Orrin looked around the town with a confused look. The bells still rang out, but we weren’t sure what to do.

“I’m not sure what that indicates, but maybe we should get to cover?” The green man said. The street had quickly cleared out, leaving us as the only ones standing in the open.

As if to answer him, a loud rumbling could be heard in the distance. Pythagoras placed one of his long ears on the ground. Even without copying him, it was clear that whatever was coming was getting closer every moment. His slitted yellow eyes grew wide.

“Get up high!” he shouted while springing to his feet. The hood of his cloak fell, but the goblin no longer seemed to care as he ran to the nearest building.

Orrin and I followed, but the door had already been shut tight. A rubber-looking material seemed to have inflated around the edges, making the entry impossible to open. A quick inspection of the other buildings showed the same closing method had been applied. I didn’t have much time to ponder why it was done; the rumbling was growing louder and louder.

From up top, a rope fell in front of our faces.

“Up here!” A voice of a child rang out after a moment of delay. Orrin nodded and threw the bags of the purchased noodles up to land perfectly on the roof. As he took the bags from the two of us, he indicated we should climb. I was first to reach the top and quickly looked down at the sight.

It was best described as a wall of water rushing through the street. The torrent seemed like it would destroy everything in its path, but the buildings took the brunt of the wave so well they must have been built with it in mind. Orrin’s feet were just barely missed as he pulled himself up the rope. Had he been a hair lower, I suspect he would have been swallowed by the rushing wave.

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The street below had become a raging river by the time Pythagoras and Orrin reached the top. I think we all took in a sigh of relief as we settled from the experience.

On the roof, a small boy, possibly no more than 10, looked back and forth at each of us. He lingered on Pythagoras the longest. I couldn’t tell if he was confused about what the goblin was or if he knew and had reason to fear him. Out in the distance, the whole area was consumed by the rushing water. The giant machine we saw earlier slowly marched against the current off to what I assume was the source of the wave.

“I see, so it must be waterproof….” Pythagoras muttered as he eyed the giant. His concerns seemed to be the least significant thing possible, but I didn’t see any point in telling him.

Orrin looked down at the water.

“That is quite something!” he said cheerily.

His cheeriness didn’t last long as soon as a shout was heard from behind. A man had come out and yelled out in shock at the sight of us. He wasted no time grabbing the kid protectively and pointing a long gun at us. Orrin put his hands up in surrender and took a step forward.

“Take it easy, friend.”

The man, however, was too cautious. He let a shot ripple out from the barrel of the gun. The rooftop seemed to shake. It took me a moment to realize the shaking was not from the blast.

Something had washed through the river and crashed into the building. And it had hit hard. The building began to crack, and my footing gave out. I began to fall down to the rushing river. Up above, Orrin and Pythagoras looked down and shouted my name. To the side of the building, I could see what had hit. A sizeable mechanical arm had crashed; it was possibly thrown, considering it looked too heavy to float.

In the distance, I think I saw the machine which guarded the town engaged in a massive fist fight with a second which was all black and had only a single arm, but I couldn’t linger on the dueling giants for too long.

My mind began to distort as I looked back up to the sky. Instead of a building, I was falling off a cliff side. The sky above was blood red, and I felt something, or perhaps someone important, was left on the cliff's edge just out of my view. Screams and cries were almost drowned out by growls and howls of beasts. I could do nothing in response to this image or current situation, so I fell.

The last thing I remember was hitting the water—whether it was the cliff's base or the mech world's water, I could not tell—and feeling it quickly suck me into the current.