Adamant Blood

The trip to Big Torii passed in a blink of flight on a duty-bound hovercraft of the Crystal Tower, as indicated by the white and blue flag flying from their back end. Derek manned the vessel. It was mostly a very sturdy flying platform for superheroes, and sometimes for camera crew.

Isoko stood with Mark, both of them standing with Tempest and Specter.

Big Torii was a giant red gate with kilometers of open space on both sides. It had an East/West orientation as opposed to Dawncoast’s North/South. Other than that, it was almost identical to the gate Mark knew and worked with all the time. Big Torii had a ‘Small Gate’ too, right on the ground in the middle of the main gate.

The guys down below were already working the gate.

Derek said, “2 minutes to activation.”

Mark said, “We’re going through with a full adamantium shell except for the top.”

“This hovercraft is rated for an extra 100 tons, so pile it on, Mark!” Derek said.

“We have extra shields on it, too,” Specter said, though there wasn’t much emphasis to his words, or desires.

Specter and Tempest were kinda wary in a lot of ways.

Tempest was blond with blue eyes, and a descendant of the Russian nations, of which Mark had assumed were fully wiped out and reintegrated into other nations, until he had met that woman at the Winter Ball who wanted help with her Russian nation… whatever it was. Mark had given that other woman money, or rather Andria had. Mark hadn’t spoken to Tempest much at all.

Tempest was their heavy hitter, alongside Isoko.

Specter was a pale guy from Antarctica, from the green lands opposite of the southern tip of South America. He lived in a city outside of the Southern Crossing, and now he was here as a superhero for Crystal Tower, with a specialization in avoidance and ingress.

Specter was going to be rushing ahead of Mark, scouting and reporting, but...

Mark asked Specter, “Do you want to hang back? Because someone is going to counter attack Isoko and Tempest, and I’d like to know that they have extra defenses.”

“Fuck fuck fuck,” Tempest slightly muttered, fear gripping her. “This shouldn’t be happening.”

“But it is,” Specter said, looking away from everyone.

Mark looked at Isoko.

Isoko said, “Specter and Tempest and Derek are with me. Tempest and I will be Sky Shaping for lightning against the main forces, but neither of our control is micro-sized at all. I could use the extra defenses from having Specter nearby.”

Those weren’t the orders that Justicar had given them.

Specter looked unsure at both of them.

Tempest, however, said, “Yes. Please. Yes.” And then she looked at Isoko, asking, “Can you really tear into a kaiju with your lightning? I’ve never been able to do that much.”

“Yeah. It’s a physical force. Tactile Telekinesis, actually,” Isoko said, “And with 10x speed when I get going.”

Tempest sighed out a bit. Mark did a Union of Good and Bad and she sighed out better, more secure. She said, “Thank the gods… or thank Freyala, I suppose?”

Isoko grinned. “Thank Freyala.”

Specter said, “I can move at 5x. I can do faster if you can speedboost, Isoko? I know Justicar can.”

“I can do that, easy, but that will put a strain on Tempest, so I’ll keep it minimal. I’ve been experimenting with a Prismatic/Boring Union that hits pretty much everything in a small way, so that’s what I’m doing most of the time.”

“I won’t have to ration power?” Tempest asked, very seriously, “Because that’s always the limiting factor.”

“Oh heck no!” Isoko said.

Tempest felt better. She looked better, too.

Specter knew he could defend Tempest and Isoko, so he was good with that.

Mark said, “I’ll be the head of the spear, running full speed Union usually, but stopping suddenly to do Binding Work. Do not expect steady Unions from me, which is yet another reason why Specter should stay with you two. If it gets really bad we’ll retreat and I’ll summon some kaiju of our own.”

“10 seconds,” Derek said.

Mark threw out a whole bunch of adamantium, stabilizing it to the surface of the ship, coating the hull and then raising barriers along the edges, 3 meters up. He made a little lookout tower for Derek up front.

Derek multiplied at the helm, multiplied into the lookout tower, and then a few of him vanished, leaving the one at the helm and the one up at the top of the tower, and a backup inside the tower, fully enclosed in protective adamantium. Derek said, “Gate activation.”

Timeweaver spoke on the comms, “Full speed you guys.”

“Acknowledged!” Derek said, readying to gun it.

Tempest tensed, Specter turned slightly ethereal as a threat response, and then the world parted, opening up and flooding Earth with mana from Daihoon and with a Call to war for all nearby monsters and kaiju. It was a very tiny Call, though, so no kaiju responded.

Mark merely tensed, and then he let the mana and the Call wash over him, rippling over the edge of the adamantium, and it felt good.

Derek slammed the throttle.

Isoko and Mark stood tall but Tempest fell back just a bit and Specter caught her.

They were through, back to Daihoon, into Sidecity.

Mark saw the tops of buildings way out there, beyond the edge of his adamantium wall, beyond the loading zone of the gate. He lifted off into the sky, Unioning Isoko’s Prismatic/Boring with his own Good/Bad. He did not want to disrupt Specter’s Ethereality, so he didn’t do Adamant/Ethereal—

“Incoming!” Derek announced, from the tower up front. “Slow fire! I’m evading it.”

Derek slammed on some rockets and spun the whole vehicle off and to the right, and Mark saw, for a moment, the small gate, right as some trailing black/white flames coated the land. The gate winked out before the fires got through, but the fires still killed everything nearby, which was no one and nothing.

Derek spun the vehicle to the sides, avoiding the voidfire, and briefly Mark saw Sidecity.

It had been evacuated, mostly, over the last few days, but Mark felt terrified people out there, and he saw a bunch of cargo hoverships that had been mostly abandoned at port, and he felt people outside of the loading zone, on the buildings to the sides—

Black/white voidfire caressed over the edges of the adamantium shell and Mark fortified those locations, discarded others, and Derek spun the hoverplatform high into the sky. It would have been disorienting for most people, but the people here on this platform were not most people, and all it took was actual action to get Tempest into the game.

"I feel them out there. You feel them with me, Isoko?” Tempest asked.

“I do,” Isoko said, “Northwest, in some buildings on the edge of Side City.”

“Aiming ship,” Derek said.

“Sighting,” Mark said, as he stepped up into the air, to see, flexing the adamantium around the ship, refreshing the shield. He saw trails of voidfire still streaming through the air, like bullets from a machine gun. It wasn’t a sniper emplacement. It was just a turret, probably deployed by some techie who was now hiding far away from the turret. The only thing left there was probably the ammo, which was the big deal. Quark informed Mark that the building should have been evacuated, so Mark said, “Tempest and Isoko; Take it down and alert HQ that we have a techie running around fucking shit up.”

Tempest and Isoko wordlessly acknowledged Mark’s command—

The sky suddenly roiled with prismatic lights, the auroras of Daihoon far away, but seeming so very close in this mid-morning battle. Platinum glitters soaked into clouds, and then came the lightning.

Platinum light blotted out all sight, and the sound, oh the sound. A building had stood there, the turret on top of it firing fast as it could empty its magazines, Derek avoiding everything and blackwhite fire erupting around the ship. And then the fire stopped, light enveloped the world, and one building became debris and a towering inferno of blackwhite fire.

Mark asked, “Is the fire in the city a problem for us?”

“No,” Justicar said, in the comms, “Ground crew is on that and on finding the infiltrators. Continue on to the blockade.”

That was the call Mark wanted to hear. He nodded at Derek.

Derek aimed northwest, toward D'Takasaki about 50 kilometers away, which was beyond the blockade. As the ship rose above the walls of Sidecity, Mark couldn’t see the blockade, but Quark could. Quark highlighted tiny green dots in the sky, above the mountains of D’Japan, encircling Sidecity in every direction.

At an average of 40 kilometers radius from Big Torii, each ship was about 2 kilometers apart from each other, though they were closer together near the D'Takasaki base. According to standard intel, most of the ships were standard-fare battle cruisers, each about 50 meters long and equipped for short bursts of speed and with long-range and short-range weaponry. A few ships, like the one over Side Depot at D’Takasaki, were bigger.

According to Timeweaver, their main weapons were renewable fireball spellcannons, as you would find on any wall in any city, with variable loadouts. Mostly fire-based loadouts. Some voidfire was to be expected. Super hard targets required kaiju-void bombs, like the ones Mark had encountered in Memphi, that voided large diameters of space. Each ship should have 3 of those, but they did not want to use them except on high-value targets. Each ship had shapers and techs and a whole lot of personal defenders, and each ship, most of all, had one dryad.

Some ships had 2 dryads, like the mothership far ahead, hovering to the left of center between Big Torii and D'Takasaki’s Side Depot.

Mark commanded, “Six ships left of the mothership. 12 kilometers away from the big one. That one first. Then we’re headed away from the mothership, counterclockwise. This is the plan, as of right now.” As Derek shifted the direction, Mark continued, “I am the only one getting within 2 kilometers of a ship. Isoko can reach me from there, and that’s enough—”

Timeweaver spoke up in the comms, “Full brunt defense, Isoko, right up, push it away.”

Isoko flickered the sky with platinum and for a moment she was bewildered, and then she saw something that Mark did not see and she focused. Tempest saw it, too, and she gasped. Isoko cracked the sky with platinum Tactile Telekinesis, detonating a void bomb far overhead and to the side. The bomb ate a 50 meter black hole in the world and then came the implosion.

Fire filled the aurora-blue daylight sky.

“I won’t let that happen again,” Isoko said, “Deploying harsh winds.”

The sky around them began curling and twisting, filling with Isoko’s vector, with overlapping layers of spheres.

Derek said, “Maintaining course.”

Timeweaver said, “Handing you off to other prognosticators.”

Aleph One spoke into their comms, “I am present and guarding.”

“What’s happening on Earth?” Mark asked, though he was mostly focused on the present.

The remnants of the void bomb implosion dissipated behind them. As long as Isoko kept on it, they’d never get that close ever again, and as long as Mark kept himself strung out over at least 100 meters then a bomb couldn’t kill him, either.

Justicar said, “The blockade is not spilling onto Earth, but we are on high alert and several systems have been attacked inside the city. Do not worry about us, Mark Careed.”

Tempest and Specter worried.

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Isoko, Derek, and Mark focused, and so, Tempest and Specter focused.

5 kilometers left.

The sky clouded over, Tempest on target, the wind picked up, the ship flew faster and rain began to fall far away, obscuring the vision of the ships to the left and the right, but leaving the target zone and ships unclouded. Tempest lived up to her name as twisters spun down from the sky in every direction, aiming at the ships, touching upon shields. She wasn’t just a Sky Shaper, she was also a Weather Manipulator. Lightning cascaded onto distant battleships, skipping across shielding, preventing them from getting clear shots on anyone.

Isoko focused before Mark expected her to. Suddenly, platinum glows shimmered in the sky in front of them and to the right, where the main mothership flew—

Void bombs went off, erasing the world in 50 meter black spheres that collapsed in a second, leaving behind implosions.

“I feel good about this!” Mark shouted, as he lifted off, into the air. “See you all on the flip side!”

The battleships easily saw Mark in his black suit with high-vis white lines, but then Mark strung himself out, Alacrity/Slowness beating hard, thrumming his existence, touching upon Isoko’s Union all around him. Mark sped up.

Prismatic flows felt pretty fucking awesome.

Mark spiraled forward, through the wind and rain, the very sky itself helping him as he reached the first ship and latched on like an Energy/Entropy vampire. It was a standard battleship with a large deck, turrets on top and on the sides, and hard shields. Mark slammed into those shields, into the invisible dryad strung into all of the machinery, into the personnel, into the soldiers, and the shield cracked. Mark flowed into the battleship itself, stringing himself out to two bodies, one 100 meters away, one right in the thick of everything, and the dryad screamed, uncurling fast.

There was resistance.

Spells fired.

Death bloomed, laced through the dryad like purple veins, into Mark, and Mark felt a surge of power that was completely unlike everything he had ever felt. Giddy; that's what this much Death mana did to him, now. Mark ripped that Death directly into himself, letting out an echoing laugh as he couldn’t contain it all, as his Union of Energy and Entropy killed all other Powers on the ship.

A blast of pure Energy, purified and rarefied, echoed out with every beat of Mark’s multiple hearts, directly into Isoko’s Prismatic Union.

The sky burst with platinum rips, with thunderous lightning, and with a hurricane blast.

The dryad shuddered, turning dormant as every part of it failed at life, its vector slamming inward, energy stolen. Mark followed that inward slam, opening himself up to attack as he Unioned with the dryad, following it into the dream.

Mark stood in his Skilling house, gazing upon the sleeping dryad.

It was a dead person wrapped in vines, Death flowing all around it, something like glowing green Life curling inside that Death. They were dead. They were alive. They slept and Mark pulled them apart, ripping out a Binding that shimmered like a black, green, and purple star. The star started to writhe in his hand, grabbing his hand, trying to change him.

It got nowhere with that.

“What the fuck is this?” Mark asked no one in particular.

The System chose to answer.