Fear slapped Nestra like a cold napkin. What the absolute fuck was wrong with Ilar? Why did he have to kick the hornet’s nest when Nestra was the equivalent of a jam-slathered toddler? For a moment, she fully expected the assembled Elders to pile on, or for Ilar to pull a carefully hidden Shinran out of his hat because why else? Gleams were arrogant. Enclave gleams were even more arrogant. Now Ilar had gone and pissed a whole bunch off. He and what army? Despite Nestra’s expectations, violence didn’t interrupt though the tension didn’t let off. The Elders quickly returned to a sullen, tense silence thanks to their fast minds. Something complicated passed between Ilar and the Patriarch. Their dear host had this wounded look that spoke of betrayal, as if saying ‘I opened my doors to you. How could you do this?’. Ilar didn’t relent. He vaguely shook the datasheet in a way that replied ‘Promoted state-sponsored grand theft, got caught, and now you’re being a bitch’. Nestra turned to watch the augs. Weiwei looked just as baffled as Nestra, but Derek seemed confident. There was something she was missing. Muttering bloomed among the Elders. To Nestra’s surprise, the aggressivity was aimed at each other. It appeared not everyone had been aware of the patriarch’s activities. Now, those pristine fingers that had been left out of the pie eagerly pointed at the guilty parties. Her visor couldn’t follow the machine-gun fast Vietnamese, but she was willing to bet there were a lot of accusations being thrown around right now. It looked like the situation was going to devolve into an all out brawl, until the patriarch’s mana spread like a mantle over the assembly. For a moment, Nestra forgot how to breathe. The man’s soft brown iris cracked, red light seeping into the world. It was like standing in front of a volcano. Fortunately, it subsided, and Nestra gasped for dear life. “Fuck…” Derek whispered by her side. Fuck indeed. The room was quiet now. With slow determination, Patriarch Nguyen addressed Ilar, in English. “I assume you want to revisit the agreement.” “The agreement itself is fine. We separately want reparations for the offense, and all stolen goods returned.” “We have entered other agreements for some of those goods.” “Through the fields!” Nestra roared. “To the gate! Run! Run!” Nestra grabbed the diplomats one by one, sending them to the monumental gates which currently stood empty. She fired a few more times to keep the red robes at bay. Derek was trying to stand up and failing. The arrow must have hit something important. She took a step towards him. His face turned grim. “For Riel’s sake, go! Before you catch an arrow!” The yellow robe had disappeared for now but Derek was going to bleed out, and then… She was going to lose another partner. And there was nothing she could do about it. Nestra turned and ran. She couldn’t carry him and shoot and outrun the gleams. The dry retort of his gun covered her as she raced across the fields, after the gleams who’d finally taken off with all their Riel-damned mana powers. She had one last glance back to see red robes closing in on Derek from all sides, then the gun fell silent. Truong’s cry of triumph was strangely loud. Around the enclave, more battles erupted. One of the warehouses was blazing like a bonfire, bathing the fields in red light. More people were running after her. Two bullets in the hand cannon, four shells in the shotgun. They were still keeping their distances, knowing it was only a matter of time before she ran dry. Three shells. Two. [THRESHOLD CITY SYSTEM OVERRIDE, TRANSFERRING CONTROL OF TAF FIREHAWK 27-A] Nestra jumped at the prompt popping up on her visor. [TRANSFER AUTHORIZED BY USER: CWO. DEREK CLINT] [COMBAT AI MISSION SET: EXTRACTION.] [PLEASE IDENTIFY FRIENDLIES] Nestra sprinted towards the gates because she knew what was coming. Behind her, she heard the shouts of the enclavers giving up on their cover now that she was legging it. Ahead, the diplomats managed to unbar the gates, slipping through out into the jungle. An overhead view filled one of her eyes. She looked at all the dots representing the Thresholders, then painted them green in the overlay. [PLEASE IDENTIFY PURSUERS] A prompt painted the red robes gaining on her. Shit, there were a lot of them. “Hostiles! Hostiles!” What could uncharitably be called a very loud fart broke the relative quiet of the sword fights, drowning the battle in noise. The ground under Nestra’s feet trembled. Dirt and gravel showered her armor and stuck to her hair. She sneezed. Something wet landed at her feet. She didn’t look too closely. The gate was right ahead. Her muscles strained from the exertion, her breathing harsh, painful. Her head felt a bit light. Nestra jumped through the small opening. The diplomats were out there, milling about, uncertain. Right. Gotta save the civvies. “Set rendezvous point for pick up,” she said. “What?” Chandra blurted. [ACKNOWLEDGED. LANDING LOCATION IDENTIFIED.] Nestra checked her map just as she covered the entrance behind her. It was at the top of the trail they’d followed today, on a narrow resting point near a secondary warehouse. It might work. “Ok, up the trail,” she told Chandra. “To the open spot near the top.” “Are you… hurt?” Chandra asked with horror, looking down. Nestra followed her gaze to a large splash of blood on her leg. There were pieces of something mixed with the dirt. She pulled her armor’s hood up and the overlay gave her confirmation that her status was all green. “It‘s not mine. Now go.” Perhaps it was fear, or just the numb tendency of scared people to follow those who looked like they knew what to do, but the diplomats climbed the trail with respectable speed. Nestra herself was struggling to keep up with her gear and the cumulated exhaustion. She had to look back every so often to check if they were being followed. About halfway up, she noticed a flash of yellow near a jungle tree. She had the armor replay the feed on her visor. A part of her wondered why she hadn’t been shot yet. The Wellington armor was good but it couldn’t stop a mana arrow. Maybe they wanted her alive? Maybe the gunship could flatten their location since they were following at a distance. Before she could find a way to command it, a burst of mana emerged from one of the peaks. A pulse of air mana expanded like a bubble. Pressure forced Nestra’s eyes away, even at this distance. This was the work of a powerful B-class raider for sure. Shit was really, really going down there if they were tossing ultimate attacks like that! Nestra fell, and so did the diplomats. An arc of pure white energy rushed up like a moon crescent, beautiful yet so very deadly. It tore through the air with a low, impossibly loud hum. Something exploded midair. [CRITICAL DAMAGE TO AFT PROPULSORS DETECTED.] The gunship had been flying too low. Dammit. The Thresholders watched their escape plan spin in a trail of smoke before crashing out of sight. “Keep going for now,” Nestra said. “We need to lose them.” They climbed for another minute, but it was clear the diplomats were slowing down. Maybe they were tired. Maybe they didn’t see a way out of this. Nestra wasn’t exactly seeing one either. She just knew help would come, eventually. It wasn’t going to arrive before the Elders did, though. [SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE ABORTED. RETRIEVAL TEAM ARRIVAL: IMMINENT] Nestra stopped in her tracks. The message was coming from the wreck. Gunships were hardy things so some of it must have survived the landing. The message though, it was weird… Arrival imminent? Could it be? She switched the emergency frequency and saw that it still relayed to the gunship’s network. “Not so proud now that your precious technology has crashed and burnt, are you?” a female voice screamed in Vietnamese from behind. It was filled with rage and malice, and a promise of personal violence. Nestra slowed down. The diplomats stopped. “Go to the wreck. Find it from the smoke. Help is on the way,” she told them. “But…” Chandra objected. “I need to hold her off. You go first. I don’t intend to die here,” Nestra replied. The way Chandra almost broke down wasn’t exactly a rousing endorsement of Nestra’s chances. To be fair, the last two people who’d held off foes were probably dead, so yeah. Chandra still gathered her team for one last push. They moved up, needled by desperate energy. It was a bit painful to see that they could move much faster when she wasn’t holding them back. Nestra hid behind a rock. The approach to the trail seemed empty with the enclave plunged in chaos behind, but Nestra wasn’t fooled, of course. Yellow robe and Truong were closing in. Maybe more people besides. She took a deep breath. True Nestra stirred beneath the surface. She couldn’t be let out, though. Being caught here as an Aszhii would be a death sentence if an Elder noticed her. They would see her as a spy for the city at best, a monster at worst, and a priority target in both cases. On a fundamental level, her confusion and stress was receding now that it looked like the rest of the group was going to make it, or at least, she’d given them good chances. Weiwei and Derek were dead though, and Watanabe’s status was uncertain. What was left behind was anger. Anger at Ilar for pulling that stunt when he could have just been more sly — he didn’t have to humiliate them so thoroughly to make a point if he didn’t intend to fight them immediately afterward. Anger at Manh for being a disloyal gleam supremacist cunt. Anger at Derek for dying a hero’s death like Shinoda before him. Anger at the patriarch for ignoring Camille’s warnings. Anger at herself for being so weak, and a coward, for not telling Ilar about what she’d learnt about the coup. She could have told him about an ‘informant’, maybe, or revealed her true form earlier to save Derek, but she didn’t want to die, or to become an exile. Selfish. “You dog-stupid bitch. I don’t know how you cheated last time, but this time, I’m going to kill you! I’ll gut you like a fish!” Oh, and anger at Truong, of course. Quickly, she reloaded the Window Maker until she had four bullets. The shotgun only had the one shell left, sadly. “Talking a lot of shit for someone who’s hiding!” Nestra retorted. “Can’t wait to rip out your potato tongue, you fat whore.” Truong couldn’t understand Nestra anyway since she didn’t have a visor to translate. That meant it was probably a distraction. Fortunately, Wellington designed their armor sets precisely to survive stronger predators. Nestra activated her thermals, then side cameras. Nothing. There were sound options as well. She checked for footsteps and got a match to her left. No visual. Nestra gripped her shotgun and waited. Truong threw more insults her way, but she was behind thick cover. Nestra was going to get flanked for sure. A heat signature jumped from behind a tree. Nestra turned and felt something push her arm to the side, but she readjusted and shot. The yellow robe was another young woman with a confident smirk that immediately turned to shock. Blood splattered the trunk behind her. Nestra’d gotten her dead center. The shotgun clicked empty. Nestra looked down to see an arrow skewering her left forearm. The shaft was red with her blood. Truong jumped on her from the trail. Nestra jumped back and raised her shotgun at the very last moment. The fencer’s overhead strike smashed it from her hands. A face, frozen in a rictus of triumphant hatred. Nestra pulled her Window Maker while pain made stars dance before her eyes. She managed to shoot once as she cleared the holster. By some miracle, Truong caught it with her blade. The blade exploded but so did Nestra’s vision. She was sent up the air before heavily crashing down. A damage report showed she was… okay. The armor had blocked most of the blow. Her hand fucking hurt though. Truong had kicked her. [TRAUMA DETECTED. INJECTING PAINKILLERS, STIMULANT] Nestra’s vision cleared. A new energy rushed through her tired limbs like a thunderbolt. In the meantime, Truong had turned to the side with a sadistic chuckle. The triumph was short-lived. Nestra grabbed a rock. It was just there. Just as Truong noticed her standing up, Nestra threw it with all her strength and an animalistic roar. It caught the young woman under the nose. Blood spurted. Nestra stood and put all her weight on her left foot, swung, and caught Truong’s knee in a devastating low kick. She collapsed like a puppet. Nestra was on her before she could recover, punching her face repeatedly with her right fist. “You. Wanted. Your. Second. Round. Here. It. IS!” Truong managed to punch her a few times, but mana couldn’t make up for leverage, or armor. Somehow, the beaten gleam still managed to raise a knee against Nestra’s chest to push her away. Nestra was up on her feet in seconds. Even the pain in her arm felt like just a distant concern. Holding her broken nose, Truong fumbled around for her sword. Nestra socked her in the jaw with a very nice hook. The gleam fell like a sack and Nestra was on top of her again, punching down with her good arm. The armored glove fell once, twice, and Truong stopped struggling. Nestra remembered she had the emotional Read the latest chapters on NovelHub - completely free! She placed the blade under Truong’s throat. The girl was knocked out, unable to resist. “Stop,” a voice said, softly. Camille kneeled by Nestra’s side. “This isn’t like you.” “Where were you?” Nestra growled. Clarity returned. The negotiators had long since disappeared, at least, and Truong wasn’t going anywhere. Nestra knew she should be in pain but the sensation just wasn’t there. Camille seemed fine though. Their mouth was moving. “Searching. I found your compatriots and assumed you were with them, but I was wrong. I raced back as fast as I could. Nestra, I’m sorry. Please let her live. She is also a victim.” “She cut Weiwei’s head. They’ll heal her, then she will come after me again.” “No. It will be over soon. We need to go now and wait for… the end. She will get her comeuppance, but not . Not in an execution. She’s not a danger to you. ” Nestra looked up to the mask. Camille’s expression was unreadable. Nestra wanted to hiss. Who gave a shit about morals and protocol now? Bullshit! And then Camille’s words hit the right part of her brain. “What do you mean, the end?” “I planted a bug in the main coms rooms in anticipation for tonight. Threshold gunships have been hovering at the edge of the enclave’s airspace for the last two days.” Threshold gunships? Just two of them could stay hundreds of meters up and reduce the entire enclave to rubble. Talk about negotiations. “Shit, is that why Ilar was so confident that the patriarch wouldn’t fight?” “This isn’t the time to wonder, police girl. We need to move. Manh will want hostages before they arrive to at least force some negotiations. His faction is almost in full control. We need to move or things will get very unpleasant for you.” Only then did Nestra realize Fox Mask’s reason for coming. “You are here to help me against the enclave.” “Against Manh!” Camille protested. “I will not allow this talentless fraud to harm you. He’s already doing enough to harm the Sword Kings. We should… hmm, maybe I should remove that arrow from your arm first?” Before Nestra could blink, Camille had cut two thirds of the arrow away. Nestra opened her mouth to tell Camille to slow down and screamed instead when the idiot unceremoniously pulled the shaft from her bleeding forearm.