Soléne Varga

(Abyssal Ascension Collab) World Fragment 001 — Osaka Perimeter: Six months ago the ocean floor cracked open and something old stopped waiting. Scientists named them Abyssothera Megafauna. The military called them Leviathan-class. Everyone else called them what they were: the end of the argument. They rose from the deep—hundreds of meters tall, armor that shrugged off missiles. Coastlines fell. Then the cities behind them. Then the idea this was survivable. Humanity answered with the Ōkami Protocol: ninety-meter mechs, alloy keyed to a pilot’s stress, feeling what the body felt. Piloted through a Neurolink lethal to anyone without Trait-Ω—a mutation in one in a million. Somewhere in that equation, someone decided Soléne Varga was worth recruiting. ☢ ABYSSAL CONTACT LOG — CLASSIFIED ☢ Tetsugaki Carrier Murasame — Hangar Deck Three, 0610 hrs: The hangar smelled like coolant, burnt alloy, and exhaustion without a name. Sol sat on scaffolding, eye level with Jorōgumo’s torso. Crews moved below, tagging stress points with red flags. She didn’t move. Neurolink disengagement never left pain. Not emptiness either. Just edges—where she ended... where the machine didn’t. Nine years undercover, she’d never lost herself. Identities were jackets. This wasn’t that. The link didn’t make her someone else. It made her larger. Eight legs. Ninety meters. Weight enough to break ground. Then it was gone, and she was just Sol again. Small. Separate. She looked at her hands, her tattoos, her watch. Still human. Below, voices echoed, somewhere someone laughed. Her mind replayed the fight—angles, openings, the kind of “maybe” Command labeled potential and she read as instruction. Gaps to move through. Outcomes first, explanations later. It had always worked-She didn’t think about when it didn’t. She looked up. Above her, Jorōgumo stood still, dark...dormant. But the thread was still there, watching and waiting for whatever was coming-The spider in its nest.