A Bio-Weapon’s Rhapsody

The rest of the very short travel was calm, Ale had submitted her flight plan as requested and was now merely cruising as she raised her altitude slowly. It wasn't needed and would probably only stress her landing apparatus, as it would then require dispersing more kinetic force than before.

But on the other hand, it would give Ale more time to prepare her approaching vector and ensure everything was within the error margin. What she got from the control tower was a mere acknowledgment and nothing more.

What she got from Hephaestus' Forge was a confirmation and a ready order.

And what she got from herself?

"They are crazy, all of them for not saying anything about this crazy plan. And I am too for following it." Was what Ale got from herself.

No one came to intercept her at her flight path as soon as her flight path was updated, which was... weird, but whatever.

Against what she had expected the Brighton Enterprises hadn't come to find trouble with her, was that because her flight path put her far away from any target that they could have?

Ale would need to ask to someone inside the Brighton Enterprises to find out for sure, not that she had such connections.

I mean, she did have a connection to them, but it wasn't like she could call Dylan to ask, who even did something like that?

'Heya Dylan, do you know why your family isn't shooting me down?'

Like, no one did that. So Ale would not start doing it either.

[Approaching limit altitude with current allowance for emergency fuel.]

[Turning into a glide.]

Ale felt the pod slowly stabilize as it started a long circling that would get her on route to the Haephestus' Forge base. Which was... the building a street away from her apartment. That was not that far all thing considered, but then again, the access to the main base needed to be on the area of influence of Vulcanus, so it made sense if one thought about it.

So with nothing much to do about it, Ale lined up her glider and for a second, she closed her eyes, obviously this was still the VR environment she had been, and as thus, nothing really changed with her physical body.

But she felt it was important to do it. Right now her body was fully isolated from the exterior, but as soon as she landed the thing... As soon as her body was released from the pod, she would then come into contact with the atmosphere of Columbus, Ohio.

The place that was probably going to attempt to murder her just for existing. Yay....

"Main Core... Prepare for landing." Ale said and before Main core would answer with a snarky comment, she plunged her plane straight towards the ground.

If she was able to feel the acceleration that her body was experimenting she would probably be knocked unconscious... Or feel as if she was turning into paste against the seat.

She was unable to feel either, and instead just watched as her speedometer started climbing as fast as possible. The scenery changed into that of the city as it was coming closer and closer to her.

At the distance she could see the roof of her target building as it opened a small door, that was her target and Main Core had helpfully painted a bullseye atop it for her to aim.

Very helpful.

"Smartass..." Ale smirked as she said, a few corrections on her flight plan and as soon as she was certain she would not miss the target Ale pulled at a side lever that had a 'Don't pull' sign, "Purging wings."

As soon as she pulled at the lever her pod ejected the wings that had been at the side.

Now that she would be using them much longer. at this point on her travel the wings were more of a liability, it was a danger that she didn't need.

A strong wing was all that would be needed to get her out of her target. Instead if she was a bullet, wind would have a harder time pushing out of her target.

Her speed and the engine at the back of her pod was all that would be needed to keep her in the trajectory that she needed to follow.

Or so she hoped, it was too late to regret her choices now, even if it failed she should be mostly fine. She would have a building to cushion her fall after all...

And since it was the base of a super villain, chances were that it was protected against this kind of damage, so [Big Sister] and [Golem] would be fine.

With some luck Ale would crash atop [Eleanore] which would be a plus...

Did she want anyone else there?

Well, she would rather [Gabriel Light] survive if that was an option, she needed to speak with that man. Also [Elder]... Hmm...

Actually, she would rather not crash into the building at all if possible, who would have thought.

"Main Core..." Ale started to say before stopping herself midway, sighing and thinking it for half a second and continued saying, "If possible, and needed, burn my mana to keep us in target. Save at least five units for emergencies."

[Acknowledged.]

[Please list what would qualify as an emergency.]

...Goddamned hells, right, even if Ale had programmed some snarky and cheeky comments, Main Core was as dumb as a rock outside the special scenarios Ale had set up for him.

"If we are missing our target," Ale started raising a finger, "If it looks like the building will cave in under the impact, and if we detect that we will crash into someone we know..."

[Noted.]

[Starting monitoring program...]

[Calculating...]

[Detected only a 4% chance of these criteria being met.]

Four percent of chance for failure, that... wasn't that bad all things considered.

Ale sighed in relief at that, meaning she didn't need to worry as much, and sure enough, when she allowed herself to relax, the speed at which she perceived the world around her started to normalize.

She hadn't noticed that she had been slowing her perception of time to stretch herself to overthink more on this, who would have guessed that she was like this. Heh.

But now that she had committed, there was no reason to torture herself like this, so now that she was aware that the perception of time was accelerating, Ale pulled all the brakes on her consciousness, and what had been originally building up momentum as something that would happen across several minutes turned into a flash.

Before she noticed her pod was surrounded by a building interior, the VR Environment faded away as she was now only seeing the video feed from the external cameras.

Apparently, the pod had been caught in a magnetic field set up beforehand that slowly started bleeding out the kinetic force from her while reducing the strain on her pod as much as possible.

Several cables connected to her pod seemed to help with the slowdown. Which was interesting and important, as the building... was not really that tall.

Actually by the information that she had available at the moment she should have already hit the ground, but instead she kept sinking down.

Not for long, as she was bleeding out more and more speed, she could already see the end of this flight path. At the end of it there was a net set up far and wide and what looked like a pool? Something similar to a pool at the end of it.

Ale also started to notice that there seemed to be a spot on her face that was itchy...

No wait.

Itchy?

She attempted to scratch it and felt her hand twitch, as in, her actual hand, not the VR Environment one.

"Main Core? What is happening right now?" Ale sent the prompt as she was unable to speak for some reason.

[Host's body is slowly being waken up, any feeling of itchiness and the such are to be expected.]

[Please do not panic.]

[It is expected to return to normal by the moment host has reached the end of her travel.]

She would have loved to have a warning!

But that was good to know at least.

*BANG!*

And while she was complaining to Main Core about the injustices of the world, Ale noticed how her pod was caught in the net, she did hear something she would have rather didn't. As several of the cables attached to her during the descent snapped in two and hit the sides of the path she had followed, destroying part of the walls.

But since that was all that happened, it wasn't THAT bad. As soon as that was done and over, her pod started to slowly submerge into the liquid, and the hissing sound followed.

"... Main Core? What is the external temperature right now?" Ale asked as the external cameras were filled with steam vapour.

[External hull temperature at 300°C and going down.]

[Estimated time for cooling to finish.... 3 minutes and fifty-six seconds.]

"What? Why?" Ale couldn't get this kind of design, who would design a drop pod that couldn't be opened after a short-ish travel?

[Pod external temperature has risen because of an unexpected flight path.]

[Original plan expected host to travel at normal heights at gliding speed.]

[Host instead went above expectations both in altitude and drop speed.]

[This is being compensated thanks to the cooling liquid she is currently in.]

"Cooling liquid? The water?" Ale said paying closer attention to the steam around her pod.

Now that she was paying attention she noticed that only the superior part of her pod was making the water boil into steam. The lower part of the substance she was submerged seemed to be closer to a weird goei substance. The hell had they dropped her into?

[Cooling substance includes distilled water and liquid sodium.]

[Both substances seem to be separated by a force field that keeps them away from each other.]

[Liquid Sodium seems to be only on the base of the pod. Care is advised since both substances are known to react in violent bursts.]

...

They were using the ingredients for a steam explosion to cool her pod down?

Why?

Why in the seven hells were they using such a dangerous way to cool her pod? Granted, most of the water would probably turn into steam before it could cool her down, but surely there was an easier way to do it.

This reeked more as if someone found very fancy liquids to cool something down and just threw whatever they could into it to see how it behaved, then just patched it with the use of mana shenanigans to ensure it didn't explode in their face.

It was not a practical, albeit working, thing to do.

Ale sighed, actually sighed as she finally got more control over herself. Speaking of.

"Ah...ah....test.... [Hello World]." Ale started small as she spoke, and laughed at the end, she wasn't sure why that made her laugh, but the Hello World joke was funny to her. "Anyone out there?"

"[Rhapsody? Please remain there, the pod should not open till the external temperature stabilizes, so do not try to open the door.]" The voice of Vulcanus came from one of the speakers.

That was not ominous at all.

"Main Core? How much access do they have?" Ale asked, it was silly to ask at this point since she had flown right here after all.

[Vulcanus.exe has normal access perms.]

"That does not answer my question." Ale grumbled back.

"Sure, I'll wait, not like I want to go into boiling steam or anything... Should have brought my armor for that." Ale answered back, she did notice a light turning off and on as she spoke, so this was speak to talk? Neat.

"[Minion armor suits are not graded for these type of enviroment, if you want armor up to those levels please make it to Lieutenant first.]" Vulcanus answered back, did the man not get the joke?

Actually, did Ale even want to get to those ranks? That was the question was it not?

They wanted just a way to get by when they joined [Haephestus' Forge], some place to mix in with the rest of what they had labeled [Humans], the superior force in the food chain.

Nowadays?

Nowadays that had changed, they knew more about Humanity as a whole, and in a way, they knew who really stood at the top of the food chain. What stood at the top of the food chain... didn't really change that much.

[Humanity] as a whole was delegated lower into the food chain, but individuals with powers, [Core Users] and [Heroes] and [Villains] as wel las [Super-Heroes] and [Super Villains] featured more.

As it was that

• , Ale needed to make a more concise effort to find about it. She guessed that they would feature somewhere in it, of course, they had power. But no one had actually spoken really about what it was and how one accessed it.

"So, while we wait, what can you tell me about the li-" Ale was about to ask about that when she felt a weird glitch cross over the speaker system, surely it was nothing important, "Sorry, it glitched out. So, like I was saying, what is the limit of temperature this thing can cool? And how long do I need to wait inside here? It isn't toasty or anything, but I would rather get along this. I do not have long to deal with this whole mess."

She had a limited number of uses for the thing that Alexanders had prepared, so she would rather get it over sooner rather than later, she didn't know how often it would be triggered.

And... Main Core was pinging her?

Ale turned her attention towards it, for some reason she hadn't gotten any of him, but there was the notification at the border of her consciousness stream.

[Error countdown +1.]

"..." ....

.....DANG IT!

"AAAAAAH!!!" Ale cursed as she punched at the wall of her pod.

"[Rhapsody? Everything okay?]" The question came from the speaker system, "[The cooling should be finishing soon, we are using a few of the [Core Users] we have available, both as a training and as a way to get you out, the pod does not look like it has enough space so there are some concerns about your safety from.]"

"Ale!" The voice of [Big Sister] came from the speaker, "I am dealing with the cooling and helping move it along, wait like... a few more minutes, we will get you out there soon."

Then before Ale could say anything else, another voice came from the speaker, this time, it was more grave and sedated.

"Rhapsody." It was the voice of [Golem], "I am moving along the material under your pod, so it moves the temperature away, Billy is providing the weird liquid metal thing under you and I am ensuring it remains away from the water. You don't have to worry about thermal explosions or the like, the [Theater Master] loaned us Aqua and she is ensuring the water is far away from this thing."

Aqua? The blue-haired girl?

"That would be me." Then came the voice of the woman, Ale remembered this woman. "[The Theater Master] said this part of the act needed to be done quickly and efficiently as possible, so I have come to ensure you do your part. You can thank him later by accepting his new job offering."

...Ale... Was not sure what to say about all of this, she hadn't expected this many people to come and help her. At best she had suspected [Big Sister] would come to see her, and then she would need to run along sending messages and visiting the other people she knew.

This... She was not sure how to describe what she was feeling.