by Brian Cody
He accelerated. The machine, in retort, pointed its laser for his head. The beam was loosed. David lifted his right, fisted it, and swung against it. Though the edge of his right sleeve super-heated to a bright orange, and though his fist burned, David clasped his teeth, and gored his limb through the current, slamming his knuckles into the laser’s barrel. A flash erupted in front of him as that barrel was shorted and the machine’s left arm blackened. The automaton pulled back its damaged left, but David caught it by the wrist and angled it aside. The alabaster machine then wound back its right and, as David, with both hands full, watched, it swung. That’s it? David thought as he perceived that blow—neither bruising nor forceful enough to drive him back; the weakest of the automaton’s throws in the midst of that fight, and weak enough to keep him in place. But why_?—David seized as intertwining knocks and clicks echoed through the machine’s forearm.
With a clang, the machine’s blade darted from its forearm and jabbed for two feet. David, simultaneously, jerked away, with the double-edge extending beside him. He watched as the machine pulled back, and he glared at that blade capable of cutting through even his skin, muscles, and bones. That’s how it got him! The machine jabbed again, and David released his grip from its hip and, with the tips of his fingers, caught the weapon’s face. He held it an inch under his chest, while the machine applied added force. David held firm. The machine pushed harder, and David countered, bending its arm back, then, with the entire squeeze of his hand, reaching in, and, with a stertorous roar, yanking back. David, even as he felt the blade slicing through his palm and felt his fingers sliding against loosed blood, continued to heave until that sharpened edge, in a blast of flames and wires, was evulsed from the machine’s forearm and tossed aside. David then opened his right, covered in blood, as he held it behind his back. Then, he tightened it and thrust, grasping the machine by the shoulders, and, alongside of gravity, accelerating their plunge.
David pushed harder and tightened his grip, and the machine kicked against him. With a vapor trail forming behind them, David accelerated further, drawing towards and then plunging past Mach two. They impacted. A tremorous blast resounded through the city as vehicles and debris were overturned, while a mass of earthen chunks geysered behind the lesser machines before descending as a craggy downpour. David reemerged from the plume of dust, spinning through the air and his eyes squinted as he hung onto consciousness. He didn’t register the first strike along the ground as he bounced past the machines, and the next two hits and rolls were perceived only as dull stings. His tumble ceased thirty feet from the shooting machines as a ramp of Bryen’s shadow reared up and held him in place before lowering him to his back. David then rolled to his knees and shook his head.
“So…is it dead?” Bryen asked as he stood in front of David.
“Heck yeah, it’s dead!” David coughed as he reared up to his feet, stumbled to his right, tilted, and then heaved back up as he found his gait stable. “Not too shabby if I might say so myself!” he called as he spun in an uneven turn and looked to his teammates pulling back to stand in front of him. “Garcia, how many are left?” David asked as he looked past Erik, while the machines sidled towards the alabaster phantom’s crater and fired in sporadic bursts.
“Enough”, Erik replied, “I killed forty.”
“Twenty-seven”, Bryen continued.
“Twenty-seven”, Shawn repeated as he lifted his mask and wiped the soot and sweat from his brow.
“Twenty-eight”, Turrisi stated.
“…Forty”, Nate murmured.
“Nate, stop making crap up!” Erik roared.
“Okay, Erik; I thought we had gotten past jealousy”, Nate replied.
“But you weren’t keeping count”, Bryen remarked.
“What about me?” David asked as he raised his hand.
“What about you?” Nate asked as he swung his head.
“I had two kills and then the white guy for the last half hour”, David noted.
“He might prefer ‘Caucasian’”, Bryen remarked.
“You could’ve done better, Piekarsky”, Nate continued.
“No! Bull-crap, Klinge!” David roared. “I want fifty kills for the white one!”
“No!” Shawn, Turrisi, Nate, and Bryen groaned.
“I’m fine with that”, Erik replied with a shrug.
“Are you kidding me? That thing killed Sterling Blue!” David roared as he spun to Bryen and then to Shawn.
“Well, technically, not that one”, Bryen replied.
“All right! Here’s the deal, I’ll start off at ten, and I’ll still beat you guys!”
“I don’t know about that”, Nate replied as David started forward.
“Oh, I do, Klinge!” David exclaimed as he pointed towards that crater, “do you know what it feels like hitting the ground at Mach two!?”
“No, that’s not what I meant”, Nate replied as the group started after David. “Even with the remaining machines, assuming we let you have all of them, there might not be enough for you to pass B-money’s or Shawn’s tallies.”
“Oh, there’s enough!” David roared as he started into a light but steady jog, his hands fisting—despite one being burned and despite the other being cut—as whistling rounds rang in his ears. He then grinned as he eyed those twenty or so remaining automatons. Easy—David looked over his shoulders, preparing to leave his friends in his fastest rush. You guys owe me for killing the white one! He looked to the lesser machines, but, as the earth trembled behind them, he locked onto his primary ‘kill’ rising from the crater he had helped create. David stopped with his arms falling. His jaw dropped as the white machine stood, not wholly unscathed, but like the alabaster shape which had preceded it, bearing two cracks—perpendicular lines jutting from one point on the right side of the chest and extending to six inches; yet, aside from those slender gapes and the tears along its arms, it stood unharmed. “No”, he muttered as Nate and Erik jumped to his side, with Nate forming an electric shield, and Erik firing a blast of flames.
“Piekarsky, look alive!” Erik called.
“Are you kidding me!?” Shawn exclaimed as he ran to David. David looked to Shawn and then Bryen, while Turrisi ran past them, stood by the edge of Nate’s defense, and fired two shots into that crowd.
“Yep”, Bryen began as he nodded, reached back, and drew his sword. “We should’ve saved it for_” he was diverted towards the white machine, and towards the three red lines which illuminated its chest—the first of which, then, was blinking. “Dave!”
“Yeah!?” Turrisi replied, while David looked to the white machine.
“Don’t let that thing detonate!” David roared.
He charged, and the group followed. That time, he did little to restrain his pace, moving several yards ahead of them as he locked onto the glowing symbol on the automaton’s chest. Standing before him, the twenty machines froze, only staring at the six rushing figures as new commands were relayed by their summoner. David was a second from contact with that mechanized line, and his teammates were three seconds behind—Erik drew his katana, Bryen lifted his sword, Nate charged his hands, Turrisi exchanged clips, and Shawn folded paper shuriken—but, before David could contact, those machines, in simultaneity, lifted their arms and let fly.
In that moment, the diminished volume of that closing battle was reinstated and strengthened. David lifted his arms and sidestepped from left to right, while the group behind him took cover and tried to evade. As they moved, the machines fired after them, and, as they closed in, the machines rushed to meet them. Three rockets were loosed in the first moment; David lunged over one and Erik ducked past the same as detonated behind them. David landed and prepared to push off and to plow through the defense, but three machines rocketed into flight and slammed into his front, driving him back and clasping his sides. “No!” David roared as he grabbed one automaton, threw it aside, slammed another into the ground, and ripped the third in half.
“They just changed
their fighting style!” Erik exclaimed as he launched a fireball at one machine, only to watch it duck under the bolide, then leap and fire a rocket at him.
“B, how long!?” David called as he started once more.
“The first line went for eighteen seconds!” Bryen replied as he flared his shadow to block against gunfire.
“The one we fought had twelve-second intervals before it detonated!” Shawn called as he held a circular shield in front of himself and a charging Turrisi.
“And that was twice as strong as the bridge!” Bryen added. “This one will be three times as strong if the countdown is_”
“Proportionate to the strength of the blast!” David continued. “We have to break through!” He swung at one machine with beheading force. He then swiped his left to intercept a rocket and redirect it into a building. “How much time!?” David asked.
“Thirty seconds!” Bryen replied as he swung his sword, stumbled back as one machine landed by his side and lunged, and flared his shadow as two more fired at him. “We should’ve prayed, man!”
“Guys!” Nate called as he ripped his fists from a collapsing machine’s hide, “head’s up!” he roared as six of the machines jumped back, lifted their lefts, and, at once, fired six rockets towards the six heroes. With a curving sway of his hands, Bryen aimed a wall of his shadow which caught two rockets and redirected them to his right and into the air; simultaneously, Erik lifted his right and held his breath, the exhausts of two more rockets curving under his pyrokinetic control and sending them to his right and into the air; alongside of Erik, Nate lifted his hands and projected a repulsing electric field that pressed against the last two rockets, and sent them to his right and into the air, or, as Nate discovered, towards the building on the right side of the street—the end-point for the other four rockets. “Oh dang”, Nate grunted as he spun to his left, “Get back!”
The rockets impacted in unison, tearing into and shredding the front of that ten-story structure in a sideward hail. With a rumbling moan, the highest three floors of that building tilted and plunged, spiraling through the smoke and impacting in a thickened plume of debris and shattered glass. All but David collapsed from the vigorous collision, and, as they were engulfed in a cloud of particulates and had to stumble and roll past portions of debris, they struggled to stand.
After rearing upright, Erik coughed, deflected a right swat from a charging machine, and kicked it away. He jumped with his katana overhead, and, as the machine landed, he swung, but the machine bounced against a protrusion, stumbled, and evaded. “What!?” Erik growled as the cusp of his katana nicked the machine’s left. Erik stepped, and, as the machine aimed its right arm, cleaved through its torso before looking to the interjection. “Fricken’ helicopters!” he wailed as he ducked to the ground.
“Wait!” Bryen coughed as he slid to a halt, kicked back a machine in front of him, and spun to the right side of the road, beside the mound of burning debris, and to where the helicopter blade rose. “Nate, helicopter blade!”
“Seriously?” Nate spun to his left, located Bryen’s point, and then traced it to the platinum-colored length, twenty feet ahead. Nate bolted into that mechanized formation, diving under gunfire, sidestepping a machine, and then leaping and outstretching his hands to contact with the bottom of that metal length. He inhaled and heaved it from the ground, with four more feet being extruded from an angular gape. He then hoisted, tensed, and jumped. Meeting him a few feet above the ground was a column of lightning, and, in that instant, Nate skyrocketed from view.
“What?” Bryen grunted as he looked skyward.
“KLINGE!” David snarled as he looked to that white machine and watched its third line draw towards its final flashes; Forty-eight seconds! He pushed off, plowing into the remaining machines; yet, their retaliating pulls and grasps dragged him to the ground. He collapsed to his knees, but pulled himself up—fifty seconds had passed. David lunged—fifty-one seconds—and outstretched his arms for his strongest throw.
A blur, however, slammed in front of him. David looked on and found the helicopter blade having gored into the ground. He then stopped as a fulgurant flash erupted to his right, where, lunging from the crater in that radiance’s wake, Nate rushed with angular bolts thrashing from his body and towards the sky—fifty-two seconds.
David looked to those jabbing arcs and then looked skyward, finding a halo of yellow light converging towards their position in a near-instantaneous rush; while, in its wake, the clouds were strewn and angled into a spiraling ring—fifty-three seconds.
Nate outstretched his arms and touched the very edge of that helicopter blade. As he inhaled, closed his eyes, and tightened with those electric currents increasing in their energetic motions, the fifty-fourth second passed. The alabaster machine became irradiated with azure energy, and that energy, in a boisterous hum, expanded. David blinked, and, in the same moment, a clangorous boom sounded in front of him, not from the machine’s eruptive field, but from a beam of lightning engulfing Nate, ballooning in a swifter torrent, and consuming the white machine’s eruption.
Chapter Nineteen: Monday, 3 May [Part Three]
A narial moan echoed through the fog over the once-vociferant battlefield. Following that moan, a hand rose from the smoke, and was then succeeded by David rising to sit and slouch. He moaned once more as he lifted his hands, and he coughed as he rubbed his soot-covered face, before dragging his fingers to his scalp and finding his follicles standing on end. David patted his hair down, with his fingers feeling the light jab of an electric shock. He then looked to his left at the sound of another’s cough and watched Shawn drag himself to his feet. “Albert?” David called as Shawn staggered aside, his cape wrapped around his legs.
Shawn grabbed his facemask, his fingers shaking as an electric shock sped from the metal bars, and looked to David. “What happened?”
“Good question”, David replied as he stood.
“Nate happened.” David and Shawn looked to Turrisi ambling to them, but then stumbling over a metallic form.
“Klinge?” David replied. “Are we dead?”
“No, just…irradiated.” David looked to the roadside as Bryen reared up, his sword in hand.
“Wait, did you say ‘irradiated’?” Shawn coughed as he spun to Bryen.
“Well, maybe ‘irradiated’ wasn’t the best word choice”, Bryen replied as he looked behind Turrisi and watched Erik rear up with the leg of a machine along his gut. Erik pushed the automaton aside and rolled to his knees while shoving his goggles to his forehead.
“‘Charged’ would work.” One by one, those five looked to some thirty feet down the road, where, in the diminishing fog, the outline of the helicopter blade could be viewed with the man who had latched on to it.
“Klinge, what did you do!?” David barked as Nate reared back, his fingers tearing a layer of burned paint from the blade.
“I created an EMP”, Nate replied as he flung his arms to remove that layer from his fingertips and then grasped the sides of his hoodie. He pulled, and his jacket was torn from his back as two charred and strewn portions which further disintegrated as they fell. “Electromagnetic Pulse”, he furthered as he shuffled his hands through his hair.
“And that did…?” David asked.
“It shorted out the machines”, Nate replied as he pointed to Erik’s side. David and Erik looked to an outstretched shape. “Piekarsky, remember that night, when, in your mindless fury, you tried to beat me to a pulp?”
“Do you want me to punch you?” David asked.
“Anyways, I figured it out when I was trying to sneak up on you: I was rushing for an ambush, so my descent wasn’t as smooth as usual. Instead of using all of the gathered electricity to slow my landing, I butchered it a bit, and lost control of about five percent of the energy I had coalesced. That energy, in turn, rushed out in a wave which was strong enough to hurt you.”
“I don’t remember feeling any pain. Did you dream about this or something?” Dav
id asked.
“Anyways…I realized I could use my teleportation as an attack, so I had to think up a way to keep myself from overloading my body and potentially exploding, and I also had to figure out a way to convert my amazingly powerful electricity into a less-shocky EMP. The helicopter blade helped, and, once I sighted it, I put most of my thought processes into stumbling through particle physics, just in case we were backed into a corner. Questions?”
“It’s not real teleportation”, Bryen remarked as he raised hand.
“So then you used an EMP to both kill the remaining robots, and stop the super robot’s explosion?” Turrisi asked.
“Well, the explosion was a variable. I wasn’t sure I had transmuted the electricity into the right wavelength to effect whatever that blue crap was, but apparently I did, and I’m not dead, but my feet are numb.”
“Okay, Klinge!” David roared as he swung his fist.
“What can I say?” Nate replied with a shrug.
“You can say ‘sorry for shorting your phones out, guys; I’ll definitely buy you all new ones’!” Erik roared as he stomped with BlackBerry in hand.
“Wait, what?” Nate grunted.
“Our phones are dead!” Erik exclaimed as he slammed his phone onto the ground.
“Hopefully there were no commercial aircraft near enough to the blast-radius to lose power; otherwise, they would’ve crashed”, Bryen remarked, “It would suck for any passengers to die that way; you know_”
“Okay, you fricken’ know what!?” Nate groaned, “I seriously doubt any of you could have pulled off anything more effective!” Nate lifted his right leg and aimed groundward for his first, stable footstep. A stomp, however, brought him to pause. He looked down to his sole still hanging and having not made contact with the ground. He glanced to his right, to the helicopter blade, and watched that blackened pillar sway. He, at first, thought it the source of the sound, but he found it having remained stable despite the nearness of another’s motions. Nate turned towards the whir of joints, the whistle of air speeding through overlapping cracks, and towards the groan of a compressing fist. From the bottom corner of his eye, he sighted the producer of that utterance, and he locked eyes with the outstretched and bounding white machine, its right fist pulled back, and its pale-blue eyes locked onto him. Oh right, Nate pondered, his heart racing, I countered its strongest weapon. I’ve marked myself as a threat. Nice.