Akira and Reia both fully charged their swords with lightning, ready at any moment to discharge the lightning essence within them to hopefully stun all the mutants.
"Akira, let's try to connect our blades together." Reia thought if they could combine their lightning it would create a bigger effect.
Making a cross with their swords the lightning grew more violent and erratic.
"As soon as we stab the mutant we need to release it so we don't get overrun." Akira understood Reia's intention and if they were able to pull it off, they would be able to kill the mutants without making any noise.
The metal door was slowly coming off its hinges and the metal was getting dented from the constant hits it was taking.
"Get ready, there will only be one shot at this." Reia knew as soon as the mutants entered the room there would be a grace period before they would be able to attack properly.
Akira nodded and waited for the door to fall over.
The door came off its hinges and slammed onto the ground with mutants falling over each other and on the door.
Reia and Akira dashed forward and pulled back their swords before stabbing into a mutant wolf's head. Their blades crossed over each other, making contact while inside the wolf's body.
Both releasing the stored essence in the blade, a massive wave of lightning flowed through the 8 to 10 mutants behind the wolf.
Every mutant was paralysed leaving them all vulnerable.
Akira and Reia quickly got to work chopping up all the mutant bodies, destroying their cores.
After killing the last mutant they let out a sigh of relief as it was a close call. Akira and Reia both moved away from the melting bodies before sitting down on the ground out of breath.
"We have only been outside for 30 minutes or so and I already feel exhausted." Reia felt drained which was most likely due to the joint attack they just did.
"Who knew it would use so much essence considering we were combining attacks, you would think it'd be less." Akira also felt the same way, as about the same amount of essence was taken out of him.
"I'm able to fire well over 1000s of bullets with my essence but something about that attack took it out of me." Reia was confused as she had a rather large pool of essence and for it to be sucked up in one attack was odd.
However, this was their first time ever joining attacks together as typically you can't do a joint attack with a gun.
"Well, we are the only few people to use swords, so maybe we should do some testing later." Akira wanted to play around with it more and seeing as it took a lot of essence he didn't want to do it again and be left in battle with no essence.
"I think so too, but for now let's get these new clothes and move on." Reia was rather curious about how the joint attacks worked but without someone like Echo, it would be hard to measure.
"Let's hurry then, the less time we spend here the quicker we can get moving." Akira wanted to find a safer place so they could rest and right now the back rooms of a clothes shop was not ideal.
Reia saw on the wall that there was actually a light switch all along.
'Tch, only if I noticed it earlier.' Reia had been too distracted to notice the light switch before being scared by the massive bat.
The room lit up and they found that the back room was a lot bigger than they expected with many shelves full of clothes. There were different sections for each piece of the clothing which made it easy to look for what they needed.
Reia and Akira decide to start at either end and pick out any pieces of clothes they would like.
After about 20 minutes of looking through each shelf, they were ready to change.
Akira stared at Reia for a moment as they had nowhere to really change and they wanted to avoid going out to the front of the store, to get to where the change rooms were.
"What? You better turn around and If I catch you peeking, I am going to have to take your eyes as payment." Reia squinted her eyes at Akira knowing exactly what he was thinking.
"I wouldn't dare." Akira turned and made his way to the other side of the room by a disabled robot that looked like it was meant for sorting the clothes in storage.
Sitting on the floor behind the robot, Akira was tempted to look, but he knew Reia was serious when she would take his eyes.
Reia then started to get change and to make it worse for Akira she took her military top and threw it to where he was sitting.
Akira heard it land right behind him, knowing that Reia was just trying to tempt him. Taking a deep breath he cursed Reia for what she was doing, but he did not break.
'Tch.' Reia wanted to tease Akira more, but he did not budge and without making it more awkward there wasn't any other way.
However, Reia against better judgement threw another piece of her military uniform this time hitting Akira in the back of the head. Reia was now only down to her underwear which was dark purple and hoped Akira would not turn around.
"Can you stop throwing random clothes at me?" Akira, who did not see the clothes that were thrown, assumed Reia was grabbing clothes off the shelves and throwing them at him, to be a tease.
But when Akira turned he saw Reia half-naked and that the clothes she was throwing were actually her uniform. Quickly turning his head back Akira freaked out not knowing what was going to happen.
Reia's face went completely red and wanting to get mad at Akira for looking, but she couldn't as it was her fault.
'Damnit, all just to tease him and somehow I end up being the embarrassed one.' Reia regretted her choice, but at least it was someone she was relatively close with, which gave Reia some peace of mind.
'Just get changed and pretend nothing ever happened, at least he looked away straight away and didn't stare.' Reia tried to talk to herself to make it less embarrassing for her. After calming down Reia started to get changed into her new clothes.
*
"You can turn around now." Reia called out to Akira telling him it was okay to look.
"Are you sure I am not going to turn around to a sword pointed directly at my eyes?" Akira was rather unsure if it was okay and this was just another trap just to tease him.
"That was a mistake, you weren't meant to turn!" Reia's face went red again as she already was beginning to get over it, but was reminded of it.
"Well, you did this to yourself." Akira turned, this time seeing a fully clothed Reia and finding it was not a bait to get him to look.
Reia wore a black turtleneck top with a black long sleeve skin tight under top. Reia had a pair of black and purple gloves alongside a pair of sneakers of the same colour scheme. She also wore a grey jacket with purple accents and the sleeves were rolled up to her forearms.
Reia had chosen to wear a pair of black short shorts and black nylon stockings. Around Reia's thigh was a black and purple accent pouch as well as a belt carrying some smaller pouches.
Akira nodded as Reia looked great, she still had the military vibe but was a lot more casual.
"At least now we won't be seen as the heroes when they see our clothes." Reia remembered what the women said and Reia could not blame her for thinking that, since the world had quickly turned into a survival of the fittest scenario.
"Hopefully we don't encounter that kind of situation again, the military is far from heros and with the kind of people in the military, that women got the best-case scenario." Akira thought back to when he was a part of the lower ranks which were filled with disgusting men and women with no morals.
"Well at least the cannon fodder are the ones to be killed first, I wouldn't be surprised if they are all mutants now." Reia, having gone through the same thing as Akira, hoped they were dead as the first rank you get was the place for people who had nowhere to go in life
When joining the military there was a month screening process regarding whether you would stay as cannon fodder or be moved to a proper squad. Akira and everyone that got a higher rank all went through this hell.
Being a part of that level of the military was also seen as an insult among the people of the military and if you never got promoted it would be a stain on your life.
"It was only for one month but it felt like years as every day there was always something new happening." Akira held his head as just thinking about it was a headache.
"We all had to do it, just be thankful that they gave special treatment to the people being promoted, so we never had to deal with them." Reia thought back to how there were always guards protecting her and if anyone dared come near her without her permission would be shoved away.
"Enough about the past, I need to get changed." Akira did not want to dwell on it for too long as it was no longer relevant to them.
Akira took off his top causing Reia to freak out as Akira just started changing in front of her.
"Wait, wait, wait!"
"What? It's not like you will see me naked." Akira had a grin as he was trying to get his revenge for all the teasing he had received from Reia.
"Ahhh, whatever." Reia clenched her fists and turned away blushing, unable to argue or fight back.
'That bastard is going to pay 10 times more for this.'