Once again, the Gaertner was the first to react. Akash’s worker Eidolon flew backwards, away from both Asena and the Voras unit that had tried to snatch him unawares. At the same time, he fired the carbine from his hip, spraying the ground at the Syntropy’s too many feet.
His aim was slightly off, lagging behind where the Voras advanced with erratic jerky movements. Watching this, Asena quickly understood the Gaertner’s intentions. He must know that he and his ‘armament’ were no match for the Voras. His only objective, therefore, was to draw and focus the enemy’s attention, onto himself and away from Asena.
He even managed to radio as much, between backthrusts and carbine bursts, “Asena! Just get out of here and return to base! I’ll take it from here…”
Asena understood the man’s intentions. She discerned the nobility of spirit that inspired them. She understood, and it only made her angry. Angry enough to break her paralysis.
You don’t get to end it this way. I won’t let you get away with this pointless sacrifice. Not after I entrusted my chosen fight to your leadership. Not after I turned my back on the only life I knew.
As unpracticed as she was with operating a model M-024, there were at least several manoeuvres with which she was passably proficient. Maximum forward thrust. Go as fast as possible. Close the gap and present herself as the larger threat.
In the same motion, she resummoned the blue blade-head of [NAGINATA]. She didn’t stop to wonder how she’d managed the feat so effortlessly this time, as her entire being drove toward the only question that mattered: can I fight this thing and live to tell the tale?
Compelled by a sudden and powerful surge of Nexus-mediated energy in its vicinity, the Voras did twist its attention and obsidian frame onto the second Eidolon. It scurried into alignment with Asena’s M-024, then shot forth to meet her forward thrust halfway, with the ends of its outstretched limbs sharpened into glowing red knives.
The spider’s jumping attack, combined with Asena’s forward momentum, didn’t leave her enough time to line up a counter (neither did she possess the skill to perform one). Anger quickly morphing into self-preservation, she upturned [NAGINATA]’s blade-head to be perpendicular to the ground, then slid it across to cover her central chassis. Two of the Voras’s knives bounced harmlessly against the improvised shield. One missed and zipped through air, while another snuck underneath and sliced Asena in the thigh.
Pain. Far sharper than the pot shots she suffered during the earlier Brutus fight. Sharp enough to reawaken the frenzy of someone else’s war.
She spun away from the point of attack. In a fit of mostly panic, she kicked out with the unharmed leg, fortuitously catching the Voras square in its central chassis. The impact knocked it back, just to the edge of [NAGINATA]’s reach. But it quickly scuttled back onto its too many feet, itself still well within its own melee range.
“What are you doing?” Akash yelled into the radio, having completely shed his usual mild manners. “I gave you the chance to run away!”
“I didn’t ask for it!” Asena out-decibeled her chosen leader, even as she strafed to keep the Voras off-balance. “Either we both get out of here alive, or neither of us does. And since I’m the one with a proper weapon, you should cover me instead of trying to play the hero.”
That proved to be the end of the discussion, and not a moment too soon. Akash repositioned himself to flank the Voras, then fired ahead of it just as it prepared to lunge toward Asena.
Once more, the Kurator’s body reacted before her mind could catch up. She stepped forward and swung down with [NAGINATA], intent on punishing the Voras’s momentary pause. But she was still not quite good enough—a half-second slower than she needed to be. The spider managed to recover just in time to slide its central chassis out from under the polearm, sacrificing just the one limb in the process.
Down to seven legs now, the Voras barely lost any speed. If anything, it upped its aggression, as though it too sensed that it was fighting for its life. Taking advantage of Asena’s recovery phase, it redirected in mid-air and shot toward the M-024, summoning more knives as it did.
Quickthrust right. Asena knew what she needed to do, but the movement felt sluggish. A far cry from the power and agility of a model ES-V. Or was it just herself that was still too slow to belong on the battlefield?
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Her poor imitation of a quickthrust nevertheless allowed her to evade two of the Voras’s sharpened limbs. Then, as two more knives shot toward her midsection, she barely managed to slide [NAGINATA] into place and parry the trailing attack.
More covering fire from Akash. Just enough breathing room to strafe to a temporarily safe distance. Sensing that the fight was going as poorly as she might’ve expected, Asena allowed herself the briefest of ganders at the HUD.
AU at 40. ER just a shade under that and falling. If this engagement were to turn into a battle of attrition, Asena didn’t like her chances, considering she could barely get hits into her opponent.
But just as she made to refocus on the battle, her eyes lingered on a strange feature of the HUD. A bright yellow bar, one that filled the rightmost edge of the display, adjoined to the dwindling ER gauge.
None of Akropolis’s Eidolons used a yellow bar, so this must’ve been something else that was unique to the M-024. Yet the sight of it was so glaring and so demanding of attention that Asena had to wonder how she could’ve possibly missed it before.
The answer assembled itself from fragments, comprising her own clipped recollections as well as whispers from the Nexus. For she had seen this yellow bar—several times, in fact—throughout the current engagement against the Syntropy. It just hadn’t been full and brightly lit, until this very moment.
The realization was accompanied by a palpable surge from the Nexus. Instead of waiting for her call, it now sent word to her, directing her attention to something it wanted—she needed—to see. This ‘message’ from the Nexus molded itself into a shape most familiar to its recipient: a thread, engorged and pulsant with memories of WAR that agitated for a return to the battlefield.
Asena knew what she needed to do. She hadn’t found the answer inside a tattered manual, at least not in a language she could understand. But the answer revealed itself all the same, with the immediacy and urgency of a war that only she could fight.
She knew what she needed to do. And this manoeuvre she performed with the surety and swiftness expected of a seasoned Kurator.
[EVOCATION].
Her body moved in the physical space, choreographing the Eidolon’s dance upon the battlefield. But this time, her mind was a step faster, as it relived and weaponized the memories of someone else’s war.
The M-024 rushed forward with speed, matching if not surpassing an ES-V in agility. One jab, two jabs, three jabs in quick succession. The grace and precision of an expert dancer. Forcing the enemy into an unwilling partnership. Coralling the Voras ever closer, thereby baiting commitment.
Left with no other choice, the Voras obliged. One last jump attack. Knives gathered and trained upon the very core of Asena’s central chassis.
Asena backthrust (remembered how to!) and, in the same motion, leaned back with her Eidolon’s upper body, with the kind of dexterity that should’ve been impossible for a giant hunk of metal. The Voras missed everything as its momentum sucked it onto Asena’s torso, just above the blade of [NAGINATA] that rested at her newly nimble feet.
As she sprang herself back to an upright position, she lifted [NAGINATA] toward the sky, thus catching the helpless Voras in its underbelly. But she wasn’t done yet. For whatever spirit that now inhabited her body had a fondness for style as much as substance.
She flicked [NAGINATA] into the air, giving it a spin that allowed it to sink back down blade-first. Then she caught the shaft from mid-air, before skewering the Voras and driving its carcass into the ground.
Last enemy down. The fight was over. Should’ve been over. But the triumphant warrior thirsted for more. Another enemy. Another dance partner.
Asena spun in place, wild eyes dancing across the battlefield. She caught sight of a feckless worker Eidolon, rooted to its spot with its carbine dangling limply at its side as it stared back at her. She drove toward it, with [NAGINATA] raised and poised for a vicious jab.
Even in the midst of [EVOCATION] with an unknown subject, Asena retained enough of herself to observe her own movement with a sinking feeling. No! Stop! That’s enough!
But the [REVENANT] warrior lacked the context they needed to distinguish friend from foe. For they were well and truly out of place and out of time, plucked from the red mist of a long-forgotten mission and dropped into someone else’s war.
“NO!”
Asena’s scream fell on her own deaf ears. But her Eidolon did stop then—and not because its pilot had somehow wrested back control from a bloodthirsty dancer.
No, it’d simply run out of fuel. For one fleeting moment, and as intense relief flooded her crumbling body, Asena managed to take note of the HUD. The ER gauge showed zero, and so too had the mystery yellow bar depleted itself. The right edge of the HUD was now utterly empty… as was the pilot’s Somatic and Psychic Reserves.
And thus ended Kurator Asena Shiranui’s first field test as combat personnel: with victory, complete shutdown, and loss of consciousness. Yet, even as her world faded into blackness, she heard the echoed glee of a dancer who’d found a new and worthy partner. She saw the dying embers of someone else’s war, and the shape of things to come in hers.