9.10 – Battle of All Shapes

Light rain moved over Lukewarm, a city sitting at a comfortable distance from Theria's edge, though calling it a city undersold how deliberately small it had stayed. No skyscrapers, nothing reaching for height. Mayor Xidia had refused to let it become another metropolis, and the result was a place where people could step out from under the glass towers and actually see the sky again, somewhere quieter and closer to the ground than the capital ever allowed.

The streets moved at their own pace, mostly indifferent to politics, that was their king's domain, and everyone seemed content leaving it there. No online debates running through local feeds, no complaints about development timelines, nothing approaching bad news beyond a faint echo of the fight between Shelly and 02 that had left an empty lot at the city's edge where a building used to stand.

A gold-yellow android crossed into the city at the end of a run she'd been holding for days straight. The Gamma symbol across her frame glowed steadily, the visible marker of a crystal pushed too hard for too long. She dropped low, bent her knees, and launched onto the roof of a three-story building.

Gamma landed on the concrete and sat down hard, letting her vents work through the backlog. For a moment they were the loudest thing on the rooftop.

She opened a floating screen, smiling despite herself. "Finally… some… technology." Getting the words out took effort, her vents claiming most of the available air. "Please, Pi, just answer. I know how much you hate calls you didn't see coming."

Pi answered on the first ring. "You took longer than expected. How was the trip?"

"You forgot to say hi."

"That would have been wasted effort too, the same as that comment." Pi exhaled through her vents, audio only, but Gamma could already picture the face that wasn't moving on the other end of it. "Did you reach the location?"

"Yes. I'm in Lukewarm." Gamma leaned against the rooftop's edge and looked down at the city spread below.

The roads here weren't standard asphalt, Reaper had effectively handed Lukewarm to the research division as a testbed, and a lot of what filled these streets hadn't cleared for use anywhere else yet.

Strips of light hovered above the roads, providing more coverage than a row of poles ever managed without any of the wasted material. Floating parks sat above the eastern half of the city, an experiment far enough along that the capital was apparently getting its own version soon.

The edge of every sidewalk moved on its own, a slow current carrying people toward wherever they were headed without anyone needing to walk for it. Drones drifted overhead with products attached, no price tags anywhere, just model numbers. Everything in the sky here was free for whoever reached up and took it.

Gamma pushed her hair back from her face, the rain had opinions about where it wanted to sit, and her hair wasn't one of them. She crossed to the next building, connected to this one by a shared canopy, and settled beneath one of the floating parks. Above her, robots rode escalators up toward it.

"Elysium is years ahead of everywhere else. Veridian Coast looks like it's from a different century by comparison." Gamma let herself settle against the rooftop. "I can't believe I ran the whole way here without so much as a screen on me."

"You sound functional." Pi's tone didn't shift. "The mission's changed—something came up. The E-Medics you're extracting are in active danger. They've made contact with Hex. You'll need to deal with him directly."

"What?" Gamma was on her feet in one motion, eyes brightening. "What do you mean deal with—"

"I mean neutralize him, then extract the E-Medics and the frame they've been building for 02." Pi kept going before she could interrupt again. "Father commissioned it years ago. Designed to hold her crystal independently, no Omega host required to stabilize her."

"Then why am I out here alone?!" Gamma was fully upright now, voice raised at the screen.

"That information just came in." Pi's tone softened, fractionally. "Do it for 02. Please."

Gamma started pacing, slow, thinking aloud. "I need everything you have on him. Did the E-Medics send anything, any specific detail that gets me in there prepared instead of guessing?"

"He doesn't carry weapons. He operates inside what he calls hex zones." The faint sound of fingers against glass came through from Pi's end. "He marks out a large hexagonal area on the ground before engaging—the shape itself is the warning. Inside it, he weaponizes energy the same way 02 does, just contained to that space."

Gamma's voice dropped. Her head tilted toward the rooftop and stayed there. "How…" She looked back up at the city. "How do you already know all of this?"

Pi went quiet for a moment. "He's already killed half the E-Medics on-site. They resisted him. He apologizes while he does it, says it's necessary." A pause. "You'll know him the moment you see him. There's a red marker near his face."

"Why would he target peaceful E-Medics? Why does he need 02's frame without the crystal in it?" Gamma froze. Her hand went to her mouth. "Oh, no."

"Exactly. Sophos has confirmed he's working with Reflex, and by extension, Black Voltage." Pi kept the data flowing to Gamma's HUD as she spoke. "They want the blue crystal. A vessel to build their own version of 02, or their own Omega. The frame is meant to hold it, they're preparing it in advance."

"How am I supposed to fight Hex alone!" Gamma's foot hit the rooftop hard enough to leave a mark. "02 and Reaper barely got through Plex, and he was rated single-S. This one's double. Do you want me out here for nothing? Call 02 and—"

"I won't call 02."

"Stop being afraid of her. She wouldn't—"

"You need to understand the situation. Her sisters are currently under my command, and she's inside Reaper's castle right now, gathering intelligence we will not get a second chance at." Pi's hand came down on the desk. "And of course she'll be angry, I took leadership from someone she chose herself, and I haven't told her any of it."

"Then why did you do it?" Gamma's voice dropped with the question.

"What?"

"Don't pretend you didn't see this coming." Gamma raised an eyebrow. "Why take leadership from 01 with zero experience running anything, knowing exactly how badly it could go?"

Silence from Pi's end. Complete.

"Pi? Still there?"

"I realized it too late."

"Realized what?"

Pi resumed typing, fingers hitting glass. "Someone new, in a unit I built myself, turned down a leadership role for exactly this reason, I think. That's when it landed for me. Leadership has weight. More than Delta does."

"You mean it's denser."

"Right." Pi didn't add anything else.

"I've never heard you laugh."

"I laughed once."

"Once is generous." Gamma looked around, then up. "I'm reading an energy signature nearby." Her head turned, left, right, up, until she caught it: a point of blue against the pale sky, brightening the way a star does when you're not sure if you're imagining it. "What is that?"

"Could that be Hex?" Pi stopped typing. "No, he's still with the E-Medics, at their location. Describe it."

Gamma smiled. "Who else shines blue in the middle of the day? Two points if you get it."

"02—" Pi's voice climbed, for the first time since reactivation. "How is she already—"

"Call you later. I'm not saying a word about the E-Police situation, that's entirely yours." Gamma reached for the call's end and stepped toward the rooftop's edge.

"Wait, don't let her—"

Peep.

The blue point grew, brightening with every second. Wings resolved out of it, segments of blue light shaped like diamonds, each one distinct but close enough together to read as a single pair of wings. The Omega symbol formed at the center, and a full silhouette took shape around it, the wings extending far beyond the figure they belonged to. 02 closed the distance and slowed on approach, the wings dissolving as she came down.

Clang.

02 landed on the rooftop already smiling. Her left foot, the one Omega had repaired, produced a slightly different sound than the rest of her on contact, a small mechanical difference that hadn't existed before. She crossed the distance between her and Gamma.

"I missed Speedy-Loudy. You have no idea how much you brightened my week with all that screaming through my microphone. New frame?"

“Yes.” Gamma, head down. "Missed you too, Captain." She held the gaze on a moment longer than the gaze strictly required. "Why does everything fall apart the second you're gone?"

"Is it that bad back at base?" 02 released her and read her face. "That explains why Pi wouldn't pick up for me. Are you telling me, or are we doing this the hard way?"

"I'm not cleaning up what Pi broke." Gamma folded her arms.

"As expected, from my yellow crystal." 02 turned and took in the view. "This city's changed a lot."

"How did you even find me?"

"The same way you found that signal, you light up yellow from a distance when you've been running your crystal hard." 02 turned back to her. "And the E-Medics called me directly, after Pi refused to. They know exactly how dangerous Hex is and they specifically requested me. She turned that down too."

"And she was going to send me in alone!" Gamma covered her face with both hands. "Now I understand why she's that small. A child's body for child's logic."

"Can you at least give me a hint about whatever's going on?"

"Why don't you find out yourself?" Gamma lowered her hands and held 02's gaze. "I'm used to the eyes you give people right before something stops existing. I'm not breaking that easily."

"Then I'll try warmth."

"Don't. It's worse." Gamma let the smile show, then dropped it. "So, are we saving the E-Medics or not?"

"Yes. I've already located Hex. I'll need your speed for this." 02 dropped into a crouch and launched, the rooftop shuddering under the force of it.

"Of course you already had." Gamma dropped off the building's edge and followed from street level.