The Green Dragon was as light as a wooden practice sword, and it owed its newfound weightlessness to the anti-gravity lifters that had come online just in time. Natsuki brandished the guandao-shaped Asura Frame with such litheness, it was as if she were handling it on the surface of the moon.
The dragon snapped at her, but in the blink of an eye she whirled the blade and struck the beast’s snout four times in quick succession.
“You’ve got some tricks up your sleeve,” Natsuki remarked to her new toy.
Somehow intuiting the weapon’s capabilities, she activated the anti-gravity lifters and floated into the air, at last eye-level with the behemoth. The bloodied beast recoiled.
“No hard feelings!”
Natsuki buried the Crescent Blade into the dragon’s forehead, and with the guandao deep in the Anomaly’s skull, she selected the electromagnetic contactor function and activated it through the nano-interface in her right hand. An electrical current flowed from the odd Asura Frame and into the white dragon. Its heart immediately stopped, and the beast collapsed heavily onto the ground.
“There’s number one! Do I see a second?” Natsuki never let go of that devil-may-care attitude, but her words carried all the weight they needed.
She landed back on the ground, before hurling the Crescent Blade at one of the white dragons mid-flight. The Asura Frame laughed in the face of gravity as it pierced the monster’s chest.
“Let’s see that zappy thing again!”
Another violent current of electricity assailed the dragon, and down the second fell. The earth rumbled from the impact as Natsuki snatched the returning guandao out of the air.
“Aw, you came back! Who’s a good boy?”
“I thought I felt something.” Ein’s voice suddenly came through over the commlink. “Natsuki, have you awakened Vritra? The Mark VI Asura Frame?!”
“Oh, this is the Mark VI, huh? I thought it was in Russia,” Natsuki said. “So Vritra’s your name.” She whirled the guandao Asura around spiritedly like a martial arts display. “I like it!”
Aliya, who had been spectating the whole performance, pointed her right palm at Vritra. “After Russia’s Eastern Front fell, it was recovered and brought to Nayuta for safekeeping. But it was dormant, waiting for its Devicer like the Mark III was. At least, that’s what I can tell from its awareness.” She took a deep breath, parsing the information she had read by synchronizing her nanomachines with the Frame. “It seems like the design philosophy for this Asura Frame was pure offense. A glass cannon, if you will.”
“Huh, sounds like we’re not so different!” Natsuki said.
“That must be why it chose you,” said Ein. “Natsuki, there’s something I need you and Vritra to do!”
There was still no end in sight for the ceaseless game of cat and mouse going on in the air around the tower. Meanwhile, the invisible air elementals had turned Nayuta into a vortex of deadly winds.
Natsuki listened to the Replicant girl’s instructions and smirked.
“It is our opening act, after all! I wouldn’t want to disappoint!”