Chapter 13.B

He went back to helping his friends. Dractus was like a whirlwind with his axe which now had a thin glowing red energy that extended about two feet out from its outward facing blade. As Dractus spun through the enemies, anything the red energy touched sizzled and burst into flames. His movements were hectic and angry. Cerulean on the other hand was the picture of calm. She had her micro-pistol in her left hand that was still shooting some kind of blue beams that would sear flesh. In her right hand was a thin Katana she had pulled out of somewhere. Her face was passive and her movements mechanical as she carefully shot anything that approached her. Those that jumped from the ceilings or walls at her were sundered in half by her razor-sharp katana. Jimmy was wild eyed and blasting creatures as fast as he saw them. Despite his haunted expression he was holding his own and killing or disabling just as many if not more than the two veteran Arbiters and Hank.

“Jimmy! Check your heat meter!” Hank shouted when he noticed two forward facing fins at the front of Jimmy’s weapon that were letting out great gouts of heat that were warping the very air in front of his weapon.

Jimmy’s eyes went wide at whatever he had seen on his heat meter and he immediately threw his gun into the approaching horde on the stairs and yelled “RUN!” before bolting towards the doors they had entered through. Cerulean followed suit knowing her incendiary was set to go off any second. Dractus let off a quicker and smaller blast of electrical arcs, just enough to stun their pursuers and provide cover before retreating himself. Hank stayed focused on shooting anything that twitched or looked their way. Dractus ran ahead of Jimmy and smacked the barricaded doors with his entire body at a run. They exploded outwards sending wood shards everywhere. The people who were on the other side of the door got sent spinning like bowling pins. Hank turned to leave when he heard and saw Cerulean’s incendiary device half buried in the sludge and biomass of a spawning nest start letting out a loud hiss and strobing red. He knew it was time to move like his life depended on it, because it probably did.

As Hank crossed the threshhold at a full run he felt a heat flash at his back. He spun around to see most of the interior of the building on fire. Well that wasn’t so bad, was his last thought before the tolerances and safeguards on Jimmy’s discarded rail driver, sitting among the now abandoned thrones, finally melted, causing the weapon’s unstable power source to detonate. Hank was blown backwards and sent rolling across the asphalt of the street. He woke up a short time later to the feeling of rain. He opened his eyes, it wasn’t rain… It was raining sludge and bits and pieces of the alien spawning grounds… The street was shaking and his friends were yelling. He looked up to see the biggest fucking alien-gorilla-thing being trailed by hundreds more of the small-monkey-creature-man-things. His friends were firing uselessly at the giant alien and her hoard. He noticed that his friends were also now painted and smeared in the raining black sludge as well. The familiar and pleasing sound of an AR15 firing made Hank glance at Jimmy who was firing his now that his railgun was gone.

“Holy shit, she got bigger!” Jimmy shouted.

Hank didn’t have time to lay around in pain, he knew this was an ideal situation for his Arbiter’s weapon: The Killdozer. He did a quick self assessment looking for injuries. Surprisingly he felt alright, the knock-off Arbiter armor under his clothes had done its job. And with the exception of the large growing lump on the back of his head he felt alright. He hopped up and ran to his bulldozer. As soon as he hit the seat it was running without him having to trigger the ignition.

“Thanks!” he shouted at his vehicle.

He carefully backed up trying to avoid the scattered stained-humans who were now standing around dumbly trying to figure out how to bring their ‘food’ into the burning building. As soon as he was aimed at the approaching hoard and the giant monster alien known as Bertha he started shifting through the gears as fast as he could. He hit the Oscillate Blades option on his weapons menu, and again watched in amazement as his solid blade segregated into more than twenty individual pieces and started to spin. When he was headed through the woods before he had left the front of his bulldozer as the solid blade. He had been afraid to jam the individual ones against the ancient trees and break them or get them stuck. He didn’t have that fear now, these demon-monkeys were mere flesh and blood.

He aimed directly at Bertha’s ankles, her hoard noticed his intent and jumped in front of her defensively. The first thirty or forty were instantly turned into a dark mist as Hank impacted their front ranks. The mist sprayed Hank’s windshield and obscured his vision. He spun the dozer out of the path of Bertha’s ankles at the last second and aimed the dozer at the rest of her hoard that were behind her in mass.

An inhuman scream came from Bertha’s throat “NOOOO, MY CHILDREN!!!!” it had sounded like 10 or 20 women were screaming all at once, but the sound had only come from her. Hank fed another twenty or so to his blades, but these ones knew to fear the infernal machine that had shredded their brothers and sisters. Some of them jumped out of the path of the Killdozer at the last second and others jumped clear directly over the spinning blades landing along the hull of the machine. Hank stopped the spinning blades and let more and more climb onto his vehicle. Once he thought he was basically at critical mass and there wasn’t enough room for more, he hit the electrical pulse button. More inhuman screams came from the demon-spawn as he shocked them with deadly amounts of amperage. It was hard to tell if they were actually dying or if he was just knocking them out, but if they weren’t attacking his friends he didn’t care.

Bertha was furious at the violent machine that had cut up her wonderful children. It was shocking some of them now as she chased it. The stinging wounds of the other Arbiter’s weapons kept pelting her back which only angered her further. She grabbed a small car and threw it at the reptilian Arbiter who was cutting more of her children with his angry ax. The car landed on top of him and a few of her children, she mourned their loss, but smiled at the Arbiter’s pain and possible death. She ordered the rest of her children to swarm the remaining two Arbiters now that they didn’t have the big ax man covering them. She would deal with the one in the angry bladed metal vehicle.

She leapt on top of the aggravating machine and was surprised that it didn’t shudder or tip over. This vehicle was dense. She felt electricity surge through her, but it did little more than tickle her giant frame. This town had fed her well and her size and birthing abilities had grown. After her successful healing of the human demon Eugene she had decided to try and alter the method to see what else she could do to these humans. She was delighted to find out that she could make them into thralls once encasing them in her larval sacks and tweaking a few of her chemical emitters. Maybe once she peeled this little Arbiter out of his vehicle she would enthrall him as well.

She yanked on different pieces of the vehicle but none of them budged. So she started punching the compartment where the driver would sit, this part looked the weakest. She started to feel give as she rained down more and more blows. The metal was hard and unforgiving against her organic fists, but this man had hurt her brood, she wouldn’t stop.

“That’s enough Bertha, I’ve brought a can opener and help,” said Obsidian who had finally decided to show up. He carried a giant pry bar that was at least as tall as he was. Down the street Bertha could see the human they had recruited to join The Balance in his own infernal machine. His Balancer weapon had evolved again since the last time she had seen it. It stood on two feet and had grown two arms, it looked like a giant metal man now.

Obsidian climbed onto the machine and eventually got up to the roof before jamming the pry bar into the seam of the door. He used his mighty strength to shove until the pointed tip screeched inside of the vehicle a bit. Obsidian leaned back and yanked trying to use his momentum and weight to get the door to pop open. Bertha smiled in pure glee exposing her many rows of teeth. With Obsidian's help it wouldn’t be long now until she got her revenge. Eugene arrived and bent his own machine over to grab the front of the bulldozer and hold it into place and stop its forward movement so that Obsidian could work more efficiently.

PAIN, BURNING PAIN! Bertha felt her broodlings dying back where she had left the other Arbiter’s. Her psychic link to them told her they were burning.

“MY CHILDREN!!!” she yelled as she left Obsidian and Eugene to go see what had caused this new loss of life.

Hank was in a tough spot. His windshield was entirely covered in demon blood and he had disabled his windshield wipers ages ago back in his shed to install the added armor. He was pretty sure Bertha was going to crush his cab in at any moment and kill him. He had no idea how his friends were faring. He was stuck on something in front of him and couldn’t pull the vehicle forward to escape this onslaught. And now some asshole with a pry bar was trying to crack open the Killdozer like a sardine can. He was out of options and he could hear the joints on his door groaning as the asshole pried. Hank made a note to himself to bring dynamite or grenades or something in the future. Man he would love to shove a stick of dynamite out of the bent portion of his door right now.

He looked around his cab and eyes landed on his pile of weapons stacked in the back corner. He grabbed the Remington 870 and shoved a few slugs into it and set it on the dash, he had a feeling he would need it soon. Then his eyes landed on his screen and the small blinking upgrade button in the corner of it. He pressed it.

You have seven upgrades available, please choose where to invest your souls:

Speed + (1)

Armor + (1)

Offense + (1)

Defense + (1)

U.I. + (1)

Efficiency +

Advanced Upgrades (Click for more options)

SWEET FUCK, SEVEN UPGRADES! This could be the edge he needed to get out of this mess! He quickly pressed Speed, Armor, Offense, Defense, U.I., and lastly the elusive Efficiency, which he pressed twice. All seven upgrades spent. Deep in his body his Arbiter Intuition was screaming that he should focus on his engine compartment. Whatever mechanism was deep inside of his Killdozer was burning and using the evil souls to power the upgrade process. Hank made a mental note to look under the hood soon and see what kind of engine was running this beast now.

Hank noticed even his dash was changing. A small metal circle about three inches in diameter was pushing itself out of the top of it, and the area that had cracked to allow its passage was healing itself and adhering perfectly to the sides of the small circular metal pedestal. Whoever was working the pry bar got his door to crack open another inch. Hank looked up out through the crack into glowing red eyes, it was the rock man. He grabbed the Remington 870 and shoved it up through the top of the bent door and rapid fired off three slugs into Obsidian’s face. Obsidian jumped off of the vehicle with his prybar to avoid further punishment, no one likes a lead facial. The metal circle on Hank’s dash started producing a strange light that blinked a few times before sputtering forth a small hologram into existence. It was a miniature version of is Killdozer about 2 inches tall with a large smiling mouth on the front grill of it behind the bulldozer blade. The headlights had been made to look like friendly eyes to complete a smiling happy face on the front of the vehicle. The mouth started to actuate and the thing began speaking in a friendly and cartoonish manner.

“Well hello there. I’m the Killdozer Mark 3 User Interface. You seem to be in a spot of trouble here. I’d like to activate the windshield wipers now if you’ll allow it.”

“Do it!” Hank shouted, realizing he was positive that he didn’t have windshield wipers before his latest set of upgrades.

The wipers cleared off the black sludge and what Hank saw actually surprised him, which was saying a lot since Hank assumed he was immune to surprised after his Arbiter VR training. It looked like a goddamn Transformer straight from his childhood was attacking him. It was as if someone had built a mech-suit while only using parts from old cars, and sitting in the chest cavity of the mech behind a pane of transparent material, clear as day, was Eugene with a sadistic smile on his face. He had the entire mech suit bent over with both of the mech’s hands on his hood holding Hank’s dozer into place.

“Sir we are taking damage to our treads, let me show you.” The small hologram’s friendly appearance shifted into a more realistic one for a second, and then the whole thing spun to a side profile and zoomed in on one side of his treads. Obsidian was there using the pry bar where he could bending things out of place and breaking things.

“That dick.”

“I concur sir. We need to leave this area as soon as possible, which we can’t do while the mech suit is holding you into place. May I recommend the Ripper Cannon?”

“What the fuck is a Ripper Cannon?”

“The ripper on the back of the vehicle has been upgraded sir, due to the point you put into offense. Additional joints were added to it as well as other useful features, well like the cannon. Use the ripper control like normally, but pull it hard in the opposite direction and the ripper will swing over the top of the cab.”

Hank did as the little hologram asked and noticed the ripper on the small hologram swung over the cab as well and was now pointed forward. He also noticed the ripper spike had two long tubes running along each side of it a few feet back from the spike aimed forward, they almost looked like gun barrels. A floating red reticle appeared on his front windshield. Hank felt the ripper control handle had a little bit of play in it. He moved it around a bit and the reticle moved with it corresponding to his movements.

“Yes sir. I see you’ve gotten the hang of it quickly. Now you can use your weapon’s screen or a voice command to fire the ripper cannon.”

Hank centered the reticle right on Eugene’s face. “FIRE IT,” he shouted. A large swath of projectiles impacted on the front of Eugene’s mech and threw it backwards while cracking the glass. Hank shifted the dozer into gear and immediately drove forward. Eugene noticed what was happening too late. He tried to crawl his new mech suit out of the way, but Hank’s Bulldozer was too fast and it entirely ran over the legs on his mech suit, crushing them mostly flat.

“God damn, what did we just fire?” Hank shouted in happiness.

“Gravel sir. Your armor no longer needed it, so it was repurposed into ammunition. It is finite and will have to be reloaded, but-”

“I get it, we fired a cubic fuck-ton gravel. Fucking awesome.”