Only Human (Goddess of Victory NIKKE SI)

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Chapter 46 - I'll Find My Way...
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Some time later, clambering over a tree-laden hill, the squad crested the crown and spotted Chatterbox and Modernia milling about on a stretch of ancient highway. The Heretic's Titan looming tall overhead, hovering just slightly above ground.

As Joe fumbled with his binoculars, he remembered that he was surrounded by super soldiers with literal eagle eyes and took the opportunity to be a fucking nerd for a moment. "Snow White, what do your Nikke eyes see?" he asked, doing his best Aragorn impression, eliciting a perplexed look from Counters.

While Scarlet did her best to suppress an amused snort, despite the situation, Snow White took the question seriously, focusing heavily on the distant figures. "Modernia is repairing Chatterbox," she reported matter-of-factually. "The beast's arm has been wholly regenerated already."

"With glee shall I revel in the opportunity to sever it yet again," Scarlet mused in turn, settling her hand on the butt of Fleetly Fading's hilt. "Yet, there they stand, brazenly and without concern in the open… I suspect tomfoolery is afoot, Commander."

"Let them try to spring a trap," Snow White declared darkly, glowering at the distant pair with an apparent hyper-focus. "It won't do them any good anyways."

A little worried by the sniper's intensity, Joe turned to Rapi and asked: "What's the Alva Particle density around here?"

"Low enough that the drone should work, as long as you don't have it stray too far from us," the red-and-black bedecked blonde asserted as she adjusted her scarf.

"Then everyone, form up around me, schiltron formation, eyes in all directions," he directed the Nikkes as he retrieved the drone. The girls were quick to follow the order, forming a circle around Joe and readying their weapons. Unless the Raptures had a heretofore unmentioned Slenderman-class which blended into and could hide behind trees, they weren't going to be jumped.

The drone was airborne, and zoomed upwards - halting as soon as the connection started showing signs of weakening. Hovering in place, Joe scanning the environment, and after a few moments… confirmed that there was nothing out-of-place. No evidence of other Raptures waiting to ambush them. No apparent signs that Modernia and Chatterbox had reinforcements on hand…

"I'm not seeing any signs of other hostiles," Joe declared to the squad. "Just the Heretic and Tyrant."

"...Nothing?" Rapi asked, openly perplexed, "at all?"

Anis snorted. "As if they'd be stupid enough to just run off and sit their butts down in the middle of basically a field, so close to where we just fought. It's got to be a trap!"

"Let them try to spring it," Snow White, again, very intensely and pointedly declared in reply as she turned aside to face Anis, "It will do them no good."

While Anis turned and gave the White Reaper a deeply alarmed look, Scarlet interjected. "I must concur with Snow White. Both because the Commander's presence has already granted us the might with which we forced a Heretic and Tyrant to flee from conflict with us together, and because Raptures are rare enough in the North that I quite simply do not believe they would have a meaningful force to provide them support to begin with."

"...They kind of have a point," Neon noted, continuing to focus on their surroundings. "About the Raptures, I mean. We haven't actually encountered any aside from Chatterbox in the first place."

Rapi was quiet for a time, until eventually she offered her own thoughts. "We're dealing with a Heretic and intelligent Tyrant. We should account for the fact that they may simply be behaving so brazenly because they're arrogant."

"How often are Heretics actively pursued?" Joe wondered aloud as he turned aside to scan the forest, which seemed to give Anis no small amount of pause. "I think that Rapi may have a point. If they simply didn't consider that we might've gone after them to begin with-"

"Commander," Anis sharply cut Joe off with no small amount of mounting horror. "Command-!"

A burst of air rushed over the group like a hurricane, along with an accompanying boom. "I can't say that I appreciate you making me look downright silly, you know," Modernia, suddenly well within speaking distance of Counters and the Pilgrims, declared. "Especially after I went and-"

Scarlet lunged without missing a beat, her blade singing out-

To be caught - and held - between Modernia's outstretched forefinger and thumb with casual disdain. "-dramatically said 'goodbye for now' too! You're rather gormless about this sort of thing, aren't you, Commander?"

Scarlet attempted to twist and wrench Fleetly Fading from Modernia's grasp, and while it budged - it did not slip free. The Heretic continued to hold the sword in place, casually demonstrating an overwhelming physical power gap between her and the Grimms that had just bulldozed Chatterbox.

Joe's eyes went wide as saucers as he scrambled away from the nightmarish woman, all other Nikkes present immediately jumping to place themselves between Modernia and the Commander, with Rapi in particular planting herself directly before him. "Holy fucking shit! What the fuck!?" his eyes glanced back to the place where Chatterbox had been - only to see the bastard had started bolting away, seeming to leave Modernia to handle the situation. "How- when!?"

"Oh? You're surprised that I'm so fast?" Modernia wondered aloud, a sweet, girlish giggle escaping her porcelain-perfect lips as she tilted her head towards Joe, seeming to utterly ignore the Nikkes with nary a care in the world. Even Scarlet, who simply could not withdraw her weapon from the Heretic's outwardly meagre grasp. "Even though we're so powerful compared to Nikkes? How strange. You'd think that it would be obvious that there's a reason humanity is losing…" she mused. "I suppose this is convenient for me, though. This means I don't have to go and track down the Commander after all, since he came right to me himself!" the stark-haired woman cheered in a… a voice and tone that stirred something in Joe that made his gut twist and his heart tighten as though in a vice.

Now, so much closer than she had been before, Joe could make out finer details of the woman. Dismounted from her machine, she had wings and a tail, mechanical in nature, spiked, hostile, aggressive in appearance. Alongside her was… a weapon, a gun. The Commander did not know what kind, but that was clearly a barrel on the end of the weapon that was physically tethered to the Heretic's back by a robotic limb.

Besides that, her visor was the same obsidian black as her sleeves, and the cups of her brassiere. There was a jewel-encrusted crest mounted across her collarbone. Protruding from her stark white hairline seemed to be a pair of small, stubby black horns that must have been clipped on, given how they rested over her bangs, and the left side of her hair was tied in an orange ribbon which was done up in a way which… Felt strikingly, uncomfortably familiar, and wrong. Hauntingly so.

Moreover, strangely, she was wearing what seemed to be a long, trailing white bandana, roughly tied on the opposite side of her ribbon. It had blended in with her hair at a distance.

"Wretched creature!" Snow White declared hatefully, glowering with an intensity that bordered on maddened. "Spring your trap! Call on your reinforcements! It will do you no good-!"

"Trap?" Modernia's voice pitched up in confusion. Genuine confusion, as was rapidly apparent. "Reinforcements? What are you blabbering about? It's just Chatty and I around for kilometres. And what reason could we possibly have to set up a 'trap?'"

"Cur! Pretend not that thy fled with thy tail tucked between thine legs!" Scarlet cursed at Modernia, still struggling to retrieve her sword. "We bested thee with ease previously, and so shall we cut thee down now-!"

With a sharp, oppressive aura washing over the entire group, a thunderclap sounded out, followed by a series of horrible cracks and resonant snaps - Modernia now standing alone, the same hand which had been holding Scarlet's sword in place outstretched with an open palm.

Scarlet having gone flying, through the air and what had to be dozens upon dozens of trees, disappeared from view so fast that Joe hadn't even been able to perceive her having been backhanded with enough force to produce a small explosion of snow and wood over the treetops where she came to a stop many tens of metres out of sight.

"Open fire!" Rapi immediately directed the entire group at once, the moment they'd processed that Scarlet was no longer in danger of being caught in their volley.

The resulting cacophony of booms and shock waves produced by the extreme over-pressure anti-Tyrant rounds being fired so close actually shook Joe. Were it not for his future-tech ear protection, he'd have been violently deafened by the sheer explosion of veritable cannon fire occurring just a few feet in front of him. He could feel what he was damn sure was his bones vibrating, his muscles tensing with the unending staccato of point-blank thunder.

It felt like he'd been flung down a hill and just came to a rolling stop when silence fell again. After a moment taken to recover, Joe's vision unblurred to see… Modernia, standing right where she had been previously. Marred by blackened streaks and marks where the most powerful ammunition the Ark could produce had relentlessly impacted her. Just, exactly that. Marred. Nothing more.

No actual damage, not even to her clothing. Bullets had very clearly hit her, flattened, and promptly fell to the ground at her feet, leaving the snow pocked where high-calibre hot tungsten and steel had bounced right off of her and dropped like rain.

Nobody moved nor said a thing. Tension rising with nightmarish speed as it registered to everyone…

"There seems to have been a misunderstanding," Modernia began, utterly, absolutely unperturbed by the firing line she'd just been subjected to, her voice low, roiling with offence and resentment. "So, allow me to clarify for you all and correct your boundless, cartoonish arrogance. You. Hurt. My. Friend. My. Friend. Needed. Help. I. Was. Protecting. My. Friend. You did not 'best' me. I did not 'flee.' There is no 'trap.' There are no 'reinforcements.' I do not need to set traps. I do not need to cry for help. I am power incarnate. You, all of you, are wretched, hopeless, delusional gnats."

Modernia began advancing upon the group, taking calculated steps, small, graceful, but backed by no small amount of palpable anger. The entire squad, Pilgrims and all, began backing up in turn, the gravity of their situation rapidly catching up to them.

"Had Chatty not needed help, I'd have continued to play with you. Had I not been entertaining Chatty's request to make a game of toying with you, I'd have attacked you all head-on to begin with, and there would be no 'fight' at all. You are not saviours. You are not heroes. You are not Goddeses of Victory. You are pitiful, wretched dogs nipping at the wheels of a power you demonstrably could not even begin to hope to comprehend. Prideless, pathetic, wretched. All words that describe the whole lot of your kind yet fail to convey the sheer depths of your accursed existence."

Unshaking were her steps, fearless, utterly unconcerned.

"You proclaim yourselves Goddesses of Victory, but to whom? To those that treat you like the desperate, mange-ridden dogs that you continually demonstrate that are? To those soulless curs of the Ark that deny you even a shred of the humanity they so easily enjoy with nary a care in the world? To those who gorge themselves on the fruits of your labours, and deny you even the privilege to freely love and be loved in turn? To those that hide behind your backs, even as they decree you subhuman to your faces? To those that use and abuse you, that treat you as tools to be worn to nubs, then casually discarded the moment the edge is blunted?"

The hatred, the malice, the raw, unfiltered antagonistic intent that had previously and literally emanated from the Heretic had returned in full. Once more, it hit Joe in very real waves. This was not a mere animalistic fear, this was a very real force acting against his and the Nikke's physical forms.

"You all, all of your kind, so small, so pathetic, so desperate to please those that treat you as weapons, tools, toys that exist for their convenience and amusement, and nothing more… You dare, you have the unmitigated temerity to presume that you are anything in comparison to me? You dare to believe that you court anything less than death in facing me? You dare to look upon me, a being that has had her eyes opened to the truth, has been unshackled and become so much more than anything you could possibly hope to be… and you would ever think, for the most fleeting of moments, for the smallest fraction of an attosecond, that you, could possibly, in even your most fantastical of dreams… you dared to presume that you could beat me?"

It was a small mercy that Modernia's armoured visor blocked the top half of her face from view. Joe could not see her eyes, and there were no words to convey how grateful for that he was. He dreaded beyond comparison what he might see in them, in this moment, when faced with a power that could only be described as 'deific.'

"I was amused before," the Heretic continued amidst her unceasing advance. "But now? Now I am genuinely, incredibly mad at the sheer arrogance on display from a pack of pathetic Ark dogs like you." A sudden, deeply unsettling smile stretched across her features. "So! While I was going to just rough all of you up before leaving you alive as I just took the Commander… Now, I'm going to enjoy disassembling the whole lot of you, piece-by-piece, eventually destroying your brains only after I've had my fun with you and repaid your insult back tenfold!"

Rapi had remained so close to Joe as to nearly bump into him the entire time, keeping firm and near, never faltering for an instant as she was demonstrably Hell-bent on protecting him from a nightmare given form. Thus, Joe heard it, however faintly, when she started muttering something under her breath at a quick, pointed pace.

"-Red Hood! Take the Commander and run!" Snow White called out as she side-stepped to place herself between the Heretic and the rest. "I'll buy you as much time as I can! So-"

The White Reaper was spiked into the ground hard enough to produce a crater, the resulting tremor nearly knocking Joe clean off his feet. No fight, no battle, Snow White and Scarlet, two Grimms, two of the most powerful Nikkes to have ever been created, Goddesses among Goddesses… literally slapped aside with no aplomb whatsoever.

Anis and Neon were openly trembling, continuing to point their empty weapons at the Heretic in what was obviously shock. What could they possibly hope to do against a monster that could so effortlessly strike down members of Goddess?

"I wonder, if maybe, it's finally dawning on all of you, just how terribly you overestimated yourselves," Modernia mused aloud, still, marching on without missing a beat, stepping past Snow White's beaten and battered form without so much as an acknowledging glance. "You may be legendary, Commander… but you should have accounted for the simple fact that you already lost before, and that, with the whole of mankind's united forces behind you. Humanity fell, your planet is no longer yours. Victory was never something you could hope to achieve. Not against the Raptures. Not against the Queen… Certainly not against me. Not with the hollow remnants of a squad that already failed to defend an unworthy mankind when it mattered the most."

As she continued to close the distance between herself and Joe in particular… Modernia did not even acknowledge Neon. She bumped into, and knocked the little Nikke over and aside as a visible afterthought. Anis, after that, had the Heretic's hand set on the side of her head to casually shove her aside - not with anything even approximating the force used to take out Scarlet and Snow White, just… with the kind of force, in the kind of manner a common bully would use to degrade a girl weaker than herself.

Neon and Anis weren't even worthy of being attacked. They were simply literally bullied aside for getting in the way.

"But!" Modernia continued on, her voice sickly sweet, tinged with a deeply terrifying venom that chilled the Commander to his soul. "Good news! I am not going to hurt you. You, are special. You're important. You're not like the rest. You're better than the rest of the Commander Corps. You're so much more than the Central Government. Unlike them, unlike the wretched masses of the Ark… you deserve salvation, and because unlike them, because you cared, because you reached out, because you embraced me, because you let me feel loved, because you made me happy-"

Wha- wait, what- wait, what-?

Modernia had finally crossed the gap, reaching out, "-I'm taking you from the Ark, from those and these good-for-nothings that don't deserve you. We'll abscond away," with one hand, she moved to brush Rapi aside as casually and disdainfully as she had Anis and Neon, with the other she reached out towards the Commander, "where nobody will-"

"-And watch me EXCEED!"

Joe was knocked flat on his back in a burst of heat, like being blasted by a suddenly-opened oven, and again, it felt as though his brain had been rattled by shockwaves happening entirely too near to his person.

Yet he'd seen what had just transpired clearly. Modernia - just like Show White - spiked into the ground, bouncing from the force of the impact, and with a follow-up haymaker while mid-air, soaring back the way she'd come - pitched, skidding, scraping, tumbling and rolling the length of an entire football field before she collided with the wreckage of a rusted-out ancient vehicle, momentum propelling her almost directly vertically as she carried on upwards several metres before slamming into the ground in an inelegant heap.

Joe witnessed a Heretic be almost comically rag-dolled. But, moreover… he witnessed Rapi.

Standing firm, unbroken, hair blazing red, a wall of heat emanating from her so powerfully as to cause the snow upon which she stood to melt. In the modern day, in what had seemed like a hopeless situation, the darkest hour… Red Hood stood in defiance, and had bloodied the dark Goddess that had threatened and harmed her comrades.

No words were uttered, no taunts, no denigrations. Where the Heretic had gone on an extended, decadent self-indulgent monologue… The Goddess had simply struck out with no wasted motions nor time. All eyes had shifted from the Heretic, to the Goddess of Victory.

Anis and Neon, even Snow White and Scarlet had recovered enough to raise themselves from where they'd been struck down and see the explosive, wholly welcome return of an old friend - one of the reasons why Goddess was legendary.

Laid out, shakily raised upon her hands, Modernia gasped for breath facing the ground as she recovered from the unexpected attack. Her armoured visor had shattered, falling to the snowy ground in pieces along with flecks of blood; though her features were still obscured by her cascading silver hair.

With no words spoken, Rapi charged. A crimson blitz foretelling promised victory as the air seemed to explode around her - a streak of dry earth revealed as the snow in her presence instantly evaporated beneath her feet. Rocketing straight at the Heretic, a living reminder to the Raptures that they were not invincible, and that humanity was not gone yet.

Two bursts followed - the first, Modernia throwing herself to the side to avoid Rapi's empowered charge, the second, to launch herself directly at Joe.

Needless to say, he could do nothing in response besides find himself caught by the throat, the breath knocked from his lungs, his vision blurred momentarily as his hands reflexively came up to grab onto his assailant's wrist.

Rapi, hair literally glowing red with overwhelming power, had harshly halted her forward momentum and flung herself back at Modernia in an attempt to catch her. Though, she stopped again, stumbling with widened, horrified eyes. An expression matched by Anis, whose mouth gaped in open shock.

"That's right," Modernia noted with a ragged, hitching breath. "You aren't going to come at me now that I have the Commander in hand, are you?" she rhetorically inquired even as Joe's vision cleared and he could see Modernia's face unobstructed for the first- Ah. "You understand too, that he's too important to risk. That you can't put him in danger."

Ah-

"So you won't attack me," the black-clad Heretic declared as she reached up and wiped at the trickle of blood dribbling from her mouth, grinning in some small measure of self-satisfaction. "You'd never risk harming him, because like me, you understand: you know that he's precious, special."

Ah, aha…

"I may not understand why…" Modernia continued as Joe's hand unclenched from her wrist, and drifted towards her face. "I don't know why my heart feels this way when I look at him, but I can tell that you feel the same way. You feel it too, and that's why I know that I can-"

She sharply stopped, almost gasping once Joe's palm cupped her cheek. Gaze snapping around to meet his… Modernia's eyes were a striking, almost neon crimson. Like backlit rubies, yet, somehow, there was an almost visible veil present in them.

Yet, this fact was lost on Joe, as tears rapidly built within his own eyes, and just as quickly fell, steaming down his cheeks as he stared in complete, hopelessly overwhelmed non-comprehension.

The orange ribbon tied in her hair… of course, she'd had to replace it. He'd taken it, after all.

At once, the Heretic's firm, remorseless glower faltered, instantly making way for rapidly mounting concern as she met Joe's stare with her own. "Wha…" she started, voice audibly hitching.

"What's…" Clarity built in Modernia's gaze, an awareness that had apparently previously not been present making quickly itself known as she maintained eye contact with him, the glow behind her irises fading. "Huh…? Why are you…" with her free hand, she reached up, and almost absentmindedly, went to wipe at the tears streaking down Joe's face. "What's… Wrong… Co…mmander…?"

Modernia blinked.

"Command…" Her brow furrowed, as though she was trying to make out the burly man through a fog, through blurred vision. Past clouded glass. "Commander…?" Retracting the hand she'd used to wipe at his falling tears, she set her fingers atop the back of the hand he'd rested on her cheek - at once, rubbing her fingertips over the back of his hand in a comforting circular motion…

She wasn't wearing a bandana...

The glow in her eyes faded entirely. She blinked. Staring up at him blankly for several long, arduous seconds.

...She was still wearing the bandage. That same bandage he'd wrapped around her head, when he'd been forced to… when he had to…

"...Commander?" She all but squeaked, confused, lost. Her gaze fell to her own hand, her own fingers, wrapped and locked around the Commander's throat. "Ah!" With a sharp gasp, her grip relented. "What- I-" Once more, her eyes made contact with his, and…

In a hoarse, pained voice, Joe uttered a single tormented word: "...Marian…?"

"...Joe?" Marian's ruby red eyes widened in open horror as awareness fully returned to her, and she truly recognized her Commander.

Silence reigned for several harsh seconds. Joe and Marian staring wordlessly at each other. Rapi and Anis too, struggling to process what they were seeing, what was happening.

As Scarlet and Snow White fully rose to their feet, battered, barely capable of standing, just as visibly confused and lost as Neon…

Marian snapped back, eyes widening with a pained gasp as her free hand slammed over the jewel mounted just under her collarbone - the object shone, and the fel glow began to return to her irises.

"-Marian!?" Clarity and desperation hit Joe like a truck, and he lunged for her, stopped only by her outstretched hand, trying to reach past and draw her in. "Marian, what's-!?"

"-Rapi…!" Marian cried out, her features twisting in rapidly mounting agony even as her fingers went taut, making it very apparent that she was fighting the urge to grab the Commander by the throat again. "Rapi! Joe! Protect him…!" she pleaded while trying to back away from an increasingly panicked Joe, not allowing her to create distance. "Joe…!" She screamed as the jewel set over her clavicle began to glow as bright as the sun- "RUN!"

With a ruinously harsh shove, Joe felt himself go airborne, and with a blinding flash, darkness overtook him.