While the leader of the Bellators fought far ahead, his team still lingers all the way back at the training room, still caught in the tornado of the army all congealed in this one room, as despite the evacuation of the leader, it was still their secondary objective to exterminate the intruders. With the sizable mob still remaining in the car as more come in through the door, there was no shortage of those tasked with this objective, though a few of them are shot down from golden energy bolts from above, and those who squeeze through the barrage are swarmed in a field of pink electric arcs that freeze their bodies, subjecting them to be risen off their feet as they fight to move even a muscle before being thrown backwards.

Those who run past the fields are then met by a far more rapid barrage of golden shots, these ones firing from the golden conal cannon of the arm of the Artificer who stands at the front, keeping her ground well guarded as golden tentacles emerged from her back project panels that function as shields which ward off incoming fire.

These panels also protect the source of those aforementioned pink arcs, that being the Vanguard who guides her fields with her arms, throwing them back so they could all inch forward more, though the space they’ve gained has been minimal.

Still they push onwards, all alongside the Alchemist who does follow, though oddly enough he doesn’t show the same interest in the battle. Instead of being his joyous self, blasting mindlessly and quipping in fun play, here he stands silent, frowning in contemplation, stunned.

Through his eyes he watches the battle unfold before him, his allies battling his enemies, shots traded and supernatural manifestations exercised on each other. So many enemies, the scale of a true Emperor if not greater, for this was the true scale of an organized pirate force: not just a simple rag tag group but instead a whole army capable of rivaling the governments who backed off as a result.

Watching through those yellow irises, the man understood he had yet to recognize a single one of these lowly bandits he’s shot at, for they may as well lack a name, a background, a life. They were simply target practice, or rather games for him to play, targets he had no emotional connection to thus he could find joy out of senselessly dropping them one after another. And perhaps in relative speech, nearly everyone he’s faced has been faceless goons for him to put down. In fact had it not been the influence he’s gained from an old ally now gone, he likely would’ve ranked a great deal of true fatalities, for his arsenal was truly designed with lethality in mind, and using it in a way that simply neutralized his enemies was if anything more of a struggle yet one he endured regardless. Regardless he still left many bodies agonized and bruised, for the minds of those bodies he didn’t care for, nor did he think he would for any who’d be on board this vessel he’d previously not been privy to.

Yet now before him doesn’t simply stand a random group of pirates, perhaps large but with no personal affiliations, rather the goons he’s been fighting through with the rest of the team have truthfully been all part of a group led by a man he knew, and judging off his reactions, a man he did not wish to be on the opposite side of a fight with.

Even if perhaps he was not directly engaging with the leader, the simple act of partaking in this battle no longer could be done with the former bliss, the bliss that the rest of the team, normally who’d be known to be more cautious than him, are still able to envelop themselves in. Thus while his two allies have not had even a fraction of his experience when confronting enemies of the Outer Rim, they were the ones engaged in full battle while he just stood back and watched in silence, watching them continue to march forwards, dropping bodies as they struggled to stand on their own feet.

Side by side the Vanguard and Artificer stood, though as more gunshots come from the upper platforms with little resistance, the Artificer grunts and transforms both of her conal cannons back to the shape of hands, clawed but no longer able to fire any bolts as she lets her tentacles handle that temporarily. Instead she flings her right hand to the side, all five of her golden fingers detaching right off freakishly as she determines in her synthetic voice entirely calm, “Here, they’ll protect you,” as reference to those five fingers each of which suddenly burst into an expansion of golden strands that multiply and expand in the shape of double helixes, helixes that reshape themselves in air to form a torso at the core from which expands four limbs and a head, as in just a second the five fingers transform each into golden specters, all of their bodies similar in that they’re made of gold and lack a face, yet there is a noticeable difference in that the royal design of the diamonds is not as prominent, allowing the main host to be pronounced.

The five specters however all raise their arms, their right hands transforming into conal cannons but their left forming to a flat shield that projects an energy barrier, immediately firing ahead in the Artificer’s place as she raises her head up and indicates, “I’m going to handle them,” as her four tentacle tips morph into claws, and all four bend to grab the floor before then throwing her up in the air like a spring, propelling her up to the higher floors.

While the Vanguard battles below alongside the specters, the Artificer lands on a platform with a handful of racks with dumbbells, some of them with benches and others without any to allow for standing. Amongst them are pirates too, one of the unfortunate ones being grabbed by the face before being slammed to the ground by the golden cyborg’s hand generated just before contact from wireframe to solid in just a second before she rolls up to her feet, her tentacles autonomously firing bolts at the further bandits as she allows her hands to be used for close quarters in more of a martial arts style, throwing punches and leaping with high kicks, perhaps superficially a primitive application of her cybernetic enhancements yet in truth the speeds and strength she was able to deliver in these tight strikes were far amplified by her inhumanity.

One of the bandits grabs two of the detached weight disks, and both of her hands suddenly begin protruding metal spikes off her skin which then oddly grow onto the disks themselves, covering them like some odd infestation which reinforces them in greater lethality which she throws at the cyborg when her focus is on the other bandits, though two more tentacles burst out of her back both of which grab the disks by the edge and crush each in half to much of the bandit’s fear, and before she can manage a counterattack one of the new tentacle heads morphs into a gun that fires a black shot into her head, dropping her body after a flash.

Those two tentacles then retract back into the body as the four predominant tentacles allow her optimal maneuverability so she can run down the platform, her tentacles rapidly firing as she slams with her fists and does tight kicks, strafing with golden boosts.

However in the middle of her charge, her shoulder is struck by a long red spear out of nowhere, piercing her metal hide and causing her to stumble to the side with a shocked grunt.

Her tentacles firing down on the remaining bandits of the current platform, the Artificer faces the direction that the spear was flung, facing the shooting range further ahead but specifically finding that at the edge stands the familiar woman in the crop top under the oversized white jacket with red spikes along the sleeves, red like her scarlet hair. She smirks satisfactorily to the landed hit, standing beside the taller woman in the knight’s armor and the other woman in the purple overalls.

Glancing back to the spear lodged in her shoulder, the Artificer quickly examined it to be seemingly made as a construct of hardened blood given its texture, though with such pressure that it was scarily solid. Still, she grabbed the spear with her other hand and ripped it off her shoulder, tossing it to the floor as the open wound already begins secreting golden liquid which covers the wound and hardens, healing it in just a second.

Already patched, the Artificer then fully turns her body to the new targets and leaps for them with an aggressive roar, both of her clawed hands open, ready to take on those who previously belittled her.

Up on the edge of the shooting range, Ruby smirks delightfully as she arches her right arm back as an open wound in her palm secretes a stream of crimson blood which then extends normal to the projection stream to form the rod of the spear, the tip expanding out and sharpening appropriately before the blood itself darkens and hardens enough for her to grab it once the stream concludes. Holding another spear, she then throws it at the incoming cyborg.

Airborne, the Artificer strafes in a golden burst in avoidance of the red spear before then boosting forward, all of her tentacles aiming and firing a flurry of shots straight for the three.

That is when the knight, Manka, steps forward and raises her left arm up as in her hand manifests a large medieval shield simply out of a pure red light, one that somehow attracts the flurry of shots straight into the red cross in the center as beside her the girl in the overalls, Bea, extends her arms forward, her fingertips emitting a cold frosty mist which creates three long icicles, and with a light wrist flick all three are flung at bullet speed.

Defensively the four tentacles wrap around the Artificer, them being the ones to be struck with the icicles as there’s little purpose to the gunfire given they were all being negated regardless.

At least the defensive maneuver allows the Artificer to complete her leap, as the tentacles expand back out again to let her throw her fist straight at Ruby who steps back to let Manka raise her right arm and call forth another red light that provides her a greatsword with a cross hilt, one that Manka swings at the Artificer, though that blade is parried with an immediately morphed long golden blade of her own as forged from her own hand, both clashing against each other.

Regardless the Artificer springs backwards back in the air as she couldn’t overpower the greatsword, but now in the air she lets herself drop back down, her tentacles grabbing the bottom of the shooting range and letting her swing beneath the platform to much of the three pirates’ confusion as they glance with peculiar gazes.

Manka keeps her shield forward in defensive mode as Ruby and Bea remain on lookout ahead too, though neither of the three face the correct direction as behind them the golden cyborg emerges from the floor itself, breaking straight through the metal as it splits a fissure, and at that very moment all three of the girls’s eyes widen as they start to turn around while the cyborg’s clawed hands clench, and the four tentacle arms sharpen with more rigid joints as though becoming more like spider legs.

The Artificer then launches herself straight at Manka first before she can make the full turn, using her wide foot to kick the knight in the back same as all four of her spider legs jab into her and throw her straight off the shooting range; she uses that kick to propel herself backwards to reach for Bea who shields herself with a wall of ice, though one the Artificer effortlessly crashes through, grabbing her face as one of her spider arms jabs her in the stomach, immediately incapacitating her with an oof and letting the Artificer focus lastly on Ruby, who growls as she extends both arms, her left also having an open wound, letting her secrete blood from both which both shape themselves to be large blunt baseball bats though with the additional lethality of spikes protruding from them. After manifesting the bats, she grits her teeth and takes a step forward, her friends defeated so quickly yet she couldn’t simply let herself lose.

To that invitation of a fight, the Artificer bends her knees, letting her hands remain as claws despite now having less range with them, though she knew that wouldn’t be enough to hold her back.

She lets Ruby be the one to launch forwards, roaring as she first swings her right bat, and at that very moment the cyborg launches herself forward, grabbing that bat with her hand, letting the spikes impale her as regardless she grips the bat so tightly that she crushes it in half, causing Ruby to stumble in fear from the utterly monstrous move.

Though Ruby’s given no time to rebound as the Artificer takes the next step forward, making a slashing motion which Ruby shields with her bat just as hoped, as the Artificer accelerates both of her arms to make speedy slashes at the bat with both hands so quick her arms aren’t even visible, but rather they become a whirlwind of golden air that eats through the blood bat, shredding the bat whole into clots of blood on the floor.

Ruby’s eyes expand in horror as she’s so quickly disarmed, thus she’s quick to secrete more blood from her right hand to form a small blood knife that she then attempts to lunge with at the Artificer, though now it’s the cyborg’s turn to use an advantage in reach as she doesn’t step back but rather lets her four spider legs begin jabbing Ruby in a rapid flurry, whirlwinding too but now with four arms instead of two, and with such intensity that Ruby’s body isn’t even able to react as she just stands in place getting pummeled as the Artificer just stands her ground and lets the flurry conclude with one final simultaneous slap of all four legs, propelling her body back with such strength that she flies all the way into the target practice dummies, her body crashing into one of them with the thud of metal.

Having defeated the three, the Artificer lets her tentacle arms smoothen again, the clawed tips morphing to guns as an application better for larger crowds now that she’s dispatched the smaller squad.

She steps to the edge and looks down, finding the remaining pirates down below fighting off the specters, though there’s notably only two left as the other three are left as corpses on the ground behind the Vanguard who struggles to hold her ground, facing off the majority of the force by herself.

Realizing this, the Artificer raises her head up to the ceiling as her four tentacles morph their heads back to claws to grab the floor before springing her up before then all four grab onto the ceiling, orienting her body to be facing directly down as she hangs from above.

She then extends both hands forward next to each other, extending those hands with golden strands that actually link them together and extend further out into a large cylindrical cannon akin to a missile barrage system, one she aims down on the pirates below as holes form on the face of the cannon.

Hanging from the ceiling and gazing through the blank face, the Artificer aims her single cylindrical cannon as all of the holes light up gold at once, and all at once a barrage of golden missiles are fired out with golden trails, each of them moving independently but all in harmony down to the floor far below, a hailstorm crashing down on the pirates as golden explosions flash all over the floor in quick consumption of the force, many of them screaming and racing for the cover beneath the platforms yet the remaining specters fire down them, and those who do manage to dodge are gripped by the four swarms of pink arcs of the Vanguard, all coming from her forearms which she pulls back to pull all the bodies snatched out into the open to be struck down by the bombings against their will.

Now that the final pirate of the room has been defeated with no immediate reinforcements, the room reaches a state of quiet it only had before the erasure of the crystal door.

Noting this grace period, the Artificer retracts her cylindrical cannon arm back into her hands that then separate again and revert to have all five fingers, and her tentacles let go of the ceiling, letting her drop down the three stories back to the floor with just a thud as her two remaining specters combust into golden goop that fall to the floor same with the three corpses, all of it crawling to the Artificer’s feet and being absorbed back into the host.

She glances down the doorway and wonders in her synthetic voice yet one able to convey her sense of concern: “How far did Medit go? I didn’t actually think he’d run off like that…he was sticking with you guys before.”

Behind her approaches the Vanguard who pants in exhaustion, but after wiping her forehead she manages a shrug and uncertain answer: “I don’t know…I guess maybe he really was just staying back earlier because he figured he had to be the one to protect us.”

She looks down at her chest where the disk shielding device was placed earlier, though it’s intangible now to which she sighs softly and now wonders mellowly, “For a second I kinda thought he was like…going to lead us like a team…I mean he was doing it pretty well before but…maybe he just didn’t want anything to happen to us. I’m just holding him back aren’t I…?”

Sighing softly to that slight show of insecurity, Dana shakes her head and assures gently albeit still in that inhuman voice, “Don’t worry about that, he’s just…fired up. We’ll catch up with him, we just need to move fast. Are you okay, did you take any hits?”

Shaking her head to the question before tugging on her chest, Kokei assures back after a relieving sigh, “No, I mean I did get shot but it was nothing the shield didn’t take. I can start moving now, yeah we should probably move soon.”

Dana nods her head as Kokei’s irises suddenly shrivel in horror, and as Dana takes the first step forward, Kokei glances back behind herself and immediately demands, “Shoot, where’s Eki??!”

Instantly Dana stops and turns back to find that behind her was nobody inside the training room, for the only bodies that were standing were them two, all others were the bodies dropped to the floor.

As Dana conducts a sweeping scan both down and ahead, the first horrifying thought hits Kokei as she asks in terror, “Wait, you don’t think he got hi-,”

“His body isn’t here, I’m not getting any scans of him,” interjects Dana with assurance, lifting her head up to continue the scan yet clearly to no differing results given her lack of an immediate correction to her statement.

Instead Dana completes her full scan as her tentacles also turn their heads around in scanning mode, yet even after the full scan and then the second full iteration, there is no body found. All four tentacles retract into Dana’s back as a result as she faces Kokei and admits befuddled, “He’s…not in this room…I don’t even know where he went to. I swear I was just gone for a couple seconds…I thought I was at least. You don’t think he also ran ahead right?”

Trying to conduct a scan of her own albeit without any of the fancy technology as her ally, Kokei shakes her head and reluctantly assumes, “I…don’t think he would. I mean he’s never done that before in any of our missions, and he didn’t really seem particularly excited about this one either so I wouldn’t think he’d break the leash now.”

Tilting her head now that that very point has been brought up, Dana glances at Kokei and asks curiously, “Wait, do you know why he’s reluctant anyways? He’s never seemed reluctant about anything, even fighting Exitium.”

Sighing to the question and lowering her head, Kokei shakes her head and admits with a frown, “I…don’t know. He was like this even back in The Peak, I mean I thought maybe he was just worried about pirates since I know he knows more about this Rim stuff than me but…well it looked like he was fine when he saw this train so I figured it’d be okay. I don’t know…and I take it we can’t just Connect him.”

Sighing back and nodding her head regrettably she confirms, “There’s jammers everywhere, I’m blind to any online contact. I would’ve contacted Medit by now if I could but…I guess we’re in the jungle here.”

She raises her head and faces forth to the exit door as she finally asserts albeit in a reluctant tone, “All we can do now is move forwards, if we’re lucky we’ll run into him but there’s no point going back, besides I’m pretty sure the prison entrance is sealed. Come on, long as we stick together we’ll be fine. Ready to move?”

Huffing through her nose in disappointment to the rather gloomy choice that required her to practically abandon her best friend who’s long vanished, Kokei has no other alternatives but to nod her head and confirm, “Yeah I’m ready…and don’t worry about me scurrying, I don’t think I could last long here alone…. I hope I didn’t get too in over my head eheh, I’m guessing you can’t make pods out of thin air either.”

Huffing back but with a bit more sarcastic charm to that remark, Dana shakes her head and retorts back, “Well this is what we get for not taking the ride home. Let’s go,” before she then resumes her march to the exit, her every step echoing given both the overall silence of the room amplifying her weighty footsteps.

Beside her Kokei sighs again though with more relief after the uplifting joke doubling in functionality as a reminder of the resolve she instilled with herself just earlier, and with that remembered resolve alongside her ally she lifts her head up and follows Dana onward.

So past the heaps of bodies from the defeated army the two Bellators make their way to the exit of the training room, the only to have remained together during the first wave of the fight. While such a fact is rather concerning especially given the caliber of the danger they were facing in said danger’s very territory, at the very least there’s solace in the presence of an alliance at all.

Both of them had lives back home they had to tend to eventually, and by embarking on this mission they were voluntarily neglecting those lives, the responsibilities carried with them. Whether it be of the great scale of a C.E.O missing after captivity which may put an entire corporation in jeopardy or simply a programmer not being able to finish their work on a website they’re meant to deliver imminently, both of them had to make a sacrifice for the sake of an ultimately selfless mission.

As whether they were fighting for this cause early on or only recently obtained the true depth of impact this oppression had on so many lives, they knew that the lives they’d be saving would be a benefit that’d outweigh the cost of what they were relinquishing.

Thus onwards the two walk out of the room and into the next, side by side, the Artificer and the Vanguard, two warriors left to forge their own smaller pact in hopes of partaking in an impossible mission.