Day 34 + Apology

[First of all, let me apologize. I hoped I wouldn't fail this early in, but a broken sleep schedule, and the fallout from the death of Monty Oum, a great inspiration of mine, conspired to stop me from posting yesterday. To make up for it, I will be making two posts today. This first one is dedicated to Oum himself.]

[from Vanishing Point]

Twelve girls, against a small army of mecha, did not seem like much of a battle to the unfortunate pilots as they closed in on the miniature blockade. What they did not know, is that these were not ordinary girls.

Standing at the front of the pack, wielding two razor-sharp katanas, was a girl in a long black dress who had to have been at least six feet tall. Her long ebony hair billowed behind her as she watched the mecha advance. Suddenly, a red-haired girl in a magical girl outfit descended from the skies, landing neatly next to her. The ebony-haired girl turned to address the new arrival as though this were a perfectly normal occurrence. "How many of them are there, Ruby?" she asked.

"A whole lot of them!" exclaimed Ruby.

"You didn't count?" said the ebony-haired girl, a little annoyed.

"I tried, but there's a lot of them!" said Ruby. "Like, fifty or something."

"Fifty," repeated the other girl quietly. "I reckon we can take fifty." She turned to the other girls, assembled in a line behind her. "What do you all think?" she addressed them. "Can we take on fifty of them?"

The answer was a resounding "Yes!", from every single girl except one, a shy-looking blonde, who quietly mumbled, "Uhh…I guess so...".

"Alright then!" said the ebony-haired girl. "Let's give these bastards hell!" She turned to a silver-haired girl wearing strange metal bracers on her arms. "Quartz, you're up first."

Quartz nodded. "Okay." With a wave of her arm, the bracers suddenly fell off, clattering to the floor. Static electricity began to spark around the girl's body, her silver hair floating upwards, raised by the static. She closed her eyes, and a large electromagnetic field burst outwards, enveloping the entire group and expanding to a diameter of at least fifty feet.

The mecha pilots at the front of the squadron, noticing the strange pulse, began to open fire, but they were seconds too late; their bullets were effortlessly and harmlessly deflected away. It was at this point that the pilots began to realize they were dealing with something more than just normal girls, but foolishly, they continued to fire.

It was not long before the clattering sounds of the mecha's guns were replaced by a chorus of clicks, as one by one they ran out of ammunition. "Crap!" exclaimed one of the front gunners. "Quickly, fall back and let th-AARGH!"

Before he could finish, the ebony-haired girl had pounced upon his mecha and thrust her katana straight through the glass canopy right into his chest. It was time for the counter-attack to begin. The girl leapt elegantly off of the mecha and back down to the ground, as the pilot slumped forward in his harness, dead. His mecha, inoperable, toppled over backwards and fell to the ground, cracking the asphalt.

Quartz was next up, firing a tremendous bolt of arc lightning from an outstretched palm. The lightning struck three of the lead mecha, frying their electronics and rendering them completely useless. Slowly, the mecha squadron's formation began to fall apart, and the girls took full advantage, splitting up themselves to take them on.

As another mecha advanced, rounding the one downed by the ebony-haired girl, another tall girl with short blue hair surged forwards. With a thunderous battle cry, she unleashed a punch that shattered the mecha's leg. Unable to balance, the crippled machine toppled to the ground face-first, trapping its pilot within. Another mecha stepped up behind it and readied its gun but Quartz swiftly set up another barrier, blocking its shots. The blue-haired girl, smirking, then simply walked up to it and demolished its leg with a sweep of her arm, sending it tumbling down on top of its damaged team-mate. Hydraulic fluid spurted from the mecha's shattered leg, pouring over the road like blood from a wound.

The katana embedded in the dead pilot's chest suddenly began to glow. It wiggled a bit, then seemingly tugged itself free, hovering in the air above the downed mecha as a few drops of blood dripped from the tip. The sword then flew across the battlefield, seemingly of its own volition, slashing at the legs of the machines and severing the exposed hydraulic pipes at the backs of their knee joints. About five mecha, crippled by the sudden loss of hydraulic pressure, crumpled inoperably to the ground, leaking yet more fluid.

"What the hell is happening?!" shrieked one terrified pilot, just before Ruby flew right in front of his cockpit, brandishing a wooden staff.

"Prepare to be vanquished, evildoer!" she declared, before banging her staff against the glass windscreen. Nothing happened, but the mere sight of a girl hovering several feet in the air was enough to freak the pilot out completely. Screaming, he backpedalled furiously away from her and straight into the mecha behind him, knocking them both over. Before he could right it, a number of thick green vines burst out of the ground around it, wrapping around its arms and pinning it to the floor. Try as it might, the mecha could not break free.

The remaining mecha began to find their mobility severely hampered by now, not just by their downed comrades that now littered the street, but also by the ever-growing puddles of hydraulic fluid across the ground. Stepping over their fallen machines where they could, and simply kicking them aside where they could not, they battled bravely on.

The katana that had been floating by itself suddenly moved in front of the shy blonde-haired girl, who until now had been hanging back behind the others. "Go on, take it," said a woman nearby in a maid outfit, whose hand glowed an identical colour to the sword. "We'll distract them, you take them out."

"Can I get the other one?" asked a brown-haired woman in an office uniform who, like the blonde-haired girl, had been hanging back.

"Ask Rei if she'll lend you it," said the maid, and with that, she turned her attention back to the fighting. Using her psychokinesis, she picked up the broken leg of what was now one of several mecha that had been downed by the tall blue-haired girl. With hardly an effort, she thrust the leg at a nearby mecha with enough force to rip straight through the cockpit; the pilot was crushed, and a split-second later the mecha exploded in a large fireball.

A green-haired girl, who had been controlling the large vines, was standing too close to the explosion and was knocked back, her eardrums shattered by the blast wave. She clutched her ears, crying out in pain as she lay on the ground. "Diamond!" called out the ebony-haired girl, addressing a white-haired girl in dirty overalls. "Jade's down!"

"On it," said Diamond, rushing over. By the time she reached the fallen Jade, blood was beginning to leak from between the girl's fingers as she continued to clutch her burst ears. "I can't hear anything!" she wailed loudly. "I can't hear anything!"

"Don't worry," said Diamond, kneeling down beside her and laying a hand on her shoulder. "I'm gonna fix you up real quick, okay?"

Diamond's hand began to glow white, a gentle healing pulse making its way into Jade. Her ears healed almost immediately, the blood disappearing and the pain fading to nothing. Jade froze in mid-wail, opening her eyes and blinking in confusion. "Huh? I can hear again?"

Diamond patted Jade kindly on the shoulder. "You're doing good, Jade," she said encouragingly. "Keep it up." Jade nodded, and picked herself up, ready to carry on the fight.

By this point, the dwindling mecha squadron had realized this was not a fight they could win. "God dammit," growled one of the remaining higher-ranked pilots. "What are these girls?!"

"Should we fall back, sir?" asked one of the lesser pilots.

"I'll tell you what you should do."

Hearing the mesmerizing voice, the pilot looked out of the front of the cockpit, and the moment his eyes met the glowing gaze of the girl standing before him, they glazed over as he fell into a deep trance. The girl grinned, pushing her half-moon spectacles up the bridge of her nose, the lenses shining dangerously.

"What you should do," she continued, her voice echoing slightly, "is turn your guns on your comrades. Kill them all."

"Yes," said the man, his voice a mesmerized monotone. "I should kill them. I should kill them all." Powerless to resist, he turned his mecha around and opened fire on his own squadron. He managed to destroy two of their machines and damage a third, before his team-mates reluctantly destroyed him.

"God dammit!" exclaimed the high-ranked pilot. "Retreat! Fall back! We can't beat them!"

"But it's just a dozen girls!" retorted one of the men. "How can they possibly be doing this?" A moment later, the back of his mecha's knees seemed to split open completely of their own volition, crippling it as so many others already had been. The blonde-haired girl, now completely invisible, had slashed the hydraulics apart with Rei's katana. After that, nobody else objected. The remaining mecha turned and began to flee, leaving their fallen comrades behind.

"Do we let them go, Rei?" asked the blue-haired girl.

Rei nodded. "Yeah. Let 'em go. They won't be coming back again."

"I guess we better start clearing up, huh?" said another blonde girl. "We made a pretty big mess of this place."

"I'll take care of it," said the maid.

"I'll help," said the blonde. Stretching her arm out to an incredible length, she began picking up the random pieces of debris strewn across the street.

"Here, let me help speed things up for you," said the office lady, handing Rei her katana back. Walking over, she took the hands of the maid and the blonde girl. "Whatever you do," she said, "don't let go." The lady closed her eyes, and gradually, the world around them slowed to a crawl. The cleanup would, to the three of them, take no more or less time than it would have done before, but to the outside world, it would now appear to take only a few minutes.

"I'll go get them some snacks and drinks," said Ruby, "they'll be tired by the time they're done. Ruby, Saviour of Tokyo, away!" With that, she flew off into the skies again.

"Does she have to do that every time she takes off?" said Diamond, rolling her eyes.

"You know what she's like," said the hypnotist girl, her eyes no longer glowing. "Let her do her thing; she's not hurting anyone."

The other blonde, who had now turned visible again, headed over to Rei to hand her katana back. "So, what now?" she asked. "Shall we leave them to it?"

"Yeah," said Rei. "Come on, let's go. Our work here is done."

The rest of the girls headed off, as the clean-up operation continued behind them at incredible pace. "Hey, how about we all head to Alexandra's maid café and grab a bite to eat to celebrate?" suggested the only girl who hadn't spoken yet, an athletic red-head whose vest top looked a little singed.

"Good idea," said the blue-haired girl, taking out her phone. "I'll text Hanako, let her know we're coming, and I'll text Alexandra as well so she knows where we've gone."

"Good idea," said the athletic girl. "Maid café, here we come!"

***

"I got the snacks!" called out Ruby as she landed, carrying a large shopping bag. "…huh? Where'd everybody go?"