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Blue Archive Soundtrack for Cold Stream (and potentially Lukewarm Stream)

"Ember."

Slap charges gouge two doors and make a third in a hedge wall. Assaulters explode onto the property from three directions. The noise masks the prop signature of the first Switchblade, burning into the armed fighter outside NAI 1, the guest villa. The shaped charge shears her apart, shattering her halo, tearing limbs off and scattering them across the garden.

Assaulters from Troop Two-One enter the still-open door and CQB their way through the house. Two-Two and Two-Three move to NAI 2, setting charges on both entrances to the house - then breaching. The fight happens one room in. Two girls with MPXs versus seven assaulters with BCM MCMRs. A dozen wound channels in each fighter are followed by dead check halo shots and headshots to ensure a catastrophic loss of life.

A grenade sails down a stairwell and frags, hitting three of the assaulters with shrapnel. A teenager with an SG553 follows, sweeping fire through the room. She gets one more of the Scorch troops before her body dead steps forward into a heap, shot to death by Kino still on the ground from the concussion of the frag.

"Mikoto-san? Mikoto-san?! Are you still there?!" The feminine cry goes unanswered. "Screw you! Screw you all!"

Kino gets up on the net. "Three Zero, this is Two Zero. NAI 2, second story termination."

"Copy, NAI 2, second story termination."

Kino confirms, "Send it."

Three drones pitch out of orbit and spool up, beelining to NAI 2. Pushing through different windows, every single room on the second floor is hit. Faces register anger and horror right before the screens go black and charges detonate. "Two Zero, Three Zero is rounds complete."

Pressing up the stairs, weapons dipped so the shooters can see just over their optics, there is no fight left on the second floor. In every room, bodies are mangled or dying. Women and children have their vests half strapped on. The two delinquent girls have M4A1 rifles, chest rigs and body armor. Kino gets on comms, "Two One, Two Zero, status."

Fixer, troop lead for Two One, answers immediately. "Two One is sector complete. Negative PUCs."

"Roger, begin your post assault. I want to be wheels up inside 5 mikes." Switching channels again, "Actual, Two Zero. NAI 1 and NAI 2 are cleared. Negative PUCs. Four walking wounded. Two requiring evac. Beginning SSR." Ignoring the dying, the assaulters start stripping electronics and anything with writing on it from the entire house. Only when they are done do they check the bodies for useful intelligence.

Sensei watches the scene from surveillance airships on the other side of the border. Activity is spiking in other parts of the town. Delinquent fighters in pickup trucks are spinning up for a fight. Sensei issues an immediate directive. "Actual, this is Bonfire. Be advised: Spark has three ass wagons full of crows ready to bang converging on the cordon area along MSR Gold and MSR Silver."

Scorch Actual, the ground force commander embedded in the southern cordon, makes the call. "Two Zero, Actual. Spur. I say again, Spur."

"Two Zero copies Spur." Kino gets back on the assault net. "All Scorch Two elements, we are exfil, exfil, exfil." Everyone drops what they are doing and starts moving back to breach.

The assault forces leave the compound, moving directly to their parked Oshkosh M-ATVs, remote starters firing up the engines before they even arrive. The rest of the cordon force collapses onto their side-by-side electric UTVs, each element providing security for the others as they move. Incoming artillery lobs overhead, coming down elsewhere in the clade. Kino gets into the passenger front and pings his command. "Actual, Two Zero is up. Ready to bounce."

"Roger that Two Zero. Take us out."

"Copy, we're wheels up." Kino gestures forward to his driver, a veteran Iraqi Counter Terrorism Group commando now, like Kino, working for SCHALE. "Drive."

Seven klicks west, IR spotting suites mounted on a KC-130 Harvest Hawk swivel and zoom, reading fresh targets from the assault tech spotting the enemy positions inside the clade. A battery of howitzers sends another barrage of magnesium-phosphorus shells into the city, plowing counter-attacking ground forces and surrounding streets into burning craters strewn with body parts and tangles of metal.

The fires burning through the Tjebnutjer Sprawl will persist for days before they can be brought under control. For the first time in generations, there is fear in the hearts of Abydos gangsters and delinquents.

NO ONE WILL BE SAFE FROM SCHALE.

BLUE ARCHIVE

Unforgiving Close Combat in a Failed State at War

A quick Blue Archive (and then some) music pack for everyone's least favorite official map out there, Cold Stream.

Seriously, after fooling around Chokepoint Stream, I'm surprised at just how scripted the map is. Fun fact, the Witch does not spawn in Cold Stream Co-op. There are two tanks on the entire map. And then the horrid gauntlet in the tunnels. But I think everyone already knows that.

• After School Dessert for the safehouse themes.
  
• Sakura Punch for Witch themes... if you manage to spawn one in Cold Stream, anyway.
  
• Mechanical Jungle: Hi-Tech Full On Mix for Tank themes.
  
• Lovely Picnic for death themes.
  
• Fever Time for the escape theme.
  
• Constant Moderato for the credits.
  
• Additional support for the better Cold Stream. It's hacky as usual and might require a manual installation or some way to make this mod load before Lukewarm Stream, but it's there.

• Nexon Games[www.nexon.com] and MX Studio for Blue Archive, the game where students fight and die in a great war by proxy fought not for great justice, but for mineral rights, in the failed state of Kivotos.
  
• Nor for composing Sakura Punch.
  
• Mitsukiyo[mitsukiyo.info] for making Lovely Picnic.
  
• KARUT for creating Mechanical Jungle: Hi-Tech Full On Mix and After School Dessert.
  
• Jesper Kyd[www.jesperkyd.com] for the Fever Time and Constant Moderato remixes above.