Despite herself, Scythe was greatly enjoying the fight. The fact that she didn’t need to worry about collateral damage meant she could truly have fun. Even if she felt herself falling behind, that was okay. Her frontal assault strategy didn’t work, and ever since she had shaken the stupid out of her other self, she was falling back even further.
But that didn’t matter. She had a wide smile on her face as she blocked another one of Vuthe’s attacks with her hammer.
She knew what was going on, of course, she had been fighting for the majority of her life and the few instances she couldn’t brawl her way through a problem that usually became Grunt’s or Silk’s problem. Well, if Cluster didn’t decide to blow the entire problem up, taking the next block of houses with it.
She laughed openly when she remembered the old days when they had first pushed Amnellium, earning lots of early success by simple virtue of Amnellium having no idea how to deal with them.
In a way it was very similar to this fight, Scythe thought as she smashed her hammer straight into the massive greatsword Vuthe summoned once more, blasting the entire magazine of her hammer into it.
The sword barely budged, clearly much heaver than advertised, although complaining would just make her hypocrite. Her hammer was weighing in at a good 7 tons, mostly made of hyper condensed metals and some high level tech stolen straight out of Amnellium’s secret labs.
Not that she pretended to understand any of the tech put into this thing, she had never cared much to learn it, that was Bullseye’s playground anyways. Well, and Cluster’s.
Jumping back and circling around she thought back to her past on that wretched ball of reinforced steel and plastoids. Amnellium had taken a long ass time to finally retaliate in force, unable to respond to Scythe’s favourite tactic of just throwing shit at the problem and seeing what sticks. They had used more than a thousand different tactics, attacking both valuable and useless stuff, all within a few decades, being as random as they could be, even picking that day’s target in the morning, and sometimes randomly switching even if it meant attacking something more heavily defended.
Sadly, Amnellium eventually managed to get a hold of their location and had sent Archangel after them.
Archangel, another enigma that made no fucking sense. It had taken them forever to escape the Cyborg’s eye for long enough to surprise attack her. And they had made very fucking sure she was dead, first Cluster had blown her up, then Silk and Grunt had made sure to destroy even the last bit of her cybernetic body. Yet she somehow survived.
Unsure if she even remembered it correctly, considering that Archangel was infact alive, Scythe quickly dove into her memory of that fateful day.
It had been a rainy ass day, as was the majority of days on Amnellium Prime. Only the golden City of Amnellium, where the seat of power was located, had its weather regulated to make it always sunny.
Scythe and her squad had spent the last week or so laying out false tracks and trails, for only a small window to surprise Archangel.
“Yo, boss, you think she will fall for this?”, Grunt asked, sceptically, as he surveyed their surroundings. “I mean, it’s Archangel we’re talking about, the Demon of Rudmenterra.”
Yeah… Archangel that fucking bitch. Scythe was seething with the thought of how loyal that bitch was to the biggest pieces of shit the universe had to offer, licking their polished chrome coated boots like the slut that she was.
But Grunt was right, under normal circumstances Scythe would never think that this plan would work. But there was one thing that the others forgot: Archangel was a cybernetic bitch, with more metal in her body than the average factory could churn out in a weeks time, and so used to all that fancy tech shit that she most likely had no fucking clue how to properly function without it.
Especially if she believed herself to have the upper hand, which was exactly why they had set their trap here, in the big factory facility of Deck 32k09, the place which had made her infamous for wiping out one of the biggest and most successful rebellions to date.
“Oi, she actually fell for it”, Cluster said with surprise in her tone, tapping away at the little computer in front of her, “Brother, she really fell for it. She triggered three traps so far, and by the looks of it she will trigger a few more. Is that really Archangel? She looks like she is drunk…”
Scythe laughed, “Yeah, I bet she does. That little hacking tool we appropriated from the fuckers in that fort really does wonders to Cyborgs”, she said with a self-satisfied grin.
They watched together as Archangel turned to leave only to suddenly be slapped in the face by the delayed trap that Scythe had placed there specifically for that situation.
“Aight ladies, time to kill ourselves a bootlicking slut”, Scythe said, reading her guns.
With barely more than a nod they moved out, ambushing the woman who had become synonymous with the Amnellium Oppression.
In hindsight it should have been clear that this hadn’t been the real Archangel. Or at least not the one that was so well known for her skills in combat. It would make sense if Archangel actually pissed off, which would explain why she was with Vuthe and the rest of her squad.
Stolen novel; please report.
Amnellium worked off of fear, so the knowledge that one of their best asset fucked off would tear down their reputation like nothing. So maybe they just appropriate some unlucky fuck to stand in for her, slapped all that chrome on her, and then had her act like the Archangel.
The History of Archangel was one coated in half truths, rumours, and mystery, so it would be easy to implement. It really did not make sense for the sniper of Apocalypse Squad to just walz into melee range with systems malfunctioning.
What was known about Archangel was that she had been part of the infamous Apocalypse Squad, the best of the best, the special forces of the special forces, the biggest and baddest bitches around.
Even to people like Scythe that squad was legendary, their success rate was rumoured to be a hundred percent, and while that may be an exaggeration, there was no way it was lower than ninety five percent.
Apocalypse Squad was the fist of Amnellium’s rulers, when they showed up you were royally fucked. Consisting of four of the best soldiers ever seen they could complete any mission thrown at them, no matter how complicated, and despite Archangel’s frankly insane skill she was just the junior member of the group.
Their leader, a man only known as “The Adjudicator”, was one of the best Commando's in the History of Amnellium Military, a genius in tactical thinking and improvisation, and his talents of knowing where his people had to be for the best effectiveness was legendary.
Their Juggernaut, just known as “The Juggernaut”, was a woman so burly she made most men look scrawny. She had a reputation for being a hardass, punching hard and partying harder. Often seen in the pleasure districts when not on mission, no matter in what subcity, she was a known devourer of men, and women too from time to time.
Then there was the hacker. He was the most mysterious of the group, some even saying he was an advanced AI running in an android body. Even then, nobody had ever seen him, no pictures existed, and he was never seen with the other three.
And last but not least, of course, Archangel. She was the sniper, the infiltrator, and the stealth specialist. The nickname Archangel was first coined by some revolutionary folk, who called her the “Eye of God”. Whenever she would spot you you would meet your maker, no matter how many miles you were away.
How the squad was first formed nobody knew, only that they had been terrorising revolutionaries and similar rebels for as long as anyone could remember.
So it should have been really obvious that the “Archangel” they were fighting was at best a bad imitation, and at worst just some poor fucker being “volunteered” for the job.
But Scythe hadn’t thought about it at the time, nor did the others really. It was rather early on in their fight against Amnellium, barely a millennia in if at all, so they had yet to learn how truly fucked up Amnellium’s governmental structure was and just how deep corruption and oppression ran in the genes of their “glorious leaders”.
Running out of their hiding spot Scythe immediately opened fire on the Cyborg that was stumbling around, hitting her multiple times, but the armour mostly managed to take the hits.
Next in was Grunt, his giant ass machine gun whirring and spitting bullets at an incredible rate, hammering the woman back into a wall, but not dealing much damage.
Cluster appeared from a different door, her rocket launcher at the ready, waiting for just the right moment, which came a few moments later when Silk threw an emp at the Cyborg. It wouldn’t take her out of the fight, but it would disrupt her shields and enhanced armour for just a moment.
Just as the emp hit Cluster fired, a roaring sound ran through the empty facility followed by an explosion. If Archangel survived this they were screwed. They had planned and setup this ambush to kill her as quickly as possible, knowing that they couldn’t survive a prolonged fight against the Cyborg.
When the dust cleared all they saw was the wreck of a body, legs and an arm missing, face melted and revealing the electronics underneath. Scythe made sure of it by emptying her magazines into the woman’s face and chest.
“Wow… That was… anticlimactic”, Silk said, and despite herself Scythe couldn’t help but agree.
“Yeah… I mean we planned for it to be quick, but this was almost too easy. I guess the rumours were exaggerated after all”, Cluster said with a disappointed look.
Scythe shrugged, “Doesn’t matter. The bitch is dead and now we can carry on with our mission.”
Scythe sighed inwardly, honestly the signs were so obvious back then. No matter, that was in the past, and now they didn’t really need to worry about it anymore. Even if Archangel decided to try and kill them now, they were strong enough to deal with her.
She barely evaded a slash from Vuthe, switching from axe to katana, and immediately after to an arming sword, before switching back to a halberd.
Truth be told, Vuthe’s skill with weaponry was kind of awe inspiring. Scythe was not a slouch by any means, but Vuthe’s sheer versatility was out of this world.
Scythe felt that she was driven more and more back, and while so far she had allowed that, she became more and more uncomfortable with the current status quo. It was time to switch it up, to catch Vuthe off guard and end this once and for all. The fight has been fun so far, but all good things have to come to an end eventually.
Getting caught by the next strike of the massive Warhammer that Vuthe summoned on purpose, Scythe used the push to reposition herself, shifting to her Hybrid form. Just as she was flying away from the hit of the weapon, she activated all the thrusters build into her Cybernetic body.
A loud roar rang through the ruins of the city, the thrusters more than strong enough to cancel out her inertia and accelerate her back into attack range.
Her metallic wing smashed straight into Vuthe’s face, throwing her through the building behind her, and into the wall beyond.
Scythe grinned widely as she jumped forwards, helped by the thrusters that replaced her left wing, and punched Vuthe once more, again straight in the face. She had gotten the upper hand once more, and now she had to keep the pressure up.
She increased the amount of hits, punching faster and faster, without giving Vuthe the room to retaliate. Almost sure of the victory now she laughed, but was cut short when something massive smashed into her side and threw her three blocks away. For a moment she had issues tracking just what the fuck just happened.
Her hammer had been lost among the rubble, not that she cared much, and by the time her head stopped spinning and she pulled herself out of the crater she had landed in, she saw a gigantic dragon towering over her, easily a hundred metres in length, with a wingspan of what she estimated to be around eighty metres. And it looked very similar to her own true form, just minus the metal bits.
“So, you wanna play it that way then?”, Scythe laughed, “Sure, let’s have some fun, aye?”
And with a manic grin on her face black smoke began to surround her, shifting and transforming, until she too stood in the full glory of her dragon form.