Valiant

[Valiant #45: Turncoat’s Elegy]

Log Date: 2/26/12765

Data Sources: Kiwi, Feroce Acceso

Event Log: Kiwi

V.V. Prominence: Intelligence Center

1:24pm SGT

“You all realize that this is going to be the tightest operation we’ve ever undertaken up until this point, right?” Valkyrie says, leaning her fists on the holoboard in the center of the room. “This will be on par some of the high-intensity missions we ran back in the Challenger program. The turnaround isn’t going to leave any room for error.”

“We understand.” Songbird says beside me, his arms folded. All of us that will be deploying to the surface of Kasvei are here in the intelligence center for our final briefing, and the air is tight with tension, and some anticipation on my part. After our draw with CURSE five or six days ago, I’m itching for another mission, one that we can actually call a win. The last mission left me dissatisfied, cheated of what would’ve likely been a victory if Makalu and his lantern freaks hadn’t swooped in and beaten us all senseless.

“Kasvei’s planetguard and local government aren’t going to be happy that we’re conducting a raid on a CURSE storage site.” Legaci says, her hologram pulling up a map of the city and zooming in on a multistory research building near the city center. “It’s unlikely that they would give us the greenlight for that, so we haven’t telegraphed our intentions, and we’re instead telling them that we’re here for a mid-deployment resupply. Since we just arrived, they’ll expect us to head to the orbital station for that within the next twenty-four hours, so we have to get down to the surface, hit the storage site, grab our objectives, and get back up to the Prominence before then.”

“And the Justice is expected to arrive hot on our heels in a matter of hours.” Forecast adds. “We don’t know when they left Svyash, but we can assume they gathered their teams after we left, and they got after us as quickly as they could. Since we know their arrival vector, we know what side of Kasvei they’re going to arrive to when they get here, and we can plan on being on the other side of the planet.”

“We’re not worried about pissing off the Halfie Protectorate with a raid on one of their worlds?” Renchiko asks. “I know it’s CURSE and all, and the stuff in the storage site is Challenger property, which technically belongs to us, but it’s still going to be an armed operation on Protectorate territory.”

“If they don’t want us conducting raids on their territory, they shouldn’t be housing CURSE storage sites there.” Quincy points out. “It should send a message to other nations as well about the lengths we’ll go to get back what CURSE stole from the Challengers.”

“We’re not going to be making this a regular matter.” Valkyrie says firmly. “Valiant Command has made it clear that this operation is an exception to our current doctrine, and it’s not the kind of thing we expect to be doing while we’re still trying to build our reputation and relations with the major powers in the galaxy. We get in, grab what we need, minimize the amount of damage we do while we’re doing it, and get back out. The less disruptive this is, the lower the impact it will have on our relationship with the Halfie Protectorate.”

“What are we grabbing on this world that’s so important, anyhow?” Ridge asks, folding his arms. “Is it gonna be another artifact the Challengers had lying around in storage when the program went down?”

“It’s going to be a number of things, but the primary objective is a high-value technological asset that Echo completed before the program shut down.” Legaci explains, saving the rest of us the trouble of explaining we’re here to pick up an actual, proper body for her. From what Songbird told me, this was the price of having Legaci signed on with the Valiant: we were obligated to provide her with a fully functioning Synthetic frame so that she could actually have a body with sensations and a physical presence, instead of existing solely through holoarrays or projector drones. And apparently, Echo had custom-designed one for her before the Challenger program was shuttered. “We will prioritize the primary objective, but we will secure additional objectives as time and opportunity permits. If there is a chance to maximize our gains on this mission, we might as well do so, since we’ll already be paying a diplomatic price for it.”

“To that end, we’re going to be deploying in a stealth skipper, and we’re going to be conducting the raid during Kasvei’s night cycle.” Valkyrie goes on. “If everything goes the way we want it to, and we pull this off perfectly, Kasvei’s planetguard won’t even know we were here, and we won’t have to worry about any political fallout. But that is going to require that everyone do their part, and follow their orders exactly.” She says this with a pointed look at Ridge, then at me.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll keep it in my pants.” I say, rolling my eyes.

“Good. We can’t afford any rogue Agents on this deployment.” Valkyrie goes on as she turns her attention to the map before us. “We’re going to be landing on the roof of the Epperson Institute, shown here. Access will be through the emergency exits on the roof; Legaci is already in the building’s systems and will be blocking the alarm signals that will go to emergency services and the building’s internal security suite. From there, we will be making our way all the way down to the building’s subterranean levels, where the storage site is located. Once there, we will split into teams to pursue the primary objective and secondary objectives.”

“I’ve prepared packets for each of the teams on the routes you’ll be taking, and what your objectives will look like.” Legaci says at this point. “Once you’ve grabbed what you need to, you’ll be returning back along your routes to the stealth skipper. No sightseeing, no detours. We grab what we need and get out.”

“Well I, for one, am ready for this!” Jetfire declares from where he’s been listening attentively on the room’s edge. “And if we get caught, just leave it to me! I’ve still got a lot of pull on Kasvei; I’m sure I could talk us out of it.”

“Let’s not plan on that.” Valkyrie says with a sideways look. “Now, to the packets. The team for the primary objective will be Legaci, Songbird, and Kiwi. Your route and objective should be on your data slates now…”

Event Log: Feroce Acceso

Owlskipper-1: Passenger Cabin

11/27/12765 1:05am SGT

“Feeling nervous?”

I glance over to the seat next to me in the skipper. Kiwi’s watching me scroll through my playlists on my phone, probably assuming that I’m feeling the jitters. “Not really. But it is a bit of a habit to calm the nerves, I suppose.” I say as I notice that she’s bouncing her knee a little. “What about you?”

“Little disappointed we won’t get to fight anyone.” she sighs. “I really thought we had ‘em during that last mission. We were finally the ones doing the ambushing, instead of getting ambushed. Then Makalu dropped in and ruined it all.”

“Yeah.” I say, tilting my head back and looking at the ceiling of the skipper’s passenger cabin. “I just wish we knew what he was doing. When we encountered him stealing the Fountain of Souls last year, I didn’t really give it a ton of thought; just thought he was some Maskling extremist. Never thought I’d see him again after that. But he showed up to grab the artifact; he knew it was there, and he was willing to fight both CURSE and the Valiant to get it, and he made it pretty clear he had plans for it.”

“We’re going to the Losinadae Nebula after this, right?” Renchiko asks from the opposite row of seats. “If we can figure out what he’s using it for, then maybe we can figure out how to use the one that Laughing Alice gave to us.”

“And he literally invited us to come and see.” Ridge adds.

“That’s not a good thing.” Jackrabbit says, leaning forward on her knees. “That’s a power statement, a bad guy move. It says ‘I know how to use this thing already, and I want to rub your faces in it. And maybe scare you a little, because I know how to use it, and you don’t’.”

“And whatever he’s doing with it, he wouldn’t be inviting us if he thought we could stop him.” I add. “It’s also likely that it’s a trap, with how openly he invited us and what he was offering.”

“So does that mean we’re not going to Losinadae?” Quincy asks.

“We are going to Losinadae. But it’s going to have to wait until after this mission.” Legaci clarifies from the hardframe she’s remotely piloting. It’s a sleek, minimal affair with a lean, narrow profile and exposed wires and hydraulics; the head is just a triangular block with an optics array and a receiver antennae jutting up out of the back of it. No effort has been made to make it pretty or give it any emotive capability; it’s a purely utilitarian frame, one intended for labor or combat, not socializing. “We’ve had this mission planned for a long time; we’re not going to push it back just because a Maskling extremist is trying to bait us into what’s probably a trap. Plus, this will give our intelligence department more time to do research on what’s going on in Losinadae before we head over there.”

“Is that really a good idea?” Renchiko asks. “What if he does whatever he was planning to do before we get there?”

“We might actually be delaying him.” Legaci says. “Like Songbird said, Makalu wouldn’t have invited us there if he thought we could stop him. Whatever he’s got planned is probably already locked, loaded, and ready to go. If he’s really got enough ego that he wants to show off, then he won’t go through with whatever he’s planning to do until he’s got an audience that he can show off to.”

“I don’t mind if we take our time getting around to him.” Ridge says, rubbing his neck, probably remembering the way Makalu snagged him by the throat and used him as a human shield. “That dude is crazy strong. We need to figure out a way to deal with him before we fight him again.”

The lights in the passenger cabin click over to red, ending the conversation before it can go any further. “Two minutes out from arrival.” Legaci says. “If you’ve got any final prep to do, do it now. Songbird, Kiwi, and myself will be on point; the rest of you follow our lead until our routes diverge. And remember to keep it quiet; this is a stealth mission.”

Everybody starts their final checks at that; I make sure I’ve got my earbuds and ninjato hilts close at hand, while Kiwi checks her runemarks, and the others likewise check their equipment. Ridge, Renchiko, and Quincy have all been issued plasma pistols now, to pair with their stunner pistols; Legaci’s got her weapons built into her utility frame, Jackrabbit’s got her mechanized boots and speed harness on, and Jetfire’s kitted out in his silver power armor. It isn’t long before we feel the skipper slowing down and beginning to tilt into its landing, seconds later, we can feel the gentle rocking as it touches down on the roof of the Institute.

The moment it does, we’re unbuckling our harnesses and getting up, moving down into the skipper’s cargo bay and towards the ramp, which has unsealed and is starting to lower. As we go, Legaci’s frame grabs a bag with the equipment needed to move the pod that her new frame has evidently been stored in. It’s cold when we step out onto the roof; between now and the last time we visited Kasvei, the seasons have changed, and it seems that Selbaredo is well into fall by this point.

“Earbuds in. You know your channels.” Legaci reminds us as we near one of the rooftop emergency exits. “You all know your partners. Stay together and do not let them out of your sightline. It’s easy to get lost in unfamiliar buildings. If there are any complications, make sure that you immediately report them.”

With that, she grabs the handle of the emergency exit and pushes it open. A little red light starts flashing in the stairwell within, but there’s no siren; it looks like Legaci is blocking the alarm signal, as promised. We start making our way down the stairwell, heading down two floors before coming out into the building proper. From here, you can see the central atrium that runs through the building, and allows you to stare all the way down to the main lobby on the bottom floor.

“We don’t have to worry about CURSE having a separate security system for their storage site on the subterranean levels, do we?” Kiwi asks as we make our way to the elevator.

“They do. But we have the codes for it.” Legaci answers. “The counterintelligence operations we’ve been running against CURSE have put us in a position where we’ve been able to compromise a number of their staff and personnel. We haven’t been able to crack the higher levels of their organization yet, but we’ve definitely gotten our fingers into the lower levels.”

“What exactly is this place?” Ridge asks as we pile into the elevator. “Looks pretty fancy…”

“It’s a research institute. One that’s benefitted from having a CURSE storage site in its basement.” Legaci says as the doors close and start to take us down. “They’ve been sitting on a treasure trove of confiscated Challenger tech for the last decade and a half. The arrangement was that they’d be allowed to study the stuff in the storage site if they shared all their findings with CURSE. CURSE doesn’t have enough people to study all of the Challenger tech that they raked in after the program fell, so they occasionally set up arrangements like this where they outsource the research to a local entity, who then shares the findings with them, and both sides reap the benefits of the research.”

“Thieves.” Renchiko mutters as the elevator descends through the floors of the Institute. “I’m guessing there’s no way to force CURSE to give back all of the Challenger tech that they stole after the program collapsed.”

“There is no legal recourse, no.” Legaci says tersely. “When the Colloquium courts ordered the program shuttered, they effectively dissolved it and gave control of all of the Challenger assets and property over to CURSE. The only reason they don’t have the Bastions is because the senior Challengers that remained loyal saw it coming and followed the program’s denial protocol. That’s why the Bastions were dark-spaced, and most planetside Challenger facilities transmitted as much of their data and research to the Bastions as they could before zero-wiping their hard drives to keep CURSE from benefitting from any of it. CURSE still managed to acquire a sizable amount of Challenger tech and property, but without the research or data needed to operate or understand it, it’s kept them from being able to use a lot of it.”

“So legally speaking, CURSE technically owns the Bastions?” Quincy asks.

“In the eyes of the Colloquium courts, yes.” Legaci answers. “But as far as I’m concerned, we have the command codes, and they don’t. The house belongs to the person that holds the keys, and that’s us, regardless of what the courts say, and whether CURSE likes it or not.”

The elevator starts to slow as we descend beneath the first floor, the lobby disappearing before our eyes. Two, three, four floors go by before we finally slow to a halt, and the doors don’t open until Legaci enters a code on the elevator’s control pad. Stepping out, we find ourselves in the center of a large intersection that joins four hallways together.

“Alright. Here we are.” Legaci says, taking in each hallway. “Songbird, Kiwi, you and I will be taking the hall directly ahead. Jackrabbit, Renchiko, you have the hall to the left. Ridge, Quincy, you have the hall directly behind us. Jetfire, you’ll be standing guard by the elevator in case anything goes wrong. Follow your routes; stick to your instructions; stay quiet, and work fast. Plan to reconvene here in fifteen minutes. If you are falling behind schedule, let us know.”

There’s murmured assents from everyone as we sort into our groups and head down our assigned halls. It isn’t long before the footsteps of others fade away, and we’re left with only the clicking of Legaci’s metal feet against the floor. The stillness around us is a little unsettling, and not helped by the magelight that Kiwi is using to illuminate our surroundings in a strong shade of green. It’s almost easier to deal with places like these when they’re occupied; late at night, when they’re empty and silent, it feels unnatural to be in a place that was designed to have people in it.

It isn’t long before we’ve reached the end of the hall, having passed several lab doors on the way here. It seems like the actual storage area is behind the hatch at the end of the hall, the door secured by thick internal bolts. Legaci’s quick to enter the code to the hatch, and I wince at the loud clunking as the bolts retract. It’s the loudest thing we’ve heard so far, loud enough to echo down the hall. Whoever designed this clearly did so with the intention of making sure that everyone within fifty feet would know when the door was being opened.

Once the hatch is unbolted, Legaci grabs the handle and pulls it wide open, Kiwi and myself following her in. After a short hall, the area opens up into what appears to be a warehouse, with rows upon rows of shelves housing crates and boxes of all shapes and sizes. Objects that aren’t small enough to fit in a crate or a box have simply been placed on the shelves as they are, with tags hanging off of them that presumably identify or classify them in whatever cataloguing system that the storage sites use. Legaci is quick to head over to the side of the room where all the larger items are, checking the signs bolted to each row of shelving units.

“Goddamn. How much stuff did the Challengers have?” Kiwi mutters as the shadows cast by her magelight slide across the floor.

“A lot. The organization was active for a century. CURSE has a few dozen of these sites across the galaxy, all dedicated to hoarding Challenger tech and property.” Legaci replies, pivoting and starting down one of the rows of shelving. “We’ve already hit some of them, and CURSE has ramped up their security in response. We’ll likely never be able to claw back all of the stuff they stole, just because of the sheer volume of what was taken, but we might be able to get back the most important stuff with limited raids like this.”

“I suppose asking them to just give it back is a little too optimistic…” I murmur.

“We’re living in the real world, Songbird. CURSE would ignore a request like that unless it was being delivered at gunpoint.” Legaci says, slowing down a bit as she examines the lower shelves, then picking up the pace towards something that resembles a stasis pod near the end of the row. “That’s why we don’t bother asking. We don’t need permission to take what is rightfully ours.”

“Is that it?” Kiwi asks, picking up the pace to keep up with Legaci.

“I think so.” Legaci say, handing off the bag to Kiwi. “Open that and get the hoverclamps warmed up while I check. Songbird, get over here and help me wipe the dust off this pod. This frame isn’t great for that.”

Kiwi takes the bag, zipping it open and pulling out the clamps while I head over to the pod and use the sleeve of my combat jacket to brush away the dust collected on the pod’s surface. A headlight on the chest of Legaci’s frame clicks on, shining down onto the glass, and dimly visible within is what appears to be a pale, seemingly organic body — one that resembles Legaci’s default holographic appearance. The contours of the face match, though the dark blue hair is longer than Legaci usually wears hers.

“Seems like it’s in good condition… vacuum seal looks intact… temperature looks like it’s within acceptable cryo ranges…” Legaci murmurs, the four-fingered hands of her frame roving over the surface of the pod while one of her optical arrays flashes a strobing light over the glass for a few seconds. “Gonna be hard to tell the actual condition without a dedicated lab and diagnostic equipment, but on the surface, it looks good. Dad designed this pod, so it should hold up better than the mass-market stuff.”

I step back from the pod, looking it over and sizing up the dimensions. “It’s a pretty chufty piece. You think it’ll be able to fit through the doorways for the rooftop access?”

“It’ll fit. If the doorways aren’t big enough, we’ll make them big enough.” Legaci says, holding a hand out to Kiwi. “Let’s see those clamps. There should also be a miniaturized fuel cell in there; pull it out as well. We’ll need to plug it in the moment we disconnect the pod from the wall socket.”

Kiwi starts handing over the clamps, and Legaci starts attaching them to the sides of the pod, each one thumping into place with a magnetic seal. I examine the power cable running to the pod in the meantime; it’s a thick, heavy-duty affair. If the cable’s diameter was any indication, keeping this pod online was eating up a lot of power.

“Alright, that should be all of them.” Legaci says as she affixes the last of the clamps to the pod. “Hand me the fuel cell. Once it’s plugged, we can turn on the clamps and we’ll be good to go.”

Kiwi passes the fuel cell over, and in a single smooth movement, Legaci disconnects the power cable at the foot of the pod, plugging the fuel cell into the socket immediately after. Red lights within the pod click on, but they turn green a few seconds later, slowly fading back into darkness again. Once it’s clear that the pod is stable, Legaci switches on the hoverclamps; a strip of white light glows along the side of each clamp as the pod gently hovers into the air, evening out around waist height.

“Alright, the hard part’s over.” Legaci says maneuvering the pod away from the shelf and back down the row. “Now we just need to get it back to the ro—”

She cuts off without warning, taking another couple of steps before stopping in the middle of the row. The pod keeps drifting forwards, but I have to stagger to a halt to keep myself from walking into her frame, and Kiwi runs into my back. “Is she okay? What’s going on?” she asks as I ease around Legaci’s frame.

“I’m not sure.” I say, catching up to the pod and easing it to a halt as I look back at Legaci. Her triangular head unit is tilted down, almost like she’s offline. “Legaci? Can you hear us?”

After a moment, the head unit comes back up, the optical array recalibrating. “This proxy has lost connection to the originator unit. Due to CPU constraints in this proxy, nonessential features will be disabled in order to continue running the echo instance of the L.E.G.A.C.I. program preloaded into this unit. Please reestablish connection with the originator unit to restore full functionality.” With that message delivered, the head pivots towards me. “Songbird. How long was I offline?”

It’s Legaci’s voice, but there’s something off about it - there’s no tone or inflection, the words delivered as flatly as a punctured tire. “Less than a minute — are you okay? What happened?” I ask, keeping a hand on the pod.

“My connection to the Prominence has been interrupted. Something is jamming the signal, along with all other comms arrays that I have installed. Please check your own comms arrays and confirm.” Legaci requests.

I reach up, tapping one of my earbuds. “Channel one, check check. Anyone on the line?” I wait for a long moment, hearing nothing but white noise, and repeat myself. “Channel one, check check. If anyone else can hear this, please respond.”

“It’s not coming through on my end.” Kiwi says. “Obviously I can hear you because you’re right there, but there’s nothing coming through on my earbud. I doublechecked the channel to be sure.”

Though I don’t have a heartbeat, I can feel the blood in my veins start to stir. “That’s not good. Something’s happened.” I say, looking back to Legaci. “Can you still push this pod, Legaci?”

“Social and emotional processing have been disabled to allocate all CPU resources to movement and stabilization calculation, visual identification, reasoning and abstraction, and complex logic processing.” Legaci replies, still in that flat voice. “I remember the mission objectives and parameters, can perform menial labor tasks, and participate in combat to a limited degree.”

“Awesome, great. Then you know that we need to get this pod back to the elevator and get it back to the roof.” I say, starting to move around the pod. Whatever’s piloting that frame now isn’t really Legaci; it’s just a shadow of her, operating on emergency measures since her connection to Legaci’s core up on the Prominence has been severed. “Kiwi, you and I will be at the front. Legaci, you push the pod and follow us. We’ll get you back to the elevator and send you up to the roof from there.”

“Understood.” Legaci says, moving to take hold of the pod once more, and begin pushing it forward. Kiwi moves around her and to the front with me, snapping her runemarks out around her wrists as I hook one of my ninjato hilts off my belt and ignite it.

“Could it be a comms failure?” Kiwi asks me as we head back the way we came.

“It’s possible, but I don’t think it’s likely.” I say as we leave the row and head back towards the hatch that led us in here. “If we’re getting jammed, it means someone knows we’re here. We need to gather the others and get out of here as quickly as possible.”

“How would they have figured that out, though?” Kiwi asks, forming one set of runes into featherblades orbiting around her wrist. “Legaci blocked the alarm signals from the building, and we arrived here on a cloaked skipper. Even if the Justice has arrived in orbit over Kasvei, they wouldn’t have had time to get people down here that quickly, and they wouldn’t know where our surface team is deployed.”

“I wish I knew, but we don’t have time to play detective right now.” I say, stepping back through the hatch when I reach it. “We get everybody and we get out before we get caught. We can investigate what went wrong later.”

Kiwi lets the topic rest; I can tell it’s still bothering her, but she’s aware that there are higher priorities right now. Making our way back down the hall, we soon arrive at the intersection, where Jetfire raises a hand to greet us. “Well well, that was fast! No wonder you two are top picks for every mission!”

“Have the others not come back yet?” I ask as Legaci starts moving the pod into the elevator.

“Not yet. Haven’t heard anything on the channels; everything’s quiet.” Jetfire says, rapping the side of his helm.

“That’s because the comms are down. We’re being jammed; someone knows we’re here.” Kiwi says, then looks at me. “Should we wait for the other two teams to get back here?”

I press my lips together, looking around. Legaci probably had a contingency for a situation like this, but with her connection to her core severed, she probably doesn’t have the capacity for complex problem-solving at the moment. “No. Waiting’s not an option. We need to retrieve them and get out of here. Jetfire, you go with Legaci and make sure that the pod gets loaded into the skipper. She’s lost her connection to her core on the Prominence because of the jamming, so she’s got reduced capabilities right now. Kiwi, you go after Jackrabbit and Renchiko. I’ll go after Ridge and Quincy. With the comms down, we won’t know if they’re in trouble, so we’ll need to check on them in person and escort them back.”

“Oh! Understood. You can count on me, Songbird.” Jetfire says, hopping into the elevator with Legaci and the pod. “Once we’ve got the pod in the skipper, I’ll come back down to make sure you all make it back up, if you haven’t gotten to the roof by that point.”

“Whatever you do, just make sure you’re careful doing it.” I say as the doors of the elevator close. As it starts rising, I turn to Kiwi. “Will you be okay if we split up?”

“I’m your girlfriend, not some helpless damsel you’ve gotta babysit, Feroce.” she says, cupping a hand around the back of my neck. “I can take care of myself. And the comms might be down, but we’re tangled.” She pulls my arm up, pushing back the sleeve to show that the runes around my wrist are active and glowing blue. “I’ll reach out to you if I need help, and you can do the same with me. Okay?”

“Okay.” I say, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you soon.”

With that, I move towards the hall that Ridge and Quincy were assigned to, while Kiwi splits down the hall that Jackrabbit and Renchiko had. My pace is brisk, not quite running, but definitely verging that boundary. Reaching the end of the hall, I find the hatch door open and step inside, using the pale, swirling colors of my starglass blade to light the way. About twenty feet in, it occurs to me to call out for them. “Ridge! Quincy! Where are you?”

“Over here!” Quincy’s shout comes from deeper into the warehouse, down one of the rows of shelves. I immediately move in that direction, keeping my ninjato raised to provide illumination, passing row after row until I spot a lump on the floor down one of the rows. Rushing into that row, I run over to it, kneeling down when I see that it’s Ridge crumpled on the floor. He’s limp when I grab him and roll him over, and doesn’t respond; hissing, I set my fingers to his neck, checking for a pulse, and I’m relieved when I feel it. Moving his arms and legs around, I check for any sign of injury, but I’m not seeing any blood, or any signs of struggle.

Then I hear the clang of the hatch door slamming shut, and the echoing thunk as the deadbolts slot back into place.

And it all comes into focus with that.

Ridge being unconscious without any injury — it probably means he was hit with a stunner pulse. The jamming that was killing our comms — that was Quincy’s ability, since he could emit different frequencies and wavelengths that could mess with electronics and communications equipment. And since he wasn’t here with Ridge, there was only one person that could’ve closed the hatch to this portion of the warehouse.

I press my lips together, trying to gather my thoughts. So Quincy was the turncoat, and if he had decided to break cover and make his move now, he had to be working with other people. He would just be a small piece in a larger plan — a plan that was probably already in motion, a trap that was likely closing around us even as I mentally worked my way through it.

Closing my eyes, I focus on my connection to Kiwi, pushing my feelings and thoughts across to her. It’s simple stuff — Quincy is a turncoat, Ridge is unconscious, this is a trap and we need to get out of here — but it’ll be more than enough for Kiwi to act on. Opening my eyes again, I reach down and grab the collar of Ridge’s jacket, turning and dragging him across the floor and back the way I came. Getting him back to the skipper was now my highest priority; being knocked out on a mission carried a high risk of injury or capture, and until he came back around, the safest place for him would be back on the skipper.

But when I get back to the hatch that leads into the warehouse, I realize that’s going to be a lot easier said than done, because the hatch only opens from one side.

At first I’m in disbelief. There’s no control pad, no manual lever, no door handle, nothing. If the door closes on you while you’re still in the warehouse, there is no way to get out unless someone opens it from the other side. I drop Ridge and search the area around the hatch, feeling along the wall just to make sure I’m not blind and overlooking it, but there’s nothing. We’re completely locked in.

The bafflement quickly wears off, mostly out of necessity. Quincy had planned this as well — trapping us in here for whoever he was working for. Probably CURSE, if I had to guess. Stepping back from the door, I take a breath and size up my options; the hinges were on the exterior of the room, so I couldn’t break those off, and the door was deadbolted into the frame of the hatch anyway. I couldn’t pick an electronic lock, and even if I could, I would need access to the control pad on the other side of the hatch. The only option that left me with was brute force, and it was going to require a lot of that, with a metal hatch deadbolted into a metal frame, inset into a concrete wall.

Any hope that this mission would be handled quietly just went out the window.

Puffing out a long breath, I pull out my other other earbud and tuck it into my ear, opening up my phone and scrolling through my music. I pick out a song — only to find that the sound is scratchy and fuzzy, like someone was running a magnet between my phone and my earbuds.

It takes me a second to realize that Quincy’s jamming isn’t just killing our comms; it’s messing with the wireless connection between my phone and my earbuds.

“Are you KIDDING me!” I shout, running a hand through my hair as I seethe. “Oh, it’s nothing impressive, he says! My ability doesn’t really do all that much compared to other abilities, he says! Bull-goddamn-shit, where’s my…” I start feeling around in my jacket, looking for the rest of my Crescendo equipment and coming up with a set of wired earbuds. “…making me dig out equipment I haven’t used in years. Who even uses wired earbuds nowadays. Nobody, that’s who. You’re lucky they threw this in with my order as a thank-you for buying the whole package… well, lucky for me, but unlucky for you when I get my hands on you, you lying little comms-jamming rat…”

After untangling my wired earbuds, I plug them into my phone and tuck them into my ears, rewarded with crystal-clear audio through the wired connection. Switching over to a song that better matches my aggravated mood, I slip my phone into my jacket and start pacing, letting the music take over and fill the world around me. Fingers drumming against my thumb and keeping the beat, soaking in the soundscape and picking out all the instruments I recognize, breathing in the lyrics and the emotion contained within the words — most vocalists weren’t poets, but you could still catch the vibe even if their prose fell short sometimes. It was something about all of this, about this experience, that always brought me alive. Filled me up with motion and energy and a sense of purpose. A feeling of remembering who I was, even with all the regrets that entailed; of remembering who I am, even with all the flaws that I still had; and who I could be, with all the hope that held.

And all of that translated into power. The power to change things, pent up and burning to get out.

Flexing my hands, I watch the little flickers of spectral light trace through my veins, forming ephemeral patterns beneath my skin. I didn’t indulge in the music near as often as I wanted to; if I let myself, I would spend almost all of my time listening to music, living in a state of continual meaning and purpose. It was like a drug, this feeling — never doubting who I was or what I could do.

It’s a dangerous thing.

Closing my hands, I glance down at Ridge, then at the hatch door before me. It’s time to get us out of here, and if it comes to it, to remind our ambushers why the rest of the galaxy was scared of Songbird for so long. Curling my right hand into a fist, I back up a couple of steps; a blue corona corporealizes around my hand, a condensation of all my unspent emotion and certainty. Winding up for a punch, I take a few skipping steps forward, slinging that fist right into the dead center of the hatch.

The blast rips across the wall as the hatch, and the metal frame it’s deadbolted into, are popped out of the wall like the cap being popped off a shaken bottle of fizzwater. Dust fills the new hole in the wall as the hatch goes sliding into the hall beyond, sending up little trails of sparks until it comes to a halt. Heading back over to Ridge, I grab him by the collar again and drag him back out into the hall, pulling out one of my earbuds as I do so. If there was any intention to keep this a stealth mission, that’s more or less been surrendered at this point; a detonation loud enough to blow a reinforced hatch out of a wall likely would’ve been heard through the other floors of the facility.

Keeping the pace brisk, I reach the elevator and pull Ridge in, unsure of where the others are at the moment. If the sounds from the floors above are any indication, there’s fighting going on — I can hear explosions, and raised voices, even though the latter are pretty faint. Reaching over to the control pad, I hit the button for the main floor, planning on making a stop there to take stock of the situation before proceeding to the roof with Ridge.

The doors close, and within twenty seconds they’re opening again on the first floor. Through the glass, I can already see that it’s CURSE, as I suspected; light power armor in white hues that stand out in the dim lighting of the central atrium. Peacekeepers are present as well, Whisper and Gossamer pinning down Jackrabbit, Ironfist wrestling it out with Jetfire while a pack of spirit wolves pile onto him; I’m sure they’re doing their best, but they’re heavily outnumbered by both Peacekeepers and regular operatives. And in the center of it all is Kiwi, being held aloft by…

The breath goes out of me.

Everything becomes distant; all the sound and the shouting retreats to somewhere far away. For seconds, I simply stand there, caught in the moment and barren of thoughts; I cannot process what I am seeing. It is too much to handle; I’m not ready for this.

But I don’t have the luxury of freezing like I did when I was younger.

Not here.

Not now.

Not with this.

I hadn’t planned for this, and I’m not ready for this, but it doesn’t matter. Glancing down at Ridge, I step out of the elevator, hitting the button for the top floor as I go. I won’t be able to see him to the roof; I’ll just have to hope that Legaci will be able to grab him and get him to the skipper when the elevator reaches the top floors.

As the doors close behind me and the elevator starts to rise, I pull my phone out of my jacket, moving through my playlists until I find the song I’m looking for. Once I find it and queue it up, I slip my phone back into my jacket, pinning it safely within a closed interior pocket, and start moving towards the archway that joins the surrounding hallway to the central atrium. If there’s one consolation I have, it’s that I prepared for this a long, long time ago. And though I never expected this day would actually arrive…

It’s here now.

Event Log: Kiwi

Selbaredo: Epperson Institute

1:27am SGT

With the warmth of his kiss still lingering on my cheek, I turn and start sprinting down the hall that Jackrabbit and Renchiko were assigned to.

It isn’t long before I reach the hatch at the end of this hall, pelting through it and into the warehouse — only to draw up short when I find myself swamped in darkness that I hadn’t expected. It’s thick, unnatural darkness, almost like a physical presence, or a fog — the light coming off my wristmarks isn’t enough to break through it, and I can’t even see the walls or floors. Backing up a few steps, I quickly pick through my runes, selecting the ones for light and wind and merging them together, then combining them with the runes that I typically use for displacement ripples. With that done, I charge a displacement ripple, and lifting my hand, I fire it into the darkness pervading the hall ahead of me.

It manifests as a forceful ring of light that blasts down the hall, carrying a rush of wind with it, breaking through the darkness and dispelling it as it goes. The ring collapses after about thirty feet, and I can see that my suspicions were right — the darkness looks like it’s a vaporous fog of some sort, because it slowly starts seeping back in once the ring has collapsed. Creating another magelight to hold with my other hand, I start marching into the warehouse, charging my modified displacement ripple and firing it every fifteen seconds or so to clear the darkness from my path. “Jackrabbit? Renchiko?” I shout, hoping they’re still conscious and they’ll be able to respond.

I think I hear someone shout in response, but it’s faint and muffled, as if the black fog was dampening sound as well as sight. Turning and moving in that direction, I keep blasting through the fog until I spot a break in the miasma, illuminated by a colder, more erratic light, and I quickly fire a ripple in that direction. The darkness clears away to reveal Jackrabbit with her buzz batons out, scraping them against each other to generate a continual arc of blue electricity, while Renchiko hunches near her with her plasma pistol leveled at the darkness swirling around them.

“Kiwi!” Renchiko shouts, moving towards me.

“Jack! Renchi!” I say, lifting my magelight a little higher and moving towards them. “Are you two okay?”

Jackrabbit’s quick to move over to join me in the halo of my magelight, keeping her batons up as she watches the thick black fog swirling around us. “We haven’t been injured, but the comms are down and something’s in here with us. Don’t know what it is because we haven’t been able to get a good look at it, but there’s definitely something in here.”

That makes me more unnerved than I was before. “Let’s get out of here. Something’s jamming comms for the entire team; it’s not just this room. Primary objective’s been secured, we can leave the secondary objectives. Songbird went to go check on Ridge and Quincy now while I came to check on you all.”

“You remember what direction to go to get out of here?” Jackrabbit asks, continuing to sweep the darkness around us with her eyes. “That’s the problem we were running up against; the darkness was too thick to figure out where we were or where we needed to go.”

“I know the direction I came from, yeah.” I say, charging a ripple and firing it back along the way I came. “Follow me. Once we get out of here, we’ll link up with the others and book it back to the skipper.”

With that, we start heading back the way I came, making slight adjustments whenever the displacement ripples reveal a wall, desk, or some other fixture I had passed on the way here. It isn’t long before the hatch comes back into view, and I usher Renchiko and Jackrabbit towards it. “Alright, there it is. Let’s head to the elevator and get back to—”

A sudden surge of thoughts and images spilling into mind cuts me off; I see Ridge lying on the ground, out cold, and hear Songbird’s voice in my head, though it’s more like a series of emotional impressions: Ridge is unconscious, it’s a trap, Quincy is a traitor. Shaking my head, I clear the images away, my vision coming back just in time to see the darkness closing around me, and Jackrabbit and Renchiko shouting at me from beyond the hatch. It looks like Jackrabbit is trying to climb back through the entrance, but the dark fog swirls shut over it, hardening into what seems like an actual, physical barrier.

I lift my arm and start to charge another displacement ripple, but right before I can fire it, a tendril of darkness snakes up from the floor, wrapping around my arm and shoving it upwards so that the ripple fires into the air instead, dissipating near the ceiling. Startled and frightened by something grabbing me, I try to yank my arm away from the tendril, and it easily collapses as I hear something billow through the fog behind me. I swing around, charging another ripple as I point in my arm in that direction—

To find Nazka standing there among the swirling darkness.

He’s already in the process of lifting a hand, but rather than moving to attack or cast a spell, he delicately places a finger to his lips in the universal exhortation for silence. Taken off guard by this, I watch as he raises his other hand to snag the cuff of his black uniform, slowly pulling the sleeve down, inch by inch…

Until a double circle of violet runes come into view, emblazoned around his wrist.

I’m dumbstruck. I recognize the runes, even at this distance; I can pick out some of them and know their meaning, because they’re some of the same runes I have tattooed around my own wrists. The fact that he’s got a double ring around his wrist means that he’s been doing this for a while, and has earned the trust and authorization that comes with having additional rune sets. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had pauldron rings beneath his uniform as well.

This also means that I almost got killed by another Maskling during the battles over the Cradle a year ago.

“What the HELL?!” I explode at him. “You almost KILLED ME on the Cradle, you dingus!”

“We do what we must to maintain deep cover. You know this, Mask Knight; do not pretend like it is a surprise that we would kill one of our own to protect the integrity of the post we have been assigned.” Nazka says, folding his arms behind his back once more. “Besides, I would have been doing you a favor by killing you there on the Cradle, with close access to thousands of Rasa Maskbearers that are far easier to fuse with than modern Maskbearers. But you know that already, because you did die on that Cradle, and gained a Rasa Maskbearer as a result.”

“Oh, you sleeper agents drive me crazy!” I seethe. “You think you can just get away with anything in the name of maintaining your cover!”

“Consider yourself lucky that you know at all.” Nazka says coldly. “I would not have revealed anything, had I not been given orders from further up. Where do you think the Valiant get all their insider information about CURSE? Who did you think Forecast’s source was? And moreover, you will not disclose what you know about me to anyone. It is rare that we get to have a Maskling in a second-in-command position over an organization as well-known as CURSE. If you value the progress that the Valiant have been making, and some of the missteps that CURSE has been making, you will remain silent, and allow me to continue steering them from the shadows. Is that understood, S-One?”

I bristle when he references my official unit designation. Not a lot of people are privy to it, which makes it clear that Nazka isn’t just another sleeper agent; his rank is way up there, equivalent to Forecast’s, or possibly even higher. And though his aloof attitude has me seething, I also can’t say that any of the points he’s made are wrong. As CURSE’s second-in-command, he’s in a powerful position — he could do a catastrophic amount of damage to the organization, or subtly steer it into mismanagement, or influence it to take positions or pursue actions the Maskling Republic finds favorable, or simply do nothing and continue siphoning intel from the highest levels of the organization. Doing anything to blow his cover would be a massive, self-inflicted wound, and the Council and the Republic’s intelligence agencies would be absolutely livid about it.

“Fine.” I spit. “My lips are zipped, not for your sake, but for the sake of our people. Now what’s so important that you had to break cover for this? You said you received orders?”

“A single order. The delivery of a message. Go to Losinadae, and take the Valiant with you. Witness what the Exile has wrought.” he says, starting to sink back into the darkness. “You should go now. CURSE forces are in the building and have engaged your compatriots. If any of you are to escape here alive, you will want to leave before the Administrator arrives.”

The shadows fully close around him with that, and the dark fog around me recedes, unblocking the hatch. The sudden absence of a physical barrier has Renchiko stumbling back into the room, with Jackrabbit behind her, both of them looking around. “Kiwi! Are you okay?” Renchiko asks, raising her pistol towards the retreating darkness. “What happened?”

“I scared it off.” I mutter, turning and heading back towards the hatch. “C’mon. We need to get out of here. Quincy’s a turncoat, and CURSE is in the building. This is yet another one of their traps, and I’m gettin’ real sick of it.”

“Wait, Quincy’s a traitor?” Renchiko demands as I walk past her and back through the hatch. “Is Ridge safe?”

“He’s unconscious but he should be safe. Songbird is with him.” I say, marching back down the hall towards the elevator. “We need to get you back up to the skipper, then Jackrabbit and I will double back and make sure everyone else gets to the evac. Is that good with you, Jack?”

“Works for me. Just make sure you’re keeping us looped in on what you know, kiddo.” Jackrabbit says, following me into the hall. “How do you know Quincy’s a turncoat?”

“Tangled with Songbird and that’s what he found in the other room when he went to go retrieve the two of them.” I say, holding up one of my arms to show the glowing wristmark. “He’s going to get Ridge back up to the skipper, and to safety. Just the same as we’ll be doing. I’d love to stay and fight, but I already know what Songbird’s going to say about that.”

“You ain’t the only one, girl. Miss the days when I could have a fair fight.” Jackrabbit laments, shaking her head. She still hasn’t put away her buzz batons. “CURSE really has this backstabbing thing all figured out, don’t they?”

“I know, right? They never square up out in the open; it’s always an ambush.”

“Hey, wasn’t Jetfire supposed to be standing guard by the elevator?” Renchiko asks as we come up on the intersection of halls.

“Songbird had him escort Legaci and the primary objective to the roof to make sure she got there safely.” I explain as I come around to the elevator’s doors and step in. “Hopefully he stays up there with her, but knowing him, he’ll probably try to come back down and help out.”

“I mean, he does seem like he’s a pretty good fighter.” Renchiko says as she steps into the elevator along with Jackrabbit. “He was putting in a lot of work during the fight on Svyash.”

“Yeah, I’ll give ‘im that.” I concede. “Dude talks a big game, but he’s got the skills to back it up. If he had just a bit more common sense to go with it, I wouldn’t mind him all that much.”

“I dunno. He’s a nice breath of air, if you ask me.” Jackrabbit says as the doors close, and the elevator starts to rise. “Cheerful fella. It’s nice to have that on the team.”

“Isn’t that what we have you for, Jack?” I ask as the elevator starts to rise through the floors.

“Ah, well, I can’t be happy all the time, love.”

“I dunno, you got me fooled. Wish I could be as cheery as you.”

“Just a matter of perspective, kiddo. You should ask Jetfire about it sometime! I’m sure he could give you some pointers about keeping things in perspective.”

“Guys, guys? He’s out there!” Renchiko says, interrupting out banter and pointing through the glass doors.

Jackrabbit and I both look to see that Renchiko’s pointing out to the central atrium as we pass the first floor. Sure enough, Jetfire is out there, monologuing to CURSE operatives that are fanning out across the atrium from the building’s main entrance. As we watch, he blasts into the air, then jets down on them with a shout of “JETFIIIIIRE JUSTIIIIIIIIICE!”

“Shit!” I hiss, fumbling at the control pad as I try to get the elevator to stop. “Is he out of his damn mind? He’s picking a fight with a dozen operatives, with another dozen coming through the doors! Why is he even out there?”

“Well, you gotta give him props for being bold.” Jackrabbit says, gripping her buzz batons as the elevator slows to a halt on the third floor.

“Renchiko, you get to the roof and get in the skipper. Tell the pilot that the rest of us might be coming in hot.” I say as the doors of the elevator open and I step out, getting a fresh set of rune circles around my wrists. “We’ll retrieve Jetfire, then find Songbird and Ridge after that. You ready, Jack?”

“Way ahead of you, kiddo.” Jackrabbit says as she bolts out of the elevator, running right for the window and smashing through it as she leaps out into the atrium. I pick up speed as I follow in her wake, my pauldron runes flaring to life over my shoulders; as I leap through the jagged hole in window, the rune circles over my shoulders fuse into glassy set of green wings, allowing me to gliding down to the atrium’s floor. I keep them with me as I land, using them as shields to block any of the plasma bolts that end up hurtling my way.

“Avaunt, ye scallywags!” Jetfire bellows, clotheslining an operative before kicking out the legs of another, and lunging forward towards another group of them. The fact that he’s unafraid to get right up on them seems to be making it hard for them to take any shots at him, since they might hit their coworkers as well. There’s some melt damage on his power armor, but overall it seems to be holding up fairly well. “Fools you must be, to attack me where I have the home field advantage! Didn’t you see they’re still selling my merch here?”

Jackrabbit is following in Jetfire’s wake, doing her best to knock out or incapacitate the operatives that Jetfire’s bowled over, clobbering them with her buzz batons or stomping on them with her mechanized boots. “Jetfire! Big guy! Listen to me, we’ve gotta retreat!” she shouts after him.

I pelt past the circular reception desk on the floor of the atrium, over which a holographic globe is slowly turning. “She’s right! We’re not here to pick a fight, we’re here to get the stuff and get out!” I say, forming a longhandled hammer out of my wrist runes. Swinging the glassy green construct over my head, I slam it down on the chest of an operative on the floor, crushing their chestplate and keeping them down for good. “Pull back, we need to find Songbird and get out of here!”

“Retreat? When the battle swings in our favor? I think not!” Jetfire says, throwing another operative over a set of lobby couches before grabbing another two operatives and slamming their helms together. “Where is the honor in fleeing from a weaker foe?”

I don’t have the chance to answer, because at that moment, something big comes barreling through the glass doors, shattering them as it hurtles towards Jetfire, picks him up, and travels a distance before slamming him on the ground. It’s the orc that Songbird and I fought in the Library — Ironfist, I think his name was. But this time, he’s kitted out in a full suit of dark red power armor, and coming in through the doors behind him are a whole bundle of other Peacekeepers.

“Jackrabbit!” I shout in warning, using one of my wings to block plasma bolts from one of the CURSE operatives, before lunging on them and nailing them in the side with my hammer, sending them flying.

“Yeah, I see it!” Jackrabbit calls, bounding backwards with a bounce from her mechanized boots. She lands within the circular reception desk, taking cover as a bolt of lightning streaks over her head, thrown by Surge as he vaults over one of the lobby couches. “Gonna need our S-game for this, Kiwi!”

“Look, I like a fight as much as much as the next guy, but being outnumbered five-to-one by operatives and Peacekeepers might be pushing it a little!” Twisting my hammer, I slam away what looks like a spirit wolf that’s lunging at me, only to have another one set on me from the other side. That one I bat away with one of my glass wings, before I kick at the one approaching me head-on. “I don’t like saying it, but we gotta retreat!”

“Think it’s a bit too late for that!” Jackrabbit says, grabbing a swivel chair and throwing it over the desk at Ironfist. The impact staggers him enough for Jetfire to throw him off, and for the two giants to start circling each other. “Tell your boy to get up here, we’re gonna need the help!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get on that as soon as—” I don’t finish the sentence, because I see something appearing out of thin air - a short, yellow-tinted blade, and my mind flashes back to the Library. I swing a glass wing in that direction on reflex, and it clips against something unseen, pushing it away. But swinging my wing open like that leaves me exposed, and I stagger as a plasma bolt slams into my side. The combat jacket blocks most of the damage, but I still feel some of the heat through the crysteel fiber weave. My temper spikes with that, and I cast some runes up to the head of my hammer, bringing it up and slamming it down on the ground. “Stop hiding and face me like a warrior, you COWARD!”

The impact shatters the tile in a radial pattern, releasing a blast wave that shunts everything around me back. Flaring my wings, I jump into the air and gain enough altitude to drift back down to the reception desk, landing on it and cupping my wings around myself as I take stock of the situation. Ironfist and Jetfire are still duking it out macho style, two big guys calling their attacks as they clobber each other senseless. There’s still about a dozen operatives up and running, some of them grabbing the other dozen that have been beaten down and dragging them back to safety. Gossamer is making her way across the lobby, pulling out a plasma blade as she goes; Surge is gearing up to throw another bolt of lightning in our direction; at the back, near the doors, is a Peacekeeper that looks like she’s controlling the spirit wolves that are starting to circle the reception desk. Walking past her is Tenji, the CURSE Administrator — I recognize her from all the press conferences and news reports, with her glasses and scarlet hair bound back in a ponytail. Unlike her Peacekeepers, she’s not dressed for combat, showing up in white suit and slacks, with a red button-down beneath it.

“Look, Jack, no offense, but unless you’ve got something big in the tank, we are screwed with a capital S.” I say as CURSE’s forces continue to close in on us. Jetfire’s in a world of his own, duking it out with Ironfist, leaving just the two of us to deal with all… this. A bolt from Surge slams into one of the wings I’ve got cupped around myself, and though it doesn’t penetrate, cracks go fissuring through the green glass.

Jackrabbit stretches her legs out from where she’s sitting on the floor behind the desk, drumming her buzz batons on the floor like she’s part of the band. “Don’t worry, kiddo. They think they’ve got the advantage, and that’s right where we want them.” She peeks up over the edge of the desk, before retreating back down. “They got cocky and brought their top dog with them; that was a mistake. I’ll make you a deal — I’ll handle the rest of them, and you see about capturing the Administrator. It should give us some chufty leverage and buy enough time for us to find Songbird and retreat back to the skipper.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You can handle all that?” I say, folding my wings a little tighter around myself as another couple of plasma bolts slam into them.

Jackrabbit closes her eyes, and when she opens them again, her pupils are glowing a lightning-yellow. “Oh yeah.” she grins before standing up and tilting backwards, flipping over the desk and bouncing into the air in a wide arc that brings her boot-first towards Gossamer. “Gossamer! Long time, no see!”

“Ach! Goddammit, you crazy bunny bitch, I’m not a trampoline!”

With Jackrabbit drawing the attention of the Peacekeepers, I plant a hand against the desk, launching myself off of it with a pulse of force from my rune circle. As I rocket into the air and start to peak out, I snap my wings open, angling in an arc that’ll take me towards the main entrance. The girl controlling the spirit wolves notices and starts to back up, but I cut my flight short before I can reach her, folding my wings in and diving to the ground; I keep my momentum as I land, transitioning into a sprint that takes me right towards the Administrator.

“Tenji!” someone shouts, and the Administrator turns around, leaning back just in time for the head of my hammer to whiff past her nose. I don’t let that stop me, keeping the swing going as I bring it around for a diagonal smash; Tenji tilts out of the way of that as well, walking backwards the whole time. She isn’t panicking like I’d expected her to; her retreat is controlled and deliberate, ducking out of the way of my swings and squirming away from my attempts to grab her.

“Administrator!” Surge shouts, as we pass by him; he starts to wind up a fistful of electricity, but Jackrabbit instantly turns and wings one of her batons at him, nailing him in the helm hard enough to crack his visor. Though the electricity doesn’t bother him, the impact is enough to throw him flat on his back, with Jackrabbit reaching up to catch the baton as it bounces back, before pivoting and throwing it at something just past me. It hits something invisible, electrical arcs dancing over it as it crumples to the ground, and without missing a beat, Jackrabbit swings her other baton up and back, blocking an overhead slash that Gossamer’s delivering from behind. Jerking a leg up, Jackrabbit kicks backwards, the pistons in her mechanized boot hissing as the footwear jackhammers into Gossamer on impact, throwing her clear back into one of the lobby fountains.

“Hot damn!” I exclaim over my shoulder. “That Spark is really something else! I need to get me one of those!”

“Sorry sweetie, these are limited edition.” Jackrabbit laughs, tapping a finger under one eye. “You’ll need to go find your own. Now grab that bigwig, I’ll keep the rest of them off!”

“Yeah, I’m tryin’.” I say, taking another swing at the Administrator, this time looking to sweep her legs. She jumps the swing, backing up a little, and perhaps not realizing how close she’s getting to backing up against the reception desk. I take the opportunity to lunge forward, bringing one wing around to stab into the circular desk behind her, and by the time she realizes what’s happening, I’ve already jammed other wing into the desk on the other side, blocking her escape. It seems like she’s about to scramble over the desk, but I dive in and grab the front of her shirt before she can, slamming her onto the desk’s surface. “Call your dogs off.” I growl down at her.

“That’s not going to happen. We’re putting an end to this tonight.” Tenji says, grabbing the wrist of the hand I’m using to pin her down. While she’s not calm, persay, she’s definitely steady — she isn’t shaken by the position she’s in, and this isn’t scaring her. If anything, there seems to be a muted anger behind her crimson irises, something that looks like it’s been repressed for a long time and is starting to bubble to the surface. “There isn’t going to be a resurgence; the Challengers aren’t going to be making a comeback, not in the form of the Valiant or anything else. That story is over. You and all the others need to let it go.”

“That isn’t your choice to make.” I snarl at her. “That was never your choice to make. We are here, and we are not going away. You can learn to live with us, or we can keep doing this until you accept that the Valiant are here to stay.”

Tenji lets go of my wrist to instead reach up and grab the lapel of my combat jacket, pulling me down towards her. Her gritted teeth show that the suppressed anger is starting to boil over, and something feels off about this — there’s a steel in her eyes and a strength in her grip that can’t be acquired from behind a desk, or while lounging around in a C-suite office. “I will never accept the Valiant. I will never accept any organization that tries to valorize Songbird, or put him up on a pedestal. I am giving you one chance to surrender and end this peacefully. Because if you don’t, I am going to put an end this and you won’t like how it looks.”

“Tenji, don’t!” I hear Gossamer shout from where she’s trying to get around Jackrabbit to reach us. It’s doing no good, because Jackrabbit in her Spark state is easily able to handle multiple Peacekeepers, and is keeping all of them away from where I’ve got Tenji pinned to the desk.

“We will never surrender.” I growl. “Not after what you all have put Songbird through; not after what you’ve done to all of us. You’ve tried to destroy the Valiant for a year and a half now and you failed. That isn’t gonna change tonight. Not now, not ever.”

“Fine.” she breathes, showing her teeth, and I recognize how sharp her canines are — she’s a vampire, like Songbird. “You didn’t want to do this peacefully, so we’re gonna do it violently instead.” Letting go of my jacket, she raises her hand past my head, reaching up towards the roof. “Calldown: Nova.”

Nothing happens for a few seconds, and I look around, wondering if I’m missing something. It takes a moment to realize there’s a faint pink glow in the air around us, and it’s growing stronger by the moment, coalescing into broad column and quickly narrowing into an intense beam centered on Tenji’s chest. I let go of her shirt, yanking my hand back when I feel the beam burning into my skin; staggering back a couple of steps, I look up to see the beam goes all the way up through the atrium, clear through the glass dome at the top, all the way into the night sky above.

And somewhere up there, one of those stars is getting brighter as it seems to get closer and closer.

I realize what’s happening too late, and all I can do is fold my glass wings around myself as a cosmic pulse of energy rips through the glass ceiling at the speed of light, slamming into Tenji and detonating like a mortar. The explosion throws me flat on my back and sends me sliding back several yards; my ears are ringing, the peony light in the center of the atrium is blinding. All I can do is curl up and keep my wings wrapped around myself while chunks of the dome cascade into the atrium; a broken rain of glittering, bouncing glass.

As the cacophony finally starts to settle and the blinding glow starts to recede, I pull my arm away from my face, staring up at the form hovering in the center of the atrium. The starlight seems almost liquid as she steps out of the column, adhering to her body in layers and solidifying into the familiar designs of a Starstruck uniform: sleek and formfitting fabric with elegant, flowing patterns; trimmed and accentuated with shards of hardened starlight, leaving behind an afterglow as she moves. Light pulses through the winding grooves in her uniform, following the curves of her body; some parts of her outfit look like they’re armored, but the design makes it look like it’s almost entirely decorative. Gossamer wings angle away from her back, narrow and transparent, reminiscent of a wasp or a dragonfly; and the tails of her skirt are gauzy and drift behind her like the fins of a fish.

Yet there’s a certain harshness to it all — most of her uniform is a pale, peony pink, fading into white, but it's contrasted by portions of black that have crept into elements of the design, almost like it’s been corrupted. There’s a singed, burnt hue to the wings on her back, and the same goes for the tails of her skirt, each one bleeding black wisps into the air behind her.

The entire atrium’s gone still, watching in disbelief as she drifts through the air a few feet off the ground; an otherworldly force and presence. Reaching up, she takes her glasses by the corner and pulls them off, throwing them aside with a careless flick. “Gods.” she sighs, flexing one of her hands into a fist and watching as pulses of light run all the way through the glove sheathing her arm to the elbow. “It’s been so long since I’ve had the chance to do this. I forgot how good it felt.”

Reaching up with her other hand, she runs her gloved fingers through her hair, all the way to the back of her head, where she grabs the hairtie for her ponytail and pulls it out. Throwing it away like she threw away her glasses, she tosses her head, shaking her hair free as it bleeds out the red in favor of a sakura pink. If there was any doubt before, it’s gone, thrown away with all the trappings she’s used to mask herself up to this point. No more suit and ties, no more glasses, no more disguises.

It’s Nova.

“You’ve been… you’ve been leading CURSE this entire time?” I curl my hands into fists when I realize my voice is coming out as a stammer, but everything I know has been flipped on my head. This changes everything — but it also explains so much, and at the same time, raises even more questions.

Nova turns her gaze from her hands, her crimson eyes coming to rest on me, and disdain that had been veiled before is now on full display. “No, I’ve been sitting on my ass and twiddling my thumbs. What do you think I’ve been doing, Maskling?”

“You’re supposed to be dead, Nova!” Jackrabbit shouts, having found her voice.

“Oh, Jackrabbit. Sorry to disappoint.” Nova says, curling a hand into a fist as a pink glow starts to coalesce around it. “But I’m very much alive.”

With that, she punches that hand in Jackrabbit’s direction, a pulse of energy rocketing away from her fist. Jackrabbit starts to jump into the air, but the pulse explodes when it strikes the ground, sending her cartwheeling into the air much higher than she intended to go. And while she’s airborne, Nova punches another pulse at her, nailing her dead on and blasting her into the side of the atrium hard enough to shatter one of the windows there. As Jackrabbit falls to the ground amid a shower of glass, Nova pivots towards Jetfire, who starts to say “Can I get your autogra—” before another starlight pulse slams him flat against the floor hard enough to crack the tile.

I scramble into action when I realize I’m next up on Nova’s shitlist, and sure enough, she’s rotating towards me as I get back to my feet. Instead of blasting me like she did with the others, she drifts down to the ground as I get my hammer in both hands, gearing up a wide, haymaker swing meant to hit her right as she’s touching down.

But she reaches up and catches it just beneath the head, stopping it dead with a strength that doesn’t match her stature.

If she wanted to be dramatic about it, she could’ve just held it there for a few seconds and let that soak in. She instead yanks the hammer in, swinging her other hand down to smash through the handle, shattering the hardlight construct in a spray of glittering light. She doesn’t pause there either, whipping that arm back around to catch me full across the face with the back of her hand.

I go staggering to the side, physically reeling from the blow, and mentally reeling from the fact that I just got bitch-slapped by a magical girl.

I do manage to steady myself, but Nova isn’t letting up, walking after me; I get my fists up and rocket one of them towards her face, but she blocks it with one arm, the other one whipping a lightning-fast hook into my jaw that that has me seeing stars as I stagger again. I just barely manage to get my arms up to block her followup jabs, backing up as I try to find an opening; but when I think I’ve spotted one and go for it, she tanks the punch to the face so she can get in close and nail me in the stomach with an uppercut. That leaves me gasping for breath, and she nails me with another hook to the face that sends me stumbling with a split lip.

I swing one of my glass wings at her, hitting her hard enough to shove her back a few yards while I catch my breath and get my bearings. I’m starting to see my mistake now; she might be a magical girl, but she fights like a Challenger, like she was in the same recruiting class that Songbird was in. But where Songbird tends to be surgical and precise, Nova’s just brutal and relentless. The uniform might look elegant and prim, but there’s nothing dainty about the way she fights — she’s happy to get right up on you and throw hands until you fold.

Realizing I’ve picked a bad fight, I change tactics as she walks towards me, twisting and sweeping the edge of one of my glass wings at her. She draws up short and rears back, the bladed feathers missing her by inches as her own gossamer wings thrum to life, lifting her back into the air again. The pressure doesn’t let up, though; being forced out of melee range simply has her defaulting to slinging starlight pulses at me, a relentless barrage that just keeps coming. It’s easy to block them with my wings, but each one lands like a hammer blow, sending cracks fissuring across the green glass. Nova isn’t pulling any tricks or trying to get clever with it — she’s just going to wear me down with brute force, because she can, and she knows it’ll work.

Using my rune circles to form an orbit of featherblades around my wrists, I throw them up in the air above my wings, using my eyes to guide them through the air towards her. Seeing them coming, she tilts out of the way, the barrage of starlight pulses easing off as more of the glassy feathers zip after her, often missing by inches and burying themselves in furniture or the floor. She stays low to the ground, flying in a curving arc around me; I start leading the feathers, angling them ahead of her to try and hit her, and a few of them almost find their mark even as she weaves around, dodging them while slinging the occasional pulse of starlight at me. Once I’ve thrown all my feathers, I form a fresh set of rune circles and detonate all of the featherblades; glassy shrapnel fills the atrium, flying everywhere and scoring at least a few hits on Nova.

That does take her off guard; I don’t think she was expecting me to draw blood, and she staggers into landing, since it looks like some of the shrapnel ripped through her wings. She’s not any slower for it, though; her outline acquires a brilliant glow, and she charges right at me like a torpedo, fueled by what I can only assume is one of her magical abilities. I quickly pivot to face her, keeping my wings folded in front of myself, but she slams right into them without hesitation. With the strain they’ve been under until this point, they shatter under the impact, with Nova barreling right through and getting a hand around my throat so she can lift me into the air as she skids to a halt.

“Hck!” I choke as she holds me up. She must be getting this strength from her powers, because there’s no way she’s got enough muscle to lift me with just one hand. I grab her wrist and try to break her grip, but she doesn’t budge an inch, so my next go-to is to try and kick her, which she blocks with her free hand as her grip on my throat tightens.

“The next sound that comes out of your mouth better be a surrender.” she warns me softly, then relaxes her grip slightly.

I bare my teeth at her, my mind scrambling for the most hurtful, spiteful thing I can say while I have the chance. “You lied and made him take the fall for you. It’s no wonder he is the way he is now, after what you did to him. Who needs enemies when they’ve got shitty friends like you?”

The way her eyes widen, the way her lips part slightly, the way she pulls back slightly as her resolve cracks and slips, I can tell I’ve hit a nerve. It only lasts for a split second, quickly overtaken by fury as she turns and slams me down against an intact portion of the reception desk, though if the crunch is anything to go by, it’s no longer intact after I’ve been slammed into it.

“You don’t know anything about him. He’s the one that betrayed me. Once when we were kids, and again when I was trying to expose the crimes of the Challenger program.” she seethes, leaning her weight down on my neck even as I’m choking for air. “He’s a coward. Always has been. Where is he right now, huh? Right when you need him the most? Not here. He did the same thing to me when we were kids.” With that, she lifts me back into the air, loosening her grip enough for me to breathe. “Go on, I’ll let you scream his name, the same way I did thirty years ago. Shout for help that isn’t going to come.”

I’m still too busy gasping air back into my lungs to heed the challenge, but I don’t think I would’ve gotten the chance to anyway. As Nova holds me in the air, everything seems to go silent, like all the sound was being sucked out the atrium, leaving us in a muted void. It makes it all the more jarring because the voice that follows hits like a truck, a physical impact that you feel as a thump in your chest as it passes through you. It doesn’t seem to fade with distance, either; I can see everyone else in the atrium stagger as the words pass through them.

“She doesn’t have to shout.”

I know the voice, but I still turn my head to look, as much as I can with Nova’s hand around my throat. Stepping out into the atrium is Songbird, with a cold look in his eyes that I’ve never seen before. His starglass blades are put away, but way he slowly walks out onto the atrium floor more than makes up for it — he steps out onto the battlefield like he belongs here, and he owns the entire space. His presence alone is a weapon that seems to have brought everything in the atrium to a dead halt — or maybe that’s just the tension you can feel from Nova and Songbird staring at each other.

Nova’s grip on me loosens altogether, letting me drop from her hand to the floor, where I finish catching my breath as she turns to face Songbird. Scrambling out of the way, I look around to see that everyone in the atrium has stopped what they’re doing to watch the pair of them. Fights have stopped; shots are no longer being fired and punches are no longer being thrown. Everyone is watching, waiting to see what happens next.

“Jackrabbit. Get Kiwi and Jetfire out of here.” Songbird orders as he comes to a stop, some thirty feet from Nova. He doesn’t take his eyes off of her as he gives the orders.

“Gossamer. Ironfist. Have everyone fall back to the staging area outside.” Nova orders, likewise without taking her eyes off Songbird.

“What? No!” I protest, starting to get back to my feet, but something blurs past me, and suddenly I find myself on the side of the atrium that Songbird entered from, sparks flying from metal boots as Jackrabbit skids to a halt with her arms around me.

“Stay. If I catch you going back out there, I’m gonna drag you back.” she says, before bolting in Jetfire’s direction.

“Cherri, don’t do this. This is not a good idea.” Gossamer says, lowering her plasma sword and starting towards Nova. “The entire roster is here; this is why we brought everyone, for this exact scenario.”

“It was an order, not a request, Gossamer.” Nova says, pointing towards the main entrance. “And you know why I’m giving it. Everyone to the staging area, now.”

Gossamer presses her lips together, but starts backpedaling, turning to the remaining CURSE forces as she makes round-up motion with one arm. “All units, fall back to the staging area! Remain on alert, we are not done here!”

There’s another screeching of metal against tile as Jackrabbit brakes to a halt beside me again, seeming to appear out of nowhere; I realize, from the way her outline is blurring, that her acceleration harness must be active. She’s got Jetfire with her this time, who’s stumbling dizzily. “Wow girl! Holy potatoes, you’re strong and you can move fast. You’ll have to teach me that trick sometime.”

Ignoring Jetfire’s commentary, I start marching back out into the atrium. “I’m not just gonna stand by while—”

“Kiwi, no.” Jackrabbit says, grabbing me by the arm and hauling me back with some of that wereckanan strength that Jetfire was talking about. “He told us to get out of here. We need to do that while we have the chance.”

I try to pull free from her grip. “And leave him behind? You’re out of your damn mind, Jackrabbit—”

“Kiwi!” Jackrabbit snaps, grabbing me by arms and turning me to face her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this serious. “You need to let him do this. He just found out that the person that ruined the last sixteen years of his life is alive. She has created all of the misery he’s had to deal with during that time. You need to let him have this; he may not have another chance to have this confrontation. And we both know that if he doesn’t get this out of system here and now, it’s going to haunt him for the rest of his life. He needs to do this, and you need to let him do this.”

I know she’s right. She’s right about all of it, and I hate it. If I was in his position, I’d want a chance to hash this out with the person that had made my life so miserable for so long, and I would probably be a lot less reserved about it. “What if he loses?” I ask, glancing toward him. He’s still facing off Nova on the floor of the atrium; neither of them have moved yet.

“Then he loses, and we pick him up afterwards. And if he wins, we still pick him up afterwards.” Jackrabbit says. “We’re not leaving this planet without him. He told me to get you two out of here; I’m going to do that. But he never told us to go back to the Prominence. We get back up to the skipper, make sure we’re ready for evac, and we monitor the situation. And whenever it’s over, we pick him up, win or lose, and head back to the ship. Okay?”

I bite my lip, shaking my head. “Fine.” I concede, looking towards Songbird’s back. I don’t bother with words, instead pushing my thoughts over our tangled connection: Come back to me in one piece.

I can tell he’s heard me by the way he turns his head enough to glance over his shoulder, and after a moment, gives a slight nod. With that acknowledgement secured, I turn and make my way towards the waiting elevator, Jackrabbit letting go of me when she sees I’m no longer trying to get back out to the atrium. Jetfire hops into the elevator with us, still moving spry but a little sore from whatever injuries he’s picked up during the fighting, and as the elevator starts to rise, the last of the CURSE forces finish filtering out of the atrium, leaving just Nova and Songbird on the floor of the lobby.

Personally, I’m hoping he carries out the order that Kaiser gave him sixteen years ago.

Event Log: Feroce Acceso

Selbaredo: Epperson Institute

1:44am SGT

Neither of us move.

The last of the CURSE operatives have filtered out through the main entrance, and the hum from the elevator is fading as it rises through the floors. It’s just the two of us here in this big, empty atrium, staring each other down for the first time in sixteen years.

“Good to see you’re there for her.” Nova says, breaking the silence. “Would’ve been nice if you could’ve done the same for me.”

My hands curl shut, and I feel my fury start to warm my chest, bitter and hot.

“I was always there for you.” I say softly, starting to circle around her. “You just never saw it, because I was never good enough for you.”

She mirrors my movement, her boots grinding over the glass on the tile as we start circling each other. “I never asked you to follow me around. To look up to me the way you did. And you didn’t have to do everything you did to try and prove yourself to me.”

“Would’ve been nice if you could’ve told me that, but you liked the attention too much.”

“If you’re looking for an apology, you’re not gonna get one.”

“No. We’re way past that.”

She stops in place, flexing her hands into fists. “Walk away, Feroce. You know what’ll happen if you try to fight me.”

I stop as well, slowly hooking my ninjato hilts off my belt. Instead of answering, I ignite the blades, watching the spectral hues dance across the starglass, seeing my reflection behind the swirling colors. “No. I’ve carried this burden for a decade and a half, and I’m not going to walk away just because you told me to. You have no idea how much it hurts to think you are the reason for the death of someone you loved. And you made me live with that for sixteen years.”

Her fists tighten at that. “I never asked you to love me.” Aloof, and cold.

“No, you didn’t. And you never would’ve reciprocated it anyway. I can see that now; I only wish I’d been intelligent enough to understand it earlier.” I agree, checking the weight and balance of my swords. “But you always kept me dancing there, on the edge of hope, letting me think I had a chance if I was just a little stronger, a little more powerful, a little more special. I wish I could get those years back. All the wasted words, all the lost opportunities, all the missed chances that I threw away trying to be good enough. All the years I spent feeling like I wasn’t good enough.” I tighten my right hand around the hilt, watching my knuckles turn white as the heat of that anger spreads from my chest to my arms, and out across the rest of my body. “Say something, Cherri. Say something that will convince me you’ve changed. That you’re not the person that you were, that you’ve been all along. Something that will convince me that I don’t have to do this.”

“I don’t owe you anything.” she replies, her voice hard. I can see the anger in her crimson eyes; anger that I would have the audacity to make that kind of request. “I don’t change for anyone. Especially not you, after all you’ve done.”

“That’s a shame, because I changed for you.” I say softly, reaching up to tuck an earbud in. “And I regretted it, so maybe you’re onto something. Maybe you’re smarter than I was. Or maybe this is just who you’ve always been, and I was a fool for thinking you’d be anything other than what you are.”

“I’ve already told you, Feroce. You know what’s going to happen if you fight me.” Nova says, starting to raise her fists. “Walk away.”

“You think you’ll win. That you’ll put me in my place, like you did when we were teenagers, and when we were Challengers. And if we were the same people that we were sixteen years ago, you would be right.” I say as I finish tucking the other earbud in. “You seem like you’re the same person. You’ve even told me you don’t change for anyone. But I have changed. And I’m not the person I used to be.”

“We can agree on that.” she says as the air around her fists starts to glow, limned in black light, a sort of inverse illumination. “And it doesn’t seem like you’ve changed for the better.”

“It only feels that way to you because I’m not blindly loyal to you anymore.” I say, tapping my phone through my jacket. The song I had queued up starts to play, starting off soft — a single repeated piano chord that will slowly grow into something more. “And because this time, you know I’m not going to let you win just so you can feel good about yourself.”

That puts her over the edge, and she lunges for me, punching a starlight pulse out ahead of her. I twist to the side, dodging the shimmering blast, and then I have to get my blades up to block her punches, because she’s opening up full throttle. That’s how Nova did things, and that looks like it’s still how she does things. Nothing held back, high aggression right from the get-go. Usually it’s enough to overwhelm her target, and if they don’t fold right away, then she just keeps hammering away at them until they wear down.

But I know that. I planned for that. I just need to be patient, and let the music take me where it needs to go.

It’s still soft, just that quiet repetition of piano chords, hitting in the lower octaves, down in the bass clef. There’s something grounding about it; a bitter reflectiveness, a rueful inevitability anchored into those chords. And while it doesn’t provide much in the way of power,  it does give me just enough to ramp up my speed and keep up with Nova as she presses her relentless attack. Every punch she throws at me is blocked or dodged, with starlight sparks flying off my swords on each deflection; none of her hits make it through, and I don’t try to push back with any attacks of my own. I will, eventually, but not right now.

“If you think I’ll take it easy on you just because you’re not fighting back—” she growls, trying to grab one of my blades in frustration.

I see it coming, and in a single smooth motion, flip that blade around reversehand as I take a half-step forward, leaving her grabbing at thin air at the same time that I slash her across the cheek with it.

She staggers a couple of steps, mouth open and eyes wide, clearly shocked that she’d been juked so neatly. Her entire offensive grinds to a halt as she lifts a hand to her cheek, gingerly touching the cut on her face and staring as her fingers come away stained with blood. I know, from being a vampire myself, that it’s an irrelevant wound — she’ll heal the damage in couple of minutes if she’s willing to burn the blood for a fast regeneration. No, this is more about the message it sends: that I can hurt her, and I will hurt her. This isn’t going to be one of the playfights she got used to winning.

I don’t know if the message is received. Based on the fury in her eyes when she looks at me, all I might’ve done is piss her off. I know her well enough to know the escalation is coming, and as I hear a slow set of strings join those piano chords, I start to externalize some of the musical energy accumulating within me, wrapping a protective layer of magic around myself.

It’s the right move, because a moment later I find myself on a diagonal track through multiple floors of the Institute. I've been punted hard enough to go from the atrium to the exterior of the building in about two seconds, with a trail of debris painting my arc through the night sky over Selbaredo.

And it doesn’t end there. As I tumble through the air, I can see the CURSE forces stationed in front of the Institute, and also Nova blazing through the holes that marked my forcible eviction from the building. I manage to twist around in the air to face her, wrapping another cocoon of energy around myself as she catches up and brings both her fists down on me, send me rocketing down into the street below.

The asphalt craters around me as I slam into the ground, and while my barrier eats most of the impact, it still hurts. But I force myself back to my feet, using the tip of one of my swords to draw a wide circle in the air above me and fill it with another barrier, reinforcing it as much as I can before Nova slams into it like a meteor. I lock my feet against the ground, a pulse of magical energy running down my legs and reinforcing the slab of asphalt I’m standing on; but Nova’s strike still carries enough power to shatter the barrier and blast me backwards down the street, ripping a trench through the asphalt. When I finally I slow to a stop, I step off the slab I had anchored myself to, staring down the street to see that Nova’s bracing herself in the crater like a track runner at the start line, preparing to launch herself at me.

Most people would be at a loss for how to handle this unrelenting aggression. But I hear the drums kick in, a steady, marching beat to match the piano’s rueful reflection and the slow lamentation of the strings; the moment comes together, and it all feels right. As much as I didn’t want to do this, this is where I’m supposed to be; this fight needed to happen, even if the music has already told me how it’ll end. Because just as with any other song, it’s not about the end — it’s about everything else that comes before it. The message, the story.

And it’s something that Nova needs to hear.

There’s a flash of light as Nova bolts at me, an angry pink rocket ripping down the street. I’d known it was coming, putting away one of my blades and stepping forward, except I’m stepping through the air, crossing fifty feet in a single warping stride. It puts me in front of Nova much faster than she was expecting, leaving no time to react as I slam a fist down on her head in time to the drumbeat. A bass ripple echoes through the street as Nova’s skull slams into the street hard enough to crack the asphalt, and knowing that’s not enough to keep her down, I take my remaining sword in both hands, driving it down towards her spine. She manages to get her hands under her and roll out of the way at the last moment, the starglass blade lancing into the ground about a foot and illuminating the fissures racing away from it.

Pulling my sword out of the ground, I get back to my feet at the same time that Nova springs to hers, blood running down her face from where she’d gotten slammed into the ground. She’s pissed, reaching out towards cars parked on the street, lifting them into the air and clenching her hands into fists; there’s a shrieking of metal as the vehicles are immediately crushed by gravity into spheres no larger than apples. All that metal being compressed into an impossibly small volume has them glowing white-hot as the atoms fight to get away from each other in their new configuration; Nova pulls both spheres to herself, then starts crushing other vehicles on the street in the same manner, more glowing spheres zipping over to form a floating ring behind her back.

I know she’s stocking up ammunition to use against me, but I don’t try to stop her; instead, I start pacing in time to the song thrumming through me, softly singing the words I know so well. Words that I wrote as I tried to work through grief and anger; words that ride on music that laces my voice, no longer contained within my earbuds. It fills the street and spills between buildings, carrying a weight with it that has Nova staggering back a few steps before she braces herself against it.

“They said it was for love

Or maybe God above

Some morals to defend

Or just standing up for friends

There had to be a reason,

There had to be a crime

That made you all betray us

And step across the line.”

I twist out of the way of the first compressed matter sphere she sends at me, and even though it misses, the intense heat it radiates sets a strip of my jacket afire as it races past. I don’t bother trying to put it out as I hear the sphere detonate some distance behind me, rattling the windows on either side of the street. Glancing over my shoulder, I can see a deep crater in the building behind me, glowing slag splattered across a sidewalk; a sidewalk that’s strewn with shattered glass from where all the windows blew out when the sphere decompressed. It’s a level of destruction that was pretty common during Nova’s Challenger days; a familiar sight that only confirms what I’d already suspected.

But I don’t have time to linger on it, because she’s already whipping another one at me; I swing my blade up to deflect it, only to quickly realize that four thousand pounds of metal compressed into a sphere the size of an orange is not going to stop for anything. My starglass blade shatters as the sphere plows right through it and blows another hole in the building behind me; rainbow shards go flying everywhere, some of them slicing across my face before they can fizzle out into starlight.

Turning off the remainder of that blade, I hook the hilt on my belt as I pull the other one off and reignite it. As Nova starts to pull another heated sphere from the glowing orbit behind her back, I sprint towards her; she starts to sling it towards me, but I’m already mapping out the spots where I want to be through this part of the song. When that repeated cadence of drumbeats hits — quarter note, quarter note, then four descending eighth notes in quick succession — I blink in and out of existence on the same cadence. Twenty feet to the left, then forty feet to the right, with the next four beats blinking me closer to Nova in a zig-zag pattern, ending with me right up on her and swinging my blade down for her shoulder.

The consternation on her face shows she clearly wasn’t ready for that, and she only just barely manages to grab one of the spheres from behind her to shape it into a long rod and block my ninjato. Despite the searing heat coming off of it, the starglass doesn’t crack or warp, though the temperature does send blooms of rich ruby and tangerine hues swirling through the glassy blade from the point of contact. Gripping the hilt with both hands, I apply more pressure, forcing Nova down to one knee as she struggles with the weight of her four-foot, four-thousand pound rod; the asphalt cracks under her knee as she grits her teeth.

And even with the strain both of us are under, I still lean down towards her, grinding out the next verse of this relentless, inevitable elegy.

“But no matter what they think

And no matter what they say

You and I still know the truth

Of what happened on that day.

Not for morals, not for love

Not for friends or God above

Scared of death, you made your choice

Your lust for power gained a voice.”

“SHUT UP!” Nova snaps at me, a surge of pink light racing through the grooves in her uniform as she shoves me back and staggers to her feet. “I didn’t come all this way just to have you lecture me with a song! Stop screwing around and fight, you idiot!”

She swings that glowing rod at me, and I know better than try and block it, lest it shatter my blade again. I jerk backwards again, and though it misses me, it still comes close enough to clip through the wires of my earbuds, instantly melting clean through them. The music comes to crackling halt with that, and its sudden absence leaves me dizzy and staggering like I’m drunk; all the power I’d been riding on instantly evaporates, leaving me empty and cold.

Nova instantly notices and capitalizes on it; I lurch away as she throws herself at me, swinging that glowing rod wildly. I just barely manage to avoid one swing, and then another; I almost dodge the third one, but the edge of the rod manages to clip me, and with as dense as it is, that’s still enough to throw me across the street. As I roll to a halt on the pavement, holding the cauterized abrasion on my ribs, Nova pounces on me, pinning me down before I can get back up. She slams the hand that’s holding the ninjato against the ground, forcing me to let go of it, then grabs my head and slams it flat against the asphalt, hard enough for me to see stars. I fumble to grab her and shove her off, but without my music, I can’t compete with the strength she gets when she’s transformed into a Dark Star.

“I told you that you knew what would happen if you fought me.” she hisses. “You can’t win, Feroce; you gave up your star shard, while I kept mine. You are never going to be as powerful as I am, and I will prove that to you every. Single. Time.”

I grab the arm she’s using to pin my head down and try to shift it, but she’s too damn strong, and just pushes down even harder. The fury, the vicious obsession in Nova’s voice is indelible; her need to be the best, to be the strongest, to be the most powerful, has only grown over the last sixteen years. Pinned down like this, trapped beneath her and unable to move, my doubts are starting to creep in, and crack my resolve.

Maybe she is right.

Maybe I haven’t changed as much as I thought I did, and this is going to end the same way it always has.

You did not come this far just to let her take control of you again.

The voice cuts through all the doubts in my mind, sharp and clear as it fills me with crystal silence. I go still as I recognize it as Valcalia’s voice, reinforced with the quiet strength and determination that is one of her defining characteristics.

You are a sonic sorcerer. You don’t just listen to music; you create it. Get up and show her what you are.

“Are we done here?” Nova demands when she realizes I’ve stopped struggling.

Though I can’t move my head, I flick my eyes towards her. She’s glaring down at me, daring me to fight back. Silently challenging me to get back up. She wants the satisfaction of knowing she’s still the strongest, and can force me to do what she wants me to do, without giving anything in return.

Those days are over, and I’m never going back to them.

I yank my hands free, bringing them together in a clap that releases a baritone shockwave. It passes through Nova without harming her, ripping across the block, ghosting through buildings and solid objects, tearing across the city and expanding up into the sky, forming a colossal dome with most of the city inside its borders. And within that dome, I can sense every single microphone, every single speaker, every single sound system, whether it’s a loudspeaker or an intercom or a car radio or a phone or a headset. Public or private, I’m jacked into every audio system in the city.

And I tune every single one to the broadcast in my heart, picking up where I left off when Nova severed my earbuds.

The entire city erupts into synchronized sound, that song blasting out of every speaker, big or small. Those drums are now thunder, inevitable and marching through the streets; this city is my stadium, the instrument of my rueful anger. Nova jerks upright, the dread symphony startling her as it presses in from every direction, and I take the opportunity to plant my hands on her midsection and channel a blast of sonic energy that sends her flying.

As she lands a little further down the road, I get up, closing my eyes and taking a moment to simply stand there in the middle of the street and soak in the music. This is different than listening to it in a closed audio system, as I often do; this is like opening myself up to let everyone hear what’s going on inside me. And though it could leave me vulnerable, there’s also something empowering about it. I’m no longer hiding; everyone can see and hear the truth. I don’t have to run from this anymore.

Letting out a long exhale, I open my eyes to see Nova getting back to her feet. I feel charged in a way that I haven’t for a long time; the energy isn’t just running through my veins now — it’s filling the air all around me, carried on the music that fills the city. This city is my stadium; this street is my set; and this fight is the performance I never thought I’d get the chance to put on. Turning towards Nova, I hold my arms out to either side, my voice no longer soft or subdued.

“So time and time again

We’ve seen the story go this way

You’re never gonna change

And I’ve accepted that today.

I’m gonna break the promise

You ain’t holdin’ up your end

When your hands are soaked with blood

It’s hard to hold onto your friends.”

“I TOLD YOU TO SHUT THE HELL UP!” she shouts, rocketing towards me again. My response is to flick my fingers up, a slice of the road shooting up out of the ground right in front of Nova like a slice of bread popping out of a toaster. You can hear the thud, and cracking of stone, as she slams into it, unable to stop herself in time; seconds later, her fist slams through it and she rips it half, stepping through with a thoroughly aggravated expression. She’s quick to sling another glowing orb at me; I lazily lean out of the way almost like I’m dancing, throwing a tether of blue light to latch onto it as it whips by. Grabbing that tether with both hands, I haul back on it, digging my heels into the ground as I swing it around in a wide circle, cutting street lamps and decorative trees in half as it comes back around. Nova’s in the middle of winding up to throw another orb when the tethered one slams into her side and explodes, blasting her clear across the street in a spray of molten slag. She goes flying through the window of a neighboring shop, hurtling through a couple of display stands and shelving units and destroying them in the process. But with the music pounding through the city, you can barely hear it.

Pulling my dead earbuds from my ears, I throw them to the ground as I start to circle around to the center of the street, trying to get a better angle on the storefront that Nova was thrown into. I tense up when I see a gleam of pink light deep in the darkness, and I kick backwards on reflex, imagining stained-glass wings flaring from my back and lifting me up into the air. With this much music in the air, those wings unfold into existence at a mere thought, reality bending and reshaping to accommodate my wish.

And it’s a good thing — almost as soon as my boots have left the ground, a peony beam of starlight, at least eight feet wide, rips through the darkened storefront, missing me by inches. As I flap my wings to get out of the way, it starts to follow me, erratic and slicing across the buildings on the other side of the street. Realizing the amount of damage it’s doing as it grinds through stone and melts metal, I pump my wings, gaining altitude and trying to lead it up and away from buildings. It works, to a degree; the beam follows me with increasing speed, reducing the amount of time spent razing across the buildings of the city, though it does eventually outpace me, clipping one of my wings and shattering it. As I start fall through the air, I twist around to reorient myself, a sweeping motion of my arms bringing in a rush of air that’s shunted downwards, braking my fall and allowing me to land on the ground without shattering my legs.

As I straighten up, Nova stalks out of the shop I’d knocked her into, pink fire seething around her fists as she homes in on me. I thought she’d be out of juice after dropping a beam like that, but I’m also not surprised — she was a powerhouse all through our teens and twenties, and that doesn’t seem like it’s changed over the last decade and a half. It looks like she’s winding up to pitch another beam at me, but protracted creaking, followed by a loud, snapping pang gets our attention. Both of us look to see that one of the skyscrapers that got beamed is starting to fold, tipping over onto the street that we’re in.

Nova instantly takes off, leaving behind a trail of pink glitter as she jets away from the ground on a diagonal track that’ll take her out of the path of the falling building. While I’m tempted to do the same, I stay where I am — not all of the the buildings on this street look commercial. Some of them have residential exteriors, meaning that even this late at night, there are going to be people in them.

So instead of running, I reach up, framing my hands against the night sky like they were catching and holding the falling skyscraper.

Even immersed in the full flow of the music, the strain is immediate; the building stops falling, but an immense pressure nearly forces me to my knees. I’m holding up god knows how many hundreds of tons of architecture; I might be able to reshape reality to my whim, but it comes at a cost, one that’s trickling from my nose as I grit my teeth. It doesn’t help that the top half of the skyscraper wasn’t built for this; I can see windows starting to break and shatter as office objects like desks, cabinets, computers, and chairs start sliding through the tilted building, slamming onto the tops of buildings and the street around me amid showers of broken glass. The middle of the broken skyscraper is also starting to sag; it wasn’t designed to hold up against pressure from this angle, and it’ll soon fold into itself and collapse onto the buildings below.

Drawing a ragged breath, I quickly look around and spot an empty plaza, with a roundabout, at the end of street I’m on. Closing my eyes, I imagine myself standing in the fountain at the center of the roundabout, with the falling half of the skyscraper still held above me as it starts to crumble and collapse into the plaza. For a moment, all I can hear is more office equipment raining down onto the street around me — but then I feel something seeping into my boots, cold and invasive, and opening my eyes, I find myself standing in the fountain, with the falling half of the skyscraper still held above me. Snapping my arms together, I shunt a wave of force upwards through the building, cleaving through it and forcing it to collapse into the plaza on either side of me.

The cacophony and outrushing dust is all-consuming, even blocking out the music in the city for a moment. I hold my breath and keep my eyes closed, knowing the abundance of toxins that might be present in the dust; the moment I catch a hint of the music again, I throw my arms outwards, releasing a wave of force that blasts away the dust and debris around me. Opening my eyes, one of the first things I see is a pink star perched on a building on the edge of the plaza, staring down at me. Filling the plaza on either side of me is an assemblage of twisted girders, beams, broken drywall, and shattered concrete, still wreathed in dust and settling under its own weight. But at the very least, it hasn’t brought any other buildings down with it.

Wiping away the streak of blood beneath my nose, I find the pulse of the song once more, rumbling through the city like thunder. Wading through the water toward’s the fountain’s edge, I face Nova as she glares down at me; I thought she’d get right on me after seeing that I’d survived, but she isn’t making any move to leave her perch. Even so, that isn’t going to stop me; the song is still going, and this isn’t over until it ends. Stepping up on the fountain’s rim, I segue easily into the final verse, my declaring voice carrying across the plaza and the city at large.

“Now I’m rising from the ashes

I’m staring down the sun

I’m walking through the ruins

Of what we would become.

I’m picking up the pieces

Of our dreams and fallen friends

And one day we’ll meet again

Yeah, we both know how that ends.”

Nova’s scowl is visible even from here, but I can see a certain grudging acceptance in her glare, as if she’s finally realized I will no longer bend to her will. “Fine.” she says, her voice echoing across the plaza. “You wanna find out how this ends, I’ll show you.”

With that, she stands on her perch, pointing an arm down at me, and folding her fingers into the shape of a gun. I recognize it right away — this used to be her finisher move when we were teenagers, and it remained one of her staple moves even after she became a Challenger.

No point in expecting a leopard to change its spots, I suppose.

I raise an outstretched hand to mimic hers; thumb up, forefinger and middle finger forming the barrel. Dueling fingerguns; it almost makes me feel like we’re kids again. But the stakes here are higher than they ever were as kids; the resentment and fury are real. This is about more than proving who is better or stronger.

It’s about proving who is right.

A pink glow gathers at the tips of Nova’s fingers, while a few blue sparks flicker at the ends of mine; but she gets her shot off first, and I see it at the same time that I feel it — a razor line of peony starlight that’s blown a hole clear through my chest. I wince as the line of starlight cores through my heart, leaving only a void behind, and my shot — a jagged, erratic bolt of blue lightning — misses Nova by half an inch as she twists out of the way at the last moment. But I don’t stop there, because I’m not merely a copycat. I learn; I mimic; I change; I adapt; I evolve.

That first shot is just the tracer.

I am the second shot, another bolt of lightning that follows the path of the first one, ripping past Nova as she’s still twisting out of the way of the first shot.

And when I arrive my terminating point some fifty feet above and behind Nova, I’m already spinning around as I point my hand down at her, fingers still formed into a gun. Sparks are dancing on the tips of my fingers as her eyes follow the line of the second bolt, and she begins to turn towards me; and all of this happens in three quarters of a second, fractions of a moment that feel like they last for minutes. She’s barely realized what’s happening when the third shot hammers into her chest like an orbital railgun. 

And in that last quarter of a second, she’s gone from the edge of the roof to a crater in the fountain where I was standing a single second ago.

I’ve started dropping through the air, and only remember at the last second to brake my fall, a surge of wind shunted downward to ease my landing on the roof. After getting my balance back, I walk to the edge of the roof, still riding the long, fading coda of this song I wrote so long ago. Pausing there, I stare down into the crater where Nova is sprawled, her glow slowly fading. After taking a few seconds to soak that in, I step off the roof and and drop down to the plaza, braking again with a rush of air that allows me a delicate, gentle touchdown.

I take my time in walking across the plaza to the fountain, the song across the city slowly fading in volume and intensity as it winds down to the end. The dome that had encompassed the city is quickly regressing, retreating block by block until it’s collapsed back into my chest again; I’m aware of the stealth skipper circling around the plaza to come in for a hot landing in an area that hasn’t been covered by rubble. But I’m standing on the fountain’s edge by the time it’s landed, watching as Nova’s Dark Star uniform slowly burns away, leaving her in the suit and jacket she must’ve been wearing before she made her calldown.

Boots echo over the ground behind me before I feel someone grab my arm, and I already know it’s Kiwi. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Renchiko pull up at the edge of the fountain with a charged plasma rifle in her arms; the same goes for Ridge, but with a pistol. Kiwi’s got her rune circles active and orbiting her wrists as she steps up beside me; when Nova starts to shift within the crater, coming back from her blackout, Kiwi starts to raise her rune circles towards her.

But I reach up and rest a hand on Kiwi’s arm, gently pushing it back down. “No. We’re not doing that.” I say softly. “This fight is over.”

Kiwi snaps her head at me, her wildfire eyes raging. “What? Are you kidding me? She is literally the reason for everything that all of us have suffered through for the last year and a half, and then even further back than that! It’s been her all along, pulling the strings and telling the lies to try and bury what she did sixteen years ago, and all the Challengers that died because of her! All the Challengers that died because she pushed CURSE to chase them down and stamp them out! We should end this now, while we have the chance—”

“That is not who I am.” I say firmly, keeping her arm pointed to the ground, then glancing to the other side, where Ridge and Renchiko have their guns still leveled. “That is not who we are.”

Renchiko glances at me, her lips pressed tight; I know she’s thinking of her parents right now, but after a moment she huffs, sliding her finger off the trigger and lowering the rifle. I can see Ridge struggling in the same way, especially after Quincy’s betrayal, but the memory of the last couple times he disobeyed orders is still weighing heavy on him. He turns around, raising his pistol like he wants to throw it on the ground, and lets out a scream of frustration instead.

“If you let her live—” Kiwi begins, trying to bring her arm back up.

“We are not going to repeat the mistakes the Challengers made.” I say, quietly and firmly, before looking to Nova. Half-submerged in the fountain’s water, she’s pushed herself up on her elbows, watching us with some combination of wariness, resentment, and suppressed fury. “We are not going to come down to CURSE’s level. We are not going to be like them, or the Challengers. We can do better, and we will do better, starting today.” Taking my hand off Kiwi’s arm, I turn around, seeing Jackrabbit and Jetfire standing behind all of us as I step off the fountain’s rim. “Besides, I’d rather leave her alive so she can explain to the galaxy why she lied about being dead all these years. Battles like this don’t fly under the radar, and we’re in the middle of a city. Every traffic camera, every late-night reporter, every night owl with a phone probably saw and recorded every second. The rest of the galaxy is going to have a lot of questions for CURSE tomorrow morning.”

I start to walk towards the waiting skipper, trusting that the others will follow. By this point, the music has fully faded away, so when I stumble a little, I mark it up to that. But Jackrabbit moves towards me, putting a hand on my shoulder as if to brace me. “Hey, chirper — are you gonna be okay?” she asks, her eyes flicking down.

I follow her gaze, and see that there’s still a hole in my chest from where Nova sniped me right through the heart.

“Oh yeah.” I say faintly, my voice closing to a mumble. “She did get me pretty good, didn't she.”

My knees buckle after that, and Jackrabbit catches me as I collapse to the ground. I can hear the others scrambling to get over to me, their fixation on Nova dissipating as I start to black out. As darkness creeps over the edges of my vision, I feel Jetfire get his arms under me and lift me up with ease, rushing me towards the skipper, and the others following close behind.

It all starts to blur together, and though I wish I could hold on, I can feel my grip on consciousness slipping. I’m not even sure why I’m trying to hang on — I did my part. I proved Nova wrong. I showed her that she couldn’t just push me around anymore. I figure I deserve some peace and quiet after all that.

So I let go, and let the darkness close around me.