Haha, you thought this would be an April Fool's update right? Well April Fools! It's an actual update! Got you good didn't I? U mad?
(Post 18 still halfway done, just like it was a month ago.)
XxXxXxXxXx
Interlude Vote. Chose either, then a subvote.
>[] Back To Before
>>[]The Lost
XxXxXxXxXx
Exact Date Unknown: ~51 Post Impact/2063 CE
"That one is umm, Tsuzumi? Beta- Betal- Beetlejuice… Whatever! Taira and Bellatrix on the top and Rigel on the bottom," the voice of a boy, young and energetic, called out into the nighttime sky. Four figures lay in a circle upon a grassy mountain peak, heads pointed inwards, arms sprawled out, fingers reaching but not quite touching. Dim orange moonlight from the waxing moon cascaded down on the quartet of children, none of whom could have been older than ten years old.
"Yes, that constellation is the drum of autumn… or it used to be," said a second voice, female this time, joining a chorus of cricket chirps. The soft but constant song of the insects blended into the whispers of the warm autumn breeze as it wafted over the soft grass. The speaker pointed skywards, a single finger stretching towards another cluster of stars in the night sky, with one star in particular twinkling a clear blue.
"And, uh, that'll be Byakko's head, and the bright star is Alcyone," the first voice guessed once more.
"Oi, Koujirou, don't just change systems like that," said a third voice, accusatory, and again from a girl.
"Psh, Setsuna, my dear, it just shows, um, my successful cultural diversity," replied Koujirou, flippantly. Although he made a brave attempt, his voice was still too young and squeaky to pull off a suave tone.
"Oh that's nonsense Koujirou. You were asleep everyti- "
"For one night, this one night at least, could you two not argue?" spoke the last figure that rested on the hill, identifying them as another girl.
"Yes Yukari-nee-sama." chorused the younger pair.
"Oh let them have fun Yuka, they'll explode from boredom otherwise. Besides, it's cute,"
"Caitlin-san, I'm not being cute, I'm-" Setsuna started protesting.
"Oh yes you are," laughed the older girl, rolling over and seizing Setsuna in a hug, pinching at her cheeks and rubbing her hair, "You're so kyoot, cooty cooty cute-!"
"Hey, hey Katie, get off her you gaijin, Setsuna is my girlfriend," laughed Koujirou as he also rolled over towards the two. He pounced and grabbed Setsuna from her other side, his fingers questing for their ribs as he tried to tickle the two girls apart.
"Omae o BAKA Koujirou-!" yelled out Setsuna from between gasps of breathless laughter.
"So much for stargazing," murmured Yukari as she sat up, shaking her head slightly to clear off the grass seeds stuck to her hair.
With a wry glance to the side where the other three were tangled up, Yukari called out, "Koujirou, you know you shouldn't be saying that. How many different girls have you claimed to be your girlfriend by now?"
Koujirou untangled himself and sat up, stroking a finger across his chin thoughtfully, "Well, I've got five girlfriends from my class, then two more from class 4A, then in 4C I think I have three- gah!"
Setsuna, who had squirmed free from Katie, interrupted Koujirou with a drop kick in the back, sending him tumbling head over heels down the hill.
"Idiooooooooooot!" she cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled down at Koujirou. The boy replied by sprawling into an ungainly heap in the grass and slowly sliding to a stop on his face.
Setsuna's shout was still echoing through the surrounding hills when she leapt into Yukari's lap, her eyes glimmering catlike over Yukari's shoulder to glare at Katie.
The other girl skidded to stop with a pout, feathery blonde locks shining in the dim moonlight. Setsuna slowly and deliberately sunk down further into Yukari's lap, "Yukari onee-sama, could you please help me? Caitlin-san is acting strange again."
"Setsuna, noooo," wailed Katie as she sank to her knees, "I want to be called onee-sama too…"
"Nuh-uh," denied Setsuna as she poked her head up over Yukari's shoulder and stuck her tongue out.
At that, Katie collapsed into the grass and curled up into a ball of apparently abject misery, her lips quivered and her blue eyes glimmering with tears. Setsuna gave a satisfied huff and turned over, sitting down and leaning against Yukari.
Yukari awkwardly patted Setsuna with one hand as she turned to glare at Katie, eyebrows raised, silently asking when the other girl was going to stop showboating. Katie neatly riposted by tilting her head cutely, silently asking if Yukari was going to help Katie on her quest to become a big sister. Yukari countered dismissively by rolling her eyes and turned away. Katie pouted, puffed her cheeks out in annoyance, and rolled onto her back again to look at the stars.
It was to this scene that Koujirou arrived at after he jogged back up the hill, brushing at his jacket and pants to clear off the vegetation they collected on the way down the hill.
"Failed again huh, Katie? Don't worry, I'll call you big sis if you want."
"You can't do that Koujirou, that would be unfaithful to Yukari and I'd never try to steal her little brother from behind her back," Katie whispered back, sounding scandalised.
"Oi. You can have more than one older sibling," Koujirou deadpanned in return.
"Oh, then who's the older of us two, Koujirou?" asked Katie coyly.
"You are, by two months or something," Koujirou returned matter-of-factly.
Katie frowned at him for a moment, then let her head fall back into the grass with a soft thump.
"It's no fun when you just return straight shots, Koji."
Koujirou just shrugged and sat down with a satisfied sigh. As he was about to lie back down, however, Katie snapped back upright and pointed excitedly.
"Oh hey! This was what we're here to see; look over there, coming over the horizon now."
A dot rose from the edge of the Earth into the sky, glimmering brighter than any star and moving quickly across the sky.
"That's Diamond Bat… 5, Pitcher's Mound? I think anyway," guessed Koujirou.
Even as he spoke, another bright spot rose over the horizon, offset forty degrees from the first.
"That's one of the Jinju 14, probably uh…" Setsuna started confidently, but trailed off hesitantly.
"Just one of them? Not going to try and pin down the platform number this time?" Katie asked teasingly.
"Their orbits are complicated," complained Setsuna.
Another set of dots ascended over the horizon, nine in a row.
"The Nine Sisters. Should they be so close to one another?"
"Only once, tonight, and then it'll be another eight years before we can see them all in the same sky again. They'll probably name this the Dance of the Nine Sisters or something in the future," Katie replied, "You'll know from timing the orbits, but yeah, Jinju 2 and 6 along with Diamond Bat 1, Home Base, are also above us, crossing their polar orbits. For a little while, just for tonight, we'll get to see most of the Orbital Defence and Interception Network all in the same place."
Katie formed a frame with her fingers, moving her hands so that her fingers enfolded the orbital coincidence.
"... well, we will. You'll be moving away tomorrow," Koujirou murmured under his breath, quiet, subdued and sad.
"... Diamond Bat 2, First Base, should be coming over the eastern horizon now," continued Katie, who pretended she didn't hear, continuing to narrate with only a slight hitch.
Her arm again rose up, pointing towards the horizon, awaiting the small spark of light from the orbiting satellite.
And waited.
And waited.
A change in the wind, cold.
A flash of light.
All four children glanced around instinctively. Lightning? With the night so clear?
Almost as if to confirm, there was a soft rumble, like distant, far-off thunder. Another sweep of the horizon put the thoughts of a natural storm to rest. Dirty yellow lights rose into the sky on pillars of smoke in the far distance. A storm of a very different kind had started.
"What're those?" Yukari snapped, standing up.
"A… missile. Missiles. Intercontinental. Can't identify as guided or ballistic," Katie mumbled, still sitting, her face pale, irises rapidly flickering back and forth as she read something invisible.
*Beep* *Beep* *Beep*
A shrieking alarm rang out from Katie's waist. Instinctively, she plucked her UN issued datapad out, the advanced computer only hours out of its plastic wrapping, and glanced at the screen.
>[Alert Condition One. All Armed Forces to stations]<
The tinny electronic beeps were suddenly drowned out by the long and piercing wail of air raid sirens echoing off the mountain ranges. In the town that rested at the feet of the short mountain the children stood upon, street lights snapped on.
"I- I have to go. Get to shelter quickly," Katie said, her voice shaky.
"Wait, what's going on?" shouted Setsuna. She scrambled to her feet alongside Koujirou and the two huddled around Yukari, all three of them looking around uncertainly.
"Antagonist attack of some sort- Antagonist Attack. Look I- I'll escort you down to the bunkers in the town. I need to go to the base to swap in a combat frame," Katie stuttered out, turning around and jogging down the hill.
Yukari hurried after Katie, her mouth opening- and was cut off as the air was forced from her lungs with a gasp when a force slammed into her from behind, lifting her up and carrying her. She sprawled forwards, saw the grass rushing at her face- then slowed as she hit something like an invisible cushion.
Impeller Field, she realised distantly, her vision still seeing starbursts from the first impact. Alongside Koujirou and Setsuna, she was being carried along by Katie's Impeller Field.
"Sorry! I didn't mean to push you so hard. Uh- this is faster-" shouted Katie with a look back.
Katie continued running, now in a full sprint. Eschewing the winding roads and stairs up the mountainside, she dashed through the forest and leapt down small cliffs covered with scree. Her path unnervingly avoided the trees and crevasses in the rocks by the barest centimeters in the dark whilst bushes were trampled without a pause.
A flare of light, brighter than the moon, brighter than the sun, flashed down through the canopy. Harsh, incandescent white light traced a line across the sky, easily visible even through the thick foliage. The white rip in the sky cooled to yellow, then orange- and then another lance of nuclear fire stabbed out from Diamond Bat 1, again lighting up the entire sky. Much dimmer than Diamond Bat's directed nuclear armament, but constantly visible, a trail of glittering, sparkling threads strung out from the Nine Sisters, stray orbital detritus glowing as they were ignited and vapourised by the laser weapons.
Katie cleared the treeline at superhuman speeds, soft loam flying up behind her and slamming into the bubble of Impeller she held her friends within as she rushed down the cleared mountainside, only a few hundred meters from the perimeter houses of the town. Above, the stars moved and multiplied, falling in a thick shower of lights from the sky towards unknown targets, the Jinju Satellites have let loose waves upon waves of missiles.
The deadly rain was blotted from sight as another one of the Diamond Bat satellites fired. The blinding white overwhelmed the softer LED streetlights inside the town, throwing the small dark smudges of people streaming from their houses for the scattered bunker complexes into sharp relief.
The town of Nanmin-chiku-nana, set on a mountainous plateau, had a clear line of sight out to sea, and without the dense forest in the way, the quartet of children easily followed the fading trail of Diamond Bat's weapon until it was cut off where the ocean met the sky. The beam of annihilation had landed somewhere well over the horizon to the north-east, but even then, a dull red glow spread out along the edge of the earth as the atmosphere refracted the light.
Koujirou gritted his teeth, clutching tight onto Setsuna and Yukari, seeing a reflection of his own feelings in their scared and confused faces. Streetlights blurred around them from the speed Katie was running at, broken up every so often by a blinding flash as one of the Diamond Bats gifted death from the heavens unto the earth. The tramp of fleeing people blended in with the distant rumble of missile launches and jet engines, underscored by the roar of the passing wind and the rapid drumbeats of roof tiles smashing as Katie leapt from roof to roof, bypassing the streets.
Katie didn't appeared affected by the sensory chaos; she rushed through the town with the same assured abandon as the forest, jumping from street to walls to roofs, well above the streams of huddled people. Occasionally, a worried glance turned skywards from the hurrying masses and caught a glimpse of Katie and her three passengers, and shocked shouts would echo after her. Katie blocked out the noise, concentrating on running.
They reached the town center, and the UN armoured shelters the quartet of children were assigned to came into view. Katie landed with a thump and finally stopped, resting her hands on her knees as she huffed for breath, streams of steam billowing from her gasps and condensing in coils off her body in the cold night air. Yukari, Setsuna and Koujirou gingerly stood up, finding the cushion of Katie's Impeller Field disappear as they did.
Around them, classmates, parents and families stared on with wide eyes, standing still.
"Keep moving! Hurry! Ugoki tsudzukeru! Isoide!" Bellowed a voice from out past the walls of humanity as a Public Order officer roared for attention, waving a megaphone. The announcement was followed by a squeal of deafening interference from the megaphone that had even the officer clapping his hands against the sides of his helmet in pain. Unintended as it was, it snapped the crowd out from their daze. The crowd quickly started shuffling for the entrance to the bunker again, a few here and there glanced back and muttered "Warukyūre".
"I'll see you later Yuka, Setsu, Koji," shouted Katie, shoving them into the lines.
"Wait Caitlin-san, don't go-" yelled Setsuna as the small trio were swept along by the crowd.
"Stay cute little sis!" waved Katie with a strained laugh.
"You- you'd better come back safe, big sis!" was the reply, fading into the hubbub of background noise.
"English isn't as cute," muttered Katie as she leapt above the river of humanity and made her way over a few more surrounding houses, landing down in a side street. Around, there were few people, one and all hurrying past her towards the town center and the shelters there. There was still someone else she needed to find, someone that she doubted would have joined the mob making their way into the shelters-
"Caitlin! Where've you've all been?" another voice, grizzled by age, thundered out.
A meaty hand grabbed heavily onto Katie shoulder, trying to spin her around. Katie let it, and stared up into the face of Grandpa Dan. His hair was white and receding, his face creased deeply with wrinkles and faint scars, but his hand still maintained a wiry strength as it clamped down on her shoulder.
"Sorry Grandpa, I was on top of the mountain with my friends. I have to go. Find them and keep them safe, alright?" Katie said.
"Like he- hocus young lady," snapped the old man, bringing his left hand, missing two fingers, down onto her free shoulder, "You can take care of your friends yourself. You think I don't know about your visits to the UN? You don't think I can't tell this isn't the usual dry-run evac? You're not going out there into that hellscape. You'll sit tight with the rest of us."
With that, he tried pulling Katie down the street toward the shelter. She didn't budge, Dan may as well have been trying to pull a mountain.
One of the Diamond Bat satellites fired again, washing out all colour for a brief moment as Katie stared up at Dan.
"They need me."
"You?! You think they need you? You're ten. Ten. You're as tall as my elbow. Ten and tiny."
"They need everyone."
"Bull shhhhhopping in a china store, I know the UN won't let a ten year old-"
Katie gently but easily pushed Dan's hands from her shoulders with unnatural strength and then tapped the screen of her datapad.
>[Directive 2 is in Global effect]<
>[United Nations Central Government Directive 2: In the face of hostile forces likely to lead to mass human casualties or significant strategic losses, the UN shall assume supreme authority over all available assets in areas declared at risk. Any and all laws or restrictions upon United Nations authority are annulled]<
>[All leave is cancelled. All reserve forces are to immediately activate]<
>[All Provisional and Cadet Valkyries are to deploy to stations]<
"What the fork? We just killed that white bastard over Europe-"
Katie tapped the screen of her datapad again, then repeated her action, more insistently.
>[New Aberrant Type Identified. Codename: Lugh]<
>[New Aberrant Type Identified. Codename: Nokomis]<
>[New Aberrant Type Identified. Codename: Vali]<
>[New Aberrant Type Identified. Codename: Caspar]<
>[New Aberrant Type Identified. Codename: Memnon]<
>[New Aberrant Type Identified. Codename: Caiaphas]<
>[New Aberrant Type Identified. Codename: Marduk]<
>[Classification change for Aberrant Types; Aberrant Types now Classed as Type Zeros]<
>[New Type Zero Identified. Codename: Ahriman]<
>[New Type Zero Identified. Codename: Kronos]<
>[New Type Zero Identified. Codename: Eirene]<
>[New Type Zero Identified. Codename: Lucifer]<
>[New Type Zero Identifi-]<
Katie flicked her finger and shut off her datapad, cutting off the emotionless synthetic voice.
"They need everyone," she enunciated clearly to Dan, her voice just as flat as the artificial announcer.
A Diamond Bat fired again. This time, something shot back. There was a dull bloom of yellow light, soft and lingering. Above, embers of burning metal spread out along the sky as the satellite weapon started breaking up, brushing golden-hued motes across the canvas of the night sky.
In the distance, over the ocean, the cold blue hue of massive a Higgs release mixed with the red glow from the Diamond Bats, turning the entire skyline a soft violet hue, from dusk to dawn.
"Bullshit, so many of those, those… monsters," the old man whispered, his voice trembling, "You can't- you won't- you'll die. You think I- I- The hell am I supposed to say to your grandaddy Evan when I join him in hell then?"
He grabbed at Katie's shoulder again, seemingly determined to just drag her off, but found his arms stopped by an invisible wall well away from her skin.
"I won't be fighting, I'll just be cheering from the back so that the actual fighters can do their job," assured Katie, "and even if I do need to do… to do what is necessary. 'I am a guardian of freedom and life.' Grandad wouldn't have stood back. Neither would have you Grandpa Dan."
"Christ, I wasn't ten years old when I enlisted, neither was your Granddad!"
Katie said nothing, staring at Dan resolutely. His jaw worked, muscles taut with strain- then the old man deflated.
"Fine. Fine! But, that quote? That's fu- ffffffor the Army young lady, and you got the quote wrong too! Ah sh- shhhhucks, Evan really is going to kill me after I cark it… Caitlin, remember: 'without me, my rifle is useless'. You better be back, or you're grounded for the next year!"
"I will be," declared Katie resolutely, her fingers coming to her brow in a sloppy salute, "Take care of my friends Grandpa."
With a whoosh of air, Caitlin Sampson leapt into the night, over a house and out of sight.
Daniel Martin, formerly of the USMC, could do nothing but look on after the granddaughter of his best friend leapt away.
The two would not meet again.
XxXxXxXxXx
Read the darn omake for the writing pls. Thx.
