The firefight began to Yumiko’s disadvantage. She had to be dragged to cover as the walker opened fire on them first. A rain of volleys followed from the Coalition regs. The heavy thumping of the exo-soldiers accentuated the cacophony as it destroyed their rubble stack. Rufus, breaking through the pain of speaking, called out for Yumiko.
“Boss, boss! Get a hold of yourself! Come on, snap out of it!”
The pain was only intensifying, getting closer, getting stronger without any stoppage. She clutched her head in agony. Through the fire of the buzzing, Yumiko realised the only way to escape the attack was to pull out from the minds of the Coalition soldiers. Someone, somewhere in this city, was using her powers against her. It took her boundless energy and terror to withdraw from their minds. When she finally did, she looked around and felt a clear mind. Rufus, blindly firing from behind cover, saw this and expressed relief.
“Thank Tuah, boss, you’re out of it. The fuck happened?”
It was her turn to feel a sense of helplessness in responding. Her voice was nearly drowned out by the gunfire.
“Something, someone, attacked me. Someone I know. Someone I knew. Can’t be. Should be dead, but how?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Rufus shouted, “You can’t mean-”
She immediately snarled and pulled out her machine gun, “Shut up! Keep firing!”
The both of them couldn’t hit anything under the suppressing rain of lead. The only lapse of brevity they had was when Gila and his men opened fire on the Coalition soldiers. From their vantage point, several bodies dropped dead on the floor thanks to accurate fire. However, it wouldn’t last long as the exo-soldiers and the walker turned their attention to their building. Resonating roars of rocket launches filled up this part of the city with a thunderous echo, turning Gila’s refuge into a blazing inferno. Her eyes widened, but she did not shout for them.
Her mind reached out into the darkness and searched the area for the regs. After enduring the stress of the gunfire just a tiny bit more, Yumiko finally found them setting up firing positions just outside the buildings. Their mere survival was a blessing for her heavy heart, reviving her fighting spirit properly. She ran through every possible path that this battle could follow. When the regs restarted their own assault against the Coalition soldiers, the ex-Yakuza made her move. By the time Rufus made out what she had said to him, she was long gone.
“Cover me.”
There was a flash of hateful, bloody wind that darted across the battlefield. Armour was seared, the flesh was rend, bones were shattered; all to a purple trail. When she stopped to redirect her angle of attack, four men fell dead. One of their heads rolled off into the darkness, while another fruitlessly grabbed at their entrails before collapsing, their throat flooded with blood. The sight was horrifying to the remaining Coalition soldiers, yet Yumiko did not stop. She went for the next best targets: the exo-soldiers that had gone too far ahead of the walker.
Inside the cabin of the walker, two men rapidly shifted their vector of attack. Their guns swivelled and immediately targeted the blur. The street behind her was filled with blasted asphalt and bullet sparks thrown up into the air as the walker opened fire. Though they missed their shots, it threw the assassin off by a large enough margin that she temporarily fell back towards the other side of the battlefield. Having heard nothing still from Chehza’s task, Yumiko grumbled and, rolling back into cover, forced herself to reach into the walker pilots’ minds. Her breaching of their minds was surrounded by the fear that the buzzing presence would come back immediately to attack her. There was no other better option from where she sat.
As soon as their mental doors were forced open, the familiar defender returned and continued viciously assaulting her. The strain of trying to trick the walker’s crew almost knocked her out on the spot. Failing to get back the presence, Yumiko fled their minds and instantly lost her momentum. Her arms and legs felt like jelly, while her head spun in circles. Even a dosage of psychogen and the sound of charging metal couldn’t energise her enough to prepare a defence. It suddenly brought her back to Sapland, when the bastard Dylus was in the very same predicament after burning himself out.
The irony then kicked in. It made her cringe and bite her tongue hard enough to bleed. By the time Yumiko raised her head up to assess the situation, one of the exo-soldiers was powering towards her, ready to skewer her. Her machine gun sprayed wildly and blindly. The bullets that hit the soldier did not faze it in the slightest. There were thoughts on whether this would be her final moments; doomed to die in the middle of the night, surrounded by violence. The thought almost soothed her had it not been for someone screaming incredibly loudly. Yumiko was too frazzled mentally to recognize who it was, only to see a sliver of a familiar uniform coming in from the left.
Rufus entered the fight once more. He was successful in distracting the exo-soldier. The hulking suit spun and shielded himself from the hail of bullets. Their left hand swung the spear in an arc and attempted to swat the meddler. Rufus read the attack, deftly dodged it and used his body as a battering ram. Yumiko watched as both of them fell to the ground, the lance flying in the air before rolling uselessly on the ground. She wondered how on earth did Rufus get away with this reckless stunt before seeing that the walker had panned itself towards another target; it was Gila, who peppered it with bullets where he thought he could hurt it the most. His wild shouting was heard by all, a taunting display of
“Come! Come and get some, ya goddamn lambs! Bersatu Regalia, bersatu Regalia!”
The fight had fallen into their favour for now. She used those precious few seconds to focus on recovering her strength, hearing Rufus savagely beating down the exo-soldier with anything he could get his hands on. The soldier struggled and writhed, unable to find an opening to counter against the mercenary-turned-animal, until their right arm came free of the assault. Careless in his attack, Rufus only felt something cold crunching his abdomen before seeing the world tumble before his eyes. He coughed after smashing into some rubble headfirst. Blinking twice and feeling blood trailing down his face, Rufus wiped his face and found that it was from his eye. It all but explained why he only saw half of the exo-soldier’s form coming towards him.
Their fist collided with his neck, rupturing his windpipe, and he was sent reeling backwards again. The soldier, even though they had thought him dead from the sheer force of that impact, wasn’t keen on leaving a job unfinished. The suit was impossibly graceful as it swept the lance off the floor, before charging headfirst towards Rufus as he tried to breathe. Death was all but certain. Yumiko had other plans, however.
The wind moved. The soldier found himself clashing with the ex-Yakuza, her twin blades locked between the tip of the lance. She couldn’t risk setting off the explosives in the point, leaving their plasma ignitions off, and noticed that her footing was quickly being lost. The soldier was pushing the limits of their suit just for a chance to impale someone. Anyone. Their desperation gave Yumiko an idea.
Using the weight and inertia of the suit against the user, she redirected the lance’s thrust to the side and saw the exo-suit lurch forward. One of her blades ignited and sliced cleanly through metal and flesh like paper. The effort left her panting for a moment, standing in place as the exo-soldier’s legs fell to the floor. One down, she thought, rushing towards Rufus.
“Corporal, keep calm. You’ve been hit badly.”
He tried to speak. Nothing but hacked gurgling came out. It was clear that the attack was slowly killing him via choking. Yumiko said nothing else and attempted to drag him to safety. She didn’t know if the regs had anything for a shattered windpipe, only that they should know how to fix one quickly. Unfortunately for her, this moment of vulnerability was immediately exploited by several new soldiers rushing in to support the walker. They saw her and aimed low. Her machine gun caught one in the arm, but otherwise missed them all, going dry at the worst possible moment.
Suddenly, a blinding explosion engulfed the soldiers. The thudding of heavy metal sounded just behind her. Chehza, who had poured all of his fury into restarting the fighting vehicle’s heart and weaponry, turned his attention to the walker.
“Right, less than 200 meters, enemy walker. Angle barrel up fifty-seven degrees,” said the reg, helping Chehza spot targets from the commander’s hatch. His tone was cold, yet carried hints of a raging inferno deep within. The grief helped motivate Chehza in delivering his own brand of hell upon the enemy.
“Clear?”
“Clear, wipe that kimak’s slate clean.”
“You got it! Firing!”
The walker had little time to retaliate before transforming into a vivid and morbid work of art. It only managed to release three rockets that missed the sitting target blasting them, slamming into the ground and a building behind it. The rest was detonated by Chehza’s barrage alongside an ammunition rack hidden inside the machine’s body, instantly disintegrating the two-man crew. The heat from the blast rushed over Yumiko, who continued to drag Rufus’ seizing body towards cover, and everyone else around the street.
Where the Regalia soldiers celebrated the turn of events in their favour, the Coalition soldiers began descending into panic. They slowly retreated towards the jamming station, now spraying wildly in the general direction of the regs. When it looked like they could set up a solid defensive position, the jamming station, the centrepiece of their efforts, met the same fate as their walker. The explosion ripped through their small position, sending some troops flying and setting ammunition aflame. The crew of the station- those who were barely alive anyway- banged on the walls, begging for help. Those who heard them ignored the cries and fled elsewhere; they were dead men anyway.
Yumiko, fresh from making a small incision in Rufus’ neck for one of the regs to put a needle through, knew then that the battle had ended. She passed on the task to someone else and looked for the radio operator. Finding him was easy enough. It was getting him to successfully contact the evac helicopter that was slightly harder. That he had been shot in the leg and was trying his best to patch it up on his own only made it worse. Eventually after some convincing, Yumiko was back on the air.
“Phenex Lead to Helix One Two, do you read?”
Silence.
“Helix One Two, damn it, are you there?! Come in!”
Then came the miracle they were holding out for, “This is Helix One Two, we copy, Phenex Lead! Holy shit, where the fuck were you guys?”
Her split second rise of fiery emotions faded. Her response was more formal and cold.
“We had a ten-one before, Helix, we couldn’t get back to you from the initial hail. We are down one man and have sustained multiple injuries taking out the interference. What’s your current status, over?”
While the sounds of distant fighting was, and always had been, audible even from here, there was a peculiar sound that Yumiko immediately associated with Helix’s helicopter; the sound of heavy machine fire. It was distinct, rapid, and never waned after the crew found their targets. The pilot confirmed her guesswork shortly after.
“Uh, we’ve been circling around sector oh-four-six for a while now, retasked to secure an overrun position. Our holding position is Cerika-Fexta-Upsil, initial evac point has been pushed back and hostile Archers are forcing a withdraw order from local JFC. Running low on fuel and ammunition, over.”
Yumiko took a deep breath, praying that the pilots weren’t eager to turn tail just yet.
“Copy, Helix One Two, what’s the status on that evac either way? We cannot stay in this city any longer, we will get overrun.”
“That depends whether you can get to that abandoned marketplace-”
There was a loud shout over the radio. Countless alarms went off in Helix’s chopper as they popped flares. The missile heading their way chased the bright flares and splashed the air, lighting up the sky.
“Shit! Usop, you okay back there? Fucking hell, that was too close! Phenex Lead, scratch that interruption, I’m making the call! RZ at the marketplace in five or find your own way out of this city, over and out!”
“Wait, Helix, I need-”
“Shit, Coals locking on again! Get to that damn marketplace!”
The line went dead. The scream of another missile being launched echoed from the city. It seemed that Helix was the only helicopter crew operating in the area for now, making it direly clear that they needed to run. The marketplace that the pilots spotted earlier wasn’t too far away, but Rufus’ injury would make the journey daunting. The matter of the dead soldier behind also came to her mind. Yumiko gnashed her teeth.
Telling the radio operator to prepare for the last stretch of their perilous journey and inform the rest to saddle up, she watched as Chehza and the reg arrived from the fighting vehicle. The private was the first to speak.
“Ma’am, what’s the sitrep?”
“We’re double-timing it to the marketplace.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“The landing zone from earlier?” Chehza said, very much out of breath, “Place is going to be swarming with hostiles from all the shit we just blew up.”
“There’s no other option. We run or we die here.”
“I’d rather run, m-miss. I’m sick of this place.”
“Same,” she turned to the reg. The lustre in her eyes faded, making way for a more sombre dullness, “Your friend, I must ask, are we taking her?”
“Huh?”
Yumiko looked down, “For proper burial.”
He scratched his head. There was a rush of thoughts in his head, both irrational and rational. The reg responded after checking his rifle and sighing.
“No. We’ll come back for her later. Or maybe they’ll bury her as well.”
“The Coalition soldiers?”
“Yeah, them.”
She pursed her lips behind her mask.
“Maybe.”
The reg nodded. Yumiko departed and did her last checks on the rest of the troops. Gila was helpful in remembering where exactly the marketplace was, accurately pointing out grid location and directions without a map. The gunner surprised her more by ditching his gun and taking up Rufus on his back carefully. When she asked what spurred the man into action, he only had this to say:
“This man has balls. A scared little pair at first. But he’s got ‘em.”
With that, they vanished from the scene of the firefight, making a break for the extraction point. While Yumiko was more focused on carrying herself towards the LZ, her mind picked up new signatures just behind them. The Coalition’s military certainly were an alert bunch. Too nosy for their own good, it seems, as another explosion shook the surrounding area. Chehza nervously grinned to himself about his handiwork.
Alas, the marketplace was in sight. This had been a place of much activity before the shells started dropping. There were overturned carts, smashed lanterns and half-eaten animals all over the place. At the centre of it was a massive clearing, big enough for Helix’s evac chopper, surrounded by abandoned military equipment. Someone clearly made a stand here, Yumiko thought upon seeing a dead soldier leaning against the wall. Deeming the area clear after a cautious scan of the area, she ushered everyone ahead and covered their backs.
When she went last, the buzzing presence suddenly made itself known again. This time, she was nowhere near any Coalition soldier. The sound of helicopter blades rapidly approaching did not do anything to quell the noise. It only made it louder, painfully so.
“An ambush…? From where?”
“Ma’am?” said the grenadier, the person closest to her. Upon approaching her, his head was blighted by that same buzzing. She could tell in-between the little glimpses she had of him struggling with his head and the increasingly agonised groaning he made, “Ma’am, what the hell is happening?! My head, it’s on fucking fire!”
The groaning paved the way for unearthly screaming. Even when some of the regs rushed to calm the man down and set up a perimeter, he wouldn’t stop screaming. When he finally did after half a minute, his mouth was foaming with blood and saliva. The radio operator turned him over and saw the man’s eyes. It made him stagger away from the body in shock.
What were eyes had been turned into brackish liquid. It leaked out of the skull, alongside the flesh inside, wrapping tightly around the skull as if melted down by some unseen demon. The operator wasn’t sure if the smell perforating his nose was from the dead animals all around him or his comrade; the carcasses were beginning to melt into the same kind of goo too, throwing up toxic fumes everywhere. The pilot of Helix One Two saw the sight and immediately assigned his gunner to work, transmitting openly.
“Phenex Team, what’s going on down there?! These corpses are goddamn melting! Usop, guns up, we might have a contact around here!”
Yumiko staggered towards the radio operator. The sight of the now-dead grenadier all but confirmed her worst fear, and she made it known to the pilot.
“Phenex Lead to Helix One Two, ignore them! Once we’re inside, take off immediately! Do not look back, I repeat, do not look back!”
“Helix One Two, roger! Fuck is that buzzing noise, clear up the goddamn radio!”
“Everyone, we are leaving this fucking city now! Get to the evac chopper!”
Most of them covered their noses and made a mad dash for the helicopter. They couldn’t even retrieve the grenadier’s corpse for burial. There was nothing left of them to take anyway other than sludge and bones. For some sadistic reason, however, the buzzing did not unleash the same fate upon everyone else. It only affected her at its worst, leaving everyone to suffer the side effects. Yumiko sprinted for the chopper, seeing the radio operator beckoning her towards the cabin space.
“Ma’am! Hurry up, we gotta-”
Something horrible screeched nearby. The operator raised his gun towards the source- just behind her- and opened fire. The helicopter gunner did the same. All this accomplished was peppering the area with missed shots. The culprit invaded the operator’s mind, introducing itself with a soft, sinister growl, and then took control of his body. The man tried to move his limbs and only felt immense resistance. Unable to move, he watched as a formless shape approached him rapidly. It twirled its hand and launched a razor-laced whip that wrapped around the poor soul. He didn’t even have the opportunity to scream as it dug into his flesh.
Yumiko was barely on the ramp of the chopper when the operator vanished in a cloud of gore. The force knocked her off the ramp and onto the marketplace floor once more. She spun around, suddenly free of the presence, and finally saw the source of her torment throughout the night.
In the flickering of red light, she could see that there was barely anything human about the shape approaching her. From feet to neck there was only heavy matte armour that seemed to shimmer and writhe with each step, expanding in complexity and size until its pauldrons were roughly as thick as tree trunks. Sitting on top of this armour was a face made of stretched, wrinkled leather bearing a lipless grin. Purple mist wafted out of its mouth every moment it breathed, allowing her to see that its back jaw had been hollowed out; twin canisters occupying where its teeth and skin and flesh should be.
But it was its eyes, however, it was the eyes that made her skin crawl. There was a man in those abysses. Enough of a man to let her know it had abandoned its old skin behind. The grin broadened as it retracted its razorwhips. There was a horrible stench in the air- rotting corpses and stinking maggots- that pervaded all their minds. When it slammed the whips on the floor, that was when the shooting resumed.
The regs and mercenaries in the cabin immediately opened fire. Each thought they were shooting directly at the shape with precision. To her, they were missing by miles as she backed away. Acknowledging her silent terror, it only snickered and spoke one, single word. It was all it needed to break her composure.
“Twinblade.”
The unflappable ex-Yakuza nearly screamed. Her heart was flying out of her body.
“What a pleasant surprise to see you here.”
Her lips tightened up upon trying to stammer something out. The name of the shape eluded her: a deliberate movement. The shape had wormed its way into her mind through wide open gaps of security, erasing every single trace of its old name. It once belonged to a man of better honour. Not anymore.
“You don’t get to call me that anymore. You burned it all back home, traitor. Left me fixed on this gas for-forever. Forever. Forever…”
Inside the cabin, someone shouted, “Boss! Boss, hang in there!” Chehza ran towards the door gunner, stole his pistol in a blink of an eye, and took aim. The barrage the shape received was ineffective, hitting only one soft spot on its armour. The pain was thoroughly unamusing.
Turning around, the shape reached back and slammed both of its razorwhips into the helicopter’s sides. The heavy armour soon revealed its power as the whips began to grind against the hull loudly, shredding reinforced metal. The passengers inside retreated further into the chopper, reloading and opening fire whilst watching Death itself come for them in a crimson shroud. It growled menacingly into their minds.
“Vermin.”
Helix’s pilot no longer felt steadfast. The sight of the helicopter trying desperately to take off as the shape pulled it down gave her mind a sudden sense of purpose. Her hands instinctively activated the last of her psychogen. For a split second in the dark, her irises exploded into stars. There was a vision in front of her, one she reached out and grabbed it as hard as she could. It wanted to see this shape dead.
The shape was closing in fast on the hapless passengers. Some of the men inside whispered prayers, others kept firing. Helix didn’t know if he was going to genuinely make it out alive with this abomination attacking him. The shape heard them all and chortled. They were no worthy foes, just lambs for the slaughter. Worthiness no longer meant anything to him, as it should’ve been from the very start.
Suddenly, a spark of purple streaked through the night. The shape had no time to react when it sliced clean through one of its whips, leaving it glowing bright orange. It reeled backwards from a burst of machine gun fire, trying to make out the aggressor. A simple turn to the left revealed a shadow kicking up a purple blade. When scattered thoughts clicked together, it responded with a raspy drawl and replaced the razorwhip it lost with more length.
The soldiers inside were treated to a spectacle of clashing blades, illuminated only by the helicopter’s weak cabin light. They made good use of this time urging the chopper pilot to leave immediately. That Yumiko would be left behind was an afterthought in their panicked minds. Chehza, however, set them straight.
“We’re not leaving the boss behind! Grab more ammunition and help her out!”
The tiny mouse of a man suddenly seemed more authoritative than before. Soon, their guns were singing along with the melody of death. Despite being in the dark about its name, Yumiko silently realised that her missing memories weren’t about how it fought. Maybe it was intentional, maybe not. Whatever was the case, the both of them had entered a high-stakes deathmatch. The shape was good, definitely more attuned with its armaments, but there was speed on her side. Soon, after taking off chinks of its armor and exhausting its breath, it disappeared into the surroundings and taunted.
“You have grown complacent. Weak. She would be so disappointed in you. The best of us, now a sha-shadow.”
“She would be more disappointed that you live.”
“Because I wasn’t handed all the cards in the deck. I made my own- made my own and survived. She became God, didn’t think about how much it would cost her, what you needed to be God.”
“Then I should do you a favour,” she brandished her gladius, tip-first, “and send you to her.”
“How disappointing it is that you didn’t do that the first time around, let me do you the favours first, traitor.”
When the clash restarted, all of the soldiers inside the cabin had run out of ammunition. Even the door gunner’s heavy machine gun had gone dry. They were all left to stare in awe at the sheer speed the two of them traded their blows. At one point, the shape had her by the throat with a crushing grip, throwing her across the marketplace before following up with a flick of a razorwhip. She wasn’t fast enough to dodge it, leaving a hideous scar snaking up her arm that hurt and bled like hell.
That was when she remembered: the helicopter needed to go, and so did she.
With all her might and the last remaining dose of psychogen, her mind flared up and dove straight into the shape’s mind. There was heavy resistance for several seconds. The fighting, fortunately, had left a sizable gap in its fortitude. The wild screaming it produced as its world went dark was devoid of humanity, like an artillery shell going off next to your ear. Yumiko weaved her way through its mad flailing, seeing the helicopter slowly rising. Chehza stuck his hand out for her to grab on to and shouted when she hung on tight.
“Go, go, go! Get us the f-fuck out of here!”
“This is Helix One Two, copy! Closing ramp door!”
Both of them tumbled into the cabin, just shy of the stretcher that had been set up to host Rufus. The cabin quickly settled down as Chehza assured the others he was fine. It was Yumiko who needed help to get into a chair. Her stunned expression spoke all that they needed to know about her state of mind.
“Is she okay?”
“Checking,checking. Good fucking lord, look at her arm. I need medpacks now, stem the bleeding before it gets worse. She was fighting like a devil out there against that… that monster, no way that wound’s gonna heal right.”
“It was like some kind of zombie thing. Super powered zombie thing. No fucking way that was a Coalition soldier.”
“I heard him. That raspy voice, dude, it was talkin’ to her. It knows her.”
“The hell? Don’t believe that for a second, them’s empty words. Freakshow’s probably trying to get her spurred up. Had to be a witch like her, only crazier. By Tuah, this is all so fucked.”
Freakshow? She thought, processing the Shape’s face and voice and mangled form over and over again in her head; Yeah, that’s about right. And he’s chosen to make his roost here.
When she snapped out of her trance, Yumiko found the door gunner standing in front of her with a headset in hand. He gestured for her to put it on, carefully attending to the wires leading into the ceiling. Once the headset was snug on her ears, she immediately heard Helix One Two speaking to someone else.
“This is Helix One Two, I got the package, returning to base. Hell if I care about Command telling us to deal with those jamming posts, we’re getting out of here for re-armament. If JFC wants me out here again, they better pay me extra, over,” then the line clicked and he spoke to her, “Phenex Lead, you copy?”
She adjusted the microphone and spoke, “This is Phenex Lead.”
“That was one hell of a show, merc, thanks for saving the ride. ETA on return should be seven minutes, we have some leftover medical supplies to keep our guy stable. Strap in and prepare for a bumpy ride.”
“What’s going on out there? What happened to the firebase?”
Helix’s exasperation was made clear even behind the door, “Overrun, our boys couldn’t hold it without any more supplies. Varquil was kinder with them, got them to retreat and all instead of doing his glory hound shtick. We still got the earlier positions, but we’re gonna be running on fumes soon. Coal raiders are swooping in on our convoys, calling airstrikes on our positions and choking our push. Can’t do shit when they’re picking us off like rats.”
“How much of the province have we lost?”
“For now, not a whole lot, but it’s about to get a lot worse if Major Luke and Varquil can’t get wide-band comms established.”
“That jamming station, you said there were more?”
“No shit. They’re blanketing the area with crazy amounts of ECM. Some units got stranded in the city when they went live. They never came back, lost several buddies trying to get them home.”
She leaned back in her chair, unfastened her mask and took a deep breath. Her chest felt incredibly hollow. The siege being stalled and possibly repelled was something she couldn’t mentally accept, especially with the Shape prowling the province. Yumiko calmed herself before responding.
“We got one of them, at least.”
“Yeah, that’s good shit right there. The Major has plans for a mechanised push in the next few days to take out the stations, else we might never get a staging point to take over their port and start our advance to the Gulf. Don’t suppose you’re keen to join ‘em?”
“What do you think?”
Helix One Two mockingly chuckled and shook his head, “I’m thinkin’ you don’t have a choice, merc.”
She sighed and leaned on the headrest. The last thoughts she had before falling asleep was on how this was going to be a long, bloody week.