Tuesday, 9 June 2024, 11:52 pm
"Ok, time to work. Be careful, ok." Ayame says with a wink.
Vera nods with a smile and performs an elaborate curtsy to see off her friend, her graceful gown fluttering in the wind. The drones approach, zooming over the treetops of the jungle as they pass the two archaners, rattling Vera's gravity well.
"High-density aetherite signature detected. Sending target location."
"Affirmative. Hitting targets now." Vera replies.
She pops her bubble and the two free fall to Earth, blistering through the air to terminal velocity. Laughing maniacally at each other's flapping faces as they hurtle downward.
The target locations popup on their visuals, as GAIA updates their informatics in real-time.
They spring into action.
Below them, in the dense jungle, members of a terrorist group work furiously to evacuate their hidden, mobile base after the drones' appearance alerts them to GAARD's presence in the area.
"We need to get this shit out of here! A drone just buzzed us. They know we're here!" The base's commander screams as he runs around in a panic.
He roars commands as he pushes and smacks men into action. His ARCH-unit blazes as he uses his biokinetic strength to toss around heavy equipment and move vehicles and structures.
"Jerry and Brick, with me, the rest of you cover the perimeter. Kill anything that gets close. We cannot lose the aetherite!"
Before him, in a large metal case, sits a large chuck of aetherite broken off from the Sydney invasion's barrier crystal. It was found 5 meters below the location Joshua Daily pulled the main crystal from.
Men scrabble to load boxes and equipment onto vehicles while others destroy what cannot be transported. The base commander stands guard over the crystal while he orders his fellow archaners to separate and prepare an ambush.
On the periphery of their camp, his archaners hide in wait, surveying the area for any signs of their incoming enemy. But the dark jungle only feeds into their fears of a Strike Team closing in on their positions.
Then, a sudden quie JM hits them, unsettling all the men. The ever-screaming jungle suddenly lays silent and every person in the camp stops in place. Their eyes flick around, trying to find focus in the dark, trying to find the source of the silence.
The commander looks around confused and afraid, the dark jungle surrounding him in every direction. He panics as he considers every angle of attack, trying to find his enemy hidden in the shadows. He hears a faint cackle above him and looks up.
Vera looks down on the camp with a merciless glower, her hair and clothes twirling in the wind as the full moon glows behind her ominously, framing the canvas that would house her artwork of destruction.
The silence deafens as all the air around the camp gets instantly sucked into a single point in the sky and a moment later, the entire camp lifts into weightlessness. Men, vehicles, trees and equipment all shoot up from the ground and suddenly find themselves in a floating forest filled with bodies and debris, twisting and spinning aimlessly in zero-gravity.
"Ayame! Dance!" Vera's scream rings out across the sky as she hovers above an enormous gravity bubble holding up a small area of the jungle and its metric tons of content.
She strains all her power to maintain its form, her ARCH-unit searing into her skin. Sizzling and sparking as she burns through the aether energy in her power-core.
Ayame suddenly appears as a flickering shimmer of light and metal. She zips through the air on vibrating molecules like a jet of wind, removing all friction in her path. She slides between the atoms, unrestricted by direction or speed as she weaves her own path of destruction through her partner's gravity bubble, slipping between men and vehicles and trees. Slide and slicing across invisible surfaces and bodies that find her sword.
Explosions and screams ring out across the sky as Ayame executes her dance of death. The gravity bubble fills with floating, twirling torrents of blood as mutilated men and corpses twitch and tumble in weightlessness.
As Ayame slips out of the bubble, Vera slaps her hands together and all its contents shoot towards a center point, forming a crude ball of entwining bodies, vehicles and jungle debris. Vera digs her fingers into her hands as she presses her palms together while the gravity in her bubbles grows more and more dense, compressing its contents into a single point. With a snap, her hands quickly part, causing the conglomeration in its center to violently explode. Her gravity well vanishes and a storm of desiccated metal and meat rain down on the jungle below her, releasing a chorus of crashes and splatters through the air.
Vera reaches her limit-break, her power-core cracks and explodes from her neck into a shimmer of aetheric dust and she plummets. Her ARCH-unit drained and her body numb from overexertion. She falls to Earth, the elegant dress flutters in the wind as she descends ever faster. She smiles, content, considering her symphony of destruction a roaring success.
"Vera! Stop showing off. Where's your backup?" Ayame scolds as she catches up to Vera's descent.
Vera strains, pointing to her dress and Ayame quickly grabs her closely and starts shuffling through the elaborate apparel adoring her partner, trying desperately to find Vera's back-up power-core. They violently tumble and roll through the air, getting ever closer to solid earth while Ayame searches furiously, eventually finding it in a hidden pocket between Vera breasts.
She grabs it, quickly slipping it onto Vera's nape and a sudden gravity bubble stops their fall, meters from the earth. They float again effortlessly in a well of weightlessness.
The moonlight swirls and flickers on the edges of the bubble as its photons get captured in Vera's aetherics.
"That was too much. You could have just lifted the bad guys!" Ayame scolds, flicking her finger at her partner. "Director-san is going to be very angry."
"Oh come on, that was epic! I hope the surveillance satellites caught it. The way you swished and slashed through that mess. So glinty!" Vera proclaims as she badly mimics Ayame's sword work while praising her partner's skills.
"You finished Virtaski? You wanna crush the rest of the fucking Amazon. Or could you maybe… you know, complete the goddamn mission!" the Director's voice shrieks into her ear.
Vera winces. "Uh… no, sir. Sorry, sir."
Ayame looks on trying her best not to laugh across the communication lines.
"Oh, good. Then get your shit together and do your job! Secure the fucking aether, right, Now!"
"Y-yes, sir. Secure the aetherite. Sir!" Vera stutters with shame and embarrassment.
"Goddamn it! Just get it. Over!"
Ayame bursts out laughing as she rubs at her ribs and tries to find her breath.
Vera pouts and huffs, cursing the Director's harassment as she slowly descends the two of them to the jungle floor. They find a clear spot and survey the scene of unrepentant devastation surrounding them. Vera giggles at the result of her aetherics while Ayame shakes her head and sucks her teeth as she looks over the mountains of detritus surrounding them.
"The Director's gonna kick you butt. You should probably stop pissing him off."
Vera shrugs. "Pfft. What's he gonna do? I'm pretty much the strongest, he needs me."
"Still, you shouldn't provoke him. He might… lock you up or something. You know, put you on a leash." Ayame shudders at her thoughts and Vera rolls her eyes.
They stroll through the wreckage wistfully as they search for the missing aetherite. Prancing between mutilated bodies and mangled machines under the dim light of a full moon.
"How were we supposed to find it, it's so dark! Did you bring a torch or something?"
"Yes, Vera. I am always prepared for missions." Ayame scoffs as she digs in her suit harness's various compartments for her flashlight.
Vera rolls her eyes at Ayame's insinuations. "Whatever. I'd rather do this naked than wear whatever that is. It's practically eating your ass. And your tits are totally squashed. Looks so uncomfortable."
"This is a tactical morph suit. Made by the weapons department. Perfect for all aspects of missions." Ayame scowls while she tugs at her suit around her buttocks.
As the two discuss the merits of their chosen combat attire, a bolt of lighting streaks through the jungle like a shooting star. It flicks toward Vera's head, scorching the trees and ground as it beams toward her. A quick flick of Ayame's sword sends the bolt ricocheting through the forest, disappearing in a violent, crackling explosion of light.
Another blinding light heads toward the two from the opposite end of the clearing. A blazing ball of concentrated aetheric flame spirals at the women. Vera intercepts and crushes the attack in a gravity well, leaving behind a steaming shimmer.
A lick of flames touches her dress, scorching a small hole. Vera notices and her face twists into a view of unrelenting anger.
She clenches her teeth as she winds her power into her hands and a moment later, she erupts through the jungle beaming towards the source of the fireball.
A man sees a glint of moonlight reflecting off her gravity bubble as it bursts through the treeline towards him. His ARCH-unit barely has time to activate before Vera rips through the top half of his body, scattering his organs across the muddy ground. She pops her bubble and it launches her gracefully into the air above the treetops.
She stares in quiet awe as Ayame streaks through the trees like a bolt of lightning, slipping between leaves and branches like a gust of wind. One of the terrorists catches a glimpse of her approach and surrounds himself in a sphere of crudely weaved metal. Her sword meets it with a thunderous clang that rips through the vicinity. It starts to vibrate and the titanium-obsidian alloy of her blade melts through the metal until it meets the familiar feeling of human flesh. Ayame whips her sword into a frenzy and a moment later, the sphere rumbles as a splattering of meat and bone coats its interior walls.
"Aya! Watch out!" Vera shrieks out from the sky as she barrels toward her partner. She watches as a torrent of rolling earth weaves through the jungle, molding itself into long spiralling tentacles of rock and stone. Vera reaches out her hand and wraps Ayame in a bubble just as the walls of rocks slam into her. The mass overwhelms Vera's hastily prepared defense, and Ayame is violently hit by giant fists of rock that breaks through, sending her tumbling wildly, smashing through trees and brush.
Vera's eyes widen as she sees her friend twitching in a mound. She slams into the ground near Ayame ripping up the jungle floor in a rolling wave of crushing gravity. As she trudges over to her partner, digging her shiny leather boots into the muddy soil, the mound of dirt Ayame lays under begins to rumble and vibrate.
Moments later, Ayame erupts from the ground, wiggling and shaking her body as she whips off pieces of sand and dirt.
Vera scoffs as she watches Ayame furiously clean debris from her hair and face. She approaches her partner and helps dust off her suit. "You ok, Aya?"
"Um, yes. I think so." Ayame responds as she checks around her body and confirms her physical status on her visual information display.
Vera rips off a piece of her dress and uses it to pat at a bleeding gash on Ayame's head. "Sorry about that Aya, I wasn't focused…" Vera says solemnly. As she speaks, another wave of rocks erupts out of the jungle, rupturing against the wall of gravity Vera had set up around them.
"Relax, Aya, I'll wrap this up quickly."
The gravity walls erupt, sending out a shower of debris that had enveloped them. The fabric of reality begins to warp and fluctuate around Vera as it struggles to hold its shape in the face of her aetherics. Sand and dirt start swirling at her feet and moving toward her as her mouth opens to scream.
Ayame recognises her partner's incoming attack and braces for effect, unable to escape the coming gravity wave in time. She bends down behind Vera, digging her sword into the earth and gripping tight with all her strength. The world around them starts to vibrate, and every molecule seems to scream out in fear.
A short distance away their targets scurry through the jungle, they sense her oncoming attack and brace of impact. Covering themselves in walls of rock, earth and metal, hoping to survive her onslaught.
"Vera, no!" Ayame screams, trying to intercede, but it's too late.
Vera screams, releasing all her pent up rage and power. A wall of compressive gravity ripples through reality, expanding as a dome around her, ripping apart the atoms of everything it touches. It shoots out in an instant from Vera and consumes everything in a sphere around her, ripping apart matter and molecules, and for a planck moment, Earth holds on its surface a true vacuum.
The gravity well collapses in a snap, replacing itself with an explosion of air, knocking Vera off balance and into the gigantic crater beneath her.
Almost every tree in half a kilometer is flattened as a tidal wave of physical force is released in every direction, rolling through the area like a tidal wave of compressed air.
The jungle erupts into a symphony of survival as every living creature panics and flees the mini-apocalypse, while sky is cleared of all its clouds and the moon seems to look on in fear as Vera's gravity waves snake their way into space.
Ayame rubs the dust from her eyes and plucks at stones lodged in her skin as she surveys the devastation. The dense dark jungle now looks like ground-zero of a high-ordinace test.
Vera slowly stands up, clears some of the dirt from her dress and straightens her hair. She surveys the results of her aetherics, slowly nodding with approval as she scans the horizon.
"Oh! Look Ayame! The crystal…"
Ayame had waited patiently for Vera to recollect herself. She raises her sword, and with all her non-aetheric power, smacks Vera as hard as she can on her ruffled behind.
Vera yelps and screams in pain, turning to Ayame with tears welling in her eyes. Ayame stares back, snarling, her face blood-red as she seethes with rage.
"DON'T! DO! THAT!" Ayame screams in Vera's face, her lips almost touching Vera's as spittle sprays from her mouth.
Vera whimpers. "I-I'm sorry. They… ruined my dress. And they hurt you… I just wanted… I-I'm so sorry, Aya!"
Ayame turns around huffing and pouting. Most of her tactical gear had been blown off or disintegrated by Vera's attack, leaving her all but naked and covered in bruises and cuts.
"I'm going back. You can get the fucking crystal."
Vera nods as she grabs her mouth in surprise.
Ayame twists her head back at Vera and leers at her with the angriest-looking face she can muster.
"I hope Director eats your ass!"
Vera's winces at the threat, but the sight of Ayame overwhelms her. She tries desperately to contain her oncoming outburst of laughter as Ayame slips off into the sky, abandoning the mission to her.
She would end up nearly wetting herself as she was eventually overtaken by uncontrollable giggling and laughter, but quickly go on to discover that her final attack had destroyed her backup power-core, leaving her stranded and alone, in the middle of the night, in the jungles of Venezuela, for 2 hours while she waited for extraction.