Unstoppable

An Endless Waltz Side Story

By Daishi Prime

Author's Note: this story was inspired by and plotted to the E.S. Posthumus song Unstoppable, and an AMV set to that piece called 'Lolitech Mk II'.

00000

They stepped out onto the police station's roof already in their armor, staves in hand, with masks dangling from their belts. Looking up into the sky, it was easy to see the majority of the Guard, concentrated in six or seven groups, mostly still over the bay. The sheer power being thrown around in the primary battle was intimidating, buster spells and fluorescing shields lighting up the sky, occasionally punctuated by missile detonations and flickers of cannon fire.

"Mother is not there," Saeryn said, "She is in overwatch, fighting the Guard who scattered." She pointed off to the east, past Central Park, "That way."

Rhys looked, and could make out several figures scattered through the air over New York, exchanging spells. "You're certain?"

"I can locate Mother and Father anywhere, you know that," Saeryn said, giving her an insulted look.

Rhys shrugged, "Sorry, nerves."

Saeryn's grimace shifted and she shrugged, but reached out to pat Rhys' shoulder. "So am I. But Mother is in more danger than the others, and we are here."

"We're not supposed to be," Rhys replied, then grinned weakly and snarked, "Senpai will be so proud. We're finally breaking rules without her making us."

Saeryn sniffed at that, "I am unconcerned with her opinion of us. But we need to go. Ready?"

Rhys took a deep breath, then lifted the mask off her belt and settled it over her face. The world went dark for a moment, then the magic adhered the mask to her face and made it transparent. "Ready," she replied, sounding odd through the mask's sonics.

Saeryn donned her own mask, then nodded. "Let us go." Her voice came out strangely, like a chorus was speaking at once. It was a deliberate bit of disguise worked into the masks – neither of them wanted anyone to recognize them.

Rhys took off after her sister, moving automatically to above and behind, Temujin loosely held in her right hand. There was a hollow feeling in her stomach, fear and nerves singing through her. They were going to get in so much trouble over this, and it might not work, might not even be necessary. But Mother was here, in New York, and the two of them had seen the casualty figures for the wolf-packs in Hong Kong. Father was safe enough, in an office far away from New York, but Mother was not safe, and they could change that, would change that.

00000

Jessica Marterosian swore softly as Halford fell, the anger and excitement of battle fading further to leave fear in its wake. She and Halford had come to the aid of two other mages of the True Circles trying to fight this one heretic mage. Now three of their four were down, and she was the only functional mage left to fight him. None of Hughes' pet heretics were moving to assist, the only ones down at low-level were all up north, covering the Army fighting the Seed.

I have to stop him. If even one of these bastards gets past us to the wolf-packs in the subways, they'll wreak havoc. She already had her strike spell in process, and as the heretic turned from Halford's tumbling form, she completed it, held out both hands cupped towards him, and let loose. No shouting or warnings, just the unadulterated fury of a lightning bolt. Zeus Fury was one of the more effective spells against the heretics, so long as it could punch through their shields. It was not, quite, a true lightning bolt, and unlike Judgment of the Fallen, it could be stopped by regular shields, but if it was not stopped, it was devastatingly effective.

It took shields to stop it, powerful shields, and while the heretic was busy with those, Jessica took the opportunity to fall back to look for backup. The strike spell shook her and her target, the range was so close, but she was fully prepared and, as he was surrounded in a coruscating burst of light, she headed for the buildings and, hopefully, some friendly troops. She might despise the Black Dogs for what their original mission was, but she needed backup and some of them were supposed to be somewhere around here. Even regular troops with some heavy weapons could distract the heretic for her.

She was not fast enough. She dropped altitude and ducked behind a building, only for the damned heretic to punch a strike spell through the building's corner. She had to stop short to avoid the shot, and that gave him time to dive around the far side of the building, cutting her off. She saw the power in his hands and drew on her wolf-pack to form a shield, angling it away from the building so she could use the blast as cover to enter the building and use the structure to cover her escape.

Then he exploded, disappearing in a yellow flash of light and crash of thunder. For a split second Jessica thought he really had exploded, that his spell had backfired, but then he crashed out of the cloud into the building, shattering his way through the wall next to a window. A figure flickered into being between Jessica and the heretic, clad in a red and blue trimmed white suit with a blank white face-mask. "Mrs. Marterosian," it intoned, voice oddly doubled and echoing, "Your talents would be more useful elsewhere. Perhaps against the Seed? We will handle this one."

A glance to her left showed another person, another of Hughes' pet heretics, in an identical outfit. Both of them were holding short silver-chased rods, capped with a crystal cylinder just ahead of what looked like a quartet of bullet casings. They had the same long black hair, the same armor, the same weapons… it hit her like a thunderbolt, their size, their uniformity, their presence here of all places… "Saeryn? Rhys? My roses?" It felt like someone – like Shiraz – had just stabbed her in the gut. Her worst fears in leaving her girls, and it was coming true just as she had feared, her babies corrupted and damned…

The one in front of her hesitated, a hand out, but the one further back snapped, "Not now, Mother. You are wrong, but it is more important that you live long enough to realize it than that we argue this now. Go. Support the Dogs as the plan called for you to. We will handle this one."

As the heretic blasted out the side of the building, shock and pain caused her to fall away, leaving the fight. It was all she could do to hold on to the wolf-pack, staring up as her girls, her precious little girls, proved just how irredeemably lost they were.

00000

'Why did you call her Mother?'

'She figured it out,' Saeryn replied, 'and we never could lie to her. Hiding it from her was a slim hope, Rhys, you know that. We need to hide it from Father and Hughes, not from Mother. Watch left, he's faking the dive.'

Rhys checked her rightward motion and snapped up a shield to her left in time to block the Guard's snap-shot buster. Her answering Zeus Buster – so wonderfully easy with Temujin's support – was blocked just as easily, but checked his motion, and then Saeryn's Ballistae slammed into his shield from the other direction.

He rolled away as his shield shattered, and tried to retreat, so Rhys rushed him while Saeryn hit him with a flash-blind spell, a simple burst of light to blind and distract him. He did not fall for that, but did not try to face Rhys either. Instead he dove back into the building, and a series of small detonations sounded inside. 'He's going through the building to get away,' Rhys told Saeryn.

'Or to get a new angle to attack from,' her sister replied, 'be careful, he is a true heretic soldier.'

Sure enough, he burst out of the building four floors down, sending a hail of bolts at Rhys. Saeryn's warning to be wary was enough, and Rhys blocked the shots with a wide shield and dropped straight towards him. He dropped towards the street level, and seemed surprised when both girls followed him, shield shattering under Rhys' Zeus Buster, then deflecting Temujin with a quick but small shield on his hand. Two more swings were deflected, then Rhys lunged sideways. Behind her, Saeryn's Ballistae, a focused buster spell designed for penetrating shields, fired at near point-blank range, smashing through the heretic's shield and detonating against him.

For just a second, Rhys thought they had him. She had helped Saeryn with Ballistae just as Saeryn had helped her with her Zeus Buster. Neither of them could match Signum-sensei, or the newcomers from space, but Ballistae had broken through Laura's shields and surprised her, so it had to be more than enough for some random heretic.

That second of hesitation cost her dearly, as the Guard's retaliatory attack was aimed solely at her. Power like fire washed over her, flowing around Temujin's automatic planar shield, and only her barrier jacket saved her from being scoured. Then something else came through the flames and exploded just against her barrier jacket, launching her into a concrete wall.

00000

Saeryn saw the second strike coming, and tried to interpose a shield, but her timing was just off. Her shield formed a second behind the buster, and Rhys was crushed into the concrete side of a building, disappearing in a blast of debris that cascaded down the façade towards the street ten or twelve floors down.

The emotions that exploded through her then were hard to categorize, hard to understand. Pain at the loss of her sister, fear for her sister and what might happen to herself, shock at the ease with which the situation had reversed, all of it buried beneath a burning rage at the thing that had dared harm her sister.

Rage clouded her vision but powered her spells, and she crafted and fired a Ballistae faster than she had ever managed, pouring power into it such that it almost destabilized. It slammed the bastard back, just shy of hitting the building they had been fighting around again. His shield was capable of absorbing most of the attack and he whipped something bright and small and fast at her.

Saeryn had followed her Ballistae in, however, and rolled around the counter-attack to slam Alexander into his torso. His shield shattered under the impact, sending him sprawling momentarily, and Saeryn tried to create another Ballistae, only for the heretic to recover faster than she expected. He snarled something, made an odd cupping-throwing gesture with one hand, and a wave of blue crashed over her. It scoured away at her barrier jacket, and something snatched at her left ear as she frantically built a shield that would surround her.

That was half solid when the Guard mage came through the whirling blue and fired something from an open hand at point-blank range. It slammed into and then through her nascent shield, grabbed her by her armor's collar, and wrenched her around. She felt the power accelerating his throw, moving him just fast enough to avoid her clumsy attempt to strike him with Alexander, and then she was flying free, but out of control, for a brief second.

Then a building struck her in the back, and the world turned a fuzzy grey for a few seconds, her ears roaring.

00000

Jessica watched her second child in half a minute get blasted into a building, and experienced an epiphany, a moment of perfect clarity. Her little Roses were fallen, lost to her so many times over, but they were still her Roses, still her Saeryn and Rhys. She could no more abandon them to their fates than she could stop breathing. She could no more abandon her little girls than she could give up the magic that gave her purpose, or the Circles that made her purpose righteous. And if they had any hope at all, if she had any chance of saving them from their father, they had to be alive to be saved.

Reaching for her Circle once again, drawing on their combined might, she stretched out a hand at the Atlantean. "Breacher." The spell was not one of her more familiar ones, since there were few shields strong enough to require it, usually. But she knew it, had gotten a lot of practice with it recently, and it shaped and released with ease. A sharpened stake of light leapt from her hand to spear through the heretic. He waved a hand to create a shield, which Breacher crashed through, only for the spell to destabilize and, once it hit the pattern of shields against his uniform, dissipate in a blast.

Jessica followed that up with another Zeus Fury, a more general Cannonball, and then had to build her own shield abruptly. The heretic was a little slower than he had been, and he was favoring his right side where one of her Roses had hit him with something. But he was still fast, still powerful. He showed no sign of tiredness, no sign of waning reserves. For a ten or fifteen seconds, she unleashed all the formidable powers at her command, pushed her supporting circle to its limit. But he weathered the storm, and his counter was to detonate a shield in her face at the first slacking of her assault.

The surprise of it was two-fold. First, she had not expected a defense to detonate. Shields shattered or dissipated, they did not normally explode. The second was, she had not realized how close he was, not consciously, and he was only a couple meters from her when his shield exploded. The blast sent her tumbling, and she only just got her feet around before she fetched up against the building he had blasted his way through.

She did not have time to formulate a counter strike of her own, though. She was gathering the power for one, as was he, when from behind him an echoing shout snatched her attention.

"Zeus…"

"… Ballistae!"

A moment later, a bolt of pure power wrapped in a lightning bolt struck the heretic, fit to make Jennifer's prized Zeus Fury look like a bottle-rocket.

00000

Freeing herself from the rubble of her impact had been more difficult than Rhys expected, and getting back out of the building and into the fight more time-consuming. The fact that Saeryn hit the same building just a floor higher and a few windows over, as Rhys was about to clear the wall, delayed her again.

Like her sister, the heretic's momentary victory filled Rhys with rage, but her first reaction, ever and always, was to make sure Saeryn was all right. So she lifted sideways and hefted Saeryn out of her smaller impact crater. Saeryn did not say a word, simply seized Rhys' hand tightly, and Rhys grinned behind her mask at the feel of her sister's power pooling between them. One cartridge each discharged, and the massive rush of wild energy into the merge cleared Rhys' mind and demanded use.

Wrapping Saeryn's Ballistae in her Zeus Buster was new, something Rhys came up with on the fly, but it fit together perfectly. With both of them contributing equally to both spells, in power and will, the merger was instinctive, and the amplified power was intoxicating. The merger of their power, enhanced by their devices and the year's lessons, lead to a greater merger. Thoughts flowed back and forth between them, still separate, but fast and smooth and clear.

Rhys lunged forward in the Zeus Ballistae's wake, keeping hold of Saeryn's hand to maintain their merge. Saeryn kept pace with her, their mutual flight spells rolling them into line, and Rhys set Temujin, in her left hand, over her right shoulder. The heretic was recovering his balance, and raised a wide-area shield, but Rhys expected that. She slammed Temujin into the shield, channeling left-over power from their cartridges into the blow. It cracked the shield, but what broke that shield was Saeryn, using Rhys as a fulcrum, slamming Alexander into it a moment later.

Using Saeryn as her own lever, Rhys swung on the Guard mage. He got an arm up to block Temujin, but the disc-shields there shattered and there was a dull snapping sound. As Temujin rebounded, Rhys saw an odd angle in his arm. That made her feel a little queasy, but there was no time to dwell. Saeryn did not repeat a physical attack, but rapid-fired three Zippers around Rhys' rebound. Those exploded against his last-ditch shields, but hammered him back and distracted him.

Rhys charged another Zeus Buster, but held onto it, the crackling energies floating just off Temujuin's head. When Saeryn's last Zipper struck, Saeryn swung Rhys forward, and Rhys rammed Temujin into the heretic's shields. The buster exploded, back-blast washing over Rhys, but Saeryn shielded her from that. A second later, Temujin crashed into the mage himself, lacking in power but encountering no defense other than the man's uniform.

He grunted with the impact, folding up around the head of her device. But Rhys had expected him to be thrown into the building, expected him to be incapacitated. Instead, he grabbed Temujin and tried to grab her, as Saeryn pivoted her out of his reach. Rhys tried to hold onto her device and her sister, but the heretic twisted away as Saeryn's Alexander struck him in the back, bouncing off the last-ditch shields again. That impact did send him tumbling away, but he took Temujin with him, and Rhys panicked. She lost her amplified power, and the abrupt difference between her strength and Saeryn's destabilized their link. She had to break it, to protect Saeryn, and lost her flight spell and barrier jacket all at once, suddenly dropping. Only Saeryn's abruptly tightened grip on her hand kept her from falling all the way to the street.

The heretic recovered first, staggering out of the building Saeryn had sent him into. He was still folded over, holding his stomach and Temujin, but the look in his eyes was pure murder. He raised his right hand, gathering power before his palm, and Saeryn shifted between him and Rhys, throwing up a shield and backing towards the building they had both hit…

Only to pause as a black shape appeared behind the heretic in an almost vertical whirl, and a black-armored foot crashed down onto his right shoulder. The heretic plummeted down from the blow, rotating to launch his half-formed attack up. The newcomer flowed around the strike, rolling downwards and firing a steady drumbeat of Zippers as she resolved into Laura. The heretic tried to dodge back into the building, but the change of direction let Laura catch up to him. She punched him once in the face, then her open palm slammed into his chest hard enough to ram him into the building façade. White lines of runes spread from her hand, and a moment later he was bound.

Almost before she consciously recognized Laura, Rhys relaxed. The speed and fury of the attack told her who it had to be, and her panic vanished as soon as it had appeared. Then Laura turned from her prisoner, as the Academy teleported him out to a holding cell. Laura had Temujin in hand, and flipped the device a couple times, as she floated up to the twins, frowning. Rhys took a moment to glance down, and found their mother rising cautiously towards them.

She looked back to Laura, and stretched out her hand for Temujin. But Laura stopped two meters distant, and her frown intensified. Then she said, "I'm very disappointed. Riko-chan… pull the first-years, the twins broke their word."

Rhys lost her breath at that, shocked and hurt, but Saeryn shouted, "Wait! We had to…"

Before she could finish her protest, the teleport took hold, and the world washed out in white. A second later, they were in Workroom Four, with their classmates. Didier almost struck a shield-cushioned wall, before tumbling to the ground. He managed to avoid landing on the injured man he had been transporting, but was not in much better shape himself, the teleport having broken his link to the first-years' wolf-pack.

Saeryn snarled wordlessly, then turned away from their classmates and dropped to the ground to hug Rhys. "Mother is safe," she whispered, "She'll be safe enough, now. She has to be."

Rhys was already quite well aware of that. The reason for her shock, her immobility, was more immediate. "She kept him."

Saeryn paused, "What?"

"Senpai… she kept Temujin."

"Ugghh, what happened," Mercedes said, standing shakily out of the circle of other first-years.

"They don't need to know," Saeryn whispered.

That hope was shattered as the workroom door opened. A paramedic, accompanied by the Volunteer Reian, came in, and while the two of them rushed to help Didier and his injured man, a screen flickered into being. Noriko was frowning out of it. She stared at the twins for a second, then shook her head. "I'm sorry, everyone, but I had to pull you out. The twins abandoned their post, and we couldn't leave you uncovered. Head on over to the dorms, Mrs. Kobayashi has some hot food waiting. I'll get some screens set up in the cafeteria, so you can keep up with everything."

Everyone turned to stare at them, questions and judgment and anger in their eyes. Rhys almost protested, almost said something to defend herself and her sister. But it would make no difference. It never did, when others turned against them. "Come, Rhys," Saeryn said in Latin as she stood, pulling Rhys up, "let's go get cleaned up. Mother is safe, we saw to that, our purpose in New York is done."

Rhys followed her sister, nodding. But she could still not move past the fact that Laura had kept Temujin. She had to wonder, after the look on Laura's face, if she would ever see her device again.

00000

"See, that question's really hard to answer. The technical answer is, I'm the strongest. I can take any of the other Paladins, one on one. That's why I'm still in charge. When I can't take one of the Paladins, they'll be the one in charge. Well, after Riko-chan, but she pretty much lets us run ourselves, so long as we play nice. But in practice, I'm not the most powerful of the Paladins. Wrack and Ruin are.

"See, the thing about the Paladins is, we strive for individual perfection. I could never stand to work according to someone else's plans and timing and tactics. It wouldn't work, even working with other Paladins we tend to trip each other up, if we're too close. That's why you don't see us tag-team anyone – except my minions. They take the Paladins' emphasis on supreme individual skill, and combine it with the sort of perfect teamwork the Myrmidons strive for but never quite reach.

"I can take either one of them by myself. But you never fight one of them. If you're fighting one of them, and you can't see the other one, it's because she's behind you and you've already lost."

– Laura Sims, Twilight Paladin,

As quoted in an interview in Imperial Military Proceedings