“No!” The pollutant exclaimed.

“I thought we were on the same page with this. You would have died if we didn’t run.” She knew it was true.

She nearly shortened us down to the Circuit board six, she did think it unlikely she’d fair too well against the others, those who are. But if she couldn’t, then it’d be safe to say that Ae couldn’t either.

Not to mention, “You fucker, we’ve been here for hours! It’s just like you said, my birthday ended at 12, so, yeah, all this shit is ruining my party.”

Axel gritted his teeth, he was getting fed up with this girl, “I told you, if you leave this building before my robot shows up, they will just kill you. We literally do not stand a chance.”

She roared at him, she had no reason not to, she was the one with armed soldiers. “Do you always take advice from your dog? I can say for a fact, right now? You’re dead weight. They’re after you. What’s stopping me from trading you out. That seems like the selfless thing to do, put aside my… carnal desires to protect my friend, and also Rocky.”

She was trying to get him angry, though he tried not to show, it was clear on his face, it was working.

“Sparky is not a dog, he’s an amalgamation of nearly the entirety of human knowledge. That counts flight patterns and war tactics. If he says there are 150 tons of metal floating above our heads and we need to sit, we sit.”

He regained composure after thinking, “And that’s still not a good play for you, selling me out. You go down that route, you’ll be starting an ‘international’ incident. You’re not dumb, you know that if a VIPU gets taken out in an area that you have a known presence in, they might not believe you’re responsible, but they’ll still use it as an excuse for war.”

“I’m just joking,” she said with a smile, thinking to mess with him further. “-duh.” She took a lucky guess at what might annoy him, and she hit the mark. He hates to be talked down to. He seethed wordlessly.

Clover pouted dumbly, “Come on I thought that was pretty obvious. I’m not selfless after all. Guess at least some of your brain power crosses over into common sense, at least when you’re not busy using it to make sexbots.”

Before the maker could think about what that meant, Tay-tay, the ‘bitch’, knocked. “Open.”

Tayanita Akecheta. One of the few soldiers in the Mount Bastard that was from America. Apparently, her family hunted monsters in the great plains, till they were wiped out or quit. One might think that the loss might heavily affect the local ecosystem, a rise in powered animals, but a few years before their fall, during their decline, the International’s organisation gained a foot hold in the northern Americas, and did a better job than an exclusive clan of powerless hunters.

Tay-tay, as Clover preferred to call her, hopped over the Atlantic at around sixteen, and Bastard quickly scooped her up. Usually, he took little interest in monster hunting, but he believed it to be one of many ways he might further his understanding of the predominantly monster hunting Organisations he was surrounded by. Due to their shared enemy, the Internationals, she bowed her head. So, she quickly climbed the ranks, until she was put in charge of a comfortable position under the Bastard’s hand, if ever he had a need for her.

Therein lies the reason Clover hates her.

“He’s here. The green guy. Says he took one of them out.”

“He did?” Both powered Units were surprised.

Neither thought him capable of much more than troubling some thugs, but it seemed he was capable of taking out a being with some worth in their minds.

“Should we let him in? Don’t forget he is our en-” Clover cut her off before she could make any valid points, “No, no, I’ll come down to meet him. Get me some extra ammo for the road.”

She bumped past her rival, leaving Axel to remember his annoyance.

“Wait- Fuck, how do you work with this bitch, ms monster-hunter?”

Her nose scrunched up, “How can you work for butchers?” Good. Someone who didn’t like him without knowing him, they’re always so easy to rile up.

“I don’t work for them. But oh, I am the butcher, though maybe not your people’s, Akecheta.” He left with a smile, ready to fight with this spoilt princess.

The pollutant thought, worried about the next moves she’d make. Even if she used her power, actively used it to get her way, sometimes it didn’t go as planned, there are always unforeseen consequences.

Once she had tried to use it to convince a boy from school to hang out with her, but it seems like that had a delayed affect, after he thought about some of the things she’d said, the false porcelain words, only 3 hours later did he come back, after she was finished exploring that forest, and she was too drunk to remember any of it.

Right now, if she used her ability to find Ae what’s to say she doesn’t find her dead? It isn’t like making a wish when used actively, it’s more akin to crossing your fingers, except it works.

The floor of the customer’s lounge was clear except for three guards looking after her big green door stopper. He’d found a booth to sit himself in while he waited. He smiled dumbly, she smiled slyly, “Been a while, hasn’t it?”

She just scoffed, “It’s been a day or two, shit stain. You sure you didn’t lose any brains that time I blew your off your head?”

He didn’t want to answer that, he couldn’t acknowledge that aspect of himself in her presence.

Luckily, he didn’t have to, a once cool voice rang out followed by the shifting of metal, “You are not taking him with you, he’s my body guard, and if he can take out- which one did you take out Greeney?”

He was happy to answer, in a dramatic tone he exclaimed, “THE SHAMROCK defeated THE LIVING LEGS with the HELP of AE! Haha, that thing can breathe under water, right? I didn’t just kill it did I? We were arguing about that-”

Clover cut him off, feigning interest, “Wowie! Good boy, he was a tough one, anyway, we’ve talked, and we’re going back to the party, aaand we’re leaving Mr. Technosexual to his devices.”

Then she thought about what he said, “Did you say Ae??”

She would have grabbed him by the shoulders, if Tayanita hadn’t come along with her spare ammo, “Where is she??”

His grin faded. “I thought she was here.”

Clover shook with frustration after hearing that. “Why would she be here! She doesn’t know where here is!”

The green thing interjected, “We were literally two streets away! I just pointed her the right way and-”

Clover finished the conversation for him, as she stomped to the door, the technophile called out, “No! Do not go through that door, Sparky-” She didn’t even look, not a word, just a motion from her got her underlings to raise their weapons.

“Don’t pull anything now. You can’t, remember?”

Her head jiggled on its shoulders with a mock smile, “Don’t put it past me, fucker.”

It faded to her true feelings when she turned to Shamrock, “You gonna come or what.” His mouth was a gape, and she decided that he wasn’t going to be of much help after he stammered, “Let’s just all cool down, and think of some sort of plan.”

Though Tayanita and the more level headed goons thought the same, they weren’t the boss.

“Shit.” was the last thing Clover heard from the American as she walked through the door.

Walking down the street, it was quiet, apart from the human noise. The cars, the blinking of stop signs, those who noticed the girl with the gun walking angrily down the street their way.

But there were no birds, she’d noticed those things caw like crazy down here, and the distinct absence of wind, though it had been forecast as a clear night, it made her uneasy, and that uneasiness was a feeling she was taught to trust.

Unlike Shamrock, Ae, or any of the other people in Tralee, (excluding the machines maker), she knew it was coming before the thundering in the sky. She followed the first instinct that came to mind. She ran as fast as she could with the heavy tube of iron in her arms.

She thanked the Glass God that she was wearing flats tonight.

She was able to run quicker, through some primal response, when the rush of wind could now be felt, rather than heard.

They tried to slow their landing, both Stan and the Gator, under my orders to keep the maker alive. Yes, they did as I instructed, but it was too little too late. Though she had cleared a few streets from the mass, she was blown off her feet by the shock and her ears burst. She was still better off than the maker of machines, and the people she was supposed to be leading.

The first to regain their senses was actually Tayanita, despite her close proximity. Axel is physically unimpressive, and Shamrock had already been kicked around a little, whereas the Akecheta girl had experience with such beings, and had the skill to reorganise herself and their group.

They couldn’t get a good look at the Gator, both because of the plume of dust in the wake of its landing, and the sheer size of the model, it was like trying to look at a skyscraper from the street.

But she saw it, though the dark of night did obscure it somewhat, the outline of the reptile-inspired titan was clear, its drooping figure loomed over the quarter in the distance. Its base was wide enough to support the colossal mass of its snaking torso and head, though it was aided by the countering weight of its equally massive tail. The mech had a near continuous sheet of dark steel casing over its already tough inside, though there were gaps, chinks, that allowed for the titan to lumber forward, to swing its tail, or its clawed appendages, that employed the same heated filaments as the maker's other large-scale toys.

As you can imagine, a spacecraft equipped with a nuclear reactor can produce an astronomical heat yield.

It’s claws, joints, and smiling maw shared the same hot glow. Seeing such a thing looming over her lively hood, Clover did the only thing a human can do. She jumped to her feet and ran in the opposite direction. Though the pollutant kept thoughts of her friend in mind, there was also that nagging again, to simply survive. And sure enough, every other creature felt it too; but the hero.

I can’t say for sure, there are rules to these things after all, but from that expression that hung from its face when it gazed upon the crash site of the gator, and for the rest of that night in fact, it was clear to all how it felt.

He flung himself at the gargant with reckless abandon.

The grating of the steel was deafening.

Stan Berwick had been living within the hull of the sadistic intelligence known as Sobek and although the silicon creature could have shielded its passenger from the noise, it allected to make the human as deaf as the incomplete machine.

The two were never suited for each other, though Stan had believed that acquiring such a ‘tool’, as he thought of it at the time, would make him an equal to the boss of his company, and in his perception at the time, the world. Now he is merely a rat in maze of metal, chasing whatever whiff of cheese he can catch.

Yes, the green boy leapt directly towards the feet of the bipedal frame, he scrounged through rubble trying to find as many people as he could, though the destruction never ceased as the Gator lumbered forward with no particular interest in the gravel; the people of this hickish country. With every minute he spent prying the rubble off of broken bodies, it levelled another building, killed more people. But still he screamed to deafened ears. For nearly half an hour, he made like a carrion feeder, following in the wake of the carnage, only serving to clean the trodden road of a killer.

The exact opposite of everyone else. Every ‘sane’ creature, though from these analyses I am sure you see there are no sane human beings. You are defective creatures. Impure. But the single most toxic individual is on display in this document. She ran through the streets, the Gator watched, but so did another, Sym-29.

He likes to watch, to see how actions might play out from afar, without his interference. It is a quirk picked up from his short time as a god in his false world.

Currently he is watching the pollutant, observing its moves, just as instructed by my String. The plan was to attack once they were all in one place, preferably at 2 o’clock once all our pieces were on the field, but under the impression that all of their enemies were spread thin, Stan and Sym thought it best to corner the maker, and dispose of the pollutant respectively.

As Bastard’s prized piece ran, screamed for her friend, Sym and his projector drones moved silently in the madness. She was taken completely unawares as a foot materialised under her legs causing her to fall in a tumble. Though she recovered quick enough, when she tracked her rifle on the position, there was no one there. Her eyes flickered at the faintest noises she could make out, given her distance from the towering figure.

She heard a buzz and twisted her stance to catch it, but to no avail.

“he doesn’t want him dead. he say’s your mine. that god. don’t think i won’t take every pleasure in dissecting you.”

His voice radiated from three different sources. She thought back to what little she knew from the briefing, “You’re that video game looking guy from earlier. I’ll give you one last chance pizza face, I know I didn’t do much to you at the store, but believe me, bad shit happens to people who try to mess with me.”

She thought on his words, he wanted to ‘dissect’ her and was more than likely one of those types that likes to talk during a fight, she was used to those types by now.

“that is interesting. can you move faster than light? i thought not. you do not stand a chance against me with ‘luck’.”

He does not understand the lengths of her power, though I can’t blame him, he isn’t actually a god, though he may yearn for the status.

“I’ve gotten this far, and believe me when I say I’ve gone through hell to get to this point. This isn’t a warzone, it’s my party.” After spinning herself around to feign confusion, worry, she crept back in the direction of the Quarter, seeing that as her current best bet. If she could just get another pair of eyes to look out for this guy’s projectors…

Just as he seemed to have left the scene, a face and fist quickly formed in front of her, the latter of which made contact with her stomach. She coughed, nearly crippled in on herself, nearly dropped her instrument of death. She was taught to keep out of danger, to live no matter what, not how to take a proper punch.

“sorry, that was rude, wasn’t it? do not worry. i’ve grown rather found of you. i think i’ll keep you for a while yet.”

She thought back on what Axel said this thing’s second power was, and she nearly shivered, if it weren’t for the pain in her gut overwhelming her.

She tried to think of something, anything, to stop it from being used on her.

Axel himself was currently in the care of the woman he’d tried to anger earlier, as they and his dogs scurried through the streets, all to escape that evil eye for even a second.

She shouted at him, “What’s your plan, butcher?” and though he didn’t hear her words, he got the message.

“Shit.” he murmured to himself.

“I wanted to save this for later, kinda like a surprise, but if I really don’t have a choice.” He turned to the dog and admitted, “I’m gonna need the suit now Darlene.”

The processor tuned out the unimportant white noise that would have crippled a human’s ears. “WHAT? Daddy, you can’t be serious-”

Without a clue what she was saying he interjected, “Give me the suit Darlene.”

After a second’s pause, it bent its limbs and unlocked a compartment on its back, revealing a black synthetic fabric with what seemed to be random lines of blue circuitry. Around the corner from a processor the size of a bus, he stripped naked into his ‘birthday suit’.

Tayanita looked away in disgust, trying to focus on the enemy, rather than whatever disgust ritual her boss’ fuck budy was participating in.

Once he slipped his body into that elastic covering, he swiped a small trigger on his nape, and let out a grunt as it clinged to every inch of his skin, except above the chin.

Tayanita glimpsed back for a second before seeing that just as much was on show.

“Sparky, translate me into a radio format, will you?” He made the order just before he stepped out into view of the monster he created, both of them really.

Stan was filled with ire when he saw the maker through the same lenses of the gator, Kali in turn was filled with a giddy ignorance as it bent its craning head down to meet its maker.

It wasn’t as arrogant as Sym, it made sure to stretch an arm down the street to block off any means of escape. The two made an attempt to cease as much of the noise as possible, they wanted him to talk freely, despite their inability to hear through any other means than the Ai’s transmissions.

There was certainly something off about what he was wearing, there was no doubt about that, but what worried the duo even more was the smile stretched across his face.

Stan new him personally, he knew that the CEO of the Right corporation, under no circumstances, makes a fake smile. And this was a big one. After a few seconds of attempting silence the Gator snapped, it let out a blaring similar to that of an oil tankard.

His dog translated, “He wishes to know what is so funny. I assume he is commenting on your expression.”

He let out a giggle, “What’s so funny? Why don’t you ask your God.” He stretched his legs, then his arms, as he waited for my String to send them it’s findings.

Though the truth is, it found nothing. There was no mention of this suit anywhere. Not in any of the Right corporation’s public or private listings. It was something the CEO had kept secret, much like the Sym series, or his dealings with Brigs in the past. Buried secrets that have altered the course of the universe.

It simply told them it didn’t know why he was smiling, and to be cautious. Stan sent a question from the belly of the beast “What is it.”

At this question, the ecstatic smile on the makers face became more serene, thoughtful. The gator glared, with its eyes tracked on him, there was no way for him to escape this with a lie, it had been built to see deviations in temperature, and with the experience gained from its captive, it learned how to see the truth. Detecting fluxes in the circulation of his blood, similar to that of a liar, but not dissimilar enough from the palpitations brought on by excitement to make a distinction.

“You know, the other day some guy compared me to iron man. I guess I can see the superficial similarities, tech genius, rich, but I wouldn’t say I’m a playboy. And I have a rule about closing myself in metal, you can guess why Stan.”

He steadied his hand on the impulse to squash his former boss, he was ready to be pushed over the edge, fuck the Liquid-crystal God’s promises. He only offers salvation for the small-spanning egos beneath him, not the short-lived ecstacy of vengeance.

“Sorry, too soon. Besides, we’ve talked about how this predicament is your fault anyway. I’m trying to explain what this thing is for. I hate having to use heavy duty machines, the simpler, multi-purpose tools are always better to use than a bunch of specific little doodads. If that seems to go against my design ethics, it’s because it does. It’s economical to put doodads on the market, that way tools like the Internationals can’t do much with them, you never understood that, you were always the humanitarian, Berwick. If I gave humanity this technology freely, taught little kids how to do it themselves, then just about anybody would be able to make their own Kali, but they’re too stupid to put in any fail safes. Maybe you think I’m an idiot because I didn’t put a sign to keep you from shitting the bed on the space program, but that seems more like- ah, no, promised I wouldn’t argue.”

“The reason nobody has seen this thing before, why it isn’t on the market, is because it’s for me. I wasn’t able to… protect something important. You remember her, gravity girl from way down in Texas. Well, we broke up awhile back. I couldn’t keep it going, I couldn’t be Tony Stark. By this point, I’m guessing Stan’s trying to kill me, and Kali’s actually holding you back, all so he can see how this ends up. Go figure, my ai is the smart one. But you probably aren’t smart enough to guess what I’m talking about. I needed a machine to make me the billionaire playboy. You wanna know what this thing is? It’s got a pretty good ai hooked up to my nerves, that reads the lady’s mood and it’ll give me pointers on the best way to please a woman.”

“It’s a condom, it’s viagra, it’s a penis enlarger…”

The gator is distracted, it found the vulgarness, and the silliness, hilarious, it let it blind it, but the other mind understands the act. He is however, too late to turn their head back to the maker's reinforcement from America.

An iron man.

Not too far from that night’s most bombastic scene, a girl was being beaten a block away.

She had kept moving forward, until she eventually came to the ruins of her den, but all of her allies were either dead, had ran away, or were dealing with the biggest target. “you’re actually pathetic, aren’t you?”

She wasn’t really listening, even with her skull being pressed into the rubble, she clung to consciousness, clung to that purposeless crawl forward, though that had been ended. “i know how somebody who’s comfortable holding a gun presents themself. you do not have it. you are unskilled, incapable on your own. it seems you don’t understand what i’m trying to do. i’m trying to save you. if you would just stop resisting- stop fighting to stay awake. you could be a god in the real world, in my world.”

“Gib… me… my gun.” After half a minute of thought, Sym obliged, “i don’t really care if you shoot yourself, it’s up to you to make the right choice.” He released the girl and walked four paces towards the ruins of the Quarter. It took that time for the pollutant to rise to her feet, and longer still to load a shot into the rifle. It put a frown on her face, that it was so clear to even an enemy, her fumbling and lack of skill, she was conscious of the impression it might give her men, the doubt it would instill.

Her age and gender already do that, obviously, but that can be explained to Those Who Know, simply by the fact that she is One That Is. That’s the reason behind the room with the red door, it keeps them away from her, builds mystery, builds a myth. But in reality, she wasn’t even the number one teenage girl in Bastard’s Mountain.

A normal human proved more efficient at managing territory than her. She hated Tayanita for that reason, she knew it was petty, but a part of her couldn’t shake the feeling of inadequacy.

She didn’t even try look at the hologram, nor did she hear what he had said, the two’s thoughts naturally aligned, “Do you know what separates those with fortune from those without? To skip the guessing, it’s luck. I might not have any special skills, but I got lucky once, and now I’m surrounded by nobility. A king who needs me, and that I can serve well. I bet you don’t know the first thing about what that feels like, you freaky.” He blinked, though it was clear from the movements of it that the act was only customary. The wincing of his eyelids like a camera shutter. “frankly, i just don’t care anymore. you’ve lost.”

She spat a bit of blood from a puncture on her lip, “Wanna see a real depressing loser?” She simply closed her eyes, and aimed for the sky. One shot was all it took.

The butt of the rifle clacked on the floor, as a foot made of light made contact with her face.

“was that a message for your god? the glittering one? it won’t save you. you’re past that point.”

During the resumption of the beating, Clover cleared her mind, waited for it too land.

Through all the madness- the colossal treading of black iron on the town, the manipulation of gravity to raise said iron or to tear the enemy apart, and the strange strategy to use a dirty machine to strengthen one’s self physically; rubble fell and squished the unknowing inhabitants of Tralee.

Screams languished now, after nearly an hour of fighting, only one held its strength. One voice, meek yet still wilful, rang out into the night.

Until finally, at 01:59, a single bullet had landed by his feet. It took a further second of thought before, an epiphany suddenly struck his mind.

Clover’s mind couldn’t stay away from the current situation, she too had struck the nail on the head. If this hologram was invincible, it’s life unthreatenable, then why did it always transform back to its soft-light form? It’s not like the thing has any organs to protect by shifting between intangibility, and it’s hard light form.

Unless there’s an actual reason to try and keep its body safe.

It’s a computer mind was able to react at the speed of light, so the only way to touch him, is to take him by surprise.

But it would only be for a fraction of a second, before he’d notice the enemy jumping in. It would have to be a good punch.

With this thought came the ramblings of a fading consciousness, “He’s gonna rock your socks off with this one.”

Perhaps more damage would have been done, if she had kept quiet, perhaps more was done because of it.

At that moment, in a sharp instant, through the rubble a green hand was thrown forth, leaving a streak in the street in the same colour as it flew by. Half a second later, and there would have been no connection. Half a second sooner, and the power to permanently damage the ai would not have been achieved. Once it made its connection, a crack of thunder louder than the dropping of the Gator rang through the streets, and was followed by the static screech of the simulated man.

While the dust covered lucky fist caught its breath from the earlier struggles, the carriers of the simulated intelligence swerved wildly into darkened corners. Finally, those unblinking eyes looked down on the pollutant, “You need any help? There’s a paramedic not too far away. I'm sure they'd be happy to have just one person get out of... out of this alive.”

The pollutant of pointlessness is diagnosable with: Imposter syndrome, minor anxiety, an inferiority complex, and (arguably) bipolar disorder.

For the sake of upholding The Pointlessness, actions are to be taken in the event the pollutant should ever overcome their doubts.