TOKYO
Chapter 13
Swarm
A bizzare monster hovered towards Vash: it looked like two rocky, hovering dinosaur skulls, fused together at the neck. Vash fired his handgun at the spot where they met, and they crashed to the ground and disintegrated. He was immediately set upon by a strange, headless-looking lizardine beast that had lost its left arm somehow, and he raised his arm. There was a thunderclap of a gunshot, and it fell back, dead.
He heard a chitinous clattering behind him, and spun around. Standing there was a red, twelve-foot-long scorpion, stinger raised to strike ...
... when all of a sudden, it was knocked to the side by a burst of fire.
Vash whirled. Standing there was a man with pale-blue hair in a ponytail, wearing a white cloak over a green jumpsuit. The scorpion turned, hissing with rage, and the man raised his hands and shouted, "Tandle!" An orange bolt of lightning rained down, blasting the creature to bits. He rushed over towards Vash. "That was nice work," he said in an easygoing manner. "You might want to work on watching your back, though."
"Who're you?" said Vash.
"Name's Rune Walsh," said the man. "Come on, there's plenty more monsters, and that's just on this street!" He turned to run.
"You a Palman?" asked Vash as he hurried after him.
"Gee, how'd you guess?" said Rune.
"Well, I'd swear that first attack was a Technique, not a spell," said Vash, firing at a gigantic dragonfly. "The only other people I've seen who could do that were from your universe."
"Yeah, I guessed that I was somewhere else by all the shifting colors and my magical snese about this," said Rune. He shouted, "Flaeli!" A fireball -- an actual spell this time -- blasted aside a large, burly monster. "So, uh, what's this world called, anyway?"
"The city is Tokyo," said Vash. "You're on a planet called Earth."
Rune whirled. "What!?" He had to duck the attack of another of the one-armed headless lizards, and slammed his staff against it before unleashing another Tandle.
"The planet is called Earth," said Vash with a frown. "Uwaaaa!!" He ducked as another oversized dragonfly launched a stinger at his head.
With a snarl, Rune threw another Flaeli at it, disintigrating it. "Just my luck," he muttered.
"Huh?" said Vash.
"Let's just say I don't have fond memories of Earthlings," said Rune. "Anyway, I probably shouldn't be prejudiced against them -- That what I think it is?" He gestured up towards the looming form of the Air Palace.
Vash took a guess. "Yes," he said.
The Highwind II took off, even before its passengers had boarded, but that was okay, because Nei used her magic to teleport them to the inside. Which was just as well, since a swarm of monsters promptly began pouring out of the Air Palace, and thus trying to get back out on foot was a difficult proposition at best.
"Battle stations!" said Rufus, almost before he was done materializing. "We'll be on deck, handling things our own way." He ran out without bothering to see if he was being obeyed.
"Such confidence in his underlings," muttered Soma as the HOLD troops began scrambling around in confusion. "You heard him! Let's get going! By the way, any particular reason you brought Neifirst's fricking body along with us?"
"Just so Zio doesn't revive her," said Nei, charging after him.
The deck was crawling with monsters. Rufus, Nei, Seifer, and Soma began throwing casting spells as soon as they were on deck, while Zero and Dita fired their weapons and Ranma used some long-range attacks. The Highwind lurched as its guns blazed and the monsters attacked.
"There's too many of them!" said Ranma, as he resorted to kicking one double-skull into another.
"Cover me!" shouted Rufus, and ducked down, reaching into his jacket, and pulled out a blue Materia orb. He placed it into a slot on his shotgun next to a green one, and raised it up. He was surrounded by a greenish-yellow glow, and then ...
There was a gigantic explosion of lightning, seeming to strike everywhere at once. Most of the monsters then fell, paralyzed or dead.
"Nice work," said Soma.
"Thank you," said Rufus, using his shotgun to take out one of the last remaining enemies. "Now let us deal with the enemies on the surface."
Vash had explained the whole situation to Rune, and his mind was spinning. He'd never known a "joint world" like this could exist. Of course, he'd never known Earthlings to be anything but evil, either, so what did anyone know?
Rune was about to throw a Flaeli at another monster, when he was abruptly slammed to the side by Vash. A corpse of a monster crashed into the ground where he'd been standing.
"Look!" said Vash, pointing up.
Rune looked. "What's that?" he said, narrowing his eyes. The first thing that came to mind was the spaceship Landale, but it was definitely the wrong shape ...
"My friends are on that airship," said Vash.
"Looks like they managed to deal with heavy fire," said Rune wryly. A sudden thought struck him. "Say, is it just me, or are there a lot fewer civillians around here than there should be?"
"They're underground," said Vash, and began reloading his pistol for the seventh time. "There's an extensive system of bomb shelters down there. With enough warning, a nuclear strike could happen and there'd be not many casualties."
Rune considered this, searching his memory for the phrase "nuclear strike," even as he used his staff like a baseball bat to knock one monster into another, and smirked when he made the connection. "So this Rufus Shinra you mentioned -- he's a good guy?"
"No, probably just enlightened self-interest," said Vash, and then closed his handgun. "But that happens to everyone here if they aren't actually pure evil."
"Such as Zio," said Rune, pointedly.
"Such as Zio," said Vash, nodding. "You know, I'm impressed. This is just about the most coherent conversation I've had." He fired his gun through three monsters at once.
"Nice shot," said Rune. "But, uh, what did you mean by WATCH OUT!"
A red bolt of light descended from the sky and became a figure with blonde hair, dressed in red and black; Rune's first thought was that it was a woman, but then something about it reminded him of Wren ....
"Whoops! Sorry, Vash, almost hit ya," said the figure. "Who's this guy?"
"Rune, this is Zero, he's a sort of super-advanced robot guy," said Vash. "Zero, Rune, he's a Palman. He's fought Zio before."
"I see," said Zero. "Anyway, I thought I'd join the fun!" he said, slicing the nearest three monsters in half with one smooth sweep of his beamsaber.
"Nice," said Rune. This guy was good. And the fact that he was a "super advanced robot guy" explained why he couldn't sense any life force in Zero, as well as why Wren -- an advanced robot in his own right -- had been brought to mind. He unleashed another Tandle.
Another monster -- this one burly and crablike, built like a tank -- charged forwards without warning and knocked him to the ground. Vash shot it between the eyes, and it exploded in a burst of glowing yellow orbs, which flew away, leaving a multicolored trail of light.
"Pyreflies!" exclaimed Zero. "He's bringing out Fiends!?"
"What are Fiends?" said Rune, getting to his feet and casting Hewn, a spell that obliterated several enemies with wind. A few more of them exploded into the glowing orbs.
"I think they're ghosts that didn't want to leave this world and transformed into monsters," said Vash. "Uh, hey, there's a lot more monsters now!"
"You're right," said Rune. "Looks like things are heating up ..."
And then, without warning, there was a feminine cry, and a shockwave slammed through the ground, ripping through most of the monsters in front of them, and coming to a stop right before it hit the trio.
"Oh no," muttered Zero.
"What the hell was that!?" exclaimed Rune. It was definitely magic, but it was more powerful than most magic-users he knew. And he was one to make the comparison.
"The most embarassing kind of person to deal with, whether they're enemies or allies," said Zero.
The dust settled, revealling a brown-haired fifteen-year-old girl in a white outfit with an extremely short skirt and a red cape, weilding a hammer. "There we go!" she said, slinging the hammer over her shoulder; she had a slightly deeper voice than Rune expected.
"A Magical Girl," finished Zero. "I think that's ... yes, it's Valkyrie Yuuki."
She waved to the group. "Oh, hey! You're Zero, right?"
"Yes," said Zero, with a much steadier voice than Rune was expecting, and once again he was reminded that Zero was mechanical, and thus had better control of either his emotions or his voice.
"Cool!" she said. "Looks like we've taken care of this street for now!"
Zero paused, as if listening to someone, and then said, "I've just gotten a call from HQ. The Maverick Hunters have about a tenth of the city under control at the moment, and some other tough guys are working on making things at least kinda safe."
"Is everyone in this city ridiculously overpowered?" complained Rune.
"Is he a new guy?" asked Yuuki.
"Yep," said Vash cheerfully.
"I'd say the numbers are around three hundred organic humanoids who can keep up with mechanicals like me, out of a population of 12 million," said Zero. "And you're one of 'em."
"I'll just head out now," said Yuuki, and leaped into the air. A pair of gigantic white wings sprung from her back and she flew away.
"Nice," said Rune. "So what's say we go up against the Big Z now?"
"Hey, I'm the Big Z!" said Zero. "Vash, how's Zelgadis doing?"
"If he's progressing at the rate he was when I left him, he should be doing fine," said Vash.
Zero nodded. "Great. Let's get the rest of the League back together, then take on Zio."
"Out of curiosity," said Rune, "why doesn't this League of yours have more members? Why don't you get some more of 'em to join us?"
"Because there's an estimated three hundred out there, and all of 'em have relatively big egoes and are used to being the 'main character' as it were," said Zero. "If word gets out we exist, half of 'em'll be lining up at our door to join us, half will be saying 'why didn't you make me a member', plenty will be suspicious of our quote-unquote 'true motives', and if any of them actually do get in, as like not they'll try to take us over."
Rune laughed. "Is that right," he said.
"You won't believe the number of humans we've rejected from the Maverick Hunters due to attitude problems," said Zero.
Rune raised an eyebrow. "The ...?"
"My group," said Zero. "We're here to make sure robots don't go insane and try to kill everyone. Okay, let's head back to Ars Magica."