Chapter Forty Six

Alexis

When Alexis charges into the metropolis on the back of Monster, she is doing her damnest to try keeping up with Five. Pedestrians are pouring around cars and down the streets, trying to get inside of anywhere they can, like a massive flood. Weaving between all of them and the manic drivers still in their cars is well beyond her capabilities. All she can do is tell Monster to keep following Five and to not run anyone over.

The moment one of the giant yellow mechs rounds the corner of a building towards them, she realizes a little too late that they’ve gotten themselves way too far in over their heads. Being a fearless hero is one thing, but facing a hundred tons of absolutely pissed off armored robot is another. No fantasy powers are going to save her here. All it would take is a single misstep for her existence, all it is, ever was, or could be, eradicated. She wants to look back, for Marek, but she can’t. Everything is going too fast.

While the giant robot charges in over head of them, it becomes clear that she should not have been following Five. She clearly has no fear of death. She leads all three of them right under the things legs. She can even feel the heat of the machine’s engines blasting down as it strides over top of her. Like a heavy thunderstorm, the sound of it drowns everything else out.

Marek, being the slowest, still has the sense, and the time, to take cover. Five immediately stops her runner in the middle of the street and starts unloading her standard rifle at it, aiming for any kind of gap between its armor plates. Rifle is way too big of a gun for her, but she still manages to unload the entire magazine in good order. Stopping Monster alongside her, she does the same thing as Five, trying everything she can to get the mech to turn around, if only for a second. The rest of the guards back home need every little bit they can get.

Bullets zing off the back of its head, and everywhere else she aims. The thing is moving quickly, and doesn’t seem to even notice, let alone acknowledge their presence. Compared to the havoc it’s wrecking all around itself, small arms fire means nothing. It probably has no idea they’re even shooting at it. At least, that’s what it feels like.

The only things that do happen to slow it down, are the footbridges and second level street overpasses going between the buildings. As she helplessly watches the mech bring Welan city to its knees, she notices something strange. As aggressive as the machine is, it will only smash through the smaller footbridges to get past them, but not even try with the overpasses. Instead, it stops to duck underneath them. Her heart sinks, seeing that that it really is only seeking to destroy home base. It’s not a simple mindless brute, and it knows what it’s doing.

As she stares in complete shock, she watches another footbridge go down. The mech hammers the thing with both arms, like a damn gorilla, shearing both ends right off the walls. Glass, metal, and a couple photographers are all sent fifty feet to the ground. To her side, Five’s cussing catches her off guard. She’s not about to be brushed off by the thing like this.

Five shouts at the robot, as if it has disrespected the wrong damn person. “You think you’re cool, huh, mutherfuker!”

She can clearly see that Five is working through some other issues too. She’s never seen her this aggressive before. There is some serious hatred in her voice, and on her face. Before she can even get the words out, to stop her, Five is barreling down the street right after the mech again. Like she had told the damn thing to do, Monster charges right after Five, nearly throwing her off the back.

By the time it reaches another overpass, Five catches up to the Mech. She gasps when she sees her and Runner leap through the air at the machine’s foot. Runner grabs ahold with both sets of front claws as if thinking it could truly drag the entire thing to the ground. The insane attempt only manages to get them pulled ten feet off the ground and thrown right back down even harder. Runner ends up being thrown through the side of a car, while Five slaps the pavement like a piece of raw meat. It doesn’t look good. What it does do, is get the Mech to glance back.

With the shock of what happened to Five, and being completely scared out of her mind, she naturally pulls the trigger on her rifle. It’s not even shouldered, but she’s had enough training to aim from the hip by instinct. With the thing towering over her and Five, she bucks round after round out of the fresh magazine, running a line of fire up the machine’s chest and strange wedge-shaped face. One of her shots must have come close to something important, because the robot finally takes notice this time, and not in a good way.

With one powerful low sweep of an arm, it scoops up two cars in its big clawed hand and slings them at her. For the machine, it’s hardly a committal effort, but it nearly gets her killed this time. The two cars part from each other when they land, both only nearly missing her. Even though she can’t see them, she feels it lock eyes with her. It causes her heart to lurches so hard, it hurts.

With a viciously fast reach, the monstrous robot turns and lashes out at her with its claws. Zeven with her eyes slamming shut in absolute terror, she manages to turn the throttle all the way back on her runner and leap out of the way. With only one hand on the controls, her arm feels like it’s being pulled apart when Monster leaps as hard as it can with all fours. The pain is telling her to let go, but her adrenaline is telling her that she will die if she does.

As she and Monster leap to cover, she can hear the rise in pitch of the mech’s turbine engines as it puts all of its strength into killing her. The pain is too great, and her strength fails. When she loses grip on Monster, and gets thrown to the concrete, she can feel the giant claws of the mech smashing deep into the ground around her. The side of her head smacks down hard, causing her to let out a short bewildered scream. She curls herself up into a ball of pain, feeling the most hopeless regret in all her life. In her ears, is the overwhelming rumbling of the ground around her being completely torn up.

Somehow, well overhead of her, the thunderous booming of much bigger gunshots turns the mech’s attention from her. When she rolls over off her hurt arm, her eyes open to the sight of half the street having been pulled right out of the ground. Water is bursting out of the ground around her, and the thunder overhead is continuing. Marek is sixty feet up, on top of a second street level overpasses, raining shots down on the robot’s back with one of the flack cannons. She can hear the steel rods clattering in under the broad armor plates covering its frame. It sounds like they’re getting inside of something.

After she counts all Five rounds, she looks up and spots two little black dots being hurled over the edge of the steel railing onto the machine. The clear “ding - donk” they make when they land on the metal beast makes her naturally shield her face. Two huge explosions rock the entire area, shattering windows all around the block and raining debris down to the street. She’s never believed a robot could truly feel hate until now. The aggression it turns to Marek with reminds her of Aaron, at his worst.

The Mech makes a wide swing for him, all the way from where it almost got ahold of her. Blocks of concrete, rebar, and piping are flying everywhere as its giant greedy fist flies through the air towards him. There are screams from onlookers watching from through busted windows as the things claws spread out and screech across the heavy steel railing overhead, gouging everything up from off the second level street. Cars, asphalt, and steel come pouring down over the side as it nearly tears half of the overpass off down. There is no doubting the thing could pull it down as easily as the foot bridges.

A streak of silver glints down the end of the second level street just in time, with Marek still atop of it. The robot has narrowly missed him. In what looks like an outright fit of rage, the mech hammers both of its giant paws back down on top of the overpass, thrashing on it like an unhinged primate. Bent on taking Marek down one way or another, the machine tears the entire end of overpass free of one of the buildings and pulls it down to the ground.

With Marek on its back, Hogan holds its ground as best it can while sliding down the crumbling section of road. It has to claw its way from side to side while cars skid downward past them. With the second mech having caught up to it, the first one suddenly abandons Marek and continues to push on down the road in a renewed sprint. It appears to have a much higher priority at hand other than dealing with brats shooting at it.

After the first mech barrels down the road towards home base at a full run, the second one starts climbing over the rubble of the overpass after it. Despite the difference in armor, there seems to be something different about it. It look around itself more, and appears to be more cautious than the other. Neither of the three of them have even shot at it yet, and it’s already keeping a close eye on them.

Either way, as she sees it, she has to try stopping it too, no matter how hurt she is. She’ll either be dead, or back on the street if she doesn’t. As she sees it, dead would suit her better. With do-or-die stubbornness, she pulls the extra magazine for the flack cannon out of its pouch and stuffs it under her armpit. She grimaces, as the thing is the size of a damn novel. With what strength she has left, she unclips the cannon off its mount on her runner. The muzzle break immediately drops to the ground when it comes free. She has always thought she was the toughest damn person alive, but now, she can’t even hold her damn gun up.

Having nearly a two inch diameter breach on it, the thirty millimeter shotgun is too heavy for her to deal with in her condition. She would have never thought fifty pounds would have ever given her so much trouble. Stubbornly, she throws the thing up over her shoulder, letting out a painful moan when she does it. Emotional about the likelihood she will watch her future demolished in front of her, she shouts at the second mech while it can still hear her.

“Hey you piece of SHIT! I’m not done with you yet!”

She plops the huge rifle up onto the top of a wrecked car and flips the oversized combat sight up on it. The robot does hear her, but only gives her a glance. Pissed off that it didn’t give a shit, she angrily pulls the butt of the rifle into her shoulder and holds on as tight as she can. She takes aim at the dark black area underneath the machine’s shoulder.

Even with the huge break on the end of the barrel, the first shot feels like one of those heel kicks from Arma. Accidentally, in the shock of the moment, she pulls the trigger again, making it a two round burst. The extreme sound of the two blasts is even worse than the bludgeoning it’s giving her her headset was knocked off, and now she’s probably going to be deaf. If it weren’t for the padding in her broad shoulder armor, she figures she’d be looking at a some torn ligaments for sure. Nearly being knocked on her ass, she doesn’t see, but only hears the rounds landing hard on their target. It doesn’t sound like they simply ricocheted off.

The robot looks back at her, almost as if surprised, crumples up a service van in its claws like a beer can, and hurls it at her with much more deliberate aim. She leaps to the ground and pushes herself in tight against the edge of the sidewalk. Like falling off a ten foot ledge, she feels the three ton hunk of scrap land on her back, but it doesn’t crush her where she’s at.

She takes short difficult breaths between words, hardly able to get them out. “Fukin… el”

When she looks up, expecting another flying vehicle to already be inbound, she finds the mech is already gone out of sight. She can hear its engines ramping up and feel the quickened pace of its feet thumping from through the ground. She rolls over on her back and covers her face with her hands. There are more gunshots from standard rifles down the street, and she can hear both of the other runners trampling across the pavement. She’s already lost all hope, but she has to get up and join them, so she does.