“Hey Daisy, ready to seize the day? Carpe diem!” said the most annoying voice in the world.
Daisy rubbed the crust from her eyes and stretched with a mighty groan. Her eyes remained closed, not quite ready for the sensual assault that came from opening them.
“We’ve got time to sleep more. What time is it?” she asked.
“It’s already 11am. Not that that means much on the moon, I s’pose,” Kane replied.
Already 11. She had slept for ten hours and still felt tired. And she hadn’t even been drinking last night. Opening her eyes, she saw Cunegonde and Yuna were both gone and the trash had been picked up and placed in a bag in their small, eight square-foot kitchenette.
“Did you clean up?” Daisy asked, her voice sounding like a strangled frog.
“Yup! Got it all done this morning. I was worried about waking you with all the crinkling, but Cunegonde said you’d sleep through it and darned if she wasn’t right.”
Daisy rubbed her temples. “Please don’t clean it up next time. Yuna needs to learn to do this herself. She shouldn’t be pushing it off on the new guy.”
“Naw, it’s fine. I gotta earn my keep after all,” Kane said.
Oh dear gods, you poor, poor thing, Daisy thought. She was committing a crime keeping him on this trainwreck of a team.
Daisy rolled out of bed and ordered Kane out of the apartment so she could change into her adventuring outfit. To fit the region, she’d swapped out her riding trousers and blouse for a pink rubber flight suit and boots. All vaguely spy-esque, vaguely sci-fi, like something out of a light novel. It wasn’t hard to get past the Yishang’s approval; she only lost some pockets and wiggle room in the process.
Once she was dressed she went out to meet Kane and Yuna in the dark stairwell that led to their cramped apartment. With the sucking maw of the air filters running and random bits of machinery clanging through the metal walls it felt like the backdrop to some weird industrial horror movie.
“Where’s our other intrepid teammate?” Daisy asked.
“Said she was gonna get some grinding in before we took a stab at the dragon,” Yuna replied, looking as exhausted as Daisy. Dark circles had become a regular fixture on the Samurai’s face. Whenever she wasn’t being dragged out for grinding or quests, she spent her time eating junk food and reading comics and light novels. Yuna was lucky Heroes’ physical health never changed.
The three met Cunegonde outside the headquarters of Mooncom, Selenia’s defense force. It was a small installation of turrets and assembly buildings a few kilometers from the Capitol Building. Their teammate was covered in sweat and munching on outdated food items to restore her health since Selenian cuisine and its ingredients were too expensive to waste.
“Nice of you all to finally show up,” Cunegonde said. “Fortunately, I was able to get some good grinding in after I eavesdropped on some conversations last night. Apparently Planetview Cavern is the best place to XP grind. We’ve been doing it all wrong.”
“Good to know,” Daisy said.
That was sincere. If she had to grind, she at least wanted to get the most bang for her buck. Hers was the lowest ranked team still strong enough to complete Selenian quests, but the cut-off was always right behind them. Even at her most depressed, Daisy still had to put in work.
“Let’s get the silly quest stuff over with,” Yuna said.
The four of them walked inside the Mooncom building and a frantic receptionist ushered them into the war room as though disaster was imminent. Around the glowing holographic table sat a bunch of Non-Heroes looking very, very serious. The only member of their team that matched the seriousness was Kane who had on his “thinking so hard he looked constipated” face. Bless the poor boy, he’d only been alive for five months.
“Let’s not waste time,” Admiral Rama spoke, gesturing for the Heroes to sit. “At 0300 hours, we detected an energy spike in the moon’s core which we believe may be related to the fried relay stations you all investigated.”
“So you think this could be the Entropic Axis!?” Kane said.
“I don’t think,” Admiral Rama said, punching the holographic table. “I know.”
Daisy whistled and nodded. “Wow.”
“Do you think the energy spike could be a Lunar Dragon?” Kane asked, forgetting that Daisy and Cunegonde had already spoiled that it was a Lunar Dragon.
Admiral Rama blinked. “Uhh… yeah. A Lunar Dragon.”
Heroes didn’t usually spoil the next line so tactlessly. The other Non-Heroes in the war room still made sure to look suitably surprised, as did Kane, who actually was somewhat surprised.
“We’ll get right on that,” Daisy said.
From there Team Daisy ran over to a crater and fought off a group of monster summoned by Vidorgia to “distract them” in order for her to finish summoning the Lunar Dragon which then took off from a crater and headed for the space elevator that the Entropic Axis was trying to destroy. Then they had to run all the way back over to the elevator in Selenia City before the fight could finally start.
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Daisy lined her three teammates up outside the space elevator entry hall and paced in front of them like a drill sergeant.
“Pre-fight check! Everyone’s got an attack, defense, and speed-boost dish?” Daisy said.
Yuna and Cunegonde confirmed that they did and Kane panicked for a second before realizing he did as well, since Cunegonde packed for him.
“Good. Everyone remembers their roles?” Daisy asked, looking at Kane because she knew Yuna and Cunegonde did.
“I defend you two, you two buff up Yuna, Yuna beats face,” Kane said.
“First try, good boy,” Cunegonde said, patting him on the back. Kane seemed quite pleased with that, but Daisy still had to ask every time.
After scarfing down their buffing food, they entered the space elevator hall and stepped onto one of the jadeite platforms. Daisy felt flutters in her stomach as it began its ascent/descent. The quest fights had been getting harder and harder lately and, having spent most of her adventuring career in “sit back and let Boulanger solo almost everything” mode, it was a rude awakening. If things kept up, there was a day in the future where her team simply wouldn’t cut it anymore, and it was possible that would happen before the Yishang wiped the world.
“There it is,” Yuna said, pointing at a slowly approaching dot on the lunar horizon.
Daisy summoned Peng while Yuna performed a few warm-up slashes with her katana. Since they didn’t have a lot of strong ranged abilities or modes of flying, Peng was a necessity. Yuna hopped on the stone bird’s back and Peng leapt up to hover in a holding pattern for the Lunar Dragon’s approach. On the platform below, Cunegonde drew her conductor’s baton and Kane summoned his lightning claymore. Daisy’s weapon of choice had evolved from a pocket watch to a compass. Apart from having better stats, she just didn’t like thinking about time passing if she could help it.
The Lunar Dragon was close enough now that when it emitted its shrill roar it made the four of them cringe. Daisy didn’t have time to curse the Yishang for giving it such an obnoxious noise because the dragon dipped straight down towards them, claws out. Peng tried to match its speed for Yuna, but the dragon crashed into the stone bird first, disintegrating it instantly.
“Aw tits,” Daisy said.
Yuna slammed into the jadeite platform, cracking it down the middle and knocking off 50% of her health from fall damage. Daisy ducked and rolled as the dragon completed its swooping pass, slashing at Cunegonde with its talons. Kane activated Alternating Current and flashed to Cunegonde. He got in a glancing blow which temporarily stunned the Lunar Dragon, but it still managed to knock Cunegonde across the platform. A hastily thrown-up rock wall saved her from careening over the side.
Yuna stood up on aching limbs and wicked blood from her mouth before charging at the Lunar Dragon. She activated Bushido and regained some of her lost HP from carving into the stunned dragon, but the second it was out from under Kane’s stun, it took off and left Yuna gawking at the sky.
“How long on another bird?” she barked at Daisy.
“Thirty seconds,” Daisy said, telekinetically hurling chunks of jadeite at the dragon for a pittance of damage. On top of being hard to hit and doing excessive amounts of damage, it also had more HP than the entirety of some earlier regions.
“Is another bird a good idea? The dragon one-shot it last time,” Cunegonde said while healing them with Grazioso. “What happens if it destroys Peng while Yuna’s in the open air?”
“Send me up, I’m not a candyass,” Yuna said.
“No, but you are a suicidal idiot,” Cunegonde replied.
“What did you say, backline princess!?”
“Suicidal. Idiot.”
“Hey, hey! Not now!” Daisy said.
The dragon came back for another pass. Both Yuna and Cunegonde re-focused, the former stepping up towards the edge of the platform, the latter backing up to where Daisy was posted behind Kane. Once the cooldown was up, Daisy squeezed her compass and a smooth, white jade Peng re-emerged from the platform below Yuna. It rose into the air with the Samurai Hero holding onto its back.
“Don’t take a direct hit,” Daisy said.
“No shit!” Yuna yelled down.
Peng swung out from the platform, forcing the dragon to choose a target. As though sensing Yuna was the greater danger, it veered at the last second towards the stone bird hovering over a hundred mile drop. Popping into its mid-air path was a claymore-wielding Hero making a not-so-great decision.
“No! Kane, what are you doing!?” Daisy yelled.
His stunning strike connected on the Lunar Dragon, giving Yuna the opportunity to put in a careful three hits so that she didn’t automatically teleport off of Peng’s back on the fourth, but as soon as the dragon was unstunned, it swatted Kane out of the air, sending him plunging like a meteor towards Po-Lin and then dove towards a defenseless Daisy and Cunegonde.
This time Daisy wasn’t able to dodge. The world went spinning end over end as she was thrown like a ragdoll by the dragon’s talons. Shimmering rainbows and twinkling stars spun in her vision. A second later she was falling through open air.
“Peng!” she shouted.
For a few seconds her heart pounded with high-octane fear as she looked around and couldn’t see Peng, but a moment later the wind was knocked from her lungs as the jade bird rolled her onto its back. Spinning once again, her momentum was finally halted by a hand clutching the fabric of her rubber flight suit.
“Grab something, blondie, your suit ain’t got a whole lot to hold onto!” Yuna said.
Peng’s back rearranged itself to give Daisy hand and footholds as she assumed direct piloting. Barrel rolling around the dragon’s biting maw, she shot for the ball of dark purple hurtling downward. Unlike her own emergency landing, Daisy was able to match Kane’s velocity and float in under him.
“Thanks Daisy!” Kane said as Yuna picked him out of the air by the scruff of his neck.
Taking Peng in a vertical climb, Daisy brought them back up to the platform, this time electing to stay on the stone bird to steer it for Yuna. Before he could leap down, Daisy gave Kane a stern look.
“Keep to the plan! Don’t leave Cunegonde exposed!”
He nodded and hopped down.
Daisy tried not to let the knowledge of how much health the Lunar Dragon had left get to her. The start of a new fight was always rocky. Learning the enemy’s attack patterns and getting in sync with your teammates always took a bit of time. But usually that meant some HP loss, not several near-deaths.
However, through sheer persistence, they were able to get the Lunar Dragon below half-HP after dumping both Yuna and Kane’s Desperation Arts into it in a maelstrom of ice shards and lightning bolts. Though unable to keep them topped off, Cunegonde’s furious cycling of shields and healing was able to mitigate the worst of the HP-chunking bites and slashes.
And then the dragon stopped. As Yuna and Daisy circled it, preparing to dodge another charge, its neck bobbed upwards.
“Oh shoot…” Daisy said. “Guys watch—!”
By the time the words left her mouth, a stream of black energy sparkling with stars annihilated an already-injured Cunegonde and Kane. She had barely enough time to cut Peng into a turn before the Lunar Maria Beam swept across her and Yuna.
The next thing Daisy saw was the void of space over her head. The hard, rocky surface of Selenia lay below her back. Were she still in possession of her pocket watch, she knew it would read four in the morning.