and Denis while you were still breathing. Its disgustingly ugly muzzle drawing nearer and nearer. You zeroed in on its center of mass and squeezed the trigger.


A burst of bullets cut through the air with the sound of a jet engine, striking the Guerilla right in the chest and its face, knocking its torso back and making it crash flat on its back. Its cumbersome form twisted and writhed as you mercilessly sprayed it with thousands of bullets, ripping out huge chunks out of its body and smearing the street in a fountain of orange blood.

You could see it dying in front of you, just a few more seconds of this and it will be dead. And then the hum-vee drove into a piece of debris, its left wheel jumped, almost toppling the whole car over and it became stuck at a 45 degree angle, knocking your aim off target.

The Guerilla stirred on the ground, as you tried to zero in on it once again, but the minigun wouldn't move so low. The hum-vee was stuck at a weird angle, not giving you a proper firing line and even as Denis frantically twisted the wheel and floored the gas pedal, the hum-vee just continued spinning its wheels in the dirt, stuck on the piece of debris.


The Guerilla spit out blood, or vomited it, then looked at your compromised vehicle bleary eyed, bellowed and charged. It shortened the distance to you in seconds and rose its fists in the air, preparing to flatten you were you stood, when a pile of debris exploded behind you and Seine burst out of the rubble.

The wolf towered 3 meters above ground, even when sprinting on all fours, as it bared its fangs in a deranged snarl, jumped and hurled itself at the Guerilla from behind, locking its jaws around the monsters neck.


Blood sprayed in every direction as the Guerilla's artery was severed. It bellowed and stumbled clumsily, trying to reach back to Seine's muzzle, smashing its fists against the wolf's face, but she never let go. Her rabid expression only became more savage as she bit in, sinking her fangs deeper and deeper into the Guerilla's neck, savagely twisting and thrashing her head, ripping the wound apart.

With a violent jerk, she pushed forward, forcing the Guerilla to spin in place, and with the same movement, Seine violently kicked the hum-vee in the side, knocking it off the piece of debris.

Jerking together with the vehicle, you accidentally bit your tongue and felt blood filling your mouth, as the vehicle leveled. You saw Seine holding the Guerilla in place by its neck, forcing it to the ground at a weird angle and you easily acquired the target. A firm squeeze of the trigger pulverized the Guerilla's head, turning it into a smear of tissue and bone on the pavement, as a burst of bullets shredded its skull.



Seine let go of the carcass, breathing heavily. Half her face turned into one giant bruise, her left side so swollen it obscured her eye. One of her fangs was broken and her muzzle was drenched in the Guerilla's blood, but all signs of fury faded. She looked completely calm and collected again, just like she did when you first saw her.


Her eyes shifted to you and she blinked:
"...watered yourself too, huh... I did as well, in my first battle, years ago." her voice sounded calm in your head, completely impartial:

"Its nothing to be ashamed of. Its just a reflex. Completing the mission is all that matters, no matter what state we're in.
You did good. Keep at it."



Denis leaned out of the open window from the drivers seat, panting, his face drenched in sweat and a trail of blood running down the side of his face. Looks like he knocked his head on the dashboard:

"Nice shooting." The boy gave you a thumbs up:

"Sorry for the wait. Felt pretty shit as soon as I left you guys. Didn't feel right leaving you holding the bag. So when I found a fully stocked hum-vee in the garage, turned around and drove down here right away. Followed the explosions mostly."

He looked back to the center of the battlefield, where the Red Dragon began reloading his oversized flintlock, another flicker of scarlet flame beginning to burn in its closed maw.


"Figure if I'm going out, gonna do it with no regrets." Denis tilted his head at the piercingly glowing Crystal behind the Red Dragon:
"Feel like checking out if that fancy jewel holds against the combined might of the Interstellar Alliances' minigun and an oversized wolf?"


"I will provide cover." Seine licked the blood off her bruised muzzle "Please drive safely and take care of my partner." Her flat gaze fell on Denis and the boy uncomfortably shifted, giving her a thumbs up.

"wha- huh? I mean- Yeah of course!" Buzzy seems particularly confused by Yuis request. She pulls the scarab out from her mallet space and hands it over. She didn't seem defeated like the others yet, dispite the ice cold of the scan Buzzy still looks ready to fight. Her gaze is firm, her mind still racing to plan out the battle even as they lose companion after companion, "...The dragons soldiers will support him under threat. If we could somehow kill all of them, we could silence him and force him to physically rampage at us. I imagine he's strong as fuck, but with the spells he's casting his focus has got to be magic, and i'd take the lesser of two evils." She pushes the now spent Negev back into her mallet space before pulling the m60 and placing its bipod onto the ledge of her cover, her face shifts into an ugly sneer as she rakes it up and down the line of soldiers at the dragons feet.

Faced with a wild barrage of heavy machine gun fire, the enemy soldiers ducked behind cover, only daring to peak out once Spectral Armor was cast upon them. But even then they were taking very quick deterring pot-shots, before diving back in, as Buzzy's barrage of bullets pounded their armor.


Yui looked down at the Golden Scarab and released a faint, melancholic smile:

"Thanks Buzzy." she smiled to herself, holding the artifact close and shutting her eyes.


"Yui, what are you...?" Lily called, crouching down and half crawling along the low piece of debris, using it for cover.

Braxton emerged out of the rubble a few seconds later. He was badly hurt, half his face singed and covered in 3rd degree burns that regenerated too slowly and his right arm was uselessly hanging limp by his side. He held it by the elbow to prevent it from swaying around. A ball of blue light kept burning in the palm of his hand and periodically discharged, as he tried to heal himself back to a semblance of functionality:

"What's the plan Yui," He faintly called, licking off the blood from his split lip: "I got your back."


Your earpiece became filled with static for a second, before a distorted grizzly voice came through:

"...-this is Admiral Harver-...2nd Interstellar-... -nce Fleet... Cherry Blossom, give me a sit-rep, over!"


"This is Enduring Cherry Blossom." Yui lifted her index finger up to her earpiece "Frontal assault has failed. Initiating contingency plan." she spoke calmly and quietly, but you could hear the tension in her voice, her attempts to suppress a sob:

"Admiral, pull back and maintain a minimum safe distance of 500 kilometers. Issue a tsunami warning and prepare for impact. Good luck. Enduring Cherry Blossom, over and out." she lowered her hand, her face obscured in shadow.



"...what contingency plan?" Lily raised an eyebrow "We don't have a contingency plan! Yui!-" the girl stopped talking as Yui looked up at everyone, her expression crushed. She smiled, as tears streamed down her cheeks.


She smiled.

And then you heard a sound akin to a chain being snapped by a cleaver. The Scarab emitted a small flash and a white-haired Eishi literally fell out of Yui, landing with her rear in the asphalt. The Eishi looked up in shock. And Yui's eyes lost their glow, returning to their normal yellow.



"...Cover me." Yui said, turned on her heel and sprinted right at the Dragon as fast as her legs carried her, right into the hail of enemy fire.



A second ticked by before you registered what she'd done and Braxton's horrified shriek filled the airwaves:

"YUI WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?!"


But Yui was already 15 meters ahead, sprinting so fast she turned into a dark blur, just barely bothering to move cover to cover.