Shopping Spree - [Ysionris]

Jennifer Frost pulled into the parking lot, driving her shiny black luxury sedan around the back of the shopping mall, where she was out of sight. She stepped out of the car, shutting the door behind her; it locked automatically. She then walked around to the back of her vehicle and pushed a button on her key chain to open the trunk. It slid open smoothly and silently, revealing supplies and weapons galore. Jennifer reached in and grabbed a plasma gun. Opening its chamber, she slid in the bright green plasma cylinders and closed it up again. With a low hiss, the weapon began to charge the weaponized plasma, preparing it for use. She did the same thing with another plasma weapon and then attached them both to the straps on her thighs.

Next, Jennifer pulled a large black case out of the trunk, setting it on the roof of the car. Entering a four-digit code, she opened the lid of the case, revealing her most prized weapon: the laserbeam carbine. She pulled the relatively small and unimposing black weapon out of the case, quickly and skillfully putting it together; attaching the bipod and the sling, as well as inserting the battery cell pack. A flick of a switch and the weapon began to warm up. She slung the weapon over her back and then pulled one last thing out of the vehicle—the armorsuit helmet. Pulling the helmet over her long blonde hair and hiding her amber eyes, Jennifer became the faceless assassin; a ghost among the shadows.

She was dressed up now in full gear; her armorsuit, weapons, and visor. Her target for the day was inside the shopping mall, making this a complicated mission indeed. CORE had been tracking this individual ever since they first discovered her, although Frost didn't know when that was. Apparently the target had entered this dimension from another one, making this a high-priority target. CORE always had their eyes on the fabric of spacetime; in fact, the main reason they were founded was to protect the Earth from extraterrestrial, and extradimensional, threat. Anything that came through to this world from another world was automatically CORE's business, no questions asked. Sometimes all they did was watch, other times they went into deeper investigation. Sometimes, they had to eliminate the threat.

Of course, many times it just wasn't that easy. If it were simply a matter of eliminating the target and being done with it, CORE wouldn't have sent Jennifer. They would have sent one of their bigger guns and they would have had it over with by now. Instead, CORE wanted to investigate and they needed someone to collect the specimen. The ever-curious minds of the CORE laboratory scientists could never allow the trigger-happy fingers of the CORE paramilitary gunmen to destroy an unexamined specimen. There was too much to be learned about the other dimensions and the creatures hailing from them.

Jennifer walked up to the large loading bay door, leading to the loading dock where the shopping mall receives all its newly delivered goods. Standing in front of the door today were two unlikely figures; guards dressed up in black armor similar to Jennifer's own. They were each carrying an arc-beam laser rifle and they greeted Jennifer with a nod as she approached the ramp.

"You have the place secure?" Jennifer asked as she reached the top of the ramp.

"Yes ma'am. All exits are being watched and we have undercover agents inside, ready to assist," the guard on the left spoke up. "As I'm sure you are well aware, we were unable to evacuate the building before you arrived. Doing so would, of course, alert the target."

This meant that the shopping mall was still full of shoppers, of course. They couldn't risk locking the place down and evacuating the building, or else the target could get away. They needed to catch her buy surprise. So, Jennifer would have to be extremely careful not to let any of the shoppers get hurt, not even by the target.

"Okay then, let me in," Jennifer said.

~ & ~

Jennifer Frost leaned against the wall, mostly hidden among the shadows, watching the target from afar. Unfortunately, it was impossible to remain completely hidden in the middle of a crowded shopping mall. The few people that passed by close enough to notice her kept their distance, noting her armorsuit and the heavy weapons hanging from it. The glow-badge on her shoulder assured the shoppers that she was on official government business, rather than being a terrorist of any sort, but they were certainly concerned wondering what kind of business such a heavily-armed soldier could possibly have in a place like the shopping mall.

Raising her gloved hand and getting ready to give the signal to the undercover agents, Jennifer stepped away from the wall into the light and began to approach the target. The target, in this mission, appeared to be a young girl, of around sixteen years old. She was dressed in a typical schoolgirl uniform and had light white hair, making her easy to tail. As soon as the target disappeared into one of the stores, Jennifer quickly made the signal and started moving quickly towards the shop. Multiple CORE agents, dressed as mall security officers, suddenly appeared out of the shadows where they had been lurking. They would get the immediate area evacuated of innocent shoppers in case this extraction job got a bit heated up.

Jennifer armed one of her plasma rifles, attaching it to her left arm, and entered the store. She was followed by three guards, carrying shock batons (disguised as regular police batons, of course). "Everyone, please evacuate the store," Jennifer said, her voice amplified through her helmet's speakers. Suddenly everyone in the room was alert and active. The security guards began to direct them out of the shop, herding them towards the doors and out into the main walking area.

"Except you," Jennifer said, directing her weapon in the direction of the target. "You can come with me."

Of all the possible responses that Silly Diamant could've chosen as a means of replying to the statement - both verbal and otherwise - she decided that she would settle on the blank blinking of the eyes. Two red coronas, framed by the whites of her innocent, wide-open eyes, disappeared twice in rapid succession as her pretty eyelashes flashed over them in what was probably one of the most common expressions of confusion ever. For the most part, it seemed that the girl was still trying to register the fact that there was some sort of evacuation going on, and this rather menacingly-dressed - in black, of course - figure with a woman's voice was holding her up with a rather large futuristic-looking firearm...

...in a lingerie store, no less.

For those who were not quite in-the-know as to what was going on, it would've otherwise have been an amusing scene. A black-armored government operative equipped to the teeth in the latest in life-taking technologies, pointing an instrument of death at a completely puzzled - neither realization nor fear had yet to settle in - schoolgirl, dressed in a blouse, vest, bow, and skirt, hanging onto several bags from assorted stores where she had already made purchases, and still holding a pair of bra and panties in her hands. It was almost difficult to believe that this was anything near "government business".

*****

Although the plane of existence - if it is to be referred to as such - upon which the Aternians reside and call home is not exactly subject to the rules of space and time, it can be said that - in relation and by reference to the universe Silly is currently in - the start of these chain of events occurs precisely one hour, twenty-two minutes, and thirteen seconds ago, give or take a few hundred milliseconds.

When she reaches the Sphere of Transcendence, Silly already completes the near-instant process of altering her appearance. The world she is traveling to in question is populated by humans, so her favorite appearance is indeed favorable, even if white hair and red eyes aren't exactly the norm there. Legs of flesh form itself as Silly stops floating over absolutely nothing and begins skipping across absolutely nothing instead, moving towards the "center" of the sphere, where an Aternian is already waiting for her.

"Silly," the Aternian rings in a disembodied voice, but its tone is not at all unkindly, similar to a tone that an uncle would use to dote upon a favorite young niece. "You wouldn't happen to be paying me a visit, would you?"

"Noooooope," Silly replies cheerfully even as she finally stopss before the Aternian with whom she is addressing. "Actually about to don the mask of a mortal. Going shopping." Inwardly, she is amused by how the Aternian is addressing her; she actually outranks this particular Aternian, and, theoretically, all Aternians are of the same age: Infinite, ageless, and unknown.

The male Aternian could've furrowed his brows had he possessed eyebrows. His form flickers slightly as arcane mathematical symbols formed of light appear briefly around his form. "I do not see you registered for any repair effort..." he starts.

Silly smiles thinly; the very few mortals that know of their existence and understand their purpose are right when they consider the "heavens" a "celestial bureaucracy". By no means are Aternians reliant on the Sphere of Transcendence to transport themselves to another universe, world, or plane of existence - any other place could've done - but, unfortunately, the Aternians like to be kept in-the-know; traveling is logged by the Spherekeeper - a rather misleading title, in Silly's opinion, for the individual does not watch over a sphere that effectively has no real purpose - and his or her job is generally easier if everyone does their universe-traveling from a single place. Jumping from anywhere else is neither illegal nor disallowed, but it is frowned upon.

"This isn't official business," Silly allows relatively pleasantly, although she seems just a tad impatient with the assumption that all travel throughout the universes is exclusively a form of business and work. The Aternians are hard-coded - no one's sure by whom, although many believe that they once did it to themselves - to relate to all mortals and love them, for their work - the maintenance of the universes, life, and forces of balance - is done for these mortal. But that, in a way, is a love for their work, not love for the mortals who reside in the universes...so Silly likes to believe. Timelessness did strange things to the perception of time and how they affect a belief.

The spherekeeper hesitates for just a moment - or what is defined as a lapse in that plane of existence. Everyone knows that Silly is, for an Aternian, a bit eccentric. She isn't disliked or avoided; she is likable, and does whatever work assigned to her with efficiency and dedication. Yet, unlike most Aternians, she seems to have an unexplained fascination for lower planes of existences and the mortals that reside in them. One would think that, after timeless observation of them, one would have learned everything there is to know about all these different races and existences, and grown bored of further observation. But that itself is not a complaint towards Silly, and fascination certainly isn't disallowed. There is no law or taboo or even custom against her traveling through the universes, so the spherekeeper knows that his hesitation is merely a reflection of his curiosity. "I understand," he finally replies, and as soon as those words leaves the spherekeeper's mouth, Silly is already glowing, the space-that-is-not-quite-space flickering about her with pinpricks of what-seems-to-be-light. "Please be careful not to break anything important while you're out."

"I won't play too hard," Silly promises even as she winks and grins playfully at the spherekeeper. He masqueraded as a human before; he knows the gestures and the body language associated with them.

Already, Silly's form is beginning to disappear, yet the spherekeeper still manages to ask one more question. "I am curious," the spherekeeper says even as Silly's legs begin to disappear, "What is it you find so fascinating about the mortals?"

Silly manages a childish grin, a gesture that is the emotional opposite of the point she is trying to make. "For one thing," she remarks mischievously as even her torso begins to fade away from this plane of existence, "they have shopping malls. But, more importantly, they reside in a plane that has a past, present, and future...and are not static creatures. There is self-fulfillment there; work, in a sense, is a great sacrifice we willingly take, but we fail to see the sacrifice in living."

The pause between her words and his show a sense of confusion and hesitation on the spherekeeper's part, but, just as Silly completes her transfer to another world, he manages to say in a friendly manner, "I think I understand."

"No, I doubt you do," is what Silly wants to quietly murmur. But her words are already lost with the complete disappearance of her physical form.

*****

It was difficult to ascertain exactly what the schoolgirl was thinking - although "nothing" would not have been an unfair guess at all - even as she finally swiveled her body - which had been pointed at the store rack - in alignment with her head - which was pointed at the woman standing at the door. It was as if the situation was still a bit hazy to Silly, but she at least had the presence of mind - obviously barely, however - to direct a certain amount of respectful attention to the person who was addressing her. There was actually a moment of reaction as Silly finally seemed to make an expression of registration on her face - it could merely be the registration of Jennifer Frost's words, but at least that was a seeming improvement - and a flutter of hope crossed the hearts and minds for those who were observing and were on the side of CORE.

At least, until one of Silly's hands, the one that wasn't holding the hanger framing the lingerie she was examining, came up - along with her shopping bags - to chest level, pointed at the product in her other hand, and remarked, rather innocently, daftly, and blankly:

"...But I'm still shopping."

((OOC: I'm quite sorry about the middle section of this post, which is not a gross neglect of English grammar, but an effort on my part to utilize the present tense to reflect the fact that the Aternians - and the plane of existence they are in - is timeless, without a true sense of past, present, or future. This went against every fiber of my writing habits, and I had to take several tries to get it right (I don't think I actually did get it completely right). This, hopefully, shouldn't happen again anytime soon, so we can look forward to more coherent grammar from here on in. ^_^; ))

For a moment everything stood still. The shop was quickly evacuated until the only remaining individuals were Jennifer Frost and the interdimensional schoolgirl. The guards were somewhere nearby, watching and waiting in case they were needed again. For now it was just a showdown between two people, standing in a lingerie store. Certainly not the ideal location for a fight between a paramilitary soldier and a transcendent extradimensional, but it would do as well as anywhere else for all it mattered. As she had been trained to do, Jennifer quickly took in her surroundings, memorizing the layout of the room and working out every possible contingency.

Frost kept her gun arm out straight, her finger on the plasma rifle trigger button, ready to fire a bolt of green energy if she needed to. The sharp spikes on the end of the weapon were pointed directly at the target, making it clear that she meant business. The target, taken by surprise, simply stared at Jennifer for a while, as if trying to process the situation. In one hand, she was holding several bags full of recent acquisitions from other stores in the shopping center; with the other hand, she was holding up a hanger with some underclothing she had been interested in purchasing next.

Innocently, she blinked her blank wide eyes, their unnatural red irises expressing a state of utter confusion. It was enough to make a weaker agent wonder if they even had the right target. Enough to make them think maybe CORE was wrong in their decision to use force to detain this innocent young girl. Enough to make them put their guard down for a moment and lower their weapon.

But CORE picked Jennifer Frost for a reason. She was a strong agent, loyal to her employer, unquestioning of her assignments. It wasn't her job to decide what was right and what was wrong, only to follow orders.

~ & ~

"Eidolon, welcome, we've been waiting."

Jennifer stepped through the jump door, entering a side room of the CORE Special Unit Forces headquarters. Static electricity generated by the teleportation drive clung to Jennifer's clothing and hair, leaving a few sparks dancing around the brass buttons on her brown woolen cardigan which threatened to light her on fire if they were any hotter.

She turned to the man who had spoken, another SUF agent. He was dressed in full Citadel armor, only without his helmet, revealing his ice blue eyes and shoulder-length black curls. Jennifer noticed an automatic shotgun strapped to his back and a Five-Seven pistol holstered at his waist. "Call me Knight," the man said, turning down the hallway. "Follow me to the meeting room." Jennifer knew the way to the meeting rooms, of course—she had been here plenty of times before—but she followed anyway, as per regulations.

They walked in silence down the sterile white hallways of the CORE facility. There were no windows or other sources of natural lighting; the whole place was kept as lit as daylight with long fluorescent tube lighting which lined the ceiling. Jennifer wasn't sure, but she had always assumed the facility was underground, which would explain the lack of windows. Because the only way into the facility was through jump door or link portal, almost no one in the entire building knew the location of the facility at all. It could be on the Moon for all anyone knew. It was the best way to keep it hidden and completely top secret. No external entrances or exits.

The two special agents finally entered the assigned meeting room; there were several different meeting rooms here, and they entered into the third one. Several CORE officials were sitting around the meeting table in the middle of the room, while a couple others were standing beside the large display monitor on the far wall. The lights in the room were out to bring everyone's attention to the display screen. Jennifer and Knight quickly took their seats at the table, and the meeting leader greeted them. "It's about time you got here, Eidolon, we were just getting ready to start," he said. The meeting leader was just a generic looking official, dressed up in suit and tie with a shaved head and pair of eyeglasses on his face.

"Your mission is simple. Find and extract this individual," the man said, directing attention to the screen. The display monitor was showing live feed from a ludicrously low resolution security camera. Stretched out to fill the whole monitor, the objects in the camera feed were difficult to discern. Someone tapped away at a keyboard nearby, and the image began to change. The feed froze and the image cleared up a bit as it zoomed in on a particular individual. After the computer operator had done his best to clear the image up, one could just make out the clear shape of a woman. She had white hair, a white blouse, red bow, and a navy blue vest and skirt.

"On the table before you we have a much clearer image, taken by one of our satellites when the target was still outdoors." Indeed, the table screen suddenly lit up and an image came into focus. It was taken from above, and revealed what appeared to be a sixteen year old schoolgirl. "The target is currently inside a shopping center. We've been watching this individual for a while now; she has been known to drop in and out of this dimension apparently at will. She appeared not too long ago today, as recorded by our interpolative information and data tracking center." The IIDT center, also known as the Observation center, was how CORE kept an eye on the fabric of spacetime. Jennifer had no idea how it worked, but somehow they could use it to know when things entered and left this dimension. They had people working there twenty-four seven.

Interdimensional affairs were CORE's business. It was one of the primary purposes they were founded; that and extraterrestrial affairs. Of course, today they dabbled in a lot more than just protecting the Earth from alien threats, but it was still one of their highest funded functions and various governments around the world were trusting in CORE to keep these threats under control and out of the public eye.

"We have agents inside the building now, but we need a special unit to take control of the scene," the meeting leader said. "Eidolon, this is where you come in. You might recognize the shopping center; it's in your locale, so we've decided to hand this mission over to you. Knight will be there for backup, but we want this to go down as cleanly and quickly as possible." This was a euphemism, meaning that Knight wouldn't step in unless it was really necessary—after all, CORE didn't want to risk losing two agents when they could afford to lose just one. Knight nodded his head, silently giving his affirmation.

"The building is full of civilians. We won't be able to evacuate the building until you have engaged the target, so try to corner her instead of approaching her in the middle of a crowd. So-called 'collateral damage' is not acceptable—we're going to have a hard enough time explaining this to the local government as it is, especially with them blaming us for the recent 'ghost assassinations.'" The man gave a quick and almost unnoticeable glare in Jennifer's direction; she let her eyes innocently wander away.

"Oh right, and one more thing: please try to bring the target back alive."

~ & ~

"...but I'm still shopping."

The target directed her finger at the hanger she was holding, making it clear she had no intention of surrendering easily. Jennifer took very careful consideration of the target's behavior. This statement held a lot of meaning to it and revealed a lot about the girl, more than an untrained mind would notice. The fact that she would stand up and resist meant one of two things. One, she was stupid and didn't realize how much danger she was in. Or, two, she knew exactly what she was getting into and felt strong enough to take it on.

Jennifer could only hope for the former situation, but she always planned for the worst. Waiting a beat, Frost let the schoolgirl's innocent remark hang in the air for a moment. Then, with a flick of her wrist and a twitch of her finger, she vaporized the lingerie with a superheated plasma bolt.

"Not anymore."

---

ooc: oh don't worry about that, it wasn't too hard to read. Certainly an interesting style choice, however. I suppose a race which always lived in the present wouldn't be able to express ideas in the past or future tenses after all, right?

The superheated gas jettisoned itself from Jennifer's weapon and towards the hanger in Silly's hand. It was, by all means, a very well-placed shot, although the auxiliary heat wave, Silly calculated in an instant, would cause slight burns across her hand. These things were always hard to track; it was fascinating that this world possessed the ability to accurately plot the trajectory of plasma, but spatial containment techniques could use some work. Well, not much of a matter; Silly moved her hand upward a barely noticeable two centimeters, and the plasma shot burnt through the lingerie, the hanger, ate through the opposite wall, then expended its energy as it faded away, leaving a glowing hole where it had embedded itself in the wall. There had been, as expected, a stray flare of plasma - an auxiliary heat wave formed by superheated gas affected by the local environment - but it passed harmlessly below Silly's hand through the air where said hand had been before.

It was needless to say that the lingerie was no longer there.

Alright, so the woman meant business. Silly guessed she wouldn't have it any other way, although her shopping being interrupted was throwing a bit of a wrench into her mood.

There was, at this point, four real reactions she could choose. The first was to still appear silly and confused and dimwitted...but it was not entirely plausible; the most idiotic of girls would've understood that this was a rather serious situation by now, and any act otherwise would be horribly fake. The second was to fake panic and distress and start running around and beg for mercy; her Aternian arrogance, however, found that distasteful, and Silly never made claims that she had conquered Aternian egocentricity. The third option was to come along with the woman - it wasn't as if Silly couldn't pop out of danger whenever she wanted - which would actually shed some light as to what was going on without having to return to the Aternian non-universe; irritation at having her routine interrupted, however, was not making Silly the most cooperative-minded of entities right now.

So she chose the fourth option.

"Looks like I've been found out," Silly giggled even as she gracefully spun like a ballet dancer, managing to retreat one pace with that one single motion as she mischievously provided a catlike grin, and, in that same spin, her shopping bags detached from her arms, slipping from her grasp, and gently settled themselves onto the carpeted floor of the store. Completing one single spin, she stopped as she faced Jennifer once more, and, with a flourish, curtsied even as she pinched her skirt, a practice not at all unlike an actress bowing prematurely for a performance, and as she straightened, she struck a playful pose, presenting her side to Jennifer, and what looked like a fragment of a shattered mirror instantly appeared from seemingly nowhere between the index and middle fingers of Silly's left hand, which came up to shoulder level. That done, she then mischievously winked to Jennifer, as if indicating she was game. "Well, then, you meanie. I suppose you want to dance with me! I'm no good outside waltz, so you'll have to entertain my whims."

That said, Silly stood ready there, preparing for the CORE operative to make her first move. It was time for a proper workout anyways.

She wants to fight, it appears. No surprise there, I suppose, Jennifer thought, seeing the girl jump into action. The target appeared more than ready for a fight; it was like a game to her. She giggled and grinned, adroitly pirouetting away from Jennifer and dropping her shopping bags on the ground to unencumber her hands. The schoolgirl then gave an exaggerated curtsey, striking Jennifer as cavalier in excess, and straightened out to a relaxed and playful position, nonchalantly pulling a weapon out of nowhere. The target was ready for the challenge, prepared for the fight, and not about to give up easy.

All of this told Jennifer quite a lot about the target. Part of her job was being able to read people and learn about them from their actions and body language; this girl was anything but subtle, making her an easy book to read. Her audacious performance, playful demeanor, and mischievous facial expressions made it clear that the target thought quite highly of herself. She was arrogant and haughty, probably self-centered, and apparently quite self-confident in her ability to defend herself from a heavily armed, well-armored, and seriously determined soldier

Frost had to agree with her on one thing, though. Never go down without a fight. Resistance always made things more difficult for everyone involved, but it was always expected and always prepared for. The target had let go of her innocent schoolgirl façade and was now wielding a short blade of some sort, standing her ground and holding a calm fighting stance. The weapon appeared to be, in fact, a shard of glass. Jennifer wasn't sure where the weapon had come from; it seemed like it had just spontaneously materialized, which was not at all a miraculous feat for an extradimensional being to perform.

Jennifer just looked at the fragment for a moment, curious. What was the girl expecting to do with such a small weapon, anyway? Certainly she wasn't conceited enough to think that Jennifer would put down her guns and accept a hand-to-hand challenge with her? Frost didn't have time for nonsense like that. She was a long distance fighter; she brought her guns for a reason and she was planning to utilize them. Frost wasn't about to give the girl the satisfaction of stepping closer for a proper fight. Time was of the essence. The quicker she could get the job over with the sooner she could go home and enjoy her appropriately ample paycheck.

A well-placed shot could take off the target's head, but killing the target at this point would be heavily frowned upon. CORE would dock her pay by no small amount if she destroyed the target they wanted alive before there had even been much of a threat. Of course, she wasn't even sure how much the target could take; in fact, she knew virtually nothing about the target. Could any damage Jennifer was able to deal out even harm the extradimensional? Well, she would be finding out soon enough.

Immobilization was the first step to detainment and targets who dared to resist did not deserve the two feet they stood on. With a barely discernable movement of her left arm, Jennifer adjusted the aim of her plasma weapon, moving it from the schoolgirl's head down to her shoes. She kept her finger over the trigger button, not depressing it quite yet. The girl remained defiant, obviously waiting and expecting the agent to take the first move.

"You said you wanted to dance, girl? Well then, dance!" Eidolon pushed the button down and held it there.

The aim at Silly's legs made it clear to the Aternian that Jennifer wasn't here to kill the goddess; the CORE operative's professionalism and stoic behavior only reinforced that analysis. So at least there was reason in this woman. Silly personally wondered just how far she would be able to push this woman towards unreasonableness, the point where ethics and morality were thrown out the window, the point where she'd be able to kill a sixteen-year-old child in cold blood. But, then again, Silly wasn't really a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, and considering these mortals were singling her out for a combat operation, chances were good that they knew that already.

Oh, well, so much for that experiment. She was kind of eager to find out what kind of mortal Jennifer was.

Silly didn't have a great deal of time to think about it, however; bolts of plasma were now no longer concentrated on any of the local merchandise, but at the ground at Silly's feet.

Plasma weapons were not extraordinarily fast compared to other trajectory-based weapons, but the range at which Jennifer was firing was not entirely likely to matter. After all, by the time merely human reflexes registered the discharge of a plasma weapon, it would've already been too late to generate a force and await a counteracting force to propel the mass of a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl out of the way, especially since one shot followed another in a fully automatic fashion.

But Silly was far from "merely human".

When the plasma bolts struck the ground, they released what was effectively a mixture of brightly-glowing gas - the dispelling remnant of concentrated plasma now without spatial containment - and dust - the ground effectively being vaporized into gas, and, at full auto, the plasma fire began to generate a glowing cloud of energy and dust before the feet of Silly, who made almost cartoon-like yelps as she hopped and jumped from foot to foot, as if trying to rapidly avoid the plasma...but, after a few seconds of that activity, it seemed as if she had grown tired of it as she merely gave a bored look downwards, her body slumping and relaxing as she no longer bothered trying to jump from one foot to another, allowing the plasma to blast into the cloud that was already obscuring her legs and rising to her head. Silly cast what seemed like a thinly amused glance at Jennifer...before Silly suddenly began to fog up before Jennifer's eyes, then slowly disappeared, like a distant mirage that slowly winked out as one approached it.

Silly wasn't a long-range fighter - hell, she wasn't really a fighter as much as she was an illusionist to begin with - but that certainly didn't stop her from bringing things just a bit closer.

Just as soon as Silly disappeared, a mirror shard suddenly slowly but lightly tapped itself twice on top of Jennifer's helmet. For those who were watching, Silly was standing right behind Jennifer, standing on her toes and straining to reach the top of Jennifer's armored form; it was, indeed, one of the woes of being vertically-challenged. But Silly still had a cheerful, if not excitedly amused, expression on her face even as she successfully attracted Jennifer's attention, and, dropping back onto her heels, asked sweetly, "Excuse me, but may I ask what you're shooting at?"

((OOC: If you're too tired to do guesswork, Silly had already deployed Diamond Dust when the danger became quite evident, so Jennifer was largely shooting at one of Silly's illusions. ^_^;

No worries, I won't allow Silly's uber-speed and dodging abilities let her leave this battle unscathed. XD ))

With the trigger button held down, the plasma weapon began to pour out a pair of bright green beams. The beams were composed of plasma; ionized, or super-energized, gas. The gas was provided to the beam from the plasma cell cylinders inside the weapon, which were filled with a complex mixture of chemicals in gaseous form. The gases were highly unstable and under so much pressure they were almost actually liquids rather than gases. The gas was energized with electricity from a battery cell pack; the electricity ionized the gas, turning it into a plasma, which was then directed down the barrel of the weapon with an electromagnetic field generated by the weapon. The electromagnetic field kept the plasma focused into a beam and prevented it from simply dispelling in the air.

Jennifer told the target to dance, and dance she did. Yelping as she leapt left and right to avoid the beams, the schoolgirl proved to have surprisingly quick reflexes. None of the beams seemed to be able to manage to hit her. Jennifer couldn't risk adjusting her aim too much, lest a stray beam hit too high and cause terminal injury to the important target. She had to keep her aim low and safe.

After only a couple seconds of fire, the plasma was beginning to generate a cloud of smoke and dust. Hitting the ground, the plasma bolts lost most of their stored energy and could not be contained by the polarized electromagnetic field. The green plasma deionized into a cloud of harmless, if not still scalding hot, green gas. Mixing with the dust kicked up from the floor and the smoke caused by the vaporization of the carpet, the cloud began to obscure the scene.

Standing in the middle of the cloud, the target suddenly seemed to lose interest in dodging the beams. She went slack and stopped responding to the constant barrage. Something wasn't right; if the beams weren't hitting her now, something was wrong. Jennifer let go of the trigger button, ceasing fire and letting the plasma weapon begin to cool down. The girl was still standing amidst the cloud of debris, which was hiding her lower body and making it impossible to see if she was damaged at all. The target looked up and gave a glance in Jennifer's direction, looking altogether quite amused and not at all hurt.

Then she vanished, her form fading out of existence like a persistent afterimage. Almost as soon as the target disappeared, a peripheral motion-detection warning flashed up on Jennifer's visor with a single loud notice beep, informing her of close movement directly behind her. Something tapped twice on her helmet and a voice piped up. "Excuse me, but may I ask what you're shooting at?" An illusion, apparently, Jennifer replied, mentally, annoyed that the target had been able to get so close without her knowing.

Interestingly, the target hadn't attacked; although even if she had, Jennifer did not think the piece of glass she was holding could have pierced her armor. But still, this meant something. It was possible that the girl just didn't want to do anyone any harm. Maybe the glass shard was just for show and the target was a pacifist. Or maybe instead she had a large ego and liked to play around before getting serious. Again there was a large contrast between the ideal situation and the worst case scenario.

Quickly, so as not to give the target the time to think or react, Jennifer spun around clockwise, pivoting on her right heel and leading with her left arm. Using the broad, flat side of the plasma weapon and all of her momentum and arm strength, Frost threw the schoolgirl out through the door of the lingerie store. "You're pretty fast," Jennifer said, exiting the store herself.

They were now in the main walkway of the shopping center. The floor was covered in clean white tiles and the high ceiling was lined with glass skylights, letting the natural daylight keep the mall lit. Different shops were set up on either side of the walkway and small stands were set up down the middle. The area had been abandoned, but a few mall security guards could be seen watching from a safe distance.

Out here, there was more room to fight. To keep the advantage of range, Jennifer needed wide open spaces rather than close-quarters. It would also be easier to call in backup if she needed it. They were always waiting, always watching, always ready. She just wasn't sure how much help they could be with their shock batons and beam rifles.

Eidolon kept her arm out towards the target, skirting around her and backing away to a safer distance. Whatever this being was, it was certainly more than human. Back inside the shop it had either used some sort of instant teleportation or had conjured up a mirage of itself while it snuck around behind Frost. Keeping her weapon aimed at the target, whatever it was, Jennifer spoke up again.

"Just what are you, anyway?"

Giggling in what was otherwise amusement at Jennifer's efforts - she was working so hard~ - Silly took just a moment to acknowledge that the armored woman, at the very least, very professional, very much in control, and very stable. A great deal of mortals unfamiliar with that degree of speed - which was not quite achievable by living beings in this world - or instant mass-specific teleportation - which this world had, but the technology was unrefined - panicked the moment they realized that Dizzy possessed the capability to move far faster than their merely mortal reflexes could react. If it was any consolation, Jennifer merely acknowledged this development and reacted as instinct would dictate: Turn around, slam.

Which Jennifer did, spinning on her heel and delivering a blow with the flat side of her plasma weapon. Silly merely smiled, taking the barest of steps backwards, matching the velocity of her backwards movement to the speed of Jennifer's arm swing. That step and hop was fast enough to take the harsh impact and hurt out of the CORE operative's attack...but it was also slow enough to allow Jennifer's arm to actually make contact with Silly's modest chest, allowing the swing to apply just enough force to propel the Aternian out of the store and complete her jump. It played out largely as Silly expected it would, and, a second later, Silly had landed gracefully at the other end of the bright mall hallway with a flourish, her schoolgirl uniform's skirt swirling elegantly around her before settling back into place. The near-invisible molecules forming her actual weapon of choice, Diamond Dust, quickly followed her from out of the lingerie store.

Ten seconds into the battle and no one was getting hurt yet. That was, as far as Silly was concerned, relatively good news. The power she had been allotted when she entered this universe was sufficient, meaning she and Jennifer were evenly matched, and, barring surprises, could probably keep each other in check; if the status quo was maintained, she wouldn't need to make a metaphysical requisition for more power, and everyone would be able to step away from this unharmed. Jennifer seemed reasonable anyways; Silly shouldn't have to expect a whole lot of craziness from her. That was something she appreciated; there were logical, predictable rules that these kind of people follow, but it also made them that much more dangerous.

In all fairness, she had seen her share of dangerous individuals on both sides of the spectrum, orderly and chaotic, and the verdict wasn't quite out on exactly which one would make the claim to infamy in terms of destructiveness. That argument - which Silly knew she shouldn't actually be entertaining at the moment - aside, however, it was clear that, orderly or chaotic, Jennifer was consummate, trained, and deadly, and for all of Silly's subdued Aternian arrogance, she knew couldn't take Jennifer lightly, not with this body.

Silly giggled and spun playfully again in response to a comment Jennifer threw about the Aternian's speed; she knew very well it probably wasn't meant that way, but pretended to take it as a compliment anyways. With that spin, she also quickly analyzed her surroundings and determined that the security guards, half-hiding in the shadows and watching the fight, probably weren't your average rent-a-cops, not when most of them were most likely handling mall evacuation, and not when they were standing there with military discipline. No panic, no heroics, no stupidity. The group here had pretty much sent a crack squad to handle Silly, and were willing to blow cover and evacuate a mall for that. They might have to be handled with eventually, but she'll deal with them when that time came.

Silly personally wished she had done just a bit more research before jumping into this universe, learning exactly what powers were in charge here, but she wasn't entirely sure it would've done her any good; there was no guarantee that the knowledge would still be with her by the time she actually materialized in this world.

Her eyes flickered back to the entrance of the lingerie store as her attention was caught by Eidolon walking out, following Silly's path out. She circled Silly, keeping a safe distance, while her weapon remained leveled at Silly...or what might be Silly. The Aternian had a bad habit of having far too much fun with playing with her illusions, and trying to make her opponents figure out which was a decoy and which was the real her. As Jennifer demanded to know what Silly was, however, the girl merely pouted and her hands went to her hips in what was definitely an indignant-looking gesture. "What do you think?" Silly replied in a cute, girlish, pouting voice that sounded young and immature for even her sixteen-year-old body. "Schoolgirl. It's not nice to point weapons at people, you know. They might get hurt."

"Right, of course, a schoolgirl. My mistake, pardon me."

Whatever this schoolgirl really was, she apparently wasn't going to say. Not that it would have mattered anyway. There probably weren't any records on whatever she really was and it wouldn't reveal any useful information to Jennifer. All that Jennifer really knew about the target was that she was apparently pretty fast and could pull shards of glass out of nowhere. She had proven so far to be quite competent; avoiding plasma fire, sneaking around behind Frost, and landing nicely on her feet when thrown out of the store. It would take more serious tactics to detain the extradimensional, if detainment was even possible.

It was also important to note that, like Jennifer, the target didn't seem like she wanted anyone to get hurt, although probably for an entirely different reason. Jennifer had a job to do; if she had been ordered to eliminate the target she wouldn't have a problem with just shooting her, despite her guise. In fact, this whole situation could have been completely avoided. Jennifer would have just sniped the target with a laserbeam from across the street. No matter how fast you were, you couldn't dodge a laserbeam, or so Frost had always believed.

For whatever reason the target was taking a pacifist approach to the fight, despite her proud attitude and capable ability. In fact, the schoolgirl hadn't made a single attack in this fight yet. She was just dodging and avoiding Jennifer's attacks, playing the defensive and staying out of the offensive. Perhaps the target was a peaceful type, perhaps her confidence was only a bluff, or perhaps she just believed she could get away unharmed without even having to fight back.

Whatever the reason, Jennifer saw it as a good thing. If the target were to attack anyone, Jennifer would be going down first, as the plan dictated. CORE didn't know how much power the target had or how strong she might be, which is why they only wanted one agent to engage the target at a time—in case the target proved competent and eliminated the agent, the others could retreat unharmed. It was a cold plan, but logical and sensible; no reason to lose more lives then necessary. It wasn't as if CORE wouldn't be obtaining plenty of useful information even if the mission failed its primary objective. The way CORE set up their missions even complete failure was planned for and set up to fulfill some objectives.

Jennifer Frost kept her weapon trained on the target, even as she took a few seconds to scan the area. This supposed schoolgirl had already fooled her once as to her actual location, but Eidolon wouldn't let that happen again. She was trained to adapt to the situation and learn from both her mistakes and her opponent's successes. Jennifer used her visor to look through the mall security camera feeds, which CORE had hacked into even before she had arrived at the scene, to make sure the area was clear. She couldn't keep those up all the time of course, or she couldn't actually see through her visor, but she trusted the other agents would be keeping an eye on things and would alert her if need be. If all else failed, Jennifer trusted in her helmet's close proximity detection and warning system. It would sense any quick, sudden, and close movements outside of Frost's range of vision and give her a visual and audible warning. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough.

Finally Jennifer closed all the things she had open on her visor, clearing it up again so she could look directly at the target. "Might get hurt? That would be a shame, wouldn't it. Well, I guess I could put the weapon away then—that is, if you surrendered. I might have mentioned it earlier, but I'm here to take you into custody. I'm not allowed to leave without you, even if that means dragging your plasma-burned corpse out. I work with the government, you see." That was mostly true. CORE wasn't actually a government organization, but it did work with the government—for a reasonable price, of course.

"You probably noticed this already, but you're surrounded. Mall security has rules against extradimensional schoolgirls and they have the right to use their laser weapons against you in lethal force; that is, if something were to happen to me," Jennifer paused for a moment to make clear what she was saying. "As long as I'm here to tell them not to, we can all live to see another day without holes burned right through us. So why don't you just put down your weapon and come with us?"

Frost lowered the angle she was pointing her own weapon, hoping to appear reasonable and nonhostile. Of course, if she needed to, she could point it right back up again and continue shooting, but she hoped that wouldn't be necessary. "Oh, also, do you have a name?" she added on in a pleasant conversational voice, as an afterthought.

Ah-ha. So it was as Silly expected; these people were here for her, and not necessarily with hostile intent. She surmised that the local world must have some sort of device that could detect temporal spatial-mass displacement, probably via quantum cross-referencing technology, if Silly got the technology level of this world figured out. It meant that she had to be that much more careful when coming back to this universe next time. If she ever came back to this universe again; the temptation to do so was far less overwhelming, now that the possibility of having her routine interrupted by heavily armored soldiers was now rather high.

For the most part, however, Silly's initial assessment about Jennifer's combat was accurate; just as Silly wasn't being entirely serious, Jennifer wasn't being entirely lethal. Effectively meaning that both of them still had a lot of tricks up their sleeves. Well, if Jennifer's armor had a sleeve...but that was a different matter entirely. Just as Jennifer and her CORE comrades were testing Silly, the Aternian decided that she would do the exact same. After all, Jennifer was most certainly turning into a more interesting person by the second.

When addressed, Silly's smile was pleasant and sweet enough - she could've passed as a sweet little sister of any of Jennifer's friends with her behavior - but when she actually replied to the fact that Jennifer was here to take her back alive, the voice that responded sounded like the self-important laugh of an arrogant thirteen-year-old. "Well, I suppose things could've gone along swimmingly had you not totally ruined my shopping trip," she grinned, her arms not crossed across her chest, and she bounced once on the heels of her feet. "So I'm not exactly in the mood to be cooperative and surrender, government or not. Oh, and thanks for the heads up, by the way; I figured the state had a hand behind this, as you ladies and gentlemen..." she gestured to everyone around her left in the shopping mall, "...don't necessarily look like mall rent-a-guards."

But at least Jennifer noted that there would only be an escalation of violence if "something happened" to her. Well, then it was a matter of making sure that nothing too serious happened to her, wouldn't it? Silly wondered how much of it was a professional statement and how much of it was a threat, and exactly how good she was act on her word. Would she have her comrades start firing anyways even when Jennifer wasn't necessarily in mortal danger? And what kind of untoward situation did she consider to be the final straw? The questions fluttering through Silly's mind was not actually out of concern for herself or the strategic situation, but a personal, genuine concern for each and every individual human, each of whom Silly liked to figure out on a person-to-person basis.

Well, then, it was a matter of trial-and-error. And Silly had all the time in the world. This world, at least, which probably wouldn't be ending for the next seventy-eight trillion years...thirty-five billion, if one considered the "world" to be the local star system, not the universe, but that was immaterial.

Then Jennifer made note about their equipped weaponry, which pleased Silly to no end. "Lasers, hm?" she grinned, the giggled childishly as she cheerfully hoped from foot-to-foot twice like an overgrown child playing hopscotch. "I was actually worried it would've been something else, but..." her grin became just slightly more dangerously confident, "...now I wouldn't have it any other way." And, as soon as she had finished saying that, the air around Silly flickered just a bit...before Jennifer realized it didn't actually flicker. Rather, images of Silly were now floating out from where she stood. One Silly, a perfect replica, drifted over five meters to the left, another slid ten meters to the right, yet another floated upwards and seated herself on the metal-and-glass guardrail of the second floor patio. By the time Silly was finished, there was just less than a dozen Sillys all around, all looking cheerfully at Jennifer. The scene was rather unnerving despite the smiles going around.

"The name's Silly, by the way," all of the Sillys spoke in unison, then tilted their heads slightly to the side quizzically with a giggle, "It'd only be polite if you tell me your name in return..." But Silly - all of the Sillys - did not actually seem to wait for Jennifer to give her name before all of the white-haired schoolgirls again produced mirror shards in their hands with a flourish, complete with various flashy poses like a teenage girl posing for a fashion magazine. Either Silly was just being polite and wasn't entirely interested in Jennifer's name...or she was confident that Jennifer was good enough to be able to find an opening to present her name even in battle.

Adopting a more battle ready position, the Sillys seemed prepare to do battle. "Now, let's all fight like good ladies do an-" the Sillys started, but they didn't get far. As the Silly on the ground suddenly tilted her body to the side, her eyes suddenly caught sight of a small stall nearby, and, immediately, with a delighted squeal, she quickly exclaimed, "Oh, oh, oh! Ice cream!" And, before the eyes of a squad of CORE operatives and under the aim of their weapons, Silly - one of them, at least, maybe the original - quickly ran over to the ice cream stall, her attention no longer focused on Jennifer, as she hastily helped herself in scooping herself a cookies-'n-cream ice cream cone. Strangely enough, as soon as the ice cream had been successfully conjured in a startling swift matter of seconds, all of the Sillys were also holding an identical cookies-'n-cream ice cream cone as well.

It would not be all that unusual for any of the CORE agents, in their debriefing report, to later write that the extradimensional entity seemed somehow "afflicted with ADHD".

Wonderful. The schoolgirl had either duplicated herself or created several false images of herself. There were now nearly a dozen copies of the target spread out in the area, making it impossible to know which one was the actual target. They all continued to grin and giggle like children without a care in the world, as if this somehow wasn't a dangerous fight at all. Then to show that she still meant business, they all pulled out another shard of glass. Silly. What an appropriate name. This whole thing is just silly, Jennifer thought to herself.

"Now, let's all fight like good ladies do an—" the Silly clones began to say. They were interrupted by one of the schoolgirls suddenly squealing and running over to an ice cream stall. She quickly stole herself a cone of cookies and cream ice cream. As soon as she took the ice cream, suddenly all the other images had ice cream cones as well. Presumably the ice cream cones which did not just come from the stall cannot be real ice cream cones but only illusions. Assuming this, it would also make sense that the girls holding the illusory cones are also probably illusory—the Silly holding the real ice cream cone must be the real Silly...right? Frost thought to herself. She kept her weapon aimed at that particular copy, based on that logic.

Of course, on the other hand, that whole thing seemed rather obvious. Silly wouldn't go through all the trouble of establishing several illusions only to immediately give away which one was the real her, would she? It could be a tactic deliberately set up to fool Jennifer into thinking she had the right one when the real Silly was actually somewhere else. Perhaps all of the ice cream cones were illusions and no ice cream had really been served after all. It was certainly something that needed consideration. In any case, she would need some way to sort out the real from the fake.

~ & ~

Knight leaned over the glass wall of the second story balcony, watching the fight on the floor below from a distance. He had his fully automatic shotgun strapped to his back, his Five-Seven pistol in his right hand, and a belt of hand grenades around his waist. He didn't like to mess around with those fancy light shooting weapons that the other agents used. Plasma bolts and laser beams just didn't have the same excitement to them that bullets and explosions did. When Knight fired a weapon he wanted to feel its power kicking back in his hands.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, could beat a good explosion. Knight loved explosives. Bombs, grenades, mines, mortars, missiles, anything that blew up. That's why he always had his grenade belt with him in battle. He could even shoot grenades out of his shotgun. In fact, he had just recently finished a project to build a custom grenade launcher for his pistol. It was attached below the barrel and could fire 40 mm grenades. It threw the weight of the weapon way off, but it was totally worth it.

"Hey, Eidolon," Knight spoke into the radio in his helmet. "This doesn't look much like a one-on-one anymore, does it?"

~ & ~

Hearing Knight's voice coming through her helmet's speakers, she turned off her voice amplifier so she could talk on her radio with Silly hearing her. While she was talking to Knight she kept her weapon trained on the Silly standing next to the ice cream stall. Frost reached up with her other hand to push a small button on the side of her helmet, switching the visor to infrared mode. If she was right and the copies were illusions, they shouldn't give off any body heat. Thermal imaging should be able to tell her which one was actually a person and which ones weren't really there. Disappointed, Jennifer noticed that all the schoolgirls lit up quite clearly, all of them giving off plenty of infrared. Perhaps it was all part of the illusion. She switched back to regular vision and then turned on the amplifier again to speak up and answer the girl's earlier question.

"You can just call me Eidolon," Jennifer said, telling the girl her codename. Secret agents never gave their real names away or they would just be regular agents. Reaching down, Frost equipped her second plasma weapon, now wielding one on each arm, each one pointed at a different Silly. "Looks like I'm going to need more firepower if I want to take you all down."

With that, as if on cue, the ice cream stand suddenly exploded.

The run for the ice cream stand was not exactly what Silly would ever call a clever tactic. True, part of it was keeping Jennifer on the edge - the CORE operative seemed like one of those types who thought the situation over and over, and might possibly overthink and burn herself out because of it - but that was hardly the core motivation - pun not intended - for Silly going over to get herself an ice cream cone. The real reason, of course, was that she could afford to be silly...and because she loved ice cream and had really been partially distracted by it. Not nearly as distracted as she was allowing herself to seem, but it was still enough to warrant a shift of priorities as she cheerfully licked away at the ice cream cone, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that she was in the middle of a battlefield.

Jennifer's difficulty in trying to detect Silly's thermal signature and differentiate them from her true self was not exactly on part of the perfection Diamond Dust. A synthetic material that metaphysically manipulated energy - although mostly light - Diamond Dust created illusions based on light, which, by itself, also displaced energy and, therefore, heat. But reflecting the proper amount of light to create the illusions was first priority, so the reproduction of a thermal reading was hardly perfect. Alone, Jennifer - if she was concentrating hard enough - would be able to tell decoy from original. The problem, unfortunately, was that Diamond Dust was hardly an point-specific weapon. It spread itself across an area with a fifty-meter radius around Silly, tiny molecules of heavenly fog, all of which reflected light and manipulated energy...and effectively created a thermal fog around the entire area. It was like trying to look for a particularly strong lightbulb in an array of lightbulbs - all of them on and blazing with light - found on a light tower of a sports stadium: Possible, but difficult.

Silly, for the most part, had been keeping an eye on Jennifer, ready to dodge any attack she would deploy...until the ice cream stall suddenly exploded beside her. The only thing that sounded louder than the explosion was, ironically, the almost comically surprised combination of a yelp and a shriek from Silly even as she momentarily disappeared behind the explosion. Somewhere in Silly's mind, her ire began to rise at her naivety. Of course Jennifer would call in for support fire even after the woman guaranteed this would be a one-on-one. It would be unprofessional otherwise; the job was more important.

It didn't make her any happier as the dust settled away and Silly re-emerged from the cloud. She bore no signs of flowing blood - Silly had accelerated just enough to match the speed of the shockwave and the splinters from the exploding stall, which helped reduce the initial impact - but her right sleeve had been torn to tatters up to just above the elbow, and streaks of dust - or possibly even harsh scratches - marked where the blast had torn across her entire body. It was clear that she was not unharmed, and that she most certainly wasn't invincible. Most importantly, however, the ice cream cone was gone...and she most certainly did not seem happy about that.

Interestingly, the decoys had merely looked surprised even as all of them turned their attentions from the CORE agents to where the explosion had been, and, almost immediately, all of the decoys had their right sleeve torn apart, and dust caught onto their uniforms and skin. They did, however, seem unharmed...but it made it all the more difficult for the CORE agents to guess which was the real Silly. Again.

Stomping once with a pout, Silly seemed like a young girl throwing a tantrum...a dangerous tantrum. "Alright, then," she scowled, and although it was hard to take her seriously when she did so in a girlish voice, an edge in said voice made it clear things were about to get dangerous. "I'll play it your way. Let's just see how long all of you can last."

A side effect of Diamond Dust was the ability to invade the human body through the respiratory system. Most living creatures needed to breathe, and had organs to do so; humans had the nose and mouths to allow oxygen in. Diamond Dust could pass through these entry points in their molecule-like state through the air, enter the respiratory organs, infiltrate their way into other internal organs...and damage them with razor cuts from within.

To keep Silly and the other CORE agents guessing, Silly and all her decoys suddenly began moving, jumping and running from place to place with blinding fast speed that they weren't even a blur, leaving afterimages in their wake. Everywhere they could see was a disappearing and reappearing white-haired schoolgirl, seemingly preparing for a sudden attack...seeing just how long it'll take for them to realize their internal organs were being scraped from the inside.

The exploding ice cream stall had exactly the effect Jennifer was hoping for. She had told Knight to use his pistol grenade launcher to fire a grenade into the stall from a distance. The ice cream stand lit up in a fireball, instantly vaporizing the frozen treats and throwing burning shrapnel into the air. The schoolgirl closest to the stand suddenly shrieked as she disappeared behind the plume of fire and smoke.

When the dust cleared Silly, as Jennifer had been fully expecting, emerged mostly unharmed. Her right sleeve had been torn up in the explosion, however, and her ice cream had melted away. Of course, almost immediately, the other copies of the schoolgirl changed their appearance to match. Okay, this tells us some very important things. First of all, Silly's speed could be outmatched, apparently. Secondly, she wasn't completely invincible. Most importantly, perhaps, Jennifer was almost certain that this was the real Silly.

Angered, Silly stomped her foot on the ground. "Alright then, I'll play it your way. Let's just see how long all of you can last," she said, scowling. Suddenly, all the Silly clones started jumping and moving around the room at high speeds, leaving not even a blur behind them. They appeared and disappeared all over the place, making it impossible to tell which one had been the real one. Jennifer kept her weapons aimed at them, waiting for the impending attack. Moving all over the place, they could attack at any moment. All they had to do was suddenly appear right next to her, attack, and disappear again.

All the agents in the room were now just as alert as Jennifer was, expecting something to happen. Worried the target might choose to attack them instead, they all had their rifles pointed at the wild schoolgirls, even though they were not allowed to attack unless attacked first or directed by Eidolon or Knight. As Jennifer watched the girls, waiting for whatever was coming, she heard one of the guards cough. She didn't make much of it at first, until another guard also began coughing. Jennifer glanced over at the guards, noticing one of them had fallen to his knee and dropped his weapon. What the fu—

A loud warning beep and bright flash interrupted her thoughts, and an alert appeared on her visor. AIRBORNE CONTAMINANTS DETECTED. The helmet automatically switched on the respirator, passing all the air she drew from outside through a nanoparticulate filter. Sh*t, I wasn't expecting this. How the hell is she doing that?! When you were used to planning for every possible contingency, unexpected contingencies were understandably frustrating.

Frost looked around to see how her men were faring. The guards did not have helmets that covered their full face, like Eidolon and Knight did, but only the top of their head and their eyes. All the guards were now on their hands and knees, coughing up blood and trying to crawl away from the scene. An extraction team had already been alerted, probably by Knight (the extraction team had been waiting outside for a situation like this) and armored men with gas masks were dragging the incapacitated guards out of the building. Most likely, CORE wouldn't be sending replacements, at least not right away.

The target was now officially classified as dangerous. She had injured several of Frost's men. CORE wouldn't mind now if Frost was, for whatever reason, forced to seriously injure the target. The girl had already shown that she was fast and capable of dodging nearly anything, and now she had proven herself to be quite capable of dealing some serious harm. It was time to stop holding back. If the target ended up dying, well, CORE would have to just get over it. Aiming only close to the target just wasn't cutting it.

"Looks like she wants to get serious, Knight," Jennifer said into her radio. "Drop a couple of live hand grenades and let's get this thing moving." Almost right away several (like four or five) hand grenades landed on the ground among the extradimensional schoolgirls. Silly had now only two to three seconds to notice and evade the grenades before the entire area was covered in a fireball.

Strictly speaking, Diamond Dust was not a contaminant as much as it was a cluster of super-fine, razor sharp substances ground to a molecular level. They were not a chemical or biological substance, and they, by no means, "contaminated" anything, but it was only natural that Jennifer's suit's miniature supercomputer identified them as such; Diamond Dust, after all, was an unidentified molecular substance, and "AIRBORNE CONTAMINANTS DETECTED" was just that much cooler, catchier, and easier to read than something akin to "UNIDENTIFIED AIRBORNE MOLECULAR SUBSTANCE DETECTED".

Silly watched in satisfaction even as the agents in the vicinity suddenly began to drop to the ground after inhaling the dangerous substance, watched as the Diamond Dust entered their bodies, watched as the molecules began to cut them up from the inside like a swarm of tiny insects with razor-sharp maws. A separate rescue team quickly rushed into the mall, more well-prepared than the armed agents that were beginning to cough blood from their mouth. Their condition was dangerous, but not extremely fatal and definitely treatable, given some surgery and enough bed rest; Silly certainly didn't like to kill unless she had to, and she left the medical team unfettered even as they pulled the agents out of the area. Unsurprisingly, the only two operatives unaffected were the ones that were fully armored, Eidolon - as she had introduced herself - and that annoying man who had shot a grenade at her.

This, admittedly, was a bit of trouble. The two obviously had some sort of filter in their armor that expunged Diamond Dust from the air they breathed, or they had some backup oxygen pack. Silly could draw the battle out some, try to see which one it was - if it was the latter, the oxygen would have to run out eventually - but she was in no mood to drag this fight longer more than she had to. The problem, however, was that these two opponents seemed to be long-ranged opponents rather than melee ones. It would be that much easier if Eidolon and Knight started moving around in fast-paced attacks - their movements would allow Diamond Dust to wear down their armor as if the two operatives were trying to move through a cloud of razor blades - but the two seemed quite content standing where they were and shooting at...well, everything. Well, her, specifically, but it wasn't as if she didn't like to think of her enemies in a slightly condescending manner. She was like an older sister that way, considering herself a chaperon to these cute little children that could be quite spoiled sometime.

Alright, that aside, it still meant Silly did not have a great deal of offensive options open to her. Not that she was actually geared towards offense anyways, but the lack of choice really grated on her nerves. Her mirror shards were, admittedly, not all that effective against their armor; they were razor sharp, but lacked the punch to even dent hardened battle plating. It might help if Silly aimed for the softer, more flexible synthetic fibers under the armor...but that was only a maybe, and it was unlikely that Jennifer would provide the opening required for her to launch that kind of precision strike at her current power level. Silly would need to wait for a breach in armor before she tried anything like that. At the moment, all she could really do is do a lot of dodging, a lot of evading. If she wanted to feel particularly mean, she could hide inside a vent and let the decoys mess with the CORE operatives. But, right now, whether it was offensive or counteroffensive, her effectiveness was greatly diminished...which left her on the boring defense.

Then Knight did something that was - to Silly - extraordinarily stupid. He dropped grenades.

The Aternian only smiled. Why would someone be dropping a weapon with a timed fused - which meant more time - that needed to be arm-thrown - meaning slower speeds and thus even longer times - at an opponent that had shown the capability to defy the very laws of physics where velocity and movement were concerned?

Silly didn't evade the grenades. She rushed right to them with blazing speed.

The decoys continued to jump, soar, and rush left and right and everyone, so it was hard to see the real Silly actually move right past the grenades at breakneck speed. The round explosives looked like apples floating in the weightlessness of outer space to her - moving far too slowly. Silly caught one with a casual swipe of her hand, then, seeing that the other three grenades landed without exploding, determined that the explosives timed, not impact-detonated. She then shot right past all four of the remaining grenades...and they disappeared from the floor.

For a moment, all of the Silly's suddenly stopped where they were, sitting on balcony railings, leaning against pillars, standing right in the middle of the mall corridors, all smiling cheerfully at Jennifer as if she was the most innocent schoolgirl in the world.

Then Jennifer realized that all five grenades suddenly reappeared...forming a ring with a fifteen meter radius around her.

Tactical grenades generally had a five meter lethality radius - meaning anyone caught within five meters was likely going to be tomato juice in a split second - and a fifteen meter casualty radius - which did a great deal of damage to anyone within, but probably wouldn't kill them. Grenades generally didn't get more explosive than that for tactical reasons; they just wouldn't be as effective if the blast radius was any smaller, but any larger, and they were just as likely to fry the thrower as well and cause too much unnecessary damage. The actual effective range extended beyond fifteen meters due to flying shrapnel, but Silly was fairly confident that small, flying bits of metal were not going to be a problem for Jennifer's CORE armor. If Jennifer didn't do anything about it, though, five grenades were going to catch the operative right in the middle of the ring - which was about to turn into a blasting zone - with non-lethal but possibly painful results.

But that was well and good. Silly didn't want to kill the woman; Jennifer was actually kind of interesting and cute and lovable in her own way. But Silly just wanted to teach Eidolon that good manners were important, that it was better to back off...and never interrupt a schoolgirl while she was shopping.

((OOC: I hope you didn't mind me writing the blast radius of the grenades, which I got from Wikipedia's M67 grenade article; I just needed to describe the radius of the ring, which thus far is at fifteen meters. If you want the blast radius to be larger or smaller, feel free to correct me, and I'll make corresponding edits. ^_^; ))

Just as soon as the grenades hit the ground, they disappeared. As a concerned Jennifer tried to figure out what had happened to the hand grenades, the Silly clones all stopped moving where they were and smiled an innocent smile in her direction. A second after the grenades had vanished they all reappeared, arranged in a fifty foot radius circle around Jennifer. She was right within the blast radius of each of the grenades—one or two wouldn't have worried her too much, but five was somewhat more problematic.

Working on instinct, a plan quickly formulated in her head. She would fire a grappling cable up at a conveniently positioned crossbeam above her and quickly reel herself to safety. Once she was out of reach of the grenades she could pull herself up onto the crossbeam and attack Silly from there. As she put her arms up to do that, however, she remembered that both of her plasma weapons were equipped—and therefore, both of her grappling cables were inaccessible.

"Christ!" Frost shouted, crouching low and throwing her arms in front of her face as the grenades detonated. The blast knocked her over onto her back but her armor absorbed most of the shock and she was able to quickly get back onto her feet without any serious injuries. Inspecting her armor, she noticed several scratches and dings in the metal plates, and a few torn stitches and ripped fibers in the gaps between the plates. None of the shrapnel, however, had penetrated the armor; if it could handle bullets, it could handle five fragmentation grenades.

"You all right down there, Eidolon?" Knight's voice said over the radio.

"Better than ever. No more frags though, got it?" she replied.

"Heh, got it. Oh, by the way, I figured something out. The real target glows a little brighter than the fakes, if you know what I mean. It's pretty obvious to see when you know to look for it."

"Really? Thanks for the tip," Frost said, before switching back to her voice amplifier and turning on her thermal imaging visor. Although she couldn't normally see anything through the smoke, infrared showed up nice and clear. Finding the brightest (thus also warmest) target, Jennifer aimed both of her weapons at it.

As the smoke began to clear, Jennifer was standing right where she had been before the explosion, looking no worse for the wear. Not waiting for Silly to make another move, she began firing both of her plasma weapons at her. If she was fast enough to move those grenades, she should be fast enough to not get killed, but at this point Jennifer didn't care if the target did die.

"Pesky brat."

ooc: that's fine. I hadn't worked out the blast radius myself, but fifteen meters (fifty feet) sounds good.

also any foreign unidentified airborne molecular substance is a contaminant in my book. :>

"Persistent woman," Silly muttered, a curious retaliation against Jennifer's quip that the Aternian didn't actually hear. The explosions had actually damaged Jennifer's armor far less than she had initially predicted...which meant the playing field was still tipped slightly in Jennifer's flavor. Moments after five balls of smoke suddenly appeared around Jennifer, the CORE agent re-emerged from the dust, her plates having held...but the fabric of the suit being ripped in several places. Vulnerable points. Silly grinned; not everything was completely irritating after all.

A plasma bolt superheated the space she had been occupying just a split-second before it was replaced by a decoy, and that, too, fizzled out and reappeared elsewhere when the heat scattered the coherent light forming the illusion. Reappearing several meters away, Silly felt amused at what was probably a lucky shot...until, seconds later, another bolt came dangerously close, and she moved again with centimeters to spare.

Silly frowned. Although it didn't seem as if Jennifer was tracking Silly with one hundred percent accuracy - a few of the bolts were aimed at the decoys as well - it did seem as if she was managing to figure out - with a rather high chance of success - which was the real her and which were decoys. It wasn't a stretch, by any means; Silly herself could think of many ways one could tell the real Aternian from the illusions. Still, she frowned; the fact that Jennifer was beginning to be able to figure out how to find the real her was no less irritating just because of Silly's knowledge of Diamond Dust's imperfection.

For several moments, Silly considered making alterations to Diamond Dust, improving their ability to become a more effective medium for energy, possibly even give them enhanced mass-displacing capabilities. She wondered how likely that would be tolerated amongst her fellow Aternians, however, who may very well consider that too powerful a move. As much as she didn't like to play by the Aternian ideology, she recognized that she also should remain in good graces for now. Easier for her to pull things covertly when others aren't suspecting her of wrongdoing half the time.

She personally pondered why she was even entertaining this battle. It caused no harm - not for Silly, anyways - for her to just simply disappear. She was absolutely confident that Jennifer wouldn't be able to catch up if Silly decided to get up and disappear. Granted, Silly was immortal and logically was a bit more mature than this, but she liked to allow her more immature, childlike persona take over from time-to-time, make decisions for her. Do goddesses have schizophrenia or disassociative identity disorder? The idea was fun to entertain.

The moments of idle contemplation cost her. Although she was absorbed in thought, she wasn't quite keeping track of where she was running...and accidentally ran right into a plasma bolt. She didn't actually realize that this had happened until the world before her suddenly turned bright, and she shrieked in surprise as the bolt made contact with her vest and blouse. The majority of the superheated gas made contact with the magics having been cast on the clothing, dissipating the vast majority of said hurt as the two energy forces canceled each other out. By no means did that leave Silly unharmed, however; when the plasma finally ceased to flicker and burned out, her vest was gone, and the right side of her blouse had been burned away, exposing the pale skin over Silly's lower ribcage and stomach on that side.

There were no immediately visible wounds, but even for an immortal in a mortal body, Silly knew that damage to her didn't actually need to be visible...and admitted that the burn had hurt like hell.

Scowling, Silly was clearly mad now. Granted, she wasn't actually sure whether she was mad at Jennifer for burning her or mad at herself for running right into the plasma bolt. But, for now, she had a pretty good idea as to why she hadn't run away yet. It was Aternian arrogance at its worst.

Seeing two dozen angry, identical schoolgirls probably wasn't all that scary if one didn't forget that said schoolgirl was also an extradimensional goddess.

Instantly, three different shards of mirrors appeared between every finger of Silly's left hand save the thumb...and every decoy mirrored that same move in the same instant. With the flick of their wrists, the projectiles immediately flew into the air...on non-linear trajectories, almost akin to how a boomerang would fly in curves. What was close to seventy-two different projectiles were now buzzing through the air like a swarm of insects...and now they were converging on Jennifer as the ring of razor-sharp shards closed the rings around Jennifer like a tornado. Granted, the vast majority wouldn't do a thing to Jennifer...but it effectively hid the presence of the three real projectiles that were already making their way towards the exposed parts of Jennifer's armor.

As Jennifer Frost engaged the target, she began to ponder who and what exactly Silly was. As a being from another dimension, nothing could be expected about Silly. Whatever rules and regularities that creatures from this Universe possessed need not necessarily apply to anyone else; in fact, one would expect that separate dimensions would have completely different usualities. It was because of this that Silly's appearance as an average schoolgirl was abnormal—surely the very idea of humans evolving independently somewhere other than Earth was completely absurd, let alone such a specific cultural fashion as the schoolgirl uniform.

It stood to reason, therefore, that Silly had intentionally taken on this guise, based on previously learned knowledge of Earth and human society. Either Silly had been to Earth before, perhaps multiple times, or wherever she was from she was capable of observing Earth and perhaps other locations and other dimensions as well. Probably both, Jennifer figured. She knew enough specific information about Earth, she was fluent in English, and she had been, apparently, here for some casual shopping.

That was what confused Jennifer the most. It made sense that an extradimensional being might be curious about other places, enough to mix in with their societies and observe them, but why would she be shopping for clothing? Perhaps if she had been planning on staying a while, but it doesn't seem like underwear would be the first thing on your shopping list if you had any intentions on staying in a foreign dimension for an extended period of time. It would seem one would be more concerned with shelter and sustenance before leisure.

It also occurred to Jennifer that it didn't make much sense for Silly to entertain this fight. First of all, Jennifer assumed that if she could just appear in this dimension at will, she could probably disappear back to her home whenever she wanted to; but on the other hand, Jennifer wasn't entirely sure how interdimensional travel worked. In any case, the schoolgirl was certainly more than fast enough to retreat and continue her shopping in the next city over if she wanted to. Frost didn't suppose CORE really had much of a way of tracking that; besides, knowing the target could move so fast would make CORE think twice about simply threatening her with guns to detain her. They would send someone more...capable; certainly the ludicrously financed research firm could come up with something.

Perhaps the extradimensional had a reason for continuing the fight. Maybe she thought it was fun, or maybe she thought it was an important learning experience. Maybe her sense of honor wouldn't let her run away, or maybe it was more arrogance than honor. Maybe she couldn't retreat because she just couldn't stand not losing a battle. At the same time, Silly was clearly fighting with some discretion. Jennifer suspected that she hadn't even begun to show how powerful she really was. It could be that she honestly didn't want to hurt anyone, or it could be that she simply wasn't allowed to, by whatever powers dominated her dimension. Interfering with interdimensional affairs might be frowned upon by the higher-ups.

Contact! Jennifer thought, pulling herself out of her thoughtful pondering.

Although most of Jennifer's shots had missed the moving target, one of the plasma bolts hit Silly right on. She must have slipped up, made a mistake, got tired, something to that extent. Interestingly enough, however, the plasma beam did not have the expected effect. Generally, plasma would burn a hole through whatever it hit and maybe cause a small explosion or something. This shot, however, simply burned away Silly's schoolgirl vest and part of her white blouse, leaving her flesh completely untouched, though slightly exposed.

The shot didn't look to have done any real damage, but the couple dozen or so schoolgirls didn't seem to like it so much anyway, based on their frighteningly enraged scowling. Immediately they all pulled out three shards of glass each; apparently that was her main weapon, considering it was the only one she had used so far besides the dangerous aerosol that took out the guards. They threw the seventy or so shards of glass into the air and they begun to spin around Jennifer like a storm of glass.

Although it was safe to assume that the shards thrown by the harmless Silly images were only harmless images themselves, at least three of them were real and identifying them before they hit her would be difficult and unlikely to happen. Frost wasn't sure how dangerous the shards really were (after all, her armor was built to be tough, and blades were one thing that almost never did any real harm) she didn't want to take any chances with a weapon she was completely unfamiliar with. The best thing to do would be to get out of the spinning maelstrom and figure things out from a safe location.

Quickly, Eidolon unequipped her plasma weapons, freeing her hands. Pointing her right arm up towards the second story balcony, she pushed a button on her right wrist with her left hand. A burst of compressed air sent a small metal hook flying out of her armor. The small sharp hook embedded itself in the ceiling and expanded to hold tight, pulling a steel cable taut behind it. Another button press and Jennifer was sailing along after the hook and out of the glass prison, reeling in the cable as she went.

Safe on the second story, she released the grappling hook and equipped a plasma gun on her left arm, ready to shoot at any shards that followed after her. With her other hand, she pushed a button on her laserbeam carbine, powering it up and getting it ready; Silly was certainly fast, but nothing was faster than light.

Hopefully.

The interim of rapid combat generated by the stalemate Silly had forced gave her a moment to evaluate her situation, although she was not absorbed in thought as much as she had been earlier; she was not about to make the same mistake that got her midsection burned once more. She didn't exactly feel like moving much, either; her torso actually hurt if she moved too much, and the pain in her arm was beginning to catch up with her. Urge to remove nerves from mortal body rising, Silly thought - had she actually said it out loud, it probably would've come out as a disgruntled grumble.

There was also another problem. She didn't like admitting it, but, immortal Aternian or not, there was a limit as to how much a sixteen-year-old body could take. That was one of the problems with allocating all of her power to speed - she near-completely neglected physical strength. Plus she had allowed arrogance to get the better of her; while she would normally stay safely out of range and keep her decoys entertaining her opponent, she had personally joined the fray, as if she had something to prove. With the grenade explosion earlier, and then the plasma bolt, Silly felt the physical well-being of her mortal shell rather...compromised.

Movement within the maelstrom of mirror shards - both real and illusions - attracted Silly's attention once more. Jennifer had finally detached her plasma weapons - a good thing, as Silly had no real answer for that offensive option outside dodging - and used something akin to an ascension cable to link herself to the ceiling, rappelling herself up in blind speed.

Silly smiled.

One of the properties of Diamond Dust was its molecular-level sharpness. One of the things that had frustrated Silly was Jennifer's utter lack of mobility; she made small, careful movements that did not actually disturb the air and space around her, depriving Silly of counterattack options. Now that Jennifer sailed up into the air, however, her armor floated through the Diamond Dust-filled air...and, at that speed, it was almost akin as if her armor was shooting through a sea of razor sharp knives. Silly used this weapon to seal her opponent's ability to move, and while she knew that Jennifer's armor was probably quite tough, the Aternian did wonder just how much punishment it could take.

And, the moment Silly had been waiting for came.

She had suspected that the other weapon Jennifer had been carrying yet had not used was essentially a light-based laser weapon, but in the heat of battle, she didn't actually take too much time examining it. When the CORE operative finally drew the weapon, though, the Aternian quickly cross-referenced her knowledge of laser-based technology in this world and time period...and confirmed her suspicions. An excellent turn of events...although, admittedly, Silly had very mixed feelings about this. Still, she overrode her ethics mentality. Now was not the time for this.

Although Diamond Dust effectively floated in a fog, Silly rearranged it into elaborate, near-invisible formations. She quickly assigned section codes to each formation, memorizing their relative positions to each other akin how a mathematician would memorize a particularly massive four-dimensional geometric problem. As a quick experiment, she rotated each of the formation's sections by a one hundred degree spherical angle...and decided that there was roughly a 63.6% chance - give or take some value of ten to the negative third power - of successful interception from Jennifer's current position - allowing an error margin of three meters, just in case - to a three meter radius around Silly, placing emphasis at a distance of 299,792 kilometers per second without immediate energy displacement against any given mass. Recalculation at a three-hundred and sixty spherical angle from all directions lowered the odds to 39.5%. Decent odds. Not extremely good odds, but decent odds. She drew three mirror shards in each hand, barely increasing both respective odds to to 63.9% and 39.6%.

Silly permitted herself a sigh. Manipulating eighty-eight stochastic variables in a three-dimensional space-time with a four-dimensional consideration was not child's play.

Even as the maelstrom of mirror shards began to track Jennifer and move her way - but ultimately dying in momentum as they wasted its momentum on course adjustment, Silly waited for the next move to come as she kept deliberately still for a moment, breathing heavily to catch a breath.

The storm of glass continued to move and began to change its course in Jennifer's direction. As it did, however, it appeared to lose much of its momentum, slowing it down at a rate which would probably eventually cause it to stop altogether without even reaching Jennifer. In the end, it didn't look like it was going to cause any damage even if it did manage to reach her new position here on the second floor, especially through her specialized armor.

Focusing instead on her target, Jennifer put away her plasma weapon and held up her sniper carbine. As she did, she noticed a few odd scratches on the polymer casing of the weapon. Looking closer, she noticed that there were several small, thin, hardly noticeable etches on both the weapon and her armor, which she had not seen before. Perhaps the illusory glass shards were more physical than they seemed? Until Jennifer had more information though, she couldn't really make any real guesses as to what had caused the scoring—in any case, the damage was all so far only superficial.

With her visor still displaying in infrared mode, Jennifer was quickly able to identify the real Silly, who was actually standing completely still for once. Maybe she was finally getting tired from all the ceaseless darting around. She seemed to be breathing quite heavily, catching her breath, indicating that her human body—even if able to move faster than any real human was capable of—still had its limits when it came to endurance.

Jennifer was also able to use her thermal imaging visor to locate the otherwise completely hidden Knight, who was on the other side of the room. Knight was also on the second story of the mall, but he was behind the target instead of in front, like Jennifer was. He kept an eye on things from the shadows, keeping his low-tech guns always by his side. Jennifer never understood why he always refused to use the top-of-the-line directed energy weapons that CORE provided, instead always relying on less reliable projectile weapons. It was just his preference, which seemed to work out for him just fine.

Whatever the reason for Silly's momentary rest, it was perfect for taking a shot at her with the laser carbine. The extremely thin beam required especially specific precision aiming, which was significantly easier to do when the target was not moving. Jennifer held the weapon up near her face, holding it steady with the shoulder sling. Normally, when she was using the weapon from a good vantage point, Jennifer would put her visor up to better see through the scope. However, in this case, whatever foreign substance had been in the air earlier was probably still there, and she couldn't risk exposing herself to it.

Jennifer took her time, but not too much time, to center the crosshairs of the telescopic sight on Silly's exposed side. Whatever strange properties her clothes had which enabled them to absorb most of the plasma shot wouldn't be able to stop the laserbeam if she aimed there, so she probably had a chance of actually getting through some flesh with this shot. If Jennifer was lucky, the shot would incapacitate the target long enough to detain her. Frost had some particularly strong sedatives with her; if only she could just stun the schoolgirl long enough to inject them.

With a regular sniper rifle, simply putting the reticle on the target wasn't good enough. You had to calculate the distance due to the effects of gravity, wind, and air resistance. Gravity pulled bullets towards the ground no matter how fast they were going, wind pushed bullets in whatever direction it was moving, and air resistance caused enough friction to slow a bullet down to harmless speeds. With lasers, however, none of those factors were important. Wind and air resistance both did absolutely nothing and the effects of gravity were negligible; it would take a particularly enormous amount of mass to cause light to bend off course.

Also, with a standard bullet, you had to calculate for the speed of a moving target. If the person you were aiming at was moving in any direction you had to aim ahead of the target so that the person was still there by the time the bullet got there. Lasers, however, moved as fast as light. While that wasn't exactly instantaneous, it was as instantaneous as anything could ever get. Nothing could move faster than light; even if you could see the beam before it reached you, there was no way to move fast enough to get out of the way.

So, with all the knowledge that Jennifer had concerning laser weapons, she was quite surprised when she pulled the trigger and the laserbeam didn't do what she had expected it to do. If it wasn't for the fact that she still had her infrared visor active, she wouldn't have even been able to see the laser to know what had happened—she would have wondered if perhaps her weapon malfunctioned and the beam didn't fire at all—but even with the visor all she knew was that the laser did not go straight. Which was odd because, to the best of her knowledge, lasers always went straight.

"There's something in the air," she heard Knight say.

To generate the illusions required for Silly's combat style, light had to be properly reflected with extreme three-dimensional precision, often with four-dimensional consideration, using an eighty-eight stochastic variable formula that this generation of humanity had yet to discover. It was, by all means, a very precise usage of metaphysics...but it allowed Silly to calculate and integrate Diamond Dust to near-molecular precision. Which was specifically what she needed as she watched Jennifer point the laser carbine at her.

Silly had no real defensive answer for Jennifer's plasma weapons, but the laser was something else completely. Never mind the fact that the power output for the laser carbine was likely to have a wattage much higher than three hundred watts, which was already beyond the strength of a modern industrial laser; the weapon was a focused beam of light, and Diamond Dust was effectively a deified response to special substances. The calculations, the formations, the precision...all of it was done to accomplish one thing: To catch Jennifer's laser by using Diamond Dust and its reflective properties by driving it in a harmless, controlled, and endless loop...before using that same laser against her.

This was likely only to work once. If Jennifer still had fight left in her, she probably wasn't going to use that laser carbine again.

The problem, unfortunately, was the fact that there were many variables to consider. If Silly knew exactly where Jennifer was going to aim, this problem would be easily averted if she could form Diamond Dust in a pattern that effectively covered an area with an error radius of less than three centimeters. But Silly had no idea whether Jennifer was going to fire a warning shot, aim for non-lethal wounds, or shoot at Silly's head or chest. Furthermore, the Aternian had to factor in the CORE operative's status as a mortal - they made mistakes, and Jennifer might as well be tired as well. Accuracy was a concern. There were so many angles and vectors that Jennifer could shoot at - which was effectively an error radius of practically nine hundred and twenty-one centimeters, an optimistic estimate at best - and Silly couldn't exactly create a catch-all formation that could compensate for all those variables. She managed to create a three-dimensional pattern in the air that could ricochet the light between the clusters of Diamond Dust clumps for about two hundred milliseconds - enough time for her to properly react and metaphyiscally make final course corrections to contain the beam in an endless loop of energy - based on calculations that she figured stood the highest chance of intercepting any random shot. If Jennifer shot in a way Silly didn't want her to, though, then the beam could easily ricochet beyond Silly's control...beyond anyone's control.

Then Jennifer pulled the trigger.

The entire incident lasted precisely three hundred and thirty-two milliseconds. The beam, thankfully, managed to catch one of the formations, and began its loop around Silly even as Diamond Dust began to bounce the light to and fro between the clusters of the heavenly substance, allowing it to travel in a harmless, ricocheting pattern around Silly at roughly 299,792,458 meters per second. The total distance of its actual trajectory was 99,531,096 meters during that time, which effectively translated to 16,588,516 predetermined loops around Silly. The air superheated around Diamond Dust even as she made split-second adjustments to finalize the containment of the laser, ensuring that it would spin in the air indefinitely like a repeating decimal that would never see an end, instead of bouncing around in a cage that would only guarantee control for two hundred milliseconds.

Silly allowed herself a split-second of satisfaction at this feat, a means to strike back against Jennifer...until the metaphysics controlling Diamond Dust suddenly reported an error.

The laser was much more powerful than Silly had initially anticipated, well into the kilowatt range. While this did not actually affect Diamond Dust per se, it superheated and affected the air around it...which would not have been much of a problem had the loop of light not incurred a fourth-dimensional anomaly as well. That particular patch of space was no longer subject to the space-warping properties of local gravitational forces. Translated into metaphysics, it effectively meant that the ring - which was much too small in hindsight - rotating at the speed of light in an infinite, overlapping loop was generating something akin to an empty void in third-dimensional time-space...which caused the clusters of Diamond Dust to temporarily lose alignment for a handful of milliseconds as they drifted closer to this void.

Silly reached out to her control of metaphysics in an attempt to adjust Diamond Dust once more, bring the laser beam back under her control...but it was too late. The beam was now fully beyond her control, and Diamond Dust did not travel at the speed of light to re-compensate.

The impulse to utter a considerably vulgar term in the language of this world had just crossed Silly's mind the shopping mall exploded.

In hindsight, Jennifer, Silly, and Knight had been extremely lucky. In its chaotic ricochet within Diamond Dust, the laser had gone through multiple lenses that changed it from a thin beam into what was essentially a cone of light not unlike the effect of a lightbulb or a spotlight, thus dispersing the damage across a wider area, but essentially inflicting less damage on a per square centimeter basis as the beam became unfocused. Silly had been in the middle of it all, akin to being in the eye of the storm, and - while not at all untouched by this disaster - escaped the fate of having her physical matter being completely vaporized, while Jennifer and Knight had the benefit of some of the strongest armor technological levels in this world could offer. What was otherwise metal-melting power expanded with a significantly increased amount of force into an explosion that dispersed the laser in all directions, lessening its impact on any specific surface. What was initially a superfocused beam of light spread itself across a wider area...which was probably what saved all of them from instant mortal death.

Of course, considering the fact that the total accumulated energy could've effectively melted a tank, this probably did not count for much in terms of consolation.

The laser expanded with a force of around thirty megajoules - roughly the same kind of power as five kilograms of C4 explosives, more than enough to utterly demolish a tank or two. It expanded at a greater distance as expected as well - the "explosion" traveled as light, not shockwaves - and not even Knight was entirely safe from it. The light found contact with the physical mass of the shopping mall, and they canceled each other out by becoming rapidly expanding gas and dust...the physical manifestation of an explosion. The mall all around was engulfed as the blast tore at marble, metal, and glass, raining down on the area as the initial blast ended within an instant. Three different sections of the mall balcony lost their supports and crumbled onto the first floor. The destruction was just as devastating as it was instant.

The dust slowly began to settle, but aside from the last bits of small tumbling balls of debris, rocks rolling away from large blocks of ruins, it was silent.

From the haze emerged Silly, and it was clear that she was worse for the wear. While part of the exhaustion had passed - not actually moving had helped a bit - wounds were now clearly visible on her body. More of her uniform had been torn away: The hem of her skirt was in tatters, going just above her knee, the damage to the blouse almost exposed all of her torso, her left shoulder was bare, her tie was half-gone, her vest was completely gone, and both sleeves of the shirt had been ripped to shreds. More important than that, however, Silly was clearly bleeding from cuts here and there, blood that was very human. She wasn't losing blood profusely, but, if anything else, it was as good an indicator of heavy damage - at least, from a girl who didn't seem to sport any visible wounds from a grenade explosion and a plasma bolt - as one was getting from Silly. Her wincing expression - which slowly came under control - was another sign that she did not emerge unscathed by this "accident".

There is room for improvement in this geometric formula, Silly entertained herself with the thought - trying to relieve herself of her mood and pessimism - even as she looked for Jennifer, trying to figure out how well she fared.