Chapter One Hundred and Nineteen - That Painful Period

  I woke up the next morning to a mild pain in the small of my back, and for once it wasn't Mister Couchtop who had decided to settle there overnight. I groaned, shoving my face into my pillow, then I absently cast Soothe Minor Pain.

  When next I saw Dharti, I was determined to give the woman a hug. She deserved it.

  I slid out of bed, feeling rather groggy, and then got up and showered, and yeah, the monthly firmware flush had started. It wasn't an excuse to miss work, even if it really ought to be.

  Dressing up and packing some extras into my purse, I headed out the door and immediately drove over to a nice cafe along the way. If I had to endure this shit, I could at least tackle the sugar cravings early.

  If I was gonna be bloated anyway, might as well stuff myself full of carbs to deserve it.

  I really couldn't complain too much. I didn't have it that bad, not compared to some. It just sucked. I made it to work a few minutes before the start of the day and discovered a message from Eldur sent to everyone on Squad B. We had an early morning meeting in one of the loading bays downstairs.

  Groaning, I took the elevator down while nursing a coffee in one hand and a breakfast wrap in the other.

  I found the squad leader talking to Sol, our ice mage, over by the side of one of our APCs. They were both in armour already. "What's going on?" I asked.

  "We're hitting an E-rank portal this morning," Eldur said. "Get dressed. We're leaving at ten."

  "Alright," I said. I wasn't gonna get any sort of dispensation or anything. At best I might be able to convince Dharti to lay down some magic to heal me up, but apparently there really wasn't much that could be done. I know, I'd looked it up.

  It was some bullshit about basic healing magic mostly only functioning in a way that helped the body heal. It could do nutrition and encourage white blood cell production and do all sorts of neat shit like deaden nerves a little, but some natural phenomena were way too finicky to mess with so casually.

  Some Nature mages could play with someone's hormones but it was generally something reserved for third tier and up spells, and it wasn't safe.

  Fortress ENE had two C-rank Nature mages working for some smaller medical corp that could work miracles with ease. Probably making seven to eight figures a year, too. I didn't have a millionth of the clout necessary to go bugging them for help for some mild cramps and bloating.

  I got changed, slipping on the company's usual gear. Cargo pants, a tight shirt that felt a little too tight today, steel-toed boots. I was happy to see that some extras I'd requisitioned had come in as well.

  There were these thin steel greaves and knee pads, as well as hard-plastic and steel vambraces and elbow guards.

  I vaguely recalled the company shifting to better armour at some point, but that might not be for a few months.

  After shrugging into a plate carrier, I checked over my gear. The company standard Myalis Arms handgun, a few extra magazines, a small first-aid kit and some portal diving equipment. I took a minute to replace the batteries in my flashlight, just in case.

  When I left the armoury, it was to find Eldur looking over a tablet. "Hey," I said. "So, what portal are we hitting today?"

  "Little E-rank thing just a few blocks over," he said. "It'll be a milkrun unless things go crooked."

  "Nearby? Oh, the wind elemental portal?"

  Eldur glanced up. "Yes. You know about it?"

  "Yeah," I said. Then I realized my mistake. How could I know about it? Sure, it was a recurring portal that Luna Corp had, so I'd cleared it out as an E-ranker in the 'future' but no one had mentioned it yet. "Uh. Someone from Squad E3 mentioned it."

  "Oh," he said, his attention dropping back to the tablet. "It should be easy enough. You might want to bring a melee weapon. We usually hit this one with spear and shield."

  "I'll grab something," I said.

  It took a solid twenty minutes before everyone else was ready, but that was fine. I was more than happy to lean up against the APC and let my brain melt for a while.

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  I refocused when Eldur called us all to attention. Being that this wasn't the army, the squad mostly just wandered over and stood in a rough line before him.

  "This will be a refresher for most of you, but it's mostly for our newest member." His eyes focused on me, and I made the minimal effort to stand a bit taller. Then he raised a spear that he had been holding. "This is a custom weapon that is specifically designed for the recurring portal that we'll be running today."

  The spear was a little strange. The haft of it was all carbon fiber, with a metal rod in the centre. At one end was a bit of a 'lump,' a section that bulged out. That was where the batteries were.

  The spear head... wasn't. Not quite. The end of the spear was a hard plastic housing, with a small blade running underneath it, more like a bayonet than a spear, really. The housing was round and kind of bulky looking, with a hole on the end and six smaller holes along the shaft.

  It was, basically, a cheap plastic fan with a small but powerful motor and a tube around it to create a stronger point of suction. Basically, the spear was really just a long vacuum without any sort of bag or filters.

  "This is a Mark Four suction spear," he said. "The toggle is here." he turned the haft a little, revealing a simple switch that could be toggled with a flick. He did just that, and the entire spear started to suck, the fan spinning up with a loud hum.

  It sounded exactly like a poorly made vacuum.

  "The monsters that occupy the portal world are lesser air elementals. They're a non-threat in most cases, but can still be annoying to deal with. The best way to combat them is through mass air displacement, or targeted displacement. They are almost entirely impervious to small arms fire, and trying to take one down through magical means is generally considered wasteful."

  "Unless you're an Air mage," Terry said.

  "Unless you're an Air mage," Eldur conceded. "In which case, this portal would be a joke. Unfortunately, Air mages are relatively uncommon."

  I nodded along. "So... we stick them with the loud, sucky end?"

  "And they'll break apart," Eldur said. "Lesser air elementals can, at best, suffocate you to death, though they're not usually strong enough to do that if you're mobile and try to fight back. It can still be very disorienting, and they can create strong blasts of air that can be... a nuisance. We'll be carrying a few shields as well."

  He tossed me the spear and I caught it out of the air. It was a bit strangely light and poorly balanced. The tip was too heavy and the battery pack at the back didn't counterbalance it well.

  I stabbed forwards with it a few times. "What's the knife edge part for?" I asked.

  "In case we run into something that isn't an air elemental," he said. "We're bringing small arms along, and we have spells, but it's best to be prepared, just in case."

  I shrugged. Alright, that was fine.

  We got into the APC after Eldur handed out a few of those spears. There were enough that we each had one, and he did a check to make sure they were all charged.

  Then we were off.

  Like he'd mentioned, this portal wasn't far from the Luna Corp HQ. It was, in fact, just a few blocks over. The building it was in was a still-functional clothing manufacturing place. They had a few floors of open-plan factory space with several dozen stations where tailors were putting together outfits. Specifically custom gambesons and thicker, padded armours. The kind of stuff that nice corps got their divers.

  Ironically, not the kind of thing that Luna Corp equipped us with.

  The back section of the factory space was cordoned off, and a faux-wall had been mounted there around the space where the portal reappeared.

  It was strangely... normal. People looked up as we entered, but there wasn't much of a fuss except for a manager leading us to the back and telling Eldur how the portal had been here from sometime that morning.

  Forming up, we plunged into the portal, one at a time. I was last in, which gave me ten seconds almost alone before I had to jump through to discreetly check myself over and rub at my stomach.

  Yeah, I was not gonna be looping this day over and over.

  ***