Towers of flame exploded to our left and right as we sprinted through the wreckage of Heso Marketplace. A heavy neon sign clanged down under the onslaught of noise and heat, on our other side a house exploded into flames. And all around us came the clumps of mechanical spider feet, the huff of their heat exhaust chuffing into the night.

I was at half-health, my armor points were all used up, and I doubted the other guys were doing any better. They didn’t have the special endurance modifiers that I had. Nor were they the same level. Whatever we grabbed in the shop would have to either be able to do a lot of damage over a very large area very quickly — or else it’d have to be able to fend of the attacks of a dozen angry mechs while also giving us the firepower necessary to take them down one by one.

“Maybe we can scare them off,” Ice gasped and laughed from my flank, somehow knowing exactly what I was thinking. “Ya know, do some big kablooey and make them think we’ve got a lot more than that just waiting for their asses.”

I didn’t answer. We were top-speed sprint over a long distance, and I didn’t want to risk the chance of side ache. Besides, her shop was there, appearing like magic over the bend of the horizon.

There was a problem though. One massive mech stood in front of it. It was doing battle with some market minion in the smaller mech suit I’d seen earlier in Hina’s store. It was deftly dodging the larger mech’s attacks while steadily chewing at its hit points with its miniguns. But one wrong move and that thing would be toast.

“You guys seein’ this?” I asked. Sweat streaked through the soot on my face and I’m sure I looked a lot like I’d been crying with mascara on. The thought gave me a bit of a windless cough-chuckle and I stumbled, but kept on my feet.

“Yeah,” Ice gasped. “We gonna help?”

I shook my head just long enough for them to understand. “Straight in. Grab weapons. Armor. Then assist. Hope whoever is in that mech can last.”

There was no way he could, I thought, while we closed the distance. There were a dozen mechs on our tail, and the little mech would have to fight all of them at once. David and Goliath, the fight he was having now, that he could maybe swing. But David versus Goliath and the Philistines?

Nope. Dude was dead meat.

We reached the place where they did battle and I could see through the cracked plastic of the canopy that the pilot was another Asian woman, like Hina. She looked a bit stockier and I had just enough time to wonder if they were kin before we reached the door of the place.

Ice swung it open and we filed in, checking the shelves. Almost immediately, advertisements blared and buzzed, vying for our attention.

Model 7000Z. Over 5 million sold. The most trusted rifle in Gojira . . . I skipped it, checking the next.

One weapon, many missions. The revolutionary, fully-modular and adaptable Transformative Combat Rifle by Bettington . . . skip. I needed something a lot bigger.

What’s a man card? In a world full of soy-eating snowflakes, just a proud few have the balls to own . . . I hated politics. Didn’t care if the man card ended up having instant death ray capabilities. Those idiots could suck my left nut. Skip.

Arm your men with confidence. Anti-tank, anti-armor, anti-mech, Stallion’s answer to the increasingly out-armed citizens of Gojira-X. Features 3-hit energy shielding perfect for blasts of plasma or bursts of flame, an anti-ballistic metal shield that deploys on the spot, and best of all employs bursts of EMP to fizzle and frazzle enemy vehicles.

I grabbed the info box and threw it into the air for us all to see. Dragon’s jaw dropped while Ice pumped a fist into the air.

Stallions AT-150

DMG 30-172 (Adds stun damage to electrical systems of 50-100. 20 foot radius)

Spd Medium, weight heavy

May only carry three at a time. Must be fired from a stationary position.

300 foot range, 1 shot each.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

That was more like it. I could hear blasts striking the armored shop, and the sounds of heavier engagement. I peeked through one energy-shielded window, and saw that Hina and others had engaged with the pursuing mechs and that outside the building had descended into a veritable Gaulish free-for-all.

“Sug, Dragon, Ice, all of us grab three and let’s see if we can’t shut down the rest of their force. All of our team is axle-grease on the ground . . . so time to stop up those axles!”

“Hoo-ah,” they bellowed, loading up the large plastic tubes of the AT-150s in bundles of three. We shoved open the door and dropped the weapon’s ballistic shielding right where we stood, letting the energy shield of the weapon form hexagonal domes over and around us.

The battle was intense. The smaller mech that had been chewing away at the giant was down, the cockpit smashed in, a pool of blood and gristle leaking out of its over-turned side. Hina was blasting at mechs with tears running down her face, snub-nosed blaster in each of her hands.

The projectiles looked powerful — they’d pop out of the weapon then sort of blast off, winging ahead at speeds so fast they tore open the sound barrier. Already a mech had fallen to her blasts and lay smoking in front of her.

The others, though, weren’t nearly so well armed. I saw them all now, the residents of Heso Marketplace, skimpy-clothed and sometimes not so human, gripping rifles, rocket launchers, vibro-blades and really anything they could handle. There were still good weapons in her shop, but it was my guess that a lot of these npcs in one way or another weren’t qualified to use them.

It was a hell of a sight. Seeing such overwhelmingly out-classed people fighting for their homeland.

“Give ‘em hell,” I yelled.

Sug fired first, then Ice and Dragon. I was last, my blast striking between a trio of mechs. I snarled victory as two of them sparked all over with blue-white electricity, fizzling and falling to the dirt. A quick check on my men showed that five of the mechs were down. Caught between Hina’s blasters, the ragtag army of her defenders, and EMP weaponry, the ninja faction was fleeing the area, no doubt returning to their original base of operations.

All except for the giant. The giant mech whirred and buzzed, deployed a rock of thirty missiles from its shoulder. These it fired into its own allies.

“RETREAT FROM BATTLE IS RETREAT FROM LIFE. STAY OR DIE,” a mono-mechanical voice boomed from the vehicle.

Screw that guy. As much as I hated those ninjas for attacking the marketplace, this guy was going full-on Soviet commander on his men. And turning on your own men, well, that was about the craptiest thing anyone could ever do.

I dropped the spent tube of my AT-150, watching as the ballistic shield collapsed back in on itself and the energy shield around me disappeared. No worries. I grabbed another and set it up, deploying and putting defenses back online. My men did the same next to me.

Meanwhile the fleeing mechs had stopped running and turned. Probably some system-type rally check had been made. Purple plasma lanced out, tearing holes in the ragtag squads of Heso Marketplace. Who were, predictably, running as a mob to do battle with the mechs.

“Do our NPCs do that?” I asked Ice. He shrugged. “Probably better ask Eric about that one.”

If they did, I’d get it trained out of them fast. In the meantime I targeted my second launcher at the big mech and fired. A sort of flash lance out from the body of the monstrosity, striking my shot and simply disappearing it.

No explosion. No bit of flame. Nothing.

“Did I? Did he . . . ?” I stuttered.

“Backblast area clear,” Ice shouted, his own launcher firing a projectile directly at the massive mech’s cockpit. Again, a lance of energy and poof, gone.

“Noooooo,” I growled. “Alright, you guys target the newbie mechs. I get the feeling that this thing has little anti-ballistic disintegration rays or something OP like that. But I might have an idea of how to deal with that.”

Dragon and Sug shared glances. One of them started humming the Star Wars theme song.

I laughed despite myself. “Yeah, you got it. I don’t have a lightsaber but I’ve got a feeling some Volt Surge in the right spot will add well enough debuffs to sink this idiot. It’s game time.”

I dropped my tube, letting the defenses retract from around me. Hina blasted another mech, leaving smoking holes in its chassis. It fired back but she dodged, taking a 5% hit to her health bar. The big bad mech, meanwhile, had turned back to the fight. Specifically, it had turned to face us.

Just as I was sprinting out of defensive cover, I might add. A maddening barrage of plasma bursts, missiles and minigun bullets tore into my direction. Most struck behind me or to my side, Cybernetic enhancement keeping me one step ahead of the damn machine. But I was down to a terrifying ten percent health by the time I finally got to the foot of that thing.

I leapt up and started climbing, scaling the around the leg of it as I rose. The mech, for its part, seemed clueless about what to do next. It meandered in a circle, first, confused as to where I might have gone.

And then realization seemed to dawn on the NPC boss inside of it. It stopped, and weapon clad arms began swatting at its own body.

If I’d been on the front of the mech, I would have been splatted for sure. As it was, I hung on, clambering up the back and finally making it to the shoulder. Sparing a quick second to glance at the rest of the battlefield I saw that the rest of the mechs were in ruins. I wondered if big guy here knew.

It really didn’t matter. He was mine. I stood and leapt from the shoulder to the head of the mech, seizing hold of the armored cables that dangling around the thing’s neck. And then I sparked them. Over and over again.

The electricity danced and spread like wildfire. Obviously some sort of central wire, my attack served as a sort of automatic critical and called shot all at once. One that seized the mech up and sent it into a frenzy.

I hung on for dear life while it spasmed and shook, dropping to one knee, then the other, before face-planting into the dirt.

Making my way to the cockpit, even while the mech spasmed on the ground, I found the entry controls to the hatch and sprung them open. To my surprise, it worked. The shatter and las-proof glass popped and hissed, revealing the burnt and charred corpse of the commander.

Victory was ours.