The thunder surged through limbs and artificial heart. Internal measurements deactivated as their data input became a hindrance. The flow of energized fluids through the flexible tubes that had replaced 94% of her veins quickened. Energy consumptions rose and so did the availability. The output accelerators whined at a high frequency. Electric energy was transmitted back to the GUNDAMN, a fragment of the process that kept forcing her to expend more energy so her Innate Ability kept growing.
She cut the connection off.
The electricity rebounded into her.
Everything around her was the crackling of lightning. Had she had lungs, the lack of oxygen would have made her dizzy. Internal mechanisms metabolized the magical lightning into nutrients for her remaining tissues. Corded muscle replacement twitched at a rapid frequency. All of her vibrated with power.
The Gamer stood there, surrounded by his harem. He was giving her the time to reach full charge. A precious few seconds during which she usually would have had to rely on Norahnon’s energy shield, instead granted freely. ‘He’ll regret that.’ Malady grinned.
He tilted his head slightly. “How long can you keep that up?” he asked.
“Tsk!” Malady clicked her tongue. Instincts told her it was time to go – and so she did.
For a split second, there were only two moving parties in the world. Herself and that annoying thunder bunny. They headed towards each other like two currents towards a shared outlet. A lance of electricity came for Malady. Taking control of it was child’s play, her own current overpowering that of the elemental. The Gamer’s familiars were strong, but they were no equal to independent Latebloomers.
Malady flung the electric bolt back at Sylph with thrice the intensity. She managed to twitch to the side, preventing the yellow-blue torrent of electric destruction from ripping her fully apart. Half of her was good enough for Malady.
Wreathed in ozone and static, she resumed her charge. A swing of her arm deployed a segmented sword previously resting in her forearm. Electromagnetism stretched it, placing magnificent voltage between the razor-sharp blades. She swung at the slime.
The healing elemental burst. A minor part of the electricity was converted into heat on contact and that was enough to provide an initial explosion of steam. Malady focused the lightning in the cavity. Rapid and repeated thunderclaps shook the ground. Sensors integrated into her eyes tracked each blob of dark blue slime that survived the impact. She condensed more of the electricity into a sphere to send an array of electric arcs after every piece of Undine.
‘These fuckers react too quickly,’ Malady thought. All around her, the familiars of the Gamer were moving. They could not keep up with her increased speed and senses, but their coordination made up for that. Besides, they weren’t all slow.
Malady turned on her heels. The arch of her sword cut through a launched Mana Chain and kept Siena at bay. Six spears thrust at her in that same instant. Rerouting energy, Malady hyper-charged the sturdiness of her surface plates, turning each attack into a needle trying to prick concrete. ‘A little help here?!’ Malady sent through the mental relay device.
‘Ordnance deployed!’ Norahnon answered.
Using the excess of the lightning she used to warm up, the Great Researcher launched eight arcs of light. Malady had to turn her body into electricity to escape the blast zone. ‘Sure wish I had that friendly fire protection,’ she thought. For a few moments she was just electricity, not to be interfered wi-
‘COALESCING OF SALAMANDER, SYLPH, UNDINE AND SIENA DETECTED!’
The announcement immediately made Malady coalesce back into a physical shape. The ordnances slammed into a hastily erected wall of stone slabs. Gnome continued to actively reinforce them to ward against the rapid staccato of electric explosions against it. Norahnon did not stop there either, raising both hands of the power armour and unleashing a barrage of arcano-tech lasers from his palms.
Malady kept charging back at the centre. A crocodile was thrown at her first, but she zapped around Stirwin with no issues. The Gamer teleporting in her way was mildly unexpected. She swung her electromagnetic sword.
Particle Skin stopped her momentum dead in its track. It wasn’t even as if she had hit a roadblock, the spell just neutralized the motion in its entirety without any rebound. The damage was entirely delivered to the Gamer, who just kept on smirking. She had no idea if she had just hurt him a lot or very little. With his absurd mana and body, it was impossible to tell. Any attempt to scan his aura just gave inconclusive feedback.
‘I don’t have time for this!’ she thought and zapped around him, only to come face to face with a Blast Ray. She was vaguely aware of the silver mana construct nearby. ‘He reflected it behind his back!’ she thought and bent to the side. The attack missed her, but it had stopped her for another precious moment. The last one she had.
Malady started a countdown.
Four elementals swirled, forming into one new entity. The threat level database in her connected archives went haywire as it calculated the specific danger this entity posed to her. This almost unassuming thing, as short as Sylph was, covered in a gothic dress of black satin, beset with too many green frills to be fashionable. She was a bloodless kind of pale and her smirk revealed too many sharp teeth for a human mouth. Eyes of sulfuric yellow focused on Malady.
“Finally, I get to play again! It’s been way too long, way, way, way too long since I was let out to PLAY!”
Malady zapped to the side, escaping the charge of the four-type Combination. The impossible elemental chased right after, her speed increased to a level that managed to keep up with Malady. The elemental’s left hand kept swiping at the electric cyborg, the long claws leaving trails of dark fire and shadowy mist.
Three minutes remained.
Malady gathered an electric bolt in her right arm and flung it with all her might. The attack screamed like magical lightning so often did, then whistled after it was deflected by the elemental’s right hand. She consolidated the shadow of the wall they stood behind into its own electric lance. It was an edgy thing, black lightning surrounded by swirling purple, dripping burning goo. It was an impossible thing. She was an impossible thing.
“Yes, yes, do keep running!” Edge moaned sadistically and threw the lance at Malady. “It makes it more fun for me!”
“Freak,” Malady chatted back and then charged straight in. The impossible elemental’s grin widened to an inhuman degree.
No computer could have calculated the risk assessments of what followed fast enough. Malady had to rely entirely on her instincts, ducking and weaving under the attacks of the gothic creature she faced. Physics were a suggestion to Malady, to Edge they were a joke. At times she ran and bounced like a normal person, the next she flew, only to collapse back to the ground, flattening like the slime that gave her parts of the symmetrical lines covering her pale shoulders.
Malady hated a fight like this. She couldn’t afford taking any meaningful hit. One drop of blood on Edge’s fingers and it would be over – and blood appeared to be graciously defined by the combat data they had on her. Even the replacement fluid would do it. It was steeped in her soul and that was the important point.
They were matched in speed. Malady considered herself to have the advantage in offensive power, but whenever she tried to bring that to bear, the Gamer weighed in with a Blast Ray or an Arc Lance. It kept the two of them spaced out. All she could do was run out the clock on the Combination – but what then?
One minute remained.
Norahnon had taken to the sky. The Great Researcher attempted to give her cover, but the truth of the matter was that the Gamer was both more precise and did not have to be more precise at all. It did not help that he was getting constantly harassed by Ehtra. ‘Give me friendly fire protection too!’ Malady complained to Gaia.
Electricity gathered up in her off-hand until the entire limb was incandescent. Just before the melting point, Malady let go of the power, flinging a nuclear power plant’s worth of output at the Gamer. Air burned blue while the cataclysmic cone of electricity ripped outwards.
Gnome put herself in front of her summoner, but that was inconsequential to Malady. All she wanted was to have this moment, this singular and carefully calculated second. The clock hit ten minutes, Edge swung at her, and then split into four slightly confused elementals.
Malady immediately went on the offensive. One swing of her sword scattered Sylph to the winds, destroying the elemental’s current corporeal form. Even Siena was not fast enough to react in time for the second swing, taking the shadow spirit out of this plane as well. A third, rapid swing of the electromagnetic sword clashed against armaments of black stone and fire. Malady moved swiftly around the defences and gripped Salamander’s throat with her off-hand.
Voltage intense enough to make even a being made from magic spasm rushed through the limb. Salamander tried to raise an arm, to blast Malady with one more attack. It was too clearly telegraphed for the cyborg to miss. She simply turned her shoulder and the half-formed fire bolt flew past. The next second, Salamander was turned into scattering particles.
Stirwin galloped towards her. The crocodilian elemental was scarcely even a threat in this form, not even two metres long, and was easily kicked aside, flung so far that he would not rejoin the fight before it was over.
It was the other threat the Gamer had held in the back of his hand that Malady now had to contend with.
The electrically charged cyborg jumped back, escaping the hard impact of the grey angel. The thin red halo above Ehtra’s head had turned into a continuous band of blood, flowing in an endless circle.
Malady had scarcely any data on the First of Hatred, but a Metracana was never to be underestimated, especially not one hooked up to the Gamer’s absolute bullshit. Just being in the presence of the ancient weapon gave the hyper-charged Frenchwoman a crawling feeling of guilt on skin she no longer had.
‘I will go for the Gamer!’ Norahnon announced. Malady sent back her agreement with that course of action. Down to Gnome and Undine, John Newman was vulnerable.
The First of Hatred dropped her sword, an unorthodox action right up until she raised that massive gun. One hand cranked back a lever, the other pulled the trigger, and the bolter spewed out projectiles like a machine gun.
Malady trusted her instincts and dashed to the side, rather than try to weave through. An instinct that was rewarded, as the bullets made an impossible 90 degree turn and chased after her. One quick lightning strike had the projectiles explode in the air. She took a sharp turn of her own. Ehtra’s sword found its way back in her hand on its own.
Slamming into her with the might of an artificial thunderstorm, Malady pushed the First of Hatred back immediately. Rapid attacks followed, cutting deep trenches into the armour of the Metracana. The series of successes was soured by Ehtra’s fighting style. She was used to being the weaker one, Malady could read that in an instant.
Wherever Malady went with her lightning fast attacks, Ehtra kept protecting her core. She was not fast enough to ever mount a proper counterattack, but she had the armour and the sturdiness to wait it all out. Malady tried to zap around her enemy, but all she met was a wall of sharp feathers, harder even than the armour was. The Astrotium plumage did not even melt from the strike.
Malady had her opponent pinned when it came to raw power, but she knew when she was facing someone with too much experience to overcome.
Malady took a step forward. The leg softly gave, before she redirected emergency power. She glanced over to Norahnon. The power armour was advancing on the Gamer over and over again, but he moved around with tactical precision. The experience gap was clear there as well.
‘Hate to admit it, but they’re just better at this,’ Malady thought.
‘You could-‘
‘I am not expending that for a promise on first dibs on inspecting some ruins, you idiot,’ Malady snapped back at her superior before he could even start the third word. One last combat simulation brought the cyborg to the inevitable conclusion. “Our loss,” she stated and drew the sword back into her arm.
Ehtra did not relax. The First of Hatred kept her sword and guard up, even as the lightning died down. The output accelerators deactivated one after another. Malady gradually re-enabled her diagnostic systems. None of them were green, but only her right arm had several red signals flash. The auto-repair artifice could deal with that with minimal issues.
“You got three of my elementals,” the Gamer said.
The words had Malady assume a combat stance out of reflex. Looking at John Newman only made her more ready to deploy an emergency measure. The man had his hands in his pockets. He clearly looked like he was trying to be nonchalant, but Malady heard it. If the Gamer had just been a little bit less wise and a little bit more unhinged, he would have done something to her.
“Relax, this fight was my suggestion. Wounds and such are inevitable,” John stated, his voice like honey spread over poisoned bread. “I’m not going to attack you.”
“But you really want to,” Malady pointed out.
“Can’t blame a man for being angry when his women get hurt,” the Gamer admitted readily. In another life, Malady could have imagined falling for him based on that stance, combined with all else he had going on for him. In this life, Malady had other interests. Plus, she did not have a high opinion of polygamy.
Slowly she circled around, avoiding the Gamer while she headed towards Norahnon. The Great Researcher was pouting, sitting in the seat of the reformed golf cart. “We could have won that,” he insisted.
“Not the point I made,” Malady answered and got in the backseat. “Plus, do you want to explain to old skullface why I decided to mess up his pet project that badly?”
At least Norahnon did not push back on that one.