Chapter 14.A

Dractus lay below the crumpled car having what the humans might call a ‘Fuck My Life’ moment. One second he was happily carving up demon spawn, the next second he was laying on his back below a tiny human electric car. This turn of events did not make Dractus happy. On top of the rest of this shittiness his tail was crushed at an extremely painful angle beneath him. Dractus knew one thing for sure, whoever had done this to him was going to pay. He wasn’t sure what the extent of his injuries were, but he was glad that it was a small car and not a large one. His ax was pinned to his chest otherwise he would have activated his laser blade skill and cut this thing off of him. Unfortunately because of the close proximity of the weapon to his body he didn’t have a lot of options and he couldn’t get any leverage to lift the car with his arms pinned to his chest.

Dractus wondered who would help him out of his current predicament. Hank was probably strong enough to move the car off of him, definitely not Jimmy or Cerulean. Hix ax had a concussive blast skill that he could use but in this confined space he might liquefy his internal organs with a stunt like that. As he continued to ponder different avenues of escape and forms of retribution for the one who had done this to him he noticed a few of the demon-spawn were getting closer to his position. He could see their clawed feet from his limited view under the deformed vehicle, and he could hear them skittering about. Surely they were looking for a way to get at him and eat his corpse, only he wasn’t dead.

All of a sudden the weight of the car was ripped off of him. Dractus looked up to find his savior… It was the smart cables from Cerulean’s ship. He had forgot all about that. To be fair a car had just landed on him so a lapse of critical thinking was understandable. Before the demons could descend upon him a few of the smart cables wrapped around their torsos and ripped them up into the air towards the hovering ship. Dractus watched and laughed as the smart cables dropped the creatures once they were about a 150 feet up. Enough messing around, time to see if I can move, thought Dractus. He fought through the aches and pains of moving and got to his feet. He tried to get to his feet quicker by pushing off with his tail but a great pain shot through it all the way up to his spine. He swung his tail around into his view and he notices a large piece of metal is embedded in it which he painfully dragged out.

“SOMEONE WILL PAY FOR THIS!” he shouted.

Above him he heard a large WHOOMPH noise. He recognized that sound. It was Cerulean’s ship firing a special type of ammunition. What ammunition was yet to be seen. Dractus’ eyes caught sight of a large black flying projectile about the size of a football. It had two stubby wings on the sides of it, meant to stabilize its descent. It flew until it landed among a pack of 30 some odd demon-spawn who had been headed his direction. A second later a great spout of fire flew into the air where the specialty ammunition had landed instantly killing most of the demon-spawn. The ones that remained alive were running around on fire trying to put themselves out.

In the distance Bertha’s haunted cry called out “MY CHILDREN!” Surely she would be headed this way to investigate. She had to have been the one who threw the car at Dractus. He would head to where her children had died and wait for her.

***

Jimmy and Cerulean were fighting back to back, picking off Bertha’s broodlings as they tried to rush them over and over again. Hank was still down the street causing hell. Jimmy was sending potshots Hank’s way when he could in a futile attempt to keep Bertha off of his bulldozer. Earlier he had seen her beating on it and he had done his best to provide cover fire, but Bertha’s hide was so thick that his rounds weren’t having much effect. Sure if there were ten of him focusing fire she could probably eventually be brought down, but not by a lone human firing and one rifle.

Cerulean was only half paying attention to the battle, her attention was split with flying her ship remotely via her tablet. She was currently using it to lift a car off of Dractus. The headstrong asshole had been so busy cutting apart these spawnlings that he hadn’t noticed a flying car… It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate Dractus’ battle tenacity, she just wished there was a little more critical thinking and less bloodlust every once in a while. Occasionally she would take a reprieve from directing her ship with her tablet and fire off a beam of searing laser from her micro pistol.

That was a stop-gap though, she knew the only way to win this battle was with her ship. It was well past time to bring in the big guns. Luckily Hank’s antics had drawn Bertha away from the town hall where most of the humans were. So if she lit Bertha up now there might be no casualties. She just had to get Hank out of there so she could drop some serious ordinance. SHIT, she could see a large hoard heading towards Dractus, an incendiary shell should fix that. Normally she would let him handle that kind of thing, but he had just been hit with a car...

Bertha let out one of her haunting screams when the shell landed and ignited, “MY CHILDREN!” She hoped Dractus was smart enough to get out of dodge if Bertha was headed his way.

She started directing her ship over to Hank’s position, but she noticed her ship’s cameras showed a dire situation. Some kind of giant robot was holding Hank’s vehicle in place as Obsidian attempted to pry it open. She was readying some specialized ordinance when she saw Obsidian fall off the vehicle holding his face. What had Hank done to him? In her peripheral vision she saw three demon-spawn jump off of the nearest building and began heading her way. She drew her pistol and shot two of them in their disfigured faces, the third one scrambled away in fear. Once she brought her tablet back up she was just in time to see Hank’s vehicle start to subtly shift. Its entire form began to look sleeker and stronger, then the tail on the back of the vehicle spun upward and released some kind of explosive shot into the robot’s face. GET EM HANK!

She continued to watch in pure enjoyment as Hank ran over the retreating robot’s legs. She saw Obsidian was trailing Hank’s vehicle at a run, moving way faster than a rock man should be able to. He had something in his hands and he slapped it onto the back of Hank’s bulldozer and then ran off the road into the nearest building. A second later the back of the bulldozer exploded into green flames, NO! Cerulean decided to do something she had never done before, she instructed the smart cables to grab Dractus, Jimmy, and herself. Quickly enough she was being pulled hundreds of feet into the air. She then instructed her ship to launch a specialty round of fire suppression foam at Hank’s vehicle. Lastly she launched the smallest bunker buster in her arsenal at the building that Obsidian was taking cover in. She was delighted when she saw Obsidian’s limp form thrown threw the street on fire as her ordinance went off and the building exploded, asshole deserved it. The smart cables set Dractus, Cerulean, and Jimmy down close to the smoking bulldozer.

“You robbed me of my revenge!” Dractus shouted.

Jimmy looked a little green, “Need more of a warning before you do that.”

“Look,” she said as she pointed at the bulldozer that was now partially a smoking ruin. The whole back end was melted, but the cab and front end looked intact.

“This is why you don’t bring initiates to hunt demons for their first mission,” said Dractus as he ran over to the bulldozer.

He tried to grab the door but it was so hot that is burned his hand, “Cerulean can you open this door?”

Before she could respond the door popped itself open. “That won't be necessary,” said a small voice from somewhere inside the vehicle. Dractus was surprised to see a small holographic version of the Killdozer with a little smiling face.

“You have been marked a friendly in this vehicle’s database. If you would please remove Hank from this vehicle quickly. It lacks the appropriate climate control to keep someone like him alive, and I had to keep the door locked to stop his enemies from killing him in his diminished state. Dractus grabbed Hank and unceremoniously dumped unconscious and overheated form on the ground a few feet away from the bulldozer which was still putting out so much heat that it was uncomfortable to be around.

“Get up lazy human,” he said to Hank’s unconscious form. Dractus felt something metal push up against the back of his neck. Out of the corner of his eye he could see it was Jimmy with his human weapon.

“If you drop my friend like that again I’ll put a bullet in you,” said Jimmy. Dractus casually smacked the barrel away.

“Don’t be so melodramatic, he is alive.”

Cerulean ran up and pulled out a tether out with a large bore needle on one end of it. She plugged one end of the tether into her tablet and jammed the other end into Hank’s neck.

“GOD DAMN! Have you rude fuckers never heard of bedside manner? The man is obviously injured. Can we stop throwing him on the ground and jabbing him with needles?” shouted Jimmy.

Cerulean didn’t reply immediately. Jimmy could see all kinds of data scrolling across her tablet in a language he didn’t recognize.

“Well, what’s the prognosis doc?” asked Jimmy.

“It’s looking like extreme overheating, and the percussion from the blast did some damage to his soft tissues. He will recover, but he is going to be in an extreme amount of pain when he wakes up.

“We have a problem,” said Dractus. Jimmy and Cerulean turned to see what he was talking about. Bertha was walking up the street towards them absolutely surrounded by the stained-humans. Her black oily skin was leaking sludge from a hundred wounds.

“ARBITERSSSS!!!!!!” she screamed, again it sounded like the voices of twenty or thirty women cranked up to decibels so loud that it actually shattered nearby car windows.

“That has to be every living human left in town that she has at her feet,” said Jimmy.

“It’s a smart move, she is stopping me from just blowing her up with my ship. She knows we won't kill the civilians,” said Cerulean.

“YOU HAVE KILLED ENOUGH OF MY CHILDREN!” screamed Bertha. Then she grabbed one of the stained-humans and threw him into the air. She opened her maw and swallowed him whole on his downward arc. The Arbiter team watched in sick fascination as she chewed. The lump of the human she had eaten moved down her throat. Bertha’s many wounds started closing in seconds right in front of the Arbiter team.

“She used his soul to power her own regeneration,” said Dractus.

“I’ll evacuate the humans using the smart cables,” said Cerulean. “You two have to kill her or at least keep her busy while I clear them. Once they are all clear we will blow this entire town to hell.”

“Easy enough, just delay a thirty-foot tall super-demon,” Jimmy said sarcastically.

“Don’t worry, I’ll give you an unfair advantage,” said Cerulean.

She went into deep concentration manipulating her tablet, before finally saying, “watch this.” Every smart cable on Cerulean’s ship jetted down at once grabbing all of the humans closest to Bertha. Simultaneously a specialty round of ammunition was fired that smacked Bertha directly in one of her armpits and detonated. There was no fire or explosion, not this time, just a massively expanding blue blob. It completely encompassed Bertha’s right arm and began to harden. Bertha began to beat on it with her left arm to try to remove or break it up, but it was still sticky and drying in places and mostly she was just making a mess and degrading her situation.

“GO NOW,” Cerulean shouted as she worked to clear as many civilians as she could with her smart cables.

Dractus ran off first, Jimmy on the other hand calmly walked forward twenty feet and went to a kneeling position and began trying to shoot out Bertha’s eyes. Every shot he landed on Bertha’s face made the stained-humans spasm. Dractus who had just ran past the first line of stained-humans smacked the flat side of his axe against the roof of a car and let out a concussive blast. The blast wave washed over the thralls who were trying to block his path and knocked them over like so many dominoes. He rushed through the gap he had made and took a running leap at Bertha. She raised her hand to swat him away, but he executed a perfect front flip and rolled into a ball, which reduced his size enough to avoid her swat. As soon as he was just past her arm still in mid-air he stretched his body back out. With his axe in both of his hands still flying forward he activated the laser edge and scored a deep gash on her underarm before finally landing on his feet. Jimmy had watched the entire maneuver and had to admit that Dractus was a first class badass.