"Sir! Flesh carver Wohali, the leader specifically requested that no one would bother him! Please, stop!"
Wohali ignored the secretary, walking toward the massive doors leading to King’s bedchambers. Before he could reach the massive doors made out of black stone, two other flesh carvers stood before him, positioning their square-shaped metal frames before the entrance.
"Wohali, you heard the lady," Zolin boomed friendly. The pleasant voice of a young male comes from countless dynamics installed all around his body. Each word was accompanied by soothing music, meant to relax the atmosphere, "King is very busy."
"Moon City has fallen. Jekaterina is dead…"
"That’s Jekaterina Soultaker for you!" Yaretzi, the second flesh carver, snapped at Wohali in a rasped voice. A dozen crimson lenses scanned Wohali, sizing him up like a predator would size up its prey.
The brother and sister built themselves almost identical frames. Both were standing on two column-like legs, two massive steel arms were coming from their shoulders, ready to maim, crush, and bisect anyone in their massive claws. Neither had a head, instead, an intricate series of moving lenses were installed around the bulks. Zolin’s lenses were blue, and Yaretzi’s lenses were multicolored, switching colors based on her mood.
Sparks of lightning flashed back and forth across Yaretzi’s body, never once stopping, never once jumping onto anyone that she didn’t want to. She prided herself, falsely in Wohali’s opinion, as a person with the greatest knowledge about various types of energy among the Bento tribe. It was she who built generators to supply heavy assault team members with an almost inextinguishable amount of energy, allowing them to operate for months without the need for recharging. And most importantly, she made them cheap, easy to manufacture, and easy to mass produce. Few in the tribe could match her skills in making things affordable. In this regard, Wohali readily bowed to Yaretzi’s wisdom.
Meanwhile, Zolin surrounded himself with pleasant sounds; each step produced a calm sound of wood hitting against wood rather than a towering crash against the floor. In his research of sound, the man found a way to negate or transform sounds to his liking, bringing the silencers of the tribe to a new height. And not just that. In his obscure research, he found a way to mimic the voices of others with perfect clarity, spreading confusion among enemy ranks. During a time of peace, he was trading ‘pleasurers’, as he called specially attuned sound forks, with other nations for long-lost artifacts and valuable items. The sound vibrations produced by them stimulated the pleasure centers in the brain, with no risk of getting addicted.
In peacetime, Wohali enjoyed debating with these two, often allowing them to visit his laboratory. The three of them were arguing for better healthcare in the tribe, the three of them were the first to master the skills of healing the biological parts rather than simply amputating them.
"Jekaterina Glawish," Wohali responded in a calm voice, turning to look at Yaretzi, "Is dead. Soultakers are scattered. Is he aware of this? Does he even care? Why are you siding with him instead of demanding answers?"
"We always knew that it would come to us to stop reclaimers," Yaretzi made a step closer to Wohali, raising the claw to point at his steel face, "The flesh is weak. Misguided. Frail. Fallible," One of the lenses looked at the secretary, making her step away in fear, "We are the ones who pulled the most weight in this war. The time simply came for the steel to meet the flesh for real."
"Two of our elders fallen in Moon City," Wohali moved his sight toward the doors, "Elder Chicapalli went missing. We lost three elders and managed to kill two enemy warlords and badly injure another. We can’t win this trade. The flesh, which you denigrate so much, stood side by side with our elders, dying for their sake. Unlike King, who ran and ran from any combat, making a fool of himself. The war came to our lands, something we were repeatedly assured would not happen. Discard the false bravado or misguided loyalty and look at the situation with a calm mind. There is only one path we must pursue now, and that is the survival of our people."
"How dare you imply…"
"Peace," Zolin spread his arms wide, "Peace, Wohali. My sister and I did not came here for King's sake. No, we came to protect you. The time is late. Instead of doing something we all might regret, let us mourn the loss of our dear allies and talk tomorrow, when we are all rested," His voice changed, now perfectly imitating the elder who was present at the foundation of their tribe, "Harsh as it may be, sometimes the tribe must follow a seemingly unpopular course in order…"
"No," Wohali said, pausing his recitation of an ancient speech, "We owe our forefathers a debt. But we can’t allow the ghosts of their memories and grievances to shackle us, rendering us unable to do what must be done to survive. They did what they had to do to ensure the survival of our people. I will follow suit."
An energy beam struck from Yaretzi’s claw, hitting Wohali in the face and forcing him to retreat. The beam melted the metal around his left lens, failing to pierce him any further. Yaretzi pursued him, swinging her massive claw to turn him into rubble.
Today, Wohali was wearing a simple trench coat made of metal. He wore this thing occasionally, always presenting it as a stylish choice rather than a tool of his trade. Today, the edge of his coat sprouted into action on its own, activated by a pseudo-artificial intelligence that he created out of curiosity, turning the edge of his coat into the sharpest blade that stopped the incoming slash, slicing off the tip of Yaretzi’s claw.
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A dart shot from beneath Wohali’s trench coat, hitting the running secretary in the back and paralyzing the scared woman before she could reach her desk and set the alarm. Several more darts shot from within his body, piercing Yaretzi’s frame and introducing his personal virus to her system, halting the flesh carver somewhat.
None of the darts reached Zolin. They simply shattered in the face of his powerful sound vibration. Zolin raised his massive steel arm, pointing his palm at Wohali. And immediately unleashed a concentrated soundwave strong enough to breach a tank’s hulls at the rebel flesh carver.
Wohali's trench coat's shield generator activated, generating a force field that allowed him to survive a cataclysmic hit that reduced the stone ground beneath his legs to sand. Before Zolin could fire again, Yaretzi charged forward.
She was angry, Wohali understood this much. His fellow colleague always allowed the emotions to influence her course of action, interfering with proper decision making. In everyday life, her tenacity was admirable, Wohali could hardly match her infernal perseverance when it came to a problem solving. Right now, it played against Yaretzi, she came at him head-on, wishing to smash him into pieces for his betrayal, rather than stay at a distance and work in tandem with her brother, taking him apart part by part. Just like he predicted.
His frame was smaller and lighter than hers, so Wohali chose not to engage her on her own terms. Instead, a plasma sword came to live in the right hand's index finger. Nimbly dodging two cruel swings of Yaretzi’s claws, Wohali went on the offensive, hacking at her left wrist and partially disabling her left hand.
The sword died in his hand before the flesh carver could capitalize on his assault. Streaks of energy flowed from his frame toward his opponent, indicating that she finally unleashed her true masterwork. The energy absorption. Wohali smiled, allowing his opponent to try to drain him of all his energy, taking a trembling step backward as if in fear.
In truth, he had nothing to fear. When it came to energy, Yaretzi was a genius, Wohali was willing to admit this much. The problem was that she focused too much on mass-producing energy generators, going for quantity, instead of quality. And in singular combat, quality would always outdone quantity.
The plasma generator within Wohali’s body could potentially work for the next thousand years or more, depending on part degradation. It was his own masterwork, a perfect device not dependent on outside sources of energy to keep working and requiring only maintenance. Yaretzi's massive frame was as much a necessity as it was a sign of her status, she had to overly expand her body, stuffing in too many generators. Wastefulness, instead of efficiency.
Yaretzi stepped forward, hitting him in the left shoulder and tearing some metal off him. This was fine; Wohali had never expected to arrive at King unopposed or undamaged. In response to her violent attack, the cracked floor exploded, allowing two of his students, two members of the heavy assault team, to come forth, bringing their swords at Yaretzi’s arms.
The blades, wrapped in overheated energy, pierced her outer hull, hitting the delicate machine work within. His students never managed to take away her arms, nor was Wohali counting on it. Even ambushed, a flesh carver was always a flesh carver. The energy absorption hungrily devoured the energy generators within his students’ blades, the force fields installed in Yaretzi’s shoulders pushed both overweight frames into the walls, creating cracks that ran all the way to the ceiling.
Energy spikes rode across the flesh carver's body while she was preparing to unleash her wrath on his students. Wohali gave her no opportunity for this. He leaped at her, tendrils sprouting from the seam all around his metal frame. He struck at Yaretzi, piercing her frames in numerous places and taking out her generators, one by one, depowering the energy-wielding flesh carver until only her brain was left, floating lonely, sealed in a massive armored body that became a trap for her.
A report of structural damage came to Wohali, and he spun around, seeing Zolin above the downed student. The sound master silenced the sound of his every step; not even the slightest tremor accompanied his mighty steps anymore. He sneaked up on one of his students, placing a hand on his frame and unleashing a sound wave that bypassed all armor, stimulating the poor woman’s brain into a state of uncontrollable bliss. In the next moment, he tore apart her arms and legs, leaving behind the frame moaning from mindless pleasure.
Wohali’s other student came at the flesh carver, swinging his reignited blade. The metal shattered upon coming into contact with vibrations coming from Zolin’s steel hand. Moving with a speed unbecoming for such a massive body, the flesh carver bisected the man at his waist, catching the upper part and casting it against the floor with a force like raging lightning.
A laser beam passed through the entrance doors, fired by another of Wohali’s students. The energy harmlessly dissipated against a sound shield formed before Zolin.
"This was a nice show, Wohali," Zolin boomed jovially, "But the performance is over. Come now, surrender. You can see that I am invincible. Have no fear, I will smooth things over with King, no one needs to be punished," His voice switched to sound like Tlaltzin. "Otherwise, death."
"So arrogant." Wohali shook his head in a mindless gesture of disappointment.
He walked toward his fellow, feeling devastated at Zolin’s obliviousness to a clear weakness in his technology. Overreliance on a single weapon always led to a situation where your foe would come out with an idea of how to counter you. The artificial intelligence within his trench coat whined, transmitting to him information that Zolin was powering up his systems to smite him with a concentrated stream of sound that could break even molecular bonds.
Wohali simply activated another device, sucking in all the air around himself and Zolin, putting them both in the vacuum. The sound master looked astonished for a second, he even tried to make a step back to get out of the soundless zone. In this moment, Wohali stuck several darts into him, filling his inner systems with his hand-crafted virus.
The air was sucked back in, filling up the void created by Wohali with a thundering sound. Zolin tried to bring his sound weapon against Wohali, aiming to turn him into dust, only to find out that the frequency of his sound had changed. Before the flesh carver was able to remove the virus from his systems, Wohali activated his plasma sword, opening the frame before him and pulling out the armored case with his friend inside.
"Do not take this as anything personal," He told his colleagues, allowing his students to pick them up, along with two damaged students and the still paralyzed secretary. "Treat this as an opportunity to overcome the flaws of your linear development. Take them to safety, please. I will finish here myself."