Combat simulation initialized

Ellowyn stood still with her arms folded by her side, her lips bent into a smirk. Let the dance begin.

Spawning surveillance drones

Nine glowing blue metallic spheres materialized around her, they immediately flew up and spread into her surroundings.

Various windows popped up in her vision after the drones established connection. Most of them were of video footage from the drones and also a 3D model of the entire area.

Spawning enemies

Three large green wolves appeared around her, they snarled and growled, wanting to tear her to pieces.

I can do this. She gripped her rifle harder and deployed its close combat mode. "Come at me!"

The wolf behind her answered by lunging from her blind spot. So quiet was its leap that the sound was completely muffled by the others snarling.

Seeing the sneak attack from a drone's camera, the system urged her to turn 90° and roll, to which she did.

It took less than a second for her to recover and stand up with the help of thrusters. She readied the rifle and fired.

"Wauuu!" The wolf howled in pain as numerous metallic slugs tore through its flesh, but it did not stop.

The wolf's second lunge completely missed for she was already out of reach by doing a one handed cartwheel to the side.

She had to use one hand to support the cartwheel because the stabilization thursters on her legs and hip were turning themselves to the front.

Another attack warning came after the second wolf leapt towards her side as she was in mid air.

Any normal human target would have been unable to react since they were already airborne but she was different. Using the thrusters on her legs and hip, she turned the cartwheel into a backward roll in mid air.

Before she made her landing, her rifle was already stretched out and launched a grenade towards the two wolves in front.

Boom. The explosion wasn't enough to injure them, but it did disorient them enough for her to recover from the fall and began charging forward.

One of the wolves regained its senses just long enough to see the bladed part of her rifle entered its skull. Its body went limp right after she pulled the trigger.

Panicking, the remaining two decided to drop any pack hunting tactics and pounced at her together.

Big mistake. She grinned before jumping back by five feet and watched as they slammed into each other.

Had the wolves looked down then, they would have seen the grenade she left on the ground before jumping.

Disoriented from the second explosion, the wolf could do nothing as she stabbed her rifle through its chest and fired into the heart.

The last one backed away from her in fear. Before she could] end its misery, however.

Spawning enemies, wave 2/∞

Three more wolves materialized and surrounded her.

What? Ah crap I forgot to turn off the wave mode.This is going to be tough. She welcomed a rush of excitement that was running through her veins.

She watched patiently at the circling pack, waiting for the first strike.

After the wolf behind her leapt, instead of rolling to dodge, she leaned her back to the side at an impossible degree and swung her rifle's blade at the surprised wolf while firing on auto and letting her bullets rip through its flesh.

With blood dripping on its sides and legs, the battered wolf limped hurriedly to behind its other comrades.

The wolves seemed to have evolved their tactics, two wolves in her blind spot started their charge, but not at the same time as one was in the lead and the other trialed, perhaps to make sure that the second one can grab her while she was dodging the first.

Ellowyn mentally clapped for them because it was a good tactic. Even with bird's eye view and a superior thruster movement system, she still couldn't handle multiple attacks from different angles at the same time.

I guess its a retreat/ She started to run backward while firing. Despite it being commonly done in shooter games, trying to aim while running backward in real life could only lead to the user losing balance and tripping. Even with stability thrusters, she still had trouble keeping her aim on the charging wolves.

Another attack warning flashed from behind her, for she was running backward towards one of the other wolf that was circling around. It was very confident in its stealthy movement since her back was turned.

She made a backward jump and used the thursters to turn herself around while grinning at the completely befuddled wolf.

Impact warning

Her grin turned to a frown however, as she was flying straight at it rather than to the side. It was too late to adjust the thrust vector and she could only raise her forcerifle forward with one hand while covering her body with the shield on her left arm.

The collision knocked the air from her lungs and killed the wolf instantly with the forceblade of her rifle piercing through its skull.

Laying next to the fallen wolf, she tried to muster the anemic strength of her bruised body to pull the rifle out, only to fail and waste the few precious seconds as the other wolves charged.

Unable to stand up in time, she had to pull an emergency somersault high in the air to evade the incoming wolf.

"Arg!" Even with her pain receptors dulled by the system, she could still sense the heat from the overworked thrusters burning through her skin.

Spawning enemies, wave 3/∞

Three more wolves materialized and joined the other three.

She had no time to panic because the wolves all charged at her like a herd of bulls. With the thrusters almost disabled from overheating, she could only take the charge head on.

Taking out two back up handguns, she deployed their close combat mode and began running forward.

Injecting backup adrenaline

She could feel her body kicking into overdrive from the excess adrenaline as time slowed down to a crawl.

Two wolves in the front pounced in unison. She turned her body sideways and maintained a crabwalk while her hip thrusters helped her lean towards the exact angle that allowed her to slip past the tiny space between the two.

The next wolf jumped at her from her side, but missed as she made a roll.

She found herself suddenly cornered as the last three wolves stood still. There was no opening she could use for any movement on her part would take her into their attack range.

So I'm checkmated. She sighed and went back to a standing pose, ready for her last stand.

Instead of circling her, the six wolves decided to form a ring surrounding her while slowly stepping forward.

The only opening she had was up. She bent her knees shortly before making a straight vertical jump. She was glad the clothes she wore in the virtual simulation wasn't flammable, for the thrusters were hot enough to give her third degree burns. She accelerated upward to around five feet. However, before she had the chance to move, the largest wolf made its own powerful leap and tackled her to the ground.

Fuck! She felt the thing's claws stab into her belly after they landed.

Health monitor offline, signal lost

She lunged both of her handgun's blades to the sides of its skull, blasted its brain, and rolled out before its body could pin her down.

The stab she received wasn't enough to damage her internal organs, but it completely destroyed the monitor which was the link between the surveillance drones and her system.

With no means to survey a battlefield full of hostiles, the system could only make approximate guesses which were terrible in a close combat brawl. A fact which she learned shortly after.

You have died. Stopping simulation

She cleaned her bed and hit the shower right after waking up, so as not to let Alice see her sweaty mess.

Flipping through her mails, she checked with the payment confirmations from the Sentria requests she did the night before. The money she received in her remote virtual account was piling up but there was no plans to spend them.

----

Thank you for your work, I have received the decrypted file.

A payment of 500 credits has been transfered to your account.

XXX.

----

Its confirmed, good job on bringing that porn site down, they were pain with all the pirated material and even pedophillia. It wasn't legal, what you did, but at least it was the right thing haha.

Even though I made it clear that you won't really get paid, here's 100 creds as my personal thanks.

Best of luck, XXX.

----

Hey Sam, did you get the test bees ready yet? I haven't heard from you in the last few days, too engrossed in your work again huh. I just hope your love for bees doesn't get in the way of the project. And contact me when you're done messing around. We need to keep in touch.

Sincerely, Ramien.

----

Sorry about that. Please ignore that last email for I seem to have sent to the wrong recipient.

Anyway, about your request for being our digital agent, we're fine with that. While we already have a guy over here, he's usually busy with bigger things so I don't mind if you were to receive our minor errands.

Cheers, Ramien.

----

Her eyes popped wide open at the last two messages. The images of her bloodied body lying infront of the metallic gates replayed themselves in her mind. A terrifying realization struck her. Will I really die before this semester is over?

She wanted to backtrack the email, find out the source, and the reason why these people are making giant killer bees. But most of all, she needed the actual data on how the bee was structured and how it fought so that she could put it in her combat simulation. Simply enlarging a normal bee and force it to fight wouldn't do.

A part of her mind childed her, that they could be mentioning normal bees for a bee farm project somewhere, but she dismissed the notion when she made the connection between their search for the soul stream and the bees. Her current conclusion was that they either have some connections with the Allied Church or some third party who wants their hands on access to the Soul Stream. And they would go to any lengths, including releasing a swarm of giant killer bees to attack wherever she and Alice was in the system clairvoyance replay she saw.

She wanted to watch the replay scene again, but Carl had took extra effort to completely erase the module from her system, saying that it wasn't something any living entity should have access to.

Its still early. She decided to put on some light clothing and head to the garden, wanting to erase the unease she felt within her gut.

Deep inside the forest-like garden, Ellowyn found the figure of Alice crouching down and gathering samples from a nearby mushroom. Zekke walked around her, occasionally barking and pulling on her clothes to get her attention.

The moment he spotted Ellowyn, Zekke unfolded its wings and flew away in a hurry, leaving her standing there with a sad frown.

"Morning Ellowyn, did you have a good sleep?"

"I'm feeling well, what about you?"

"There are quite alot of work that needs to be done. And I can't do most of them at school." Alice said while putting her specimen into clear pouches and moved onto the next one.

"I'm sorry for bothering you then."

"No, its fine. I'd rather prefer some company. And you probably have something to ask me too right?"

"Not really, I just wanted to see you." She was speaking the truth, "Though there is something on my mind. Its alright if you don't tell me."

"Just ask away."

"The conversation between you and Jake sparked my interest. I've done some research and see that you and Tom went great lengths to deny Eve corp's involvement in human wing attachments. And I can't think of a reason why. It doesn't violate any humane ethics, nor is it hard to achieve."

"It lays more in our work ethic, really. We prefer not to work on very large and time consuming projects that doesn't really give any benefits to the general society. And to take on the project is a big risk. Unlike what you think, putting such a large foreign body part onto the human body isn't easy and it is much harder to not have failures with the human test subjects. But most of all though, the project doesn't really do anything to progress the field of genetic science. Not as much as the other projects we're working on anyway."

"But don't you also work on the genetically engineered pets?"

"Those are my hobby project that happens to give some side income. What we're talking about, however, would cost us time and money to achieve something ... useless. Did you know that to make a human fly with bird-like wings, we'd need wings so large and tall they would touch the ceiling? The kind our competitors are trying to make would be purely for cosmetic purposes and also a burden to move around in. It is simply a risk we do not want to take."

"I see." Ellowyn nodded, "I guess I'll return and get ready."

"Do you really want a pair?" Alice said, her tone filled with interest.

"Ah no, not really." Ellowyn quickly shook her head. Such a pair of wings would only slow her down and make it harder to maneuver in enclosed spaces. But it'd be awesome if I ever get one.

The atmosphere in the campus remained gloomy and timid. However, she noticed many of the students without animal ears chatting normally. I suppose they're not worried because its not their problem? She shrugged.

Like the rest of the students, all of her teachers aside from Mr.Stanford -whom still had a mechalonic air around him- showed signs of anxiety.

Despite the lectures being done using vibrant holographs with stunning imagery, the lecturers anxious and dull voices was funny at first but quickly bored her.

She plopped her head on the table and pretended to sleep while using the system to check the Sentria request board. She then proceeded to remote access her computer at home and started to do some of the easier request.

"Miss Ellowyn, you might be missing important class material by sleeping during our session. "

"I'm sorry, its just that I am a little tired. But I was paying attention." She sat up and pretended to yawn.

She could she that the professor was trying to break the dull mood by calling out a random slacker. But she pitied him because she was no slacker.

"If you were, then answer me this: ..."

Ellowyn raised her eyebrow, the question required an answer that had not been covered in class yet, based on a quick search of the system's lecture recording.

She didn't miss the look of surprise on his face when she answered correctly. The day and nights writing her combat algorithm had paid off.I might be new to this world, but math is never new to me.

It was the robotic class that she looked forward to the most. Too bad Tommy's not here. She thought of the many questions she wanted to ask him while staring at the vacant seat besides her. All of the other students took a seat away from her, but she didn't care.

The lecture itself wasn't very interesting for she had already covered such topics before. Although she had some difficulty operating the clunky software, her soul room was leagues better.

"... and that is it for today. Also If you haven't got your robotics kit already, you can buy get one or order separate components in my office."

That got her attention. It didn't take long for her to follow him to his office.

"Why on Earth do you need so many thursters?" Daimon was flabbergasted. The girl in front of him had make an absurd request.

"Its for a personal project I'm working on. Are there any problems?" Ellowyn said.

"No, there are no problems. Its that none of my students have ever ordered so many thrusters of that size before. Please be careful with whatever you're doing. These things aren't toys."

"Thank you for you concern, professor. But I know what I'm doing." She gave him a confident smile.

"Be Careful, I don't want to be responsible for your death." He shook his head and gave the box of components to her. The frail thing looked like she could barely handle the weight. "Can you carry all of that home?"

“Let me help.” The red haired bodyguard girl beside Ellowyn said.

"Its no problem." She put everything in her backpack and activated the small support thrusters on its side.

"Thats a fancy backpack you got there."

"Its the newest model I think. Have a nice day." She bowed and left.

"Rich kids these days." He mused.

Ring. He answered the phone.

"Daimon here."

"Its Ramien, did everything go well?"

"Better than expected. No one is suspecting a thing."

"Good, I'll contact you later, don't forget to use a secure channel when calling me, last time you almost got us traced."

"It was just an accident okay. Anyway, I need to prepare for my next class. Talk to you later."

GDoc link please comment in any errors you see. Its not that I’m lazy, but I’m too busy to proofread my chappies. >.<