Well, this is my first Brave Frontier fanfiction, I'd been waiting for so long for a Brave Frontier category came out and didn't even realise when it did. So, bleh bleh bleh, legal whatever, bleh, I don't have the patience to really remember all the legal jargon.

Sefia

Sefia took a sip of coffee, the foam resting on her lips, rubbing her aching brows with her free hand. Her elbows were propped up on her plain white desk, surrounded on all sides by towers of paperwork. She gestured to the girl standing by the door, turquoise haired and with a chirping voice and bubbly eyes, her new assistant.

She realised she couldn't even remember the new girl's name. She sighed, "Go down the list again, tell me the most important ones."

The girl nodded and consulted a clipboard cradled in her arms. She recited musically, "The Atharva Republic requests, cordially, for seven more airships, the Principality of Vriksha requests, cordially, for three more war-golems, and the Sama Kingdom requests, with utmost cordiality, for twelve galleons and eight legions."

Sefia sighed, nursing her headache as she thought over these requests. The war had Akras stretched far enough as it was, to say nothing of the ridiculous needs of the surrounding kingdoms to fuel their own dying fronts against the Gods. Especially the Sama Kingdom, their requests had grown even more incredulous with every passing message.

"Should I reply them that we are unable to help them?" the assistant asked.

"No." Sefia closed her eyes and drew in the air with one finger, muttering in response, "Arrange for five airships to be sent to Atharva, one golem to Vriksha, and to Sama… to Sama… send them nothing, tell them we are stretched thin enough here."

The assistant tried to hide her shock. "Are you sure, ma'am? They sound very desperate."

"I'm sure…" Sefia sighed, "send nothing to them."

Her assistant nodded obediently and scribbled something in her clipboard. Sefia took another sip of scalding coffee, grimacing slightly. "How about internal affairs? Give me Sergio's latest report, security breaches, incursions, damages, everything."

An only slightly less depressing, and much longer, list followed, detailing the entire collection of ill happenings throughout Randall, uncovered espionage attempts, monsters discovered stalking outside the walls, prowling the sewers and the back alleys. But still, it was less trouble than they'd had in months, thanks to the Captain of the Guard, Sergio. And thankful she was, Sefia wasn't sure she could mentally endure this job if it got any worse.

She swirled her cup of coffee around, the foam spinning along the rim. She thought for a moment, before saying, "Tell the Captain to strengthen inspections at checkpoints, whatever it takes to weed out these irate spies, and such, tighten security around the Survey Office and the Admin Office, oh, the Research Labs too. That boy won't let me hear the end of it if we don't."

The assistant nodded, writing something down in her clipboard. "And what of the monsters, ma'am?"

"The monsters," Sefia began, skimming a bit of foam off the top. "Well, get Sergio to double patrols into the forests around the city walls, find that breach in the sewers and plug it up. Oh… and give my regards to the Captain of the Guard, tell Sergio he's done a wonderful job."

Sergio

"Who are you?"

Two men sat across from each other in a depressingly plain, grey room of slate, a mirror covering one whole side wall. One of the seated men was tall and slender, with long black hair tumbling over a blue trench coat, a grim look on his face. The other man didn't look nearly as grim, partly because his face was hidden behind a black helmet with long slits for a visor, armoured in plate metal covered in black scorch marks. He had a cape that might have been red before but was now black with ash and ripped in half, the edges burnt. His gauntlets were shackled and chained to the table.

Sergio, the former of the two, looked at the prisoner and said calmly, "Where do you come from?"

The prisoner sighed and said exasperatedly, "I've said it a dozen times yet you can't seem to understand, I don't know anything! I don't know how I got here, who I am, who you are, I don't have a clue. You probably know more about me than I do!"

Sergio sat back in his uncomfortable chair and asked, "So you're telling me you have no idea why you fell out of the sky?" the armoured man shook his head. "Or why you were babbling about sieges and monsters and emperors when we pulled you from the water?"

He shook his head again. Sergio snapped his fingers and the door to the room opened, a sword was brought in, scorched and chipped, but the hilt had been cleaned when the sword had been confiscated. The armoured man reached out with his shackled hands, "My sword! Give it to me!"

Sergio held it just out of reach, holding the blade up to the light and inspecting it, coolly saying, "I thought you didn't anything?"

"I know that's mine because I washed up with it!"

"Well then, may I ask why your sword bears this?" Sergio angled the sword towards the prisoner, tapping on a gold etched emblem on the hilt, a fiery coat of arms. "This is the Agni Royal Seal, carved into Agni steel, care to explain?"

The prisoner shrugged, asking sarcastically, "I don't know, maybe I got it from Agni?"

"A probable story," Sergio said thoughtfully. "I would believe you actually, if the Agni Republic wasn't in ruins, if the secrets of forging Agni steel hadn't been lost for four dozen years. So tell me," Sergio leaned in slightly and narrowed his eyes. "Who are you?"

The prisoner's helmet stared back morosely and silently, and Sergio stared back. The door to the room opened again and a woman poked her head out, her long green hair messy and unkempt from days spent working without rest. Ophelia said, "Sergio, there's something you need to see."

"I'm in the middle of something here," he growled in irritation.

"It's important, I insist," Ophelia hissed.

She sounded very insistent, and worried. Sergio sighed and stood, he took the prisoner's sword and nodded to him, "We'll continue this conversation another time."

"I'm looking forward to it."

Sergio followed Ophelia out the room into a well-lit observation room, populated by a few other figures inspecting the prisoner through the one-way mirror. He handed the sword to a guard waiting outside and followed Ophelia, walking hurriedly down the room and out into a hallway.

Sergio noticed her discreetly checking her communicator, a small rectangular glass display, then shoving it back into her pocket. He asked casually, "Farlon again?"

"Farlon," she confirmed. "He says that it isn't healthy to work for three days straight."

Sergio chuckled but didn't say anything about it, instead he asked, "So what's this thing you were so insistent I had to see? I was in the middle of interrogating a spy."

She led him down the hallway, countless paths and doorways leading away, dozens of people bustling about, headed along on their own business in the lower levels of the Survey Office. Sergio nodded to a few of them as he passed, Ophelia sighed, "Do you ever think maybe some of these 'spies they bring in are just some unfortunate folk in the wrong place, wrong time?"

"The innocent don't run," Sergio replied firmly. "Only the guilty. So what was it you wanted to show me?"

He noticed the path they were taking led straight to the Survey Office's main chamber. She seemed to grow more agitated the closer they got. "It's something big, really big, the brains weren't sure what it was at first but it sounded bad when I left to get you. You should really carry your communicator around with you, you know? Captain of the Guard and all?"

"Don't get distracted."

"Sorry, anyways, from the energy displacement they thought it was just another monster, a Class-6 maybe, but the energy levels kept spiking and it was obvious we were looking at something much more powerful."

Sergio furrowed his brows worriedly, Class-6 monsters were the most powerful they'd seen thus far, Duelmex and Felneus for example, anything higher than that was unheard of.

The door to the main Survey Office was a pair of huge sliding doors made of frosted glass. They slid open even before the two of them got near enough, an old man with a flowing white beard and dressed in a simple black robe tied at the waist with a white cloth stepped out. Lorand fixed his eyes on them and ushered them in hurriedly, "Sergio! Quick, ill tidings await."

Sergio stepped into the main chamber, a huge circular area, dimly lit, rows upon rows of curved tables with countless monitors showing rows of incomprehensible data surrounded a round table with a huge, detailed holographic map, dominating the wall was another huge glowing map, this one with a pulsing red dot flitting across it.

Few of the monitors were manned, everyone in the room, perhaps twenty or thirty, were standing under the huge map, watching it with growing worry. Weiss, manning the foremost monitor, declared, "It's moved again! Moving along Amdahl's east coast."

Sergio's eyes widened in shock as he realised the red dot speeding around the map was their new enemy. The crowd parted for him and he walked up to Weiss's side, grabbing his shoulder, asking, "Gods above, what are we looking at!"

"No one knows, but it's energy signature is topping out the charts!" Weiss's eyes tried to follow the red dot as it flew across the map. "It's at Encervis, now it's left Palmyna altogether, Lizeria, Mirvana, Cordelica…"

"What could move this fast?" Lodin, standing in the crowd, asked in shock as the dot flitted away again.

"It's at Ryvern now!" Weiss exclaimed. "Slowing down, closing in on Stokhelna Forest."

Sergio asked, "That's where our garrison is!"

Stokhelna Forest was their only foothold left in Ryvern, if they lost it-

"I'm getting an S.O.S from the Stokhelna Garrison," Weiss held down a button on his keyboard. "Audio's coming through."

A rush of static sounded from the speakers, then a voice, unclear and incoherent through the interference and background noise. A moment passed and it cleared up, the voice clearly said, rather shouted, "-epeat, the garrison is lost! I repeat, the garrison is lost!"

That garrison was the largest they had outside Sama and La Veda, it would take a small army to crush them.

"He's killing everyone! We can't even-"

A scream, so loud the voice disappeared behind it.

"I can't stay here any longer, send all the help you can! He's too fast to-"

A strangled grasp, armour clanging, the crack of breaking bones, and a body colliding against earth.

Silence for a few long seconds, then a sound like a hand grabbing the mike roughly, and a voice, like a furnace of hellfire and brimstone, "Mortals. You will all die."

Then the sound of metal being crushed followed by blaring static.

Sergio stared at the red dot that hovered around Ryvern, feeling the silent fear of everyone in the room. Weiss quietly said, "Transmission lost, only one energy signature left. Do you want me to try and find survivors?"

Sergio sighed, "No, Ryvern is lost."

He turned and folded his arms, raising his eyebrow at the crowd. "What are you all looking at? Back to work! I want eyes on this new enemy! I want to know what he is! What he can do! How to kill him! Go! Go! Go!"

As they turned their backs to him, Sergio grabbed Ophelia and pulled her to one side, whispering, "Get a team ready, I want the best you can find in five days."

"Any criteria?"

"Make sure they're not the sort to die."

Chapter one is done, I hope you liked it, leave a review on what you think, or leave a review telling me what characters you'd like to feature in the story. If you liked it, great! If you didn't, tell me how I can make it better, please, criticism is the best advice.