“For now, I’ll regard getting sliced as the worst way to go. For now.”

- Excerpt from Lieutenant Hans Hoffman’s Journal Entries

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+++ Lieutenant Hans Hoffman +++

Rignon

“ALL OF YOU ARE SLAVES OF YOUR DESIRES!”

The deranged shout from the bloodied woman reverberated in the streets. Hans didn’t know where exactly she dropped—but the house in front of them had its roof demolished. He immediately stood up from the road and shouted his order.

“Get her! Or the city’s doomed!”

He immediately rushed toward his parked Wanderfalke, throwing his SMG inside as he hopped in. Grabbing the controls, he watched as everyone in the city moved to hunt the elusive demon. Adelyn’s Wanderadler had already run into the streets, while soldiers rushed into the houses and lanes.

Damn it, faster, faster.

Soon, his engine came back alive, and his Wanderfalke lunged forward away from the plaza. He cut it straight into the direction of the woman’s last location. Placing maximum power on his legs, his mech jumped and scaled the house. Sparks flew off as the legs of his eighteen-tonner mech screeched through the roof.

Then, he jumped on the next one. Then the next one. Then the next one. Scattered gunshots already began going off below him. He set his sights on the growing speck of smoke ahead. Then he pulled his mech to a halt as he pressed his speaker on.

“Clear the way!”

The soldiers on the ground, who were trying to challenge the demon, ducked to the ground. Hans squeezed his finger on the trigger, unleashing a hail of machine gun rounds. The smoke dissipated, revealing the black-haired woman. She had just sliced three musketeers, but a dozen bullets struck her. She staggered backward upon receiving Hans’ accurate gunfire.

Then, Hans’ main gun pinpointed her shocked body. A clear shot. Something that probably wouldn’t kill her, but he took it. The firing pin in his gun’s chamber struck a loaded MPAT round. Sabots detached itself once it exited the barrel, and the fins spun the munition as it flew in her direction.

A violent boom detonated, obscuring the streets with smoke. Another set of gunfire rained from another direction—it was Adelyn. Hans, realizing the threat that was coming for his partner, lunged forward. The legs of Wanderfalke screeched as it skidded on the road. Gunfire from Hans sliced through the air, peppering the demon further. In seconds, she was forced to flee instead of attacking Adelyn, who was now in a lane perpendicular to Hans’ position.

“Lieutenant! That was a dangerous stunt! We could have had a blue-on-blue incident!”

“I’d rather die than let her get the two of you!”

Hans continued squeezing his trigger until the Calamity of Desire disappeared from his sight. Damn it. She’s tough. The streets fell completely silent. She’s going to reach the civilians. They’re going to get massacred. He bashed his fist.

“We need to keep moving,” Hans said. “Captain, use your speakers to organize the Imperial forces. Get them into blocking positions. Anything. We need people to stop her.”

“Copy…”

Hans drove his mech forward, getting himself into a hot pursuit. He followed the corpses of civilians and soldiers alike, all of them still freshly bleeding on the winding streets and lanes. Due to the tightness of the city’s passageways, he had to once again force his mech’s legs to shorten themselves. His hull was thus raised high, and his speed was sliced by nearly a quarter.

But soon, he had emerged from the tighter lanes, driving straight through one of the main roads. A massive wall of red flesh blocked his path, however. It was, as he expected, made up of those red, fleshy, tiny dolls. The sight of the horror nearly made him puke, but instead, he backed a bit.

Then he pulled the trigger.

It was doing things badly. He pulled it again and again, raining bullets at the fleshy wall. But the effect on the target was less than desirable. The bullets he sprayed would destroy some. But there were too many fleshy dolls that could replace it. And all of them kept the wall-like structure together.

He readied his mech for a desperate charge. After all, flesh can’t defeat steel, no? He didn’t know if it would be a smart idea, but…

Two grapnels shot straight to the top of the flesh wall. The razors from his forward legs deployed, as his mech shot up into the sky. Blood spurted out from the top of the wall, splattering his mech. Especially when the razors of his legs sliced through many tiny dolls. But it worked. It allowed the rest of his legs to step on the wall, and climb up.

The dolls tried to latch up on his legs, but the power of his mech’s machinery proved triumphant. Making his way up on top, his bloodied mech jumped past the obstacle—landing on the wide streets ahead of him. As he drifted on the streets, however, the wall behind him detonated into an open inferno.

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“Clearing it now, Lieutenant!”

“Copy, but I’m already way past it,” Hans said, as he looked at what was ahead of him.

Standing on top of a destroyed wagon, surrounded by corpses of hundreds of civilians, was the demon. Hans watched as the corpses all slowly turned into the same red, fleshy dolls. All the while she laughed and laughed at the sky. Hans immediately took aim. His coaxial machine guns and main gun locked on her.

Then she spoke.

“Haven’t you questioned yourself yet, young man?”

He looked at her body. It was all shot up. Holes upon holes had peppered her slim form. Yet she held to her oversized axe without much problem. It violated all physics. All of biology. Yet…this was what he was dealing with. A monster beyond the purview of science. It was…

In a way, to this day, Hans realized something. He still hadn’t truly accepted his magical reality.

“You dance with angels,” the woman said, not bothering to look at him. “For what? I can smell it in you. That concentrated…resentment. Hate. Anger. At how none of it is working for you. Your desire to have your sacrifices be known…”

“Shut up, you know nothing, you murderer!” The loud sounds from his speakers were broken by a hail of machine gun fire. She jumped up into the sky again, dodging his gunfire. Hans tried to aim his main gun quickly at her. But just as his round flew out of his barrel, she dived straight into the road.

His shot missed, and she slammed her axe on the road. A rift on the rocky ground exploded straight in his direction, which Hans dodged just in time by jumping. His mech landed on the cracked remains of the road…as she stood there, smiling in his direction.

“It’s not money, isn’t it?” the demon taunted again, her smile growing. It revealed her slightly bloodied, but otherwise pristine, white teeth. “Or is it out of love? Do you desire love? Attention? For someone to know who you are and understand you? Oh, such a cocktail of unmet desires!”

Hans gritted his teeth. What the hell is she talking about? Hans felt his mind lighten at the words being thrown at him. Which further infuriated him. Not only was she quite the murderous, rampaging maniac. She was also possibly reading his mind, and taunting him!

His autoloader slammed a new round into the chamber. But already, two gigantic fleshy golems had been formed in front of him. The two creatures blocked his line of sight with her. Damn it. His fully conventional weapon systems just wouldn’t cut it.

He aimed his gun at one of the golems. Then he fired an MPAT round set to airburst mode.

The head of the golem was blown off, but otherwise, it was just replaced and recreated. Hans tried to spray it again with his machine guns, but it wasn’t effective.

“Damn it!”

Adelyn’s mech finally drove past the collapsing, burning wall. But she suddenly pulled into a halt, as her hatch opened.

“Alizée? What the hell are you doing? Wait, you’re changing?!”

“Summoning Crosslight! I now know her! She’s that same woman who tried to speak to my mind! She’s going to kill both of you. And I won’t let that happen. I’ve had enough of just watching!”

Adelyn yelped, as suddenly, Alizée leaped out of her mech. The young girl, now clad in her pink, angelic armor slammed down into the ground. Hans found himself dumbfounded upon spotting her beside him. She was holding that crossbow again. The same crossbow she used to kill the ‘Tentacled Eel’.

“Alizée! Get out of the road!” Hans ordered.

“No! Sir Hans, please, let’s take her down, as a team!”

Hans watched as the child he had tried to protect and keep out of the fighting… joined in. She aimed her crossbow at the fleshy creatures, and let off a shot. It glowed pink, slicing through the golem, and causing it to disintegrate.

Almost as if she purified it…

The woman’s eye glinted red and locked into Alizée.

“The Angel of Purity,” she said, her voice low but loud. “And Justice.”

Her eyes locked on Adelyn’s mech. Then to Hans’ mech.

She licked the blood on her lips as she smiled.

“The same two angels you dance with.”

Pulling out her axe, the woman dashed like a flash of light into Alizée’s direction. Hans noticed that Alizée stiffened in fear, her eyes widening as the demon rushed in her direction. Protectively, Hans revved his mech right in front of Alizée to prevent the monster from reaching her.

“I won’t let you get to her!”

“Lieutenant, what the hell—”

A boom disoriented Hans. Fragments of his armor above him shattered, spraying his body with tiny, sharp metals. A scream came from him, as his mech tumbled into the ground. A blue inferno had been ignited, and he heard the loud screams from the demon.

“Justice! Damn you!”

He looked at his bloodied display. Both he and the demon were burning in fire from Adelyn’s MPAT. Most likely, the ADI variant. Hans tried to turn his mech’s turret in the direction of the demon, but it was unresponsive.

I guess Adelyn’s magical MPAT rounds have a more powerful blast now too.

Enough to almost act as an artillery blast.

Enough to disable his mech without a direct hit.

He laughed at the irony of this. Friendly fire, just the same thing he did to those soldiers.

I’m not dying because of Adelyn’s shot though. Hans thought. I wouldn’t let her stain her hand with my blood for the second time.

“Sir Hans!”

“Stay back, Alizée,” Hans said, as his bloodied hands grasped his controls. He already felt his left leg turn numb. Multiple massive fragments of his mech’s armor had embedded themselves deep. That meant he wouldn’t even be able to press his left leg on the reverse pedal anymore. “Let the adults settle this.”

He lunged his mech forward in the demon’s direction, engaging his forward leg razors one last time. Just in time for her to recover from Adelyn’s shot, raise her oversized axe—and slice his mech half mid-air.

All that Hans remembered was the axe slicing through his face and body.

Then pure darkness.