Shou could feel Luce's blood dripping down his back. The buggy was stopped outside their hideout and he carried the woman behind him as he watched Miu shakily fussed with the manual controls to the garage door of their home. The E.M.P had managed to pass through their Faraday shielding and power to the building had been cut. He could feel Luce's cheek against his ear, and the coldness shivered his bones.

“Hurry up!” he yelled unhelpfully.

Friend, Shou. You must remain calm.

“I am calm!”

“Who are you talking to?” Miu asked.

“Reggie! It's in my head.”

“Wait, I think I got it!” Miu exclaimed.

A loud clack came from the locking mechanism and the door popped up slightly. Miu yanked the metal grate up and once the gap was large enough, Shou quickly dug under it. Miu and Marble followed after him. The rooms were dark, lit only by the emergency light strips they had installed as the automatic light sensors did not trigger. Despite that, he ran to the medical bay on familiar instincts, throwing his gas mask on the ground unceremoniously when he found it stifling his breathing from the weight of carrying Luce. Though most of the medical equipment were bought over to Ampyre with Doctor Miura, there were still supplies that could help the situation. Miu ran past him and yanked opened the glass door to the medical bay.

He brought Luce in and laid her down on the surgical bed. “What do I do?” He asked.

“Nothing!” Miu yelled from outside. A few seconds later, a white glow rushed in from the door as she came in with an emergency lamp in her hand. “Go check on Reggie's body and see if you can restore power to the building. We need the haemostasis pump if the bleeding gets worse.”

She was already pulling bandages, disinfectant, and stitches from the cabinet. It was an amazing feat as Shou had no idea where half the items were kept despite being the main recipient of the room. How he would have survived all those years had Miu not been beside him was beyond him. Engineer, paramedic, organiser, amazing.

Friend, Shou, time is short.

“Right!” He snapped out of his thoughts. “Right! I'm going!”

He rushed to the workshop, still following the strips of light. Grabbing a torch off the table, he shone it on the Titan's body. He felt a sense of relief in the back of his head and he wondered if it was from himself or Reggie. He climbed up the back of the giant machine and into the opened cockpit.

As he reached for the drive at the back of his head, Reggie sounded off, Disengaging safely in five... four... three...

“Two... one...!” The drive popped out from the nape of his neck and he inserted it into a fitting port.

Then, he waited. The body had been powered down at the time of detonation so theoretically, the likelihood of damage should be minimal. They had also reinforced the room with another layer of Faraday shielding of a different frequency. He held his breath as the minute mark passed, the standard time required for starting up. Then, he heard the familiar shaky hum of Reggie's shot bio-cell and the Titan slowly began to move.

“Yes!” Shou shouted, his excited voice echoing within the empty room. “Get me down from here, buddy!”

Reggie's hand twisted around behind as it always did and he climbed onto its palm. The Titan then lowered him to the ground. It's head turned, the torches where its ears should be shone a spotlight on him and giving enough ambient light to illuminate the room. But the mech was still powering up, as could be heard from the pneumatic compressing into action from around its body. It would take another half an hour before it was ready to fully move again.

“I'll be right back, buddy. I'm gonna check on the generator and get your new cell from the buggy.” Shou took off the bloodied soldier shirt he wore and grabbed a fresh-ish white-ish hoodie from his cabinet. Hood up, visor down, he left for the garage to exit the way they came in.

Outside, he jogged around the structure to where the small thermal generator shed was built into the side of the main building. The rusted door hinges creaked as he yanked it aside. Shining the torch inside, he expected scorch marks or burns from the E.M.P damage but everything seemed normal aside from the plasteel machine's lack of activity. He opened up a panel on the side to check on the circuit board and let out a relieved breath. There seemed not to be any visible damage to the board, and none of the components looked burnt. He moved over to the breaker and found it tripped. It seemed to him the shielding had prevented the worst of the electrical charges and simply overloaded the breaker. With a flip of a switch, the machine quickly grumbled back to life. As he left, he made sure to close the door behind him despite the rust's ear shrieking protest against doing so. Nothing rusted metal or damaged electronics more than the Taint.

“Shou!” Miu's voice echoed into his headset. “The proximity alarms are going crazy in here.”

He looked over the dunes to see clouds of dust racing towards them. “They found us,” he replied ominously. In his mind, he did a quick calculation of the time it would take to install Reggie's new bio-cell and for it to boot up. “How's Luce?”

“I got the bullet out and stopped the bleeding. But I'm still stitching her up. E.T.A, ten minutes.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

He took a breath and a moment to think. Then, “Okay. Get her on her feet and install the bio-cell on Reggie. I'm going to buy you some time.”

Miu sounded worried. “How?”

“I don't know,” his hand hovered over the strings of his hood where the controls for the comms are built into the aglet. “Maybe bullshit can work.” He turned communications off.

There wasn't any reason to argue with her on the matter. They were about to be surrounded, and any amount of fighting will result in one too many casualties given their lack of any weapons at the moment, and he was not willing to put his friends' lives on the line. If he bought them another half an hour, it would give Miu enough time to install the bio-cell and ride Reggie out of there.

So he began walking towards the dust cloud which quickly spewed out a line of half a dozen armoured trucks. But most of the vehicles weren't from the same batch and were coloured differently. From army green to enforcer black, it seemed the attacking force had only managed to scramble together whatever automobiles they could post E.M.P.

As the drivers spotted him and started to ever so slightly turn in his direction, he half expected them to run him over. But as they neared, the vehicles slowed to a crawl as they surrounded him in a circle, kicking up enough dust to bury them in a fog. Shou thought it was a little excessive they encircled little old him with bulletproof trucks when all he had was a stun gun that he forgot to reload.

Out of each truck, 4 or five soldiers jumped out the back, taking formation behind the cover of the vehicles with their rifles drawn and aimed at him. Slowly, from the passenger seat of the truck directly facing Shou, Corlyle stepped out, a bandage across his forehead from where Shou had smashed into. He could not help but laugh.

“Do you think this is funny?” Corlyle angrily asked.

“A little,” Shou's laughter died down to a chuckle. “I should have given it a harder wack though. Might have fixed that screwed up head of yours.”

Even through the mask over Corlyle's nose and mouth, Shou could tell the man was holding back his anger which only made Shou want to make fun of him even more. The president walked up to Shou and stopped right within arm's reach. But the man did not speak. Instead, he simply eyed up and down Shou's body.

“If you want to take me home it's going to cost you.” Shou joked. He decided to stop messing around. “What do you want, Mister Anjexe.”

The former teacher breathed. “We need your help.” Shou raised a brow. “More specifically, we need your mech, if it is still functioning.”

“It is,” he admitted. “Why?”

“We've confirmed Exodus is en route to Citi. The E.M.P has disabled almost all of our mechs and damaged the rest. We're trying to bring old models out of storage but it's taking too long. Both Citi and Citidale are in chaos. The power grid is down, and we've lost a large portion of our cyborg manpower. You and... Reggie are the only ones left within distance.”

The news of the number of fatalities hit Shou hard, but he kept the feeling bottled up. It was not the time to show any hesitation. More lives were on the line.

“Distance?” He found the phrasing strange. “Of what?”

“We've managed to scavenged and set up a crystech pulse repulsor, but we don't have any compatible mech models or tanks that are still operational.”

And Reggie's Regalia model was made to be highly customisable. But even with a new bio-cell installed, they might not have enough energy to use it. Crystechs gobbled up power with impunity. Usually hooked up to a city's power-grid and set as defensive turrets, to wield it after an E.M.P knocked-out most of the grid was beyond reckless. And potentially...

“That could be fatal,” Shou admitted.

“To who?”

Shou's fist clenched and before he knew it, he had punched the president across the jaw. The man stumbled back as the soldiers around raised their guns urgently but held back from firing.

“Reggie. It's fatal to Reggie. My friend!”

“Right. Your... friend.” The man slowly stood to height but his eyes darted away from looking directly at Shou.

“You want me to save you? You want me and Reggie to risk our lives to save yours? After you tried to kill all those innocent mages and golems, you want me to save you?”

He gulped. “Yes. It's either you, or all of us. Please.”

“Hah...” Shou felt rage bubbling inside him. “And this is how it ends? Us dying to save you?”

“Us?”

“Yes!” Shou exclaimed. “If you think I'm letting my friend do this by themselves, you have another thing coming!”

He sighed. “Then yes,” The president could not meet his gaze but still monotonously said, “Yes. Please, save us. The country will be forever thankful for your sacrifices.”

Shou was stunned. He knew Corlyle Anjexe was an egotistical bastard, but he never thought the man's empathy would be lacking to the point where asking for someone else to sacrifice their life was an emotionless chore. All this time he had thought Corlyle simply wanted fame and power but was still willing to do good. But now he saw that the goodness came from a selfish centre. A wish to do good to further his own position.

“This must be a joke. You still can't see it! It's still about you! This war you want to stop so badly just to get into the history books, someone is paying for it! Maybe not you. Maybe not the people up there in Citidale, but someone is dying for it. The mechs, the golems, soldiers. Now me and Reggie. All just to save you, to serve your agenda!”

From somewhere within him, Corlyle found the strength to raise his voice against the wind. “This isn't about that! It's about saving Citi! It's about saving the whole country!”

“Fine! You say that, fine! Then prove it. If you want my help, you step down as president. You and your entire cabinet can get your ass out of government, how about that? You do that, you resign, and I'll help you.”

“I-“ Corlyle froze.

The demand was a bolt from the blue. A test for the president to see what mattered to him the most. Shou learnt a long time ago that the first thought that comes to your mind is who you are. For Shou, he wanted to run, to not sacrifice himself or Reggie for this man's agenda. He was a coward. For Corlyle, the first thing in his mind was power, to be remembered for his strength. An ego oversized.

“That's-“ Colyle continued to choke.

In that moment of first thought, you have a choice to go against your baser instinct. One can choose to be better than who they are and change, or succumb to themselves. When Shou found out Reggie was not just alive, but sentient, he had to come to terms with his life's goal and everything he had been taught. Arnold had the same abject reaction too, but eventually chose to change for what Shou could only hope was for the better. That choice after the thought is what details a person, defines who they want to be.

Corlyle finally spat out, “Let's discuss this.”

Shou was sickened. Even in crisis, the man could not let go of his ego and want for fame and power, and the soldiers around them knew that. Slowly, they began to lower their guns. One even visibly sighed, shook their head, and turned away. The dust finally settled. To the north, the skies darkened as the Exodus swarmed stretch from mountain peak to peak.

With a disappointed shake of his head, Shou turned away from the president and walked back towards the hideout. The barricade of soldiers let him through without resistance.

Behind, Corlyle panicked. “Kenta? Kenta! You have to save us! Please! I beg of you!” His voice broke into the desperation of survival. “Where are you going!?”

Shou spat. “I'm going to save this piss ass world.”