Prelude to War: Chasing Spectres [Unmaking]

[Nico Cinder]

Nico shoved his gladius through the neck fat of the abomination nearest to him. A kick to the chest sent the thing off properly, in a fountain of blood. A red glow hung about Nico's vision, and his kicks looked absolutely filthy with the DNA of Unmade chumps. He was, admittedly, a little lost, somehow gotten himself separated from the others. This happened to Nico more than he would care to admit. Gunfire echoed down the hall, catching his attention for a moment. Yep, all boxes checked. It was definitely that time of the night. Instinctively, he tightened his grip on his blade, wincing at the pain he was sent in return. A cut had opened up in his sword hand, making it hurt like the devil whenever he had to uh...sword hand. He looked down at the weapon. It spoke to him, in times like this, where blood was plentiful and tension wound taught. The sword played that tension like a guitar string, and Nico heard it sing. However...There were more voices in his head than usual, tonight. Unwelcome guests, like these dead folk on the ground.

"Feh."

He let the sword and shield slip from his grip, and they collapsed into ash upon hitting the ground. Some curses simply weren't worth the trouble. The pain in his limbs receded in a similar manner, but whispers remained, haunting the corners of his vision and ears. Bad juju, all over this fucking place. It was uncomfortable, but dealing with these things on the daily builds a small tolerance. Moments later, a lucky distraction would appear in the form of a couple of Mustang's soldiers, sprinting around the corner that all the gunfire had come from. They trotted up to Nico looking visibly relieved to have a moment to breathe - any opposition that would've awaited them in this room lay dead on the floor by the demonic punk's hand.

"What are you two doin'?" Nico asked them, lighting a cigarette. Hm. That was funny. He was getting the strange urge to gut these sinful motherfuckers where they stand.

Nico blinked. And coughed.

"Uh-" began one of the soldiers. He really looked like he just got caught doing some shit he wasn't supposed to be doing.

"Blowing stuff up," said the other, cutting his buddy off. He retrieved two blinking boxes from his field kit, and held them up with a little shake for Nico to see. "Wanna help?"

"Say, I think I like you two," Nico said with a warm, but somehow very empty smile. "Think you can help me out instead?"

The soldiers eyed each other carefully. "What do you need?"

Wordlessly, Nico got on his hands and knees and put his ear to the floor. "Ya'll hear that?"

They looked at each other again, and kinda just shrugged. The fuck was this guy doing?

"There's a party downstairs and I forgot my invitation. Think I could borrow yours?"

-----

The ceiling above the three combatants exploded, again, showering rubble down in a perfect circle. Saren, to his credit, used the curtain of dust to stealth out, his optic camo shimmering him away. Orion batted away a stray chunk of concrete with a snarl and harsh bolt of ki. The creepy one took a couple hops and skips back from the cascade of debris, a dull expression on their face.

"Such a dramatic, this one," she said. Were her calculations off? How did he end up in the ceiling?

"HELL-O!" Nico shouted. "DID YA'LL FIND THE CRICKET?" Somewhere, an unseen sneer haunted Saren's ethereal face. Not this degenerate again.

"You scared him off," scoffed Orion, still in his fighting stance. A glance down the expansive room showed that more enemies were making their way into the fray space.

"WHERE'D HE GO?" Above, in the hole in the ceiling, Nico took one more drag from his cigarette before placing it between his index and thumb. Dexterously, he placed a fresh one in his mouth with his free hand.

"I'm not sensing him anywhere..." said Chara, almost to herself. Orion's silence spoke much of the same. It wouldn't be long before even more of the main fight spilled into their little slice. With every second Saren spent breathing, things became more complicated.

"WHAT?" Nico shouted. It was hard to hear his friendlies over the sound of people shooting and killing each other. He inspected the mostly smoked cigarette stub with moderate interest, using it to light the one between his teeth. "You said he went EVERYWHERE?"

*thwick*

A lit cigarette fell from the hole in the roof, spinning with all the grace of a ninja star.


*FWOOOOOOOSH*


A fireball blossomed atop the pile of rubble, flash firing anything too close to the sun. When the roar subsided, Nico dropped into the room from the second ceiling hole, patches of flames still burning the rubble around him.

"I dunno if they got rockstars where ya'll are from but as a rule, we are the most fashionably late creatures in the room at any given point in time. Now, I know what you're gonna say-"

Nico dusted his shoulders off and walked towards his teammates before promptly catching a bolt of plasma to the back that sent him flying over their heads. As he tried to untangle himself from the floor, Saren materialized in front of them. He was a little toasty on the left side, smoke still curling from his shoulder plate. He was still a good bit of distance away, so the spectre could've made a run for it, if he felt pressured. He didn't.

"Heyyy!" Nico said with a pained laugh. "You smell kinda tasty!" He was on his feet again. There was still a cigarette in his mouth.

"You are, without a doubt, one of the dumbest humans I have ever met. And I've known many stupid humans," shouted Saren with bitter notes. The explosions and gunfire grew ever louder. "Come on, then. It doesn't matter who you bring with you. You'll all kneel before Darkseid. He is beyond you lot."

Nico smacked his lips, and summoned his skateboard. "I ain't leaving here without your head. And Sam, if you know where he is. Do you know where he is?"

"You'll be even easier to run through the second time," spat Saren, cloaking once more.

"Don't lose him again!" growled Orion. The saiyan sent several bolts of ki at the spot where Saren had stood, blowing up anything and everything that was supposedly over there.

Saren wasn't over there though. He had scaled some nearby scaffolding and had apparently played videogames before, because the stack of red barrels next to Orion was the first to explode when he started firing from his perch. Nico perked up real quick as his board morphed into an assault rifle. He sent rounds up at Saren and MOVED, searching for cover. Chara drifted out of view, trying not to draw attention to herself as she sidled up to the reconstruction Saren clung to. Wasn't that hard, the way he and Nico were lighting each other up. Calmly, she summoned a small fireball to her palm and let the flames begin to lick up the scaffolding.

*clickclickclick*

"Shit!" Nico swore.

Saren got wise with a hint of smoke, and took the opportunity to leap from his high ground. The Unmade lieutenant glided overhead with an acrobatic ease, siting Nico as he did. But before he could pull the trigger, Orion leapt from the cloud of red barrel smoke and sent a kick right into Saren's midsection. The spectre went careening upwards, smashing through, what sounded like, a few ceilings and floors.

Orion gently touched down next to a reloading Nico, and Chara joined them. They all looked at the many holes in the ceiling. The one Saren went flying through had several holes in several ceilings behind it.

"Thanks, chief…But what happened to don't lose him?" said Nico with a chuckle.

Orion huffed again. "Don't even start. Let's just get after him."

Chara held back the barest wisp of a smile.

---

"God that guy was kinda off though, right?" said the soldier with the bombs.

They were on a brisk jog and a crucial mission. That is, to get as far away from that loud hole in the floor as they could get - that's classified information though, so no one knows that but them.

"I mean who isn't in a place like this, look around." said his buddy. "At least he was kind enough to clear the room for us. I’m tired of wiping blood off my visor."

“He looked like he wanted to be wiping us off his visor.”

“He wasn’t wearing a visor.”

“I meant like, metaphorically. He looked like he wanted to red mist us, man.”

"Nah, nah he was probably just in a battle trance or something. He calmed down about a third of a way into that ciggie he was smokin', you could tell."

"Ah fuck that square smelled so good, cut right through the usual battlefield stench. I wanted to ask him for one and, I mean, I feel like he would've said yes? But then I feel like he woulda bit my hand off when I went to reach for it."

"Hey I thought you quit smokin'?"

"Ahaha. Yeah no, I did. For my health, y'know."

"Veeerrryyy funny, this guy. For his health. While he's fighting horrible Unmade abominations. Just ask the guy for a cigarette next time, dummy."

"YOU ask him for-"

This incredibly important conversation was abruptly cut short by something or somebody bursting straight through the floor and up through the ceiling, making quite a ruckus, quite a mess. The two gunners stagger back, unsure of how to proceed. One of them peered through the bottom opening. The other looked up through the top.

"Where did you say we were setting the rest of these charges?" said one.

"Back the way we came, I think," said the other.

Nico waved up at the one looking down at them.

 

[Orion]

Any hope of control or precision in their mission had been well and truly lost. Rubble and fire reigned in the chamber, strewn with the bodies of Saren’s corrupted minions. A number of ragged holes desecrated the ceiling; one of the Markovian soldiers peered down at them while Nico greeted them with a wave. Orion had half a mind to just bring down the entire facility around their heads, but a niggling feeling told him Saren would survive it anyway.

Oh, and probably half of his team wouldn’t survive either.

But was that really a big prob-

The Saiyan warrior clenched a fist. The unrelenting rage emerged again, mixing in with his thoughts. A spike of panic registered, however briefly, at the realisation that outside of another operation going sideways, there was nothing in this situation that should have prompted such callous thinking. Missions like this often, if not consistently, failed to follow the pre-orchestrated plan. This wasn’t new and it wasn’t particularly vexing. And yet his fury gnawed him still, as if no longer requiring a reason to exist.

Chara touched Orion’s balled hand. His head snapped to her. “Remember what we talked about on the way here. Darkseid’s watching for an opening. Any opening.”

Orion pulled his hand away. “There is nothing whispering in my mind, child. I will not fall for such psychic foolishness.”

“He won’t directly assault you,” Chara said, seemingly ignoring the disdain that Orion glared at her with. “It can be a slow boil. You won’t notice it until he’s-“

“Enough!” Orion said. He craned his head upwards, staring through the tunnel of holes reaching through the ceiling, up where the Saiyan had belted the turian commander. “Our goal is not yet complete.”

“Whoa, just chill dude,” Nico said, puffing out smoke as he took his cigarette between two fingers. “We got this.”

“A lot of self assured soldiers die,” Orion said venomously. “You better recognise the threat Saren poses or you’ll join the long list of them.”

Nico shrugged. “Just a suggestion. You do you.”

Instead of waiting for them to pursue, Saren plummeted back into the room, crouching as he landed. The ground shook at the impact, standing slowly.

“Quite the leg you have on you,” Saren said coldly, eyes fixed on Orion. “Perhaps I’ll rip it off and beat you to death with it.”

Orion’s brilliant white aura burst to life around his body, buffeting Chara back a few steps. He furrowed his brow. The rage flared pleasingly at the turian’s words.

“I wonder how eloquent your quips will be after I tear off your jaw.”

Saren grinned.

“Orion!” Chara called out. “He’s playing you like a-“

The Saiyan exploded from standing point, soaring over the devastated room like a blazing comet.

“... puppet,” Chara finished, out of Orion’s earshot.

Cocking a fist mid-flight, Orion threw it forward as he reached Saren, still grinning infuriatingly. The turian made no move to block as the Saiyan threw the punch full-force, with all the momentum from his dash. Saren’s body flickered momentarily before vanishing. The Saiyan sailed through the empty space where the turian commander once stood.

Orion’s eye widened as the click of a rifle pierced the chaotic din of the room. He spun in time to dodge the projectile, though he rarely moved with such finesse. Saren’s body appeared upon one of the high vantage points of the room, obviously installed specifically for a breach of his facility, lowering a sniper rifle from his eye.

Orion pointed an open palm at Saren, a ball of light oscillating before it. “I would have thought an operative of your stature would hit their mark first ti-“

An explosion dulled the Saiyan’s hearing as he flew forwards, an intense blaze eating at his back. He hit the ground and barrel rolled a distance until he could flip himself back to his feet. Flames ate away at his robe. He unclasped the gold chain and tossed it aside.

A jagged black ring of soot stained the facility floor where the explosive had detonated, encouraged by Saren’s bullet.

“It’s a little different when I’m ready for your strike, isn’t it?” Saren said coldly.

The Saiyan grimaced, thrusting an open hand at Saren and lighting up the room with a column of ki. The turian blinked out of sight as the energy wave obliterated his vantage point, showering chunks of burning steel and concrete all around.

A sensible thought tried to squeeze through the miasma of anger in his mind. Sense his ki. You don’t need vision to know where he is.

Nico dispatched another of Saren’s mindless drones and called out to his platoon leader. “Hey, you alright over there, chief?”

Orion took stock of his injuries. “Nothing I can’t walk off.”

“Oh, really?” Saren’s disembodied voice said. “I’ll have to do something about that.”

Chara drove a crimson dagger through a turian henchman and turned her attention to Saren. “We need a plan.”

“There’s only one plan we need,” Orion said as extraneous thoughts dissolved, leaving only a singular purpose. “Pummel Saren into pulp.”

 

[Roy Mustang]

“Oh no…” Baymax’s soothing voice was almost inaudible amidst the gunfire and screams of laser bolts. The man Baymax was talking to likely wasn’t able to hear the words regardless, he was curled on the ground, clutching his injury with his face screwed tight. “You have suffered significant laser exposure to your left hand and may be experiencing shock, I will close off the wound and administer appropriate emergency measures. Please hold still.…”

“Just get him to the vehicle!” Mustang interrupted the large, red-armored medical robot with a harsh bark. The man was missing half of his damn hand, this wasn’t the place for a diagnosis! Baymax silently regarded Mustang for a half-second, then scooped up his latest patient. The State alchemist turned his attention back to the frontlines, glove at the ready.

“On my mark. Go!”

*Snap*

A burst of alchemical sparks sent the opposing forces ducking out of the way as a sloppy mess of erratic flames swept across the hallway. With the deadlock of bullets and laser fire paused for a time, Baymax rushed the injured man back to the safety of the least damaged of the three burrowers. It was serving as their most secure point for the injured, and if things turned particularly hairy it had already been rotated around to make a pressured escape.

Mustang slid back behind the barricade of debris as the exchange of gunfire erupted once again. Three men out of commission thus far. It was better than he’d expected for this much resistance, but neither team had reported success yet. The longer they spent here, the worse chance that Saren would discern their intent and make the appropriate counterattack.

“I’m not afraid, really!” Came an insistent voice from behind him. The goat boy, Asriel Dreemurr, from the sounds of it. “I came with this attack because I wanted to help! Everyone here is putting their lives on the line for this attack. Why aren’t you letting me fight? ”

Mustang fixed Asriel with a stern look, but it was clear from a glance that he wasn’t intending to sound insubordinate. The kid was wide-eyed and scared. He was panicking, not contesting the chain of command. Mustang’s stare softened somewhat. He glanced another peek at the battlefield, and a snap of his fingers caused an exposed parademon to erupt in flame. He turned back to the monster boy, who was still huddled behind the barricade, as though he was convincing himself that he was ready for this as much as he was trying to convince Mustang.

“Just because my sister said to-”

“I’m not holding you in reserve for your benefit, Dreemurr.” Mustang cut in,
“I have no intention of coddling you or your sister. This is a tactical choice. Our team is here to buy time, and draw attention to our position. At the same time, we’re also the rearguard. If we overextend from the entry point we risk our escape route being cut off behind us. We’re stretching thin here, Dreemurr. If we reveal that decision to Saren’s forces, they will start to realize we aren’t pushing as hard as we can, and will begin to suspect this to be a diversion.”

Faise fluttered over to the two of them.

“Providing the enemy with the appearance of their own favored outcome, a stalling assault unable to make effective headway from the initial breach, while our actual mission teams appear within the portion of their base they appear to have defended.” She stated with the precise indifference of a machine.

“Exactly. The main advantage our strike team has is the unpredictable nature and abilities of you outsiders. The more of you we keep concealed from the unmaking, the more off-guard we can hope they will be when you come into play. It’s the reason I’m allowing all your reckless lone-wolf tendencies.”

Mustang risked another glance at the opposition as Asriel considered this. He wasn’t entirely convinced that Saren’s forces had taken the bait. If they really thought this was the front that mattered wouldn’t they have pushed harder by now?

“So the reason you sent Orion, Nico and Chara after Saren was…”

Uh oh. This kid was a smart one. Mustang glanced back to Asriel with a faint smirk.

“...Because I knew they would go after him on their own if I assigned them anything else.” He nodded.

“Sir!” Sergeant Fuery poked his head out of one of the burrowers with an alarmed look, “There’s something that’s got the enemy’s attention, come look at this!”

***​

Riza Hawkeye fired three shots then dragged the stunned Hiro through the doorway he had found.

“Talk to me Hiro. What’s your condition?” She barked as the other two soldiers moved into the space, firing back at the enemy. Hiro was curling around his injured hand.

“Really… hurts…” He mumbled from grit teeth.

Hawkeye frowned, glancing around the space. It was definitely a server room of some kind, this was probably the right spot.

“Hold the door! I’m getting Hamada to a terminal!”

“Sir!” Alters acknowledged, his own focus entirely on the enemy in the hallway outside.

“A terminal?” Hiro wheezed, “They’re not all the same, you know..”

“Come on, you need something to even get a sense for how these systems are set up, hamada. It’s a start.”

But we don’t have time for a start. She thought with a grimace. They had been counting on the other teams to keep the heat away from this mission. There wasn’t enough stopping power between them to hold a point if the Unmaking was aware of their intent. They needed to get the information and extract, now.

Hawkeye sat Hiro down in front of one of the terminals. He set to work, wincing as he tried his best to type despite his injured hand. That was probably going to slow him down, and they had little way of knowing how long he would need to find the information on the Fade. This wasn’t going to work.

She whirled around as PFC Alters went flying past to crash into a rack of servers by the far wall. Sergeant Ricken was being lifted into the air, held by the top half of his head by a hulking brute that nearly filled the doorway. Hawkeye opened fire, noting with some concern the similarities between this turian’s physique and that of a certain wanted scientist who had participated in the first assault. Had they synthesized their own version of that serum?

She dove aside as the hulking Turian charged into the room, barely seeming to notice the bullet wounds. They weren’t equipped for this. It was time to adapt the plan.

“Colonel! Our team has been detected. We need backup now!”

***​

Mustang threw down the message receiver and bolted back out to the barricades with a frantic urgency, sliding back into cover amidst the firefight.

“Ashe! You’re holding our defensive position, keep these men alive! Baymax, Dreemurr, you’re with me!”

“Affirmative.” Ashe responded immediately, and Mustang didn’t even wait for the other two to affirm his new orders. Standing up out of cover, Mustang raised his hand. His alchemy collected the oxygen around the Turians and other cultists that were camped out behind rubble and other barricades.

*Snap!*

A spiraling column of flame arched outwards, flowing through the entirety of the corridor. In such a confined space there was no were for them to run. The entirety of the enemy battleline was swathed in flames. They screamed, burning to cinders and ash in a matter of seconds. There was a moment of silence, the hail of gunfire stopped in an instant. Mustang lowered his hand.


“Let’s go!”

 

[Roy Mustang]

A shot to the side of the jaw was at least able to get the hulk-Turian’s attention. It stomped towards her with an air of decisive malice. Hawkeye furrowed her brow, and began to step backwards into the depths of the server room. She had to buy Hiro the time he needed, and that meant keeping this beast well distracted. She would have to rely on Alters and Ricken to handle any further Unmade reinforcements. She was going to have to focus on this particular problem.

The hulk-Turian snorted and started to run. Hawkeye’s pistol rang out twice, thudding into its bulky carapace of a chest with unclear amounts of impact. That was one magazine empty. She darted off down one of the side aisles, ducking between rows of blinking computers. There was a roar of fury, then the decisive bending of metal as the enemy pursued her path. No good. She risked destroying the info they needed if she let the beast cause too much damage in here.

She pivoted again, running at full tilt now. The thing was faster than her, noticeably so, but it built up too much momentum to stop quickly. That was her best advantage. She could hear its steps thundering just feet behind her when she pivoted down another row. She skidded to a stop, whirling around and dropping into a steady crouch, second pistol drawn. The Hulk-Turian rounded the corner seconds after, skidding slightly on the smooth metal floors as it turned too abruptly for its weight.

Headshots were the only sign of actual effectiveness so far, so she unloaded four of them point-blank as the beast turned. It jerked its head to the side after the first impact, hand moving up reflexively, but too slow. One graze, one miss, two bullets into the area of the left eye. The Hulk-Turian roared in pain, clutching its head and swinging a wild fist in Hawkeye’s direction. She scrambled backwards and away. From behind her the unmistakable sound of rending metal was accompanied by a furious roar. She turned, and immediately dropped herself backwards. A metal cabinet, torn free of its casings, sailed through the air less than a foot above her as she fell prone. The thing tore a hole clear through the wall ahead, exploding in a burst of smoke and flames in the hallway outside the room.

Hawkeye twisted, wrestling her rifle free from her back. She managed a single wild shot that clipped the creature’s shoulder, but it only snarled and stomped its foot. Hawkeye rolled aside, noting the uncomfortably sizable dent in the floor panels. She couldn’t ask for a better angle though, and the bolt-action rifle delivered a round directly under the chin of the creature. It’s head snapped back and this roar was more of a yelp of pain than outrage.

Finally some sign of progress. Hawkeye tried to shift away from the monster’s path once more but she was too close. The creature’s kick launched her a good distance and she slammed against the wall a short distance away from the hole. Her vision blurred as she scrambled into a crouch. She could hurt the thing, but she couldn’t bring it down. At this point she might be buying time with her life. Hopefully Hiro was making some progress.

“Uhhh Miss Lieutenant Hawkeye?” As though summoned by her thoughts, Hiro’s voice came through her earpiece. She could hear gunfire in the background of his audio. That wasn’t a good sign.

“Tell me you’ve found what we need, Hamada.”

“Aha… not quite yet. But there’s a group coming down the corridor and heading our direction. We’ve got a problem.”

Hawkeye took a shot at the light fixture above the hulk-Turian and it exploded with a flash, showering it with a spray of angry sparks. the creature was hurting enough to shield its remaining good eye from the flare, but it wouldn’t be stopping. And they had more people coming their way. A part of her hoped that the lieutenant Colonel had managed to find them, but she was confident it was too quick a response to have been from the defensive team. This was someone else. Another problem…

“It’s me. Hi.” Hawkeye blinked at the familiar voice, glancing as a figure stepped through the hole that had been broken in the wall.

“I’m the problem, it’s me.” Sgt. Swift sneered at the Hulking beast before firing a rocket directly into its chest.

Hawkeye used one application of Mustang's Focus to avoid the worst of her close-quarters encounter.

 

[Chara Dreemurr]

They’d lost the plot, the heroes were all suffering serious status effects, Saren’s hit points were still sparklingly high, and their resources and items were running low.

This was a crisis.

Chara wondered just how many troops she’d already missed sneaking behind them, as Orion’s reckless attack left their assassination team fighting effectively leaderless and blind. Nico’s chaotic and effective attacks on Saren’s elite guard had left the enemy’s support in disarray and panic, but had created few casualties. Saren had kept them on the defensive, and as the three took on the enemy in earnest, their divided efforts were causing as much harm to their own work as help.

Chara had been forced to split her attention, giving what help she could to keep Saren’s forces from causing any casualties among Mustang’s men. Steelgaze - as Chara’s scan function dubbed him, - and his men did their best to keep Saren’s spare forces off their back, but they weren’t fighting nameless infantrymen - they were fighting Saren’s best special forces and even with the support of a mage in their midst, the fight was on a different level than any battle against the nameless, mindless hordes on Nausicaa. Their wits and training were being pushed to their limits in this battle, and they had nothing to show for it.

Though, as Chara watched the Saiyan warrior streak across the room like a bolt of lightning, fist pulled back, she was reminded that many fights ended with one lucky punch - and Orion was certainly throwing enough to hit the jackpot eventually.

Saren gave a smile as Orion drew close, and a step before the Saiyan warrior could hit his mark, he was sent flying by an explosion from beneath. tactical land mines, Chara realised. The Saiyan warrior was sent flying backwards, only to recover as though the hit had hardly mattered, Regaining his momentum in a second as he threw himself at his opponent in a blur of speed.

“Orion-” Chara cried out, ready to point out the flaws here - that if Saren had one land mine set, he had other traps ready too - but the idea was quickly snuffed by the expression on his face.

Doubtless, Orion was listening no better than before - and his rage would not allow him to acknowledge such. As far as Chara was concerned, her time was better spent supporting his moves and figuring out Saren’s game.

The Dreemurr mage unleashed a volley of magical knives, creating a spray of red magic across Saren’s flanks, leaving him just one safe corridor and pinning him between a wall and a Saiyan Warrior. Something didn’t add up, as she watched Orion plant a fist - successfully, this time, right between Saren’s eyes, a shield lighting up, then crackling as he was sent backwards into the wall. Chara’s relief left her as the wall opened up, a secret door opening for the Unmade agent to throw himself through before it closed, its energy shielding crackling as it swallowed a barrage of Orion’s Ki bolts and held strong.

Chara didn’t bother to warn Orion as he smashed through the wall with the much more physical strength of his bare fists, but it gave her a second to think as she hurried after him, Thinking the problem over.

Orion was durable, certainly, but that mine could have done more damage than it had - the Unmade had done more to stronger beings, and while a land-mine of the caliber to hurt a warrior like Orion was pretty difficult to make, Saren had the metaphorical cash to burn.

The land mine didn’t do a lot of damage because it wasn’t meant to - merely give the impression it was meant to, then. Illogical with Orion as an opponent - whatever conscience Saren had would be suppressed by the unmade energies running through his veins. Whatever was going on had to be part of his plan for the trio, not just a taunt, or a warning…

Wait, Chara reminded herself, remembering other things she’d learned, other conversations that had given her so much data on Saren already. Darkseid hadn’t taken away his conscience, or at least left enough of it for him to make certain offers - like he had earlier. She didn’t know how much was genuine, but he wanted them to join him, and as she made it to the door she’d hoped to find earlier, the pieces fit together into a truly ugly painting.

She hadn’t seen what he’d deployed, had come to it too late to save Orion as electrical currents twisted to life, something in the center room Saren had entered flickered with a pulse of light, and Orion’s body was wrapped in a blinding blue light, holding him in place.

“Perfectly executed. For what it’s worth, Commander Orion, I respect your resolve, if not your emotional control. I’ve read enough of your file to know you are ordinarily far more… coordinated.” Saren’s voice resounded, a smug satisfaction. “Worry not. Darkseid will put your empty rage to far better use. We will be enemies no longer, after today.”

In a blur that surprised even Chara came Nico rolling in - quite literally, using his skateboard to flip in from the side of the room with a clumsy sort of grace. “Hey, how about you get your stasis jam off the boss man?” Nico cut in with a chuckle, before taking a deep breath in and exhaling a burst of smoke and flame right where Saren was - the blaze catching him straight across the head and engulfing it, overlapping with hardlight, as the Hologram of Saren turned a light blue

“Your unpredictable nature is both staggeringly annoying, and a hazard I cannot abide. We’ll settle for isolating you, for now.” Saren replied with a cold, smooth voice, before Nico’s body was covered by a blue haze and disappeared without so much as time to swear. Teleportation, though Chara could see from the flickering lights in the facility, this particular trick drained a lot of the base’s power.

But Saren had power to spare.

“He can contend with the southern guard for now.” Saren added, turning away from Where Nico was, where Orion stood trapped with an expression of rage now unmoving. “Mustang chose poorly for this mission. Neither you or Cinder are known for playing well with others.” He continued, batting away Chara’s next barrage of crimson knives with a bash of his shield, as a calm returned to his voice. “And Orion was quite too preoccupied with his own foolish rage.Fortunately, that behavioral issue will disappear when you are all unmade. Understand I do this out of respect for you as combatants, and commanders. You were simply used poorly by a Leader rushed in decisions and limited in options - as a young man like Mustang often is.” Saren explained with a sympathetic sight, walking slowly forward.

Chara stumbled back a step, looking to the stasis on Orion. Could she figure it out? Likely not. She didn’t have the magical ability to fix something so complex, so out of her field - at least, not on another person, without appreciable technology in reach. She’d need a moment to tinker with the apparatus holding Orion to make sure she could break it without killing him or stopping his heart, and disarming it properly…

And as she dove for Cover, another wave of bullets came spewing from Saren’s battle-rifle, leaving the unmistakable “zzzt” of electrical discharge. Whatever he was firing, she was fairly certain it was set to stun.


Chara took a deep breath. She couldn’t plan around someone who understood her typical fighting style so well, and she was left without support from her allies - her only option here was to fight, and most likely, to die or be unmade.

It was beyond frustrating, and her resignation, quick to fall on her shoulders, gave way to that defiant rage. After all she’d done, everything she’d fought for, for it to end here would be the worst tragedy - after she’d placed her faith in her brother, in mustang, without even fulfilling her real duty amidst all this.

Within that rage, though, she remembered her real purpose:

Saren was a tactician, an intelligent man, and he’d researched everything he knew on Chara… but he did not know everything. He’d seen her from Asgore’s eyes, and perhaps, a bit from the more guarded Toriel, through the notes she’d hidden, the experiences she’d recorded.


But she’d never recorded that repeating battle. She’d never spoken to Asgore of her own loneliness amongst the timelines.

Most of all, she had left no trace of her own hatreds.

The box she was hiding behind was kicked away with a flourish, and Chara quickly flipped out of the way, taking fire and feeling a shot from Saren’s pulse rifle strike her in the right arm, feeling it hang uselessly by her side as pain and fatigue shot into her body.

A bright grin framed her face, as she drew her knife, charged forward, and carved through Saren’s breastplate with one swing of her knife. “I may not play well with others, but one on one is my specialty, Saren.” Chara replied with an easy smile, gazing into Saren’s shocked expression with one alien to him.

Gone was any semblance of hesitance or analytics on Chara’s face. She’d already watched Saren enough to know a punch was next, which she dodged with an immediate crouch. He was likely to spring back and find a weapon next, now that he’d made some distance between the two, so she pursued with her magic, leaving a row of blades that each found a few more dents in his armor and left him gasping.

A simple blink from the turian, and Chara leaped through the world within the world, her shortcut leaving her in the perfect position to Let Saren fall backwards onto her Gleaming blade. Saren noticed, and to Chara’s surprise, revealed another trick of his Unmade armor - jets sent him flying up in the air, lending freedom from a sticky end. The veteran warrior she was fighting sent himself straight towards a nearby armory, as any weaponless man would do under pressure.

Chara was already there when he arrived, her grin turning crazed as she advanced. Her hatred, her frustration, no longer needed to be held back. She had no allies left, one enemy to defeat, and no other plan than the thrill of combat - a decade of hardship, death, lost friends and comrades - she let it loose, as she unleashed a trio of cuts with her blade that rent the very air in front of them, and a hundred blades pelted him from every angle, leaving him only able to choose which knives to dodge, not whether he could.

The veteran warrior was pushed back, overpowered, and forced to his knees in a matter of seconds, the combat knife he held all too flimsy in the force of the assault he was facing. Chara’s expression turned to disgust - not at Saren, but at the plan, this whole coalition, working with others… in the end, it was all useless. She’d had only herself to rely on, and the rest were detritus that had gotten in the way. Anger washed through her as she lifted her blade high, ready to strike Saren down for her master-

Hesitation held her, in that final moment, as she stopped herself, a choked gasp as she realized she hadn’t breathed in some time…

The smoky coils of Darkseid’s controlling presence were easier to pull off, this time, as she concentrated her mind, yet the distraction cost everything.

Saren struck with all the speed and agility of a jaguar, his first punch connecting with Chara’s jaw hard enough to knock the smaller woman off her feet, and his second digging into her Stomach hard enough to cause her to double over. Something crackled above her, as she stumbled down onto her knees, but knowing and doing were different things, and the blunt weapon smashed into Chara’s back and left 2 of her ribs. An electrical charge sent waves of pain through the Young Dreemurr’s body, as every muscle stubbornly refused to move.

Saren picked her up with a sneer, Hatred and anger in every inch of his face as he slammed her against the nearby wall. He held a mace crackling with electricity in his other hand as a primal growl escaped him, his entire body shaking with rage.

“You little…” the unmade commander spat. “Don’t you see I’m trying to help you?! That you’re standing in the way of your own salvation! I’m saving our civilization! You spit on my face while claiming to do the same in this ridiculous quest!”

Chara looked at Saren in the eyes. The desperation and anger, the rage that overtook him, was clearly Darkseid’s own blossomed within him, and yet other emotions in his expression weren’t.

His Sorrow. Desperation. Horror. Guilt. They hadn’t shown their face to her before.

In my opinion, the chance that we stop the timeline extinction event is approximately 0. Though I plan to do what I can when the time comes, one human’s unbinding of fate is not enough to stop Darkseid’s plans from coming to fruition. We are bound to take every chance we can to save our future, but we cannot face that future without fully understanding and accepting our own chances - and the realistic chance that we will not survive it.

The words Chara had typed into her own report now resounded in her head, and she wondered if they had rang in Saren’s own - and for how long. Whether he was thinking of that, or of her parents - whether they’d been good friends once, or just respected acquaintances.

Whether this mess was Chara’s fault, or Saren’s. Whether it was Even Darkseid’s. It didn’t matter - it had created a fallen hero, one way or another. The thought she was about to be unmade to save her was a bitter irony, but one she could do nothing about, paralyzed as she was.

“I’m…” Saren muttered, the rage coiled back, as his purpose seemed to re-enter his voice. An unspoken apology flitted across his face, but it was quickly covered with a stone-faced mask, as he regained control.

“I’m going to make this quick.”

Chara wished she could close her eyes, as dark tendrils of energy crackled along his gauntlet…

But it would have caused her to miss the spray of plasma blasts that knocked Saren off his feet, and her to the floor.

“High Ground, keep up the fire. Snake Eyes, retrieve the mage!”

Chara was dropped like a hot potato as Saren was forced to retreat. She blinked her eyes as bodily control slowly came back to her… just fast enough to be picked up like a fallen log by a solid hand.

“Wow, you’re light!” Snake Eyes commented. Not a mage, or a Saiyan commander. Just an ordinary man with glasses and short-cut black hair boasting a mildly impressive physique.

An ordinary soldier under Roy Mustang’s command, pushing back Darkseid’s top commander..

“Did Roy issue that cannon?” Chara asked, regarding Steelgaze with a far-away expression, as her mind processed what could only be described as utter bewilderment.


“Ripped it off a fixed emplacement. After Saren separated all of you, his officers seem to have dropped their guard, and we faced light resistance.” Steelgaze’s gravelly voice echoed. A man Chara had just met today, and almost dismissed entirely. And now, she owed him and the men working under him his life.

Which, by extension, meant she owed Roy her life.

“I… am grateful for the assistance.” Chara managed to grunt out.

“Save your breath. Gonna need all of it.” Steelgaze admonished her, as she was slowly lifted to her feet. “That thing’s got limited ammunition.”

Chara heard confidence in that voice - the confidence of a veteran she’d hardly paid a speck of attention to, until now. Defeat had been so close, and now, something akin to hope had filled Chara’s bleeding body.

She had been close to becoming just like Saren - not merely in becoming unmade. She’d forgotten the monsters she’d given mercy to, the soldiers that held the line at Markov, the heroism of those like Isra and Meng at Nausicaa…

She’d almost fallen down his same path of hopelessness by focusing on the big names, the great powers in the world, but Sergeant Steelgaze stood here with nothing but gun, experience, and Courage, doing what Nico, Chara, and Orion had all failed at.

A low laugh echoed from Chara, as she realised this, her heart feeling unshackled. Saren had been played by Mustang right from the start! He’d set up the perfect Group to go toe-to-toe with Saren just by playing against the unmade Commander’s ego.

Steelgaze turned to her with a frown lining his aged face, and Chara’s laugh died as she saw the familiar ripple of a stealth field.

“Down!” Chara yelled, but she knew it was too late, so she threw herself forward, knocking him out of the way as a few phasic slugs dug into her flesh.

A smoky smell erupted from Chara’s hoodie, as she stumbled on her feet, but she forced herself to wobble up to a standing position.

“You should be dead!” Saren hissed from his decloaked position.

Chara gave him a thoroughly determined shit-eating grin in response.

“I refuse.”

Saren’s reply was to lift his rifle and fire, sending Chara scrambling to the side. “You think this will accomplish anything?! This is merely delaying the inevitable.”

“Well, it gave me time to recover, for one.” Orion grunted from behind the Turian.

“Orion?”“ the Turian growled, shocked as he turned around.

“Yes.” Was the Saiyan warrior’s simple, straightforward reply, before kicking Saren across the room.

Saren was left like a broken horse, stumbling to try and regain his footing as he pulled himself up from the broken steel wall. “H-how…”

“Just a matter of basic ki control.” Orion replied. “Steelgaze, you and your men work on suppression. Secure the south entrance and make sure Saren can’t leave, and his men have a hell of a time getting in. Chara, form up behind me. I’ll force Saren to show us some openings. exploit them. And where’s Cinder?”

A break in the ceiling announced the return of the Prodigal teenager. “I’m back to save you, boss man-Oh… Nevermind. Nice job, guys.”

Saren’s growl of rage summoned a new set of unmade, as he pushed himself up to a kneeling position. “You worms! You are nothing before Darkseid! This is all just… a useless fight against the inevitable!”

Chara gave a satisfied grin, as a feeling of contentment washed over her. Suddenly, Saren’s imposing presence felt so very small.

“Neither you nor I can say for sure. Not when we both miss what’s in front of our face.” Chara replied with a chuckle. “Whether it’s his or mine, I’ve chosen to stop guessing, and meet judgement day on my feet.”

3,181 words

 

[Roy Mustang]

There was a rhythm to the assault. The interior of Saren’s fortress seemed full of identical corridors, built out of an adherence to design more than intent. That meant that here in the depths of the complex, his forces were taking similar placements at each checkpoint they tried to hold. It was a touch disappointing almost. Saren’s forces were not charging blindly like a gibbering horde, but their strategy was only barely less mindless when left to their own devices.

Mustang reached the next corner, Baymax and Asriel in tow. He peered around it carefully, just enough to confirm the enemy was in the expected positions. There it was again, the same formation. Prone, crouched and standing, nestled in the cover of the corridor’s architecture. It was an efficient and understandable defensive position, but uninspired and formulaic. It hadn’t stopped them at any of the last four places he’d seen it. Mustang slid back out of sight and raised a gloved hand.

*SNAP!*

Alchemical sparks raced around the corner. A few shouts of surprise turned into screams as the defensive line was engulfed in flame without warning. They were trying this same defense again and again, despite how miserably it failed to oppose his assault. It smelled of incompetence. Either the Unmaking didn’t properly understand how to vary their defensive tactics or Mustang was missing something. Ridley had been maddened by the Unmaking, but certainly was not lacking in cunning. The zoids that had assaulted Markov’s walls were brash and brutish, but had been noticeably more coordinated than a typical Zoid attack. These tactics were so mindless they seemed just instinctual. Something wasn’t connecting right. Whatever intelligence had driven those foes so determinedly was not present in defending them here.

The corridor had gone silent. Mustang checked visually for survivors, but smoldering ash was all that remained of the defensive line. He waved a hand for the other two to follow, sparing only a passing thought that they both continued to be unharmed. His focus was on the routine of the conflict. Meet the enemy, erase the enemy, move on. It was a sequence he had gotten familiar with during the Ishval conflict. It was mildly disturbing how familiar it felt here. This kind of conflict was where he belonged. Not in Karl’s games, here in the trenches of the fight against the unmaking. A human weapon with an inhuman target.

He paused at the next corner. They could hear gunfire now. It was echoing from the hallways in a way that made pinpointing the direction a nightmare, but it meant that Lieutenant Hawkeye’s team was still fighting. Some portion of the infiltration team was still in need of support, and they were getting closer.
Mustang forced himself out of the mindset of a weapon. He needed to be tactical again. He was in command here, these people had trusted him to see as many of them through the assault as possible.

“Show yourself, Mustang!” a voice echoed down the corridor from up ahead. The state alchemist peered around the corner, grimacing. They had PFC Alters at gunpoint. Motioning for the other two to stay back, Mustang stepped to the very edge of the wall.

“I believe doing that would quickly see me shot!” He called back.

‘We’d rather see you when we discuss your surrender!”

Mustang grunted, then stepped into the corridor, his hands raised.
“You expect us to surrender this mission over a single man?”

“I expect you to surrender this mission, Lieutenant Colonel.”

The unmade Turian at the far end of the corridor had markings signifying him as a Major of the Markovian military. Damn the unmaking had been able to infiltrate their forces far enough to have insider information. But this officer must have gone AWOL long enough ago to have been isolated from their information network.

Those cultists had tried this same tactic against him already during the Nausicaa incident and it had failed spectacularly. Saren’s forces must be operating as an isolated cell, or the Unmaking was seriously lacking ingenuity when it came to stopping foes they couldn’t overpower. Either way, it was a flaw that he was more than happy to leverage. A focused blast of fire on the man targeting Alters, then a wall of flame to disorient the forces when he tried to get away. It would provide the opening needed to separate Alters from the enemy safely.

“I don’t think that will be happening.” Mustang smirked.

With a mechanical click, several nozzles lowered from the ceiling of the corridor, spraying water in a wide spiral around the whole of the area. Mustang stood stock still, his now wet glove halfway to a snapping motion, a look of supreme regret on his face. Ah, right. The sprinkler systems.

The unmaking wasn’t entirely out of new tricks.

 

[Orion]

Orion was barely there anymore.

A spirit of vengeance assumed his body, his mind, throttling forward with unrestricted force. Tactics discarded, raw power embraced, the Saiyan pursued Saren doggedly, a singular purpose drowning out all other thoughts, all other considerations.

Kill Saren.

Every attempt at a strike, however, ended in futility. The turian commander predicted Orion’s movements and likely attacks with superb accuracy. The Saiyan warrior rocketed forward with a cocked fist, and Saren left a holographic decoy for him to punch uselessly before taking a shot from a secure location. His attacks barely scratched Orion’s armour or skin, which only fed the Saiyan’s sense of superiority.

“Look at the little coward run!” Orion shouted as he swung his foot through another false Saren. “Great commander of the Unmade, delaying his inevitable death while pelting pebbles from his hiding places!”

“Perhaps if you were a better warrior, I would already be at your feet by now,” Saren said, having materialized a distance away from the Saiyan once more.

Orion grimaced, a growl passing through his exposed teeth, as a white aura burst around his body. The facility shook in response to the Saiyan commander’s rising battle power, adding to the general chaos of the battlefield. An urge spoke in his mind to simply blast the turian away with a ki blast, but his fury demanded a visceral, satisfying kill. No, death to a ki beam was instant incineration, a moment of agony dissolved in less than a second. He wanted to tear Saren apart with his hands. He wanted to feel his warm lifeblood trickle through his fingers.

The floor beneath Orion’s feet shattered into scattering debris as he screamed forward. He drew two fingers to his forehead, preparing to teleport behind Saren and clamp his meaty hands on either side of his hideous alien neck… but then Saren smirked. It was a smirk that claimed victory prematurely, a haughty, condescending insult to the worthy warrior that Orion was. Mocking him.

Two fingers became a fist instead. The Saiyan commander extended it forward, the flying punch guiding him towards his target. Saren remained firm as Orion’s attack had a mere heart beat’s distance between them.

A violent explosion jerked Orion backwards. Uncaring and sloppy in his rage, he let himself tumble across the ground, waiting for the inertia to deplete before sweeping his legs around and landing in a crouch. The premeditated landmine barely singed the front of his chest plate, like all of Saren’s offensives – only buying time before he watched his kingdom crumble around him.

How blind could the turian be? His end was nigh, and lost in his own hubris, he couldn’t understand that it was all coming to an end.

“That’s it, Saren,” Orion mumbled to himself. “Soon you’ll be deposed, and a new king will take your throne.”

A voice called out his name as he blasted forward once again, but it sank beneath the waves of Orion’s singular focus. Flashes of red energy streaked from the corner of the Saiyan’s eye, forcing Saren against a wall. Orion grinned maliciously as he realized Saren had no escape routes now – this attack would connect. He held back some of his strength purposely. He didn’t want to pulverise the turian’s skull in one blow – how would he feel the agony of dismemberment without a brain?

Finally, finally, his knuckles felt impact. Orion’s satisfaction lasted only a moment as he witnessed a lattice of cyan hexagons ensconce the turian – a pressure activated energy barrier – absorb the entirety of the punch’s power and launch him backwards. Orion kept chase, ecstatic to test the shield’s durability with Saren against the wall, but instead it opened at the turian’s presence and he vanished into the black of an adjoining chamber. The Saiyan fired a volley of ki blasts in disappointment of having his satisfaction ripped from him again, but a freshly erected shield covered the entrance, nullifying the energy attacks like rocks thrown into a pond.

Orion barreled through the barrier with an extended fist, obliterating it like cheap glass – apparently it dealt with projectiles better than a Saiyan warrior’s brute physical might. A narrow corridor set the two rooms apart, and he spotted Saren on his feet as if fresh, as if the battle hadn’t even begun yet. A barricade slid down, blocking Orion’s vision of his target.

Snorting at the pathetic delay tactic, Orion sheared through the blast door.

A blue flash of light blinded him, forcing him to pause a moment and recalibrate… until he realised that he hadn’t made the decision to stop at all. A small silver emitter at his feet projected a field of immobilising energy all around his body. He flexed muscles, raised his battle power, but any attempt at escape only tightened the grip on his skin, as if the very air closed on him to crush him.

Saren strode up to the frozen Saiyan, hands behind his back, that damn smug grin plastered on his corrupted face. “Perfectly executed. For what it’s worth, Commander Orion, I respect your resolve, if not your emotional control. I’ve read enough of your file to know you are ordinarily far more… coordinated.”

Orion instinctively tried to reach for Saren’s neck, even though logic told him it was a hologram, but the containment field stifled that desire, clamping around his bicep painfully. In that moment, he noticed his battle power dropping. Was the force field draining his energy as well?

“Worry not,” Saren continued, his smirk dropping, focusing more on business. “Darkseid will put your empty rage to far better use. We will be-“

Orion’s hearing dulled, replaced with a sharp ringing. He didn’t hear the end of the sentence.

Empty…

For the first time in a long while, Orion’s mind… quietened. The endless cacophony of battle all around him disappeared, and his thoughts took centre stage.

There was nothing empty about Orion’s rage.

As a Saiyan, living under the heel of an imperialistic tyrant, he wiped out alien civilizations to take ownership of their planets for the Cold Empire. Despite his excellent record and unquestionable loyalty, those same lizard bastards abducted him and his family, experimented on them, and subjected them to horrendous circumstances – even pitting Orion against his own wife.

He survived those experiments, leaving his old life behind, and tried to make a new start on a new world. Still, he was tracked. Still, he was hunted. And that planet was lost also, his surrogate community obliterated.

The robe and armour he still wore were styled in the fashion of those people – a constant reminder of what a hardened killer could become, given a true and honest chance, and a heartbreaking lesson in remaining vigilant at all times.

But all he had left of his Saiyan heritage, the only thing that set him apart visually from a human, was his tail.

With that gone, a piece, an important piece, of his identity had been erased. It was as if the tail anchored his past behind him, dragging his Saiyan identity with him always. Until it was severed, left behind in the overgrown wilds of Cevanti. Irretrievable. Forgotten.

That’s what brought the beast to the surface. A final straw lain atop the back breaking burden he already carried, an indelible smear upon his people, his friends, his family, his honour. What could he point to that differentiated him from a lowly human? How could he remain a proud Saiyan warrior without a tail?

How could that be empty?

And yet, as he finally processed the thoughts that bloated and lifted his fury to the surface, that same intense, all consuming fog thinned. A semblance of wit and cognisance entered his mind, and while he still could not banish the pain of the symbolic loss of his past, he realised how much of a fool he was to let it take control so suddenly, so completely, that he devolved into a husk for that rage to assume.

…like a puppet on a string.

A horrible realisation dawned on him.

“He uses that. Don’t let it be his way in.”

“Darkseid is who I am worried about.” Chara spoke, “And he can do more with it than distract.”

Orion couldn’t believe it. The pathway to mission failure had already been etched into him before he uttered a word to Mustang. And worse – Chara had warned him. His raw, unprocessed emotions provided the perfect entry point for Darkseid to subtly direct the Saiyan without making his influence obvious, or even sensed.

The part of him that still ached for his lost tail yearned to latch onto that colossal blunder and feed on it, but Orion would not allow it any longer. Fury blinded him for too long. It would take time to heal from this spiritual wound, but its time as his sole focus was over. He would face it with a clear head and resolve it, before it poisoned him again.

But the battle rolled on in his absence. It was time to return to active duty.

Frozen as he was, he could still take in the battlefield. Some of Mustang’s men had intervened, dragging an injured Chara out of harm’s way. Saren phased into the visible spectrum as Chara knocked her savior out of the way of the turian’s wave of projectiles.

Orion watched, his blood chilling, as the teenager stumbled forward, somehow retaining her footing as smoke lifted from her chest.

She was his responsibility. And here he was dwelling on a dead history while those fighting for a better future sacrificed themselves for a glimpse of it.

The force field would not yield to his strength. If he raised his battle power, it drained the excess energy too fast for him to utilise it. Then what…?

A memory awoke. In battle, against a foe of similar might, landing blows simultaneously could lead to one of two outcomes. If two fists collided, the enormous force could reverberate through his bones, running through tendons and muscles, wearing his body down. However, if the right technique to the strikes was applied, it was possible to cancel the force out, releasing it as a harmless shockwave.

Orion doubted the force field had been engineered for one practiced in ki manipulation, considering it allowed him to raise his power level at all. The Saiyan focused on the stasis field applying pressure to his body, feeling it squeeze over him, and opened his eye. Colourless energy buffeted out from Orion’s body in a single exertion, an exact counter to the force being used against him.

The blue field surrounding his body dropped for a second, and Orion bounded out of it before the trap snapped shut again. He quickly examined himself – the trap left no lasting damage.

“You should be dead!”

Saren’s intimidating voice brought the Saiyan’s attention back to the mission. Chara responded back, though her words were lost to Orion beneath the din of the battlefield. The turian raised his rifle for the coup de grace.

Orion tapped his forehead with two fingers and rematerialised behind the Unmade commander.

“You think this will accomplish anything?” Saren growled as he squeezed the trigger. Chara, despite her wounds, escaped the first sputter from the rifle. “This is merely delaying the inevitable.”

“Well, it gave me time to recover, for one.”

Orion smirked at the sight of unveiled shock on the turian’s face as he spun at the sound of his voice. “Orion?”

“Yes.”

A kick that would have cleaved a normal humanoid’s torso from their waist slammed into Saren, knocking him across the room like a misshapen ball. Orion resumed control of the operation, handing out orders to Mustang’s soldiers and regrouping with Chara and the enigmatic Nico Cinder.

For the first time in weeks, Orion felt something akin to himself again.

“Whoa, boss man! Something’s different about you. D’you get a haircut?” Nico said.

Chara looked at the Saiyan, her face sodden with sweat. “Orion… nice to have you back.”

“Those wounds…” Orion said.

She shook her head. “I’m tougher than that. I’m good.”

Saren lifted himself to his feet, holding his side.

“He’s injured,” Orion said. “We have to finish this now, before he vanishes into another hitherto unknown chamber.”

The turian commander tapped his wrist device a few times and seven identical clones materialised around him, mimicking his every move.

“You landed a single blow, Orion,” the octuplet of Sarens said simultaneously. “I’m hardly beaten yet.”

“Whoa that’s a lot of Sarens,” Nico said. “You got a plan, chief?”

Orion cracked his knuckles. “He’s hurting more than he’s letting on. His entire playbook is based on deceit and underhanded tactics. I’ll admit, I’m not sure what else he could have in reserve, but injured as he is, he has a plan concocted already. In order to reach him for the killing blow-“

“-we need him to think he’s in control,” Chara said, finishing the thought.

Orion looked at her and gave a curt nod. “Nico, make yourself scarce. Light a cigarette while you’re at it. When I say, take a deep, long drag.”

Nico nodded. “Ah, I get you!” A flash of black smoke and embers preceded a skateboard appearing in his hands. He dropped it and leapt on, rolling into the battlefield. “Later!”

“Chara, on my mark, I need the strongest projectile attack you have.”

Chara nodded.

“It’s time to finish this.”

Orion exploded forward, selecting one of the Saren clones at random. The turian smirked. Orion had to stifle his own.

He threw a punch through the holographic projection. Appearing bewildered, he spun about, spotting the next closest Saren, and fired a ball of ki towards it. It passed through, exploding once it collided with the far wall.

“Still you think brute force will win this fight,” the Sarens said. They all unholstered a rifle and aimed at Orion. Eight red lights danced over his body. “You don’t even know what you’re trying to-“

“Nico! The one at my ten o’clock!” the Saiyan shouted, identifying the only Saren with a ki source.

The turian commanders frowned. “What are-“

Cinder ramped off a fallen chunk of wall, a lit cigarette clasped in his lips. He somersaulted through the air on his skateboard until he was upside down and directly over the Saren clone that Orion identified. The turian looked up at Nico as he tugged the cigarette from his mouth and pursed his lips, spilling forth a cone of hellfire.

The cyan shielding coated Saren once more, but either its strength had dwindled or Nico’s attack proved overwhelming for its defenses. The shielding shattered, permitting the shower of fire to touch his corrupted skin.

Saren writhed in pain and his holographic clones imitated him exactly.

Orion blasted toward Saren, placing index and middle finger on his forehead. He waited until the turian noticed his approach. “Chara, now!”

The Saiyan vanished, reappearing by Chara’s side, as a crimson knife already spinning wildly toward Saren, its blade occasionally flashing gold. The turian commander spun about, muddled by the now doused flames and Orion’s abrupt retreat, with no time to dodge the incoming projectile.

A golden bouquet of flame erupted as the blade struck true, shrouding Saren in smoke.

Orion touched down before Saren, waving away the remnants of the explosion. The once proud commander was slumped against the wall, his head slack, his chest heaving. Much of his flesh had blackened, though it was difficult to tell upon his corrupted skin. His armour was desecrated with cracks and missing chunks. With obvious effort he turned his head to stare at Orion as Chara and Nico formed up behind him.

“You fools,” Saren rasped. “I did this all for you. There is no stopping Lord Darkseid. He is a tsunami that will drown the galaxy. If you joined me – him – you could have been spared. We could have saved more lives. Instead, you damn yourself, and billions more, to death.”

The turian coughed up a black liquid that he let flow freely down his bruised jaw. “I am only one commander on one world. There are more like me, just as strong. Maybe stronger. They all serve the corrupted Arbiters of their world, who are many orders of magnitude stronger again. The Arbiters in turn serve Lord Darkseid.”

He smiled weakly. “It took so much planning, so many resources, to simply scratch Lord Darkseid’s armour. You think there is hope for you outside the Unmade? All of your efforts, and in this grand story… I am but a footnote.”

Saren’s expression grew intense, locking eyes with Orion. “I hope that when the Unmade finally smother you all, you remember my offer that I gave to you, and how you rejected it. And in those final moments… despair.”

Orion aimed an open palm at Saren’s face. “I hope that death will grant you peace, Saren. Truly, I do.”

A bolt of energy engulfed the turian’s head. When the light faded, his headless corpse toppled to the ground.

 

[Chara Dreemurr]

Asriel put his hands up to create a makeshift furry canopy above his eyes, as the Sprinkler system turned on. It briefly, nostalgically, brought him back to his younger days, when Chara would notice he was in a shower and flush…

Well, it did teach him to always lock the door.

Asriel gave a frown as he heard the soft slapping of two fingers failing to snap together.

“R-roy…!” Asrial called out, as he quickly put two and two together. They’d planned for Roy’s ability, and now, the Flame alchemist had lost his ability to fire.

With another flick, the lights in the room dimmed, and suddenly, the group were standing in the midst of Darkness, a handful of shots ringing out in the darkness. An emerald arc of light sparked, crashing into Baymax’s armored form as the robot was suddenly left loopy.

“Power… disabled… back-up power… fifty percent efficient… Water… wet…”

Asriel didn’t understand enough about Robots to be sure what had just happened, but he guessed his robot friend was just thrown for a loop, as he was left blind in the midst of everything.

“Now why don’t you sit down and wait, and there won’t be any trouble!” Asriel heard from behind him, as his heart-beart quickened. A trap - and one they’d fallen straight into.

Asriel grimaced. Chara would never have fallen into a trap like this.

“Now, you’re going to work nicely as bait to make sure your advance team stands down.”

“My team won’t surrender on my account-” Mustang called through the darkness.

“-Not yours. His.” The Turian called, the lights coming back on at a dim light to show Asriel, hands behind his back, with his blade dropped and a knife across his throat. “His sister’s weakness is well-known.”

Asriel glared straight at the Turian, a heavy shard of bitterness sitting in his own throat. Once again, he had been known - not for who he is, but for who he could manipulate. A way to hurt his sister. Someone who could be used against her.

It stung to be treated that way, and it stung because in some ways the Unmade commander was right - he was a lever Darkseid had used before.

Despite that… a smile shone across his features.

“My sister’s weakness? You’ve got me confused with Twix.” Asriel suddenly called out, confidence beaming through his words.

His heart pounded in his chest, but the words stoked something in him, an internal fire that had grown cold as the fight went on, but it was always just below the surface.

He was the brother of Chara Dreemurr. The son of Asgore and Toriel Dreemurr. He remembered the terror of the first battle of Markov and he remembered tracking his sister down over the course of months, battling the unmade wherever they crossed his path. He’d been attending Bulwark hero college for a year and change now, and they’d taken what he’d learned and helped him refine it - physically, and mentally.

It didn’t stop the fear from pounding in his chest, or the anxiety from settling in his stomach, but it helped him stay steady within it. He knew they weren’t wrong, exactly - he was his sister’s remaining family. Their lone hostage.

But that’s all they knew about him.

Asriel grabbed the knife-hand of the unmade Commando holding him and fire crackled from his hands as the Enemy’s hand was engulfed in flames, as passion flew through him.

He focused on the Major holding his comrade hostage, as electricity crept unseen from his body.

He would not be abandoned. Markov was done losing soldiers to people like him.

Asriel threw the man holding him into the side of the wall, as flames billowed up from his being.

His sister was here fighting. Her comrades were giving it their all, in order to make sure they could stop this disease, here and now.

The Major Motioned his gun towards Alters head. “Stop! Or he-”

The loud sound of lightning crackling and discharging crackled through the area, as a white glow of energy engulfed the Turian commander.

Asriel let the momentum and passion of the moment uplift him, flowing into his magic as the critical moment hit. Flames Echoed from his body, engulfing the sprinklers and leaving them as unrecognizable, melted masses of metal.

Even Roy seemed to be shocked for a moment, unsure of what to do as the fire lit up the room. Asriel took the opportunity to release a second heat wave in his direction, covering him in fire.

Roy gave out a shout of surprise, as the enemy hesitated to fire - was this, perhaps, a trick of Darkseids? Had Asriel turned after all?...Or at least, that’s what Asriel imagined them thinking, as a cocky smirk broke across his features.

Roy’s body was engulfed in the blaze, but not one hair on his head was singed.

“You can use your fire with this much control over it…?” Roy seemed to gasp, a mixture of surprise and respect washing over him.

Asriel responded with a cocky wink and a shrug. “Of course I can. What am I, Chara?”

Roy responded with a grin and a snap, as the unmade ambush was left literally running for cover.

Asriel wasn’t done, however, as he approached Baymax.

“Do you understand how to fix him?”

Asriel gave a shrug. “No, Dad never got around to teaching me robotics. But Hiro or Chara probably do.”

“Do not worry. My systems have recovered. I am… okey-dokey.” Baymax replied.

“I’ll… take your word for it.” Roy replied, raising an eyebrow.

Asriel’s face hardened into a glare. “We’re running out of time, and Saren’s definitely fighting our team.”

Roy gave him a confident nod, before turning to Joan. “are you okay to fight?”

“Somehow.”

Asriel handed her his blade. “Not exactly the weapon you’re used to, but I think you’re going to need it more than I will.” he offered with a cheerful smile.

Roy gave an approving nod, before turning back down the hallway. “Let’s move, people!” He barked, before adding “And Dreemurr… good work.”

The younger Dreemurr fought like mad to hold off the smile trying to creep onto his face.

1,032 words

 

[Roy Mustang]

“Baymax, I want you up front, find the source of that gunfire we heard! Dreemurr, you’re in charge of keeping the enemy off of our tail! Let’s move, people!”

Mustang’s uniform squelched irritatingly as they hurried through the corridors of the compound. The large red-armored robot led the way, moving with the tireless speed of a mechanical warrior, and a brief glance over Mustang’s shoulder confirmed that Asriel had adopted a rearguard position. The goat boy’s eyes were alight with fire magic, scanning for any further traps lying in wait.

Mustang grimaced faintly. He could claim that things had been desperate; they were. He could claim that they’d demanded to be involved; they had. He could even claim that he had been looking out for them specifically, all these things were true. But all the same, Mustang had a feeling that Toriel would disapprove of him bringing her children into a mission like this. He would have to make time for a visit to apologize when they made it back.

A spray of bullets played off of Baymax’s armored form as he rounded the corner ahead. In response his rocket thrusters ignited and he blasted forwards, slamming into the rearguard of the Unmade force up ahead. The medical robot’s martial arts proved quite effective in the tight corridor, launching the Unmade soldiers against walls and ceilings with an unnerving smoothness.

“Come on, you unmade posers! You knew I was trouble when I walked in! You’ll be lying on the cold, hard ground when I’m done!”

Mustang recognized that vitriol. As Baymax cleared the way through the rearguard, Asriel, Joan and Mustang rushed to the gap that had been blown in the corridor’s wall up ahead. The room was full of electronic cabinets in various states of destruction, along with several Turian bodies and a few Markovian troops that Mustang didn’t recognize. Sergeant Swift and Lieutenant Hawkeye were back-to-back, along with the dozen-odd remaining members of Sergeant Swift’s veteran band. They were engaged in a chaotic firefight with a disorganized band of unmade soldiers. Asriel leapt into action immediately, fire magic already brought to bear. Despite the direness of the situation, Mustang breathed a mental sigh of relief, they’d made it in time.

“Stay away from Juliette!” Sergeant Swift snarled, lighting up a Turian that had downed one of her teammates “About time you showed up, Mustang!”

“Lieutenant Colonel! On your left, sir!” Hawkeye shouted urgently.

Mustang felt a current of air, and dove to the side as a hulking carapace-clade behemoth of a Turian flattened everything in the vicinity of the area he’d just been standing. He stepped a few paces backwards, cursing once again his carelessness to have fallen for that trap earlier. He pulled to a stop, staring down the monstrous unmade powerhouse.

“Yes, I suppose this thing would have been a bit more heat than we had planned for the stealth team to handle…”

The behemoth turned to lock Mustang with bloodshot red eyes. It was difficult to consider something more or less of a monster when it came to the Unmaking, but it was obvious this thing had been experimental. Perhaps an effort to reverse engineer the serum Dr. Caustic had employed during the previous assault on this place. For all his supposed cunning, Saren really was desperate.

It bellowed, roaring at Mustang completely heedless of the bullets that were ricocheting off its armored skin. Mustang only smirked in response. To its credit, the creature moved impressively fast for its bulky frame, but a large red blur burst through the nearby wall ahead of its charge. Baymax caught the surprised creature’s punch with only minimal trouble, and Mustang couldn’t help but smile.

“Alright, let’s finish up in here!” Mustang shouted, reaching for a discarded weapon. He stopped when he noticed Hiro was still hunched over one of the terminals, typing frantically.

Damn, that meant that they weren’t just pinned down. They hadn’t completed the mission yet.

Leaving the fight to the rest of the team, Mustang rushed over to the youth, noting his hastily bandaged hand and less than composed expression.

“Talk to me, Hamada, what’s wrong?”

Hiro gave a manic sort of laugh, “Wrong? What’s wrong? What’s wrong is the way that these idiots are storing their data banks.This system is archaic and so hard to navigate I almost thought they were doing it on purpose at first, for security, you know? Turns out! Nope! They just don’t understand how to do basic! Household! Data management, come on!”

He was panicking. Mustang frowned, He shouldn’t have put the kid in such a pivotal point of the mission, that was too much pressure for someone that was new to this sort of operation. Hamada and the Dreemurrs had signed up for this, but Mustang shouldn’t have given them the chance to get involved.

“Steady breaths Hamada, if we need to exfil, we can exfil, this data isn't the primary mission focus.”

“Yeah, yeah” Hiro responded dismissively. He was probably barely listening.

“Sir.” Hawkeye stepped up besides Mustang, “Room has been secured. We have a considerable number of injured though. I don’t know if we’ll hold off another assault like that.”

Mustang nodded, frowning at the bloody gash trailing from the side of the Lieutenant’s face.

“Hamada, do you think that you-”

Hiro turned around, “look, I know that you’re trying to be helpful here mr. lieutenant colonel sir, but I can do this, I promise! I know that we’re in danger here but if you guys can keep the unmade held back than I’m confident that-”

A flashing red light appeared overhead alongside a less than pleasant alarm. Mustang and Hiro both glanced upwards.

“Core meltdown initiated… Core meltdown initiated…”

“I can fix this!” Hiro whirled back around to the terminal, typing frantically.

“Sir, It’s Orion. He says the mission is completed.” Hawkeye glanced up from the communicator with a solemn expression.

Mustang nodded.

“Then we’re getting out of here. Tell Ashe-0 to prepare the delvers for a hurried exit!”

Hawkeye saluted.

“Alright, you heard them, men!” Sergeant swift hollered, “We’re getting out of here!”

Mustang turned to follow the exodus, but paused when he noticed Baymax had made no motion to leave. With a glance backward, Mustang saw the reason. Hiro remained hunched over the terminal.

“Leave it Hamada! We’re getting out of here before this place blows itself into space.”

“I’m almost there!”

Mustang frowned. They needed this information, but there was no telling how much time they had.

“Hamada we need to-”

“Just a bit longer!”

“Core failure priority one detected…. Core failure priority one detected…”

Mustang scowled. Both Lieutenant Hawkeye and Baymax were remaining also. Either the medical robot hadn’t been programmed to recognize the dangers of this kind of situation, or he didn’t think they were in danger yet. They would all die down here together then, trying to get a desperately needed clue for saving the planet. Was that a good enough ending?

“Hamada…” Mustang began.

“THERE IT IS!” The youth practically screamed! “I’ve got it!”

“Then we’re leaving! Now!”

 

[Chara Dreemurr]

Chara gave a soft, bittersweet smile as she watched Saren fall.

For all of his bluster, he really had been a good man, once. Now, ripped apart from the inside by Darkseid’s machinations, and from the outside by the strike team, he had become utterly unrecognisable.

The thought was interrupted by a blaring alarm, and flashing red lights filling the chamber, as Chara heard a chilling arrangement of words,

“Core meltdown initiated… core meltdown initiated…”

Nico whistled as he heard the announcement. “Load-bearing boss. Just like a videogame.”

Chara wasn’t going to say it out loud, but… he was right.
“Cue the escape sequence, then…” The dreamer started to say, moving forward, before a crack and a pop audibly resounded from her chest.

Determination had its limits, and she’d lost focus for a second, she realised - in the time it took her to fall to the floor she’d already analyzed her internal damage, now she’d finally had time. Several broken ribs, pushing out and into bloodied areas. Nerve damage from the electric shock. Something was up with her spine, not a complete break, but major away from medical facilities.

But it wasn’t her first or even her hundredth time taking injuries like this - so outside of a simple grunt, as she fell, the only thing that escaped her was a chuckle.

“You know? Don’t slow yourself down for me - I will find my own way out.” Chara replied, giving a soft smirk. This might well have been her penance - one meaningless death, one she’d wake up from, in exchange for the one they’d taken from Darkseid, a man who didn’t have to die…

Only for her to be suddenly and quickly picked up in Orion’s arms with all the effort of a sack of peas.

“I don’t think I’m going to be explaining how I abandoned a good soldier to Roy.” Orion added, before, with the effort of a large cat picking up one of her kittens by the scruff of a neck, he picked Chara up, took out a small, green bean, and stuffed it down her throat with nothing more than an abrupt ‘eep’ from the much smaller mage as a reply.

“What…” The surprised judge started to ask with a cough, only to realise that this cough… didn’t hurt. Her ribs weren’t digging into anything. Matter of fact, they seemed like they were back where they were actually supposed to be!.

“Senzu Beans.” Orion replied, before placing another in Nico’s hands. “Do you have any injuries among your men, Steelgaze?”

“Somehow, no, they were too busy focusing on the superpowered powerhouses.” the Commander added, and Orion gave a nod, before handing Nico another bean, and consuming half of one himself.

“We’re leaving together.” Orion called, leading them back along the path. “Chara, keep those sensitive eyes of yours open. And…”

Chara raised an eyebrow, as Orion paused.

“Good work.” Orion finally stated, as the group left.

Chara just gave a small nod. There was a lot to unpack, and consider. So many moves to make. But right now, the pressing concern was leaving before the level collapsed.

At least, to most of them. Nico moved with all the concern and panic of a man listening to a walkman in his room. “Wait, so this place is going to blow? In that case, has anyone got a few pairs of shades? I got a cool idea for a group photo.”

Chara didn’t laugh. But she couldn’t resist smiling.

The trio moved in tow with Steelgaze’s squad, clearing out of the level with haste. The darkened halls were now lit in a bright red as pieces of the base already seemed to be setting alight, and the ground periodically shook with an ominous rumble that threatened to knock a few of them off their feet - at one point, Chara and Nico both nearly fell into an ominously long pit, only for Orion to grab them both in one arm each and scoop them back atop solid ground.

The reprieve from fighting didn’t last long, either - it didn’t take them more than a couple flights of confusing stairwells to hit a snag, as they found their drill tanks ruined, and their rides guarded by unmade soldiers.

“Chara! Steelgaze! Alternate paths!” The warrior had yelled, even as the warrior had stepped forward to effortlessly smash one of the offending warriors off their feet.

Chara had answered first, activating her senses as she saw through the walls and looked for vector, even as she barraged the unfortunate warriors with an onslaught of crimson knives that had filled half the room. “Back up and to the left. Maintenance corridor from there. Should open up into a large garage, from the looks of it. We can steal a ride out from there..”

“Will we have time?”

Chara sighed. “We’ll have to.”

“Then let’s not waste another second!”


It didn’t seem that Darkseid’s men were worried about their own survival, so long as they could take out the group, and their escape was met with heavy resistance. Every stairwell, every corridor, every excuse for a chokepoint was filled with enemy soldiers, and the team had to fight for every inch of ground.

Fortunately, even the best of the unmade were not ready for a cranked-out metalhead, experienced mage, and all the might and power of a Saiyan warrior, restored to health and stamina with the help of the senzu beans. Every barricade and bottleneck was quickly run over with a hail of rockets, magical knives, and Ki blasts.

“Feels like I don’t even need to keep my gun loaded at this point,” Steelgaze had complained.

Orion looked to Chara with a frown. “How much farther?”

“Through that central bay, then the outside should be in sight. That leads to a Vehicle hangar, so we should be able to acquire transport.

“Yo, guys, problem. Nose is filled with something gnarly.” Nico complained, sniffing to the side.

Chara frowned with annoyance, as Orion gave an exasperated sigh. “Keep your eye on the mission, Nico. you can worry about the smell of the battlefield later-”

“No, I mean it smells like when I got separated earlier and-

Chara caught something out of her eyes, code that was *wrong, and huge, and *All sorts of dangerous*, and was surprised by a flare of something large, and black breaking through the hangar bay walls.

“-I got stuck fightin’ that, yeah.”

Equally surprising was the familiar bits of code from the other side, as she saw her brother’s familiar boss monster signals along with Mustang and… Hiro, Riza, Baymax, and a few of the other soldiers, from the looks of it. They entered the bay from the other side

“An Omega Rex!” Hiro exclaimed, as he dubbed the distressingly large, tyrannosauran android in front of them. Though Chara hazarded a guess they typically didn’t have an aura of raw flames of darkness around them - that seemed like Darkseid’s personal touch.

The beast screamed a roar of challenge, and the two groups didn’t have a chance to greet each other as both went on the offensive, ki blasts, fire bursts, magical knives, cigarette flames and Blaster shots mixing in with Riza and co’s bullet hail, doing enough to cause the creature to buckle… Before the flames themselves shot out, The fire grabbed for Roy as it formed into the appearance of a clawed hand. The grasp of Darkseid himself.

Cut off the head. Chara understood that. So with everyone’s attention on the beast, she didn’t hesitate to put herself across the lobby, Knife filled with Raw Crimson energy as she cut across the claw…

A stab wound that left little damage on the fiery hand as the Beast reflexively clutched down, pulling Chara back instead of the Lieutenant. She could feel Darkseid’s unmade grasp literally squeeze the life out of her, and her eyes felt the supernatural need to close… before they were filled with a veritable rainbow of power.


“That’s

My

Sister!”

Had Asriel’s voice always been that… deep?

a brilliant array of stardust, flames, and lightning, and raw Rainbow-colored laser energy struck the Zoid at once, as she swore she saw a flash of…

Well, one blink and he looked normal, but for a moment she could have sworn Asriel was a heck of a lot taller.

The assault left numerous welts and dents across the machine, and Chara, curled near the top, felt the beast let go, leaving her falling through the air. She was well-prepared for a short drop followed by a sudden stop, before She felt familiar mechanical fingers curl around her, stopping her momentum.

“I am here to assist!” Baymax cheered happily, as he floated Chara down gently.
The Creature roared it’s defiance, as it’s ground-to-air cannon unleashed a hole of fire into the top of the Garage, threatening to bring it down. Not all of it’s counter-attack was so worthless, as an array of massive guided missiles streaked through the garage straight for the younger Dreemurr sibling.

Chara’s knives would have been too late, but Asriel was in good company, as Orion’s ki blasts intermingled with Roy’s furious snapping and a few well-placed shots from Hawkeye’s preternatural aim, leaving more of the Garage destroyed, but with Asriel and his group unharmed.

This didn’t stop the level of heartache she felt from leaving her chest, but that was okay. She knew how to use it, as she popped away from existence, and back above the Zoid, her blade coated in black energy lined with red - and shifted, the knife extending into a sword all it’s own.

“That. Is my brother.”

The Elder Dreemurr stabbed with all her raw hate, and an explosion of black energy cut from the top through the bottom of the Machine, creating a small but ragged hole through the Mechanoid’s chassis. Damage done, she took a shortcut off the Creature, disappearing into the void to reappear Right between Roy and Orion’s group as the Machine sputtered uselessly.

The garage was looking worse for wear though, and most of the vehicles had by now been thoroughly thrashed.

Roy thrust a finger at the zoid and barked his next orders with the timbre and power of a Veteran commander.

“Take it down before it causes more Collateral. Give it everything you’ve got!” Roy yelled, before fixing his gaze on Asriel, a thoughtful expression crossing his face. “Can you use your fire magic directly on the Zoid? Centered around the neck joint.”

Asriel gave a solid nod, as Chara’s eyes flicked between the two. Roy was a flame alchemist… She saw the logic.

But now it was time for her to focus. Hundreds of knives wouldn’t be enough to scratch the paint, so with a quick snap of her fingers, she dug a little deeper and summoned a few thousand behind her, with a golden light pinging in the middle of it. Her eyes flared a bright, cherry red as a bit of magical, blackened tar fell from her mouth. “Let’s finish this off!”

Nico gave a sigh, his infernal cigar dancing between his fingers

“this is gonna kill my throat…” he muttered, as he took a long drag, suppressing a cough as best he could.

Riza took aim as she spoke to Sergeant Swift. “Your men know the weak points of this thing?”

The blonde badass gave a grin. “All Too Well…”

Orion paced both hands outward, golden spheres of broad ki forming from his palms. “Final…”

The Unmade Omega Rex attempted to respond with a blast of azure energy, Before Baymax flew up with Hiro in tow, Smashing it in the Jaw with a furious uppercut that left the creature reeling.

“Photon levels are determined to have been excessively unhealthy. Suggesting dietary alternatives” The robot replied snappily
“Translation: eat this!” Hiro yelled from atop Baymax, before throwing a grenade Chara guessed he’d swiped off one of the unmade into the android’s mouth, the explosion giving them their opening as the two got clear, further suppression coming from pin-point strikes from Swift and Riza, and a hail of bullets from a mixture of Cevanti’s finest.

Chara cracked a smile at the display, as she snapped her fingers.

The air was filled with dazzling red, as ten thousand knives smashed into the Omega Rex from every possible angle, leaving a score of shallow cuts and nicks in the beast’s armor,. The punishing assault was punctuated with the long burn of satanic fire as Nico quite literally skated into action, buzzing the beast and leaving some of the outer plating melted and weakened,

“...Flash!” Orion yelled, as a golden blast of light struck the beast and slammed it viscerally against the nearby wall, burning away the outer armour and exposing the sensitive compartments beneath.

A further blast of flame enveloped those as Asriel covered the creature in the fire magic he had left to summon, coating it in fire.. “Is that… enough, Mister mustang?”

Roy adjusted his gloves as he answered. “Perfect.”

With a snap of his fingers, the magical flames roared to life, glowing white-hot as the internal circuitry sizzled and charred by a barrage of pyromantic explosions flowing across it’s body, and the Omega Rex fell to the ground

The group took the barest of seconds to breathe, before heading to the front of the garage, no time for celebration

“There’s an APC there.” Roy called, pointing to a nearby armoured turtle of a vehicle. Weaponless, but well-armoured. Just what they needed.

Then the harsh, shrill cry of surrendering Steel beams echoed through the area, as the roof screeched and cracked. The group might have been squished then and there, but not for a pair of very large, android limbs pushing up the top of the garage facility.

“...I must inform you that this place has become structurally unsound,” Ashe-0’s familiar voice called out, “I would recommend you get in the APC and move out quickly, before you become structurally unsound.”

Chara was pretty certain only Ashe and herself caught the smile plastered across Roy’s face before he managed to hide it again.

“What about you?” Roy asked, a look of concern washing over him.

“No worries, I’ve obtained a carry-all for Ashe-0 while we were wasting time here,” Faise’s chipper tones chimed in over the radio, as the sound of heavy ship engines roared behind the group, “I do have a duty to keep the valuable assets gathered here intact.”

Chara didn’t waste time, as the group crowded into the oversized APC, and Riza barely waited for the doors to shut before putting the Vehicle in full gear, the group rocketing out of Saren’s base at top speed.

Chara looked to the others with a grin despite herself, “Logically, I imagine it will gradually collapse in on itself, as different pieces melt and fuse together, before burning out. However, due to the volatile nature of Darkseid’s tech, it might also just…”

Chara’s words were punctuated by a violent, prolonged explosion that stole hearing from everyone in the van, as a large, Cherry-red fireball rumbled into the air. Even from the slits of the APC, Chara had a feeling that would be seen from orbit.

The base was destroyed. Saren was dead. The unmade had been defeated. And while there was so much more ground to take back, They’d finally taken the first step to removing Darkseid’s taint from the crossroads.

Chara smiled. “...I learned from a movie I watched a long time ago that the proper celebration of such an occasion involves shawarma. Any takers?”
.

Nico has used 1 focus for an ultra-long drag on his satanic cigarette with a lot more area of effect than normal.
Chara used 1 focus for entirely too many knives, and 1 focus for BEEG stab with the FIGHT action
Asriel used 1 focus to ignore the concentration modifier for his abilities temporarily and fire them all at once.
Orion used 1 focus to turn his ki beam into a final flash
Ashe used 1 focus to hold up a big-ass garage
Roy used 1 focus to utilize his alchemy with Chara’s flame magic to melt the Omega Rex’s circuitry.
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