CHAPTER 12 - …BUT AT WHAT COST?
Armored from fingertips to bladed heel in a near skin tight suit, the young, childish princess CAL once knew was no more. In her place stood a powerful and dangerous woman, clad in black and intent on violence.
“Warrior CAL is stunned by the Huntress Anaya? I should be blushing right now.”
CAL was right to be stunned into silence, the armor merged seamlessly into her body. A matte black skinsuit formed the under armor, stretching across her entire form. From her feet all the way to her neck and extending even to her cheeks, it was impossible to differentiate it from her actual skin. Covering the under armor was the mechanical suit itself, slender, round, smooth. A far cry from its blocky, cubic original design. It even altered her eyes, shifting them from a brownish gray to an iridescent Amber.
CAL walked up to her, hugging her tightly.
“H-How… Where did you get this?”
“Father showed me the Great Armory and I discovered the Dragon Armor and the Guardian.”
Dr. Kilo appears beside them, sighing heavily.
“Miss Anaya, I must implore you to cease calling me the ‘Guardian’ and refer to the Suit by either of its titles, the Dragoon Armor or the KingTaker.”
Turning his attention to CAL, he rapidly appeared around him, taking in every ounce of his being with his Holo-Synthetic eyes.
“You sir, are a stunning specimen. Warrior CAL I presume?”
“”Uh… just CAL.”
“Good, good. I am D. Miles Kilos. Co-creator of the KingTaker, Smartest man in the 2nd Millenia, and resident Mind trapped within an A.I program. It is a true pleasure to meet you.”
CAL tried to ignore Dr. Kilo’s continuous observation and furious note taking.
“This suit… it’s old human tech?”
“Yes, yes. One of the finest pieces of the millennium.”
“And Anaya, it doesn’t hurt you?”
“Warrior CAL worries too much, Dragon Armor is strong and makes Huntress Anaya stronger!”
Dr. Kilo appeared in between them, cutting off their conversation. “Not to be a bother, however, would seem that techno organic abomination has risen to his feet.”
They all look toward the absolutely livid monster that is Negas. His cracked eye, crimson red and oozing viscous fluids, stared at them with potent hatred. Pointing his claw, at them he began walking toward them, a noticeable limp in his step.
“I’M THE DAMNED TYRANT OF THE SOUTH STARS. PILLAGER OF THE GREY TIDES OF NUMEN! ONE OF THE NINE BILGEWATER PIRATE LORDS! A DAMNED RAIDER OF THE CORPSE OF THE SINGED SEA DEVIL! I AM NEGAS THE MAN-BREAKER AND I REFUSE TO BE BEATEN AND HUMILIATED BY A DROID AND HIS BIONIC BITCH!”
His claw began spinning like a drill once more, as he charged into battle. Furious rage emanating from his war cry.
CAL and Anaya glanced at one another, the same thought entered their minds simultaneously.
“Together?” They both asked eagerly.
Smiling at their instant agreement, they charged forward, meeting the Man-Breaker with their own fury and rage.
The clash was an explosion of speed and force, like boiling water meeting a freezing river. Negas’ strikes were hard and brutal, though his attacks were slow and evadeable, when they struck true, they left the recipient crippled. CAL and Anaya on the other hand fought in near perfect unison. Choosing to compensate for Anaya’s weaker strikes, he forgoes his usual choice of blades and edged weaponry for two colossal warhammers. Using their brutally furious strikes to match Negas’ own blows. All the while Anaya strikes with all the speed of a tornado.. Evading every titanic blow Negas threw at her, and deftly slipping between Cal’s and attacks to land her own.
At first the battle balanced itself, as neither side took any severe blows. What few hit CAL would barely faze him, and the many assaults upon Negas were little more than flea bites upon the steel hide of a tank. This balance would not last however, as CAL’s Hardlight Warhammers began to shift with the battle. Realizing, that though they hit hard, they need to hit even harder. Strike by strike, blow by blow, CAL put thought to form as he altered their form bit by bit.
.
Negas came upon CAL with another heavy blow. Narrowly catching his wrist with the crossed hafts of his warhammers, the spinning claw inches from his face. Anaya appeared next to him in a cloud of darkness, kicking the elbow of the clawed arm and dislocating it. The claw stopped spinning as Negas howled in pain,swiping at Anaya with his good arm to no avail. No longer struggling to hold his attack, locked his wrist between the two hammers.
CAL was ready to rip the clawed appendage right off of the smug cyborg, but a moment of hesitation struck him. He felt a sudden shock flow though his system, a shock of familiarity and innovation. A sense of deja vu washed over him as the world around him slowed to a crawl.
“Okay, this is new…”
He felt both in and out of his body, able to feel every fiber of his physical form while seeing himself doing it.
“What… What is this feeling? It feels like… like I should be saying something. Or that I have said something… before?” Coming closer to the answer he was unwittingly looking for, a warm sensation crept across his body.
“A sentence?” He felt a chill ripple across his spine.
“Oh! Is this a game of hot and cold? How about a speech?” A frigid breeze cut through him, chilling him to the bone.
“Okay! Wow, Not that one! A Phrase, It has to be a phrase.” The warmth returned momentarily, leaving as quickly as it came.
“A word then, but what word?” Heat resonated throughout his body once more. Growing and fading as he mentally scanned through every letter in the alphabet. Burning red hot as he began searching through the letter A.
“It’s on the tip of my tongue. Something like “To Change”? No, not that, something like “To add on.” His body began radiating heat, most of it pulsing heavily to his hands with every word he spoke.
“Add on…?”
“ALTER?”
“ATTACH?”
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“ADJOIN?”
“No, wait… I do know this word. Why did it take so long for me to remember it?”
“AUGMENT.”
The world restarted as he spoke the thunderous word, sending every ounce of that pulsating power, not to his hands, but to the Warhammers. Their green glow, overtaken by the bright orange fires of a freshly forged weapon, blinding everyone with a stunning flash of radiant light and heat. When CAL looked upon them once more, he no longer saw the heavy warhammers. Instead, he held two smaller mauls, their massive heads augmented with a rocket turbine on the backend and a spiked front end.
“THE FUCK YOU JUST DO?”
CAL laughed as he felt the power of the Mauls resonate through him.
“No idea, big guy, but I can tell you this, These bad boys really don’t like you.”
Still holding Negas’ wrist, He revved the turbines, and smashed it apart as he separated the Mauls. Negas roared, taking the blow in kind and striking toward CAL with his right hand. He met the cyborg’s blow with one of his own, crushing his hand with the full throttle of the maul. Implanting it deep into his forearm, Negas stumbled back as his arm imploded from the compacted force. The Cyborg tried to take steps back, only to feel Anaya wrap her arms around his waist holding him tight.
“You will stay and face death, Borg-man.”
“LET ME GO YOU 20 CREDIT A NIGHT BITCH!!!”
Struggling to free himself, Negas failed to defend himself from CAL. Slamming his maul right into his jaw and tearing it to pieces with a single blow.
“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth? Guess I should be saying “did you”, cause you aren’t doing it anymore.”
Negas flailed wildly, though Anaya held true and strong. Barely moving and inch as CAL sized up the giant cyborg.
“You know Negas, if you were anyone else. I’d give you a swift death, but considering everything around us. All the people you killed, all the innocents you enslaved, the children and animals you tortured and experimented on. I’m not going to make this quick, and I'm gonna relish every moment of it.”
CAL struck him in the knee, blowing it out. Once more in the head, indenting his cranium. Struck two-fold to his ribs, wrenching him from Anaya’s grasp, and across the arena. Shakily and using his broken bionic arm, he attempted to rise to his feet. Anaya would not allow this, kicking him fiercely, he fell to his back as she began stomping on him.
CAL gently placed his hand on her shoulders, and pulled her back.
“No, let him get up. Let him get up and defend himself.”
Anaya grunted, nevertheless she agreed to wait. Allowing the cyborg to once again rise to his feet. Taking a pathetic swing at the duo, Negas felt the brutal embrace of the maul slam against the shattered remains of his jaw, followed by Anaya’s blades entering his chest. Savagely, she ripped her wrist blades out of his side, shredding his left lung in the process.
“You Zehorg Noch tah*!!”
Both of them laid into him with a frenzied flurry of blows, half of them dropping him to the dirt, the rest raising him back to his crippled legs.
“Fight back you borg freak!” CAL yelled with rage as he slammed both mauls into his spinal cord.
“Yeah, fight back!” Anaya roared, ripping his leg off.
“Or is 2v1 too much for the esteemed Pirate lord?” CAL said with a sadistic smile
Thus, the onslaught continued, and the next 20 minutes of Negas’ life were filled with the most excruciating pain he had ever felt. CAL started with his legs, and worked his way up, while Anaya struck wildly, like a savage animal. Working in slow tedium, they broke him bit by bit, shattering the machine and rending the flesh. Dragging and beating him across the entirety of the arena. Anaya struck a blow for each and every member of her people, whom Negas murdered over the years. CAL struck simply out of hate, hate filled with regret for every one he failed to save today, and he truly did relish every single blow.
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Anaya fell back to the ground, sprawling herself out as CAL sat in a crouch. Both exhausted, both emotionally spent, both… satisfied. CAL looked upon the wreckage of Negas, only his torso and head remained in one place. The rest of his body lies scattered about the arena in bits, bolts, and blood. They continued to sit there in silence, only the sound of panting and exhaustion filling the dead air.
Anaya was the first to break the peaceful serenity.
“Is it done…Warrior CAL? Is the Borg man’s terror done?”
Rising to his feet, CAL offered a hand to help Anaya. “After that? What we just did to him, I really hope so. Otherwise I’m really going to start questioning the limits of mortality.”
Looking around the arena as the flames began to die down, Anaya felt the heavy rainfall around them.
“Warrior CAL, we should look for other villagers.”
“You’re probably right. Most of the Raiders are probably fleeing right now. But before that, I should… You should… Your Brother, he…”
CAL Stopped immediately upon hearing Negas’ faint sadistic laughter. They both turned, eyes wide, staring at the smoking wreckage lying prone across the arena.
CAL’s commlink sparked to life, filled with the guttural, blood choked laughter of the mad borg.
“Oh, yes. They should be fleeing. They’re fucking dumbasses, but not stupid enough to die for the cause.”
His booming, megaphone amped voice fell to barely a whisper in his ruined form.
“Die for the cause? With you half dead, do you really think the villagers will kill routed troops? Even your sadistic crew?”
“You make me laugh, droid. Did you think I’d risk the biggest fucking raid in years, without a failsafe. Tell me, did you ever question how I got so many of those damned bugs in the air after you fried their hive?”
“Where are you going with this Negas? All of the Vespids are dead, and you’re not in any condition to activate any failsafes.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, droid. Those vespids, they were infused with Nylum a friend sent me. Turns out nuclear energy is a hell of a growth serum. And that failsafe? Well I hope your bitch is faster than you.”
CAL turned to Anaya, confused by Negas’ words. Until he noticed his claw behind them, or more accurately the lack of the blades on the claw. Hearing a buzz in the air rapidly approaching them, CAL pushed her to the ground.
“Warrior CAL wha-”
Not a moment too soon as a swarm of razorlike blade bits flew at CAL like a storm of glass and barbed wire. Managing to cut and deflect the majority of them, several hundred still cut through him. Embedding themselves deep within his cybernetic flesh. The buzzing noise around them was all consuming, drowning out any other sound, including Anaya’s warning.
A sudden and familiar pain filled CAL’s chest, as the blade bits stopped swarming around him. Barely about to look down, he forced his stiffening neck to lurch forward. Negas’ other blade claw, covered in blue and red blood, had torn through his chest. Severing his spinal cord, and tearing through his sternum like paper. Worse, he felt the embedded blade bits vibring rapidly, tearing through his muscles, like termites through wood. Several of them detonating into microexplosions, vaporizing him from the inside out.
Through the shock of the moment he began falling to the ground, hearing Anaya faintly screaming his name. Frantically trying to shake him, Anaya tried in vain to pull out the blade. Attempting to pull out the blade bits once that failed. All the while, Negas laughed in CAL’s ear.
“”Not what I was planning, but taking you with me is revenge enough! And that wasn’t the failsafe!”
Negas’ coughing laughter became harsh and ragged.
“When my fucking heart stops, all of those Vespids corpses, you know, the ones leaking volatile nuclear material? A detonator hidden in their brains goes off, sending all of the good radioactive shit all across the continent!”
“CAL could do nothing as Negas’ laughter grew weaker and more ragged.
“I told you… I refuse… to… be… beaten. . .”
CAL looked at Anaya, his stern gaze caught her panicked eyes. Mustering all of the strength he had, he spoke a single word to her, as the flatlined hum of Negas’ lifeless body echoed throughout the jungle.
“Run.”
Anaya’s stunning beauty, her worry, her concern. It was the last image in his mind as a white light engulfed his visor, turning to a thick static and then to darkness. The last sound to grace his ears, her whimpering voice calling his name.
“CAL…?