String - Identity 12.9

4000 Words

I surged into action, my movement systems launching me forward with a hiss of compressed air. 

Prometheus would back me up, and it wouldn’t be long before the rest of my team and the ECU Rookies would be joining the fray. All they needed to do was finish dealing with their battles. 

Liberation fought alone, trapped within the flames, while his weaker comrades flailed about trying to get through Prometheus’s ring of fire. This was our opportunity to cut off the head of the snake. Without Liberation, the Pandora branch in Bayside would surely crumble.

I landed with a skid only a few short meters from the colossal man.

Liberation went for a lethal blow as he cleaved at me in a wide arc. I ducked the swing, feeling the power behind it carried by the wind. If that had hit, my remaining normal bones would have been pulverized. The kinetic damping in my suit would have prevented death, but not the injury. The thought made my veins burn with adrenaline. 

I saw the follow-up attack. Liberation was experienced, and he had anticipated my dodge, so he thrust his shield forward to bash me. I was already moving, kicking off to dodge to the left. My movement systems gave me the boost I needed to stay alive. 

I zipped to his side and saw him wide open.

I tried to attack with my shoulder turret only to be notified that the targeting lens was damaged. I quickly spent a charge to repair it and blasted him with high explosives. The first two landed directly, but his repulsion dome repelled the rest.

No damage, not even a scratch or a scorch mark. 

I was nowhere closer to hurting him than Prometheus was, but I had succeeded in knocking him off balance. 

If my sniper rifle could only serve to put minor dents in his armor, then the shrapnel from my explosives wasn’t going to do the trick either. His armor seemed impervious to physical damage, which at face value seemed ridiculous, but this was a material Liberation could make with his power. It had properties I didn’t understand.

I had lost my chance to analyze him with my power when I eagerly rushed in to claim the first strike. While I may have stopped him from forming a plan, I had done the same to myself. Regardless, it didn’t matter. 

All I needed to do now was focus on winning. Once I had an opening, I would take it without hesitation because if he got his hands on me, he would crush me with his enhanced strength. 

Fire slammed into Liberation’s dome of light as I dashed to the side. He ignored Prometheus and kept me in his line of sight. For the moment, my strategy to keep his attention was working, and it would, right up until the moment he killed me. I just needed to make sure he never got hold of me.

Easier said than done.

I extended my blade and jabbed at the dome, but it bounced like I had tried to punch a trampoline.

How do I get through?

Was it even possible? Grim had a weakness we were able to exploit. If Liberation was vulnerable somehow, he had taken steps to hide it.

He lunged forward through his dome with the intent to skewer me, and he had been startlingly quick. The tip of his sword clipped my shoulder, and sparks flew. The force alone was almost enough to dislocate my shoulder. 

I spun and slashed, my blade catching the lower half of his breastplate. I expected sparks to fly, not for liquid silver to erupt from the gash. Liberation didn’t even seem to notice before he hit me with his shield. I flew backward and rolled before hitting a tree. I barely felt anything as I climbed back to my feet, but my eyes caught the gash in his armor.

A substance trailed from it like blood, molten silver. It didn’t manage to get very far before it abruptly stopped and receded back to the wound and knitted itself back together. 

Living armor?

It was all I could process before he charged me again, each step shaking the ground like a stampede of angry bulls. White fire tried to slow him down, but he powered through it without issue. Liberation raised his sword and swung down hard as I clambered out of the way. The tree I had crashed into was split in half down the middle in an instant.

“Keep your distance, boy!” Prometheus yelled.

I gathered that much on my own. 

She yelled something else, but Liberation was after me like a hungry hound, every strike made with the intention to kill me. He didn’t have time to waste fighting me. He came here to secure Lucy’s aid, and he had already failed. His next objective would be to force her cooperation somehow, and the more time he wasted fighting me, the more time she would have to escape.

I had to do my best to keep that window open for her.

I narrowly avoided each of Liberation's swings. His overwhelming ferocity made it challenging to get breathing room. I ducked, rolled, jumped, and grappled out of the way of every strike, each one becoming faster than the last. 

His ease of movement couldn’t just be because of his enhancement rating. There had to be more to it. Why had his armor bled? What kind of material was it, and how did it function? Was it actually alive, or was it something to do with his power?

I needed to know now, and the only way to do that was with my power.

I need a distraction. 

Ten, maybe fifteen seconds was all I needed to make an analysis from a distance. 

The white flames around the area were starting to dwindle, and a quick look back at Prometheus told me she wasn’t holding out very well. It appeared my initial observation about her power wasn’t entirely accurate. Her power would keep her alive, but she was still old. Part of me wondered if that was the real reason Gaea made herself younger, instead of a desperate need to preserve her own vanity.

The rest of my team was still busy dealing with their own problems, and the Rookies were no different. So I was on my own for a distraction. The solution came rather quickly when I spotted the large piece of Mechatech I had hacked moments earlier. It was standing stationary, waiting for a command. Without a driver inside it, the machine lacked the programming to move on its own.

I had completely forgotten. I was so used to my drones being capable of executing basic autonomous directives to keep themselves useful. This machine had no such programming because it wasn’t programmed that way. It needed a driver, and right now the only driver it recognized was me.

I couldn’t afford to pilot it manually, so I brazenly connected the foreign mechatech to my network and forced an installation of the same software package my drones were running.

I didn’t have time to monitor what was happening on that end when Liberation surged towards me again. 

I prepared to act, only to see the humanoid automation slam into Liberation’s side. They were about equal in size and stature, but it was clear that Liberation’s enhancement factor outstripped the machine’s strength. However, before Liberation could annihilate my new weapon, I redirected my two drones and attacked his rear.

I knew my drones wouldn’t help much in this conflict, but they at least stopped him from ripping the automaton to shreds.

It was now or never.

I dove into my power, every second sounding like a drum in my ears.

Where is he?

Given that I was in the middle of a forest, there wasn’t much my power could latch onto. I could see Prometheus’s cabin and almost everything inside. I could see countless red stars moving around outside the ring of white flame, fighting something I could interact with. I desperately searched for Liberation. The largest red star seemed almost blinding, and he was only a dozen meters from me, battling with a white star.

I narrowed my focus and found what I was looking for. The material he was wearing was called Libertarium, a nice, humble name. All I was able to get from my brief scan was that it was costly; over fifty-five charges to improve durability and density, while other categories showed to be much cheaper. 

Everything he was wearing was made of the stuff. His armor, his shield, and his sword, all the same.

I wasn’t surprised.

However, I didn’t see any evidence for the armor being able to repair itself, which meant that Liberation was the one doing it. If he could create the material, then it only made sense that he could repair it as well. Then by what means was it created and shaped? Could he make more during a fight, or did he need more time?

I ran out of time to theorize.

I was abruptly pulled out of my power when part of the automaton hit me. The dismembered pieces lay scattered around Liberation. 

He came at me again, but this time he leaped. He cleared the distance between us in a moment, and all I was able to do was scramble backward. He landed with a crash, slamming his shield down where I had been a second ago. The impact was so violent that the shockwave he generated rattled my entire body.

I hadn’t been this close to death since Grim swallowed me whole.

Not yet!

I retreated back into my power to find the automaton, its scattered remains looking like dull flickering lights all connected by faint, wispy threads. I picked one at random and sunk three charges into a repair.

[Charges: 27/30]

I blinked and came back to the real world just in time to see all those pieces turn to liquid and congregate back into a singular mass. It stretched and warped like gum before reshaping into a perfectly pristine automaton. It turned and dashed toward Liberation, who stood above me, his sword poised to skewer me.

My grenade launcher fired smoke grenades packed with the same hallucinogenic I used before. They exploded on impact, but Liberation’s attack still collided with my chest, but my armor didn’t break. The very tip of the sword pierced the outer layer, but went no further. Liberation withdrew immediately and staggered away in a coughing fit.

I rolled over, wheezing, clutching my chest.

“Warning: Critical damage sustained. Outer layer compromised.” My visor flashed and showed me a 3D image of my suit with my chest highlighted red. Pushing myself back to my feet felt like it required every muscle in my body to work a million times harder. “Minor trauma inflicted. Medical systems engaged.”

A rush of adrenaline coursed through me, and my breathing suddenly became a lot easier. I steadied myself as I faced down Liberation. My smoke grenades had stunned him while the repaired automaton tackled him from behind, grappling him in a full nelson. He hacked and coughed as he struggled to free himself.

“You fight the wrong battle,” Liberation growled angrily. “So much power and potential wasted. There will be no reward for your bravery. You win nothing but your own condemnation.” White flame lashed out and struck him, tendrils of fire snaking their way around his armor before slipping through the tiny gaps in his armor. Liberation choked out a strangled gasp. “Not like this! No!”

His dome extended around us, cutting off Prometheus's flame, but sealing us off from the rest of the battle. I would have felt a tad more panicked if Liberation weren’t currently being held in place by my automaton.

Now!

I knew what needed to be done and readied my blade. I powered forward, attempting to close the distance between the two of us. One quick strike to the heart, and I would cripple Pandora’s operations. They would crumble, bit by bit, their influence shriveling up to die. One less obstacle to clean up Bayside.

Liberation saw me coming and took drastic measures. He threw all his weight to the side and toppled over to the ground, taking my automaton with it. Its grip loosened, and Liberation quickly took advantage to rip himself free. I pumped the brakes and halted my approach as he snatched his sword off the ground before shooting back to his feet.

“No more running away,” Liberation declared as if he were a judge passing a sentence. “You’ll die quickly. I’m not the kind to take pleasure in suffering, even if they are heretics.”

I didn’t care to speak. 

He attacked, and I acted accordingly, dodging out of the way of his strikes and narrowly evading his attempts to grab me. There wasn’t much room to move around, and with each passing second, Liberation was shrinking the size of the dome. However, I noticed that he kept it big enough so that his sword wouldn’t hit the inner surface.

My automaton struck at him from behind again, attempting to grapple him the same way it had before, but Liberation was quick to fight it off. He slashed madly at its side, his sword cutting through its golden metallic skin. I was quick to see that this machine was my greatest asset in this situation. I needed to keep it around.

For a third time, I dove back into my power.

The damage was minor this time. I repaired it.

[Charges: 26/30]

Liberation pulled his sword free from the unmanned machine, watching with undisguised astonishment as the damaged area turned to liquid before reforming perfectly.

It needed more durability. Five charges for more resistant armor.

[Charges: 21/30]

He went to cleave it in two, but the whole thing turned to liquid. His sword passed through harmlessly. The golden humanoid machine reformed as the sword left its body, looking ready for another fight. It engaged Liberation directly, striking the man with its armored fists. They clanged helplessly against his helmet and breastplate, and Liberation didn’t hesitate to kick it back to gain space.

The leader of the Pandora Initiative brought his sword down on top of the machine’s head. It split the automaton’s head in two, but went no further.

“What? How can this be?” Liberation questioned as he pulled his sword free.

Repair.

[Charges: 20/30]

The head reformed in stellar condition.

Liberation’s head snapped toward me.

“You—!” He was tackled by the giant golden man machine. They thrashed around as I jumped in and out of my power. I was getting faster, but my concentration was becoming hazier. “So young…? How can you have—”

The automation wrapped its forearm around Liberation’s throat and tightened as hard as it could.

It’s not enough. It needs more power.

Its power source was laughably weak. 

I needed to switch it to a Jericho Core. I had made so many by now that a simple conversion only cost a single charge. I paid for it, watching as the automaton slackened for a moment. It was almost enough for Liberation to break free, but it came back online in less than a second.

[Charges: 19/30]

Strength. Kinetic output.

Six charges later, the golden automaton tightened its grip so much that its metallic plating started to creak under the immense pressure. It would last for the moment, but I wasn’t entirely concerned about longevity right now. All that mattered was putting Liberation at the worst disadvantage possible.

[Charges: 13/30]

I watched Liberation’s armored fingertips tig into the machine’s forearm as he tried to pry it free. To his credit, his enhancement factor was making quick work of it, but I by no means made the task easy. He was struggling, and I bought myself a precious few seconds.

That was all I needed to land the strike.

I blitzed forward and struck as hard as I could.

The Victorium blade pierced his chestplate and sank into his flesh. I felt him tense for a moment as the blade pierced his heart—or should have.

The tip of my blade hit something metallic and stopped.

No way.

I had been right, but I hadn’t looked deep enough. Living armor. It not only protected his body but also his organs. There was a shell of Libertarium around his heart that I didn’t have the strength to penetrate. I used all of it just getting that far.

I withdrew my blade and retreated just in time to see him rip the machine’s arm off and knock it clean off its feet. The moment it crashed to the ground, Liberation put his foot through its chest, smashing the Jericho core to pieces. He looked up and stared at me like Prometheus had stared at him, with undisguised hatred.

“I’ve changed my mind,” He picked up his sword, his hands tightening around the guard. “I’m going to make it slow.”

Before he broke into a sprint to close the distance and attack me, the ground shook.

The very earth beneath our feet heaved violently. My center of gravity was thrown off balance, and evidently, I wasn’t the only one. Liberation wobbled just as badly as I did.

Earthquake.

It wasn’t a short one either. 

It lasted long enough for multiple trees to uproot and fall over. When I did eventually lose my footing and collapse, Liberation did too. I saw in my peripheral vision that we weren’t the only ones. Everyone else had fallen to their knees, struggling to stay upright.

There was a loud splintering, and I turned just in time to see Prometheus’s cabin fall in on itself. The roof and walls faltered, caving in, and all that was left was a pile of wood and stone.

Then the shaking stopped.

Silence hung in the air as everyone gathered their bearings. The hostility radiating from Liberation moments ago had lessened significantly as he stared back in the direction of the city. He seemed transfixed, almost lost in thought.

“It’s too soon. Surely it can’t… no,” he turned his attention back to me, and the hostility came back full fold. “There’s still time. Still a chance for our victory.”

An explosion erupted behind me. I turned to see dark red-tipped wings emerge from the wreckage of the cabin, surrounded in a hazy red hue that flickered like a flame. They extended outward and flapped, sending debris flying everywhere. There was a shrill squawk as the flaming bird emerged, growing in size by the second. 

It climbed over smoldering wood one razor-sharp talon at a time until it flapped again and took to the air. The wind hit all of us violently, Prometheus’s white flames withering and shrinking under the powerful force. Liberation’s dome that was keeping us locked in close combat rippled and wobbled like a water balloon threatening to pop.

Then it dived on us, one of its talons closing in around the bubble. Liberation’s repulsion zone might as well not have even been there. The Phoenix’s talon slashed through it, and I dove forward through a tiny gap. My movement systems propelled me forward fast enough to escape as the talons closed behind me.

Liberation wasn’t so lucky.

He was raked violently, but one of his hands grabbed onto the Phoenix’s leg. In a flash, its fire was gone, but losing its power wasn’t going to stop her. Her beak came down like a hammer on top of Liberation’s helmet, and the force, followed closely by the thunderclap, almost knocked him on his ass. I was so stunned that the revelation almost slipped past me.

There’s a caveat to his power nullification…

“Pull us out!” Liberation shouted his command. “Our mission is a success.”

I was taken aback.

A success? This seemed like a complete failure on all accounts! What had they possibly achieved?

“What a shame… I guess the fun is over.”

I recognized the voice—the same one that had echoed all around us before Pandora had arrived. There was someone here that we couldn’t see. It made my skin crawl, even more so when I saw Liberation become transparent. His body turned into a mist, and I could still feel his hateful gaze on me, promising a painful execution when we next met.

One by one, Pandora’s Supers faded like they had never been here at all.

“Hope to see you all very soon. It would be a shame if this were to be our last meeting.”

The raspy voice faded like an echo, along with all the danger.

Prometheus’s white flames shrank and died only moments later, and I was able to see what had occurred on the other side of the flaming ring. 

There were hundreds of statues, all of Vigil. Everywhere I looked, there were more than I could count. Then, almost like dominoes, they began to fall to pieces. The real Vigil appeared from one of the closer statues and slumped to the ground, clutching her head. I could only imagine what kind of battle she had been fighting while the rest of us had been trapped in here.

Anomaly was by her side in an instant.

“Upgrade!”

I turned to see Alice running toward me. There was a cut on her cheek and a nasty wound on her forehead, like someone had tried to bludgeon her to death. Thankfully, though, she appeared to be functioning just fine—at least on the surface.

“I’m okay,” I said unevenly, turning to look up at the Phoenix. She was still hovering in the air above us and only just now turned to look at us. “I think I am, at least.”

Slowly, the Phoenix lowered to the ground, shrinking the closer she got. By the time she touched down, she was no bigger than a normal-sized human. Then, in a flash of flame, the feathers around its chest opened up and Lucy stepped out.

It was a bit of a headache to observe. 

The feathers seemed to fold away on themselves, reshaping and reforming until they became a part of her hair. She appeared just as she always had, but there was a noticeable change to her hair, which was now much longer than it usually was. It was awash with different colors and with the occasional feather, all woven into some kind of braid that didn’t entirely look like it was done naturally.

Lucy gave me a hard stare.

Then, she faltered. I watched her try to think of something to say, emotions raging inside of her. She couldn’t decide how to start, so I figured I would beat her to the punch.

“You look well,” I said easily. I was caught off guard by how tired I sounded, and it was only then that the fatigue really started to hit me. “I’m glad you’re alright.”

“I’m far from alright,” Lucy’s tone was harsh, but not venomous. That was good. “But I’m glad to see you’re okay too. What about…” she paused for a moment. “Abby?”

“Physically? Yeah, she’s fine. Mentally…” I trailed off and shook my head before looking over my shoulder. She followed my gaze to see Seer, Copycat, and Prosperity grouped up and checking each other for injuries. Prosperity, unfortunately, seemed to be the most roughed up. “I don’t know.”

Lucy sighed, her breath coming out shaky.

“I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

“No one is,” I said sympathetically. “I wasn’t. I’m still not. Don’t think I ever will be.”

Lucy met my gaze, and we both came to a silent understanding.

Pandora needed to go, and they weren’t going to wait until we were ready.