Sariah’s true role within G13 was to find and kill gods.
This role was so secret, in fact, that the other members of G13 didn’t even know of it. To them, Sariah was a field agent and a high-ranking member of the Ecclesia; she provided information and communication with the church, and also went out and about into the world to conduct in-person investigations into whatever incident the secret branch was dealing with at the time.
It had begun even before G13 was formed, really, with G13’s existence mostly just being a good way to let her work alone and travel all over the world in order to fulfill her godslayer duties.
One couldn’t even count how many she’d killed over the years. Well, Sariah herself could, as she kept a highly detailed mental note of the circumstances of each and every one, but no other soul in the world was aware of her divine body count, and even a high guess would likely fall short of the true number.
And it was that experience that allowed her to wander into the domain of the Rushuna war goddess without an ounce of fear in her bloodstream.
Finding that domain was actually rather simple; Sariah knew the war goddess would have to be somewhere within Rushuna’s general vicinity, as her war magic in its current state was too weak to extend beyond its walls, and she couldn’t exist within the town itself. While the people of Rushuna seemed very hospitable and friendly, even they wouldn’t tolerate a god for long, and certainly not one who represented war of all things….
The only place the war goddess could be was underground, and all Sariah had to do was access one of the wells on the outskirts of the city. From there, she found a tunnel system hidden away by rock, which was simple enough to remove with an Earth Install.
Sariah followed that tunnel for a mere minute or two, and eventually came to a large cavern hidden underneath the city. It was lit by the glow of pale blue water-attribute forcestones; long streaks and chunks of them buried in the rocky walls of the cavern.
The ground was covered in weaponry; swords, spears, axes, shields, bows, arrows, crossbows, even a ballista rusting and rotting away in the corner. There were pieces of armor strewn about in various degrees of decay, war drums, banners representing the different nations of the world ready to be marched into battle. All items conjured by the war goddess, but never properly utilized.
“Y-you survived?!”
Sariah followed the voice to its source. In the back corner of the cavern, slumped up against a weathered battering ram, was the war goddess. She was likely thirteen or so feet tall, but her body had gone sickly, and with her poor posture and huddled-up position, she looked so much smaller and more feeble. She was a ghostly pale, and her face was almost skeletal. Her once long, luscious golden hair had gone almost completely gray, as well.
She seemed to be wearing parts of a suit of armor; one that Sariah could mentally recreate as something beautifully-crafted. Most likely a shining white and gold, covering her from head-to-toe. Now, however, it was unrecognizable. Rusted and battered to hell, with most of the pieces missing. She seemed to have abandoned the helmet and chest pieces, likely due to them being too heavy and suffocating for her frail body, and one of her gauntlets was missing, revealing a scarred hand with gnarled fingers.
To put it bluntly, she looked absolutely pathetic.
“Indeed I did,” Sariah replied. For a moment, she did consider pulling a gag revealing that she had not in fact survived the crossbow shot, but gods didn’t deserve to be treated with anything other than cold distaste and a bullet to the skull. Figuratively, of course, given that most of them were not able to be killed with simple bullets to the head. Were this any other foe, Sariah likely would have joked around a bit, but it was easy to deny that impulse in this moment, against this god.
She unclipped the Baagh Gauntlet from her back and slipped her hand into it. As it settled into place, the weapon glowed with an orange shimmer that vibrated the air around it. A metallic growl echoed around the cavern walls, prompting Sariah to nearly break out into a beaming smile of childlike excitement at getting to wield yet another weapon of the Celestial Beasts.
The war goddess snarled, though it utterly failed to elicit even a little bit of intimidation in Sariah. “Who are you?!”
“G13 field agent Sariah Knight. And I’m here to kill you.”
The goddess spat in Sariah’s direction, but it did come pitifully short of reaching her. “Bah! No mere mortal can kill a god!”
Sariah’s lips curled into a wry smile. “Oh, we certainly can.”
Two spears emerged from the piles of weaponry behind Sariah, aimed right at the center of her back and skull. She was ready, whipping around in a half-circle and swiping with the Baagh Gauntlet at the same time.
Jagged orange streaks of energy appeared where the claws cut through the air, tearing the spears to thousands of miniscule pieces, and blowing everything else in the immediate area backward as well, leading the cavern to temporarily become a tornado of blades and armor.
The goddess let out an attempt at a ferocious war cry, and in response, an assortment of nearby equipment began to coalesce. Three helmets, three chest pieces, some gauntlets and greaves, a sword, axe, and mace. Three makeshift soldiers held together by the war goddess’s raw magical power.
The trio of poltergeist soldiers charged towards Sariah, the mace wielder leading the charge. Sariah’s first backhand swipe with the Baagh Gauntlet sent it flying into the nearest wall, although it wasn’t defeated quite yet.
The sword and axe wielders came next at the same time, striking from two different directions. With her free hand, Sariah drew her pistol from its holster, blasting the sword clean in the flat of the blade, breaking it in half and rendering it mostly useless for the time being.
She gritted her teeth, narrowly ducking beneath the incoming axe swing. She’d never been the most skilled melee fighter, and the Baagh Gauntlet, powerful and exciting as it was, was throwing off her balance from the sheer weight of it. She couldn’t perform any quick maneuvers up close; she’d get one good swing at a time, and would have to be careful in between each one.
With a forceful heave, she brought the Baagh Gauntlet forward, wrapping its massive hand over the axe soldier’s helmet, crushing it between her fingers as though it were paper. She then spun around and flung the soldier far off into the distance, where it crashed into the wall and exploded.
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The mace fighter had returned, and together with the sword soldier, they’d formed a pincer formation around her. She managed to shoot the sword fighter’s helmet off, but that didn’t deter it from swiping with its broken blade.
She brought the Baagh Gauntlet up to block the downward smash of the mace, struggling just a bit with holding it so high above her head. With that foe temporarily dealt with, she twirled her pistol around in her hand, and swiped at a small switch on the side of it. A prong jutted out from the bottom of the handle, which she immediately thrust behind herself, stabbing the sword soldier square in the chest before coursing electricity throughout its body, paralyzing it.
The mace fighter came in with another swing, but Sariah was able to throw out a quick swipe with the Baagh Gauntlet, and once again the orange streaks ripped the air apart, this time obliterating the mace soldier in the blink of an eye.
With the electric shock to the final soldier now finished, Sariah removed her pistol from its chest, and fired into its body point-blank, destroying it.
She didn’t even have time to breathe after finishing the last of the trio, however, before the war goddess’s next phase of her assault began. The battering ram was charging at her at high speeds, and with the Baagh Gauntlet weighing her down, she wouldn’t have the maneuverability to dodge in time.
The claws of the gauntlet bit through the battering ram in one clean cut, hurling the giant machine off to the side in the same motion. Remembering that the war goddess had been propped up against the battering ram moments ago and could now be anywhere in the room, she prepared for the next attack.
It came in the form of multiple crossbow shots from all directions. With a scowl, Sariah swiped the Baagh Gauntlet around in a full circle. She knew she wouldn’t be able to deflect every single shot, and that rang true, as one bolt managed to cut a sharp line across her stomach, but it was the only move she could make in that split second.
The instant her gauntlet swing ended, she caught the form of the war goddess moving in towards her with a longsword held high above her head. Realizing she had no other options, Sariah removed her hand from the gauntlet and rolled backwards as quickly as she could, narrowly avoiding having her arm severed off by the chop of the longsword.
“Why are you in my way?!” the war goddess practically screamed, saliva spewing out from between her clenched teeth in unison. “They must go to war!”
“Not on my watch,” Sariah muttered, retrieving her necklace from beneath her shirt. Her next words came out loudly enough for the goddess to hear. “All you gods make the same mistake, time and time again.”
“Wha-?!”
“Ultranians will not worship you, whether you’re a god of war, rain, fertility, or winning the goddamn lottery.”
With an animalistic growl, the war goddess charged forward, throwing out heavy swings. She had little remaining physical strength, however, making each attack slow and clunky; dodging them was a breeze for Sariah. “How dare you speak to me in this way, mortal!”
Momentarily overtaken by her hatred of gods, Sariah planted her foot on the war goddess’s back and pressed forward, sending her face-first into the side of the ballista. Ignoring her pained wailing, Sariah then said, “Ultranians believe that power comes from developing oneself. Cultivating power by draining it from others you see as beneath you just doesn’t work here.”
The war goddess began to push herself up from the rocky ground of the cavern, though her arms strained with each movement. “What a ridiculous-!” her words were cut off as Sariah’s boot pushed onto her head from behind, smushing her face into the ground.
“Gods have no place on Planet ULTRA,” Sariah said. “Maybe if you were to cast aside your godhood and live life as a proper ultranian, you could find a reason to stay.”
The war goddess’s arms began flailing about in an attempt to scratch at Sariah’s leg. The G13 agent released her foot from the back of her opponent’s skull, mostly in order to allow her to speak.
But all the war goddess did was shriek and roar, all while desperately trying and ultimately failing to return to her feet and lunge at Sariah. “Guess not.”
GOSPEL!
“Invading this world, trying to steal the ULTRA Force at the planet’s core, and attempting to throw the world into war just to amplify your own power….” Sariah stated as the silver-white spears rained down from above, pinning each of the war goddess’s limbs, along with her torso, to the ground.
As the war goddess continued gurgling out screams of vitriol, Sariah walked back over to the Baagh Gauntlet in order to retrieve it from the floor. As she slid it over her hand, she noticed some of the weaponry in the room began to vibrate just a bit. The war goddess was, of course, attempting to stir them into action, but what little power she’d possessed at the start of the fight had quickly dwindled into almost nothing.
Sariah returned to the war goddess’s helpless body, staring down at the pathetic deity with a cold gaze. “I suppose you could consider this me getting even,” Sariah began. “Since you stole one of my lives the other night with that crossbow shot. But even if you hadn’t, I would have killed you anyway.”
She plunged the claws of the Baagh Gauntlet into the war goddess’s chest, and streaks of jagged orange light exploded out from within, ripping the goddess’s body to dust.
* * * *
ULTRA KNIGHT
* * * *
When Sariah returned to the G13 room, she was surprised to see Bianca sitting there on her computer. “Bianca? What are you doing here?”
The blue-haired girl gave her usual little smirk, but Sariah could feel something….different about it. She’d long-ago learned that that smirk was usually reserved for moments when Bianca was being a little shit for the fun of it, but this time, it seemed as though it might be preceding something actually serious for once. “Am I banned from here or something?”
“No,” Sariah said. “Just didn’t expect the laziest member here to be here when she doesn’t need to be.”
“Ouch, Mom. That hurts,” Bianca replied before taking a sip of her soda. “Whatcha up to?”
“Just getting ready to message King Garn. The Rushuna incident has been taken care of.”
“Oh, nice, good job!” The sarcasm in her voice was impossible to ignore. “But what about your little church investigation?”
Sariah’s brow furrowed. Bianca had almost certainly been referring to Sariah’s internal investigation into the strange artifacts that had reportedly gone missing from the Ecclesia’s possession. “What about it?”
“Oh, not much….I just, ya know, figured it all out, that’s all.”
Not quite sure how serious to take Bianca’s claim, Sariah raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“Yup! Pretty cool, right?”
Sariah held her arms out. “I’m all ears.”
But Bianca was already wagging her finger back and forth before Sariah could finish her sentence. “Ah ah ah! I’m not gonna just tell you that for free! What’s in it for me?”
“This isn’t something to play around with.”
“Oh I know it ain’t, “ Bianca replied, leaning back in her chair, tucking her hands behind her head. “It’s very serious stuff, and I know for a fact that you’d be very very interested in it! Which is why I think I should be justly rewarded in exchange.”
Scowling, Sariah said, “How do I even know you’ve actually figured it out? What exactly are you claiming to know anyway?”
“Everything!” Bianca said. “I combed through my top secret security footage and found the exact moment your little purple amethyst thingie was taken, and I even made a forcerecord of it so I could see it up close and personal!”
“How do you have security footage of where the artifact was kept?”
“Irrelevant. But what isn’t irrelevant is what else I figured out using that forcerecord!”
“….”
Taking Sariah’s silence as an admittance of interest, Bianca continued. “I was also able to track down the naughty nun who stole the other little purple amethyst thingie from the pirate lady aaaand….I know who the U-Knight is. Well, technically you know them, too, but….”
The room went silent for a few moments. Both women kept their eyes locked on one another, one in cold analysis and the other in smug delight.
Finally, the silence was broken by Bianca. “Emphasis on them, by the way.”
“….What do you want?”
Bianca smiled wide. “I wanna meet Gata the Cat.”