Omake time.
(AN: the foreshadowed-but-not-yet-revealed major NPC is 'Miss Overconfidence,' deliberately put in a role that does not require I actually do anything with her.)
((()))
"
Right, Telportation interdiction is up," Shuri said in clipped tones, before turning glaring at Kojirou in particular, "The first rule, is
no heroics. If you are not a member of the Twenty, and you try to stand alone against a Type-Zero, you will either instantly die, or draw your teammates into exposed positions, either way weakening the flight as a whole. You
always pool your resources with at least one flight-mate, whether you're on offense or defense."
"But what-" Kojirou began, but Shuri cut him off immediately.
"
I won't be trying to fight solo here," Shuri said, "And I've
fought Type-Zero's before, including Medusa. Koji, you're going to be officially recognized as an Ace after what you've already done during this deployment, but you need to
survive in order for that to happen. Sandra's already down, and Anna's still on her classified op, so we're basically down to three-and-a-half Valkyrie's to manage a fighting retreat here, since Miss Overconfidence will be stuck carrying Sandra until her E-war packages are repaired."
Shuri paused for a moment, nothing but the wind faintly shrieking at their barely subsonic passage East towards the Indian Ocean breaking the silence for a long moment, before she took a deep breath, and continued.
"You all know why Sandra leads the flight, not me," She said grimly, "I'm not
good with communicating. But you
need to understand this. If
anybody breaks role, we
all die. If we go supersonic to try to keep Medusa from engaging, the civvies probably die. All we can do is try to hold out long enough for reinforcements to be freed up, or wear Medusa down enough, it decides we're not worth the trouble. This time, winning isn't destroying the AG, winning is
living."
Kojirou opened his mouth to protest again, but Setsuna smacked him over the back of the head. For a moment, both froze in surprise; Anna
hadn't intercepted the blow, and it'd been a long time since that'd happened while they were in the field.
"Yukari," Shuri continued, "Kojirou, you'll be the interception team. Setsuna, you'll be on bombardment with me. If the Rokusabes are getting overwhelmed, I'll move up to support them in melee. If Medusa gets past all three of us, switch to delaying rather than for-effect firing until we can catch back up. If Medusa kills all three of us, cut and run. Two damaged Valks and one intact won't be able to even slow Medusa down meaningfully, there's no point dying to accomplish nothing. Everyone
understand?"
All the girls nodded grimly; Kojirou scowled ferociously, but eventually nodded as well.
"Let's go."
((()))
Medusa had poor strategic speed, but was
dangerous at 'sprint' distances, capable of using a pseudo-plasma heavy weapon as a burst-thruster to exceed Mach 20 over short distances. What this meant for the Rokusabe siblings, was the time between the Type Zero entering visual range, and it entering
melee range, was measured in
seconds.
Shit! Kojirou thought as he swept his halberd through a circular block deflecting three of the 'snakeheads' that Medusa had been named for,
it's almost as fast as Anna!
Kojirou was good, arguably just a touch better in pure melee than Shuri, though he lacked the multi-tasking ability to mix weapons fire with halberd-work; Yukari was better overall, though nowhere quite near Shuri or Rokusabe's level in raw melee. Her electrified armor and weapon specialization, however, covered for a lot of skill discrepancy. For Medusa, either striking or
blocking Yukari while she had absurd amperages flowing through the surface of her armor and halberd was a losing proposition.
Lesser Types never survived to learn not to attempt a second melee blow; for a Type Zero like Medusa, it only took a single blow for the Type-Zero to change tactics. First, it tried pulling back to bombard Yukari from range; Kojirou almost split from his sister trying to keep up. Heavy bombardment from Shuri, Setsuna, and Yukari herself, rapidly disabused Medusa of that idea.
Its second strategem was attempting to focus on Kojirou; it discovered that the younger Rokusabe was
well accustomed to facing foes in melee that were capable of such speeds, and he was more than willing to use his sister as cover against Medusa's sextet of 'snakeheads,' nullifying the Type-Zero's ability to overwhelm most foes with rapid-succession melee blows. Against most flights, this would have been an effective strategy, but Shuri was not called 'The Golden Ace' for nothing, and precision long-range fire was what Setsuna
did. Even at melee range, they were still able to lend effective support fire, laser beams slipping through half-second firing windows to degrade Medusa's Impeller field.
Not that the degradation was
noticeable, at least to the Rokusabe's; Yukari was above average at sensing, but she still mostly just sensed the overwhelming presence of a Type0Zero's Impeller and intent to kill; Kojirou might as well have been blind to the electromagnetic spectrum for all the good his sensing ability did him, save for one thing. He could not sense 'what,' he could not sense 'how,' he could not sense 'why,' but he could sense
where.
And with
where, Kojirou applied one of the foundational lessons he'd been taught by all the Valkyries of his flight; where
not to be.
Specifically, wherever Medusa's 'heads' were, nothing but Kojirou's blade was, and for a time, it seemed that the cadet-flight was actually
winning the fight.
A duration which lasted for just over eighteen seconds, at which point Medusa decided its current strategy was inefficient, and simply smashed directly through Kojirou's only viable piece of cover: his older sister.
The switch came
far too fast for Yukari to respond effectively to, she had scarcely even realized that Medusa's next series of attacks targeted
her, rather than her brother, much less attempted to evade or block, when the first 'head' smashed into her Impeller, crushing the outer layer instantly. The second smashed her middle layer, the third her inner layer, the fourth she finally managed to partially evade, and her armor soaked much of the damage, leaving her 'merely' with crushed ribs, a collapsed lung, a burst kidney, and half her stomach and liver mashed together to the point where on the right side of her waist, they couldn't really be distinguished from each other.
The fifth blow tore off her right leg and roughly a third of her pelvis; the sixth and final head was smashed aside by a fiery-eyed Kojirou.
"Grab her and retreat!"
Shuri shouted, shifting her flight position to interpose herself directly between Sandra's unconscious body and the Type-Zero, reacting to Setsuna starting to shift forward almost before the girl began to move, "Masaya, stay on my flank! We need to distract it!"
Shuri's entire missile rack deployed and flushed all missiles instantly, the guided weapons arcing off of her back and around towards the Type-Zero. Medusa responded by advancing on the remaining active Valkyries then deploying its plasma-boost in the final tenth of a second before the barrage would begin to reach it, blitzing directly towards the ranged-combat team.
Exactly as Shuri, having noted how Medusa didn't deploy the plasma device to finish off the Rokusabe siblings, expected. For a normal human,
perceiving Medusa's attack run would have been impossible. For a veteran Valkyrie, perception would be possible, reaction would not. But Shuri was an ace, the 'Golden' ace, experienced in combat against Type-Zero's, and having faced Medusa before. As the Antagonist burst-accelerated to hypersonic velocities, Shuri tilted her head to the side, revealing her combined and over-charged pair of Particle Projectors, and a discharge potent enough to jostle Setsuna's aim, ten meters away, tore at Medusa on a directly reciprocal heading.
Relative velocity between the particle burst and the Type-Zero was a relevant fraction of Light Speed; two layers of its Impeller shattered.
Medusa, seeing Shuri ready with six plasma torches, two halberds, and a heavier plasma weapon coming to bear as her missile racks withdrew, employed an energy-intensive bit of gravitic manipulation to avoid further engaging its foe in the manner she preferred.
Its warped burst of speed flung it several kilometers away from the Valkyrie flight. Setsuna continued to fire laser beams at the Antagonist as its flight pattern stabilized, and it came about to initiate another pass.
"Kojirou," Shuri snapped, "Pass Yukari off to Miss Overachiever, I'll be going into melee with you this time."
Still partially combat effective, Yukari texted, unable to speak properly with her partially-crushed chest.
"Good," Shuri nodded sharply, keeping her eyes on the Type-Zero, mentally counting down until Medusa could employ its 'sprint' again, "Setsuna, form up with the injured group, and continue providing fire-support. It'll be more cautious now; if it gets past the melee team employ your nuclear option. That might buy a few seconds for us to re-engage."
For a few seconds, comm channels were silent as the flight shifted into its new formation, and Medusa began to close again.
"How can you be so calm when we're getting our asses kicked?" Kojirou asked on a private comm line once he'd formed up on her.
"Asses kicked?" Shuri said, laughing bitterly as she spared Kojirou a one-eyed glance, the other still firmly fixed on Medusa, "Rookie, nobody's
died. We're doing
F!@#king amazing."
((()))
In the end , it only took three more passes, and another hundred and fifty-seven seconds, for Medusa to pick apart the flight. For two of them, Kojirou's prodigious melee ability, combined with Shuri's dynamic adaptive ability and raw skill, allowed them to continue a fighting retreat.
Then the Type-Zero used its boost while it was still several kilometers distant from the melee team, blitzing past them to within less than a kilometer of the ranged/injured group, leaving no possibility of Kojirou intercepting it before it entered melee with four Valkyries, none of them currently melee-capable.
For Shuri, there was only one possible choice to make. With a second and a half, she could have brought Kojirou along with, but she didn't
have a second and a half. She teleported directly between Medusa and Sandra, losing the outermost layer of her Impeller to block its first blow, before bringing both of her halberds to bear in a furious assault. It lasted less than two seconds, medusa overwhelming her with number of weapons and raw force, entangling both weapons swiftly, and then beginning to hammer away at the Ace's Impeller. She responded by deploying and firing her ranged weapons at point blank, but Medusa ignored the gunfire.
Shuri's Impeller field was strong, but it was
not unlimited, and nowhere near as strong as the Type Zero's. It took only seconds, Kojirou screaming in rage as he poured on speed not seen since his first spar with Anna at the beginning of the semester, trying to reach his sister and friends before they were slaughtered.
Shuri felt her penultimate Impeller layer collapse, and knew he wouldn't make it. She had just enough time to look over her shoulder at Sandra, still unconscious, and wish the girl was conscious to hear her final words.
The 'Golden' Ace's final Impeller layer snapped, and suddenly a great many things happened
very fast.
First, her ability to retain her grip on her Halberds was lost, and they were torn from her hands.
Second, she was no longer protected from the effects of moving at Mach speeds through atmosphere, and was subjected to sudden and abrupt deceleration.
Third, Anna Sanchez, no longer blocked by Shuri's teleportation interdiction field (initially ranged to keep the Type-Zero from closing to point-blank instantly), tore a hole through the fabric of reality directly between Shuri and Medusa, erupting through the fabric of time-space with an enraged scream.
"NO MORE PEOPLE DYING!"
Medusa immediately redirected its attention to the new threat, lashing out with all six of its 'heads.' Two directly impacted Anna's Impeller, to no visible effect. Two were seized by her bare hands, and immediately subjected to point-blank assault from her Plasma Lance, the 'halberd' reconfigured to vent its hyper-energized matter through ports on her fingertips.
The last two were intercepted by the expression of the firing apertures of two combined Heavy Particle Projectors at the 'root' of the head-snakes, sheering directly through the Type-Zero's mis-focused and weakened Impeller field, decapitating two of its six heads.
Medusa
screamed in pain, and attempted to disengage, but Anna refused to release the two heads she still held; the other pair lashed out once, twice, and were neatly severed before they could batter Anna's Impeller a third time by Kojirou's attack pace, his sword, blindingly incandescent with focused energies, passing through their 'necks' at Mach 27 as he didn't even
attempt to slow down to retain engagement range.
"
Only Antagonists Die." Anna growled, dragging the thrashing Type-Zero in towards herself in spite of its best efforts to escape.
Then her Heavy Particle Projectors completed their charging cycle, and discharged again, directly into the Type-Zero's chest. This time, Medusa was prepared, and hardened its Impeller field at the appropriate location as soon as the firing aperture was expressed, literally abandoning its remaining two 'heads' as it did so, allowing Anna's fingers to tear through the mere physical matter.
The motive force of the blast granted the Antagonist some separation, and it immediately 'burst' accelerated further out, deploying every ranged weapon it possessed, and commencing heavy bombardment fire.
Setsuna,
still providing uninterrupted support fire, switched to intercepting the heavy missiles Medusa had launched; Anna accelerated after Medusa, deploying her Hypervelocity Cannons and Laser on interdiction fire, while rapidly beginning to dump her own missile armament into real space in pursuit of the foe herself.
It took Medusa little more than fifteen seconds to recharge its plasma 'boost' device after discharge, without interference, Anna's rate of closure would have closed the distance in twenty-three seconds. It interdicted several attempts of Anna's to teleport in order to maintain separation, before a hypersonic projectile interrupted its battle plan.
Kojirou came back for a second pass, slamming directly into the wasp-like abdominal protrusion housing its plasma booster. Having detected the younger Rokusabe's approach, Medusa was again able to harden its Impeller field in the appropriate location to keep it from being pierced, but it lost another three layers to the male Valkyrie's attack.
More importantly, having managed an essentially directly-on center-of-mass to center-of-mass collision, Kojirou and Medusa's relative inertias very nearly cancelled each other out. Kojirou lost most of his Impeller to the collision, as well as suffering a concussion, detached retina, dislocation in every joint involved in his sword strike (meaning every joint in his arms), and inner ear rupture. Loss of balance and disorientation caused him to go tumbling down towards the ocean below, and Medusa turned to finish the melee-focused Valkyrie off before he could further trouble it.
Then Anna slammed into Medusa's back, leading with plasma-tipped fingers, which speared directly through the Antagonist's carapace and into its Thorax.
For the second time, Medusa
screamed.
Anna ignored the scream, and began tearing chunks of flesh out of the creature's chest; while her arms were busy, her fully-combined quartet of Heavy Particle Projectors fired at point-blank into the join between torso and abdomen, destroying its remaining Impeller layers, and severing the plasma booster from the Type-Zero's body.
Medusa tried to teleport out; Anna interdicted, and tore an important-looking arm clear of the torso with her right arm, before spearing it on one of Durga's horns, and reaching down with the now-freed arm to collect the severed abdominal booster.
Medusa rapidly-regenerated the mutilated two heads it still possessed, and slammed them against Anna's chest.
Her Impeller field shrugged it off, and unprotected by an Impeller field, it took less than a tenth of a second for her Hypervelocity Cannons to shred the appendages.
Medusa tried to teleport away again; Anna interdicted, then tucked the appropriated boost-mechanism against her chest, and pulled her head and upper torso inside of Medusa's thorax.
Then Durga began to
feed.
((()))
"Well," Sandra says, groaning slightly as she shifts her head slightly so she can look over at Anna, standing alone on the beach of the tiny island the flight was waiting for pickup on, "Nobody died. I'll call that a win, but I will be having
words with the next staff officer who decides to split our flight up while on the front."
"How can you be so calm!" Setsuna shouted, anger in her voice thinly covering fear as she used her impeller field to keep a precise amount of pressure on Yukari's heavily bandaged right former-hip, "Anna just
slaughtered a Type-Zero! Then she
ate it!"
You know something, Shuri texted, not wanting to speak aloud after the battering her flesh had taken when exposed to supersonic wind-forces,
You would be reacting more if you hadn't had reason to expect your flight to be capable of the most number-sparse successful elimination of a Type-Zero ever. Especially
one without any fatalities.
"Anna?" Sandra called.
"Yes?" the Canadian Valkyrie said, voice
almost as neutral as it ever was.
"Do you mind if I tell them?" Sandra asked.
"I have no preference one way or another," Anna replied.
"Of course not," Sandra said, and every other member of the flight could
hear her roll her eyes, even if none could see her do so.
Silence passed for a long moment as Sandra chose her words carefully.
"Somebody please keep talking," Kojirou said, "It's a
lot easier to
not panic about being
blind when I've got something else to focus on."
"Anna Sanchez isn't just an Ace," Sandra eventually said, "She's the Valkyrie with the longest synchronization hours, almost eighty-thousand, and the most combat hours, at over twenty thousand."
That's over nine years
with a Valkyrie Core, Shuri said,
More than two years
of actual line combat time. How come we haven't heard of her before if that's the case.
"You have," Sandra said with a sad sigh, "It's simply that her callsign for anti-Zero suppression missions is classified. I am quite certain that you recall how Sekhmet was abruptly removed from the Alaskan theatre, and then the Saskatoon Breach was sealed without any commitment of UN forces?"
"Wait," Setsuna said, "You're saying that was
Anna?"
"Yes," Sandra said, "This is the second time Anna has killed a Type-Zero. The first one, she defeated
alone."
Silence reigned over the island from then, until the UN medevac team arrived to pick them up.
((()))
Author's Note: This popped into my head a few days ago. I've always been fond of character/story themes involving 'the big personal secret' (when it's a positive one), and I particularly like 'the reveal' moment, where characters realize something amazing about someone with them they'd never really understood before.
I spent most of my spare time today writing it, instead of updating my own quest. Naughty me.
