Ripley

Preservation Matrix activated at the first syllable of 'shoot' leaving Jacob Grazhe's mouth, Starlight acted second and dragged most of us into a weakly formed synchronized state where my Matrix would keep them from following orders. Me, Diana, Fernandez, and Pouler survived.

I purposefully kept Starlight away from Rachfeld, and the man's pistol quickly burst blood out the side of his temples. Sabrina got her revenge, and I would get my payment now.

"Dread- why did you-"

We would have spread ourselves too thin.

Many other bodies thumped to the floor all at the same time, and I could feel Diana grow in horror as she tried to burst out of my hands. Jacob laughed, his face melting away as a featureless woman melted out of his image.

Princess Heart Seeker… and a second signature. Hexflame.

I'd seen the reports that Hexflame was killed by Kim Liyung a few months ago, but it didn't seem like she was truly dead. Instead, her catatonic body was grafted into Heart Seeker's shapeshifting technology.

And Hexflame could mimic Mutations after all, but how? Jacob was dead, for months.

"You bitch," Diana screamed, her eyes beginning to turn crimson. "I'll fucking put you in a grave!"

"Oh?" Heart Seeker chuckled, before flesh began to expand and clothing formed upon her so she resembled Lieutenant Jacob Grazhe once more. "Like you put my grandson one foot in the grave?"

Diana jerked back, a sense of defeat in the movement. "I'll…"

Things didn't get better, not when Steel Vanguard rose up again. A low reverberance echoed from his suit, as more blood spilled out with each jerky movement. "As I said… I am steel."

And it continued to get worse, as two women came out with burns across their bodies. Sabrina and Kim… and they were being escorted by a proud woman wreathed in a cloak of blue flames. Sabrina coughed, ashes spurting from her mouth. "She- she told us to tell you that…"

Sabrina's eyes wandered the field, and when she caught sight of Rachfeld's dead body, she paused.

"Sabrina…?" Diana said weakly.

"It was Heart Seeker, she stopped us first. Made us relay that we…" Kim gritted. "We… lost."

"That, they did." Azure Phoenix opened up a fan, fluttering it in front of her face as she turned to Steel Vanguard. "Ah, but you look worse for the wear, brother?"

"Your stomach's danglin' out." 'Jacob Grazhe' gave a hearty laugh. "Guess we got to stick another person in ya' now."

Steel Vanguard only gave a slurred nod, looking sleepy as they did so.

Behind us, those who'd survived tried to aim their guns up. One even shot Azure Phoenix square in the head, the bullet leaving the other side of her skull as she stepped back. That hole plugged in with blue flame and the blood trickling down was swept up by a lick from her tongue. "Oh, what impudence, we show mercy? And this is how you return the favor?"

With a flick of her finger, a drilling flare of bright blue dug through the helmet of the policeman who shot her, ashes like sapphire dust spilling into the air that flowed like smoke into her lungs. She took a deep breath, an ecstatic look on her face. "Ah, so much better."

Diana was trembling in my arms to launch herself at the Princess, but she was in no state to fight. Neither was I. My armory was currently invisible, but I'd need to replace my Arachne's tips to either fight or make a safe escape.

Three royals stood in our way, superior and victorious.

Steel Vanguard. Azure Phoenix. Heart Seeker.

Heart Seeker smiled through the shape of Jacob Grazhe, her hand shining as flesh molted into steel. That was a Mutation I'd remembered him using to break through the table where the Pandora had been within. "Now… do you want me to be a good cop, or a bad cop?"

Analyzing the situation, there was no easy way out of this… except one.

The Dogwhistler… I was seconds away from contacting Elsa, when a voice spoke from behind us, Titanium Energy commanding through it.

"My father was only ever a bad cop." Anabelle Grazhe appeared from the dust, a visor on her eyes as her form seemingly melting into the air as other policemen under her command appeared. "Now kneel."

All three royals were forced onto their knees, I already was.

'Jacob Grazhe' laughed, screaming out as metallic skin and jagged edges ripped through his flesh. "C'mon Annie, that any way to treat your daddy?"

"My father only ever called me Anabelle…" The Lieutenant raised her voice, sharp and filled with malice. "So you're where his SIM went? At least now we know how Hexblood could copy Mutations."

Steel Vanguard rushed forward, his staff descending like a falling skyscraper. Anabelle Grazhe snapped her fingers, a whistling sound screeching from the light motion that turned the surrounding air into a shimmer.

She was affecting atmospheric density to create a barrier. The staff missed her by an inch as though it slipped off course, but she was unfazed as dust crashed into the air, her hand clasping Steel Vanguard's staff with defiance. The staff began to shake, and that vibration spread through Vanguard's armor until he was rattling like he was about to explode.

Anabelle Grazhe… a former Special Investigator of the SIO, an Esper, Tier III and Silver, with the added touch of some Titanium within her. She was a Lieutenant for a reason.

All of that vibration crunched into his knee, snapping that joint so his leg broke in two directions. But even that refused to make him fall as he twisted his staff to reorient his center of balance into a whirlwind of steel.

Anabelle was already gone. She'd vibrated in place for a second before vanishing as her cohort of policemen began to open fire on the royals. Azure Phoenix snarled, opening her palms with talons of sapphire flame as feathered wings erupted from her back.

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Diana shot away from me the second I let go, and this time I was in full support. She grappled Azure Phoenix in the air, while two Arachne-tips speared into both wings to ground her. Kim Liyung and Sabrina acted likewise, taking advantage of the distraction as frost and ectoplasm joined into one.

But the flames of the princess manifested with an overwhelming surge, blinding us while searing and melting through the metal of my Arachnodyne tips. Diana took the brunt of that flame, which began chewing through the fibers of her suit while she gripped onto Azure Phoenix. She screamed through it all, breathing in that heat as it ignited lightning through her body through Thermokinetic Metabolism.

Just as she burned, her lightning forced her cells to regenerate. A wicked smile emerged as the metallic gauntlets she wore seemed to sharpen with an electric veil that she gouged into Azure Phoenix's arm. "Let's see how good your healing really is!"

Bones crunched, and muscles stretched past their limits as the limb fell with a ribbon of blood. Azure Phoenix collapsed with a bloody stump, while Diana coughed ash and was busy getting to her feet. Earth and debris coated in green ambushed from all sides, but a screaming inferno rendered it into ash. Ash like powdered gemstone, it swirled onto Phoenix's torn limb and accelerated her healing. "Oh, you bitch!"

Diana was struggling, draining Silver from the Phoenix's torn limb as guttural growls bubbled out of her. Meeting her voice was a cone of flame, Archangel appearing just in time as a shield manifested over them…

Not that it would help. That shield kept the flame out, but not the heat.

It was Sabrina who warded that, moving in as she threw grenades out that burst with icy mist as all sources of carbon dioxide rapidly froze to her will. There wasn't anything I could do, the flame was hot enough to melt right through my suit… so I turned my sight to Anabelle, 'Jacob', and Steel Vanguard — who was weakened enough that now the remaining STRIKE members could feasibly combat him.

Kim Liyung had done so as well, aiming her blade on the man who had once been Lieutenant. In full force, he was a being capable of condensing air and sound, impenetrable to bullets with steel skin, and with a voice capable of manipulating others.

His daughter was far more refined, focusing entirely on the manipulation of vibrations, of kinetic energy. She shot out bullets from a rifle, thick and heavy, which burst milliseconds before contact to create a shrieking noise that drenched the steel skin of Jacob Grazhe's.

In moments, those vibrations thickened and condensed as blood and steel burst out of Heart Seeker's body — her hold on Hexblood's Mutational copycat abilities clearly unrefined. Steel Vanguard came to her defense, his staff renting through the air as even with one leg he manipulated it with grace and ease.

I dealt with him.

I flipped over, the Glitch Cloak activating to cast a mirage of false futures upon my skin as my Modules overwrote one another with calculating predetermination.

Time slowed, my limbs hammered, my insight honed — and then I overcame as I tackled his weight off course and tangled his shoulder, elbow and neck with my Livewire claws. He swung, only hitting an image that had once been me, and that motion precisely spelled his literal downfall.

He was finally taken to the ground, and I wouldn't let him rise up this time.

Diana

Burning… I was being eaten alive. Archangel's armor was red-hot, sparking and twitching as the hexagonal barriers around us did nothing to keep the actual heat away from us. My very suit was a coffin, heating up as I tried my best to convert that searing pain into strength.

I was already at my limit, Azure Phoenix's arm hadn't been enough to push me through another 'trigger'. Then a cool mist surrounded us, a levity from the pain that had been suffocating me as Sabrina pushed from the side of the shield, braving the flame on her own end.

Her body was covered in an icy shroud, the thin veil freezing and melting with each weakening breath of hers. I saw her fingertips turn blue, then glaze over with frost as her eyes pleaded with me.

"Run." She mouthed, but the fire was so devastating she was barely a haze through the blue. I groaned my way to my feet, gripping the spear dropped by Archangel's feet as she kept her barriers over us.

She rasped. "What're you-"

"Let me through." I held the spear comfortably in my hands, a final push of electricity charging me up as my skin and muscles began to fuse with the steel fibers atop me.

As the barriers dropped, I dashed through, uncaring as to whether I'd make it to the other side alive. As fire devoured me, resistance snagged around the spear as Azure Phoenix gagged with it gouging through her lungs. Before she could manage another spew of flames, I dragged it sideways to crunch through her ribs.

And reached through.

Her heart pulled out, still beating in my hands as I crushed and devoured it's internal Mutagenic powers. Azure Phoenix sputtered blood from her mouth, stumbling back as she palmed the wound on her chest which was already closing up.

She laughed despite being heartless. "Please, I burn through that thing five times a day!"

A curtain of fire burst from her remaining right arm, but ice stood between us as Sabrina tackled me away. We rolled on the ground, all three of us tired and battered and burnt. Even Azure Phoenix was covered in sweltering wounds that were being plugged with new flesh.

Sabrina seethed over me, our eyes focused on her right arm which was under a veil of consuming blue fire. Azure Phoenix's eyes snapped open, something confusing in her voice. "Get it off you, Throm, or it'll eat any flesh it gets to!"

Sabrina's weakened eyes closed, almost in resignation.

I didn't hold that same mercy. Using the lingering charge in Archangel's spear, I called it to my hands and swiped it down. Severing Sabrina's arm right under her elbow.

The dismembered limb continued to burn away into blue ashes, sweeping towards Azure Phoenix's own wounds which bubbled with fresh flesh. Sabrina heaved in pain beside me, her eyes clouding with weakness as my thoughts tore in two directions until Archangel came through. She grabbed the spear in my hands, and jabbed it into Azure Pheonix's throat. Deep, but not deep enough.

"Should I… uh… should I-?" Hesitation toiled in her voice, the blade a swipe away from tearing the Phoenix's head off.

Sabrina's yell came before mine. "Stop! Don't do it!"

My own order choked, confusion twisting in my thoughts but Sabrina's pained throes took my focus. "I'll tell you later, Diana… just… leave her alive."

Azure Phoenix looked at us, some defeat in her eyes… before fire reignited in them once more as flame danced on her fingertips. I pushed back control into Archangel's spear, but before I could behead her, a hand held the spear.

It was thin, aged and wrinkled. The sleeve of a white kimono trailed above it and the man bearing such garbs wore a white dragon mask.

Without a care of thought, he kicked Archangel into me.

———

Dreadwire

As my limbs focused on keeping this struggling titan of a Prince down, I was all but sure now that the 'body' within him was only some sort of punishment or test from his father. Instead, he was much more likely to exist in a similar state as Diamante.

A brain in a machine. Isolated in the depths of cold steel.

My Arachnodyne tips were severely damaged, unable to access their operating mechanisms but I still had the advantage in terms of leverage. As for Anabelle Grazhe?

"Be still." Her voice weighed on her 'father' like a mountain, freezing him in place as she precisely whittled down Heart Seeker's form.

"Stop!" Her father yelled back, momentarily blanking me out but likewise stopping Vanguard's resistance. Anabelle was unimpeded, likely because it wasn't Anabelle fighting at this moment, but Anomaly.

Titanium against Silver, the answer was easy.

Our advantage would only grow, as Twilight reported in my ears. "Alright, War-watcher's no longer trying to fry my brain out! We've got Squads Theta and Omega converging on our position, they're the specialized anti-Vanguard and anti-Phoenix squads!"

"I doubt we'll need them." Vanguard was finally disabled, while Azure Phoenix just had her throat stabbed into by Archangel. "But these two are tough to kill. They've drained our resources… significantly."

"It'll be fine… just… take a moment to recover before-" Twilight stopped, as did I, when Archangel was kicked across the room, slamming into Diana and Sabrina.

A singular man was the culprit, and he wore a white dragon mask while dressed in only a simple robe. Barefoot, he stepped towards us.

"All of you will end this fight, now." His light voice held a richness that made it more real than any voice I'd ever heard before, an order that struck deeper than even the Grazhes'.

Someone shot at him, and his hand snapped up. In between his fingers was a single bullet, still spinning. Then he flicked it in his fingers, and I saw blood spill from the back of the policeman responsible for the shot.

At that, everyone stopped… even the Lieutenant, meeting the masked man's gaze as she spoke in a hushed whisper. Fear trembled in her voice.

"Omen… we have an affirmative on The Bladefather's position."

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