Arc... more or less done? I... don't know what to do with the next one, yet, but I'm pretty happy with this one so far <3

***

Interlude - Ernest Glover

He watched the squad enter the building, then let out a sigh. This was just another day, or rather, another night, in the service of Seraph. 

He really wanted to smoke, but he’d been trying to give up on that habit for years now. Ever since he hit C-rank, the company doctors had been looking over his health with a lot more care, and his habit of vaping or smoking was ‘detrimental’ to him. Even as a C-ranker, where he could push his body a lot harder and further than most, it was still a risk that wasn’t worth taking.

Not that Seraph wouldn’t do something if he needed it. Cybernetic lungs were always an option, if it came to it. 

Still, he listened. He would always listen.

He leaned his head back and stared up into the sky. It might have been the dead of night, but there wasn’t a star in the skies above, only a fuzzy grey haze, the bottom of a layer of smog illuminated by the million lights of Fortress ENE.

Ernest was a man in love. It’s why he was out here at this hour, doing work that most C-rankers would probably find beneath themselves.

All this to capture and question some newbie D-ranker from a nothing corp. They didn’t need a C-ranker’s worth of firepower for this.

But Seraph asked, and he was a man in love.

His magic was always Light. It was quick, and bright, and strong, and somewhat uncommon. Definitely one of the least common sorts of magic, because while plenty of people felt love strongly, it wasn’t everyone that felt it the right way.

Light magic was fueled by admiration. That made it... not common, but not impossibly rare.

Wind magic was fueled by ecstasy and joy. Again, not impossibly rare. He knew a few wind mages. They were often addicts, or had minds that were twisted a little wrong so that they were eternally optimistic.

He had been a Light mage, before hitting C-rank. His magic empowered by his admiration. Now he knew better. 

Love didn’t have to be for another person. It could be for something as stupid as a pet. For him, it wasn’t a thing, it wasn’t a person--even if he still admired the others at his rank and above within the company--no, what he loved was Seraph itself. 

The psychologist that worked with him said that it wasn’t... normal. Not in so few words, but he could read between the lines. 

So he had complained, and now there was a new psychiatrist, one that worked with him to deepen his love. 

Another sign that the corporation cared, at least for him. He could, and would, reciprocate.

Though he’d rather do that reciprocation in a time and place that was more fun than this shithole corner of Fortress ENE.

“Check in, team Alpha,” he said over the comms. He glanced up at the apartment building and counted the windows until he was up to the floor where their target was. 

It only took a moment for the sergeant to reply. “We’re in the elevator, sir,” the man said. He was Ernest’s senior, and had even been his sergeant at one time, but that was a while ago. “We’ll be at the target’s room soon.”

“Acknowledged. Let’s keep the chatter to a minimum, then,” he replied. Sure, he’d started it, but he didn’t need the squad filling the comms with yapping. That made them look unprofessional, and as the senior ranking person here, that would end up reflecting poorly on him. 

Seraph wouldn’t give up on him, even if he chose to act up a little. He was a company-raised C-ranker, and there weren’t all that many of those.One day, in a decade or two, he might hit B-rank. Between now and then, however, were several smaller rungs on the ladder that he hoped to climb.

A few small setbacks, like that dungeon he’d been supposed to clear and missed out on, was... frustrating. But it wasn’t a deep slip. It was a slight stumble at best.

He was busy drumming his hand against his thigh holster when the front door of the apartments opened and a woman left, someone wearing a hoodie and who started walking down the corridor with the casual gait of a local.

He looked up. There had been a noise. The pop of something that might have been a single gunshot, muffled by the walls of the apartment. Was that one the squad? He wasn’t sure. Usually he’d be able to recognize the sound of their rifles, and his C-ranker senses helped with that, but the shot coming from far away and within a building masked it a little.

His comms bipped again. “Yes?” he asked.

It was the sergeant, and he was breathing heavier. There was the sound of movement behind him. “Sir. Ah, one wounded. Suspect is missing. They took the elevator down. Fuck, ah, sorry, sir.”

“Explain,” he demanded. He hated that the man was swearing over the comms. That would be reviewed later, it was minor, but it would reflect poorly on all of them.

“I was hit, sir, in the knee. I’m being... one moment. Dammit, the stairwell is trapped.”

Ernest stood a little straighter. The target shooting back and running was unfortunate, but it wasn’t impossible. Anyone discovering a squad of well-equipped corporate soldiers breaking in their door in the AMs would panic, and a panicking D-ranker wasn’t without options.

Them getting away was a bad sign, mostly with regards to the competency of his soldiers. 

Them having time to trap his men in, however, was a step too far. That implied prior warning.

He was so deep in thought that it took his senses a second longer than usual to notice that the woman casually walking by had turned and was moving his way. She pulled out a revolver from an inner pocket, thumb pulling back the hammer.

He instantly flooded more magic into his shields. 

The woman raised the gun, then paused, the end of the barrel aimed, unnervingly, right at his face. His augs traced the likely trajectory for him, painting a thin blue line across the air right towards a space an inch above his sightline and between his brows. 

“Hey, Ernest,” the woman said. “Your boys upstairs kicked my cat.”

“What?” he asked. “No, nevermind that. Put down the gun, and lay flat on the ground. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

She scoffed. “No. That’s not going to happen. Will you explain why Seraph is here, at this hour, breaking into my domicile?”

“Get on the ground,” he growled. 

“Typical of Seraph. Pushing your weight around, as though you’re all that. Just another corp without a lick of common sense,” she said. Her words were one thing, but the tone of her voice was grating, like she was talking down to a child. He saw a flash of periwinkle beneath the hood, and her eyes with filled with mocking mirth. 

“We can do this the hard way,” he said. 

“I bet Seraph likes doing things that way, huh?” she asked. “Or is that just you?”

Ernest had enough. He glanced around, then sent a quick warning signal over his comms. It shut down non-priority messages, preparing him to have as few distractions as possible in a fight. He considered turning on the combat mode on his suite of cybernetics, but he didn’t need it for one lowly D-ranker.

“So be it,” he said.

He flicked his hand forwards.

A beam of light raced out between them, a spell he’d been using for years.

The woman shifted to the side, and the spell punched a hole through her hoody and out the back, somehow entirely missing her stomach.

“That’s enough,” she said before pulling the trigger.

His shield lit up as a round rammed into it. He felt his reserves dip a little. That wasn’t a normal round from a civilian-grade plinker. That was the kind of gun designed to take out bigger predators in a portal. 

He made note of that, then stepped to the side and shrank his shield in. Another flick of his arm and a dual-cast sent two more tight beams flying towards the woman.

She dodged.

He was taken aback for a moment. The two beams were fast. Not light-fast, but Light magic was hardly what anyone would call slow. To dodge a spell like that either required incredible speed, more than most unaugmented D-rankers would be able to handle, or incredible skill.

She spun, then brought her gun up again.

Again, the trajectory pointed at his forehead.

His shield burst into light as it ate another round, and he grit his teeth.

“Is that all you can do, Seraph boy?” she taunted.

It worked.

He stepped forwards, pulled magic from his core and shoved it through the complex, trailing form of a spell THING WHOSE NAME THE AUTHOR FORGOT. The magic slammed through it, and then burst out ahead of him in a spell he was quite fond of. 

Brilliant Tri-Helix exploded forwards, all three balls of light spinning around each other even as they raced forwards.

The beauty of that spell wasn’t just its strength and the weird quirks that came with being a spell in three parts. It was that he could maneuver it post-cast. It made it hard to avoid.

“Shadow Bolt,” the woman said.

Her spell barely hard time to form and cast before his Brilliant Tri-Helix was there, but it still struck out and hit one of the three prongs of the helix and made it detonate. The other two, somehow, skirted past her, burning at the cloth of her hoody and missing her entirely.

“What?” he asked.

“Is that all you’ve got, Seraph boy?” she asked. “Maybe join a real corp, huh?”

He closed his mouth so hard his teeth clicked together. That was it, enough. He grunted and flung his arm out, casting the same spell again.

“Shadow Bolt! Shadow Bolt!” the woman screamed. Then she contorted herself and started to remove her hoody.

Did she really need to speak her spell aloud? It was barely a first level spell. Was she entirely new? 

He cast, then snorted as one of her Shadow Bolt splashed uselessly against his shield. A split second later, the shield flickered, letting his Brilliant Tri-Helix past.

The second Shadow Bolt had gone wide, very wide. It was still climbing high above, into the shadowy night sky. It wasn’t even flying straight. His augs painted its trajectory, as a wide loop that would, eventually, circle back around to crash into the ground nearby. Idiot.

His Brilliant Tri-Helix burst forwards.

The woman tossed her hoody out, then grinned. She was dressed in a loose tanktop with some old band’s logo in faded print on the front, with cargo pants and not much else. He instantly hated how smug she looked.

She mouthed ‘Shadow Bolt’ again, then dropped to one knee.

He shifted his Brilliant Tri-Helix. With how wide it was, it would be hard to hit her with all three but--

His eyes went wide as her Shadow Bolt shot forwards, followed by two more.

The first smacked into one of the projectiles in his Brilliant Tri-Helix, bursting it apart. The other two followed in the glowing trail, both of them spinning at the same speed and angle as his helix. The two spells crossed by each other, perfectly avoiding each other.

His Brilliant Tri-Helix caught her hoody out of the air and exploded. 

Then her Shadow Bolts crashed into his shield, right where he had weakened it to make room for the spell. The first Shadow Bolt’s ‘head’ was shaped like a cup. It was a shape he recgonized. It was there to maximise contact area against a shield, to strain it.

He pushed his magic to reinforce the shield.

A second later, the second Shadow Bolt crashed into the dissipating form of the first, its head a long, narrow point that punched a tiny hole in his shield.

The trajectory line from his augs showed her gun aiming through that hole.

He ducked to the side, then stepped back and back, even as her first two shots punched into his shield and collapsed it.

He threw up two more panes of light before him. The first was hasty. When her shot hit, it exploded. The second was stronger, her bullet rammed into it and pancaked, the shield barely shifting.

“Nice try,” he said. 

His heart was racing fast. He had used up more magic than he would have expected from his reserves, and had emptied his ready magic. But he was still a C-ranker, and that had been six shots from a six-shot gun. 

She grinned, then pointed up.

Ernest wouldn’t have, under normal circumstances, looked up, but his curiosity overwhelmed him.

He stared into the sky just as a Shadow Bolt plunged out of the night sky, weakened from its long looping flight, but still equipped with a sharp, narrow point that hit him right in the eye with the strength of a strong right hook.

***