Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (21/?) WiP 1 (Patreon)

Hey everyone! here's the Work in Progress for Chapter 21 I hope you guys enjoy! :D 

“Auntie Ran, what is war like?”

That was the very first question I asked my aunt, long before I was put under her care.

It was a question that would evolve over time, much to her frustration.

“Auntie Ran, could you please tell me what it was like to be in a real battle for the very first time?”

The question grew more specific, more precise. As it became clear with each passing year what it was I was looking for and why.

“Ask me when you’re older” She’d always answer, or rather, find something to say to that effect.

This back and forth lasted for months, then years, and increased the closer I got to the end of my time at high school as I was dead-set on pursuing a course that would see me entering a completely different world. At which point, my question became more of a point of proactive interest, rather than a point of passing curiosity.

It’d been nearly half a century since the last conflict, a series of skirmishes that could barely be considered a cohesive set of battles let alone a war. Yet it was here in these last few flickers of humanity’s violent past that my aunt earned her medals and stripes. It was through her that I could learn what it was like, and what I should be prepared for should another conflict arise. Whilst at the time I was confident I’d never really need that information, I was glad that I pursued it anyways, given the reality that I quickly found myself in almost immediately after I left the nest.

“Everyone’s first is different. A boarding action is categorically as removed from an orbital drop as a combined arms push is from a limited engagement. I don’t want to get into the specifics of how mine went down, because whatever battle you find yourself in will be fundamentally different. Here’s a few pointers though, which I think are universal enough. One, you will feel fear, shock, and confusion or heck any combination of the three. But whatever you do, you cannot lose it.

And yet here I was.

About to fucking lose it.

Though not in the way that my aunt more than likely intended. As out of all the scenarios I was trained for, out of every eventuality the professional overthinkers back at home had put forth for consideration, this was most assuredly not what anyone could’ve ever anticipated.

There certainly wasn’t a time slot on the Threat Assessment and Response training blocs that included how to swiftly and safely incapacitate or neutralize an ever shifting mass of undulating flesh-like plaster.

One that bared down at me with two, amorphous black spheres that rippled with each and every blink. Its irises pulsating like a cell’s nucleus under a microscope, its colors transitioning through the entire visual spectrum faster than a budding streamer’s RGB setup.

Its whole mass lacked a cohesive form and shape, instead looking as if an amoeba had been upscaled, but needed to keep reforming itself all in an attempt to hold some form under the threat of becoming a puddle of goop on the dirt.

“Two. You will be wracked with indecision. But follow your gut, then your training, preferably in that order, and just do something.”

My hands moved on their own, running off of muscle memory alone. It took less than a second for me to palm my holster, unlocking and removing the gun from its magholster in one swift, uninterrupted motion. My whole arm moving fluidly as the exoskeleton frame did barely anything to compensate or augment these movements.

It was pure training and instinct coming through at this point.

Without a second’s hesitation, and with the HUD switching instantaneously into its tactical loadout, I raised my gun towards the creature in front of me; target reticles finding it almost impossible to lock on to any specific point on the creature.

The EVI began scanning, desperately combing through every bit of sensor data it had in an attempt to isolate the suppossed core hidden somewhere within the creature.

TARGET IDENTIFIED. SPHEROID OBJECT, 0.12 INCHES IN DIAMETER. HIGHLIGHTING NOW.

A round, distinct object highlighted in another pair of target reticles suddenly came into view, placing itself square and center on the grid-like layout that was the tactical HUD.

It sat stationary on the upper ‘shoulder’ of the creature’s right ‘limb’, a nondescript extension of its amorphous ‘torso’ that looked as if someone with no prior sculpting experience had tried to freestyle an arm with no reference or guidance.

I shifted my aim accordingly, feeling the slight nudges from the suit’s exoskeleton as it attempted to help me along by correcting minor details of my aim through purposefully overriding small little aspects of my stance, grip, and forearm placement. Taking into account the finer details of the surrounding environment and accounting for every possible environmental factor. Augmenting human marksmanship and firearms intuition with the pure, brutal, and unfeeling efficiency of mathematics.

Despite all of this, for a split second there, my gaze strayed towards its eyes again; and for one brief moment I swore I could feel an intelligence locked somewhere within it.

That didn’t change anything though.

But what happened next, definitely did.

As my line of sight was suddenly obscured. A female figure having placed herself between me and the null. Or perhaps, from her point of view, it was probably the other way around. “Altena Fisero!” The apprentice exclaimed with a sharp, assertive yell, followed up shortly by a localized surge in mana radiation.

ALERT: LOCALIZED SURGE OF MANA-RADIATION DETECTED, 700% ABOVE BACKGROUND RADIATION LEVELS

Causing the Earth beneath our feet to shake and shudder, before finally cracking open with a deafening crunch that sent rock, dust, dirt, and debris shooting into the air. The ground shifted upwards by a solid few feet, before promptly being brought back down with a gut twisting thump.

The cracks in the Earth gave way to a dizzying army of vine-like tendrils, as well as spears fashioned from the thorny rose bushes that surrounded us. All which slammed into the null everywhere all at once, eliciting a bassy, heart-stopping roar that all but sent the apprentice stumbling back in disorientation. It was clear why it had that effect though, as the sensors clocked it in at just about 142 decibels.

The null that now more resembled a pin cushion wriggled and writhed in place, seemingly in pain, but not mortally wounded. It began tugging at the vines which held it in place, parts of it that were pierced all the way through began melting and reforming, worming itself around the puncture wounds and reforming it someplace else.

“Emma Booker, you must take flight, immediately!” The apprentice craned her head towards me, and yelled out desperately. “I shall deal with this beast, this is not a place for students!”

No sooner did the apprentice utter these warnings did the null return with an attack of its own. Having actually enveloped the spears within its own body, it promptly transported them towards a single focal point, before finally concentrating all of them into a single ‘fist’ all within the span of a second. The attack came just as quickly, with the ‘fist’ barreling towards the apprentice’s flank.