Seras Streams
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DMA - B2 - Chapter 29 – Jace takes Manhattan
🕑 Added 2024-11-26 15:00:07 +0000 UTCGreg let out a deep sigh as he faced his allies. “Before we tackle Myscape Industrial, you all should know why I hate them so much.” His face betrayed his emotions – emotions that Jace knew well. Hatred. “They didn’t just lead to my Streetrunner crew’s deaths…the megacorp actively caused them to die. We were set up. Hired by a Myscape executive to steal from another executive in the same company.”
“Sounds risky,” Jace commented, knowing how cutthroat the upper echelons of megacorps could be- at least from his street-level view of the way the upper crust operated.
“It was,” Greg replied as he began checking his weaponry again, ensuring every piece of equipment was in its appropriate place. “That executive who hired us…she was just using us to test security. We were set up and went into a death trap.”
Priam gasped and cupped his hands over his mouth. “That’s…I’m so sorry! Those meanies!”
Greg nodded solemnly, “Six crew members – wiped out in a hail of automated flechette turrets.”
Jace winced in sympathy, having experienced the exact scenario that Greg had just described back on Velenar Prime during his Aspirant Trial. “Yeah,” Jace replied, crossing his arms. “Those type of bullets hurt.”
Greg frowned, “Yeah, well, that’s why I’ve got a bone to pick with them. I don’t just want to bring down the servers like we just did with Cybronics…I want to utterly ruin them. Just like you did to Pheracorp’s building.”
Jace nodded, recalling the time when he and his sister had to leave New York City as Myscape Industrial had pushed all of the non-corpo folk out. “The entire island of Manhattan is under their control. That’s a lot of buildings.”
Quinn came over the comms, “Unless you want to sink the whole island, we’ll need to adopt the same strategy that we did for Pheracorp. The whole island is their headquarters, and the server is located beneath the largest building around.”
Jace nodded, knowing exactly where Quinn was talking about. He and Chroma had looked up at the mammoth construction of the Empire State Tower, and he always marveled at the idea that people over a hundred years ago built the thing. Sure, Myscape Industrial had added to it with some supports and building even higher up, but Jace always found it fascinating how the ancient walls slowly shifted into more modern architecture.
Greg shook his head, “Hit and run isn’t exactly my strong suit.”
Jace smirked, “It is mine, though. Why don’t I go do my thing – cloak up, cause some havoc, get their forces away from the servers – and then double back to meet you both? Then we can deal with the server together.”
“Sounds like a plan!” Priam said with a smile. “Mind leaving the tent in here, then? I can take a quick nap while you’re destroying stuff.”
“Sure,” Jace replied as he unslung his pack and set it down. “I’m going to leave it here. No point in lugging it around all over the place if I’m going to be doing hit and run jobs.” Setting it down on the ground, he unsheathed his sword, went to the console, and hit the portal button for New York City. The pastel blue portal appeared before him. “Mind using those Skills on me before you take your nap?” he asked Priam.
“Sure! Pulsar Ward (Rank 30), Pulsar Physic (Rank 10) [Contingent].” The golden honeycomb barrier pulsed to life around Jace’s body before settling on him, and the tiny golden symbol above his head shone with brilliant radiance. “I set the contingent condition to lethal wounds.”
Jace nodded, “Thanks, Priam.” Dark Matter Blade (Rank 5) [Rending], Dark Matter Shield (Rank 3). His blade blazed with crimson and purple, and the shield popped into place under Priam’s barrier. “Here we go,” he whispered to himself as he walked through the portal.
>>>---<<<
Terry looked over at his best friend, Kimmy. She looked stunning, as usual, in her slimming outfit and new cybernetics. The two were leaning against the ledge of a building’s roof right in Myscape Square, and below them was the glowing, blue portal covered with red chains. “Sucks that we’re stuck here,” he muttered as he chewed his nicotine gum.
She nodded, her red hair blowing slightly in the breeze. “Yeah. I had my eye on a sweet world to visit.” She glanced at him and raised an appraising eyebrow, “Eternal winter…but its warm. The snow feels like it’s a warm bath.” She giggled, “I can’t wait to go there!”
Not for the first time Terry felt the tug of an inappropriate joke on the edges of his mind, and he was about to blurt it out when a ripple in the portal caught his attention. Tapping Kimmy on the shoulder, he pointed, “Did you see that?”
“No, what?”
Terry glanced at his Wayfinder. A badass rottweiler floated in the air next to him. “Did you see that?”
“I did,” the floating dog growled out. “They are here.”
Kimmy stood up and tossed away the cigarette she was about to light up, “Shit, really? How come our sensors didn’t pick him up?”
“Only distortions in localized effects can reveal the cloaked figure,” the rottweiler replied. “I have contacted the other Nebula Alliance members present on Manhattan Island. They are converging on this location, save for the two Ascendants who are at the servers.”
Terry nodded. He’d seen the video on the Webnet of Pheracorp getting destroyed. The video from the mechs perspective of an Aspirant carving them to bits, a Streetrunner crew getting utterly wrecked, and even footage from inside Pheracorp itself. Not to mention the whole building collapsed shortly after. Good thing we got so many people here to help.
Two Ascendants were present, as were eight Aspirants including Terry and Kimmy. And all of them had Classes that meant they should be capable enough on their own. But if the rabbit-person is present, we focus him down, he thought.
The combat of the Storm Force five at Cybronics Research less than half a day ago had filtered over to the Nebula Alliance’s Wayfinder communication network. Deckard had given emergency Quests to every single Aspirant on Earth who was trapped there by this X person controlling the portals. They were all Tier 4 or higher, since this Jace guy could somehow incapacitate people he looked at that were Tier 3.
Terry shrugged and ran a diagnostic on his cyberware. Good, everything is perfect, he thought. He was sporting the newest cybernetics that the Nebula Alliance could provide; all very high Tier, 7 and 8. Kimmy was an absolute monster of biological augmentations – mutations from other worlds caused by weird chemical concoctions. She even had bragged about a Tier 9 mutagen she ingested recently.
“You ready?” he asked his childhood friend.
Kimmy nodded as her hand seemingly melted and warped into the shape of a blade, as the bone came to the surface and formed a wickedly sharp knife that sparked with solar radiance from her Star Cosmic Power. “I’m good. We just have to find this guy.”
The rottweiler interrupted at that, “The laser grid will be active momentarily. It should enable us to track the cloaked Aspirants.”
Kimmy giggled, “How the hell did that get set up so quickly? Did Deckard pay off Myscape Industrial directly? Threaten them?”
“No way,” Terry replied as he hopped onto the ledge of the building. “They’re afraid, and I bet when they asked Deckard to help protect them, he offered a solution.”
“Correct,” his Wayfinder replied. “Deckard advised using every single laser-generating item and laying them in a grid across the main thoroughfares, to track movement.”
Terry saw an image flash in his vision and focused on it. He saw the view of a camera with infrared enabled to see the lasers that just turned on. He could see the beams breaking momentarily as something moved fast across town. “He’s heading to the Financial District.”
Kimmy smiled, “What are we waiting for? Let’s go bag us an Aspirant!”
“I get his cybernetics!” Terry shouted as he chased his friend across the roofs of the city. If I can rip them off his body, that is.
>>>---<<<
“Get to the Financial District, and then even with your super-low soul energy coefficient, you can affect a 5-mile radius,” Ollie advised as Jace ran along the streets of his old hometown.
“Right,” Jace responded.
“What’s the plan?” Quinn asked.
“Going to flood the island,” Jace replied. “I’ve got three Archmage spells-turned-Skills.”
“You can only use one,” Ollie stated, “Before you risk destabilizing reality and causing problems.”
I can’t affect the whole island then. Only about half of it. Still, that should be enough. His eyes picked up something…odd. Tiny pinpricks of light. “Ollie? You seeing this?”
“Seeing what?”
Jace came to a stop and focused his vision, zooming in on one of the dots. Crap. Lasers. They know where I am. He could see the very faint, almost impossible to notice in the light of day laser lights. Scanning the walls of the buildings in the seemingly empty city, he saw thousands of dots across the street. “They know I’m here,” Jace stated. It also explains why the streets are empty – they knew we were coming. It should make it easier to avoid collateral damage or innocents getting caught.
Well, he knew there were no innocents left on this island. Myscape Industrial had completely driven all of the street folk out. The only people who were here were megacorp employees.
Almost to confirm his being noticed, a deafening warning siren went off. A klaxon that sounded out loud, and made Jace grit his teeth, as his enhanced senses were harshly affected. “Advice?” he shouted.
“Rooftops,” Ollie replied, having to shout in Jace’s ears to overcome the noise.
Jace nodded and shot the Ghostlight Grapnel Arm up to the top of a building and pulled himself up. The warning sirens kept going off. Damnit. Turn down the noise! Almost as if reacting, he saw a small volume bar appear in his vision, and it zeroed out – not turning of his hearing but reverting his increased auditory senses from Cosmic Infusion. That’s better, he thought as he no longer was gritting his teeth from the pain of the high-pitched whine.
“Shit,” Quinn muttered. “You’ve got incoming! I’ve got it on satellite. 8 Cosmic Power users, coming across the rooftops.”
“Can you get close enough with the satellite image to determine Cosmic Power?” Ollie asked.
“Nope. I’ll try and access the camera network, but it’ll take some time!”
As long as I stay up here on the rooftop, they can’t find me crossing the lasers. Jace began running along the rooftops, jumping from building to building.
>>>---<<<
Terry stopped right after jumping and landing behind Kimmy. She pointed ahead of them, “He’s not on the ground anymore! He’s up here!”
“How can you tell?” he asked her.
She ignored his question, and instead barked out an order. “Quick, area of effect!” She pointed her arms forward, and the flesh warped and shifted as spikes of bone were flung outward in a cascading arc. They left small trails of shimmering, red starlight that made the projectiles look like tiny spikes of blood.
Terry saw a slight, shimmering, gold as the projectiles impacted something, and he focused in on that as he raised his right arm, the laser-cannon built into his palm, gathering energy. Pouring his Cosmic Power into the integrated weapon, he muttered his go-to Skill. “Nebula’s Icy Caress.” The tip of the slightly yellow beam turned into a crystalline, icy blue as the aperture that had begun to heat up from the weapon’s activation was instantly cooled, and the laser itself was infused with the super chilled power of any icy nebula cloud.
“Take this!” he shouted as the world in front of the both of them turned bright blue.
>>>---<<<
Jace felt the slight impacts against Priam’s barrier, and glancing back he saw a pair of humans that looked very different from each other. One was a young woman, whose body was distorted and rippling as if her flesh was alive – spikes of bone that glowed with luminous, red energy that mimicked the Star symbol on her hand.
The other was a young man who was even more heavily cybernetically augmented than Jace was. Covered completely in prosthetic components and not wearing any clothes – he barely looked human. Almost like a robot, instead. And Jace could feel the heat from the weapon on his palm heating up despite the fifty-foot gap.
Jumping into the alleyway between two buildings, he dug his foot-claws in, and winced as he saw an enormous blast of blue light cascade above him, covering the whole environment in frost that looked extremely sharp. Nebula. But icy, just like that General Logistics person back on Velenar Prime. And the…flesh-bone person with him is Star cosmic power. The hell was wrong with her body though?
More concerning though to Jace was the main question that burned a hole in his head. How the heck did they know I was there?
“Look out!” Ollie shouted in his ear.
Jace looked up and saw the ice that had coated the building began to rapidly spread. He had to drop down onto the ground of the alleyway, and then dash down the back alley behind rows of buildings to avoid the encroaching ice that began to chase him as if it had a mind of its own. “How are they tracking me?” he asked. “The lasers were just on the ground floor!”
Ollie floated out of Jace’s hood and around his body, “One of those bloody-bone-star-spike things is in the back of Priam’s barrier. Maybe she can track it?”
Jace reached around and felt the bone spike. Gripping it, he pulled it out before dropping it. “Right, back to the roof then.” Launching his grapnel arm, he pulled himself up to the roof of another building, and glancing back saw the duo scanning the terrain. “Think I lost them?” Jace asked.
“I doubt it,” Ollie replied as he retreated inside Jace’s hood. “They figured out you were here in the first place.”
Jace shook his head, “They’ll keep chasing…unless I double back.” Jace began running the opposite way – heading uptown. To his shock, the woman turned to face him, and fired off more of the bone spikes. Jace was able to nimbly dodge them. How is she tracking me?
>>>---<<<
Kimmy was shaking all over. She collapsed to her knees, breathing heavily. Terry came to her aid and knelt alongside her, “What’s wrong?”
She took in shuddering breaths, “The mutation…It lets me…see things…but it’s…costly.”
He frowned, Damn it. You’re our only way to know where he is until a Black Hole power user shows up. He knew there were two Aspirants with that type of Cosmic Power who were part of the Nebula Alliance present on Earth – and were hopefully headed his direction.
Kimmy shoved him to the side and dove to her left, and Terry saw the ground where she was standing a second before carved in two. The building shook beneath them, and he felt himself slipping into the crevice that opened up beneath him. Kimmy dug her bone spikes it, and something stabbed itself into her back. She screamed out in pain, and an oozing, purple-and-crimson nebula cloud seeped out of the wound and began to spiral up her lower back.
Digging his feet into the collapsing rooftop, Terry pointed his laser-arm-cannon at where he thought the Aspirant was standing, and let loose an icy blast.
>>>---<<<
Jace had activated Wrath’s Embrace (Rank 10) [Focused], and Ruination Razor (Rank 1) [Wrecking]. Jumping across the buildings to close the gap was easy, and he had already scored a deep wound, severing the spine of the weird, mutated woman. The building had begun to collapse from his initial strike that had missed his target.
He felt, sensed the temperature change in the air. He turned, twisting out of the way of a laser blast of supercooled energy that streaked past him.
I’ve gotta get off this building, he thought as he jumped away to another rooftop. The structure caved in, dropping those two Aspirants into the lower levels as the roof began to buckle inward.
But more were coming into line of sight, jumping from roof to roof as they closed towards his location. Zooming in with his eyes, he could make out the various Cosmic Power symbols. The two dropped down were Star and Nebula. I see two Black Hole, two Pulsar, and two Planet. He sighed. “Ollie, advice? Run or engage?”
“If you can keep them occupied, it will provide the perfect chance for Priam and Greg to move on the servers.
Jace nodded, but then was hit with a moment of dismay, “Crap. I’ve got the three drives.”
Ollie’s face turned into a frown, “Then it looks like you’ll have to get back to the portal. Which won’t be easy once those Black Hole Aspirants make their way over and can sense your presence.”
“Then I’ll fight it out. I’ve got my trump card, still.” He readied himself as he saw the debris below and to his right shuffling. 8 on 1 if those two down there rejoin the fight. He smirked.
I just have to quickly engage them and eliminate them, one at a time.
Comments
Joshua Zollinger
Combat is one of those things that some people are going to enjoy, and some people aren't. It's a common problem with litrpg/system type stories... you can never satisfy everybody. Personally I'm enjoying the variety; the combat is the equivalent of a popcorn action flick where you know nothing TRULY bad is going to happen and the hero is always going to come out on top, but at least it's entertaining. Unrelated, you might want to look at this line: The other was a young man who was even more heavily cybernetically augmented than Jace was. You mean Jace, the person who just barely had all of his skin and organs augmented? Jace, the person who is basically just a brain inside of tech at this point? I think I get what you're trying to say, though... maybe focus more on the appearance of augmentation? Something like he "was even more obvious in his augments than Jace" or "had even more visible augmentation than Jace" or something like that. The rest of the paragraph conveys what you're trying to get to but that first line just feels off. Finally, I like what you did with the Aspirants this time. In the past when we've gotten a "bad guy" POV, it was always focused on what was already happening. Having the little flirtation between the two makes them feel a lot more real.
Seras Streams
Well that's why I tried to vary up the fight scenes with different mechanics / environments / hostile forces / approaches. There's a whole universe of threats and Jace is going to come up against them. I can see how it can feel 'samey' - hence why Pheracorp was more drawn-out to demonstrate "Oh, they could destabilize do X, Y, Z, and get it done" and now we are doing more 'go fast break stuff'. I can consider looking at some type of revision when I get Book 2 back from the editors. But as it stands right now? I like the combats that these next few chapters lead to (including 1 that almost kills Jace).
EsZeus
Problem now is, the fights are getting "old". Doing the same thing 5 times with the megacorps and reading about it, is getting old. Maybe this could be in need of a different approach? :)
