novelraw Chapter 124: Weaponized Devotion.
Chapter 124: Weaponized Devotion.
V O L U M E F I V E
Chapter 124: Weaponized Devotion02 began to glow, deep, burning blue, bright enough that the sunlight couldn't compete. Everything in the graveyard washed out around her, the color draining from the world and replaced with cold blue. She tossed Tau's sphere gently into the side, and fixed her red eyes on one target.
01 went still. "Captain?"
"I thought the message I sent through your sisters was clear enough." 02's voice carried the flat, patient tone she reserved for threats. "I tore one of them apart and pressed the other into the concrete. I pulled an SSD from its casing with my bare hands." She reached back. "Apparently that wasn't sufficient. Send more assassins, and I'll tear them apart too."
She drew her blade.
The force released by that single motion pushed loose debris across the graveyard, small parts, fragments, scattered pieces rolling outward and hitting the perimeter walls. 01 braced against it, fighting to hold her ground.
"Let me be more direct."
02 rose off the ground. Her wings spread. Beneath her, the pavement cracked and began pulling inward, a shallow half-sphere pressing into the concrete from the sheer weight of her presence.
12's voice cut into 01's comms. "Run! she's about to—"
The line went dead. 02 had severed it without looking.
01 started retreating. "Captain, you don't recognize me? I'm—"
"No." 02 raised one hand toward the sky.
A formation of cloud, artificial, dense, wrong, gathered above the park. 01 brought up her borrowed shields in the same motion, 04's ULTRA configuration, three layers, two dense anchor shields with a third lighter one that could move freely. She stacked all three layers into a single upward dome between herself and the cloud and held.
Then the beam came down.
It was massive and loud in a way that felt less like sound and more like pressure, the air itself being consumed, everything in range pushed outward in a ring. 01's feet dug into the pavement as the force pressed down on her, the concrete cracking beneath her heels.
The first shield dissolved into red particles.
The second began to scream, an audible stress in the energy structure, heat bleeding through to 01's frame as the beam closed the distance. That one broke too. The third was all she had left.
"Super speed, initiated!"
01 snapped her head right.
12 was already a blur.
Clang.
She hit 01 full force and drove them both sideways, out of the beam's reach in a single impact. The momentum was too much to absorb cleanly, 12 tumbled across the graveyard floor, 01 dragged along with her, both of them coming to rest in the dirt and scattered parts.
They got up. Armor scraped, white plating dark with grime, 01's vents running hard to pull the residual heat out of her frame.
"Thank you." 01's cooling system was barely keeping up. "What is happening? I never thought she would—"
"I don't know. But we need distance." 12 kept her eyes on the figure still hovering above them. "I noticed something. She can't track two targets at the same time, not while aiming. She locks onto one and holds it. The moment I moved she lost you. Get into cover and stay down. She won't follow, she needs the height."
01 nodded and disappeared.
Both E-UNITs spread out through the graveyard, moving between the stacked piles of parts. 01 found a small van buried in a heap near the far wall and sealed herself inside.
02's eyes tracked the space below her.
"Already found a weakness." Her voice carried no particular heat, more like genuine acknowledgment. "These two are more tactical than the pair at Raisin Heights. Not that that was much of a fight." She tilted her head. "I'll give you that. Even I hadn't mapped that tradeoff yet."
01 held her breath inside the van.
‘Is she… talking to us?’
02 raised her hand again. "Guardians of the Abyss, initiated."
Blue energy surged from her in branching lines, each one thickening and rising, pulling itself into shape. Two towering silhouettes assembled from light, fully blue, no shadows in them, four meters of manifested energy taking the form of armored Roman warriors. One carried double axes, the other a spear. They solidified and dropped to the ground in unison, the impact rolling through the park like a held breath finally released.
"Find them."
They moved between the piles without hurry, they had no physical weight, just the slow parting of debris as they pushed mountains of parts aside like inconveniences. They had no irises. They didn't need them.
One stopped at the van.
01 froze. The steps had gone silent right outside. She couldn't see through the windows, the angle was wrong, but she could feel it there, something enormous crouching down to her level, inspecting the vehicle she was inside.
Then the second guardian gestured toward the far end of the park.
02 looked. Nodded. The first guardian stood and followed the second.
01's vents ran at full capacity in the dark of the van, her eyes locked on the rear doors, calculating how close she had come.
Across the graveyard, 12 was crouched low, fingers moving against a comm panel, trying to punch through the interference. She managed a partial signal, broken and rough, but enough. "This is 12, we need support, now, Fifth of July Park, being used as a parts graveyard, you'll—" The comms cut again.
She realized a half second too late.
She looked up. 02 was directly above her, hovering, watching with the patience of something that had never once needed to rush. To her right, a guardian, axe aimed. To her left, a guardian on one knee, waiting.
12's legs refused to work. Fear had overridden the command. She looked up at 02. "Captain, please—"
A guardian took her by the collar and turned her to face 02 directly.
"Do not call me that." 02 closed her hand around 12's face, the grip tightening with slow precision. "You don't qualify to her."
"W-Who?"
02 nodded once.
The guardians moved to the center of the graveyard and took position. Parts fell from the surrounding piles with each step, the sound of metal on metal filling the space. They left no footprints, they weren't physical, just energy given a shape.
02 settled between them. "E-PHONEUS. I can sense you, anything running on energy registers to me. Come out, or your partner loses pieces until you do."
"01! Don't... she—"
ZZZT.
02 felt it, a flare inside her head, sharp and disorienting, something structural pushing back against the word. "Shut—" She was already beside 12, arm pulled back, the sentence unfinished.
"—up."
Clang.
The punch hit 12 in the gut with enough force that she came free of the guardian's grip entirely, launching across the graveyard at speed. The shockwave that followed cleared everything in a wide circle around 02, parts, debris, fragments, all pushed to the edges.
02 raised a hand before 12 reached the far wall.
An energy barrier formed at the perimeter.
Crash.
12 hit it flat. The impact ran through her frame in visible waves, her eyes stuttering, optics blurring, cracks spreading across her hands and face. White plating fell away in fragments. She slid.
01 was motionless inside the van. She was fighting herself, every instinct pushing toward the door, logic holding her back. Neither option saved 12.
A guardian collected 12 by the arm and brought her back to stand beside 02.
"That didn't draw her out?" 02 looked at 12 with something approaching clinical curiosity. "Fine." She looked at the guardian. "With every five seconds that pass, a limb. When she runs out, the head."
01 flinched inside the van.
The guardian reached for 12's right arm. The motion was slow and deliberate, synthetic muscles snapping like thick cables, joints separating with loud cracks, and metal shrieking against metal until the arm tore away completely.
01 pressed her hands over her face. She couldn't block the sound. Every second of it stretched past its own length.
12 held herself rigid. Sparks falling from her shoulder. She was fighting to stay silent, she could hear 01 in there, and she was not going to be the reason 01 panicked and ran out.
02 looked at her. "Impressive."
The second guardian moved to her leg, slower this time. 12's expression collapsed through several things at once, pain asserting itself past every attempt to contain it, and then she couldn't hold it anymore. The scream came out when the leg detached, too large to stop, filling the graveyard.
Inside the van, 01 was crying without sound, moving through her SSD on instinct, looking for anything. File after file of 02. ‘ 12 was right. This is worthless,’ panic spiraling.
Then she found it. A report from 05. The memory wall.
The psychological block Nick had installed to keep them complacent. If it worked on them... it had to be working on 02 right now.
She pushed the door open.
She walked out into the open and faced 02 directly, both guardians, all of it. "Captain. What are you doing?"
02 raised her arm. The cloud began forming above the park again, this time wide enough to block the sun entirely. "Your microphone appears non-functional. I ordered—"
"Captain 02." 01's voice was barely steady. "Don't you remember us? The E-UNIT?"
ZZZT.
02 grabbed her head. The cloud dissolved. "What are you—"
"We missed you. Me. 05. 04. 03."
ZZZT.
The pain came back sharper. The guardians flickered. One drove a fist toward 01.
"Don't you remember our operations in Metromania?"
ZZZT.
The fist dissolved into sparks centimeters from 01's face. 02 came down from the air, both hands pressed against her head, landing hard. "I can't—"
"The raid on Metro Robotics. The war at Frostholm. The fight against Behemoth." 01 took one step forward. "03's gore collection. 05's expression when something bores her. 04's streams. My—" Her voice caught. "My devotion to you."
02 hit the ground on one knee. The second guardian came apart. She could feel the files, right there, close, but couldn't reach them. "I can't remember."
01 stepped forward and caught 12 as the guardian released her. 12 held on with the one arm she had left.
"Father put a wall on you." 01's voice steadied. "I know how to help you fight it. Don't you want to know what your life looked like — before whatever he built inside your head?"
02 pushed herself upright, still fighting the pain. "Stop—"
01 stepped back immediately. "Okay. Okay, I'm stopping."
A long pause.
"She told me," 02 said, voice low. "About the memory wall." She looked at 01. "How do you know about it?"
"He put one in us too." 01 held 12 carefully. "Blocked you from our memory so we wouldn't go looking for you."
"And you removed it?"
"Long story." 01 managed something that was almost a smile. "Do you want to hear it on the way back?"
"Back where?"
"The Hope Bubble."
02 stood. She looked at the orange notification still sitting in her HUD, the one she had refused to dismiss since the road. Her expression settled into something quieter than anything she'd shown in the graveyard.
"Don't leave anything out."