Even though Bee had launched herself up the stairs right after Ess was dragged away by the speedster, she had only reached her bedroom just in time to see a miniature rocket roar in the distance before shuttling disturbingly quickly into the sky, her brother following right behind it.
Bee immediately rushed towards the window and opened it to get a better view of the rocket's ascent. On her way, she plugged a chocolate muffin into 'Elijah's' mouth before his trembling lips could part to ask what in the world the deafening noise downstairs was.
The mannequin beauty stared at the sky. Soon, Ess would be plunged into outer space and be forced to become a next-of-kin to Epheria's six moons, some of which were visible even during the daytime.
Bee clicked her tongue before turning to 'Elijah' who grew paler by the second. Both hope and fear crushed him. If someone had come to apprehend these criminals who had so 'graciously' killed his family and abducted him, he only prayed he would survive the conflict that ensued before that goal was reached.
As Bee crouched down and pulled something large and black from under the bed, she reassured her forced mate.
"Don't worry, babe. I'll keep you safe," she said in a hollow voice that might as well have played the epic role of a death flag.
She then set the large, black case more than half her height in length against the wall, and pulled out a pistol from a holster around her thigh.
She pointed the gun out the window and watched as ten figures in armor and helmets converged towards the house, bolting from the line of sparse trees a distance away.
Bee's eyes darted around, noting the individual movements of the pack of enemies as they scaled the steel fence rapidly.
Before she could fire even a single shot, however, one of the incoming figures acted first.
He pressed his hands onto his chest and made a gesture with them that looked both like a blooming flower and the open maw of a beast.
This symbol was a Mudra.
Agent Julls, like Dein, had a Blue Spark, and his powers were rooted in manifesting symbolic meaning into supernatural effects. Unlike numbers, though, his specialty was with ritualistic gestures mostly embedded in religion.
A glaring, silver light gushed out from where his hands met to illustrate the Tejas Mudra. The radiance seemed to pour from his heart vibrantly, imposing a sacred, divine sensation on its surroundings. However, more than that, it blinded whomever Julls saw as his opponent.
Bee squinted.
The vicious brightness stung her pupils and almost seemed to ignore the walls as it saturated her bedroom. It also adopted a physical influence that pushed Bee back the closer Julls got.
The Tejas Mudra was a gesture that invited one to remember a sense of light and brilliance within the heart. Normally, this wasn't literal, but Julls, through months of digging deep into the symbolism of various gestures had managed to actualize this light and brilliance, weaponizing it against enemies.
He grinned as he saw Bee duck down, disappearing from behind the window.
'She had a gun. She must be a pretty good shot. Now that I have shut down her vision, a few Agents should be able to a—"
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Julls' hopeful internal monologue was disrupted when he heard a gun cry four times, followed by the screams of four of his fellow Agents!
'What on Epheria…?'
A slender hand wielding a pistol had suddenly poked out of the window. It was quickly retrieved an instant later.
Julls was startled to see three Agents limply fall to the ground on both his sides, bullet holes visible in their helmets. Only one had survived, but it wasn't because the bullet sent his way had missed his head. This particular Agent just happened to have a Green Spark, and his Utility granted him thick, crystalline skin that was tough enough to block Bee's Fint-powered bullet.
That said, the sheer force of the bullet had caused him to stagger back a few steps, and because of that, he wasn't motivated to take a few more shots.
Julls and the remaining Agents immediately opened fire with their Anti-Abberant rifles. At once, the whole area was dyed in radiant blue when the rifles fired hundreds of rounds.
As the house groaned and creaked from the assault, the Agents continued moving in, with Julls releasing the Mudra he had been forming with his hands. That didn't seem to do any good right now.
The enemy seemingly had an aim so impeccable that she didn't even need to see her targets!
'What monsters are these?' Julls thought, his heart racing.
The house fell apart in the next five seconds. It wasn't only the penetrative impact of the bullets that violated it, after all. The blue energy coating them was so hot that it lit up the materials that made the target.
Thus, a blaze rose in the distance, but none of the Agents let up.
Some hurried to all the visible exit points while others aimed at every orifice made on the house by their gunfire.
Julls prepared to perform another Mudra as his eyes traced every position a possible counterattack could come from.
'Where are you?' he thought tensely.
A few moments passed.
No one believed that the enemy had perished in the conflagration within and around the house. There was no way.
Their faith in their opponent's abilities was soon validated.
The roof to the house exploded with a bang, and the Agents jerked their heads up to see the figure of a woman in a silver, transparent night dress soaring into the skies, a confused, mortified young man with a muffin lodged in his mouth in one of this woman's hands, and a large, black case in the other!
"FIRE!" Julls commanded his six fellow Agents and the world was lit in blue once again. Unlike the police, the Bureau wasn't exactly motivated to save civilians when terrorists of a certain grade were in sight. Thus, they didn't hold back.
However, this didn't amount to much.
Before any of the Agents had even pulled their triggers, Bee had warped away from the sky and appeared right before one of the Agents closest to the house!
This Agent's heart nearly stopped. He didn't even get a clear view of Bee because he had been glaring upward.
'She can Phantasm?!' he thought in horror, and in the next millisecond, he felt a gun's muzzle press against the end of his chin.
BANG!
The Agent immediately became a statistic.
The sound of the shot and his brains getting blown through the top of his head attracted the other Agents who hadn't caught on to where Bee had disappeared to. As they all turned their rifles in her direction, 'Elijah' murmured incoherent statements about his innocence through the chocolatey sweetness of his muffin.
It wasn't his cries about being a victim that saved him, however.
Bee stomped the ground, rather, the pavement leading to the house, cracking it, and flicked a broken chunk of it with her foot towards one of the Agents nearby. As it flew like a bullet, it was smothered by dark, oil-like Fint before crashing into its target with a nasty boom that was expressly reminiscent of a firecracker.
It was horrifying to think that the Agent smitten by this attack died immediately, their rifle, which ate the chunk of concrete first, forcibly opened wide. Yet, even more horrifying than this, was what Bee did next.
After setting 'Elijah' down, Bee pulled out the muffin in his mouth before pushing the poor, terrified soul's head down so that several bullets flying at him missed. She then rolled off his back to dodge bullets aimed at her as well and forced 'Elijah' to crouch down, saving his life again.
Bee then charged the muffin in her hand with a clump of Fint and flung it at another Agent who was stricken aghast when it smashed open her helmet, shattered her teeth, and blasted through her throat on its way toward a distant tree trunk.
It went without saying, that this Agent had her life sentence revoked.
The remaining Agents deemed staying in one place dangerous and immediately started darting around while trying to fire their rifles.
Bee raised her large case, planted it before a crouching 'Elijah', and opened it.
Before she could extract whatever was within it, however, she sensed a surge of Fint building up around a hostile a dozen meters away from her and did the same.
Erasing the space in front of her with Fint – Phantasming – Bee's figure warped forth towards the threat she sensed!
Yet, at the same time, her opponent did the same.
The space between them bubbled, sparked, and then it turned bloated, expanding and stretching the details of rubble, grass, and air imprinted on it for a split second!
Bee and Julls were flung back several meters – the former back to 'Elijah' and the latter close to the gate where he had been before attempting to Phantasm right towards Bee for a sneak attack.
Both parties squinted, Julls with a little bit of fear creeping up his bones. His armor had sustained damage from the repulsive force just now, and his helmet fell away, revealing his gingery hair first and his stark blue eyes second.
Bee, on the other hand, was perfectly fine, her face placid. She slid her hand into the open black case and retrieved something that made Julls turn pale.