//------------------------------// // 2 Enter the Lyra // Story: Lyra-7% // by Meep the Changeling //------------------------------// Lyra Heartstrings - 15th of Firstbloom 18 EoH - Noon Multiverse Location: Neighpone, Equis #7 - The Anthroverse No words could adequately describe the pure terror I felt watching the beast slowly wading it’s way towards the shore. Casually swatting at the distant dots I assumed were mechs like a horse flicking it’s tail at flies. The snaggle fanged maw dripping flaming drool, the metallic hide, the bird-like talon hands, none of those were anywhere near as horrifying as it’s sheer size. This island was appartment sized to that monster! I knew what a mouse felt when a human walked near it. “Who just cursed like a filly? Is the second wave here yet?” The first female voice asked urgently. The fuck did she mean like a filly? That had to be a local expression. “No, Tennō,” a new male voice chimed in, “my squadron is still fueling up. That wasn’t one of us.” “Who else is on this channel?” The woman, Tennō presumably, demanded. I winced and looked down at the device on my wrist. It figured this was a two way radio. “Lyra Heartstrings, a civilian. Accidentally tuned in to your tactical channel. I’ll turn it off as soon as I figure out how this thing works!” I quickly stammered, knowing full well how most militaries treat breaches of a tactical network’s security. Suddenly, a massive flash of white-blue light whited out my vision! I heard the electric hum of my helmet auto-deploying the secondary visor, but it was to late to avoid the flashbang level of light! “Right, that pissed it off!” Someone announced. “What did you do?” Another asked. “I had clear a shot for an eye, hit it with a snap freeze spell. Yep! He’s on my tail!” They replied. “Tategami! Bait it away from shore for as long as you can,” Tennō ordered. “Civilian, I have no idea how you got on the Imperial Isle, but in light of the attack, we’ll overlook the trespassing. Head to the beach... Yes towards the kaiju! I can’t spare an A.L.I.C.O.R.N. to evacuate you, but there will be ships here to reinforce us soon. I’ll have one of them pick you up.” “You want me to run towards the flaming death turtle?” I asked incredulously, vision starting to come back. “You don’t want to be on land, gaijin,” a female said in the familiar ‘I’m focusing very hard on not getting killed,’ tone. “If this fat-ass steps on the isle, the seismic activity will probably make it erupt.” “This is a volcanic isle?” I asked stupidly, before realizing that would explain the massively lush plant life quite nicely. “Hai! So get off it, this kaiju outclasses us!” Tennō snapped urgently. “Off it is!” I declared to myself. “And stay turned in,” she added. “Everyone, if the situation changes, warn uh…them.” “I’m female,” I said reflexively, as I ran to try and scoop Bon up, managing to get her onto my shoulders mostly via my urgent movements coaxing her to climb up. “Oh! Do you have a helmet on? Between your muffled voice and your accent- Chikushō!” The sudden oath was accompanied by a bright flash as if a lightning bolt had hit the ground behind me. “Stop talking to the civilian and take this thing down!” A male’s voice ordered. I turned around in time to see a second flash of light, the twisted monster spewing what I could only call a lightning bolt made of fire in an arc through the sky. A small purple flash of light, almost washed out by the beam’s monstrous whiteness twinkled beneath the kaiju’s breath weapon. “Osu! He clipped my float-unit!” A man shouted in panic. I began to sprint. Whatever ships that got there would probably be retreating minutes after arriving… Trapped between a giant monster and a volcano. Oh yeah, a handgun was totally making THIS safer! “Momo, catch him!” Tennō ordered furiously. “I’m still flying! But there’s no way I’ll be able to dodge anything,” he clarified. “Someone cover me, I’ll land and fire from-” The monster swung an arm like a club. The man’s voice went silent with a crackle of static. “Kuso kurae kutabare!” someone screamed, a half dozen fireballs blossoming on the monsters warty chest halfway through the screaming. “Dust this bitch!” Tennō ordered. The firestorm that erupted as I sprinted through the flower-field, eclipsing the sun. In the long list of insane things I’d done, running towards a giant monster being consumed by what appeared to be three satellite’s worth of kinetic bombardment definitely took the number three slot. “Chere.ly, Navigation: Most efficient route to the beach ahead,” I ordered, AR instantly highlighting a trail for me in blue and giving me a distance. Five and a quarter miles. Way less than I thought it would be. I could probably sprint most of the distance. At my top sprinting speed, that would be- No, I’m carrying Bonbon II, plus my kit, plus suit. So, at best I’d probably be able to make thirty tops. That means the sprint should take around three or four minutes. Thank you military grade bio mods and physical training! I love you. The firestorm ahead of me cleared, revealing a bruised and lightly bleeding demon-turtle-alligator. The beast threw back its head, roaring in blind fury. The sea around the beast began to boil as it’s flaming shell tripled in size, distorting the air around it with monstrous waves of heat! “Keep back! That will melt your plating!” Someone shouted. “Asatsuyu, mana dry,” another reported. “Sakura, mana dry, munitions spent,” a third reported. “Everyone running dry: Fall back and wait for the heat to dissipate, then use melee,” Tennō ordered grimly. I mentally slapped myself for paying attention to their chatter. All of my attention was on the trail, time was most definitely of the essence here. Without satellite support the best I could do was plan the route based off what I could see from my current angle. Making the projection update constantly as I ran. As important as keeping to the path for speed’s sake was, the motherfucking kaiju-mecha fight in the distance was very distracting. Particularly when one of them fired off a barrage of thirty or so greenish pink plasma bolts which flew in physics defying random arcing paths, peppering the monster with small explosions all over it’s left side. “Oh man, that was awesome!” I exclaimed, nearly losing my footing as I stepped on a loose rock. Bad Lyra! Do not look up from ground when sprinting! You are literally at break neck speeds. “Thanks, civvy,” a male voice grunted, “made that spell myself.” Spell? Wait, they had mentioned mana. Was this some kind of ‘advanced technology is sorcery’ thing? No that’s stupid, probably just their term for a kind of technology. Like how we named the first air-space superiority fighter series ‘Titan’. The dirt, grass and flowers gave way to a shallow sloping pile of rocks! The new terrain popping into view, hidden by the crest of the hill I had been climbing and the thick plant life. My eyes widened with terror as my left foot didn’t touch down where I thought it would, but rather one foot lower than expected. Momentum carried me over the lip of what I could now see was artificially transplanted turf onto the blackish-gray stones. I pitched forward, managing to throw my hands out just in time to catch the ground, avoiding flying down the jagged rocks at the cost of shooting pain down my arms. “Who was that? Who’s down?” Tennō demanded as my pained cry echoed off my faceplate. “Me. Tripped. Rocks. Sprinting.” I summarized, pushing myself back upright with a grunt. “Oh thank the kami!” She exclaimed. “No offense but we can’t afford to lose- Kuso!” I heard the sound of something huge and fast slamming into water! Both in person, and over the radio. Looking up I saw the tail end of the splash from the monster’s kick. Glittering white foam that had been water falling for a hundred feet. What the hell could those mechs even do to this thing? “That literally scratched my paint job!” Tennō yelped. “You guys can’t expect to beat that thing…” I muttered to myself as I pushed myself back into a full sprint. “This one’s a bit bigger than normal, but we’ll pull it off,” the man happy about his plasma bolt ‘spell’ said confidently. “His friend went south, we’d have more here if we weren't dealing with both of them at once,” someone grunted. “Cut the chatter, baka!” Another shouted. Normal?! Two!? How the flying fuck did life evolve on this planet with things like that roaming the seas!? The rocky slope flew by, leaving me sprinting through a grassy field. The tall grass grabbed at my feet, slowing me down ever so slightly with each snagging blade of grass. My legs and lungs started to burn just a few dozen yards into the grass, the extra-long sprint starting to take it’s toll a third of the way through. Gritting my teeth I pushed on. The field ended on the beachhead. Then it was nothing but sand. I could do sand. It wasn’t that far, just over three miles. I could do it. “He’s six kilometers from shore!” A female voice warned urgently. “Osu! How much time does that give us?” Tennō asked even more urgently. “A minute if he decides to ignore us and just walk for shore,” a male’s voice reported. “Everyone, cause it as much pain as possible. Ignore the vital areas, we don't have the mana or ammo to deal much damage anymore,” Tennō ordered. “Keep him pissed off and attacking us till our backup gets here.” The determined chorus of “Hai, anata no seinaru igen!” almost deafened me even through the VM’s radio! Chere.ly informed, The sky in front of me rippled and warped, the monster’s blazing shell flaring again. My helmet reported a five degree increase in temperature this time. I winced, if you could actually feel that heat from miles away, how intense was it for those pilots up here? I reached the midpoint of the field, my helmet showing my speed was cut by about five miles per hour thanks to having to crush my way through the waist high blade-like grass. The damn crap would have been cutting my legs up if I didn’t have my flight suit on. As it was, my boots polish was scratched beyond what should have been possible. My shoulders ached under Bon’s weight. It was one thing to carry her around, I could do that all day. It was another to sprint at top speed for miles with her on my back. My biomods were good, but ‘human maximum’ is not superhuman. “Fuck… You… Physics...” I groaned, pushing my way through yet another tangled knot of grass only to smash my knee into a boulder sending a shooting pain through my left leg. “Ahhh! Motherfucking son of a whore!” Coffee-tabled by mother nature! Fucking bitch... Over the radio, someone erupted into genuine laughter. “Her cursing like a little kid, it’s honestly boosting my morale, how about you guys?” Ignoring the confusing jerk, and grateful the impact hadn’t broken my knee, I vaulted over the rock, hissed in pain as the leg attached to my definitely bruised knee hit the ground, and took back off into my sprint. “How old are you?” A woman asked in a concerned voice. “Twenty eight,” I grunted, working on shunting my bruised leg throbs to the back of my mind. “I’m not a kid.” “Ah Tartarus, you’re a minor?!” Tennō groaned. “Gōsutoraidā, get here faster! The civilian is under age.” “We are fifteen minutes out. How the osu did a filly get onto the Isle?” A male voice asked incredulously. Oh. Right. Alien world… Their language might be similar to Japanese, but had to have some differences. Maybe that’s why they kept saying ‘spells’ and ‘filly’, poor Chere.ly must be working overtime! “Apologies. Japanese is not my native language. I’ve been an adult for a decade. I got here via a teleportation device. I did not intend to arrive here. I can not use it again,” I said in as simple of sentences as possible, hoping to minimize translation errors. “Oh,” Tennō said with a relieved sigh, “good. Please tell me you’re a pegasus, you might need to fly out of here under your own power. There’s land twenty miles south by southwest.” “Uh…” I said, doing my best to blatantly ignore the obvious hiccup in translation. “I can’t fly on my own.” The kaiju roared again. The primal bellow hit me like a brick, only my combat training prevented me from turning my sprint a hundred and eighty degrees and speeding away with all possible haste. The monster’s scream was followed by a sharp whistling sound and three screams from the radio, accompanied by three sharp bangs. “Chikushō!” Someone screamed. My right foot exploded out from the confines of the grassy mess of clinging and cutting, and slammed into the sand. The pale white powdery sand was a joy to step on after the hard pounding of packed dirt. I had made it. Beach. Keep on the lookout for ships and boats. I took a few more steps and skidded to a halt, throwing up sand as I basically fell on my ass in my haste to sit down. My legs were screaming in protest, and my lungs just about as angry at me for pushing myself that hard. I’d need a good five minutes to get my wind back, with any luck, I wouldn’t have that long before the promised help arrived. “No!” A male voice yelped in panic. “He’s tracking me! … Munitions are dry! Baka… I’ve got two minutes of flight time left!” I looked up to watch the fight just in time to see the massive beast lumbering to it’s right, moving to swat one of the mechs from the air. At this distance, I could make them out. The angular, humanoid, brightly colored mechs were about a fifth of the kaiju’s size, putting them are around sixty feet tall. Each of them had a pair of stylized bird-like wings, which judging by the glowing plasma that sheathed the ‘feathers’ was their source of thrust. They moved fluidly too, like organic creatures. Very impressive, especially considering the mech units the Eurasian Confederation fielded. These things were not clunky bricks with legs, rather they looked like… Well, an anthro horse in high tech armor with epic glow wings. Five of them remained flying evasively around the massive turtle thing. The one it was tracking began to speed off backwards, away from the shore. “Where’s my backup!?” Tennō demanded urgently. “Eight minutes more, my Emperor!” a deeper male voice reported. Chere.ly reported. Ohhhh fuck! I felt my heart seize slightly. This world was apparently so fucked that goddamn heads of state personally took the field! Or a situation so desperate that she felt the need to assist directly. “I can see that hole we made in it’s shell…” The Emperor said, her voice taking on a grim tinge. “Please… Mysuki-heika, don’t!” Someone begged, using what I presumed to be her real name. “And let twelve thousand years of history die?” Mysuki asked rhetorically. “My Emperor,” someone pleaded, “you don’t have an heir! I can not allow you to-” “All lines end one day. Neighpone can find a new Emperor. It can’t replace our Ancestors treasures,” Mysuki said decisively. A mostly white mech leveled a massive long bladed polearm at the hole in the monster’s shell, a pink energy field enveloping the blade. “What I do, I do for the honor of Neighpone and the honor of my family. Banzai!” I had just enough time to think ‘Wait, if she’s the Emperor, didn’t she just wish herself long life as a battle cry?’ before the mech’s wings flared, speeding forwards literally like a rocket, the entire mech vanished behind a pink streak of light faster than you could blink! The streak screamed through the air, smashing directly into the hole in the monster’s flaming shell. A plume of white hot flames erupted from the hole, the monster screamed in a mixture of rage and pain so mind breakingly terrifying that I felt my heart literally stop, starting again with a sharp electric jolt as my suit’s medical suite flashed stress level warnings. At the same moment the electric jolt hit me, a gout of boiling steam exploded out from under the monster’s shell, propelling it backwards towards the beach as if a breaching charge detonated on the opposite side! “It’s still alive!” A panicked voice shrieked. “Then shoot at it!” Another screamed. The shell smashed down into the sand a hundred yards from where I sat, the impact knocking me over as the beach lurched under the impact. Two of the remaining mechs began firing various weapons into the still screaming kaiju’s gaping back wound, which from here looked oddly uninjured for having a body part torn off… Just a bit bloody, not like, hemorrhaging organsy. “You okay, Bon?” I moaned, sitting up slowly. Bon tightened herself around my shoulders, clearly stressed as I was, but seemingly fine. A pained moan came crackling over the VMs radio. “Not dead… Lots of pain… Units on fire.” Mysuki reported, voice sounding weak and fluid filled. “What? Where is she?” A male voice demanded in fear and joy. “I’m picking up her aura on the beach head,” the gruff male voice I assumed was the ship captain Mysuki had been requesting updates from informed. “Can anyone get to her?” Ah hell... “Not with how pissed she made this thing!” A woman's voice cried. Okay. There was still someone else much better equipped for- “I see her, she’s stuck in it’s shell… It’s full of…stuff. Can’t get to her. It’s really intent on- Osu!” A male’s voice yelped, one mech flying up a little too late, getting a lower leg clawed off with a shriek of metal. Well, shit… “Civvy here,” I said, urging Bon to slide off my shoulders onto the beach, “I’ve got this.” “No you don’t!” The female pilot objected. “Just hang tight. You don't have the tools to crack open her cockpit.” I stood up, legs still protesting movement, and reached down to my belt, slipping a thermal lance from a pouch of my survival kit. “Actually, I do,” I objected, starting a second sprint to get to the massive stony shell lying on the beach. Her Highness was very very lucky that in the event of a crash, a Pegasus IV pilot was expected to cut their way out of the wreckage. “Ah, unicorn,” the pilot said in a relieved tone. “Um… no,” I replied, “I’ve got a thermal lance.” “Wait, you’re armed?” The ship captain asked suspiciously. “Um, yes, but a thermal lance is not a weapon,” I explained, reaching halfway to the shell as I finished speaking. Damn my bruised knee was really, really, really hating this! “A twelve foot long polearm with a flame enchantment is not a weapon, how exactly?” The captain asked again. I triple blinked. Why the flying fuck would someone instantly think of medieval lances in a world with mechs!? Oh… Duh. For mounted combat in mechs. Sweet! “We have an error in terms here, sir,” I explained. “The device in question is a handheld cutting tool.” “And you have this, why?” He asked. “Part of my survival kit. I’m at the shell. Er, your highness, are you holding up alright?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t already too late. “I’m alive… Legs are broken. Fire’s going to...get in here soon,” she replied. I nodded to myself, this was going to have to happen quickly. The shell was absolutely massive, it was easily fifty feet from the sand to the rim of the shell. Once inside the slope wouldn’t be a problem to walk on, the trick would be getting in and out again… Well, mostly out again. I drew my pistol from it’s holster with my freehand, and clamped it under one arm to retrieve the grapple cartridge. Quickly screwing the large cylinder onto the end of the barrel, I returned the gun to my hand, aimed it up and over the edge of the shell, and fired. The pistol hummed for a second, the familiar ‘thweee-voom’ sound interrupted by a sharp bang as the microwave beam detonated the cartridge's propellant, sending the grappling hook flying up and over the edge. The nano-cable trailed along after the hook, expanding with a sharp hiss of air from it’s original sewing thread thin size into a nice half-inch diameter as the cable came to a rest. I detached the cartridge from the gun, holstered it, and quickly pulled back on the rope until the hook snagged firmly onto something. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to climb anything else… My kit had just the one. Grabbing the cable I began to pull myself up, one hand at a time. Without a wall to brace on, it was slow going. I’d never been that good at climbing a free hanging rope. The fifty feet seemed like fifty miles. Hand over hand. Each pull upwards accompanied by an explosion, or a roar, or cursing from the radio, or screaming, or pleas for help from fire. My right hand at least reached the rim of the shell. Gripping the stony ledge as tightly as I could I heaved myself up, arms burning from the climb, and rolled over the ledge onto a fleshy pod. “In the shell now,” I reported. Taking a few seconds to catch my breath, I looked out over… A sea of mostly translucent green zit-like pods which contained- “Oh sweet fucking physics, it’s full of the thing’s young!” I shrieked in surprised horror. “By Saturn…” The captain swore. “Get her Highness out of there! As soon as we are in range I’m shelling that spot to dust!” My eyes rapidly scanned over the fleshy eggs, doing my best to ignore the fact that many of the thing inside were moving around. Fifty yards away from me, halfway down the side of the shell, I saw the Emperor’s mech. It lay in a patch of squashed eggs, organic gunk dripping around its exterior, twisted and mangled metal lying around it like grenade shrapnel. The only recognizable parts of it were the head and torso, and by recognizable, I meant as objects. Bough of them were battered beyond being able to tell what the thing looked like originally. “Where is the cockpit on this thing?” I demanded into the VM’s radio as I did my best to hop from flesh-pod to flesh-pod and ignore the fact that I was running atop things that were moving underfoot… “You enter through the hatch at the hollow of the throat. The cockpit is centered in the chest behind the armor plating. If you can’t cut through it, get out of there,” someone ordered. I was too busy making my way down to tell who it was. “Hey, Empress, is the way to your hatch clear?” I shouted, hoping she was still lucid enough to hear me. “Yes… But I’m pinned,” she replied between choking coughs. “Not for much longer you’re not,” I said decisively, finally arriving at the massive thing’s torso and clambering up the side thanks to holes rather conveniently melted into the hull. At least one thing today was easy… As my boots hit the ‘top’ of the wreck I dropped into another damned sprint, biting my lip hard enough to draw blood as my taxed body screamed in protest. “Shoulda… Taken… A marine’s… exosuit…” I groaned as my boots thudded against the steel. A massive splash forced me to whip my head around! I caught the outstretched taloned arm of the monster as it fell into the sea, cheers and cries of “It’s down!” almost broke the VM’s speaker with their intensity. Fortunately, the hatch was easy to spot. A somewhat rectangular three foot by two and a half foot panel with a rotating handgrip lock centered in the middle. Hoping for some luck, I reached out and grabbed the lock. The first thing I noticed was the handle was tiny, I didn’t have that big of hands, and I couldn’t fit my pinkie finger in with my other fingers. It was like the thing was made for a 13 year old. Reasoning that the aliens must be smaller than humans, I gave the lock a twist. Nothing. I twisted it the other way. Nothing. It was well and truly jammed. No problem. I quickly set the thermal lance into place against the hatch, two inches away from the edge, and clicked it’s ignition switch. The loud hiss of highly compressed oxygen probably pissed off the mech pilots via their radios as I did my best to cut as large a hole into the plate as I could before the thirty seconds of fuel burned up. I only had one more cartridge for the lance, and she said she was pinned… Fortunately thirty seconds was all I needed to cut through the three inch thick hatch’s layers of… metal foam and square tubing? Interesting construction. Ejecting the spent cartridge from my lance, I quickly slotted the other one in, grabbed the hatch, and tossed it away. Immediately smoke began to pour from the hole in a thick black plume, my helmet’s HUD started flashing various chemical warnings the second the smoke enveloped me. With no time to waste I crawled into the narrow opening, barely managing to fit into the cramped space and turning the ninety degrees necessary to slide into the ladder access way. The smoke filled the cockpit almost completely, crackling green flames flickered threw a few wide cracks in the cockpit’s floor, hinting at a major chemical fire. I could barely make out the pilot’s silhouette through the smoke, just enough to be able to tell by the line going to her mouth from the roof that she had managed to get an oxygen mask, or something similar, on. And also to notice that she had a pair of abso-fucking-lutly adorable pointy triangular animal style ears! And an actual horn centered on her forehead, just big enough to be noticeable, but not really to be useable for impaling something. Holy fucking crap I was looking at a bipedal unicorn! All of my yes! I felt my mouth split into the widest grin it could make- No! Bad Lyra! Danger now! Ogle the alien babe later. Actually don’t, cuz she’s an Empress... Returning to the problem at hand, I peered through the smoke. The adorab- Empress was currently pinned firmly in place by a large steel conduit which wrapped around the pilot's seat, locking her left arm and legs in place. “Your highness!” I called looking down into the cockpit. “There's no way in hell I’ll fit in there. Take this, cut yourself free, and I’ll pull you up!” I quickly held out my thermal lance as far as I could manage. The alien looked up at me slowly, moving as if almost dead. Spotting my hand, she moved with the speed of someone desperate to survive, snatching the tool from my hand with her own very delicate looking hand like a gift from a god. “How…use?” She coughed. “Open end against anything, push button, don’t look at the flame it will blind you,” I explained. “Oh! Portable mage-knife. Got it,” she said, reaching down and activating the lance on her third try for the switch. “Watch your legs!” I warned as the bright white light of molten metal and burning plasma mixed with the flickering green of the fire. Thankfully, despite moving the lane too quickly to cut for the first pass, she managed to slice herself free just as the tool sputtered and died. “Buy that… from Flim-Flam Co?” She joked as the lance died. “Come on, push that bit off and reach up here!” I ordered firmly. She complied, moving her free arm to push the conduit away. The slab of steel fell to the floor with a loud clang, sending a shudder through the burning mech. The Empress reached upwards with both hands, allowing me to get a grip on her wrists while I braced my feet on the top of the ladder to pull her- “Holy crap you’re light!” I exclaimed as she practically shot up into my arms- Revealing her absolutely adorable pink fur and…distinct lack of a top. But also breasts. So I guess the simple shorts were okay. “No, you’re just a massive osukoto earth pony!” She objected. “Uh… Yeah… Not a pony,” I grunted pushing her up and out of the hole I’d cut into the mech so I could pull myself out as well. “Wait, how the fuck do you know my home world’s na- FUCK!” I asked, switching to a panicked scream as I noticed every single pod I had stepped on on the way over had split open, and a hoard of dozens of scuttling, pale white, bigass human sized, demon-turtle-crab-babies were making their way towards us! “Why do the tiny ones have lobster claws?” I sobbed in terror as I scooped the alien-pony up into a fireman’s carry. I was so happy she was a head shorter than me and about a hundred pounds lighter. There was no way in hell I’d be able to sprint with someone my size on me after the hell I’d put my legs through already... “Here, take my sword!” The Empress cried, detaching something from her belt and passing me a- “Why are you passing me a katana hilt?” I demanded, drawing my pistol and firing three shots into the advancing mass of shambling eldritch horrors. I’d seen the Mark XIX MASER pistol flash vaporize a quarter inch of steel body armor. I’d seen it flash heat simulated human tissue to steam. I’d never seen it just make a monster’s hide sizzle a bit as the microwave pulse basically light tapped it’s chest… “Take! Sword!” My passenger screamed urgently as the monsters drew closer. “That’s not a sword, that’s a broken off hilt!” I retorted, holstering my pistol to run, figuring I could get around the hoard and make it to the rope. The Empress pushed the jade handled, copper decorated hilt into my face, the ‘end’ pointing away from us, and tapped a silver stud near its disk shaped guard. A slim metal rod shot out from the hilt, telescoping outwards as a bright pink crackling energy field formed a blade shape around the extended portion. “Oh fuck the hell yes!” I exclaimed grabbing the motherfucking lightsaber like/as my life depended on it. The first alligator-turtle-crab-demon scuttled up the side of the burning hull, pincers snapping eagerly at my legs. I swung the blade, the rod counter balancing the weapon as it burned a deep groove into the creature’s left claw. The beast hissed and pulled itself up. I turned and ran down the length of the ruined mech, waving the blade frantically at everything remotely close to the two of us and doing my best not to scream like a little girl being chased by baby Great Old Ones. To my delight, I managed to keep my panicked screaming to that of a grown woman being chased by baby Great Old Ones. A state of screaming that the Empress made into a duet as my turning to run had revealed the eighty or so monsters on our ass to her. The next two minutes blurred together into a panicked frenzy of screaming, hacking at everything that got remotely close to me, and running atop pods, releasing even more hissing, gurgling half-baked but somehow alive terrors! Every muscle in my body was on fire. My brain was in full survival mode, focused on the moment, the threat, getting the fuck out of there and nothing else. Somehow, I doubt I’ll ever know, I managed to reach the rope and grab hold of it to repel down, a baby kaiju snapping it’s claw shut around my helmet, scratching grooves into the metal as I went down! “I have her, we’re clear!” I shouted at my wrist as the rope hissed against my flight suit's gloves as I basically fell down the rope, gripping tightly at the end only to slow my fall enough to not break my legs when the two of us hit the sand. “Osu! They are jumping down!” The Empress shouted as I groaned in pain from my boots hitting the ground. Not bothering to look up and confirm, I turned and began my best run away from the hell filed turtle shell. Unfortunately, that best run was a jog. “Too... Much… Running…” I gasped. “There’s only three. Set me down and slice them up!” Her Highness ordered. I tossed the energy blade down so I wouldn’t accidentally cut my passenger, and with as much gentleness as my sore, fatigued, at it’s limits of endurance body could muster dropped her to the sand. “Ah! Osu!” She screamed in pain as I accidentally dropped her on top of her legs. Reaching down and grabbing the still burning plasma sword, I wheeled around, ready to do what little I could to kill the abominations in my practically-crippled, gasping for air state. “Oh thank goodness…” I groaned happily. The monstrosities stubby legs were not carrying them over the sand very well, they were barely five yards away from the shell, and a full thirty yards away from us. The VM’s radio crackled to life, making me jump and nearly drop the sword. “The Yamato is in position, my Emperor. Commencing bombardment,” the captain’s gravely voice announced. We were WAY too close to that shell! There was no way in hell I could possibly carry her any further away than this! “We’re going to die…” I lamented, dropping to my knees. “What makes you think that?” The Empress asked. “Naval shelling... Of beach… Twenty five.. Yards…” I gasped, body in such rough shape that it was probably looking forward to never doing anything again in a few minutes. A deep boom echoed from out over the ocean. A loud shrieking whistle split the air, and the shell erupted into a bright green ball of crackling energy. The blast surged outwards, ripping the shell to pieces, speeding towards me like the universe's most deadly hurricane- And stopped dead as if physics simply told it ‘no further than this’ fifteen yards away from us! “Huh?” I demanded of the universe, grateful for but confused at this act of mercy. “Limited Area Thaumaturgic Disruptor,” the Empress explained as the green fireball died down, confined within a specific dome of space. “Helps keep the property damage to a minimum.” “Oh. Well alright then,” I said, sitting down to obey my body’s cries for mercy. With the sudden trip into metaphorical hell done, I turned to look at the alien I had just rescued. Yep. Four and a half foot tall bipedal unicorn. Floofy pointy ears, vestigial horn with a large white diamond replacing its tip, a small muzzle that looked at home on her human-ish face, large eyes of a golden color almost exactly the same as my own, short pink fur from head to digitigrade hooves, a flat chest but over all adult human female shape, only scaled back to fit her short stature, and sporting a glittery golden pixiebob haircut with an identically colored pony tail, braided and capped with a jade ring that poked out of her black cargo shorts. So! Fucking! Adorable! Even with both legs clearly broken. “I am Emperor Segata Mysuki,” she introduced, giving me a polite bow from her own sitting position. “Forty First Emperor of Neighpone. May I know my rescuer's name? And species.” “Lyra Heartstrings,” I replied, taking a second to breath. “Retired fighter pilot. I’m a human. From Earth.” “Well, Heartstrings-sama, I owe you big. After my legs are fixed up, how about we have lunch and talk?” She asked politely. I grunted in surprise. “Not going to… Hold a funeral for… Troops?” I asked. “We A.L.I.C.O.R.N. pilots have already had our funerals. It’s the first thing we do before even training exercises. It is rude to be sad for their passing, instead, upon the next full moon, we will celebrate their lives. I assure you, they will never be forgotten, and have brought great honor to their families,” Mysuki said solemnly. “So we are free to have lunch this day, and I would like to know more about my rescuer, and her species, whom I have not heard of.” “Alright then… Sounds… Awesome…” I panted.