Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

All of a sudden, the bullets started eating into her condensed aura. The infusion of dimensional energy had increased to the point that it started to overwhelm her Radiance. There was a balance necessary for Radiance to consume efficiently. It wasn’t an instantaneous shift from whatever it devoured to more of itself after all. The transition was swift, less than a fraction of a second, but there was still a gap.

It was like a battlefield held within a glass of clear water. Radiance was gold, and the dimensional energy was…well, black, she supposed? It was closer to clear, just like pure water, but not quite the same. Gold ate into the black, turned it into a burnt reddish brown first, before more of the gold touched it, suffusing it with that colour. At the moment, the black pushed away the gold before it suffused, hence, unable to convert.

The annoying part was that the battlefield was actually her Anima, which was mostly gold to begin with. The natural remedy to the situation was to flood the field with more gold, but in her incarnation body, and the fact that the sun had already set, her Radiant regeneration wasn’t fast at all. If this was her true body…

Nah, if she were here in her true body, this situation wouldn’t have happened at all. She would have wiped the army simply by flooding the battlefield with her sunblades. She wasn’t capable of that now, and she abruptly realised that hardwired instincts were battling with the current circumstances. Her Anima was more than enough to take any blow, in her true body, but it wasn’t true now.

She’d grown careless with her defences. There was no need to dodge or deflect with her weapon, which wouldn’t harm her in the first place. Her Truths revolved around offence. Radiant Flying Swords. Bladeless Sword. And perhaps that was why her Sword Truths wouldn’t merge properly. Huh. Another way to look at things, another angle. She couldn’t help but smile, even as her Anima was battered by the continued fire.

Ptang! Puchi!

A bullet managed to crack her aura, and it slammed into her side. The bullet flattened against her skin, but would probably leave a bruise if she left it alone.

She contemplated retreat, but her foes were well within reach. She could take the fire for now to get rid of the soldiers. This was war, again. She shouldn’t have been involved, but she inherited Lilibeth’s body and memories. She’d suppressed them initially, but once she loosened up, they slowly seeped in. Memories, attachments, lingering emotions…they all seeped into her psyche. Thankfully, the memories were isolated in this incarnation, and while her true body could access those same memories, they didn’t hold the same emotional charge there. An unexpected weakness of producing incarnations, she supposed, though perhaps they were an advantage too.

Lilibeth was an Astorian, and Yuriko sometimes identified herself as one, too. And as a resident of the Republic of Astoria, and one who held power, she was duty and honour-bound to protect it.

The hidden snipers still managed to elude her, but she could mitigate the damage to her body by layering Anima and Radiance underneath her skin. It wouldn’t last forever, but it should last long enough to finish things.

First, she drew on old techniques, old sword styles, and stances. Flowing Water and Sweeping Gale were the ones with the best mobility. Severing Shard and Raging Volcano were the most ferocious in offence, while Jade Mountain was the best at holding the line. She’d long since melded everything into a cohesive whole, but with the advent of her Flying Swords, she’d put aside lessons long learned. She called upon them now.

Her perception couldn’t detect the sniper bullets, but…it still existed within its space. Her perception aura should be able to detect gaps in the air? Except it wasn’t that simple, of course. There were too many things going on within a hundred and twenty pace wide sphere, and those things could cross that distance within the blink of an eye. She could detect the normal bullets that entered through her Anima, which meant she could ignore everything else.

She started with the regular machine guns. Flowing Water helped her smoothly get out of the way without losing momentum or changing direction. Sweeping Gale sped her up. Jade Mountain allowed her to deflect bullets in a way that they deflected towards other bullets and brought them out of line.

Ptang!

Ow.

Using the three stances allowed her to dance between the machine gun bullets and remain untouched, but it also occupied most of her spare strands of consciousness. So she had to allocate more from her true body’s side.

She used those to track gaps in the wind. It didn’t help that Gramps was using his power. Air pressure grew erratic across the distance, and…was that a gap?

Ptang!

Yup. Ow.

Yuriko gritted her teeth as she bore the pain of getting shot. That’s another bruise along her ribs. She could either allow it to heal naturally, spend some time using Recovery, or do a partial Elemental Shift around the hurt. The latter two require focus, though only a single strand of consciousness was needed for it. And since she didn't want to waste Radiance at the moment, she controlled her Animus and Anima into the Recovery pattern, while she maintained her underskin armour.

A couple of seconds later, and she was back in position to attack the heavies again. She infused Radiance into her Edge and unleashed it with a couple of swipes.

Ptang! Whiff!

She sensed the second bullet and sidestapped it. The projectile actually turned around in midair, though it slowed down as it did so, which gave her enough time to lock it down with her senses. When it returned, she cut it down with an angry slash.

Whiff! Whiff!

Two more sniper bullets and again, they came from different directions. She recognised the shape of the gap in the air, and since the pattern had been repeated over a dozen times, it wasn’t much of a surprise for her to recognise it. The heavies were helpless against her Edge, and she cut the rest of them down, which then invited more sniper bullets. This time, she managed to block them instead of evading. It meant she could reasonably foresee the near undetectable bullets’ path inside her perception range.

She scanned the area with Chaos Sight, seeking sources of esoteric energy. Unfortunately, all of Irvalla’s war machines had some of the dimensional energy signature, either wafting from every surface or exhaust from the vents.

There were more powered armoured soldiers within sight, though not within immediate reach. Most of the invading army wasn’t actually focused on her, she realised, just the perimeter screen? The rest were focused on securing the base. How many were they in the first place?

From what she observed earlier, there were three groups in the vicinity. The base was roughly a couple of square longstrides, was on relatively flat ground, and more than half of it was filled with hangars and runways. She assumed the ballistic missiles were siloed underground, and she suspected that it was located over where the remaining Astorian soldiers held their last stand. There were a couple of Irvallan brigades exchanging fire there, composed mostly of infantry in powered armour and lightly armed vehicles.

She caught a glimpse of the trio that came with her, slinking their way into the base. The enemy’s outside assets were all firmly focused on her…

Plink! Plink!

With casual grace, her sunblade deflected a couple of cloaked sniper bullets. They landed on the dirt and on the asphalt, the latter cracked with the impact. She sidestepped as a line of machine gun fire crossed her original position, then she dipped into that river and deflected bullets into an incendiary missile. That explosion covered the space ahead of her with smoke and fire, and while it didn’t cut off the gunfire, their aim remained focused on the position she just left. Again, she dipped into the stream of bullets and deflected them towards a tank, but this time, it was ineffective. The armour was sloped and too thick to be affected by anti-infantry weapons, so she directed the ricochetting bullets into the cannon barrel, and, by luck, the tank’s crew had just fired its main cannon.

Boom!

The barrel peeled open like a banana. The turret’s hatch thumped, though it did not break; however, she saw smoke waft out of the seams. The tank’s engines roared, but it didn’t move.

An armoured personnel carrier zoomed out of the cloud of smoke and aimed its heavy machine guns at her. The gunner sprayed the bullets rather than keeping it to a focused stream, in the mistaken belief that it would be harder to defend against. It only created wider gaps for her to dance through.

She hunted for heavy power-armoured soldiers, but didn’t see any nearby. She was left with the mechanised division pouring all of their firepower at her. She evaded, deflected, or diverted the bullets while she steadily advanced. Her feet were on the ground as flying would just make her an easier target for the hidden snipers. Their continued hiding aggravated her, and she started to sweep her perception cone in an effort to find them. It was unlikely they were nearby; however, the visual obstruction prevented more attempts at shooting her.

For the next hour or so, she danced with the perimeter forces. After a few minutes, the snipers changed something, and the bullets swerved around her deflections and struck at her fingers. The first time knocked her sunblade out of her hand, but of course, the construct was controlled as much by her mind as her limbs. The blade simply performed a deflection while midair and returned to her vicinity afterwards. The change did one other thing, which was that it allowed her to track where it came from.

She glared in the direction of the base. The sniper wasn’t in one of the sentry towers, but high above it. A flier power-armoured soldier, or several of them. They flew without lights, and their gun discharges were no brighter than the pinpricks of the stars. And she, being used to seeing the multihued streaks of Chaos across the skies, had not been able to distinguish the stars from muzzle fire.

“Rotter…” Yuriko muttered.

She’d already killed a dozen heavies, and an equal amount of tanks, twice that much in APCs. She left the unarmoured infantry alone, but mainly because those types didn’t approach or even shoot at her. She drew in all of the heavily armed and armoured units, but the battle within the camp continued, and she didn’t think the Astorian military would win. But that wasn’t the goal anyway.

Now. She had some flying snipers to wipe out.

She rocketed towards the sky and headed towards the flying squadron. She couldn’t make out how many there were, and she thought she saw more blips on the horizon. As she left the ground, she was bombarded from two different directions, but it was also a good way to adapt her defences. At this point, she could detect the cloaked bullets as they approached her, mainly through the gap in the air, which left her enough time to parry. She had a sunblade in each hand, and Radiant energy fed into the blades was the excess from her regeneration. Her Intent and Will reserves were full.

She closed in, and despite how the fliers tried to evade, she was faster still. Within a minute, they were close enough to strike with an Invisible Edge.

Two quick Edges killed the lead flier, followed by a second and third pair. By that time, the rest had scattered…

BOOOOOOM!!!