Parallel Approach
The two girls found their advantage in retreat, knowing that their overall goal was to stir things up on both sides. They were already on the front lines, after all, switching things over would invite them into much of the same frenzy.
Rosa took immediately to the space above, her holo generators running strong. Of course, on this side, the moon had nothing to glide upon, wings wouldn’t serve the same use. However, such provided a very well placed location for an ionic thrust, the stiff wings acting much more like a jetpack. Her protective suit was making use of the same ionic shielding to sustain an oxygen supply for her, something which was already being recycled as she breathed. Her DRE provided yet another form of protection, but in this case as a particle weave that infused her entire body in ions like an aggressive barrier. Her jetstream momentum then struck quickly into a nearby fiend as a flying kick, the ions of the impact sparking as the fiend disintegrated. Another fiend came around to turn upon her, that same fiend being subdivided as a high-intensity ion holo-blade passed through it, appearing from out of nowhere and simply falling upon her foe.
Kori meanwhile also set her Trance Inductor Drive on this side as well, the ions flowing a yellow circuit over her face in contrast to the blue patterns conduits like her typically held. She jacked herself into her arm, manipulating the circuits with her accelerated presence to unfurl pure ionic force as a projection. She wrapped such around her, jumping lightspeed into the air, crashing hard upon a fiend in the process, then discharging from impact to strike another. Kori even caught Rosa’s next shift, switching to gravitation might instead as she simply pulled herself in a horizontal descent towards a third fiend and then drawing two more towards her in a gravitation implosion. She turned towards one of the oncoming threats, the gravitational force gathering into her cybernetic hand as she outright crushed the fiend on impact.
The other fiend Kori had invited didn’t even reach her. Rosa formed her frost carefully, placing a series of frost blades in series along the path between. As the combined impact shredded her foe, she flew over and snatched two of them and made a sweeping spiral dive against yet another fiend, the dual blades slicing the fiend to ribbons. She then flew back over to Kori, holding a defensive perimeter with her, as yet more chaotic fiends drew closer. They were managing, but fending this many wasn’t going to be some easy feat, they were going to need some help. As the mist of chaos dispersed from the few they had managed to deal with, their ebony hand itself felt unsatisfied and withdrawn.
「I can’t have you taking all of the fun, not when this isn’t completely your responsibility. Your foe is here for the betrayer, it’s time they had a good taste of some true chaos. It’s time you had a good taste of some true chaos. Do not forget, four bodies, two people.. one entity. You are not alone.」
The ebony of their arm flared to life, layers and structure of reflective ebony chaos rendering new form to their previously regular semblance. It was like the arm of a demon, a semblance of claws that held no true form. Driven to strike, the two girls dashed off in opposite directions, their chaotic arm each striking into a nearby fiend. The fiend was not torn apart, it just simply ceased to be.. while their arm pulsed with even greater chaos. They were devouring chaos.. and it felt savoury. Rosa let her shift fade, while fourteen foes rushed them at once. They both dived at one, but that left them open to the dozen left. However, in that, true chaos was unleashed. Making use of the growing power they had consumed, unrelenting plasma scourged in an erratic pattern around them, a violet frenzy that turned the stone they stood upon into pure silver ice. Half of their foes burned to ash, the other half froze on contact. The same ash settled a white haze that was attracted to the frozen cubes, the ash crushing the cubes with imploding force. When the frozen foes were nothing but a flat plane, the two girls touched the ground they stood on, as their chaotic hand took in all of the elements remaining.. including the chaos that used to be.
Both girls knew subconsciously how this whole thing worked. They knew they could command true chaos to infinite potential, but that it was limited by the capacity of chaos they could carry. However, for every foe they defeated with true chaos, that foe was converted into more chaotics they could just simply use. Instead of getting weaker as they fought, they would only get stronger. This true chaos was working completely to their favour, replenishing their ionic or even elemental reserves, addressing pain and injury, and even supplementing their natural stamina. In all ways, they were growing stronger. However, even that felt a bit intimidating, for such power wasn’t in the least bit natural. There was no way they could hope to contain this much chaos.
It didn’t take them long to realize the problem was even worse than expected. Not only was this whole thing an armada that threatened even the unnatural outreach of their potential, it was also an elaborate trap. A surge of chaos rampaged towards them.. as several others far off into the distance began their descent towards Aestus. It was a collection of chaos more formidable than any army either world had faced even in their decendant’s future.. and it was about to begin its attack. The two girls had meanwhile devoted themselves to an offense, they couldn’t manage both things at once. There was also the concern that chaos worked as a whole, the chaos certainly also advancing on Ruixse at the same time. It was absolutely impossible to be everywhere at once, this was much more than they could handle.
“Battlecruisers Omega and Epsilon have been deployed and are engaging the enemy. Oh, and don’t worry, that’s only the beginning. It seems Velvet has kept quite the trick up her sleeve here, having more than just a bike to drive around. No wonder the girl always loved thermite, this stuff has its own thermite cores.. has as much power as ATALS. Oh, and.. Drew and the crew are here too. Seems hypertech is offering aerospace their services again, this time in weapon maintenance. Tristine already managed to overclock the plasma cannon, not even I have figured out what that’s going to mean. Velvet of course took her favourite, Omega, leaving Hypertech aboard Epsilon. You will also not believe who is driving.. I really have to question your sister’s sanity. Then again, I guess when the situation demands it…” Holi’s voice was interrupted by a sudden solar flare, the blinding plasma eruption bleaching away the horizon. Rosa turned to Kori, knowing that only one of them had heard Holi there. Rosa reaccounted Holi’s details, catching Kori up to the same perspective of shock. This changed everything. All too certainly, having friends in the right places made all of the difference.
Coming to terms with the idea that the other side might need their attention much more urgently, the two switched things over to that side. The instant they appeared, they heard a whirl and a pop, the colossal taking to the field again. Scattered everywhere were numerous destroyers and armored walkers piloted by Luna’s forces.. but not even those were alone. Cosmic crafts scattered in the area above them, firing waves and volleys into the rising forces to keep them promptly on the ground. A call promptly came in through Axln’s power gear at that point.
“Welcome back, inheritor. While you’ve been gone, Mheridz had promptly shown up and had taken action, mixing her forces with our own. I’m sorry, she imposed the instructions that I would need to deploy all forces if I had any interest in keeping you safe, which is the highest priority. She is aboard the citadel, using it as a command center between both divisions of forces. Oh, additionally, it appears that Ezhyrae had made use of her influence within the foundry to requisition her own siege-mantle, the place being operated by some chosen academy staff. Jhez and Xwyhr are there too, considering they both count as academy staff right now. Mheridz expresses complaints that your sister is obviously treating this as some party, that the girl should really act her age, and hopes you might have something to share to make that happen, even though she admits that your sister is also demonstrating some unexpected skill at keeping forces organized. Her remaining complaints involve how reports from that side have remained cluttered and confusing, even though the individual in charge of reports is a historian. I have no idea what actions to take, as her own instructions have been rather cluttered and confusing when mixed in with all of these complaints.” “Then just tell her to not worry about some flagship.. siege-mantle.. that has more influence than she does. Everyone is helping, and that’s already making a difference. Oh, also, I need you to reduce enemy numbers, the priority is any enemy forces attempting to flee the moon. Please make sure Mheridz is aware of that objective.” “Right away, inheritor.” Luna ended the call, leaving Axln to address the foes before her. Of course, Axln had already disposed of seventeen foes during the call, her attention easily sitting in two places thanks to her infusion. Unlike any other might she commanded, it appeared that the chaos she gathered travelled with her to this side, meaning the foes she had just devoured were stacked upon the ones she had devoured on the other side. Getting some help really was going to make all the difference.
Axln passed the same information on to Lyun mid-combat, while also using her circlet to scan the sky for important targets. She found the academy’s siege-mantle, this side’s version of a flagship. Accounting for it’s identifiers, she found several cosmic crafts with the same designation.. all of them piloted by an ersatz. Ezhyrae really had been keeping busy. However, she also knew Ezhyrae, managing this much activity at once was not what the girl was good at. In that consideration, she suspected that such was her sister’s contribution, a demonstrative effort at keeping forces organized. Knowing Jhez, the guy was probably more trying to keep up with a tactical awareness, possibly working with her sister in that front too.. even if he would be the only one who could understand the method behind his own madness. Lyun was of like minds too, the girl knew how to manipulate people, especially Jhez. She had some of the best intentions in her motives too, so the girl really was shining in her first big event.
At this point, it became difficult to gauge which battlefront the two girls would be needed at the most. They had a lot of powerful support on both sides, quite honestly. The girls even checked the other world in a momentary glimpse to witness the space above occupied in an armada of space fighters, the esteemed reinforcements for the two established battlecruisers. Certainly, it was not to say that they were fighting a winning battle, their enemy still had them overwhelmed, and both sides were burning resources in order to keep up their aggressive stance.. However, neither side was losing ground either, and both sides really did appear to be evenly matched, it seemed like a perfect parallel. With consideration to how they just needed to act, the two girls simply kept to that side in an effort to reduce numbers before they would switch over and do the same again. They just needed to spread as much true chaos as possible, so that they wouldn’t suffer over capacity.
Rosa took the initiative, her creativity blossoming inspiration. She needed to waste chaos then, that certainly wouldn’t be beyond her. First, she created a magnificent holo canvas, the sheet of a height which would have made ATALS look small in comparison. Ions were her paint, the canvas igniting in an abstract order of ions in a random sequence. Then she exposed further chaos to it, rendering the pane itself unstable and glitchy. The entire structure just contorted in a spaz, random elements of the structure warping in angles that ripped through nearby chaos. While that was occurring, she shifted principles, leaving the chaos to persist without ration. Before the residue could fade away, she peeled away the frost to have the burst of energy ignite, rampant flames spiraling like a visage of hell incarnate. All too suddenly, she shifted back once again, the heat reacting with the residual ions to cause a burst reaction, with a rage of explosions decimating the moon’s surface. Even then, she switched yet again, freezing the force reaction in a captured still due to a sudden frost presence. Switching back, the intense force was already on the rebound, causing explosions to invert into implosions. Switching yet again, a dark elemental reaction, causing a gravitational shift. Yet another switch, she was left with a gravitational core, a concentration of energy mighty enough to collapse into a black hole. Though that, several of the larger fiends were even consumed, the might of principle being all too powerful.
Being one to share Rosa’s chaos, Kori felt her chaos shift too. At first, she could feel the wasteful approach actually worked. However, as the entire process fused with chaos abound, the wreaths of chaos took a chance opportunity to devour the chaos decimated in the process, along with being empowered by the growing surge of true chaos. She was actually only getting stronger. Such was possibly how and why everything accumulated into something as incredible as a black hole. However, this would be Rosa losing control over her chaos, everything amounting to too much to handle. If that thing collapsed.. black holes are not something to just leave in your backyard. As such, even in the rapid intensity of Rosa’s shifts, when the next turn for elementals came, Kori turned all of her dark elemental ability upon the design and ripped every last ounce of darkness from it, leading to a brilliant luminous flare. Even that held too much power.. but Kori was noticing something else that Rosa had not. Her envelopment of her shift only included a slight area around her.. that area had been growing in size with each shift. Quite rationally, even the first area had been almost a hundred times her normal size.. if it grew enough to reach their forces.. those ships were not designed to work under elemental principles.
Kori then instead forced a timestop, a dangerous move that left her allies unable to defend themselves and her enemies still good to go. In addition to that, she directly charged the sphere of light, capturing it with her chaotic arm in a burst of searing pain that she quite certainly could feel. She then created an ambience of inverted time, slowing down herself while leaving everything else to go at normal time. Rosa found herself neglected in this, the chaos within her having opted for the more preferred flow of time. The chaos around them had been equally motivated, leaving Kori herself considerably vulnerable. Rosa was shocked at what had been transpiring, not even aware of why Kori had been doing all of this. Witnessing Kori with more elemental power than she could handle, Rosa realized that this might have been her fault. She needed to get rid of this excess power now, it was a danger to everyone. Dipping into the wellpool of light, she took a small sample of light energy and struck the fiends still approaching with the resulting mass concentration in a still form. The light met with them and began devouring their very chaotic form in an all too parasitic form. Rosa herself could feel the pain flaring from the contact, the over abundance of light having destabilized her own elemental composition. This was only from small contacts, Kori would fare far worse. Rosa was thus in a desperate flurry, quickly making use of all the nearby chaos to attempt to find a use for all of the excess light. Committing her own chaos to the task, she felt pain in an even greater intensity as wisps of her presence extended her actions beyond the reality of her actions, a swirl of endless momentum as light shifted everywhere. In a good number of cases, the light simply had to be directed as a distilled beam into generic deep space.. an act which would hopefully lose intensity before it made contact with anything.
Kori restored the presence of her own time just as Rosa collapsed to the ground. Rosa was not exhausted, quite the opposite almost, as the mass flow of chaos enabled in her actions had caused a surge in chaotic growth. Due to such a flow of chaos, Rosa could feel her chaos delivering an endless flow of stamina to her, leaving her to feel as if she wouldn’t be capable of sleep for the next month. The pain however had become unbearable, her mind suffering under the intensity of everything that had just happened. Of course, that had all been her fault, she was only blaming herself for it.. but the plan had been to avoid sacrifices. Such was why, even as her very form gave way on her, she refused to just stop there. Giving up, letting herself be consumed.. no one would forgive her for that. Possibly Velvet, most of all, having then let the girl down twice. Even with pure determination, Rosa was still unable to get back up. However, Rosa’s determination extended to making the most of everything she still had.
Pain, that was the greatest thing she still had going right now, it was endless. Pain was outright annoying for people too.. even if that was something chaos could never understand. Chaos never felt pain, that was more of a context of principle. Scientifically, it was an electrochemical impulse delivered through the nerve system that communicated intensity to the mind. Instrumentally, it was a reaction between water and plant that drew a shift of a person’s plant elemental composition to a more water-based favour, causing their physical form to rend conflict. Of course, this was a firm example in how water was considered a non-physical elemental. Pain was electric energy, pain was water elemental, pain was something chaos never knew because it was of principles that opposed it’s design. At least.. for primitive chaos. She drew all context of her pain and agony towards her chaotic arm, filling it with the impressions left of her own torment. Then, with a scream of otherworldly fervor, she cast forth this same instilment of pain, sharing her agony with every fiend around her. Four leader fiends, actually working to provide a flow of growing chaos, immense bodies of chaos that had weathered most of the previous demonstration of power, suddenly disintegrated, the gateway that had been their weaving likewise annihilated in the process.
“What the hell was that?” “Oh, hi, Velvet.. I thought you didn’t know how to contact me?” “I had Holi patch me through, she’s handling the call. Also, don’t change the subject. That was mot-.. that was Rosa’s scream, wasn’t it?” “Scream? We’re in space, you can’t hear people scream out here.” “Given how.. supernatural.. that sounded, I wouldn’t have claimed it was a person screaming. She’s chaotic enough, it’s entirely plausible, and I know her voice. What happened to her?” “Rosa fought.. to avoid sacrifice, even her own. She’s still awake, she knows we’re talking, though the bubble we’ve got means she can’t hear you right now. Sorry, I really have to go, going to need to ensure she stays safe until she’s had a chance to recover. Holi, please let the others know she’s okay too, they’re probably also worried.” Kori was outright crushing a few passing fiends while she spoke, ending the call before Velvet could complain further. Velvet hadn’t asked the right question, she had never inquired if Rosa was going to be alright. Kori herself didn’t know the answer to that question, she had no certainty how things would go from all of this. No one could predict the future at this point.
Velvet however wasn’t taking the news very well, that much was obvious. Battlecruiser omega actually directed its attention directly upon the chaos still around Kori, providing additional cover for them as Kori worked to give Rosa the opportunity she needed. As plasma rounds rained down upon them, Rosa’s shift having ended to allow such plasma to even work, Kori realized that they might have even forgotten that they actually carried plain weapons of their own. She herself has a plasma weapon, even if it didn’t quite compare to the firepower Velvet was commanding. In all consideration, it didn’t even compare to the firepower Kori could command, the thing seemed all but useless. However, it was at least a simple expression of force that would drive things back and not give her a flow of chaos as a result. She could even consume chaos to replenish her stocks, giving her a way to obtain a net negative stash of chaos. She made use of her trance to pinpoint an accurate shot, her handling still suffering as her first shot sent her tripping over Rosa. Recovering in the air, Kori balanced herself out with a shot in the reverse direction. It was unfortunate that Rosa’s wave of anguish had wiped out most of the lesser fiends in the area though, the shots having little impact on the abominations closing in. However, such shots did cause her enemies to stagger too, the rain of plasma that followed soon after making use of the opening provided. Considering the two would be related, Kori was certain that Velvet’s vehicle handling appeared far more reliable than her aunt’s.. with an accuracy that seemed even to shine over her mother’s. Of course, it wasn’t as if she knew Sophie’s ability in piloting an aerial vehicle.. but even Rosa had appeared unexpectedly gifted in the air without warning.
With that consideration, Kori got yet another idea.. that she could simply give Rosa some proper opportunity to rest under Luna’s care before being returned to the battlefield by rift. It was a chance opportunity that such an option remained open to her, and it seemed like a good time to make progress on the other side, quite certainly it wouldn’t make things any worse.
Luminaeris 