Three things were immediately apparent. The floundering helicopter was going to crash if the monsters clinging to it didn't let go, the monsters had no intention of letting it go, and there was nothing the crew could do about it.
Jade was running towards Luis before she'd even finished processing the situation. The soldiers were scattering, trying to get out of the potential crash zone, and here she was running towards an out of control aircraft. A small, rational part of Jade, hidden away in the back of her mind and suppressed by general demonic impulsiveness, was mourning the fact that natural selection had failed her. But she couldn't run, not when there was a chance she could help. The helicopter could easily take out a building or two when it impacted, and some of the nearby structures were clearly still in use.
"Luis! Slingshot!"
Her companion paused, a wounded soldier's arm draped over his shoulder as he dragged the man to safety. Naomi's music still blasted through the street, bolstering her with incredible speed and agility. Jade needed every drop of the magic, they were running out of time.
Luis gave her an incredulous look, his eyes flicking between her and the spiraling vehicle. He knew what she had in mind. To his credit, he didn't try to argue. They either did this now, or it would be too late. With a gesture, Luis conjured a long tether of icy blue energy, flinging it across the street to wrap around Jade's arm. A deep chill washed over her as the 'Frost Hook' took hold, adhering to her armor. She accelerated, pouring on speed and dashing away from her friend, pulling the line taut.
"Now!"
The instant the tether ran out of slack Luis heaved with all his might. Jade launched herself off the ground in the same instant, springing off a tipped over car and using the magical cord as leverage to send herself arcing high into the air. It was a maneuver made possible only by their greatly enhanced strength, and she made it more than forty feet up before she began to level out. Jade's trajectory was taking her right towards the smooth wall of a tall office building, and she was still far below the careening vehicle, but that wasn't a problem: She had more tricks up her sleeve.
The instant her feet impacted the surface of the building Jade channeled a burst of mana through her legs, launching herself skyward along the wall with 'Mirage Step'. She used it three times in rapid succession, draining her magical reserves at a prodigious rate as she propelled herself higher and higher.
ZAP. ZAP. ZAP.
Jade surged up the wall like a bolt of lightning, flickering in and out of sight as her magic carried her towards her target. The third blink took her high enough, the smoking vehicle spinning wildly in the sky just above her. There was no time to think about the insanity of the stunt she was attempting. Just like her days on the gym floor she gave in to her body, letting it guide her. Trusting in it.
She kicked off the wall, launching herself into open air and drawing Phantom in one smooth motion. The pair of wyverns were clinging to the landing skids of the helicopter, clawing and tearing at the craft with brutal savagery. They were large targets and, at this distance, impossible to miss. Jade flung her enchanted blade straight into the back of the closer of the pair.
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"I can't control her!"
Specialist Dave Renner heard the pilot's strained shout over the myriad alarms, beeps, and a deeply disturbing mechanical groaning sound that he was pretty sure no aircraft was ever supposed to make. He was manning the door-mounted cannon and had been happily mowing down monsters when two of the flying dragon-things had snuck up on them from below. For the third time he tried to bring his sights to bear on the writhing mass of scales and claws attached to the bottom of the vehicle, but the damn gun wasn't designed to aim straight down.
"I'm trying to get it! It's too close!" He shouted back, trying to adjust the mount to give the weapon a larger range of motion. It was no good, the deck of the aircraft itself was in the way. Apparently, the designers had never anticipated a need to shoot through the floor.
"Hang on!" The pilot called back, her hands flying over the flight controls. "I'll try and scrape them off using a building!"
"Are you fucking crazy?!"
That may have been the stupidest idea Dave had ever heard. There was no way the rotor blades would give them the clearance needed to perform a stunt like that, not without turning the helicopter on its side. And helicopters did not fly sideways. The pilot was surely even more aware of that fact than he, but they were out of options. The ground was coming up fast, and they were coming in hard.
"Screw this." He said, pulling out his sidearm and flicking the safety off. "I'll do this the hard way!"
He slammed the release mechanism for his seat harness, hooking one arm through a handhold and leaning precariously out over the dizzying drop. In training, he specifically recalled being told to never do this. Unfortunately, the army hadn't drilled them on the proper procedure for fending off giant winged lizards that were hitching a ride. So, he had to improvise. The wildly swinging deck of the helicopter didn't make it easy to aim, but the monsters were so close that hardly mattered.
Dave squeezed the trigger, rapidly dumping his service pistol's magazine into the belly of the lizard-thing. It screeched in pain, black blood spraying from its scaled body as he pumped round after round into it at point-blank range.
"Yeah! Take-" Dave was interrupted as a long, barbed tail whipped across his chest, nearly pulling him from the doorway. His weapon went flying as he lunged for the handhold, hanging on for dear life, feet flailing over a hundred feet above the city streets below.
"Oh shit! Shit!" He cursed, trying to heave himself back in. The helicopter was spinning now, the rotation pulling him out and away from safety. Just as his fingers were slipping free from the bar, he felt a hand grab the back of his vest.
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"In you go!" Dave only caught sight of a flutter of blonde hair and the glint of a glowing knife before he was bodily flung back inside the passenger bay.
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Jade dropped down from the helicopter's door, landing back on the belly of the spasming wyvern. Its claws seemed to be stuck in the underside of the helicopter, locking it in place while it flailed around wildly with its wings and tail. The other monster was faring little better, tangled up in its companion's wings.
This was no time for half measures. Clinging to a protruding spine and holding herself in place with her enhanced strength, Jade shifted into her demon form. The enhanced physical stats immediately eased the strain of hanging on, but that wasn't the point. The succubus brushed her hand against the wing of the unharmed wyvern, channeling her enhanced 'charm creature' spell into its body. The 'C' rank spell took effect immediately and it unlatched itself from the bottom of the plummeting aircraft, flapping away with a shriek.
Or rather, it tried to. The instant the monster slipped out from under the vehicle the rotor blades sliced through its head like a guillotine, completely severing it and showering her with a deluge of black blood. More screeching alarms joined the ones already present in the cockpit and the aircraft began to shudder alarmingly as it continued to drop ever lower.
Oops. Jade winced. Well, that was one down. One more to go.
The ground was coming up quickly. Seventy feet. Sixty feet. Jade summoned an aura blade, twisting away from the creature's snapping jaws and slicing through its forelegs. Two quick slashes were enough to sever its limbs, freeing it from the vehicle. Grabbing tightly onto one of the creature's many long spines she kicked off hard, propelling them away from the doomed aircraft. There was a heart stopping moment where the two of them fell straight towards the concrete street below, and Jade felt a flutter of panic, worried she'd miscalculated.
Then, the beast spread its wings, their fall turning into a glide as the creature fought to right itself. Jade rode the wounded beast down, shifting back into her human form and preparing to bail the instant they were low enough. A triumphant, exhilarated grin spread across her face. She'd done it. All that was left was sticking the landing.
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Dave was disoriented. He'd cracked his helmet against something hard in the process of re-entering the helicopter. His training kicked in, getting him back in the gunnery seat before his vision had even cleared. The pilot was saying something he couldn't hear, but he could feel the aircraft start to level out. They were still falling, but it was more controlled now. They'd be okay, as long as…
A flash of scales zipped passed the door, another of the winged creatures flapping downward, struggling to remain airborne. Dave swung the door-mounted cannon around and fired on reflex, his body reacting to the threat before his mind registered the woman clinging to the creature's back.
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Jade heard the cannon spool up, but it was too late. She was still turning to face the danger when the door-mounted gun of the helicopter roared to life, spewing a hail of destruction at the incredible rate of 3,000 rounds per minute. The fire stitched across the wyvern's body, shredding it as if it had flown through a giant, invisible chainsaw. Even with her high agility and Naomi's amped-up speed enhancing song, Jade barely had time to twist aside. She couldn’t avoid it all, and a quartet of minigun rounds found her chest.
The first two were deflected by her armor's enchanted defenses, shattering them. The third merely grazed her, scoring a groove through her armor. The fourth punched straight through her chest, sending a lightning bolt of searing pain through her body. Wounded, disoriented, and no longer held aloft, Jade dropped the final fifteen feet to the pavement like a rock.
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"Well?" Director Irene Holston asked as Sam entered the room. He was still wearing that ridiculously colorful shirt, and she had to resist the urge to scold him. Even after only a few weeks of working with her deputy director, she knew him well enough to know that it wouldn't do any good.
"She'll be fine." He said, moving a pile of documents off the chair opposite her office desk and lowering himself into it. "Jade's already up and about."
"What…?" Irene shook her head in wonder. She'd heard accounts of the incredible fortitude of wayfarers, but details were still sketchy. "She took a cannon round to the chest at, what, twenty feet? She should be a smear mark on the pavement."
"I think it's safe to say that the enhancements given by the Labyrinth are the real deal, Irene." Sam said, shaking his head in wonder. "Don't get me wrong, she was pretty roughed up before that Naomi got to her, but a couple of those healing spells later and she was practically good as new."
"Incredible…" Irene stood up, moving to look out the window and survey the city skyline. Curling smoke rose from behind buildings a few blocks away, where the battle had taken place. After the day's incursion, the security force was being doubled. "Casualties?"
"Several injuries, no fatalities. We were lucky."
"Lucky that they were here. Sam, it's only been a few weeks. What's going to happen when people start coming back from the Labyrinth with powers they've grown over months of training? Or after years of practice?" Irene suddenly felt very, very tired. "The world is never going to be the same."
"Let's worry about one crisis at a time." The deputy director said, joining her at the window. "First, we need to ensure that there's still a world here at the end of this."
"True enough. What's that you have there?" She nodded at a folder held in his hand. He opened it, revealing a sheaf of what she took to be X-Ray printouts.
"The medics looked over Jade after her friend took care of her. These are the images they took."
Irene took the papers, glancing over them. It looked like a series of chest X-Rays.
"I'm not a physician Sam, what am I looking at?"
"I'm not sure." The casually dressed man pointed to the center of the image. "But the doctor tells me that this is not normal."
She peered closer, examining the image carefully. There was a small, fist-sized lump of… something, beside what was labeled as the heart, right behind the sternum.
"What is this?"
"We don't know. No one else has anything like this." Sam shrugged. "A few of the wayfarers came back different, changed by the Labyrinth into different kinds of creatures. Maybe she was too."
"If so, she's hiding it for some reason." Irene put the papers down on the desk with a sigh.
"Should we pressure her for answers?"
"No." Irene shook her head emphatically. "At least, not yet. Sam, we're going to need these people. It's imperative we stay on their good side. If wayfarers can keep growing in power as quickly as they already are, we're going to have a hard time exerting authority on them sooner rather than later. Get our staff looking into these three, I want everything we have on them."
The deputy director didn't appear to be listening. He was holding one of the images, studying it curiously.
"Sam?"
"Ah, of course." He said, nodding and making for the door. "I'll have our preliminary findings delivered by the morning."
Irene watched him go, sinking back into the seat behind her desk. In some respects, he was right. They had to focus on the dangers at-hand. And yet… Someone had to consider what the aftermath of this crisis would look like. The director was well studied in what happened to most people when they were given great, unchecked power. The idea of thousands of people returning to Earth with abilities far beyond what Jade and her companions had displayed today was a frightening prospect.
And one whose implications had to be considered before it was too late to do anything about it.