With Shroom Man 777 and Fingolfin_Noldor
Ushijima class assault ship HSS Saya
Deep space immediately below Sectors D-30 and E-30
UNREAL TIME / June 3401
Field Marshal Kyoko Sakura examined the myriad display screens decorating the bridge. Their course was clear, straight to Chamarran space, yet she knew that the Wobblies wouldn’t give up easy. At least, for their own sakes they shouldn’t, not after going out of their way to come this far. Sensors had detected even more multiplication in Miratian signals, which either meant they had gotten some reinforcements--which was unlikely, considering the vast distances--or they were returning the favor done to them by the Dual Empire fleets.
“Send out the King Tigers,” Kyoko said, before blowing into her mug of Byzantine-blend recaff and taking a small sip of the steaming liquid. “Intensify recon sweeps.”
“Aye, launching fighters now,” an officer acknowledged. In the viewscreens, they could see representations of the SB-7 King Tigers deploy from their motherships before engaging their hyperdrives. The superfighters were state-of-the-art Haruhiist designs, extremely capable and despite their size were considered as gunboat-class by other navies. They could make intrasector jumps and, when equipped with tactical reconnaissance pods (TARPs), sniff out whatever the Wobblies had scattered throughout space.
In the meantime, Kyoko contented herself with waiting and watching. With each passing second, their sub-fleet was nearing Hierarchy space, and reaching it would ensure their safety. Yet she assumed that their pursuers were far from idle. She was playing hard to get, but if her suitors were really that determined, then she might end up having to humor them.
She smirked, and then yawned. The recaff was hardly doing any good, and at this point she had issued all the orders she needed. There was little she could do to influence the outcome of this affair. The balls were in the Miratians’ court now.
Kyoko supposed that she could rest. But ever since Earth-4, she hadn’t been sleeping. Hadn’t slept at all, actually. Couldn’t, not after what she had seen. Whenever she closed her eyes, she always saw the same thing, again and again...
***
The Symphony of the Damned
Earth-4
Sol, Multiversal Empire of Happiness
Amidst the carnage that consumed the entirety of Earth-4, there was a siren’s song ringing through the air, the melody of millions screaming and dying. It waxed and waned rhythmically, like a grand orchestra playing a melancholic tune as men, women and children uttered their final breaths and gave up their lives for their false goddess. Within this chorus lay the siren call for more and more souls to join them in their sacrament, even those of their enemies. All of their deaths would serve their goddess and thus enrich her as she reached out for the stars in a final act of revenge against those who had perpetrated this grand injustice against her and her people. Through their sacrifices, there would be an opportunity to break away from the hands of fate that had bound the Goddess to the only line of destiny she could possibly follow.
And now, as the sun set on Earth-4 for the final time, the climax of that last song was beginning to wax to its fullest. The end that was prophesied and promised was finally coming. It was a finality that few would have predicted, but it was here. The final actors were now in place, ready for their roles in the trap that had been laid for all those who had a part to play. They would soon learn that the vicissitudes of fate was not something so easy to escape, and once trapped in its grasp, they could only watch and behold the terrible things that were about to happen.
However, such considerations were completely and utterly lost on Field Marshal Kyoko Sakura as she led her own section of the SOS Imperial Guard and Marine Corps vanguard up another one of the spires that stood at the corners of the Leader’s palace. The surrounding area was crawling with enemy forces, and the superstructures themselves had energy signatures that were off the charts. The spires were obviously high-value installations, and so they had been dispatched to attack these sites in order to draw enemy forces away from the Leader’s stronghold and thus expedite Warmaster Rus’ lightning assault.
Kyoko’s ascent up the spire was certainly unsettling, but for completely different reasons. As far as she and her forces could see in either direction, there were absolutely no traces of the chaotic, warped architecture that dominated the rest of the Leader’s palace and its surroundings. The velvet carpets were pristine and intact. The walls were an immaculate white, well lit by the ceiling lights. Portraits hung on the walls, snapshots of better times from the Multiversal Empire’s glory days, the Goddess amongst her people, beautiful scenery unmarred by war, still lifes of droids, and candid shots of MEHmen living their lives carelessly. It was the Multiversal dream. Memories of happier, more bountiful times, frozen forever, while the whole world outside burned to ashes.
With war raging everywhere else and the insidious influences of Chaos starting to make themselves known, the pristine and immaculate setting of the spire stood out like a sore thumb thrust many miles into the air. While Mami and Sayaka had to contend with obscene monstrosities and mutated military forces, Kyoko’s own ascent remained completely unimpeded so far. She wondered how well General Misaka was faring.
“Field Marshal... where’s the enemy?” one of the Marines asked.
“I don’t know,” Kyoko replied. In addition to securing the spires, their purpose here was to pin down any enemy forces that might otherwise be sent to defend the palace against Rus’ attack. “We’ll clear the building. If we don’t find anything, we go topside and request for an evac.”
“If you say so, ma’am,” a Guardsman said.
“Look, just stay frosty, soldier,” Kyoko said. “We haven’t even gotten that far up yet. There may still be an enemy presence on the upper levels. Like I said, we’ll sweep the building, and we don’t find anything, we’ll just leave. Simple as that.”
“I still don’t like this,” the Guardsman grumbled. “It’s too easy...”
It was. The next floors came and went without incident, until they reached the last level. Instead of emerging on the spire’s balcony, they found themselves inside a vast cavernous amphitheater. It was dark, with rows of seemingly empty chairs surrounding the vacant stage. The ceiling was dome-shaped, like a parabolic dish, designed to reflect sound back to the audience.
“We’ve got movement.”
The curtains on the stage parted abruptly and dramatically. Massive spotlights shined from the ceiling, sending beams of blinding light down on the SOS soldiers. Kyoko reflexively held up her hand to block the light, even as her polarizing visor compensated for the glare. Through that glare, she could see a multitude of figures emerging on the stage...
“
Welcome, interlopers!” a distorted voice echoed throughout the auditorium. “
I figured you would show up here when you’d come to take the palace. Now...join us for your welcome soirée! Care for a dance?”
The figures on the stage brought up graceful instruments gilded in gold. Many of them
were in fact instruments themselves, robots specifically designed to play music for the Goddess’ own personal orchestra, with intricate mechanical fingers to play keys studding their bodies, and faceless harpsichords for heads. A choir of ladies descended from above, their overlarge dresses fluttering in the air as their masses were held aloft by hoverchairs. A lone figure, the Saint, walked before the assembled orchestra. The maestro bowed before his audience.
“I don’t like this,” a Marine growled. “What do we do, boss?”
“When in doubt...” Kyoko sized up the assembled musicians and flashed a predatory grin. “Kill them all.”
“Oorah!” the Marine grunted. Together with his squad, he ran up towards the stage and brought up his rifle. “This concert is closed due to bad reviews, and incoming fire!”
He fired. Phased plasma bolts strobed through the subdued lighting and streaked towards the maestro, but the conductor merely waved the diamond-tipped baton in his hands, and the instrumental machines began playing their music. Silver fingers strummed gold-weaved chords and struck mother of pearl keys. A visible wave of distorted air with the rippling consistency of liquid water expanded from the cybernetic symphony, and upon making contact with the distortion, the phased plasma bolts simply
winked out of existence.
The entire squad opened up with their weapons, but it was to no avail as the expanding wall of fluidic light reached them. The atonal symphony was joined by a chorus of death screams as men and women were flayed alive, the very molecules slowly peeling off their armor, and then their flesh. Their bleached skeletons collapsed onto the auditorium’s empty chairs, as though sitting down after a standing ovation.
“Empress...” Kyoko gasped. Those soldiers, gone just like that. Were they using some kind of sonic weaponry?
“
I see you’ve enjoyed our little demonstration. Don’t worry, we’re just warming up,” the maestro promised her. His back was towards them as he resumed conducting his orchestra. He tapped his baton on his score table, flipped to another page and cleared his mechanical throat. “
Now. Let us begin.”
“Everyone scatter!” Kyoko shouted. The next wave vaporized the remains of the skeletonized squad, along with the chairs closest to the stage. The other Guard and Marine formations moved out of the way of the destructive sound pulses, which gradually subsided and dissipated after reaching past a certain distance. Kyoko crouched behind a ruined chair, her ears still ringing from the sonic attack.
Laughter echoed throughout the amphitheater.
“
How about a more relaxing tune?” the maestro taunted. A pair of clunking, barrel-chested bronze-sculpted robots walked to the front of the stage. There was a whistling sound as the ports on their bodies drew in air, and then a deep gut-rumbling noise issued forth from their torso-trumpets.
No, it can’t be... Kyoko’s eyes widened in horror. That sound was unmistakable. She remembered, Solaris, 3393. She was visiting just in time for the Mega City riots, and had seen... and heard of how Max-Tac had put the unruly underhivers down. She recognized the sound now omnidirectionally reverberating through the auditorium.
Brown. Noise.
“Shit!” a Marine, PFC J. Sasaki, summarized it sucinctly. Her remaining troops, who had managed to dodge the first wave, were now groaning in abject misery at what the last attack had inflicted upon them. Kyoko fought the burning shame threatening to creep onto her face, and held back the tears that were welling up in her eyes. Nausea threatened to overcome her. But she struggled on. She was a soldier, a fighter, a warrior woman, and she would not let this grave insult defeat her. She rose up, despite the horrible discomfort it caused her, and brought her weapon--an M25 plasma rifle with a fixed bayonet--up to bear on her enemies.
“By Haruhi, I swear I am going to fucking kill every last one of you fuckers!” she spat. With those words of rage, her Guards and Marines rallied to her, their own shame giving away to anger and the desire to wreak revengeance.
The maestro sighed dismissively. “
Some people just don’t have any taste,” he lamented, before shrugging and bringing up his baton for another crescendo. “
Oh well, you’ll be dead anyway, what do I care.”
The baton went down, and simultaneously all the instrumental machines unleashed a wall of coagulated sound, like a tsunami of distorted light rushing towards the struggling formation of SOS Imperial Guards and Marines. The troops closest to the waves cringed and reeled in horror, awaiting the inevitable, closing their eyes and preparing to die. But something happened.
The waves stopped.
They didn’t dissipate. They didn’t disperse. They were still there, but they were
still. Mere inches away from the closest SOS Marine who was on the verge of making his peace with the Empress. PFC J. Sasaki took this opportunity to scramble away from the frozen death-wave as fast as he could while thanking Haruhi for the blessings she had bestowed upon him by letting him live to fight another day.
In his place, two lithe and identical-looking young girls stepped forward to face the maestro and his death-wave. They were clones of General Mikoto Misaka, aptly named Misaka 10031 and Misaka 10032, part of the program to produce weaponized espers for the SOS Imperial Armed Forces. The girls were serene, their faces calm and showing no sign of strain from holding back the orchestra’s devastating sonic attack with sheer force of will alone.
“
What-- What is the meaning of this?!” the maestro sputtered as he waved his baton wildly. His mechano-musicians played harder and harder, but to no avail. “
Who dares interrupt our music?!”
“We’re here to audition,” Misaka 10031 smiled.
“And we even brought our own instruments,” Misaka 10032 added, and giggled.
Together, they brought out containers that looked nothing so much like guitar cases. They opened them and produced a pair of strange, asymmetrical machines vaguely rifle-like in shape and form, painted hot-rod red. Kyoko recognized them as psionic accelerators. The machines activated with a dull bass thrum, and as the espers pumped more and more psionic energy into the devices, they began to crackle from the ionic buildup. There was an explosion of sparks, and arc lightning coursed through the length of the psionic accelerators like strings of jagged electricity.
In rage, the maestro intensified his symphony and the sphere of rippling sonic energy began expanding once more. But the two clone-espers stood their ground.
"Your false goddess might have given you many foul gifts, but the Empress Haruhi has also blessed us with many powers,” Misaka 10031 declared, and Misaka 10032 continued for her, “One of which, as you will soon see, is the Power of Rock!"
The Misakas held up psycho-conductive picks in their hands, and then brought them down and began strumming the streams of ectoplasmic electricity coursing through their psionic accelerators, plucking the lightning with delicate fingers as though the searing bolts were but strings. A low rumbling sound filled the auditorium, the ground began to vibrate, and dust shook off the ceiling. Ambient energy in the air began to build up in the form of crackling static electricity. The lights dimmed. And then they struck the power chord, sending a counter-wave of light and sound right back at the maestro and his orchestra. Like matter meeting anti-matter, the second their manifested music made contact with the death-wave, the entire amphitheater
exploded.
Please don't say "You are lazy"
だって本当はcrazy
白鳥たちはそう
見えないとこでバタ足するんです
本能に従順 忠実 翻弄も重々承知
前途洋々だし…
だからたまに休憩しちゃうんです
この目でしっかリ見定めて
行き先地図上マークして
近道あればそれが王道
はしょれる翼もあれば上等
ヤバ 爪割れた グルーで補修した
それだけでなんか達成感
大事なのは自分 かわいがること
白分を愛さなきゃ 他人も愛せない
The girls sang while the dome ceiling shattered into countless building-sized fragments, which were scattered throughout the nine vectors. The blood red skies, the burning palace of Sasha jutting over the horizon, and the rest of the mega-city surrounding the spire were laid bare and revealed for all to see. Gusts of wind blew over the unprotected stage, and empty chairs were ripped off the floor and blown away.
“The battle of the bands has just begun,” Kyoko grinned. “Boys and girls, join the chorus!”
The surviving SOS Imperial Guards and Marines added their fire to the lightning strikes clashing against the symphony’s sonic wave attacks. Torrents of phased plasma and gauss penetrators, together with the Misakas’ electrokinetic attacks, drove the maestro’s music back. But the Saint of Sasha was far from defeated.
“
It’s time for the vocals!” the conductor declared as he waved his baton again, and the large ladies on their hoverchairs flew towards the SOS formation with utmost menace. “
Sing to me, my angels of music!”
The soprano singers unleashed an ear-piercing, high-pitched banshee’s wail as they swept in for musical strafing runs. Their dresses fluttered as their hoverchairs glided through the air, kicking up shards of shattered glass in their wake. The affected Haruhiists covered their bleeding ears with their hands. Whenever the rings of distorted air emitted by their ululating mouths struck an unfortunate target, he or she simply exploded into a shower of disintegrated organs.
“Put a cork in it!” Kyoko snapped as she fired a snap shot from her M25. The phase plasma bolt flew right inside the mouth of one of the flying sopranos, and exited the back of her head along with a stream of vaporized teeth. The overlarge woman simply fell off her hoverchair and plummeted several kilometers off the spire.
Meanwhile, the Misakas continued their climatic battle with the symphony, and despite the surprise soprano strike, they were continuing to drive the sonic wave back. But the maestro would have none of it. The baton he held in his hand transformed into a gold-threaded bow, while his other arm morphed into a fiddle, and he began playing his instrument furiously. He joined the orchestra and added his own considerably might to the symphony. The sonic wave surged once more, growing larger and repulsing the thunder storm conjured by the Misakas.
“Field Marshal, we’ll create an opening for you!” Misaka 10031 shouted. She went down on her knees, rocked her head up and down wildly, and strummed the chords of electricity on her accelerator harder and faster, sending more lightning to clash against the symphony’s attack.
“Rock on!” Kyoko waved the sign of the horns at the Misakas before inserting a fresh magazine into her M25.
Misaka 10032 turned to the remaining SOS troopers, who were either fighting off the sopranos or succumbing to the sonic weaponry. She rallied them by crying, “You and I must fight for our rights, you and I must fight to survive!”
“No one's gonna take us alive, the time has come to make things right!” the troops hollered back as they resumed fighting with renewed determination.
Together, the Misakas and the SOS troopers concentrated their attack at a single point in the symphony’s musical death-wave. It cracked under the barrage, and a tongue of lightning lashed out from the Misakas’ accelerator-guitars and struck the maestro in the face, partially melting his masked visage. Kyoko took this opportunity to leap onto the stage. Upon landing, she bayoneted the nearest instrumental-robot and sent a torrent of phased plasma at another harpsichord-faced machine, reducing it into a puddle of steaming pyrite. Behind her, the death-wall closed as the face-melted maestro regained his composure and resumed playing his infernal strings.
“
You think you can defeat us?” he laughed as he turned to face Kyoko, revealing his twisted visage. “
Our death-harmonic symphony shall serenade the triumph of the Goddess’ will. It shall be a lullaby for when you close your eyes for the final time.”
A door opened on the stage floor, and a shining spherical mass of iron emerged from it. It was a disco ball. A death-harmonic disco ball.
“
Prepare the laser beam! I’m gonna use it tonight!” the maestro cried out as the death-harmonic disco ball rose from the floor. The emitters that studded the ball’s surface glowed a faint red as they activated. The deadly sphere began spinning slowly yet steadily. “
Engage the laser beam! It’s gonna end your life!”
The sphere strobed brightly and shot out dozens of laser pulses, sweeping through the stage like a grid of bloodlit lines. Kyoko dodged with superhuman speed, the pulses barely even singeing her hair as she weaved between the laser lines and leapt into the orchestra’s instrumental machines. The flashing beams followed and did all the work for her as she maneuvered through the golden harpsichord-headed machines, the droids with mother of pearl piano keys on their torsos, the spider-like drum contraptions, and the walking bronze tubas. Suddenly, the orchestra became much quieter, and the wall of murderous music made manifest diminished. The Misakas’ lightning bolts began seeping through and smiting the other orchestral machines.
“
No! No! My valkyrie, stop her!” the maestro screamed in a panic.
On cue, the last large lady on a hoverchair dove towards Kyoko, who was still on the run from the lasers. The woman began to sing, sending a sonic pulse of bone-liquefying energy towards the Field Marshal. But Kyoko jumped, and the pulse missed her and merely struck the stage floor, causing an explosion that actually propelled her further with its momentum. Kyoko landed on the hoverchair right beside the soprano singer. The woman turned to face her while singing a high-pitched note of destruction, but Kyoko grabbed the soprano’s head and twisted it towards the death-harmonic disco ball. The spherical mass of iron began vibrating as the notes resonated through its form, causing a hundred hairline fractures to spiderweb throughout its surface. The soprano singer continued to sing--actually, she was literally screaming her head off as Kyoko continued twisting her neck--and then the death-harmonic disco ball finally exploded into a shower of shards, impaling the remainder of the maestro’s orchestra.
“Your fat ladies have sung, but the only one it’s gonna be over for is you,” Kyoko called out to the maestro as she snapped the soprano singer’s neck and jumped off the hoverchair. She landed on the stage, just as the orchestra players fell all around her in several pieces, their bodies and chassis all sliced to bits by the lasers that had unsuccessfully chased her before.
“
The sin of pride is what will do you in,” the maestro intoned as he brought up his golden fiddle threateningly. His bow touched the strings.
Kyoko merely laughed and brought up her own M25. “I thought we had this settled, I'm the best there's ever been.”
Infuriated, the maestro prepared to play his instrument, but a bolt of light struck him, blasting his limb clean off the shoulder. His scream of anguish nearly matched the soprano singers’ notes in its ear-piercingness.
“Now it would be a sin for you to get my bow,” Kyoko said as she picked the severed violin-arm off the floor. “You go on back to hell and to the wood shed I will go.”
The violin struck the maestro’s face before he could even make a comeback. Both the instrument and his visage deformed from the impact, and he collapsed to the floor. But Kyoko didn’t relent. She brought the golden violin up over her head, and she brought it down on the maestro’s face again and again and again, until both the instrument and the maestro’s skull were misshapen wrecks. Strings jutted out from the ruined gold violin. Putrid black fluid oozed out of the maestro’s shattered head.
“And you just saw Kyoko Sakura’s amazing drum solo,” Kyoko spat on her enemy’s face as she tossed aside the malformed fiddle. She took a deep breath. All of their enemies had been quite thoroughly killed. She looked around, at her remaining men and women, at the Misaka clones who had been instrumental in their victory here. She took a moment to look up at the sky.
Just then, a blinding light flashed from the direction of the false goddess’ palace, and then an orb of darkness emerged from the horizon like a negative sun, bathing the entire landscape in black light. It was expanding, growing larger and larger, swallowing up the whole sky. It loomed over the spire and the entire mega-city like an obsidian scar in reality.
“
...massive explosion at... palace!” a garbled voice could be heard over the radio. It took Kyoko moments to realize that it belonged to Field Marshal Homura Akemi. “
Aurelian... emergency evacuation... all forces on Earth... RTB immediately.”
Kyoko was about to radio in for an evac when the stage itself exploded outwards in a spray of wooden splinters, sending her flying back to the audience area. She fell on a chair, which crumpled under the impact. She looked back at the exploded platform and saw smoke and purple fire spewing out of the hole on the floor. A sparkling figure emerged from the gaping hellhole. There shined a shiny Saint, in all of its ostentatious glory, in the middle of the stage.
Behind her, great fiery pillars of destruction descended from the black hole in the sky. The thick flaming columns writhed like tentacles and swept across the megacities of Earth, destroying all they touched, extinguishing all life in the culmination of Sasha’s ascension. It was coming closer to the spire, Kyoko realized, but the Saint paid it no heed.
“
A front row seat to the true diva of the show, the Goddess Sasha herself!” the Saint laughed, her mellifluous voice belying her grotesque nature as she slithered on the remains of the stage with her serpentine lower body. “
Why, my dears, you can even have a backstage pass for after the concert!”
She cackled as though it were some hilarious joke. Kyoko scowled as she pointed her M25 at the Saint’s face.
“The only thing going backstage is my gun up your ass!” she growled before squeezing off a shot.
The hypersonic phased plasma bolt came within a micrometer of the Saint’s face, but the thing merely puckered up her lips and blew a kiss, and as with the first shots fired at the maestro, the pulse of blurring light extinguished the energy bolt. The Saint winked at Kyoko and then blew another kiss, at her.
But the Field Marshal saw it coming, and with superhuman speed she dodged the pulse of obliteration by somersaulting a dozen meters into the air. Yet in jumping out of the way, she rendered herself vulnerable to a follow up attack. The Saint puffed up her cheeks to send out another devastating sonic strike.
“Field Marshal, catch!” one of the Misakas threw her psi-accelerator at Kyoko, using psychokinetic powers to propel the instrument into the Field Marshal’s hands.
“Thanks,” Kyoko caught it while still in the ballistic arc of her evasive leap, hanging upside down and suspended midair. She closed her eyes and attuned her own psionic energies into the device. It came alive with a spark, and crackling lightning-strings streamed across its form.
The Saint opened her mouth and let out a murderous melody, a voice even more terrific than the entire choir of sopranos combined. It reached Kyoko, but she strummed her psi-amplifier and banged her head, sending a wave of coruscating thunder and lightning to clash against the Saint’s acoustic beam. The unstoppable force met an immovable object, one made out of purest rock, and the resulting seismic shockwave rippled forth from the spire they were on and spread outwards. At first, the transparisteel windows of the surrounding starscrapers were shattered into diamond dust, and then the rest of the buildings followed suit, their structures crumbling as their very foundations were rocked into oblivion.
The two forces cancelled each other out, and as the echoing reverberations subsided, Kyoko finally landed on her feet. She surveyed the carnage she and the Saint had wrought. While the spire itself was still intact, if barely, the surrounding cityscape had been thoroughly flattened as though it had been in the epicenter of a tac-nuke detonation. A thin line of blood trickled down from Kyoko’s nostril, she wiped it off with an SOS-issue silk handkerchief.
“
Impressive, you most certainly have talent,” the Saint taunted, before drawing out an enormous sword and slashing at Kyoko. “
Now let’s see if you can make the cut!”
The Field Marshal jumped back to avoid the strike, but the Saint pressed on with deceptive speed despite her massive serpentine form. Kyoko didn’t have time to focus her psionic powers. In sheer desperation, she pulled out a katana from her psi-accelerator.
“Buddy Holly guide my blade!” she cried. The monomolecular blade was a blur as she parried another strike.
“
Fool! There is no one to guide you!” the Saint sneered as she delivered another tremendous blow. Kyoko managed to block it, but its force drove her down and caused the floor beneath her feet to crater. Their blades locked, Kyoko stood firm, but the Saint was simply too strong. The Misakas, sensing that the Field Marshal was in danger, attempted to intervene along with the remaining SOS troops, but the Saint merely repulsed them with another sonic pulse, throwing them aside like rag dolls. Some soldiers were thrown off the spire completely and plummeted to their demise. “
Look around you, Field Marshal. Look at the sky. Do you see what is happening to this planet? Do you have any comprehension of the grandeur that has transpired? You have failed your Empress. The Goddess has triumphed!”
The Saint’s scaly tail whipped out from underneath Kyoko and wrapped itself around her form. Kyoko tried to scream, but felt the wind forced out of her as the Saint constricted tighter and tighter, rendering her ribcage unable to expand and her lungs unable to draw in air. The Saint squeezed even more every time she exhaled.
“
There is no one left to help you! You will die here alone!” the Saint ranted on as she continued asphyxiating Kyoko. The woman screamed a silent scream before the world went black as oxygen deprivation took its toll on her. Her hearing was the last sensation to go prior to unconsciousness.
“Kyoko Sakura. We won’t leave you behind.”
A tiny voice called out to Kyoko through her earpiece. She recognized it.
Sayaka. Miki.
“
Kyoko Sakura. We won’t leave you behind.”
Sight returned as blood flow resumed. Kyoko gasped for breath, as the Saint had inexplicably released its hold on her. The wind was howling, and hovering before the beast was a CV-77K Super Pelican gunship surrounded by a squadron of Infinite Stratos suits. They unleashed of phased plasma bolts and beams, striking the Saint and causing her to break off from Kyoko and slither away to evade the barrage. The rear ramp of the Pelican lowered, and a familiar figure leapt out of the aerospacecraft, flanked by the six Stratos suits.
Field Marshal Sayaka Miki walked over to Kyoko and helped her up.
“Right in the nick of time, Saya-chan,” Kyoko smiled weakly, still catching her breath.
“We have to get off this death rock as soon as possible, Kyoko. It’s time to end this,” Sayaka said as she brought out a case and pulled out her own psi-accelerator. She tossed a spare to the Misaka clone who had given her accelerator to Kyoko. “Misakas, with us. The rest of you, fall back to the dropship.”
The SOS Imperial Guards and Marines withdrew to the Pelican while the Stratos supersoldiers lifted off, leaving only the two Field Marshals and the two Misaka clones. The Saint slithered out of hiding from beneath the spire’s ruined pinnacle. On one side, the burning sky silhouetted their forms, casting giant shadows on the ruined landscape below them. On the other side was the unreal night brought by Sasha’s ascension, a black portal rimmed by writhing eldritch appendages reaching out towards them. Kyoko reignited her psionic accelerator and stared the slithering Saint down. “It’s time for the final number. Purple Filth, live at Endsville.”
“
There will be no escape for you all! You will all die a peasant’s death!” the Saint hissed defiantly as she brandished her sword. Her tail coiled around her in preparation for her strike.
Kyoko flashed yet another predatory grin, as she was often given over to doing. “Is that so?” she said as she placed her hand by her psi-accelerator.
The Saint issued an ear-piercing shriek and attacked, blade raised high, ruinous powers blasting out of her open mouth. Everything her voice touched turned into ash, but the Field Marshals and Misaka clones stood their ground as the death-wave washed over them. A thick cloud of dust rose from the scene of carnage, and the Saint laughed in triumph.
Then, a gust of wind blew the dust cloud away, revealing the four Haruhiistas still standing and cradling their instruments, evidently unscratched from the attack. Kyoko brushed some dust off her shoulder before saying, “Our turn.”
“
No, it can’t be!” the Saint gasped.
But it was. Kyoko, Sayaka, and the Misakas strummed their accelerators and sent a wall of blinding psychic light at the Saint, who screamed in horror as she was engulfed by the radiance. She wailed and writhed as her black form disappeared in the total whiteout. A second sun blossomed there, on the peak of the spire, even as the unnatural darkness of Sasha’s culminated ascension brought eternal night to the world.
The light gradually subsided, revealing the Saint’s smoldering form suspended in midair. She uttered in disbelief, “
What are you really?! Be you gods? Be you angels?”
“No,” all of the Haruhiistas found themselves replying solemnly. “We are but girls. Rock!”
Together, the four of them sent a final pulse of rock at the Saint, shattering her form into a storm of disintegrating shrapnel. The rhythmic wave motion propagated further, going outwards in an arcing path that carved through everything in its way--including the writhing blackness that, by now, had swallowed up the entire sky--burning a narrow path of rainbow light through the firmament and into space itself.
Sparing no time, the Infinite Stratos suits swept down and plucked the Haruhiistas off the spire mere seconds before it collapsed, and brought them into the Pelican as it rocketed through the hole their psychic blast had punched through the dead sky. Even as they soared, their pathway was narrowing as the blackness expanded to close the gap, like unholy flesh healing over a wound. Whipping tendrils of ink lashed at their dropship, carving gouges on its fuselage. Point-defense fire ripped through them, but they still kept coming. The Pelican engaged its afterburners, and its pulse drive sent it at hypersonic speeds through the mesosphere, but at the last second, a thick black tentacle latched onto their aerospacecraft and prevented it from breaking out into space. Inside the dropship, the Haruhiistas continued strumming their accelerators while focusing every last fiber of their psychic abilities to enclose their ship in a sphere of psionic energy, fighting against the appendage that had adhered on their ship.
“
I recognize that tune,” Homura cried out over the radio. “
All ships, provide cover to that dropship! Fire the remaining liquid-R warhead!”
Lances of relativistic plasma stabbed down, severing the tentacle that had snared the Pelican. Other beams, missiles, and beam-shooting missiles rained from the heavens to cause a thermonuclear widening of the Pelican’s escape route. Protected by its psychic shield, the dropship raced through the expanding fireballs, evaded the withering tendrils trying to catch it, and finally exited the planetary atmosphere, backlit by a flash of brilliant green light. Homura had ordered that a single liquid rubiconium warhead be kept in reserve, though she certainly did not imagine that she’d be using it for something like this.
“Elvis has left the building!” Kyoko said as she tossed her accelerator to the deck and collapsed onto a bucket seat. As the dropship entered an awaiting carrier’s bays, she decided that it was probably the best time to faint, and so she did, allowing unconsciousness to take her.
***
“Unidentified contacts are escorting the Byzantine Saint into Earth, a whole fleet... They’re diving into Earth! Empress be with them.”
“The Chamarrans are opening fire on the Byzantines, but they’re not retaliating!”
“Goddamn cats, I can’t believe they fell in with the Brags. Project our jamming fields to cover the Byzantine fleet, and send as much point defense as we can to shoot down the Chamarran missiles heading their way. Main batteries, focus on repulsing the attacks from Earth... Someone, get us out of Sol now before the anomaly or the OMINOUS get us!”
“We’re at the hyperlimit. Jumping... now!”
***
The malignant red eye of Earth That Was. Billions burning alive on its damned surface. Tentacles whipping through space to rip ships apart. The flash of hyperspatial reversion.
Kyoko’s eyes snapped open, and she nearly jumped out off her command chair. Her empty cup of recaff clattered to the floor and rolled off to the side. She looked around the bridge, her eyes eventually falling on the overhanging chronometer, which indicated that only mere minutes had passed. The bridge crew were busy doing their duties, showing no sign of having seen her doze off. Her XO apparently did, though, and he bent down to pick the cup up.
“Field Marshal, are you feeling okay, ma’am?” he asked concernedly.
“I’m... I'm fine,” Kyoko sighed. “I think I just need a long vacation after this.”