This was exactly what Rave had hoped for before going on this expedition.

Well, not this precise scenario. Suddenly intervening in a conflict between an order of self-righteous pricks and immoral, life-defiling warlocks wasn’t something she had imagined to happen. It was, however, exciting and that was exactly what she was after. Great as her day-to-day life with her John and their harem was, the funky Lightbearer still craved unusual and dangerous situations. It was in her nature. It was part of what had driven her to her boyfriend in the first place and part of why they made for such a good duo. They completed each other.

It had to be said that the current conflict was far from dangerous to her, though.

Rave zoomed through the streets, raising a cloud of black dust in her wake. Under normal circumstances, such a line would have given her position away, but she didn’t expect John to be completely certain. After their experiences during the Five Day War, the pink-haired danger craver understood one or two things about battlefields. One of which was that, in every large scale engagement, the fog of war inevitably rose up.

The cloud she trampled into existence joined the other scattered particles. Flying fireballs, close quarter engagements with superhuman might, light spells, shadow spells, lightning dancing across the sky and arcane might all contributed to disturbing the black layer that covered the ground. The more of it scattered, the less things could be understood from an outside perspective. Inside the fog, the line of sight was limited. To John’s eyes in the sky, they would be little more than outlines illuminated by flashing lights.

‘If you want him to find you, just fire something into the air,’ Copernicus advised, from his position around her wrist. The copper band was the only piece of decoration on her bodysuit. Most of it was a bright pink, a colour similar to her hair, but the combat gloves and thigh-high boots that were melded to the protective equipment were of a black colour. All of it sat as tight as a second skin. Only the headphones around her neck bounced a little bit. ‘He should recognize your light.’

‘Aww, that’s a romantic thing to say,’ Rave responded.

‘It’s a factual statement,’ the dry response of the suncat came swiftly. ‘Normally light spells are golden or white, not scattered across the colour spectrum.’

‘I prefer techno-coloured,’ Rave responded and turned a corner. With the momentum of a car driving on a highway, she jumped at a heavily armoured invader. Her knee collided with their chest plate. Rave’s suit, despite being more flexible, proved to be the sturdier of the two materials. The immense force of the impact put a dent into the thick metal, but the primary effect was that she rammed the soldier through the wall of a nearby house.

Elegantly, Rave stopped on her feet and looked down at the person. Judging by their build, the combatant was probably a woman. The armour erased most proper hints in terms of gender. It wasn’t as intricate or powerful as the full plate the proper knights wore, but it was just one step below that. While most of the knights were occupied with Jack, these officers had the command over the forces.

‘Thought she might put up just a bit of resistance,’ Rave thought with minor disappointment, poking the shoulder of the officer with her foot. In some ways she missed the days when she was talented and lazy. There were certainly more difficult fights to be had before she became one of the strongest people on the face of the planet. Raising her head, Rave looked into the eyes of a surprised warlock and two demons. “Ya should get to the pentagon, mansion, thingy,” she gave them the quick version. “Your creepy old Demon Lord struck a deal with my tiger, so ya can come with us. Once this barrier control stuff fades, that is.”

“Sure,” the warlock agreed pretty swiftly and walked towards Rave and the hole she had created. In passing, he reached for the dagger, giving the unconscious officer a vengeful glare. That was where he kept it at.

The people outside the building weren’t about to let them leave. A small group of Golden Rose soldiers united into a simple arrow formation and faced Rave as she walked out back into the fog of war. “I just kicked your boss through a building, ya should know better than that,” the Lightbearer told them, while giving the people she had rescued a dismissive wave. She didn’t need them here. “Just go sit over there until this is done, ‘kay?”

“Those who defend sinners will be treated as such,” the head of the formation growled.

Rave rolled her neck and sighed. “Arighty,” she just stated and activated her martial arts aura. It was a set of internal procedures that she had gone through so often, she barely even noticed them anymore. The breath, the mana distributing through her body, permeating all of her until the excess escaped as blue light from her pores, all of it was just normal to her. Gathering the mana in her ankles and then forming it in such a specific fashion that she instantly moved a couple metres forwards, that came with minimal delay.

For an enemy like this, a minimal delay was of absolutely no matter. All of the soldiers barely got to show the surprise on their faces before Rave slammed her fist into the frontman and caused all of them to fall over like bowling pins.

‘Strike,’ she complimented herself.

‘Given that you needed two attacks to finish off this group, I’d say it’s more of a spare,’ the cat in her head told her.

‘I see you’re wearing your smart fur today, Cappy.’ Rave looked at the people on the ground and sighed. “Don’t make me break your legs so ya stay down. I like winning, I don’t need to be cruel about it.” She turned around and walked back to the unconscious officer. In the process, she looked over her shoulder and grinned. Even enemy soldiers couldn’t quite help themselves but stare at her bubble butt. Given the skin-tight bodysuit, she would have been surprised if all of them could have averted their eyes. The Lightbearer knew what she had. “Here, if ya need an excuse to stay out of it,” she grabbed the officer and carried her over to her group, “ya go see to it that I didn’t mortally wound her. Would certainly make me happier.”

“What do you care if any of us die?” one of the people asked. “You’re supporting sinners.”

“And you’re burning down a city and everyone who lives in it, don’t ya give me a speech on morality.” Rave rolled her eyes. “I ain’t a preachy girl, so spare me with all of this. I just don’t want people to die needlessly. Ya got that?” Some of her enemies looked confused, others defiant. ‘At least they got some individuality, I guess,’ Rave thought and then sprinted off into a random direction.

Making sure they followed her suggestion would have been a waste of her time. She was better advised running around and interrupting enemy operations. The squad of seven she had just defeated was just one of a myriad of strike forces all running around the place. According to her boyfriend, the enemy army had 300 to 400 people in it, so her stopping one fraction of that wasn’t going to amount to much. Similarly, she lacked the mental coordination of John’s familiars, so partaking in the wider rescue operations wouldn’t be particularly efficient either. Instead, she was going to be the wildcard, jamming enemy plans against John’s planned movements by appearing out of nowhere with no rhyme or reason.

Trying to orient herself would be near impossible without calling one of the elementals for help anyway.

Through the black clouds, Rave spotted a familiar bright light. With unsteady flickers and of jagged shape, the lightning cut through the fog for just a few moments. ‘Alright, if Sylph is working over there, I’m running into the opposite direction,’ she decided and took a hard turn right.

The streets in this segment were littered with corpses. Warlocks, primarily, with a single low-rank member of the Golden Rose joining as the source of the crimson spill that turned dirt into mud. Rave noticed the clouds her breath created. ‘Why can’t every city have a heater?’ she whined in her head. ‘Better question, are demons freeze immune or something? I couldn’t run around naked in this weather!’

She jumped over a corpse and continued on her path. The death all around didn’t bother her whatsoever. Rave was a child of the Abyss, violence and the abrupt end of life were nothing outstanding to her. She was more interested in the low number of demonic victims. This was around the first area the Golden Rose had hit, before John had sent anyone to interfere with their purge. That they managed to waltz through here and kill everyone was to be expected.

It was just that the corpses lying about didn’t really represent the local population all that well. Rave hadn’t observed the distribution between humans and demons as closely as her boyfriend had, but even a rough glance told her that the losses didn’t line up. The Golden Rose wasn’t universally exterminating the demons.

‘At least not on the spot,’ Rave thought, cautious about being hopeful. She didn’t particularly like Moira, for a lot of personal reasons. One of her issues was that Moira’s view on honour was TOO rigid. Mass murder didn’t strike her as something that fit in there. Yet, the Golden Rose was advancing all the same. Either she had misjudged Moira, there was dissonance between her and the Order of the Golden Rose, or there was more to the current conflict than she knew.

Doubtlessly that last one was true. Rave had sprung into action after a brief explanation by John. One could accuse her of being negligent, given that she was storming into a conflict she didn’t really understand. Rave would have shrugged at that accusation. She wasn’t nearly as concerned with morals or ethics as her boyfriend was. She went by her guts. She had her own compass of what was right or wrong, grounded in her life experiences rather than books on philosophy. That made it less well grounded, but Rave didn’t mind too much. She knew what she wanted and she knew who she could trust. That was good enough for her.

Rave noticed that she was gradually moving out of the fog of war. That told her that she was getting out of the combat zone, so she considered turning around. Nearby combat, however, goaded her into a different direction. ‘Seems like there’s a party outside the disco,’ she thought and effortlessly leapt up to a nearby rooftop.

Manifesting her cat ears, she listened closely. Despite being just hair, they somehow worked as if they were the genuine thing. Four ears were obviously better at locating the origin of any sound than two, particularly if the pair on top of her head could rotate a fair bit.

There were the many sounds of the battlefield behind her. Then there was the sound of metal clashing repeatedly one or two hundred metres to her right. Looking over in that direction, she saw the copy of her boyfriend fly around. ‘He’ll call the girls if he needs help there,’ Rave thought and turned her left ear towards the closest source of sound.

Skipping over a couple of rooftops brought Rave on top of a side street where two groups were currently clashing. The larger group of demons and warlocks was torn apart by the advancing arrowhead formation of the Golden Rose fighters. A single blue-skinned, four-armed fiend put on some resistance, but everyone else seemed rather inept at fighting.

Rave descended onto that battle with a dropkick that immediately took out their commanding officer. “Alrighty, this where ya surrender-“ She was interrupted in her entrance line by a fist flying towards her face. She caught it with her palm and kicked the assailant, a female squire, in the stomach. “Lemme spell that for ya,” she continued while the rest of the enemy formation came at her. “S-U-R-R-E-N-D-E-R. Surrender. That’s what y’all should do.“

By the time she had finished speaking, the last of the enemies went to the ground. Most of them were still conscious and tried to get to their feet. They had guts, Rave had to respect that much.

A mad cackle behind her caused her to turn around. One of the warlocks she had just saved drew their knife and immediately plunged it into the throat of the officer. “Die, you Gaia-sucking cunt!” the warlock screamed and raised the knife for a second plunge. Those would be their last words.

Rave’s foot hit the warlock’s head with such intensity that the skull shattered and the neck broke. What flew off to the side was a gory mess of flesh that the Lightbearer didn’t need to look at as it was catapulted into a nearby alleyway. “The FUCK is wrong with some people?!” she cursed and hastily got down on her knees. The office who’d been cut was still alive, albeit the hole in their throat was far from pretty. She knew that she wasn’t aiding the exactly honest side, but killing someone she had already put out of commission was simply too low.

A voice reached her while she thought about how to keep the person alive.