Lee was playing an online match of Kallen Fantasy VI, as for if Cocolia would find her or not. She decided not to worry about it, and simply kept her new Alloy Dominators with her at all times.
She didn't have a set of holsters, but she did have a backpack for when she went out. In the end, she decided to store one unloaded in the inner pocket of the backpack. She had the other one loaded with its safety on sitting on the desk next to her computer, just in case of an attack.
She noticed something strange. Several players had suddenly become still and stopped talking, including several teammates who were active just moments ago. She waited a few seconds to see if it was just a temporary issue.
Then the lights flickered, and she felt a little bit of shaking.
Quickly moving to the window, she looked out upon the street to see several cars crashed into various buildings and into each other. Including one that had crashed directly into the lobby of the hotel she was staying at.
Several people walking around had turned pale, complete with purple lines, the signature mark of Honkai Energy erosion.
However most were not moving at all, simply lying dead on the ground with the same symptoms.
Huh, she had expected to feel like something was happening when the eruption happened. Looks like her Abundance Constitution was working overtime to ensure that she didn't even feel the ambient Honkai energy in the air.
A few seconds later her phone pinged. Picking it up, it was a message from Kiana, several more followed in quick succession.
Kiana: Are you okay?
Kiana: Where are you, we need to meet up asap
Kiana: Please be okay!
Lee: Image (Alloy Dominator)
Kiana: Nice to see you are okay!
Kiana: Nice gun!
Kiana: Guess my dad was right about you being dangerous
Kiana: I need help!
Kiana: I need to make sure Mei is still alive!
Kiana: She should be at the school right now
Kiana: Where are you
Lee: Hotel room
Lee: Next to your apartment building
Kiana: Wow you really were close
Kiana: I knew it
Kiana: My Lee sensor was going off.
Kiana: Are you capable of making it to the school?
Lee: Will make my way there
Lee: Better hurry asap
Putting down her phone, she reached into her backpack and pulled out her second Alloy Dominator. Putting in a Honkai energy storage cell while making sure to keep her path energy away from it.
Now dual wielding pistols, she quickly moved around the room, shoving items into her small backpack.
Water bottles from the fridge, a few snack bars, her phone charger, and her other clothing.
For the baseball bats she hesitated before taking both and putting them handle side up in the bag sticking out the top, she didn't really need them now that she had the Alloy Dominators, but they seemed like a less lethal option if necessary.
Rushing out the hall and pressing the elevator button, before realising that was a bad idea, she quickly continued to run down the hall and slammed into the door of the emergency stairs.
After running down about 2 flights, the lights flickered and the main power went out, throwing the stairwell into darkness before emergency backups kicked in and relit the staircase in red.
Good thing she hadn't taken the elevator.
Running down the last set of stairs, she took the side door which directly led outside into the alleyway.
Opening the door she was hit with a wave of sound, car alarms, fire alarms, and other various sirens all going off at the same time. It was incredibly loud.
Her phone also sounded an alert at maximum volume, followed by matching alerts coming from various points along the street.
Temporarily setting down one of her pistols on the ground, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and muted the alert. It was a generic disaster warning alert, with absolutely no detail at all about what the disaster was. Noticing that her phone now indicated it had no cell service at all.
Putting her phone back into her pocket, and picking back up her pistol.
Making her way out of the alley, as soon as she crossed into the street she saw several of the Honkai zombies turn to face her. Upon seeing her, scythes and claws materialised in the hands of the most affected, while most just stared at her for a second before deciding that a straight charge with no weapon was an optimal play.
Raising her pistols, she discharged a few shots into the approaching zombies. It was her first time firing the weapon. It shot out purple beam type attacks, which caused the clothing of the zombies to catch fire while piercing right through the zombies.
The zombies for which the shots hadn't instantly downed them seemed unaffected by the fact that they were now on fire, and continued to charge directly at her.
Raaaahhh!
Panicking a little bit, she fired several times at the approaching zombies before downing all of them. Several shots flew wide.
Huh, that was a little panic inducing, it's hard to aim with one hand.
Acting on that thought, the set one of the pistols back down on the ground, before toggling the safety of the other one, pausing for a moment before deciding to remove the power cell so the gun didn't accidentally discharge into her back.
Pulling out the power cell, she was not careful due to stress and accidentally deleted all the energy stored inside the cell.
"…"
Throwing the now empty power cell aside, she put the now empty gun back into her backpack, before picking up the other remaining gun and holding it with a 2 handed grip.
Lee started to run down the street in the direction of Chiba Academy. Occasionally shooting zombies that were present on the street.
I wonder if I can harness Abundance path energy to "heal" Honkai beasts, removing all the Honkai energy from a zombie or Honkai beast should instantly kill it right? Isn't that the principle behind the SELENE system?
Slowing down a little bit and shifting the pistol to her left hand, she focused on concentrating her path energy into the palm of her right hand.
Thinking for a moment, she decided it was best to just hold her hand straight out, palm towards the enemy, a random zombie whose leg had been shot off. She pulled the energy back into her forearm before pushing it rapidly through and out her palm. A glowing bullet of pure path energy shot out of her hand, rather like Sunday's basic attack, almost missing the zombie but still managing to hit its extended arm.
Upon contact with the path energy, the zombie glowed briefly just like Siegfried had, before all the purple disappeared and the zombie collapsed into pale dust.
Well, that seemed… remarkably effective. Seems very hard to aim though, not very precise. The gun is better at ranges further than about 5 meters.
After crossing from the right to the left sidewalk, and turning left at the next intersection, she started running down the street, Chiba Academy was ahead around 4 blocks and to the left. After running for half a block, a purple sphere of lightning emanated from the school, causing streetlights to explode and for Lee's phone and gun to shock her, almost causing her to fall flat on her face and making her drop her weapon. Cursing while taking the now fried phone out of her pocket and tossing it onto the ground, and lamenting her now definitely fried (expensive) laptop.
Picking the gun back up, it was remarkably unfried. The Alloy Dominators were not affected by the power surge, looks like Schicksal tech was more resistant to this kind of thing. Checking the screen, she noticed that the Honkai energy power cell had even slightly refilled.
Looks like Miss Herrscher of Thunder is throwing a temper tantrum. Hopefully Kiana would get there soon to calm her.
Or more likely, given Mei's attitude towards Kiana, Mei would attempt to murder her on sight.
After running for a few more blocks she reached the entrance to the school. She had never actually been here before today.
Making her way through the gate, she wondered about how exactly she was supposed to find Kiana, before she heard a loud voice screaming.
"You aren't Mei! Give me back my Mei!"
It was Kiana, if you couldn't tell by the presumptuous way she had claimed ownership over Mei.
"Prepare to be repaid for all that you have done, Mortal"
And there was the extremely chunni Miss Herrscher of Thunder.
The sounds of a fight and the voices were coming from the rooftop of the building next to the school, not the actual school itself.
Quickly running back out the gate, down the street, and entering the alley, she shot the handle of another locked emergency exit door, hopefully leading to a stairwell. The metal of the heavy emergency door now glowed bright orange, and hot metal dripped from around the edges of the new hole.
Now that the handle was gone, there was no way to open the door, as the emergency exit door was otherwise featureless. The metal around the hole was too hot to touch.
Cursing, before making her way out of the alley and finding the proper entrance to the building. Entering the lobby, she turned and quickly walked to the emergency stairwell, the door opened inwards with a push bar, making her way up the stairs, 10 flights in total. She burst through the door at the top leading to the rooftop.
Upon emerging from the door she saw Mei holding Kiana by the throat in a very familiar position. Kiana attempted to call out for help, however her face was turning pale and she obviously couldn't breathe.
This doesn't seem right, isn't the real Mei supposed to wake up upon realizing that she is about to kill someone and then attempt to commit suicide?
[System: Mei's current affection level towards Kiana is currently 23.]
Ah, so it was her fault for encouraging Kiana.
She pointed her gun at Mei's head, and said. "Drop her, or I'll shoot!"
Letting go of Kiana who promptly fell hard onto the roof, the Herscher of Thunder turned towards Lee and said.
"I do not recognize you mortal, but you are presumptuous to threaten the great Queen of Thunder. I will show you the power of thunder!"
Whoa, so fucking chunni.
Dropping the pistol and holding out my hand, I performed the same path energy attack I had on the zombie earlier.
It missed.
"..." Great Miss Queen of Thunder.
"..." Lee.
The Herrscher of Thunder, who was temporarily distracted, booted back up and quickly started to charge an ultimate move.
Lee quickly spammed out 2 more basic attacks in a row.
The second one missed, but the first one hit the Herrscher of Thunder square in the chest. Suddenly causing her fancy Herrscher outfit to disappear.
"?" original Mei.
As she was currently hovering about 1 meter off the ground, she looked down and immediately fell to the ground in an almost cartoonish manner.
Sitting there a little stunned, the original Mei, the crybaby, looked extremely confused.
Wow, I just 0 cycled the Herrscher with a basic attack.
She sat there on the ground for about 5 seconds, before looking up at Lee.
"What just… How did you do that?" Mei asked.
[System: Alert! Mei's feelings toward you increased by 41 points! Current score: 95. ❤︎]
Yikes!
"Magic." Lee said decisively.
She decided she needed to address the situation immediately.
"I don't like you." Lee said bluntly, "You almost killed Kiana."
[System: Alert! Mei's feelings toward you decreased by 4 points! Current score: 91. ❤︎]
Huh, that wasn't as effective as I thought.
"Sorry! I wasn't myself! I wasn't in control just now!" Mei said weakly.
"Actually you were in control, the second personality just now was a stigmata personality, created via interaction between the stigmata you possess and the Herrscher core Ryoma so carelessly implanted inside of you." Lee said, though most of it was just her personal theories, "That was a part of you."
"Sorry." Mei added, even more weakly.
I feel like this isn't having the intended effect, just making her depressed. I need some backup.
Looking around, Lee noticed Kiana passed out on the rooftop, she quickly ran over and resuscitated her using path energy.
After Kiana sat up. Lee said "Hold on one second, I am going to kill her." Standing up, Lee started to walk back towards her gun, forgotten on the floor.
[System: Alert! Kiana's feelings toward you decreased by 22 points! Current score: 64. ❤︎]
[System: Alert! Mei's feelings toward you decreased by 17 points! Current score: 74. ❤︎]
That's more like it.