Lightfoot dragged Soundwave behind her as they hurried to the danger zone. It was sheer luck, or maybe misfortune depending on how she thought about it, that she and her partners were travelling south on business when the alert came. An ongoing Unfettered attack was as rare as they came, and the Protectorate was scrambling all of its nearby assets along with the National Guard.

Her Alteration allowed her to absorb, store, and redirect momentum, which was a bit distinct from kinetic energy in general. Almost the same, but thematically different? That was how the eggheads termed it back in the Research Division. Also, while kinetic energy mostly refers to something physical, momentum can sometimes refer to metaphysical things. Of course, she didn’t know how to store said metaphysical momentum so she’d mostly been stuck with what physics described. At least, that was until a few weeks ago. 

She frowned at the thought, and a moment later, wondered why she was getting distracted. She was moving at speeds that would be lethal should she lose her footing, or if she missed the proper timing to absorb and release momentum. 

Behind her, Soundwave stood on a hoverboard, secured by a line crafted by the third member of their team, Weavemaster. The board was about a pace long, and ten inches wide, and a couple of inches thick. It was something one of the tinkers in the Protectorate built for field agents. It also replaced the van the duo used to travel incognito. Well, the board and Lightfoot running wasn’t exactly subtle, but it allowed them to travel to critical sites at thrice the speed they used to before. 

Her thoughts wandered, and she used her Alteration to absorb them and recenter herself. 

Calm and focus.

It was something she was normally short of, but was dearly needed now. The Unfettered… It was a good thing that they were only the auxiliary team to handle those monsters. She didn’t think they’d be a match with just the two of them. Weavemaster wasn’t here. The goof was embroiled in a photoshoot, again. She wondered if he was really committed to being a hero or if it was just a side job, a hobby that he indulged in every now and then. She’d always wanted to help, ever since her body Altered. She could barely remember her trigger, just that her mind purged the event since it happened when she was barely pubescent. 

Wheee Whooo Wheee Whooo!

Sirens, from both police, national guard, and fire engines. They caught up to the lead responders and pulled ahead of them a minute later. She glanced at the map function of her HUD and determined that they would need to turn into the road three longstrides away. Her new gear was courtesy of the Protectorate, though that was a more recent thing, owed to the latest restructuring. 

“We’re coming in hot,” Soundwave said. 

The road was in zigzags but changes in elevation weren’t much of an issue for Lightfoot. Soon enough, they entered a valley with a lake in the middle of it. She spotted something glowing in the distance, about thirty or so paces above the ground. That shimmering thing darted to the ground, made something go poof, then it returned to the sky. 

“What is that?” she muttered. 

“No idea. Think it’s a new Unfettered thing?” 

“No, otherwise we’d have been informed.” 

Boom!

A vapour cone and a sonic boom erupted above them, then whatever created it slammed into the hillside. 

“That was Shielder, engaging Pride’s lionesses,” Soundwave said. “There are three more in the vicinity.” 

“Effing hells,” Lightfoot swore. 

“We have to intercept them before they reach the lakeside,” Soundwave said. “Wait! Who’s that?” 

“Huh?” 

But they were moving too fast and Soundwave shrugged. “Unimportant for now. Continue please.”

A few seconds later, they emerged at the valley floor, and another few seconds after, they were amidst the survivors. It was bad. There were at least ten dead people, and the ones left were in tears. 

“Everyone, come towards me! We’ll evacuate you from the battlezone!” Soundwave yelled and Lightfoot knew that his voice wouldn’t reach the Pride and would be confined to the immediate vicinity. He probably made sure to temper the volume so that the staffers wouldn’t startle. 

Lightfoot, upon stopping, absorbed all of the momentum she used. She retrieved an expanding hovercart that could comfortably carry three or four people, then checked the survivors. None were in critical health, so she wouldn’t have to try and rush them to an ambulance…

“Incoming!” Soundwave yelled and pointed, then he screamed towards a rushing lioness, but his voice was so focused that Lightfoot couldn’t even hear anything. The blast hit the lioness and threw it back a couple of paces, but it dug its claws at the ground and resisted. When Soundwave drew a breath, the humanoid cat, with impeccable timing, lunged at him. But Lightfoot had not been idle. She rammed the lioness in mid leap, and transferred half a dozen instances of momentum she gathered from abrupt direction changes. The cat flew a hundred paces off, but in feline fashion, twisted around as it fell and landed on its feet. 

Soundwave screamed again, and this time, Lightfoot could see the vibrations focus so that there was a visible distortion in the air. But somehow, the lioness dodged and the blast hit a tree which snapped it in twain. 

Lightfoot bounced left to right, gathering and storing momentum as she did. The lioness rushed right at them, and she prepared to ram it again. It looked uninjured, which was bad news. 

“Desperately need back up!” she yelled into her receiver. 

“Twenty seconds,” their mission support said, but his voice was trembling.

“We don’t have—!” She cut off as the lioness rushed them, but dodged at the last minute. Soundwave’s blast missed again, but instead of releasing control, he managed to turn it right around. It hit the lioness on the back and knocked it forward, while she drew a collapsible baton and used it to transfer momentum into the thing’s guts. The metal dug into the fur, then snapped as the force exceeded its tolerance. The metal tip remained embedded in the lioness’ fur, but as soon as it recovered from its tumble, the steel tip fell off and revealed the monster unscathed.

The lioness growled and hissed, then dug its heels into the soft ground, then sprung. Lightfoot couldn’t counter and dodged out of the way, using stored momentum to accelerate. Soundwave wasn’t so lucky. The lioness’ claws tore into his armoured forearm and came off with a spray of blood. 

“Argh!” Soundwave’s pained scream blasted the cat backwards, but did little else. The lioness was persistent and continued to approach, but both of them were nearing the end of their resources. Soundwave looked pale, and had blood dripping from the side of his mouth. Lightfoot’s store of momentum was down to two instances, though she rebuilt them by bouncing back and forth. Unfortunately, she couldn’t build up a good stockpile that folded in multiple instances like she did during the trip here.

Ratatat-tatat!

The lioness dodged the rain of bullets from the charging armoured transport. The heavy machine gun on the roof was manned, but the shooter was hidden underneath a metal dome. The bullets were also tracer rounds and the gunner tracked the lionesses’ evasive maneuvers until he or she managed to draw a bead and actually hit the thing. Unfortunately, the only thing it did was bounce the bullets off its fur, and once it knew that the armoured transport wasn’t a threat, it moved to neutralise it anyway. 

Bam!

Crunch!

The lioness tore up the armour plates and crumpled the transport. Then it shoved it to its side, growled, then started tearing at the door. 

Lightfoot slammed into its side and knocked it flying. From the corner of vision, she saw the survivors were being evacuated through transport trucks, and she could see another lioness being fended off by the Protectorate’s star hero, Shielder. The man simply slammed into the feline humanoid and pinned it there using his force tech. Actually, he occupied another two lionesses at the moment. 

But the one they were tying down simply didn’t want to stay that way. It rolled to its feet and charged towards the truck, and Lightfoot was still depleted. Soundwave’s screams were having less of an effect, even though those cat ears should have been more sensitive to loud noises. There was little doubt in Lightfoot’s mind that had she been the target, her eardrums would have burst, and she might possibly have a permanently crippling injury. The lioness shrugged off the blows, either hers or Soundwave’s with humiliating ease. 

Just as the lioness recovered from its impromptu flight, and just before it managed to charge back into the fray, a flash of light struck it. 

To Lightfoot and Soundwave’s surprise, the lioness’ fur burst into flame, and a few seconds later, it turned to ashes. 

“What happened?” she couldn’t help but ask. Her eyes tracked the light source, but it moved away from them and hovered a dozen paces or so above the ground. 

“Forget that for now and keep watch,” Soundwave said, and Lightfoot nodded. The evacuation was going well, and there was no sign of another lioness. She looked up every now and then. The thing that saved them was circling the area, and she couldn’t help but try to make it out. She only stole glances, however, and kept most of her attention on the vicinity. Another few minutes later and the evacuation was done. 

“We have to escort,” Soundwave said. 

Lightfoot took one last glance at the floating object, which couldn’t be more than a few inches long, and bowed in thanks. She pursed her lips and thought that the thing looked and felt familiar, but she couldn’t quite put a finger on it. She certainly hadn’t seen anything like it before, but her instincts still twitched. Nevertheless, there was nothing to be done, and she left with Soundwave, following the truck as it escaped the active battlefield. 

____________

Yuriko absently noted the arrival of the Protectorate as well as the familiar heroes. She wondered idly why Jeremiah and Haven, Soundwave and Lightfoot, didn’t contact her again after she visited Protectorate HQ some weeks ago. 

‘But didn’t Weavemaster, Lance Hiller, forget about me?’ she thought to herself, then shook her head. It was a mystery she couldn’t afford to ponder at the moment. 

Her true body had studied Fri’Avgi’s method and she had a reasonable chance of copying it with her incarnation body. She hadn’t tested how to locate Scarlett’s location, but she was just about ready now. 

She reviewed the vocal, somatic, and runescript components of True Connection, then gathered her Animus. She had no access to the amounts of Elemental Energy she needed to cast the spell, but Animus, being based on Chaos, was a viable replacement. She pushed her true body into the dreamscape, touched the connecting thread between herself and Scarlett, then began Arcana Weaving in her incarnation body. Animus was pulled from her reserves and she carefully used it to shape the spell. Somatic and runescript components, along with her voice, twisted and changed the energy, and linked them into a powerful reality bending effect. 

The spell touched upon the connecting thread between them, and reached out towards her friend. Unfortunately, Scarlett was unconscious, but thankfully, all Yuriko needed was bearing. She pinpointed it, and while she couldn’t really write down the coordinates of the sublayer or interstitial space, she could feel it. And more importantly, she could cut her way to it!

She drew a couple of strands of Swordlight, infused them into an Invisible Edge, and slashed down with her hand. No, it wasn’t Invisible Edge anymore, considering the attack as clearly visible, and the fact that it wasn’t meant to attack someone, but rather, she cut right through the canvas of reality, but in such a way that it would heal itself quickly enough. 

She pulled the gap open with her Anima, then stepped through.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep