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"That's right, I am your enemy. Me and no one else. Let's see how you deal with an enemy of your..."

Size? Hahaha.

"Power. Your power."

The giant robot threw a punch.

He saw it coming. Of course, how could he not see it coming when it was the biggest thing he'd ever seen? "Telegraphing" didn't do it justice. It was announcing it with a fucking bullhorn.

Sylvester didn’t dodge, but neither was he swatted like Heather.

He raised his arms, crossed in front of his head, and stopped the attack.

He should have flown away the moment the giant robot's hand made contact with him, even a slight graze would have done it with the speed and power of the punch. But that wasn't all he had done to prepare. He had thrown two claws of darkness downward, causing them to sink into the ground. That was how he managed to stay on his feet.

He couldn't add well.

His arms felt like they were about to be ripped off.

He couldn't repeat it a second time, even with the help of the claws of darkness (or anchors, hell, it didn't matter). It had been foolish to try. Sylvester thought it’d be surprised and he would have the perfect opportunity to attack, but it had left him too fucked up to do anything besides feel his arms practically beaten to a pulp.

He dodged the next attack, turning in the air, wings pressed against his back but spread as wide as possible. It was what he should have done from the start.

As Heather had said, he could try to tear off its limbs.

Easier said than done, of course, but you had to start somewhere.

Sylvester flew low, at one of its legs, which it lifted up to try to crush him. He made about a dozen cuts in about the same place and retreated before it could crush him. Sylvester admired his handiwork from a safe distance.

That is, nothing at all. His katana hadn’t even torn through whatever metal that giant robot was made of.

It was to be expected, but... Come on man, he should have at least done some damage, no matter how insignificant! He reminded himself that it might be true, though not enough to be visible to the naked eye.

The giant robot swatted him.

Like a bloody fly. Exactly like Heather, and he flew off in the same way. The only thing that prevented him from ending up the same way was that Heather, on her return flight, managed to catch him.

"I don't like the look of this," she said.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The situation or his body? Sylveter grimaced, feeling as if all his ribs were broken, as if the ribs were shards of glass or knives digging into his skin.

He supposed it didn't matter what she meant. Because they were both going about equally well.

Sylvester broke away from her. Perhaps he was in no condition to stand up under his own power, but, fortunately, he didn't need to. The wings did most of the work and his feet were well off the ground.

He coughed several times, spitting up a little blood.

He clicked his tongue, aimed his arm and fired at the same spot. The steady fall of a single drop of water could destroy rocks, break diamonds. So, if he wanted to succeed, he had to concentrate all his attacks on a single point. Better to go limb by limb than to spread himself too thin and achieve nothing.

At least they had already achieved something. Drawing the attention of the damn thing away from the citizens, not that it would help much. Just attacking them or reacting to their attacks could cause a lot of innocent casualties without even meaning to. Normal human beings, along with their carefully constructed cities, were like ants to the damned thing.

San Francisco wasn't the metropolis it once was, nor did it look much like the settlement when it was still called Yerba Buena. It had been stuck in the middle of those two things because of the changes brought about by the threat of the Remnants, the regression they were all going through. It was now a burning inferno. There wasn't a single intact building within sight. The air reeked of blood, guts and worse.

There were flames to spare. A piece of shit made of cardboard with sunglasses, jacket and hat, also on fire, caught his eye. He didn't understand what that was about, blinked rapidly as if the smoke had made him hallucinate and of course nothing changed, but it probably deserved to burn. Shame about everything else, though.

Heather went on the attack, slashing not only at the same leg he had repeatedly attacked but at the same spot. It didn't take a genius to attack the knee to disable someone, but he wondered if she could sense (or see, somehow) the damage he might have done to it. Or at least his attempt.

He wouldn't put it past her to have more ways to see than an ordinary human. She was anything but ordinary.

More importantly, she succeeded.

Namely, the giant robot bent that knee, making the ground shake even more. She'd just started, hadn't even put much effort into that blow, and already she had it down on one knee. Unbelievable! And frustrating. He told himself that his previous attacks had helped, if only a little.

What pleased him most, though it was neither the time nor the place, was that the giant robot caught her again, bringing its hands together in a fist that it wielded like a hammer against her back.

Heather fell to the ground, barely avoiding falling into a group of people and vehicles passing by in search of salvation, hit the asphalt and bounced off as if it hadn't been asphalt but an inflatable mattress.

Yes, it was neither the time nor the place, but haha! Now she'd see that it wasn't that easy. In fact, she seemed a bit dizzy with so much bouncing and shaking, maybe she would even end up throwing up like him. That would even the scales. That would be fucking great.

I'm going crazy. I'm thinking about this kind of stuff while innocent people are dying. Something's really broken in there... No, I hope it's temporary, but I'm losing my fucking mind.

Hysteria? Was this hysteria?

Maybe the answer was just that simple and he wasn't losing anything, but recovering.

Regaining normality, the feelings that any human being would suffer in a situation like this... But he wasn't just any human being. He had the responsibility, the weight of the world on his shoulders. A terribly overwhelming weight.

So he had to control himself.

He had an idea. He threw an anchor of darkness (fuck, okay, sometime he had to make up his mind about what name he liked best) at the fist that was reaching out to crush him. It dug in deep, disappearing inside, the robot's hand expelled a white smoke as if it were its blood, almost covering the anchor.

Sylvester propelled himself sideways, dragging the anchor with him.

That's how he got the robot to punch itself. Now that was fucking effective, a big chunk of its face fell off and was buried in the ground like the half-wing of some great fossilised beast.

A God Made of Steel (3): END