ESTIMATED STRIKE-ZONE: 2km from [coordinates] ETA: 4min 52secs

You are currently "20.2 meters" from [coordinates] The City of New Francisco thanks you for your collaboration.

Ajax's neuralink was doing overtime to tone down the terror currently trying to turn his adrenal glands into fountains. It poured biochemical stress suppressants and played small copyright-free AI-generated tunes in a vain attempt to soothe him. The electrical components of the processor sent precise jolts down his nervous system to stop the shaking, and keep his heart from a full-blown tachycardia.

His eyes were locked on the feeds from the drones outside.

The yard lay carpeted in dissolved monster bodies that still hissed and frothed. At the center stood the target: larger again, maybe five meters total, torso plated like overlapping obsidian blades. It looked like a reptilian knight welded out of the blackest glass. Its claws were hooked scythes, each big enough to shear through a mid-sized car. The monster's face had become a solid wedge, no eyes, only a slit down the center pulsing dim cobalt. Fresh ridges along the jaw made a toothed collar, serrations catching the sunlight each time it snapped at a flyer.

In a whirlwind of violence, it clamped a talon in one hand, braced a foot, and wrenched. The claw tore free with a crunch that made a knot in Ajax's stomach. The target shoved the severed limb into its maw and chewed. Growth rippled down its arms and up its spine, growing a bit larger, pulsing.

And even then, the winged monsters were becoming a threat faster than it could grow them. The monsters that before had not been any larger than a person were now several times that. Their serrated edges ripped through reinforced concrete and metal like tissue paper, chipping away at the target's armor from every angle and all at once. It didn't matter how many it killed and ripped and ate, it spent more time completely enveloped than free of the attack.

All around it, the flying monsters kept smashing against each other, merging, growing.

The sound of Copper clicking a fresh railgun barrel into place snapped Ajax out of the trance. "What are you doing!?" he asked with a slight shrill to his voice. "W-we're going to die, the manual says-"

"The manual says that in the event of getting caught up in a meguca confrontation, bury all assets with a tracker, and in the event of their retrieval by another team, our families will be compensated proportionately," Cucumber said, pulling out another drone from the pack, not bothering to plug the fiber optic now that the jamming had stopped. "And we say our life's worth a lot more than every piece of munition in this room."

He swallowed. "But the AI recorder…" The program installed at the start of the mission, tracking every move, every word, every bullet.

Copper reached out his large hand and patted Ajax on the shoulder. "If we live, we get premium. No more problems. If we die. No more problems."

"Not even Copper would be able to make 2 clicks in five minutes under heavy aerial assault. So think of it this way, Wires," Cucumber handed him an assault rifle. "Your fight or flight is kicking in, and fleeing isn't an option. So either go hide, or help put more iron into that thing."

The moment was punctuated by a 'THUD' outside and a building-shaking roar that made the ground tremble underneath Ajax's feet. He hesitated, swallowing a knot in his throat as he grabbed the firearm. "I'm… I'm not…" He had the software, and some parts of him were cybernetic, like his eyes, lungs, and trachea (a basic requirement for most denizens of the truly deeper levels of the second district). But he didn't have the kind of equipment that would've made even the best unenhanced marksman envious like the others clearly did.

Copper shrugged, shouldering the railgun in favor of the machine-gun he'd been carrying all this time, the barrel wide enough it might as well have been an auto-canon. "Not much aiming needed, it's a big wall."

Another roar, Ajax tightened his grip. "I-I'm ready," he lied.

ESTIMATED STRIKE-ZONE: 2km from [coordinates] ETA: 4min 51secs

You are currently "1,780.1 meters" from [coordinates] The City of New Francisco thanks you for your collaboration.

"Everyone push inside! We're closing the gates!" Vesper shouted through both her own voice, the intercomms, and through every available channel, amplified thanks to Quinn plugging her straight into the bunker's comm's system. "Don't shove, just move! Keep going inside, every corridor, every room, just move!"

The bunker was at capacity, it'd been at capacity for hours. Now they were opening the restricted areas just to get every last person they could, and even then, there would be no room. One look at the crowd and it was clear they would run out of literal space sooner than they would citizens.

Some grim part of her wondered how much worse it would be if the flying monsters hadn't shown up. Vesper did her best to ignore the stains the panicked crowd were trampling over.

"With this much people, the ventilation system-"

"Doesn't matter." She cut Quinn off. "As long as it can hold for a few minutes, we can hold through the blast."

A singular communication line opened up, and Isia's face plastered itself all over the feed. "WHERE'S AXEL!?"

Vesper flinched and hesitated. She suspected exactly where Axel had been, the sound of two monsters fighting one another was hard to miss even this far away. Not that she would've needed to when the district-wide notification had included images of a creature she'd never seen before ducking it out with a living flying horde. But she could not admit that, she knew exactly what their sniper would do, she had to-

"Fuck, he's not there?!" Isia said. "I'm-"

"I am ordering you to come back this instant!" Vesper blurted. "We don't know where Axel is. If you go looking for him blindly, you'll get caught up in the blast too! Do you think he'd want you to kill yourself like that?"

Isia's face stilled, brows furrowed, face twisted with uncertainty. "I-"

"He survived a meguca assassin." The gang leader cut her off. "Do you think he can't survive a green nuke?"

The sniper faltered before her shoulders dropped. "I'm a minute off, save me a spot."

Vesper sighed, hiding her relief as she cut the line off, eyes lingering on the living stormcloud that had been growing and compacting over a singular location.

She really hoped she was right, Isia would never forgive her otherwise.

"Please don't die," she prayed to whoever might be listening.

ETA: 4min 35secs

"I need a priority high-speed AV right NOW!" Shadow's mangled body thrashed against the restraints, three separate megucas wearing white medical gowns pinning her down. Blood poured out, trying to grasp through missing limbs, wounds reopening.

It shouldn't have been this way, they had a dozen elders out in the field, they should've noticed the flock of monsters had not been a dispersed group of weaklings but a singular C-class. If she'd known… if she'd known…

"SOMEONE SEDATE HER!" Several voices shouted at once.

"Heal me on the way!" She screamed, flinching as a needle was jabbed into her neck. Her mind lashed out through the neuralink, sending message after message to the elders.

She'd only been met with silence and encroaching darkness.

TARGET DISTANCE: 180,121.1 meters Launch Timer: 4min 10secs

Elder Summer sat atop a foldable plastic chair perched at the pinnacle of New Francisco's highest skyscraper. Violent winds howled in a relentless torrent, screaming across glass and metal, yet not a single strand of her hair shifted from its precise position. The world around her was frozen solid, ice crystallizing on exposed surfaces, but the biting chill never touched her skin.

Her gaze cut through the dense carpet of clouds below, zeroing in on the swarm of flies amassing at her city's gates. Behind her, an entire tower's worth of verdant vegetation twisted, pulsating rhythmically with the force of her power, an immense, a lone touch of green that crowned the city's otherwise neon and metal blandness.

Two days' worth of power.

That was what it would have cost her to eliminate the threat before it had bloomed into the annoyance that confronted her now. Forty-nine precious hours of meticulously gathered resources, careful cultivation, and accumulated energy. Energy she was meant to keep nourishing and growing until the arrival of an A-class Leviathan. Energy she could only hope would be enough with the assistance of the AK01 weapon.

All because CYPHER had been too busy to notice that the swarm of F's and G's was in fact a singular organism. It hadn't even deigned it worth waking Elder Summer from her short burst of hibernation. Now, having been roused prematurely, she confronted a creature that demanded one hundred and three hours' of her power. And at the current rate it was killing humans, it would ascend into a B-class before it got close enough Fulton could engage, an intolerable outcome.

Yet despite the staggering waste of resources, the irrecoverable sleep lost, and the bitter taste of her frozen apple, Elder Summer couldn't suppress the faintest hint of amusement.

Observing the pup below her, bearing new and intriguing fangs, was undeniably entertaining.

She had encountered Megucas who burned their emotions for power, others whose abilities thrived on quantized, mechanical precision, and a few who straddled the line between both. Apparently the boy's power was in the later category, yet this new power radiating from him felt entirely foreign to his existence.

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As if the true source was something else, something external rather than internal. She had never seen such a thing before.

"Did Hecate do this when she 'fixed' his soul?" Elder Summer murmured thoughtfully, taking another contemplative bite from the crystalline apple. Could it be that the most secretive elder was finally stirring? "No, it's too overt, even by her standards," she concluded after a moment, eyes narrowing slightly.

Even Elder Fulton would have detected this anomaly had she paid close enough attention. But none of the reports had mentioned this delightful anomaly. If anything, she was quite sure that Elder Fulton's fervor at having the pup "removed" would have been far greater had she'd sensed something like this.

Elder Summer leaned back, plastic creaking, briefly entertaining the notion of going out of her way to preserve this curious little thing, before swiftly dismissing the idea. To alter the nature of her attack so it would be less indiscriminate in what it damaged would cost her a monumental eight hundred hours of accumulated energy, a price far too steep, even for something this rare.

What in the world had that little shade been thinking, neglecting the fundamental lesson every Meguca should know from the outset?

When an elder stepped into the arena, survival hinged on running away and nothing else.

But then again, if the boy were foolish enough to be trapped between an elder and a rampaging C-class, perhaps he never had the potential to matter at all.

"You should run, little pup," she murmured softly, chin resting lightly on her palm as a faint smile played across her lips. "It'd be a shame if you ended up crushed beneath my boot."

ESTIMATED STRIKE-ZONE: 2km from [coordinates] ETA: 3min 31secs

You are currently "31.7 meters" from [coordinates] The City of New Francisco thanks you for your collaboration.

They stood upon the security box atop the building like it was their bunker, screaming as they each poured bullets out into the sky by the hundreds per second and not a single one missed. The sky was flesh, flapping and flying in a tornado of razor-sharp serrated edges and howling winds. The number of monsters might have technically decreased, but that was because they were merging into something that would come out nastier.

And though there were eight of them, shooting and swapping with every reload, Copper alone stood at the forefront of the chaos. The cyborg fired the railgun with his right, the crack sounded like tearing sheet metal. The hypersonic round sliced through two lesser flyers before punching into a larger one's center mass. Orange shock rippled across the connector membrane. The massive flyer staggered, dark fluid geysered. Copper then twisted the autocannon machine-gun he'd been wielding with his left and plunged four rounds into the monster, putting it down for good.

Without missing a beat, the cyborg twisted and landed three rounds on three flyers that had attempted to approach from their blind-spots. The man had turned into an anti-air walking turret of death, targeting everything that got close enough to matter, while the others mostly poured their munition into everything beyond that perimeter.

"CHANGE!"

Copper roared, jumping into the security box as the others stepped outside to pour lead at anything that got close. Within the security box, Ajax with thermal protective gear was aiding the cyborg to remove the red-hot barrels for both weapons and handing over a fresh set.

"CHANGE!" Another roar, and the cyborg was right outside once more, with Ajax picking the assault rifle and trying to aim at anything that might help.

ETA: 2min 59secs

Something swooped overhead, and they collectively flinched as the shadow stretched as large as a building, large enough to blot out the sun completely as it descended with the ferocity of a winged blender. It tore through the other flying monsters, shredding them into paste and frothing flesh before continuing its way down upon them.

"DUCK!"

Despite the command, none of them knew where to go that might be safe, so they did the only thing they could: They opened fire straight overhead. Yet it would be an angry black blur that saved them, passing overhead like a meteor as it tore a bloody gash through the monster's length.

It roared, recoiling before a part of its amorphous body slapped the black blur and spiked straight to the ground. And for a moment, the mercenaries froze, watching with slack jaws and wide eyes as the flock of smaller monsters swirled like a tornado, descending towards the crater.

"FIRE!" Ajax found himself momentarily surprised that it was his own voice that had given the order.

Copper moved first.

The cyborg hurled the railgun aside, wrapped both bionic hands around the autocannon, and dug in as armored struts punched from his boots, anchoring him to the buckling concrete. The gun bellowed in an unbroken roar, a tongue of molten tungsten that lit up the darkness. The continuous recoil ground the floor beneath him to powder. The incandescent torrent carved a path through the swarm, flaying the weaker creatures into shredded flesh and shattered bone before they could dodge.

"CHANGE!" Copper roared through the comms, everyone had gone deaf from the barrage.

Already a second wave was gathering, a part forking off towards the massive monsters and melding into the open wound, closing the frothing flesh.

ETA: 2min 25secs

Ears ringing, Ajax moved to throw a fresh barrel at Copper when he was shoved out of the way, sending him careening against the security box's wall.

Cucumber's headless body collapsed next to him.

The flying monster's body was torn to purple mist before Ajax could even register its presence.

Copper was screaming, face twisted in rage as he unloaded several more rounds into the pulped monster before turning the weapon skyward at the descending tornado of fanged flesh that had chosen to focus on the noisy squishy humans. Every other mercenary took aim and unloaded everything they had.

"RUN!" The order rang from every channel all at once. "RUN, WIRES!"

ETA: 2min 03secs

Ajax's legs were moving underneath him as he tumbled and tangled his way forward. The roar of the autocannon was followed by the floor began to crack and give, and in a singular horrifying crunch, it went silent.

And Ajax ran faster.

ETA: 2min 01secs

"Help!" He screamed, choking in his own ragged breaths, the dull sound of wings and tearing concrete giving chase, catching up.

ETA: 2min 00secs

He reached the edge of the building, yet did not break stride. Without looking over his shoulder, he jumped.

For a singular moment in time, his body held itself midair, the floor three stories below a certainty, the monsters above an inevitability.

"HELP!"

There was a blur of black, and his body lurched to the side.

Something caught him.

Something hard and sharp. Searing pain erupted from a hundred tiny spikes prickling through his protective gear like it was paper. The sound of beating wings was accompanied by a violent crash before he was unceremoniously dropped on the ground. Ajax rolled, pulled his gun out and froze as he stared up at the black glass-like monster that stared back.

The monster that had saved him.

ETA: 1min 49secs

Everything caught up to Ajax all at once, his mouth moved before his brain caught up. "They're going to nuke the monster!" He screamed, it was a prayer, a gamble, an impossible hope that his words meant something for the creature because nothing else would change what was about to come.

For a fraction of a second, he could've sworn he saw understanding flash across the unblinking glowing blue eyes from within the monster's obsidian wedge-like head. The creature opened webbed wings that had not been there earlier and leapt with enough force to crack the concrete, sending Ajax tumbling back.

The storm of flying monsters gave chase, but were not fast enough to keep up with the obsidian thing as it rushed towards the largest one of them all.

ETA: 1min 38secs

Fang-tipped tentacles whipped out of the C-class, swiping and slashing at the smaller monster that didn't bother to dodge, instead clinging to the flesh and biting down on it with zeal. The C-class swatted and vibrated, even sending the other flyers to harass the creature, yet it continued to eat its way through, directly into the mountain of flesh.

The flying fortress wailed, a shrill ear-splitting scream of pain as it shuddered violently, spewing fountains of frothing blood.

ETA: 1min 30secs

The C-class vibrated with anger, rising into the sky, following the sound of a roar that was getting further and further away. It climbed in pursuit of the creature that had eaten its way through to the other side, and was now using the C-class' own bulk as a barrier against the more nimble but smaller individuals of the flock.

In a furious shriek, the flying fortress accelerated, beating its building-sized meat-flaps hard enough to cause powerful winds all the way down at ground level.

ETA: 55secs

The two monsters shot upward on a column of roaring air, leaving the first pursuer a mere pinprick against the vault of the morning sky. Ahead, the C-class behemoth and its swarm still dominated the horizon; by sheer bulk it could mask the sun, yet even that vast shape could no longer hold back the light forever.

ETA: [Cancelled] Elder Summer says: Duck

From the heart of the city, the tallest skyscraper lit up.

A single spear of emerald light erupted from its summit, etching a perfect arc across the sky until it found its mark.

Beam and monster collided.

Light devoured everything. The flare burned through ocular filters rated for soldering arcs. Ajax yelled, palms slamming over optic ports, even as the shockwave caught him a scant few seconds after. The atmosphere tore outward, then crashed back in a tidal punch that hammered against his bones; whatever windows that had survived disintegrated into razor rain.

The roar exploded through his body, rattling cartilage, alloy, and straight down into bedrock in one relentless surge.

There was almost no heat, yet Ajax's skin prickled and screamed as if it'd been scorched so fast he'd lacked the time to feel the warmth. A pure note rung through his ears and his body, leaving him limp, blind, senseless, unable to breathe, brain turned into a singular white sound.

Unconsciousness would've been a mercy, but the pain refused to let go.

Ajax heaved as his neuralink recovered from the shockwave and kicked into gear. It pushed adrenaline and a dozen other substances into his system. It detected there was no real deep damage on his skin and numbed the pain. It began rebooting every cybernetic and sending him reeling back to the real world.

When his optics finally cleared from the static, the sky was shedding phosphorescent green leaves in a verdant downpour. Each fragment settled with a hiss, cracking pavement and coaxing vines, flowers, and moss to grow and spread from fresh fissures until concrete blossomed with impossible life. Ajax numbly noticed the pieces falling on his own body, and moved to remove them as his neuralink's pain dampener warned him of actual damage taking place. The skin that had touched the leaves for too long was red and swollen, the first signs of a rash spreading ahead unmolested.

Above, he spotted the faintest outline of a black figure entering a spiral at terminal velocity. Both wings were torn beyond measure, not even twitching as its body oozed a glowing smoke in its descent.

It was the same kind of "flight" that a low-manager would take upon discovering their entire branch had been erased.

Ajax never saw the exact point of impact, but the sound arrived all the same:

THUD

And silence.

He breathed in, his lungs filling with something minty that awakened every nerve ending in his body better than anything the neuralink could pull off. The energy of the Elder's blessing seeped into him, driving him to stand up on legs that stopped shaking on the third try. He breathed again, closing his eyes, feeling very air around him, a soup of power that would kill any monster.

"Thank you for your great miracle, Elder Summer," he whispered the prayer, finding his words held far more reverence than every other time he'd spoken them. Why wouldn't he? Until now the miracle of the Elder's green touch had been just a myth, something even the people who could afford a window with actual sunlight had only whispered as tiny green flashes in the sky.

Witnessing the scale of her power this close was nothing but awe-inspiring, and surviving it? It would've been impossible, had the elder not chosen to spare them.

The quiet moment of contemplation was interrupted by his neuralink, the AI observer sent a warning.

[Confirm target status].

Ajax grimaced.

Though he felt invigorated, every part of his body ached with dull pain from over-exertion. He dragged himself back towards where the others had taken their final stand, sparing their crushed, mangled bodies a small nod of respect.

The children of the lower districts were no strangers to corpses, but these had stung.

"Thank you," he whispered to the dead.

He gathered them as best he could, separating the company's issued gear from personal items. Trained eyes spotted a fair few things worth a good credit, and a few more that were only sentimental value. He took neither. Instead, he gave their remains a quick appraisal scan and sent an asset-extraction request to the mercenary's AI-manager, along with a next-of-kin notification.

It was the least he could do.

Silently, he picked up the moss-covered railgun, dusting off the vegetation, checking its physical integrity, and running a quick system's check. It had enough juice for either two normal shots or a well charged one.

With a grunt of effort, he shouldered the weapon, ignoring the scrapping sound of the barrel against the pavement as he began moving.

He hoped it would be enough.

He had a contract to finish.

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