Lutecia needed information. More than that, she needed time—time to plan, time to maneuver, time to concoct an escape strategy. The sniper had only been the first stage of the attack on her. If he succeeded, well enough. The sniper's round had been a lethal spell and it would have shattered her skull had she not been hugging Vivio when he fired. But that was only the first step. At least two more people were moving in on the ground. How many more were there? How many layers to the trap?
Under the circumstances, mobility was key. As a summoner, she could call on allies of her own, be a one-woman army, but she needed time to cast those summons. If she could get to cover...
Left and right were out. Back into the Mirage Hall wasn't necessarily possible, and even if it was, it was a different kind of trap. So forward, then, into the crowd, using the chaos they'd created to her advantage. She joined the surge of people trying to get away from the area where death had rained down, her first few steps shaky but adrenaline making later ones more sure. She melded with the panicked mass, moving out towards the park.
~X X X~
"R2. I've lost her."
"R3. Same here."
"I'm tracking," Windom said, scanning the security camera feed. At ground level, Altima and Vespa were more often than not blocked from their quarry by people, and she'd naturally seek that protection. To the park security cameras, though, Alphine was much more easily located, a blotch of black and purple amid other colors. "R2, adjust to ten o'clock. R3, to one o'clock. The crowd's starting to thin out about fifty yards from you when they split up at the intersection."
"Copy that, R4."
~X X X~
Lutecia reached an intersection, a kind of little plaza at a spouting fountain where the paths to various attractions met and divided. She took the second from her right, the one that headed back the way they'd originally come to the Mirage Hall. That was the direction Vivio had flown off towards the sniper, and instinct took her that way before she had a chance to think it through.
Logic told her belatedly that the better course of action would be to shake off her own pursuers first, rather than bringing her battle to Vivio's, but her reflex had been to get to the younger girl and protect her. This wasn't her fight, not even if she'd been a full-fledged mage soldier instead of just a cadet. It was Shadow business, covert operations that didn't respect laws or honor or decency, and it had no place in Vivio's world. Lutecia's head throbbed as she tried to sort out tactical considerations from her emotions. With luck the followers would split up, cover different possibilities for where she'd gone.
~X X X~
"R4. She's heading towards the Riptide. Third route from your left."
"R3. I see her!"
"R2. Same here."
"Then take her."
~X X X~
She hadn't lost them, Lutecia realized with a glance back. The man and the woman both were still behind her, and they were still close. As they broke into a run, their outfits shifted, ordinary clothing turning into form-fitting bodysuits in mottled black and gray that would have served as camouflage in the night.
It's too overt, she realized. Marine Garden had security camera, and the two hunters were showing their faces. Understanding came instantly—they had control of the cameras; that was how they were tracking her. They could afford to be overt because there'd be no video record, only the notoriously unreliable accounts of eyewitnesses.
The male pursuer raised his Device, and a defensive spell was on Lutecia's lips in response, when the confrontation was delayed.
"You two! Hold it!"
It was two of the park's security guards, ANTs in hand and leveled at the pursuers. They didn't know exactly what was going on, but armed mages of no obvious affiliation were a definite trouble sign.
"Sweeping Fire."
It was the woman who reacted at once and with violence, a charge of russet magic spitting from the tip of her Device and bursting in front of the guards. It knocked them sprawling, and one went down and out at once, but the second did not. Perhaps he was a low-ranking mage, or perhaps the security uniforms offered some barrier protection. For whatever reason, he was able to raise his ANT and fire from his prone position. The single shot was well-aimed, but the woman simply blocked it with a shield. Her male partner blasted the guard with ice magic, frozen spears that punched through the secman in an example of savage overkill.
The sacrifice, though, had bought Lutecia the time she needed. Four-pointed runes, the Belkan variant of a summoning circle, shimmered in midair and insects emerged from them. There were a dozen or so small ones, about the length of a finger, like wasps, but there was also one who was much larger, shaped like a tall man and whose chitinous exoskeleton made him look like a human soldier in greenish-gray medieval armor. Her favorite summon, Garyuu, who was almost more like a familiar to her, even a friend, than a mere creature.
"Merge with the cameras and cut off their signal," she ordered the wasps. One of their primary abilities was the way they could control machinery and computers, even low-grade Ais. Since the enemy was using the park's security system to track her, she'd deny them that advantage. The wasps buzzed off to carry out their tasks, and she prepared for the next step.
Then, flashes of light caught her attention. She turned towards the Riptide, and saw once, twice another black-clad man—the sniper?—lashing into Vivio, sending her cannoning into the ground.
"Vivio!" she screamed. Was she all right? As the park guard had learned, these killers were cutting down anyone in their way. How much more willing to kill, then, would they be for their target's girlfriend?
The two pursuers were firing on her, now; she raised a Panzerschild and deflected their spells.
You will not hurt Vivio to get to me. Not now. Not ever.
"Garyuu, take those two down!" she snapped, and the insect knight launched himself at the two pursuing mages.
As for the other one, she was going to handle him herself. He'd been the one to hurt Vivio; she needed to settle it with her own hands.
~X X X~
"R4 to R1, she's coming your way. She sent a summon after R2 and R3. I think you pissed her off."
"Where is she?"
"She's heading up—damn!"
"What is it?"
"I just lost the feed off about a dozen cameras." Windom cursed again, looking up at the static-filled screens. His fingers flew over the keyboard, trying to reconnect. "I can't get them back. Either she's taken them out or she's subverted the system."
Her summons, Windom thought. It had been the same way on the Steuben extraction. They'd paid a small fortune for a series of system passcodes for the building operations and security controls, only to just lose everything at once. The Raptors had thought that Alphine had simply had the support of a Shadow computer specialist; the government's black-ops section could afford top-level skill in that area, but it looked as if Alphine herself was the one who'd done it, her technomancy literal rather than figurative.
That had been the moment when that job had started going off the rails, to end eventually in a botched contract and the death of Dan Avalon. The Raptors' then-leader had been the only one to make contact with Dr. Steuben's assassin, and had ended up dead while his backup had floundered, their communications down and trapped by security in several other parts of the building. This operation might have been beneath the morning sun instead of a corporate office complex at night, but it was starting to break down in exactly the same fashion.
~X X X~
Jim Avalon had made the connection between the past and present as fast or even faster than Windom had. How could he not? Every moment of the Steuben extraction was written in his mind as if branded there. He'd called in favors, laid out bribes, pushed informants until they broke, and all to one end: to identify the assassin who'd killed his brother in the course of erasing Dr. Steuben.
He'd been taken aback, at first, to learn that it hadn't been a freelancer, not even someone working for a corporation or a local government, but an agent of the TSAB's own black-ops division. But that didn't change his mind about what he intended to do. And even if things were starting to go wrong, Avalon still couldn't criticize too much. He'd hurt her with his first shot. She'd sent her prime fighting summon off after Vespa and Altima. He knew that she had S-rank summons, but couldn't use them in Marine Garden without risking dozens of civilian casualties and blowing her cover wide open. And she was coming right for him.
Avalon slotted a cartridge, ready to load it for when he needed it, and arrowed down towards the summoner. Let the girlfriend be dead or alive; she was only a bit player in the drama. This was the encounter that mattered.
~X X X~
He came down on her like the wrath of God, not some kindly Deity but a god of vengeance from the old days. She responded, lashing out with shooting magic, multiple projectiles that arced upwards, tracking his position no matter how he weaved and dodged in the air and impacting one after another with savage force against his barrier. Lutecia wasn't a bombardment mage, but Asclepius's mana boosting gave her the power of one even if she'd never have one's ease and facility with direct combat.
Her opponent, though, was a shooting mage. Less powerful than she was, yes, but better-capable than she at this kind of fighting—and he had the advantage of mobility.
And she was hurt.
Lutecia's head pulsed with savage pain as shots peppered the path around her, hammering at her shield. Her vision blurred again each time the surge of magic meeting magic went through her. Hate was in the other man's eyes, hate and a kind of lethal, unholy joy at being able to act on that hate.
"You killed my brother, you damned Shadow bitch!" he roared at her, rushing in, the bayonet-like spike gleaming at the end of his Device. Lutecia got a shield up in time, fighting to hold it, and it stopped his rush.
"Load cartridge!" he ordered, while still driving against the shield.
Lutecia had a bad idea what was coming, quickly preparing her own countermove.
"Break Shot."
Indigo fire exploded from the weapon's tip, an extra surge designed as a shieldbreaker, but Lutecia had already dropped the shield, pivoting aside, letting force and momentum carry the sniper through where she'd been and leaving him off-balance against a shot in the back.
~X X X~
Vivio's entire body hurt.
The raw power of her Barrier Jacket was as good as anyone she knew, even her mother, which was a good thing, because it had had to absorb hit after hit that she shouldn't have had to suffer. Slowly, achingly, she pushed herself out of the web of the shattered flagstones of the Marine Garden path.
Does he think he killed me? she thought, confused as to why the sniper hadn't followed up with further attacks. Vivio looked around and saw, shocked, that he'd flown off and was going after Lutecia again! The exchange of magic between the fighters filled the air like a fireworks display.
She needed a way to end this, and quickly! Cia was already hurt; who knew how long she could hold up? Just standing up, let alone fighting, was more than Vivio had been expecting her to be capable of.
The problem was, Vivio hadn't doing very well. She'd landed a couple of solid hits, but those had been more about luck than skill: she'd simply hit him with more raw power than he could handle. Whenever it came down to actual combat, he outfought and outplanned her, chaining spells together to keep her off-balance. The way her instructors did. The way she'd done before...in practice. Only this wasn't practice, and she'd been slow and clumsy instead.
All right, then. We go with what worked.
"Burning Glory, switch to Saint Mode."
"Yes, mistress. Barrier Jacket: Saint Mode!"
Superficially, Saint Mode looked like a negative image of Royal Mode: the bodysuit became silvery-white, the short jacket blue, and the gauntlets vanished entirely. She'd based it on her Fate-mama's Sonic Form, reducing her Barrier Jacket's defense to gain power in other areas. Only where Sonic Form added to Fate's speed and the power of her melee attacks with her Device, Saint Mode added to Vivio's bombardment magic.
"Kreuz Form!"
Burning Glory shifted back to the cross-tipped rod.
"We may only get one shot at this, so let's make it count."
"Ready to go, mistress!"
The Belkan spell-rune blazed up beneath her feet as Burning Glory loaded the last two cartridges in the cylinder.
"Target Bind!"
~X X X~
Avalon cursed under his breath as he went hurtling forward, the force of his Break Shot wasted as Lutecia pulled the shield out from under him. He fought to turn, knowing that he was too slow, knowing that he was about to get hit and hard.
Except that he didn't.
She was the one who was too slow, the blood smearing her face mute testimony to the reason why, and she couldn't ready and cast her spell in time. He whipped Diving Raptor's bayonet into her, knocking Alphine stumbling off-balance.
"Impact Shot."
The blast sent her flying, bouncing across the ornamental flagstones of the path and crashing into a souvenir stand. Plush toys and T-shirts rained down around her. Avalon landed to brace himself, then snapped off a binding spell while Alphine was still down. This time it was different. He hadn't been able to chain Takamachi long enough to load and fire one of his major spells, but the binds were holding on Alphine. He slipped another cartridge into Diving Raptor, and a rune lit up beneath his feet.
Only it wasn't his indigo-blue, but a shimmering rainbow of colors. And the rune wasn't a Mid-style circle, but the triangular Belkan symbol.
Streaks of rainbow light streamed towards him out of the air. They seemed to plunge into his chest, not hurting him but not stopping, either, building and building in a swelling sphere centered on his Linker Core.
This...this is high-compression magic! Avalon realized. The mana released by the fights that saturated the local atmosphere was being gathered around him. Desperately, he looked around, sure from the color that Takamachi was the one responsible. He saw her at once, ablaze with magic, her cross-tipped staff raised above her head, crackling with energy. He tried to fight his way free of the gathering magic, but it clung fast, almost like some kind of binding spell. The only other option seemed to be to take down the caster before she could use that magic, so he fired off a Rapid Shot in her direction.
~X X X~
"Thy sins hath found thee out.
"Thine hour is at hand.
"Thou hast sown the wind.
"Thy harvest now is nigh."
Power sang through Vivio as she recited the incantation. She could feel the way it was building up, how it poured into the collection sphere she kept leashed by her will.
"For thy transgressions
"My hand hath turned against thee."
She felt the impacts jolt against her, one after another, and she almost lost it, but she fought down the pain and kept the mana compression under control. She couldn't afford to lose it now, for Lutecia's sake!
"Outcast forevermore,
"My wrath 'pon thee descends."
Her eyes snapped open.
"Starlight—"
Burning Glory's tip swung towards the sniper like a compass needle seeking north.
"JUDGMENT!"
~X X X~
The rainbow globe surged to three times its size, engulfing the sniper. A deafening roar exploded through the park, and the wind whipped at Lutecia's hair and clothes, but the blast itself was all but entirely confined within the sphere. The spell raged on for nearly thirty seconds before it dissipated. The sniper's Barrier Jacket had not stood up to Vivio's spell, a point made obvious by the fact neither it nor any other stitch of clothing was left on his body. He was spared any embarrassment, though, because one had to be conscious to be aware of one's humiliation and he wouldn't be coming around for a good six to eight hours. His Device had been shattered; his naked body was the only thing that dropped into the neat little divot cut into the ground by the lower edge of the blast sphere.
Vivio had dropped to her hands and knees in the immediate aftermath of the spell, but had pushed herself up and was running towards her girlfriend. Lutecia didn't have much time.
"Asclepius, open a link to headquarters, secure communications. Alphine, Agent Lutecia, verify."
Less than two seconds passed before the screen opened.
"Agent Alphine, you're a mess," was the desk agent's pithy reaction.
"Yeah, I know. I need a cleaning crew out to the Marine Garden amusement park in Harbor City. A strike team jumped me."
"Will do. Local involvement?"
"None yet. They jammed communications from park security."
"Good. Details?"
"Sorry; I have to cut you short. Civilian." She cut the link as Vivio reached her.
"Cia! Are you all right?"
The summoner nodded. She shouldn't have; it sent a surge of pain through her head.
"Um...mostly?"
"Why didn't you wait? You could have been killed, fighting that guy!"
"He had friends. They came after me when you flew off."
Vivio gave a little gasp and Lutecia winced. She'd phrased it almost like an accusation and she hadn't meant to do that. At once, she tried to soften the blow.
"After I dealt with the,, I had to get to you, to help—and I saw you fall." She smiled wanly; she was exhausted, the ebb of the adrenaline rush leaving behind the effects of the battering of her fight with the sniper and the magical exertion, all coming on top of her original injury. Blood was making her left eye stick shut. "I had to get to you, then, and stop him from hurting you."
"But Cia, I was trying to protect you!"
"Doesn't matter." She was going to shake her head, but stopped herself, remembering the nod. "I love you." Her vision was going gray around the edges, but she forced herself to keep on. For some reason it felt vitally important to her to say the words, and to say them now, not later. "I don't ever want...to be the reason...that you're hurt."
And with it said, she let the silence and darkness take her for a time, cradled as she was in the one place she felt safe enough to let herself go.