Bonnie watched as Jace’s machine was levered up and brought into a launch position.

The Vice Admiral’s machine underneath was almost unrecognizable. The tank treads had been replaced with three separate legs that looked more like tentacles with their segmented armor plating. Two of them were more substantial than the one that sprouted from the back of the core. Three canisters sprouted from the back of the core as well. They leaned off to one side and were covered in a protective webbing that gave the finished product the look of a dragon’s wing. The dragon motif was matched on the right arm where the bulk was double what was on the left and seven large claw-like spikes made up the rudimentary fingers. Clearly the right hand wouldn’t have any dexterity given that the spikes had only a few hinged sections. The left arm was more normal with a large oval shield that had been bolted on. The shield itself could easily cover the whole suit from incoming fire. Some sort of weapon was held in the left hand. The tip of the weapon only reached a few meters in front of the hand, but the back of the weapon had plenty of bulk. It stretched back over the shoulder of the machine and wrapped underneath the arm, forming a loop. It was split into two main blocky portions and connected around the upper arm with plenty of piping. The shoulder that didn’t have the webbed propellant canisters carried a massive length of coiled metal wires. It was likely some sort of energy weapon, Bonnie imagined.

The head was truly off-putting and gave the monster the right to be called exactly that: a monster. Most of the unit was custom ordered parts that had trickled into The Straggler’s convoy, but the head had been salvaged. Ukko had kept the thing from some battle far before Bonnie joined up. Ukko had called the head Brahma. Bonnie didn’t know what it meant, but she always found the four kind-looking faces entirely at odds with the nature of MACs. Ukko would talk about how it was used on a MAC that had never fought a battle. He said it was used in ‘helpful’ ways. Bonnie couldn’t understand such an outlandish concept. MACs were machines of war, what other purpose could they have?

Bonnie continued to stare at the machine, though she wasn’t sure what she was looking for.

She never really bought into the ‘MACs are beautiful’ crap that all the pilots seemed to spout. Bonnie was fairly certain the pilots were all insane, so she never had much of a desire to join their ranks. After Ukko slaughtered her parents, he promised she would be able to fight with her bare hands if she joined up. Bonnie quickly agreed. Back when she was a child, she was certain that revenge would be pointless unless she grabbed it with her own hands.

Now that she was older… she didn’t really think about her revenge very often. She realized a few years into her service with The Stragglers that it was very hard to kill people you ate with. Part of her wondered if she’d been brainwashed. Maybe her young mind had been molded by these people. Maybe she was turned into some sort of heartless creature in the process. But she didn’t give that idea much credit. Bonnie was the master of her own fate. That was what made Bonnie Bonnie. If she was brainwashed, then that was merely her own weakness. Hers. And that weakness would be an important part of her.

But these thoughts didn’t suit Bonnie. She was what she was. She was made by her own hands. She held her fate close to her heart and didn’t let go.

She looked down at her hands, her hands that were now just metal and wires. She chose this as well. This was simply one more decision that her own willpower had brought her to. The Stragglers needed MAC pilots considering how many have died in this operation, and so Bonnie volunteered. Deep down, she wasn’t sure why she did considering how much she disliked the metal golems, but that didn’t change the fact that it was her and her alone that raised her hand to volunteer and then offered them both up as collateral in the contract with the metal beast.

The robotic countdown sequence broke her out of her reverie. She liked to think about what she’d made of her life. Like a carpenter taking a few moments to eye up their creation and appreciate the finer details that others wouldn’t notice.

Or maybe, Bonnie thought, she just liked to make sure her memory wasn’t going to shit.

Bonnie, still with a slight smile on her face that would surely horrify the poor girl, grabbed Guinevere and lifted her off the ground. Her smile grew just a bit as she realized she was lifting Guinevere in the exact same way she had just lifted Lionel at the lunch tent. It was kinda funny.

“Well, that’s fantastic. You’ve got the Trahir system all nice and working. It’s a little bit strange that all it took was a single button press but,” Bonnie, who was at least a foot taller than Guinevere, brought her uncomfortably close while still holding her off the ground, “the thing that’s really bothering me right now is why the hell you just launched him?”

Guinevere responded through a gasping breath and sprayed bits of spit as she choked, “He… it’s…” her face was turning a new shade and she clearly had no oxygen left for thinking.

Bonnie let go of the girl’s tie she’d been holding her up with and let her compose herself on the floor. Bonnie appreciated the girl’s choice of clothing. One reason being that she liked a snappy dresser. Guinevere had her outfit of a dress shirt, slacks, and a black tie and she didn’t deviate. Though that might be because she didn’t have any other clothes, what with being a prisoner and all. The second reason was more utilitarian: the tie provided a good place to hold onto while also being a good way to restrict airflow. Bonnie wasn’t quite ready to test out her metal hands directly on a human throat. She didn’t want to hurt the girl after all, but she was also very certainly going to get an answer out of Guinevere one way or another.

Bonnie crouched down beside Guinevere as the girl continued to try to cough out her reply, “He… training. It’s for training.”

Bonnie shut her eyes. She didn’t like doing stuff like this. This was the sort of thing Ukko should be handling. But someone had to step up, and Bonnie decided it would be her. She made her choice, and now she had to deal with the consequences, “And who, I wonder, told you it was time for ‘training’?”

“Ukko-” she coughed once more, seemingly finally getting her breathing back in order, “Ukko told me once everything was working to launch Jace. That way we can get the kinks out of the system and-”

Bonnie stopped listening to her. The girl was clearly panicking. But, in a strange way, she also seemed rather content. A lot of the stress that seemed to be permanently painted on her was melting away. Bonnie doubted Ukko would give such an order, but it’s not like she was the man’s right hand or anything. She looked at her own right hand and wiggled her metallic fingers.

Funny.

She took a deep breath and tried to think about what needed to be done first.

Punishment could come later, but it would probably need to happen. Maybe Bonnie would ask Ki. He was better at being stoic and emotionless for things like this, but he also had a weird hang-up about hurting women. The sparring matches between the two of them usually just turned into Ki acting as a punching bag and blurting out his god-awful poetry between each hit.

Bonnie liked sparring with Ki.

Focus, Bonnie thought to herself. Focus.

As of right now, the important thing is to get Jace’s new machine back in the hangar and to get Jace back in chains. Bonnie didn’t know the specifics, but she knew enough about the Trahir system to know it shouldn’t be used haphazardly.

Guinevere would be the easiest way to accomplish the task. Bonnie could always sortie on her own and try to force Jace back but… well, that would entail a lot of risk to Bonnie, Jace, and the machine. Making Guinevere call him back might be the best way to handle this situation.

While Bonnie was in the midst of wondering if she should use threats or promises to get Guinevere back in line, a voice boomed through seemingly every speaker in the room and likely every speaker throughout the entire convoy.

It wasn’t pleasant. Both the accent and the message.

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“Well ain’t that somethin’. Can’t believe ya found us and sicced a rabid dog on us. Guess you youngsters ain’t so stupid as we were thinkin’. Don’t change nothin’ though, I’ll bury all’o ya. Ya fools’ll keep me diggin’ fer years. God must be wit’me.”

Bonnie recognized the voice immediately. It was the old gravedigger from the valley. Not many escaped that day, so Bonnie was surprised to hear his voice. He should’ve been easy to kill after all.

She got on her personal radio and contacted Ki. After the scouting captain died, Ki had taken over that responsibility. Seemed like everyone was getting over-worked these days, “Ki, what’s going on?”

“Well, I can’t say I’m positive, which probably means it’s pretty bad. All three advance scouting teams are unresponsive. The group in charge of keeping an eye out close to the convoy told me they saw something moving in the forested area up ahead, but it’s not like they can see perfectly through all this terrain.” Ki’s voice stopped for a moment, “Well that’s a bother. Sorry Bonnie, we’re going to need you to sortie right away.”

“Is it that bad?”

“Well… it’s bad enough that I’m already hearing shots and feeling tremors. A lot of them too.” Bonnie heard a few muted blasts over the radio and waited for Ki to continue, “I’ve got one more trick to wake up Ukko. He won’t like it, but he also won’t like us getting massacred. Bon…” Ki’s voice stayed nonchalant even through the obviously stressful situation, “you’re taking a lot on your shoulders. I probably should have offered to split the responsibilities but-”

“I made the decision Ki. It was my will. Your hand won’t be touching my fate any time soon.”

He chuckled and continued, “Yeah, that sounds like Bon. Well, all I’m saying is if things start getting rough, I’m in favor of retreat.”

Bonnie smiled. Ki usually just went with the flow, so it was nice to see him with a bit of his own will, “Well Ki, I’m in favor of you doing what you think is best. I think today is the day we’re all going to have to make our own decisions.” Bonnie made her way to the door, leaving Guinevere behind. She would have to put this little situation on the backburner for now. In fact, it might be a good thing that Jace was out and about. He was quite the little murderer, so this might be the perfect chance for him to prove to be useful. “Today we all get to live by our own choices.”

“Yeah… yeah I guess I’ll give it a shot.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Bonnie started to make her way to her own hangar. She used the distance to issue a handful of orders, but her main order was simple and absolute: make up your own minds and seize your own fates.

Bonnie was well aware, even more so as the thundering of guns started to reach her ears, that this would be the sort of battle that might get labeled a slaughter. She wasn’t going to try to order anyone to stay and be forced into that sort of death. But as she ran through the camp the general consensus of The Stragglers was clear as day:

One more battle.

Bonnie didn’t see a single person making a run for it.

She was hoping they didn’t feel pressured into making a stand here, but if they felt pressured that would be their own weakness. At least, that’s how Bonnie decided to think about it.

The sun was overhead, burning a bright white as it worked its rays in between the thin veneer of gray sky. It was cold enough for flecks of frost to still be scattered about and the slight drizzle seemed to seep deep into the bones of anyone it touched, sending a jolting chill through the tired soldiers as they struggled to warm up their bodies for the coming fight.

Bonnie was happy for the weather though. She always enjoyed the cold far more than the heat. She appreciated the warmth of the heavy coat and considered it well worth the trade-off of sinking a bit further into the mud than her fellow soldiers. The protective materials that she had slowly but surely sewn into the jacket made the thing into quite the cumbersome bit of clothing.

Bonnie realized the coat wouldn’t protect her from much. If anything, the skin-tight pilot suit that any MAC operator had to wear was probably far more worthwhile for protection. The material it was made out of helped pilots to live through the number one survivable injury in the metal monsters: heat. It could only do so much, and some argued that the melting of the plastic-like fabric was a far worse way to go than being burned alive in a conflagration of wool or cotton, but it usually helped more than it hurt. Bonnie’s coat could protect her from a bit of shrapnel, but ultimately, she just liked the weight of it at this point.

And the idea.

Bonnie liked the idea of running around a battlefield clad in armor and duking it out with the enemy with swords and clubs and fists. The battlefields of this future have made any and all personal body armor virtually useless. The spears of today far outclassed the shields, Bonnie supposed. It was unfortunate. Her desired war was far and away in the past, but standard infantry was still used once in a while, so Bonnie was thankful for that.

Bonnie arrived at her hangar and looked up at the machine that made her feel so small.

She didn’t like it.

But… maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. It might not be with her own hands, but she would be able to fight like the warriors of old in this thing; a real melee focused brawl between armored up soldiers.

Bonnie sighed as the engineers started to shout back and forth and fumes of all levels of toxicity started to fill the hangar whose roof was now screeching open as metal rubbed against metal.

The colorful array of surely cancer-causing smoke started to swirl and rise up into the gray skies above.

Bonnie thought back to the stories about mercenaries strapping a few bits of kevlar to themselves and then grabbing their rifle. Just a handful of seconds and they were ready for war. Simpler times.

Bonnie grabbed onto the cable that flowed out of the MAC’s cockpit as it was levered into a standing position. Her weight triggered the mechanism that began to spool up the cable, raising her into the machine. These hangar trucks supposedly had a system of extending bridges that would allow the pilot to board in a bit of a safer manner, but Bonnie had never seen the system actually functional.

She sat down in the cockpit and locked herself in. A lot of the controls had been gutted from this model and were instead replaced by four empty cylinders. Bonnie stuck both hands into the two cylinders that sat at her sides. They were fairly crude, but they did what they needed to do: the latches that attached the metallic arms to her body were pressed and her forearms detached from the rest of her. It was just a convenient place to store the forearm section of her mechanical arm. A metal rod with some sort of complex internal mechanism sprouted out from where her elbows used to be. She proceeded to put the metallic stubs into the two cylinders that sat in front of her. A series of clanks rang out into the cockpit as gears ground together, bringing all the necessary contact points into position. After a handful of seconds, Bonnie’s head was flooded with an intense pain that went away just as quickly. Bonnie was told most pilots wait to directly interface with their machines until they absolutely needed to, but Bonnie thought that seemed silly.

Again, Bonnie thought about how crazy MAC pilots were. They tried so desperately to preserve their lives from this ‘curse’ of the MACs that robs your lifespan, but most pilots would just end up killed in battle, so it was awfully stupid to worry about trying to live a long life.

Bonnie had made her choice as surely as she’d made any other: she would rather just fight at her best and suffer whatever consequences came her way.

Bonnie felt as if she were borrowing the machine’s eyes as she scanned the hangar and waited for the final few engineers and mechanics to scramble to safety. A light on the side of the hangar switched from red to green and Bonnie wasted no time launching high into the sky and leaving behind a veritable mountain of choking exhaust fumes. She scanned the horizon. The ocean was still a bit hard to make out at this distance, but it was there. Strange pillars seemed to rise up out of the beach and Bonnie wondered if there might be some sort of ruins sinking in the watered-logged sand.

She’d like to make it to the beach.

But she had a few things to handle before that. She scanned the nearby mess of autumn-soaked forest that was broken up by the black asphalt of pitted roads and saw plenty of enemies approaching.

Conventional weapons like tanks and APCs sped toward them right alongside the towering MACs that were far more numerous than what Bonnie wanted to deal with. It was an absolute mess of colors and banners that fit in well with the fall-flavored array of leaves and plants.

MACs as pristine and new as they come, tanks with rusted out hulls that had been patched over with logs, banners of every shape and size.

It was truly a ragtag group.

The pristine MACs were charging right alongside piles of junk that could hardly live up to the ‘metal monster’ moniker.

Bonnie smiled as the red lock-on indicators in her mind’s eye blinked green one after another. The Stragglers must have really pissed these folks off to bring them all together like this. With a simple twitch of a nerve the missile pack that stretched from shoulder to shoulder and another few meters beyond roared to life as each deliverer of death was set on its course.

Bonnie’s MAC was suddenly consumed by the billowing white clouds of smoke as each missile erratically flew away, seemingly desperate to escape the MAC’s scrambling field. Then, in a moment that even Bonnie admitted was fairly pretty, each and every rod of death that surrounded her machine suddenly oriented themselves as they slipped away from the MAC’s field and zipped away on their individual missions.

Bonnie nodded her head for a moment as the countdown to impact ticked away in her subconscious. She said the same prayer she always said when she went out to battle, the prayer she found scrawled on a scrap of paper in a fallen soldier’s hand once upon a time, “Though I’ll take joy in the thrill of this battle, I’ll take no joy in your deaths. I can only hope and pray to whatever might be in charge of this nonsensical world that we’ve all come to this bloody crossroad of our own free-will. May every death, of mine and of yours, be a meaningful one.” She opened her eyes as the countdown reached one, “Now then,” the line of flame-tinted explosions seemed to stretch for kilometers as the approaching enemy met with her salvo, “let’s all give it our best.”