2B leapt through the air, her sword's edge twirling around her form like a drill and the flock of flying machines was decimated, not even the shrapnel reaching her armored form. She had initially been hesitant to don a set of the humans power armor, thinking it’d limit the motions and grace she relied on to fight but that hadn’t been the case. If anything the mobility focused suit only made her more graceful, she rarely touched the ground, flowing through the air like gravity was something for others to concern themselves with.
Her suit was lighter and less armored than others, and featured air jets and grapples. Apparently her combat performance warranted a specialty suit made to enhance her fighting prowess, it was hard enough to hit her even without the suit, so she didn’t really need the armor.
Her mobility meant the only friendly forces that could keep up with her were pods and destroyer drones, and she formed the vanguard with these forces. Paving the way for the armored squadrons following in her wake. At least that had been the idea, she was to run ahead, take out whatever machines she could while avoiding direct fights. Scout duty essentially, instead not a single machine had been left in her wake.
It was a slaughter, nothing had managed to get close to her. She had no blind spots and with how fast she could move nothing could escape her blade.
The machines fought harder than they had ever before, firing more accurate rounds at a faster rate than they should have been capable of, and the shots hit harder than anticipated, but it just wasn’t enough. The machines best paled when compared to her own.
But she was only one android, she couldn’t be everywhere and the machines flooded her assault group like a tide, wearing them down like a river to rock. But that rock just replaced itself, every android the machines took out was back in the fight moments later, their body either repaired in the command tank or having a new one made, armor and all. The androids threw themselves to their deaths again and again, half the drones were just finding metal to supply the assemblers.
As long as the command tank at the center of their formation was intact 2B would have reinforcements. Though if it wasn’t for the need to get said command tank to the machines server banks she could have done this mission on her own. But for optimal results the command tank needed to inject the virus. 9S was actually inside the command tank, in what little room was left in the cockpit after the new machinery had been added. Only giving 2B more reasons for wanting to keep the tank safe.
Not that 2B thought about or realized that last reason, she was fully focused on her mission objectives, and ensuring as many machines were cut down as she could manage. Her sword found little difference between a machine's armored form and the air around it, cutting through both without slowing. The fins around her waist turned sharply, and a pulse from her air jets threw her free from the retaliatory fire from the machine's companions.
She turned the momentum from the jets into a spin, throwing herself at the machines once she was clear and cutting through them with the same ease as their brethren. A single foot slammed down and pushed against the ground, throwing her at her enemies yet again. If someone with unaugmented vision watched her they’d barely see a blur, only seeing as machine after machine was bisected.
Most fronts didn’t have someone like 2B, there the fighting was even more brutal, so much so that even with the guaranteed resurrection offered by the command tank the average android would still flee from nearly certain painful death. But the engineer excelled at removing defects, and he’d always regarded the pain response as a crutch for the unobservant. Most androids fighting on the front had willingly installed a chip when the human had requested it, one nicknamed the ‘berserker drive’, it numbed pain and fear, and increased aggression.
They threw themselves into death after death with a smile that had more in common with a snarl than anything else. Fighting even after losing entire limbs, the logic virus not being a concern anymore. They had even less regard for their lives than the machines, seemingly excited at the thought of throwing themselves into the maw of death, as long as they took a few machines with them.
It wasn’t even that it threw them into mindless rage, that would have been inefficient, it just made them want to fight and fight and fight. An android was still themselves, and would almost fight how they would normally fight, just without fearing their own deaths and with even less restraint.
They weren’t any different from 2B in that regard, though she had never truly feared death, and she hadn’t bothered installing the chip. The suffering of a few painful deaths was nothing to what she had already been through, and she had aggression to spare. By this point the machine mind had deduced fighting her was an impossibility, instead directing all their forces to stopping the armored convoy, but that just meant 2B was free to hunt the machines at her leisure.
The armored battalion, made of dozens of tanks and tens of spidertrons was assailed by tens of thousands of machine life forms, but the battalion held strong and she became the hammer to their anvil. She crashed into the back of the machine horde and swept through them like a combination of missile and blender, carving a swath that was only widened by the drones following in her wake.
Machines fell by the hundreds, either to the guns and missiles of the tanks and androids, or to 2b and her drone squadron. But the machines didn’t break, the machine mind was too desperate to allow its servants even the imitation of free will.
The convoy was taking loss after loss, mostly the androids only running around in power armor, but the lighter armored ‘scout’ tanks were falling to a battalion of Goliath tanks, which was moving to intercept her own tank convoy. Artillery fire from the command tank had already destroyed 3 of the 12 tanks but the rest would arrive and slow the convoy down.
Maybe even long enough for Engel to arrive. So 2B did what she did best and dove towards the Goliath tanks, rapidly arriving and slicing through their armor like it wasn’t there, not bothering to do anything beyond destroying the treads and cannons. Even with her new speed and strength actually destroying the tanks would take far too long.
The first 4 tanks were disabled and 2B dived towards the fifth when two feet slammed into her chest, kicking off her and launching her into the ground with a boom, leaving her embedded in a crater of concrete and pulverized machines.
The machines' own androids had arrived, and unlike before they wasted no time in trying to kill 2B. She had barely managed to pry herself from the ground before a fist slammed down where her sternum would have been. Once again cratering her into the floor, her armor’s warnings flashing as the shields dropped to critical levels. She activated the suits' emergency jets and tore herself free, the machine still wrapped around her.
A rapid barrel roll flung him from 2B’s suit and he vanished, teleporting off into the distance. 2B kept her head on a swivel, monitoring all her sensors but there were too many machines for her to focus on the androids. More goliaths were arriving every second.
This wasn’t a fight with only a few moving parts, this was a full blown war. 2B couldn’t concern herself with hunting down a particular machine. No, she just needed to make sure the convoy got to the machines' servers before the machines massed enough forces to push them back or destroy them. And that droid's sneak attack hadn’t actually slowed the convoy.
By this point the smaller machines weren’t even noticeable, more of them dying to blast waves, stray rounds and misfire than from any concerted effort on the androids part, the only true threats were the goliath machines. The battle was in the leveled ruins of a city, meaning there wasn’t enough cover for anything larger than a slight android, it was a battle devoid of any strategy, the tanks lobbed death at each other and took fire in turn.
Laser’s, beams, missiles, cannons, bullets, flame, fire and light. The battle could have taken place at night and not looked any different than it did. 2B was directly between these two opposing groups, in the middle of the crossfire. But there was more than enough cover for something as small as an android, she stuck below the arcing fire and wove between piles of rubble and burnt out machine husks and crashed into the machines main battle line, she just needed to tear open a hole for the convoy to punch through.
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Her blade screamed through the air, parting it was a visible trail and she cut through the machines like so much cardboard. As the fight went on she was only becoming more skilled, more adept at using her new speed and strength to enhance her blows, but she never dropped her guard. The droid’s had shown a vested interest in attacking her and as fast as she was they could teleport, giving them the advantage in any contest of speed.
That meant she just needed to fight better than they could. As much of an advantage as speed was it was nothing a prepared enemy couldn’t counter, so when the droids next tried to ambush her 2B took the foot off at the heel.
The same teleporting ambush trick would not work twice. The droid must have known that, as they didn’t teleport away to try again, instead a flurry of strikes met her own with force, nearly throwing her as her suit struggled to keep her in the air. If there was one disadvantage of pseudo-flight then it was the lack of leverage. That was easy enough to fix though, she put both feet on the ground for the first time since the battle had begun, planting herself firmly in the ground.
The suit redirected power from her flight units and put them towards shields and raw strength, and her grip on her sword tightened in time to block and the next strike, her retaliatory slash breaking through the droids guard like a battering ram, pushing them away and giving her distance.
That same distance came with a few disadvantages, mainly the fact that this droid wasn’t fighting alone. The masculine combat model had 3 other copies fighting, and only one of those other copies was fighting her, the other two were fighting the convoy. Outright throwing the tanks they couldn’t destroy. The distance she had gained meant this second droid could join the fray without risk of friendly fire, and any chance she might have had to press her advantage was taken as it launched its own attack.
She was just slightly stronger than them, even with her suit. And she was outnumbered, slowly 2B was pushed back, forced to give ground to avoid strikes. This wasn’t working, they couldn’t lose momentum. It was a good thing 2B had grabbed more than just a suit of armor, a hatch on her armor opened and a large grenade fell into her hand, a flick and it launched, detonating as she dashed just out of its blast radius. She dashed back in as soon as the flash faded, the ground scorched and molten, but the droids themselves only lightly singed.
But they were staggered and reeling, and 2B pressed her advantage, her sword cleaving through one of the droid's arms and halfway into its torso before its partner lashed out with its blade forcing her back. Given the way it limped behind its partner she hadn’t managed a killing blow, just a crippling one. Given that these droids had ranged capabilities similar to her pods' heavy attack…. A crippling blow wasn’t good enough.
Speaking of Pods, hers was only just now arriving, having fought through the machine swarm with its own swarm of destroyer drones. That was the closest thing to reinforcements she’d be getting. “Pod, deal with the injured machine, I will handle the intact one”. The unharmed droid glared at her “as if you could”. And 2B didn't deign the machine with a reply. Her blade would speak for her skill.
Her pod and the drones would be more than capable of handling a wounded machine, it was practically falling apart already. That left her free to fight the droid, and her slightly stronger and faster blows made all the difference now that she wasn’t dealing with multiple fighters. She whittled the machine down and it grew more and more desperate with each glancing wound. Finally the droid realized its defeat was inevitable, and it lost all restraint trying to land a single blow on her entirely abandoning defense. It snarled “you will not beat me!” as it tried to skewer her. Her suit's sensors picked up an energy buildup, it was going to detonate its blackbox.
2B abandoned her own defense, only faintly noting as her pods fire joined her in trying to put the droid down before it could detonate, it hit blow after blow on hers but they had less power, its energy drawn inwards. Her own strikes tore chunks out, fire from her pod and the few remaining drones shredding the droid's internals, and it rapidly stopped struggling, being little more than a metallic skeleton with bits of machinery dangling from it. The detonation she felt in the distance only moments later showed not everyone had destroyed their drone quick enough, leaping up into the air showed … devastation. Half the command tank was incinerated, and if it hadn’t been there 2B wouldn’t have even known where the convoy was supposed to be.
Everything was just…. Gone. like the spidertrons own detonation she still so vividly remembered, there was nothing but devastation. She practically teleported herself and 2B arrived at the remains of the command tank within moments. The metal still radiated an intense heat and the air wavered around it. Still 9S’s vital signs were still online, he was in there the comms were just most likely knocked out.
The armored entrance to the command tank was tough, but it fell to 2B’s strength, the armored door being torn from its housing. She had to dodge the gout of flame and bullets that launched from the open door, 9S launching out just behind the fire brandishing his sword, 2B grabbed him by the collar and set him back on the ground. Ignoring the faint relief at his wellbeing, “2B! You're alive! I thought the machines were prying the tank open, sorry I almost hit you!” 2B shook her head, his actions had been appropriate. “Your actions were correct” 9S looked out at the devastation surrounding them, a look of horror on his face “it's all gone….” 2B nodded, “we will need to complete the mission on foot, do you have the virus?” without the command tank they’d need to get 9S there to implant it, it’d be less effective but it wasn’t like there were alternatives.
9S nodded, “I downloaded the virus to a drive” 2B knew he would have, he’d likely been planning on making the run himself if she’d be destroyed. 9S didn’t give up on mission any more than she did. “Then we move, the machines will be closing in.” with that she scooped him up, he only had a light suit of non-powered armor on, meaning his ground speed was far lower than hers.
The few remaining drones from her squadron, along with her and 9S’s pod’s formed a wedge, 2B cradling 9S to her chest as they flew over the empty battlefield. If she’d been looking at him instead of the battlefield she’d have seen the blush on his face. Without needing to fight through any machines or wait for the tanks to move, 2B rapidly approached the entrance to the underground fortress. The drones burning through the steel doors and heading in first, greeted by blasts of energy.
The drones dodged the slow attacks and burned the small machines, clearing 2B’s path and she didn’t even slow, her suit already plotting the optimal route to her destination. Resistance was oddly light, most of the more powerful machines had been outside trying to keep them from getting in in the first place. Most rooms had one or two machine forms, and near the rear they were armed and armored enough that 2B actually reached the rooms they were in before the drones killed them.
But the end of the fight was largely anticlimactic, the drones burned through one last door and took up position guarding the hall while 2B and 9S strode into the server room, the air was freezing as massive cooling systems kept the circuitry from burning out. Androids had destroyed these servers before, they had even tried viruses and studied them. But the machines always pushed them out eventually. That would be changing as 9S walked into the room, and started hacking the server banks.