First Song

Casey

 

We were just pulling back into view of the gigantic alien invader when I saw a line of tanks open fire. At first, I thought they’d been aiming at Erin and I screamed out for them to stop, but General Schulz gave me a curious eyebrow lift and said nothing.

When several turrets exploded into showers of sparks I saw that they hadn’t been aiming for her as I’d thought – they were doing their best to help her. She had been huddled up on one of its legs, the bright glow of her shield being used to protect her, but now she had to grab ahold as the six-legged spider turned towards us.

The General shouted more out the window and I had to cover my ears as I sat alongside him, my brain doing it best to translate the harsh German into English.

One of the tanks that had fired exploded into flames and I growled in frustration. What had happened to Mika was happening again.

“I’m getting out,” I announced, shoving open the truck door and dropping to the ground without waiting for his reply.

‘What is your plan?’ Hunter/Artemis asked me, but I honestly had no fucking idea. I suspected that she knew perfectly well that I was doing it live, right now. Maybe the best thing I could hope for was to keep as many people from getting killed as possible.

I’d stopped paying attention to Erin for a short while and when I’d looked back to see how she was doing had lost track of her. She wasn’t dangling from the leg anymore at least.

Was there something we could do to extend the protective area that Artemis created around me? I remembered the defensive field that had stopped me from getting shot back when I was destroying those child traffickers in Germany.

‘Yes, somewhat, although even I have my limits,’ she said to me, a determined tone to her voice. 

Then that was what I would do. I would trust Erin to do what she had to so that she could defeat the stompy robot, while I did what I could to keep everyone else alive.

As I was considering exactly what that would entail, the sky came alive with streaks of light, all of them emanating from some defensive guns that had appeared on the robots back. Over the roar of the wind, I could hear what sounded like incoming jet engines.

The underside of the overcast sky was lit with the red glow of explosions and flames, but the soundwaves from the detonations didn’t reach my ears for several seconds. 

Whatever was happening in the air, they were drawing the attention away from my girl which could only be a good thing.

While the tanks were the main target of the enemy on the ground, most of the people were back here with the trucks. There was a distance of at least eighty feet between them and I didn’t think that Artemis could stretch her abilities that far, so I had to make a quick decision. Did I protect the tanks or the trucks?

So I chose. People were the most important, so trucks it was.

Soldiers were running everywhere around me by now, piling out the backs of transports with their rifles slung around their necks. A few squads moved forward with some kind of rocket launcher braced on one of their shoulders. I had no idea what it was, I wasn’t a military nerd, but it looked hella cool.

I turned back to the General who had since started shouting out more orders, but decided against telling him what I intended to do. Without a word, I tightened the straps of my backpack and turned towards our distant enemy, my arms spread wide.

Anyone looking at me at that moment would have seen me grinning like I’d lost my mind, and maybe I had. Come at me, giant spider bro. Come at me.

And it did.

With literally zero warning the air around me erupted in bursts of mud and asphalt. One unfortunate soldier guy got caught in the maelstrom of hypersonic ammunition, his body torn to shreds despite the body armour he was wearing. I winced, hoping that Sebastian would be able to save him but judging by the amount of blood that had already pooled around him I doubted it.

 

Erin

 

I tried to keep everything else out of my mind as I looked down at the exposed plating that Athena was urgently gesturing towards. Crouching down, I had a rising sense of dread that I pushed down, along with everything else.

Over the past few minutes, I’d already worn myself out trying to cut through the dense alloy that these machines used to protect themselves. I felt like I was perhaps halfway through cutting a fist-sized hole, but it was tough going.

The low battery warning sounded in my ears again, another thing I’d been trying to ignore while I worked.

A few deep breaths to calm myself, and I was back to being a human-shaped thermal lance.

And then my music died.

I heard the alert as my phone told me it was shutting itself down, and all music disappeared from my ears in one go.

Without my music to focus me I was helpless and completely unable to channel any more of Muse’s energy into the task. Shit.

Then the panic began to return.

Why hadn’t I charged my phone sooner? Why was I so useless that I needed music anyway? Casey had no problem without it, so why was I so utterly awful?

Muse pushed on my emotions, trying to calm me, but it wouldn’t help. She couldn’t bring my phone back to life – she’d even admitted it.

‘We will work out something, Erin, please try to keep calm.’

Without the constant thump of bass, I could hear the booming sound of explosions all around me. Distracted, I turned my attention outwards, trying to see what was happening.

The view from up here was breathtaking, even at night, and if I had been here for almost any other reason then I would have stopped to admire it. The rolling, forested hills were interspersed with signs of human habitation. Clusters of homes, retail parks and distant highrise office block were all surrounded by expansive fields and collections of trees.

The sprawl of the great city of Stockholm was just about visible to the south of me, its skyline flat and mundane compared to some capital cities I’d been to.

Shells were still being fired at us and I had to drop down to my knees to keep my balance. The machine shook and manoeuvred around beneath me, making standing a touch difficult.

‘Erin, we need to focus.’

But how? I didn’t have any music and no-one else was here to help me.

I felt Muse’s restraining hand on my emotions ease, the panic welling back up inside me and I fought hard to keep myself from breaking down into despair. My chest felt like someone had slammed a weight onto it, cold and heavy. We couldn’t win. I couldn’t do this. We were all doomed and it would be my fault.

‘Sing with me,’ Muse said. Her voice wasn’t quite an order, more of an invitation.

What did she mean?

‘Do not worry about the words, just sing with me,’ she repeated in a tone that was soft and welcoming.

Still completely confused, I wiped at my eyes and furrowed my eyebrows. Sing? What kind of singing?

Her voice was quiet at first, low and haunting. My mind immediately flashed back to the day when she’d soothed my fear of and pain away on our flight to Austria. It was helping now, too, and I felt the weight in my chest begin to loosen and lessen.

I crouched down and closed my eyes, doing my best to block out the world around me and to focus on her voice.

She was right in that I couldn’t understand the words, but I could feel the emotion that she was trying to convey. Somehow I could feel the beat, too, and I began to tap my leg along with it.

There was another explosion nearby and I flinched, ducking down behind the shield as I used it to protect myself from any falling chunks of debris.

Rather than speak, she just began to sing louder in my head until it was nearly overwhelming for me. There was nothing else I could focus on, only her voice.

I began tapping again, finding the rhythm and the courage to begin humming along. It was an odd experience – she began to alter the words that she was singing to match my own. At least in pitch, if not in meaning, and my confidence grew.

My voice ever since the changes sounded so pure and feminine to my ears and the euphoria that it elicited made my heart swell. I experimented with my singing voice, raising the pitch and experimenting with the resonance, and found myself giggling to myself as it sounded so natural and perfect.

Goddess, it was a good thing we weren’t in too much of a rush right now because I wanted to do more of this.

Athena gave me time to work through my emotions on my own, but then drew me back to the task at hand. She didn’t use the lyrics, but the intensity of her singing to let me know that what we had been doing was urgent and that I should get back to it. I tried to find that connection between us and noticed that I could feel it growing stronger.

 

My human thermal-lance impression was back in business, and it was time for the main show.

Athena had changed her words from whatever she had been singing into English and the connection that I felt blossomed into something far stronger than it had ever been before. I still couldn’t predict the words that she was going to use, but at least they had meaning and I found myself able to follow along half a second behind.

So there I was, atop a giant mechanical spider, using my alien-given powers to cut open a super-dense piece of metal by singing amateur karaoke. I don’t think I could have become any more of an anime character if I’d tried.

Well, maybe if I transformed into some kind of magical girl in the process. That would have been waaay more anime.

I heard laughter in Athena’s voice as she continued to sing, and it made me smile despite myself. Everything was going to be alright.

 

---

Casey

 

I’d been standing protectively in front of the soldiers for about five or ten minutes before they managed to destroy all of the emplacements that had opened fire into the sky. Worry was flooding my senses, both for Erin and for us.

Even though Artemis was great at keeping me alive, she was struggling to protect everyone. A couple more soldiers had been badly injured by salvos from the mech, and Sebastian was doing everything that he could to rescue them.

We’d realised after a minute or two that we could expand the defensive field if I pushed a bit more energy through it, but that also meant that I had to hold the flow steady.

Erin and I had practised that before, so normally this wouldn’t be a big deal. But we’d already had a long, tiring day of dodging fucking meteorites and dancing with literal alien drones. All the fighting today had drained me and it was only the buzz of adrenaline keeping me going. It was also getting late, closing in on midnight, so this was a little harder than it should have been.

All that said, I was still here, keeping these soldiers alive, and had been the whole time. They’d watched me with amusement at first, but as soon as they realized what I was doing that turned to amazement and gratitude.

A smile curved my lips at the thought that they’d never seen a goddess before.

Off in the distance, I could hear another roar incoming and I waited for it to explode like all of the others had before it. Except that it didn’t. I turned my gaze to the spider to see why it wasn’t protecting itself, only to realize that they’d just destroyed the guns it had been using.

I cursed loudly. Erin was up there somewhere, and even though she had a literal Shield of the Gods with her, I was still worried for her safety. 

Was our only hope, and the one person I’d managed to love with all my heart about to die?

The impact was immense and made the whole machine shudder and sway. I yelled out her name, terror clutching at my heart.

“Erin!”

 

Erin

I had the hole cut open at last, and I let out a cry in victory, raising my hands into the air to cheer.

And saw something very fast coming directly at us. Very fast and missile-shaped.

Oh shit.

I barely had enough time to slam the shield down in front of me before I was thrown backwards in the air. The shockwave was like nothing I’d felt before and pain registered all over my body as I crashed back down onto the top plating of the machine.

By all rights, my body had no business being in one piece any more and it was complaining about its mistreatment. Darkness was threatening to overtake me, but Muse was tinkering with things – I could feel it in my mind.

‘Stay with me, Erin,’ she said. ‘We’re not finished yet.’

I groaned. Everything was agony.

The platform underneath me shifted, pulling itself back into an upright position, but there was nothing I could do right now. Every time I even thought about moving my mind would threaten to blackout on me.

Overhead I could see the storm continuing to swirl and grow. Flashes of the power it contained would seep through, lighting up my surroundings in a flash that was accompanied by a belated drumroll of thunder.

There was so much power up there. I’d used similar power to fuel the Aegis just a few hours earlier when I’d deflected the meteor that was intended to kill all three of us. Was that what it was here for now?

Slowly and carefully I willed my body to sit up. It screamed at me in protest but Muse allowed me to block the pain out for now.

The corners of my vision began to grow foggy, so I gave myself time to breathe. My ribs must have been broken because even that act hurt like a bitch.

There were more explosions off in the distance and I gritted my teeth. Athena was right – we weren’t finished yet.

I inspected the rest of my body. One of my legs was clearly broken and pointing in completely the wrong direction below the knee; that would take a little while to heal. My other one seemed fine, though, and I twisted to lift myself up onto it. 

That was a struggle and I nearly passed out twice try to accomplish it, but I managed after the choicest swear words.

My eyes caught sight of the battle that was happening down below and my heart froze. There was a figure standing with their arms outstretched, daring the robots to attack them with everything it had. There was no doubt in my mind that it was Casey and I had to make a conscious effort to breathe again.

She was doing something incredibly dangerous and no doubt super tiring. I wasn’t sure how much longer she’d be able to protect the people below but I needed to do something now.

‘She is strong, but even she has her limits,’ Muse told me, and I could feel pride and longing well up inside me.

Yes, she is.

I turned back to where I’d been standing before. The surface was covered in a black residue and I was fairly sure that the plating hadn’t been as dented before. Whatever had hit us was powerful, but it had barely caused it to flinch.

The ten meters or so that I had to walk felt like a mile as I hopped and staggered my way towards the tiny hole in the plating that I’d created.

This time it was me that began to sing, attempting to emulate the undecipherable words that Athena had used when she tried to create that emotional connection with me. I only managed a single bar before she joined in with me, the tone of her voice reverberating inside my mind.

I smiled, feeling that sense of empathy and shared emotion return.

Closer and closer I hopped and limped. It felt like I’d been walking for days, but it was only a few minutes at most.

As I took my last hop, I collapsed down onto my knee and screamed as every nerve in my leg reported its damage in real-time.

‘Breathe, Erin.’

I tried, but each intake was short and shallow and I had to put a hand to my side to try to comfort my poor bones.

The sky above growled and rumbled, competing with the cacophony of the battle that was still going on around us.

Sometimes, especially during energetic concerts or firework displays I could become overwhelmed by all of the noise and light and movement. It was impossible for me to focus on any one thing and so the sensations washed over me, raw and unprocessed.

That same thing was happening now, and I could feel my brain tuning out of everything to protect me while my heart was beginning to race in the early stages of panic. It took some effort to even remember why I was here.

I adjusted my gaze downwards at the hole I’d created earlier, but I wasn’t sure what I had to do now. It was dark inside and all I could see were giant bundles of cables running alongside some kind of crystalline structure that seemed to catch the light in odd ways.

Then a thought struck me, and I looked skyward again.

‘Exactly,’ Muse said.