Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

“Crazy girl,” Benjamin muttered as he braced for the rough landing. The Swift wasn’t a combat vehicle, and while it wasn’t exactly stealthy, it wasn’t ostentatious either. So how did the invaders find them so—hmmm. Radar?

He frowned and stretched his senses. While his primary perception ability involved air, or rather, more specifically, the atmosphere around him, Altered power could be stretched and evolved. His Alteration back when he was a boy merely involved manipulating the winds within a couple of paces around him, and only moving air above a certain threshold. Slower than a stiff breeze, and he couldn’t sense or manipulate it, which he found out once he stretched his range. Increasing scope took much longer and required certain…substances as well as training. Thankfully, the Daublin-Lawson family was wealthy for many generations, so he could afford the cost of expanding his personal power.

The Swift limited his direct contact with the outside winds, throttling his output to a mere trickle instead of a mighty river akin to the Santana, which surrounded the island of Winderfield and bisected Neo Prism City. Even so, the little bit he could detect after stretching his senses told him that it wasn’t radar. It was something else that smelled like the rifts. So there had been no chance of a stealthy mission, and things had to be done upfront.

The Swift bounced on landing, and Benjamin almost bit his tongue off. He glared at Steel Hive, but the mechanical gestalt lifeform was quite busy flicking switches and toggles. There was a loud clunk from the Swift’s sides as hatches opened despite some damage from incoming fire. Then Hive’s minions flew out of containment. The hatch opened, and he preceded Arcmind outside, though he made sure to create a wall of pressure around the exit.

The barrier turned out to be unnecessary since nobody was firing at them. Benjamin’s field spread out almost as soon as he exited. A flash of movement at the extreme of his range, about a longstride, drew his attention but fell past his range. He wasn’t curious enough to focus and stretch his wind sense.

Instead, his attention was suddenly riveted towards the skies where his granddaughter danced.

Boom! Boom!

Brrrrttt! Brrrrrt!

Tracer bullets drew lines in the air. Cannon shells exploded in midair, though he couldn’t understand how they expected to hit someone agile with those. Tank cannons weren’t used for anti-air after all. Maybe they were throwing everything to make it stick? Why, though?

He extended his senses and reached for the base. There was still some fighting at the edges of the camp. A few soldiers held out, some fled, and none surrendered. The invaders didn’t look like they offered it anyway.

Where were the officers with the command codes? The base commander and his adjutant weren’t within easy reach. They might have fled or already been killed. So the next step was either to disable the ballistic missiles or explode them. Deny the invaders Astoria’s munitions, and deny them the base too.

At the very least, he could determine the strength of the opposition and… Oh. More were coming.

___________

Yuriko only vaguely noticed that the Swift and her sneaky relatives had crash-landed since she was busy evading the rain of bullets. The ones from the war machines—tanks, wheeled vehicles with turrets, and armed personnel carriers—weren’t much of an issue since the machine guns only fired in line. Sure, the gunners tried to sweep her, but even so, those projectiles weren’t infused with esoteric energy.

The ones she had to take seriously were the blasts from the soldiers in powered armour. Not the fliers, but the ones that were marching towards her. There were five next to the war machines alone. The armour looked like what would happen if she crossed infantry armour with a tank. It bulked up the eraser to roughly three paces tall and about two and a half wide. Three had a large cannon attached to their backs, one had a missile pod, while the last one had a backpack that lit up with purple arcana energy to her Chaos Sight. She focused on that one and noticed energy threads connected the unit to the other heavily armoured soldiers. Ah, not just the ones in powered armour, but the other infantry units and mechanised units too.

The booming noises came from those armoured soldiers too, and those bullets were pregnant with infused esoteric energy. It was similar in nature to the energy prevalent in Interstitial space, and what she suspected was dimensionally-attuned energy. It wasn’t the same as Elemental energy, Radiance, daemonfyre, or Chaos, but it was intertwined with the canvas of reality. Which was why she didn’t detect it before. It was the same flavour as what open rifts gave out too, or perhaps it was better to say that it was the same energy, only the rifts agitated it. Much like how a stream was normally clear, but when something struck the riverbed and threw up sand and mud, the particulate matter became easier to see. But it also obscured the water, huh? It was something like that, anyway. Come to think of it, the same energies were the root of Altered power.

Anyway, the bullets swerved towards her, though they weren’t like the missiles fired by that one soldier who chased after her. At the very least, missiles were easy to cut down since they were slower than bullets.

Ptang!

“Urk!”

She didn’t see that bullet! It struck her side, and while her dense aura protected her, she saw cracks spread from the impact point. Of greater import, she detected dimensional energy trying to invade her Anima. She allowed Radiance to consume it and was pleasantly surprised to get back more Radiance than she consumed. Hmmm.

Ptang!

“Ow!”

She glared at her other side. The bullet struck the exact opposite point on her waist. She flared her Anima and reformed the armour a couple of inches away from her skin, then filled the gap with a softer layer intended to absorb and disperse kinetic force.

Ptang! Ptang! Ptang!

Three bullets, three different points. One at her head, another at her back, and the last one at her sternum. Where was the shooter?

Well, no matter. The cracks quickly repaired themselves, fueled by the very energy they used to injure her. She quickly decided that she should hit the soldiers she could see rather than go haring off on a game of hide-and-seek.

She aggressively advanced towards the heavies. She formed her Anima into a thick shield in front of her and charged through the fireworks, while she shrunk her perception sphere to about half, then directed the excess into a cone in front. She saw every bullet, every rocket, and cannon shell headed towards her, and while she could easily take the hits, she didn’t want to spend the time and energy to nullify the effects of physics. A blast directly in front of her would throw her back if she didn’t dig into the canvas of reality, and Astoria’s layer was still resistant to her normal ‘hooking’ technique. Which meant she had to push against the air, which took more focus and effort than normal. So she avoided getting hit by the cannons, deflected the explosive missiles to the side and used the explosions to increase her speed.

The hidden snipers continued their attack, but Yuriko ignored their presence. Her Invisible Edges normally had the same range as her Anima, but if she added an infusion of Intent and Will beyond what was needed to form it in the first place, it could persist beyond that range as well as allow her to steer the course. That process consumed too much, though, so unless she fought something that persisted in staying out of her range, she deemed it too wasteful. Unfortunately, there were too many foes to fight here, though she succeeded in catching and holding attention.

However, the primary mission was to disable the base’s missile silos, right? They were only four people… A glance back revealed that Steel Hive had released and controlled mechanical hornets and had sent them ahead either as a distraction or to scout. The base was still some distance away from them, and who knew how long the resisting soldiers could last.

She reached the tanks and heavies after half a minute. The aura around her body was webbed with cracks, but still held strong. She released an Invisible Edge at the heavy with the missile launcher, though by now they seemed to have run out and used a plasma repeater to attack. Those were easily deflected or blocked by her aura.

Strnkkk!

The Edge cut into the heavy plating and cut several inches into it. She was sure it reached the person inside, but the armour was massive and apparently, thick, and her Edge was tuned specifically to bypass it. The plating was either a different alloy or the way they empowered it was distinct from the fliers. Not surprising, in hindsight, but annoying nonetheless. She fired off a second Edge and aimed at the cannons mounted on three heavies’ pauldrons. The swiftly blocked her attack with their forearms, which resulted in severed hands and gauntlets. Those weren’t as thick as toro armour.

A moment later, she was within melee range, and the heavies were not melee fighters; they were mobile artillery. Her sunblade danced around an attempted block and touched off the torso plate, but just as with the Edge, the brief touch wasn’t enough to cut through. She twisted under a hasty punch, then pressed the blade against the heavy’s waist. She held it there for a couple of seconds, which was enough to bisect the soldier.

Bzzt! Clunk!

Ratatatat! Boom!

Her focus cost her, however, since the soldiers didn’t hesitate in bringing all their firepower to bear, disregarding the life of their ally. Or perhaps they’ve already written the soldier off. How cold.

She ducked under a cannon shell, but the thing slammed into the soldier’s upper torso and exploded, with her not more than a pace away. She didn’t fight the shockwave and was flung away. The black smoke and the shrapnel hid her long enough to allow her to regain her bearings. The heavy that wasn’t armed with a cannon or missile rack was the only one to track her as she was flung back. Accurate plasma bolts slammed into her defences and ate at her aura. It burned away the hard part of her armour and ate away at the buffer layer, and would have eaten through the inner shell if she hadn’t collapsed the armour into a denser, but thinner layer. That would mean she wouldn’t be able to handle shockwaves as easily as before, but the plasma bolts didn’t have much kinetic force to them. The dimensional energies slithered into her Anima but were subsequently consumed by Radiance, though the flood could probably overwhelm the process if she let it be for too long.

She boosted towards that shooter and slashed an Invisible Edge at them. Incredibly, they managed to dodge the initial slice, but were caught by her follow-up. That heavy wasn’t as tough as the other one, andit lost a leg as well as most of the hip. They fell to the side but didn’t cease shooting. Incredible resilience? Or were they compelled to disregard pain? The damaged armour revealed runescript patterns, but there was too little to properly decipher. What she did see bolstered courage, so there was that.

She flipped around to land on her feet, then sidestepped machine gun fire from a nearby tank. The armoured vehicle was of a different design from what the Astorians used, though the basic shape was the same. The bullets weren’t empowered by dimensional energies, however, so she ignored them.

Until, of course, they suddenly were.