Outside of GLYPH HQ, the squad of Dahye, Ace, and new recruits Gisela and Annabelle gathered. Dahye, as the acting leader, stood at the front of the group, finishing up reading through the files they’d been given for their current batch of missions.
“Alright, I think we can get three of them done today,” she said, closing up the folder and looking to the agents under her command. “We’ll have to catch a few trains and hustle between all three locations, though.”
“What’s the rush?” Ace asked, though from the playful teasing tone in his voice, Dahye knew he was very aware of her reason for wanting to get the work done as quickly as possible. That didn’t stop her from giving him a disgruntled side-eye that had him swallowing the cheeky follow-up comment he was about to make, though.
The station they needed to depart from was a ten minutes’ walk away from HQ. She was a bit concerned about their group potentially catching too much attention from any potential enemy organizations who might start trouble and delay their itinerary, but Ace had the good sense to throw on a disguise to hide his mask, and it helped that Gisela and Annabelle just looked like two young girls, especially with the former preoccupied with her handheld. That really just left the katana strapped to Dahye’s lower back as a point of interest to any enemies, but that was just the risk she was going to have to take. The citizens of Braver City certainly didn’t care; there were mobsters working sign spinning shifts, swordsmen walking their dogs, cyborgs picking litter off of the streets, and people with beast ears and tails busking downtown on a day-to-day basis.
As the group walked through the busy sidewalks of the city, Dahye took notice of the two rookies. First was Gisela, who, despite keeping her eyes glued to the screen of her handheld gaming device, managed to avoid colliding with anyone and anything around her. She seemed to have a good sense of her surroundings, and she even answered a few questions that the others shot in her direction every now and then, showcasing her multitasking abilities. Gabriele had spoken highly of her, and her praise was already turning out to be pretty well-founded.
Dahye was a bit more interested in Annabelle, however, especially when she noticed the girl’s awkward, clunky penguin waddle style of walking. It put a smile on her face, even if she did end up having to slow down her own pace to keep from leaving the android girl behind.
In time, the four of them made it to the station, and boarded their train.
“So what’s first on the agenda?” Ace asked, scratching at the scraggly gray beard his disguised form possessed. Dahye recognized this new form as a copy of one of the cooks at the Derring-Do Diner. It was always a bit unsettling to her whenever Ace took on one of his disguises, but if it worked for the mission, then she couldn’t really complain much, could she?
“Pennsylvania,” Dahye replied, opening up the folder and handing it over to him, having already organized the mission documents in the order she’d planned to have the group tackle them. “There have been a few sightings of a flying monster in the area over the past week, all around the same hours of the day. We should be arriving right on time to find it.”
Ace nodded, then looked to Annabelle, and then Gisela, who was still occupied with her game. “We’re gonna be fighting during most of these missions, right? Are you two equipped for that at all? I didn’t see you bring any weapons.”
Dahye had also noticed that earlier before they left HQ, but she hadn’t been that concerned by it, as she was more than ready to do all of the fighting herself anyway. But it was a good question, and one she also wanted the answer to now that Ace had brought it up.
Annabelle gave her signature double salute, kicking her leg out into the aisle just as an attendant walked by, tripping right over it.
After some apologies from Annabelle and Dahye, the former was scooted over to the window seat to avoid that happening again. “My combat apparatus is not currently attached, but I can provide assistance via my Amp systems if requested!”
“Yeah, those did actually come in handy last time,” Ace said before nodding in Gisela’s direction. “What about you, Atari?”
Sighing, Gisela paused her game and set the handheld down. Holding an arm up, she pulled the sleeves down, revealing some kind of metal bracelet that extended from her wrist to halfway down her forearm. Tapping her fingers against its surface, panels around the bracelet opened up, and out popped some kind of high-tech machine gun. “I like using guns, mostly.”
As Dahye positioned her body to block the sight of the machine gun from the other nearby passengers, Ace whistled, leaning forward and admiring the weapon. “Ay, I think I’ve heard of these bad boys. They’re some new Grail Gun prototype, right?” He recognized it as using some similar technology to his ArsenALL briefcase, albeit done in an alternative way by a rival manufacturer. Personally, he didn’t find Gisela’s version to be as impressive as his briefcase, but he didn’t say so aloud, or even point out the similarities between them. For one, he didn’t want one of his first impressions with someone to be negative if he could help it, especially if they were lookers like this girl was. And for another, well…anyone could be an enemy eventually. Best not to needlessly give away any information that could be used against you in the future, right?
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Aaaaand how’d you get your paws on them, exactly?”
Shrugging, Gisela tapped on the bracelet again, causing the weapon to retract. “I won a bet.”
“Ah, right, silly me,” Ace said, leaning back into his seat. “I should’ve known that teenagers obviously make little bets with each other where they wager top secret prototype weapons projects. Must have been a real nail-biter of a Tekken game for you, huh?”
“It was Mario Party.”
“It…it was actually from winning at a video game? Really?”
Rolling her sleeve back down, Gisela resumed her game without a word, only offering a tiny little grin.
After arriving at the station in Pennsylvania, the GLYPH agents hopped on a bus and rode that to a small town, and from there, they hiked into a nearby woodland area, where the flying monster they were hunting down had been spotted.
Were they not in pursuit of a potentially deadly monster, they likely would have enjoyed the trail they were marching along. It was nice and quiet, with the occasional chirping of distant birds, and the way the sun broke through the trees hit just right, keeping the area well-lit, and their skin warm and cozy.
“Alright,” Dahye began, turning around to the other three. “We may have to split up a bit to search for-”
“Ah, nah, we don’t have to do all that,” Ace interrupted, reaching over and tapping on Annabelle’s shoulder. “Do your thing, little lady.”
She saluted him. “What is ‘my thing’?”
“Scan for the monster.”
“Ah! Affirmative, abbott!” She saluted him a second time, kicking her leg out. That put a smile on Dahye’s face. She’s adorable~.
Annabelle’s eyes began to glow even brighter, and the machinery in her head whirred just loud enough to hear. She panned her head slowly around the forest, eventually coming to a stop while facing southeast. “Enemy detected! 0.46 miles to the southeast!”
Ace patted the android girl on the head, and gestured at her with his free hand, looking over at Dahye as he did so. “Ain’t that handy?”
“Wow, that is impress-”
“0.16 miles! Rapidly descending!”
The rushing sounds of the trees in the distance hit all of their ears at the same time, followed closely by the ugly roar of the mysterious flying monster.
Gisela was the only one quick enough to put some distance between herself and the others to avoid the incoming divebomb by the monster, as Ace was trying (and failing) to get Annabelle to move out of the way.
Recognizing that for whatever reason, Ace and Annabelle would not be able to avoid the incoming attack, Dahye stood her ground in front of them, wrapping her fingers around the handle of her katana, and calling out with her mind, “Dhara!”
The Blue Dragon Spirit, invisible to all but Dahye, appeared above her shoulder, its long, serpentine body coiling around the many different trees in the woods. “Ready!”
As the trees in front of her were blasted away, the maw of the beast finally made itself clear, jaws opened wide, with rows of nasty jagged yellow teeth coated in saliva. It was moving too fast to get a clearer look at the rest of it, but the fangs were what Dahye had to prioritize in that precious second before the monster could tear into her, Ace, and Annabelle.
She drew her katana in a flash, its bright blue blade slicing at an upward diagonal angle. Dhara followed the blade’s motion precisely, effectively extending the slicing range of the sword to a few hundred feet in length.
The slash cut across the monster’s open jaws, essentially parrying the incoming bite and redirecting the beast at an upward angle. It soared right over the GLYPH agents, casting a large black shadow across them. The fast-moving winds blasting off of its wings rustled their clothes and hair, but other than that, they were fine, saved in the nick of time by Dahye and Dhara’s deflection.
Chuckling, Ace said, “That thing’s a lot bigger than I was expecting…”
They all turned to watch as the monster began to rise higher into the sky, no doubt angling back around to dive at them for a second try. It looked like a massive bat with a wolf’s snout, along with four glowing red eyes. Its fur was covered in blood, but it clearly wasn’t the monster’s own.
Off to the side, Gisela rolled her sleeves down and tapped on the bracelet around her left forearm, calling forth the machine gun within it, and readying it in her grip.
Ace tapped on Annabelle’s arm. “Hit me with that super strength thing you zapped me with last time. You’re gonna be a chew toy if you can’t move outta the way fast enough.”
“Accepted, amigo! Arm Amp, activate!”
The flying monster finished turning itself back around, and was once again diving for the GLYPH trio. It seemed to know better than to simply repeat the same move it had done before, so it pulled out a new trick – spitting two giant globs of bloody goop.
Ace, his arm strength empowered by Annabelle’s ability, scooped the android girl up and leaped out of the way just in the nick of time. The blood missiles the monster had shot at them were each the size of a refrigerator, and each looked to be even harder than one the way they blasted through trees and buried themselves solidly into the dirt.
Dahye had to leap away from one as well, preventing her from getting another deflecting slash like before. Gisela was free from this first volley, and tracked the flying beast with precision, laying dozens of bullets into its body as it soared past her. Blood spewed from each hole she opened in its flesh, but it didn’t seem especially affected by it.
Ace whistled. “Nice aim on her.”
All the while, Annabelle kept her eyes locked onto the monster, eyes glowing. “Attack ineffective! The head is the enemy’s only vulnerability!”
Gisela scowled at the revelation that her shooting had been “ineffective”. This time, she rolled down her right-side sleeve, revealing a second bracelet. After tapping on that one, the panels opened up, revealing a new assortment of metal parts that she quickly attached to her machine gun. After a few twists, pulls, clicks, and cranks, the machine gun had now been reconfigured into a sniper rifle.
Off to the side, Ace let out a whistle. “Ooh, fancy.”
As the flying monster circled back around, it spat out a new volley of blood missiles – and many more, this time. It was a constant barrage of them blasting through tree trunks and striking as much of the earth in the GLYPH squad’s vicinity as possible. Ace (and Annabelle), Dahye, and Gisela had to scramble to avoid them all, which didn’t give them much opportunity to mount a counter offense as the monster rapidly approached once more.
Dahye ran up the trunk of a tree and flipped off of it, avoiding an incoming projectile as it smashed the tree into pieces. “Gisela!” she called out. “I’m going to redirect it again! Can you make the shot?”
“Yeah!” the rookie agent called out, just before reaching down and rolling up her right pant leg, revealing a metal greave crafted similarly to her bracelets.
Dhara’s head appeared in front of Dahye, her body coiled around her immediate surroundings. Her tail suddenly dug into the earth, burrowing a few feet into it. Glowing blue tendrils spread out from the end of the tail like roots, locking her into place within the ground. “The beast is moving much faster than before. I will root here to empower your deflection.”
Nodding, Dahye focused her eyes on the shadowy mass as it quickly rushed towards the group. Her fingers gripped tightly to the handle of her katana. She just hoped it didn’t decide to change its angle at the last sec-
Oh shit.
The monster took a wild turn away from Dahye, instead going for Gisela, who was standing far off to the side. Before she could fire her sniper rifle, the monster coughed up another blood projectile from deep within its throat.
“Dhara!” Dahye called out desperately as she leaped forward and slashed, hoping the Blue Dragon Spirit could reach in time, even with a decent bit of her tail lodged into the earth.
With a roar, Dhara flew forward at the same angle as Dahye’s sword, and just barely managed to sink her teeth into the side of the monster’s neck, just as its blood missile shot out. The Blue Dragon’s earlier deduction had also been correct; the monster was moving much faster, so its charge was much stronger. Dahye’s slash almost wasn’t enough to properly deter the beast as it soared past, and if Dhara hadn’t rooted herself in the earth to add some stability, it almost certainly wouldn’t have been enough, and Gisela would be a goner.
The monster let out a roar, its head now angled upward from the sudden slash of pain it took to the neck. Gisela still had to dive to the dirt to avoid getting clipped by its body, but she was otherwise safe from the missile, as well as being eaten.
“Gisela!” Dahye called out, rushing over towards the girl. “Are you alright?!”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she replied, pushing herself up.
Off in the distance, Ace set Annabelle down, and reached for his ArsenALL briefcase. “Alright, I’ll shoot it d-”
But Gisela’s voice suddenly cut him off with an emphatic, “No!” She’d never spoken above anything other than a flat, deadpan mutter up until this point, so the sudden emotional response caught the others all by surprise. Composing herself, she gripped her rifle, and returned her voice to its normal timbre. “I got it.”
Before the vets could ask what she meant, Gisela took off jogging up the hiking trail. She then leaped up off of the dirt and kicked out her right leg.
The panel on the greave opened up, and out shot a grappling hook that latched tightly to one of the highest branches of a nearby tree. It pulled on her with force immediately after, sending her swinging around like a pendulum just barely above the dirt, angling up until she was soaring high above the woods, where it released, allowing her to maneuver freely.
As she caught sight of the flying monster, the momentum of her launch spun her around until she was upside-down, but that didn’t deter her at all. She set the scope to her eye and took aim, directly at the monster’s skull.
One pull of the trigger sent the specialized Grail Gun bullet zooming through the sky, hundreds of feet into the distance, completely undeterred by wind or gravity.
It pierced through the monster’s skull, dug through its brain, and detonated, turning the beast’s head to mush, and causing its now-lifeless body to sink straight down into the forest below.
With a satisfied smirk, Gisela’s launch hit its peak, and she began descending straight down towards the ground. She kicked her leg out once more to fire the grappling hook within, catching another branch and swinging back around, landing safely in the dirt not too far from the group.
“Got it,” she said, holding the tip of her rifle up to her green lips, and giving it a little blow.
