A shot rang out, echoing in the near-complete silence of the overgrown fields. Simani holstered her gun and began to move closer to the mines, Ruban in tow.
Not that a gunshot would make much of a difference to an Aeriel, but it had distracted the thing from entering the mines, drawing its attention to the approaching Hunters. Ruban counted that as a win. They would have a much easier time dodging the energy-attacks out in the open than within the claustrophobic confines of the mine.
Simani cleared the shrubbery moments before Ruban, drawing her sifblade into her right hand and clutching the gun in her left. Ruban saw the exact moment the Aeriel caught sight of her. Its hellish eyes flashed silver in the reflected light of the rising sun, its gigantic silver wings pulling back into a high arc, readying for attack. Ruban took a moment to thank whoever was listening that this one didn’t have the dreaded crimson markings on its wings. It was not that he didn’t relish a good fight as much as the next Hunter, but he wasn’t comfortable fighting an X-class in an area surrounded by civilians. The stakes were too high to risk it.
In the next moment, the Aeriel was charging at Simani with an enraged snarl. Her bullet had hit it in one of the wings. It wouldn’t cause any lasting damage; nothing would, except for sif. But Aeriels didn’t like to have their wings messed with.
Simani dodged the charging Aeriel easily with a smooth leap off to the right, giving Ruban the opening he needed to bring his sifblade down in a forceful arc to slash at the creature’s face. The Aeriel drew back, taken by surprise. The blade connected, tearing at the creature’s skin and causing a blinding sliver of light to flash out of the injured skin like blood pouring from a wound. A moment later, the light subsided, leaving just the ear-splitting howl of the Aeriel as evidence of their small victory.
It didn’t last long. The Aeriel lashed out blindly, angrily at Ruban, its flailing hand connecting with his chest. The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back a few feet from where he had just been standing. His abdomen felt as though it were on fire.
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Civilians often believed that the deadly energy-attacks were the most dangerous thing about an Aeriel. And perhaps they were, when it came to largescale terrorist attacks on mass targets. But in close combat, far more problematic than an energy blast was the sheer physical strength of an Aeriel, their agility and endurance. Most Aeriels – apart from the rare X-class – couldn’t throw more than a couple energy-shells in a day anyway, and it wasn’t the most precise of weapons, making it easy to dodge if one kept one’s wits in the face of a massive fireball flying towards them.
Even with no energy-shells, however, it took at least three to four fully armed Hunters to take down a single unarmed Aeriel. Only a very few of the most skilled and experienced Hunters were allowed to Hunt in pairs, instead of the traditional teams of four.
He looked up to see Simani launch herself at the Aeriel, firing a shot a little off the creature’s right wing to distract it. The shot was never meant to hit its target, but it got the Aeriel to move instinctively leftwards in a bid to avoid another bullet to its wing. There, Simani’s right hand shot out at lightning speed, slashing viciously at the Aeriel’s exposed left wing with her sifblade. Once again, blinding light issued from the spot where the sifblade had touched the Aeriel’s skin, and the creature let out another ear-splitting scream, flying away and backwards. Simani followed it, firing two shots right at the creature’s chest as she tried to get close enough for another strike with her blade.
Ruban felt it before he saw it, the familiar prickling sensation as the air around them heated up with gathering energy. The Aeriel flew up and out of Simani’s reach, flapping its injured wing desperately to propel itself upward and farther away from its opponent. It needed distance for the momentum to build, Ruban realised, as he saw the first vestiges of an energy-shell forming in the Aeriel’s outstretched palm, a tiny dot of light that kept getting bigger and bigger until, within moments, it was the size of a small tennis ball.
“Sim!” he shouted, but his partner had already realised what was happening. Against every instinct in Ruban’s body telling him to make her run away from the inevitable blast, Simani stood perfectly still, as if petrified by the oncoming attack.