RAINFALL

ANGEL: ONE MILLION

…

“Dreida, This isn’t something you should be doing on your own. I can send Remnaya and Loki with you.”

“That’d be putting unnecessary pressure on you, sir. You have enough work here as is; and besides, we both know I can take care of myself.”

“I’m not doubting you, I just…I’m not gonna put one of my own in jeopardy for this mission.”

“Just trust me, Riley. Please.”

“…Huff. Okay. You have your orders, then. But come back to me in one piece.”

“I promise.”

…

| Mission Site Echo.

| 5:04 PM.

| The Flooded Remains Of An Exilier Energies Plant. Somewhere On Europa.

Like a majority of the plans that Riley would come up with, it was a beginning-to middle-to-end progression line in which everything was supposed to fall into place by itself. Heck, this one in particular was being handled on a much tighter scale to befit that, evidence being that the whole thing was entrusted to just one person, and you couldn’t get any less broad than something only you could get done. This group in particular, Nimbus Rehabilitation, was made up of a number of individuals who had survived the massacre of a village known as Nimbus Rose three years prior. Those who survived the destruction had banded together for a single, united purpose following it; salvation under the command of Riley Virtruso.

A small inner circle had been established early on full of people who were actually there when Nimbus was lost, but outside of that, it was either someone with a different story to tell, or folk looking for a job. Dreida Ontari was the latter of these options, and had been sent to investigate the recent appearance of an unassailed ground unit on Europa waving the flag of the Era Of Siliphys; a faction of pragmatic institutionalists who hid their faces behind masks, and were more of a cult than the “visionaries” they branded themselves to be over on Venus.

Dreida’s insistence to go after them herself brought her to Exilier Energies, one of the many, many power plants that gave to the people under the constant rainfall of Europa through providing them with electricity. Their latest project, another power plant, was flooded in a terrible storm that left multiple staff injured and the place itself abandoned. The Dog Torjin was directed there by Nimbus’s leader himself, but found nothing except for water that went up to her calves, and busted equipment that made this place look straight out of a horror movie. How was she gonna find a cult in a place that not even the wildlife wanted any part of?

She was gonna have to rely on her nose and dumb luck, and neither of them brought her any closer to what she was looking for. Sure, she was getting deeper in the facility and the factories water levels were getting more strained as she went further down, but that…shouldn’t be happening, right? Not unless the water was being drained out of an outlet or being manually pumped from the interior to the outside. Now, nobody native to Europa would care enough to do something like this; floods and storms were such a regular occurrence that it could be remedied by just building another power plant—but it seemed that for Gladiolus, that wasn’t good enough.

Who else would go out of their way to deploy themselves on-planet for an electric company, than the second strongest earth-grown faction behind the Winged Varsity? Not to mention that the Colonel of their armed forces was more than eager to swap steel with Dreida, for as soon as the Magistrate bounded down a flight of stairs and turned a corner to slide under a nearby gate, Alvira Haider took a single glance in the Doberman’s direction and ordered six red dot sights to lock on to her figure. This prompted Dreida to stop where she slid and put her hands up like a deer in headlights, her eyes darting back and forth between the six riflemen with Alvira, Alvira herself, and the debris-ridden floor that made up their immediate vicinity.

“WOAH! Hey, hey, I’m not hostile!”

“State your name and affiliation.” Alvira ordered without a shred of disposition. “Dreida Ontari, Nimbus Rose; we’re not officially sanctioned!” The Colonel kept pressing her. “Private Military?”

“We’re Freedom Fighters.” Dreida was a bit embarrassed to have to say that out loud.

Sure, the fear in her eyes was one thing, but combined with how she almost fell into the gate behind her showed Haider everything she needed to know about this “freedom fighter”. Someone this clumsy would do more harm to herself than an enemy, and besides, what reason would she have to lie when she was not only cornered, but outnumbered as well? Alvira ordered her men to lower their guns and return to both cleaning up the area and scouting it out, leaning on her shield while watching Dreida stumble back to her feet.

“Freedom fighting means public relations. You here alone or with a clean-up crew?” She asked. “I’m not here to drain the place out. I’m looking for a group of people—registered targets.” Alvira raised an eyebrow when Dreida said this.

“On Europa? Only people you’d find are the United Insurgency, girl.”

“I can elaborate if you wish.”

The Defender’s lips curled up into a smile. At least Dreida knew how to carry herself, especially on a planet that’s essentially been forced into martial law by crazies like the Insurgency.

“Please do. I’m here on the jurisdiction of Gladiolus, so perhaps we can help each other out. Colonel Haider.” An introduction was made. “Dreida. This time, without a bunch of red dots between my eyes.”

Availing Colonel Haider to the details of her coming was a much more educating experience than Dreida thought it’d be. This was in due part to the soldiers that once aimed their rifles at her head pitching in with all kinds of ideas as to how to cull the herd with a group-efficient mindset, showcasing their talent in strategic adaptation and even speaking in a way that reminded the newcomer of her own boss. That said, they weren’t going to make any progress standing around—this place had five floors worth of water and equipment they needed to drag themselves through, and until they caught wind of any activity from a side not their own and cleared it to the point where the proper crews could take it off their hands, they’d be here for a while on what was now considered a “joint operation”.

They silently agreed to not tell their higher-ups about this partnership as well. Dreida knew that if Riley knew that she had gotten herself in bed with a faction of such high standing, he’d have a conniption at the thought of having to invite a government sanctioned task force into the fold of his work–a matter which wouldn’t help the fact that he was interrogating a criminal with no legal grounds to do so in the midst of it all happening. Terios had only recently been brought into custody from a coordinated attack on a floating village in Connecticut, and refused to budge even when faced with his life being at stake if he didn’t talk. He spent the whole interrogation trying to convince the freedom fighter that he wasn’t with the Coalition, but Riley's survival instincts refused to let him settle for someone who claimed they were just “some guy” after almost running Vangelion Falls off the map. He wasn’t going to let this stand, but was clearly growing wearier the longer this took.

Dreida was on a time limit for her bosses sake, so she considered herself lucky to have bumped into someone who hated wasting time above all other evils in the world. Alvira was like a rocket just waiting to be set off, and with each order and formation she barked out to her riflemen was she only growing more poignant as they exited the factories top floors, soon arriving at a massive, closed-air warehouse deeper towards the basement that was teeming with water and rubble. But not everything was just set-dressing. There was activity amongst the aching silence—whirring, twisting gears from automated machines that moved like people and spoke like them too beneath their feet. Cyborgs.

“Are these your guys?” Alvira crouched beside Dreida as they overlooked the perpetrators, hunching behind a guardrail obscured by some washed-over boxes. She ordered a rifleman to get a clear angle on one of the two cyborgs beneath them, allowing a look into their activity and a fear that they’d get spotted.

“I’m counting four masks across the board, all with that damn flame on their cheek. That’s EOS.” Dreida confirmed.

“And you said they’re not supposed to be on-planet?”

“They’re so far off-planet that it’s bordering on abnormal.” Dreida whispered. “Coupled with the fact that they’ve brought what’s essentially a four-man firing squad, I’m concerned as to why they’d be anywhere that isn’t Venus considering that’s usually where they lay.”

This “firing squad” was doing the same thing that Gladiolus had been sent from Earth to do; draining the factory of its flooding water in a bid to get themselves some good publicity and save lives on the way. They weren’t doing anything besides standing around and chatting amidst the rubble, a particular, much shorter EOS operative rambling to an annoyed subordinate about a new hire from their upper echelon. An “informant”, according to their words. Seems like they had a man on the inside that needed to be taken care of—but all bets were thrown off when not even twenty seconds after this conversation was sunsetted, a head-bagged and restrained captive was forced to kneel before the quartet. Draining the place was clearly not their top priority.

Nobody on the upper floor moved once they had a visual of the captive.

Annoyed or not at his superiors' incessant rambling, an order was given that had to be followed, so without a second of hesitation would a much taller EOS initiate tug a knife from a sheath on their thigh, step forward, and hold it against the captive’s neck. They leant in and asked them a question, and when their captive shook their head no, the knife was slit directly across their throat in a single motion that took their life in six seconds flat. They choked on their blood before falling dead and cold, and Alvira had to grab the barrel of her rifleman’s gun to keep him from opening fire as soon as it happened. Fighting would get them killed if they went in as sporadic as they seemed. They were here for information. Information, and the right moment to take action—now wasn’t that moment, and besides, they could actually hear these Siliphys guys talking to one another. Maybe they could assess what the hell they just saw from something as simple as a conversation.

“…We didn’t have to execute him so quickly, sir.”

“I didn’t kill ‘im, you did! Jeez! I tell ya’, you take a guy to three different places and give him three different chances and he just. Doesn’t. Budge! I wish these metal fucks we got paired with were as dense on a mission as he was in interrogation, but oh well!”

Three sentences. That was all it took for Dreida to gauge the personality of the shortest of their enemies and it made her blood run so hot that she could swear it was boiling. A duo of riflemen had to talk her out of rushing onto the scene, and if that didn’t work, then Alvira would check her herself. Even so, the hold-off from the Colonel seemed to be the right choice in the matter. A shot was lined up, right at the smaller one’s skull, and the safety was clicked off to signify a readiness that could potentially end this mission as soon as it started. But the tiny commander just kept talking—all of his words aimed at his taller subordinate.

“And besides, what do you mean “We didn’t have to”, Ajax?” He’d sneer. “Are you starting to soften up on me, or is that Europan blood in your veins tricking you into giving a shit about this dying planet? This water is for our Soul Mages. Whoever upstairs is doin’ half our job for us funnels the rest down here, we collect it, and bring it back to the people who are paid to distribute it. It’s simple stuff!”

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He propped himself up on a nearby crate that was adjacent to the now floating body in the water, kicking his legs like a child and laughing all the way through the recess of the factory.

“ISN’T IT GREAT HOW EASY OUR JOB IS!? You and me, friend, all we gotta do is kill! With this sack of shit not telling us where the second Astral Weapon is, we just need to keep findin’ guys and putting ‘em to the sword until they break! Bodies on top of bodies for the sake of conquest-”

A 30-06 Springfield bullet was sent straight through the head of their shorter adversary. Ajax immediately ducked for cover while the cyborgs he commanded shifted towards the shooter, having been caught off guard and put on the backfoot of an ambush.

“Imphra!-“ The victim of the shot raised his hand to cut off his subordinate.

“I’m fine, Ajax. So. These are the guys doing our job.”

A pair of horns sticking out through Imphra’s hood lit up a bright, devilish orange—matching well with the gray skin of his face and burning a scar into a gap over his left eye. Imphra, whoever he was, was a hybrid of a Yunoclisp and a Greystar. He had fangs that made up a majority of his teeth, and a cat-like gaze that made the “Imp” in his name all the more prevalent. A sniper bullet didn’t even phase him. Taking caution was going to be an understatement.

The two cyborgs that were once by his side had disappeared after Ajax ordered them to return fire. It didn’t take long to recognize their whirring gears as they sprung up from behind Dreida and swung at her in massive gaps, the doberman ducking the first swing and back-stepping another before vaulting over the railing to leap into the bloody water below. The Colonel’s riflemen were more than capable of keeping the bots at bay while Alvira rushed in after her ally, but everyone knew that this would only be a temporary halt in the face of much more imposing opposition across from them. They were after Astral Weapons. These guys had to be put down.

Ajax opted to step to the two women first, spinning a staff out from behind his back and aiming its front towards the water below. The weapon itself could be profiled through its silver-painted wood and outlined yellow streak—Mythologian or not, that wasn’t built for saving lives. A majority of people who followed that discipline went in without direction and came out the other end as a healer; legally sanctioned under the title of Druid. This guy wasn’t that. Very, very clearly, he wasn’t that, but what he was was a professional at getting himself far while only having to do half the work. After all, his enemies had done their part by standing in a liquid.

He jabbed the front of his weapon into the ground, sending a torrent of thunder through the water and towards the women in a great flurry of speed. Dreida had to act on instinct to not get caught by the lightning in the moment she had, a swipe of her hand projecting a screen in front of herself that buffered a list of abilities she could access as a Machina. Whereas Ajax had power, she had options, and as she was a Druid and he was a Magistrate, she’d utilize these options that came with being a healer to form a clear barrier of magic energy between the thunder, herself, and the Colonel. Her plan was to stick to the back line and allow Alvira to fight up close, all the while healing and supporting her so that the fight could only end once they got the upper hand and seized their victory.

And like hell was Haider going to waste that chance.

The Colonel sprung out from the left side of the barrier and used her shield to flick water into Ajax’s face, now pushing forward with the environmental advantage by kicking debris in his direction and engaging him in close quarters. She was more upset about her shield making her move slower than the fact that she had to fight someone so dangerous up close, looking to apply a more “bait-and-punish” style to her fighting in a way that would allow her to gauge Ajax’s discipline without getting hurt. Her shield was more than durable enough to hold itself against an array of swings that came from all sides, but it wasn’t going to last forever; this guy was significantly more aggressive than she thought he’d be, especially with a staff of all things in his arsenal.

Alvira pushed against his offense instead of mindlessly taking hits to her shield, shoving Ajax with a shoulder bash and following through with a heap of swings that not only chipped the ends of his staff, but forced him to start trading blows with her on equal ground. They were as fast and as reactionary as one another with both combatants relying heavily upon their instincts and fight psychology to win—leaving Dreida running herself ragged in an attempt to keep up with these two as the middlewoman. She had to keep the Colonel alive through healing her wounds and covering her with shields, then used a majority of her energy to cast spells that boosted her attack or raised her speed to where Haider could get an advantage and keep Ajax on the defensive. As long as Dreida stood, Ajax wasn’t going to win, but that wasn’t Ajax’s problem. It was Imphra’s problem, and he had a solution. Completely unmitigated Violence.

“YOU LEFT YOURSELF VULNERABLE!”

Dreida’s last bit of energy was put into spawning a barrier that went up completely by instinct. Her reserves were low and she was forced to rely on Alvira to carry the weight, turning her attention to Imphra in a bid to buy as much time as possible for her friend despite her exhaustion. But he wasn’t there. Imphra wasn’t in front of the shield. A scimitar, which had bounced off the shield and was the single notion needed to get Dreida’s attention, fell into the bloody water as if no one had been holding it at all. She didn’t even get the chance to look up when he sprung down on top of her, the ends of a sharpened pair of nunchucks going right through the barrier and stabbing into her shoulders.

…

Imphra’s Anima Zone forms a large dome of water that traps whoever he casts it on inside. For as long as they’re in the dome, the target is stuck completely stationary and are unable to move until the spell ends, unless they have something within their own arsenal to disrupt it, or an outside force breaks the dome entirely.

…

“Beautiful Ballad.”

Suffocating rain filled the dome that Dreida was trapped in, her back hitting the ground while its visage formed around her, and the effect of Beautiful Ballad started to fill her lungs with water. Imphra was trying to drown her at the same time as he stabbed into her body with those sharpened ends, aiming randomly and hitting every target he laid eyes on to the point where the Torjin could feel her vitals start to slow down and cease operation.

She was sure her blood had stopped pumping thanks to all the damage to so many vital arteries and nerves. All she could make out besides her own pain was the banging that rang within her head due to the force from the attack. In one moment, Dreida failed Alvira. She couldn’t even keep a promise to Riley that she’d come back in one piece from a mission he gave her. The banging got louder. And louder.

And then the dome that made up Beautiful Ballad shattered like glass.

“IRIDESCENT CRADLE!”

That wasn’t Dreida.

Glowing vines snaked past the shattering dome and wrapped around Imphra’s body in a tight, suffocating bind. His arms were being put under so much pressure that he dropped his nunchucks next to where his scimitar lay, barely able to turn his head just enough to see the glint of a katana and a flame at the end of a rapier.

“RILEY! NOW!”

A coalescing wave of silver and orange cut through the Yuno-Star like he was made out of paper. The only reason it didn’t kill him was because he was a Vanguardian, and his nature as a “Tank” gave him enough natural resilience to survive hits that would kill a lesser Battlemage. But now, everything was different. That cruel, merciless nature and death-embracing smile? It wasn’t there anymore. Imphra was scared, and he had good reason to be.

Riley Virtruso burst onto the scene with Loki to his right, and Remnaya to his left. The flame from his rapier covered the entire left half of his body as he walked towards Imphra, the rest of himself shaded black. His mission statement was to always save lives, but this devilish little freak went too far for him to care. He looked at Imphra, and saw the man that burned down Nimbus Rose. He looked at Imphra and he snapped.

“Defender!” He barked at Alvira. After successfully warding off Ajax on her own, the Colonel was happy to see that the cavalry was here. It was five-versus-two, and those odds were ones she liked more than ever—even if the guy leading the pack had a hint of crazy in him when he called her by her discipline.

“I expect you not to lag behind if you plan on fighting with us.” Clearly, this bunny boy was overtaken by his emotions, but all Alvira saw was someone after her own heart. “I’m the one giving the orders, rabbit head.”

“Then GIVE one!”

“Okay.” Haider grinned ear to ear. “Win.”

From this point onward, speaking was unnecessary. Ajax and Imphra both coiled themselves in preparation while Dreida hung back, cradled in Remnaya’s arms. She looked on as her boss did the one thing she always told him not to do—put himself in harm’s way while disregarding his own health. But at least he wasn’t alone. He had Loki, he had Alvira, and as long as Remnaya was there to heal their wounds and hack their way to victory, she wasn’t going to complain. How lucky was she?

Imphra, meanwhile, was completely beside himself. “YOU’RE ALL DEAD!” Riley and Alvira didn’t react to his screaming. Loki, however, laughed in his face.

Between the numbers game being out of his favor and the presence of the man who lit him aflame, Imphra was wrong to rely on his rage when every facet of the fight was working against him. Riley, Alvira, and Loki targeted Ajax with the goal of beating him to where he couldn't assist his superior, the first of the three leading the charge with a hefty balance between magic and swordsmanship.

The Rabbit Torjin had access to Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind through his time as a Magistrate, and used that avenue to give his allies a middleman so he didn’t get in Loki and Alvira’s way while fighting. Because Imphra was a Vanguardian, he was a damage sponge as well—the three new arrivals beating him so badly that what they did to him could be considered a jumping, all the while Ajax couldn’t get an inch of play in thanks to Dreida and Remnaya’s magic.

Hell, Riley just stopped using his rapier after a while, along with Alvira and Loki putting their own weapons away when they got the message. What followed was an event that could only be described as the most satisfying twenty seconds in Nimbus Rehabilitation’s short history, in which a murderous, manipulative, cult-driven purist was brought to the brink of unconsciousness with nothing but hands, or as one of Alvira’s younger riflemen watching from above would describe it, “boxing”.

A torrent of thunder was sent blitzing through the water at a volume so high it caused ripples in the liquid. The trio who had taken the initiative against Imphra were lifted away from it by a platform Dreida spawned, being large enough to include herself and Remnaya on it as well. Once the adrenaline wore off and the fight was won—judging by the cracked orbital bone and fractured jaw they gave the Yuno-Star—Ajax considered himself lucky that his stunt with that last bit of thunder even worked.

Both of them retreated without anybody opting to chase them, as the knowledge they gathered on this “Informant” of theirs could prove much more valuable than continuing to fight in a thunder-conductive environment, against a thunder-based enemy. For now, they had more water to drain out and a body to return to its family. Alvira put everyone to work quicker than they were used to, especially considering that her status as Colonel gave her agency over everyone who came to help her.

Then Riley found out about it.

They were gonna have a lot of paperwork to fill out.

…

| One Day Later.

| 2:44 PM.

| A Hijacked EOS Airship. Somewhere On Europa.

With the assistance of Remnaya disarming their V.I.P, Dreida was able to tackle them down and tie their wrists together. The Era of Siliphys were hunting down a once-unassailable catalog of weaponry, and knowing this information thanks to Imphra spilling it yesterday, it was less about securing more details to stall their advance, and more of a race against time to make sure they didn’t get them at all. Alas, they were one down. It was time to think outside the box before they ran out of chances.

“We’re going down hard! I’m breaching our way out, so get ready to jump!” Caleb, a fellow Druid who specialized in Blood Magic, assembled a construct of blood to form the breaching charge that they’d use to escape, greenlighting their extraction once the women behind him were ready and making for a quick dust-off as they leapt from the ship out into the skies of Europa.

…

| The Day After That.

| Nimbus Rehabilitation HQ.

| Medical Bay.

Dreida was behind Riley, Remnaya was behind Dreida, and Loki was behind Remnaya. They walked in a line from the medical bay to the holding center with the second of the quartet having just gotten patched up, a majority of the wounds that covered her arms, torso and shoulders being wrapped and medicated by the third of their healers, Vivian. After what happened on Europa, her boss wasn’t gonna let the Doberman girl out on the field any time soon unless she went with her team, and besides that, all four of them still had licenses and legal documents to fill out considering their involvement with a government-given operation on Alvira’s behalf.

Of the four, Riley was the only one who actually enjoyed doing paperwork—it gave him a chance to shut himself out from the world and just exist in his office thinking to himself. He needed that quiet every now and then, but now, that luxury wouldn’t be afforded to him for quite some time. Alvira found out about Terios, but instead of threatening them with legal action to hand a criminal over to licensed officials, she offered to take over with the man’s interrogation as a whole. Maybe she’d get something out of him, who knows?

Actually, scratch that—this was Colonel Alvira Haider. She knew how to make it happen. But what she didn’t know was that she had quite the story waiting for her on the other side, with Riley, Loki, and Caleb watching through a viewing window behind her.

“So, Mr. Hildryn.” Alvira started. “When do you plan on cooperating?”