“You okay?” Octavia exclaimed through her helmet, her grip on Mackenzie’s shoulders tightening as she guided the human to raise her head enough to take a look at her. The glass shard was still impaled through her temple, trapped between skull and flesh as blood poured freely down the side of her face. Several other small cuts from the exploding glass had left her face marred with many smaller streams of blood adding to the mess, and tiny flecks of glass reflected the emergency lights of the cabin amidst the blood and sweat.

“Never better,” Mackenzie replied breathlessly, her eyes wide with adrenaline as her gaze flicked towards the side of the ship where Alex and Jace were laying down return fire. She moved to join them, shuffling a half-step before Octavia’s grip on her shoulders stopped her.

“Wait!” Octavia exclaimed quickly, pulling Mackenzie back towards her protectively.

“What are you doing?” Mackenzie shouted over the din of gunfire, her eyes flicking towards the doorway once again, “We need to help!”

“Just a sec,” Octavia insisted urgently, her grip tightening on Mackenzie’s shoulders as she held the human tightly against her. She set her rifle down and used the now-free hand to reach up to the large piece of glass sticking out of Mackenzie’s temple, “This is going to hurt!”

Mackenzie’s eyes glanced up into the corner of her vision and a look of surprise crossed her features, as if she hadn’t noticed the shard was there in the first place. Her eyes settled on the reflective visor of Octavia’s helmet as she gave a single nod and tilted her head to the side to give better access to the wound, falling still to let Octavia do the work.

Gripping the edge of the shard, Octavia took one look at the wound to confirm that there were no complications. Satisfied by her findings she pulled at the shard sharply, yanking it out of the wound with a short spray of blood as the laceration was unplugged. A fresh river of blood began to spurt from Mackenzie’s temple, the entire side of her face quickly turning red with her own blood.

“Ah shit, hold on,” Octavia urged as she dropped the shard of glass and pulled both of her hands away from Mackenzie. She reached down to her left bracer, sliding open the storage panel there. The small cluster of emergency medical supplies gave her pause as she eyed over her options in the moment.

The reality was that Mackenzie was vulnerable, and that no matter what she did or said there would always be that chance that she could take a stray bullet in the middle of a gunfight. Her mind wandered to their time on the Scales of Justice; the late-night talks, the dinner dates in the cafeteria, the quiet times where it was just the two of them adrift in a sea of stars. Her mind lingered on the first time she had worked up the courage to visit Mackenzie in her room, the smoothness of her skin and the surprisingly floral scent of her room lingering as phantom sensations in her mind despite the turmoil around them.

Octavia’s eyes flicked towards the back of the compartment where a small ultratech patch was located, made of a flexible vinyl with an adhesive side and a small processor in the center. As her eyes landed on the patch, a thought immediately crossed her mind with the subtlety of a howling train.

“Are you sure about that?” Vita asked with a faint edge of concern as the thought crossed into Octavia’s head.

There was a brief moment of pause as Octavia’s eyes shifted back up towards Mackenzie, then with a single rush of determination she reached into the compartment and withdrew the small adhesive square, “Yep,” she retorted sharply. The compartment closed with a flick of her wrist and with her offhand she gripped the edge of her shoulder cape and brought it up.

“This is going to sting,” Octavia informed flatly as she wiped the blood from the wound with the nanoweave fabric, covering the purple with red.

“Ah, fuck!” Mackenzie exclaimed in pain, her face scrunching up in an obvious display of agony. The laceration easily moved with the motion of the wiping, opening and closing with wipes back and forth. The human had to bite her lip to keep herself from breaking down into tears, a look of focus on her visage as she focused on biting through the pain.

As soon as Octavia had cleared enough of the blood away, she brought the adhesive square up to the side of Mackenzie’s head and slapped it firmly over the wound, stemming the bleeding immediately. The human cried out sharply at the sudden force on the wound, but as the pain of the impact faded away, she reached up and felt at the edges of the adhesive curiously. Relief fell onto her features as she turned her gaze up to Octavia, “Thanks,” she remarked gratefully, offering a bloodstained smile despite the circumstances.

Octavia wasn’t paying attention to the gratitude, however. She squinted and leaned in, eyeing the patch closely with a discerning eye. The small square of ultratech stuck out slightly from the wound, a small indicator light remaining dark for the moment. As she watched the light with raising concern, it suddenly flashed yellow, blinking steadily against the side of Mackenzie’s head. Relief instantly flooded Octavia’s system, a weight falling from her shoulders as she turned her gaze away from the patch and regarded Mackenzie.

In the din of combat there was a peaceful silence around the two as Octavia’s fear was replaced by relief, as her visions of blood and death were replaced with what was directly in front of her. Through the screen of her helmet she gazed into the deep pools of jade as affection swelled in her heart, her breath falling shallow as the world around her narrowed. She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around her lover, pulling the surprised human into a tight hug against her armored torso.

“Babe, what’re you doing? Now’s not the time!” Mackenzie complained, though she made no move to resist Octavia’s advances. She squirmed slightly in the unyielding grip of the cybernetic soldier, allowing her head to be squished against Octavia’s armored breast despite the chaos of the gunfire around them.

The embrace lasted for a few seconds, but those seconds were a lifetime to Octavia as she watched the yellow light steadily blink directly in front of her. Holding Mackenzie’s head firmly against her breast with her head tilted, Octavia’s entire world narrowed to the blinking light, her vision tunneling as the world around her faded into a black void which erased everything else from existence. Blink. Blink. Blink.

The next blink was green.

Octavia had never experienced joy like she had in that moment, where all seemed right with the world despite the blood and fire. The light remained green and steady, a small beacon of sanity in an uncaring world where everything was determined by factors preordained by events set in motion millions of years prior. Octavia pulled her head away from Mackenzie, the world moving in slow motion as she fixed her lover’s face with a determined gaze.

In her heart she knew that the attendants out there were just trying to avoid death, the same as her. They had been dragged kicking and screaming into the light by the Omni, and once there they had to fight and scrape for every last inch. She held no malice towards the machines because she understood them - but there, in that moment, she knew that there was no discourse to be had. It was them, or it was her.

“I’m going to save you,” she declared firmly, a statement of fact that would not be undermined by the chaos.

Mackenzie’s look was one of confusion, an eyebrow raised and an unsure expression on her face as she watched Octavia rise from her kneeling position. She watched in stunned silence as Octavia picked up the borrowed rifle, only to call out in shock as Octavia made her way for the back door, “Wait, what are you doing?”

Octavia paused with her hand on the door handle and glanced over her shoulder at Mackenzie for a moment. Her vision zoomed into the steady green light in the middle of the patch, reassuring herself in a split second before her vision returned to normal and she offered a quiet, “Getting us out of here,” as she pulled on the door handle and slipped out of the opposite side of the crew bay.

The landing pad had been cracked by the force of the Longsword crashing into it, several cracks splintering out from the center towards the edges. Water pooled in the crevices as the rain continued to pour, the steady pitter patter on her armor adding an endless beat to the deafening sounds of the firefight from the other side of the landing pad. Directly across from her was the edge of the landing pad, and beyond it was the darkened wasteland that stretched on endlessly in every direction.

“Vi, reroute all power from the support systems to the combat systems. Control set D, safeties off,” Octavia instructed as she made her way towards the tail of the Longsword, keeping herself low in a crouch as she rounded to the side.

“Uh... Are we sure about this? I know Mack’s in danger, but Auntie Valentina always told us that safeties off was for emergencies only,” Vita remarked, her tone shifting into one of worry as they came to a stop behind the wreckage.

Octavia was silent for a moment as she glanced over her shoulder, her mind flicking towards Mackenzie still hiding within the wreckage as they peppered it with bullets. A pang of fear spiked through her heart as she turned back towards the corner, “I know, Vi. But I’m not going to risk it,” she decided.

With a hidden frown, she peeked her head around the corner, getting a better view of the situation. They were trapped between a rock and a hard place, and the only way out of the situation was through a blockade of armed attendants at the end of the landing pad.

There was a pregnant pause as they both considered the ramifications of what they were about to do. The sound of gunfire didn’t help the train of thought as the bullets ricocheted noisily off of the armored plating on the other side of the wreck, Jace’s turret adding a constant droning rattle to the orchestra of chaos around them. As Octavia turned her attention to a small group of three that were making their way towards the barricade, her retinal display zoomed in and highlighted a missile launcher that one of the attendants was carrying, the same model which had shot the other Longsword out of the air.

“Look, Vi, we’re out of options and out of time. It’s now or never.”

“...on it. Safeties off in five… four… three… two… one…”

Octavia’s heads up display went dark, providing a natural view through the visor of her armor as the power was redirected to the main combat systems. The air around her shimmered faintly as the Guardian suit projected its shield, the rain splashing against the invisible barrier before rolling down the shimmering air in short rivulets of water. In the same moment that the barrier was erected, Octavia’s world slowed down to a painful crawl.

As the neurolink rewired the connections in her brain, Octavia had a front-row seat as she watched every individual raindrop snap into crystal clear focus, highlighted in the dark as her natural vision boosted to hypernatural proportions. She felt a wave of cold radiating out from her spine as her body fell into autopilot, her programming leaping past her neural pathways and straight to the cybernetics within her body.

Octavia’s mind watched as her programming took over, the sensation of distance between her and her body increasing until she could scarcely be certain that it even was her body anymore. Somewhere in the distance she could still feel her hands around the grip of the rifle, and could still hear the steady pitter-patter of rain against the energy shield around her, but it had become a dreamlike state that she had no control over.

All at once she sprung into action, dashing out from her hiding place and into the middle of the firefight at full speed with her rifle perfectly leveled in a firing position as she sprinted. Tracers raced back and forth between the crashed Longsword and the attackers at the end of the landing pad. As she crossed into the open she immediately spotted a cluster of attendants hiding behind boxes at the entrance of the landing pad, as well as several who had advantageous positions on the city streets overlooking the pad.

A tracer round raced past Octavia’s head in slow motion, so distinct that she could see the bullet cut through the rain as it streaked towards the Longsword behind her. Another bullet was following it only a foot behind it - a micro adjustment to where her head was positioned allowed her to skirt past it without breaking her stride. In response she raised the rifle outwards to the side in one hand without turning her head, the barrel pointed directly at the mathematical source of the bullet’s trajectory.

Squeezing the trigger, Octavia’s armor compensated for the recoil, mechanical force holding the rifle steady as she fired with one hand. She counted off the rounds being fired, letting go of the trigger when five rounds had been launched towards the source. Without breaking the pace of her sprint her eyes focused on an attendant directly ahead of her. She found the barrel of her rifle swivelling towards the target, and another five rounds were precisely shot off towards the hostile.

Without waiting to confirm her kills, she leveled her rifle forwards and gripped the handguard with her offhand, balancing it as she squeezed the trigger. Five rounds. Ten rounds. Fifteen rounds. Twenty rounds. A veritable hail of gunfire lanced outwards at the cluster of boxes near the entrance of the landing pad where the most attendants were located. The rifle clicked loudly.

Jammed.

Octavia didn’t stop her dead sprint forward, following her hail of bullets towards the entrance of the landing pad. She counted three attendants laid flat by the gunfire, either dead or out for the count before she even made it to their barricade at the entrance. An attendant who had been taking cover from her approach raised out from cover and leveled a shotgun directly at her, his chest prominently marked with the Omni sigil.

With a lunge from her offhand, Octavia threw the rifle with enough force that when it hit the attendant in the face it decapitated the machine cleanly, its head crumpling as it tore violently off of its body. A wounded attendant lay on the ground directly in front of her, propped up in a sitting position against wooden boxes. Without breaking her stride, Octavia’s paw came down into the attendant’s chest, cratering the metal as her clawed paw tore directly through its chassis and into the other side, destroying the sigil he had displayed so proudly.

Lowering her shoulder, Octavia burst through the crates with the velocity of a wrecking ball, sending a spray of wooden shrapnel out around her as she ripped through to the other side. An attendant on the other side of the boxes took Octavia’s shoulder to the back, instantly crumpling his torso and sending him sprawling to the ground as she carried through in her charge.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a mote of light lancing towards her from the streets overlooking the landing pad. Rather than trying to stop it she lowered her shoulder towards the missile and continued charging forward. The missile impacted the shield over her shoulder, blossoming into a brilliant fireball around her as she continued unimpeded through the impact, leaving a flaming blast crater behind her where the ordinance had exploded and failed to stop her.

As she cleared through the fireball, two terrified-looking attendants had whirled out of their barricades at the end of the landing pad and had leveled rifles at her. They squeezed the triggers and a short barrage of gunfire impacted the shield at torso-level, the shimmering field flickering slightly as it withstood the kinetic barrage. The impacts weren’t enough to stop her.

Octavia leveled both of her fists and thrust them out at full strength as she raced between the two attendants. Her fists slammed violently through their chests simultaneously, ripping through vital connections and tearing apart structural machinery as she lifted the two robots off of the ground and carried them with her through her grip inside their chests. As they dropped their rifles from the force of the impact, one of them tried hopelessly to grip at Octavia’s forearm, trying to dislodge itself from Octavia’s unyielding grip.

Bringing her arms directly forward in front of her, Octavia ran full force into one of the external walls of the temple, slamming both of the attendants into the masonwork with enough force that they were both instantly obliterated. Microscopic pieces of machinery and metal exploded in every direction as the two attendants were crushed to their very core, her fists leaving twin craters in the stone as she pulled away from the impact site.

A sudden barrage of impacts against her side brought her attention towards a trio of attendants who had focused fire on her, their bullets impacting against the energy shield. Her shield flickered as it reached its breaking point, and with a sudden flash, it popped, allowing the bullets to continue through to her armor. The last burst of their magazines peppered against her armor, flattening and ricocheting harmlessly.

Small vents opened up in the gaps of her armor and with a sudden burst of momentum, Octavia was propelled backward with a rocket blast. Her paws skidded on the wet cement as she landed, leaving gashes in the cement where her claws had carved into the material to slow her momentum. Bents on her back opened up as she redirected and sent another burst of power through the jets, propelling her at breakneck speeds towards the three unsuspecting attendants as they struggled to reload faster than she could reach them.

In mid-propulsion Octavia reached over her shoulder and drew her amarkai, immediately slicing downwards with a quick slash as she landed in the middle of their cluster. The attendant in the center was cut from shoulder to hip in one clean slice, both halves of its body instantly dropping to the ground in a loud clatter. Using the momentum of the slash, Octavia shifted her grip and stabbed upwards to the attendant on her right, impaling it to the hilt with enough force that the blunt end of the blade guard left a sizable dent in the attendant’s chassis.

Wrenching the blade sideways, Octavia opened the wound wide enough that she could see the sparking internals through the wound, and with a deft sidestep and a yank of her blade arm she drew the blade out of the attendant’s chest and slashed it horizontally through the neck of the third attendant. The second and third attendants dropped to the ground at the same time in useless heaps at her feet as Octavia’s shield flickered and powered back up, the rain pooling against the invisible forcefield as it strengthened once again.

An attendant across the street was trying to run away, sprinting in the direction of another small cluster of attendants as fast as its legs could carry it. Octavia was faster.

A burst from her directional jets sent her leaping across the street with her blade raised, and as the attendant screamed in horror, Octavia came crashing down into its back with her paws. Her claws extended, gripping into its armored chassis as she let her momentum transfer into the robot, riding its corpse to the ground as her armored weight cratered its back until her claws touched the cement on the other side. Without hesitation she brought her blade down into the back of the attendant’s skull, putting it out of its misery.

A flash of lightning illuminated the street in front of her as the five attendants turned their attention away from the Longsword, all eyes directly on her. For the first time during the engagement, the streets were silent, filled only with the sounds of the heavy rainfall and the crackling of the various fires that had resulted from the explosive combat. At the sight of the Omni sigils painted prominently on all of their chests, her paws tensed and her enhanced claws tore through the attendant’s back like a knife ripping through a tin can as she wrenched the blade out of the back of its skull and faced down the armed robots across the street.

“Kill it!” One of the attendants shouted in outrage as it raised a sniper rifle towards Octavia. The rest of the attendants all raised their rifles and pulled their triggers.

The streets erupted into violence once again as the sounds of gunfire echoed through the edge of the city, the attendants desperately shooting at Octavia. Her jets fired off, propelling her forward through the first volley as she skidded to a halt in front of the nearest attendant. The rest of their barrage had been too slow, firing where she had been and connecting with nothing but air.

Octavia gripped the attendant with her offhand and wheeled him around in time to use him as a shield against an incoming shotgun blast which ripped his torso apart, only flecks from his body impacting the glimmering shield around her. Coiling her arm, Octavia threw the attendant as hard as she could at the one who had shot him, and in the same motion, the jets in her armor blasted her backward.

Her back slammed heavily into an attendant, sending it flying in the opposite direction as she wheeled around and drew her sword through the torso of another, leaving a gaping laceration that left the internal wiring exposed. She followed up with the slash by dropping into a crouch and kicking one of her paws out in a sweeping motion, kicking the wounded attendant’s legs out from under it. As its head impacted the ground she slammed her fist down into its face, caving its head in and leaving a fist-sized crater in the concrete beneath it.

A burst of gunfire impacting her shield drew her attention to the attendant she had thrown with her back, who was currently lying supine with a handgun drawn, rapidly firing the entire magazine into her shield. With her attention on the supine attendant, a proximity warning sounded in the back of her mind and her armor immediately responded, the back panels opening as a dazzling array of bright purple flares were launched from her back.

The flares trailed thick purple smoke, obscuring her from view as she slowly stood up to face the attendant laying on its back. He desperately pulled at his trigger, each time met with a resounding click as the empty gun refused to fire. She stalked towards him, outlined by the harsh purple glow and the thick roiling smoke behind her. His scream of terror pierced the distance between her mind and body as her paw crushed his skull without a fraction of effort.

As the smoke billowed out through the street, Octavia could hear the remaining attendants scrambling and searching for her, their vocalizations of terror only serving as an audible beacon for the technological predator.

“Where did it go? I can’t see it!” a male’s voice called out.

“I’m no-- ahhh!” her voice was cut off by the sound of metal tearing as Octavia’s blade tore horizontally through her torso.

“Who was that?” an attendant screamed in terror. A staccato of gunfire began to ring through the smoke as the attendants fired blindly in the dark. As Octavia approached one of the attendants from behind, he turned around to face her at the last second as his face contorted into a display of pure horror, only for her blade to pierce his chin and jut out of the top of his skull in that instant, freezing his expression as it was before she twisted the blade out of his head.

As the body dropped to the ground, Octavia stalked out to the edge of the smoke, her eyes immediately locking onto the last attendant she could see in the area. It was the female with the sniper rifle, standing resolute in the middle of the street with her rifle raised directly at Octavia’s head as she emerged from the thick smoke. Despite the resolute stance with her squared feet and postured shoulders, Octavia could see the fear in her expression as clear as if it had been written in bold neon signs.

“You’re a fucking monster,” the attendant spat, her voice quaking with fear and uncertainty as she readjusted her grip on the rifle.

Octavia’s eyes flicked from the attendant’s visage to her trigger finger, her predatory gaze locked firmly onto the offending digit. As the attendant began to flex her finger towards the trigger, Octavia’s arm whipped into motion, launching her amarkai like a javelin towards the attendant. It slammed into her chest with enough force to instantly drop her to the ground, the crystalline blade impaling the cement behind her and pinning her to the ground as her rifle clattered onto the street to her side.

The attendant grunted as she tried to grip at the white blade, struggling to free herself as Octavia slowly stalked towards her. With each step Octavia took the attendant struggled more and more, her panic visibly rising until Octavia came to a stop directly next to her. With wide-eyed terror, the attendant looked up at Octavia as she stopped moving, becoming still as she regarded the armored horror in front of her.

“Please,” the attendant whispered.

Octavia reached down and gripped the handle of her blade firmly. With machinelike steadiness, Octavia steadily dragged the blade upwards, cutting the attendant in half, inch by inch until something vital within it was severed. As the sigil in the center of her chest was cut in half, the attendant fell limp, the life draining from her eyes as Octavia wrenched the blade out of the gutted robot. Once again, the streets fell into silence, save for the unwavering pitter-patter of rain and the steady crackling of the fires that raged around her.