(120): Battle of Lome |
A thin veil of green had turned the no man’s land west of Threshold into a strange golf course. A fuzzy carpet of lush grass covered yesteryear’s scars, each shell impact now a round depression smoothed by time and rain. Almost five thousand waited in quiet ranks, some more organized than others. Fewer than a quarter were C-rank.
The rest were stronger.
It was the most powerful raider group ever assembled. Of the hundreds of thousands who volunteered for Riel’s grand return, very few had made the cut. Never since his departure had so many nations united for a singular purpose: to plant a flag in the soil, and make monsters die in front of it. Pride kept Nestra’s head high. Shinran stood at the forefront alongside a dozen A-class raiders from half the world around.
“I find myself overcome with nostalgia,” Doctor Mazingwe whispered while Riel checked his antique watch.
“I think this time will go better,” Nestra replied with a smile.
The tall doctor leaned to the side, golden armor extra shiny in the summer light. His joy bled through the mana that radiated along the edges of his iconic spear.
“Oh yes. This might be a historical occasion, but I believe we are a bit too strong for a single kaiju.”
“It’s a stress test,” Nestra agreed.
They exchanged a glance. In front of Nestra, her father turned to give her a nod. Nestra might no longer be the Palladian heir, but she could still learn politics. Dawn Spear and she knew that the first operation was a kaiju hunt because it was the most dangerous event still threatening mankind. One A-class could kill a kaiju with time and support. Ten would butcher it in under a minute. With Riel, it was a done deal. No, this was a rehearsal for the real event Nestra expected would take place in a few months, after things had calmed down.
With Riel returned and Threshold part of an alliance of nations, the grasp of the lizardmen on their bridge world had gone from tenuous to doomed. Nevertheless, she had to remember that some sore fuckers could still ruin the fun for everyone. Hence why Dawn Spear would shadow her ass, and the coven would stay on the other side of the planet. Fucking Rebirth. Fundie assholes delaying proper hunts.
Time was up. With a hand flurry for show, Riel opened a massive hole in space, revealing the austere front of the Brandenburger Tor. Early morning light showed it was dawn in Berlin, yet a delirious crowd still greeted humanity’s savior with songs and screams. The wall of sound hit Nestra like a slap, yet it didn’t shock her. She’d experienced the same thing six times by now. Riel and his flunkies — Riel she couldn’t believe it was accurate — also he’d repeated she ought to stop swearing his name — Riel strode forward with mighty steps to greet the people while the European contingent ran by at gleam speed, taking their spot on the right of the formation with military precision. The one minute speech Riel gave to his fans lasted fifty seconds more than it took for the raiders to be ready. Fuck, she loved working with professionals.
With a last wave of his hands, Riel closed the portal. Now, the assembly was perfectly quiet.
One thing with old first gen fucks and their insufferable scions was that as far as speeches were concerned, the shorter the better. Riel placed his emblematic black helmet upon his head. With his scuffed armor, he was history stepping out of a datasheet, The last gate opened to the empty beach in front of Lome.
“For mankind,” Riel said.
Nestra roared with the others, then column by column the raiders deployed, a smooth flow of flying and racing gleams in eclectic gear, a kaleidoscope of color and mana hues spreading from the breach.
Lome wasn’t what Nestra had expected. The beach was smooth sand decorated with as much refuse as algae. Distant shacks acted as improvised bars complete with stacked plastic chairs. The smell of fire and salt fought with the distant, enduring stench of a fish market. A parking lot to her left had been cleared to make place for machine gun emplacements and antiquated walkers while soldiers in fatigue carried equipment from ancient trucks driving down the road from the city’s gates. It was a living beach, or at least it had been until a few days before.
Nestra looked up behind, finding a pitted wall of large slabs that wouldn’t slow down anything above D-rank, and behind that, tall concrete buildings devoid of paint or windows, their openings adorned with drying laundry.
The morning sun granted the city no mercy. It looked like what it was: a fortress in name only maintained by the blood of its raiders and the vain hope that kaiju would keep finding other spots to attack. And it might have survived too. Nestra spotted other groups under flags at the edge of the formation, marking rival fortresses coming together in this darkest of hours. She only recognized the Lagos enclave, but there must be at least a dozen African contingents already deployed. In any normal time this would have been a hard-fought battle, but with Riel here, things would be different.
The raider groups quietly arrayed themselves in prepared emplacements while the local raiders had gathered in a tight group at the front under their national flag. Nestra saw the despair mixed with wordless hope in the eyes of far-off civilians. She could also hear guns discharging in the distance, far to her right where a lagoon’s monsters were already answering the call of the tide. As soon as Nestra’s group was in position, they split to form a single line. Each raider stood ten meters apart with no depth, a single line uninterrupted until it disappeared past the spiky hedgehogs of cannon-covered piers. It was a silly formation that made no sense. Raiders fought best in tight squads backed by fast-response groups and range detachments. Here? Here it wouldn’t fucking matter. Excitement rushed through Nestra’s veins despite her worries. Once again, she was going to be part of history.
Riel hovered far in front, with Cyrrhus on his right and Lukwata, a beautiful Kenyan A-class water gleam to his left. They’d been deliberately picked to show African primacy in the conflict and to make sure the hundreds of recording drones recorded the reconciliation between US-aligned Cyrrhus and Threshold-aligned Riel. All of this was a show, but Nestra didn’t mind. She respected the hustle so long as people were protected. Like this, they waited for a good thirty minutes doing nothing but looking good. This, again, Nestra didn’t mind. The timing had been calculated to make sure they would be in place long before the heart of the tide arrived, just in case. Right on time, Nestra felt a spike in mana. Shapes slithered under the waves. She slowly started to coat her armor, fingers clasping the hint of her fae-gifted golden sword.
“If you spend too much mana now, you will be exhausted before the day is done, young Palladian,” the good doctor chastised from her right flank.
“You just want me to use my sword so we compete for who’s the shiniest,” Nestra replied.
She would probably run out of mana no matter what. It wouldn’t matter, of course. The choice of using her human mask was one motivated by image and safety. Image to remind the audience of her origins. Safety because this form could catch a crushed crystal sniper bullet through the cortex, and Nestra could rebuild it later. Also, it had been a while. There was a certain pleasure in feeling ice course over her Bellerophon armor to turn it from functional gear to spiny black ice sculpture. She kept it simple though, she didn’t want to run out too soon. Just as she finished with a basic layer, the first of the tide emerged from the depths.
These were creatures of the shallows: bottom-feeding dokkaebi that were only a threat in vast numbers. Against raiders, they were barely a warm-up. Nestra actually did what Mazingwe hoped for: she used the golden sword. The piece of gear had been clearly designed for some exotic affinity she didn’t have, but the base prowess and sharpness were so good it didn’t matter. She sliced the first attackers with contemptuous ease, mirrored across the beach by lazy raiders moving at a fraction of their normal speed.
“Agent Palladian?” a voice said in her ear.
“Yes?”
“Ops here. Our drone network is in place. Let us know if you spot anything suspicious. We’ll keep you appraised when we do.”
“Copy that.”
“Over and out.”
The voice turned silent. Nestra took a deep breath. She was trying to enjoy the moment, but the threat of Rebirth kept worming itself in her heart. There were over ten A-class present here. Surely those fuckers would give up, right? Surely. It was such an important event. The others of the coven were not even here.
The surf licked Nestra’s armored boots. Wasn’t this supposed to be low tide? She frowned when the ocean receded, revealing more frenzied dokkaebi running to their deaths. Then it kept receding. Rocks, seaweed and more monsters appeared by the second. Nestra frowned.
This wasn’t good, right? As the ocean pulled back ten, then twenty, fifty meters, the line kept solid but the hubbub of conversations surged from her back. She turned, spotting thousands of worried faces looking at the windows despite the security… oh yeah, Lome didn’t have enough bunkers for everyone. The ground wouldn’t allow it. Those people were pointing outward.
At first, Nestra didn’t see it. There were too many monsters flowing up, and while the B-class to either side of her killed them off without difficulty, she still had to focus on the area under her control. There had to be eyes on her so she couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. Only later did she hear it, a deep roar. There was a wall of blue in the distance. Then she realized it wasn’t that.
Tidal wave.
Nestra kept fighting, ignoring the natural disaster coming right at her. Many of the monsters were D-class now, strong enough to hurt if she weren’t careful. The first C-class came soon after. Nestra wondered if doctor Mazingwe hadn’t killed it when it crossed his area of control so she could get a bit of training. It would be so much like him too.
It was a salamander with an oversized black mouth. As soon as it came in range, its mouth gobbled a massive ball of wet sand.
“This fucking…”
Nestra overloaded her armor. Frost fingers crawled over the wet area, covering the sand with a sheet of ice despite the warmth of the sun. She was ready when the salamander spat a ball of mud at her. Nestra jumped to the side. The ball exploded shortly before landing. With a gesture, Nestra swept a cone of mana outward. The disruptive spell turned the mudball into ice chunks, arguably more dangerous but not to her. Only frozen flakes peppered her armor without much effect. Nestra didn’t wait to charge the salamander before it could do it again.
Ambush predator, unnaturally exposed. Its instincts will work against the frenzy when I close in. Poor balance due to oversized head. Vulnerable flanks.
Nestra made a large circle around the beast. Jaws closed less than ten centimeters away from her chest. Long reach, as expected. She killed a D-class charging her flank.
Patience.
Human Nestra’s toolkit favored longer engagements. The ground around her froze under the withering power of her zero aura. The salamander tried to back away, its cunning overriding the tide’s blind hatred. Nestra manifested an ice spear while a large fireball screeched overhead, the mark of a nearby conflict. Her spell hit its front leg in a wave of shards. There was another C-class monster approaching her from the sea.
Nevermind then.
Nestra quickly manifested another spear. The salamander tried to dodge but it lacked the mobility, its favored terrain taken over by Nestra’s uncompromising cold. With enough spikes planted in its bleeding flesh, Nestra had all the conduction she could use. She cast thunder wave, one of her mom’s favorites.
Bolts spread across the frozen section of the beach with a terrible roar. The spell overrode the salamander’s resistance though its thick skin. Nestra still charged to the side and cut its jugular just in case, but it was clear the combo had disabled the creature. As Nestra turned to face the next opponent, she realized Mazingwe had brained it with a laser. She huffed.
“Which will it be?”
“Look,” Mazingwe replied.
The wave was coming. It felt slow because it was still so far, yet so large it was more like a mountain than something made of water. A deep hum overtook the din of battle.
Nestra returned to killing but she kept an eye on the horizon while her neighbors kindly kept the C-class off her back. Sometimes, the light would hit the wave just so, and she could see a tentacled behemoth hidden beneath the surface. Oh, that was a bad one, probably something Threshold would only see once every ten years, and then Shinran would always help in person. The battle calmed down, raiders returning to their positions while Togolese cannons provided cover. The water mountain was almost upon them. It towered over even the massive residential buildings past the wall. Nestra was quiet before the show. Here on the beach, she felt naked and vulnerable. The wave gave her vertigo, her mind struggling to accept its size.
Riel raised a hand in the air. A circle appeared behind him, a sign he was being serious. Ambient mana plummeted as the spell sucked all available energy inside of its many glyphs. The world held its breath. Even the monsters paused, overwhelmed.
Riel cut down. There were no arcs, no lights, no explosions, not even a hiss when the fabric of space bent to his will. The slice was surgical. The air parted. The sea parted.
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Behind it, even distant clouds drifted apart.
The kaiju parted as well, in two intact, perfectly symmetrical halves before pressure and gravity vomited tons upon tons of entrails into the warm air. Still, the rest of the wave was almost upon them. Nestra held her breath.
Before Cyrrhus, a hurricane descended from the cloudless skies, dispersing and swallowing the water into a cobalt-colored pillar. The tide before Shinra exploded under a thousand giant red fists. Right in front of Nestra, Lukwata raised her hand, and the wave… stopped. It just stopped. And then it slowly deflated.
Nestra had never witnessed such shameless aura farming (as her father would say) in her entire damn life. A part of her was furious that it was absolutely working on her. Damn. Way to show off.
The impossible power of the A-class also killed whatever creatures were hiding within. Nevertheless, the tide endured, and would do so for another few hours, not that it would make much of a difference. And just as she was thinking that, a wormhole opened in front of her, as it did hundreds of other raiders.
The show was over. Now it was about efficiency. Nestra immediately crossed, knowing the wormhole had been opened by Riel. On the other side was a village of concrete blocks, red bricks and redder earth as if blood had dyed it. Militia soldiers, overwhelmed by mineral creatures. Golems. The bullets of their rifles couldn’t penetrate mana-reinforced stones fast enough. Line breaking, soldiers falling back, screaming civilians in white ‘boubou’ clothes hiding or fighting with sticks. Nestra saw it all. An elderly man being swallowed by a salamander, waist crushed.
No time to waste.
True Nestra exploded outward. Power flooded her as she poured everything into hypervelocity. She charged along the golem line, tearing them apart, then momentum brought her to the salamander. A sweep cut through the head from side to side right above the mouth, the beast releasing its bloody prize. Not enough. Draw them away from the civilians.
Nestra roared a hissy challenge. She screeched in the middle of the tide, unmoving, an intruder the monsters recognized as even more abhorrent than the humans themselves.
She never had any doubt that it would work. It did, and beautifully. She went through them, each movement a counter and a death blow. They didn’t stand a chance. Her Scornful Crescent wasn’t the gracious and disdainful waltz as she had been shown. Disdain was the luxury of the complacent. She was here to kill. Crumble hearts. Stab eyes. Punch through chests. Summon abyssal water, catching stragglers and dragging them back to her through bloody mud, and then when they flailed around her, release the charged electricity. Nestra roared as they died, what little power they provided soothing her need for challenge.
In the end, it had always been about protecting the people. That could be a good challenge too.
Nestra turned from the corpse pile to see civilians standing around mesmerized while beleaguered soldiers urged them to move. Doctor Mazingwe had followed through. He already had the wounded elderly man in a stretcher. Suddenly unsure on what to do now that she’d temporarily run out of targets, Nestra approached.
“I was taking care of Mr Atsou here while you were distracted. We should bring him to the mobile hospital… immediately.”
“Allez, plus vite!” soldiers yelled at the fleeing civilians.
“They were attending a wedding before the village’s walls broke, if you will believe it,” Mazingwe added with a smile.
“Can’t they get into Lome itself?” Nestra asked, reverting to her human mask.
“Merci! Thank you!”
Nestra nodded at the grateful, fleeing people. It was always nice getting appreciated although she wished they moved a little faster.
“The city is already packed with people. Help me get the stretcher up. Slowly. 3, 2, 1, well done, young Palladian. Ops, this is Dawn Spear, passage to the hospital from… where are we?”
“Assome,” a sergeant replied.
The soldiers were staying behind, Nestra noticed. It was only a matter of time before the tide returned, although it would be weaker on the other side of the city where they currently stood. She might have to come back here later. She gave the red earth one last glance before carrying the stretcher across a newly formed wormhole.
The defense initiative’s hospital was a Threshold funded array of tents installed at the periphery of the Gnassingbe airport, mostly because it was one of the better fortified spots and also because it was flat. The sun reflected off plane tracks magnified the wet heat which, when merged with the stench of blood and offal, provided a reminder of what tides really entailed. While cameras focused on the kaiju, the poorer and more dispersed portion of the population fell to roving bands of dokkaebi, their numbers so high raiders couldn’t be everywhere at once. A group of children cried under a canopy tent while an exhausted nurse in a bloodied uniform distributed bottles of water to stave off the sweltering heat. Baselines carrying an endless stream of stretchers emerged from wormholes in tight lines. Two volunteers in civilian clothes practically pushed Nestra and Mazingwe aside. A gray-haired woman grabbed Nestra’s shoulders in a tight grip.
“Go where you can help. We will do our part. We will help this man,” the baseline told her with confidence tinged with sadness.
Nestra nodded, but before she could return to the nearest wormhole, a voice in her ear almost made her jump.
“Ops here, we might have something. Can you check with Doctor Nephrite? Tent 2.”
Nestra frowned. She knew that name. Tent 2 was large enough for 100 beds and mercifully cooled by mana-powered enchantments. A short nurse at the entrance only allowed them in after Mazingwe assured her that they were expected. Tent 2 dealt with the most serious cases, as was apparent when they walked past two busy surgical theaters. Pure mana healers were also present. Nestra spotted the familiar wide back of Valerian slowly reattaching the arm of a shell-shocked woman, her gaze riveted to the spectacle of muscle strands fusing back together.
“Val?” Nestra greeted.
“Just give me a sec, this is delicate…”
“I shall keep myself busy,” Doctor Mazingwe said.
He cleansed his hands with a burst of light, then put on gloves at high gleam speed to assist with a suture. Nestra waited while Valerian finished, then moved to what looked like a spectacular fracture. At least, that’s what Nestra expected from the bruise on the woman’s thigh.
“Alright. As I explained to ops, we’re having a bit of a problem with supplies. They’re not missing, per se, but we got mislabelled pallets and some equipment that should have been delivered to secondary spots.”
“Don’t mind me,” the woman grumbled while Nestra hovered behind the doctor.
Val gave her an apologetic smile. It helped, somehow. Oh right, it helped because Valerian was gorgeous. Nestra always forgot that.
“Which should not be happening because logistics is double checked by AI. Someone must have tampered with the containers after yesterday’s delivery. It probably happened last night.”
“Aren’t there cameras?” Nestra replied with a frown.
“I’m sorry to say that’s your job to find out, Nes. I am but a humble doctor.”
He flashed her a smile that left the Togolese patient dazzled just from the ricochet off Nestra’s resting bitch face.
“Alright. Check the warehouse, got it. Am I looking for something specific?”
“You are the police officer, Nestra?”
She sighed. How annoying it was when people remembered her qualifications and gave her responsibilities. The horror.
“Alright, but I might need some help.”
She left at gleam speed. No time to lose.
“Ops, get me a direct line with Valerian Nephrite please?”
“Done.”
She left the tent, then found a guard. Sadly he only spoke French and her visor didn’t work here, but he managed to translate his response via an antique phone. The warehouses in question were originally used by the army. Some kerfuffle during the transfer of ownership might have led to lower security overall.
“I’ll check it out, but I don’t think that Rebirth is on it. They need to hit hard to discredit us, somehow. Stealing medical supplies isn’t it.”
“Maybe they’re desperate?” Valerian asked.
“Even then they’re very good at outrage. Our analysts think they’d try to show us as kidnappers or organ harvesters. Hmmm.”
Nestra gave it some more thought.
“Could they have poisoned supplies somehow?”
An idea was germinating in her mind.
“What do you mean?”
“If they poison a large group of people, they could claim our very presence is deleterious. Or my presence, rather.”
“Your alien friends were supposed to come?”
“Yes, but we had them attend a party on a transport ship off the coast as part of our attempt to reestablish transcontinental shipping… Or maybe they’ll say we experiment on humans. But they need to prove it’s us doing it, or rather manufacture some evidence. Hmmm.”
Pah, she hated the brainstorming part of the process. Arriving at the warehouse on C-class gleam legs, Nestra found a hapless admin employee in charge of surveillance who confirmed the place was just too much of a mess to properly oversee after a brief conversation.
“There are containers from all around the world, madame!” the lanky Togolese defended, sweat stinking his white shirt to his skin. “But only the approved personnel went there. I checked! No containers left the base, I am sure of it.”
Nestra frowned. Not theft, then, unless someone stole pallet by pallet? She decided to check the warehouse itself. Threshold’s containers were marked with the snake and staff of the Health Ministry. Unfortunately, they were mixed with pallets and boxes, some from neighboring Benin while others had been airshipped all the way from Vancouver.
“Is it fine to call yourself Nephrite, by the way?” Nestra asked Valerian as she moved from row to row, looking for anomalies.
“I wanted to talk to you about it, but you were too busy. I have been reinstated pending an approval hearing. Next patient please!”
“What! How? Congrats!”
“I have you to thank for this, again by the way. During the negotiations, our Elders asked the jellyfish being, hmm, Blinky was it? And Blinky confirmed the importance of studying offensive healing arts. She said it was absolutely necessary to mount countermeasures, and that the difference between deadly neurotoxins and gleam-level anesthetic was just a matter of dosage. My cousin Sylvie, I think you met her, she’s the one who asked. I owe both of you a lot.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Nestra checked suspicious damage on a container, but found nothing conclusive. Storage here was chaotic so a scuffed container meant very little.
“Hmm. Weird. Ops, can I get the manifest for the cargo shipments? Need to check something.”
“I’ll find it,” the voice replied with curt professionalism.
“We will push research forward a great deal while allowing healing raiders to defend themselves, even inflict debilitating spells upon guardians. The meeting will be a ceremonial event to mark my return, but I’d still appreciate your presence.”
She could hear the smile on his handsome face.
“You were there for the fall after all. Be there with me for the rise.”
“Sure, I wouldn’t miss it now that I’m ‘Important’ and not some weird bird.”
Baihe was positioning Val to be her favored contact with the megacorp. They were not exactly subtle about it, but she would take it. He hadn’t looked that relaxed in ages.
“Oh, I received the manifest.”
“I’ll let you focus,” Val said, returning to his task.
Nestra finished her quick round, finding nothing unusual. The containers were old and the paint sufficiently peeled that she was pretty sure the codes hadn’t been messed with. With gleam speed, she opened them to check the inventory. The very first container was problematic. She checked the official tally: 32 remaining boxes of disinfectant and bandages.
The container had to be holding something like 50. She found the expected stuff in neat stacks on the left, ready for transport on prepared pallets. On the right were boxes of mana-infused IV bags and water purifying pills. They shouldn’t be there. Someone had transferred them from another container. She checked the manifest, then her memories
That one was gone. Some of the containers were brought directly to the tents, while others waited here to have the content delivered piece by piece. Someone was messing with those, but why? She turned when a forklift entered the building at a rather unreasonable speed. Someone was risking their certification.
The man driving it gasped, causing her to frown. She gave him a good look. He was an anglo, which was strange here. Wasn’t logistics handled by local firms? Not like she wanted to be racist. There were definitely anglos living here…
Nestra could tell the exact moment he recognized her for sure, and his face twisted into a rictus of horror so visceral it stopped her from reacting for the vital split second that followed. Nestra had been feared and hated before, but never had she seen such soul-deep revulsion. So when he drew a gun, she was just a hair too slow.
“Fuck.”
Gleam reflexes allowed her to turn her armor pauldron first. She started casting a simple bolt, but…
Need him alive.
Nestra manifested a taser from her dimensional pocket as she stepped forward and to the side, dodging the barrel or at least trying to, but it proved pointless. The guard pushed his gun under his throat and, without a moment of hesitation, blew his head off.
Brain matter and blood sprayed the forklift’s back and the ground beyond.
The gunshot echoed like thunder in the warehouse. Nestra rushed forward, too late. She hadn’t expected the instant suicide.
“Nestra?” Valerian said, panicking.
“I’m fine. Shit. Anyone in a forklift delivered a container in the past, err, two minutes? Hmm TOCU - 612…”
“Dammit, I’ll check.”
Mazingwe appeared by Nestra’s side an instant later.
“Killed himself when he saw me,” Nestra explained, checking the deceased man’s pockets. There was a visor, locked, nothing else. Nestra found herself missing the age of paper manifests.
“He must have been moving something around,” she spat with annoyance.
“Yes, someone just delivered us one of our own crates, starts with TOCU. I think that’s it.” Valerian replied. “Heading there now to check it out.”
“Let’s go!” Nestra yelled. “Ops we’re going to need reinforcements on this one. And get the hospital evacuated!”
“Shinran has been notified. He will personally offer assistance,” the man replied, voice quavering from the stress.
Doctor Mazingwe turned back into Dawn Spear, picking Nestra up so they could fly back faster. Valerian’s voice rang with excitement.
“Not this one. Oh, I found something unusual. There were mana stones sealed here behind an isolation spell.”
“Don’t touch it. Don’t get closer!” Nestra urged. “I’m almost there. Dammit, Val, don’t touch the suspicious container, you idiot. What if it’s trapped?”
What had Rebirth planned this time? They had to hurry. The white tents of the hospital returned into view, evacuation starting with new groups of wounded immediately redirected to secondary locations. Some of the guards were already moving. Nestra spotted the white coat of Valerian stepping away from an open container. Ok, planning time. It could be a great many things so the most urgent task was to neutralize it to allow others to check it out, preferably on the other side of a portal.
“I’ll use my dimension pocket to —
Light.
Sound.
Golden light.
Nestra blinked. She was lying on her back. Blue sky. Where was she? Where the hell was she? Weight on her body. She forced herself to breathe. An acid stench in her nose. A hiss. She pulled herself up to her elbows, finally noticing she was in her true form.
Her human body was…
It was dead? It was dead.
A black cloud was rising from the ground over the hospital, dark mana mixed with… acid? The cloud devoured the summer light in its brief fight against the day. Doctor Mazingwe flopped to the side, the left part of his face devoured until the bone of his jaw was revealed. His ear was gone, and Nestra could see the skull under the dissolving dark hair. His left arm was missing as well. Realization hit.
“No. No no no no no no.”
The hospital was a crater engulfed in noxious fumes. Bodies lay haphazardly over the burning asphalte, few of them twitching.
“No no no please no.”
She flipped Mazingwe on his back. He stopped there, mouth open in a vulgar display that didn’t match him at all, his dignity. She had to help him, somehow. Anyhow. The burns were spreading. If his head was destroyed, it was all over. He was a B-class gleam so perhaps his natural body control… Nestra grabbed for a special reanimator: an expensive mix of healing agents and neoadrenaline. She realized she could reach the heart through his ribs on the left side, where the armor was melted.
He covered me.
The fucking idiot. I was fine in true form. Why did he cover me?
Because he couldn’t be sure.
Nestra planted the needle and pressed the button. Mazingwe couldn’t be sure she’d survived so he had jumped in to protect her, without doubting. Because he was a first gen and a believer. And that was all it took. A hundred fucking years of wisdom wasted on her dumb ass.
“Please please.”
Mazingwe opened his right eye, the only remaining one. His chest expanded to grotesque proportions, spine arching dangerously. Nestra was thrown off.
He screamed. It was an expression of pure agony that paralyzed Nestra.
What have I done?
And then a shape fell on her. Nestra barely registered the two azure iris of a water gleam, her mana partly hidden. She had thick dark hair held in equally thick braids, a pleasantly round face. Nestra had never seen the woman before, but she injected something in Mazingwe’s neck and he fell back, relaxing.
“Nezhra, I need you to disappear the affected flesh away. Use your mana.”
“What?”
“Now!” the woman screamed in her ear.
Nestra manifested a scalpel, then a flat, square surface instead. No cutting. Disintegrate the affected flesh. Ok, ok, she could see where foreign mana clung to him, fighting the light. It was incredibly potent acid. Just do it until there is no more acid. Easy. Nestra started, but her eyes blurred which made the task difficult. People were screaming now, all around. Gleams landed at speeds that shattered the ground around her, but none of it mattered.
“Riel. Valerian is dead. He’s dead.”
“Focus! I can’t cut it for you!”
The woman pinched her cheek. Nestra focused starting with the head. The skull was almost eaten through in some spots, revealing a membrane over Mazingwe’s actual fucking brain which she could see but she got there on time. The scalp. Then the jaw.
“No, ribs first. Protect the heart.”
The heart. The heart.
“Nezhra!”
Nestra saw the woman spray Mazingwe’s skull with a clear gel. The substance clung to the wounds, stopping the bleeding entirely. It was fully transparent. Remnants of contaminated skin dissolved.
“Blinky?”
“Focus, foolish child.”
The heart. Cover the ribs, under the nub of the arm first. Then down to stop his innards from spilling. Less work that way.
“Just cut his stump; it will make regrowth easier.”
“Okay.”
Valerian was dead. She’d failed. He was fucking dead because she’d been too slow. Too slow! She should have told him to run. Run immediately.
But he wouldn’t have done it.
“He’s stabilized. Good. Next victim.”
“No,” Shinran said.
Nestra looked up. He was here.
“I fucked up,” she told the red-armored titan. “I was too slow. Too stupid. Valerian’s dead.”
Shinran was so angry. Nestra recoiled from fear and shame, but when he grabbed her, it was very gentle.
“We can’t risk her too. We’re extracting now. Riel?”
A wormhole opened. Nestra was grabbed by two armored hands. Familiar.
“Dad?”
Her mother was here, hugging her with her short frame, then she was dragged back through another opening and into Threshold’s night.