Unit E-27 was summoned to briefing by Dr. Viridessa.
The room was sterile, circular, and quiet—too quiet.
"It has been several days since your TDM against Unit E-28," Viridessa began. Her eyes moved across the team, pausing just a fraction too long on Lyra
.
"I have identified recurring problems."
Selene crossed her arms. "With respect, Doctor, we eliminated Unit E-28 that was the mission parameters—"
"—are irrelevant, most of yougot eliminated with the MVP being Joren" Viridessa cut in calmly. "You will be undergoing two tests instead of one."
Selene frowned. "Why?"
Viridessa turned to her fully.
"You overindulge in aerial combat," she said flatly. "Across simulations, you consistently choose air superiority even when it is tactically inefficient. In close-quarters combat during the TDM, you were nearly eliminated. If not for Joren, you would have failed."
Selene stiffened.
"You will be deployed to the Star Wars universe," Viridessa continued.
She shifted her gaze.
"Aric. You are proud. You isolate yourself from support elements, even after direct orders. During the TDM, you placed yourself farther from the team than Silas did."
Aric opened his mouth. Viridessa didn't let him speak.
"You will be deployed to the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Your suit has been modified to resist Warp exposure. Pride will get you killed there. Let's see if you learn."
Silas was next.
"You lack restraint," she said. "Collateral damage means nothing to you. In one simulation, you threw a kaiju through multiple civilian structures."
Silas said nothing.
"You will be deployed to Cyberpunk 2077, during the Edgerunners era. Your Mobile Suit will be scaled down to standard Exo-Guard armor. Being full scale will bring alot of problems."
Then Viridessa's tone changed slightly.
She looked at Lyra.
"You are not weak," she said softly.
Lyra's hands clenched.
"But you are emotionally dependent on your team. When one ally falls, your performance collapses."
Lyra swallowed.
"You will be deployed to the NieR: Automata universe."
Silence followed.
Finally, Viridessa turned to Joren.
"You performed well in isolation," she said. "Which is why your next test removes your greatest advantage."
Joren blinked. "My tech?"
"Your safety net," Viridessa corrected. "You will be sent to Pandora. Survival conditions. Limited systems. Unpredictable variables."
She folded her hands.
"You have two days to prepare."
She paused.
"Dismissed. Joren stay."
The others filed out.
When the door sealed, Viridessa lifted her datapad.
"Your file indicates traces of Dendrite and Metallurge DNA," she said. "Yet you present as fully human."
Joren let out a nervous chuckle, scratching the back of his head.
"Yeah… turns out my great-great-great—well, a lot of greats—grandmother fell in love with a Dendrite. After that, mostly humans. Then about a century later, after the Metallurge gained sentience. Same story."
He shrugged.
"After enough generations, it all just… diluted. Guess I'm the result."
Viridessa studied him for a long moment.
"Interesting," she said.
She didn't explain why.
Two days later, the hangar felt different.
Unit E-27 stood in a loose line, duffel bags slung over their shoulders. Most of them had packed food, tools, spare clothing practical things.
Aric, had stocked up on stimulant stems, already chewing one right now.
In front of them loomed their mobile suits.
They'd piloted them a many times in simulation, memorized every readout and response curve but seeing them here, at full scale, scarred and real, sent a quiet shiver through the unit.
This time, if something went wrong, there was no reset.
A voice cut through the hangar.
"Yo. You guys doing a practical run too?"
They turned to see Taryn Holt, unit commander of E-28, hands hooked into her jacket, wearing that infuriatingly relaxed grin.
Selene crossed her arms. "Yeah. You as well?"
Taryn nodded. "Yup. Question full-size deployment, or Exo-Guard armor size?"
"Mostly full-size," Selene replied, jerking a thumb toward Silas. "He's running Exo-Guard armor though."
Taryn laughed, loud and unbothered. "Unit E-28's going full Exo-Guard armor size across the board, baby. Woohoo."
Before Selene could respond, boots echoed across the hangar floor.
Dr. Viridessa entered, tablet tucked under her arm, eyes already assessing everything at once.
"Good. You're all ready," she said, then paused when she noticed Taryn. "Ah. Ms. Holt. I believe your unit is scheduled for deployment shortly."
"Yes, ma'am," Taryn replied with a nod, already backing away. "Good luck out there."
She disappeared toward her own bay.
Dr. Viridessa turned back to E-27. "Mount up. Deployment windows are tight."
The unit broke formation, each pilot heading toward their assigned machine but Silas stopped them with a raised hand.
He passed each of them a small, matte-black chip.
Selene frowned. "What's this?"
"Unofficial firmware," Silas said evenly. "Version 2.0."
Lyra blinked. "Music?"
"It may help stabilize emotional response under isolation," Silas added, already walking away. "Or at least keep you focused."
Without another word, he climbed into the cockpit of RT-002 Nemesis, the hatch sealing behind him with a hydraulic hiss.
The others stared at the chip in their hands for a moment.
Then Selene exhaled. "Figures."
One by one, they turned toward their machines.
This time, there would be no simulation walls to catch them.
They climbed into their respective cockpits one by one.
Hatches sealed with a heavy thoom, locking them inside darkness lit only by soft HUD glow.
A moment later, Dr. Viridessa's voice came through the comms calm, precise.
"Unit E-27. I'm aware Silas distributed unofficial installation chips. You are authorized to install them now. I don't want surprises mid-deployment."
Each of them slid the chip into the narrow slot just beneath the collarbone an interface surgically implanted during their Exo-Guard augmentation. The connection was instant.
Their HUDs bloomed with data.
A music library. From entire civilizations. Songs from dead worlds, unfinished rhythm patterns encoded by non-human minds. Practically the entire known multiverse, indexed and recorded.
Lyra froze, breath hitching. Selene whistled under her breath.
Aric smirked. "Show-off."
Joren was giddy.
Silas, predictably, said nothing.
From the control room, Dr. Viridessa watched biometric readouts stabilize. Stress levels dipped. Heart rates evened out.
"Good," she said. "Now don't get distracted."
A pause.
"Begin neural synchronization. In three… two… one."
The sensation hit all at once.
A sharp spike of pain followed by warmth as thousands of microscopic fibers unfurled, wrapping around muscle, bone, and nerve. Interfaces locked in. Thought blurred into machine.
Then the cockpits came alive.
External feeds replaced the darkness. The hangar unfolded around them in towering scale as restraining clamps released with thunderous metallic snaps.
One by one, the mobile suits rose to full height, hydraulics hissing, reactors humming.
They stood giants of steel and intent.
And then someone laughed.
Over comms a involuntary laughter.
Because there, between their towering mobile suits, stood RT-002 Nemesis.
Silas's unit Exo-Guard Armor Size.
Barely taller than a the average Exo-Guard instead of a skyscraper, compact, sleek, and utterly dwarfed by the rest of them. Where they were walking fortresses, Silas looked like a david and goliath situation.
Silas's voice finally came through, dry as ever.
"…Don't say it."
Selene laughed anyway.
Dr. Viridessa folded her arms behind her back.
"Opening rift in five minutes."
The hangar trembled as a massive circular platform rose from beneath the floor, its segmented plates shifting and locking into place. One by one, it aligned in front of each Mobile Suit towering colossi of steel and weaponry.
Only Silas was different.
While the others stood mounted on platforms the size of buildings, Silas activated the embedded MTD in RT-002 Nemesis. The compact suit hummed softly, space folding inward as a controlled rift opened. Without ceremony, he stepped through it and vanished.
Dr. Viridessa watched the readings, then spoke again over the comms.
"Your Mobile Suits are equipped with embedded Multiversal Transition Devices. However—" she emphasized the word, "—due to your current scale, charging time is significantly longer than standard MTDs. We're talking minutes instead of seconds."
The metal prongs surrounding the platforms began to spark, arcs of energy crawling across their surfaces as the air grew heavy and distorted.
"Do not use them casually," she continued. "They are emergency-only. If your life is in immediate danger, you pull out. I will not risk losing the unit I'm supervising."
The rift at the center of the platform began to form reality bending inward like glass under pressure, light stretching into impossible colors.
Inside their cockpits, the pilots felt it: the low-frequency hum vibrating through their bones, the HUDs flickering as dimensional coordinates locked in.
"Destinations are pre-programmed," Dr. Viridessa said. "Once the rift stabilizes, you'll be deployed individually."
A pause.
"…Good luck, Unit E-27."
The prongs flared white-hot.
And then
The rift fully opened.
◇◇◇
Selene felt nothing at first.
No stars.
No HUD warnings.
Just absolute black.
For half a second, she thought the rift had failed.
Then the alarms screamed.
A column of blinding emerald light tore across space the Death Star's superlaser, already mid-fire, already committed.
Sky Defender's AI didn't wait for her command.
EMERGENCY THREAT DETECTED
SHIELD OVERDRIVE: ACTIVE
The beam slammed into the forward shields like a god striking glass.
Space bent.
The shields flared white-blue, cracking outward in hexagonal shockwaves. Sky Defender was hurled backward, stabilizers screaming as Selene was thrown against her restraints.
"WHAT—?!" Selene shouted, instinctively grabbing the controls.
Alderaan filled her forward display
still intact.
Still alive.
The beam diverted just enough, carving a molten scar through space before dissipating.
Sky Defender steadied itself, wings unfolding as thrusters burned hot.
Selene's breath came fast.
"I… I stopped it?"
Confirmed.
She barely had time to process that before something else happened.
Across the galaxy
Jedi stopped mid-meditation.
Masters on distant worlds felt it like a blade pressed against their spine.
Something wrong.
Something immense.
On Coruscant, deep within the throne room, Emperor Palpatine's yellow eyes snapped open.
"A disturbance," he hissed, fingers tightening on his armrest. "Not the Force… something outside it."
Darth Vader turned toward the viewport, mechanical breath slowing.
"I sense it as well," he rumbled. "A weapon… but not of our design."
Back in space, Sky Defender's sensors lit up.
Dozens of contacts.
Then hundreds.
TIE fighters poured from hyperspace like a swarm of insects, solar panels catching the starlight as they locked onto her.
MULTIPLE HOSTILES DETECTED
Selene's fear evaporated replaced by something sharp and familiar.
A grin.
"Oh," she muttered, rolling the massive mobile suit as engines roared to life.
"This I can do."
Sky Defender surged forward, wings igniting, cannons charging as the first wave of TIEs closed in.
◇◇◇
Lyra's RT-001 Genesis materialized in the broken, rusting factory, the metallic scent of decay filling her cockpit.
As she fully arrived, the suit's sensors immediately picked up a threat: a massive buzzsaw-wielding machine barreled toward her, sparks flying from its rotating blades.
Without hesitation, Lyra squeezed the trigger on Genesis's arm-mounted cannons, each shot sending precise bursts that tore into the robot's joints and circuitry.
The machine's limbs shattered, and it collapsed into a heap of smoking metal.
From the shadows, 2B and 9S cautiously emerged, eyes widening at the fully armed, enormous Mobile Suit towering above the crumbling factory floor.
Lyra's HUD highlighted a dozen more rogue machines moving in from different directions, and her AI immediately began analyzing attack patterns, scanning for weak points.
2B whispered to 9S, "What… is that?" while Lyra, barely acknowledging them, kept her focus on the next threat. Genesis pivoted smoothly, each step precise despite the damaged floor beneath. The hum of her internal systems was the only sound besides the whirring motors of incoming enemies. The battle had already begun, and Lyra, though tense, kept her breathing steady, determined to survive the first real test in a world where death was permanent.
Her eyes flickered on the HUD, analyzing the surroundings she had no allies here but herself. For the first time, Lyra understood just how isolating it is.
◇◇◇
Silas emerged from the rift into pure chaos.
Fire burned across the highway. Vehicles lay twisted and overturned, alarms screaming into the smoke-filled air. Night City in its purest form loud, violent, indifferent.
Then he saw her.
Gloria Martinez lay broken on the asphalt, blood spreading beneath her in a dark halo. Her body was in wrong angles no body should bend at. A few meters away, a flipped car rocked violently as David Martinez clawed at the seatbelt, screaming her name until his voice cracked.
Silas froze.
He knew exactly who she was.
He had watched the anime with his sister.
He remembered this scene. Remembered how fast it happened. How unfair it was. He hadn't cried at the ending but Gloria's death had lingered. A woman who worked herself raw for her kid. A mother who burned out quietly while the world kept moving.
Silas hadn't grown up with a mother either. Just himself, a younger sister, and the slow grind of survival until Evolto City found him. Until his adoptive father dragged him out of the gutter and gave him something resembling a future.
The whine of rotors cut through the smoke.
A Trauma Team air ambulance descended, red lights flashing. Medics rushed out, weapons ready, scanning bodies. One knelt by Gloria. Another checked David.
A moment passed.
Then the verdict.
"He's not a client. Neither is she."
"Secure the policyholder. Leave the rest to city meat wagon."
The medics turned away.
They pulled a screaming, bloodied corpo from a nearby limousine someone insured, someone valuable. Gloria was left bleeding on the pavement like discarded trash.
That was when Silas moved.
Boots hit asphalt. Heavy. Deliberate.
One of the Trauma Team operatives noticed him and raised their rifle.
"Oi—borg. Don't even think about getting closer."
Silas didn't respond.
He kept walking.
The warning shot cracked past his shoulder.
Still, he didn't stop.
They opened fire.
The rounds sparked harmlessly against his armor.
Silas raised his weapon once.
Returned fire.
The convoy vanished in a violent blur vehicles torn apart, the air ambulance spiraling down in flames. The insured corpo died with it, crushed by the wreckage. Silas didn't look back.
He reached Gloria and lifted her gently, as if she weighed nothing.
"Hey—HEY!" David screamed.
Silas turned.
In one second, he crossed the distance.
David didn't even see him move.
Silas ripped the door open and hauled David out of the wreck. The suddenness of it stole the air from David's lungs. He struggled, panicked, until Silas locked eyes with him.
"Stop," Silas said quiet, absolute.
David froze.
Another Trauma Team squad screamed in from above.
Too late.
Silas ignited his thrusters and vanished nothing but a blur tearing through the smoke and neon carrying Gloria in one arm and David in the other.
Night City kept burning behind them.
For once, the story didn't end the way it was supposed to.
◇◇◇
Joren's Mobile Suit tore through the rift and dropped straight into the oceans of Pandora.
For half a second, his stomach lurched then SERA reacted instantly.
"Water-strider mode engaged."
Hydrodynamic stabilizers flared beneath Asgard's feet, allowing the massive frame to stand atop the water's surface. The suit still sank slightly, metal calves disappearing beneath the waves, but it held. The ocean rippled outward in massive concentric rings.
Joren exhaled slowly.
Before he could speak, SERA's voice cut in again.
"Warning. Large biological entities detected. Distance: fifteen klicks."
"Show me," Joren said.
The forward camera shifted, zooming across the horizon. At first, all he saw was open sea then movement. Ships.
As the image sharpened, his jaw tightened.
Matador vessels with harpoons.
Its the Tulkun hunting scene.
"Zoom in," he said, voice flat.
The camera locked onto the command deck of the lead ship. Two figures stood there, unmistakable even through the spray and distance.
Mike Scoresby.
Recombinant Colonel Quaritch.
Joren's hands curled slowly around the controls.
He felt something cold settle in his chest.
Back in Evolto City, he had visited the Tulkun water sanctuary by coincidence, that very one. He remembered floating beside them, laughing as their massive shadows passed beneath him. Remembered the translator humming softly as their voices filled his mind: old, patient, kind.
They were not animals.
They were people.
"SERA," Joren said quietly, "target the lead vessel."
"Confirmed."
Asgard's shoulder-mounted plasma cannon rotated, energy building with a low, rising whine. The targeting reticle locked onto the sea dragon escorting the hunt.
Joren was seconds from firing.
Then
Reality stuttered.
Every screen lit up with red errors.
The sea dragon convulsed mid-motion, its neural link scrambling. SMP-2 Crab Suits froze, hydraulics seizing. Mako submersibles jerked violently as their systems glitched and rebooted in panic loops.
Harpoon guidance failed.
The shot meant for Ro'a veered off scraping her flank instead of striking true. Ro'a roared in agony but twisted with desperate strength, shoving the Matador vessel aside. The killing shot plunged harmlessly into the sea.
The hunters stared.
Then, slowly, they followed the direction where the beam had come from.
Across the water stood Asgard.
A towering god of metal, feet planted on the ocean itself, plasma cannon still glowing with restrained fury.
On the Matador bridge, Mike Scoresby squinted, adjusting his hat as his voice crackled over comms.
"Uh… Quaritch?" he said, thick Australian drawl carrying even through the chaos.
"Is that one of yours?"
Joren didn't fire.
Not yet.
But Asgard's systems continued to hum, power climbing patient, controlled, and very much awake.
◇◇◇
Aric didn't arrive to silence.
He came screaming out of the rift, Lizard's systems shrieking warnings before his vision even stabilized. The ground beneath him wasn't ground it was a living sea of crude metal, spikes, and green bodies.
Orks.
A lot of them.
His mobile suit slammed down in the middle of an enormous war camp, crushing scrap towers and bodies alike. For half a second, there was stunned silence.
Then the Orks roared.
"WAAAGH!"
Artillery fire lit up the sky almost immediately. Shoddy cannons belched smoke and shells, rounds detonating around him in violent flashes. One exploded close enough to rattle Lizard's cockpit, alarms flaring red across Aric's HUD.
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME—?!" Aric shouted, panic and fury bleeding together as he yanked the controls.
A massive shell screamed past the mobile suit's where he'd been standing a moment ago. Another detonated against his shoulder plating, tearing away armor and sending molten shards flying.
They weren't afraid.
They were excited.
Gargantuan walkers lumbered into view ramshackle titans of scrap and guns while hundreds of Orks swarmed forward on bikes, trucks, and foot, firing wildly and laughing as they did.
Aric boosted hard, barely dodging a barrage that carved a trench where he'd just been. His heart pounded.
"This is insane!"
He twisted Lizard midair, plasma fire erupting from his weapons and vaporizing a cluster of Orks below. It barely slowed them down. If anything, their cheering got louder.
Every direction was hostile. Every second, another shell. No backup. No Joren. No unit.
Just him.
And an entire Ork tribe that had decided he was the biggest, best fight they'd had all year.