~April 26th, 140 AH~

~Sector Capricorn, the Vulkan Coast~

An enormous shadow rose toward the sky and stretched as far as the eye could see.

Asena Shiranui flew toward the shadow, unflinching in the face of a nightmare that was more terrible and all-encompassing than she could’ve anticipated. Black paint spread and ran over her racing thoughts like the great rivers that once shaped someone else’s world. But she never slowed in her flight, imagining herself and her faded-gold phantom as the paintbrush that could and would cut new colours into a deadened battlefield.

What drove her single-minded pursuit? Duty to those she called her allies? Fear of what she’d lose if she chose to do nothing? Perhaps all of those things, but the singular lifeforce that filled her heart and arteries now—as essential to her being as the Nexus to an Eidolon’s functions—was anger.

Just as she’d been angry at her father for keeping her in the dark. Just as she’d been angry at her fellow Akropolitans for their reckless tyranny and meek servitude. She was now angry at the Syntropy for their immense and overwhelming power.

How was it that one entity could override the shared destiny of a whole planet? That it could be so powerful as to erase from existence every other will, story, and legacy that came before it? How was it that she and the rest of humanity were expected to simply give in and watch it happen, powerless to stop this final march that would lay waste to an entire civilization—and perhaps countless others that had already suffered the same fate, in an incomprehensible war that spanned worlds and lifetimes?

No.

That was Asena Shiranui’s answer to the shadows that were about to swallow her world whole. There was no calculation behind her anger. No tactic, no intel, no hope. The refusal belonged purely to that of a petulant child who’d been shown the true and miserable shape of her world… and simply couldn’t abide by it.

No. This isn’t how it ends. This isn’t how I surrender my life.

Her anger demanded companionship. It was absolutely inconceivable to Asena that not another soul on this godforsaken planet shared in her anger, in the same youthful petulance that wouldn’t take the preposterous injustices of life lying down. She knew of at least one kindred spirit, the unique shape of whose anger she’d witnessed—lived—first-hand. And it was this companion, first and foremost, that she searched for amidst the shadows cast by the Mothership’s leviathan frame.

She found him in his own pocket of shadows, within the depression of an impact crater. But he wasn’t alone. Akash Varana’s worker Eidolon stood over the supine frame of Zelen Athelstan’s midnight-blue ES-V. Both of their central chassis were open, and Akash’s uniformed figure now leaned across from his own cockpit, feeding wires and tubings into Zelen’s.

Asena tried her utmost to still her rampaging heart, as she landed gently next to her allies and crouched low, bringing herself in line with the cover provided by the impact crater. As she did, she saw right away that Zelen was unconscious, which meant that Akash was in the midst of administering field Gaertnerschaft.

Asena fought down the initial instinct to jump out of the cockpit herself. Instead, seeing that Akash still had his headset on, she spoke into the radio in a slightly trembling voice, “What happened to him? And where are the others? Shouldn’t Graeme be providing shield support?”

The truth of it became self-evident even as she gave voice to her question. She braced against a fresh surge of her own grief as she received Akash’s in answer.

“Graeme’s gone,” the Gaertner said, voice remarkably calm. His was the singular focus of a master Seher at work—of a leader who must save a living [ALLY] before he could mourn the dead. “As for your first question… I found him like this. I can’t ‘see’ everything that just happened—not like you might—but I can tell you that whatever it was very likely happened more than once… and most definitely had something to do with that.”

The older man remained focused on his patient, but the inflection in his voice served also as a nod of the head. For a moment, Asena reflexively shifted her gaze, toward the shadow that dwarfed the Apfel Alliance trio and their untenable hiding hole. Then she turned back to her allies with ever-rising urgency.

“On my way here, I saw Vendetta units streaming out of the Mothership. Not just a handful… but nearly a whole platoon of them. Stop what you’re doing and let me escort the both of you to safety first. Zelen’s clearly not in any shape to deal with the Syntropy presence.”

“You make it sound as though you are.”

Somehow, the grief—the defeat—in his voice set Asena aflame with a fresh whorl of anger.

“Do I have a choice?” she yelled, no longer bothering to hide her own tremors. “Our one Reiter is down for the count. As far as I can tell, anyone that was here from the Joint Forces have either died or fled. Do you expect me to just hide here with you, while the Syntropy lays waste to everything we’ve been fighting to preserve?”

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Akash was silent for some time, his back turned to Asena’s M-024 as he busied with his young patient. When he did speak again, the words escaped in a choked whisper, broken up by the tears he hid from Asena, “This is all I can do.”

“What?”

“This is all I’ve ever been good for. Taking away you young ones’ pain. And now, I can’t… It’s all…”

“What are you saying, Akash? Speak up, damnit, we’re still in the middle of battle!”

“This is the end.”

Now Asena fell silent, even as the flames of her anger lapped against the chasm within her chest.

“This is the end,” Akash said again, then finally turned toward Asena’s SPU, his face contorted in agony and smeared with tears and ash. “You know it too, don’t you? You knew it all along. Ever since you asked me about the records we found in the Caverns. The ‘end’ came for the Cavepeople, and now it’s come for us. Just as it always has. And just as it always will.”

Asena’s face hardened. At the same time, her grip on the handle of her [NAGINATA] tightened, as her grief and anger sought release in the form of violence. The yellow overdrive bar on the rightmost edge of her display, currently empty, nevertheless loomed large in her consciousness, along with the restless stirring of a dancer’s soul.

She wanted again to yell at the tearful man before her—so timid and fragile in his human flesh. She wanted to lean in and shake him by his feeble shoulders, until the flames of her rebellion sparked anew the hopes and dreams that once enlivened his greying visage.

Had their hopes been too idealistic to hold water in the battlefield? Had their dreams been naught but the ravings of lunatics who refused to see reality for what it was? Perhaps. Almost definitely.

But Asena Shiranui would rather be a raving lunatic than the meek servant to a broken reality that cared not whether she lived, died, dreamed, suffered, loved, or lost. And if her allies wouldn’t stand to join her, then she must simply rise alone. She must burn and fight and kill and rage against her fate—until the dying embers of her rebellion lit anew a fire that would cut through shadow and obsidian.

Asena gripped the shaft of her [NAGINATA], and made to rise. And that was when the shadows in the distance too shifted, as if in concert with her roiling battle-lust.

Both Kurator’s and Gaertner’s attention turned in unison toward the enemy’s new movement. Then they both refocused all of their senses… for the cues weren’t merely of a visual nature.

First, the whole of the atmosphere up and down the Vulkan Coast shuddered, as the very air was displaced and rearranged by the locomotion of an enormous organism. This was accompanied by a deafening cacophony: a veritable maelstrom of rumbling thunder, screaming wind, and keening metal. The air even filled with a distinct scent, one that was at once terrifyingly alien and intensely familiar: a mosaic miasma of burnt flesh, stagnant sewage, and—oddly enough—synthetic fish that had been left out for a few too many days.

In the end, however, both Kurator and Gaertner followed this shuddering twisting billowing mess with their eyes… for even their confusion of senses could be explained readily—horrifically—by what they saw. For the enormous shadow that rose toward the sky had now reached it.

The Mothership—all of her—now occupied the skies above the Vulkan Coast, having vacated fully the dark waters below, remnants of which still gushed from the lower half of her sleek obsidian hull in massive columns. Her shadow too shifted with her, now casting its omnipresence over a barren earth and the meek creatures that hid in whatever holes they could find.

Those creatures were now fully exposed, as they stared up in frozen unison at the Mothership that flew overhead. Her movement was languid and ponderous, with a stop-start hitch that gave discernible shape to her immeasurable weight. A swarm of Syntropy units—mere flickers of red upon a pitch black field—swirled around her hull in numbers, forming myriad intersecting orbits around her ‘gravitational pull’.

As if in a trance, Asena’s eyes drifted over to her radar display. Somehow, something even stranger than the Mothership taking flight had drawn her attention, and she managed to catch what it was, just before the signals floated out of detectable range.

There, filling nearly an entire screen like paint spilled over a pixelated canvas, was the colour blue. Nexus blue.

Asena suddenly recalled the whole reason she’d flown to the Vulkan Coast in the first place. A strange procession of friendly Syntropy units, featuring an alien chimaera and an all-too-familiar centipede. Surely, they were connected to this sudden change to the Mothership. Not just connected. If the predominance of blue on her screen were any indication, Asena could only believe that those strange Syntropy she saw had been…

She looked to the sky one more time, and noted the bearing of the Mothership’s ponderous flight. North. Almost exactly so.

Northbound to Akropolis.

Asena tore her eyes away and looked back at Akash. The older man had his back turned to her again, eyes still glued to the impossibility that rose ever higher into the skies above.

“Do you see where it’s going?” Asena asked, surprising herself with the solidity of her own voice. The Gaertner nodded in response, back still turned. “Then do you still think there’s nothing more we can do? All those people stranded in Akropolis… with no knowledge of what’s about to descend upon them. What was any of this for… if we won’t make a stand now?”

Akash Varana remained silent for some time, even as the shadows above drifted past and away from his hiding place. When he turned back to face Asena, however, she saw in the hazy sunlight that his tears had dried. His expression was once more set in stone, if not enlivened by crazy hopes and dreams, then at least hardened by a sense of duty to the young people for whom he fought.

“New orders, Kurator Shiranui,” he spoke with his usual even keel. “I want you to follow the flight of… that thing. Head it off if you can, while avoiding detection at all costs. If—and as soon as—you confirm that it’s headed where we think it is, you are to fly immediately to Akropolis, provide advance warning to the Joint Forces, and work with them to evacuate the population. I don’t think they’d be very welcoming of your return, but I trust you to navigate that bridge when you get to it. As for myself, I’ll see to sending reinforcement and transport. Everything the Alliance can spare.”

Akash paused to glance at his Reiter patient, still asleep despite—or perhaps because of—the insanity that abounded all around him.

“And leave Zelen with me. I’ll personally make sure to bring him back to... combat readiness. God knows the young man’s endured more than his share, but we’re gonna need him to come through for us, one more time.”