“Chaos Massive Impact!!”

A large plane of force emerged from Phoenix’s outstretched hand, impacting the silver dragon and staggering it in the air. Nil’kin immediately followed with immensely powerful strikes of lightning, each one brightly illuminating the block as they struck and blasted the dragon’s wings and back. Amidst the sparks, Mark leaped high into the air and then slammed his fists down onto the silver beast’s back, sending it careening toward the ground. It impacted with a thunderous rumble, kicking up an incredible cloud of dust and debris — dust and debris that Kestrel readily swept away with her winds so as to maintain sightlines on the dragon.

Even in the split-second that the dragon had been obscured, however, its wounds were already rapidly healing as its constituent nanites converted any nearby matter into more of themselves. Seeing this, Pierce dashed forward and then jumped into the air, aiming to land a mach-speed kick on the beast’s head — but right as his foot would have connected, the dragon’s metallic body parted around him like liquid. He instead hit only air, his trajectory continuing onward and into the beast’s head, where its metallic body matter then fully reformed around Pierce’s body.

“Shit! Chaos Cannon!!” Phoenix shouted, her projectile aimed at the dragon’s head in an attempt to free Pierce. As soon as the beast detected the projectile, it moved to dodge; it wasn’t able to completely get out of the way, allowing the Cannon shot to scoop out the side of its scalp, but the damage wasn’t enough to free Pierce. Immediately after that, however, Mark’s halberd sliced into the dragon’s head, shearing off a large mass of nanites to expose Pierce’s side — an opening Pierce readily took advantage of to summon Hastryth and begin hacking away at the nanites around him. In response, the dragon began to reach up with its hands to cover its exposed head, but Kestrel quickly wrapped the beast’s arms in fierce winds as she fought to hold it in place. While she did, Nil’kin repeatedly blasted the dragon’s head with lightning strike after lightning strike, but even her electricity combined with Pierce’s own hacking from within weren’t enough to fight off the silver masses of nanites as they moved like liquid to fill any gaps.

Before the nanites could close in around Pierce once more, a massive spire of ice suddenly spiked out of the ground underneath the silver dragon, impaling its torso and lifting it off of the ground. Without ground contact, the beast’s rate of creating new nanomachines slowed — but it still had access to the water molecules within the ice. Even then, however, a shotgun blast of smaller ice spikes shredded through the dragon’s head, exposing more of Pierce’s body to the air. And as soon as he was exposed, a thick layer of ice formed around him and then expanded outwards, effectively blowing up the dragon’s head from the inside to allow Pierce to drop to the ground, newly freed. He immediately leaped away from the dragon before stopping to even out his breathing — though as he did, portions of his energy shields remained flared.

Nil’kin readily blasted Pierce’s flared shields with lightning to destroy the nanites that were eating away at them before turning towards the new arrival on the scene. “Finally showing your face, huh?” she snarked.

“We don’t have time for this!” Rebehka countered, passing Nil’kin an irate glance before turning toward the Earthians. “What are you all doing here?!”

“We just wanted to help…” Pierce muttered.

“Then be more careful about direct contact! Especially against a Nanocreature construct that’s larger than you!”

“Just follow our lead, and don’t be stupid!” Nil’kin declared as she began blasting the dragon with lighting once more, while Rebehka shattered her crafted ice spire with a single thought to shred the dragon from inside.

“…Slashing it is ineffective, and direct contact can trap us…” Mark muttered as he watched the two women staving off the dragon. “Is there really nothing we can do…?”

“The Nanocreatures can make more of themselves as long as they have direct contact with other matter, right?” Phoenix pointed out, “so you and Pierce can at least focus on shearing any nanites off of the surrounding ground and buildings! You might not destroy them, but you can hamper their ability to reproduce!”

“Hmph…” Pierce snorted in frustration as he glared up at the giant dragon, and then snapped his attention to the surrounding area — where silver streaks covered the entire block. “…It’s at least something! But you better not let our work go to waste!”

“I’ll try my best,” Phoenix drawled, and then gestured for Kestrel to lift them both into the air as she extended her right hand toward the dragon and shouted, “Chaos Cannon! Chaos Cannon!”

The two purple energy projectiles flew through the air toward the silver dragon, but despite being preoccupied with batting away at Rebehka, the dragon’s body parted around the Chaos Cannon projectiles just as it had earlier around Pierce. This time, however, it didn’t clamp down around the projectiles, instead allowing them to careen off into the distance. Kestrel quickly took advantage of the literal opening to begin rushing sharp winds through the hole, significantly slowing the beast’s attempts to coalesce itself and allowing Nil’kin to blast its insides multiple times with fierce electrical strikes. Eventually, instead of attempting to close the holes, the beast suddenly melted around them, turning into a massive pile of silver goo that dropped on top of Rebehka.

Just before she was trapped, the Nimalian Cryotechnic encased herself in a massive spire of ice — and then exploded the ice outwards, giving herself an opening to escape the pile of nanomachines. She caught herself in the air with a platform of ice and began extending that platform to run to the side, though as she did, two massive arms materialized out of the silver sludge and reached up to grab her. Rebehka readily slapped the arms away with more ice while Nil’kin began a rapid assault of lightning strikes on the spread-out puddle, prompting the nanomachines to coalesce once more into its dragon form to minimize its exposed surface area. As it did, it raked the ground all around it with its claws — but Mark and Pierce quickly appeared on the scene to slice the leftover silver streaks off of the ruined concrete, while Kestrel’s winds held the nanomachines aloft.

Once Pierce and Mark had backed off, Rebehka moved to impale the beast with another spire of ice from below. Its torso began to part, just as it had done a couple times prior, but as it did, Rebehka switched to creating a massive sphere of ice all around the beast. Seeing this, the dragon began lashing out with its limbs to crack the ice shell, but Rebehka readily reformed the ice after each crack and fully completed the enclosure within seconds. She then filled any free interior space with more ice, trapping the beast in a massive floating ball of ice — at which point, she began manipulating the ice to exert an extreme crushing force on the beast contained within. Nil’kin added her own electricity to the ice sphere, running a high voltage all throughout the ice to hinder the nanomachines’ ability to replace it.

Several moments passed as the two Chaotics continued in their attempts to destroy the massive dragon. The thunderous sound of ice cracking under immense physical pressure echoed down the block, and portions of the dragon’s limbs began turning a charred black as Nil’kin’s high voltage within the ice forced more current through the nanomachines than they could handle. But then, a second later — with no warning, and faster than anyone could react — a thin spire of silver metal exploded out of the ground, effortlessly blasting through the ice shell to connect with the dragon inside. As soon as the new hole was created, nanomachines began flooding out to cover the ice shell’s surface; Rebehka attempted to encase even those nanites in ice, but each time she did, another silver spire would appear out of the ground to foil her efforts.

“It keeps finding ways to escape!” Phoenix exclaimed with a scowl. “How do we stop this?!”

“The nanites must be underground, too,” Mark pointed out from the side. “And who knows how much they’ve corrupted, down there…”

“Yeah, but what’s the actual plan, here?” Pierce questioned as he appeared next to Mark and Phoenix. “We can’t just keep this up forever!”

“That was never the plan,” Nil’kin countered, still primarily focused on pumping high voltages through Rebehka’s entrapping ice while she addressed the Earthians. “You think you can contain an outbreak of this severity? Ha!”

“I’ve trapped these beasts in ice, before, but this time… this time…!” Rebehka said, her brow furrowed in frustration as she continued fruitlessly to contain the massing nanomachines. “What’s… changed?!”

“Hold up, though — what?” Pierce passed Nil’kin an incredulous look. “Didn’t you say just earlier that the only way to stop this thing is to obliterate it completely? Are we not doing that?”

“Pah!” the Dra’kis scoffed. “You thought I meant we would obliterate it? Hardly.” She then glanced to the side, where a Black Suns craft was approaching. “The plan was always to delay the beast long enough for the district to evacuate. Though waiting even this long is folly.”

“We’re evacuating? What?! But what about—?!”

“Obliterating the beast is what the orbital cannons are for. In fact, the cannons have already fired on Holres’Ket. At this point, we have less than twenty minutes before impact.”

“How did it come to this, so quickly…” Rebehka muttered.

“I told you that searching for a cure was foolish,” Nil’kin declared. “And now look at the district!”

“Hold on, that can’t be the core reason, can it?” Phoenix questioned, “an outbreak like this — I mean, those nanomachines had to come from somewhere! Are you saying that they all just spawned out of thin air when Kaoné attempted the cure, or something?”

“We don’t have time to speculate, right now,” Rebehka interjected, finally giving up her attempts to actively contain the nanomachines to instead encase the entire block in a massive chunk of ice. “…There. That should hold it off for now.”

“And we need to leave,” Nil’kin remarked as the Black Suns craft lowered to the ground nearby, while still levitating above it. Fierce streaks of fire covered the vehicle’s doorway — an incineration bath not unlike the ones found at the district gates. Nil’kin readily leaped through it, the flames washing over her shields as she landed in the vehicle’s shielded interior; Kestrel and Mark soon followed suit.

“This… is this really it?” Pierce muttered in disbelief, “it all went to shit so fast! What the fuck?”

“This can’t be normal… can it?” Phoenix mused.

“Normal — no,” Rebehka replied as she approached behind them and began ushering them into the vehicle. “But as to why this outbreak progressed so quickly, well… there’s no way to know that just yet. The only thing I can know for sure is that the district of Holres’Ket is as good as lost…”

---

*

Silver streaks of light flashed through the air, the arrows piercing through two of the metallic creatures rushing the research center. The animals staggered under the attacks, but they were — at this point — only two of many, and the rest surged forward. While Twy continued to rapidly shoot arrows with her bow, Sky and Spike both pushed forward, the former’s flames washing across the grounds while the latter used his fabricated shields as projectiles. Austin remained in the back line, using his Imperator Psychotechnism to wield his claymore from afar and slash into the oncoming hordes, while Conrad snuck around the sides of the street while invisible to get opportune sneak attacks with his glaive.

Between the five of them, Luke (who had received a rifle from the Black Suns), and the handful of other Black Suns Chaotics, they had all managed to successfully hold the line at the research center thus far. But the initial horned beast had been only a harbinger, with the hordes rapidly ramping up their attack over time; within the past five minutes, the metallic creatures had begun attempting to close in on the research center from all sides, forcing the Black Suns to spread out and cover the other streets while the Earthians locked down this one.

“There’s no end to them!” Austin exclaimed in disbelief as he recalled his sword to his hands to renew his control over it. “How are we supposed to stop this?!”

“Hate to say it, but I don’t think ‘stoppin’ it was ever an option,” Spike remarked. “All we’re doin’ is delayin’ until Kaoné can cure that cat thing!”

“Then she better cure it soon — watch out!!” Austin dove towards Spike, punching away a metallic beast just before it could clamp its jaw down on Spike’s leg. Sky immediately bathed the newly obliterated creature in flames before launching herself upwards with a blast of fire to escape a handful of flying beasts diving toward her. She then released a burst of fire all around her to stagger the metallic creatures, allowing Twy and Luke to snipe them all out of the air. As the remnants of the beasts fell to the ground, however, the remaining intact nanomachines melted together to form another whole creature that joined a full swarm en route to Sky. The Pyrotechnic was forced to focus on evasive maneuvers to avoid being overwhelmed; in an effort to relieve her sister, Twy momentarily lowered her bow to trap the creatures swarming Sky in a bubble of water — only for the nanomachines to begin using the water molecules to create more of themselves. In an attempt to remedy that, Sky quickly began to superheat the water bubble.

“Wait, no—!!” Twy started to shout, her eyes wide in alarm — but by then, Sky had already detonated the bubble of water in a cloud of steam. White water droplets filled the air, obscuring Sky, Spike, and Austin from sight… all while the steam cloud slowly adopted a silverish metallic gleam. A second later, the cloud rapidly coalesced around the three Earthian Chaotics, almost fully encasing them in the silver liquid-like material of massing nanomachines.

“I can’t move…!” Austin muttered as he attempted to move his arms, but the nanites covering his shields locked him in place. He then glanced over at Spike, who was able to resist the nanites through his overbearing strength.

“Brace yourself!” Spike warned as he drew back his fist and then slammed it down over Austin’s head. The force from the blow instantly floored Austin; he himself remained protected due to both his energy shields and simulating Spike’s durability, but the nanomachine shell that had formed around him was mostly shattered off from the impact. Just as Austin made to stand up, however, a massive wolf-like beast pounced on him — and another two lunged for Spike just as he made to help. Austin quickly summoned his claymore back to his hand and attempted to slash at the beast on top of him, but its paws held down his arms and prevented him from getting a good angle. A second later, however, a massive gash suddenly appeared on the beast’s side, followed by a massive puncture wound. An invisible force then pushed the beast to the side, followed by an unseen hand grabbing Austin’s own and yanking him to his feet.

“You okay?” came Conrad’s voice, though the man himself remained completely invisible.

“I think…” Austin responded apprehensively, turning to look out over the block. With aid from Twy’s arrows and Sky’s flames, Spike had freed himself from the metallic beasts piling on top of him… but charging down the street were dozens more, a handful of them as large as the massive horned beast that had started the attack.

“Shit, we can’t hold this…” Luke muttered, though continued to fire his rifle — his each and every shot finding its mark on a creature’s head or chest. He then raised his voice to address the other Earthians, shouting, “we can’t hold this any longer! Pull back—!“

Just as the words left Luke’s mouth, the street itself under the approaching hordes leaped into the air and began rolling backwards like a massive rug, catching the metallic beasts and forcing them back. The Earthians watched in confused awe as a shield generator then manifested in front of them, raising a large energy barrier to block the creatures from approaching any closer.

“It looks like I finished just in time…”

“Dean…” Luke commented, turning around as Kaoné alighted on the ground behind him — all while cradling a familiar feline creature. “I take it that was you?” the Captain questioned, gesturing toward the street and shield generator.

“Yes…” Kaoné responded warily, looking over each of the Earthians before turning towards Petro and the other Black Suns soldiers, who were rapidly approaching.

“Dean Densalin! You’re out!” Petro exclaimed, “thanks for the assist! As for the sita…” His gaze dropped to the creature in Kaoné’s arms — which, conspicuously, was wearing a small set of powered armor. “Was the procedure a success?”

Kaoné nodded. “It was. I rescued your monitoring equipment, as well, but I’m not sure how long I can protect it in these circumstances…”

“You just single-handedly dealt with an entire fuckin’ army of monsters!” Spike remarked incredulously. “With you around, dealin’ with the rest of this shit should be a piece of cake!”

“It’s too late for that,” Petro declared. “The moment we determined this was a Critical Infection Incident, we engaged our last resort protocols.”

“…Which means…?” Austin prompted uneasily.

“It means that an orbital strike is en route as we speak,” the Colonel replied. “Once those rounds have been fired, they can’t be stopped. And at this point, we have…” He paused to look at something on his invisible AR display, and then up at an approaching shuttle. “…Just a few minutes to leave, if that.”

“A few minutes?!” Sky exclaimed.

“So this really was a Critical Infection…” Kaoné muttered.

“How did things get so bad, so quickly?” Twy questioned.

“I don’t know, but we can discuss that once we’re in the air,” Petro insisted as the shuttle lowered to the ground nearby, its incineration flames pumping full blast over its entrance door. “Everyone in!”

“Go, go!” Luke urged, watching as Austin, Spike, Sky, and Conrad each leaped into the shuttle alongside the Suns. He jumped in after them, followed closely by Petro and then Kaoné, who yanked the shielded Chaotic Monitoring equipment along with her as the shuttle began lifting into the air.

“Hmph. So you survived, after all.”

“Chaos Knight…” Petro muttered, turning away from the shuttle’s bay doors to look at Nil’kin — and then at Rebehka, Pierce, Phoenix, Kestrel, and Mark, who all shared the shuttle. “…I see you all made it out just fine.”

“It’s too early to say that, sir!” shouted the shuttle pilot from the front. “Everyone, brace yourselves! This is gonna be tight!”

“What are you—? Ngh—!” Austin began to ask, only to be knocked off his feet as the shuttle suddenly accelerated into a climb. As the shuttle’s bay door closed, the ruins of Holres’Ket — as well as the scars of recent battle damage — could be seen shrinking with distance. And then, before the door could close completely, the thunderous roar of a monumental explosion filled the air, accompanied by a bright flash of light through the shuttle’s closing door. Kaoné quickly fabricated thick sound-proofing to dampen the deafening sound, but the shuttle itself still rocked under the shockwaves — and then twice more, as two more orbital rounds slammed into the grounds of Holres’Ket.

“Whoa-ho!” Luke whooped as the shuttle rocked under turbulence that would have downed any commercial airliner. “…Now that sure was somethin’!”

“Oh my god… oh my god…” Twy grasped at her chest, attempting to slow her panicked breathing as the shuttle began to level out.

“That was… ugh…” Conrad groaned in discomfort. “Let’s… never do that again.”

“There is plenty about this situation that I’d like to not do again, but the orbital bombardment is not one of them,” Nil’kin declared. “It was an objectively necessary measure.”

“Those rounds still came in a little hot, didn’t they?” Rebehka questioned as she glanced at Petro. “I thought we had another few minutes.”

Petro returned the glance before releasing a deep sigh. “…I share many of your questions, Dean Tchiréon,” he eventually replied. “What happened today… none of it should have happened.”

“Indeed,” Nil’kin asserted. “If you had simply bombarded the district from the start and just rebuilt the whole thing, this situation would never have happened! You can believe that’s going in my inspection report!”

“That’s not what I meant… but we can save that for the postmortem,” Petro responded levelly, though it was clear from his frustrated expression that he was holding back. “I only request that you hold off on submitting your report until we can complete the postmortem, Chaos Knight.”

“I’ll grant you that, but only because I’d like to see what kind of excuses the Black Suns come up with.”

“There’s no denying that what happened here is bad, though…” Phoenix commented. “And we really don’t know how it happened so fast?”

“As I said… we’ll have to save these questions for the following investigation,” Petro said. He then shifted his attention to Kaoné, and the feline she was still cradling in her arms. “But at least it wasn’t for nothing.”

“…Was the cure a success, then?” Rebehka questioned.

Kaoné nodded. “We’ll need a proper sweep with a nanite sensor to be sure… but it would seem that, yes, I managed to remove all of the nanomachines within the poor animal’s body.”

“That’s great!” Mark commented with a faint smile.

“Pah,” Nil’kin scoffed. “This all started because of that cure attempt. Colonel, do you really think sacrificing an entire district was worth the life of this one… useless feline?”

“I gotta say, it does seem like kind of a high price…” Austin muttered.

“Something else must have gone wrong along the way,” Petro insisted. “Our captured specimens grew aggressive when Dean Densalin began the procedure, that much is true. But that aggression can’t explain how the nanomachines escaped our containment measures, which were explicitly designed to handle this kind of aggression.”

“Already spinning up excuses, I see,” Nil’kin retorted.

“No, I’m inclined to agree with him,” Rebehka countered. “The metallic infection is incredibly dangerous, there’s no doubt about that. But I’ve never once seen a containment facility lose control of a situation this quickly without some manner of outside interference.”

“Like when the Bleeders attacked your Academy?” Sky suggested.

Rebehka nodded. “Yes, like that. Colonel, do you have any idea what that outside interference could’ve been?”

Petro remained silent for a couple moments, as if in thought. Eventually, he replied, “…I have a couple of ideas, but at the moment, they’re no better than speculation — and thus, don’t bear voicing.”

“Even if we assume foul play, the increased aggression itself was still caused by your cure attempt,” Nil’kin declared. “Don’t try to avoid that, Colonel. This district was lost due to your selfish desire to save one worthless animal!”

“No life is worthless, Chaos Knight,” Petro countered. “This cure, and the information we’ll have gained from it, will be incredibly valuable in fighting off the Nanocreatures in the future. We may have lost Holres’Ket in the process, which will certainly set us back… but if I woke up this morning, with all the knowledge of what happened today, then I would still do it again. Because this is the best path to saving as many people as possible in the future.”

“’The road to hell is paved with good intentions’…” Twy warily quoted.

“As if you couldn’t say the same about Ms. Bomb Everything From Orbit,” Pierce retorted.

“You deride me now,” Nil’kin snapped, “but the Suns could’ve saved themselves a lot of time, money, and energy if they had just started with a bombardment!”

“Regardless of what could have been done, what’s happened today is over,” Kaoné stated, fixing Nil’kin with a glance before slowly sweeping her gaze across everyone in the shuttle. “…But what we can say is that we’ve cured another animal, and made more progress in, hopefully, developing a cure. Everything aside from that, however, will have to wait for later — there’s little to be gained from arguing right now. So let’s just rest until we reach the space station, okay? After what happened today, I think we’ve all earned it.”

“Can’t argue with rest,” Conrad remarked as he made himself comfortable in one of the shuttle’s seats.

“And just like that, everything ends as quickly as it started…” Austin muttered to himself as the shuttle grew quiet, with everyone withdrawing into their own thoughts while awaiting their arrival at the space station in orbit. “And this isn’t even the worst that the Nanocreatures have. What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?…”