~April 26th, 140 AH~

~the Last Bastion of Humanity~

The war converged onto a single point. The war diverged into myriad individual battles.

As much as Asena wanted to grasp the shape of the war and the future that might lie beyond it, she herself was an individual. And she needed to funnel her focus and Reserves into every battle as they came, lest she drown amidst a blackened sky.

Her latest battle drove her into the path of a Vendetta unit, one that flew at speed toward the topmost apex of Akropolis’s barrier dome. She headed it off with a midair tackle that rattled her own shoulder. As the two combatants squared off above the surface of the barrier, the human pilot glanced at the rightmost edge of her HUD, where the overdrive gauge had shot up halfway with a glowing yellow bar.

Asena couldn’t tell whether the Syntropy continued to follow some pre-War instinct hardcoded into their programming, or if they now acted on an entirely new directive passed down by an alien entity. Whatever the case might be, the enemy now moved with discernible purpose and coordination, organizing themselves into several discrete teams that then assaulted multiple sections of the dome with pinpoint barrages.

Their aim was abundantly clear: wear down the barriers with concentrated attacks on smaller areas, all while dividing the Akropolitan defense. Asena knew that some of the barrier-side Panzers and Jaegers, instead of evacuating with the civilians, had stayed on the perimeters to reinforce the dome for as long as possible. She also knew that their Reserves were finite, and that she needed to do her part in thinning out the Syntropy before the inevitable breach.

By now, the Kurator-turned-warrior had gelled with her M-024 thoroughly enough to have grown into her own battle-tested repertoire. Start with caution. Bait, evade, draw out the smallest of openings where she could get in a quick jab or a bump with the shaft. Just what was required to fill the overdrive gauge, until…

The rightmost edge of her HUD flashed with a yellow glow and urgent battle-lust. [EVOCATION] to summon her [REVENANT] warrior. For not only was Asena the only Kurator in Akropolitan history to pilot a combat-grade Eidolon, she’d also incorporated her Einkunst into her repertoire.

Dancer spun across the sky, taking the fight back to the Vendetta. From caution to maximum aggression in a flash of faded gold. The blue blade of [NAGINATA] led from the front as Dancer put on the performance of a lifetime.

Pirouette to counter a [MISERICORDE] strike. A shaft-end into the back of the Vendetta, knocking it off-balance and throwing its [BOMBARDIER] off-course. Punish the opening. Relentless pressure. A twisting flurry, topped off with a diagonal cut from the right arm up to the left shoulder, disarming and disabling the opponent in one fell swoop.

Dancer ended the fight with a savage kick into the fresh gash on the Vendetta’s central chassis. She kept sight of her fallen foe, just long enough to watch its smoking frame break apart and drop lifelessly toward the barrier below. Then she immediately spun back toward the sky, scanning for her next target.

The kill had been fast—perhaps her fastest one yet. But it wasn’t fast enough. Not when the enemy was so many. And not when her overdrive gauge continued to fall precipitously, in cruel mockery of Dancer’s limited time on the battlefield.

Her second opponent was yet another Vendetta unit. Just how many of them were there? This second Vendetta had watched closely her fight with the first, and even in the heat of battle, had computed a new tactic with a speed and surety that were the privilege of the synthetic and unfeeling. It backthrust out of [NAGINATA]’s range, even as it deployed its own brand of ‘pressure’ in the form of [MISSILE LAUNCHER] and [GATLING], forcing Dancer to reckon with her lack of ranged options.

Dancer didn’t stop. Didn’t hesitate. Partly because she was now battle-tested enough to know that hesitation meant death. But mostly because she still had full confidence in her own victory. Her opponent might think itself clever, turning this fight into target practice. Little did it know that it was merely playing the unwitting partner in a Dance of death.

Channelling the irrepressible spirit of her [REVENANT] exemplar, Dancer jerked and lurched through an improvised routine, one that was unpredictable even to herself. Spin right, dive down, lateral thrust left, even an inexplicable backthrust or two, just to keep both combatants guessing. It all added up to ‘pressure’ of a different kind, one that nullified all logic and forced a synthetic entity to react rather than execute.

The opening—the inspiration—came without warning, unbeknownst to Dancer herself. A sudden forward burst in the space of a [GATLING] cooldown forced the Vendetta to check its flight, hovering in the air for a fraction of a second as it changed the directions of its thrusters. Dancer saw this moment unfold as if in slow motion, and determined exactly which way her partner would move. And that certitude afforded her the audacity to try something completely unprecedented.

Using her forward thrust as a springboard, she arched her back, raised [NAGINATA] into an overhead swing, then let go.

[NAGINATA] spun through the air as a blue-streaked disc, preempting the Vendetta’s evasive manoeuvre before making crunching contact in midair. The ‘flying disc’ came to an abrupt stop, with its blue blade-head buried deep within an obsidian shoulder.

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Through it all, Dancer hadn’t stopped moving. With the Vendetta stunned into a momentary halt, Dancer closed the distance in an instant. Her hands found familiar purchase, back onto the [NAGINATA]’s shaft, which she then twisted and drove through the rest of her enemy’s central chassis.

Even as she watched her erstwhile dance partner crash and burn, Asena couldn’t help but note the apology that bubbled from her chest. She didn’t know much about the Shiranuis’ Old Earth ancestors, nor their traditions in relation to a particular slashing polearm. Even so, she had the nagging feeling that her improvised circus trick had broken some kind of taboo.

But now wasn’t the time to be worried about offending her ancestors. There was a war to be won, and limits to be broken.

Two Vendettas down. A sliver of Dancer’s overdrive gauge remained, which left her with just enough time to at least open the next engagement. She didn’t even bother to check her ER gauge, knowing that exercise to be a futile one. Whatever she had left in the tank was whatever she’d have to spend.

She turned her attention back onto the apex of the dome, where more Syntropy continued to pour in from the sky. Then she watched in horror as one of these units broke formation, revealing its full frame and a ‘morphology’ that was readily distinct from the rest.

A model ES-V, with its crimson paintwork just barely discernible. Spindrift.

Until now, the heat of battle had blissfully burned away Asena’s anxious thoughts about her estranged (and somehow altered) brother. But that selfsame anxiety now came back in full force, as she watched her brother become the hammerhead of humanity’s ultimate enemy.

A twisted black band billowed from the stump of a right arm. The end of this whip-like structure now wrapped tightly around a large obsidian mass—larger even than the ‘Eidolon’ that wielded it, at least the size of three ES-Vs crushed and melded together. It took a bewildering moment for Asena to realize what it was: a chunk of the Mothership’s hull, secreted and bequeathed to a son, for him to execute her will.

Then this grotesque hammerhead fluxed with an aura of black energy, taking on all the unadulterated might of a warrior who needed only to destroy the thing that stood in his way.

The hammer came down, unimpeded. The sky flashed with an explosion of black-on-blue, momentarily blinding all human pilots in the vicinity, Asena included.

When she regained her vision, she saw to her horrified astonishment that a massive ‘gash’ had materialized upon the apex of the dome. Its appearance was bizarrely reminiscent of a deep cut on human flesh, with uneven borders of macerated tissue framing a clear opening into exposed innards…

And the barely-crimson centipede flew into this opening, dragging behind it a fragmented remnant of its borrowed hammer.

“No!”

Asena screamed into her cockpit and flew after the thing that used to be her brother. By then, her overdrive gauge had depleted, and even her ER was dwindling at an alarming rate. But she paid them no mind, attuning only to the desperation and anger that flooded her heart.

The first thing that caught her eye, however, as she too slipped through the opening in Akropolis’s dome, was the aerial view of the city, laid out in its full and all-too-fragile glory. There were the JFB and the Tetrarch estates, forming a concrete fortress atop the hill. Middle Akra and its orderly rows of houses sat in a partial ring just underneath, and Lower Akra filled out the rest, with its sprawling mosaic of chaos and vibrancy.

It occurred to Asena then that this was her first time seeing Akropolis in its entirety. It was a strange sensation, not because of the emotions the view evoked, but the lack thereof.

For Asena’s heart ached, not for Akropolis herself, but for her people, who even now scrambled through the streets as they made their escape. She watched in her mind’s eye as some of them stumbled and fell, only to be picked up by a neighbour and urged on with shouts of terrified encouragement. She watched as children turned and pointed to the sky, to a crimson centipede and the faded-gold dancer that gave chase—giants they knew only from breathless tales, now writ large and descending upon their realities, bathed in light from the unfiltered sky.

Asena blinked away tears as she dug her heels in, willing her M-024 to fly faster, to fight harder against the march of time and fate. Before her, she no longer saw a city nor the throngs of innocents that needed protecting. For she was but an individual, and right now, she had only enough focus and Reserves to—

The surge of a second Eidolon beside hers. A streak of burgundy against a sky blurred with tears. Tripod, with his frame already smoking from the ravages of earlier battles, flew after Spindrift, matching speed and power, ES-V for ES-V.

Then Asena’s headset crackled with a young general’s clipped orders.

“Leave Spindrift to me.”

“What?”

“I’ve fought alongside him for fifteen years. He might have undergone… a few modifications since I last saw him, but there’s no one in Akropolis that knows him better than I do.”

“But I have to—”

“That’s an order, Corporal. I need you for a different task. See those Vendettas streaming in through the breach? Can you to deal with them while I hold off Spindrift?”

Asena hesitated, but only for a second. Now wasn’t the time. Not when there was a war to be won and innocents to protect.

“Acknowledged,” she said, as she checked her flight and spun in midair, facing the arrival of a new wave of Syntropy. More dance partners for her to choose from. She’d have to build her overdrive gauge back up, but for that, she had a trusty repertoire to fall back on.

She also knew that she wasn’t alone. For myriad individual battles now converged onto a single point—to serve a united purpose. Among the new arrivals were more model ES-Vs: brothers ready and willing to sacrifice for each other and a future whose shape none of them could grasp.

And not only the Joint Forces. Just then, a second message broke through the radio, carried by an ally’s familiar even-keeled voice.

“Asena? This is Akash, reporting in to say that the cavalry is here, such as we are. Sending Panzer and Jaeger support to your position. And our whole transport fleet is here, ready to receive civilians as they make their exit. Just… hold on, Asena. Hold on, just a while longer.”