Kyle the Apprentice Warlock

Did you know that walking in powered armor is slow, and tedious?  Well, it is.  Whenever Camina found herself in a situation where she had to ‘work’ with civilians on camera she always found herself fantasizing about giving a truly candid interview.  One where she could just tell everyone how it really was.

And no, it was not a good idea.  She would never, ever, actually do that.

But God damn it.  She hated walking through buildings in her armor.  It really wouldn’t have been that bad if not for the trail of airport security following her around like baby ducklings.  Obediently, in a line, and so very, very fragile.  With no understanding of the danger they were in if she accidentally bumped into one even with the highly controlled movements she was using to limit her suit’s strength.

Familiar yet somehow inordinately annoying at this moment, the suit’s hydraulics whirred rhythmically inside her helmet with each step.  Whirrrr-clunk… whirrrr-clunk… whirrrr-clunk… whiiirt?  A sound.  Even her armor seemed to question what it was.

She’d heard it and sensed a disturbance in the ambient magic levels.  Arcanes were swirling around her in current she understood.  Around the corner ahead, something was disturbing the flow of the currents by soaking up free arcanes.

Watching it with her eyes and her magical senses, Camina could feel the eddies swirling and interfering with the natural flow of this unnatural quantity of magic.  Well, that wasn’t entirely true.  The unnatural quantity of magic part.  New York had a pretty high natural magic level before the first large scale magic collectors had ben built to bring the AMD down.  Certainly not Prometheus Purple all the time, but it had been high enough often enough that the Magicorps, a military branch dedicated to fighting monsters and magic, had been necessary for the nascent United States of America.

Pushing back the vaguely remembered history lesson that was squirreling itself to the forefront of her mind at the most inopportune of times, Camina held up her fist in the gesture telling everyone else to stop.  From the muted sounds of bodily collisions behind her, followed by murmured ‘Sorrys’ and hissed ‘shushes, not everyone in the party was aware of what a raised fist on a bent arm meant. 

Amateurs!  The scoff was internal as her helmet’s external speakers were on, in case she needed to shout warnings or commands.  Instead, she indulged in rolling her eyes before twisting her waist to indicate to the civilians that they were to wait there.  At least they had caught on that pointing at them and then at the ground by their feet meant for them to bleeping stay put.  The first monster she’d come across, one of those idiots had tried to come after her to ‘help’ and had ruined her element of surprise.

That had been a mess.  Slow learners some may be, but they were catching on.  And Camina was moving quickly.  Sure, it felt slow to her because her tall, powered armor gave her longer legs than those not in powered armor.  It was slow to her even if everyone else was creeping along in a slow jog.

Stepping around the corner, Camina swiftly located the hostile targets in her heads-up display.  The hallway had opened onto a long airy corridor with high ceilings lined with baggage check and ticketing counter, with sporadic self-serve kiosks along the way.  It was a decently sized area for an engagement.  She’d be able to maneuver her bulky armor around without doing excessive damage.

There were six manifestations.  Launching herself at them, she fired up her propulsion and spread her wings for stabilization.  Pulling her lance from her back it morphed into a sword suitable for use in her gauntlets and backed by augmented strength.  One, sliced in half and spilling ichor from its steal and rubber body.  It had been small, possibly a former luggage cart.

Crunching her body to flip into a new trajectory, she focused on number two and three.  A self-service kiosk and what had to have been the very last coin-operated pay phone in existence were snarling and snapping at each other as they fought to free themselves from the bolts and electrical infrastructure that tethered them to the floor.  Two and three went as she landed in a hard skid between the two.  Tiles and grout sprayed up before her as her weight shattered it in a moving wave.

As she slid between the two her body twirled in a swift double pirouette, her weapon flashing out and severing both in half then freeing their remains from the floor.  The movement ended is a graceful bow, like in the dance practices she’d go to as a child before her pact with Michael.  A girl had to have fun somehow, and this had not been a fun mission.  No.  It had not been.  That level four had been… nothing.  It had been nothing.

Ever since the battle of Ragnarök – which had been disappointing in and of itself with the way it ended – work had been so boring.  There were no challenges.  Camina never got to really let loose and go all out.  It didn’t help that monster classifications weren’t just based on how powerful they might be magically but on their size.  So that airplane manifestation had been a four based on size alone even if it had been dumb and not even remotely close to what its final form.

Pushing down with a foot, Camina went for the next manifestation.  Her mind wandered to the old children’s rhyme a bit as she did a quick flash sprint up to the beast and ran it through as it lumbered along. 

Prometheus Purple do beware,

Monsters, monsters, everywhere.

Rock or metal…,

Humming the tune to herself, she jumped up onto number five’s back.  It was a suitcase.  Or it had been before the manifestation had begun growing out of control.  Stabbing the rollicking creature that was now the size of a horse big enough to ride in her powered armor, Camina rolled expertly with the bucking monster.  She was tempted, really tempted, to raise one hand and pretend like she was in a rodeo, but experience had taught her that this would be the one thing those who disliked her would focus on out of everything else she would do that day if it were caught on camera.

…Those cold stones,

Never in a purple home.

Never alive but never dead,

Can’t be eaten by your bed.

Too bad that wasn’t quite true.

It took far more effort than she’d expected to kill the thing.  Stuff that didn’t have a clear solid form when it manifested could be weird to get rid of.  With a more flexible framework to build upon the manifestation sort of distributed whatever it was that kept it alive to disparate parts and sometimes, she had to completely disassemble it to get it to die like she wanted.

Six now.

Six was across the skywalk to the parking garage.  She didn’t strictly need to deal with it.  However, Camina grimaced, it was going to be an issue if she ignored it, and they drew its attention while trying to get people out of the building and onto the line of hotel shuttles and tour busses that seemed abandoned in the bus loading and unloading zone. 

Snorting and growling, the monster was moving in a very organic way.  It was mottled brown and green, and an odd sort of squarish shape.  A pelt of flopping green and brown circles hung from cracked gray-brown-green skin.  If Camina didn’t know better, she would almost think that it had evolved from…

… a shrub.

One of the kinds that were trimmed into cubic box shapes.  A box bush… or whatever the heck they were called.  Gardening wasn’t really her thing. 

“Oh, hell.”  That wasn’t good.  While living organic material rarely mutated in Prometheus Purple levels, it was possible.  Really high purple might as well be really low pink.  And once you’re in the pink, everything stinks.  A lewd rhyme most Magicorps soldiers learned in basic to remind them that Prometheus Pink basically equals death if you weren’t protected.  Camina had picked it up from her parents, and their friends, and all the soldiers she was around in military school, and her older brother… Okay, fine, Magicorps was steeped into every moment of her life.

With a sigh, Camina checked the seals on her suit and trudged after the last obstacle in her path to leaving the claustrophobic confines of the airport.  Once she was out on the street things would be better.  A fully organic manifestation was slightly harder to kill even if it wasn’t made of reinforced materials.  They were too alive.  Too full of muscles and sinews even if their blood and bone weren’t like normal animals.  They felt like real animals.  Dispatching them felt like killing and butchering real creatures sometimes.

Like now.  But she did it quickly. 

Then turning in place, she returned across the skybridge leaving a trail of sappy blood footprints.  There was Jim.  Filming her like he’d promised to do, he’d left the corridor that the others had been instructed to wait in.  Behind his camera the youth was beaming that silly excited grin that had first made her afraid that he was a gore groupie.  It reminded her of her kids, and she tried not to let that flash of emotion show on her face. 

Never be sad in front of the camera.  Someone had told her that once.  Never show emotions that can be used to make you seem unstable or unsuited for the job.  Determination, satisfaction at a job efficiently done, but never sadness or worse yet, any indication that she might actually enjoy her work.  Hell, the only spell she’d even used today was the spell to summon her suit.

“We’re all clear.”  She spoke loudly through her external speakers- as her helmet was still closed- to let the people who were driving know it was safe to prep the buses.  She intended to keep her helmet closed now that she’d seen how high the AMD really was.  The magic levels in parts of the city weren’t just Prometheus Purple.  They were high Purple.  Closer to Pink really and that… that wasn’t good.  Jim hurried forward and was about to pass her to get a closeup of the monster remains.  “Don’t.”

“But it’s dead right?”  Too damned focused on the shot for his own good.  Maybe it had been a bad idea to bring him in to this.  Camina would never forgive herself if something happened to him. 

“The AMD is too high.  It’s almost pink over there.  That was living plant mutation.”  Jim blanched, his face paling terribly at the realization of the danger he’d almost put himself into.  “Stay close to me.  Not out of my sight.  Unless I tell you to run.  If I do, then run and don’t look back or stop until you are off Manhattan Island.”  She kept her volume low so that the airport security who were closer now couldn’t hear what she was saying.  “We’re higher up on the Prometheus Scale than I thought we were.  Let’s not panic anyone though, okay?”

Other security staff went back to notify the various pockets of survivors that they had liberated and unified know that it was safe to start bringing injured people forward for loading.  Things moved quickly and she watched dispassionately as he first bus was loaded.  She gave the warnings to everyone about the parking structure being too dangerous with higher magic levels than the airport building itself. 

Camina knew the warnings didn’t matter.  There was bound to be someone who didn’t listen to her and would choose to risk getting to their vehicle to leave.  They’d found four buses that were parked, intact, fueled, and in drivable condition while being magically hardened enough to function.  There was almost a dozen more which hadn’t been hardened but could be put in neutral and she could push them one at a time.

Good.  Five was a lucky number, wasn’t it?  Once loaded, she waited for the driver in her dead bus to give her a thumbs up out the window.  Positioning herself behind the bus she braced her hands, planted her heels firmly into the asphalt of the street, and leaned into the bus with hard even pressure.

Wheels rolled, and a weak cheer came up from inside the vehicle.  Those watching, the remaining injured and the uninjured who had helped them to reach this point, also cheered from the loading and unloading curb before the terminal they were leaving from.  This was it.  They were on their way.  Through a city full of monsters which could now be made from anyone or anything living or dead.

Her heart thudded in her chest in a tremulous and unpleasant way.  She hated city combat.  The damaged vehicles, the desperate wounded people hoping for survival.  How many times was she going to be the one saving people from monsters in high magic zones?  And would they still be people by the time she reached the hospital? 

Luckily, Camina was distracted from her morose descent into depressive memories by a bright moving light moving across the sky.  At first, she tensed in her steady trudge behind the bus, thinking that it might be another monster.  But no. It… was a chariot?  A magical chariot?  The chariot of heaven?  Michael?  Had that silly Archangel broken the rules to come and help her?

No.  That was not Michael.  Michael did not cackle maniacally like that.