Bonnie was a woman of action. She made her choices and lived by the consequences. Living a life like that had, in her opinion, made her pretty skilled at making quick decisions in stressful situations.
For this very reason, she began firing shots and launched a handful of missiles as Ukko’s machine turned to face her. The missiles went wildly off course due to the MAC’s scrambling effect, but Bonnie expected this. At the very least, they filled the sky with deadly explosives that limited Ukko’s movements.
She boosted her MAC one jump back and then another, sliding backwards on the sand until her machine’s feet came into contact with the firmer dirt around the tree line. As she moved, her eighty-ton golem kicked up massive, engulfing clouds of debris along her path.
She switched to infrared vision as she tried to make out Ukko’s machine in the cloud of smoke and flame from the barrage of rifle fire she let loose.
She was well aware that it would take more than that to destroy Ukko’s MAC.
A sheet of rain was suddenly dumping out onto them as the edge of the storm decided to release everything it had left.
It made for poor fighting conditions on soft land like this. Ukko’s machine was clearly trying to keep them from moving the fight out onto the water and into the city. The skyscrapers that still towered above the ocean’s waves would have made for perfect cover and compensated for Bonnie’s lackluster loadout. The forest could help out as well, but she would need to lure Ukko’s machine in and manage to deal with the absolute mire that the land had turned into. That sort of terrain was more than capable of trapping the massive metal beasts of war, her’s included.
A strong gust of coastal wind blew away all the smoke in a single go. Flames still clung onto the fleshy surfaces that oozed out of cracks and gaps in Ukko’s smooth and rounded armor. The flames didn’t seem to bother the creature underneath that knightly visage of Ukko’s MAC.
Bonnie was certain: Ukko was no more. That machine… or thing, was something else entirely. It was as if a parasite had taken up residence in his MAC, but that was ridiculous, right? Bonnie certainly couldn’t think of a time when any machine throughout history had turned into a living organism or was taken over by one. It was madness. She didn’t think a MAC’s metallic and chemical-laced body was a particularly hospitable environment for such parasites either.
But she couldn’t deny what was before her. Whatever the thing was, it needed to be killed, just like any other enemy.
The machine raised its weapon in a split second, a feat of dexterity impossible with current MAC technology, and fired off a strange looking projectile that sailed straight for Guinevere. It was a length of pink fluid or light, Bonnie wasn’t sure which, but it moved erratically and quickly.
Bonnie couldn’t save the girl, but she could use the opportunity to charge Ukko’s machine. If she can’t land a blow, she can at least rush past and head out to the submerged city. She had to try to at least turn some aspect of this battle in her favor.
She activated the reserve thruster bells on her upper thighs. Metallic shrieks emitted from her machine as the plates covering the housings slid out and away. She shot forward with the sound of a whipcrack being left behind. The axe in her left hand sailed easily and naturally as she passed by the monster. The power of her swing shifted her MAC as it sailed past, so she was never showing her back to the monstrosity of an enemy. She raised her rifle and prepared to rattle off covering fire for herself as she boosted toward the nearest skyscraper.
It was a good plan. It was well executed too.
The only issue was that her axe didn’t actually meet any resistance.
Bonnie was able to compensate, but she was slow to brace herself as the organ-infused leg of Ukko’s MAC suddenly slammed down on her own MAC’s core. The kick dented the cockpit walls badly enough for the metal plating to now only be a handful of centimeters from her face. Shards of steel burst off the interior in flakes from the force of the impact, cutting into Bonnie’s face. Her machine crashed into the water, but she kept the boosters at full power, just barely managing to burst back up from a watery grave. Her MAC was suddenly turned into a waterworks display as the ocean poured off her machine in powerful streams. Some of the water ran past the boosters, immediately evaporating and covering her in a dense mist.
But before Bonnie could even hope to regain her balance in the sky, she found herself staring down the barrel of a gun that looked to be made from glowing human remains.
A voice, though certainly not Ukko’s, came through her speakers. It was an almost indescribable sound. Bonnie could almost believe the voice was simply nestled somewhere in the back of her mind, hatefully whispering it’s message, “You won’t interfere.”
Time seemed to stop in its tracks as a pink-ish light began to glow inside of the tube of rotting corpses.
So the consequence for her decisions this time would be death, huh? Bonnie was fine with that. She had lived her life of her own will and was happy to die that way too.
Anyway, she had a sinking feeling that this battle was going to be the end of The Stragglers. The friendly dots on her HUD had been disappearing one by one. It may have just been from the jamming of all the MACs in the area, and any of the spotters left alive probably weren’t in a position to report on MAC movements either. Maybe the monster before her had some ability to interfere with her electronics specifically, but Bonnie knew that was all just wishful thinking. She had seen the husks of machines and piles of corpses. The Stragglers’ MACs gliding easily through incoming drones and missiles only to be met with a sudden barrage of a rocket battery hidden in a tree. The enemy MACs tearing into the conventional arms The Stragglers sent out to battle, trampling tanks and massacring squads with pure and potent precision.
The Stragglers, the murderers of her real family, had become what she would consider to be her true family. It was probably a horrible thought to have, and Bonnie didn’t like the idea of trying to explain herself to whatever deity above is guarding the pearly gates, but all the same… Bonnie didn’t want to live in a world without The Stragglers.
While Bonnie sat in the calm embrace of certain death, waiting for the dented metal plating in front of her to be vaporized and her own body to follow suit, an onslaught of fiery flashes filled every monitor. The concussive forces of a multitude of blasts made for an endlessly deafening echo inside of the metal box she thought would be her grave and crematorium rolled into one package deal.
But Bonnie was a woman of action, so once she realized she was still alive, she started the fight anew.
Without another thought for her unexpected survival, she boosted backwards at full speed and lodged her machine directly into a glass covered skyscraper. Through the rain of shimmering crystal shards that seemed to reflect the beautiful blue of an ocean with clear skies above, Bonnie saw Guinevere’s machine and a waterfall of 400mm shell casings crashing violently into the ocean below, causing gouts of white peaks to rise at least four stories up and around the surrounding glass towers. The fire rate was slow, but with each powerful thunk of the two guns mounted on her waist, a twelve-shot rotary can filled with ammo would prepare the next round for firing. Three of these ammo canisters were mounted together on each side of the machine, and as the twelfth shot rang out from one cannon, the next can of the human-sized shells was locked into place with a beautiful dance of gears and cogs and chains.
The recoil from the massive guns was immense and rocked Guinevere’s machine side to side with each alternating shot. Overly thick legs hid an assortment of boosters that could help to stabilize the machine during mid-air firing. A mesmerizing display of constantly shifting rods of flame poured out of each and every opening between the foot and the calf armor to keep the machine on target. As Bonnie looked closer, drawn in by the show of force but also fully aware she needed to get moving herself, she saw the two cannons being shifted slightly and precisely between each flash of light and thunderous crack from the guns.
Bonnie was amazed. She’d only known one human being that could work a cannon with such perfection. To think Guinevere could be on par with the Vice Admiral… Bonnie felt like she had to manually close her dropped jaw at the beautiful sight. The girl seemed to be something of a prodigy, and that’s without even mentioning the piloting skill that she must have surely used to escape that initial attack from Ukko’s machine.
Bonnie may not gush over MACs like other pilots, but even she could appreciate a well-tuned artillery battery. It was a thing of utter beauty.
Ukko’s machine had been lost in the cloud of complete annihilation provided by those massive battleship cannons, but each new shot was still connecting with a target hidden within, causing flashes of golden fire to light up the smoke cloud. Each new shell that connected pushed the cloud of gunpowder another few dozen meters back in the sky. Under normal circumstances, Bonnie would’ve thought four shots max from those guns would turn a MAC into nothing more than a scattering of debris, but the shells were still connecting with this monster.
It was simply impossible.
But Bonnie didn’t let things like that stall her decisions.
After all, Bonnie had to move quickly.
She was dimly aware of the dead and injured that had been crushed by her machine when she collided with the skyscraper. Apparently people were living in this sinking city. Any of the people that could still move were making their way toward an opening in the wall that led to a rickety wooden bridge. The bridges scattered around the city, mostly made from office debris, connected each and every one of the skyscrapers in a spiderweb-like structure. As Bonnie looked closer, she saw the people from each and every building all heading to one place: the central tower.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Bonnie glanced down at her forearms that were firmly attached to the control system. She felt a sort of phantom pain as she imagined her long-gone knuckles pure white and her fists clenched tight. She had no time to think about casualties. Right now, she had to deal with this thing. She tuned her frequency to Guinevere’s and hoped for the best, “Please tell me that thing is dead.”
Guinevere’s voice responded sounding like someone who had truly just been through the wringer, “No.”
Bonnie sighed to herself as she leaned her MAC out from the side of the glass-clad tower. One hand gripped onto the steel beam above as she readied herself for launch.
It would be a quick cremation for anyone left on this floor, but she needed to do her job.
The entire floor filled with smoke and flame as glass melted and a hole was burned through the floor where she was standing. Bonnie took flight, “How many more shots left?”
Bonnie could see the third ammo cans rotate and lock into place at the breach of the cannons on Guinevere’s waist, “Twelve.” Her responses along with her exhausted voice were clear signs of the toll on her body. Even beyond the consequences she was surely feeling from piloting a MAC, she was also having to deal with that immense recoil. Bonnie was impressed she could talk at all.
“Save the rounds, I’ll use the smoke as cover and assess the damage directly.”
The gray trails of rain in the distance continued to pour over the forest, but the blue skies had finally crawled over them out here. Large white clouds broke up the endless sheet of blue and rose high up into the skies above, seemingly reaching up forever like the castles of Gods. It was a stark contrast to the dark and dreary mass of clouds that lingered over the mainland on their way to the distant mountain ranges.
Bonnie zipped around the water-logged buildings and lowered her altitude until she was just barely skimming the water, leaving a trail of steam behind her as her boosters heated the ocean water. She arrived beneath the most recent cloud of gunpowder and shot up through it without hesitation, causing a nearly tsunami-sized wave to expand out in a circle and crash against the nearby structures.
She already survived once. She decided to believe that it was a sign of today being a lucky day.
She moved at full speed and looked down once she was high enough above the monotone gunpowder cloud.
Her speed had cleared away the obscuring smoke and she could still see the waves, tens of meters tall, that she had created on her initial boost up.
Continuing with her focus on ‘think less, do first’ she barreled down toward the figure that she just revealed. Her scrap metal axe made contact with the thing and sunk deep into its shoulder with a spray of purple and red fluid. Not at all like the usual spray of chemicals and oils that would have normally poured out of such a wound on a MAC.
She was taken aback by the feel of the blow: she didn’t come into contact with any metal.
She pulled back, enacting the same strategy she tried to use on the beach. As she flew backwards in a quick retreat, she let loose a barrage of rounds from her rifle, each shot slamming into the more-organic-than-metal creature. Each shell was sucked in with a sickly ‘pop’ before the explosion would go off, sending fluid and chunks of meat in every direction.
Bonnie took her retreat as a chance to get a proper look at the thing.
The metal armor that it had been seeping out of was now almost entirely gone. Only the core at the center and the knight-like helm had remained. The halo adornment on the helmet was cracked in half and something dark and foreboding seemed to lurk just underneath the visor.
The rest of the thing was a constantly pulsating mass of organic looking material. It was a strange hue of purples and reds with darker streams pumping underneath the more muscular looking organic bits. The overall silhouette of the being was a complete oddity. It had no specific shape and seemed instead to just grow in any and all directions, sprouting limbs here and there with void-tinted openings dotting the surface.
It was as if a viscous liquid that had broken out of its container had spread itself around the metal golem with no real logic.
Except this liquid was growing.
Upon closer inspection, Bonnie saw bits of shell casings as well as her axe that she left planted in the monstrosity being pushed out and falling into the ocean alongside the organic matter.
Was it regenerating?
Is that why it hadn’t moved yet?
“The core.”
“What about it?” Bonnie was surprised to hear any input from the researcher-turned makeshift pilot, but she decided to hear her out given that artillery performance of hers.
“It’s focusing-” Guinevere began coughing but managed to get the rest of the message through, “It’s regenerating around the core first-” she burst into another fit of hacking something up.
Bonnie took another look at the immobile creature in the sky. Guinevere was right, the core that was just visible was fully covered once more by the organic tendrils.
Did that mean Ukko was still in there? Was he the heart of this thing?
Bonnie shook her head. It was a pointless thought.
And it was also one thought too many.
The creature had stayed idle long enough.
Before Bonnie was fully aware of what was going on, her machine was gripped out of the sky. Her cameras clicked off one by one as the mass of expanding flesh-bubbles crawled up her MAC. Her legs and arms were both trapped, and she was being held above the void-filled head of the creature.
Bonnie saw something terrifying in there. Something that made her feel dead inside. Something that made her brain certain of only one thing: impending doom. Not just for her, but for everything.
Everything.
But Bonnie’s brain had always been weaker than her brawn.
She was proud of that fact.
Her muscles jumped into action before her brain could succumb to whatever madness was assaulting her.
She brought the legs and arms of her golem together, pushing her core further back into the sinewy sheet that covered the core of the enemy. More of the purple organic substance jumped and latched onto her machine. She was now fully trapped. With nothing but a bloody thought, she activated all the boosters in her arms and legs to sink herself even further into the monster. Once they were active, she removed her stubs from the control sockets and reconnected her prosthetic forearms. She gripped blindly onto the crank that would force open the hatch of the cockpit. With the dents in the metal interior, the cockpit had become nearly impossible to move in, Bonnie was only barely able to slip her arms toward the crank. She clamped her teeth firmly together and was only mildly aware of her screaming voice and the spit that flew out from the gap where she’d lost a tooth. Her muscles bunched up and began to rip through her pilot-suit.
The hatch slowly creaked open, just a hair, as the gelatinous substance of the creature was seeping over and into her cockpit.
It was suffocating. The walls of her metal coffin had closed in so tightly. The foreign organic mess of this creature was filling in any and all gaps. The metal or maybe the monster, Bonnie tried not to think about it, pinned her chest to her seat as she tried to slip toward the small sliver of light in the opening of the cockpit. Bonnie felt pressure from every side and a deep and dark pressure in her head as well. With a sudden gout of strength, whether from fear or courage, Bonnie pushed herself toward the sliver of light.
Bonnie tried to put all her heart into this kick, “Shoot!” as she slammed her feet into the slightly ajar hatch.
Her left leg snapped with a terrifyingly loud crack and buckled inward.
Bonnie could taste the iron-flavored blood from a freshly cracked tooth.
She slipped into the slightly widened opening and prayed to anything she could think of.
She felt the rush of air and her stomach dropped before she really understood that she made it out.
She opened her eyes only to be blinded by a shockingly golden flash of light followed up by a blast of sound that she was sure shook each and every one of her internal organs. Two more flashes nearly made it through her closed eyes as she crashed into the water.
She immediately gasped upon impact and was hit with a second slap of water as the ocean closed up to fill in the crater her body had just made. She felt the creeping darkness of unconsciousness close in on her as she sank deeper and deeper into the cool yet oppressive expanse of water.
The pressure of a new explosion was the only thing that pulled her back from the brink. It felt as if her organs had all been compressed within her and she gasped for air once more only to take in a mouthful of salty water that burned her cut up mouth.
With a strength she didn’t know she had left she struggled her way to the surface and vomited out a mixture of sea water and blood that stained the waters around her.
Bonnie stared up at the sky, feeling suddenly small and fragile compared to the two metallic monsters that were suspended above her. The scene was framed by the towering and tilting skyscrapers that rose out of the ocean floor, all of them together forming a sort of pillar-filled arena for this fight.
It was clear that Guinevere had fired her cannons. Bonnie’s MAC was no more. The machine worked perfectly as an impromptu explosive device, just like Bonnie hoped it would. The familiar golden and fluted core of the enemy was now entirely free of the organic mess. Guinevere had closed the distance.
Though the bottom half of Guinevere’s MAC was bulky with the propellant tanks and the extra armor that surrounded them, not to mention the massive battleship cannons that had been swung back into a scabbard-like position, the top half of the MAC was lightly armored and extremely maneuverable. The main armament of the thing was a massive blade, twice the size of the MAC itself, that was usually hoisted in a spring-locked position over the right shoulder for a quick first strike. The blade was an intricately curved sword with tiny, sharpened gears along the blade to help it grind through armor. The left shoulder held a pod of elongated rockets that reached from the head to the waist when stored in the upright position as they were now.
The black and white swirls painted onto the armor looked almost hypnotic when in motion.
Bonnie remembered that this thing had been shipped to The Stragglers not too long ago. A suit custom ordered by some rich idiot who wanted to get a medal. Though it had a few odd modifications, like a large canister that seemed to be submerged in the core.
Strangely for a rich idiot’s MAC though, the thing actually looked formidable, and Guinevere was clearly making good use of it.
Though Bonnie was nearly unconscious there in the water, her brain struggling with even the simple task of breathing through her battered lungs, she realized how odd it was that Guinevere wasn’t making the final strike.
Either Bonnie had died, and the afterlife was just one long still shot of the last thing you saw, which was an existence that Bonnie immediately decided was horrifying. Or… or something was wrong with Guinevere.
The massive blade was poised directly over Ukko’s cockpit and shook wildly as the machine struggled to hold up the weight of the blade in such a position. Or maybe the shaking was from Guinevere? Maybe she pushed herself too hard and the MAC had already driven her crazy?
It was an odd sight, Bonnie decided. But she felt so at peace here in the cold ocean with the waves rocking her oh so gently.
The beautifully large clouds that lingered overhead.
The blinding glass towers that reached oh so far above her.
The massive creatures above that were locked in a battle far beyond what humans were capable of.
Bonnie smiled to herself.
It was nice to feel small for once.
She may have imagined it, but as her body was being roughly pulled onto a wooden raft, she thought she heard two very important sounds:
The crunching of metal grinding through metal.
And the high-pitched screaming of Guinevere.