Magical Girl Overtime [Second Arc Complete!]

Bellona was quick to react to the sudden rain of debris. She quickly transformed into her full-powered form and erected barriers while her gladii flew through the air and intercepted larger pieces of concrete and rebar. Screams surrounded her as the inhabitants of the underground city ran for shelter, though some of the feeble metal sheet houses were crushed by larger chunks of concrete that Bellona was too far away from to intercept.

Concrete wasn’t the only thing raining down on them. Bellona heard the distinct sounds of gunfire, adding to the screams all around her. Children were being brought to lower levels to shelter them while the adults of the underground city headed for their homes and a central armory to arm themselves.

An aircraft descended vertically into the hall: a black thing, large with two powerful engines on the side that were articulate and pointed towards the ground at this moment, and a swiveling automatic gun under the cockpit. It was flanked by two of the mechs that chased Bellona initially, and together with those mechs, the aircraft unleashed a hail of bullets that crashed against Bellona’s barriers and the concrete pillars that the orc defendants huddled behind.

Bellona gritted her teeth, sending out her gladii to at least assist the residents of the underground city, but for all intents and purposes she was pinned down, stuck protecting the humans from Tokyo who were still trying to leave through Mana’s portal, though now their retreat turned into a panicked stampede, and some threatened to run away from the portal to escape the attack. The witch was likewise occupied with maintaining her portal, only extending a few extra barriers as protection from gunfire, with assistance from her clone Marisa.

Worry gripped Bellona’s heart as she noticed that one person was notably absent from the scene.

Arisu!

She saw the girl dashing from steel hut to steel hut, snatching children and helpless civilians out of the line of fire and bringing them behind the relative safety of concrete pillars. Bellona looked on with worry as she noticed holes in Arisu’s uniform, though the girl was unharmed underneath, thanks to her healing powers.

“What are you standing around for! Help us! Slice them up or something!” someone screamed from her side, and Bellona grimaced.

Getting into an argument with a panicking civilian was the last thing she wanted to do right now, so she strained and controlled her gladii, sending them towards the airship, which now hovered above the central platform without completely landing. The two mechs escorting it were ready for Bellona’s haphazard assault, however. They readied large metal shields to fend off the beam attacks and tracked the gladii before shooting them down with pinpoint accuracy.

The aircraft turned around by a hundred and eighty degrees, presenting its rear hatch to the town. It opened and two dozen men and women dressed in black combat gear swarmed out. They were heavily augmented, with long, optical stalks in place of their eyes and strange grills where their noses and mouths ought to be. They wielded automatic rifles with an array of extra optics, the purpose of which Bellona couldn’t quite surmise.

Behind them another figure walked into view, though there were always at least four soldiers who stood around him, erecting clear ballistic shields. A man wearing an expensive-looking business suit, who looked at least eighty years old, with small, uncaring eyes. He wore a machine around his whole body, which Bellona soon recognized as some kind of exoskeleton that kept his geriatric body in an upright position, and two tubes, one filled with a clear amber fluid, the other with a crystal blue one, entered the veins on his forearms. A speaker was in his throat, and even as he moved his lips, his voice came out of the device instead, which projected it over the battlefield with ease.

“So, this is the kind of hole you crawled into, Masao? You live like some sort of sewer rat? How fitting. Maybe I’ll let you decompose in that stinking water down there after we’re done with you.”

He stopped as if he was waiting for a response. Bellona growled and used the break in gunfire to charge towards him, but the soldiers he brought answered with robotic precision. They turned towards her and fired their guns – not at her, as if they knew that she would simply block their attacks – but at the civilians behind her.

Bellona’s eyes went wide as she saw their intent and fell back, erecting barriers to stop the shots, and just then, she finally saw what the strange optics on the guns were likely for.

The bullets flew an arc, attempting to get past her barriers and hit the civilians behind them. Dredging through her knowledge of past and future warfare, she found the concept of ‘smart bullets’ and realized that she was being played. She repositioned her shields and managed to deflect them from the civilians, but at the same time, she saw other salvos flying arcs past the concrete pillars, hitting the huddling orcs behind them.

What can I do?! Realm of Duels? There are too many targets, and the enemies are too far away! The moment I let go of these barriers, all of these people will…!

Her efforts to save people rendered her more helpless than ever before.

“We were utter fools! They must have hidden their agents among the displaced humans in the ruins! I told Garnuk over and over again that he’s too softhearted and we shouldn’t take in every stray human we see on the surface who doesn’t look like a raider or corpo, but no, he’s a bleeding heart who endangers his community to feel better about himself!”

Masao Katsuya rambled, digging through a box in the corner of his farm as gunfire and screams came from far above. After some digging, he found a pistol, and Annette immediately recognized it as a smart gun, the most expensive kind of firearm a person could own in Prosperity City – if they were the right kind of people, that was.

Those kinds of firearms featured target-searching via ocular implant, using the user’s own perception of threats as target ID. Bullets locked onto said targets and could hit them even if they hid behind cover by flying in arcs, utilizing individual propulsion. Once inside the body, they would set off small explosions to tear flesh apart and incapacitate the target completely. From what Annette knew, only Hayder-Katsuya’s own higher-ups and security detail were even cleared to own them, and among them only the higher-ups got the explosive ammo; for everyone else it was life in prison to be caught with one. If the cops didn’t pump you full of lead first for stepping out of line as a prole.

He collected around four magazines and stood up, facing Annette.

“We have no time to lose. We must get up there!” he shouted and Annetted hesitated; part of her wanted to punch him or just put a bullet through him. He was one of the corpo pricks who were deeply involved with the company that snuffed out so many lives in this world and many others, no matter how much he signaled that he cared oh so much about the orcs of this town, and seeing the expensive, exclusive toy he pulled out to protect his life enraged her once more. Still, she managed to ask a question.

“To do what?”

“Christian wants me and no one else. I have to try and talk sense into him, maybe he’ll be satisfied with killing just me. And if that doesn’t work…”

The man tossed his gun her way and Annette caught it out of reflex, staring at him incredulously.

“You won’t have the luxury of using your nonlethal gun here. You should take this,” he explained, and she nodded. Some of her doubts about this man remained, but her rage evaporated, just like that.

***

“Bellona is probably massacring them right now, anyway,” Annie spoke, trying to convince herself as they hurried up the stairs to the central platform that made up the village square. They could still hear gunshots. Most of them were the crude crackling of the primitive guns the orcs had scavenged, while the counter fire from the corporate forces were either the loud roar of miniguns that shredded concrete, flesh and bones, or an eerie whistling sound followed by screams that indicated the use of smart ammunition.

“Doubtful. From what I’ve seen of her, she’s some justice-minded type of person. She will be trying to keep everyone alive, which is her greatest weakness in this situation,” Katsuya countered her, and she grimaced.

“As long as she’s unwilling to let anyone die, she’s letting everyone die in the long term,” he continued. They finally arrived on the level of the village plaza, though they were still a few platforms and bridges away. She could now see what was happening: Bellona could only manage to keep her barriers up to protect her people, while her daughter used her body as a shield for the orcs she could manage to reach. Hayder-Katsuya’s forces advanced with trained precision, alternating their salvos.

“They brought out their elites,” she commented, and Katsuya nodded with a grim expression before he noticed something and signaled for her to hide behind a corner. Three ropes hit the steel flooring noisily, dropped from far above, and as Annette followed them with her eyes, she could see three of Hayder-Katsuya’s elite rappelling down from the fresh opening in the ceiling.

Katsuya bumped his elbow into Annie’s arm and nodded the way of the troopers, then to the gun he handed her earlier. Annette stared at the device for a while before she took a deep breath and gripped it firmly. The weapon automatically connected to her ocular implant, and a targeting reticle appeared in her field of vision, that darted around. Three red squares appeared around the now landed troopers, who took aim at a group of orcs on another platform, who were huddling behind cover to hide them from the initial wave of troopers.

Annette never killed anyone before, and truth be told, she didn’t want to, either. But right at this very moment, with other lives on the line, she acted. She squeezed the trigger thrice, aiming the barrel at her adversaries individually out of habit, and the bullets she released flew through the air with a deadly whistling sound, flying visible arcs in the air as the bullets’ propulsion systems found a perfect, unguarded angle, then each bullet hit its individual mark in the chest.

At first the soldiers looked merely surprised that they got hit – and to Annette’s surprise, they then looked like they were about to shrug off their injuries, turning around to point their weapons at her, but that show of resilience came to an abrupt end as the smart bullets exploded, blowing new, large cavities into their bodies. Blood, guts and strange cybernetics spilled on the ground, then the combatants collapsed.

“Fuck…!” Annette whispered, noticing that her hands were shaking involuntarily.

“That’s the kind of power the corpos don’t want the ‘proles’ to have,” Katsuya said with a nod.

“Now let’s get going!” he shooed her and Annette reluctantly advanced, though as they were passing the bodies, he suddenly stopped again, kneeling down next to the soldiers and turning their heads.

Their spines were cybernetic implants, from what Annette could tell, and their faces were augmented nightmares. Katsuya pulled the helmet off one of them and cursed with a little hiss as he saw all sorts of circuitry sticking out of the skull.

“What is it? What’s the matter? They’re over-augmented steelheads, what’s the big deal?” she asked, though she had a feeling that deep down she knew what he was upset about – and she would rather not hear about it.

“My father’s research, in its bastardized glory. Hayder made it work and turned them into grotesque creatures. I highly doubt that these are trained soldiers who underwent the surgery willingly, either.”

“What do you mean by that?” Annette asked and immediately cursed as she had to take cover behind a corner as another group descended into the shaft. She heard the dreadful whistling and immediately pushed Katsuya through the window of one of the steel huts before jumping after him.

Not a moment too soon, as her maneuver just barely made the approaching smart munitions hit the steel sheet making up the wall. Small holes were punched into the sheet metal, and Annie feared that the smart munitions would adjust and hit her right after, but the bullets were dented, their fragile sensors now rendered useless as they hit the ground in front of her. Annie immediately returned fire through the window and the grotesque show of the half-flesh-half-machine creatures exploding their guts onto the ground repeated once more.

“The kidnappings that were blamed on the orcs…! Don’t tell me…” he mumbled, and Annette saw his lips trembling.

“This fucking animal! Grabbing people off the streets, replacing their brains with electronics and turning them into mindless drones…! These are the people whose disappearances he blamed on the ‘invaders’, I’m sure!” Katsuya ranted and stood up again.

“Change of plans,” he announced, quickly walking ahead.

“Instead of offering my life, I’ll distract that pig.”

“And what am I supposed to do?” Annie asked, hurrying along.

“You? You’ll pump that entire magazine into him from a safe distance and turn him into a bloody puddle!”

Bellona was still busy blocking the shots of the strangely robotic-acting soldiers, letting out a strained grunt as she blocked another salvo. She heard Mana shouting instructions behind her, similarly strained, as the people of Tokyo panicked and attempted to push through the witch’s portal. Marisa had to intervene and use her magic to prevent a stampede, pushing people away from each other with invisible barriers or even freezing them with Paralysis spells.

“One after the other! We’ll keep you all safe, damn you, so stop panicking!” she shouted herself hoarse, though it didn’t help much.

Bellona couldn’t exactly blame the civilians, either. No one liked being shot at, and the transparency of the magic barriers protecting them didn’t exactly help either.

“Just make the portal bigger!” someone shouted, and Mana grimaced, turning her head towards Bellona.

“Could work! Of course, there’s just another normal door on the other side that they still need to go through, but… a sudden crowd gathering on the other side? Won’t that attract attention?”

“Just do it so we can get them out of our hair!” Bellona shouted, and Mana nodded. She widened her portal, and the panicking civilians poured through, ending up in some side alley of Prosperity City.

“You should go with them and make sure they get through the door!” Mana instructed Marisa, who nodded and jumped on a magic platform to pass through the portal above the crowd.

“Once they’re through, focus on helping Arisu protect the people of the town!” Bellona commanded, and Mana nodded.

Satisfied, Bellona looked ahead again, assessing the situation: her and the soldiers were locked in a stalemate. She sent out her gladii to cut them down if they got too close, but she couldn’t make them advance past a certain point where the two mech suits that flanked Hayder stood vigilant and shot the floating devices down once they were able to track them properly.

“Come on out, Masao! Don’t you want to end the suffering of these beasts that you’ve been living with?” the augmented geriatric taunted, letting his head swivel around slowly as if he was scanning the area.

He locked eyes with Bellona, and a thin, disgusting smile crept on his lips.

“And you! The terrorist. So occupied with trying to save everyone that their lives simply slip through your fingers. You could simply charge me and kill me, but you couldn’t possibly do that, could you? The second you lower those defenses of yours and stop taking your people and the beasts under your protection, my loyal men will mow them down. I’ve made sure to make that an order.”

Bellona gritted her teeth and managed to throw a murderous glare towards the ancient man, who let out a long sigh. One of the mechs flanking him turned its head towards Hayder after he spoke those words, however, almost signaling doubt with its body language.

“Today is a wonderful day, you know? I get to kill not two, but three birds with one stone. First I finally get to remove the last loose end to consolidating power over the company by getting rid of Masao, then I can come home as a hero for finally wiping out the evil creatures who have been abducting our poor citizens, and, lastly, I get the sacrifices for my latest creation. All thanks to my… benefactor’s dimensional beacons!”

Bellona cursed under her breath. Truth be told, she had wondered when the involvement of the dark Deogemma would be revealed to her – and of course, they infiltrated the highest form of government on this world as well.

“Mana! Open a portal behind that bastard! I’ll cut him in two!” she commanded, and the witch stretched out her other hand, but she hesitated at the last moment.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you! Or do you not have a conscience?”

Bellona followed Mana’s gaze. The geriatric had raised a hand, and a hologram was being emitted from a ring on his index finger. The stranded people of Tokyo were displayed, panicking as some of them had grabbed the others and put guns on their temples. Marisa stood between them, looking from one to the other, visibly unsure what she should do, though she had already channeled a spell in her hand, which waited to be let loose on one of these kidnappers.

“You probably wondered how we found you so easily. We didn’t. We found these poor sods and left some of our agents among them. A bunch of stranded strangers; it was easy to get some new faces among them and simply wait for them to be found by some bleeding heart – or the terrorist from their home world.”

Bellona froze in place and broke out in a cold sweat as her mind was racing to find a solution to their predicament. However, before she could, a voice called out from across the plaza.

“Christian!”

The man they met in the hydroponics section, Doctor Gidead, walked into the center of the square. The augmented soldiers stopped their fire on Bellona and immediately trained their weapons on him, but they didn’t shoot yet. The way the geriatric leader of the bunch looked at him, there appeared to be some kind of long history between them that Bellona wasn’t aware of.

“Ah, the lost son returns! Masao, my thanks to you for sparing me the search through this entire shabby subhuman breeding ground.”

“Leave these people alone, Christian! It’s me you want for uncontested control of the corporation, so just get it over with. Just promise me that you’ll leave them alone!” Gidead pleaded, though, as Bellona learned now, that wasn’t his real name at all.

“Fallen so far that you not only call proles, but abhumans like these ‘people’? My, what happened to the young man who had a vision for how the city ought to be run? All that time you spent in the greenhouse did a number on your mind and your pride!”

“I’ve come to realize what kind of monsters you and my father were, Christian! I thank you for killing him, but for taking his ideas and twisting them into an even worse version, I’ll ask you to die as well! Now!”

The sudden shift in his attitude caught Bellona by surprise, and the old man as well, it seemed. Multiple shots were fired from around a corner, and as Bellona looked to the source of the noise, she saw Annie, leaning out of cover and emptying the magazine of the strange gun she was wielding; an ominous whistling sound filled the air as the deadly projectiles flew through the air and zeroed in on the man in the exoskeleton, who stood alarmingly still.

The reason for that attitude was immediately revealed as the shots of the futuristic weapon arced away from Hayder and exploded on the steel sheets making up the ground around him.

“Oh, you fool. Did you think you could kill me with our company’s product? Guiding systems like these all come with subroutines to prevent any harm to my person!”

His laugh filled the room accompanied by immediate gunfire as the soldiers fired at ‘Masao’ and his co-conspirator. A bullet struck Annie and she cursed, holding her arm as she kept herself behind cover and shuffled away from where the arcing bullets tried to track her.

Bellona fully expected Masao to be riddled with bullets, but Mana quickly broke from her position, opening a portal and pulling the doctor through, right inside their protective dome of shield spells.

Once again, they were in a stalemate. Bellona and Mana didn’t dare to do more as the hologram of Marisa being kept at bay by the agents was still projected into the room – but as Bellona racked her brain for another possible solution to her predicament, something unforeseen happened.

Only a few minutes prior.

Zach grunted in pain as he popped the drum out of his revolver and let the two spent cartridges fall out. In a short moment, the entire place went to hell, and he barely had any time to react. A dead agent of the Corpo Police was lying in a pool of blood on the ground, twitching and moving her limbs involuntarily as the crude implants in her open skull kept giving her dead body commands and her destroyed nerve system couldn’t follow through.

“Of course they found us… they always do… they are always two steps ahead… fuck…” he spoke and found himself short of breath. He looked down and found a small hole in his jacket. As he pulled it to the side, he saw a similar hole on his right flank, with blood seeping into his shirt.

“Fuck…” he mumbled, sliding down the wall of the side alley he was hiding in. The deadly whistle of smart ammunition was all around him, with the screams of the residents and shouts in a language he didn’t understand intermingling with it.

Instead of offing myself I’ll be just another casualty of corporate crackdowns down here, won’t I?

He let out a long sigh, pushing himself on his feet. He at least wanted to know what exactly was going on down here before the lights went out. He supported himself against the nearby wall, slowly moving towards the town plaza, where a booming male voice spoke in a particularly arrogant tone, though he couldn’t make out what he was saying.

He reached a corner and leaned against it, peeking to spot the man with the booming voice, and immediately Zach’s heart was gripped by a cold terror.

What the hell is Hayder himself doing here?!

He saw Bellona and Mana in a pinch, and he saw the other girl, Arisu, dashing around, grabbing people and dragging them out of the line of fire, while offering her body as a shield until they were safe. He witnessed ‘Doctor Gidead’ walking out and confronting Hayder, during which he was revealed to be Masao Katsuya, and then he witnessed Annie’s failed assassination attempt.

He saw Annie getting shot and cowering behind her corner as bullets crashed against the thin metal sheets. He wanted to dash towards her and protect her, but his body still locked up. He turned around and let out a short scream of frustration as he closed his eyes.

You’re a dead man anyway. Just go out there and prevent her from being killed. You like her after all, even if you’re an irredeemable murderer.

Still nothing. His body locked up, only able to clutch the medallion around his neck. He was out of options, so he tried the first item on the list of final futile efforts: he picked a god to pray to. Given who gave him this medallion, it only made sense that he picked the one he personally shared meat and mead with for the past year.

All-father. Wise one. God of battle. Raven god. We are worlds apart, but in this desperate moment, please listen to my prayer! Don’t let me die as a coward and despicable murderer. Don’t leave me powerless as my friends are slaughtered in front of me!

At first, he was convinced that this wouldn’t amount to anything. He spoke to a medallion with etched metal, nothing more. But as he opened his eyes again, the runes on it glowed in a deep blue light. And then, to Zach’s astonishment, he got an answer.

“I hear you, dying warrior from another world! I grant you the strength of the Berserkir, and my wisdom for the battle ahead – your final battle as a mortal!”

***

Zach moved with purpose, towards the corner where Annie sat, clutching her arm and flinching away from the incoming barrage of bullets. For some odd reason, they never seemed to adjust their fire towards Zach. He kneeled down and tore the remaining unstained sleeve off his shirt, tying it tightly around Annie’s wounded arm.

“You’re hurt…” she spoke, but he shook his head.

“Forget about that. You tried to assassinate Hayder. Why?”

Annie turned her head away.

“Petty revenge by Katsuya. But there’s something more.”

“Like what?”

“The things he’s leading are all drones and follow simple instructions. When he croaks, or gets seriously injured, they will immediately stop whatever they’re doing and follow the corporate emergency protocol. Bring him to the ER to scrape whatever’s left of him up and put it into functional parts. We could save the town that way, but…”

Annie looked at the gun she held with a bitter expression.

“He has countermeasures against smart ammunition. None of these shots will hit him. It’s over,” she concluded and leaned back against the wall, staring at the ceiling.

“Bellona could slaughter them all, but only by sacrificing many of her people… and those who live here.”

Zach thought about Annie’s words for a while and nodded, then he got up, pulling out his revolver.

“He can’t jam old-fashioned bullets.”

“What are you saying?! They’ll shoot you to shreds! Stop that!”

Zach stopped at the corner and turned towards Annie one last time, smiling her way.

“Your teasing never really bothered me. And… I guess I still like you, after all. Goodbye, Annie.”

He could hear her shout his name, but right now his mind couldn’t focus on anything but his goal: to kill Christian Hayder and put an end to this massacre.

Bullets noisily hit the ground next to him, making his ears ring as he simply walked up to the group of attackers surrounding the president of Hayder-Katsuya.

“And who are you supposed to be?”

The voice from the man was as loud as it was grating. Zach didn’t respond and just kept moving. He spotted augmented soldiers left and right, raising his revolver and shooting them through the head, destroying their implants and whatever pitiful mass of their brains was left.

The man at the center looked panicked all of a sudden. His beady eyes widened to a size that seemed impossible and he took a step back. Zach didn’t know why – it couldn’t have been simply because he just shot some of his guards; there were other corpses littered on the ground from the previous fighting after all.

“If you get any closer, you freak, I’ll have their throats slit!”

He brought the hologram of the hostages his men took on the other side of Mana’s portal into view, and Zach stopped, considering the situation.

“A bluff. He needs them for something. Once you call it, this small man will run rather than execute his threats,” the borrowed wisdom of Odin whispered into his ear, and Zach grinned.

He kept advancing, and the man took several steps back, as Zach shot two more of his bodyguards in the face.

“P-protect me! And agents! Extract the hostages for the goddesses’ project!”

Once that command was given, the proverbial floodgates opened. The two mechs which flanked the airship and were busy fending off the flying gladii before tried to aim their weapons at him and were promptly dismantled as a green and blue flash took one down each. Bellona and Arisu, the mother-daughter duo punched and sliced through reinforced steel of mechanized armor, buying him precious time while the mech pilots ejected towards the open ceiling in rocket-propelled escape pods.

Two bodyguards with ballistic shields blocked his way, but Zach didn’t care. As he aimed at their heads, he felt a strange power flowing through him and into the bullets, which punched straight through the transparent shields and through mechanized skulls. Hayder was now right in front of him, spurring his ancient body to move as he turned around and walked towards the vertical craft. He looked quite pathetic, only able to walk with big steps, with his body sometimes wobbling from one side to the other as his exoskeleton made noisy whirrs. Zach aimed at him and pulled the trigger again, but the gun clicked uselessly.

Right. Six shots.

He popped the cylinder out of the revolver and let the empty shells fall to the ground, while his left hand fished for his spare ammunition. He found six bullets and brought his hand back to his revolver, inserting the first. He noticed that he was smearing blood all over the steel, and then as he tried to insert the second bullet, his arm uselessly fell limp to his side and refused to move.

Things finally fell into place as he looked down: why he didn’t have any trouble approaching when everyone was cowering behind cover, or why Katsuya appeared to fear him. His torso was riddled with holes from bullets he never felt. He should be dead, but he kept walking – and his arm should have stopped working long ago, as it was now hanging by a literal thread of muscles. The power of the Berserkir made him a beast that could take lethal wounds and keep going until his enemies were annihilated.

His usual self would have panicked or passed out this very moment, but not him. He wasn’t Zach, the murderer and coward, he was something more. He popped the cylinder back into the revolver with a flick of the wrist and rolled it on his bloodied chest until the bullet matched up with the barrel, then he took aim again, his hand dripping with his own blood.

“Who the fuck is that guy?! WHAT the fuck is that guy?”

Zach’s shredded lungs didn’t allow him to speak to announce his name or nature to this man right now, but he could think it as he took aim and splattered the brains of Christian Hayder, the CEO of the most powerful corporation in the world, across the passenger cabin of a vertical lander – and a not insignificant amount into the rank waters below.

I am Ka’Zarr. An Einherjar of Valhalla. And I bring death.