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AFS 2: Strange Flame Strangeness - Part 11 - Always Finish Big
🕑 Added 2025-03-30 18:29:33 +0000 UTCAuthor’s Note: Ah, why did I make this so long? At least it’s fun, right? Maybe?
Part 11
I ran toward the most dangerous space crab in the area, Big Gray, as fast as I could push the mech. Unfortunately, the damn flying crabs were faster.
I let out a breath and focused. If I wanted to keep the shitty survival challenge mech intact long enough to do some damage, I couldn’t use My Armor is My Body for very long. But I could use it for short bursts as long as the moment was just right.
I sliced the body of a flying crustacean in two, then noticed that there were three bugs perfectly lined up, one after the other, as if trying to prevent me from reaching their leader. Hah!
I used my mindset technique and took one step using an Impossible Leap while holding my sword out. As I moved forward in a flash, my blade severed the crab’s carapace into two.
Hanna sucked in a sharp breath. “Holy... what was that?”
“My version of luck.”
I was sure that if the little crabs could have chosen to not fight me, they would have, but they had to follow their leader’s orders like the semi-hivemind they were.
At least this time, they were smarter about it. Four space crabs flew toward me from all directions. I stepped forward, split open the one on my twelve. I kept going and took out the asshole at my three before jumping to the side. Then I turned to get the bastards who were originally on my six and eight.
I kept my turn going and jumped forward over a fifth bug that tried to claw my chest while I was distracted with that team of four. Hah! I landed on top of it, causing us to slide forward on the damp jungle floor. I stabbed it in the head for good measure.
I lifted my sword up, just in time to catch the final stray flying crab.
The same rock song continued to play. We weren’t even a quarter of the way beyond where we started it.
“So fast,” Hanna murmured.
“How are my legs?”
“Ah! They’re practically on fire! Let them cool for a few seconds before we keep going.”
Damn shitty survival challenge mech!
After a terrible ten second wait where I assumed I looked cool, I started running again, still toward Big Gray’s general direction. Sadly, he never stayed in a single spot.
“Connect me to my teammates.”
The music’s volume decreased significantly just before YaoYao and Spring appeared to the side of my viewing screen.
Spring frowned. ”Fairy Lin. What happened to the plan?”
”Have you kept Big Gray still for more than a second or two?”
They grimaced.
”New plan. The three of us will work together to defeat this fucker in our mechs.”
Sweat poured down YaoYao’s face. “I don’t think I can keep this up.”
I smiled. “You’re doing great. You make a perfect bait.”
Spring scowled but YaoYao nodded. “I’ll keep being weak and relying on MingRen.”
”Good. And Spring, I need you to make it go in a predictable direction for ten seconds. Can you do that?”
His brow furrowed. “If I… Yes I can!”
”Make it so.”
”What are you going to do, Fairy Lin?”
I grinned. ”Kick ass.”
I closed out of the communications screens and focused on the movements of the mechs and Big Gray. The volume of the music turned up.
”By the way, Hanna.” I maneuvered the red mech toward the northern part of the clearing. I flicked a switch that would loosen the muscles a little, something a pilot would normally never touch.
”What?”
”Good job on that circular shield. That was your work, right?”
”Yes. T-thank you.”
”And I apologize about the mech.”
”Huh?”
”It’s not going to survive after this.”
YaoYao’s mech tripped over a tree trunk. Spring moved in front of her, grabbed her mech’s arm and brought her backwards while firing on the crab. His rifle’s pink neon lights blinked out. He ran out of charges.
Big Gray, sensing his prey’s weakness, darted forward. For once, he wasn’t moving in a varying serpentine motion and ran in a straight line toward the retreating figures.
He probably thought I was too far away to reach him with my only weapon. He’d be wrong.
I used My Armor is My Body, infused my sword with my spiritual energy, then Impossible Leaped to appear right next to Big Gray. It ran right into my blade and sliced its own neck off. Because I didn’t trust it not to recover from that, I used a Thousand Cuts three times in multiple directions, directly slicing it into cubes. Still not satisfied, I created hand seals and cast a simple Golden Core level technique called Acidic Fire Storm, which shot green flames into the pile of cubed crab.
Of course, as soon as I released my mindset, the mech practically collapsed.
”What did you do?!”
I grinned. “Just sacrificed the mech to get the big boss. You were planning to give up anyway, right?”
She sighed. “I’m not—!” She breathed out then in a calmer voice, she said, “I’m not talking about the mech.”
”In that case, it’s a trade secret. Don’t think about it too hard.”
I scanned the area, searching for more crabs, but I couldn’t find them.
Spring and YaoYao appeared on my screen. Thank fuck that was still working, even though most of the mech was trashed.
“You got it!” They both looked so excited.
”Damn straight. Hopefully, the mech pilots at the base managed to take down the mothership in orbit so we don’t have to worry about more attacks.”
That, sadly, sobered them up.
”How are your mechs holding up? Mine is trashed.”
YaoYao grimaced. “Chad’s mech is in poor condition. It took too many hits here and there at the joints. I think it can walk to base, but it’s not taking down a C-rank beast, let alone an S-rank.”
Spring looked sheepish. “The muscles are practically burned out and I’m running low on energy, but other than that, we’re in good condition.”
”Great, so we have two half-useful mechs that aren’t going anywhere. Without major repairs. I think we’ll have to grab the muscles from Chad’s and move them over to Spring’s.”
Both Hanna and YaoYao gasped. “Impossible.”
”There is no way to do that without an industrial-sized artificial muscle tightener.”
I grinned. “Just make Chad do it when he wakes up. It’s the least he can do after sleeping through the whole fight.”
YaoYao tilted her head and thought about it. “Can a 4S physique do that?”
I shrugged. “He can certainly try.”
I saw a flash of blue energy and had just enough time to put up a simple shield before it struck my cockpit, sending my mech flying several yards.
I quickly scanned the sky. There, about a kilometer out and high in the air, was another gray-alien-looking space crab. This one, however, had massive fly wings, and it was soaring in swerving, irregular arcs.
Ah shit.
I had enough energy, just barely, for one of my special attacks. No pills to replenish my energy, either.
I pulled on the cockpit release and opened the chest up to the jungle’s foggy blue sky. After I removed my seatbelts, I turned to look at Hanna. She’d set up her seat, so that she was sitting on James. If he were a normal injured person, that wouldn’t have been the best idea, but he was a SS-rank pilot and she needed her hands free to control the mech’s internal systems.
”Don’t eject the cabin unless Winged Gray over there attacks you directly. You’ll just be a slow-moving target to it.”
Hanna nodded. “But what are you going to do?”
After I pulled out my sword, I created a cushion of divine sense and stepped onto it. “Well, I’ll just have to run over there and kick its ass, won’t I?”
Her mouth dropped open. “Holy shit.”
Then I dashed through the air toward Winged Gray.
Since I didn’t want to be an easy target, I had to vary my pace and direction. It immediately noticed me and began firing blue blasts of energy toward me.
One of them got close, so I allowed myself to fall a dozen feet before catching myself just to fuck with it.
Alright, this wasn’t working. I couldn’t use my sword to fly because I need it as a weapon. But that left me in the awkward position of being less mobile than my enemy. While I could attack from a distance with one massive attack that was sure to take it out, I had to be sure it would hit it, which I couldn’t, since the alien crab was too damn fast.
Then, the best way for me to handle this, was to use my weapon in the way of the classics. Sometimes, you just couldn’t beat the classics.
I created several hand seals and infused my spiritual energy into my weapon. Next, I allowed my sword to briefly hover above my shoulder before I used my index and middle finger to point at Winged Gray. It shot forward, part of my divine sense to control it while my spiritual energy powered it. This left me open to run through the sky.
I must have shocked it because its already large alien eyes grew wider, as if it had a giant exclamation point above its head. It sent two blasts out, one toward me and the other at my sword. I swiftly dodged, but I sent my sword right through the blue energy. The blast did nothing to my personally forged weapon. Good.
Once it saw that it couldn’t stop the blade, it ignored me and began retreating away from it as fast as it could. Finally, I had the fucker on the run!
At least I thought I did until it started darting in my general direction. Shit, I knew where this was going. I started to climb higher. I had to keep the high ground.
Unfortunately, while I could dodge using Impossible leap for short distances, it was still generally faster than me. It closed the distance and wrapped its crab-leg-like fingers around my neck.
It tilted its head creepily then, right before my sword could slice through it, it caught my blade in its free hand. The sword stuck deep into its hand, but couldn’t fully penetrate far enough to do major damage. Its palm lit up around my neck as it began to charge one massive attack. Even though it was hard, and my throat felt tight and like it was on fire, I laughed. “To think,” I squeezed out the words, “you made the worst possible choice.”
I brought out the strange flame from my soul space and set Winged Gray on fire. The shriek that came out of its lipless mouth echoed through the sky, even over the winds. It immediately let me go and fell. It also, somehow, smelled like a boiled crustacean with a butter sauce.
But that wasn’t good enough, was it? Just catching on fire might not kill it, since its healing factor was too high. I sent a command to my strange flame to create several wormholes and cut parts off it as soon as something went through them. Pieces of the alien fell to the jungle floor like strangely burning meteors.
I scanned the area with my divine sense, this time stretching it as far as I could comfortably go. There really weren’t any more crabs left. All the beasts in the forest had run away from our noisy fight. There were even several carcasses left from stray blasts and lasers.
We were safe… for now.
With a gesture, I gathered up my little flame into one palm-sized blaze and began walking through the air back toward where I left the mechs.
I poked the yellow and blue lines with my divine sense. “Who’s a good flame?”
It seemed to twist in the air, as if knowing I was talking about it.
“That’s right, you’re a good flame.” It flickered and grew brighter.
Grinning, I put it back into my soul space. Then I gestured with my index and middle finger, pointing down at where my sword dropped and forced it to fly back up. I had it hover over my shoulder.
”Now, you.” I glared at my precious weapon I barely used. “You need to do better. I didn’t even get to use you to do my finishing move!”
Its tip lowered as if it was ashamed and sufficiently chastised. Well, that might have been me controlling it, but whatever. A lonely immortal had to have fun somehow.
Hah. As soon as I touched down, Spring came running toward me. YaoYao hesitated at the foot of her mech.
”Fairy Lin! You’re hurt.” He frowned down at my neck.
Oh right. My neck had been scorched a bit. The alien’s final power up had actually burned through the material of my suit, exposing my skin. Also, my voice was a little too hoarse while I talked to my precious strange flame earlier. In all likelihood, my neck was partially crushed, but my physique was too good, so I barely noticed.
He brought out the wound spray and bandages from his space button and began treating my injuries. He bit his lip. His eyes appeared a little moist.
I patted his hand. “I’ll be fine. It won’t even leave a scar once I’m done healing.”
”It must have been so painful, though. And you were up there all by yourself.”
I grinned. “If you want to join me up there, you’ll have to work hard and learn everything I teach you. There’s a lot you have to study before we can get started on your cultivation base.”
He grimaced. “Don’t talk so much. You’ll hurt your throat more.”
I rolled my eyes.
Just as he finished bandaging me up, YaoYao and Hanna worked up the courage to come over.
I clapped my hands behind my back. ”Alright, let’s take these mechs apart then put them together so we have one working mech!” I turned to Hanna. “As far as I can tell, Mr. Gu is stable, so you can either help us out or eject your cockpit to quickly make it back to base.”
She seemed hesitant, then closed her eyes. “Thank you for saving us! And, and… I won’t tell anyone about what I saw.”
I was about to tell her not to bother since my actions had probably been caught on camera, but after looking around, I realized that the spy bots had been destroyed a long time ago. Even the newly named Drebot was lying in a heap of discarded metal. Well, apparently I could keep my secrets for a little longer.
I nodded to Hanna. “Good.”
”I’ll also help you guys a little before I go, as long as Lord James remains stable.”
Just then, Chad stumbled out of the cockpit. He looked around, very confused and like he had a bad taste in his mouth. “What did I miss?”
Author’s Note:
Alternate Image for Lin for this chapter:
I was planning on using both, but they would have been too close together so I decided against that.
