“Run this by me again? Why are we starting with Angela on this?” The query from Drenar has Kyle curious, and Angela folds her hands against her chest, waiting to see what their arcanist inventor has to say.
“Because she's kinda badass? Also, if anything goes wrong, she might survive it?” Kyle asks with an edge to his tone. Which for Kyle to say, meant he was about ninety-nine percent confident.
{Joey, remind Kyle that I'm not a science experiment, and that if this harebrained idea, whatever it is, gets me hurt? He's going to have my bootprint embedded in his backside.} Joey nods at that thought whisper from her, and nudges Kyle. He takes the subtle hint.
“Er-hem,” Nick coughed while feigning annoyance, having possibly picked up on it. "I have objections to this. Mad science with unproven magitech sounds like a bad idea, Kyle. You also owe me a spotless floor."
"It'll buff right out!" Kyle protested. Angela glanced down at the scorch mark on the concrete, and grunted. "Well...probably?"
"Secondly," Nick interjects before Kyle can continue, "Angela is not indestructible. That's usually Drenar.”
“I already have Joey using me for mad science,” Drenar counters while loading up a magazine of autobow bolts. Joey politely clears her throat and motions to him. “Oh come on Joey! I'm not a blood bank!”
“Here's a cookie. Now, I need blood!” She demands with an evil grin and an empty blood pack in her hand, gloves already on. He groans and runs his fingers through his hair, and Angela can't help but chuckle. Joey runs him through a barrage of alchemy at night, blood work during the day, and an extra helping of sass anytime in-between. She tips her head in her direction.
{Joey, hey, be gentle! He's tough but not indestructible!}
Her Kitsune friend flashes a smile at her. {I can fix that.} She has a glimmer of mischief in her eyes, and Drenar finally takes the hint. “Look, Drenar's blood--and yours--has the alchemical precursors for Regen potions. All Maridian silvers do!”
“I feel used,” he complains, even while rolling up his sleeve. “How'd you make due before you met me Joey?”
“I usually had to pay people. Now it's free. Minus Malena’s treats. And a ten percent cut to Julia," Joey says with an innocent shrug.
“Hey, it's twenty-five!” Julia says while assembling the newer, streamlined Barrett rifle. This one is by far a much more compact design, and actually usable for closer ranges. “You break him, you buy him!”
Drenar sighs in resignation. “Remember the time when we agreed we weren't gonna fight over me? Yeah, I don't remember having that conversation, so I'll say it again, I’m not a science experiment!” It was funnier that he is willing to roll along with it. Usually. “Okay Kyle, while Joey's trying to pimp me to a vampire, let's have at it. How's this new armor set work?”
Kyle clears his throat. “So, you guys have seen the Valkyrie armor? They're compact power armor systems. They're cutting edge, and beyond any magitech in the world. They have a compact mana reactor that can keep them operating for weeks in the field, and powerful enchantment work to ward off bullets, fireballs, sharp sticks…or Tsundere dragons,” he adds with a stab at Julia.
“I'm not that dangerous. I mean, to my friends,” she shrugs.
“What's your kill count?” Kyle presses.
“Like I'd be morbid enough to keep count?” She gave him the Tsundere raven death glare she had practically trademarked by now. “Nah, I think in terms of lives saved. It's something Drenar would say!”
“Still here, still being used as a blood bank,” Drenar states with an accusing glare at Joey. She politely hums while getting his blood samples. Again.
“Right then. Putting it bluntly, we got beaten to hell with those armor sets we had prototyped. We needed something better," Kyle elaborates before handing a bulky-looking wristwatch to Angela. She eyes this new gift with skepticism. “That is what you'll be wearing now.”
“It looks like…” she turned it over and frowned, “like an old analog wristwatch. Nothing special. Guessing it isn't?”
“Press the dial. I also asked Julia for, um…measurements.” He says the last word very quietly.
“We're all grown-ups here, Kyle. All you had to do was ask,” Angela said with a polite smile. It's a treat to watch him squirm and turn and stammer a few words to try to recover and fail. She slips the watch onto her arm, and it feels…snug. And slightly warm. A tiny tingle of energy radiates from it. “So, this is it? What is it, some kind of barrier emitter?”
He can barely contain his excitement. “It's a full suit of magitech armor. Thanks to my recent discovery of a new variant of Valkyrian steel, I managed to make a full set, and several others. I also baked in a phase enchantment to fold it up into a discrete package. No one else will notice, unless at close range,” Kyle adds with a confident smile.
“Kyle, I sure hope to hell this doesn't end like last time,” Joey sighs as she finishes taking a blood sample, and Drenar looks a little shaky. This kitsune is practically a vampire with her experiments, but she's been stockpiling a healthy helping of new Regen potions. It made her a little anxious that her blood was the baseline component for these. “You tested this, right?”
“You think I wouldn't? Like I would anyone try this out without testing it out a few times to work out any phase array bugs?” Joey taps a shoe impatiently on the floor while Kyle peers at her with narrowed eyes. “Yes, Joey, I checked it. I also smashed up a prototype just to see what would happen, and the safeties engaged to keep it from harming the user.”
“Good! I like fail safes!” She smiles faintly at Angela. “Well now, even I haven’t seen this, just the bits and pieces. When did you do all this?”
“Late at night, when no one’s around? I barely sleep.” He sips a cup of coffee that had been sitting on the table as if to prove his point. “Okay, let’s do this bench test. Press the set button on the left side, and hold it for two seconds. That'll ensure that it doesn't trigger by accident for normal watch use. Also, relax your body a little. I have it calibrated for each user.”
She follows the instructions and a small beep emanates from the device. Slots open on the edges of the round face, and armor plating quickly unfurls and contours over her open hand, wrapping protectively around her fingers and closing to form a metallic gauntlet. Larger plates expand and fold down her arm, building and reinforcing into interlocking plates that send a spark of energy across her skin, and even a spark of power through her core.
She stands rigidly as the plating contours around her bust and torso, with more of those flexible plates at the joints, and it flows like quicksilver down her other arm and legs. It feels snug, even slightly tight across her figure, and small runes glow with a soft yellow glow on the greaves and gauntlets that adorned the armor. She let out a gasp as it rode a little too snugly on her backside.
She’d better tell Kyle that one in private.
Eventually, that mechanical clicking sound stopped, and she found herself encased in a neck-to-foot suit of dull green-tinged magitech armor. The breastplate is a little rigid, but it flowed with her in all the other motions, and she rolls her shoulder blades, and then takes a few practice steps. She twisted to see if her range of motion was inhibited. Instead, she found it flowed nicely, though the plates did separate just a little, as she moved. It almost felt like her dragon scales, except artificial.
Angela lets out an emergent smile. “This is awesome. Kyle, the weight of this is so evenly distributed that I barely notice it!” She takes a short test jump and gets to her normal jump height without much effort. Kyle looks like an eight-year-old kid at Christmas. “Well, at least I won't be eating an early demise from a lucky shot to the chest.”
“Yeah, nah. It has redundant barrier generator systems with a battery of mana crystals. You can also recharge it using your own mana generation for prolonged periods. The wristwatch has a smart display, and a backup projector in case of damage.”
She flexes her hand and curls her fist gently, testing the motion, and the display lights up with various statistics: operation time, heart rate, and other vitals, along with a reading on some kind of internal mana capacitor, and Kyle continues detailing the armor. “This is a prototype, mind you. There are some bugs to work out. So, consider this a stress test of the real thing. Let me know if it starts doing things to you that you don’t like. Like making ominous charging noises like it’s about to blow up, or getting unnaturally hot. Those could be warning signs.”
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“Is he…is he screwing with us?” For the first time, she can’t get a read on Kyle because he’s wearing a dead calm serious face. Joey shrugs lightly and takes the blood samples to her lab, where poor Drenar is once again donating his lifeblood to science. It might be a tad exploitative, but she’s pretty sure that Joey makes it up to him. Later. Joey must have heard that internal thought raises an eyebrow, directed at her.
{What happens behind closed doors, stays behind closed doors.} It’s enough for Angela to clear her throat and test the motion of the armor. “Alright Kyle, let’s test this sucker and run it through the paces," Angela announces.
“Done. Head out to the course out back. Nick has it set up for a solo venture.”
Of course, Nick would set it up during a snowfall. Again. It’s like he’s trying to torment them all on purpose with the choice of outdoor training during inclement weather. Or, it’s just because they live in a portion of Colorado where it snows a lot.
Five minutes later, she’s loading a GRC-15B autobow rifle, and peering down the 4X scope along the top rail. The armor does nothing to encumber her movements, and her use of telekinetics to steady her aim has not diminished. It might be slightly better. “Kyle, explain the layers of the system. This feels like a dual-layer body armor setup.”
“Correct. Hard shell outer, soft shell inner. The inner shell has various things like regen potion injection ports, system readings, mana channels, and various protective enchantments. The ones I’ve put on, for the moment ward off against most basic magical attacks, and soften the blow. But don’t take a fireball to the face. That still doesn’t end well.”
“What about bullets to the face?” Angela asks cautiously.
“Yeah, don’t run into those, either. I have a helmet with a reinforced barrier system prototyping. It works on a radar and proximity alert system to snap on automatically, but it’s still in the works. It’s not ready yet. It’s also a huge drain on mana reserves with that rapid activation.” Kyle taps the armored gauntlet on her arm. “Valkyrian steel outer plating, it’s the wonder material of the mage world–light, strong, and resilient against most attacks. Those carry various swappable plates you could use–whether we plan on swimming in a pit of acid, or just braving the cold. Depends on the rune work.”
"Fascinating. What are the downsides?” Angela asks, and notes this cannot be truly without flaws. Kyle shivered in the chilly air, his breath turning to frost in an instant.
“Encumbrance, and the fact that this is not cheap to make. These suits alone are uh…well…I overcharged on Zameren’s expenses card.” He’s pulling at his beard, it must have been exceedingly excessive. “Alright, you know the drill by now. One hostage straw dummy, you have to bring it back intact. You don’t have to disable the golems this time as a ‘win’ condition. Just get the hostage back to the starting point in one piece.”
She takes a sprint stance, and nods to her friends, with soft white flakes melting on the conforming armor. She’s about to see how insane Kyle is with this idea of an entire armor system with various sub-systems and protections. “And….go!”
She grabs the autobow and clips two stunner orbs to the belt, and dashes through the snow, her telekinetics driving a subtle vibration where the snow seems to slide away from her body before it could come into contact with her. The armor shifts and creaks lightly, but for something this metallic, it barely made any noise. Luminari was also strapped to her back–a last-minute addition that Drenar insisted.
She worked past the obstacle set–target practice with mobile golems shooting stunner rounds at her in a criss-crossing pattern. She slid to cover and took out the first two with precise shots using the autobow, then slid out of cover to take on the third, pulling Luminari and deflecting the shots as it tried to reload from an external ammo rack. She leaped and sliced its head off with an almost effortless lop of the blade, and the runes surged with gray-blue light.
Even stranger was the fact the mana conduits that adorned the exterior of the steel and green-tinged armor lit up in the same color, intensifying so that it formed angular patterns along her arms and legs. The mana crystal in her heart surges with power, and she feels all her focus intensify as Kyle’s golems all converge on her position. He’d upped the difficulty, and she slid between shots, swiping claws, and a fiery burst by one equipped with a mage wand in its tail, in a decidedly deadly attempt to slow her down.
But those blasts were everywhere that she was not. She could feel the hum of power from the crystal, and the singing chord of Luminari resounding in her ears as she kinetically grappled to one target with a daring closing attack, slicing through arcanist circuitry and steel alike.
She pivoted and bounced off the tumbling debris, landing in a crouch and a slide as she went under the next expected attack, throwing two stunners with a flick of her wrist that disabled the far golems and they started firing blindly. The next target tried to slice her open and the claws just glanced off the surface of the metal, jarring her movement but not stopping her.
This must be what the Valkyries felt. Unparalleled grace, and daring, with the steadfast resolve to protect this world against the deadliest threats the cosmos had to offer. She caught the limb exposed and severed it with a single blow, and then used a kinetic grapple and her own brute strength to send the humanoid skidding through the snow and crumpling on a weathered stump.
She darted into the prefabricated structure, feeling the vibrations of movement that alerted her to the presence of the golems waiting with pre-sited weapons. She wasn’t walking into a field of fire on that one. Nick was stepping up his game.
She went through the wall with a smash of telekinetics and sent debris pinging off the metal skins and crumpled the head of one and smashed it into the other, feeling that thrum of power coursing through her.
Every trial she was enduring was so others wouldn’t have to face the monsters alone. Every trial and error in this course prepared her to end the threat that still came to her in discomforting dreams. That monster, coated in blood, laughing maniacally as she hacks people apart with that crimson blade.
That deadly blade the demon inside her used as a conduit–
She almost skidded past the target as that strange thought entered her head and brought reality to a screeching halt. A ringing sound filled her ears and she winced, where did that wayward thought come from? Luminari is shining brightly–even resonating–and she puts a hand to her chest. That crystal inside her–it’s vibrating at the same frequency. She can feel it.
Sam, are you feeling this? Her silent whisper to her drakensoul came with a startling answer.
She broke her.
Sam’s single statement was filled with a shuddering feeling inside her, as Samarina wept. Angela glanced around, unable to make sense of this.
Sam, what are you talking about? That vibration has faded a bit, and she feels an onset of fatigue, and flecks of snow biting at her exposed cheeks. A low wind creaks through the trees. But Samarina doesn’t respond. She’s gone silent. She stands there, at a loss for what she’s witnessed–but it had to mean something.
She glances at the now safe target, hefts it in a fireman’s carry, and sprints back to the finish line, Luminari having faded in intensity after sheathing the mighty weapon.
“Damn. I need more golems. Joey, we got repairs to make!” Kyle said between chattering teeth. He just did not like the cold at all, and she set down her equipment. She pushed past everyone and told them she just needed to go get the armor off and get cleaned up.
By the time she was in the locker room, her hands were shaking, and she fumbled with the latch of the armor that slowly slid the plating back into those impossibly thin, impossibly small compartments as the phased material went back to its compact state. She barely was able to get the watch off as she ran the sink and threw water in her face, trying to understand what had just happened.
Something new was happening. She could feel it in her heart.
Danger is coming. The kind of danger that threatens them all. She looks at her flushed face, and pushes a few wayward brown strands aside, focusing on that no longer uninjured face–a light scar across her cheek is there—a scar earned, in the defense of others.
She’s fought the ugliness of the Talons and their doll-faced diva with murder in her heart. Whatever this feeling is, she’s not scared of it. She firms up her expression, eyes narrowed, and ties back her hair, knowing their moment of action is coming, soon.
She’d be ready for it. They would fight the monsters together.
THE LEGEND OF THE LUMINAIRES: END OF VOLUME II - III INTERMISSION
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