Chapter 766: Second rift repaired.
Like she usually did, Sunshine absorbed the current that came from the storm. It was too much_ way too much_ but her body had always been a stubborn vessel. Her eyes turned a blinding, milky white, and her hair defied gravity, crackling with enough static to power a small city. Blue-white current skittered across her skin like hungry snakes.
Then, she began to weave.
She reached into the raw chaos of the storm and pulled out threads of pure energy. Usually, these felt like silk; today, they felt like pulling rusted rebar through wet concrete.
"Come on, you glowing little bastards," Sunshine hissed through gritted teeth. "Cooperate!" In the back of her mind, she wondered why nobody in the universe had ever considered building a device that did this job. It would have saved her a lot of effort.
Had she known about the rifts, she would have started working on this from the very moment she discovered that she had been reborn.
This rift was bigger, so it required more time and energy, draining her to an almost hollow state. She forced the strands into a more complex crisscross pattern, her fingers dancing despite the agony. Her hands began to bleed where the energy chafed against her physical form, the red drops vaporizing into steam before they could even hit the ground. Her lips trembled, and hot tears she didn’t even feel tracked through the soot on her cheeks.
[Warning: Biological integrity at 12%. Cellular frying detected. Cease operation immediately, you are in danger.]
"Find a solution then!" Sunshine screamed inside her head. "If I stop now, you know the consequences. Don’t you dare pull me out!"
[Host, there is no time to find a solution. Calculating.....chances of organ failure: 95% Host you will not survive this.]
"I am not giving up!" she retorted, her vision swimming.
The system paused. It processed a sudden spike in data that shouldn’t be there.
[Host, I am detecting sudden cellular regeneration, strength levels are increasing.]
Sunshine didn’t care about the logistics. She felt a surge of warmth_ a second wind that felt like a shot of espresso to her very soul. Thanks for the boost, system, she thought, assuming it had finally decided to be useful.
The rift began to dim. As Sunshine tied the glowing patches together at a faster speed than before. She was like a blur of energy.
Around her, the Storm squad finally noticed the shift.
"Look at her!" yelled one of them, his own hands sparking. "The boss is actually doing it! She looked like she was struggling just moments ago!" Unlike them, who could take turns and switch when one was exhausted, she didn’t have the luxury.
"Yeah, she was crying. Right?" someone shouted over the thunder.
"Let us boost her morale!"
They broke into a rowdy, off-key anthem that Warren had come up with.
"Oh, the sky is torn and the wind is mean, but we’re the toughest bunch you’ve ever seen! Pull the thread and tie the knot, give it everything you’ve got!"
The ridiculousness of it actually gave Sunshine a jolt of laughter. "Worst... backup... ever!" she wheezed.
The singing and storm lasted four more hours. With one final, agonizing heave, she tied the last string of energy. A white pulse rippled outward, sealing the rift permanently. It went quiet, as if a steam pipe had been shut off.
"VICTORY!" some one screamed, though half his team had already fainted from the effort. Their exo-suits hovered and hummed, keeping their unconscious bodies hovering safely like metallic balloons.
"Activate the blinding buttons, guys," Sunshine croaked into her comms. "I’m dropping the shroud. We leave as silently as we came."
****
Outside the barrier, the scene was pure, unadulterated chaos.
Asgeda threw something that looked like black dough at clone Sunshine’s exo suit. Before anyone could react, it exploded. Parts of the suit fell apart, exposing clone Sunshine. She was bleeding. He smirked, watching the light fade from what he assumed were her eyes. The team from fortress four wailed loudly.
Dramatically, Nimo yelled. "You were supposed to help us. What have you done?"
One of the Noxians scoffed.
"Finally," Asgeda spat. "The repairman is dead. Fall back! The Xylas are going to lose their minds!" The battle to reach Sunshine had been a long one, lasting for far longer than he thought. While he would have preferred to take her alive, he had known that the watchers would not let this happen. So, he had no choice but to strike the unexpected killing blow, taking everyone by surprise.
He wasn’t wrong. The Watchers, seeing their favorite puppet fall, had gone into a berserk rage that was making the Noxian retreat very difficult.
"Move now. Head back to the mother ship." Asgeda ordered.
"Wait," one of the Noxian warriors pointed upward. "Where’s the exit?"
They looked toward the spot where the rift had been. It wasn’t just closed; it was erased. A few Noxian warriors who had been flying to the "patch" tried to force their way through it. They didn’t hit a wall; they simply ceased to exist, melting into thin air.
"Well, that’s awkward," muttered Pink, watching from the edge of the battlefield. They had been played! She adjusted her feathers and scoffed. "Classic Sunshine Raine. Overachieving as usual. She closed the rift." Then it screeched angrily.
It was so distracted that it did not see the giant dust bomb coming towards it, the impact sent it falling to the ground.
The Noxians panicked. Their escape route was gone, but they needed to leave now. "To the other rift in the East!"
They flew off, trying to outrun the furious Watchers, but it was like trying to outrun an angry swarm of hornets in a closed room.
Meanwhile, the Fortress Four team moved in to start clearing up the battlefield and preparing their exit. They had nothing to worry about, with their enemies heading in a different direction.
Phillip noticed an injured Noxian and a half dead watcher, close to each other. "They left behind some stragglers. And by stragglers, I mean guys who are bleeding and possibly about to die."
"Neems, what do we do with them?" Siegfried asked.
"Pack them up and lock them in the boxes before the watchers discover this," Nimo said, pulling out a pair of high-tech zip-ties. "Let’s take them home as souvenirs. The boss has always wanted a watcher, and now we have one. Also, these new ones need to be questioned."
Back at the center of the storm, the shroud dropped. Sunshine noticed that the battle seemed to be over. Particles of dust bombs were still swimming in the air.
"Did we win?" An electrokinetic asked asked.
Phillip set off three blasts of fire that exploded like fireworks. The signal that Sunshine had been waiting for.
"We won, now let us go." She said. "Time to go home and think about the third rift." This was a victory they had earned through a lucky scheme. At the next rift, they would not be this lucky.