I watched as the horns of angels blew, and the world seemed to end around me, apocalyptic amounts of suffering on display as men fought and died pointlessly. On one side, the black-clad terrorists unleashed rapid bursts of laser fire so fast they looked like a single beam. The lock mechanism on the side of their unmarked and unloved weapons let out a rapid buzz.

Their weapons, quickly discharging orange capsules, which were discarded and replaced by new blue ones, let them hoze their enemy in battle.

The Lunatics on the other side, or at least the ones in the front hacking and charging into laser fire, were armed with a kind of glave, simple metal, with no armour or greater protection. Downside streets, lit by fire, I could see men moving, and as some came within line of sight, there was another great blast of the horn.

They were firing a laser, though I wouldn’t describe it as such. It was more like they were firing an angry, screaming bolt of light that thirsted for the blood of the enemy. The few that fired hit targets like concrete, steel plating and enemy combatants and all that was left was a hole of slag as round as my fist in its wake.

They were some kind of super laser musket, so overspeck that I could see they stop to swap barrels like one would ammunition, every shot followed by pulling the barrel off, passing it to a guy next to them, and getting another barrel handed over.

They had an important look, somewhere between guard and, more importantly, guard.

Their shots lit up the night and made the sounds of chaos go silent while they lanced across the open area beyond the safe, smokey confines of the voidrome concourse.

It was utter pandemonium, a vision of the end times the nuns would talk about. The buildings around the spontaneous nightmare killing field were once wood-panelled but were now just on fire.

In the distance, a building, as if commanded by some cosmic rule of bad timing, crumbles, falling down in a fit of melodrama only capable by a force of nature with a sense for the dramatic.

There were people shouting orders and commands, drowned by the sound of weapon discharge, fire, the clash of the melee and the crumble of a distant building; a bunch of them on the Lunatic side were shouting at one another, arguing all the while their troops got slaughtered.

Oh, and there was a woman with pink and black hair flying on a sword, shooting pink lasers from her hands.

You know, like one does.

She was shouting something, a smile on her face. One of the Lunatic captain people pointed, and then three of the laser muskets aimed and tried to fire on her and the who thing gained an additional layer of complexity.

I would say it was like the ninth layer, one for each circle of hell I was currently standing inside. The only thing that kept me from genuinely believing I had died on the throne and had gone to some form of the demented afterlife was Lilly shouting that I needed to get out of there first and talk with the other legionnaire later.

I snaped, too.

I had a grand total of two pistols with six shots each loaded and a bit of ammo to spare, one laser gun that was probably at 30% charge and had no blue thing in it, surrounded by weapon fire that could turn me to ash, no back up and I needed to somehow get out, through a clash of hundreds of armed men.

I reached down and grabbed one of the blue things I stole off the crybaby and made to reload while I started paying attention to movement, lines of fire, and cover, quickly finding myself going down and forward awkwardly.

The moment I stepped over the line, I felt a sudden tug downwards that almost made me scream as the wound in my leg, fresh unscared but still hurt flesh, forced to take the brunt of my sudden weight.

I almost fumble the tiny glass capsule but manage to keep it in my fingers while I kneel down into a pile of rubble. A laser shot came from near by getting me to tuck my head down while I tried to open the gun up and slap the cartridge in. I was unfamiliar with it, but I managed to figure out how to get the gun to open up and I lined up the pegs and arrows on it and clicked it before closing it up.

I could go right into the guards, or left into the murderous black block.

“Up! Look up,”Lilly shouted to me.

I pulled back from the wall to get an angle up in case there was someone lining up a shot and saw the woman firing lasers at both sides, mostly through the black block, but a few through the long guns that were trying to pick off. Zipps of pink light tore through the metal and glass, which got the men to toss them away, but she didn’t kill them.

Black block it was.

I got up and scanned the other side, looking for the next target, the next piece of cover. Ten feet, not occupied or 15 and more cover.

I moved 15 feet, huffing down air to stifle the pain that rang out in my mind every time my leg met the ground.

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I got 5 feet, ducked down as a shot went wide over me, and I pushed off from my duck before rolling awkwardly into cover, the battery pack thunking on the ground in a way that didn’t sound right. As I came up from the roll, I was face to face with three cowering black-clad men.

I moved before I ever registered it. My honed instincts squeezed off a shot, and I burnt through the second guy, the laser burning a hole an inch and a half deep through his left lung and into his heart, and he dropped, holding his chest as he died screaming. The first guy’s gun was between the barrier and me, so he fumbled it up and out while the last guy started to move his gun.

I didn’t wait; I dove straight at him, shoulder-checking him as I heard the buzz of the hammer falling 25 times in a second, shot flying up into the air.

Dumb ass stopped with the gun and punched me in the side, and I kicked him back with my bad leg. We both let out a light scream of pain as my leg connected with something solid, probably his torso and the impact rattled up my leg.

I gripped onto the last guy as he stood, my hand falling to his belt while the other guy shouted for help, the noise lost in the din of combat.

My hand found a metal handle, and I pulled it out and smashed it into his side while he lifted my face as he pushed me away, cocking back his arm before getting in a solid hit on my cheek.

I got knocked free while the blade was in him, and he screamed in pain.

I hit the ground and heard dumb ass with his gun and chucking the knife after landing and lifting my head, but my aim was shit, and I just hit one of his hands with the pommel instead of the blade. I fumbled and managed to get the gun up again when the third guy, holding his bleeding side, levelled his gun at me.

We fired and moved at the same time.

My shot was shakey, but I managed to only get skimmed by the bolt as it tore through my clothes and left a light burn on my back.

Luck put my bolt in his knee, and he fell, the both of us screaming.

I rolled back towards cover, and the idiot finally got his weapon clear, firing randomly above me, flashes of light streaking over me, and I stopped on my side and pulled the trigger.

It clicked, and nothing happened; he levelled his gun at me and pulled the trigger, it clicked, and the top kicked out an orange cartridge. I dropped it, rolled onto my front, forced myself up and with a few quick steps, I threw a fist at him.

It was a piss-poor punch on my part, and he got the gun between my fist and himself.

I looked him in his eyes, and the two of us panted; my shoulder drooped, and he did too, and I managed to quickly grab the gun, pushing it back into him, pressing him into the cover. He adjusted his grip, and we got into a shoving match, only I was shoving the gun into his neck.

I got my good leg below me, pushing myself into him while keeping my weight off my bad leg, and we stalemated.

His eyes were full of desperation, and I saw him get to push. With one hand, I thrust the gun down before belting him twice in the jaw and once in the side of his neck, and he dropped the gun as she shouted.

I grabbed his head and slammed it back into the rubble with the crunch of bone, and let go.

I looked over and saw the last guy near me.

He was down but not out. Rule one, don’t leave a single mother fucker behind to shoot you in the back, he had a weapon he needed to die.

I shrugged out of the pack and went for the dead guy, quickly getting over to him, lifting his gun and firing off two more shots at the last guy before striping it off the fallen man's body.

The gauge read 200, so whatever it was, it was not the percentage.

I got back to the rubble and sucked in thick breaths of smoke-tinged hot air, trying to get my heart rate down, but I didn’t have the time to do that; I had to get out of there.

I raised my head and just as quickly ducked back down as a bright flash of pink slammed down next to me before rolling twice and face-planting.

It was the sword lady; her sword slammed about a foot into the ground a yard from me. Its hexagonal tile-wide blade was not practical to use as a weapon, but it obviously had some kind of use.

I had to wonder if it was how she flew or if it was something else entirely.

“Ugh… my boobs.”

I turned from the sword and looked over at her.

This close, I could make out a proper amount of detail beyond the black and pink hair. Up where she had been, it was hard to make out what she was wearing, but it was also pink, a long, almost dress-like robe of some sort. She had one shoulder exposed, and as she pushed her front off the ground, a ridiculously sized chest with a near indecent amount of cleavage was on display.

She had skin a few shades apart from my own, my coffee and cream to hers with a bit less cream and a hint of orange to it.

She turned her head to face me, and I saw a slightly scuffed face that couldn’t hide the terrible beauty of her face. Strange eyes, pink like her hair, but with strangely shaped pupils, full pink lips, a hairpin with some kind of artifact gem on it stuck in her hair.

Pink on pink on pink.

We met one another's eyes, sizing one another up before she smiled with teeth white enough to put out an eye.

I was weary because she didn’t look like what I expected, she looked more like an entertainer. She was the kind of unnatural beauty that would crook her finger and get straight nuns wet just by looking at her.

“Did you just face plant from the sky and brush it off like it was nothing?” I asked her.

She rolled over on her side, one hand going to her hip, the other propping up her head like she was going to ask someone to paint her like one of their empire girls, and opened her mouth and said, in a perfectly chipper tone, “Yep, but that’s all in a day for one of us.”

“And you’re just fine?” I asked her, not believing a word she said.

“Oh yeh,” she said, waving me off, “I’m definitely not waiting for the combat meds to fix all the torn muscles.”

She said it with a smile that did not match the situation.

She was far enough from the cover that it was possibly dangerous for her to just lay there, so I quickly made my way over to her and started dragging her.

“What are you doing? Nooo, don’t drag me! think about my dress!” she pleaded, and I ignored her, dragging her into cover before collapsing on my ass and panting to catch my breath again.

“Can you get your head in the game? We’re in a war zone, not a ballroom.”

She looked at me and pouted and shook her head, a single strand of hair standing up.

“That’s not very cash money of you, what kind of magical girl are you? You can’t be as cute as you are and still be that serious.”

I looked at her and blinked, my mouth hanging open. I would have done a double take, but I was staring straight at her.

“What the fuck are you talking about, woman? Are you all boob, no brain?”

“What the hell are you on about, you’re the same as me! You’re a magical girl,” she said with perfect honesty.

I sighed.

The woman who got to shoot lasers from her hands was a very beautiful, very dangerous brainlet.