The sentinel guard’s radio fizzed with static as it was connected to a civilian line. “Home base, this is Firewalker. Do you copy? Over.”
The guard sighed and leaned away from the edge of the apartment block’s roof and picked up the receiver, looking at the building across the street that the signal was coming from. “35 Ataùd Avenue, this is Cuernavaca Sentinel Unit 23. Please refrain from using the emergency radio for recreational purposes, repeated violations will result in demotion to scavenging du–”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t bother you while you’re rooting for truffles, got it. Just thought I’d bring up the local emergency to its first upcoming victim. This is Firewalker, under and up.”
The radio cut out an instant before a dark shape flew up past the guard, too fast to make out. The guard heard the sound of cracking concrete coming from behind, then turned to see a colossal woman standing in the middle of a small crater on the roof, eyes burning with orange light and a grin plastered on her face. A crushed walkie-talkie fell from her hand. “So nice to meet in person.”
The guard immediately raised his shotgun and fired into the center of Waia’s mass. The cloud of buckshot crumpled into a glowing mush upon contact with Waia’s shirt, then began flowing up, past her shoulders in two even streams, down her arms, before finally dimming and hardening into a pair of solid metal gauntlets on Waia’s hands. After a couple of seconds, the only sound left was the sound of the gunshot echoing through the city streets.
The guard checked his pockets for a second magazine to replace the empty one, but Waia casually stepped aside and batted the gun off the roof with a single armored backhand. “We’re not doing that, no.”
Without hesitation, the guard drew a knife and lunged for Waia’s neck, only to be grabbed by the wrist and halted in place. Waia twisted the guard’s arm and forced him to drop the knife, getting a good look at his watch in the process. How lucky was she, invading a city full of people who still wore watches.
Examining the hands and not accounting for imperfect timekeeping, she was apparently four minutes and nine seconds ahead of schedule.
“Eh, close enough.”
With her free hand, Waia delivered an uppercut straight into the guard’s gut. The Servant went flying, soaring over the adjacent building like a shooting star. Waia wasn’t far behind, having caught up with a single leap, grabbed the Servant by one leg and hurled him straight down into an old fire station.
Waia fell through the hole created by the thrown Servant, examining the Servants who stood in shock around the fresh pile of debris. She held up an armored hand. “Anyone here know where that Huntmaster guy is staying?”
A younger-looking Servant looked for assistance from the Servants around her. “Uh, he’s– he’s usually in the n–north of the city?” She pointed to the wall behind her.
“Thanks.” Waia dived to the side and burst through the wall of the fire station, onto a wide street. A squad of Huntsmen, assembled as a response to the sound of gunfire, stopped in their tracks, pointing their shotguns at the Primus in front of them. Soon, armored vehicles followed in their tracks, arrayed in Waia's path.
Waia grinned and spread her arms wide. “Good morning, Cuernavaca! If all you wonderful murderers wouldn’t mind diverting all of your attention straight to me, I’ve got a quick announcement before we get to the fun part!”
The Servants on the street recoiled from Waia, crowding around the periphery and behind the armed Huntsmen.
“Yeah, that's right! Get a good look at me before I get started! I just want you all to know that you can spin me some sob story about how this is all the fault of a bunch of people you haven't even tried to bring real justice to, but it's not gonna change my mind about this! You all started this, and now I'm gon–!”
An ear-splitting crack heralded a tank shell roaring over the heads of the Servants of the ground and striking Waia in the forehead. In a reflexive attempt to stay upright, her anchored feet scraped two boiling trails in the asphalt as she was pushed back several feet from the force of the strike.
The impact of the shell exploding in her face threw her head back and threatened to make her topple backwards, but she managed to right herself and step out of the three-inch-deep ditches that she had dug for herself. She wiped the molten iron out of her eyes with a laugh of ecstatic relief. “Oh, it's good to be back.”
“Vengeance scattered!” With a unified cry, the Servants released a volley of gunfire against Waia. The civilian Servants scattered out of the line of fire as the hail of lead melted harmlessly upon contact with Waia.
Waia leapt forward through the air, cleaving through the leaden pellets with ease and slamming into the line of Huntsmen with meteoric force. Two Servants went flying immediately, and Waia ducked low and swept the legs of two more before anyone could turn their guns on her.
Waia emerged from her crouch with another leap, ripping through half the remaining line and crashing into a brick wall on one side of the street. Waia let her feet sink half an inch into the shattered brick, stood up on the wall as if it was level ground, reached up to pull a nearby street light out of the sidewalk, and swung it at the Servants on the far side of the street. In a matter of seconds, the entire phalanx of Huntsmen had been swiped out of Waia's path as if they were cardboard props.
Waia saw the barrel of the tank that had once been protected by the Huntsmen swivel to lock onto her. Before it could get another shot off on her, she hurled the severed street light at the tank's turret, bending the barrel into a misshapen, ineffectual tube.
Waia let herself fall from the ruined wall. The tank desperately attempted to reverse away from her, but Waia caught up to it in a few brisk strides and grabbed it with both hands, the frontmost section of the vehicle crumpling with little effort.
The squeal of treads still attempting to pull the tank away from Waia were cut short as she shifted her grip and lifted the tank up in the air. She heard a barely-audible thud as the vehicle's crew slammed into the now downward-facing front of the tank's interior.
“Now for the fun part,” mumbled Waia, flipping the tank upside-down in her grip.
–
“And from what I understand from an eyewitness source,” said Mark, “you guys left the entire former state of Hawaii deserted through a combination of evacuation and systemic massacre, is that right?”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Suleman sighed. “Again, the Servants have turned to more radical methods to remove Primoi from a region, but from what I understand, all of Hawaii was being secretly controlled by the island's Domain, just like in–”
Crack.
Suleman looked to the window to try and locate the source of the distant sound. “...What?”
A Servant was allowed through the room's doorway by the two guards. “Huntmaster, sir! We're getting multiple reports of a Primus loose in the city and approaching this building!”
Mark craned his neck to get a good view out of the nearby window. “...Oh yeah, there she is. Well, I wasn't expecting her to do this quiet, but that's definitely louder than I predicted.”
Suleman followed Mark's gaze out the window. What appeared to be a damaged tank was flying upside-down through the air as if shot from a cannon, several hundred feet away. A dark speck followed caught up to the tank from where the vehicle had come from on the ground, lingered on top of it for a moment, then shot forward off the flying platform, the force of the separation sending the tank hurtling straight down and through the roof of a supermarket.
Suleman watched the slowly-growing speck descend back down into the mass of dilapidated buildings on ground level, then turned back to the Servant who had delivered the alert. “Contact every nearby military asset we have and get them here immediately!”
The Servant gave a curt salute and ran back downstairs.
“One more quick observation before we get to all that, by the way,” said Mark.
“What now?!” Suleman whipped around to see Mark stand up from his chair, ropes falling off him and piling up around his feet.
“You suck at knots.”
Suleman was not given the time to dodge, and had the air knocked out of his lungs when Mark barrelled into him and shoved him into one of the guards by the door.
The second guard attempted to lunge at Mark with the butt of their military-grade combat shotgun held high, but Mark lunged out with one leg and kicked them in the gut, sending them sprawling in turn. Mark barely had time to right himself before the first guard pushed Suleman to the floor and aimed her sawn-off hunting shotgun at him.
Mark grabbed the twin barrels of the shotgun and had just enough time to push it down so that it was aiming between his legs before it went off, blowing a chunk out of the floor. With the first guard's arms down, he took the opportunity to lunge in and headbutt her. The impact of his forehead against a gas mask stung hard and made his ears ring, but still managed to crack one of the mask's eye lenses and shove the back of the guard's head against the wall with a loud thud.
Mark felt Suleman claw at his leg and feebly try to drag him to the floor, so he swiftly responded with an elbow to the old man's nose. Suleman croaked with pain and slumped back to the floor, but still managed to hold Mark in place long enough for the second guard to recover and draw their knife.
Mark turned just in time to see the blade coming for his ribcage and twisted out of the way, grabbing the nape of the guard's neck as they charged past and shoving them to the floor. When they sprawled out, he stomped on their hand and forced them to release the knife. Behind his back, he heard the second guard raise her shotgun with a grunt and spun around, a clenched fist slamming into the guard's uncracked lens.
The second guard's shotgun clattered to the floor as she clutched at the shards of broken glass protruding into her eye and stumbled against the door. Mark grabbed the shotgun, ejected the remaining shell and hammered the stock into the back of the first guard's head as they attempted to stand.
With one enemy fully down for the count, Mark wheeled around and pinned the second guard against the door, jamming the top of the shotgun into her neck. The guard weakly clawed at Mark's arms for a moment before he yanked the shotgun to one side, catching the respirator of the guard's mask with the stock and pulling her to the ground.
Mark straddled the collapsed guard and brought the shotgun's stock down on her dented gas mask twice before rolling off of her and springing to his feet, breathing heavily and brandishing the dented shotgun like a club at nothing in particular. He looked at Suleman writhing on the floor. “That the... That the best you people can do?”
Suleman made a meek attempt to charge, but was easily knocked to the side by a strike to the ribs. This time, he moaned quietly and made no attempt to stand.
Mark dropped the empty shotgun and grabbed his knife and gun from the floor, looked out the window and found no trace of Waia, only the easily-visible path she had taken through the city. With a frustrated grunt, he made for the door.
He took two steps before another another Huntsman burst through the door. “Huntmaster, sir, we've been ordered to evacu...” They stared down at the two unconscious bodies by the door, then up at Mark. Then, four more Huntsmen emerged from the door and raised their shotguns at Mark.
Mark groaned and was halfway to putting his hands behind his head when the entire front half of the room exploded in an eruption of dust.
Mark fell backwards in surprise and prepared to stand and run, only for Waia to emerge from the dust cloud, coughing into her arm. She glanced down at an arm that was buried from the elbow up under a car-sized chunk of concrete. The watch on the arm, the same as that on one of Mark's guards, was frozen in position. “Oh, hey, fifteen minutes exactly.”
Mark stared in horror at the pile of rubble where seven people had just been. Waia caught his expression. “Oh, don't be such a baby. It's not like you couldn't have seen this coming, let's get out of here.”
Mark forced himself out of his shock. "A– Y– Hang on, th–there's a– some documents on the first floor, on top of a floo– on a filing can– cabinet–”
“A-buh-duh-muh-muh,” mocked Waia, “just let me get those myself if you're just gonna keep soiling yourself down there.” Without breaking her disapproving eye contact with Mark, she melted the floor beneath her and crashed through two layers of concrete.
Mark heard alarmed shouts get cut short, followed by several people scrambling to escape the room on the first floor. A few seconds later, Waia climbed back up through the hole in the floor that she had created, now with Torch's folder clutched in one hand. “This thing better be good.”
Mark took the folder from Waia and stuffed it in his hoodie pocket. "So, I was hoping you, uh, you would be a little more discreet in getting us out of here, what do we do now?”
Waia scowled. “Really? Your oh-so-special plan didn't account for me doing what I told you I was going to do?”
“Wh–? I–I didn't have a plan! I was just acting off of panic! Getting that folder was a lucky break, I've got nothing now!”
“Well, good news for us both,” said Waia, “I've already got a plan. Because I see no reason not to leave the same way I came in.” She took Mark by the wrist and led him to the hole in the roof that her entry had created, led up to by a ramp of rubble. “C’mon, I hate this place.”
Mark raised a leg to begin climbing up the ramp, but stopped when he heard Suleman moan on the floor on the other side of the room.
Suleman struggled to lift his head and look Mark in the eye. When he spoke, his voice was choked by blood trickling down from his shattered nose and into his mouth. “You... You won't get away with this... Neither of you...”
Waia scowled and cupped one hand, allowing the metal encasing her hand to slough off and pool in her palm in a ball-shape. She pulled her arm back as if to throw the makeshift cannonball at the old man on the floor, but her arm was held down by Mark.
“Don't,” muttered Mark. “Let's just go.”
Waia scowled and sniffed, but dropped the lump of metal before spitting in Suleman's direction. “What, is he getting special treatment because you can see his face? Are you feeling bad for the old man who's just as responsible for all this as everyone else?”
“He's harmless over there, just let him live with this.”
Waia turned to look at Suleman, her pupil-less eyes boring into him. “You, don't even think about coming back for more. I'll be doing that myself. In case you couldn't tell, I don't feel like the due's been paid.” She turned and continued up the ramp with Mark.
Their exit was blocked by an attack helicopter.