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Jack ad-Illum hadn’t been called in for a mission this large for a long time, especially not in Lowharf. When Dlar made the call to pursue Apocrypha, he bit his tongue. When she decided to recruit sub-Vigils instead of opting for the proposed stealth mission, he bit his tongue. When the casualties started to pile up trying to free one man, he bit his tongue.
When she had left him to monitor the mansion at the side of the moat, far away from the main conflict at the bridge, he finally let himself go. He swore, stomped, and grumbled in all of the alien languages his father drilled into him. This operation went against everything he trained for.
An explosion rocked the far side of the building, and whatever fell into the water sent ripples around the entire moat. Jack fell silent. He reached for his blade- a thin foil that whistled as he drew it- instead of his pistol. He wouldn’t kill anyone for Dlar’s plan if he could help it.
He called in the explosion, but Doriax and a group of sidekicks were already on it. Jack kept to his cover behind a fallen chandelier.
He heard shouting from the balcony above the moat, then running. Peeking out, he just caught the two women as they tumbled from the upper floors, splashing unceremoniously into the moat below. Jack stood to get to them, when a mercenary leapt from the balcony, lazily twisted herself in the air, and landed into a roll on the ground. A fall from that height should have killed a Mundane.
He didn’t have time to think. The mercenary rolled into a kneeling stance, her rifle pointed up at him, and pulled the trigger.
Jack’s Savari suit acted before he did, jumpstarting his nervous system through ports installed in his spine and limbs. Backburner jets that came out of his black and red armor blasted him to the side, as a few bullets ricocheted off the side of his cylindrical helmet. He was behind another broken railing before the mercenary stopped shooting.
Can’t take this alone. Jack realized. Sharpshooters were deadly for Savari suit users- if one of her bullets found a chink in his armor, he was just another non-Rooted, non-magical person underneath. Just another Mundane man.
He reached for the side of his helmet, to find a sparking flap dented where his headset was affixed. Unlucky. Jack tore the bit of ruined tech off. No calling in- he’d have to stall her. That couldn’t have been a deliberate shot. Right?
He heard stone crack, and the mercenary was flying- no, jumping- over his cover. Jack’s suit threw him to the side as the barrage of bullets peppered the ground. He felt a sudden bunching of pressure and pain in his leg, and collapsed to one side. He felt the suit’s instant analysis through a sixth sense, as if it were his own body- she had shot through a joint mesh, a small booster, and his achilles tendon. With that impossible accuracy, she wasn’t a threat to just him- she was a threat to nearly every Vigilant gathered here. He needed to warn Dlar.
He wasn’t proud of his next ploy. “Fuck! I yield! I yield.” He grumbled, lowering his saber.
The voice warped through the helmet. “If you know what’s good for you, stay down and stay quiet. You know by now I could have shot past that flimsy neck guard of yours.”
It was an out-of-date model, but few people knew about the specifics of Savari craft. He hadn’t even thought about replacing it yet. “We’re going to get Apocrypha out. The Mohns are done.”
“Good.” The woman turned towards the moat. “I don’t work for those freaks. Not anymore.” She added quickly.
She was turned towards the moat when Jack focused his will on his suit. The boosters flipped out behind his back, and launched him forward, followed by a streak of light. She turned around, but not fast enough- his blade arced towards her chest.
Jack had hoped to slice her shoulders or the straps holding her rifle- something that would just incapacitate her, force her to fall back. But she dodged in just the wrong way, ducking down to leap away, causing her neck to fall right into the arc of his sword.
She fell to her knees. Blood poured from her throat- then abruptly stopped. Some kind of sinuous, white flesh sprouted from her neck, reaching out, then withering before growing again. Something in her was trying to keep her alive- and it was failing.
Jack’s sword fell to the ground, and he knelt beside her. Someone moved around the side of the moat- the saline scent of a stressed Albera. Doriax.
“She’s hurt- my blade punctured her trachea. Her Root is trying to keep her up.” Jack explained as the jellyfish-like alien half-floated, half-slithered to their side. “I can’t get the helmet off!”
Jack- adopted son of a non-speaking alien- was one of the few Mundane able to ‘listen’ to the Albera’s olfactory language. A sharp, bitter worry plumed from Doriax’s stem-like central cord. You must not tell anyone. The scent-phrases hit like whiplash. We must save her.
“What? Do you know this-” Jack cut himself off. Not the time. “Okay, what do I need to do?”
Hold her. “Left arm. Remove.” Doriax had to type into his voice generator to make up for the lack of Alberan phrases. I need to treat her.
The human Vigilant began to unwrap and pull away the woman’s glove and sleeves. They were covered in patchy, brown fur. Her fingers twitched.
Doriax wrapped a spiky tendril gently around her arm, making sure to keep his quills from piercing her skin. The warble of magic pulsed through the tendril and up to Doriax’s crown. The air filled with the scent of confusion, then anger, then… debate? The rapid-fire smell-phrases and clicks of his tentacles made a conversation far faster than Jack could track- but someone was responding in kind. The mercenary? He doubted it. The woman was barely conscious.
Someone else was in there.
Doriax removed his tentacle. I don’t like this. He said. That growth is a parasite. Allowing her to breathe. It… it needs me to purge a medicine inhibiting it.
“You don’t seem sure?”
Be prepared. I do not know its motivations. “Take your sword.” Doriax typed. Jack did, though he wasn’t certain how well he could fight with a snapped tendon.
The Alberan Vigilant wrapped his tentacle around the mercenary’s arm, and the sickly sour smell of an incantation wafted through his shroud of sheer clothing. Jack’s grip tightened. Dollops of blood teleported out from the woman to the ground next to her, visibly clouded with a murky, light-blue medication.
The woman’s neck jerked forward. White strands lurched from her in a violent plume, rapidly growing and whipping against the stone with enough force to cut gouges in the floor. Jack wrapped a hand around Doriax and flung themselves backward. The woman thrashed. Something squirmed beneath her skin.
Jack leveled his sword towards the possessed girl. “Let her live, or I’ll kill you both.” He growled. He hoped his anonymity- and the resulting anonymity of his powers- as a low-ranking hero could give the thing pause. It did.
The thing had grown rapidly, pushing out of her lower back in dark green tendrils and wrapping around her throat and chest in wide sheafs of white lichen. The woman’s head lolled to the side.
Jack’s eyes flicked to Doriax. “What do we do?” He whispered. They heard other boots coming around the side- the rest of Doriax’s regiment.
A choking, violent voice burbled up from the woman’s severed throat. “Do not interfere again, half-human.” It growled. “Your Vigil’s time will come.”
Then, the scarf threw the mercenary’s body backward. It tumbled, rolling across the uneven ground, and splashing into the water. By the time Jack could limp over to the edge of the moat, it was gone.
By the end of the day, the Vigil had found Apocrypha and turned over the sadistic Silvio Mohn to the police. Dlar forced her boss to file the paperwork, electing to throw a congratulatory party at the Vigil Hall with all the sidekicks that participated. Everyone thought they had won.
For some reason, Jack- low-ranking, powerless, Mundane Jack- was joined afterwards by the greatest of the Alloton Vigil. Sleet Scythe, Doriax the Displacer, and Ace Apocrypha sat with him around a grim table and a fifth of whiskey.
They were preparing for war.
Four is really going through it now :'(