The gore was tremendous, and I was wet with the squick even at a distance. I was just glad it didn’t get in my mouth because I might have lost my fucking cool.

Of the shots I fired, only half of them hit, and those were shit shots, but it was something. With the vicera, and getting shot they fell quickly after that.

It took longer to recover the sword than it did to finish them off.

“You just have to wiggle it,” Pinky, the pinkest wielder of a weapon capable of blowing heads off, casually told me.

“I did that already,” I complained back.

“Then let me do it.”

Cursing my skinny, flabby arms, I refused. Vehemently. I just barely managed to catch myself from automatically saying, ‘yes please.’

My stupid big mouth going to jail for treason aside, she got behind me, reached around me and grabbed the sword.

She wagged and I went along with it and the sword popped out of the rock and the man like it wasn’t even stuck.

We fell back on our asses, me pushing her back, and I landed with the back of my neck in her chest.

They were… very capable of handling my fall. The fabric at the bottom of my neck was very soft. It was incredibly soft.

She let out a little, “Oof,” as we fell, but we kind of just sat there.

I held the sword. She held me up.

In her lap.

“Don’t, say, anything,” I said quietly, not quite able to make it the threat I wanted to. My mind was too focused on the boing behind me.

I could feel the flutter of a not quite laugh through her chest as she said, “Whats wrong? You had a problem freeing my sword, and now it renders you speechless?”

I had not been expecting that, and it got a tiny laugh out of me, fueled by the traitor who would not stop betraying me, myself.

I managed to retain my cool and getting my mind in order. I was normally good at keeping my cool in combat, but it was an entirely different thing to keep it when you were literally lying on a busty woman who was making jokes.

I mean, seriously. That just wasn’t fair.

“Was that automatic?” I asked her, “Because you seem really good at acting under pressure for a dopey airhead.”

“Ouch. What kind of magical girl can’t throw out some good banter? I can’t tell if I’m more insulted by you thinking so little of me or at being called a dopey airhead,” she wined.

“Your acting like a dopey airhead, and your probably high on whatever meds your using,” I told her frankly, quickly standing up and turning to face her. “Your literally the model of dopey, and acting like an airhead.”

Her response was to pout, and I immediately felt like I had kicked a puppy. A pink and black mutant puppy.

I sighed and lent her a hand up, which seemed to correct her mood a little.

I couldn’t tell if it was manipulation, or just her having two states of existence that she flipped between at speeds no one should be able to but I didn’t particularly care.

Her internal struggle between the two bi-polar wolves in her mind was none of my concern, my concern lay in getting out of here so I didn’t die, something Pinky didn’t seem to care about in the slightest.

I left her to brush herself off and made my way to the best part of cover, peeking up over it to get a read on the situation. My partner also did, and started audibly humming to herself, mumbling, “Mmhm, Mmhm,” like an idiot before asking, “so whatcha you looking for?”

I sighed, but we were in this together for now… somehow.

“Just where to go next. I don’t want to get caught between the two of them.”

“Oohh. All smart and stuff, sugoi! I would just run for it, but doing it this way is probably smarter.”

I looked at her, then rubbed my eyes, putting down the sword to double palm.

“Of course you would just run through a combat zone, that’s… Yeh, fuck it.”

“What it’s not that weird. Well… it’s not weird when I deal with people, anyway. Anything other than people don’t stare at my chest. Plot armour and all that, you know?”

My migraine, that was to say Pinky, could not stop me. Not for long anyways.

“Well, I know where we’re going, so. One… Two…” I started, quickly grabbing the sword.

“Wai-”

“Three,” I said, throwing myself up and over.

I quickly oriented myself to the best piece of cover and booked it, my shoes giving me a little more spring to my step.

I felt something hot enough to singe me pass behind me, quickly followed by a column of superheated air hitting me. The scream hurt my ears, but it wasn’t enough, not in passing at least, to knock me over.

I arrived at what looked like a kiosk and threw myself over to it.

Three, very crispy, men were inside. Based on the circular pattern of it, and how they weren’t totally on fire, told me it was the lunatics lances that had done it. I shuddered at that but got my grips quickly enough.

Lucky me, I had literally dodged that bullet… Or laser… Or plasma. I couldn’t be sure unless I got a better look, but something about it told me laser.

Something about that barrel thing they were doing, swapping it out, told me it was a laser, but it could be plasma.

I cleared my head in time to hear Pinky coming, getting clear of her path as she rolled in and splatted against the wall in front of me.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

“Why are you so fast?” she mumbled into a piece of bio-wood.

“I told you, I’m not fast, you're just top heavy. It’s all that weight you throw around whenever you walk.”

“Your top heavy too,” she mumbled.

“Yeh, but I’m a short stack,” my mouth told her as I paid attention outside, “All the energy is contained in my five-and-a-bit feet … It goes where I want it.”

“Not that top-heavy or that short,” she told me.

I got a little grossed out at the idea of being top-heavy. But hearing the, not that short bit gave me a weird cozy feeling in my chest. It was inopportune, so I strangled it viciously, but it had been there for a moment.

A lance thundered overhead, and I saw a peeking man get his top half instantly char broiled which helped a bit.

It was a good shot too which worried and helped me stay grounded, which was annoyingly hard in the current situation.

There were two more pieces of cover between us and the machinegun nest, and I didn’t like the idea of running in front of it. Between that one, there was only a single piece of cover between us and freedom, so once we got out, we were clean for a getaway, but that wasn’t the worrying bit.

“Lilly, what do you think about our chances if we push in front of the machine gun?”

“Don’t,” she said simply. “The fiercest resistance is probably there. The fringes were light, which points to heavier shock troops ready to repel in close combat to halt the main gun from getting pushed. Also, there is no way they would set up cover that protects them from their own gun.”

Yeah. Nothing was ever that easy.

“Why would we go in front when we could take the gun?” Pink asked, “I might hate the guards and whatnot, but I’m not against getting a bad guy. Bet that will wipe the smug look off his face.”

“Who’s face?” I asked her while I rolled the idea around in my head.

“Commander Crimson Crane,” she said simply, “He’s like… My arch nemesis? We have this whole back and forth, we do, you know? He’ll do something that’s not quite an atrocity, and then I’ll defeat him, and he’ll shake his fist as I get away from his men and shout at me.”

I looked at her and squinted like she was a fucking moron.

“And he’s alive?” I asked her, “because where I’m siting you have a solution for that Miss pink particle gun on my finger.”

“I never get the chance,” she shrugged.

I looked at her and got the feeling this was a can of words that I didn’t want to open right now.

“Well, Pinky-”

“My name isn’t-”

“Pinky!” I affirmed louder, “Your idea of silencing that gun is probably our best shot. Do you have any extra good ideas rattling around in there, or are we just going to charge the heavily fortified position using the power of friendship or whatever?”

She pouted again for a moment but brightened up when I said she had a good idea. I went through another cycle when the insult landed and zipped right back up when she realized I was asking for another idea.

It was like watching clothes in a laundry machine. Up down, up down.

She got a look on her face, a clear, overexaggerated look of thought, before nodding to herself sagely.

She beamed at me after a few moments and said, “Run at it, and shoot it until it dies. Always works for me.”

“Thats… Oh boy…”

Dear god. I know I don’t believe in you, so this is rude. But can you please watch over me, your strongest soldier, in her hour of need? I thought to myself.

“Ok… do you have a second one in there?” I asked her.

“Nope,” she said, her beaming look not interrupted.

“Whew, boy. That’s… yeh, okay. We’re not going to do that.”

She looked confused but didn’t say anything else that would make me want to do something stupid, like perhaps find the nearest bridge to jump off of, so that was nice.

I looked back from her, and planed it out, plotted where I would move, how I could get from here to there.

If I was rushing them from the front, my gun would be less useful. If any of them had decent armour, it would probably catch the bullet before it left its housing.

I checked for plasma. I had a few squirrelled away, as it turned out, though not as many as I wanted. I counted five or so unloaded and one in Righty. I checked my pockets but found no grenade, so that was out.

Good job, me. Leaving a compact tool that would be perfect for this. Yippee.

One of the better places was where the sniper had hit one of the goons. I knew that one was down one of however many people were there. I could engage in melee while I got covering fire from Pinky.

It was also just out of line with the others, being a bit further away than the rest but closer to the entrenched gun.

We would only need to take one piece of cover, and then we could slip back and into the emplacement. It was also to the side of the gun, which meant it couldn’t shoot us.

I did not want to know how many men were in there, but it was the best place. We would need to slip behind it anyways, which would be probably bad if we didn’t take it.

“How fast can you run,” I asked her, “and can you run all the way over to there?” I continued, pointing.

She leaned in, looking down my arm at where I was pointing.

“I can’t make that, but I have an idea…”

It was a bad idea, but it was a better idea than clearing multiple pieces of cover while fighting partially out of cover.

Even if it was silly as hell.

I slammed out of cover clumsily, my shoes purposefully kicked off with as much force as I could. I had to run awkwardly, back relatively upright instead of hunched over to avoid tipping over.

I had to do that because I carried her on my back. Her head atop mine, her arms and legs holding onto me, one hand ready to snap off a shot.

People were heavy, but my legs could handle it for the distance we were going.

I thudded when I moved my legs slaming into the ground, as I took the least cluttered route, avoiding bits of broken plant and plastic and stone and metal.

The machine gun noticed us rushing towards it and turned, first stopping its fire before swivelling towards us and lighting up.

I swore and sped up, my breathing shortening and the spring in my shoes increasing. I got a lead on the shots before he narrowed in on me, out speeding how quickly he got the gun towards me. I couldn’t outrun a laser, but I could abuse the person using it.

A shot from behind us cracked beside me, nearly throwing me forward as I flinched from the scream of superheated air. The bar of light hit the wall of a building twenty feet away, burning through a woody exterior and leaving behind a molten divot in the inflammable wall behind it.

One of the guys in cover to our right spotted us as he peeked over and cracked off a shot towards us that tore through my armour, further destroying it while also putting a burn through my plate and into my rib.

I almost screamed, only not as adrenaline hit my system all at once, Lilly silently doing whatever it was she could do. The surge of it got me to gape as the feeling went from horrendous to a suddenly numbed burn, so distant it felt like it was happening to someone else.

I sucked back a lungful of air, my head turning just enough to see his head as a second shot turned his head into a charcoal bricket and passed past him into the ground behind me.

Another shot passed nearby, and Pinky shouted in pain as a shot clipped her and scorched my jacket, though it was not followed up nor as powerful as one of the lances.

I counted my lucky stars because I did not want to get in there, only for Pinky to be fucking dead.

Maybe I was getting sentimental, or maybe it was my need to survive, counting her as my best way out. But I couldn’t help that I wanted to be right next to her right now, and tossing her charred corpse off my back was not what I wanted.

I focused on getting to the cover, everything else falling away as my heart thundered in my ears.

Sixty feet.

Another shot cracked off in front of me, the sniper missing by about two feet. My animal brain screamed in fright, but I managed to keep running into it.

Forty feet.

The machine gunner started to correct the light flying from the gun, closing in behind me as he rapidly jerked the gun.

Twenty feet.

One of the pieces of cover we ran past threw something that rolled on the ground, and the mg closed.

Ten feet.

I could see the men in the cover front facing and while unready, they saw me.

Five feet.

The machine gun pinged and the shots cut of, one burning through my coat as it flapped. I pushed off a little harder, aiming to get behind the men in front of me. and my brain registered the word, “grenade,” from behind me.

And then I was in flying over them, putting a bit of spin on it as I turned, taking in the sight of a wall of guards as I crested over a piece of cover.

The goons stood up, and one of them got picked off before I even landed, shrugging it off as it slammed into a helmeted head and sprayed off in several beams like a prism.

I landed, knees buckling from the weight, even through most of it getting absorbed.

Lilly apologized, and twelve men looked towards me, one of them flinched for a moment as he took the hit.

Fuck me, this was definitely worse than rushing the gun.

And that was before the grenade went off, a starting pistol on the absolute nightmare clown carnival this was about to be.