Team Steel

Outside the cafe, the patron's watched as the five mages confidently walked towards the monsters, each taking a position that appeared to be a coordinated formation. Each step they took, the sunlight glittered against the silver and chrome detailing of their uniforms and Emma noted that each of them had two silver stripes embroidered around the left biceps of their uniforms, indicating them as Rank Two mages. Their look was refined, the silver and chrome detailing gave them a punky element, yet elegant. It would be clear to even an outsider that these were colony mages of a higher rank.

As far as the Defense's skilled teams go, Team Steel was the second best. Logically, their presence should bring forth the question to oneself, should I be worried? If Team Steel was here, then the monsters must be level three or higher. However, the presence of the camera crew answered that question, another photo op.

"Is Alexander with them?" A patron whispered.

As if on queue, the door on the grand silver armored truck opened one more time, and Emma watched as a tall, handsome man with silver hair made slow, confident steps down the steps and out of the vehicle.

Melly grabbed at Emma's arm and started bouncing up and down. "Emma, oh my god It's Alexander!"

He wore a military suit with dazzling silver embroidery and three silver stripes circling the bicep of his uniform. Class Three. Even without the stripes, the suit already identified him as a high class mage.

It was undoubtedly Alexander.

He wore sunglasses and carried himself with a clear confidence. While the cafe patrons moments before were washed with fear in the presence of these monsters, these Mages, especially Alexander, were calm and collected, paying more attention to the camera crew. Alexander gestured and talked to a woman with the crew, keeping his back to the monsters the entire time. The remaining members of Team Steel stood looking bored, only appearing animated when the camera turned toward them.

While the mages were preoccupied with the cameras, the monsters started moving, regaining everyone's attention. Alexander slowly turned around, facing his team, his mouth open to say something. One of the mages, a woman, immediately unsheathed a dagger that seemed to hover in her hand. She gestured, and it went flying, striking first one monster then the second before returning to her hand. She grimaced at the monster sludge and handed the weapon to a member of the cleanup crew without even looking at them.

It had happened so fast Emma could barely follow the dagger before it was back in the woman's hand. She glanced back towards where the monsters had been, adjusting her crouch to now see that they lied slumped on the floor. Just like that, two monsters were dead.

But the rampager still stood there, shaking and snarling.

The mages wouldn't simply kill the rampager, not when there were likely witnesses. Rampagers couldn't be tranquilized, but they would somehow get him onto one of the trucks and transport him elsewhere. It would look like maybe he was being taken away for help, but everyone knew the reality of what would happen after.

Alexander had a smirk on his face as he put his hand on the female mage's shoulder, showing her off to the camera. His body language said it all: What a mage, huh?

While Melly was still giddy and commenting on how good Alexander looked, Emma felt a wave of sickness. This was fun for them. The moments of daily terror for ordinary colonists were just photo opportunities for mages who pulled up like celebrities and acted bored.

Emma looked away from Alexander and the rest of Team Steel, back at the rampager. He was stumbling, his body constantly moving but not making any progress. It was as if the corruption was still learning how to move this body it had consumed.

Emma turned back to the mages. A man walked up to the woman who had killed the monsters and raised his hand as if to offer to touch her shoulder. The woman waved him away like she was shooing off a fly, and the man retreated.

He must be a Conduit, Emma thought.

Where there were mages, conduits were never far off. Since the consequences of manipulating dark energy was opening yourself up to the corruption itself. Mages were at the highest risk of falling to the consumption becoming rampagers themselves. That's where conduits came in. They had the ability to channel and stabilize the corrupting energy in mages, a process called sync.

Much study had been made to see if conduits could somehow save rampagers. But all attempts had proven futile. The difference seemed to be that a mage's inherent ability to handle and manipulate dark energy was what allowed them to be stabilized.

Regular humans like us, Emma thought, emphasizing to herself, "us" and "regular", were far too corrupted by consumption for any conduit to rescue them. The damage done to their bodies, to their minds, was irreversible.

But mages did rampage. It happened, especially before people understood the true balance between mages and conduits. When mages went rampage, it was usually catastrophic. So much so that over the years, many protocols had been put in place to reduce the chances of mages rampaging.

Each colony handled protocol differently. Emma had been too young to understand how her previous colony managed it. On Floating City, every mage team would be paired with at least one conduit. And while Rank Ones were often allowed to do singular patrol, they would have protocols of checking in regularly to their superior. Rank Two mages, and the rarer Rank Three, per protocol were always in teams. Teams like Team Steel, and Team Mind. There was safety in numbers, if one of the mages rampaged, there were others that could subdue him.

Rank SC, Special Class, was another case entirely. Shrouded in mystery, Emma was not sure exactly what their protocol was. From what Emma understood, there were currently four SC Mages on the Colony: Max the metal and mind manipulator, Ally a metal manipulator, Trent a fire manipulator and of course, Vaughn also a fire manipulator, and the most powerful mage amongst them l, so much so that there was some speculation as to whether he should be classed in a rank of his own.

Conduits were also ranked, Rank Ones, Twos, and rarely, Threes. There were no Special Class conduits, there seemed to be a limit on how much a human body could channel and stabilize dark energy. It wasn't much understood by the public how then Special Class mages received stabilization. Much about the special class, outside of their victories in battle, was shrouded in mystery. 

Still staring out the window at the conduit who retreated from the Team Steel mage, Emma felt annoyed that the mage had shooed him off as if he were a fly. That didn't seem an appropriate way to treat a person who literally kept you from ripping apart at the seams. 

Emma didn't know why she was becoming angry, but perhaps she was thinking, did they treat my sister like this? Shoo her off? Did my sister run away? Was it all too much?

A deep anger started rising within Emma, and she felt tears welling in her eyes. Was this just anger? Why was she starting to cry? She had been trying to hold herself together. Her sister had often written to her about how happy she was and how fulfilled her work made her feel. But watching the interaction before her, Emma wondered if Lily had just been trying to make her feel better. Was she having a harder time than she let on? That would be a Lily thing to do.

Emma started blinking rapidly, trying to dissipate the tears before they fell. She wanted to cry. The feelings had been building up for months now. This terrible feeling, and the recent happenings, these strange moments, like just earlier when she...

Again, she stopped her train of thought and looked back over to the rampager.

When I felt you, she thought, looking at the rampager, and them, looking over to the two dead monsters.

She stared at the rampager, who was shaking even more violently now before erupting into a bloodcurdling scream.