The mech did, in fact, want some.

But it wasn’t a selfish robot who just wanted to take — it was generous enough to give, as well, as demonstrated by the backhand smack it delivered to Tyger, sending him flying dozens of feet away, crashing into an array of mine carts like a bowling ball.

“Oh, great,” Kiria muttered. “Look what you got us into now….”

Steam blasted out from the vents on the back of the mech just before it swiveled and darted right for the carts that Kiria and Reina had been taking cover behind. Both were blown away at the sudden speed the monstrous machine was managing to pull off, and were it not for Reina’s quick reflexes, they would have been mush.

The chameleon girl kicked her leg out in a sharp flick. There was a black metal greave wrapped around her shin, and as she kicked out, a panel on the surface opened up. From within emerged a wire that shot out into the distance towards a parked forklift on the other side of the area, which wrapped around the machine.

With an anchor point now established, the grappling hook tugged back on Reina, pulling her towards it like a retracting measuring tape. She was able to take hold of Kiria just before being yanked away, saving them both from the charging mecha.

The girls skidded to a stop right beside the forklift, a proud smile awakening on Reina’s face as she realized what she had managed to pull off. Kiria’s face, in contrast, was more confused than anything, her eyes darting down to Reina’s leg as the wire returned to its station within the greave. “What was that?”

“My grapple-greave!” Reina answered enthusiastically. “Isn’t it cool?!”

“Yeah, actually, that is pretty cool.”

“I got it from my Hunter training! It’s super fun! And it also has-!” Her sentence went unfinished, however, as the looming shadow of a projectile minecart blotted out the sun temporarily and converted her happy speaking voice into a sudden shrill scream of terror.

Kiria returned the rescue favor by shoving Reina out of harm’s way. The cart collided with the forklift with explosive force, knocking the machine halfway over from the impact.

Kiria’s attention now returned to the mech. It was proving to be a lot more capable and dangerous than its appearance would typically suggest; it moved quickly, and transitioned from one action to the next even quicker. She was willing to bet there was a pilot inside making such snappy decisions for it, and a skilled one at that.

Elsewhere, Tyger shoved the carts off of him, sitting up from the floor with his teeth grinding together. “Son of a bitch….!” He clambered to his feet and took hold of a cart, launching it directly at the back of the mech. “Hey, asshole! Turn around! I’m not done with you yet!”

The mech obliged, rotating 180 degrees to face Tyger head-on.

The two charged straight at one another, each winding an arm back to prepare a swing.

Tyger, being much smaller, was able to throw his punch out first, blasting his knuckles directly into the mech’s frontmost leg. The metal dented a fair amount, shredding away a decent chunk of the protective armor.

The punch was also strong enough to wobble the machine outright, throwing off the aim of its own punch, causing it to miss Tyger completely. Seeing an opportunity, Tyger leaped towards the arm and grabbed hold of it, clamping down tightly. The metal began to dent inward as Tyger’s muscles constricted more tightly, threatening to sever the limb entirely.

In order to prevent this, the pilot within the mech flicked several switches on in a flash. A huge burst of steam blasted out from the vents on the mech’s back right before the arm began to transform from a fist into a saw.

Tyger growled out in pain as the blades of the saw started to jab into his skin, forcing him to relinquish his hold on the mech, buying the latter enough of a window to barrel forward and once again send Tyger flying dozens of feet backward.

“We gotta go after the pilot!” Kiria said. “Reina! You said you had a bow, right?”

“Bow-bracer, yeah!”

Despite not being positive what exactly that meant, Kiria put her faith in her best friend as she always ended up doing. “Okay! Get in position and line up a shot at the cockpit! I’ll keep it busy!”

“Got it! Be careful, Kiria!” Reina called out. She kicked her leg out once more, this time aiming it upwards towards the top of a crane on the opposite side of the area they were in. The grapple-greave shot out and found a lodging point, and her body soon followed, whisked away in the blink of an eye.

Kiria, meanwhile, kept her eyes locked on the mech. From what she had witnessed earlier, she knew she wouldn’t be able to overpower the mech like Tyger was, especially now that the pilot seemed equipped with countermeasures. What she needed to do was stay mobile and stay annoying, diverting the mech’s attention away.

From the way the robot was built, the cockpit was almost exclusively front-facing, as the bulky shoulder plating provided protection from the peripheral angles. She’d have to turn it around to face Reina without giving away the latter’s position, all while avoiding her own demise.

Once she decided what she was going to try first, Kiria held her right arm out behind her towards her lower back. The skin on her fingertips gave way to the circuits underneath, magnetically pulling a cylindrical mass of metal she kept on the back of her waist into the palm of her hand.

The instant the metal was in her grip, the machinery within Kiria’s hand kicked into gear, with wires, gears, pulleys, and more interlocking with the metal rod. In no time at all, the nanobots that made up her hand had reshaped the rod into a spear.

She kicked off of the ground in a bolt towards the mech, who was just finishing off its duel with Tyger. As she came into range of it, she thrust her spear through the leg opposite of the dented one. The speartip impaled the metal cleanly, opening a puncture hole through the limb.

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However, Kiria knew the spear wouldn’t pass through completely clean, and was likely to become lodged halfway inside. To avoid this, the nanobots in her hand once again reconfigured the spear, breaking the parts down into a reinforced glove. This allowed her to remove her hand from the mech’s leg and continue her sprint past the robot, avoiding the approaching slam of the machine’s arm.

Having put some distance between herself and the mech, Kiria quickly spun back around. Her hand reshaped the metal once more, this time into the shape of a javelin. She took aim and fired, sending the projectile towards the cockpit.

The pilot was quick enough to call an arm up to block the attack. And while the javelin was able to pierce through the armor, it wasn’t by much, and the attack wasn’t particularly debilitating.

Not wanting to be caught weaponless, Kiria brought her hands up to her forehead, forming a triangle with her thumbs and first two fingers. A powerful, inhuman voice then reverberated from within her, calling out:

SUPERCHARGE!

She held her right palm out, concentrated it in the direction of the javelin. It took a brief second, but she was successful in her plan as the magnetic power within her hand pulsated with enough force to pull the javelin back into her possession.

Up top, Reina managed to find a good foothold, and prepared to take aim. She flicked her wrist out in a similar motion to her grapple-greave, opening up a similar panel on the metal bracer around her arm. From this panel, a mechanical bow sprouted outward.

Once the limbs were ready, a thin red laser opened between the two ends, forming a bowstring. The bracer on Reina’s opposite hand supplied her with the arrowheads that she positioned along the laser string before pulling back to take aim. As she pulled the arrowhead back against the laser string, another laser line formed behind the arrowhead, serving as the base of the arrow.

The mech wasn’t facing her, so she didn’t have a clear sightline at the cockpit. She would have to wait and hope for Kiria to turn the mech around.

As Kiria took notice of Reina’s position, she moved forward to begin angling the mecha to face that direction, but was suddenly forced to jump the opposite direction as a shoulder-mounted gun suddenly appeared on the machine and fired towards her.

Knowing she wouldn’t be able to outpace the gun for long, her hand molded the javelin into a shield, providing her with cover as she moved to safety behind some rock.

The same rock that, funnily enough, Tyger was using as cover, too.

“Sup?” he said, panting as she approached.

Kiria looked over him with concern. He had taken quite a beating; the saw blades had opened several cuts along both of his arms, and taking two direct, heavy smacks were clearly impacting him as well. She realized that Tyger must have been one durable son of a bitch; if she were to take the same hit, she wasn’t sure she’d even be conscious afterward, let alone from two.

“You should get out of here,” she responded. “Head back into the pulse and try to call for help, whether it’s the others or the city guards. Think you can make it?”

“Wh-what?!” Kiria was surprised at the look of disgust that had made its way to his face. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere! Not ‘til I bury this thing’s ass! In outer space!”

Ignoring the stupidity of his comment, Kiria said, “You’re not in a condition to fight right now, Tyger.”

“The hell I’m not! Piss off! A hero doesn’t run from a fight!” He then pounded his fist into his chest for emphasis. “And he sure as hell doesn’t leave other people behind when they’re in danger!”

Sighing, she turned away from him and back towards the mech. It appeared to have temporarily lost track of the two, and was searching behind some crates elsewhere, giving her some time to breathe and think of a plan.

Reina was on the opposite side of the area from where Kiria and Tyger were, and the mech was roughly halfway in-between, although it wouldn’t be long before the pilot figured out where they were hiding.

“We need to get the mech to face Reina’s direction,” she said out loud, figuring there was no winning against Tyger’s stubbornness. “Once there’s a good angle, Reina will shoot at the cockpit.”

“She a sniper now?”

“Looks like it,” Kiria said, shrugging her shoulders. “The pilot’s fast, so we’re not gonna have a lot of time. If she misses her first shot he’s gonna be ready for the next, and he’ll be keeping an eye on her.”

Tyger nodded in understanding. “Gotcha. I can hold him down once he turns around. That way he can’t block the shot.”

Kiria’s brow curved up. “What? Didn’t he already break your hold with the saw arm?”

“Don’t worry ‘bout that. I can take it this time.”

“Tyger, I’m not gonna let you hurt yourself doing that. Don’t be ridiculous.”

But he ignored her, angling his head around the side of the rock to get a better look at the layout of the battlefield. When he returned, Kiria noted that his brow line somehow managed to find a way to furrow even more angrily. “Shit….!”

“What is it?”

“He’s pretty far away,” Tyger responded. “He’ll prolly see me before I can get in close. Might screw me up….”

“You need me to buy you some time, then?” Kiria asked. “I can run faster than you.”

“Wh-?! The hell you can!”

She smacked the back of his head. “Focus! So you need me to distract him? How far am I running?”

To her surprise, Tyger started to shake his head. “No, no, no! I’m not lettin’ you be bait! A hero doesn’t let other people put themselves in danger!”

But the two found their conversation interrupted as the mechanical whirring of the mech signalled that the pilot had deduced their location, and was angling towards them.

“Tyger! We don’t have time for this!” Kiria hissed.

Relenting, Tyger barked out, “Fine! Cross him up! Run past him and make him turn around!”

With a nod, Kiria leaped over the rock cover and took a mad sprint forward towards the mech, putting her faith into whatever idea Tyger was proposing, more so from lack of choice than proactive belief.

As she cut across the area in a mad dash, she held her shield up to deflect the incoming shoulder gun fire. Each collision of bullet and metal sent stings up her right arm, but thankfully she was fast enough in her sprint to only need to block the bullets for a brief moment, as she soon found herself directly underneath the mech, gliding right between its legs.

Once she made it to the other side, she spun around, right before the mech began to do the same. She wasn’t exactly sure what was supposed to come next, but she mentally prepared a few options for herself based on what happened.

The hulking machine brought its saw arm out and swung it directly at her.

METAL!

But the arm never made contact. At least, not with its intended target.

Tyger slid directly in front of Kiria at the last possible second, arms held out to the sides. Kiria’s eyes widened as she realized he had put himself within lethal range of the saw arm, and his body was already too injured to withstand the blow. If she had known that was his plan, she wouldn’t have-

KKKKRRRRRRNNNNNNGGGGKKKKK!

Yet the saw did not cleave Tyger’s body apart as it logically should have. Instead, the arm was stopped completely in its tracks, held tightly within Tyger’s stranglehold.

The Metal Install that Tyger had activated had temporarily given his body an incredibly strong surface — strong enough to keep the saw from ripping through his flesh and bone. This time around, he seemed completely unaffected by the bite of the blades, and was able to hold the robot in place through sheer physical might. “Gotcha!”

“Oh! Oh!” Reina exclaimed as she finally sensed her time to shine. She let loose the grip on the string of her bow-bracer, firing a red-laser-bodied arrow. The projectile zoomed through the air, crashing through the reinforced glass of the cockpit before the pilot could move a muscle.

The arrowhead found its mark, and the red laser energy within the arrow exploded around the inside of the cockpit, shutting down all electrical activity within the mech.

Now devoid of pilot and fuel source, the walking hulk of metal soon broke down, collapsing onto the ground with a heavy thud.

Reina dropped down from up above, bouncing and skipping around in celebration. “Woohoo! We did it, guys!” She locked each arm around the waists of her two friends, pulling them in close for a group hug.