Thursday, 9 May 2024, 6:43 pm
"Ayame, Vera, do you copy?" The Director yells out.
"Y-Yes, sir. We copy, sir." A trembling voice squeaks in response.
"Good, new orders. I need you two to take out the guardian's eyes. All of them."
"W-What? Are you serious, Martinez? How the hell are we supposed to do that?" Another voice scolds across the communicators.
"I don't give a fuck, Vera, just do it! Acknowledge?"
"That's absolute nonsense. Just keep shooting it with the big guns or something. Why do I have to go all the way up there to fight it?" Vera nags in response as she sits pouting on top of the Sydney Tower Eye, staring up angrily at the gate guardian in the sky above her. "This is so unfair. I don't get…"
"Vera fucking Vertaski!" The Director interrupts, screaming into her ear. She almost loses her balance as she startles from his response. "I swear to god if you do not shut up right now and follow my goddamn orders, I'm gonna come…"
"Ok! Ok. Sorry, Jesse, jeez. We're going, ok. Goodness. So moody today." Vera groans as she lifts herself up to her feet. She stands on the tiny climbing rails of a tall radio beacon at the very top of Sydney's tallest tower. The warm evening breeze flows through her thick blonde curls as she stares up at her target, calculating a plan of attack. She dusts off the soft velvet gloves that adorn her hands and puffs up the large, frilly dress she wears, moving around its various ribbons, belts and tassels into their correct positions. She flattens out some tufts of hair that have escaped their bows and lets out a long sigh. "Ready Ayame?" Ayame Kurosawa stands to Vera's side with her hand over her mouth as she covers her giggling. "Whatever! I look fucking breathtaking, laugh all you want in your shiny gimp suit, Ms. Cameltoe."
Ayame breaks into a coughing fit, her friend's words startling her into inhaling some spit. "What! Vera! So mean!" Ayame scowls, slapping her friend on her upper arm. Vera slowly teeters over the edge of the rail and slips off, she lay hovering in the air on her back, hands behind her head as she looks up at the enemy and back to her friend.
"Whatever, let's just do this before Mr. Director screams in my ears again. Such a bully. "Vera says with a grimace. "Hm, should I just crush the whole thing?" she asks with a tilt of her head, trying to gauge the creature's true size and strength.
"Oh!" Ayame says surprised. "But, it's so big! You really crush it?"
"Yeah, I doubt it, and there'd be nothing for you to do, anyway. Ugh, let's just go kick it's ass! Director said we have to get all the eyes, so focus on that, I guess. Sounds good?" Vera asks with a grin and nod and Ayame replies with a rosey-cheeked smile and two thumbs up.
Vera leaves first, the air around her wobbles and fluctuates and the long metal antenna lining the rooftop next to her starts bending and pulling toward her as she draws her open hands to her side. She snaps them shut and an extreme-density gravity bubble instantly forms around her launching her toward the floating jumble of eyes at multiple times the speed of sound, her gravity bubble bullet tears through the many wings and eyes of the guardian explosively, filling the sky in a gigantic cloud of blood, flesh and shimmering aether. She flicks herself around in the air, deactivating her gravity bubble and using the momentum to somersault down into a lower position, she activates another grav-bubble and goes flying toward the guardian again. It anticipates her attack and releases 3 enormous beams of aetheric energy toward her, sending her flipping and twisting through the air, using her grav-bubbles to toss herself gracefully, dodging the enemy's counterattack, her hair and dress fluttering all around her.
Meanwhile, Ayame moves toward the guardian like a torrent of wind, her aetherics allowing her seamless mastery over the movement and vibrations of atoms around her. She slides through the air at impossible speed as every molecule in her way slides past her unhindered. All friction and physical constraints are removed in the presence of her ability and a shimmering streak of light trails behind her as her ARCH-unit sparks and cracks with power. She moves into attack position and slips her sword from the sheath on her back as she glides up beneath the creature, maneuvering between its many flapping wings and towards its fleshy-crown of eyes and in a twisting blur of rhythmic blade work, she quickly carves out multiple eyes as she rolls and swings through and around the creatures twisted jumble of eyeballs and fleshy tendrils, dodging it's aetheric-beams and flicking wings. In just a few minutes the duo of Split Nova have destroyed half of the creature's 16 eyes, and on the ground, 8 of the angelic beings fall dead and crumble into aetheric dust.
Vera rolls over another eyebeam and uses a quick snap of gravity to launch herself forward at tremendous speed. She slips through in between the creature's wings, stopping herself just short of an eye with a wall of reversed gravity. A quick twist and grip of her hands causes the two eyeballs in front of her to wobble and burst from the extreme gravitational energy she controls.
The guardian seems to go into a frenzy at the loss of its eyes, spinning itself wildly in place. It suddenly stops with a quick outstrench and flick of its wings and a gigantic blast of enormous physical energy knocks both women out of the sky. Vera falls and crashes onto the rooftop of a large building coming to a rolling stop, her left leg twisted and bleeding as a bone peeks from the skin on her shin. Ayame flies through the air violently and crashes through the roof of a large grocery store, smashing through numerous shelves of food items as she comes to a rolling, screeching halt, crumbled and crushed into a pile of cabbage.
"ANRU!" Another aetherian word echoes loudly across the city and The Director watches as the angelic beings speak, then lift their wings to their highest points, and suddenly, their swords explode into flames. Then, again, they are motionless.
"Guess I was right about the flaming swords." the Director chuckles nervously
"Look, Director!" Doctor Ravinok yells out. The Director quickly turns his attention to Ravinok's focus, and on one of the monitors the crown eyes continue to float above the sky of Sydney, leaking blood and aether, many of its wings damaged or destroyed and 10 large, bleeding holes where its eyes once stood. While on the ground, 10 angels have already crumbled to dust. "The eyes are the key, Director!" The doctor proudly announces.
"Right as always, Ravinok." The Director nods. "Vera, are you still in this?"
"Fuck, no!" A scream comes back. "My leg is broken, my dress is ruined and I haven't heard from Ayame. I'm gonna go find her. Get somebody else to kill that thing. Argh!" Vera screams back in response while she uses her aetherics to set and seal her broken leg.
"Fuck! Alright people, we need to take out those eyes before we can get to the barrier crystal." The Director explains to the teams, who have been waiting eagerly for his directions. "Listen up! We probably only have one more shot at this before the winged fuckers decide to join the fight. So we need to coordinate attacks and take out as much of those eyes as you can! Acknowledge?" A multitude of affirmations ring out across the ACZ. "Joshua, you stay put, as soon as those eyes are taken care of, I want that crystal out of the ACZ, and on an ATG! Acknowledge!"
"Roger!" Joshua replies with a strained voice as he and Rumaan struggle to hold up the massive building collapsing around them, their ARCH-units ablaze from the overusage, sizzling and hissing beneath their skin. "Make it quick! Or we're gonna hit our limit-break." He cries out as the infographic in his vision tells him that he ARCH-unit usage was reaching its limit. Using it beyond this limit would result in the quick onset of Aether-Induced Meta-Psychosis, leaving him practically braindead within seconds.
The strike teams on the ground start their offensive movement with the guidance of Command. They move out to predefined locations and prepare their attacks, each group taking aim at a different set of eyes. "Hit it!" The Director's commands and powerful archaners from three Strike Teams launch a coordinated assault on the guardian's eyes. The sky over the city erupts in a cacophony of explosions and devastation as their attacks reach their target. After the dust settles, 3 more eye sockets stand hollow, their eyeballs reduced to showers of blood and aetheric debris. Only 3 eyes now remained.
"SAN! GROSHA! GA BRY!" The angel's words ring out for a 3rd time, echoing through the buildings and roads of the city and in a sudden burst of light, the 3 last remaining winged aetherians disappear.
The first one appears in the vicinity of Veilstrike as the team moves through the downtown area towards the guardian's location. The team stood together on a narrow street, staring intently at the creature as it stood motionless further down the road until the creature lifts its sword toward the group and its flickering wings all stretched out around him. The team captain opens her mouth to scream an order of retreat, but before the words have time to form, the creature moves.
With a powerful flap of its wings, it launches forward at a speed too fast for the human eye to perceive. The team all burst into a sprint in an attempt to escape, but the creature appears before one of the team members in an instant. He tries to scream but the flaming sword has already stolen his breath from his chest, the aetherian lifts the skewered archaner off the ground and watches on as the flaming sword grows brighter, erupting into a billowing blaze that quickly swallows the archaners entire body. The aetherian flicks its sword to the ground and the archaners body is thrown off at incredible force, smashing into the pavement into a bleeding pile of burnt flesh and crushed bones. The rest of Veilstrike and the GAARD Combat Command look on in shocked silence at a twitching mound of eviscerated and scorched flesh that was once a living human.
"Did you see that, Command?" The trembling whisper comes from the team's captain who has slipped into a nearby cafe and now hides behind the cashier's counter.
"We've got eyes on it. Stay put, we are working on a plan." The Director quickly responds, trying his best to assure the scared woman.
"Ok, Roger. Please make…" the captain is interrupted as the aetherian explodes through the cafe's shopfront sending flying debris everywhere. Before the Veilstrike captain could scream, it shoots forward, grabs her firmly by her forehead and presses on at intense speed, ploughing through multiple buildings and vehicles while using the captain's body as a battering ram against layers upon layers of glass, metal and concrete. By the time the carnage ends, the woman is nothing more than scraps of skin and muscle barely hanging onto the shattered remains of a skeleton. The aetherian crushes what remains of her skull in a spray of blood, bone and brain matter. Around it settles a scene of unfathomable devastation as an entire block of buildings are destroyed and most begin to crumble and collapse. Its mouth slowly opens, and a piercing high-pitched scream emerges causing the remaining Veilstrike members to wince in pain.
"Gaaaaah!" One of the members screams from a nearby rooftop, clutching his bleeding ears in anguish. The echokinetic writhes around on the floor in pain, the high pitched scream having blown out his eardrums.The winged aetherian again flaps its mighty wings, completely blowing away the small corner store in which it stood, relieving it of it's roof and most walls before bursting it the air, pulling with it a huge cloud of dust as it ascends. It disappears again in a blur of light before appearing before the squirming archaner on the roof. It lifts its hand, pointing a solemn finger at the man and the man is quickly lifted into the air by invisible forces, his body twisted around in unnatural ways, tearing apart skin and muscles and snapping bones like sticks. An ominous hum suddenly pervades the area and the air around the doomed archaner rattles with energy, and in an instant, every particle of matter within meters comes rushing towards him. In a sucking swoosh of gravitational power the man is crushed into a single point, a tiny singularity which quickly explodes as an airburst of devastating force, toppling the building below it, and blowing away the tops of those around.
"Jesus! Oh god… oh God! HELP! HELP ME!" The Vice-Captain of Veilstrike screams in terror after witnessing the massacre of his teammates.
"Bladestorm! Get your asses to Veilstrike's location now! We're initiating suppression protocols! Get those fucker's into firing range." The Director commands furiously.
"On our way, Director! 2 minutes out!" A response comes from Bladestorm Captain, Rashe Bowman.
As the rubble of the toppled building settles, the aetherian once again appears amidst the clouds of dust. A flap of its wings quickly cleanses the area, and the morning sun rains down again on its glistening porcelain skin, another flap of its wings launches into the sky and in seconds it stands before the Veilstrike vice-captain who was quivering in a pile on the street, his mind broken by the angelic being's unrelenting viciousness and strength. The creature lifts its wings, reflecting sunlight onto all around it and the trembling archaner looks on in stunned horror as the angel breaks toward him. He has no time to react. His head flies off, rolling into a nearby gutter as fountains of blood and aether spray from his body. The angel again stands motionless, its marble skin now dyed red.
Across the city, in the sky near the harbour's edge, Vera Virtaski contends with one of the enemy while Ayame Kurosawa lay injured and unconscious in a pile of vegetables in a large grocery store below her. "I can't fucking hold it!" Vera screams as she fights to contain the aetherian inside an invisible bubble of extremely high gravitation pressure. It struggles against the walls of her gravity bubble pushing out with wings and limbs with all its considerable might. Vera's ARCH-unit is on the verge of a limit-break as she strains against its overwhelming power, shooting and zapping as it purges aether to keep up with Vera's aetherics. "Martinez! Shoot the fucking thing!" Vera screams across her communicator.
"Acknowledged. Activating suppression measures." A response quickly comes back.
On the battlefields southern perimeter, large artillery are quickly positioned and prepared for firing. "Bio-suppression measures… Fire!" A voice yells from the perimeter wall. "Net-suppression measures. Fire!" The cannons fire in a symphony of eruptions and the bio-suppression measures leave their barrels first. Large, lead shells lined in aetherium burst forth from the barrels, contained within, a devastatingly destructive slurry of aether-infused biomatter and chemicals. The artillery rounds whizz through the air, leaving behind a trailing spiral of glittering dust. The first shell hits its target explosively, coating it in a thick, sticky, molten-miasma of noxious chemicals causing the creature's skin to sizzle and pop, sending cracks along it in all directions. 3 more shells hit it in quick succession. Another volley of shells leave the perimeter a moment later, each housing a capture-net weaved of an aetherite and titanium composite. The shells buzz through the air, exploding just short of their target and releasing the large mesh of metallics and aetherite that quickly wraps itself around the enemy. The aetherian, captured and confined, falls to the ground with a tremendous crash, where it lays writhing and wriggling, trying in vain to break free as the net slowly contracts and digs into its skin.
"Fuck! I'm never doing this shit again!" Vera cries out as she quickly descends into the destroyed building below her in search of her partner. She would find Ayame battered, bruised and bleeding, but still alive and breathing. "Aya! Wake up! Aya!" Vera screams as she slaps Ayame across the face.
"W-what happened?" Ayame stutters as she regains consciousness.
"You abandoned me is what happened. Had to take care of one of those bastards on my own. Look at the state of me!" Vera scowls as she stands before Ayame, her abdomen is charred and bleeding from a stab wound, most of her dress is burned and tattered and her hair is a disordered mess. "This is all your fault, you know." She snarls.
"O-oh, I'm sorry, Vera, I dunno… Oh, Oh fuck. My arm! No!" Ayame cries as she notices that most of her left arm is now missing. "Not again" She whimpers as she starts to softly cry.
"I dunno, I think it suits you." Vera giggles, causing Ayame to pout angrily as she wipes away tears. "Command. We need a healer. Martinez!" Vera asks, but there's no response.
At GAARD HQ combat command center, every eye looks on in absolute and unrestrained shock as the final aetherian wreaks havoc on their northern defence perimeter. The being had first appeared in the harbour, in only a matter of moments it would sink 3 of the naval destroyers that occupied the water around the city, ripping through the hulls of two with pure physical force and ripping apart the third in an explosive gravitationally-powered airburst that lifted half the vessel out of the sea. The being quickly makes its way along the lengthy perimeter destroying every human and machine in its path. "That thing's ripping us apart! We need to contain it!"
"It's too fast, sir. Ballistics can't land a hit. There's nothing we can do!" A voice cracks out in the room.
"Unacceptable! We need to hit it, slow it down. Get me a window. We're bringing down the hammer. All eyes in the room turn to the Director as he reveals his plan. On the screens, the angel continues to forge a path of destruction through the Sydney landscape. "Vera! I need you!"
"No! I just found Aya and she's hurt. We need a healer!" Vera scowls in response."Vera! This is serious. One of the ettys is about to take out half the perimeter. We've already lost hundreds. Vera! We need you. Please!" The Director calls out, his voice softening as he pleads for the woman's assistance.
"Ugh, fine. I'm going. Send me a location." Vera snarls. "Ayame, just rest ok, I'll be back soon."
"No, wait…. Wait. I'm coming too." Ayame says as she lifts herself out of the blood drenched vegetable display. "We do it together."
"Aw, it's ok Aya. I can handle it, you're missing an arm, honey. Just…"
"We're going. Come!" Aya scowls, her face serious and unwavering as she grabs Vera's hand. Vera smiles and quickly lifts the two of them into the air and they shoot towards the northern perimeter.
"What do I need to do, Director. I don't think I can contain it for long. I'm nearing my limit." Vera asks as they move across the harbour.
"We just need it stationary for 20 seconds. Get it over the water, we've prepped the SkyHammer to take it out." The Director responds.
"Oh, oh my god. Ok, just don't hit me with that thing!" Vera yelps back.