A jagged, crimson scar tore across the alien sky, a permanent reminder of the dimensional rift that had vomited this horde of monstrosities onto the primitive world of K'tharr. Below this bleeding heavens, the air itself was thick with the reek of ozone, charred Chitin, and something coppery and foul. The plains of black glass and obsidian spires, forged in some ancient cataclysm, now served as the stage for the final act of a planetary cleaning.
This was the crucible for the third-years of the Superhuman Heroes Academy, Class 3-Alpha and Beta. They were not veterans, not yet, but they were Earth's sharpest scalpels, sent to excise a malignant tumor from the cosmos. The Alpha class consisted of A-rankers: A, AA, and AAA. The Beta class was made up of B-rankers.
"Roderick, I need a sixty-foot dome, now!
High-velocity spin!" Freed Hendricks' voice cut through the battlefield's cacophony, calm and authoritative. His hands were already raised, fingers splayed, as shards of metal-rich obsidian tore themselves from the ground to orbit him in a deadly cloud.
"On it!" Roderick Argus, the air manipulator, didn't just create a gust; he sculpted the atmosphere. With a whirl of his wrists, a translucent dome of howling wind encased a section of their front line. A split second later, a volley of crystalline spines fired from the multi-limbed horrors known as Shard-Slingers, impacted the barrier. Instead of piercing through, they were caught in the vortex, their lethal momentum stolen, and spun into a chaotic, glittering orbit within the wind-wall.
"Perfect. My turn." Freed's eyes, usually a soft brown, now glinted with the cold light of polarized iron. He made a gentle plucking motion. The orbiting spines, now his to commend, realigned. With a sharp flick of his wrists, he sent them screaming back the way they came, each spine finding a chink in the Shard-Slingers' armor. The resulting series of wet thoks and brittle cracks was deeply satisfying.
"Drake, we have fliers incoming from the north-west vector! Acid-spitters!" Zack Helios called out, his enhanced senses picking up the subtle shift in the air pressure and the feint, corrosive scent long before anyone else could see the threat.
"On it. Lilian, I need a dispersant field. Their acid congeals in the air," Drake responded, already summoning water from, the moisture-thin air.
Lilian Heart, the emitter, focused. "Dispersant field, going up!" A wide, shimmering dome of faint blue energy erupted above them. The Acid-spitters dove, but the moment their sizzling green liquid passed through Lillian's energy field, it lost cohesion, breaking apart into a harmless, misty spray.
"Now, Drake!" she grunted.
Drake didn't waste the opportunity.
He combined his two water orbs into a massive, churning sphere and sent it skyward. Just before it reached the dispersant field, he clenched his fist. The sphere exploded into a thousand whip-like tendrils of high pressure water that lashed through the flock of fliers, snapping necks and forcing the corrosive liquid down the monsters' own throats.
Zack, his senses overloaded, focused on the smaller threats. "Two lurkers, burrowing underneath, heading for Rachel's position!"
"Not on my watch," Lilian barked. She pivoted, dropping her dispersant field and firing two focused beams of pure concussive force into the ground. The earth erupted, revealing two worm-like creatures, their bodies pulverized.
On Freed's right, a sun was being born. "Athermis, light 'em up! I'll handle the splash damage!" Georgia White yelled, a feral grin splitting her soot-streaked face. Twin serpents of fire and lightning writhed around her arms.
Athermis Light, her form already beginning to glow with internal, holy reliance, nodded. "Clearing a path. Rachel, prepare for flash-freeze on my mark." She became light, transforming into a beam that painted a searing line across the battlefield, vaporizing lesser monsters. She rematerialized behind a phalanx of hulking, rock-skinned Bruisers. "Now, Rachel!"
The temperature plummeted. Rachel Frost moved her hands as if conducting a symphony of absolute zero. A wave of cold so intense it stole sound itself washed over the Bruisers, encasing the mid-charge monsters in a prison of ice thicker than their own hides.
"Mike, their internals are brittle. Find the resonance," Rachel said, her voice as cool as her power.
Mike Xavier, his eyes closed despite the bedlam, sensed the complex biological structures within the frozen behemoths.
"Got it. Their skeletal structure has a crystalline lattice frequency... passing it to the heavy hitters." He pulsed the data-stream through their tactical link.
"Frequency received. Aya, you're the hammer," Freed commended.
Aya Mist, who had been hovering a few feet off the ground, a silent guardian angel, nodded. She dropped from the sky like a meteor. Her fist, enhanced by strength that could crumple tank armor, connected with the lead frozen Bruisers, delivering the precise vibrational frequency Mike had provided. The monster inside disintegrated into a pile of frozen gravel. Aya was already a blur, zipping to the next statue.
"Team B, suppressing the eastern flank. Team A, push forward. The big one is getting anxious," Freed ordered. The "big one" was the High threat, the Magma-Crawler.
The Betas moved with flawless synchronization. Mike acted as a battlefield sensor suite. Roderick created localized whirlwinds to disrupt the Crawler's aim. Zack tracked smaller threats. Lilian and Drake neutralized ambushers and created barriers, with Drake flash-freezing a moat around the strike team.
Meanwhile, the Alpha strike team went to work. "Georgia, superheat the segment over the heart! I'll follow up!" Athermis commended.
"With pleasure!" Georgia unleashed a concentrated beam of plasma-hot fire. The Magma-Crawler's hide glowed cherry red. It roared and tried to slam its body down onto them.
Aya intervened. She met the descending mountain of flesh and magma with sheer, brute force, flying straight up to plant her hands on the underside of the glowing segment and push, holding the several-hundred-ton monster at bay.
"Now, Athermis!" Georgia yelled.
Athermis had gathered the ambient light, the glow of Georgia's fire, and the faint radiance of the bleeding sky into a single, brilliant point at her fingertip--a lance of condensed nuclear fusion. "Lux Finem," she whispered. The beam pierced through the superheated armor and into the Magma-Crawler's primary heart. An intense, internal light flashed within the beast's body.
"Rachel, end it!" Freed ordered.
Rachel unleashed a wave of absolute zero, a final, killing frost that swept over the Magma-Crawler. The thermal shock was catastrophic. With a sound like a continent of glass breaking, the High Threat shattered into a million frozen, smoking pieces.
The battlefield fell silent. The students stood amidst the devastation, panting.
Zack was the first to break the silence, wiping a streak of black blood from his cheek. "Well. That was a workout."
Aya landed softly. "Its hide was tougher than the simulations predicted."
"Only by seven percent," Mike said, opening his eyes. "I've logged the variance."
Georgia let the last sparks of lightning die on her fingers. "Simulations never capture the smell, though. Ugh. Burnt bugs sulfur."
Drake let his water orbs fall. "The hydrological cycle here is a mess. It took me twice as much focus to pull that much water."
"It's a dead world, Drake," Rachel said, her expression composed. "We are here to make it liveable again."
Lilian leaned against a rock, breathing heavily. "Remind me to request a wider emission aperture when we get back."
Roderick finally let his wind domes dissipate. "You and me both. My head is pounding like a drum."
Freed walked to the center of their loose circle. He looked at each of them--the fiery brawler, the radiant paladin, the ice-cold strategist, the unbreakable flyer, the technopathic sensor, the steadfast emitter, the fluid hydromancer, the sharp-eyed scout, and the steadfast aeromancer. They were Alphas and Betas, a classification that meant nothing in the heat of battle. Here, they were a unit.
"Mission parameters achieved," Freed said, his voice tired but firm. "High Threat eliminated. Mid and low threats suppressed. The gateway will be opening for extraction in ten. Good work, everyone. Textbook execution."
Athermis offered a small, tired smile.
"Not quite textbook. But we adopted."
"That's the real textbook," Freed replied.
As the familiar hum of the teleportation gateway began to build, they took one last look at the battlefield. Together, battered but unbroken, the third-year students turned their backs on the carnage and walked towards the light home.