Angela walked carefully. The ground was open and accessible, but she felt something would find her if she didn’t tiptoe with the machine. She wasn’t sure if she was being paranoid, but the memories of the time once passed flooded back into her sleep, and waking was misery. Despite the quiet attempt, the ground still rattled at each touch of the metal “toes” to the ground. The Worms didn’t build their things to be delicate.
Her stomach growled again, and she wished the feeling would disappear. She had seen no animals in the whole morning, and even if she had, she wasn’t sure she could stomp on another so soon.
“Damn! This is all their fault!” she roared. ‘Fault’ echoed in the landscape. “Shut up!” she added quietly, so the echo didn’t sound like it was mocking her.
Angela scratched at her head, her long black hair fraying wildly, until she paused and took a deep breath. The metal hand punched straight into the ground, leaving a crater, but it didn’t feel satisfying. She wanted to punch something for real. “If only one of them were here….”
The girl stopped and pondered, did she want someone around to punch, or did she want to cease being alone? She screamed and tried to focus outside the mech’s opening. Once again, the phantoms of her friends appeared, but she ignored them and marched forward. Now that she knew what was happening, she wouldn’t let their appearance bother her again.
She thought she wouldn’t until she turned to her left. Dalila, a girl Angela once called her best friend, sat to the side and smiled at her. The girl was quiet, in contrast to the popular chatty girl Angela had once been, but they somehow got along. In junior high, they often met at one another’s house to play the odd games Dalia owned. Odd to Angela, at least.
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“Aw man, we’re coming up to a rough part!” Dalila said as Angela felt herself get pulled into an old memory.
“Rough part? Is it going to get difficult?” They had been playing through the story in a game over the last few weeks; at least Dalia had been playing, and Angela mainly had been following along. The prospect of getting harder did not bode well.
“Yeah, emotionally; I mean, this is where characters start dying! Oh, spoilers, by the way.”
“I don’t… Dalila!”
Angela’s friend had looked away from the game to speak to her and died at the hands of an alien grunt while not paying attention. Angela was alone. “I can’t…I can’t!”
“Take it easy and stop shooting wildly. Go left. Your other left! Grab that rocket!”
Angela grabbed an enormous weapon and fired an explosive rocket into a crowd of foes. She gasped for air as she realized she had been holding her breath.
“That’s it! You’re doing just fine on your own.”
“When do you come back?”
“Once the enemies are cleared out, keep fighting!”
“I can’t keep doing this without you!”
“Just keep going! As long as you stay alive, you’ll carry my memory with you!” Dalila said with a laugh.
“You’ll carry my memory with you,” the phantom said again as the image of the past broke.
“Shut up!” Angela finally shouted while kicking a tree clear into the sky. She let out a heavy gasp of air and charged forward blindly. When she had to focus on speeding through the unsteady mountain path, she didn’t have time to focus on the thoughts that berated her mind.
The pounding of the Reapers’ feet on the ground was all that could be heard through the mountains until Angela stopped short at a sudden cliff side. They had carved a smooth rectangular path straight through the mountains, and she immediately knew what she was looking at. “The bastards, finally something to kill,” Angela muttered as the Reaper jumped into the roadway. There were two directions, east and west, but the sun was setting as noon ended and would be a nuisance to have in her eyes, so Angela walked in the direction away from the setting sun.