Kenji
The world was a blur of howling green, muffled by a wall of compressed air.
Kenji lay on the ground, surrounded by this ball of wind.
The wind roared around him, a deafening barrier that rattled his bones. Through the translucent, shifting walls of the cyclone, he could barely make out what was happening outside—streaks of purple lightning, flashes of cannon fire, and the white blur of Kiana.
He pressed his hand against the invisible wall. It was cold, solid as stone, yet yielding like water.
'She's protecting me,' he realized, the thought sinking like a stone in his gut. She thinks they're the enemy. She thinks she's saving me.
He looked down at his chest. The gaping ruin Bronya's cannon had carved into him was not entirely gone. While the hole no longer went through his body, there was still a deep gash of raw flesh that was exposed to the cold wind.
The nerves beneath the fresh tissue misfired, sending jolts of agony through his torso with every breath.
He wanted just to lie down and wait until his chest fully healed, just breathing was already painful enough. But he couldn't just sit down.
Not while his friends were out there.
He watched as a distorted shape fired a blue beam that shattered against the wind barrier. He saw Mei deflect a blade of air that would have taken her head off. They were fighting each other.
All because he was too stunned to dodge. 'All that danger sense just to get hit… I'm a moron.'
A spike of frustration pierced through his exhaustion. He hadn't taken that hit just to be coddled in a cage of wind while his friends tore each other apart.
But another problem arose when Danger Sense detected multiple threats closing in on them.
'Anti-Entropy!' He needed to tell them before it was too late!
"Wendy..." he rasped, his voice swallowed instantly by the roar.
He grit his teeth, the muscles in his jaw tightening until they ached. If she wouldn't let him out, he would have to let himself out.
He clenched his fists. One For all charging, red lightning crackled around his arms, illuminating the inside of the sphere in harsh, flickering strobes.
He threw his arms wide and slammed them together with a thundering clap, releasing an omnidirectional burst of air pressure.
BOOM.
The wind sphere unraveled. The pressurized currents destabilized, blowing outward in a sudden, violent gust that cleared the dust from the center of the garden.
Kenji dropped to the grass, landing in a crouch. His legs trembled, protesting the sudden return of gravity, but he forced them to hold.
The battlefield froze.
Wendy spun around, her glowing green eyes wide with shock. Her hand was still outstretched, controlling the remnants of the wind. "Why did you break the sphere!?"
Kiana and Mei, who had been locked in a stalemate with the rogue Bronya, stopped dead. "Kenji!" Kiana yelled, relief cracking in her voice.
But Kenji didn't look at them. He didn't look at Wendy.
He looked at the empty air.
His Danger Sense was sending a chaotic, multi-directional warning that made his vision swim. It wasn't coming from Bronya. It wasn't coming from Wendy.
It was coming from everywhere.
"Stop!" Kenji roared, his voice cutting through the sudden silence. He staggered forward, his eyes darting around the perimeter of the garden. "Everyone, stop! We're not alone!"
Wendy blinked, her rage faltering into confusion. "What...?"
Before anyone could react, a sound echoed through the garden, a distorted voice amplified by a dozen hidden speakers.
"Invisibility module, disengage."
The air around them shimmered. It looked like a heat haze, a ripple in reality that warped the light of the burning sky. Then, with a collective mechanical thrum, the illusion shattered.
Metal solidified from thin air.
They were everywhere. Dozens of Anti-Entropy mechs, sleek and painted in dark titanium, decloaked in a perfect, encircling ring. They stood on the ruined walls, hovered in the air, and blocked every exit. Their weapons were already charged, glowing with a menacing red light.
"Ambush..." Mei whispered, her knuckles white on the hilt of her katana.
Wendy stared at the army surrounding them, her glowing eyes darting frantically. "What... who are they?"
As if to answer, a mech perched on a high wall leveled its rifle. It wasn't aiming at Kenji. It wasn't aiming at the Valkyries.
It was aimed at Wendy's back.
Kenji's Danger Sense flared—a sharp, specific jolt amidst the noise—a sniper.
She didn't react fast enough. She was too stunned, too confused by the sudden appearance of an army where there had been nothing but air a second ago.
Kenji activated OFA, ignoring the pain of his healing muscles. He didn't have the speed to reach her, but he had the range. He raised his hand, his fingers snapping in a sharp motion.
A bullet of compressed air slammed into Wendy's side. Not strong enough to hurt her, but enough to push her away.
She stumbled sideways just as a beam of energy seared through the space where her head had been a millisecond before. The shot scorched the ground, leaving a line of molten glass in the grass.
Wendy scrambled for balance, looking from the scorch mark to Kenji. He stood with his hand still outstretched, panting, his eyes locked onto the mechs.
He had saved her. Again.
"They're here for you!" Kenji shouted, moving to stand back-to-back with her, facing the ring of mechs.
He could feel the heat radiating from her, the raw power of a Herrscher, but it felt much weaker than before. "And they're here for me. If we want to live, we have to stop fighting each other."
He looked at Kiana and Mei, then back to Wendy.
"We have to fight them."
Kenji stood back-to-back with Wendy, his eyes scanning the ring of titanium giants that loomed over them.
The mechs were silent now, their decloaking complete, but he could still feel their harmful intent even without Danger Sense.
Their red optical sensors gleamed in the twilight, dozens of unblinking eyes fixed on the four of them.
Suddenly, he could feel Wendy slightly tremble on his back. She wasn't the tempest she had been moments ago.
If she had been at full strength, she could have decimated all the robots with little difficulty. But she was exhausted, her breath coming in short heaves.
It didn't help that she was also just a newly awakened Herrscher, still not used to controlling her overwhelming power and wasting tons of energy.
"Stay close," Kenji whispered, not daring to look away from the mechs. "Don't let it catch you off guard."
"I won't."
Across the clearing, Bronya stepped forward. She walked to the center of the encirclement, her movements too smooth compared to her usual roboticness. She stopped, facing them like a judge.
Then, a voice boomed from the speakers of every mech in the circle, a synchronized, distorted chorus that made the ground vibrate.
"Impressive."
Kenji narrowed his eyes. This must be the woman Theresa told him about, the one he should watch out for.
Cocolia.
"I expected resistance," Cocolia continued, her voice dripping with cold amusement. "But this... display? It exceeds my projections. You are truly fascinating, Aoyama Kenji."
Kenji clenched his jaw. "I'm not your subject."
"Aren't you?" The mechs shifted in unison, the sound of heavy servos whining in the quiet air. "You fight like a hero. You bleed like a martyr. And yet, you are here, surrounded, broken, protecting a bomb that is about to go off."
The optical sensor of the mech directly in front of Kenji flared brighter.
"Be reasonable," Cocolia purred. "Surrender. Turn yourself in, and I will guarantee the safety of your friends. Even the new Herrscher. All I want is just... compliance."
Kenji looked at the mechs. He looked at Bronya, standing silent and enslaved. He felt the ache of the remnants in his chest, the memory of the lightning that had coursed through him.
He let out a harsh laugh. "Compliance? You send an army to ambush us. You turn our friend into a puppet. You try to kill Wendy. And now you want me to trust you?"
He shook his head. "You're sketchy as hell, lady. There is no way in this world or any other that I'm trusting a word you say."
There was a momentary pause.
Then, a chuckle echoed from the speakers, she sounded genuinely amused.
"Surprising," Cocolia said. "I thought you were just a brute with a savior complex. Perhaps you're not as stupid as you look."
The red lights on the mechs flared. The hum of charging weapons filled the air, and Danger Sense alerted him of the rising shriek of lethal intent.
"Capture them."
Bronya moved first. Project Bunny materialized, its cannon tracking Kenji. The mechs raised their rifles.
"Kiana! Mei!"
"Way ahead of you!" Kiana yelled back, her pistols already blazing as she opened fire on the nearest mech.
Mei drew her katana, the blade humming with purple lightning. "We hold the line here!" Kenji wasn't sure why, but it looked like Mei was slightly glowing.
But he couldn't focus on that right now, so he turned to Wendy. Whose expression is a mix of anger and fear.
"Wendy!" he said, grabbing her shoulder. "We need to work together if we want to live. Please, work with us."
Wendy looked at him, then at the army that had come to cage her again. Her fear hardened into something brittle and sharp.
"Very well."
Her eyes glowed green once more as the wind howled around them, and the battle began.
Missiles rained from the sky, a storm of fire and shrapnel that tore through the overgrown flowerbeds.
Lasers from the circling mechs cut burning lines through the air, sizzling as they vaporized stone and plant alike.
Kenji ducked under a searing beam of plasma, the heat singeing the ends of his hair. The smell of burning was thick in his throat, a metallic taste that coated his tongue.
He wasn't fast enough. The pain in his chest, from the wound and regeneration, is constantly sapping at his strength and taking all of his focus.
"They're pinning us down!" Kiana shouted out. She was behind a crumbling stone pillar, reloading her pistols. "There's too many of them! We can't break through!"
Around them, the ring of mechs tightened. It was a slow, methodical strangulation.
Kenji closed his eyes for a fractured second, reaching out with his senses. There were too many enemies to take note of, so he needed a way to map them out.
His Danger Sense was a chaotic, three-dimensional web of intent painted across the darkness of his mind. He could feel the missiles locking on before they fired, the electrical charge building in the mechs' cannons before they discharged.
He opened his eyes, locking gaze with Wendy. Her hands were slightly shaking as she held a defensive wind barrier, but her eyes were clear. She was waiting for him.
"Wendy, just give me a little longer to heal. We need to knock out Bronya and get the hell out of here, but for now," he rasped, pointing toward the western flank where the mechs were clustered thickest. "Give them a path and hold back Bronya!"
Wendy thrust her hands forward. The air pressure in the garden shifted, and Bronya's eyes widened as Project Bunny summoned a shield to protect her from a devastating gust of wind.
At the same time, a vacuum tunnel formed right next to Kiana and Mei, cutting through the center of the encirclement.
"Guys!" Kenji shouted.
Kiana didn't need to be told twice. She dove into the wind stream.
It was beautiful and terrifying. The wind caught her, accelerating her movements until she was nothing but a white blur.
She shouted in surprise at the new sensation, but it wasn't long before it turned into exhilarated laughter.
She ran up the vertical wall of air, flanking the mechs. Her pistols flashed, each shot hitting a joint or a sensor before she crushed them with physical blows.
The other mechs rained down missiles and bullets at Kiana, only for the attacks to be redirected by powerful wind.
Mei followed, her form dissolving into purple lightning as she rode the currents. Her katana extended into the vacuum, the wind elongating her reach until her strikes became invisible scythes of air and electricity, shearing through titanium armor like paper.
She was completely focused, and Kenji wasn't sure if she even blinked once while tearing down the mechs.
But another feeling rose from within his chest, the pulling sensation that came from Wendy. He was now getting the same feeling from Mei, albeit weaker.
The outer ring crumbled. Mechs fell, their systems sparking and dying under the precision assault.
But the center held.
Bronya stood amidst the wreckage of her own troops, still being forced onto defense by Wendy. Project Bunny's shield was a wall of annoyingly stubborn blue light, absorbing every stray shot, every gust of wind.
She was the fortress they couldn't breach.
"We can't get close!" Mei called out, landing beside Kenji, her breath coming in short gasps. Kiana dropping in not long after. "And she's coordinating the other mechs to cover her blind spots!"
Kenji looked at Bronya. He saw the dull red glow of her eyes, the mechanical jerk of her head as she tracked them.
"Time to change tactics," Kenji said, his voice low.
He turned to Wendy. "Blind them."
Wendy nodded. She raised her hands, and Project Bunny stumbled as all the force it was stopping suddenly vanished.
Then the debris of the garden—dust, leaves, shattered concrete—lifted into the air. It became a swirling vortex of grit, a localized sandstorm that swallowed the center of the clearing.
Visibility dropped to zero. The mechs' optical sensors faltered, their aim drifting.
It was a good thing Kenji didn't need to see.
"Twelve o'clock! Cannon!" he shouted, his voice cutting through the roar of the storm.
Mei and Kiana moved on his command, trusting him completely. They split, flanking the shrouded form of Project Bunny just as the cannon fired, the beam harmlessly searing the empty air between them.
"Now!"
Wendy clenched her fist. The storm condensed, slamming into Project Bunny from the front. The mech braced, its shield flaring as it diverted all power forward to withstand the crushing pressure.
It was exactly what they needed.
Kenji pushed past his pain, activating a burst of OFA and punching the air in the direction of Bronya, sending another shockwave that tore through Wendy's vortex, sending a sudden force that finally shattered the shield.
'It worked!'
"Kiana! Mei!"
Kiana dropped from the sky, driving her heels into the mech's exposed shoulder joint. Mei surged from the dust, her blade finding the gap in the armor, severing one of its arms.
Project Bunny was sent flying back, its systems groaning. The red light in Bronya's eyes flickered, and she suddenly stopped moving.
Time seemed to slow as Kiana and Mei ran at Bronya. Everything was going well, all they had to do now was knock her out, and they could start trying to find a way to run.
His Danger Sense felt the other mechs charge up to attack, their intent blurring in together, but Wendy was already prepared to defend.
He could focus his attention on Bronya and—!
"̵̙̈B̷̙̐Ě̵̙Ḣ̵͇I̵͖̾N̵͖͂D̷͠ͅ ̴̳̆Y̴̫̓Õ̵̳U̴̳͒,̴̼̕ ̸͖̀D̷̜̾Ṵ̵̑M̵̥̓B̸̼̑A̷̘̿S̶̬͒Ś̵̼!̴̟̈"̷̫̽
The voice tore through his skull as he realized that his mind was smothered by all the other mechs that he failed to notice one signal behind him, something that felt different from the other mechs.
Kenji didn't question it, "Wendy! Behind us! NOW!"
Wendy spun, unleashing a torrent of wind blindly into the space behind them.
Her attack hit something. But her eyes widened as the gale shattered against a wall of black energy that hadn't been there a second ago.
It seemingly absorbed the attack and rebounded it at them, forcing Wendy to counter with another blast to cancel out her own.
The smoke cleared.
Standing there, untouched, was a nightmare of engineering. It was slightly taller than the others, armored in obsidian and crimson plating that seemed to drink the light. It didn't look anything like the other mechs. It looked like a predator.
It loomed over them, its single, red optical sensor narrowing as it locked onto them.
Kenji's eyes widened as he realized what had just happened. It knew that he would be too focused on saving Bronya and fighting the horde of mechs to notice this one specifically.
The mech raised a hand and shot a black ball of energy. He and Wendy jumped back and avoided it, but suddenly they were forced onto the ground as a gravity field slammed down on the garden, pushing them to the dirt.
"How do you like my little present? This is the Aesir, I made it specifically for you~" Cocolia's mocking voice boomed out from the mech.
Kiana and Mei stopped in their tracks, surprised by the sudden appearance of a new enemy. This hesitation gave Bronya enough room to jump back to Project Bunny, putting them back at square one.
Kenji and Wendy finally pushed themselves off the ground, just as missiles hit the spot they were before.
"Don't worry about us! Keep trying to get Bronya!" Kenji shouted. "We'll try to handle the mechs!"
The Aesir raised its arm. The air around its fist distorted, condensing into a sphere of pitch-black energy. With a sharp, mechanical hiss, it fired.
The gravity ball tore through the air, a localized singularity.
"Scatter!"
Kenji dove left. Wendy shot right. The ball struck the ground between them, and the earth screamed.
A crater imploded into existence, the soil and stone crushed instantly into dust by the immense gravitational pressure.
"It's heavy," Kenji gritted out, feeling the drag of the field even from meters away. "Don't get caught in it!"
He charged while simultaneously dodging attacks from surrounding mechs. The Aesir tracked him, its red eye unblinking.
It fired another gravity sphere, forcing him to skid and roll. Wendy was there instantly, unleashing a barrage of wind blades that sliced through the air, distracting the Titan.
The blades hit the Aesir's shield and shattered harmlessly. But the distraction worked.
Kenji closed the distance. He pushed 40% OFA into his good arm, the red lightning crackling.
He threw a punch aimed directly at the Titan's core.
THUD.
His eyes widened as his fist seemed to sink into its outer shell. There was no crunch of metal. No explosion. His fist hit a wall of translucent, rippling energy.
The force of his punch didn't break the shield, it sank into it.
The shield flared, turning from blue to a menacing red.
He didn't have enough time to move before the energy surged back out at him.
Kenji was blasted backward as if he'd been hit by a train. He flew through the air, the wind knocked out of him.
"Kenji!"
A cushion of air caught him. Wendy swooped down, her arms outstretched, slowing his momentum before he could slam into a wall.
She set him down gently, hovering between him and the Titan.
"Looks like it also absorbs direct hits," Kenji wheezed, clutching his chest. "We can't fight it head-on."
The Aesir didn't give them a moment to breathe as panels on its shoulders slid open.
Zip. Zip. Zip.
Razor-thin wires shot out, gleaming with electric blue light. They lashed through the air like whips, seeking to ensnare them.
"Up!" Kenji yelled.
Wendy grabbed him, launching them both into the air. The wires snapped beneath them, carving deep slices into the stone pillars where they had just stood. But the sky wasn't safe.
Airborne mechs and the Aesir tracked them perfectly. Its missile pods opened. A swarm of micro-missiles launched, trailing smoke.
Wendy spun, weaving through the barrage. She unleashed a gale, knocking the missiles off course, but the Aesir fired another gravity sphere into their path. The sudden weight dragged them down.
Wendy cried out, struggling to keep them aloft. The strain was etched on her face. She dodged a laser beam by a hair's breadth, then narrowly avoided a razor wire that sought to wrap around her ankle.
"There's too much!" Wendy gasped, her flight becoming erratic. "I can't... I can't keep this up!"
They roughly landed on the ground, stumbling before regaining their footing. Kenji looked at the dozens of robots and the field around him, everything was in ruin.
To his left, Kiana was pinned behind a block of rubble, suppressive fire chipping away her cover. Mei was locked in a duel with five mechs, unable to break free.
Bronya stood over them all, her cannon charging for another shot.
And in front of them, the Aesir Titan walked forward with not even a scratch on it.
'How?' he thought, his eyes darting between his friends and the monsters closing in. 'How the fuck are we supposed to get out of this?!'