A Most Unlikely Hero, Vol 5, page 18
Yumi didn’t like this man, but she accepted his reasoning. Extracting whatever machine or parasyte was implanted into Commander Karen was a top priority.
“Now, then, I’ll just carry her to the medical wing and—”
“No,” Yumi interrupted. “I’ll be carrying her. The last thing I want is for you to cop a feel while she’s unconscious.”
Gideon clicked his tongue. “Damn it. This might be my only chance to squeeze those amazing melons, but this flat-chested bitch is ruining it.”
“What was that?!”
“N-nothing!—ouch! Don’t hit me! Ouch! Stop it! OUCH!!!”
4
Kazekiri had passed out from the insane aerial maneuvers Darrick was performing.
To keep the girl from being tossed about in her seat as Darrick went through a series of intense stunts that made even her question his sanity, Nyx had transmuted the seat to wrap around the girl like a cocoon. Meanwhile, she kept a firm grip on her seatbelt and made liberal use of her alchemy to keep herself in her seat. This had never proven more useful than when Darrick flew the shuttle upside down.
“Damn it, boy! All the blood is rushing to my head! Turn us right side up!”
“I-I can’t! If I did that—”
Two blaring horns caused the plasteel windows to rattle. A pair of massive passenger barges were headed straight for them. Nyx’s stomach dropped as Darrick, barrel rolling the shuttle, wove through the towers jutting from each barge. Then they were out the other side.
“—we would have crashed into those barges,” Darrick finished.
“Fine,” Caridna growled. “At least warn me when you’re going to do that next time.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“The police aren’t chasing us anymore,” Nyx said, looking out the back window.
Indeed, the police shuttles had apparently decided that caution was the better part of valor. They were making a long sweep around the two barges, each of which looked like they were around 60 meters in circumference. Looking at them from behind, the barges reminded her of cacadian puffer fishes.
“Where to now?” Darrick asked.
“Head to the first Mars barrier exit point,” Caridna ordered.
“Right.”
Nyx settled down as the shuttle sped up. She was pushed back into her seat, but the inertial dampener had been turned up, so she could hardly feel it. Beside her, Kazekiri groaned as her eyes fluttered open.
“W-what happened? Where… am I?”
“You are in a shuttle that’s on its way to one of the six exit points in Mars City.” Caridna looked back and grinned at Kazekiri. “Welcome back to the land of the conscious, Sleeping Beauty.”
Kazekiri blushed bright red. Then her expression scrunched up, as if she was just now noticing something odd. She looked down.
“W-what is this stuff? Why am I wrapped in… this strange material?!”
“This isn’t a strange material. It’s from the seat,” Nyx explained calmly. “You were unconscious. I transmuted your seat to wrap around you, so you wouldn’t get injured.”
“Oh…” Kazekiri paused. “Thank you for that, then, but do you think you could undo whatever you did to me now?”
Nyx said nothing, but she did place a hand on the seat, transmuting it so that the seat unwrapped itself from around Kazekiri and went back to normal.
“Thank you.”
The police must have lost them completely. Nyx couldn’t see anyone chasing after them. Darrick pulled on the controls and the shuttle ascended. Higher and higher it went, taking them further from Mars City and closer to the barrier.
Kazekiri gripped Nyx’s arm.
“Are you afraid of heights?” Nyx asked.
“It’s not heights I’m afraid of,” Kazekiri mumbled, her hands trembling. “In fact, I normally love flying. However, our driver is a maniac whose reckless flying made me pass out. I like to think my nervousness is understandable.”
Nyx considered her words for a moment. “Do you want me to wrap the chair around you again?”
Kazekiri looked like she was seriously considering it. A second passed, and then she shook her head. “No, thank you.”
Nyx shrugged. She didn’t really care one way or the other.
They soon reached the exit point. A large frame of gleaming durasteel shaped like a rectangle surrounded a series of massive slabs situated on the dome that protected Mars City. Blinking lights further indicated what this place was.
Darrick set the ship into hover mode.
“What are we supposed to do now?” he asked.
Caridna smiled. “Now, we wait.”
5
Ēostre wore a bright smile as she waltzed through a hailstorm of projectiles. Lasers, plasma, electricity. Nothing could hit as she danced across the hallway, slicing and dicing everything in her path with a pair of precision lasers used for medical surgery. Her precise attacks and ability to avoid or negate all the attacks coming her way caused the officers she was fighting against to panic.
“W-who the hell is this woman?!”
“Monster! She’s a monster!”
“Now that is just too rude. :-(”
More shots were fired, but Ēostre tapped her foot against the ground. A circle with runes appeared beneath her feet, and then several slabs emerged from the floor, taking the projectiles meant to her. She moved between the slabs. More shots were fired. She created more slabs to act as cover.
Giggling to herself as the officers panicked even more, Ēostre created more circles on her gloves, and instead of using the floor as protective cover, she swatted the projectiles away like they were nothing.
“What is this?! How is she doing this?!”
“Magic! It’s like magic!”
Ēostre decided to end things here. She placed her hand on the wall, which lit up with several Asgardian runes. Seconds later, the wall came to life, hands exploding from it and smacking the police officers away. Screams echoed down the hall. Police officers went flying in every direction.
While she did not have Nyx’s unique ability to transmute her own body—She had a regular body composed of flesh and blood, unlike the assassin—her skills at transmuting the world around her were second to none. It helped that she had a very special way of using alchemy. It was actually her skills at alchemy that had earned her the title Asgardian Witch of Angelisia.
She walked up to a door. It was an automatic door, so it should have opened for her automatically. It did not. Someone must have locked it from the other side.
Ēostre frowned.
Her gloved fist glowed as runes appeared on it.
Then she punched the door, which exploded with concussive force. Like a rocket launched into space, the door, twisted and warped, was blown off its hinges and smashed into the wall on the opposite side of the room. Ēostre stepped inside.
“F-freeze!” One of the two guards squeaked, aiming his gun at her. “D-d-don’t move or I’ll shoot!”
Ēostre smiled. It was such a sweet, lovely, saccharine smile, the kind a lover might give to their significant other.
The officers pissed their pants.
“I will give you both five seconds to run. If you’re not out of this room in five seconds, I’ll hurt you. One. Two.”
She didn’t even get to three before both officers bolted, their frightened screams echoing down the hall. Ēostre listened for a moment, cocking her head to the side, and then walked up to the large console in the room.
The command console was a basic device—a simple series of dials and knobs. The knobs opened the entrances and exits to the dome, and the dials shut off key points in the lightwave barrier. There was a commlink attached to the console as well.
Ēostre went to the commlink. “Caridna, dear, can you hear me?”
6
“Caridna, dear, can you hear me?”
Nyx blinked when Ēostre’s voice sounded out from the commlink. The infamous witch had neglected to travel with them. She had assumed that the woman intended to not take part in the operation, but it seemed the woman had merely gone after a different target.
Caridna pushed a button on the commlink. “I can hear you. We’re at the first exit point.”
“Oh, goody! In that case, I’ll go ahead and open the gates for you. (^_^)”
The first exit slid open, its four durasteel panels sliding apart, revealing four more panels that slid apart in the opposite direction.
Darrick flew through the exit into a long tunnel. Darkness spaced by a few well-placed lights engulfed them. Blink. Blink. Nyx counted a .2 second period between the moments it was dark and the moments it was light. The tunnel was at least 100 meters long, for it took them nearly sixty seconds of speeding before they reached the end.
“Ēostre, we need gate two opened,” Caridna said.
“I’m already on it. Don’t be so impatient. :p”
“Hmph!”
The gates slid open like the gaping maw of a beast. Nyx and Kazekiri peered past the gate. Multi-colored lights would have blinded her had she not used alchemy to create a thin layer of film over her eyes. Kazekiri looked away. That was the light wave barrier. She remembered seeing it during her arrival on Mars.
As she stared, a small section of the lightwave barrier opened. Like a blossoming flower, it split apart, and Darrick piloted them through it. They had entered Mars’s atmosphere.
“Take us to the Mars Penitentiary, Boy,” Caridna said.
Darrick looked pitifully at the child-like woman. “Do you really have to call me ‘boy?’ I have a name, you know.”
“And I don’t care to know your name. Now get going.”
As the shuttle flew forward, Kazekiri and Nyx found themselves staring out the window. The flaxen-haired girl appeared to have finally calmed down. Caridna continued screwing with Darrick, who tried to drive while being forced to endure the young-looking woman’s teasing.
Nyx glanced out the window on her side. She saw nothing of the landscape, though, for her mind was further away, on a certain boy who’d given her a home.
Hang on, Alex. We’re coming.
7
Alex hadn’t spent the past several hours waiting for some miracle to happen. He wasn’t naive enough to assume that there were people coming to rescue him. If he’d learned anything from his time as a cadet, from his time protecting Gabrielle, it was that to make something happen, one had to reach out with their own hands and grasp it.
His D-glove had a lot of his more useful inventions. Most of them were smaller, like his multi-purpose tool, but there were a few larger items that he kept in storage—just in case.
The multi-purpose tool, a cylindrical object with a shifting tool head, was something that he used when doing on the spot repairs to broken equipment. He’d built it based on Gabrielle’s all-purpose tool. While not as “all-purpose” as Gabrielle’s invention, his featured a tool head that could change between several different tools—screwdrivers, hammers, hydrospanners, laser cutters. It had 20 different configurations.
He still couldn’t access his Aura of Creation. Alex had determined that it was due to the thing on his neck. It acted like a dam. Rather than negating his powers or stopping him from using them, it blocked his powers like a dam would block water.
That was actually what had hurt him back when he’d tried to use his Aura of Creation against MacArt. It hadn’t been a built-in defense, but his own powers backfiring on him. Now that he knew this, he could figure out how to break it.
If it was blocking his power, then the most likely case was that it was using a series of power converters or a miniaturized variation of the lightwave barrier. Power converters, if used as a rerouting device, could theoretically bounce Alex’s power back at him. A lightwave barrier would act more like a dam, which would cause his body to break down because his powers couldn’t get out.
“I don’t see why you won’t use my power.”
Because I don’t trust you.
“That’s quite a harsh thing to say to someone who has been with you for your entire life.”
I wouldn’t know anything about that. Why is the other voice not stopping you?
“Hehe, that device on your neck was made specifically for Angelisians. Your other half is currently unable to reach you.”
My other half…
Alex shook his head and ignored the voice as it tried to seduce him into using its powers. He had no reason to trust this voice, and he still remembered how he’d hurt Gabrielle while using that red power the last time. It had caused him to go out of control and attack anything that moved. He would never let that happen again.
Using the multi-purpose tool, Alex drilled a small hole in the device around his neck. He made sure not to accidentally break anything. There was no telling what that would do. Afterward, he changed the multi-purpose tool from a drill into a camera.
A long wire extended from the end. There was a lens attached to the wire. Flipping the multi-purpose tool around, he set the camera lens against the hole, and then pulled out more of the wire to extend its length. There was a small screen at the bottom of the handle, which he used to look at what the camera was seeing inside of the hole.
It’s definitely a type of power converter.
Power converters—at least, human ones—were tiny nodes that connected to a network of circuits which, when activated, would convert one type of energy into power. They were most often used in shuttle engines and computers.
One could invert a power converter’s purpose by reversing its function. This would cause all of the energy to be stored and then sent back to the source. Saboteurs used this method when trying to destroy someone else’s work.
Now that he knew what he was dealing with, it was time to get to work.
The first step was widening the hole, which he did with the drill configuration of his multi-purpose tool. He stopped once he judged the hole to be at least five centimeters wider.
Alex pressed several buttons. The multi-purpose tool changed again. It shifted, the drill peeling away as if it was made of thousands of flexible wires. Then the wires changed shape. Long, slightly curved, and with a nozzle at the end, one might have assumed that it was a blow torch.
He was careful to keep his hand steady as he lowered his decoder, a device that was often used to reprogram machines. This was a miniaturized version. Gabrielle had given him the idea for it. Speaking of, he was really going to have to thank her after this. It was the knowledge she had imparted on Angelisian engineering that allowed him to make this.
After finding a node, Alex carefully placed the nozzle over it. He took a deep breath. Then he activated the decoder.
There was a beep, followed by several slich-slich-slich noises like something was scuttling inside the tube-like body of his multi-purpose tool. The decoder was analyzing the program used to create the power converters. Once it did that, it would invert the converters, causing the whole thing to malfunction.
Or it would kill him.
No pressure.
It took several long, ominous, and nerve-wracking minutes before smoke emitted from the collar. Alex winced as he received an intense jolt. Fortunately, there was no ka-boom. The collar crackled several times, then a click echoed inside of his cell, and the collar clattered to the ground.
Alex was free.
“It is good to finally be capable of speaking again. Excellent job, Alexander. You are truly an exemplary mechanic.”
“Stop flattering the boy. He’s not exemplary at anything. He’s just an idiot.”
“You should not insult your host, daemon.”
“And you should learn to grow a pair.”
No arguing right now please.
“My apologies, Alexander. I did not mean to disturb you. I just wished to express my satisfaction at being free.”
“I hate you both. Damn it. I was this close to seducing that prude brat to my way of thinking.”
“It didn’t look that way to me.”
“That’s because you’re blind, you fucking—”
Alex didn’t let Voice Number One get any further than that. He closed off his mind, blocking out her voice. He hoped it would be indefinite, but he knew better than to have such high hopes. In fact, the voice would likely come back in a few seconds. That thought made him depressed.
He shook his head.
All right. It’s time to get out of here.
Alex called upon his Aura of Creation by thinking of the people he cherished, and his powers answered him. It was like a gentle creek flowing through his body. The energy washed away his exhaustion and engulfed his body in a silvery blue aura. Willing the aura to change, he channeled it into his left hand. The blue aura shifted, elongated, changed shape, and the end result was an ethereal blue sword.
“Don’t block me out like that, you stupid brat!”
Shut up!
“I agree with Alexander. Be quiet.”
“I hate you both!”
Metal squealed as Alex swung the blade at the durasteel bars containing him. Composed of pure energy, the blade tore through the bars with ease. As Alex stepped out of his cell and onto a walkway, he looked around.
The section of the prison he stood in was made up of multiple levels, possibly even hundreds of levels. Up or down, no matter where he looked, all Alex could see was more prison cells just like the one he’d been in. Walkways meandered around a large hole in the grating. A railing kept people from falling into the depths below.
Sirens blared, the sound deafening in the confined space.
Well, Alex thought to himself, that can’t be good.
8
Within a small room filled with blinking lights and several holographic monitors, a group of security guards watched as their newest prisoner tore through his jail cell with a glowing energy sword.
“This isn’t good,” one of them said.
“What should we do?” another asked.
“How should I know?”
The door suddenly slid open, revealing a large man with an even larger gut. He walked into the room. His stomach jiggled as he moved.
Like the others, he wore the standard police uniform, a blue unitard with shoulder pads and chest armor. Because of how rotund he was, the armor that he wore was specially designed to fit his frame. His boots clacked against the tiles as he walked up to the hovering holographic monitors.
