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FALLEN COLONY SHIP ORPHEUS: ARKS CEMETERY
It all happened so fast.
One moment, the Darker formerly known as Aki02 was kicking her support partner Luna into the nearest tree. The next, she had her metal fingers wrapped firmly around Ivan’s throat as she lifted him off the ground. The man struggled against the Darker’s indomitable grip but it was no use, he couldn’t break free.
From somewhere to her right, Kira heard Shankar give the order: “Kill him.”
She wasn’t going to let that happen. She
couldn’t let it. Without any recollection of doing so, Kira found one of her machineguns pointed in Aki’s direction.
Time wasn’t flowing quickly anymore. In fact, it had slowed to a standstill. Kira’s heartbeat thundered loudly in her ears. Her finger closed around the trigger, about to reach the point of no return.
She would do it. She would kill Aki to save Ivan. Let them hate her for it, she didn’t care. Nothing else mattered at that moment except protecting the one she loved.
Hadn’t she endured enough already? Her dad was stuck in the hospital with chronic heart problems. Her sister had been missing for months. She wasn’t about to lose her boyfriend too. No matter what, Kira was going to make sure of that.
No matter what…
“WAIT!!!” yelled Akasha.
Kira relaxed her finger, the trance magically broken. It took her a second to realize Akasha hadn’t been shouting at
her, but at Aki and Shankar.
“Wait!” the Newearl repeated, her hands held out in a halting gesture. She was speaking solely to her brother now. “I’ll… I’ll go with you. Just, please, don’t hurt him…”
Shankar nodded to her in agreement. “There, you see? The choice was yours all along.”
Aki released her grip on Ivan and he fell roughly to the moss-covered ground. Kira rushed immediately to his side. Aside from a bruised neck, broken arm, and a few minor scrapes, he seemed to be alright. “Don’t worry, Spitfire…,” Ivan wheezed, looking up at her, “You won’t… get rid of me… that easily…”
Kira chuckled with tears in her eyes. It was the same line she’d given him on the way to Kestren’s lab. “I know that, you big doof. Just make sure it stays that way.”
“Thank you,” Akasha said to Shankar. “Now it’s Aki’s turn. You said you’d release her.”
The big Newman stood very still and Kira wondered if he was reconsidering his offer. After a moment, however, he nodded and closed his eyes to concentrate. Beside Ivan and Kira, Aki staggered and fell to her knees. The Darker core embedded in her chest grew dull in color and began to shrivel up. The veins surrounding it retracted and disappeared. When the core was little more than a deflated husk, it abandoned its host and dropped lifelessly to the ground.
Aki’s glowing red eyes faded to their normal black color. The Caseal looked a bit dazed and confused, as if seeing everything for the first time.
“Aki? Is that you in there?” asked a hopeful Luna. The little support partner had just finished dusting herself off after a nasty run-in with a tree.
“What happened…?” The Caseal performed a quick self-diagnostic. “I was in the ARKS Command tower, and then… I can’t remember anything after that. What is going on here?”
Luna flung herself into Aki’s arms. Laughing with relief, she replied, “Oh, y’know, this and that. Worry about the details later, okay?”
Shankar wasn’t interested in the happy reunion. He motioned to Akasha. “I have kept my end of the bargain. Now, it is time you kept yours…”
With a solemn face, the Newearl headed to join her brother—until Kira cut her off. The orange-haired girl took Akasha by the wrist, stopping her in her tracks. “Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded. “You’re not actually going with him, are you? You know what he wants you to do!”
Yes, Akasha knew very well what her brother intended. “I made him a promise, Kira. Ivan and Aki, they’ll be safe.
You’ll be safe. You should go… while you still can.”
“I thought we’d been through this, Kasha. I’m not giving up on you that easily. And
YOU!” Kira shouted, stabbing an accusing finger in Shankar’s direction. “Kasha’s my best friend. If you think I’m gonna let her throw her life away over your lame-brained, self-absorbed power trip, you’ve got another thing coming!”
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Shankar should’ve been furious. He should have been, but he was feeling something else instead. Was it a twinge of doubt? “You, human. What is your name?”
The girl impudently planted her hands on her hips. “Kira Vorholtz. What’s it to you?”
“You remind me of someone, someone I once knew.” A wave of recognition suddenly washed over him. “No… I remember now. I know your face. I’ve known it all along…”
From somewhere inside his armored suit, Shankar pulled out a small silver object attached to a chain. It was a locket… one Kira knew all too well. Her heart caught in her throat.
No, it can’t be… It can’t…
But it was. Somehow, she knew it was. “Where’s Faraday?! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY SISTER?!” Kira screamed.
Wordlessly, Shankar returned Faraday’s locket to its hiding place. His eyes grew soft for a moment, then distant, then cold. “I… killed her,” he said bluntly, without emotion.
Kira’s face turned ashen white. Her mouth felt like sandpaper; her legs threatened to buckle beneath her. The reason she joined the ARKS was to find her missing sister. And now…
“She was my companion on
Ur, for a time,” he continued. “But… that time came to an end, as did her usefulness to me. I offer no apologies or excuses, Kira Vorholtz. What is done is done and cannot be changed. Know, however, that her sacrifice was not in vain. Silencing her helped safeguard my plans—plans that can now come to fruition.”
“Is that all you’ve got to say?” Kira growled through clenched teeth. Her initial shock had given way to boiling, red-hot fury. Sorrowful tears cascaded down her face.
“Hate me all you like; it makes no difference. I’ve long since passed the point where I might regret such actions.”
“Then I’ll
make you regret it!” There was no holding back this time. Kira aimed both machineguns at her sister’s killer and fired.
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Shankar was ready for it. In a split-second he conjured up a bubble of wind energy in front of him. Kira’s bullets were sucked into the miniature, self-contained hurricane and redirected to the ground and sides, away from the Newman. Kira kept up her ear-shattering assault but nothing got through. Cursing, she released the triggers and let the dual streams of gunfire peter out.
Shankar was ready for that, too. After the final bullet whizzed harmlessly past, he allowed the wind bubble to dissipate. By the time it did, his outstretched arm was already pointed at Kira. A jet of solid flames roared out of his palm toward the girl. She dive-rolled to the right just in time to avoid getting toasted, then immediately dodged a second, follow-up blast.
This time Shankar swept his aim from right to left, using the attack like a flamethrower. The sustained torrent of fire was almost blinding in the otherwise pale light of the cemetery. Kira threw herself behind a nearby gravestone as the flames licked at her heels. It was close—too close for comfort, really—but the attack passed her by without doing any real harm.
Not far away, Akasha watched as her friend and brother battled fiercely, her sense of dread rising with each passing moment. “Kira!” she shouted, once again drawing her double saber and locking the two halves in place. Akasha tried to run to her friend’s aid but a wall of flames sprung up as if by magic, separating the combatants from the spectators.
“Don’t interfere,” Shankar warned his sister. “The girl wants her revenge, and I will not deny her the chance to try.”
“Stop this!” It was no use; Akasha’s words couldn’t sway them. Kira seemed determined to fight Shankar, and Shankar was content to let the situation play out.
That didn’t mean Akasha was going to sit back and watch. She held out her hands and a gale of ice energy slammed into Shankar’s fiery wall. At first the two Techniques appeared evenly matched, fire and ice, but Akasha poured more power into her own, slowly forcing the flames into submission. At the last moment, however, Shankar redoubled his efforts and the curtain of fire blazed to life once again, even stronger than before. Akasha jumped back to avoid getting burned.
Before she could try again, a series of portals opened up on the ground all around her. Out of them emerged a menagerie of Darker types: Dagans, Micdas, Dicahdas, Dahgashes, and a solitary El Ahda.
Shankar was trying to distract her, keep her occupied. Unfortunately Akasha had no other choice but to play along. With Ivan lacking a weapon and Aki still recovering, that left only herself and Luna to fend off the Darker horde. She would do her best to protect them, praying Kira would be alright facing Shankar alone…
Kira, on the other hand, gave no thought to odds or risk. Her mission was clear: vengeance for her murdered sister, and she would stop at nothing to get it. Still crouched behind the safety of the gravestone, she fished a grenade out of her jacket and lobbed it in Shankar’s direction. The Newman released a stream of Barta that encased the grenade—still in midair—in a block of solid ice. It fell sharply to the ground and exploded, but the icy coating dulled the blast. Shankar remained unhurt.
The Gunner was on her feet before the smoke cleared, sprinting in a wide circular arc around her opponent. Her guns provided plenty of cover fire as she ran. Kira expected Shankar to protect himself with the same wind bubble tactic again, but he surprised her by blocking the bullets with something else—a shield of solid ice. It formed in the air between them and extended itself in the direction Kira was running. Not only that, Shankar was able to replenish it as fast as her bullets could chew into it.
Kira kept running. She kept firing. Frustratingly, she still hadn’t scored a single hit.
Maybe it’s time for a new strategy, she decided.
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Kira holstered one of her machineguns and pulled out another grenade. While shooting one-handed, she used the other hand to remove the grenade’s safety pin. Kira didn’t toss it right away, however. Instead she held onto it for an extra second. Then, with a grunt, she chucked the grenade in a high arc towards Shankar. Predictably he tried to knock it out of the air with another Barta blast, but because Kira had held onto it for so long, it detonated early.
And it wasn’t a normal grenade at all. It was a flash bang.
Shankar covered his eyes in surprise as the mossy hill was temporarily overwhelmed by a great burst of white light. That’s when Kira threw the second grenade, underhand this time so it would bounce beneath the ice shield. It seemed like a good trick—until Shankar blew it back at her with a gust of wind energy.
There was no time to dodge. The grenade exploded in a fiery flash, the force hurling her backwards at least a dozen meters. Kira tumbled to a stop and grimaced in pain. She’d earned a few bruises and some minor burns, but luckily that seemed to be the worst of it. As she forced herself to her feet, she looked up. Shankar was gone.
Where—
Above her. Using a wind-assisted leap, the big man was now hurtling at her like a falling meteor, ready to attack. Kira jumped back just before a bolt of Zonde lightning struck the spot where she’d been. Shankar landed in the same spot a second later with a thud.
He didn’t stop to recover. Shankar lunged forward, swiping at her with a clawed hand as she ducked away. The claws ripped through her jacket and grazed her right shoulder. One of Kira’s guns was up a moment later, firing at him from point-blank range. He managed to block every shot with his newly-armored forearms. The armor plating was rough and uneven, jet black in color, and somehow looked organic. Which, she supposed, it was.
Just like a Darker’s…
It also appeared to be nearly invulnerable to normal attacks, like a Metos’ armor or a Ga Wonda’s shield. Kira retreated as Shankar pressed forward. The Newman towered over her, but his bulk weighed him down slightly—just enough for Kira to stay out of reach. She took potshots when she could afford to, zigzagging between rows of gravestones and darting around faded, leafless trees. Shankar deflected her attacks each time.
He never stopped, never slowed down. Kira, however, was beginning to feel winded. She couldn’t keep up this cat-and-mouse game much longer. Once again she reached into her jacket for a grenade.
At that moment, Shankar’s fireball slammed into her back. Kira let out a gasp and toppled forward as a wave of searing pain rippled through her body, nearly overpowering her senses. She fought hard to keep from blacking out. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice was screaming:
“You’re on fire!”
Kira rushed to pull off her jacket. She threw it to the ground and frantically slapped at the flames. Disturbingly, a large hole had been scorched into the center of it. Though she couldn’t see her own back, she could tell it had been badly burned. The acrid smell of charred flesh was proof of that.
“Give up,” said Shankar, gazing down at her from three meters away. “You don’t have what it takes to defeat me.”
Kira’s eyes flashed with defiance. She’d heard lines like that her whole life.
“You’re not good enough.” “You’ll never measure up.” Compared to her prodigal sister she had always been the black sheep in the family. It was why she demanded so much of herself, why she’d worked twice as hard to prove them all wrong. And she certainly wasn’t giving up now.
“We’ll see about that,” she replied. Kira suddenly and forcefully tossed the still-smoldering jacket at Shankar’s face. Doing so revealed what was hidden underneath—her last grenade.
Shankar swatted the jacket away just in time to watch the grenade bounce casually past his feet and roll to a stop behind him. There wasn’t time to escape it. He spun around to face the impending blast, distantly aware that Kira was already scrambling for cover.
The grenade blew, engulfing Shankar in a blaze of fire and destruction. Kira watched it happen from behind the nearest tree. As the explosion cleared, she expected to see a pile of smoking remains—if there was anything left at all. What she found instead was a cocoon of organic armor plates arranged like a monstrous budding flower. With the danger past, the curved plates fell away, leaving Shankar inexplicably crouched in the center of it. Somehow he had summoned them to protect himself, probably from within his own body.
But there was something else nagging at Kira’s mind. A detail, something she had observed just before the grenade went off. Shankar had turned
towards the blast instead of away from it. Why? That’s when it hit her: the core on his back. Every Darker has one; it’s their weak spot. Maybe it was his weak spot, too.
And maybe he was trying to protect it. Now
that was a theory worth testing…
Still on his knees, Shankar clutched his head with both hands as if in extreme pain. “Curse you,” he growled. “I’ll make you pay for that.”
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When he stood up and turned to face her again, Kira noticed two things. The first was the patchwork of burns on his armor. Evidently he hadn’t escaped completely unscathed after all. The second thing was the color of his eyes. They had turned an inhuman shade of red, much like a Darker’s, although they weren’t glowing… yet.
“That’s my line,” she shot back. “You’re going to pay for what you did to my sister!”
Kira fired her machineguns again, an attack he deflected easily with his armored forearms. Shankar charged at her in a rage. The Newman seemed faster now, more determined. This wasn’t an idle game to him anymore. Kira knew she had no chance in a straight-up confrontation so she reversed course and ran straight into the nearest patch of trees.
Shankar was hot on her heels, swinging at her with a handful of razor-sharp claws and shooting the occasional burst of Zonde or Foie. Kira weaved through the tiny forest of dead trees, making it as difficult as possible for him to target her. She was running on pure adrenaline now. Her body felt like it might give out at any moment but she willed herself to keep going, to keep fighting. She had no other choice.
Aim for the Core…
Shankar lost sight of Kira as they rounded a pair of particularly massive trees. Assuming she was still ahead of him, he kept going—right past her hiding spot. Concealed in the nook of a tree, Kira unleashed both machineguns on him, her sights centered on the Master Core embedded in his back. His reaction speed was impressive, spinning away as soon as the gunfire sounded. But he wasn’t fast enough.
One bullet struck the edge of the Core, another scraped the side of his ribcage, and a third tore a hole in his upper arm. That was all the damage Kira managed to do before Shankar got his wind bubble up. The rest of her shots were sucked in and redirected away from him.
If Shankar was mad before, he was
furious now. With a roar, he shoved the wind bubble forward like a projectile weapon. It picked up speed and slammed into Kira before she could get out of the way, hitting her with the full force of the energy contained within. The powerful air currents inside the bubble left her outfit in tatters and her body covered in bloody gashes. She was thrown backwards and slammed into the tree trunk behind her.
Staggering to her feet, Kira groaned. Everything inside her felt broken. There was blood trickling down her face, her arms, her legs. Still, she wasn’t ready to give up. “It’ll take… more than that… to keep me down…,” she said. The gleam in her eyes was just as ferocious as it had been at the start of the fight.
Shankar rushed forward with lethal intent. He swung at her and she ducked beneath it. He swung again but she jumped aside. Kira fired her guns in bursts to keep him off-balance and, perhaps, to score a lucky hit. As often as possible, she kept aiming for the Master Core.
They danced back and forth through the cemetery, trading offense and defense, each trying to lure the other into a fatal mistake. Neither side faltered.
Until…
Shankar launched a trio of massive fireballs at Kira’s retreating form. The first two collided with a pair of stray trees. The third raced up the hillside after its target. Unexpectedly, Kira skidded to a stop, made a U-turn, and ran straight for the oncoming Foie.
It’s a feint, thought Shankar.
It has to be. There’s no way she can take that blast head-on…
It wasn’t a feint. Kira leapt high and somersaulted over the top of the fireball. Still in midair, she let loose everything she had at Shankar. Dual streams of gunfire converged on his location. The Newman raised one arm to block, taking a bullet to the shoulder in the process. Then another to the stomach. And another in the thigh.
Kira was prepared to dodge his counterattack the moment she landed. Unfortunately, her feet never reached the ground.
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A Darker tendril shot out of Shankar’s palm like a hardened lance, piercing straight through the center of Kira’s chest. She never saw it coming.
Legs dangling a meter in the air, she coughed up a spattering of blood. Shankar retracted the tendril into his hand and let Kira fall to her knees. There was no need to finish her off; the fight was over.
Shaking, Kira clutched at her wound. The pain wasn’t as bad as she expected. What hurt her more was the thought that she had failed. She’d given it everything she had… and it still hadn’t been enough.
Dad, Fara… I…
Further down the slope, she heard a pair of voices cry out with grief. Ivan and Akasha. As the fiery wall between them receded, Kira turned her head towards them and mouthed the words,
I’m sorry.
It was all she could manage. Her strength was fading, her vision blurring. But there was more to it than that, something she couldn’t explain. Something very wrong. Her insides were beginning to feel… strange. This wasn’t a Darker infection, at least she didn’t think so. She always imagined it would feel cold, but this… this felt warm.
Then it was more than warm. It was hot. She was burning up inside, literally roasting alive. It felt as if a miniature sun was being born within her. Kira looked down at her hands.
They were glowing.
Akasha watched as Kira’s whole body began radiating like an incandescent bulb. The orange-yellow glow grew brighter and more intense until it enveloped her, consumed her. The girl’s face contorted in a soundless scream. And then…
Then she disintegrated into a million tiny pinpricks of light. Her body had been broken apart from the inside out and converted into a cloud of pure photon energy. It was simultaneously the most beautiful and horrible sight Akasha had ever seen.
The glowing cloud hovered in the air for only a moment, then it was funneled into Shankar’s waiting palms. Akasha’s brother took in Kira’s energy, drank it up, until there was nothing left of her but a pile of tattered clothes lying in a heap on the ground.
Akasha screamed her friend’s name at the top of her lungs, but it was no use. Kira was gone.
TO BE CONTINUED
Originally Posted by AIDA
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I shouldn't question it, but I also wonder how long core dude newmen dude can go for, flinging all those techs mid combat? Looking back at the chapter before, I wonder if Aki sustained any lasting damage caused by the core? Considering it works like a darker core and all.
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