A moment of time frozen and refracted in weathered down glass. Light occluded and glinting off at angles innumerable. Dust not allowed to settle as it was rippled through the air. A rumbling engine long overdue for any sort of maintenance. A gyroscope catching grit at scraping intervals. Clanging ornaments and feeders putting rise to action. Muscles tensing both organic and manufactured. And the eyes in the sky seeing all.
“50 azimuth!!! Fire incoming!!!”
Muscles loosed and potential became kinetic, barely holding wall becoming obstacle demanded away, and a shoulder the one demanding as such. Blocks eaten at and barely meaningful cracked to crumble. Rust eaten rebar splintering where it even stayed. And all hell loosed itself as alley became ally and confined air to enemy.
Fire twined and metal recoiled, cracking all apart with married fury. One shell skimming the upper floor with no regard for accuracy or cover.Tearing through dilapidation in entrenching score. The other the same but right through where Micha just burst out of. The spackled air bunched hard, the walls between streets shattered with no force lost, and revenge spat at prey too willful to just go and die.
A spray of debris and stony shrapnel across a slammed back, the opposite wall catching him with no love spared. A snippy pain highlighted by the heaving ring of high velocity metal on metal. An echo torrential, still whizzing out anything else crumbling apart. But gaining distance rather than accoutrement in a collapsing opponent.
Because the crude ordinance failed to find its bite, ricocheting off as its brethren sailed above in skewed trajectory. Finding not the side on target it had hoped for, but the front face already buzzing the air to rip it apart again. This time with a zing to make the air sing in pain.
Micha felt his bones attempt a second coup, pulled and scraped up as fast as he could. No side door or easily collapsible wall to charge through, just desperate measures fallen to out of need to get the hell out of there!
Just a blur in a recoiling peripheral, ill kept optics not even seeing him dash to the street they regurgitated their spent casings to. Clangs paired in kicking force to prepare another shot to put all in order. But met with higher velocity charge as its hide became killbox reversed.
A sharp jerk in the light of rotating rails, rotors unable to bear that weight of sudden momentum. All too late and too brash, set up for failure in a sky tearing crash.
Momentum shifted violent, forced rotation as its entire assemblages cried out in pain. Iron feet scraping to a gut wrenching stop, sheer force trenching its armor, firmly staunch buildings made impact crater almost meteoric, and a bright blue path-
*BBOOOOOOOOOOM*
Torn through this feral unit’s rocket rack.
The ripped out canyon swallowed in fire and spalling, sparkling propellant showering like ill-fated stars, and the air made weapon of concussion and devastation. The ground on rushing as Micha was thrown to it and tossed about. A bright line of burned in metal light tracing its callous path occluded, making this show of force more immutable and certain. Revenge and prey were not quite so set in stone.
Ringing bones and blood shot eyes shook away as Micha rasped back up and as far away as he could. Facades and clouds and rubble abound as his only cover left. But where fear and purpose held sway, rage and rebuttal cried perpendicular.
Armor not quite holed but near enough to it. Smoke seeping out from ill sealed hatches. Machine roaring like an extension of its master, as metals reached their limits. But both pressed with all they had left. Weight shifted over, ripped gyros about to counter a fall, poured wrath to bear and the fight out of flight.
The wounded unit charging into its busted open blind, crashing through caved in structure, threatening more collapse as walls came down. But spat hate as fire upon its overmatching foe.
Successive rings kicked in patterned ballistic bass. Hard beat on all soft matter as high caliber shells speared through the cacophony of valiant defiance. But the percussion section sounded symbol rather than leather. Rounds bouncing off armor more than a match for piss poor propellant. And already set to match this defiance with fitting end.
Angular mech crouching low on the incoming, rails kept low and out of danger, but rack tilted right and aligned square. Twin screeches puncturing the beat mid set, cutting it barely four notes in, adding that wanted hollow gong. But reverse as to its recipient and finale to its symphony.
Short smoke trails banging out, stopping wrath in its tracks with sudden recoil alone. Breaking that fight back down to flight too late, as composite spears stabbed straight in. Armor just clay, hollow their claim, and fire their ultimate form to crescendo this arraignment. A hissing flare and kept back fuel, cooking off ammunition bins and unready body. The only result, the only flooding instant left. The breaking surge of a far greater-
*BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*
Pressure waves filtered and shocked away the dust clouding everything. Blistered out of alleys and through every surviving building. Deadened with corner and more prepared cover, but still Micha regretted his self-serving call to action.
A small room still standing but caved in on the opposite street, window into the battlefield offered whether he wanted it or not. Raining debris and more stabbing star streaks fluttered to the rubble of this blasted open desolation. Accented by retching disbarment, gravity taking its course over this failed power on high. Metal peeled open and falling apart, and dropping to the ground it once ruled over. Now ruled by a new master.
But even as this display edged to quiet pattering, it failed to stay. Another beast making its presence known again and its own defiance heard immutable. Rubble stumbled and crackled to life, broken rotors scraped a foot back into load bearing, a smashed platform still workable as it limped into cover.
The other mander mech able to free itself from the building that partially buried it, still able to bring its stacked armament to bear around its chosen broken corner. Still able to stab at the one that now bore their ire.
Screeches ignited in sequence in their locked rack, held back as their full burn force became potential forward velocity. So they could all at once scream toward their target, payloads heavy and deviation substantial. Set to kick yet more of this violated air and make it known that there is no peace allowed in this world.
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Their trails cutting out mid flight, screaming acceleration becoming hissing release. A more thorough devastation making its properties known. As those fat tanks of flying fuel crashed into the hard surface of the building Micha had abandoned, and aerosolized their contents. Their thermobaric charges tuning the air to sucking configuration.
A light, a spark, a push and pull as conflicting forces blasted their wrath. Every speck of dust and particulate detritus jumped to life, every crack and crevice hissed and bleed its long buried contents, every bone made to suffer and ear made to rupture, and every heart made to skip as postmodern death blared its wanton display. A fireball more sustained and torrential, failing to kick true yet ripping the air away from everything. Burning it all as fuel and oxidizer, and lighting this small turn of the road to a miniscule star’s brilliance.
Micha was wrenched into his cover, sucked toward his chosen corner with only friction to swear eternal gratitude to. His skin burned as heat poured back through, claws digging hard into the concrete to just bear it and stay. Anywhere else would be pure death for his kind. And bane for any sort of life as he knew it.
But this weapon of terror knew no such effect on cold sealed armor, would not receive so verbose a reaction from its wielder or its equal. A peeking edge-out as the fires burned their course, as the air rebounded back in tumultuous churn, as a million small flames flecked at whatever they could burn in this long since desiccated landscape.
A curved rusted edge leaning cautiously out as well, bum leg disregarded as just stake and counterweight. But its careful hobble was met with nothing discernable. Just pure scorch blackness and flames lapping at what was left of its leader. No angled smoking wreckage, just wreckage strewn corner made yet more barren. But not so silent.
“fffvv- ight there! 280 by 19, on the money! Blow this fucker back into the stone age!!”
Angles smoked off their imparted excess, seals retained yet still rocked and socked hard. Half rack melted and black surface marred to steel. But retaliation rising back about to brilliance, as those rails split and flowered unholy wide.
Body turned to let them spread, let them splay to the sky and spin with full intention. Lightning arcing between and across, the air beginning to buzz to something more than cracking. A green aura emanating and swirling to this accelerating tornado’s center, congealing and building with something unattainable by nature. A horrifying rippling turning the air to soup, rocking the already beaten, terrifying everything inanimate or otherwise. But leaving the rusted hulk to blind to its ultimate end approaching.
And its utter invalidation as matter. As those rails snapped closed. And true plasma burned its presence into this world.
“EAT SHIT AND DIE!!!”
An instant flash, a moment caught at a standstill by a simple need to understand what was seen. A green line burning parallel to this blasted street, disrespecting every building and rubble pile built up upon it. So fast that matter was refused its equal and opposite reaction, and yet so laden it turned it all to a rainbow of melt. Holes wider than whatever was just fired, force major by factors extreme. Nothing in its path allowed to remain, not concrete or rebar nor rusted armored beast.
That platform, bent in lame stance, blown open so white hot it splash against the hole beyond its cover. Munitions not even allowed to cook off and shine brilliant, just blown to insignificance by sheer force of plasma coated magnetism. All of it lightning with no tearing open thunder, even the air was refused its rebounding tenor. Just a retina burn and torrenting obliteration of everything in this pure flashing instant.
Yet heat still washed back the world at normal speed, kicking Micha back from the corner he’d dared to look around. A final collapse sending wind force deafening, yet pressing its oven convection out and tossing the world about one last time. Squishy form bouncing off the crumbled floor and nearly flew out back into the street, road rash and compromised stealth only saved by those desperate claws digging into the floor barely a step up from dirt. Though still he rolled in pain as the sear made its demands known.
Those claws grasping and smothering his face, feeling the rising intensity that catching up nerves unfortunately facilitate. A burn spreading and eating deeper, near radioactive in its caustic penetration, but nowhere near as pure solar solvent. Just a burn peeling back his smooth snout near to bone, at least in sensation.
A sensation only had because The Green needed suitable hosts, and manders have a knack for robust healing. His tail might lose some paunch for it, and the mouthless scream in agony marked it all the traitorous, but the alternative was certainly worse. Better to suffer with feeling for a time than burn in numb slough.
And this agony can only go on for so long, sapping what adrenaline remained with every full body hyperventilation. Soon dropping him to the wayside as the world continued without him.
The buzz in his ear clicking in metered intervals like a countdown timer, a simple message passed through the massed interference just loosed and reverberating through everything. A doubled closing, triple even closer, all building to that signal finally-
“vvvVVvfff-EZZ!! What the HELL was that!?!”
“Heh… hehehehHAAHHAHA!!! THAT WAS AWESOME!!!”
“Highmark 1!! Answers! Now!”
“S-heh-sorry! I- heha I hooked the Petunia up to the accumulators!”
“YOu WhAT!?!”
“Yeah! It fit the spare connectors, so I finished hooking it up while we waited out those stupid toads.”
“Y-you just plugged it in?! Rezz it’s a fucking perpetual generator! Disconnect it now!!”
“Hey, it’s only a little hotter in here. That shot barely touched my red line. Not to mention it emptied its entire buffer. That’s decades of buildup burned through without a hint of overload! So stop worrying already and enjoy the fact I just fucking fired a full shot!!”
“Th-THAT DOESN’T MAKE IT BETTER!!! That thing is a sun in a box that’s been sitting in the weeds for god knows who long!!”
“And it still works! Nieba… Dan! My battery just soaked up to full off of residual charge. You know what that means. We can finally use this thing how it was meant to be used! We can finally fully power the base! We can finally bring the whole fleet out of mothball! We can…! we can…”
The radio filtered down, both sides feeling something already expressed too much already. Already known and filled to its brim. Something sad yet happy all at once. Something Micha didn’t feel right being privy to. Let alone able as everything hurt.
The sear had waned but his body was lead and dust. A pitiful heavy breath tried and failed to pull him off the ground. The green under his skin felt suffocated, his bones just couldn’t help but hold the tune of that vibrant green streak, and his vision stubbornly kept it burning across. He was tired, beaten, and just wanted to go to sleep.
But he knew he was too in the thick of it to just give up now.
An aching arm pulled itself up to the coat over his chest and rasped at the zipper, yanking it down to let the streaks under it breathe for him. The sun couldn’t help but come through all the holes in his cover so Micha wasn’t about to wilt. And his heart still beat itself in line, so he wasn’t dying just yet.
“... Any- anything left?”
“Negative… No, I think you got 'em all.”
The rumble of his quarry continuing on her path kept him company, circumventing the blockage it had created. The shadow of its angular hull stomping past, keeping his heavy body laid out. But only for so long.
“Hopefully that was the last of them.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb Rezz and say, if its not, they certainly aren’t going to try again.”
Because this chase was still on.
His drained muscles fought, remembered just what they needed to do. Training bubbling up out of the fog as situations aligned. As memories of being beaten flat and told to keep going were pushed out by disappointment. He was a soldier, a pilot. This was just daily life and he had a mission whether he had qualms or not.
And likewise he knew what all this pain meant wider. That reactor was too dangerous to be allowed anywhere but with him. Motivation for accepting this duty ringing higher. That power was a threat none should be allowed. A weapon too extreme to be let back into this world.
A stumbling draw, a curving rise, and all that will reaffirming that he had to keep going. He had to keep that power out of the wrong hands. He had to...
He had to keep his daughter safe.