“Twenty eight klicks till the line. All clear from here.”

Miles of city passed in silence. Echoes of footsteps followed in straight lines. Along parallel streets minced into mounds. Past devastated abodes for people no one knows anymore. The cut short skyscrapers and brought low downtown were nothing but the past, now it was grey and green brownstones. Homes blown in and blown out, coated over and carved into landscaped craters.

Those still standing lucky to not bear the slapdash markings and bloodied reinforcement of feral occupation. Darkened doors and crawling shadows growing darker as time advanced its course. Though thankfully abandoned or cleared away by repeat incursions, they only cemented the creep factor dissuading. Like haunts for vengeance seeking ghosts. But this was moot and pointless, muted by more pressing issues drawing Micha astray.

His skin felt like oil, dust caking and sucking away his moist squish. His eyes stung with stubborn grit. His body could only soldier on for so long. No internal heating doesn’t preclude a want to be hot all day. Decades of relaxation don’t build an endurance base, and this chase had been strenuous.

Yet his quarry continued ever onward with no signs of slowing down. A steady beat far ahead, far enough that there was no need for them to look back and see the lone figure following along. Trudging. Staggering. Regretting leaving his pond. Wishing he could just fall back into it and wash all this way in cool… draft?

Micha stopped in his tracts as a waft graced his bare clawed feet. A hovel right beside him exuded a familiar feeling missed beyond words. And yeah sure he couldn’t speak, but he would be speechless anyway. A stoop carpeted from first step to door frame beckoned him like his Shangri-La had followed as well. The draft was wet, cold rain water caldron collecting everything and protecting it from the harsh sun. Growing its own garden of green time limit. A fleeting oasis just waiting for him.

But… but he still had a mission. A duty. He had to keep going. Had to keep up with his quarry. His warming devastating reactor. His… already waning will.

Th-the suns almost down anyway. And that mech can be as quiet as it wants, but it can’t hide in the dark. She’ll have to hunker down and stop for the night to cool off and stay out of sight. Sooooooo, what’s a quick dip going to hurt?

Will broken and dust just demanding to be cleaned off, Micha heeled turned off his hunt and gleefully climbed the soft stairs to the darkness calling his name.

The inside bearing little resemblance to its former class, the carpet lining the ceiling and bowing the foundations like a slow moving explosion. Wood rotting to soggy splinters, sagging everything into the focal point of this mildew bog. A hole ripped and widened through the roof and second floor. Caved in to let the dusk light in. Orange mixing with green and bluish brown. All surrounding a thigh deep jade bowl of crystal clear water laden to its brim. Etched concrete base lasting better than the floorboards, soaking in all that was left out or in the way as that verdant expanse carved its path. Making a miraculous setting all the more magical. And only expediting the disrobing of all this in-the-way clothing.

Jacket tossed aside, pack and all. Pants hobbled out of to near stumble. Head lurched back as his headphone accessory tried to stop his giving in, but it sprang back to its box with nothing to show.

Micha was already too far gone, already slamming forward onto the fuzzy floor and sliding snoot first like there was no point in using another muscle. The water taking him like he’d spent a lifetime in a desert, caked carcinogens flaking away and denied the ecstasy of the deep. A grey stain haloing the surface as his smooth form slid to the bottom. Barely a ripple as all Micha’s troubles melted away.

Mineral solutions and impurities uptaken, all sequestered into concentrate both sacred bath and hearty feast. A means slightly happenstance to fill the void of not being able to eat. Everything missing provided by osmosis and transfer, filling that void with pure blissful satiation. As little by little the insidious fog clawed back what had been pulled free.

The cold slowing overeager nerves, cooling what was nearly dried up, flowing in like his whole body was a sponge. His form settling at the rounded center, like a bed befitting a god had opened its covers to take him away from this reality. His chair a pale comparison… if… rather warmer. But the baser instinct of temperature regulation filed everything away. Nice and neatly without a hint of malice. It could wait, it would be there still, but this was better. So much…

Okay only a little better. A single folder out of order, smothered lungs having to readjust. His pond not quite as deep and his acceptance of bodily change only so far. A sloth like drift cut short, irked awake, slyly malicious archiving away seen for more than it let on. But still it was nice to just forget a little bit.

Micha clawed back up, sliding up the opposite shore before he suffocated himself by accident. This small lapse only so damning. The quiet heavy ripple of his exit the only thing greeting him as he added a shake and spray to it. Lower half allowed to stay chilled, tail more adept at taking in and storing anyway. But his upper half lolled out into the last little bits of sun coming in from the hole above.

The streak across his snout smiling his content back where it belonged, as the rest of his symbiote enjoyed its unfettered stay. As at least some amount of drift made itself at home. He’d done more than enough to deserve a rest. Dodging a battlefield, trudging across this overgrowing city, chasing… someone…

That content smile deflated in concentration. It was R something. Ra… Re…Wait!

The cold metal press against his neck made his mind jump. Rezz. The one who stole his reactor. The thing he had to keep away from the wrong hands. The ones he can… just. No, he can’t remember who. But he knows they can’t be allowed to have it. Can't allow anyone to.

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His head shook the cold away, his thoughts needed more than ever. This wasn’t where he needed to be. This was just a stop that had to come to an end. He clawed away, up and out of chilling rain water seeping into his bones. Hands slapping his squishy face awake to the wet slap of over soaked mits. He had to keep moving. He had to get that reactor back. He had to…

He had to have realized this place was too attractive. Too stable for such a precarious structure. Too inviting to his kind. The rusted, hidden metal beams erected about the bowed walls saying more than could be explained away. The feeling of all over dread percolating to the surface adding new adrenaline to the equation. And the soft squeak of smooth claws on rotted wood the last bit of proof to this damning lapse in judgment. A slow turn of his head putting vision to the just barely seen.

The blood markings on the darkened walls. The piles of debris and scrap pushed to the sides and out of sight. The sharp edge pointing at his back. And a horrifying gurgling growl rising to stab it into him with no mercy left to hesitate. Only waiting to align right with his heart. To make this fight end before it started. But failing to account for outside interference.

“hhugh… twenty five clicks out.”

All attention and tension snapped to the radio unbound of its focusing phone, as intent and instinct shifted advantage.

Micha twisted off his toes, tensed claws relinquishing and letting him spin on the slick moss. Whirling him around on the spear that threatened his back. The one quickly bearing more than just two hands. A repurposed pipe more likely to give tetanus than pierce clean, to wound and degrade and leave open for what came after. But not today.

A claw wrapping around as that twirl was forced to lock, those clawed toes slamming back down as his grip wrenched its momentum into the distracted.

The cloaked hunched form being dragged into the light, bearing scars and opened wounds from so much unacceptance of new facts. It had tried to tear its closed up mouth back open and hide its deformity with soiled cloth. And yet fell right into its cold master's wants. To sit silent in wait for others of its misbegotten kind to come to it. And make them pay for existing as it did. But they had found the wrong prey to pounce on.

Its own grip iron, too tight to let go as its spear pulled it over the lip of its own trap. A bloody spray like a yelp, the flutter of camouflage ill-kempt and loose, and the eventual splash down to flood this silent scene to boisterousness. Its cover made suffocater as it soaked and clung in flailing instinct. The pipe let go but scratched at in too late inaction, new owner in control and flipping it back over. Both hands swinging it about, crashing it down with no mercy seen or felt. And slamming it home into this drowning feral’s back.

Resistance met and metal bending, rust cracking out and bone making a mockery of its edge, but training too honed to let inadequacy prove a detriment. Muscle and weight and mass of strike, all falling down and forcing this point. Through that bone and squish and out the other side, through this predator’s heart made a kin in its prey.

The once clear water, clouded only by light dusting, now turned to a soup of crimson and brown. Old blood, congealed and rotted, used as markings. Mixing with new spilling out as their struggles fell flat. As the depths of their own trap took them. As they were washed clean of their stains and their once pure pool accepted their taint. As fresh adrenaline made that red spread farther. And… and as Micha realized what he had done.

His claws reeled, grip on the lip failing to hold off the sudden rush of regret and sickening lurch. A stumble near to falling over, back crashing angled into the blood painted wall behind him. Sliding down it as his body wretched and sputtered for a full even breath. His eyes wide as could be, his heart in his throat more than it should be. All his content hopes and sequestered intent falling like so much society before it.

He killed it… he killed one of his own kind. He didn’t know if they were a man or a woman, what their name was, what they could remember of their old life. All… all they allowed was for one of them to die. For that pool to be tainted with blood full of The Green. For a cycle to continue and one of them to feed the other.

They… they wouldn’t have given him a choice. That thought flailing and whipping out from the foggy side of his mind, tethered to training and pulling it for closure. For solid grounding to stop this struggle. But only succeeded in repeating that justification. This was war, and your opponent won’t give you a choice.

Even breaths. In and out. His whole lithed frame rising and falling. Forcing all the haze away. In and out. Just soft gurgles and slight whistles as the water calmed from its sloshing and the last of his opponents nerve endings died out.

The quiet dominating yet again. The fog being forced back with full realizations cargo in toe. This had been his life in the barest of senses. Killing others in the name of duty or to just see the next day. All he’d done for the longest time, before he’d ever stepped foot in a mech. Something else was deeper still but too far, though its shape not dissimilar. Surviving this world as best as one could, and eking out a life for…

There was something else blurring that line. Not fog but purpose. The jangle of the tag around his neck making that line known at least in name. Rachael and her mother… Guinevere? Grace? Only so much progress gained at one time. And the process wasn’t exactly proving painless. Yet it still made itself known. That he had something. Someone maybe still.

But it was all secondary, all wider goal, all needing to be spared from what could come about. Because he still had a thief to chase down.

The rotted wood creaked as he beat the dust off his clothes and rerobed. The fading signal of his quarry chirping as he firmly reset the headphone jack, thankful for it to no true end. The voices on the other end hard to make out as time had bred distance, but he knew their direction well enough. Knew their tactics if his memory was worth anything. And knew their needs if experience was to be believed.

The dusk outside growing darker by the minute. The distance hopefully stagnating as they regrouped for the coming night. It was now or never.

The once city carried its shadows to fathomless depths, the spite of The Green only able to tear down so much. The outer periphery out of its reach by virtue of population density and ill-suited terrain. Nothing to target and less area to spread out from. Because a true hill rose above a sprawling suburbia rotting in more normal manner.

A nice hem to keep things in, like water. And others out, like nuclear blast waves. Micha didn’t really remember whether this place was that close to being truly obliterated but knew the limitations of strategic targeting. This city was a perfect bowel to cause chaos in rather than reduce to wasteland. Something to see as still standing and flock to, and regret ever seeing in the first place.

Insidious.

But all of that was history he could only ever have known in passing, no grand villain to lay blame on to but the people of the past. All he was worried about now was what could be waiting over that ridgeline. Though he knew it wasn’t going to make his duty any easier.

The last of the crumpled and desiccated houses passed in silent order, rusted to the bone cars pushed out of the road saying more as to who was able to get out rather than get in. The incline treacherous by virtue of weathered asphalt being ill prepared for heavy metal feet to traverse. Footprints mixing and covering each other over. Solid enough ground found by trial and error. But the rise came and its extent was made real. The Green was not this place's only claim to fame.