New Era’s Mould 5 – Dea Ex Machina [Scarlett POV]

Scarlett could see them now.

The projectiles that had ripped off her ear, her thumb and her biceps were launched by cavities in the hands of the two Metracanas of Hatred. Sensory data provided by the ear replacements and attached neural implants helped, but it was her eyes themselves that could perceive it now. The currents tingling through her, mana and electricity, uplifted her into a previously unachievable level of perception.

Claws glowed red hot, their temperature spiking, then closed around the attacks. She squashed the living Lorylim matter. It felt like crushing a rotting, worm-infested apple.

Thresta charged into the gap. Her Astrotium weapon swung downwards. A calculated quarter step backwards took Scarlett out of the trajectory of the weapon. The motion came to a sharp stop, point of the dagger in front of Scarlett’s stomach. Tiamat laughed through the lips of her failed vessel.

Scarlett coldly grabbed the Third of Darkness’ leg with her talons, ripping her off her feet with a mighty tug of the mechanisms within the artifice. The left leg’s auto-stabilization was insufficient for the rotation Scarlett then enacted. She swivelled on the omni-directional hip joint. Torque pulled at her right leg, all of the weight of the corrupted Metracana first refusing to begin moving, then pulling her along halfway through the rotation.

Thresta was once more launched away. Distance was key, that was what Scarlett understood about her situation. Kerelex and Xerxes were immediately upon her, aiming to exploit a weakness that she did not have. Instinctual experience remaining in their corrupted minds was filled with hundreds of years of combat experience, thousands of years of war.

War, alas, had changed.

The unnaturally fluid motions of her enemies were met by her mixture of jagged and seamless. Swords cut through the air, each swing a masterstroke and yet insufficient in a battle between meat puppets and a robot ballerina.

Scarlett was oddly amused by the fact that her motions were like that impractical dance. A purely superficial similarity, born from the inhuman flexibility of her upgrades. There was none of the mirth or frolicking of ballet, none of the art, all of that was trimmed like fat off the efficiency of her fighting style. It was created by human intuition, exploiting an absurd range of motion and response timing. It was adjusted by the second, machine learning feeding information into her neural implants.

A lunging step forwards let Scarlett pass between the two Metracanas. They whirled around in unison to swing at her exposed back. She bent forwards until her head almost touched the ground. Moving on three rotational joints at hip, knee and ankle, the red claws of her left foot reached and closed around an enemy’s arm. Lorylim matter bubbled around the heated blades, filling the air with a peculiar scent of wet rot.

Torso swinging back up, she slammed one Metracana into the ground. The same **** that went down went up. The back of her right hand found the side of the second male enemy’s head. The liquid flesh around the metal skeleton wobbled, the humanoid monster was flung back and towards where Hailey and Delicia were working.

‘I need an extra limb,’ she thought and sent an updated schematic request to her helpers.

“REALLY?!” Delicia shouted.

The hint of brattiness made Scarlett’s lips twitch. Finally, some signs that things were as they should be: them in charge.

Scarlett raised her hand, relying on the targeting data from her implants, and shot at Thresta without looking. Mechanical senses confirmed the hit before the Third of Darkness slammed into the metal wall again. Beneath her, one of the Metracanas spasmed helplessly. A constant stream of electricity scorched the Lorylim matter off the warped metal core.

“Can you not do it?” she asked coldly.

“Of course we can do it! It’s just another socket and additional segments!” Delicia shouted over the sounds of Hailey driving back the sole Metracana that had been launched in their direction. Scarlett lent quick supporting fire.

“Thanks!” Hailey shouted.

“Do not thank me, do your job,” Scarlett answered plainly. Her mild satisfaction was an emotion she swiftly shut down. They had the advantage on the battlefield, but they were woefully unaware of the wider war situation. The redhead was constantly pounding against a layered wall that had been erected between her signal relays. Once they were safer, she would be able to break through that. For now, she had to narrow down on the task at hand. “Why are you crying?”

“Huh?” Delicia touched her face, tears cutting trenches into the grimy black dusting of ineffective Lorylim spores. “Why am I crying?”

There was no further time for such contemplation. Thresta and the second male Metracana were charging at Scarlett again. The Third of Darkness attempted to mask her presence again. A futile effort, as proven by Scarlett throwing her electrified kin at Thresta. Once more, the Lorylim dodged, only caring to attack and not at all to aid.

It was a mostly sound strategy, by Scarlett’s analysis. She could easily overpower one of the three Metracanas and outmanoeuvre two, but three her simulations considered difficult. So far all of her combat had aimed at creating the space so that she only fought two enemies at a time. By her own scanning, she was currently a combatant on par with Rave without her Unleash, while her enemies operated in the level 500 to 550 range.

What Scarlett needed was enough power to not just incapacitate but defeat these enemies.

Thresta swung her dagger at rapid speeds. The hivemind had worked out that only Scarlett’s torso and head were really **** at this point. A fact that made their pattern predictable.

They were not, however, without their surprises.

The ground to Scarlett’s left suddenly erupted. A horrific pillar of flesh and fanning fingers grew towards the ceiling in a matter of seconds, spreading black spores and slime as it went. What had been the shape of a little girl less than fifteen minutes ago was now a 53 story tall, festering infection upon Scarlett’s home, covered in gaping maws and teeth.

“My father built this skyscraper for me,” Scarlett growled and blew a hole into the monstrosity before it could descend on her. She had been twice lucky in that the monstrosity had not emerged right next to her and that it had missed the main power line that continued to supply the Combi-Assembler.

The Lorylim were incredibly annoying reality tumours – they were also too well informed for that to have been entirely coincidental. Yet, Scarlett could not find anything in her simulation in which they would have benefitted from this situation. The Metracanas even hesitated, as if their own plan had just been offset.

Something was not quite right.

Scarlett exploited the opening in the battlefield as mercilessly as she laid off underperformers. She charged at Thresta, ramming her metal shoulder into the stomach of the Third of Darkness. In one fluid motion, she then grabbed the neck of the humanoid monster and gripped the spine. One moment later, the separated head of the Metracana flew across the room.

“We are ready!” Hailey shouted.

Scarlett already knew. She had followed the design work at the terminal. She had understood very little of the rapid work of Hailey’s hands with metal and runes and only a few things about Delicia’s concoctions. Regardless, they had filled the gaps in her design in record time. “Once we are out of this, I am paying you a bonus.”

“A high compliment, wow!” Delicia shouted, once more activating her chimeric combat mutagen. She and Hailey threw themselves into the battle. Two Metracanas, a spreading pillar of corrupted flesh, and a skull skittering back towards its body on centipede legs. The two crafters would not be able to hold out for long.

The Combi-Assembler would not need long.

Scarlett entered the chamber. Warning protocols blared in her head. ‘Access hatch failure. Clamp failure. Laser grid inaccessible. Recommend-‘ Scarlett killed that string of the program at that point. She ripped the clamps that she had broken out of their sockets. They were in the way of her manually assuming the correct position.

The calculation had to be perfect. She **** the assembly routine to activate. Blades cut a trench in her back, slicing through synth-skin and true skin alike in an effort to expose her spine. It was a truly unpleasant feeling, to have bones exposed to the air. As efficient as the outcome was, the procedures themselves were alterations that should not be made lightly.

Scarlett had run the calculation.

This was needed.

Besides, compared to replacing her limbs, this operation was the least changing. It was also the most dangerous.

Dozens of small metal plates were pressed against her exposed spinal column. The bone drills got to work, driving heavily enchanted screws into her bones. The tiniest miscalculation in how she stood could lead to permanent nerve damage, outright paralysis below the neck, if not instant ****. Like all risks, it had to be taken.

Scarlett shut out everything. The view in front of her of Hailey and Delicia taking several blows in an effort to keep the Lorylim away from the ongoing procedures. The sensations of metal rubbing against exposed nerves. The unpleasant vibrations of the shears that removed the hair preventing access to the uppermost vertebrae. Scarlett ignored it all with pure willpower.

One last time, the pain of an attached bionic trembled through her. The biological remnants of the tailbone were returned to their purpose, becoming the location of the socket for the mechanical tail. Atrophied genetic memory was rapidly completed with code Scarlett wrote in the few seconds it took for the Voidmarrow to be integrated into the exospine.

The runes all over her augmentations flared up. Impossible, black light ate away at what should have been. Another exercise of her will enslaved the metaphysical power source to the routines of the code. What a Raid had produced, made matter from nothing, Scarlett would utilize to its fullest. Warnings were rules for people incapable of overcoming unusual problems.

Alchemical fluids were applied swiftly to the remaining gaps between flesh and metal, fusing the two together, regrowing skin and lost hair in a matter of seconds. Mechanical tendrils retreated into the Combi-Assembler, its final task completed.

Scarlett Thorne emerged as a streak of lightning.

Thresta did not see her coming. The regenerated Third of Darkness only moved her eyes towards Scarlett when the technomancer’s claws were already digging into her scalp. Micro-vibrations filled the air with a deeply unpleasant frequency as Scarlett’s digits slowly but surely did the impossible. The superheated metal cut into the Astrotium skull of the Metracana.

“Thank ya-“ Hailey started, only to be gripped by the mechanical claw at the end of Scarlett’s fifth limb. A disgusting flood of semi-living matter splattered across the floor where the enigma engineer had stood before getting yanked aside.

Scarlett had no more time to limit test how much damage she could do to Astrotium. Point blank, the energy focus in her palm unloaded into Thresta’s agape maw. The previously destructive beam became utterly devastating, fuelled by both Scarlett’s own mana and every little bit she could tickle out of the Voidmarrow. The attack blew the Lorylim matter clean off the skull, leaving a shining piece of metal behind.

“RED!”

The warning was unnecessary. Scarlett had already tracked the approach of the other two Metracanas. The pillar of hands, teeth and eyes had become a mycelial network of exposed organs by now, spreading through half of Scarlett’s workshop and feasting on whatever biological matter it could find. A process that did not distract it from throwing plenty of disgusting outgrowths at the redhead.

Three opponents. The number that she had simulated to have been the breaking point between advantage and disadvantage. With its multiple attack vectors and greater mass, the pillar was technically a more threatening opponent than the decommissioned Third of Darkness. Yet, Scarlett had no reason to be concerned. The formula had changed.

The two Metracanas charging at her were no threat. The advantage in experience? Fully neutralized. Their combat patterns? Solved. Their abilities? Inferior.

Scarlett’s tail speared the chest of one Metracana. The almost two-metre-long extension of her back whipped around. Gravitational enchantments inside the artifice of her calves kept her effortlessly stable. Simultaneously, she grabbed the swinging arm of the second Metracana by the wrist. The arm was locked in place. The creature added its second hand in, trying as hard as it could to press down, to get the grey blade to sink into Scarlett’s skull. Try as he might, he could not overpower even the single limb.

The technomancer calmly pointed her left at the heart of the corruption around her. Internal mechanisms whirred, replacing the rune inside the crystal glass in the palm. Electricity and mana concentrated into the changed outlet, unloading not as a concentrated beam of lightning, but a widespread onslaught of fire.

The massive creature screamed in rage. It tried to swipe at Scarlett. She simply activated one of the charged segments of her exospine. A mana barrier flared up, the tendrils burning in arcane fire as they bounced off the metaphysical surface.

Over the course of half a minute, she reduced the pillar to nothing but ash. “This will need further improvements,” she reckoned afterwards, critically inspecting the limb. AM had needed limitations in the arsenal of elements it had access to for computing efficiency. She did not have that issue. After her arm, she turned her gaze to the Metrcana that was still trying his best to strike her. Like a toy, she picked him up and launched him across the room. ‘I have to adjust my previous level estimation downwards. My own lack of combat prowess made me overestimate.’ “We are moving,” she informed her fellow crafters.

“Not going to finish them off?”

“They are too sturdy for that and we are on a timer,” Scarlett responded and began to energize her attack systems. “I’m making a breach.”

It was odd to be the fastest in a group, twice so by the margin she then moved at. Scarlett carved her way through three floors with claws and heat before she realized she was almost out of sight for the other two women. That short hiccup aside, they made their way down through the skyscraper with very little issue. Thresta was broken and Tiamat seemed to value her other two toys too much to send them on a futile mission.

She almost felt in a triumphant mood, when they made it to the streets of the Hudson Barrier. An emotion thoroughly curbed by the state those streets were in. Empty houses were hotbeds for mould and those that had not evacuated in time ran the streets as infested zombies. The centre of prosperity that had been the dockyard area was no more and would not be again. There was no point in trying to scrub clean an area of this size. It would all be burned down, paved over, and rebuilt from scratch.

“WHAT THE FUCK?!” The screech announced the arrival of their rescue ‘party’ before she landed by their side. Eliana, covered in a carapace of bone, inspected Scarlett with agitated eyes. “What the fuck did you-“

“The necessary adjustments,” Scarlett cut her short. “The report can wait. I- Finally got through the ciphers.” In an instant, Scarlett reconnected to the internal server workings of Fusion. She immediately shut down any connections that had run over the hardware located into the thoroughly infected skyscraper behind them. Then, she reached out to Momo.

“Oh, thank God,” the fairy sighed and sniffed.

Scarlett heard that sound, then glanced at Delicia, who herself still dropped the occasional tear. Her emotional calm was compromised when she came to the most likely conclusion. “Do we have time to find John?”

“No, but you can find Magoi!” Momo responded, sadness and practicality mixing.

Scarlett’s eyebrows pulled together. “Has he still not evacuated?” She spread her mental network outwards, to the parts of the city that had been inaccessible until a moment ago. When she found the High Fateweaver, she **** herself onto his speaker. “Leave!” she barked at him.

“Ah, finally, I had hoped you would come through at some point,” Magoi said and offered the camera a solemn smile. “If it is in your ability, could you put me through to my children?”

“You can-“

“No,” Magoi interrupted her, friendly but certainly. “I cannot.”

Scarlett tilted her head back and blinked away the beginnings of her own tears. “This is a horrible day.”

“All days of war are horrible days,” Magoi Magus said. “It’s been an honour.”

“Likewise.”