To say we ran towards the fortress armor was something of an overstatement. It truly was the pinnacle of XPCA weaponry, with all the exotics that entailed. Moving in a straight line towards it was a challenge as its dozens of weapons bore down on us, blasting us and our path with familiar attacks like freeze bombs and adhesive, but also things I hadn't seen before, like a creeping red slime which we fastidiously skirted.

I also...wasn't doing so hot. I'd been beat to hell just earlier that day, fucking over my legs twice between losing the duel with the sword ninja and tearing my shit out to rescue Saga. Fortunately, I had the medical gel and bandages Karu had put on me, and I think I had residual effects from the stims and from Saga helping me with my pain, but my mobility was a pathetic jog at best.

Mostly, it was AEGIS and my shield keeping me alive. Another shot from the big gun exploded into my shield only instants after AEGIS threw me to the side again, the lethal fragments of shrapnel missing me by inches.

"How do you know when he's going to fire?" I yelled at her as I rolled back to my feet, hoping there was a cue I could follow without relying on her throwing me around constantly.

"I'm tapped into its remote systems!" she yelled back, helping me to my feet as we started running again. "There's a pilot, but in the event he's taken out or being manipulated, it can be driven remotely. Everything he's doing is being broadcast over the same secure line Targa was using earlier for her exosuit."

"So Targa's the remote pilot?"

"Her, or someone where she is."

"How fortunate for us." I gritted my teeth and cut a missile which impacted near us to pieces before it could disgorge another small minefield. "So what's the plan?" I shouted to her.

"WHAT!?"

"I asked what the plan is!" I shouted over more booming reports. We were coming up on the monstrosity's legs and the sooner we had a game plan, the better.

"YOU HAD US RUN UP HERE WITHOUT A PLAN!?"

"I assumed you had one! You always have plans!"

"I always make a plan before I start anything!" She ducked behind me as a trio of rotary-barrel guns outlined my shield visibly with a constant stream of white strobes, and pelted us with hot metal grit. "You're the one who comes up with plans in the moment!"

"How am I supposed to come up with a plan to fight that!?" I yelled at her over my shoulder.

"I don't know! I just followed you when you said we were taking it down! You sounded so confident, I thought you knew what you were doing!"

"Well that's a big fucking mistake!"

"Yeah, I'm seeing that. Watch out!"

She threw me again, and dove with me to stay inside my shield as the machine guns kept firing even as a huge crater appeared in the ground behind us, filling the air with dirt and the smell of smoke.

The hail of gunfire stopped as the fortress armor reared back and AEGIS picked me up bodily with her one good arm, sprinting across the ground with strides so long it looked like she was skating. With a metallic groan, and the tearing of wind as thousands of square feet of air were displaced, it smashed one of its enormous crackling whiplike arms into the ground near us.

The boom was deafening, and the ground shook so badly that AEGIS stumbled and both of us went rolling. And then I felt a hugely peculiar feeling as the ground surged with latent electricity, arcs skittering across the surface as the whip-arm discharged, turning the ground itself into an electrified floor.

Me...I was fine. My powers did as they always did, shunting the electricity across the surface of my skin without resistance. I'd never felt this much current before, and felt almost like it was moving me as it crawled across my body, tingling and tickling in a way that was almost, but not quite painful.

AEGIS, though...she screamed and contorted into a fetal ball, electricity jumping between her individual strands of hair, arcing up and down her legs, even bridging her open mouth. I scrambled to her side and put a hand on her, forcing the electricity off of her and back down into the ground.

After just a second, it passed, but she was smoking faintly. She groaned and to my surprise, rolled onto her back with a pitiful cough.

"You're okay? AEGIS? Talk to me," I said, shaking her awake. "Come on, AEGIS, talk to me."

"...I'm...fine…" she said, sounding anything but. "...just...need a sec…"

"I thought you were done for," I said, my heart pounding in my throat. "We need to move before he attacks again. Come on--"

I pulled her upright and she staggered for a moment before getting her feet under herself. She seemed to take a deep, deep breath, and when she let it out, smoke and steam billowed from the ports in her joints, and then we were running again.

"I made myself as shockproof as I could," she said. "I thought, if nothing else, it might come in handy if I ever got in the way of your powers if we fought together." She shook her head. "Never expected it would be used for anything like this, though."

I also shook my head. AEGIS was constantly full of surprises. I thought of a couple times I'd fought beside Karu and had a difficult time really letting loose for fear of catching her in the blast. At least one of those times had been in Eryendria, where AEGIS had probably noticed. It was almost scary how sharp she could be.

Suddenly she grabbed me and threw me to the ground again. This time, she clenched on top of me so hard it was painful, like she was trying to crush me. I began to yell out but she clapped a hand over my mouth and held my jaw clenched shut.

A screeching wail emanated from the death machine and when it hit us, I felt it so strong it was shaking the ground. I felt my teeth shaking in my mouth, felt my bones shuddering around where AEGIS held me in a death grip.

I understood, but only because I'd meet Karu's friend Deej the one time. A sonic attack with a resonant frequency which would shatter my bones. I clenched my jaw and muscles as hard as possible, not sure what the hell else I could do to keep my bones from breaking inside me. Whenever I felt a part of me vibrating uncomfortably, AEGIS was there, holding me violently to keep the quaking at bay.

After a concentrated few seconds, it began to subside, and the earth under me was solid once again, though I had gotten buried a couple inches in the sand during the attack.

"You okay?" she shouted in my face, looking me up and down with concern as she straddled me.

"Thanks to you, yeah," I said, trying to get out from the sand.

She started to move anxiously. "We need to--"

Her words were interrupted by a pained grunt and she slammed into me. Almost afterwards, I heard the booming report of the big gun firing.

"Ow, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," she said, crawling off of me. Her entire back was almost torn off, and I could see bent and damaged parts inside of her where the shrapnel from the big gun had punched into her.

"AEGIS! Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'll live. Fuck. That did a huge number on my operational capacity though, I don't think I can take another one of those."

"Why didn't you move!?" I screamed at her, pulling her upright.

She smiled with a wince. "Better me than you," she said.

"You goddamn idiot."

We were almost at the foot of the machine and again, AEGIS grabbed me.

"I'm going to throw you up there. Make sure you grab something or it's going to be a hard fall down."

"Wait," I said. "What about you? You need to be in my shield."

She shook her head again violently this time, her long twintails flying back and forth. "There's no time. I can't climb anyway with this," she said, holding up her defunct hand where she'd caught the shadow ops' sword. "No more arguing, up you go!"

And true to her word, she picked me up like I was a small dog, and then threw me like a javelin, the damage in her back screeching as she twisted.

I may or may not have screamed like a little girl the whole way up.

I slammed on top of the leg, just above the 'knee', with a dull metallic thud that betrayed just how fucking solid the machine was. Instantly, I felt the same tingle as before, realizing that the exterior of the mech was electrocuted constantly to prevent exactly this kind of invasion.

How lucky for me I was immune. A few minutes ago, I was just thinking there was no way I could beat this thing with my power set, but now I was wondering if there was any way to beat it with any other one.

"AEGIS!" I shouted down at her. "Go in the base, find the armory, grab as much as you can! We'll need explosives to hurt him!"

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Gotcha!" she shouted back up and with only a moment of winding up, seemed to skate away with impossibly long strides and a roar of an engine louder even than the armor's.

I began climbing as best I could manage, heading inward up the leg towards the torso. Easily the size of a two-story office building, the torso seemed to have been built with the express purpose of putting as many weapons as humanly possible onto as large a space as could be carried. As I moved, more weapons popped out around me and I cut them up as best I was able before they could open up on me. Last thing I needed right now was the thing shooting a flamethrower or something at me point-blank and sending my burning body falling the thirty feet to the ground.

It was hard to climb. There were a reasonable number of handholds, and even access ladders in some places, but they had clearly been designed to be used when the machine was stationary and not actively trying to kill you. I was blinded by my shield strobing with constant gunfire, and the pilot was even desperate enough to send artillery and rocket strikes falling from the sky on me, even at the risk of exploding on itself.

My shield surged through the contrails of the rockets, but if it did anything when it reached the source, I couldn't tell. This fucker was probably as immune to my electricity as I was to its.

From behind me, I heard a soft clink-clink-clinking, like a chain being pulled maybe. But when I turned to look, found a half-dozen drones closing slowly on me, magnetic feet carrying their round little quadruped bodies closer and closer to me.

I slashed at the closest one, and when that didn't work, I held my swords together on one of its spindly legs, heating it past white-hot.

When that leg moved, the magnet held to the surface and the drone moved forward, leaving the leg behind, stretching the superheated metal like taffy. It stumbled and fell forward where its leg should have been. The rest of the legs kept working, sliding the drone towards me slowly.

But while I wasted time with that one, its cousins were gaining on me. I pushed myself further up the leg, trying to divert my attention equally between climbing up to where the torso met the four legs in a central platform, and melting legs off the other drones, but the former demanded most of my efforts, and the drones were both increasing in number and getting closer.

There was no way these things didn't explode, based on their similarity to the ones I'd met before, and no way I'd be able to hang on if one did. I just had to climb and hope I could lose them as I went, but it wasn't looking good.

I looked down and that didn't seem an option either. The fortress armor was generally holding position between the bulk of the Exhumans fighting and the hangar, but every so often some fighters came close enough for the pilot to make an effort to wipe them out. From this height, it felt like watching him stomp a cockroach, as a burst of munitious fire, or the electrocuted whip-arms, or even just one of the machine's legs came crashing down amidst the combatants.

There wasn't anywhere to land safely, and even if I did survive the fall, I'd be down there with the others it was mercilessly crushing. The drones were still pressing in though, over a dozen of them now, and I was almost to the torso.

Another weapon popped out and blasted me before I could whip my swords out of the drone I was melting, and whatever it did reminded me of the lurching disorientation the Exhuman in New Eden. Almost instantly, I felt the world spin and I felt dizzier than I'd ever been in my life. It took a couple of tries to slash and disable the device, but even when it stopped doing whatever it was doing, my head still spun.

The number of drones appeared to have doubled, but that was just my vision. I staggered and stumbled, almost falling off the leg but somehow finding something to hold onto before I could roll anywhere. I closed my eyes and forced my blades out by sound, aiming for the closest metal clinking, but knowing that they were pressing in on me and I wasn't making any ground away.

I tried to get back up but my head spun too badly. I had to, though, no matter how disoriented I felt, and crawled on all fours agonizingly slowly away from the insistent drones.

But it wasn't working. I had no chance to escape before, and now that I was disoriented, my odds went to less than zero. It was all I could do to scramble up the last part of the leg and sit down at the base of the torso, watching the drones make the final advance on me.

I melted another one or two but any second now I'd be in range and they'd blow me apart. Down below, I saw Karu still streaking around, just a blue ribbon lit up with flashes of fire from time to time, so close, but so far away.

I bet if she knew I was here, she would have still rescued me. She'd done it before, led the Exhumans to me and blew the wall out of the annex, even if she was pissed at me.

I wondered...if I hadn't treated her as crappily as I had, would she be with me here now? Instead of being off fighting Exhumans like it was her job, if I hadn't led her on, if I'd been honest with her about my feelings, or picked one of them from the start, would she have left my side? Would we be working together right now, bringing down the fortress armor just like we'd teamed up to bring down that terrapath?

It didn't really do to speculate, and just made me feel sad and empty at what I'd lost. Like Coach had always told us, there was time to second-guess and analyze our mistakes after we finished the game. In the moment, be in the moment. Play with what's in front of you.

I smiled a little grimly. Might have been great advice for football, but out here, staring down a wall of guns and drones, there wouldn't always be time to reflect afterwards.

My senses seemed back online and I got up, determined to take as many of the fucking drones down with me as I could, if this was how I was going out. Each one just took so long to disable, though, and I couldn't do anything to their shells, just the legs...and even that just made them move forward at a crawl, but still forward.

I went in a big circle around the back of the torso, picking off drones the entire way until I finished an entire lap around the colossal thing, ending right in the front. There were still a dozen drones chasing me the way I came, and the other way was blocked by more as well, finally trapping me. I looked up and there, directly above me were translucent smokey glass panels, the cockpit for this monster.

So close, but so far.

The drones pressed in on me from both sides and this was definitely the end. I just had the choice of how to end it all. Wait for them to close in, jump off to my death, or try to find enough handholds to flip the pilot the bird personally before the drones caught up to me on the vertical. Of these, the last was the most appealing, so I scanned the torso for handholds and gradually began a cumbersome ascent.

I...wouldn't make it. The drones' insistent clink-clink-clink of their feet didn't change tempo as they went from scaling horizontally to vertically, but I'd slowed again. My legs were killing me and the path up was just impossible in some places. As much as I enjoyed the thought of making a mess on the asshole's windshield when I went out, it looked like it was not to be.

I finished with one drone and another was already there. I wouldn't have time to pick this one off before it got within range. On a whim, I named him Bombert. Seemed like a better way to go than dying to anonymous drone number billion and five.

Bombert skittered forward with the same relentless energy as the others. I melted one of his arms, but that arm had just moved and it wouldn't fall apart until it moved again, and by then he'd be in range. After melting a couple dozens of the little shits, Bombert finally had my number.

I hoped that when I fell, AEGIS would be able to find my body without too much trouble, that she'd keep her cool as she always did and bugger out. It would be stupid for her to die here, too. Somehow I doubted she would...she gave me shit for it constantly, but she could be stubborn, too.

But here at the end, I could indulge in a little fantasy. I hoped she'd take off, pick back up with Karu, they'd rescue Saga, meet up with Lia far from here, and live long and happy lives together. Maybe even think of me sometimes, but not enough to get in the way. That'd be nice.

Bombert exploded, but not in the way I expected. The front half of him just twisted, flattened, and clanged against a new crater on the fortress armor's hull, and then he fell off, banging against the other drones on his way down. A second later, I heard a booming report as the shockwave from the blast reached me.

I wasted no time in shifting my blades to another target, and while I did, another drone exploded in the same manner, followed by another echoing boom.

As best as I could while keeping up the onslaught on the drones, I scanned the battlefield for who or what was saving me. I still saw Karu down there flitting around like a dragonfly, and no other combatant seemed focused on me or the fortress armor at all, except to evade it as it lumbered ever further into the fight.

And then I saw a flash as another drone exploded. Not from the fight, not even from the base, but from a car parked maybe a hundred feet past the other side of the road, sitting out among the scrubland and cacti like the driver had pulled off into the middle of nothing to take a whiz.

I could see the driver, though, and whizzing they were not. She was prone on top of the car, laying with her body on the hood and using the angle of the windshield to aim upwards with a sniper rifle as big as her charcoal-grey clad body. Another flash, and another dead drone, and another sonic boom as the distant echo from the gun reached me.

Thanks, Lia, I sent her my mental regards. Saving her stupid older brother even at a time like this. Even against a hundred Exhumans and a walking death machine the size of a building, she was there to get my back.

Best. Sister. Ever.

I resumed my climb now that the drones were getting pushed back instead of advancing, the satisfying crunch of drones and the booming report of Lia's gun pounding like a slow heartbeat, every five seconds exactly.

I reached the plate glass window and peered inside, seeing an incredulous-looking pilot who did a double-take at seeing me on his cockpit. I gave him a small friendly wave before summoning my blades within the cabin. To his credit, he went at the controls with renewed vigor, almost threatening to throw me off.

Lia shot again, and an orange energy barrier caught the bullet right in front of me, holding it in the air inches from the cockpit. The bullet was easily the size of both of my fists put together, and I wondered if Lia's truck was just full of hundreds of rounds like that.

Another shot, also stopped, but this time the barrier flared white hot. Five seconds later, the barrier exploded into sparking, flaming fragments and a crater punched into the cockpit glass. I couldn't see the pilot through his mirrored helmet, but his growing panic became apparent as he flailed with the controls. I focused on keeping the drones off while she punched more and more holes into the cockpit until finally the window shattered into thick chunks of glass.

Avoiding the sharp edges, I climbed in. Now within range, I felt a small twinge of guilt as I gutted him, sitting down in the pilot's seat after defenestrating the previous occupant. A huge switchboard spread out in front of me and above me, yokes for my hands and feet, and at least half a dozen joysticks and throttles. Holos floated in the air all around me, showing me feeds all around the fortress armor, though the main one was a fully 3d map of the armor and everything around it in real time.

I had no idea what any of this did, but you could bet I was excited to give it a try anyway. Not willing to open fire on the Exhumans below, I pulled all the yokes to one side, and at least one of them spun the torso around so that I was facing the annex. Once I had it locked in my sights, I pulled every trigger and pushed every button I could get my hands on.

The fortress armor shook under me and I was simultaneously deafened and blinded by the wall of firepower it output into the concrete and metal building. The structure was easily four times the size of the armor, but that didn't stop it from exploding and collapsing brilliantly, a white mushroom cloud billowing from the ruins. I turned to the hangar next, but AEGIS was still in there somewhere so I wasn't going to blow it just yet. With any luck, she'd seen what happened to the Annex and get out here so I could toast Targa with her own damn weapon.

I shouldn't have even worried. Within moments, the armor began to move on its own, and when I pulled the yokes the other way to correct, nothing happened. The armor turned back towards the fight, the main holo blinked out, and looking at the others informed me that I'd been locked out. The fortress armor was now being piloted remotely.

After all that. Fuck me.

Well, it had been fun while it lasted, but it was definitely time to take this thing out of commision, from the inside out if I had to.

I began slashing out panels, cutting up anything that looked important, but nothing seemed to even slow it down. Maybe the controls up here really were all useless if it was being piloted remotely, but I had to try. The armor was bearing back down on the main fight now, and on one of the panels I hadn't yet destroyed, I saw something which made me pause, and then begin hacking things up twice as fast.

The holo showed an overlay of the entire battle, but there was only one targeting indicator, only one priority target that the remote pilot was gunning for.

The Fortress Armor was going after Karu.