Alright, Chapter 5 is here! Very sorry for the delay as I'm a busy man. Anyway, DAL fans rejoice as the DAL movie is coming out pretty soon and also the game too. I don't have much of a roadmap to show now as I intend to keep it this way. But rest assured that the fanfic has not reached a dead end. It is just the writing being the problem. Without further ado, enjoy!
Chapter 5: Rising
It is already night and Arashi had finished training from Mana. The young man still wears his wiring suit and goes out of the base, he arrives at a small beach. It turns out, the base is located in an island somewhere in Atlantic Ocean. The base is shrouded by a mountain, it is a base carved and built in the mountain to be exact. There are forest on the mountainous terrain with steep cliffs, a perfect location for a base.
Arashi do not have his visor this time, only pulling up his mask with the black bandana, he has always wanted to try out something of his ability. Since he found out he can cut through everything by infusing death mana. What happens if such mana is infused with projectiles?
He first fired one bolt from Hale to a large piece of rock. The bolt partially pierces the rock, leaving a small crater upon impact. He then infuses the mana into his pistol, and fires. The bolt exits the barrel, a wispy blue blade is immediately formed, shrouding the bolt. Upon impact, the rock is immediately punched through, leaving a big gaping hole.
"What in the?... If I can do this with Hale, then I can even obliterate a tank with Javelin!"
He is delighted to discover new properties of his power. Unknown to him, Dante is watching him from a distance.
"Learned new things huh? Time for a new weapon. Then your AR-Unit training will start if you know what I mean."
Arashi then look towards the cliff and then, in a puff of wispy blue aura, he appears on the cliff. This move surprises Dante as he never expect Arashi to still have teleport after losing his powers.
"So, he evolved his power to have teleport again. This kid is amazing to be honest…"
As Dante is at the higher ground, he doesn't need to move to keep an eye out for Arashi. But what he sees start to disturb him. Arashi is aiming at a large gap between two cliffs.
"What is he trying to do now? Jump to the other cliff?"
Arashi only start to stretch himself, he is warming up to sprint and jump across the gap. He wants to find out just how much the strength has increased by the properties of the wiring suit. The young man also purposely positions himself away from a cliff wall.
"Alright… Let's do this."
Arashi then sprints at blistering speed, shocking Dante who is watching.
"What the hell is he thinking? Even with enhanced strength, that suit won't generate enough force for you to jump over!"
Dante is literally screaming in his heart as he sees that, he is clinging on the little strands of faith that Arashi will make it safely. As Arashi jumps across the gap in the midair, he noticed that he will land very close to the edge.
"Come on, a little more…"
Unfortunately, his toe steps onto the edge first, slipping off the edge, hitting his right leg right under the knee. The impact fractures his shin bone, causing immense pain to him.
"ARRRRRGGGGGGHHHH!"
He yelled as he falls into the cliff. The scene shocks Dante whose faith has been shattered by Arashi.
"DO SOMETHING DANTE!" Nishiro shouted too.
Dante immediately uses his Spirit power and superior territory control to appear near Arashi. However, what Arashi does surprises him, Arashi conjured a territory that breaks his fall and allow him to be suspended in air.
"Hey, are you alright." he asks.
Still shocked, Arashi remain silent, he then realised what he have done and what Dante meant.
"Yeah… Please, let me try to climb this…"
Arashi certainly doesn't look good, but he endures the pain, then slowly manipulates his territory like he is climbing a ladder. He slowly climbs with one leg and two hands with Dante by his side.
A few minutes later, he managed to climb onto the cliff and he rolls away from the edge panting heavily.
"Maybe next time, you should not sneak out of base like that." Dante reprimands Arashi.
"I now know what you've meant! I can't put it in words, but I think I can demonstrate that." Arashi replied.
Dante only smiled, his student is motivated to learn and learning at a fast rate. He helps Arashi up and activate the thrusters on his wiring suit to fly back to base.
The doctors scanned Arashi's broken leg and operated on it. Using cutting edge realizer, they join back the broken leg and heal it completely. Arashi will not awake until the next day morning.
"Dante, Mana, let me show you…"
Arashi in his wiring suit, immediately sprints, suddenly he seems to levitate. Mana and Dante can tell that he has conjured a platform for him to sprint on. He then conjures a slanted platform and he jumps on it and sprints like how he sprints on walls. The young man then back flips, conjuring another platform for him to cartwheel into a perfect landing.
Mana is very impressed by the acrobatic moves as she is clapping. Dante looks pretty impressed too.
"Very good… You are speeding up the progress a lot." Mana compliments him.
Suddenly, a man enters the training area, holding a large silver colored briefcase. The man turns out to be Ian.
"Alright, Spectre. New toys for you…"
Ian opens up the briefcase, revealing an assault rifle that looks like a Colt M4, but taking a closer look, it is a HK416 rifle. the rifle is completely in black, with flip up sights. The rifle is packed with foam, surrounded by various sight like attachments, reflex and ACOG. It also consists of a shorter barrel, foregrip attachments like laser and flashlight. There are a few STANAG magazines which is loaded with spikes.
Ian takes out the rifle and pass it to Arashi, who grabs it and inspects it. Arashi noticed that there are no ejection ports on the rifle, and the spikes tell him that the rifle is a gauss rifle. The rifle is very balanced, in fact, modifying the rifle to gauss rifle and adding counterweights at the butt stock of the rifle eliminates the need of a heavy barrel and compensator for recoil compensation. There are gray words "GAR-BOLTOR" engraved right below the receiver. There is also a selector for safety, single and auto fire mode.
The training arena immediately shifts to a gun range with the use of realizer. Arashi knows what that is about, that is to try out the new weapon. Ian passes Arashi a magazine and he inserts it into Boltor.
"Okay, kid. Try the gun for yourself."
Arashi stands at the firing range and fires Boltor. The bolts are very concentrated to the bullseye thanks to the zero recoil. Arashi and they crew are very satisfied with the rifle. They know he will be on the field very soon.
"Congratulations, Spectre. You have done well and as a result we can speed up the progress. Time for AR-Unit training. But before that, I have activated the functions of your wiring suit, you have active camouflage and pain suppressors."
To test out the functions, Arashi simply use his mind to control the suit. His visor highlights 'Camo Activate' and his whole body turns transparent. His visor has also outlined his body in order for the user to see what is going on. Arashi then disengage the cloak, revealing himself again.
"Your wiring suit also linked to our system to perform an instant deployment of units. Before that, Mana you need to look away. Spectre has to remove his visor and mask."
Mana obeys and look to her back. The visor now shows that 'MERCURIAL-AR READY', Arashi removes the visor and pulls down his mask, he uses his mind to control again. Arashi sudden engulf in a vortex of electricity and then an exoskeleton attaches onto him.
Arashi noticed although the unit looks like the one that he touched back then, it is different. Although still based on the carbon nanotubes on the other unit, the armor plating has changed. There are less muscle fibres and the shoulder plates are now rounded. The metal claws are slightly longer too. There are pieces of metals at his back as if it holds something. His ear areas are covered by metal platings, exposing his forehead and face.
"Insert your sword."
Arashi inserts the whole sword into the strip and it grabs the sword, holding it in place. Then, metal pieces join up covering the lower jaw. The metal jaw has metal teeth that covers the real teeth of Arashi. Then, two more metal pieces joins up covering his face and eyes. It turns out that those are visors.
His sword sheath is mounted on an articulated arm which automatically switched between his back and hip. Allowing Arashi to draw his blades in so many ways.
"Meet Mercurial, the more stable AR-Unit based on Nevermore-AR. Nevermore-AR need more tweaking so that it won't eat us alive. The suit is powered by SECOND AI, not too smart and definitely not stupid AI. The AI handles the interface such as highlighting your palms which blasts lightning, objectives etc."
Arashi is overwhelmed with information. His palms crack lightning, ready to unleash a shock therapy on his targets.
"Mercurial and Nevermore has something unique in them, that is to rapidly charge energy to let you lift things that are extremely heavy. You can easily lift a mech and even throw it. Now, grab that realizer core."
A realizer unit appears and Arashi reaches out his right hand to grab it. The visor immediately highlights his right hand with pulse of blues going toward his body. The realizer unit is then crushed by the super strength properties of Mercurial-AR.
"See that? The problem will be that realizer unit as you have seen, is in a unit. You have to use your blade to cut that thing out. SECOND can highlight the part where the realizer is, then all you have to do is to cut it. Bandersnatches however has a fuel cell that can recharge energy too, that will be highlighted as well. But be careful, fuel cell can explode as Mercurial and Nevermore has the interface to allow timed detonation on them. So now, try it yourself."
A Bandersnatch suddenly appears, the robot starts firing dummy rounds at Arashi. He immediately concentrates to slow the rounds down while charging towards the robot. One thing he notices is that the visor's refresh rate has been improved as he cannot see the flickering anymore. He draws his sword, deflecting away the bullets. He then slices the robot's legs clean off with a force so great that the robot is sent flying upwards. He then aim carefully to sever the highlighted parts, slices upwards diagonally on the robot's back, separating both the fuel cell and realizer core and allowing Arashi to grab it with one hand. He then absorbs the energy and crushes them.
"Good, good. We can go and fly now! You really are a progress booster." Dante complimented.
Arashi only smiled, but his AR-Unit made him look rather emotionless.
"I didn't expect that…"
The crew only smiled as a recognition on the progress.
An hour later
Dante and Arashi is at the summit. Dante has his Kusanagi-AR while Arashi has a flying attachment attached to his waist. The attachment is in black and resembles a pair of wings. Both units start to levitate as their thrusters activate.
"Scythe Wings is now remotely controlled. Try to control it, just fly upwards."
The attachments like the suit are linked to the brains and controlled it. Arashi has a familiar feeling as if he has his wings back. He is able to fly upwards and manoeuvre, this surprises Dante.
"Dante, please allow me to try this on my own. I think I have my wings back..."
Dante realises that by luck, they actually created a perfect system for Arashi. But still, an external device may have input latency.
"Alright, try to fly around, perform as many sharp bends. I need the data to see if the latency can be an issue." Dante ordered.
"Roger."
Arashi immediately speeds off with the SECOND switches the HUD to a flying one. Arashi using his mind to set turn zones which are highlighted in his visor. As he turns, he can feel the G-Force slightly, being protected from the crushing G-Force by the AR-Unit.
Meanwhile, Dante is reading the data. He is impressed by Arashi's performance.
"With only less than 2% lag. To get this at first try we are in luck!"
While Dante is drawn by the progress, there is a voice.
"It is not luck, it is you two's fate."
The voice surprises Dante and he sees a man in black leathery armor with a hood and a pair of white tendril wings and the time seems to stop. Dante recognizes the man as it matches the description from both his Wizards and Arashi.
"You are... The angel my men spoke of, Nanaya Kyo!"
The young man only smiled and not pulling down his hood, he continue to speak.
"Greetings, Karakukyo Dante and Avatar of Raziel, Nishiro."
Nishiro appears as well, he is disturbed by Kyo's appearance.
"I thank you for assisting my brother. But this time I have to intervene, I have to make everything work."
His statement puzzles Dante and Nishiro won't had no memory of Kyo appearing before. Kyo notices that and explained.
"I can change almost anyone's fate, this training would have crippled him permanently. I can and have to prevent that."
"Then when do you not intervene?" Nishiro asks with a serious tone.
"When Itherael says so... And also, a warning, a war is coming... Goodbye."
The time suddenly resumes, Arashi is still flying normally. Suddenly the radio cracks with Arashi's voice.
"Hey Dante, what's going on? How's the thing?"
"Very little latency, and you won't believe this, Kyo stopped the time and warned me saying a war is coming." Dante replied.
This surprises Arashi as he knows that Kyo cannot talk to anyone or intervene the course of fate until the time is right.
"This carries a message, there is no way Kyo will simply appear like that." Arashi replied.
He, Dante and Nishiro try to decipher what Kyo is trying to tell them.
"We have to train harder and faster!" the three said in unison.
"It's not just that, this means we have to perfect Nevermore-AR too." Nishiro commented.
"We'll do that later, now we are going to conduct aerial combat training. Your sword is not accessible at the moment, but we have weapons specifically for Scythe Wings." Dante added.
Suddenly, two part of the wings separate and attaches themselves onto Arashi's shoulders. They extends and exposing two razor sharp black blades. Arashi notices that both blades has a long barrel at the side ending near the blade tip. In his visor, there are two lines each coming out from the barrel, suggesting to Arashi that those are gun barrels.
"As you can see, there are two guns, one on each blade, try firing them."
Arashi aims the blades at the sea and fires. The barrels shoots out a large arc of lightning.
"Woah, lightning cannons?"
He continues to fire as the blade cannons are rapid firing. Then he infuse his death mana and fires. A large stream of lightning blasts towards the sea and creating strong waves.
"Now, enter stealth mode and take down the three dummy Bandersnatches." Dante ordered.
Arashi turns transparent with his unit and flies to the objective marker. The Scythe Wings are extremely fast and silent with top speed up to mach 2. SECOND immediately marks three Bandersnatches, Arashi selects his weapons, the DREAD SLP (Super Low Profile) heat seeker missiles and targets one drone. The Scythe Wings deploy the missile from the interior, send the missile flying towards one drone while Arashi turns on full throttle.
The drone cannot pick up the missile from its radar due to the stealth system of the missile and it connects, destroying the robot. While Arashi stabs the right blade through the Bandersnatch's chest, penetrating the fuel cell. Before the remaining drone can react, Arashi already remove the Bandersnatch it explodes while dropping into the island. He immediately focuses, slowing down everything, takes aim and fires, the arc of lightning blasts the Bandersnatch's body clean off.
"Enable airship combat mode!" Dante commanded.
Arashi do so and enables it, his gun swords immediately shoot jets of plasma, forming a large and long blade of electricity.
"In this mode, you can bring down lightly armored airships. Mercurial is not powerful enough to bring down heavier ones like Qliphoth."
"I see… Anything else?"
"Nope, we are done! One week ahead of schedule too."
Everyone is happy to hear that as they manage to cut down the time. Allowing Arashi to be on the field much quicker.
"But, since I'm ahead of schedule, I suppose I'm jobless now eh?" Arashi asked jokingly.
"Well… If you insist… I'll talk to Woodman and see what we have. Let's go back to base." Dante replied.
Back in the base
The two men head back into the base with Miruko, Mana and Ian waiting for them.
"Congratulations, Spectre. You are now a field operator of Yggdrasil."
Miruko congratulates Arashi who is now a full fledged Wizard.
"Thanks. I hope to be on the field as soon as possible." Arashi replied.
"Well done. You are one of the fastest learner I have seen." Mana complimented.
"Is it so? Haha… Thanks."
It is a new start for Arashi, his second identity is now fully functional and able to let him blend in well. He won the trust of Mana, who does not suspect his identity.
10 hours later: Harz, Germany, 1am DEM Spirit Intelligence R&D Facility
"INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!"
The alarm is roaring as someone intrudes into the facility. Gun fires everywhere in the facility and Wizards falling one after another. These intruders some appears to be lightly armed, some heavily armed. Their body has some kind of armor that is low profile but offers good protection. Their arms are mechanical ones as carbon nanotubes and some composite platings can be found on them.
"MAYDAY MAYDAY! We are overwhelmed by unknown tangos, they are heavily armed, we currently have more than 50 casualties! Requesting for backup!" The female Wizard shouted.
In the control room of the facility, there are two DEM Wizards who are scrambling for help by contacting German Wizards as the facility is under attack. They managed to have a video feed contact to the military.
"Copy that, we have dispatched our Wizards, requesting for tango description." the German operator asks.
"THEY ARE ALL AUGS! MECHANICAL AUGMENTED!"
The male Wizard shouted while attempting to lock the doors out. This puzzles the operator who couldn't comprehend the situation.
"Augs?"
Suddenly, the thick reinforced steel door is being kicked off as there is a deep dent on the door. The male Wizard is immediately killed as he is shot on the head.
"NO! WHY YOU!?"
The girl immediately deploy her laser blade and charges at the door. However, she is immediately kicked back and a man's arm deploys a solid blade and stabs through her chest, killing the Wizard. On the other side, they can't see the man's face as the man immediately shot out the camera.
The Wizard that is handling the call is stunned as they have heard of a black ops unit operated by DARPA with the capabilities of killing Wizards and deploy territory without the need of a CR-Unit or wiring suit.
"How in the… Is that DARPA's legendary unit… the Ghosts?"
Back on the facility
"We got an established link Jaren." one soldier reported.
"Overlord, this is Steel, we have access to the mainframe. Downloading data."
"Copy that, Steel. Wizards incoming ETA 10 minutes."
The man known as Jaren, is hacking into the servers in the facility with other soldiers too. He look like he is in the mid 30s with brown scruffy untamed hair and goatee. His sunglasses is unique as it is frameless. At the left side of his forehead, there is a hexagonal scar. The download speed is very high and downloaded all data in just two minutes.
"Team, give me a sitrep."
Jaren called with his radio asking the team.
"All Wizards subdued, no casualties, explosive has been planted." the squad leader reported.
Jaren look at the time without looking at the watch as his augmented eyes allow him to have a HUD where all the information is displayed.
"We have exactly 7 minutes to evacuate, timer set to 715. All personnel board the VTOL now!"
Jaren's command is heeded and everyone starts to evacuate. A few soldier's raise their hand and a mechanism disassemble to reveal a cyan light. The explosives' timer immediately set to 7 minutes and 15 seconds.
"Overlord, this is Steel, we have downloaded the data. We are evacuating the facility."
The VTOLs are actually in active camouflage as it appears out of nowhere. These soldiers are apparently trained to fly a plane as one just jumps into the cockpit and starts to fly them. There are a total of 4 VTOLs and swiftly all loaded with the soldiers, then they speed off into the night sky and engage the active camouflage again. German Wizards arrive the burned facility soon after and the explosives trigger, blowing the whole facility off DEM's map. The Wizards are shocked and immediately called for more backup for search and rescue.
Few hours later: Baltic Sea, USA Secret Black Site
The VTOLs land with camo disengaged, the Ghosts alight the VTOL and fall in. Awaiting them are two large built muscular man in black suit.
"All men assembled, sirs!"
Jaren salutes the two men, with the two men salutes back and Jaren puts down his hand after theirs.
"Ease yourself. Don't have to be formal here."
The soldiers ease themselves and Jaren presents the data in the form of a few tablets.
"Mr Daniel, these are the data."
One of them takes the tablet and look at the data.
"Good work… We are one step closer… Hehehehehahahahaha…"
That's all for Chapter 5. You may be surprised on why did I put cyborgs in the fanfic? Well let's be serious here, the battlefield of DAL has evolved. CR-Unit are too bulky for black ops usage and thus, augs like Jaren are created. They signed the contract to be one machine. And I guess I don't have to tell you where this is from. ;-)