The Salvation of the Shattered Axis, Chapter One: Giants in a Galactic Conflagration

[Quellian-dyrae]

Why us?

Amy didn't ask the question out loud. She knew the answer, logically. But in that first moment of being asked if they had any questions, that was the first, fleeting thought that went through her mind. Amy still had trouble, sometimes, seeing herself and her siblings as "big names", at least on an intuitive level. To her, deep down, in her instinctive self-conception, they were still just three social workers who happened to have an angel living in their heads. Ordinary people...who just so happened to be blessed with an extraordinary ability to help others.

A lot of people might not have caught the slight, amused twitch of Nadia's lips (to be fair, she had just been told that they were going to be running a full-scale invasion into the Shattered Axis, and that the safest and most practical way to do it was to go at them full-bore through the depths of the Netherrealm, so one amused twitch was kinda hard to notice compared the the huge, eager grin that was currently on her face), the brief flick of her eyes in his sister's direction. The triplets had the capacity for private thoughts, of course, but they tended to be sharing them with each other by default. Nadia had caught that thought, fleeting though it was, and while it didn't surprise her, it did amuse her. Nadia Springs had precisely zero problem recognizing themselves as big names on an intuitive level. Heck, if anything, she was just happy that the rest of the galaxy finally seemed to be catching up to what she'd been saying all along!

Caleb might, admittedly, have kinda blinked once at the idea of waging an assault through the Netherrealm. It wasn't like they hadn't battled demons before - there were few foes Trinity understood how to fight better, in fact - but it was like, still. That seemed pretty ambitious. He didn't share Nadia's default assumption that they were completely invulnerable as a matter of course. That being said, given the team that had been put together for this ("Hot dang!" has literally been the first words out of Nadia's mouth when they had all assembled), it also wouldn't be fair to say he was especially worried or concerned about the idea. It was a big play, and they'd have to take it seriously. But he had no doubt that it would be within their capacity.

While they had their share of experience fighting demons, and Trinity in particular knew a fair bit about the Netherrealm in the general sense, they hadn't actually been there very often, and when they had been it had always been for things like, "Go destabilize this wormhole that's spewing a bunch of mid-level demons into the city; it has to be done from the inside, do make sure you get back out before it collapses" or "some dimension-phasing demon's been pulling people they think nobody will miss into their domain for presumably untoward purposes, someone ought to put a stop to that" and such like that. You know, brief excursions. They'd never really travelled through it before, at least not by any but the most common and routine means.

So Caleb, ever the one to keep on task, asked, "Do we have a particular route plotted out, or should we figure one out ourselves?" Given that on the one hand the Redemption was a sentient spaceship so plotting a course seemed kinda like its forte, but on the other hand they had freaking Zargothrax on their team, both possibilities seemed pretty much equally plausible, to him. "And if the former, what sort of information do we have on the route? Like, what sort of demons should we expect to encounter in what numbers, and so on?"

"I feel like the most important question, though, is do we calculate relative bragging rights based on the number of demons defeated, or the size of the largest demon defeated? I could really go either way on this..." Nadia added in what was...certainly a contribution to...some tactical discussion. Somewhere. I mean, presumably at least. It's a big galaxy.

(The sidelong looks of wry bemusement she got from her twins were, needless to say, much more obvious than the one she had given Amy.)

Spoiler: Telepathic chatter, spoilered for cleanliness but feel free to open

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~I would have thought personal fighting power of the strongest demon defeated would have at least made the list.~

~You know, you'd think that, but size is cooler. I'm pretty sure that's a law of physics. And it mostly covers the same territory anyway.~

~I do feel obligated to note that there are plenty of demons whose size is a poor measure of their power at best. Many human-sized demons command sufficient power and magic to crush towering behemoths by force of arms.~

~I mean, I'm not arguing that, but then you have to explain how the guy was actually some sort of fiendish arch-warlock and get into why his fireballs are the best fireballs and then someone points out that mages are usually squishy up close and you have to go into a whole thing about wards and by the time you get back around to actually bragging everybody's moved on. Whereas with size you can just be like "Dude was a hundred feet tall and I knocked him out with one punch!" and everybody just gets it.~

~Well, I suppose you're the expert.~