78: New Headgear

“What the...” Titus murmured as they left the forested area. He, along with everyone else, swiveled his head around to get a better look at their new setting. “Apocalyptic wasteland can’t even describe this. Developers in video games would never design an area so gray, flat, and boring.”

“It’s probably more realistic though,” Kallix patted Titus on the back. “This place is kind of a wasteland, countries used to test weapons up here, and back then, a lot of them had nasty side effects. Luckily generations before us have cleansed those, but the damage it's done to the ecosystem and land is quite irreversible.”

Clapping his hands to halt the conversation, Kael turned to face the group. As the quietest member, he paused for a second to let everyone wrap everything up before speaking. “Let’s split up here. One hunter with one or two students. Angelica, you can come with me, out of everyone here I’m most equipped to answer your questions.”

Once he finished speaking, he pulled out the two swords sheathed at his waist, levitated them, and pulled out two swords slung across his back, keeping those in his hands. While he prepped what he needed to prep, the others did the same, splitting into groups while doing so. After a brief awkward moment where Nyssa looked around to several of the hunters—only to see them already talking to someone else, she and Celeste ended up with Mira.

“Morning.” Mira nodded upward, extending her hand forward to greet the two. “We’ll take the left-middle area. So, we’ll have Kael, Angelica, and Conrad to our right, and Orin with Electra to our left.”

After shaking Mira’s hand, Nyssa turned to Celeste and looked upward towards the top of Celeste’s head. She made some subtle gestures as her eyes tried to communicate a certain message.

Mira, confused beyond imagination, furrowed her eyebrows and crossed her arms as she spectated the silent exchange between the two girls. First, Celeste shook her head. Nyssa followed it up with another pleading look. Celeste shook her head once more. Nyssa crossed her arms and turned away with a smile. Celeste did the same. Before long, Celeste cracked, extending her arms. “Fine, go for it.”

Nyssa, breaking into a smile, transformed into a fluffy white cat and leapt into Celeste’s arms. Not a second later, she scaled Celeste like a tower and came to a rest on top of her head. Dangling her paws off the sides of Celeste’s head, she patted her girlfriend’s cheeks a few times before closing her eyes.

“I... see you have some new headgear,” Mira ventured with a hesitant pause. “Is this going to hamper you two?”

“No, she’s very light, don’t worry,” Celeste shrugged before shaking her head a little. “And she doesn’t get dislodged somehow. She’ll probably fall asle... ah, no, she’s already asleep though. Don’t worry, this is run of the mill with her.”

“Alright...” Mira trailed off before turning to face the wilderness they’d be traveling through. “Want to get going? I plan to travel through the air like usual since you mentioned that you can fly.”

“Yep, I’ll follow along right behind you,” Celeste floated into the air, her entire body heating up as her heart began to pound in her chest. Her hair transitioned from brunette to a starry blue-purple.

Mira, on the other hand, pulled at the air, and strands of blue aether appeared in her hands. As she pulled herself upward, she swung in the sky like a nimble acrobat, reminiscent even of a spider-themed hero. Together, she and Celeste ended up being the first to leave the gathering area.

They meandered through the air, keeping low enough to observe everything on the ground. Every minute or so, Mira would then come to a stop, hanging in the air from a thread of energy, and take a couple notes while explaining her thought process to Celeste and... well, to a certain asleep Nyssa.

“We’re coming up on a fight,” Mira commented to Celeste right beside her, “See those two monsters duking it out right above us? They uh... They both need to be exterminated.”

“Why’s that?” Celeste asked as she peeled the white cat from her head. With a couple gentle shakes and a rub on the forehead, Nyssa blinked her eyes open. Together, she and Celeste looked over at the fight transpiring.

A boar covered in metal-like bristling hair with two flaming tusks rammed against a... writhing mass of flesh. The flesh, if an observer extrapolated enough, could be reminiscent of a four legged animal, but had no further distinguishing characteristics. Though seared and injured after every attack, the mass of flesh seemed to regenerate with no lasting damage—bar the continuous outpouring of blood coming out of every orifice.

“Well, the... thing, that keeps regenerating for obvious reasons. It just keeps adding biomass to itself to keep growing. They get really ugly.” Mira frowned. “We’ve run into ones that were allowed to grow underground for years, and they often take months to exterminate.”

“And the boar?” Nyssa spoke up from her cat form, catching Mira off guard.

“That one just kills a lot of herbivores that we want to stabilize the population of. In the long term we’re trying to revitalize the area. Having a healthy ecosystem is important for that. Right now it's heavily skewed towards predators,” Mira began pulling strands of energy out of the sky. Shaping it into a bow, she let loose a couple arrows to lead the way. Celeste, catching the hint, also sent a couple of beams towards the fighting monsters below them.

Their combined efforts managed to pause the fight, the towering creatures came to a stop and faced the sky. Mira, well-experienced in this regard, spread her arms, pulling webs of energy from the air, collapsing them inward to immobilize the two monsters. The more she forced her arms together the more they contorted and writhed in pain. “Since we have a fairly long patrol today, let’s keep it easy. Don’t go all out, budget your energy since we’ll probably have around ten of these types of fights.”

“Got it,” Celeste murmured, keeping her attacks to a stream of ultra-hot beams. “Nyssa, can you focus on the boar? Since it seems to have a lot of heat resistance which isn’t great for me.”

“Sounds good,” Nyssa writhed around in Celeste’s arms before leaping off of her. As she fell towards the ground, she grew into a giant, armor plated wurm. She crashed against the spiked boar, filling the air with the sound of screeching metal. Burrowing into the ground, she curled up around the boar and began constricting it, crunching it inward as Mira helped her out.

“... Impressive,” Mira mumbled, watching the boar’s flames begin to dim as its limbs began to go still. “Very... very impressive.”