Chapter 7: An Angel Descends

Even as Shine spoke the words, Elise was already beginning to act. "QUADRA FORMATION!" beams of light shot out of Bachstelze, reaching out to Shine's Fairlion and Cecilia's Blue Tears, and then from each of them, the beams reemerged and converged on Perrine. "QUADRA LOCK!" the rift, surrounded by the beams of light, began to fluctuate, and then flowed upwards, as the beams formed into a pyramidal shape. The amorphous mass of darkness flowed within the barrier they had created. "Everyone, open fire!" Elise began blasting the rift with Bach's laser cannons.

"Vostock Laser!" A massive shaft of light blasted out of the chest of the Fairlion, "Rolling Cannon!" the energy cannons mounted on the Fairlion's head also began pouring bolts of energy into the rift.

"Blue Tears, FULL BURST!" Cecilia opened fire with all of Blue Tear's weapons, beams from the remote Tears, the energy sniper rifle, and a barrage of missiles.

Perrine gathered all the magic power she had left, and lifted her rapier into the sky. Electricity crackled around her, she lowered her sword, pointing it at the rift. "TONNERRE…ÉCLAMENT!" a brilliant blue bolt connected between Perrine and the Rift, more energy than she'd ever dreamed of channeling.

As more and more energy poured into the rift, it churned faster and faster within the barrier, until finally, it exploded. The barrier turned brilliant white, brighter than the sun, for just an instant. And then it was gone. And the sky was empty except for the four girls. All the Neuroi and all the monsters were gone.

"Whoo hoo! It worked!" Elise's excited shout crackled over the radio link. "Cecilia, Perrine! We did it!" Elise looked around, "Perrine? Are you there?" She looked over and saw Perrine bobbing in the sky, suddenly the glowing propellers on her striker unit flickered, and went out. "Perrine!" Elise screamed as the other girl plummeted out of the sky…

Mami squinted, trying to see what was going on in the melee up ahead. She was using her rifles to provide covering fire, but the three combatants were so mixed up she didn't think she was being much help. She had yet to even get a good look at who the enemy was. It was just flashes of yellow and blue and white as the blades of the fighters clashed.

As she continued firing, she realized that something was touching her ankle. Looking down, she saw some sort of golden cord wrapped around her left leg. Before she could react, it gave a violent tug and she found herself being pulled out of the sky. "Oh, this is not good". And then she hit the trees.

Perrine slowly opened her eyes. Trying to remember where she was. She had been fighting, fighting for what felt like days. Then she remembered, the Neuroi and the monsters, the rifts, those other three girls. Her head was resting on something soft, it felt familiar somehow…her eyes were finally open and focusing, though she still couldn't see. "Glasses…glasses" she reached her arm out and around, and her hand grabbed something soft. She squeezed and a voice squeaked a bit.

"Now now, those aren't your glasses. Here you go." Her glasses slipped into place, and she realized she was laying on someone's lap. And her right hand was currently grabbing that person's breasts. Perrine felt herself flush red and she snapped her arm down. She tried to sit up, but a hand held her down. "Hold on, you've had a rough day. You fought longer and harder than the rest of us, so lay down for a little while longer." Cecilia, that's who this has to be, the Brittanian with the sniper rifle.

"Is she awake now?" A voice Perrine didn't recognize called out.

"Yes, she just woke up. She seemed a bit confused at first, but that's understandable." Cecilia looked back down at Perrine and smiled gently. "Did you two find it?"

"Yes, it was right where the sensors said it would be," the voice, which Perrine realized had to belong to the fourth person, Shine, continued, "it's not too far away, we can walk there in about 10 minutes. Do you think she can walk now?"

"I'm fine. I can get up now." Perrine forced herself upright, though her head suddenly felt like it had expanded to several times its size. She shook it a bit and looked up. Elise and someone she'd never seen before stood before her. The girl, Shine, was shockingly young. If she'd been in the 501st she'd have been one of the youngest members of the team. She was had blonde hair done up in a set of buns on the sides of her head, with curly streamers of hair hanging down from them. She was wearing some sort of pilot suit, pink and red, which seemed to have been tailored to resemble a ballet tutu. She looked at the other girls, seeing them clearly for the first time, and without their machines in the way. Elise was wearing a thin, green and white leotard, with green thighhighs, her suit had some sort of short tail emerging from the back, and that, along with the ear-like decoration on her head made her look remarkably like a witch. Cecilia was dressed similarly, wearing what looked to be one of the dark blue Fuso undergarments, with thighhighs of the same color. "Where are we going?" She looked around and saw her jacket lying over a log, they must have taken it off her, leaving her in just her shirt and stockings. She reached for the jacket.

"Oh, you can leave that behind, you'll just be taking it off when we get there." Elise broke in. "I found a place where we can clean up. We're kinda grimy." She smiled at that, and Perrine realized that Elise still had black smudges over her face, and if Elise looked that bad, she herself was probably even worse.

"You said it's a ten minute walk? Hold on." Perrine stripped off her stockings. She noticed the other girls giving her a strange look. "I don't have my shoes with me, and I don't want to rip up the bottom of the stockings if I can avoid it." Perrine wondered why they were giving her such an odd look, even without the stockings and shirt, she was still more dressed than Cecilia or Elise! Elise and Shine looked at each other and shrugged, and turned, motioning the others to follow.

A brief ten minutes later, and the girls found themselves looking at a natural hot springs, cutting into the side of a cliff inside the forest near the beach they'd landed on. They quickly stripped off their clothes and slipped into the water. "Oh this feels so good" Perrine stretched her arms over her head. They'd arranged themselves in a rough semicircle, with Cecilia and Shine on either end and Perrine and Elise in the middle. After a few minutes of quietly working the grime off of themselves, they all settled back in to soak for a while. Perrine noticed Elise not too subtly staring at at Cecilia's chest. "Oh not another one" she muttered to herself. She resolved long ago to quit obsessing over girls with larger breasts than her own.

"So, what exactly is going on here? I was the last to arrive, so I'm really not sure what to think of all this." Shine broke the silence, "anyway, as I said, my name is Shine Hausen, of the Dukedom of Riksent." They went through the introductions again, "well, this is very strange. We are all clearly from different dimensions. That's not unheard of, but very unusual." Shine noticed that the other girls were giving her somewhat boggled looks. "I guess you don't have any experience with this, do you? Well, considering how different our universes are, that's not really a surprise. But that must be what happened. We were all brought from our universes into this one, but while we are all from some version of Earth, this is clearly not Earth." Shine gestured at the unusual trees surrounding the hot springs, and at the triple moons, just visible between the trees. "And those creatures, some were from Perrine's world, right?" Perrine nodded, "while that large creature, the Regisseur, is something I recognized from my universe. However those other creatures, none of you recognized them either, did you?" Everyone else shook their heads. "They may be the key to all of this. We should also see if there has been anyone else brought here," a sudden growling sound interrupted her. Perrine's face had turned bright red.

"Sorry, its just…I haven't eaten since before I went out on patrol, and I used up a lot of magic power today." Perrine sunk down deeper into the water, trying to hide her embarrassment.

Shine giggled a bit, and stepped out of the water, coming back holding a box. "I thought we'd all be pretty hungry by now", as she slipped back into the water, "so I brought this. I wish I could say it was a homemade picnic lunch, but unfortunately its just military rations." She opened the box and pulled out a couple of wrapped bars, passing the box to Elise, who did the same. Each girl pulled a few out, there were probably at least twenty bars in the box, and started eating.

"Actually," Perrine said as she chewed, "this isn't bad. Better than most rations I've had to eat." Elises grunted an agreement, while Cecilia seemed less convinced, but ate anyway.

"Mmm…these are delicious! I haven't eaten in so long." Perrine's head jerked up at the unknown voice, and she saw Shine and Elise staring in shock towards Cecilia. Perrine looked over, and saw what may just be the most beautiful girl she'd ever seen. A perfectly proportioned face, with large, deep red eyes, framed with a long mane of golden hair that was spreading out over the water. And while Perrine had long since been inured to large breasted women, this girl had possibly the largest breasts she'd ever seen, but not sagging in the slightest as they hovered just over the surface of the water. But what was truly causing the stares was what was coming out of her back, a pair of brilliant white wings, like those of an angel. As Perrine took in the strange new arrival, the arrival in question had returned to munching on one of the ration bars.

"So…excuse me, but who are you?" Cecilia spoke the words the others were thinking. "When did you get here?"

"Oh, my name is Astraea. Close Combat Angeloid Type Delta, Astraea." The words came out between bites on the bar. "I don't know when I got here, exactly. I was flying around looking for food, when all of a sudden I was over some strange forest. That was several hours ago. I heard you guys and came down when I saw you were eating. I was soooo hungry." Astraea grabbed another bar from the box and tore into it. "So, who are you guys? This doesn't look like Synapse or the lower world."

Yet another round of introductions began, unsurprisingly, Astraea knew nothing of the worlds the others came from. They talked for a while longer about themselves and the worlds they came from, when all of a sudden Astraea grabbed Cecilia and threw her over to the other side of the hot spring, to the surprise of the rest of the girls.

The girls started at Astraea's sudden action, but moments later a flash of red sliced between them, and a woman in red appeared, her sword buried in the earth right behind where Cecilia had been sitting. Astraea had already begun her counterattack, delivering a roundhouse kick right at the woman's head, but it was blocked by the woman's arm, and their eyes met, deep red, and ice, ice blue...