I took down this story a while back, because it had gone on the wrong direction from which I had originally intended. I've decided to get back to this, because I still like the universe a bit, so I guess we'll see where this goes from here.

Prologue

Sector ?, Division ?

1930 hours

"Oracle, Strike-one is in position. Awaiting confirmation."

"Copy that Strike-one, we read you clear as day. Set up and wait for the convoy."

Kristoff deployed the tripod and planted it along the building ridge, sliding a fresh ammunition magazine into the ASR1 sniper rifle. His HUD's timer was ticking fast, so he didn't have much time. "Strike-one, set up and get ready. Convoy ETA is 3 minutes." He lifted the safety on the rifle and zeroed the scope, the HUD syncing with the rifle's onboard chip to align the targeting reticule to his vision.

"What the hell is so important in that convoy?" Flynn said, checking his rifle.

"We don't know. Intel didn't tell us. We got the EMP ready?"

Charles raised the device. "It's primed. Ready to go when we are."

"Grapples are ready." Nemo tossed out the grapple guns to his teammates, of which Kristoff grabbed one and attached to his belt. "Your suits should arm then with the necessary activation codes."

"ETA 2 minutes," Kristoff reported.

"No but seriously," Flynn went on, moving up to the ridge that overlooked the street below. "To think they would have deployed a Class-X insertion team to assault a single convoy would definitely mean something, right?"

"Shut your mouth, Flynn," Nemo retorted with a wide grin. "Always the curious."

"Hey, one day I'm going to become a world-famous detective," Flynn replied. "Imagine. The great Flynn. Doing what a Class-X never good."

"Screw you man," Charles said, trying to hide a smile. "I hope you'll never get there."

"Oh, we'll see."

"ETA one minute."

"Oh will you chillax, Kristoff?" Flynn walked over and put his hand on his shoulder. "It's going to be fine."

"I don't like the looks of this." Kristoff scouted the area, looking through the scope on 8x magnification. "This doesn't make sense. It's way too quiet out here."

"What, isn't that a good thing? Y'know, I kinda like having the easier missions—"

"That's not it, Charles. Something's up."

"Hey," Nemo said suddenly, "Does anyone else feel kinda chilly? It's like the temperature got a lot colder—"

"Shh." Flynn cut in. "Get down! Convoy." Kristoff planted the remote camera on the ledge before ducking behind it, initiating his HUD's display of the camera feed. "Give me the EMP. I'll trigger it." Charles tossed the device towards him and he caught it, his fingers almost fumbling with the device as they stiffened, sparking off panic inside him before he got his fingers under control. Nemo is right. It is kinda cold.

Along the red lines that darted along the cityscape and buildings within the sector the camera picked up the pure black convoy that made a slow turn around the bend. Kristoff recognized the model: Turtle-class transport, armed with the heaviest armor ever placed on a convoy. Along its rectangular body were 4 mounted and remote-controlled turrets, all controlled by operators inside the convoy. Its thrusters maintained its levitation to the highest order of stability. In essence, it was a floating tank, minus the huge gun. Alongside it were two patrol flyers, Mosquito-class gunships, armed with enough firepower to take out a skyscraper.

Flynn has a point. What the hell is in that convoy? Nervously he thumbed the safety on and off from his rifle, taking in deep breaths to calm himself. He wasn't going to enjoy going up against one of those things. I never liked doing these kind of things. Why the hell did I sign up for this…

Silently he watched the camera feed as the Turtle moved slowly across the street. His HUD kept up the feed, but also brought up a scanned simulation of the area, projecting the effective range of the EMP. Right now, the convoy was about to move straight into it. "Wait until it gets into the middle of the sphere," he heard Charles say.

"You sure our suits are immune to this shit?" Flynn asked cautiously. "We do run on electronics too, you know."

"Our suits electronics are made to stand more than this dosage of blast," Charles replied.

"Dude," Nemo said. "This is the highest EMP charge made in human history. Are you absolutely sure you didn't miss anything?"

"Only one way to find out."

The convoy ambled its way further into the blast radius. Kristoff's hands tightened on the detonator.

"Now."

Kristoff hit the detonator, and static slammed into his eardrums, causing him to scream out. His HUD whited out, then faded to black and the crackling started all around him, mingled in with the screams of his own teammates. An electrical jolt slammed into his palm as his metal rifle was charged, forcing him to drop the weapon with a rather loud clatter. His fist clenched and slammed onto the ground, attempting to block out the static screams that filled his head.

And then there was a calm, just before he heard the most terrible screaming of metal as what he assumed must be the convoy crash into the ground below. His HUD lighted up again, and for a moment there was silence.

"Told you," Charles said.

Kristoff scrambled to his feet, picking up the sniper rifle and looking through the scope. The device had done its work indeed; the Mosquitoes were now a mangled heap of burning metal, and the Turtle wasn't going anywhere either, though Kristoff was impressed that it's main cargo hold was still intact. "Let's move." He slammed the grapple onto the ridge and disengaged, falling with the device strapped to his belt, allowing him to rappel down to the ground below. The moment he reached the floor he detached the device entirely, allowing it to fall to the ground as he raised the ASR1, pointing the barrel nervously at the Turtle.

Nothing stirred.

His teammates rappelled down next to him. "Anything?" Kristoff shook his head, rifle still raised. His teammates retrieved their own weapons as they moved towards the Turtle, cautiously taking one step at a time.

The back doors creaked open.

It didn't open much, just a tiny slit and a glimpse into the interior of the cargo hold, where sparks were flying, scattered across the room. Kristoff couldn't make out much, but he needed to make sure everything was good. "Flynn. Move up and secure the vehicle."

"You got it." His teammate moved up and towards the opening in the cargo bay, never dropping his guard as his footsteps echoed off the metal ground of the street. Nemo hefted his LMG as he took two tentative steps forward.

"Charles," Kristoff said. "Can you get a scan on the vehicle?"

"Should have done that the first time." Charles' gauntlet popped, extending the scanner from the interior of the arm guard, sweeping a beam of blue light over the wreckage. "Feed is uploading to all our HUDs." A window popped up on Kristoff's HUD, distracting him temporarily from his scope.

Something was wrong about that scan. It should have been blank. The shapes inside should have been square and boxy, like that of actual cargo.

But the shape was human.

And moving fast.

"FLYNN!"

His teammate turned around at the sound of his scream just before a shard of what appeared to be ice slammed straight through his body, the tip coated with freshly drawn blood. Flynn looked down, half in pain, half in shock. And then one more slammed through his skull, his prone form collapsing to the ground.

"NO!" Kristoff yelled as he watched the corpse slam into the floor. The doors of the Turtle burst open, and a blue form sprung from within, gushing a strange blue light from limbs.

A single thought crystallized in his head. What. The. Fuck.

The woman levitated above them, her hands glowing blue, her eyes a blinding white. Her dress splayed out behind her, flowing with the cold gust that had suddenly rushed through the street they were on, her hair a mess of platinum blonde. Her gaze tilted upwards, almost like she was expecting something, and if she was she most certainly got it. The snowstorm hit them with full force, staggering Kristoff as he struggled to maintain a straight aim. "Weapons free!" he yelled to his teammates. "WEAPONS FREE!"

Nemo opened fire first, albeit miserably off target. The figure turned, Nemo having caught her attention, but he kept up the stream of lead as he yelled in defiance. She merely frowned, directing her own stream of ice towards him. Nemo took the first shard in the chest, the next in the shoulder, and the last in his leg. He fell to one knee, crying in pain just as Charles recovered to open fire, taking advantage of the temporary but costly distraction. But it didn't work. An ice sheet materialized in front of the figure as she blasted Nemo with a potent beam of ice, knocking him to the ground, moving no longer. She almost didn't bother about Charles' own attack, simply slamming the sheet straight into him, knocking Charles out.

Kristoff's own rifle finally got a shot off. The .50 cal rifle kicked back into his shoulder as he fired, the round shattering the first ice shield conjured, but blocked by a second one conjured almost immediately. He cursed, ducking to the side as a blast of ice razed the ground he was standing on moments earlier, hitting the floor rather painfully on his arm. He'd made a tactical mistake, and he knew it. In a rather hasty attempt to get to his feet he exposed himself, and then he was restrained. Invisible but tangible tendrils grasped his torso with a vice-like grip, holding him firm as the figure swooped down towards him. Kristoff struggled to break free, but by then her hand was already strangling his neck.

"Why… are… you… here…"

In the haze of his lack of air Kristoff heard the words echo off the surrounding buildings, only to echo off within the walls of his head. Her voice… It was penetrating, omnipresent. He couldn't escape it, and neither was he going to escape death by strangulation.

In a final desperate attempt he reached behind him, retrieved his taser, and jammed the device into the figure's arm. She screamed in pain, the grip on his torso and neck released. Instinctively Kristoff kicked forward, knocking the figure backward, then delivered a solid uppercut to his adversary's chin, sending her flying a good distance away. He dropped to his knees, attempting to catch his breath, half from strangulation, half from shock.

What the bloody hell was that?

He looked at the fallen bodies of his teammates. He could do nothing for them now; he had no medical equipment to attempt to revive them. "Oracle, this is Strike-one. We've secured the cargo, but my teammates are wounded and KIA. Need a CASEVAC and cargo transport at my coordinates ASAP."

"Copy that, Strike-one, can finally oblige. Sending a Hummingbird towards your location now."

Kristoff picked up his rifle and slung it over his shoulder, attaching it to the magnetic grips on his suit. Then, as a personal matter of duty, he went over to his teammates corpses and retrieved their dogtags. When he got to Charles, his arm reached up to grab his. Charles' eyes flung open, glazed over in a combination of pain and fear.

"Shh… it's okay, Charles. CASEVAC is coming." The same eyes rolled over to gaze at Kristoff, the expression softening, and the arm went limp as he slipped back into unconsciousness.

Kristoff's own arm was trembling.

And as he sat down next to Charles' prone body he took another gaze at the figure clad in blue, now lying motionless on the floor a few feet away. He closed his eyes, trying to drive away the images and the shock and the fear and the horror that had plagued him only moments before, and decided the best way for him to do that was to sleep.

But for him, sleep never came.

"So we got her?"

"Yes sir."

"I'm impressed, to say the least. For a single Class-X to be able to somehow neutralize the greatest war machine that we have known, they are either extremely qualified, or ridiculously lucky."

"They did get the jump on her."

"Even so, we've seen her combat capabilities. For her to be downed like this is considered a feat in itself. That unit is getting medals when they get back, posthumous or not."

"What's to be done with her?"

"Well, we've done our job. We've neutralized the threat posed to us, so now we shouldn't have to worry about overly lethal terrorist attacks on our cities. For the girl, I'd say the most humane treatment we can provide to someone so outcast and isolated already, is to put her into the academy."

"What happened to her?"

"Rumours say she was bred for war. Never given a chance to feel what it was like to be a true human being, instead tortured into obedience and sent to fight from very, very young. The academy can help her regain those lost years, but I'm afraid I can't share the same optimism about her regaining her humanity."

"I do suppose we have to try."

"You're right. We do have to try. And maybe we'll get a new recruit out of this too."

"Doesn't that take the humanity part away?"

"You say it like recruits and humans are two separate things altogether."

"Is it not so, for her?"

"…"