"Who are you??"
The question was posed by the pretty Surpasser woman, the one that had done the most amount of Shura killing in the hotel plaza, after Max of course.
'Damn it! I shoulda armored up. Fuck sakes... I could have dropped "I'm just a passing-through Kamen Rider. Remember that!"...ugh, fail!'
Max always enjoyed spouting that line if he had the chance to, it originally belonged to Tsukasa Kadoya, the main character in the series 'Kamen Rider Decade'.
He looked down at the short but extremely pretty lady. She barely reached the chest of his disguised form, let alone his real Toriko sized body; her dark hair was cropped into a cute, messy bob that framed a surprisingly delicate face and her soft almond shaped eyes made her ultra cute.
She wore a set of tight, form-fitting Sacred Blood armor that clung to her small but still curvy frame like a second skin of polished obsidian.
It looked incredibly cool—sleek, minimalist, and built for raw speed rather than heavy defense. Her small fists were completely bare, and the white knuckles belonging to her were stained with Shura blood.
She had literally torn through tough alien armor and Shura flesh with nothing but her raw, Surpasser-level strength and martial skills.
'Cute! Buuuuuut, I better not waste time flirting... Ah well, there's lots of other women out there.'
Max was a little bit attracted to her cuteness and the multiple dishes of knuckle sandwich he had watched her cook up and serve a minute ago, but he didn't really have the time or real desire to flirt with anyone while in the Alliance.
"No time to chat babe, sorry. You guys keep going down here, I'm on the up and up."
Clang-clang-clang-clang...
With that, all of the weapons dyed in Max's purple and pink energy that were still floating around him dropped back to the ground.
With a simple thought, Max turned the volume back up on his Beast Soul speaker. He had only lowered the music as the last Shura fell to create a cinematic 'end scene' effect for combat. His original song of choice, 'The Only Thing They Fear Is You', was exactly four minutes and forty-five seconds long, and clearing out the Shura in the plaza hadn't even taken half that time.
"Good luck."
Max folded his arms, and with a sudden burst of electromagnetic power, he rocketed straight upwards into the sky, his little black rectangle Beast Soul following closely behind him.
For a few seconds, the hotel plaza stayed completely silent, save for the heavy, chainsaw-like metal sounding out of the quickly departing black rectangle.
The Surpasser woman and the remaining Evolvers simply stood there, their mouths slightly agape. They didn't just stare at Max—they stared at the little black block chasing him into the sky.
In a universe filled with majestic dragon mounts, glowing ethereal bows, and massive soul-swords, a floating, booming geometric box screaming heavy metal music from old Earth was the most profoundly bizarre and impossible Beast Soul they had ever witnessed.
After all, everyone knew technology didn't work inside the sanctuaries.
"What kind of Beast Soul is that...?" One of the Evolvers muttered, blinking up at the sky as the purple-and-pink-dyed weapons Max had released returned to their original sheen, cracked, and became useless around their boots.
The Surpasser girl shook herself out of her daze first. Her delicate face hardened back into a sharp, commanding expression, snapping her gaze away from the retreating streak of Max's flight.
"Don't worry about him! Stop daydreaming and move!"
Her voice rang out, small but carrying the undeniable authority of a top-tier fighter. She slammed her bare, blood-stained fists together with a heavy crack, snapping the shell-shocked Evolvers back to reality. "This plaza is secure, but the nearby blocks are still crawling with them. Shura kill squads are bound to be pushing down the parallel avenues. On me—let's go!"
Without waiting for a response, her compact frame blurred as she darted out of the plaza. Her tight obsidian armor caught the faint light of the fires around them, and the inspired Evolvers immediately found their footing, tightening their grip on their Beast Soul weapons and rushing out into the smoke-filled streets to hunt down the next wave of invaders.
Max floated midway between the streets below and the orbital shipbuilding yards, which were ablaze with the lights of war as the Shura and Alliance fleets exchanged fire.
'Hhhmmm, shields over the teleporter station are holding no sweat, those Marvel metals are no joke, and neither the fuck am I! Now let's see... How should I do this?'
Max sat there mid-air, pondering which one of his previously cooked up plans would be the most fun.
'Well, it HAS been a hot minute since I've driven the car... it's going to be a tight fit in this body, or maybe not? Ugh, I still wanted to try out the new Dragoon fit in combat too... Ah fuck, whatever, P-car it is.'
He released the holographic guise of Nanami that he was still sporting, dismissed the image inducer and summoned a handful of Beast Souls.
Firstly the Flux armor and helmet were pulled out, encasing Max's huge body, overtop of the Godly Sweats he always wore. If you can magically make your dirty clothes disappear and return them fresh moments later, why bother doing the laundry at all?
Speaking of resummoning things, Max called the image inducer back out as well, it fixed itself neatly overtop of his slim suit. Years ago, he realized that holograms could be pretty useful in combat.
Another blinding flash of Beast-Soul light materialized in his palms, hardening into the heavy, lethal weight of his Twin Talon Beast Souls, the Desert Eagles he had used [Beastsoulification] on so many years ago. As his fingers wrapped around the grips, a sudden memory flashed through his mind.
He remembered a while back when he had tried to turn a pack of cigarettes into a Beast Soul, only for the paper container to transform while the loose smokes hilariously tried to dump themselves all over the ground.
Max glanced down at the 'chambers' of his freshly summoned hand cannons. This was the first time he had brought the Twin Talons out of his sea of soul since they had become Beast Souls.
The magazines remained locked, surprisingly heavy, and perfectly loaded.
He closed his eyes and analyzed the weapons with his [Electromagnetic] vision.
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
He took some pot shots upwards into the chaotic space battle up above with the Twin Talons, letting [Domino] take care of 99% of the aiming.
Several bright explosions blossomed in the battlefield, and very shortly after, debris started raining down into the city below. Most of it fell outside the outskirts of the building, but a few choice pieces of glowing metal slag raised the Shura death count on the ground level significantly.
Fate sure could be a bitch when she's being manipulated.
The empty gun glowed for a moment, and then the weight it held before being emptied suddenly returned; besides the sudden difference in how heavy the Beast Soul felt in his hand, Max could feel the fresh payload with his [Electromagnetic] senses too.
Max grinned behind his round sunglasses and helmet visor. 'Right. The electromagnetic element I injected...'
He had almost forgotten the reckless experiment he had pulled on the guns back when they were still somewhat normal desert eagles, right before their transformation.
Max hadn't just let them turn into Beast Souls in stock form; he had used his [Electromagnetism] to aggressively pump a raw, high-density electromagnetic current directly into the guns' metal mechanisms, trying to see if he could modify the firing pins into railgun strikers while pouring some of his energy into the metal and ammunition of the weapons themselves.
That had actually caused some changes to happen when he activated [Beastsoulification] moments later.
The physical ammunition in the guns' magazines hadn't been treated as loose inventory; his current had bound the now 'mutating' bullets, which had married themselves directly into the guns' unified geometry, completely rewriting how the chambers worked.
They didn't need physical gunpowder to ignite anymore. The pistols were now localized rail-cannons, firing hyper-velocity kinetic slugs propelled by pure, badass magnetic force.
Even more impressive and important, mere seconds after every round had been fired from the barrel, the Twin Talons Beast Soul magic, or whatever force was in play (Max wasn't quite sure about how this part worked) would spring into action, seamlessly loading a fresh, magnetically replicated set of slugs directly into the empty magazines, ready for the next burst of hand cannon havoc.
Unlimited ammo, auto reloading, and entirely immune to the Sanctuary's anti-technology laws. Max spun the heavy hand cannons around his fingers, and gazed up with his sharp eyes, locking them onto Shura. "No reloads, no gunpowder, all me. Let's see how you guys handle a real energy weapon, but first, let's pull out the Porsche."