Gwendith was somewhat bored. Living off the grid, away from the apartment and the amenities inside the mega buildings, needed a bit of adjustment. She and the others had only been in Dragon Fall City for a little while, a couple of weeks or so, but already, the place kinda grew on them.
The easy access to entertainment and knowledge, the convenience of not having to lug hundreds of different coins around, the ease of finding everything in one place or, better yet, the convenience of ordering things off the REI-space and having it delivered to their door, was quite addicting. Losing most of it was much like missing a step while going down the stairs. Startling and unpleasant.
The hovel they currently lived in was in one of the rundown apartment buildings in Junktown, and aside from the frequency of Scourge, which popped out every time it rained, it wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t as if they had no running water or power but they had to be careful of their usage. They had to abandon the hideout once already when the draw to the local power grid had been noticed. It would have been easy to kill the inspectors and enforcers, but they were just doing their jobs, Gwendith thought.
At the very least, the rotting bastard that touched off the entire thing was dead. Saki gave them the news and, according to Heron, he already had a way to get to the next level, though it involved cozying up to a mega-corporation. Millennium State Conglomerate’s history was obscured and the public records were so squeaky clean it was suspicious, but maybe it was better than the others. Certainly, G-Tech Solutions, or rather, whomever was controlling it, was bad news, but maybe the rest were more…neutral?
Gwendith snorted. Such optimism was unbecoming of her. She’d leave that to her beloved, thank you very much.
Ryoko seemed to have a better time than Gwendith. The handmaiden enjoyed the markets in Junktown, that was for sure. Each settlement, each community were secluded from the main roads, and were well defended, but the meeting places were open affairs. Sure, every stall owner had a guard or was armed by automatic firearms. They eyed strangers warily, but they didn’t turn anyone away. Except for the obvious corpo spies anyway.
At the moment, the apartment they were squatting in felt a bit muggy. It was raining and there were puddles out in the hallway. The leaks that went inside the suites were plugged up with ice, but the humidity penetrated into their quarters anyway. Devotee was outside, slaying any Scourge that found its way into the building. They’d amassed several hundred Jin of bones already, but exchanging them for ACs proved a bit troublesome. At least until Elsie told them about chips. Those were untraceable vessels for ACs that were used to transfer from a bank account into itself. There was a limit to the amount each chip could contain, however, and there was a digital display to show how much was inside. That said, trading in the bones to a less reputable buyer meant that it was bought at a steep 70% discount. Still, it was better than nothing. That was how they were living now anyway. Not that the bank accounts they held were drained or anything sordid like that. No, instead, Elsie told her that transactions were being tracked, and anyone or anywhere she used them would flag the surveillance and they could have corpo goons down on them in minutes.
Pop! Crack!
At least they were able to cook again. Gwendith stared fitfully at the fire and the pot Ryoko was using to make a stew. She didn’t want to know what was in there.
Still, Ryoko’s Facets were geared towards making life pleasurable for her mistress, and that included culinary delights. That she was doing it for Gwendith instead of Yuriko didn’t seem to bother the older woman, though all of them missed the young mistress.
That said, even if the original threat was dealt with didn’t mean everything was alright. They had a bounty out on their bottoms. Not just from law enforcements, but others who were in on the rotter’s scheme. Not that any of the bounty hunters lived to tell their tale. Another source of ACs and weapons.
She looked out at the window, feeling a bit melancholic with the rain. She briefly thought about the years she’d been held captive, at the endless snow, and the pain and horrors she suffered inside…she anticipated shaking, heartbeat racing, and cold sweat…but, after a convulsive swallow, she shook off her mood.
Gwendith sighed, but her mind still skittered away from the memories after that brief touch. Yuriko and Heron were wonderful in accommodating her weaknesses and she was grateful. She would do anything for her beloved, even if she knew some of it was rooted in Yuriko’s Mishala Mien. It wasn’t as if it was that Mien that prompted her lover to rescue her.
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Her blue mood was shattered when the hair at the back of her neck abruptly rose. Her Anima solidified around her body as the window shattered in front of her. She felt a narrow dart skid off her defenses and she yelled in both fury and surprise. But before she could react, a storm of bullets slammed into the concrete walls and penetrated through them.
Gwendith’s Anima made for a poor condensed armour as it was too flexible. Fortunately, the presence of her Animus frostscales compensated for that weakness. As it were, the frostscales barely blocked the bullets and she was hit with several dozen across her limbs and torso before she could retreat. She used her kinesis to grab her weapons, a couple of machine pistols, and an assault rifle. Her perception broadened to scan the outside, but her assailants were too distant to make out easily. She got a direction, however, and most of the fire came from across the road, on a similarly dilapidated apartment building. Ryoko was in the kitchen and Gwendith heaved a sigh of relief to note that the tawny haired woman had gone for cover.
“Burning Moon!” Devotee yelled as he charged towards an outer wall. His leap tore apart the wall and slammed across the road and dug his fingers into the opposite building’s wall. The bullets shifted their aim towards the Chaos Lord, but there was a reason such weapons were not in active use back home. Devotee’s Protective Field stopped them cold and he rapidly climbed up a couple of levels.
Gwendith extended her tendrils, not over the road, but down towards the ground floor. She found what she expected to, a squad of men in powered armour were storming into the building. Her tendrils, stretching at fifty paces, could barely reach them from over the window and straight down.
The bullets from outside had split focus from just her to Devotee. She ran out of her bedroom and grabbed Ryoko. The handmaiden, after seeing that the bullets had stopped, headed towards their gear and shoved everything loose into a spatial backpack.
“Where to?”
“Follow behind me,” Gwendith instructed. She pulled some of her frostscales loose and layered them over Ryoko. She had more than enough individual scales considering she didn’t use Animus much while the things continuously regenerated and spread. She probably had over ten thousand scales, lumens, at the moment, and she had to disperse some of them every day since they were heavy. So she had more than enough to protect Ryoko, but the handmaiden shivered at the cold. Not much Gwnedith could do about it though.
She barrelled out into the hallway and headed towards the stairs, her tendrils extended all the way. She encountered the first mooks in powered armour about three storeys down, and she solidified ice where they were about to step. Couple with a vicious push, she toppled them over and he tumbled down the stairs, taking half of his squad with him.
As for the rest of them, after staring at the mess in shock, they recovered after a couple of seconds. But that was more than enough time for Gwendith to act. She solidified a chunk of ice and brained the lead man with enough force to dent the helmet. The cushioning must be good since it didn't do much other than act as a distraction. But by the time she and Ryoko came into view, their weapons had been disabled. When they tried to shoot her, the guns simply shattered.
That didn’t deter them though, as the men drew their back up weapons. The fools who grabbed guns only had them explode in their arms while those that took knives or batons rushed up the stairs. Gwendith grinned and forced them to slip. Down they went.
She grabbed Ryoko by the waist and both of them jumped down the stairs. This time, the stairwell had an airshaft wide enough for their bodies to slip through, and they were down at the ground level a moment later. They headed towards the backdoor, but of course, the rotters had the building surrounded.
She ignored the calls for surrender and simply disabled their weapons. The persistent ones took out melee weapons, and this time, they weren’t standing precariously on stairs. Either way…
Bang! Ratatatat!
She used her assault rifle liberally while using her Animakinesis to fire the machine pistols. The bullets plinked off the armour, but it distracted the men long enough for them to slip past the blockade. They were off down the road, but had to jerk into another building when she saw armoured vehicles with turrets careening down the street. As they closed, she covered the road in slick ice, causing the vehicle to skid and slam into the opposite building.
That didn’t really stop the attack or the ensuing chase. Gwendith, after getting tired of the harassment, switched over to lethal attacks. The power-armoured soldiers were mortals and Anima Pride behooved her to spare them, but there was a line they crossed when they tried to shoot Ryoko, who was a non-combatant. She froze joints, snapped limbs, and, finally, necks. It was easier to fight using cold, but she used heat too. It turned out that powered armour’s energy source didn’t like it when it got too hot. It was easy enough to locate and she dumped all the heat she displaced from making ice into one man’s armour. The thing caught on fire, then melted the armour like a candle.
That act provoked furious fire, not just from their rifles, but from heavy machine gun turrets, and even a few explosives. The latter were easy to neutralise since all she had to do was place a curved ice barrier in front of it. The energy of the blasts simply got redirected, and the remaining kinetic and thermal force, as well as the shrapnel, wasn’t strong enough to reach her.
They must have crossed a dozen blocks but the pursuit continued unabated. She was getting a bit worried about Devotee, but Gwendith reminded herself that the man was an Anima level above her.
By the time she crossed fifteen blocks, the pursuit had died down. She and Ryoko found themselves in an alley that was tucked between a couple of tall buildings. They were in the shade, but the rain caused water to pool. It was up to her ankles now, and there was trash and other unmentionables floating past them.
“Dev, where are you?” Gwendith cast a simple Message spell and felt it connect with the Chaos Lord.
“Busy. I’ll find you ladies later.”
She sighed and tugged Ryoko’s arm. The buildings around them looked a bit too broken down, but it should do for a momentary shelter.
She reached up with her Anima tendrils and pulled herself up to the second floor. She could have jumped, but didn’t want to splash too much. She pulled up the handmaiden afterwards.
She had just moved a couple of paces inside when she felt a wave of hostility. Footsteps came from deeper within and she glared at the incoming figure.
A figure that was suddenly covered with a thick layer of Anima tinged red and crackling with electric sparks.
“So there you are,” a lazy voice said. Then a metal bolt slammed into Gwendith’s shoulder and shattered her frostscales.