Rushing wind, distant thunder, the cries and yells of orders below. A mind racing at the implications imparted onto it, repeating a message over and over so it could be conveyed correctly. A girl, no older than sixteen, flying over a speed blurred armyscape, tents and concrete spread out between her and her goal. Her dirty blond hair tied up and flowing behind her. A suit of meshed and plated metal, of fiber colored and camouflaged grey, all signified with a haphazard velcro patch shaped like a round shield. She was a super, a hero of the League, and she had a dire message to deliver.

Her destination impossible to miss, ceasing this military industrial sprawl ahead of her with a sudden vast slab of metal and gunpowder. A wall towering over everything, the focal point of this entire vast effort. Triple wide stairs zigzag up its back, the right side filled to the brim with soldier and supply, the left barren and awaiting casualty and evacuation. Between them ran rail and pulley, tube and rope, end points for concrete structures that clanked at the walls back. The whir of machinery, of grunted effort, of powered purpose dominated everything. But not a single joule or watt was to be had. Those were rent away months ago.

Her final stop was upon her, the raised lip of the wall not an obstacle. She focused, remembered what her mother taught her about stopping. “Visualize all that thrust you’ve been using, think of how it moves you about. Then reverse it slowly but surely. And don’t worry about looking dumb doing it. It’s better than smashing into the ground at 90 miles an hour.” She visualized, felt the push she’d imparted upon herself abate and press back upon her. She pulled her feet up and revisualized that thrust, countering it hard to stop faster. Her feet skimmed the helmets of the soldiers resting against the lip, desperate for reprieve from their turn at the leading edge. She stumbled and decelerated, kevlar boots missing shotgun shell coated metal and squeaking over plexiglass. The clear coated platform turned landing strip hanged over the far end of the wall. Over hell itself.

She fell forward and caught herself looking down at the darkness that the wall’s shadow created. That paled in comparison to the vantablack void that crawled up the wall below her. She forced her head away, but could not avoid the town below, sacrificed to attrition and lost to the horrors that this wall must stop. Her breath caught as she remembered her first time seeing them… but she had to focus. The message.

She picked herself up and rose to meet its recipient. His back was turned, a similar suit of woven metal and fiber, of plates coated in kevlar, topped off with a symbol reminiscent of the very wall he stood upon. His burnt orange hair was short, but haggard. If not for the overbearing smell of cordite and ash she would have winced at the disturbing stench of days old sweat.

“Dad!!”

The man, towering over even the soldiers watching on behind her, turned to face his daughter.

“Aegis! What news has come?”

His smile, his booming tone, everything about him was joyous in demeanor, but his face could hide none of the fatigue draped over him. His orange hued eyes were bagged and laden from days without meaningful sleep. His beard was scraggly, unshaven, and blackened with dust and powder. His suit was torn, scratched, and stained with old blood. Both his own and too many others’. And yet still he smiled… beaming down at his daughter without a care for his condition.

“This is serious! We have a swarm coming that-“

“Good!!” The man took a proud stance. “I’ve been waiting all day for some action!”

“NO DAD!!!”

The girl gritted her teeth like this was far from the first time, staring into his eyes and demanding his attention more than his praise.

“This isn’t like the other ones!! They said it’s likely to be in the tens of thousands!! Like the entire damn cordon is falling on us!!!”

She was wide eyed, she couldn’t let her dad just brave this news out. The soldiers listening on behind her mirrored her horror. They knew what awaited them, they knew it first hand, but to hear it out loud only lifted their fear up past what meager resolve they still clung to. The man bent down to his daughter’s glare, his own desperate to quiet her fear.

“It’s okay Aegis.” His boom turned to low reassurance and a hand pressed down on her shoulder.

“We can handle it. We’ve handled every swarm before. We will handle this one too.”

He released, rose back up, and brought back up the joyous command he offered against the storm brewing before them.

“Now! Go inform the squad leaders, send the news down the line!”

She stared back at him, still unconvinced, but nodded and turned away. The soldiers gathered up all looked to her, insignias slapped on helmets the only needed symbol. More plates of metal and kevlar bulking up their profiles, but they knew it was little more than desperate hope. Matte black auto shotguns rested every which way and the smell of cordite and magnesium covered up every other possible stench. They stared back with tired eyes, with blank stares that could see for miles and yet see nothing but the horrors in their memories. This conflict had gone on too long already.

“Recon says a wave’s coming in 10. The numbers look to be 10 times the norm. And… the expected clear time is… tomorrow at the earliest.”

Those looks deepened. Waves had stayed strong for hours before, but a whole day was something beyond. Something too much for them to- “AEGIS!!”

All heads turned back, her father back standing tall at the center of his platform without a hint of fatigue left to exude. Arms staunch at his hips, stature hardened against the backdrop of the hell beyond. Against the ever building column of smoke and dust.

“Better make that 5!!”

Her heart, the world, the whir of the safe side behind. All of it sank below the surface, slowly drowned away as a rumble carried up over it. The soldiers behind didn’t wait for the order, leaders ran down their lines and shouted over the increasing quake.

“GUNS UP, GUNS UP!!!”

The rails and pulleys squealed to life, skeletal turrets clanked up over the safe lip and crossed over into locking positions on the far side. Gunners clambered onto controls, pulled triggers to test spool their rotary cannons. Boxes were brought up and slotted into their bases, gears locked together and tightened in place.

The girl knew she was in the way of this tightly wound choreography, but could barely bring herself to pull away, fear driving her back and forth between helping and running. Her duty fighting better and focusing her back. Hopping her off the wall, yet staying her low and hovering over that safe edge.

“SWARM SPOTTED!!! GREEN 10!!!”

Spotters ran from their forward positions and flipped placards on the safe side, ten green and one red. Thuds rose over the errant rumble, the girl turned to the militarized expanse behind her to see sequenced puffs of artillery fire in its farthest reaches. The ordinance screamed over, a continuous stream of fire as frequent as the gunners could produce it.

The girl floated low, hanging on the lip of the wall and scrunching her head to ward off the cacophony. She could feel the rumble through the metal, the torrential stampede tearing toward them, even as the beat of the shells thundered against it. She could feel it all through the wall, this defiant drum getting beaten against, every strike eating away at the resolve of those charged with its defense. Yet still she couldn’t take the cowering uncertainty, her head pulling back up over the lip, worry splattered on her face as she watched on. As her father spread his arms out over the crossing shell tracers.

The far side of the wall started to glow orange, brighter and brighter. It spread for as far as she could see down the wall’s inward curve. Curiosity too much to bear, she rose above the wall, the artillery keeping her flight low but awe denying its danger. She saw, for as far as it could reach, the massive field of translucent orange follow the wall’s outer edge. A wall upon a wall to block hell’s advance. But her awe was battered as the rumble became physical.

Under a backdrop of fiery white smoke and torn apart ground, the land ceased to remain static. Monstrous, ravenous, and nearly unkillable. But now numbered beyond count. The ruins beyond clawed to dust in their wake, the stampede too close for that drum to hold still, and the roars tearing through the last of that resolve. The wall shook as the leading edge clawed up it, solid metal, concrete, and hope meaning nothing to them. But this edge found no purchase as it hit the orange barrier. Scaled horrors piled up, crushed against it, against one another. Claws rent metal and flesh alike without regard or care, but were stopped by the barest millimeter of pure energy.

Hope seemed to find one good hold, but realism stymied this. The man could only hold for so long. But his haggard state seemed to be the least of his worries at the moment. A soft utterance underscoring the hellish scramble and drawing away his rather needed attention.

“Today… today? Hmmm.”

His thoughts though seemed clear as he raised his head, and that soft utterance gave rise to the boom that carried over all.

“Today… Today we will fight!! Today we will bleed!! We will suffer and strain against what wrath has brought against us!!”

Soldiers tightening their guns and sights on the hell below them looked up toward him, like nothing else mattered but his words.

“But we do not just fight for ourselves… Not just for our brothers and sisters standing beside us!!”

“We fight for everyone that stands behind us!!!”

The man raised his head higher, the boom drowning out everything beyond. The entire section of the wall now looked toward him, unable to turn away.

“Today we fight for the miles behind us!!! For the people depending on us!!!”

Those looks tightened, some resolve rising through the murky shell shocked surface.

“Today we fight to give them back their safe and happy lives!!! To give them back their hope for a brighter future!!!"

The girl landed down on the lip of the wall, taking in her father’s words in hope that it would drive her own fear away.

“Today we put fire to scale!!! We throw back fear and strife to stand firm against that which seeks our end!!!”

“And Today!!!"

That resolves flared.

"We will show them they!!!"

Those grips tightened.

"Will never again threaten this world!!!”

And those guns spooling up and locking on to everything roiling below them.

“So today!!!”

“May be the longest day!!!”

“Of any of our lives!!!”

“BUT TODAY!!! WILL BE THE LAST DAY OF THEIRS’!!!!”

The wall erupted, cries of thousands meeting and beat those hellish roars. The girl yelling in kind as the man threw his arms down, as the barrier opened its abominable contents up to the waiting storm of fire and courage that poured down upon it. And the world shook in true defiance to the monsters brought to bear. A world… yet unready for what they left behind.