The furious, cold energy of Felicity's determination drove The Hand like a runaway freight train. Within moments, the massive guardian was tearing its way out of the Gutter Nest, not via the slow, stealthy routes, but through pure, brute force.
Under her mental command, The Hand used its X-Buster digit like a seismic drill, its power charging and discharging with incredible speed. She wasn't interested in a slow ascent; She wanted a direct line to the surface. In a downtown park, a figure known online as Mothman420 was recording a live stream on his rollerblades. He felt the ground tremble violently beneath his feet. "Whoa, what in the blazes!" he yelled, skating backward and fumbling with his camera rig. "That's some serious seismic activity, folks! Bigger than a sub-level transit line!"
Just as he spoke, the earth erupted. A blinding X-Buster blast tore open the asphalt and concrete, blowing a tremendous plume of debris, dirt, and smoke into the night air.
Charging out of the gaping hole was The Hand, its armor glinting under the city lights, with Felicity perched atop its wrist like a vengeful queen. The guardian didn't pause for a second; it was a juggernaut with a single destination. Mothman420, adrenaline overriding common sense, brought his camera up and began chasing the action on his rollerblades. He watched in stunned amazement as The Hand, guided by Felicity's singular focus, leaped off the massive heap of rubble and vanished into the night, its trajectory set squarely toward the looming, monolithic structure of CENO Tower.
A red alert went out at CENO Tower. the deafening, insistent blare of Red Alert sirens flooded the command centers of CENO Tower. Felicity's brazen surface breach hadn't gone unnoticed. In a dedicated hangar bay overlooking the city, Medusa Marla and Agent Koba watched the live feed streaming from a dozen CENO aerial drones. The footage was startlingly clear: the colossal, X-Buster-equipped Hand was leaping across the financial district, an unstoppable bio-mechanical battering ram, with Felicity perched atop it like a furious general.
A sharp, authoritative voice cut through the alarm. Commander Mya Tarq's command crackled over Marla's internal comms, leaving no room for negotiation or hesitation. "Marla, Koba, you are the closest active field agents with the required asset countermeasures," Tarq ordered. "Go and deal with this threat. Do not let that creature reach the tower perimeter."
Marla's crimson eyes narrowed, a cold smile touching her lips. The thrill of the hunt was back, and this time, the target was personal. She glanced at the massive beetle-borg next to her. "Let's move, Koba," she hissed, her bat wings snapping open, ready to launch her into the night sky to meet Felicity's desperate charge. Felicity was swooshing along the city skyline, perched atop The Hand. The colossal guardian was moving with astonishing speed, propelled by a silent mental command, eating up the distance between the park and CENO Tower. Her mind was racing, trying to form a strategy beyond the simple, burning need for retrieval. Her primary objective was the Ash/Herja Bismuth Core. After that... perhaps the data locked within the Aegis Node 7 could help her bring them back. She knew CENO might hold a clue to rebinding Ash.
Her thoughts were violently cut short.
A sudden, fierce crackling jagged beam of green lightning sliced through the air, narrowly missing The Hand's shoulder plate. The attack was swift, powerful, and utterly unmistakable.
The Hand, reacting to Felicity's instantaneous mental warning, executed violent evasive maneuvers, banking hard against a rooftop. Felicity gripped its armor plating, her wings flaring out to compensate for the sudden change in direction. She looked up. Hovering a hundred feet above and closing fast were her two new nemeses: Medusa Marla, her bat wings cutting silent, deadly arcs through the night, and below her, the enormous, armored form of War Beetle Koba, war Beetle boosters firing to keep pace. The confrontation had arrived.
X-Buster Counter
Felicity didn't hesitate. Facing two specialized threats, she had to eliminate the brute force first. Without wasting psychic energy on small summons, she channeled everything into her greatest weapon: The Hand.
"Target the beetle!" she commanded mentally.
The colossal guardian roared, its massive middle digit glowing white-hot. It unleashed a cataclysmic X-Buster Volley fire—not a single charged shot, but a rapid-fire sequence of devastating blue plasma bursts designed to saturate the target area.
Marla, quick to react, used her superior aerial maneuverability to evade the barrage, twisting and diving as the blasts screamed past her bat wings.
But Agent Koba was too massive, too slow, and traveling too close to the ground. Though his armor was tough, sheer luck—or perhaps Felicity's desperate will—guided one of the massive plasma bursts. The blast slammed into Koba's side. The impact was phenomenal; the beetle-borg was tagged, its boosters failing instantly.
The massive battle Beetle was knocked completely off its trajectory, an inert metallic wreck hurtling toward the ground. With a tremendous, earth-shaking crash, Koba smashed through the side of a massive Amazon warehouse building. A split-second later, the impact energy ignited, and the warehouse section erupted in a blinding, secondary explosion, turning a portion of the structure into a spectacular pyre.
Felicity had eliminated the ground threat and now had a clear, one-on-one battle against Medusa Marla.
The colossal explosion that consumed the Amazon warehouse elicited a primal shriek of rage from Felicity. It wasn't triumph; it was the sheer, terrifying cost of her attack. But the time for hesitation was over. She leaped from the top of The Hand, her raven wings snapping open, propelling her into an aerial battle with Medusa Marla.
Felicity immediately unleashed a volley of her energized chakrams. The violet discs sliced through the night air, tracking Marla with deadly precision before arcing back to her hands, a relentless, shimmering cycle of attack. Marla met the assault with cold fury. Her own vipers spat a barrage of focused green lasers. Felicity knew the greatest danger was the petrifying gaze. Just as a viper locked onto her, Felicity activated her defense: the Swarm Skin Cloak. A thick, buzzing cloud of ethereal energy enveloped her, acting as a chaotic, shimmering visual distortion. The cloak provided enough protection to break the viper's deadly focus, turning the beam into a harmless spray of energy across the swarm skin cloak.
But the distraction was a luxury Felicity couldn't afford. The massive, smoking factory building began to rumble violently. With a deafening shriek of torn metal and groaning concrete, the crippled form of Agent Koba—battered but functional—erupted from the ruins.
The War Beetle was now fully enraged. It ignored Felicity entirely, its singular focus returning to the most powerful asset on the field: The Hand. Koba charged, its massive pincers extended, ready to engage in a desperate wrestling match with the Hand, seeking to grapple the colossal automaton and neutralize it once and for all.
The battle had split: a desperate aerial duel between Felicity and Marla raged high above the city, while the two gigantic bio-mechanical forces of The Hand and Koba clashed violently on the rooftops below. Below, on the shattered rooftop, the colossal wrestling match had begun. Agent Koba, driven by pure rage and programmed loyalty to CENO, rushed The Hand, trying to bind its immense digits with its metallic pincers. But The Hand, guided by its new, furious commander, wasn't interested in a slow grapple.
As Koba closed the distance, attempting a low tackle, The Hand's vast bio-steel fingers tensed. It brought its thumb and index finger together, building up an impossible amount of kinetic and psychic energy between the two digits. The air crackled, the sound drowned out by the brawl.
With a blinding flash and an invisible wave of concussive force, The Hand unleashed a powerful flick.
The impact was surgical and devastating. The concentrated blast of energy hammered into Koba's chest plate. The powerful War Beetle was instantly halted, its forward momentum reversed with shocking violence. It went sailing backward like a discarded toy, an armored projectile screaming across the street below.
Koba smashed through a row of half a dozen parked buses with a continuous, grinding roar of tearing metal and glass, leaving a trail of wreckage and sparking debris before finally coming to a crumpled rest.
The Hand stood victorious, its attention now returning to the urgent aerial battle above.
High above the collapsing cityscape, Felicity pressed her attack against the momentarily distracted Marla. She didn't rely on raw power, but on precision. She hurled a rapid sequence of energized chakrams, guiding them telekinetically. The chakrams didn't fly straight; they zipped and curved, deliberately ricocheting off the metallic spires and glass facades of nearby buildings. This created a chaotic, impossible trajectory that allowed all of them to converge on Marla from multiple angles simultaneously.
The violet discs struck Medusa Marla, tearing through her prismatic scales and momentarily disrupting the flow of orgone energy through her body. The hits staggered her mid-air.
Seeing the opportunity, The Hand, below, seized the moment. It locked onto the falling Marla and emptied a light volley of X-Buster shots. These were not the cataclysmic blasts meant for Koba, but focused, rapid bursts designed to hit hard and fast.
The blasts hammered Marla, driving her backward and neutralizing her flight. She was sent tumbling and smashed through the side of a nearby office building. The impact was loud and conclusive, tearing a gaping hole in the structure's upper floors.
Felicity immediately descended, her raven wings guiding her back to the safety of The Hand's massive shoulder. She didn't look back. She knew the target was only stunned, not defeated.
"Move!" she commanded mentally.
The Hand surged forward, leaving the scene of the massive, two-stage battle behind as they tore off through the night, their immediate objective—CENO Tower—now closer than ever.
Inside one of the smoking upper floors of the office building, Medusa Marla lay amidst shattered desks and smoking carpet. Her scales were scorched, and the vipers in her hair were momentarily limp. She slowly pushed a slab of plasterboard off her chest, her crimson eyes blazing with cold fury.
"She...Shes trying to save him," Marla moaned, the sound raw with frustration and pain, referencing Felicity's bold, successful counter-attack and escape. The hunt was far from over.
Within the swirling, protective light of the Bismuth Transformation Crystal, Ash's shimmering consciousness held fast, completely shielded by the formidable Intent of Herja.
"It is time," Herja announced, her calm presence resonating through my consciousness. "This crystal holds more than just a memory; it is a repository of all that we are. It is time for the respawn."
The air around Herja began to pulse. The solid, crystalline fortress she had erected around me dissolved into pure, raw orgone energy. The Bismuth matrix itself shifted, and a bright seam of violet light opened in the crystal's structure.
From this glowing fissure, a viscous, luminous flesh began to pour forth. It wasn't grotesque; it was pure, vibrant life-stuff, knotting and weaving itself into complex bio-structure before my very eyes. The flesh coiled, extended, and solidified, rapidly taking the familiar, powerful form of Herja. Muscles coiled, skin smoothed, and the distinctive features of the Genome She-beast—the Plasma Tail, the razor-sharp talons, the bio-plasmic steel tiger stripes, the coiling strength—were instantly re-formed.
The newly formed body took a final breath, and as it did, Herja's gaze fixed upon my floating consciousness. With a silent, powerful pull, she reintegrated my being.
I snapped back into selfhood, feeling the sudden, jarring weight of flesh and bone, the thrum of her own immense power. She was no longer a floating light; she was Herja, whole and new. Her previous body had been destroyed and its core stolen, but the crystal had carried a perfect, functional "save point."
The Herja Core—the crystal—had performed one of it's functions, birthing a new, complete Herja, complete with Ash's consciousness, right inside CENO's own lab.