The loss of Wrath, and no sign of the Dragon disparaged the Dark Angels. They were the Dark Angels leaders. Warrior leaders who fought beside their men, and inspired them. The Dark Angels weren’t the same without them. With neither leader in sight, they felt alone in their fight and unsure. Were their leaders already defeated?
Rather than tactic, the Dark Angels set on the Sheriff Bobs with uncontrolled rage. At first that was all they needed. When Tasha, the warriors, and the remaining Sheriff Bobs joined the battle, things changed. Tasha, as always, was the first to rush into the fray. The Dark Angels showed even more fear towards her than Michael who she now fought beside. It was the Sword. They knew to stay away from that Sword. The slightest flesh wound, even a drop of blood drawn from that sword, would drop them, inflicting horrendous pain like a poison was running through them. It was second only to the Sword Ethan carried.
Tasha went after the biggest and baddest of the Dark Angels. She was agile and in spite of what appeared to be a dangerously offensive approach to battle, was very disciplined. At the prime of her physical life, she moved gracefully and intentionally, and might disappear into a throng of Dark Angels, only to reappear a few minutes later having killed them all. Sword or not, Tasha was to be feared.
With Slash, Michael easily cut through the Dark Angels. He was more of a straight ahead kind of fighter. If you got in his way, you died. It didn’t matter how many Dark Angels came at him, Michael never backed up. He simply cut through them all.
The Warriors too, were doing damage.What AI was able to accomplish with real time processing, the Warriors accomplished intuitively. Their highly honed synchronistic fighting style was too much for the Dark Angels and they fell because of it.
Everything was working well for the Immortals. The problem was, there were so many Dark Angels. Over one hundred thousand of them, and only 13 Immortals. The fight would last days, if not weeks and things can change in such a span of time.
It wasn’t apparent yet what the Sheriff Bobs were doing. They weren’t contributing much to the fight, that much can be said. Judging from the way the Dark Angels tore through the first line of Sheriff Bobs, hand to hand combat wasn’t possible. The plan was to guide the Dark Angels towards the mine, while the Immortals backed them up.
The Sheriff Bobs stuck to the plan and formed a line on either side of the Dark Angels in an attempt to herd them towards the mine. While preparing for the battle, they retrofit themselves to create endothermic reactions. They drew heat from around the cold blooded Dark Angels. Atmospheric heat their bodies required to function. The Sheriff Bobs repulsed and directed the Dark Angels, but neither side could get close enough to strike a blow.
After developing antimatter weaponry, Michael requested the Sheriff Bobs keep the bodies of the Dark Angels somewhat intact. This rendered the antimatter bullets useless as they splattered the remains of a target half way through the Cosmos taking generations to reassemble. The Sheriff Bobs had developed the synthetic antiserum of Ethan’s blood. They would leave fallen Dark Angels whole, but the Sheriff Bobs had yet to begin mass production of the bullets, and saw no need to do it now.
The Cadets were still in the junkyard where Michael slayed Wrath. Because O’Brien was back in charge, they decided to eat first and then set out to find the next town. They knew they were out of the fight. Maybe they could help out if they had some more antiserum bullets, but Jonesy fired all of his into the air and O’Brien. O’Brien unloaded all the ones in Perkins' gun into Wrath.
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“Did you see how gangster I went on Wrath?” O’Brien said, through bites of a sandwich. “Bam! Bam! Bam!...Bam! Bam! Take that you oversized gecko. Oh? You want more do you? Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!” O’Brien gave him a few more for good measure.
O’Brien was back, and feeling pretty good about himself. Normally there would be no way to get him to shut up about his heroic deed, which got better with each telling, but Wrath’s head opened its eyes and started looking at him, which slowed O’Brien down considerably.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Are you seeing this boys?” he said pointing to Wrath’s head which was rather calmly looking back at them.
The boys looked over to Wrath. They could clearly see Wrath’s head, and all of them were held in place by his gaze; more in awe than anything. Momentarily, his body got up and started walking over to his head. The boys remained frozen in place while Wrath’s body bent down and picked up the head and fixed it back on his shoulders. With a few creaks of the neck, Wrath was back to his old self. Fortunately the clash of the distant battle was on his mind, and paying no further attention to the Cadets, leapt to the battle.
Wrath leapt right between Michael and Tasha. Once again Michael was amazed at the size of balls on this guy. Jumping in between him and Tasha like he had a say in things. Michael turned to confront him, but Wrath was clearly challenging Tasha and she waved Michael off. There was unfinished business between her and Wrath because of Ethan’s last quest. She handed her Sword to one of the Warriors and drew her favored Bowie Knives, one in each hand. Wrath was going to pay for his past insolence.
Michael shook his head at how Tasha liked a good fight. Always. Now here she was circling Wrath, no Sword, looking like a cat with a mouse. She truly enjoyed the fight. “No Sword,” he thought amusedly. Then he was gone.
Wrath held no weapon. It wasn’t his way. He preferred to tear his opponents apart and lick their blood. He did wear vambraces on his forearms and greaves on his shins for added protection, but other than that, he relied on his massive power, quickness and fighting ability to defeat his enemy. He looked at Tasha with disdain as she crouched down to make herself look even smaller. Never one for ceremony, she leapt at Wrath, more to start the fight than anything else. She went for his face, but Wrath easily deflected her with a powerful backhand, sending her flying into the air and landing hard against a rock.
Crashing against the rock didn’t accomplish anything but to wake Tasha up, and she was quickly to her feet more alert than ever. She swept under the approaching Wrath, cutting him along the thigh while passing between his legs. Before he had time to react, she was on his back, stabbing him deeply several times on both sides of the neck with her Bowie’s. She chose not to sever the carotid arteries, which would have resulted in an instant kill. Once again Wrath was able to grab her and fling her to the ground.
This time Tasha got up looking more inquisitive than anything. She knew she had cut him bad, now she wanted to know what damage she had caused. Wrath was enraged at how quickly Tasha disabled him. He knew he was hurt badly. Tasha moved in cautiously, obviously deciding where to strike next, which enraged Wrath even more. Ignoring his pain, he came at her hard. He was limping and his right arm hung uselessly by his side. She let him come. When he got close enough, she stuck him in the gut with one of her Bowie’s and easily jumped away to the side. In her confidence, she left the Bowie sticking in Wrath’s gut. Wrath looked down at the knife.
Tasha waited. Waited for the big dumb brute to realize just how fucked he was. His left arm was almost as useless as his right, and it took several attempts to get to the knife. He wasn’t interested in Tasha anymore. He was looking at the knife. He had his hand on it, but couldn’t pull it out. He looked up at Tasha. That was the look she was waiting for. Wrath roared his defiance, as Tasha ran up and leaped to slash his throat, severing both carotid arteries. Blood poured and squirted from his neck and he quickly dropped.
Tasha stuck her foot on Wrath’s chest and withdrew her Bowie. Still panting, she stood looking at the Fallen Angel. As always her chest was heaving from the adrenaline of the battle and she felt it coursing through her veins. The rush of the fight and victory overwhelmed her. She threw back her head, and as if in warning, let out a ferocious battle cry. The Warriors roared back to their Leader. The Dark Angels cowered.