7.05 Freeway Escape
December 2384
“You’ve got to be kidding me…”
Miori stared at the white machine that Annie presented to her with a big grin. It was a motorcycle, she could tell that much, but it was much sleeker and looked far more technologically advanced than any motorcycle she had ever seen in Japan. It had digital displays in lieu of any analogue speed meters, as well as sleek double wheels with an illuminated gap in-between, which looked like it was more for style than function.
“It’s a top-of-the-line model! Those gangers look like piles of junk with their cheap implants, but they never cut corners with their engines!” Annie led a sort of sales pitch, leaning over the machine to hug and caress it.
“The Iwasaki Shinobi XR5! Effortlessly goes up to and above four hundred kilometers per hour if you really push it! It’s, uh… not street legal, but it’s not like anyone ever bothers to enforce the law when it comes to the gangers.”
“And once they wake up and notice that we stole their babies, they’ll come for our heads,” Zach spoke with an exasperated sigh, rubbing the back of his head. “Fuck, PPiper, I’ve never been this deep in the shit, and I’ve only been helping you out for a day.”
“You can call me Annie. Drop the gamer handle, the game’s shut down now, anyway,” Annie spoke to him, though he didn’t look like the more personal address was what was on his mind right now.
“Oh, come on, don’t look at me like that. You’re the one who escalated, you know? We could have maybe talked our way out of it, but you blasted that guy’s arm clean off and painted us all in his hemotech.”
“Did that look to you like we could have de-escalated?! That’s the last time I’m ever letting you choose the meet-up point.”
Miori looked around between the two and loudly cleared her throat, making them stop their bickering before she turned around towards the machine.
“So, the plan is… I ride this as fast as I can, break through the police blockade on the ground, which will be significantly less problematic than trying to fly over the wall, and cause some chaos, drawing all eyes on me and allowing you two to follow with some distance. Is that right?”
“That’s about it! Reckless and stupid, but I’m certain it will work!” Annie said, giving Miori a thumbs up.
“Well, I could fly close to the ground, but if what you say is true about this machine, it might be a bit faster than I am when I fly,” Miori admitted, offering Annie a little smile.
“There’s one little problem with this plan, however,” she announced, looking around between the two of them, who expectantly looked at her, waiting for her explanation.
“I can’t drive,” Miori admitted and felt her face heat up a little as Zach and Annie exchanged a confused look.
“Don’t worry about that, Miori,” Bellona spoke in her mind, and she blinked, tilting her head.
What do you mean?
“Assume our halfway fused form.”
Miori nodded, pulling her hood back before she let the power of her partner flow through herself. She was still human, she was Miori, but suffused with parts of Bellona’s powers, just as she had been in Capitolium. Her blue glowing hair swayed in an unfelt breeze as she turned around and touched the motorcycle, running her hand along its frame.
“Just picture it as yet another weapon. As a steed of war.”
Miori nodded and closed her eyes. She could hear Annie and Zach exchange a few words, as they had no clue what she was doing, but her mind was entirely focused on the engine in front of her.
You are my steed of war.
Knowledge flooded into her from Bellona’s mastery of anything martial. Years ago, that much information would have given her a massive headache, like the design for guns that allowed her to summon them, but with her being in tune with Bellona like this, it was like a gentle pouring of water onto her scalp. As she was done, she turned towards the pair.
“It’s okay now,” she reassured them, and Zach looked anything but convinced.
“I’d tell you to show me, but I doubt we have the time, nor the private road for that, so I’ll have to take you at your word,” he commented.
Miori responded with a nod. “I’m ready to go.”
With a turn of the key and a kick, then machine came alive with a roar. Miori would be lying if she said she wasn’t nervous. Despite Bellona sharing her battle instinct with her, declaring this bike a ‘steed’, this was still her first time driving; and according to their plan, she would be driving it at breakneck speed, too.
Annie and Zach picked their own motorcycles. Annie sat on a bright purple frame with a single, giant exhaust in the back, while Zach picked an ever-stylish black paintjob for his bike that had an angular shape, making it look a little bit like a spear tip. One machine per ganger had been parked outside of the bar, minus the one belonging to the woman who ran. After everyone picked their vehicle, Annie went ahead and slashed the tires of the remaining ones to ensure that the gang wouldn’t be following them and interfering with their plans.
“I’m ready! I think…” Miori announced to the pair, and Annie gave her a thumbs-up with a wide grin, then she tossed her something. Miori caught the small object and inspected it in her hand. It was an earpiece, so she quickly put it in.
“We’ll stay here for around… ten minutes,” Annie commented and gestured like she was operating a computer. Miori only realized that she was doing something with her implant as she caught a glimpse of the blue glow emanating from the woman’s irises.
“That piece got a tracker in it, so I can guide you a little bit... and give you a heads-up when you are about to run into corpo police!”
“Won’t the corpos be able to track her through that?” Zach asked skeptically, but Annie grinned, planting her fists on her hips, looking pridefully towards the man.
“Oh, come now! Do you have so little trust in me that you think I wouldn’t have countermeasures for that? Won’t hold forever, but they won’t know ‘oh here comes the terrorist’ until it’s too late.”
“I don’t know enough about you to even consider things like ‘trust’,” Zach admitted with an exasperated tone. “You’re just an online acquaintance.”
“An acquaintance you wanted to ‘know’ better in a love hotel in Tokyo. Even had a cute human avatar ready to go with it! Honestly, I’m glad you didn’t try to get it on as a rat man.”
“Can you stop that already? Yeah, I wanted to cyber, but that was… man, how long ago now? Five years or so? And my guild already gave me enough shit for giving you the coordinates, so can we put that to rest?”
“…is this the right time and place?” Miori asked with slightly warmer cheeks, and the two immediately stopped their bickering. They turned their heads away from each other, whether in embarrassment or annoyance, Miori couldn’t tell.
“Ten minutes, then,” Miori spoke. She fetched a hairband from her pockets and tied her hair into a ponytail, then she grabbed the handles of the motorcycle tight. She rolled the throttle and the engine’s purring became another roar as the small vehicle’s surprising power pulled Miori along at high speed. At first, she nervously clung to the handles, but after a few more moments, she drove along the street with some confidence, following directions towards the city wall which Annie had given her earlier.
For now, she had to get through the main streets of Prosperity City. While she saw flying cars on one of her earlier visits to this place, the lower streets were surprisingly populated by all sorts of vehicles, some of them looking modern like her motorcycle, others looking reminiscent of familiar cars from home, albeit with more rust and solar panels shoddily attached to the roof in what looked like amateurish work by the owners.
Miori weaved through the traffic, with some streets having come to a complete standstill for cars. She got some annoyed looks from the other drivers – and to her relief no one appeared to question the glowing appearance of her hair. In fact, she could witness some young women with neon-colored hair that glowed in a similar manner to hers lounging around a kiosk, wearing what Miori could only describe as punk and Lolita-inspired outfits with thin LCD films in lieu of fabric, displaying ever-changing symbols. From hearts to stars, to little skulls, whenever the images changed, so did the color of their dresses. One even acknowledged Miori with a nod, as if to signal her approval of Miori’s own hair and glowing clothes.
The fashion sense in this world is quite unique. If we ever have a moment of peace, I’d like to come back and really take it all in.
“You’re yearning for an adventure, free from the pressure of saving people or fighting Scotus’ family. I think Seika is rubbing off on you.”
That she is…
Miori kept driving along until she finally saw the freeway entrance that matched Annette’s directions. Bikes and cars were parked to block the entrance off from the regular street. They had blue, flashing lights that marked them as some kind of law enforcement, but the cars looked civilian. More than that, the logo of ‘Hayder-Katsuya’, the company Miori heard of multiple times during her short stay in this world, was featured prominently on those vehicles, and even on the badges the armed people standing around the vehicles wore on their chests. Corporate police. That name suddenly made a lot of sense to Miori.
The civilian appearance of the vehicles was a ruse as well, she quickly realized. The cars were the right size and shape to take on rear passengers, but had no doors for them, nor windows, not even a rear window. Instead, there were gaps, indicating compartments that could open.
“Armed vehicles in civilian disguise,” Bellona completed her observation, and Miori nodded.
“I guess we’ll cut our way through,” she announced, slowly rolling her motorcycle in position. She came to a stop at the edge of the main street, only a short distance away from the blockade. She could see the armed men arguing with some drivers who wanted to use the freeway. Loud shouts and obscene gestures were exchanged until the armed men threatened to use force, arming their guns into the face of a particularly aggressively arguing driver.
Miori revved her engine, and only then one of the armed men turned his head her way. He stared at her incredulously, until she summoned her halberd into her left hand, holding it by her side. Another roar from her motorcycle later, she saw realization in the man’s body language just before she let go of the brake and her bike accelerated towards the blockade. She made a single slash with her halberd, projecting an energy blade that rushed ahead in a vertical line towards the armored car barring her way.
“It’s the terrorist! Get her!”
“Get down, you idiot!”
She only heard those two shouts before her vertical slash hit the armored car, cutting straight through the obscured back compartment – and just as Miori intuited, it housed a variety of weapons. Ammo got sliced by a hot, magical blade and cooked off, and soon an explosion ripped the vehicle apart, with the shockwave throwing the armed men to the ground.
Miori accelerated through the roaring flames and small follow-up explosions. She felt some stray shrapnel hit the chassis of the motorcycle, but it only left scratches behind, and then the road was clear. She raced up the curved ramp towards the freeway, and once she was on it, she accelerated as much as the motorcycle allowed her to.
“That got their attention. Their comms are going crazy with all the calls for backup, so keep an eye out!” Annette informed her over her earpiece. Miori continued down the freeway, which ran like a crater between mind-bogglingly tall buildings. Overhead she saw what looked like organized lanes for flying vehicles, with floating beacons that gave off a gentle blue light. They were as empty as the freeway below.
Soon she wasn’t alone anymore. Three more of those strange cars from before entered the freeway on an entrance ahead, and this time they abandoned their civilian disguise. The rooftop hatches slid open, and mounted machine guns emerged. There was no gunner behind them, but the optics mounted on them suggested that they were either aiming autonomously, or they were remote controlled by someone inside the car.
The three cars blocked her way, driving next to each other in a rolling roadblock, while the guns swiveled around to target her. They wasted no time and immediately opened fire with lethal intent, and Miori hit the brakes of her bike hard as bullets made asphalt debris spray into the air.
She accelerated again, driving snake lines to dodge the continuous fire and summoned her gladii as well as a barrier, just in time, as the gunners zeroed in on her and malformed metal slid off her magic barrier as it stopped their fire dead in its tracks, though the continuous fire took its toll on the spell.
She acted quickly and accelerated to top speed, approaching the cars and swinging her halberd in a horizontal line, extending her reach with her energy slashes. The machine guns were severed from their platforms and clattered as they hit the ground, with one of them still firing wildly in every direction as it vanished in the distance behind Miori, until it ran out of the remaining bullets in its severed belt feed.
The driver in front of her appeared to grow desperate after being disarmed and slammed the breaks to try and make Miori crash into him. She reacted promptly and pulled the front wheel up, climbing and then jumping over the car, landing on the asphalt in front and accelerating to build distance. Her gladii trailed behind her, flipping around and aiming at the three cars’ tires before taking shots at them. A loud, explosive noise filled Miori’s ears as the tires burst and the drivers lost control. The cars drifted towards the sides of their lost tires, making the three cars crash into each other and come to a halt behind her.
“I hope you don’t mind driving around a few angry obstacles later,” Miori commented dryly into her headpiece, and Annie let out a laugh at the other end.
“Don’t you worry, we’ll find a way. Your little breaching action also caused upset commuters to simply drive on the freeway now that Corpo headquarters are pulling their forces back to chase you, so we’ll simply blend in as a bunch of noncompliant citizens. Cause some more mayhem, girl!”
Miori let out a little sigh, accelerating again to bring the machine to its limits. The passing high rises gave the impression of her racing through a canyon of steel, glass and neon lighting, with the occasionally shimmering light of floating advertising platforms and guidance beacons overhead.
“You’re about to get company, so be ready! They’re coming from above!” Annie warned her through her earpiece and Miori scanned her surrounding area. She got her halberd ready, holding it by her side, while the tip sent sparks flying from the asphalt in a threatening gesture – she had little hope that this would deter her pursuers, but it was worth a try.
She saw a shadow move in front of the cloud cover above and immediately dodged to the side as one of the mech suits she encountered at the very beginning of her stay in this world descended on her, swinging down a large sword with glowing edges. It cracked the road wide open, missing Miori by half a meter, who cursed and fought to regain control over her vehicle for a moment as the force of the impact threw her off balance.
The mech behind her pulled its blade out of the asphalt and accelerated to chase her, easily catching up with its thrusters at full throttle. It took another swing at her, and this time Miori parried it with her halberd, though she cursed as the force of the tall machine simply pushed her vehicle to the side.
She disengaged and used her power of flight to pick the motorcycle a little off the road and put it back to stabilize it, then she brought back her gladii – they swarmed around the machine, and the pilot spoke for the first time as he wildly swung around, hitting the gladii one after the other.
“These things again! So, you really are that terrorist, even though your face looks different!” a voice rang out from the machine’s speakers. Miori blocked another swing of its sword with her halberd, this time using her barrier spells to stabilize her motorcycle to allow her to push back with enhanced strength and pull the large machine back.
“Why did you save me?” the voice demanded to know, and now Miori finally knew who was piloting it.
“You’re that suicidal maniac with the self-destruct, then!” she spoke, breaking off and building distance from him, readying her halberd again to clash with him once more, but Annette’s voice from her earpiece interrupted her.
“Your opponent was just warned over comms to build distance. There’s a sniper!”
“A what-?” Miori started, but quickly after, Bellona’s battle sense warned her of approaching tremendous energies. She saw a light approaching from the front and immediately turned the machine to the side. An energy beam ripped right through the middle of the street, opening a wide tear in the asphalt and flinging hot, molten remnants to all sides.
Miori dodged to the side and, lacking space, she jumped on the crash barrier, gritting her teeth as she fought to keep her bike balanced on top of the thin metal, all while she had to summon a barrier to deflect both shrapnel and bullets fired from the other mech’s wrist-mounted machine gun. She could see the streets below and knew that she would be falling down if she didn’t put her back into repelling this assault.
“He’s shooting again!” Annette warned, and Miori let out a war cry as she summoned a full line of magically enhanced long guns behind her barrier that returned fire. She saw magical bullets tearing through metal joints and plating, and while her opponent had muted his suit’s speakers again, she could imagine his curses as the ammo in his wrist cannon cooked off after a direct hit and it tore off his left arm.
With the force from his continuous fire letting up, Miori jumped off the barrier and rushed towards the hostile mech with her halberd raised as a second high-energy shot soared past her. The mech dodged, jumping off the freeway and firing its jets at full throttle again, overtaking Miori and heading to a distant point ahead.
She was now getting close to both the city wall as well as the ‘sniper nest’, which was a mech like the suicidal pilot’s, though it looked much bulkier than its comrade. It held a large rifle-like contraption that multiple cables ran into, which looked like they were connected to the local power grid. As it charged another shot, the nearby billboards flickered and dimmed in a brownout as the mech shot for the third time. Miori changed lanes to dodge, but this time he kept tracking her, making the energy beam move in a curve from one side of the street to the other. The burning hot beam crept ever closer, so Miori followed up with a desperate maneuver: she hit the brakes and pulled the bike sideways before she leaned to the side, sliding the bike under the approaching shot at a sharp angle. Sparks flew as the bike’s chassis scraped over the asphalt and Miori strained to keep her head above the passing road as the energy shot passed above her.
She used her halberd to push herself back upright, immediately accelerating again and bringing the ruined bike on collision course with the entrenched mech standing in front of the sealed city gate. The other mech from before landed in front of its comrade and raised its sword with its remaining good arm, ready to intercept her with a strike.
“I have partially recovered. Let’s take him on together!” Bellona spoke, and Miori could feel her partner’s power washing over her. With a flash, she transformed into Bellona’s base form and jumped up, balancing on the motorcycle’s driver seat with her feet as she readied her halberd and summoned another row of magical long guns to her side.
The bulky mech with the large gun ejected the power cables and disengaged, flying into the sky with powerful thrusters, leaving only Bellona and this one-armed mech in front of her. He and the steel gate were her only obstacles left, though she was certain that there was a small army giving chase. Bellona grinned, channeling magical energies into her halberd and her long guns, making both glow with incredible power.
“Come, then!” the pilot shouted over his loudspeakers, and as Bellona got close enough, he swung his sword her way. Bellona met him in a clash - it wasn’t a clash of equals, not in the slightest. Both the sword and the mech’s remaining arm were cleaved in half, allowing the Magical Girl to pass him by without issue as the pilot let out a curse. As he tried to turn around and pursue Bellona despite the lack of arms, his thrusters exploded behind him, disabling his reactor and causing an escape pod to be launched into the sky.
Bellona was home free, with only a concentrated shot from her summoned guns separating her from the outside world. A concentrated beam of blue energy hit the steel gate as the magical girl jumped back on her motorcycle’s seat, and a circular hole was punched into the barrier just in time for her to break through as glowing drops of liquid steel splattered in every direction.
The road ahead of her was dark, with the surrounding area being a barren wasteland. She could make out the rusted ruins of old cars, and the hollow shells of what used to be buildings, now buried deep in the ground, building a sharp contrast to the modern buildings in the distance, which were a little worse for wear after their sudden teleportation, but were at least still standing.
“Okay, you’re out of range of the defenses. You can ditch the bike and fly from there. We’ll give you a signal when we arrive, so go ahead and look for your lost people. Oh, and do take a detour to get rid of the earpiece. They have started tracking it.”
“Understood,” Bellona responded, pulling out the earpiece. She looked at the bike, its previously pristine, even luxurious surface now riddled with scratches from all sorts of abuse it received in the past thirty minutes.
She locked the throttle and tossed the earpiece into the small compartment under the seat, then she put the bike on a side road leading nowhere, jumping off and watching it leave, with her gladii accompanying the vehicle like a flying escort. She registered with some surprise that the machine kept its balance even without a driver, and some sort of advanced system made it follow the road on its own.
The futuristic tech in this world has its benefits… too bad about the overall environment.
Bellona turned around and flew higher into the sky, choosing the black cloud cover to hide her as more mechs arrived down on the street and scanned for signs of her, before chasing the motorcycle they spotted.
The stolen buildings were offices and some residential buildings. Originally from vastly different parts of town, they now stood together in a chaotic mix, with some of them even partially sinking into the ground, leaning against other buildings as concrete cracked and glass windows were shattered. There were no lights in the windows, naturally, given that they had been removed from their power sources. Bellona landed in one of the shattered windows, having a look around.
It was a typical office building: multiple rows of long tables with computers and monitors placed on them, with a single large fax machine and copier at the far wall as the centerpiece.
It was eerily quiet, however, so Bellona started to search the building, floor by floor.
Some of the sights she saw were expected: the vending machines on every floor had been broken into and scavenged for food and drinks, to keep the people who got trapped with this building alive. In what looked like a lobby to receive business partners and various meeting rooms she saw crude sleeping spaces with empty bottles and discarded packaging, with suit jackets serving as blankets or makeshift pillows and some actual pillows and blankets that were scavenged from the surrounding residential buildings beside, but the most crucial part was missing: there were no people.
She accelerated her search, giving the floors only cursory glances, then she left the first building and entered the apartment building next door.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” she finally shouted, but the only answer was a lightning strike illuminating the stairwell as another thunderstorm started up in the surrounding lands. The thunder followed soon after, making the walls shake and the furniture rattle.
“The storms didn’t appear this powerful inside the city… maybe there are defenses in place?” Bellona proper mused in her mind as she kept searching, opening various doors. She saw empty pantries and unmade beds, but still, no humans at all.
Or so she thought. She heard quiet talking from above. Curses mixed with rattling, and Bellona hurried upstairs, following the voices.
“Hello? Is anyone here? I’m here to help you get back home!” she shouted, pushing open the door of the apartment she heard the voices from, and stopped dead in her tracks, as did the scavengers she ran into.
They wore rags, but their bodies were still heavily augmented. One had an artificial eye that looked twice as large as a normal one, while the other had what looked like a computer’s cooling block sticking out of his bald head like a mohawk. Both were carrying sacks, filled with various items that were obviously taken from the apartments. They scrambled to grab their crude guns, simple revolvers that would look a little outdated on Earth as well, but Bellona was between them in the fraction of a second, having summoned two blades and holding them to their throats.
“W-wait! D-don’t kill us, miss! We don’t mean harm, we’re just pickin’ things that were left behind and no one needs!” the first guy stammered.
“Y-yeah! The tech in here is garbage anyway, like, it looks like it’s from the Middle Ages! Would be fools to hurt anyone over it!”
“Where are the people? The ones who lived in these buildings!” Bellona asked pointedly, looking from one to the other, and the scavengers exchanged a short look.
“They, uhm… they’re not here!”
“Meaning?” Bellona asked, pushing her sword’s blade a little against the man’s jugular to make it clear that he shouldn’t try anything stupid, like lying to her.
“The green-skinned ones… they came here and they took them!”
Bellona hesitated before she lowered the blade. The two scavengers were shivering, with their hands raised. They looked like every kind of lowlife she could imagine, but she was certain that they told the truth.
“Green-skinned ones… I’ll have you tell me the entire story, then you can leave.”
***
Miori heard the approaching sound of two engines even through the torrential downpour as she stepped out of the apartment building. Two motorcycles approached from the road, flashing their lights at her before the riders dismounted. Annie and Zach hurried to her side, and Annie was laughing the entire way, while Zach looked like he was reevaluating all of his life’s choices that led him to this place.
“Oh, man! You should have seen the chaos in the city, Miori! The angry mob pushed past the car wrecks and started looting the bits of the mechs that fell off. They called back half their forces to get the mob under control, and that’s when we snuck out.”
“I can’t believe that actually worked. I’m surrounded by two mad women…” Zach mumbled to himself, frantically checking over his shoulder to see if they were being followed, then he looked at Miori.
“So, uhm… did you find them? You found them and sent them home, right?”
Miori grimaced and shook her head, handing Annie a map that the scavengers had crudely drawn for her. The woman gave it a curious glance, letting her eyes wander over the scribbles.
“This leads to the old sewers. Been abandoned for at least half a century now. What about them?”
“According to two… locals… those orcs and goblins you mentioned appearing in this world seventeen years ago are still here.”
She could see Annie failing to connect the dots, so she continued.
“Apparently they came here a few hours after the buildings appeared and dragged everyone off.”
Now she could see Zach’s face contort in disbelief as he visibly puzzled together what Miori would say next.
“We’re going to follow them, and we’ll get those people to safety.”