The Photon-Frame surrounding Leo’s body had grown far beyond its usual size, transfigured into a great giant of light. MUV Avatar: Agni manifested the protective field as an all-powerful puppet with offensive capabilities to match its defense, standing over forty meters tall and with wings adorning its vast back.
It continued its ascent through the atmosphere. At thirty kilometers above sea level, it stopped.
“Some view,” Leo mused.
Even he wasn’t immune to the majesty stretching out before him. An abstract painting of contrasting ocean blues and cloudy whites extended infinitely from below, curving into the distance. The Earth’s roundness was strikingly distinct from here. Reaching the ozone layer had taken mere minutes. The Asura Frame put even humanity’s fastest fighter jets to shame.
The Mark VII’s sensors went off. The first wave of the seventy-two meteors were now eighty kilometers from the surface, and their altitudes were dropping fast—fifteen kilometers per second, to be precise, or Mach 44—though they were slowing down.
This was far from a good thing, however.
“The faster they go, the more friction they generate with the air, causing the meteor to break apart,” Leo murmured, reading a data window being projected before him. “So that’s the problem, huh?”
In lieu of any physical monitors or armor, the Mark VII instead had to rely on projections like this to relay information. The Frame had analyzed and extracted the plan data transmitted by Kiriko Kaji earlier. According to the projection, most meteors burned up in the atmosphere due to the air density, and the majority that made it to the surface were no larger than pebbles. But to prevent that from happening, these had been magically decelerated.
“They’re pumping the brakes so they make it to Earth intact. The bigger they are, the bigger splash they’ll make on impact. Damn archmages think of everything!” But that just made them all the more enticing to beat. “Agni! Photon lasers!”
Leo commanded the giant from its heart. The avatar then raised its colossal, glowing arms and crossed them over its chest, firing a beam of light from where they intersected. It was the very same attack Leo often shot from his fingertips, but this was of far greater scale and designed specifically for non-atmospheric combat. The laser raced upwards ever higher.
Technically, space was defined as being at or over an altitude of roughly one hundred kilometers. Leo hovered at thirty kilometers, and his target was descending from about eighty, at an acute angle relative to the surface. The meteor was eighteen meters in diameter. Huge, to be sure. But within the expected range. Still, if allowed to complete its orbit at the Earth’s crust, it would cause an enormous explosion and leave a crater magnitudes larger than itself. The shock waves would travel for over a hundred kilometers in all directions.
That fate could be yet averted, however, as the red-hot mass of rock continued on its collision course. Leo’s photon laser struck home and accelerated the meteor’s heating to tens of thousands of degrees Celsius, until the surface began to crumble away. That was enough to do the trick. According to a computerized simulation displayed by the Mark VII, it would continue to be scorched on its way down and be completely vaporized long before ever reaching Kyushu.
“How long until the next shot’s ready?” Leo asked the Frame. “Five seconds? Spin the Wheel faster, Agni!” The Asura of Flashfire needed to recharge in order to fire again, but he didn’t have that kind of time. “Increase power! We need the lag time between shots as low as it can get!”
The Wheel of Orison in his belt sang, “Gate Gate Paragate! Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha! Gate Gate Paragate! Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha!”
Leo locked on to the next target, trying his best to ignore the distracting racket. Calling it a meteor shower was a misnomer. It was hardly as concentrated as the name implied, and there was a considerable amount of space between each asteroid. Plus they came in sporadic bursts—sometimes in groups, sometimes alone. It was more like a light summer rain than a downpour.
“This’d be way easier if I could just melt them all at once!”
He prepared the second blast. The light giant crossed its arms again, and another searing ray burst from where they met. A direct hit. The meteor began to crumble.
Leo was less than impressed. “This is going nowhere!” he growled. “How am I supposed to take out every last one like this?!”
Leo knew very well that he was...a lot. He was not unaware of his own fiery nature, and he wanted desperately to simply give in to it and annihilate everything at once with a Doomsday Book. It would have needed a massive amount of electricity and mana to fire off, but if it was between that and waiting for the Prayer Wheel to charge over and over, he much preferred the flashy option.
Kiriko’s voice replayed in his mind.
“If you’re going out there to fight anyway, why not let it be this?”
“You could save our lives, we’d owe you a few favors, and you’d get to show off.”
Leo clicked his tongue. The pleasure of seeing all of his targets destroyed before him in one fell swoop was difficult to resist, but the plan didn’t allow even a single one to slip through. Meaning the logical course of action was to be patient and precise.
He huffed. Leo Makishima was certainly nothing if not fiery. But he would be dead in the ground before he stooped to brazen idiocy like those pompous adults.
“Hurry it up, Agni!” he barked. “We don’t have all day!”
The Wheel of Orison sang, its chorus reaching a crescendo, and the Mark VII called upon more power than ever before. The radiant giant at last began to fire laser after laser with almost no delay. A ceaseless barrage of photon rays singed the second wave, then the third, each shot striking home. Soon, he had fried fifteen meteors in total, a third of which were already falling to pieces and quickly turning to ash in the atmosphere.
But there were still over fifty on the way. Would this be enough?
Right when Leo’s frustration was about to flare again, the Mark VII projected a video feed. It revealed something entirely new entering the fray, as well as its name and specifications.
“What?”
Leo was no longer the only one floating there in the stratosphere. It was a giant, silver serpent coiled into a circle, but the window stated that its unwrapped length was over two hundred meters. Its name was MUV Avatar: Vritra.
It was the Mark VI’s droid. That red-haired girl.
The way it was coiled together made it look like a flying saucer, and the smoothness with which the anti-gravity lifters carried it only added to the illusion.
Lasers fired from all over the saucer’s surface, much like Agni’s photon lasers, but the dragon Asura had eight bores from which to fire. All of them discharged heat rays into the heavens at once. Each blast hit its mark as the meteors broke sixty kilometers in altitude.
“That much power can only mean one thing,” Leo murmured. He clicked his tongue again. “The Nayuta snobs stole the elf back.” Only a Replicant could create something of such strength, something that rivaled even his light giant. “Fine. We’ll cross that bridge later. Right now, all that matters is winning. No matter what!”
That was Leo’s reason for being. Expand his arsenal, learn from experience, and win. It was all he lived for. He found pleasure in nothing else. He cared for nothing else. So if he wanted to keep living, he needed to be stronger. Stronger than anyone.
And right when his resolve was steeled, it came. Something like a voice whispering deep in his ear.
Unleash the darkness, champion of Earth. It was a stately man’s voice. But whose? Why did it sound so familiar? Surrender yourself to the thrill of battle. You know who your opponent ought to be, do you not? Come now, you know who among us can give you what you seek.
“You’re...right.”
The temptation crept into Leo’s heart. When he closed his eyes, he saw a handsome young man dressed in blue. An archmage. He recognized him.
Now is the time. At last, I release the fetters of the curse of divine fury. Go, and fight. Fight! Fight!
He remembered now. His name was Quldald of the Whirlwind, and not long ago, he had defeated Leo. Rather than kill him, however, the archmage had marked him with a spell.
“Agni!” Leo roared. “Aim for the snake! It’ll make a good target!”
A photon laser beamed from the giant’s crossed arms, this time aiming for MUV Avatar: Vritra. The attack landed right in the middle of its winding body, and the serpent was split violently in two.
Leo cackled maniacally. “How do you like that?!”
But the serpent quickly reassembled itself, and the satisfaction immediately vanished from his face. It was a simple matter for a construct of nanomachines.
“Agni, don’t let up— Whoa!” The reconstructed avatar immediately fired back at Agni, taking Leo by surprise. But the giant was just as impenetrable as the Photon-Frame, and both it and the boy in its heart were unscathed. Leo countered the attack with an equally fierce grin. “Not bad, Red Hair! You’re not giving me the chance to keep the pressure on, are you?”
She had superb combat awareness. Any ordinary human fighter wouldn’t have had the decisiveness to counterattack so swiftly. Leo applauded her quick thinking. It was probably the first positive emotion he’d ever felt for the girl.
“Don’t stop now! Let’s heat things up! Make this worth my time!” Leo screamed.
Before he could order another attack, though, the Mark VII detected an incoming threat. A third party was shooting up into the stratosphere at a blistering speed, its distinct black and gold armor unmistakable. It was the Mark III, and from what he could tell by the auxiliary droids expanding its limbs and stature, it was primed in Full-Armor mode.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he snarled. “Come right at me!”
Now this was an opponent worth fighting. Leo swelled with pure excitement.