“So you're some kind of big deal in West Hills?” Sam asked.

Apparently her boredom had overpowered the fear of her captors. The captured woman was unbound and sharing the back cabin of the Abomination with him and his allies. Derrick hadn't bothered to restrain her because she was outclassed by every other person in the cabin. Obviously, they'd taken her weapons though.

Sam had become much less afraid of him after a short session of comparing auril techniques. While nowhere near as proficient as himself, she was well above average anyway. Like was sadly normal, his attempts to learn from her had quickly become him giving lessons. She did possess a few nuggets. Like a better ability to filter out other lifeforms from her pulses' returns than him, a technique he was glad to steal.

His pulses had been refined it the streets of West Hills, a very different environment than the life choked forests and fields of the countryside. The sea of life his pulses picked up out here was distracting.

He wasn’t disappointed, building up his knowledge of auril was a slow affair.

Currently, he, Mathew and Blake were all staring at their phone screens. Derrick had been reading reports from Deleterious and his assistant back in West Hills. No idea what the other two Users from West Hills were up to as the Abomination carried them closer to Flint Creek.

“Oh, yes,” Blake announced, apparently bored. “Frankly I'm surprised you've never heard of Derrick the Red. Most powerful man in West Hills. Maybe you've seen his TV show?”

“I'm around the third most powerful person,” Derrick added with an eye roll. Blake just loved bringing up the Trial. Derrick was pretty sure that under all the attitude, he was jealous. “West Hills isn't as small as Dewport, no one person is in charge. Really, no one is.”

He glanced at Sam, and saw only confusion on her face.

“TV show?” she asked. “Are you kidding?”

“Trial of Predation?” Blake clarified. “The most popular show in the world? Thanks to being the only show in the world the first few days after the Scourges arrived.”

“It was broadcast by the System to the entire planet by a cartoon snake that was really an alien?” Blake clarified as Sam just looked more and more confused. “It was supposed to be moral boost by showing some of the toughest Users on the planet kick ass or something.”

Derrick frowned and watched his prisoner's face. If she was lying, he didn't see it and couldn't think of why she'd bother.

“Now I know you're fucking with me.” Sam said. “You think you're one of the toughest Users?”

The most powerful man in West Hills and Blake Demnol to shared a look.

This was a concerning development. Even if things had been bad in Dewport they should still have seen the Trial. There had been both participants and viewers as far away as China and New Zealand.

Blake said something but Derrick had stopped listening. After he was done in Flint Creek, he would investigate this oddity. It could be what he'd been waiting for, a target.

Yes, he'd been spinning a bit lately, he knew. He felt a burst of eagerness. This could be something to sink his teeth into. He smiled, creating Red Works and heading to Flint Creek was already paying off. Coming here had been the right choice.

“God, that's creepy.” Sam said. “Why is he smiling and staring at nothing silently?”

“He's taken a lot of blows to the head,” Blake explained matter of fact. “He might be plotting though. That's his plotting face. We're a bunch of character at Red Works, we are.”

“Like that kid who's been meditating the entire time I've been here?”

“That's not a kid,” Derrick warned, rejoining the conversation. “It's a Crusader.”

He strongly suspected she wouldn't know what that was, so he continued.

“An alien given a human body by the System and sent to Earth to help us fight the Scourges.”

“You're definitely kidding me now,” she replied scornfully. “Why would you even try to convince me this pipsqueak is some kind of alien, never mind any kind of soldier...”

She stopped talking because the subject of her disbelief was staring at her. Staring at her with bright blue eyes that were bisected down the middle and contained two irises each, on on either side.

Third Striker was doing more than just looking at her. Derrick could feel the Crusader reaching into the substrate, subtly altering the laws of reality for some effect he wasn't nearly qualified to try and discern. Whatever it was though, it spooked Sam into silence.

When she closed her mouth, Third Striker closed his eyes and the small hybrid went back to meditating. The Crusader had been silent and still for their trip. He didn't like to get involved with humans, Derrick knew. Every conversation was awkward for the hybrid. Whatever the Mwin were like, they must have been very different to humans and that difference made interaction annoying.

Very little had changed with Derrick's teacher since they'd first met. He spent most of his time away from West Hills, sent by the System to the four corners of the Earth to fight Feral Artisans.

Derrick wasn't really in the mood to talk much either, he was too busy thinking about what her ignorance meant and how he could exploit it. Soon, he was back to reading reports while Blake smirked and Sam dealt with the reality of being next to an alien she'd just insulted.

The quiet of their joyride was quickly broken again. This time by Stacy, who entered from the front cabin with a concerned look on her face.

“We're picking up multiple strong fold draws grouped together and headed our way,” she informed the room.”

“How many is multiple?” Derrick asked. He was surprised it had taken this long. They were just a few dozen kilometres away from Flint Creek now. He'd expected to see some scouts or something half an hour ago.

“More than a few, less than a horde.” She stated professionally, then shrugged. “Prototype, remember? What I can tell you, is that they seem to be on the same road as us and we've got minutes before we collide with each other.”

“Things have been weirdly slow,” Blake commented as his sword left his hip and cut the air in a complicated pattern. “Grey Legion?”

Stacy paused and looked unsure.

“I don't think so,” she said. “The Legion doesn't usually draw much power from the Fold. This would be like a dozen Combat Drones. I'm pretty sure whatever seeing is moving too fast for those things too.”

“Could it be one large draw? Or one creature with multiple draws?” Derrick asked carefully.

“No,” Stacy denied. “At least five separate signals, changing position relative to each other.”

That was good news, Derrick could only imagine how bad ramming their convoy into a Feral Artisan could be. The downside of it not being one of those monstrosities was that they were the only Scourge he knew of that used a lot of manna. The Grey Legion tended to balance auril and manna, while the Spore Tyrants used the former exclusively.

“You already informed our people outside and Breakneck?” he asked and received a crisp nod.

“Well then. Take us further back and send our pair of mortar armed Tempests ahead. Let's sneak a peek”

Tempest mortar batteries had a self aiming feature. They were capable of identifying targets as they descended upon them. This was because they fired mortars with, among other sensors, cameras on them.

One of the large screens that took up a wall of the cabin flickered to life, revealing only sky for now. After a second, that sky blurred, wobbled and became a birds eye view of the road ahead of them. He could see their own convoy, a dozen Breakneck riders, three Tempests, Meg's supply truck and at the back, the Abomination dwarfing them all.

The riders of Breakneck were an impressive group to look at. A dozen men and women in black armor and on bikes that looked like they’d been ripped right out of science fiction or anime, each with their white logo emblazoned on the side. The knight made of horizontal stripes.

The bike were covered in smooth and shiny armor of a half a dozen different colors. Each one decorated at least slightly different than any other. White, silver and dark blue seemed especially popular. Colors and shades the System commonly chose for its own equipment, Derrick noticed.

Adding to the display were the weapons attached to the side of the two wheeled vehicles, within easy reach. Shotguns and swords, axes and grenade launchers.

Just ahead of these heroes of humanity, was a collapsed overpass that had been cleared off the road and then the road curved just a bit, but enough to break line of sight past the overpass. Just on the edge the camera's vision was... a faint blur.

It was especially hard to notice the distortion due to how broken up the roads were. It was a disturbingly large and fast blur, Derrick realized as he processed what he was seeing. Comparable in speed and size to their own convoy. If anything it was moving faster than them.

“It must be some kind of stealth,” Stacy said.

“I'm glad we brought an expert,” Blake said. “I thought it might be swamp gas.”

“Hit that blur with everything we've got.” Derrick said. There was a small chance that they were Users but he doubted it. At the very least, the mortars should slow them down and reveal their attackers. Thanks to the Abomination, they should be able to make more shells anyway. “With that much manna, assume they have force shields. Shield Breakers first, then stagger into shrapnel.”

Another screen flickered to life on the opposite wall as a new spy mortar fired, this one accompanied by dozens of more explosive friends.

Fighting the Grey Legion, Derrick had mostly tried for surprise to counter defences. The Grey Legion needed to predict the path of an incoming attack to use a force shield to block it. Making mortars an effective counter to their small and dense shields. Only the Combat Drones had any ability to see a mortar dropping out of the sky on them and successfully intercept it.

Against those harder targets, Red Works used a harder hitting ammunition. A shield breaker was just an armor piercing mortar that was designed to channel its explosion forward and into any shield that appeared in front of it. Once that shield burst, the wave of shrapnel mortars would do most of the actual damage.

The occupants of the cabin waited breathlessly as mortar shells made contact with the blur. The shells exploded midair, blossoms of flame and smoke a dozen feet above the road.

Instantly, the blur was covered by ripples of green light that spread from where shells hit alien shielding. The shield was still moving down the road, Derrick noticed.

He had just seconds to wonder if whatever defences their target was using had failed before the second and final wave of mortars hit. More explosions and green ripples made him think the attack failed but they were too few. Some of the mortars had gone through.

And yes, there it was. Explosions, beneath the shield. The blur and green ripples faded completely, revealing...

“What the fuck are those?” Stacy asked with a grimace.

“Oh, this is going to be fun,” Blake commented, his tone acidic.

“Third Striker?” Derrick said. Asking the most experienced of them if he knew what he was looking at.

“Never have I seen the like of this odd pack. The colors and use of manna are familiar to me however. I believe we face the Rebel Instruments. ”

“Any word from Meg?” Derrick asked Stacy. He was far outside his area of expertise here. His instincts were to leap out of the moving vehicle and find somewhere to hide. This fighting out in the open seemed unnatural to him.

“She says she's going to ram them.”

Of course she was. Well, he known she wasn't the type to run away. He might be nervous about facing a Scourge with unknown capabilities head on but her? She hadn't gotten where she was by being subtle or careful. She probably expected the Scourge to be afraid of her.

“Honest battle,” Third Striker commented approvingly from his corner of the cabin. “There shall be glory earned today.”

Third Striker had made his entire life about going to the fringes of the galaxy using dangerously unstable teleportation and fighting the most dangerous monstrosities he could find. This was probably still just a break from the real fighting for him.

“Stacy, man the Buckler Cannon.” Derrick ordered with a sigh as he watched two dozen armed and wheeled forms shift around each other with the grace and coordination of synchronized swimmers. The way those machines moved was straight up graceful. They also seemed to be able to change direction instantly and on the spot.

Headed right for them, was a swarm of dark grey and bright green machines. Each member of the two dozen large swarm was the size of a small motorcycle. Their 'body' was a single gunmetal grey orb, propelled across the ground by a wide wheel that surrounded the entire body and a three pairs of 'arms' that grew out of each side. The arms didn't appear to do much, they occasionally touched the ground but not hard enough to aid the machine creature's movement. They just waved at the creature's sides as they dodged and weaved among each other, the movement reminding Derrick of airborne insects.

Tucked at their sides were a third pair of limbs, these with three fingers on the end, and what seemed like some kind of double barrelled guns. Each gun had some kind of large projectile in the top barrel while the bottom one was empty. Each limb ended in sharp points that had an eerie green glow to them that Derrick recognized as zausite.

Yes, that made these the Rebel Instruments. He'd learned that much when Kate had stabbed him with a knife made of zausite. She'd also said something about the System not even knowing the Rebel Instruments had been in the city. That made them a subtle Scourge. It was looking like these machines were the ones tampering with the bunker under Flint Creek.

They were also apparently a resilient Scourge. A dozen mortars had exploded among them, but only one of the weird creatures had been destroyed and left behind by its allies. Derrick assumed that toughness was because the horrible things were apparently made of metal. Making them not just horribly tough, but completely immune to all of Derrick's auril abilities.

Rebel Instruments, huh. He knew next to nothing about them. Just that they produced the dangerous material called zausite that was dangerous for living things to even be around. Oh, and it could cut through System made materials much easier than it should.

He couldn't help but think back to when he was choosing his Role and his patron Authority had told him to run or die when faced with artificial Scourges. Well, he was far from alone anyway. To get to him, an enemy would need to go through Breakneck and his allies.

He felt a familiar sensation as the System sent him a notification.

Universal Support System

New Mission:

(1)Destroy the Rebel Instrument Scavenger Pack

(2) Examine three nearby System Stations for corruption

(3)Purge corrupted System Stations

Oh, good. The System had caught up. Now they not only needed to beat back these attackers, but find out where they came from. He assumed that if they didn’t, these ‘Corrupt Stations’ would pump out an endless supply of zausite wielding attack robots.

“Huh, motorized spiders.” Blake said, as Stacy hurried to the hatch in the ceiling. “Not what I was expecting to fight today. Well, no point in staying in here. I'm going up top as well.”

Shit, they were just hundreds of meters apart now. Blake had climbed above using a side door with a ladder next to it. What exactly was he planning to do up there? Swing at them as they drove by? He'd have to hang off the side of the Abomination, the vehicle was too tall for striking down from the roof.

Derrick stayed to watch him and the two colliding forces from a bird's eye view. He wanted to see how well Breakneck would do against these things.

He called another screen to life, this one showing straight ahead.

The caravan of Users drove under the overpass. The mechanical creatures accelerated, leaping towards the bikers of Breakneck at the front of the group. At the same time, Breakneck and Red Works opened fire on the incoming enemies.

Grenades and bullets filled the air between them. Derrick heard the familiar sound of the Buckler cannon's steady firing from above. If that weapon could force the Lurker of Loving Purpose on the backfoot, it should sting these transformer rip offs.

Five of the scavengers were blown apart almost instantly. Green shields rippling and failing under the fire of bullets. Now unprotected, User aimed weapons carved holes in the scavengers bodies and tore off robotic limbs.

There was a second of stillness as the enemy was blown apart, it almost looked like shock to Derrick’s eye. Like they hadn’t expected to be hit as hard as they had. They recovered almost instantly though, continuing their weaving advance without firing back.

There were still many more of them though. At least fifteen of them were left. It was hard to get an exact count due to their weird rhythmic movement, with a birds eye view it was like watching an intricate shell game. That same synchronized movement, combined with their speed and manoeuvrability made the robotic scavengers hard to target.

They dodged and weaved around the heavier weapons fire unpredictably, right up until the moment a collision seemed unavoidable. At the very second before the motorcycles of Breakneck and the Rebel Scavengers were about to ram each other, the Users of breakneck pulled together to form a wedge and shields of blue light flickered into existence in front of them.

It was like the scavengers hit an invisible shield wall.The alien constructs were sent sprawling back and around the charging Users of Breakneck. Their carefully orchestrated movements were smashed aside as the Users barreled past them. Many of the mounted users used this to their advantage, peppering the stunned machines with blasts and swipes from their weapons.

Another four enemies were dismantled, collapsing lifeless onto the road. The rest were sent skittering out of control by the power of the mounted Users’ passing.

Derrick felt a surge of wild pride. Breakneck, the army Meg had created, was intoxicating to watch. So very different from the skilled caution and lighting strikes of his own Red Works. Plus, it was nice to not need to step in for once. His skills were mostly useless here.

Totally engrossed in the fight on the screen, Derrick jumped a little as someone spoke from right next to him.

“The Rebel Instruments weakened the blow,” Third Striker said casually from beside him. “Zausite is the bane of the System’s own raw manna. The victor of this battle is still undecided.”

“This skirmish has just begun,” the hybrid continued. “This will be a good learning opportunity for you, my student. Do not try to defend, you must destroy your foes before they reach you. Do not let their shared domain overwhelm you or you are finished.”

“I don’t think...” Derrick began before for something on the screen caught his eye.

Fast as thought, the remaining Rebel Instrument scavengers righted themselves and counterattacked. Scattered amongst the passing motorcyclists, they matched their enemy’s speed instantly and began firing their weapons.

The guns mounted on their sides were revealed to be harpoon guns. Jagged projectile shot out and penetrated the vehicles of Breakneck, then, connected and propelled by chains of alien material,the scavengers pounced.

Four of Meg’s soldiers were instantly downed by the spiky limbs of pouncing mechanical monstrosities.

In the same moment, Derrick flinched again as a spike violated the walls of the cabin he was in. The green gleaming weapon carving though the Abomination’s armor like butter. Another followed a second later. A third a moment after that. Derrick realized that in seconds the Abomination would be crawling with scavengers.

“To battle and glory,” announced Third Striker eagerly.