Only Human (Goddess of Victory NIKKE SI)

[Ace of Scarabs]

Joe really needs to stop tempting Murphy to add excitement to his day

 

[Blackhart]

Joe really needs to stop tempting Murphy to add excitement to his day

Click to shrink...

Fr, the amount of times he challenged Murphy in a few paragraphs... Man will have the entire Rapture population in that hemisphere after him.. if he's lucky

 

[Fragment of Serenity]

Maxwell is going to murder someone.

Possibly multiple some-ones.

...certainly her partners and likely Suyen.

And Joe and the rest will absolutely cover for her.

 

[The 17th Immortal]

Maxwell is going to murder someone.

Possibly multiple some-ones.

...certainly her partners and likely Suyen.

And Joe and the rest will absolutely cover for her.

Click to shrink...

Assuming they're not actively participating, of course.

 

[BakaSmurf]

===
Chapter 102 - The Amazing Flying Circus
===

Once everyone was inside the aircraft, it was notable how Emma and Vesti immediately moved as if to fall in alongside Rapi, who momentarily looked uncomfortable before the two women caught the displeased glower Eunhwa shot their way. It took a moment, but it seemed to register to them that Rapi wasn't a member of Absolute anymore, and they were inexplicably formed up alongside Counters. Made even more noticeable by the fact that Rapi had stopped wearing her full Absolute uniform a while ago.

The pair sheepishly moved to instead stand alongside Eunhwa, while Anis and Neon looked somewhat awkward at the situation. To say nothing of how uncomfortable Rapi seemed. It evidently just came naturally to Emma and Vesti to assume formation with the former Goddess. He supposed he could understand why Eunhwa would find that vexing, even after it had presumably been a fair while since Rapi had been a member of the squad.

Man, Joe could already see how this could wind up being an awkward mission. At least Matis seemed immediately distracted by their transport, Drake and Laplace having followed Maxwell into the pilot's cabin while the beleaguered blonde grumbled about her squadmates bothering her with questions about what the Maxwellcopter could do, if Maxwell could pull off barrel rolls or fly through tunnels in it, if it could transform into a jet, robot, or a giant gun, etc.

A giant flying gun would actually probably be useful against the likes of Stormbringer—a Tyrant which was a giant mechnical bird of myth, large enough to rival the Avenger itself. But, that was neither here nor there.

At any rate, the aircraft started up fine, Joe's ear protection kicked in given how incredibly loud helicopters were while running—even while inside of one, which would cause everyone's voices to sound somewhat modulated to him, but they'd still be perfectly descipherable. The hangar elevator started up, and the helicopter ascended before having even achieved lift-off. A few minutes of this eventually resulted in the surface hatch opening, causing daylight to strike the Maxwellcopter for the first time, Christening the wildly yet seemingly non-consensually egotistal aircraft with the sun's rays.

Once the elevator came to a stop, only a few moments passed before the helicopter's propellers kicked into high speed, and the machine lifted off under its own power. With the hatch closing behind them, the Maxwellcopter flew in the open skies of Earth for the first time, like a majestic peacock. Loud, and obnoxious—a perfect fit for Matis given Laplace and Drake's behaviour to that point, to be honest.

Despite the absurd nature of their transport, the flight to Area H was quiet, seemingly largely uneventful. While waiting to reach the drop-off point, Eunhwa spoke up, fixing her attention squarely on Joe. "RoE?" She inquired.

"Return Fire Only," Joe immediately replied, hanging onto one of the transport's standing handles, given that his exoskeleton made sitting down on anything other than a stool kind of awkward. "Our mission is to retrieve the Heretic Fragments, not sweep the region clear in a deranged blitzkrieg. Get in and back out as smoothly as possible. That means avoiding conflict if we can. No unnecessary theatrics that could risk needless injuries or even deaths."

Eunhwa looked surprised when Joe didn't miss a beat as he responded to her, then she looked outright stupefied when he kept going and explained his reasoning with professional ease.

After a moment of stunned silence, it was Emma that spoke up next. "...Eunhwa was just trying to catch the Commander not knowing what 'RoE' means," she started simply enough. "I don't think she was expecting such a well-reasoned justification for his answer too."

While Vesti looked at Joe with wide, wonder-filled eyes, the man in question looked absolutely perplexed for a brief moment, before his neurons connected and with a quick shake of his head, he declared: "I was about to ask how in the fuck I couldn't be expected to know what 'Rules of Engagement' means, but then I remembered that the average Commander is a chimpanzee in a cheap suit with a dented head, and that getting their shoes tied in the morning is an accomplishment for them."

Rolling his eyes, the man let out a sigh as he was forced to ponder for a moment the fact that the Commander Corps was actively shitting all over his and Andersen's legacy. This considering that Joe wasn't even a prideful man in the first place—he could only imagine how severely that pissed off Andersen, peacock that he was.

But, it was what it was. The Commander Corps would be dealt with when it was dealt with; following the downfall of the Central Government. Until then… They'd have to just deal with the knowledge that these morons were wasting lives to maintain their power and keep mankind trapped under their thumb.

But, they were in the here and now, deploying into a battlefield where a Heretic was felled. They didn't know what to expect of the area beyond the environmental hazards that lingered as a consequence of Indivillia's core overloading explosively, or even how Raptures may behave in that location in the wake of the destruction of a Heretic. Focus. Now wasn't the time to get wrapped up in the past and future.

So, Joe refocused, taking a deep, bracing breath, and with his head no longer lost in the clouds… Noticed—Counters all snickering in smug amusement at his brutal dismissal of the Commander Corps aside—Eunhwa giving him an unblinking, askew, uncertain stare, her bright amethyst eyes boring into his face. Given that, attitude aside, Eunhwa was a very pretty woman, being stared at by her nearly gave him pause.

"You ain't gonna do it," the voice of Anis suddenly cut the ongoing beat short. Everyone turned and gave the yellow-bedecked blonde a confused look, even as she herself presented a smug expression Eunhwa's way.

"...What?" Eunhwa's brow furrowed, damn near cocking her head at the seeming non-sequiter.

"You're not gonna make the Commander look bad," Anis asserted, her smug redoubling. "He's too good at his job. In fact, he's the best Commander in the Ark. In fact, he's the best Commander humanity has ever had."

"Yeah!" Neon interjected, pumping her little fists with a proud smile as she agreed with Anis and spoke up. "The Commander's brain is too big to be tricked! Even when a plan fails, he figures it out and we wind up coming up winning anyways! He's the best! He puts the rest of the Commander Corps to shame!"

Eunhwa gave the pair just about the most heavily-lidded stare Joe ever did see. She didn't seem particularly impressed by their assertions, and in fact, rolled her eyes in response. "Oh, I'm sure he's a regular New Hope or Legendary Commander."

Joe did his best to keep his breathing even and pointedly not react to that statement. He'd also made a note to chastise Anis for trying to be cute about who he really was. The last thing they needed was an OPSEC breach about this of all fucking things!

Anis and Neon, regardless, looked somewhat offended at Eunhwa's dismissal, thus, seeking affirmation, the two whipped their faces around to fixate on Rapi, who looked surprised. "Rapi!" Anis started, her girly voice bouncing off the walls of the helicopter as she spoke. "What do you think of the Commander, hmmmm?"

"Yeah!" Neon nodded verily, expectantly looking at the taller blonde. "Tell us about the Commander, Rapi!"

Though there was a delay, with a small smile, Rapi's gaze drifted, becoming unfocused as she said: "...He's amazing. He's kind. He's considerate, brave, focused… Tall… Handsome… Broad chested… Wide shoulders… Big arms… His chest hair… That toned back…" The normally taciturn little woman trailed off, her gaze becoming very unfocused as she started to quietly chuckle to herself, her expression drifting into a blissful reverie.

Joe was doing everything in his power to not acknowledge how Rapi just started drooling over him out in the open like that. How embarrassing. Affirming and confidence-boosting, yes, but still embarrassing! Good Lord, she'd do that back in the day as Red Hood, but… Man, more and more of her old personality really was reasserting itself, huh? The thought of that was both relieving, and worrying, considering how… Well, Red Hood was.

"-Rapi!" Neon stepped forward, sharply poking the taller woman square in the forehead to forcibly bring her back into reality. "You were supposed to add onto how good the Commander is at his job! Not perv on him in public! Go do that when we get back home and you can lock yourselves up in his room with Cinderella again!"

Rapi's face began to burn as red as a stove's heating element, while Anis looked ready to guffaw at her fellow's entirely self-inflicted predicament, and Joe attempted to disassociate.

It certainly didn't help that Absolute looked utterly bushwhacked by Rapi's response. Eunhwa was staring with wide, uncomprehending eyes, Vesti's mouth had become practically unhinged, and Emma looked very much caught off guard for a few moments… Right before her expression shifted into one of damn near predatory anticipation. Joe tried really hard to just ignore that, because whatever the fuck that was, he didn't need that in his life on top of everything else going on.

However, in the midst of all that, Drake suddenly emerged back into the passenger hold, chortling at the top of her lungs most villainously. She kept going. And going. Laughing and laughing for an awkward, uncomfortable amount of time.

Only after things became thoroughly weird did she actually speak up. "I knew it! I knew I had you figured out from day one!" She dramatically pointed at Joe even as she leaned back and settled her free hand over her face, peeking through her splayed-out fingers like a chuuni. "To ensorcell even the mightiest of Nikkes with naught but his masculine charisma… The keen mind of an unstoppable conquering Supervillain! So brilliant as to conquer the Ark- Nay, the whole world in one fell swoop, forming a personal army of the mightiest Nikkes the world has ever seen all the while! A fine addition to the League of Villainy! Bwahahahaha!"

Joe really started trying to disassociate from that, because Jesus fucking Christ, that hit too close to home considering what they were planning to do with the CG, and while the man was sure that Absolute could ultimately be trusted, Ingrid hadn't really talked to him about that yet. And there was no way in Hell they were going to let Matis know anything about fuck all!

"Wrong!" Laplace burst into the passenger cabin after Drake, hands set on her hips as she did her best to do the Superman pose, despite being the tiny little thing that she was. "The Commander is clearly a Hero among Heroes! For even Nikkes to look up to him, he couldn't be anything besides a shining beacon of hope and light and victory and hope! With his direction, the Ark will take one step closer to liberating the surface from the evil Raptures! The Hero's Association is all the stronger with his membership!"

Drake chortled like a cartoon character. "Foolish hero! So blinded by your hopeless optimism, that you cannot identify a true Villain even when one looks you in the eye! A dark lord standing at the head of a dark army rises! Let the world know true fear! Bwahahahaha!"

"Nay!" Laplace interjected, directing her nose skyward as she did so. "A true blue Hero ascends to shine a light upon the world below! A new age of Heroes arises, and all shall be uplifted as the Ark rises to soar through the clouds so that all may look down upon the evil Raptures, as has always been our Heroic right!"

Joe closed his eyes and took a very deep breath. Laplace and Drake were draining to deal with, to say the least. Utterly deranged characters, regardless of how they were supposedly the most powerful Nikkes in the Ark.

Opening his eyes, he noticed that Eunhwa seemed to be having the same reaction as him, though one tinged with more noticeable annoyance, given the light furrowing of her brow.

"Just as annoying as they were the last time we had to work with them…" the Korean beauty noted under her breath, Joe's electronic ear pro working overtime to amplify her voice so he could hear her over the helicopter's roaring engine and spinning blades. "Utterly rediculous…"

Emma turned to face her much shorter fellow, a small smile playing across her features as she did so. "You don't think it's a little amusing though? The way they make everything a big show?"

Laplace and Drake continued bickering in the background, now being soundly ignored as they did so.

Eunhwa's response came flat and pointed. "I hate clowns," she declared simply.

Joe interjected in a similarly dry tone, grimacing slightly. "Shame we seem to have been conscripted into the amazing flying circus, then."

"Indeed," Eunhwa replied with a snort.

Emma, Vesti, and Rapi all looked between Joe and Eunhwa with no small amount of surprise, the three not having expected the two to find any degree of common ground, especially after their introductions had started with such a venomous argument. Professionals, it seemed, tended to find at least something to agree upon when faced with buffoonery, though.

Of course, as soon as they were on flat Earth again, Joe would put his foot down and wouldn't tolerate any bullshit. He had no interest in potentially needing to work around needless problems caused by idiocy. Regardless of how foolhardy Matis was about their capacity to fight, an unnecessary risk was an unnecessary risk. Simple as-

"Maxwell, stop!" Drake suddenly called out, eliciting a moment of surprise from Laplace, who braced at the minimal forewarning.

The aircraft's momentum suddenly shifted, swaying backwards to harshly slow down, if not outright reverse. The heavy exoskeleton combined with his grip on the standing handle kept Joe pretty securely locked in place, but the sudden change was still more than a little worrying. "What's going on?" He demanded of Drake.

"Raptures," Drake replied, lightly rubbing at her chin as she maintained her footing with little to no apparent effort alongside Rapi, while everyone else at least swayed more than a little bit as they maintained their footing. "A lot of them. If we try to fly any closer to Area H, we're gonna get shot down and swarmed."

"Shit," Joe started with a grumble. "Shifty, can you confirm?"

"One moment, Commander," Shifty said before a beat passed, and she replied properly. "I can confirm, there's minimal Alva Particle interference in the area. Scans show even more Raptures than Drake's sensors suggest. I would strongly advise against attempting to fly the rest of the way to the battlefield where Indivilia was destroyed."

"Because of course…" Joe growled, shaking his head as he could make out from the window the copter already dropping towards the ground, "Maxwell, you see anything yourself?"

"No," Matis' squad engineer and sniper replied matter-of-factually. "But Drake's sensors are about as reliable as sensors can be. If she and Shifty say we're about to soar into a Rapture horde, then we're about to soar into a Rapture horde."

"So?" Laplace started, huffing with a small frown. "I'm not afraid of some weak Raptures! Let me at 'em! I'll-"

"You will not engage Raptures without my express permission first!" Joe very pointedly and harshly declared while pointing at the little twintailled blonde for emphasis. "This is a retrieval mission, not a sweep and clear!"

"But we could easily take them all out!" Laplace asserted in a borderline whining tone. "Just Matis alone! With Absolute and Counters along too-!"

"You have infinite energy?" Joe interjected, brow furrowing heavily.

"H-huh?" Laplace looked somewhat taken aback, blinking quite a few times before replying. "N-no, not-"

Joe sharply turned towards Absolute. "You have infinite ammo?" He asked in turn.

"Of course not," Eunhwa replied, seeming annoyed by the question.

Emma set her finger on her plump bottom limp, eyes drifting upwards in consideration. "Well, if I just use my pistol and give my minigun ammo to Eunhwa, she'd probably be able to shoot for a long time, since I've got so much-"

"Of course not," Eunhwa cut Emma off, pointedly repeating herself with no small measure of annoyance. The sniper probably took offense to the idea of loading mass-produced machine gun ammo into her high-speed, low-drag custom elite operator sniper rifle.

Vesti just shook her head to answer the Commander's question.

Thus, he turned back to Laplace, declaring: "We have not been outfitted for a full-on assault against massed Rapture hordes. Even if we could clear out all nearby Raptures without significant risk to our forces, that would be a significant hit to our logistics, and greatly increase the risks associated with just continuing onto our actual objective. Our mission is to get in, retrieve the Heretic Fragments, and get back out. Period."

His point was punctuated by the helicopter touching down, the machine's suspension producing a noticeable bounce before coming to a complete stop. All the while, Laplace looked more than a little displeased, while Drake's attention was elsewhere, likely focusing on tracking nearby Raptures over playing into her typical theatrics.

"Commander," Maxwell spoke up over comms as the aircraft's engine cut off, and the propellers began to wind down. "This is the closest I can safely get us by air. We'll need to continue on foot if we want to avoid major fights."

"Will the helicopter be safe here?" Joe asked, adjusting his tactical vest as he did so.

Maxwell replied matter-of-factually. "I can set the autopilot to backtrack a while and land further away from the nearby Raptures if you want to play it safe. The autopilot trains based on paths already flown by a pilot, so it'll only be able to follow and land along the path we've already taken. We may have to hoof it to reach it if it happens to land in a area of high Alva Particle density and we or Shifty can't connect to it at range, though."

Joe scoffed. "Sounds a lot better than Raptures tearing it apart while we're away and needing to walk the entire way back."

"Agreed," Anis dryly added her opinion on the matter.

"The less we have to walk, the better," Neon agreed with a sagely nod.

"Even though 'she who walks, arrives?'" Anis asked in a bit of a cheeky tone, which inexplicably caused Neon to react as though she'd just heard something profound and deep.

Joe, on the other hand, recognized that Anis just hit Neon with some psuedo-philosophical bullshit, and presented the messy-haired blonde with a heavily lidded look. While she looked a little put-off by the displeased stare, Anis did stop, so credit for that, if nothing else.

"Are we heading out, or not?" Eunhwa inquired, letting her annoyance at the ongoing clown show shine through clearly.

"Yes," Joe replied as he moved for the sliding door, whipping it open and motioning for the girls to all file out. "We'll go over formations and shit once we're all outside again in preperation for the trek."

The Nikkes all complied, though Laplace continued to pout, and Drake villainously chortled for no apparent reason as she hopped out of the helicopter. Maxwell—similarly to Emma—spun on her heel so she could playfully wink at Joe before leaving the aircraft, which produced a huff from Rapi, who left the vehicle just before the Commander did.

Taking a deep breath, Joe allowed himself a moment to brace for what was coming next. Doubtlessly, a series of problems that would be his problem to solve. Starting with an unexpected horde of Raptures hovering around the area where Indivilia had been destroyed, complicating their plan of approach right out of the gate.

Because if it wasn't one thing, it was another. Such was life on this bitch of an Earth.

 

[Fragment of Serenity]

Well, it has become clear how Joe made it to as great a height as he did: he's an expert crazy lady wrangler.

Alright, how big of an explosion is this going to result in? And is the Max-chopper going to make it out in one piece? Place your bets!

 

[Grim Dark Fantasy]

I can get about Joe being too serious for Drake (even though she's great, I dare say she's the GOAT), but I feel like in order to be in tune with Matis you need to be just a little crazy in the head, and Joe doesn't have that in him right now. Still, they are the right sort of people you need when things stop making sense and you have to do something batshit insane and seemingly impossible.

Alright, how big of an explosion is this going to result in?

Click to shrink...

We have several candidates who are into big explosions. And Laplace is just the most obvious one.
I'm saying all of them.

 

[JKD_666]

I can get about Joe being too serious for Drake (even though she's great, I dare say she's the GOAT), but I feel like in order to be in tune with Matis you need to be just a little crazy in the head, and Joe doesn't have that in him right now. Still, they are the right sort of people you need when things stop making sense and you have to do something batshit insane and seemingly impossible.

Click to shrink...

Joe got along with Godnesses just fine, tho. And let's face it, they got up to some serious buffonery, too. I think Joe will be ok.

 

[DeathShade]

Joe got along with Godnesses just fine, tho. And let's face it, they got up to some serious buffonery, too. I think Joe will be ok.

Click to shrink...

Scarlet got a lot more chill once she became an Alcoholic.

Before that she was getting punted through floors and ceilings for challenging Lilith to fights.

Anyway, Maxwell isn't actually sane. She just has the common decency to restrict her particular brand of crazy to in private

 

[WhyBotherEatingSauce]

Wooow. This website format is confusing. You have been publishing on it since 2023! Sheeesh. Well, I am using your fan fiction as a reference for my cross-post (like yours is!). Thanks!

* Edit 12 minutes later: yes! I received approval for public display!

 

[Blackhart]

Yoo, didn't expect such a quick follow-up!
Honestly, I'm just waiting for Joe to go through his psychotic break lmao
Dealing with the Tension between Absolute and Rapi, followed by Drake and Laplace just existing... I feel a bit sorry for him..
TFTC!

 

[BakaSmurf]

===
Chapter 103 - The Best Around
===

Boots hitting the Earth, Joe stepped away from the aircraft, taking in the sights surrounding them. Unlike the Vancouver area surrounding the Ark, Area H and its surroundings were rather… Post-apocalyptic. A veritible wasteland of sand, dirt, and dust. Ruined buildings dotted the horizon, all painting a picture of long-term destruction. Everything was a depressing desaturated beige, though at least the sky was clear and as blue as ever.

Otherwise, it reminded the Commander of the region surrounding the Orbital Elevator; the equatorial landing site of the Initial Rapture Invasion that had been literally flattened and in many places outright glassed by the first Rapture descent.

Joe felt his chest tighten at the reminder of that place for a great many reasons, but, it was what it was. He pushed those thoughts aside and focused on the here and now, the mission to retrieve the pieces of the Heretic Indivilia that were left over after she was destroyed following a battle with Matis and Absolute three months ago.

Eunhwa spoke up as soon as Joe had taken a few steps away from the Maxwellcopter—which looked exceptionally rediculous in this keenly depressing and oppressive environment, to say the least—towards the gathered girls. "You mentioned discussions about formations?" She inquired.

Nodding once, Joe immediately proceeded onto business. "For this operation, it would be best to split troops up into groups of long-ranged units and close-to-medium-range units. Eunhwa, Maxwell, and Rapi with at least one spotter as sniper support, with everyone else comprising a medium-to-close-in combat unit."

"Rapi as sniper support?" Eunhwa started, furrowing a brow as another ascended onto her forehead. "Are you sure about that?"

At that, Joe focused on Eunhwa as he crossed his arms. "Why do you have doubts about having Rapi serving as a sniper?"

"That's an M82A2," Eunhwa started, referring to Rapi's massive .50 cal. "Putting aside the fact that Barretts are anti-materiel rifles, not sniper rifles to begin with, the A2 in particular is a shoulder-mounted weapon. It was not only not designed to be fired prone, it was originally built specifically to be fired skywards at airborne helicopters from a standing position."

The black-clad ravenette continued laying out her reasoning without missing a beat.

"This makes it ideal for use on large Raptures, both aerial and otherwise at most ranges, and while the non-shoulder-mounted variants of the Barrett can reliably serve as sniper rifles if loaded with mission-appropriate ammunition, the shoulder-mounted bullpup model is just not suited for such applications."

Still, she was not yet finished.

"It could potentially be pressed into a particularly destructive designated marksman role, if need be, but it would be best to simply have Rapi serve alongside regular infantry as a close-in anti-materiel specialist. Especially considering she has that thing loaded with Ultra Raufoss rounds. The less chances she has to miss and potentially waste some of the most expensive ammunition produced in the Ark, the better."

That… Actually made perfect sense. Shit, Eunhwa made a really good point. It was kind of inarguable, even. Joe's thought process began and ended at 'long rifle + big bullet + scope = sniper.'

But, all things considered…

"Given that Rapi is also hyper-mobile as a matter of course," the Commander started, rubbing his bearded chin contemplatively for a moment. "Yeah, I have no argument to the contrary. You're right. It would be best for Rapi to just act as she usually does, while also having the capacity to easily bypass the armour of larger Raptures if need be."

He shifted his attention to the red-and-black bedecked blonde momentarily. "You have any thoughts on this matter, Rapi?"

"Not beyond what's already been said, Commander," Rapi replied easily. "My assault rifle and grenade launcher are best suited for mid-to-close range engagements, and Wolf's Bane is best served in an all-range anti-materiel role. And as has been noted: dedicated sniping would not be the best application of my abilities, nor is such my field of expertise to begin with."

Nodding once, Joe declared: "Okay, Eunhwa's right, Rapi will remain with the general infantry as an anti-materiel specialist." Turning to look over everyone else again, he caught sight of Eunhwa… Once more, just staring at him, an openly bushwhacked look of abject shock worn plain on her face.

She really didn't have a high opinion of Commanders. Not that the man could blame her, she had probably expected him to insult her intelligence and double down on having Rapi snipe, and Joe would have probably expected the same out of any other Commander as well.

But this Commander wasn't above taking good advice from the people he worked with, regardless of the state of their interpersonal relationship. He and Eunhwa didn't necessarily have to get along personally to work together effectively on a professional level.

"Commander, Commander!" Laplace's hand shot up to grab attention, as if shouting as she was wouldn't do that job well enough in the first place. "What about Drake and me?"

"You're in the same role as Rapi, Laplace," Joe answered simply. "High-mobility anti-materiel general infantry. That laser cannon of yours serves a similar function as a direct-fire rocket launcher normally and hits like an artillery piece, so you'd be best served running as fast as you can and flanking the enemy while they're distracted alongside Rapi. Drake, you just stick with Emma, Anis, Vesti, and Neon. Emma's our field medic and needs sufficient escort, given that she's our lifeline if any of you are injured out here."

Drake laughed villainously as she replied. "There could be nothing more Villainous than showing my Villainous superiority by demonstrating that nobody else can protect the medic better than I, a nefarious Villain can! Thus forcing everyone to submit to the inarguable superiority of Villainy! I agree to this arrangement which mocks the inferiority of non-Villainy! Bwahahahahaha!" As one might imagine, she leaned back and chortled into the sky like a mad woman, her half-length cape billowing in the wind as she did so.

Maxwell interjected cheerfully. "Remember that my weapon is both a precision sniper rifle and an anti-materiel rifle, so I'm a bit more versatile than you might think. Also, mind if I look at your drone, Cutey?"

Joe blinked, caught somewhat off-guard by the request. "Why do you want to see my drone?" He asked, not noticing Rapi's brow furrowing at hearing Maxwell's affectionate nickname for him.

Maxwell's answer came easily enough. "So I can tweak it to function as our spotter using its range finder, IFF, and multi-spectrum vision systems. Elysion snipers usually use dedicated crawling spotter drones with much more powerful dedicated components, but these little scouters have similar systems in them. Lesser systems, but it'll get the job done with some quick tweaks."

Eunhwa piped up again at that. "The drones I've used keep getting destroyed in the field… But I'll admit that they've been consistently better at spotting than I am alone."

Emma spoke up next. "Vesti or I usually spot for Eunhwa in the absence of a drone, but we won't be able to do that for her if we're on the frontline for this operation."

Maxwell continued. "You also won't need that drone for yourself on this mission, Cutey, since Drake can sense nearby Raptures even without visual contact anyways. She'll ping everyone's IFF systems constantly so you won't need to worry about walking into a horde or anything like that."

"What a bother," Drake declared, a disdainful sneering grimace worn on her features.

"It'll be a big help though, Drake!" Laplace pointedly declared before Joe could reply to the complaint.

"Okay, fine, I'll do it," the self-styled villain replied breezily, with absolutely no resistance whatsoever, as Laplace preened at having accomplished the arduous task of convincing her subordinate to cooperate after a singular, toothless greivance.

Joe just took a moment to take a deep breath before retrieving the drone from its harness, followed by casually tossing it Maxwell's way. The engineer of Matis caught it, and immediately started fiddling with it, deploying a number of sub-arms from her exoskeleton that all had a number of tools and wires attached to them.

As that was being done, Joe brought his hand up to his ear. "Any updates to share, Shifty?"

"Negative Commander," the blue-haired operator replied promptly. "Alva Particle density remains low, and no Raptures have begun to approach your location, suggesting that you're still undetected."

"Excellent," Joe declared as he continued. "Mark this as our primary exfil point and recall the helicopter-"

"Maxwellcopter!" Laplace and Drake both interjected simultaneously even as Maxwell painfully cringed.

"-a few kilometres back the way we came. The less risk of it being found and destroyed by Raptures, the better."

"Understood, Commander," Shifty acknowledged the instruction. "Once you've departed, I'll start it up so you don't get dust and dirt kicked in your faces."

Huh. Joe hadn't even thought of that. Considerate. "Appreciated," he said before redirecting his attention to the squad proper. "Okay, any further comments or suggestions before we head out?"

"U-um…" Vesti started meekly, making a tiny motion as if to nervously raise her hand, though it went no higher than her waist, in contrast to Laplace shooting her appendage up as far as she could extend it in a fraction of a second. "C-can I t-take point?"

Joe blinked, took a moment to parse that request, then recalled the assertion that Vesti fought something like Liliweiss. That sort of aggression didn't manifest and disappear on a whim, the pitifully cute little ashen-haired cloaked woman more than likely actively revelled in open combat.

Perhaps that was the one situation where she felt free to cut loose? Where she actually felt confident? Perhaps even the one time she felt she could de-stress?

Either way, despite the deeply dubious look on the face of Anis, Joe nodded. "Yes, Vesti. Just do not engage without permission or unless you are attacked first. Understood?"

"Y-yes- I-I mean, understood, Commander…!" Vesti looked as relieved as she did anxious. Right proper little anxiety ball this one was.

Looking about, Joe inquired once more: "Anything else?"

"...Onnneee… Moment…" Maxwell gradually piped up, before a wide smile found purchase on her features, jostling the quadroter once as she set her spare hand on her bare midsection so toned that she had faintly visible abs. "Done! Eunhwa, connect to the drone so it can share its IFF with you and spot for us both."

"Done," Eunhwa declared matter-of-factually, her silken jet black hair catching the gentle wind rather photogenically, as if for emphasis. "Though I doubt this will compare to a purpose-built spotter done…"

"It only needs to get the job done well enough for now," Joe declared as Maxwell deployed the device, and it dutifully moved to hover between the ravenette and the blonde with a light buzz of its propellers.

Activating his arm-mounted CombiLink—which was not unlike a Pip-Boy from Fallout, albeit a slimline futuretech one—the device projected onto the Heads-Up-Display of his open-faced helmet's new Augmented Reality visor, and Joe was blasted by the sight of it overwhelming his senses with a whole load of shit, including having every damned vision spectrum active at once. It actually managed to hurt to look at.

Maxwell smirked at the sight of Joe recoiling and retracting his visor to harshly rub at his eyes. "Yeah, maybe don't try to use the drone yourself for now. Nikkes have systems that parse all of that noise into usable information for us and injects it directly into our brains in an orderly manner, while you're just getting blasted with everything being fed into your poor CombiLink unfiltered at once…"

Joe disabled the connection to the drone, instead reflexively switching to the Locally Generated Tacmap function- Blinking, something occurred to him. "Drake, could you push the location of detected Raptures to my CombiLink's LGT as you notice them so I can get an active visual reference on the bastards as we go?"

"Easily!" Drake declared as the wrist-mounted computer prompted him to authorize a connection from the white-haired woman, which he, of course, allowed. "It'll make things a little simpler for me if you track them yourself so I can just focus on Nikke stuff instead of needing to constantly tell everyone where every Rapture is every time myself too."

Recalling how Drake had stopped and made a point to focus on tracking Raptures in the Maxwellcopter, that actually made sense. If she could just automatically ping detections directly to Joe's device without stopping, that'd be one less thing for her to have to juggle. Hell yeah, Joe loved it when methods were found to reduce tactical friction-

"Commander," Rapi spoke up. "If every member of the squad connects to your CombiLink, we can all passively receive the map data and Rapture locations as well, so long as Alva Particle density doesn't rise high enough to disrupt the connection even at short range."

"Oh, shit, Hell yeah," Joe couldn't help but grin at that. "Fuckin' synergy, I love it. Everyone do that, it'll make this entire operation run that much smoother." After a moment, the man authorized the round of connection requests to his CombiLink, and once the girls all confirmed that they had the currently generated height map data produced by Shifty's ongoing local scans, he nodded with a broad smile. "Excellent. Like a well-oiled machine."

There was a beat in which every gathered Nikke just stared at Joe quietly, looks of either various degrees of appraisal, or open pleasure, if not wonder.

"You really are a cut above the average Commander, aren't you?" Emma rhetorically asked, her expression being one of pleased consideration. "No wonder Ingrid pounced on you at the first opportunity and gives you everything you ask for. I'd want to keep you around at all costs too…"

"I've never met such a smart Commander before…" Vesti noted, her big blue eyes all but sparkling as she stared up at Joe like he was a celebrity.

"I told you," Anis declared, a smile broad, smug, outright prideful as she looked Joe's way. "Our Commander's the best."

"Just wait 'till you see him in action!" Neon suggested, setting her hands on her slim hips and pridefully raising her nose into the air. "This is just him warming up!"

Laplace hummed, giving Joe a critical, heretofore uncharacteristically serious stare. When she eventually spoke up, it was with a sharp countenance that seemed to ill-befit the little hero-obsessed loon. "It's no wonder Syuen told us to try to convince the Commander to sign up with Missilis instead… Even though he's just a human, he's already way smarter than the other Commanders we've dealt with before. I don't even feel tempted to tell Drake and Maxwell to ignore his orders and treat him like an object to be protected like we usually do with other Commanders!"

"Yeah, it's crazy," Drake agreed, appraising Joe with her obsidian black, unnaturally beady eyes. "You should join up with Missilis! I bet you'd actually be a good Commander for a change! Especially since you actually listen to Nikkes! Every time we've worked with one before, they've been the stupidest idiots imagineable!"

Maxwell hummed, rapping her fingers atop the frame of her exoskeleton's legs. "Yeah, unless you wind up tripping flat on your face when we get into an actual fight… You actually seem to know what you're doing, Cutey. That's really rare for a Commander. I actually want to listen to you and see if you can keep it up when it really matters. That's never happened before."

"We told you he's the best," Rapi smugly declared, matching the expression Anis and Neon wore together. Seeing Rapi wearing such an expression actually made his heart skip a beat, but given the situation, he kept his head in the game and remained focused. He could gush over Rapi being pretty and having a wonderful, stirring confident grin once they were back at Shangri-La.

Eunhwa was the only one to not immediately speak up, just continuing to stare wordlessly at Joe, her expression unreadable. After a few moments, she finally did say something. "...We should get moving. If we waste too much time here, we may wind up needing to either navigate back out of enemy territory in the dark, or even spend the night in an area of heavy Rapture activity. Even with the active tracking capabilities of Matis, that is a situation we should avoid getting ourselves caught in."

Joe was actually grateful that Eunhwa didn't continue to heap on the glazing, considering he was just displaying basic fucking competence. This was what should have been expected out of every Commander at the bare minimum, not something that made him stand out as an icon of singular hypercompetence.

"Eunhwa's right," the Commander started with a sharp clap of his hands. "Let's stop burning daylight. Arrowhead formation, Vesti at the tip, Rapi and Laplace on her wings, Neon and Anis on the flanks, Emma with myself and Drake at the centre. Eunhwa and Maxwell: follow at the back and be prepared to break off and set up to provide long-range supporting fire if need be."

Everyone complied, and with their weapons readied, the unit started moving into Area H proper, aiming to weave around wandering Raptures as much as was possible.

After a few minutes of walking, the Maxwellcopter started up on Shifty's command in the distance, and looking back over his shoulder, Joe watched it lift off and—holy shit it looked so fucking uncannily goofy flying—turn to head right back the way they'd come.

Thus, the group proceeded on foot to collect fragments of a dead Heretic, hopefully with minimal fuss.

Joe could only hope that life would give him a break and not wind up to kick him in the nuts for once.

Needless to say, he gave it even odds for another random Chatterbox interrupt before the day was done.

 

[Dsaeg]

Bragging continues. Maxwell is either digging a shallow grave for herself or unknowingly is laying a foundation for a threesome to establish a pecking order with Rapi.

 

[Fragment of Serenity]

In order for Joe to be maximally effective, he needs to go one way and the rest go a different direction.

Chatterbox cannot resist following after him. It's an ego thing at this point, lol.

Then, once Chatterbox shows up, they pull the old switcheroo and ambush him.

 

[BakaSmurf]

===
Chapter 104 - Never a Dull Moment
===

Joe contemplated his tacmap, then closely examined the marked Raptures on his HUD… "We have to go through these bastards to get to the objective. They're too evenly distributed with not enough sight breaks to slip past them."

"Agreed," Eunhwa declared over comms, nestled a fair way back in a sniper's nest atop an old firewatch tower, surrounded by open wasteland as she was. "If we try to go around them, we'll be out here for an entire day longer than estimated. That canyon stretches out beyond either horizon and is far too wide to jump. We have to use the bridge right here, or hoof it the entire way around."

The fucked-up part of this random sharp-walled canyon in southern Canada is that all signs pointed to it being artificial—the product of a massive fucking laser that just cleaved a scar into the Earth's crust like a gargantuan sword being dragged across the face of it. Joe didn't remember this from the Initial Invasion, but he still had significant gaps in his recollection, to say nothing of the fact that Goddess couldn't have been on every front throughout the entire war. Some great battles actually had nothing to do with them, despite what some tall tales would say. He'd ask when they weren't on the clock, while just assuming that it could also be a product of the Second Surface Reclamation War.

Hell, maybe that 'New Hope' he'd heard about during their brief meeting with Dorothy—who Joe really had to refocus on getting on their side given how damned much thinking about her still hurt—had a run-in with a Heretic here. Lord knew those monsters could present the firepower to pull something like this off. A question to bookmark for later. Maybe for Andersen, even…

At any rate, the bridge wasn't in the horrible condition one might have expected from a pre-war construction, and lo, Maxwell had confirmed that Mighty Tools had built it only twenty or thirty years ago at the behest of the Central Government with support from Matis. Having to go around or over the massive gouge really made getting to and from objectives in this part of the country a right bitch, considering using aircraft too deep into the region always attracted the attention of flying Raptures.

So of course, the Raptures seemed to notice that the bridge was new, and had a tendency to congregate around it and just sit there, waiting. Bastards couldn't make anything easy for humanity, huh?

Not privy to Joe's internal bitching, Maxwell piped up from her own perch—a simple barren hill—with a hum. "And hope that there aren't any other clusters along the way that we'll have to fight to get past anyway."

"There's a Lord-Class here, though," Anis noted with an audible frown from her spot alongside Neon.

Indeed, a Lord-Class of the Mace model drifted around the bridge they were set to cross—the thing was one of the more organic-looking Raptures, even more so than Chatterbox. It was a flier, had undulating, carbon black hide with glowing red flesh peeking out from behind massive dark dermal plates. It almost looked like a giant bloated starfish, one with large, visible gills and a mass of glowing red eyes on its Earth-facing underside.

Maces attacked from the sky using lasers, which would punch clean though any type of armour that didn't have laser resistant coating… Coating which wouldn't hold up to a Lord's lasers for more than about a second of sustained fire.

So yeah, it would be best to take that bastard out as quickly as possible, lest they risk incurring immediate and heavy losses to the thing's beams.

"Lords are nothing!" Laplace declared from where she was bouncing from foot-to-foot alongside the bombed-out building ruins they were taking cover behind, clearly antsy from having had to not blindly attack every Rapture on sight over the past few hours spent moving towards their target. "I could take it down all on my own, no problem! Let me at 'em!"

"She actually could, you know," Maxwell noted matter-of-factually, her tone breezy despite the danger that came with facing something as dangerous as a Lord, which was the class just below Tyrants. "I've personally seen her even destroy Tyrants on her own. A Lord would be a pushover for her."

"Hmm…" Neon mused aloud. "I have been wondering about the kind of Firepower Matis has to show off…"

"I could take down two- no, three- actually, no, just two of them at once!" Drake interjected with a bellicose brag, standing with the back of her palm raised to her opposing cheek, Sadistic Carnival held loose at her waist. "Hear me clear, Rapture scum! I, the great and terrible Villain Drake, will knock you all down! Bwahahahaha!"

Turning sharply to face Drake, Neon nodded once before declaring herself: "Our superior Firepower will win the day!" as she checked to make sure her custom M16 kitted out to serve as a light squad automatic weapon was locked and loaded, her shotgun being ill-suited for the kinds of ranges they'd be fighting at out here; even despite the mandate for her and Anis to also carry some slugs for their shotguns, which basically let them function as somewhat inaccurate, low-range rifles in a pinch. "Let's do it, Commander!"

Anis just let out a quiet, drawn-out whine at the lack of concern her squadmates seemed to have at the notion of directly attacking one of the more dangerous Rapture types that could be encountered on the surface.

Considering all of the information they had on hand for a long few moments… Joe started tapping away at his CombiLink. "Vesti, Laplace, Rapi, Anis, Eunhwa and Maxwell: on my mark, all of you fire on the Lord-class at once at maximum output and using your high explosive weapons. It's the most dangerous threat on the field right now, and eliminating it immediately will make dealing with the rest of the Raptures a glorified mop-up job."

Emma cocked her head at the man from her designated place at his side, her silken blonde locks streaming off of her shoulder as she did so. "All of our heavy hitters, firing at once? Isn't that kind of overkill, Commander?"

It was Eunhwa that responded, though. "Ensuring the largest and most dangerous Rapture is destroyed first will actually save us resources if it works. One shot from each of the squad's big guns on a target that is currently not moving, and has no defences raised, yet. That one strike should be enough to take it out, which we'll especially want to do considering it's a flier and could cause serious problems if it's allowed to brace and rally against us."

"That means charge your cannon all the way up before firing it, Laplace!" Maxwell sharply declared. "None of this 'snapshot' nonsense you've been so fond of lately!"

"But-!" Laplace started in a whining tone, only for Joe to cut her off.

"Fully charge your weapon before you fire it at the Lord, Laplace. That is an order," the Commander dictated firmly.

The little twintailed blonde grumbled under her breath, lips drawn into a grimace.

Meanwhile, Drake hummed as her cape billowed in the wind. "Putting everyone at risk to look cool doesn't sound very heroic to me," she noted in a very faintly admonishing tone. "Especially since the Commander is just a squishy human that's relying on us to protect him from monsters."

Laplace looked shocked, then with a heavy frown, almost pouted like a kid that got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

She, however, didn't complain further, and it seemed that the plan was locked in and good to go. Thus, Joe looked over the intel they had, and nodded once before speaking up again.

"Everyone, form up and get ready for the alpha strike on the Lord. I want this encounter to go nice and smooth." He motioned for the girls to move, and in just a few minutes, they were all set up, hands on their triggers, the Mace in their sights.

With the first soundless ping sent out, Laplace and Maxwell started charging their lasers. With the second, lungs were filled and breath promptly let out low and slow. With the third…

A series of thunderclaps sounded out simultaneously, and two streaks of near-blinding light triggered the auto-polarization of the Commander's visor.

The Lord screamed out in shock and pain, its dermal armour being blasted off by bullets, both precision and high-explosive, and raw energy as its core exploded from the impact of high intensity laser beams striking it at light speed, producing an explosion of charred flesh and boiling gore.

Then the grenades and rockets struck the horror, reducing it to a rain of putrid, steaming ichor and smouldering meat. What little was left of the thing hit the bridge with what surely would have been a sickening squelch, had Joe been close enough to hear it.

Instead, all that was heard was the scream of the numerous Husk and Servant-Class Raptures that immediately braced for combat, many scattering in a blind rage—though that changed quickly given that a few did notice the girls nearby, and the whole lot focused on them nearly at once.

"Fire at will!" Joe called out, swinging his hand out and stretching his arm towards the Raptures, despite only Emma being close enough to see the motion, having remained with him both as a dedicated escort and because the medic shouldn't be rushing into combat against a foe that had no concept of 'war crimes' a human peer foe would be expected to avoid committing. "Fire at will!"

Lead flied, beams streaked out, and explosions rocked the battlefield—yet, far more striking than any of that, was the sight of Vesti dropping her rocket launcher and flinging herself from the bombed-out second story window of her artillery perch with a vengeance, right at a Servant-Class Rapture—machines that were two metres tall and often just as broad at minimum.

With wide eyes, Joe watched the little ashen-haired Nikke draw both Grizzlies on either sides of her hips mid-air, and let out a savage, primal scream as she flew at the tripodal cretin with her cloak billowing behind her dramatically, just behind the stream of .50 calibre rain accentuated by tracer rounds.

The Rapture's armour was shredded—or at least, the outermost layer of its armour was. For as nightmarishly powerful as Nikke-grade firearms were, pistol-calibre guns were still relatively weak against these terrible monsters. To say nothing of the fact that Vesti had thrown herself right at the largest Rapture after the resident Lord.

Joe had immediately wondered if Vesti had just inexplicably experienced a psychotic Mind Switch, given how deranged and outright self-destructive the action was on the face of it.

Yet, staggered, the tripod spun around and blindly returned fire, though Vesti twisted her body mid-air with enough force as to shift her momentum just enough to avoid being struck by a stream of high calibre hyper-velocity slugs. Cloak streaming out around her and being shredded by the bullets that might've destroyed her body if not for her acrobatics, the little Nikke struck the wasted soil with such a powerful impact as to produce an explosion of sand which burst around her in a momentary blinding cloud.

Such was just enough as to occlude the Rapture's gaze for exactly as much time as the girl needed to harshly transition her momentum into a forward roll, landing on her feet, her legs coiled and she launched herself straight at the tripod again, soaring like a human-shaped spike and accompanied by a banshee-like shrieking roar, Vesti screamed as she drew her arms back so as to drive them forward at the last possible second—spearing her automatic pistols into the Rapture's biomechanical body with merciless fury.

Momentum carried the pair forward into a harsh, dramatic car crash-like roll, which was accompanied by a deep, thrumming roar—a single, continuous thunderclap as she fired her automatic pistols into the beast's body from within, absolutely coating the practically miniature Nikke in putrid ichor which blew back all over her with explosive force.

Two smaller Husk-Classes started to rush to intervene, rapidly approaching from either flank of the ongoing assault. Where Joe was ready to direct someone to provide fire support, Vesti, with another throaty roar, tore her arms outwards through the tripod's body horizontally, triggers still fully depressed as two streams of .50 AE found themselves intercepting the approaching Raptures, which were shredded by the semi-armour piercing high explosive rounds that punched through their low-grade bodies and obliterated their cores.

As Vesti's pistols ran dry, she unceremoniously let the weapons fall from her hands, drew her dominant right limb back, and drove it into the tripod's ravaged body with explosive force. Just as quickly as her clawed digits disappeared within, was the extremity ripped right back out, bringing the Rapture's core with it.

Thrusting the blood red core skywards, it was crushed with a primal roar and a frenzied rictus of inhuman rage. The neon glow of the Rapture's heart faded with rapidity, just as the Husks that had been charging her hit the ground alongside their fellow, still and lifeless as Vesti remained straddled atop the largest of the three, chest heaving, brow and nose wrinkled in a snarl, breath coming hot and heavy, teeth bared to the world.

It took a moment for Joe to register the silence that followed. In the time that it took for the Commander to find himself entirely enraptured by the smallest Nikke's absurdly ferocious display, everyone else had proceeded to efficiently mop up the rest of the hostile machines with no aplomb—at least, everyone but Anis, who was just as dumbstruck by Vesti's display as the Commander himself was.

Silence fell over the team for a few moments, during which Emma reached over and lightly patted Joe on the shoulder. "Did we forget to warn you about Vesti? Sorry, Commander, she's something of a little firecracker in a fight, as you can see."

That was certainly one fucking way of putting it! Holy mother of shit!

Flicking her hair with a villainous pose, Drake went to speak up. "That was-" Her head snapped aside, focusing on the edge of the canyon just as Joe registered a big reading on his own HUD. "Bogey, incoming, climbing up the cliff's edge! It looks like a Tyrant!"

Oh son of a bitch, you've got to be kidding me-!

While Joe wound up to order everyone back into formation with a purpose… He was once more utterly stupefied, this time, by bearing witness to Laplace-

"Hero jump!"

Dead-sprint towards the canyon and dramatically front flipping right off the cliff, curling herself up into a twin-tailed ball and flying a good ten metres vertically before cannonballing downwards into the gorge below like a rock.

The man just stared, eyes as wide as dinner plates and mouth hanging wide open. That did not just happen-

A monstrous scream sounded out, and following the sounds of something crashing straight up the vertical stone wall of the canyon, a massive beast launched upwards, taking to the sky. All the while, Laplace could only just be made out kick-boxing a number of clawing tentacles attempting to grab at the little interloper as she stood atop its wretched body.

"Hi-ya! Hero Kick!"

'Attempting' being the keyword here. Laplace was surprisingly easily fending off the tentacles flailing at her, even as her cannon, Hero Syndrome, was visibly charging in her hands.

"Hero Boot! Hero Heel! Hero Shoe!" Joe watched as Laplace continued to spin in place, throwing out lightning-fast kicks even as she demonstrated that she'd likely never read a thesaurus before. Yet still, she easily protected herself from the Tyrant's attacks, bobbing and weaving around its tentacles without apparent concern.

On that note: the great monster slammed into the ground atop four great, spindly legs that came to perilous knife-like points. Mechanical armour, visible cables which made up the meat of the limbs, and a three-part segmented body that ended in a bulbous, fleshy mass accentuated in black mechanical tubing. The sight of a great, towering, four-legged spider complete with glowing red eyes made it easy for the Commander to recognize it from his studies of the Ark's Rapture bestiary. A Harvester; a Tyrant-class Rapture that specialized in ambush tactics.

If not for Drake's extrasensory abilities, it would have probably worked too. Yet, instead…

Joe watched a teeny-tiny little twintailed blonde Nikke make one of the most dangerous Raptures that prowled the surface look the part of a fool. The man hadn't thought anything could catch him off-guard more than the sight of Vesti going full Doomslayer. He was wrong, Laplace was a beast. To take a Tyrant and just-

"Commander, permission to open fire!" Rapi cried out, shouldering Wolf's Bane and setting her sights on the great Rapture looming overhead.

Yet it was Eunhwa that replied. "No, she has it handled, Commander," the ravenette asserted over comms. "If she needed help, Matis would have already intervened."

Drake chortled as she declared: "But one mere Tyrant is nothing for a Nikke of Matis! Watch and consider applying to be our Commander, Commander!" The so-called villainess demonstrated her complete lack of guile of any kind, even as she reminded Joe that Syuen had ordered the three to convince him to defect to Missilis.

"Well," Maxwell almost sighed from her own hilltop perch. "Maybe two-thirds of Matis could easily take a Tyrant… Usually just one-third, though."

Joe wasn't paying attention to the two's byplay, though. He was too transfixed by the sight of Laplace, he swore to God, damn near operating on the same level as a Grimms. She was somehow maintaining her balance atop an actively resisting Tyrant, even as she threw out constant kicks to prevent it from grabbing her or otherwise knocking her off of its back. This, with casual self-assured confidence which ill-befitted her perilous situation. It was almost like this was little more than a game to her-

"Laplace-!" The leader of Matis kicked off the Harvester's back directly upwards, gaining air as she brought her cannon around and flung with the heavy weapon around her body with a harsh motion, the momentum causing her to spin and front-flip right before she sharply dropped, driving Hero Syndrome into the biomechanical horror's back, the weapon's quad-pronged bladed front end spearing through its armour with ease. "-Buster!"

Firing the fully charged laser cannon with its business end pressed directly into its flesh, the Harvester's main body lit up like a light bulb for a few striking seconds before a massive beam burst out from the abomination's underside, the directed energy glassing the ground upon which it stood, a terrible scream emitting from the arachnid-like nightmare punctuating the climax to the… 'Battle' rather sharply.

The Harvester's form hitched, and it tumbled forward bonelessly, even as Laplace finally went flying, though with a breezy 'hup!' as she hit the dusty Earth with a roll which ended in a superhero landing, one knee on the ground, a fist planted at her feet, her weapon held behind her in the moments before, with a broad, toothy grin, she triumphantly rose to her feet and jabbed her finger skywards as Hero Syndrome literally disappeared into thin air in a flash of light, wait they could do that-?

"Heroic!" The little blonde started, "Victory-!"

The Harvester then exploded, a shower of gore hitting Laplace's backside, coating her trailing white puffer jacket and twintails in Rapture ichor.

Several moments passed in silence, Laplace holding her heroic position, even now with her back covered in bits of biomechanical refuse. Her expression, however, was visibly strained, as she clearly hadn't expected that to happen, and wasn't happy that it had happened either.

As well she shouldn't be, given that they weren't going to be back in the Ark for the better part of the day, at least… One could only hope they wouldn't need to spend the night on the Surface with no access to showers.

"FIREPOWER!" Neon cried out as she started jumping in place, pumping her little fists in the air as Anis looked utterly flabbergasted and exhausted with this entire day already. "BEAM! BIG BEAM! BIG BRIGHT BEAM! NEON BEAM! BIG BRIGHT NEON BEAM GOOD! I WANNA SIGN ON TO MISSILIS! GIVE ME A BIG NEON GUN WITH SUPER FIREPOWER TOO!"

At the sight of Neon's display, Drake let out a singular bark of laughter before she made a declaration. "Told you, Commander! Never doubt Matis or the benefits that come with signing on with the most technologically advanced company in the Ark! Which includes such benefits such as premium dental services, a personal valet, heavily discounted premium Evergreen boosters, and ready access to the Drakemobile whenever a valued Commander wants! What a bargain! One would have to be a fool to not want to join up!"

Somehow, Joe could feel Maxwell planting her face into the side of her gun out of embarrassment off in the distance. Probably because he too felt intense soul pain from just how egregious, shameless, and clumsy Drake's recruitment attempts were.

"Matis," Eunhwa started, even as Vesti finally dismounted the dead Servant, picking up her pistols with a deeply sheepish look on her face at the mess she made, shyly traipsing back the way she'd come to find her fallen beret. "Stop trying to poach Commander Pholus. Or at least do a better job of it if you're going to insist on it."

Emma leaned over, presenting Joe a wide, beaming smile as she said: "Well aren't you the most popular boy around, Commander! I wonder if Rapi and Cinderella should be jealous? Hmmm?" She inquired in a teasing tone.

Joe just grimaced and palmed his own face.

Never a dull moment with Absolute and Matis.

 

[Ebanu8]

Lol, Drake trying and failing to poach the Commander.

 

[VATSTeen]

Honestly Drake was the wrong person to seduce Joe to Matis.

It should have been Maxwell.

 

[Testerx900]

Nice to see an update. Chapters 47 & 48 from canon included plenty of new material to work with in the future.

 

[Fragment of Serenity]

Honestly Drake was the wrong person to seduce Joe to Matis.

It should have been Maxwell.

Click to shrink...

Watching Maxwell attempt to flirt would be amazing in and of itself.

Rapi could likely learn a few things.

 

[Grim Dark Fantasy]

Honestly Drake was the wrong person to seduce Joe to Matis.

Click to shrink...

I know, but Drake made a very villainous move of stealing my heart.
Unforgivable.
Though, Maxwell is also great.
And Laplace after Project Matis event is just precious. Always protect her, she is our light in this world.

UPD.
As much as I like the story, the late chapters feel like a slog. The descriptions nice and all, but the pacing is completely off. I really wish it was more "dense" in terms of events, since there isn't really a lot going on in the recent chapters.

 

[Blackhart]

Damn... The smug hero obsessed gremlin is scary..
My social batteries are draining just listening to her and Drake talk
Thank you for the chapter!

 

[BakaSmurf]

===
Chapter 105 - The Belly of the Beast
===

"This…" Maxwell started, brow furrowed, gaze whipping about their environment. "Shifty, are you sure?"

"I've checked several times," the team's operator asserted over comms. "These are the coordinates both Matis and Absolute reported previously, and according to satellite map data, you should be standing right in the spot where Indivilia was destroyed."

Eunhwa spoke up next, her patience audibly running thin. "We destroyed Indivilia in a rocky, uneven valley. This is a flat plane. You gave us the wrong coordinates, check again."

The leader of Absolute's point was emphasized by the unimpeded wind causing everyone's hair and trailing clothing to billow about a fair amount.

However, Joe opted to interject and redirect their operator's instructions. "Shifty, can you do a full scan of the area? Something about this feels wrong," he noted as he looked over their surroundings, turning about as he got a strange sensation from everything happening.

As Eunhwa shot Joe a dubious look, Shifty replied to the man. "Yes Commander, allow me a few minutes for the scan to run- Ah!?" The operator audibly jumped in no small amount of shock and surprise immediately. "Commander, the initial scan burst confirms that you are at the reported coordinates, but you're also all 200 metres above the objective location!"

That caught Joe off guard for obvious reasons, the man's gaze snapping directly downwards, at the ground upon which they stood, even as the girls all looked thoroughly confused. "Wait, what- How-?"

With an explosion of loose dirt, a number of black things emerged from the Earth beneath them, whipping out and striking out at the gathered Nikkes. Of them, only Eunhwa reacted fast enough to avoid having a thick black spine lance out and spear itself into each of the girls, while Rapi quickly threw herself between Anis and Neon as they too were targeted.

Though they all reacted almost immediately to the attack, destroying the assaulting implements with various tearing, striking, and chopping motions—all of which revealed the things that attacked them to be tentacles, all failing wildly for a few seconds in their partially destroyed state before harshly retracting into the ground just as rapidly as they'd emerged. Rapidly, only the severed tips were left strewn about the area.

Given that Joe was only human, the few seconds in which that all occurred had passed by in a striking blur he could barely even process. Shaking his head, his gaze whipped about as he immediately cried out: "Jesus fuck-! Call out injuries!" He barked out an order as he deployed First Affection and fell into a low ready, scanning for potential hostiles, which drew a very critical eye from the leader of Absolute.

"Nothing but a pitiful little poke!" Laplace asserted in reference to the bloody penny-sized hole in her gut. "As if a Hero would be so much as winded by such a sad excuse for an attack!"

"A true Villain would never be shaken by such a basic ambush!" Drake declared as she motioned as if to literally brush off the similarly-sized hole in her forearm, which only served to smear blood across said limb.

"Spike-type stab wound, minimal width across, minimal depth," Emma replied with a surprising amount of professionalism as she set her fingers over the nape of her struck neck, at once becoming serious once there were injuries to declare. "It didn't go very deep or hit any important internal components, Commander." She then shifted to address everyone else. "Does anyone have anything different to report?"

"No," Maxwell said even as she rubbed the stab wound on her thigh with a grimace. "If we were mass-produced models, those definitely would have punched clean through our armour and reached our insides, though. The benefits of being high-grade Specialist types, I suppose."

"I-I'm fine, Commander," Vesti quietly noted as she gingerly touched her punctured shoulder. "Though… It's starting to tingle weirdly."

"...Yeah, I'm noticing that too," Emma warily replied, grimacing. "That's… Disconcerting."

Laplace and Drake both frowned, touching at their injuries as they nodded in agreement.

At that, Joe stared at Emma for a moment before sharply turning to Counters. "Rapi, Neon, Anis, are any of you feeling the same symptoms?

Rapi paused, looking a little concerned as her free hand traced across the gashs in her shirt across her stomach- "I intercepted the tentacles before they reached Anis and Neon, and they all deflected off of my skin, Commander. Only my shirt was damaged."

Pausing, Joe stopped and looked to the area where the attacks landed- and, yeah, they had landed true, but had clearly skidded off of the little blonde's skin, tearing large holes in her top as they did so. That… Tracked. She was a Grimms model, even Chatterbox hadn't been able to do much as dent her dermal armour with repeated, savage strikes. If a Specialist's armour could minimize the damage from those attacks, a Fairy Tales model would just no-sell it outright.

So, he didn't have to worry about Rapi, Anis and Neon—who both looked more than a little spooked by what had just happened—at least. But, still… He turned to the others, nodding to Eunhwa. "You managed to dodge it?"

"No injuries to report," the diminutive ravenette asserted as she looked between Joe and Rapi with a suspiciously furrowed brow, her gaze drifting over the Nikke-grade firearm in his hands, and Rapi's conspicuous lack of wounds from three simultaneous strikes where even Laplace had suffered one.

Joe wasn't given much time to dwell on that though, given that Emma scratching at her wound with a grimace demanded his attention and focus. Approaching the olive-eyed blonde, he almost reached out to touch it, but halted in the instant before Emma motioned as if to bat away his hand. "Don't touch it, Commander. We don't know what this is. It might be something that could eat away at human flesh like acid."

"Is it getting worse?" Joe asked even as he took a step back, brow furrowing in justified concern.

"Yes," Emma flatly replied, even as Vesti, Maxwell, Drake and Laplace started to look more visibly irritated by their injuries. "Give me a moment to try healing it, Commander. If it works, I should be able to do the same for everyone else."

Looking between all the girls that had been hit, Anis settled her gaze on Joe, her brows down-turned in unapologetic worry. "Commander…" She started with an uncharacteristically small voice, Neon staring at Matis and two-thirds of Absolute with rapidly mounting quiet concern.

Lightly clenching his teeth together, Joe considered the situation as it was. Regardless of Emma's assurances… He came to his conclusion quickly. "Fuck this, we're leaving!" He loudly declared to everyone as he about-faced and started off back the way they'd come. "Shifty, set our transport to be waiting for us when we arrive back at the exfil zone! We don't-"

"Wait, Pholus!" Eunhwa started towards Joe, approaching him boldly with a halting wave of her hand. "We don't know if whatever everyone has been hit with is severe enough to call the mission off! Blacksmiths are known to use a paralyzing agent to capture lower-grade Specialists with minimal resistance, but that agent only acts as an irritant to high-grade Specialists. Matis and Absolute may only need to disable or mute their pain receptors to complete our objective, and Counters wasn't even hurt in the first place!"

Joe stopped and turned to look at the severe woman with a dubious expression of his own. "The objective we're apparently somehow standing two-hundred metres over in a flat plain you yourself said didn't exist the last time you were out here? A flat pain housing mysterious tentacle spikes that have left wounds in everyone but yourself and my squad that are rapidly becoming more and more irritated as we speak?"

Joe and Eunhwa, now bickering, didn't notice Rapi, Anis, and Neon each backing a few steps away from Matis, Emma, and Vesti, their expressions rapidly growing dark and nearly panicked.

"We don't-" Eunhwa started, reaching out and grabbing Joe's arm even as he moved to continue walking back the way they'd come. "Would you listen-!"

Only to be harshly cut off by Shifty. "Commander! Extreme seismic activity in your location rapidly rising from below! It's going to hit you in only a few seconds! Brace yourselves!"

With widening eyes, Joe's gaze met Eunhwa's, who snapped around towards the rest of Absolute, Matis, and Counters-

Only for the ground to give way beneath them, collapsing as everyone found themselves in an uncontrolled free fall. Just fast enough for Joe and Eunhwa to have completely missed the uncanny loss of focus in Laplace, Maxwell, Drake, Vesti, and Emma's eyes before they all went tumbling down.

---

"-Eyes…"

Joe stirred, a grimace rapidly finding purchase on his features as full-body pain registered to his rapidly returning senses. What-

"Open. Your. Eyes. Damn it!"

At that command, the man rapidly found himself snapping back into full awareness, and with his eyes opened, he was met by Eunhwa's face mere inches from his, her silken raven locks streaming across his face, arms on either side of his-

"Get. Out." She ordered him, voice audibly heavily strained, the woman visibly trembling like a leaf in the wind, grimacing in readily apparent pain. It was dark, the pair only barely lit up by a dim light filtering in from above them. "Now!"

Blinking rapidly, Joe registered that they were… Oh, shit!

He scrambled as well as he could, inching himself out of the tunnel Eunhwa had barely created using her own body as a brace to ensure that the Commander wouldn't have been crushed by the debris they'd been standing on when it fell on top of them following the cave-in.

It had taken longer than one might've preferred given the tight squeeze, but Joe—with Eunhwa's rifle on his chest—pulled himself free from the near-death cubby. The gun was set aside, and at once he moved to start grabbing large chunks of rubble and threw them aside with the aid of the exoskeleton Snow White had previously hotrodded, get as much weight as he could off of the woman's back so she could free herself.

Much as he'd have preferred to have literally any of the other girls help with this instead of his inadequate ass, his HUD indicated quite clearly that comms were down, while he and Absolute's leader were clearly alone.

It took an agonizing two minutes, but the pile started to lightly pulse even as Eunhwa huffed and strained from beneath it; evidence that damn near enough weight had been removed to let her just stand up under her own power. Joe picked up the pace, and mercifully, all the rocky garbage pressing down upon her started to give way, and the Commander could only sigh in relief as Eunhwa was able to rise to a knee and practically throw herself free from what would have been their shared tomb.

Notably, she hit the ground inelegantly, landing on her side and staying there, gasping in what could only be pained exhaustion.

The man, of course, dropped to a knee—which caused him to hiss in pain himself—but he had to check the woman for injuries. "Eunhwa, are you alright?" He asked, immediately patting her down for obvious wounds. "Sounds like you're in bloody agony."

In immediate response, she actually scoffed, regardless of how weak it or her following words were. "I shut off my pain receptors five minutes ago. I'm just overexerted. Give me a few minutes and I'll be back on my feet."

She was underplaying how bad her condition must have been, to necessitate disabling her sense of pain—an action which carried with it a risk of experiencing a Mind Switch for many Nikkes—but this wasn't the time or place to argue with her. The moment she was able again, Joe was going to have to rely on her regardless. Injured or no, she was still a Nikke, while even with First Affection he would barely be adequate enough to hold off Husks… Maybe a Servant if he got the drop on it. Best to let her recover as best she could.

At any rate… "Thank you," Joe said simply.

Eunhwa's eyes widened as she stared up at him in open shock. "...What?"

"I'd be dead if not for you," Joe elucidated just as simply. "So again, thank you."

Wordlessly, she kept her gaze fixed on him, until she eventually just let out a small sigh and allowed her focus to fall on nothing in particular.

While Eunhwa just closed her eyes and focused on catching her breath, Joe turned and scanned their surroundings as well as his woefully lacking human senses would allow him to, in likely vain hope of spotting Emma, or anyone else for that matter. The environment was well-lit, bright and clear. Though it was an otherwise indistinct metallic structure. Clean, sterile, stark white and featureless… Whatever this was, it wasn't made by human hands, that much was clear at a glance. If anything, given the resemblance to Rapture armour…

Joe growled. "The Raptures built a fucking facility around the battlefield where you guys took out Indivilia."

Eunhwa remained quiet for a few seconds, though she did eventually reply after taking a moment to breathe in deeply. "Well that explains that discrepancy, at least."

Joe shook his head, frowning deeply. "Raptures don't have a tendency to build structures, in my experience."

"They don't," Eunhwa quietly agreed from where she lay on her side, almost looking helpless as her diminutive size was emphasized by her position. "Heretics don't get destroyed very often either, though. They probably built it around Indivilia's fragments to protect them from us. Extraordinary response to an extraordinary situation."

"Yeah…" The Commander nodded, or he tried to, at least. The spike of pain in his neck that came from trying to do so quickly discouraged him from completing the motion. Christ, how far had they fallen? The whole two-hundred metres? Doubtful- But, no, Marian had cushioned his fall from the transport craft back on their first mission to the surface, hadn't she? Eunhwa might've been able to do the same, if need be. Just flipping him onto his back after landing wouldn't have been difficult for a Nikke to do if she'd had to in order to protect him from falling stone.

While the man rubbed his smarting neck, Eunhwa spoke up, still rather quietly: "You're going to need to replace your helmet."

Halting, the man ran a hand over the surface of his headgear, and- holy fucking shit. It was absolutely totalled, he could tell just from touch. Yet… "The electronics are still working fine," he noted with some awe.

"Elysion redundancies and hardening," the black-clad beauty remarked with a small smirk. "Makes it difficult to not fall in love with a piece of gear when it can get chewed on by a Rapture, and just keep working like nothing happened." She actually let out a single, low chuckle before continuing. "A tablet Vesti brought along on one mission had half the screen wind up smashed… The damned thing somehow detected that and compensated by adjusting its resolution to only use the functioning half of the screen automatically."

Blinking in surprise, Joe replied with a wowed, "Huh. Holy shit, that's actually really impressive. Having shit like that could've helped quite a few times way back when…" He mused to himself, letting out a breath as he continued to take in their surroundings, returning his gaze to Eunhwa…

Who was now critically staring up at him from where she laid, gazing through her cataract of raven black locks that cascaded over her face and were splayed out around her. After a few moments, she sharply inquired, "Who are you?"

The man paused at that, brow furrowing in confusion, it only then occurred to him that he might've just gone and implied that he was active for way longer than he was supposed to have been.

"I looked into you after Ingrid had us exfil Counters from that mission you went on with Wardress," Eunhwa started, and Joe immediately realized that this was going to suck. "Your service records point towards you being from the most recent wave of Commander Corps graduates, but there's no evidence that you've ever interacted with any of them. CC grads all stay in contact with each other, form up a safety net for each other in anticipation of their missions going wrong, and losing all of their money to failed contracts and expenditures."

Narrowing her eyes, she continued.

"Nobody in your graduating class even seems to realize that you're supposed to be one of theirs. They would know who you are. They'd have spent months in the same classroom as you, trained with you at length. Then, you suddenly get grabbed by Ingrid after just one mission with Counters, receive stark preferential treatment from her, supposedly have an incredibly deep history with Rapi we'd never heard about even once in the decades we'd been her squadmates. Rapi, who never told us about her past no matter how often Emma and Vesti pried…"

"To say nothing of the competence and knowledge you're displaying. Commanders are not trained to the degree you have been, to the point of already having multiple Tyrants to your name, on your official record no less. And, now, you've deployed using highly modified illegal equipment," she glanced at his exoskeleton, "Illegal equipment that evidently makes you confident enough and capable of wielding Nikke-grade equipment yourself, with seemingly nobody in charge making any note of you doing so. At any point."

She then looked over the rest of the gear on his person.

"You outfit yourself like a warrior, not a common Commander. You fall into a soldier's low ready instinctively, like you've fought often enough that it just comes naturally to you now. Despite Commanders operating in a profession where most die young, early, and helplessly. To say nothing of the fact that instead of panicking upon falling into a new and practically unprecedented dangerous situation, you stay calm and collected, even knowing how close you just came to death, all while, on paper, still being practically a greenhorn."

The woman's brow furrowed as she redoubled her skeptical glare directed Joe's way.

"Do you even have a CC graduation certificate?"

…Because of course they handed out certificates, and nobody had thought to give Joe one, if only to help cover his tracks.

"Of course you don't," Eunhwa kept going. "You'd have had to even set foot on the academy's grounds for that. No reports, not a single sighting pointing to you ever having even been in the same district as it. You're a ghost, a man with no history, no connections. Nothing. You just appeared one day, took command of Silver Gun, then Counters… With Rapi as your subordinate. The subordinate of an inexplicably hyper-competent man from nowhere, who regardless, apparently has a rich history with her. A woman who never shared who she was before the day she joined Absolute. So, who are you?"

Well. Ingrid most definitely hadn't let Absolute in on the truth, that was for sure. Regardless, what was he supposed to tell her? Well, besides…

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Joe remarked matter-of-factually.

That only seemed to piss Eunhwa off, given the way her brow knitted rather heavily and she began to lightly bare her teeth at him.

"Ask Ingrid," Joe instructed her flatly. "You wouldn't believe me, you're more likely to believe her."

"...Even saving your life isn't enough to earn that answer, huh?" She made no attempt to hide how mad she was at his reply. "Tch. Fine, whatever-"

"If it turns out you can't be trusted," Joe sharply interjected. "Ingrid would have no choice but to mind wipe you if I just tell you shit off the cuff. Or kill you outright. You're right about everything you noted. With that being said: do the math, and consider why everything may be the way it is."

Eunhwa now looked more than a little wary as she stared up at Joe, her expression twisting in distaste and confusion. Though she didn't immediately say anything, seeming to ponder the situation around Joe once more.

"Once again: ask Ingrid," Joe strongly suggested to the ravenette. "If I speak out of line, it may cost you your life, while she's the one that draws the line. If you can be told, she's the one to tell you, not me."

For as much as Joe would like to be able to be honest with Absolute about who he, and by extension, Rapi were, for all he knew they would ultimately be more loyal to the Central Government than they were to Elysion, so… He'd have to leave that up to Ingrid's discretion.

There was a long pause as the pair remained in silence, mercifully, no Raptures seeming to charge them down. Despite being trapped in a likely Rapture base of some kind. Best to not test their luck if they could help it.

Bending down, Joe picked up Eunhwa's rifle, and upon returning to his full height, he asked: "You good to go?"

Eunhwa stared up at the man for a few long moments. Eventually, she lightly scoffed, and moved to rise to her feet. Though she was slightly unsteady, she was able to stand under her own power. As she stood, Joe noticed how her jacket had been absolutely shredded by the shit that had fallen on them. To say nothing of her beret just being gone, as it would be. That was unfortunate, but such things happened in the field. She reached out to reclaim Perfectionist from the Commander, looking over the rifle to ensure it was still in working order.

Taking that as an affirmation, Joe lightly nodded once, this time luckily not producing a spike of pain through his neck. "Let's go find everyone else and figure out what the plan is from here on out," he suggested as he once more deployed First Affection, which too was, at a glance, undamaged by the fall—save for some scuff marks.

"Yes," Eunhwa replied in the affirmative, motioning down a stark white hallway untouched by the cave-in. "Let's."

 

[Grim Dark Fantasy]

The dialogue with Eunhwa heavily relies on her background as a former Commander, so noticing the discrepancies is natural to her.
Still feels like the scene broke down the pacing of the chapter.

 

[YoRHa_42s]

So uh… Emma, Vesti. AND MATIS are getting corrupted? Or can we hope it's just paralytic?

 

[Dsaeg]

Eunhwa meets the situation where her giving shit meets care instead of results.

 

[Fragment of Serenity]

So uh… Emma, Vesti. AND MATIS are getting corrupted? Or can we hope it's just paralytic?

Click to shrink...

Given the situation, I thinks it's more likely that its paralytic. As was pointed out, standard models would have been taken out by that assault, so the setup was likely built for such models. Grimm and adjacent weren't planned for.

 

[The 17th Immortal]

Given the situation, I thinks it's more likely that its paralytic. As was pointed out, standard models would have been taken out by that assault, so the setup was likely built for such models. Grimm and adjacent weren't planned for.

Click to shrink...

Let's hope. Is Vapaus even a thing, in this fic?

 

[BakaSmurf]

Let's hope. Is Vapaus even a thing, in this fic?

Click to shrink...

Yes, Snow White presented Joe a Vapaus bullet back in chapter 69. They just never actually got around to discussing what Vapaus actually is beyond it destroying NIMPH and by extension Corruption, because he started freaking out over Marian, and Snow wound up being too busy to tell him at any point before the current mission.

 

[DeathShade]

Yes, Snow White presented Joe a Vapaus bullet back in chapter 69. They just never actually got around to discussing what Vapaus actually is beyond it destroying NIMPH and by extension Corruption, because he started freaking out over Marian, and Snow wound up being too busy to tell him at any point before the current mission.

Click to shrink...

So Vapaus is a thing but Joe has no clue about it or what it does.

So saving the squads may be impossible unless we get a pilgrim interrupt or Joe's vapaus blood ends up getting spread around.