Despite what all Eve had said, the marines and soldiers put up a much better resistance than she thought they would. Right away, the power armor soldiers deployed these mobile barriers that looked like small black suitcases but unfolded on the ground into solid defensive cover; the barriers were about six feet long, three feet tall, curved inward, and shimmered with an active repulser field.

  Gamma-17 reacted right away when the soldiers began firing at her, unleashing dozens of sweeping tentacles with razor sharp spikes on the end, stabbing after the soldiers around her. Luckily, the barriers held for the time being, flashing out brilliantly any time Gamma-17 attacked.

  The power armor soldiers took the front line, spread out in several directions behind their cover shooting after Gamma-17, but after getting hit by the destabilizing acid and seeing one of her tentacles dissolve away, she was being much more evasive in her assault. The marines stayed behind the front lines more clustered together, grouped up in larger barriers and each taking turns laying down suppressing fire. The marines weren’t so worried about hitting Gamma-17 directly—their bullets were ineffective against her anyways—but the sonic-concussion rounds unleashed focused sound explosions that seemed to disrupt the Predazoan’s movements, and I could even see her skin shake or tremor anytime a round exploded near her; the sound must have been just annoying enough to be a distraction, giving the power armor soldiers more opportunities to hit her with their lethal ammo.

  Yet despite such flawless tactics, Gamma-17 wouldn’t go down; as large as she was, she moved faster than should be possible, and her movements were so erratic and unpredictable, none of the power armor soldiers could even anticipate where they should be firing, always just a little too slow behind her.

  Eve remained on the far side of the field, still only about a hundred feet in front of me; she hadn’t engaged Gamma-17 at all yet, and I was wondering if it was because she wanted to hold a defensive position near me—to protect me.

  Gamma-17 hadn’t even noticed me yet—I was completely inconsequential sitting up in the stands—but she glared at Eve any chance she had amidst her evasive maneuvers around the soldiers.

  Changing tactics, some of the marines started throwing out these cluster-flashbang bombs; they exploded on the ground, then erupted in several chain flashes of spiraling light and disorienting sound, but aside from shrieking out her frustration, it didn’t seem to bother Gamma-17.

  “Eve, don’t you think you should engage?” I asked into my headset. Eve ignored me, keeping her eyes on Gamma-17, but she refused to move from her spot before me.

  “Eve!”

  “No, I can’t risk you getting hurt!” Eve snapped back at me.

  Suddenly, Gamma-17 ripped through one of the mobile barriers, the repulser field failed, and she speared three tentacles through power armor as though it had been made of paper.

  “Eve, the soldiers are getting hurt! I’ll be fine, I have that immortality enzyme, remember?”

  Eve shook her head, “It can only heal your wounds, it can’t bring you back from the dead.”

  “The longer you wait, the more people will die. Eventually, Gamma-17 will confront you anyways, and you might not have soldiers left to support you.” I countered.

  Eve didn’t have a good response for that; she continued watching Gamma-17 move across the field, able to track all her movements with obvious ease.

  “Eve, we have a job to do; please trust me, I’ll be here, I’ll be safe.” I paused for a few moments, almost laughing at my next gambit, “And then we can have that date once the mission is over.”

  Finally, I saw Eve’s resolve weaken as the tension in her shoulders relaxed, “More than just a date, I get a make-out session with you too.”

  People were literally dying around us, and Eve was using the opportunity to blackmail me into a make-out session.

  “Fine sure, just go help them!”

  Eve barely turned to look back at me, a mischievous smile on her face, “A full 10-minute make-out session.”

  I rolled my eyes, “Two minutes.”

  “Eight minutes.”

  “Five minutes, and you can sit in my lap while we’re making out.”

  Eve smiled victoriously, “Deal.”

  “Okay fine, go!”

  Eve turned away from me and let out her own ear-splitting shriek. The soldiers around the field paused in their assault, and even Gamma-17 slowed down her evasive maneuvers. In a black, fleshy explosion, three sets of long bat wings ripped out of Eve’s back, and a black, segmented tail with a silver scythe hook sprouted and lengthened a solid 30 feet behind her. Eve’s fingers all turned into razor sharp black claws each at least a foot long, and her knees shifted and buckled to look like velociraptor legs with the curved claws and everything. Then black chitin plating folded over most of Eve’s body, ripping apart her clothes, leaving only her mouth free, with little slits for her glowing yellow eyes.

  In one second, Eve had been a hundred feet in front of me, and before I even finished blinking, she was gone. I heard a crashing noise above me and looked up to see Eve had flown up to Gamma-17, bit a huge chunk out of her neck, and then threw her towards the ground before she could even react. Again, Eve disappeared from my sight, moving with such speed I couldn’t even process it.

  I looked back down to see Eve and Gamma-17 in the middle of the field, surrounded by the soldiers and their barriers who were taking the brief window to gather their wounded and put them behind cover.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “Sister, so good to see you again.” Eve’s voice was playful, but full of terrifying malice.

  “Alpha-03, why are you here? What do you want?” Gamma-17 asked, standing back up. Immediately, I could see her wounds bubble-black and regenerate—she was healed in seconds.

  Eve gestured out with her long claws to the field around her, “I heard you were in the system; I just wanted to play.”

  Gamma-17 had been in complete control of the battlefield with the soldiers, but now looking through my scope, I could see real fear in her eyes, “Why are you with the Imperials? Don’t you remember what they did to us?”

  Eve laughed, but it wasn’t her normal giggle, it was sinister and mocking, “I don’t give a fuck about any of them.” She gestured to herself, “I’ve already achieved perfection.”

  “You lie; you haven’t had enough time to accumulate the necessary biomass!” Gamma-17 shouted, a sound of desperation in her voice.

  Again, Eve laughed, “Sister, we all have our own individual drive that leads us to perfection; not all of us want to be gluttons and consume entire planets.”

  At first I thought the soldiers paused their assault so they wouldn’t hit Eve, but now as I looked around the field I realized a lot of the marines appeared quite nervous, like they weren’t sure what was going to happen next. They all had their guns trained right in the center of Eve and Gamma-17, and I had a feeling they wanted to see how it would play out. And if it didn’t go according to their plans, I was pretty sure they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot Eve too.

  So, there was still quite a bit of distrust for Eve in the military. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything I could do to help and just hoped Eve would prove them all wrong and take out Gamma-17 on her own.

  Gamma-17 shot forward faster than I could react, but even faster than that, Eve spun around and slammed her into the ground with an axe-kick. Gamma-17 rolled out of the way quickly, slashing out with her tentacles, only to have them all cut down with a wicked flurry of slashes by Eve’s claws. Gamma-17 shrieked in frustration, and Eve shrieked back twice as loud, downing out her sister’s sound easily.

  “You could just leave me here then, no need to interrupt my drive to perfection.” Gamma-17 growled.

  “You know as well there can only be one true perfect Predazoan.” Eve’s smile through her black armor was vicious, “This was always going to play out eventually.”

  I wasn’t sure if Eve was just shit-talking, or if that was for real something between the Predazoans. Was it really going to be some Highlander thing—there can be only one? Was that why Eve had no problem hunting them down with The Radiance? Or was this all just to get into Gamma-17’s head?

  Gamma-17 roared again and leapt into the air, but before she could even close the distance Eve flew up and slammed her back into the ground with her tail. It didn’t matter what Gamma-17 did, Eve seemed to react as though she knew exactly how she would attack—either perfect Predazoan reflexes, or that mind-reading extra-sense at work, I wasn’t sure.

  Instead of getting all the way back up, Gamma-17 took a knee before Eve, lowering her head, “I could submit myself to you; you would be my Prime and my drive would follow yours. We could achieve perfection together. Please, we don’t need to fight.”

  I looked around again to see the soldiers also seemed to be confused, and there were more than a few that started shifting their rifles to point more towards Eve.

  But I wasn’t worried; I trusted my little Evie.

  In response, Eve spun around and swept her tail out so fast, it was all a black blur I couldn’t even see, but a second later I realized Gamma-17 was kneeling before Eve—without a head.

  “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll just take your biomass for myself!” Eve said almost giddily.

  Gamma-17’s headless body leapt into the air and spread out her tentacles, trying to flee from Eve in desperation. Her head regenerated quickly, and I could see wild fear in her eyes. From there, the soldiers started firing again, trying to cut off her escape.

  But Eve turned around and shrieked at them, causing them to pause their assault once more. Then, she flew after Gamma-17 so fast she disappeared.

  I wasn’t sure what I expected when two Predazoans clashed, but it certainly wasn’t this game of cat and mouse; the fight was completely one-sided, with Eve moving a hundred times faster than Gamma-17, with brutal attacks a thousand times stronger. Eve’s body could shift near instantly to fit her needs, manifesting tentacles, spears, claws, even sending out little disruptive drone-forms to claw after Gamma-17. Meanwhile, it was like Gamma-17 had to think every time she shifted her form, trying to organize her body in an appropriate response only to be a second too late. She unleashed her own extra forms after Eve, but Eve would just manifest a large mouth and consume them all in one bite.

  They flew around the rafters of the stadium for a solid two minutes before I noticed Gamma-17 was getting slower and smaller; Eve had consumed so much extra biomass it was starting to affect Gamma-17’s physical form. Whatever nonsense cellular manifestation or endless energy the Predazoans seemed to employ, it apparently wasn’t limitless after all.

  Eve was toying with Gamma-17 now, biting off limbs and tentacles, it almost seemed like she was savoring the flavor. After another minute of brutality passed, Gamma-17 had lost so much biomass she couldn’t even hold herself up on the rafters anymore and fell back towards the field. Before anyone could interrupt, Eve stomped down on the weakened Predazoan, and a flash of oily black ooze gushed out.

  The chitin armor around Eve slowly resorbed into her flesh, and she returned to her regular goth-girl princess form. She stood up tall and victorious, grinding a bare foot into the shivering Gamma-17, now just a tiny alien squid form no larger than a child.

  “It’s been fun sister, but all good things must end.” Eve said almost soothingly, and she leaned down to the terrified Predazoan. Little tentacles slapped after Eve, trying to push her hand away, but it might as well have been confetti for all the good it did. Eve reached her hand into the center of Gamma-17 and pulled out a black and red flesh-orb like a mesh of brains and hearts the size of my fist. She took a single bite of it as though it was an apple, and Gamma-17 unleashed a terrible trilling cry, shook violently for a few moments, and then was still. Gamma-17’s remains slowly started to dissolve into black ooze, than seemed to solidify into nasty black ash, curling up into itself. Eve dropped the rest of Gamma-17’s biomass core with a look of distaste, and when the core hit the ground it seemed little more than brittle dead skin that cracked and flaked away to dust.

  Eve wiped off her hands and started skipping off towards me, back to her usual playful self.

  I had no idea how to react to what I’d just witnessed. The soldiers on the field seemed almost at a loss, but a few started radioing in the mission was clear and they started with the cleanup protocol. We’d only lost a dozen soldiers, very few wounded, so overall it was a very successful assault—all thanks to Eve.

  And I think that’s what everyone was thinking; during the assault, the marines and power armor soldiers had been rather ineffective against Gamma-17. She was too fast, too strong, and even with their destabilizing acid rounds, they hadn’t been able to inflict any damage on her. Instead, Gamma-17 had been able to eventually get through their defenses, break through the barriers and rip open power armor like it was cardboard. And yet before Eve’s power, Gamma-17 was nothing—not even a challenge, no threat or danger at all. There was honestly no reason for the soldiers to even be here in the first place, it could’ve all been handled by Eve, who I’m pretty sure was moving at some lightspeed levels beyond anything I could comprehend—stuff you’d read in a comic book.

  What had Eve said before, how none of the soldiers could do much against a Predazoan? As the field was being cleared out, I had a feeling a lot of the soldiers were thinking that, and it was kind of a scary realization to make; Eve could singlehandedly destroy everyone on The Radiance—hell, everyone on this entire planet. And there wasn’t anything that could stop her power, except for some weak little human she was supposedly in love with.