[412] 5.36 Assault on Bouvet V

We end up all landing flat on our asses in a small, dark room.  I’m sore, my [Veilsight] is just a bit fuzzy, and someone has landed her stomach flat on my boobs.  Whoever it is, is just a bit heavier than I remember Chloe being.  I’m going to pretend it’s Chloe and it’s just her swords and armor weighing her down, because otherwise that would be really awkward, and I would rather not have to have that conversation with Lindsey if I can at all help it.

My [Veilsight] miraculously returns to focus once the three of us have stood back up and dusted ourselves off.  That’s all the time we get before the intercom goes off yet again, as though to remind us that nowhere in this godsforsaken fortress is safe and we’re going to be on a knife’s edge until we either get the hells out of here or…  I’m not going to entertain the other option.

“Cheater, cheater, pumpkin-eater!” Ms. Fawkes says, the voice seeming to burst forth from right on my ears.  But also, seriously?  Are playground insults all that the great roboticist of this international criminal organization capable of?  Am I really struggling to deal with some kid who didn’t get enough discipline from his parents?  By the goddess, I’m starting to not even feel enraged about this kid.  Just really fucking disappointed in him and his parents.

However, there aren’t any robots coming into the room, and I don’t see any down the nearby halls.  We don’t have an infinite amount of time, but at least we have a couple of minutes to formulate a plan.

Chloe hands [Aria] to me and points to a spot on her shoulder.  Her eyes are determined, and she gives me a nod.

“Are you sure?”

“We don’t have time for discussion.  Neither of us had a chance to restock on [Ether Canisters] after the Atlantean Trials and we don’t have time for natural regeneration.  Just do it already so I can get us back healed again and ready to go.”

I still hesitate.  I know she’s right, I know there’s no other good paths, and I know she knows it too because I know how hard it is for her when I use [Lifecasting] and she wouldn’t dare suggest this path unless she had found all other ideas lacking.

“I’ll make this quick, Chloe.  And as painless as I know how.”  I don’t have her knowledge of human anatomy.  But I can see every curve of her delicious body, the channels where [Ether] flows through her body, running parallel to her blood vessels.  I’ve fought enough enemies to have an idea of where the human body is weak, and where I can deliver a wound with a minimum of pain.

About an inch below the center of the clavicle, then sliding along the outside of the ribs and eventually toward her arm and right scapula, avoiding the ribcage and not piercing the respiratory cavity in which the lungs and heart lay.  The perfect balance of damage without being life-threatening.  [Aria] pierces her skin and her flesh, causing Chloe to wince and seethe.  But she does not scream, and the pain does not make her collapse as it would have when the System first arrived.

I draw the weapon out at her insistence, stabbing it in the ground at her feet.  Even before her weapon leaves her body, Chloe’s [Divine Regeneration] is already hard at work stitching the damaged tissue together and reversing the injury as though unwinding the very spools of time themselves.  A cast of [Healing Circle] upon herself multiplies the recovery process by another factor or ten or so, bringing her back to new in just a couple of seconds.

At Chloe’s insistence, and after she transfers a portion of the [Ether] she just gained from our stunt, I repeat the process once.

“What are you doing, Seraphina?” Lindsey asks.  She looks at me as if I’ve gone mad, only stopping when Chloe raises her good arm and nods in approval of my actions.

She heals herself again.  Then I repeat this gruesome display, a second time, and finally a third before.  It’s the quickest way to ready ourselves for the challenges which lie ahead.  But now I know firsthand exactly what Chloe goes through every single time I’ve pushed myself to the brink of death, have volunteered for torture and indulged my self-sacrificial, protecting nature.  And I don’t like it any more than she does.

“And you had the gall to call me the heartless one who doesn’t care about others!”  Because of course Ms. Fawkes can’t spare us the dignity of a moment’s silence before they just have to say something undignified.  “Stabbing the very woman you claim to love more than anyone else?  Truly, you have neither heart nor conscience!”

They give another blessed moment of silence before spitting out more incoherent insults.  “I just had yet another wonderful game idea for us to play.  Have you ever gone through a maze before?  This floor has lots of twisting pathways, so it’ll be just like that.  If you want to make it to me, you’ll have to get off this floor in, let’s say, five minutes.  Otherwise… boom!”

Do I personally think that Ms. Fawkes is actually going to blow up their own facility?  No, it makes no sense and generates no benefit.  But Ms. Fawkes has proved thus far too frenetic for me to rely on things like interest and benefit to determine how they will act.  I could even see this being used as some sort of leverage— play my game by my rules or I blow this up and kill everyone inside, assuming I care more about these underlings than they do.

We rush out the door and into the hallway and immediately run into the first trap set for us.  A massive plate of flooring some twenty feet in length collapses upon the three of us.  Lindsey uses some [Acceleration] Skill to shoot forward, while I grab Chloe and teleport the two of us to meet her before continuing on.

Next on the cliché list of traps is the false floor that leads down into a pit of vipers— mechanical ones, of course.  I shake my head and roll my eyes— Ms. Fawkes has seen all three of us fly, so this has got to be for no reason other than for shits and/or giggles.  The beam lasers coming out of their eyes are a nice touch, but they’re so weak as to be wholly ineffective against us.

The arrow trap is even more trite, but at least it has a slim chance of working.  Well, maybe it could work on Chloe.  My [Agility] is enhanced by the aspect of [Veilsight] inherited from my previous [Valkyrion’s Perception].  And Lindsey’s class is [Speed] focused with additional boosts to her [Agility] and stealth.

But even this trap fails as it must, though I will admit the poison was a nice touch.  I wasn’t sure how Chloe would handle it at first, but it turns out that [Blade Dance] provides a substantial boost of [Agility] as well,  Her weapons slice through the arrows by the dozens, sweeping slashes severing arrows from their tips and quick parries knocking more aside until the trap has run out of ammunition.

At this point, I’m expecting a giant stone boulder to descend upon us and start chasing us through a narrow downhill passageway.  Who knows?  Maybe we’ll need to find a big key or a bombable wall in order to progress.  At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised.

We make our way down the next hall at a light jog.  Right turn… dead end.  Return to the previous intersection, right turn, and another dead end.  Another right turn after doubling back and another dead end because why not.  [Veilsight] hasn’t suggested that any of the walls are illusory, and Lindsey’s occasional chittering isn’t picking up any signs that they are hollow, either.

“Might I make a suggestion?” Chloe asks.

“What did you have in mind?” Lindsey asks.

“I want to try that technique.  We still have some time.”

“Tick tock, tick tock!  Only three minutes left!  Unless of course you’d rather me move on to the penalty phase of this floor.  Do you prefer the smell of cyanide gas, or maybe mustard gas?  Ooh, or maybe I’ll add in some hydrogen sulfide to make sure you really enjoy your final moments.  In either case, you better act now!  This limited-time offer won’t last, so make your selection at the sound of the buzzer!  Buzz!”

This asshole just won’t shut up.  We’re standing in the center of an intersection, waiting for Chloe.  Down the first path from whence we’d come, the first wave of robots approach.  This time, however, we have the advantage of a single pathway through which we can corral them as they engage.  Blasters all aimed in one direction, the benefits of stealth rendered useless when I need only a single [Repulsion] barrier to keep all their attacks at bay.

My [Ether] is draining precipitously once more from the sheer volume of the onslaught as the drones fire upon my barrier.  Lindsey assists, her eyes once again yellow-gold and green as she taps into her [[Insight] Element Manipulation] once more, this time on a far less flashy but only somewhat less destructive scale.  She needs only a single finger through the barrier before her attacks start mowing down the stronger soldiers that try to sneak through.  Every strike is a hit, and every hit is a kill.

My curiosity gets the better of me.  “When did you start learning how to use magic?” I ask her as I conjure a blaze of [Infernal] flames as a secondary barrier.

“Really ever since the battle of Washington three years ago, watching how effortlessly Kristil was tearing Legion forces apart with her [Plasma] magic.  Although I didn’t have a ton of success until I reached third Ascension and gained access to the [Insight] element via a Class Skill.”

“Chloe and I had to learn our dual elements the hard way.  Probably because we both still did so while still in the second ascension.”  I reinforce the barrier with another infusion of [Lifecasting], tilting it in such a way that Lindsey has a couple of angles from which to shoot.

“She learned hers first, didn’t she?”  A ray blast passes right past Lindsey’s right ear, singeing the hairs upon it.  She pays no mind to the faint smell of burnt hair I cannot fully ignore.

“She did.  Before Washington, actually.  I didn’t learn [[Infernal] Element Manipulation] until the end of last year.”

“By the way, how much longer do we have to hold out?”

“Thirty-five seconds,” I lie.

“Thirty seconds left until the toxic gas release!” Ms. Fawkes says, right on schedule.

Did they really think that I would answer that question honestly while under surveillance?  There are only fifteen seconds left until her attack is fully charged, but deceiving one’s friends helps to deceive one’s allies.  Lindsey’s got a background in battle tactics; she’ll understand.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she also had a theater background back in high school.  She shows all the outward signs of discomfort— the gritted teeth, the heavier breaths, even the cold sweat and the erratic micromovements which suggest panicked thoughts.  Everything except the fact that her heart remains calm and her [Ether] flow steady.

“Ten seconds, ladies!” Ms. Fawkes says.  “Nine… eight, seven, six—”

“Zero.” Chloe interjects.  Her eyes blaze with [Celestial] flame as both her swords emanate a pure white and even hotter fire.  She bends her knees down, then springs forward at speeds far beyond my or Lindsey’s abilities to track.  All that’s left where she just was are a coronal ring of blackened tile below and a series of holes in the ceiling that lead up to higher and higher floors in this seemingly endless complex.

“Sera!  Get Lindsey and come here now, both of you!  I think I’ve found what we’ve come here for.  And I don’t want to have to look at it any longer than absolutely necessary!”