As the dust settled, both Penny and Asher reappeared, their figures coming back into view.
The ground around them had been obliterated, littered with bullet holes, or torn apart by the barrage of gunfire. The only part that remained untouched was the ground directly beneath their feet—no bullet had managed to pierce through.
Penny stood straight, her blades, which had shielded them, retreating back to their familiar position behind her. Each blade was long and sleek, with a one-sided recurved edge that dipped in and out. Glowing green lines ran through them, and the guards had a circular design, with the green lines there resembling a power button.
It was then that Asher noticed something through his HUD: the blades weren't actually floating.
Ah, I see. They look like they're floating, but they're actually controlled by ultra-thin wires, almost invisible unless you catch them in the right light. I wonder what material they're made of—nanotubes maybe? Or maybe synthetically engineered graphene fibers, wrapped in bundles?
Whatever the case, it allowed Penny to control her swords as if they were extensions of her own body, which, in a way, they were.
As he thought about that, some of the White Fang members on the second floor snapped out of their shock and leveled their rifles at Penny and Asher.
Penny's eyes narrowed, sharp and focused, like a camera lens locking onto its target. She bent her knees, jumping into the air with enough force to crack the ground beneath her. As she rose, her hands waved towards the White Fang members who were preparing to fire.
Her blades cut through the air towards them.
Each one found its mark, piercing the torsos of five White Fang soldiers. Even the sixth, who ducked behind the stone railing, wasn't safe—the blade pierced clean through. As Penny twisted mid-air, the mechanism in her backpack kicked into gear, the wires retracting at high speed.
The six White Fang members were yanked into the air. The one behind the railing was pulled straight through it, shattering the stone as if it were made of clay.
When the blades detached, they flew in all directions, crashing to the ground. Some hit the tables and couches on the first floor, shattering them with a loud crash.
As Penny landed, Asher called out to her.
"Penny, don't waste your time down here. Get to the sixth floor."
She glanced back at him, pausing only briefly before nodding.
"Got it!"
With a single swift step, Penny launched herself backward, flying past Asher and out of the building through the shattered glass doors, broken from the gunfire. The moment she was outside, she glanced up at the building as two of her blades shot up, their tips sinking into the wall near the second floor.
With a powerful jump, the wires attached to her blades reeled in, and she used the momentum to propel herself into the air. Officers, soldiers, and airships stationed nearby were left stunned. The sound of gunfire had barely subsided, and now this... wave after wave of impossible action.
In a matter of seconds, Penny reached the sixth floor. Four more blades latched onto the wall, pulling her through one of the windows as she burst in. Her landing was heavy, the impact echoing through the floor as she quickly surveyed the office, and glass fell around her feet.
It appeared to be completely empty—rows of unused desks, office chairs, powered-down computers, and no signs of life. But that was only what her eyes could tell her. Penny, however, had a multi-spectrum vision system. Her eyes could work like a telescope, picking out details from a distance, and even detect heat signatures.
More impressively, though, she could see the aura of others—the manifestation of a person's soul—something far harder to deceive than thermal vision.
"Hello," Penny called out in greeting, her voice echoing slightly in the silence. As she spoke, her swords shifted, their hilts realigning as the blades folded in half. The front half of each sword slid back, locking into place behind the back half, transforming them into something resembling pistols.
Without waiting, Penny fired.
Green lasers shot out from the blades, now functioning as rifles. The projectiles were hard-light, capable of carrying kinetic energy, though not with the same speed and force as bullets. Still, the practically unlimited ammo and the fact that she was up against humans made the lack of speed irrelevant.
A shot pierced through one of the wooden desks on the floor, and it hit its mark. A cry echoed from a White Fang member who had been hiding. His body crashed to the ground, slamming into a second desk from the momentum of the hard-light projectile.
Another White Fang member, crouched near the fallen man, shouted, "What the hell- Dammit, she can see us!"
At that point, hiding was pointless.
The ten or so remaining White Fang members on the sixth floor peeked out from behind cover and immediately opened fire. Penny responded instantly, dodging with a blend of her superhuman agility, her blade wires, and the precise use of her sword-rifles. She moved fluidly, firing and evading at the same time.
From the outside, the sixth-floor windows were lit up with flashes of green and yellow, the constant muzzle flashes and laser shots painting the building in a chaotic, deadly dance of color from the outside.
Back on the first floor, the moment Penny ascended, Asher gave a sharp command to the two Atlas soldiers positioned outside, against the walls near the shattered glass entrance.
"Since you two wanted to come along, cover me," he ordered.
"Give me suppressive fire on the second floor. I'll handle things down here."
"Yes, sir!" The soldiers didn't hesitate.
Their phalanx rifles were already in hand as they moved quickly from behind the walls they had been taking cover behind. Low to the ground, they opened fire. The rifles were hard-light weapons, so while they didn't have the raw power to punch through stone railings in a couple of shots, their rapid rate of fire and lack of overheating made them ideal for suppressing enemy positions.
Asher, meanwhile, kept his focus on the White Fang on the first floor, who had ducked behind cover but were still within his line of sight. He'd already memorized their positions.
The shot that had put a hole through that one White Fang member's head hadn't come from Penny; it had come from him.
In each of his hands was what appeared to be a double-barreled pistol. There were vented holes on the sides of each barrel, and the guns were solidly built with reinforced metal and composite materials. The weapons were sleek, painted in a metallic maroon with silver highlights, and equipped with simple iron sights.
The barrel of the one he'd just fired was still hot, already showing signs of wear.
As Asher surveyed the situation, one of the White Fang members behind the central reception desk took a deep breath, his expression sharpening as he quickly rose to his feet.
He peeked just high enough to line up his rifle against the reception desk and take aim at Asher.
The one who can block bullets is gone, now's our chance to take out the other one!
The White Fang member locked onto Asher with his assault rifle, squeezing the trigger in an instant.
But Asher's suit—GAIA—detected the gun's position, the bullets, and the trajectory of each shot in real time. His body and the suit moved in perfect synchronization, and he turned sideways so quickly it almost seemed like he had teleported. The White Fang member didn't even see Asher raise his gun or fire it.
A red laser shot out from the top barrel of Asher's pistol, hitting the White Fang member square in the head. The blast burned a hole straight through him and continued to punch through the wall behind him.
The entire act, from reaction to firing, took less than a second.
With that, Asher finally sprang into action. He pushed off his right foot and rushed forward, leaping into the air into a front flip. The force of the jump carried him across most of the first floor, arcing almost to the other side. While still mid-air, he quickly locked onto three White Fang members in his line of sight.
There were three to his right: one was behind a table they had flipped over, and the other two were down a corridor that branched off from the lobby. They had been out of view until just moments ago. Their heads were beginning to turn in reaction to Asher suddenly appearing in the air, having been near the entrance only a second ago.
But it was far too slow. As Asher flipped through the air, his aim was flawless. He fired three shots, each red beam of light piercing through a vital point, instantly killing his targets.
As he landed, there was a heavy crack. He crouched on the reception desk, the very same one the White Fang member had been hiding behind. Fragments of wood flaked into the air as Asher glanced down and saw another White Fang member behind the desk.
Unlike his partner, this one didn't have a rifle; he had a pistol. The moment he heard the crunching of wood and saw Asher's suited form looming over him, the soldier started to raise his gun with fearful urgency.
But before he could even aim, Asher opened his hand, letting one of his double-barreled pistols slip from his grasp.
Huh, he dropped his weapon?
For a brief moment, the White Fang member's eyes followed the falling pistol, but that was the mistake. He didn't notice when a sword materialized in Asher's hand. The blade was sleek with a black finish and a gentle curve, almost like a scimitar. Along part of the sharp spine, the metal was serrated like teeth.
The moment Asher gripped the hilt, the White Fang member, who had canine Faunus ears, heard a faint hum. The sword was vibrating at high speed, much like the Insurgent's High-Frequency Combat Knife.
Asher swung the blade in an arc, faster than the White Fang member could finish raising his gun. The sword flashed across his neck, and the moment the swing ended, the blade disappeared. Without missing a beat, Asher grabbed his double-barreled pistol before it had even hit the desk.
As his head slid from the clean cut of his neck, the last thought on the White Fang member's mind was a simple question: How? Where had he been hiding that sword?
That question was another reason why Asher had chosen to operate under the persona of Cipher.
For a long time, he had been mulling over how to explain the Nexus Space. His aura was still dormant—a detail he intended to address one day, though more out of curiosity and research than necessity.
But until then, it meant he couldn't claim the Nexus Space was his semblance. On the other hand, it was too useful in combat to leave it untapped. That's why Cipher worked so well for him. He didn't need to care what his enemies thought of his abilities. And as for his allies, he'd already devised a clever lie if they ever asked.
Even if he hadn't fully transformed Nexus Space into a mobile factory yet, it made for a perfect personal arsenal.
"Hm?" Asher glanced to the side, catching sight of three more White Fang members down the opposite corridor he had just fired down. All of them had their assault rifles aimed at him, and one even had a hard-light rifle—a likely result of weapon smuggling.
As they opened fire, Asher calmly grabbed the end of his trench coat and held it up. To anyone else, it might have looked like an aesthetic choice, but for Asher, nothing was ever purely for show, not even a simple coat.
The Vex-MK 1 wasn't as durable as the Insurgent Armor. While it could handle gunfire without any issue, it had weak points that could wear down over time. That was the trade-off for its flexibility and speed. Which is why the coat, though it looked like simple fabric, was anything but.
As bullets and hard-light projectiles flew toward him, it seemed like they would pierce straight through the coat or blow it away, since it appeared to be made of just fabric.
But the moment the first bullet hit, the light gray fabric turned darker in that spot. In response to the impact, the coat stiffened, instantly dispersing the force of the shot without so much as a rip in the fabric.
The same effect occurred when the hard-light shots hit, causing another patch of the coat to stiffen and darken. Yet, not a single fold of the fabric budged or tore.
"What the hell is that thing made of!?" A White Fang member shouted in confusion, continuing to fire his hard-light assault rifle at Asher. The shots seemed to have no effect, causing him to gape at the coat.
The answer?
A smart-fiber weave.
It was the same reactive kinetic material used in the inner layers of the Insurgent Armor. As the name suggests, it reacted to sudden kinetic impact, identifying the force and momentarily stiffening in reaction to it. The darker hue came from the material's light absorption properties shifting in response to the impact.
Normally soft and flexible, it became hard on impact, with an extremely tight weave and a sub-layer that helped refract energy. It wasn't invincible, though—it had its limits. If hit with enough force, the weave couldn't disperse the energy quickly enough, leading to the nanostructure breaking down.
And repeated fire in a concentrated area could cause it to overheat, losing its dispersive properties. But against the weapons the White Fang were using? They could shoot for an hour, and it wouldn't make a difference.
As the gunfire continued, Asher's focus wasn't on the bullets or the hard-light projectiles; it was on the two double-barreled pistols in his hands. He called them Breakers.
It wasn't impossible to weaponize hard-light dust without sacrificing speed and force. In the end, the energy generated from hard-light dust was similar to light itself, though at a much higher intensity.
Turning that energy into a solid light construct required specialized technology, and Atlas was the primary owner of it. But it was possible to focus all that raw energy, without transforming it, and use it as a weapon.
The only problem?
The technology was still in its infancy, making it bulky, expensive, and potentially dangerous.
Asher had been forced to create his Breakers in a day since that was when Ironwood informed him about the raid. This was also why they had an overheating problem and why firing them damaged the gun. He didn't have time to fix it. The right Breaker Pistol, the one he'd already fired four times, looked as if its barrel might crack at any moment.
"Should be able to survive one last shot," Asher muttered to himself, watching as the Breaker Pistol in his left hand disappeared into the Nexus Space, replaced by an S.G-2, one of his smart grenades.
The main difference between the S.G-2s and the S.G-1s he'd used during the airship hijacking with Weiss was that, since the S.G-2s were designed to be used by Insurgents whose armor made button pressing impossible, they could also be controlled remotely when connected to a network using GAIA.
The moment Asher focused on the grenade, GAIA's voice echoed in his ear.
[S.G-2 unit detected and synced.]
"Mode: Light Burst, High Intensity. Set the delay to two seconds and the explosive duration to one," Asher ordered.
[S.G-2 configured.]
After that, Asher waited a few seconds, the sounds of bullets hitting his coat eventually fading away. All that remained were the faint pulses of hard-light projectiles in the air. Two of the White Fang members were reloading.
With a quick motion, Asher tossed the S.G-2 into the air above him, still hidden behind his coat. The White Fang member with the hard-light assault rifle noticed the grenade, his eyes following it upward as he tried to make sense of what it was. Because of his distraction, he took the full brunt of the light burst when it went off.
"Augh, fuck!" He shouted, his aim faltering as the intense light scorched his eyes. His shots went wild, hitting the walls around him.
"I can't see!" The other two White Fang members, still struggling to reload, were in the same position, blindly fumbling as they were caught off guard by the blinding flash.
The only person unaffected was Asher. GAIA had already pre-dimmed and adjusted his vision to shield him from the flash. Standing from his crouched position on the reception desk, which was now riddled with bullet holes, he let his coat fall.
He raised his right hand, still holding the Breaker Pistol. Aiming at the White Fang member with the hard-light assault rifle, he squeezed the trigger. The lower barrel of the Breaker flashed, and a red laser shot out, cutting through the White Fang member's throat. The beam pierced through the back of his neck, severing his spinal cord.
The man's body stood for a moment, as if frozen, before he toppled backward, lifeless.
The sound of the body hitting the ground was quickly followed by curses from the two remaining White Fang members. They began firing blindly, but none of their shots came anywhere near Asher.
Looking down at the Breaker Pistol in his right hand, Asher saw that the entire gun, not just the barrel, was cracked and trembling slightly. The remaining dust inside was becoming unstable. Without hesitation, he threw the pistol. It arced through the air before skidding to a stop right at the feet of the two White Fang members.
The next second, the metal of the gun bulged, and it exploded. A violent release of light-like energy engulfed the two remaining White Fang members, who were still blinded from the light burst. The explosion tore through the corridor, shaking it violently, shattering walls, and even collapsing part of the ceiling.
Asher didn't bother to look at the aftermath. Instead, his thoughts turned inward.
If I remember correctly, there were twenty-six White Fang members split between the first and second floors. I don't see any more down here. Penny took care of six, and I've taken out about eight, so there should only be twelve left on the second floor.
As his gaze shifted upward, Asher looked at the overhang of the second floor. He then glanced back at the two Atlas soldiers, who had been laying down suppressive fire to keep the second floor from targeting him. He then tapped into their communications.
"Cease fire on the second floor. I've handled the first, and I'm moving up," he instructed.
The two soldiers nodded at one another, acknowledging the order.
"Understood, sir," they replied in unison.
The two Atlas soldiers pulled back from their positions, the suppressive fire of hard-light projectiles finally ceasing. Up on the second floor, behind the stone railing, the White Fang members who had been keeping their heads down noticed the change almost immediately.
"Those bastards finally run out of ammo?" One of them asked, not wanting to risk peeking over to check.
"I think so. Not that it matters, we're still surrounded," replied the other White Fang member, crouched next to him. He glanced down the walkway toward a figure who seemed to be the squad leader.
He called out to the squad leader, his voice carrying, "Hey, any word from down below? What the hell's the Leader's plan?!"
The squad leader turned to him, irritation evident in his voice.
"No clue. They started jamming signals the moment they surrounded us. Can't get anything through, let alone receive orders."
No matter how they looked at it, they were in trouble. But what troubled them more was how the police and military had even found them. They'd been so careful, and until now, no one had even suspected they were operating in Mantle. But now they were surrounded and being overtaken, not by their entire force, but by just two people and backup.
With the images of Asher and Penny fresh in their minds, another White Fang member asked, "Any clue who the girl and the thing with her were? Was it some kind of android?"
"If it is, I've never seen one like it," the squad leader answered curtly.
Down on the first floor, that's when Asher made his move. Turning his back to the second floor's overhang, he sprinted toward the adjacent wall. He jumped off a table that instantly shattered under his weight, bounding toward the wall and landing on it vertically with his legs bent.
Then, pushing off the wall, he launched himself into the air, heading straight for the second floor.
From that height, he could see four White Fang members crouched low. They saw him coming a moment later, their eyes widening in shock. They reached for their guns, but Asher was faster. In the blink of an eye, four combat throwing knives appeared in his right hand, where there had been nothing a second ago.
Calculating the angles instinctively, he threw the knives with the force of the exosuit behind them. The blades whistled through the air, each one finding a vital point. Blood splattered from the bodies of the White Fang members as they fell to the ground.
Moments later, Asher landed heavily on the second floor, his boots hitting the floor with a solid thud.
"Shit, he's up here!"
"Move!"
The remaining White Fang members on the second floor, still reeling from the chaos, barely had time to react as Asher raised the Breaker Pistol in his left hand. Most of them were huddled behind the stone railing, tightly packed and lined up. Only the squad leader managed to duck behind a corner before Asher fired three shots.
The red laser beams lit up the walkway, and within moments, paired with the four White Fang members he'd already taken out on his way up, the number of enemies on both the first and second floors dropped to just two.
Asher began walking toward the corner where the squad leader had taken cover, his footsteps calm and deliberate. He connected to his comms as he moved and contacted Penny.
"Penny, I've cleared the first and second floors. Have you dealt with the sixth yet?"
Up on the sixth floor, Penny was surrounded by her swords again, now back in their original form after leaving their rifle mode. The once orderly office had turned into a chaotic mess—desks sliced in half, long slashes and marks across the ceiling and floor, and the unmistakable signs of battle, with bullet holes and impacted areas from her laser fire.
Yet, despite the carnage, Penny was completely unharmed. All the White Fang members who had been lurking, waiting to ambush her, were dead. Their bodies lay motionless across the floor or broken pieces of furniture, covered in blood.
"I've just finished neutralizing the threats! I'm moving to the hostages now," she responded in her usual chipper tone.
"Alright, good," Asher replied, his attention returning to the walkway ahead.
Around the corner, the squad leader and one other White Fang member were crouched low.
Both of them were breathing heavily, their hearts pounding in their chests as the silence of the moment stretched on.
"Y-Do you have a grenade?" The squad leader asked, glancing at the White Fang member beside him.
The question snapped the White Fang member out of their fear-stricken daze. He nodded and quickly reached for something on his belt, holding it out to the squad leader.
The squad leader took it, letting out a deep breath as he did.
"The moment I throw this and it goes off, you and I make a run for the stairs, and try to make it to the subbasement. The upper floors are finished," the squad leader instructed, his voice tight. The remaining White Fang member nodded in agreement, but the anxiety in his posture was clear as he swallowed hard.
The squad leader listened intently as Asher's footsteps grew louder, closer. He took another steadying breath and moved, priming the grenade. He then reached his arm around the corner to throw it down the walkway. But the moment his arm came around the corner, a laser shot out in response, nearly simultaneously.
The squad leader didn't even register what had happened until he looked down and saw his arm, from the elbow down, had been completely severed. The wound was instantly charred, releasing the distinct smell of burnt flesh.
"Uaghh!" The squad leader screamed in pain as he and the remaining White Fang member scrambled to their feet, but it was already too late. The grenade went off in a violent explosion, blowing up his severed arm and catching both of them in the blast radius.
As Asher eventually came around the corner, the Breaker Pistol in his hand still smoking from the split-second shot, he took in the scene. It was a stomach-turning sight—rubble mixed with gore, leaving the bodies of the squad leader and the White Fang member unrecognizable.
Yet, Asher's eyes didn't even flicker at the carnage. Calmly, he spoke over the comms, his voice steady.
"First and second floors are clear."