by Brian Cody
“Yo, B!” Shawn called as he stepped to Bryen and turned to David.
“B-money”, David began as he took another step, “are you hurt_?”
“Go!” Bryen exclaimed as he jumped up and darted past his teammates, those stomps then audible enough for him to detect while upright.
“What?” David asked as he spun after Bryen.
“It followed us!” Bryen exclaimed as he spun back. “It’s here!”
“Wait; here?” Turrisi asked, the ground underfoot then shaking. “Where_?” In a grating churn of shattered debris, the colossus plowed through the front of a building, stomped onto the road fifty yards from the six, and stumbled to its far side. With a shaking turn and a diagonal rise, it lifted its mace, and, as those six turned, it swung.
“Go!” Erik howled as a pulse of energy erupted from the ground, bolted for them, and, speeding just yards behind them, detonated the adjoining ten-story structure. The six were launched as that building plunged, and they bounced along the road as tons of debris crashed and as the collapse of the building’s remnants trumpeted behind them. As the surrounding maelstrom of particulates and glass howled by their forms, they knelt and covered their ears. They wanted to remain there, on the ground, but, as those stomps increased in tremorous rhythm, they dragged themselves to their feet, then turned from the rushing machine, and scampered down the road. They moved but one hundred yards from that pursuing colossus before slowing, and, as they congregated in the street, turned back to it, and charged. Fleeing was futile; the only thing remaining was battle.
“The arm!” David exclaimed as the machine fired its beams in a groundward trail. Bounding from the flexuous path carved into the earth, the group dispersed but maintained their charge with David at the fore. “B-money, can you cut through? Can you cut off the right arm!?”
“Enough of my shadow was able to burn out the engine”, Bryen replied as he sprinted along the left side of the road, a harsh bang sounding behind him as a car was lasered through, “maybe!”
“Is that a ‘yes-maybe’, or a ‘maybe-but-I’m-really-not-sure’?” David asked.
“Well…” Bryen replied as he looked up to that rushing colossus and tightened his fists. “I guess we’ll find out.” He pushed off into his fastest sprint and then accelerated by a frictionless line of his shadow.
“Cover-fire for B-money!” Turrisi bellowed as he charged, “aim for the head!” he ordered as he lifted his weapon and opened fire. With certainty made tangible to them, the group, once fleeing and once evasive, darted headlong for the automaton, augmenting their paces and readying their faculties for the most effective forms and methods of cover-fire. Bryen, simultaneously, lunged onto and then glided across the left sidewalk. With a rising thrust of his left, he extracted five piceous tendrils, and, with a curving swipe of his right, he harpooned them across fifty feet, and three stories before they latched onto the tubes composing the machine’s right arm, just below its chest armor. The colossus, turning to Bryen and eying those blackened strands, lifted its left and rushed towards him, but, at the same moment, five gunshots slapped into the front of its face, diverting it down the road.
Across from Turrisi, Erik pitched a wave of fireballs from his right, with the bolides slamming into the center of the machine’s chest with jolting force, but failing to harm either the colossus or the alabaster frame controlling it. “Erik, I said ‘aim for the head’!” Turrisi barked.
“I was checking something!” Erik replied as he concentrated on the blue radiance which flashed in front of the chest. “That energy shielding is most concentrated around the white robot!”
“Then aim for the head!” Turrisi repeated as he fired three more rounds. The colossus stomped towards them, pulled back its mace, and swung in rising curves.
“Crap!” Bryen groaned as he stood along the machine’s side, his hands swaying and turning as he pulled and pushed those obsidian lines to enact a grating gyration. “Stop making it move”, he groaned through clasped teeth as the machine turned to the left.
On the other side of the machine, Shawn flew past its front and launched a paper chain that wrapped around the automaton’s left wrist. He then started behind it, but the colossus pulled against him. “Come on, don’t break!” Shawn roared as he countered. The machine stepped, and, with a dynamic sway, tore its left arm free, with Shawn jolting backwards. With its left, the colossus then knelt and swung down, its jagged claws slicing towards Turrisi. Turrisi lunged back, his legs rising and thrusting his body into a back-flip, while the claws shot past. The superfast blur of a sprinting David rushed by Turrisi’s stumbling form, and slid under the automaton’s outstretched left before kneeling and firing a right uppercut that slammed into the colossus’s face and knocked it backwards.
As the colossus spread its legs and stomped to once more stabilize, Nate, along an adjacent building, rushed across from it. Between the palms of his hands, he formed an electric orb. Then, he pitched, with the radiant globe slamming into and engulfing the machine’s head. The colossus stepped as the surge diminished, and it turned to Nate—its head unscathed—while igniting its ocular gaps. “Crap!” Nate barked as he bolted skyward. The beams shot out behind him and seared into the building. Nate, however, stopped running and looked back as the radiant lines were deactivated. Did I short them out? He looked to the road, but grunted as the automaton stomped towards him, and seized as it swung its mace. “Oh_”—Nate jumped, the mace impacting three stories below him, and that azure pulse goring into the structure and pulverizing the glass two stories below Nate, one story below him, and then around him. Nate crossed his arms over his face as the jagged torrent erupted in front of him, and he held his breath as he felt that explosive blast resound through the structure and then shoot out and around him.
Nate wheezed and found his magnetic grip lost. He opened his eyes and looked through his disheveled hair, and felt the sensation of passing wind—he was falling. Stumbling through semiconsciousness and with his ears resounding with a piercing tinnitus, he thrust his arms as he flipped past the five-story gape, and, in a body-contorting jerk, latched onto the bottom of the circular chasm peering to the building’s opposite side, his fingers wrapping around an amalgam of stone and steel, and his grip weakening with each shivering expiration. His grip was lost. With eyes agape, he plunged along the remaining three stories, but was caught before he could hit the ground. As his hearing returned, he looked to David.
“Wake up, Klinge!” David exclaimed as he decelerated and stepped onto the sidewalk one hundred feet behind the machine. “Take a breather, but you have five minutes!” he exclaimed as he released Nate and backed away. “Anymore than five minutes, and it’ll cost you extra!” David rushed into the air as the sounds and flashes of his teammates’ battle occurred before him. As the machine turned to its right, David darted for the head and hooked his left at the side of its face. David then slowed to a midair halt in front of it and spun, but, as he rushed, the machine slammed its left palm into his side and started to close its jagged grip. David pushed off, kicked away, and flipped over the ensnaring digits. He then turned to the head, but as he knelt to continue his charge, he sighted the recommencement of that scarlet glow—by then at full radiance. You wanted me to not get caught! David surmised as he found himself parallel with those eyes. He turned as the beams were shot, he cringed at the superheated barrage, and he gagged as the pressure behind those torrents hammered him into the road and drove him through solid pavement for one hundred yards.
“Oh shoot!” Shawn barked as he came to a midair halt. “Is Piekarsky_?”
“He took the mace, head-on and could still fight!” Erik exclaimed as he drew his katana and rocketed for the colossus. “He’s fine; just give him a minute!” The machine turned to Erik, backhanding its left, but Erik parried with his blade. He ceased his flames, pivoted, and reignited them to shoot upward as the machine fired its lasers a second time. He ascended, spiraled around the beams, and dove, but the machine
spun and swung its beams towards him. “Crap!” Erik exclaimed as he then rushed between the colossus’s legs. The colossus looked past the sparks below its right shoulder and watched Erik back-flip and then ascend for a return trip. However, instead of tracing his movements, its eyeless expression was flung back to those sparks, and then to the blackened lines churning and gyrating along the bars making up its limb. In a second-long pulse, it fired its lasers, with the two beams burning through the ethereal tendrils.
Bryen seized at the quartering of his assailment, and, as the machine lifted its mace and stepped away, he looked on to the severed remnants and then gasped as he watched them unravel and dissolve. Denser construct; forcefully broken; daylight—I’m standing on a bomb! “No_!”—before he could act, a flash of midnight blue appeared in front of him. He knelt, and those tendrils were devoured in a caustic blaze of strange energy; he leapt, and his ground-held silhouette exploded. Bryen blinked and found the ground and sky blurred into one furious mass as he spiraled. He blinked again as his limbs tilted towards what he surmised to be the ground, and he found himself at the zenith of his launch, facing skyward. Wait, played in his mind as he perceived an aberration: a contrail moving perpendicularly to the road and some one hundred feet above the tallest building. Wait, played in his mind as he blinked and plunged, slapping, jouncing, and spinning for one hundred feet before coming to rest.
Simultaneously, the colossus looked down the road to him, back to its damaged arm, and then back to him. Then, after a momentary stillness, it sprinted past Turrisi and lifted its mace; however, its charge was diverted. The colossus spun to its left and locked onto Shawn as he pushed the machine by its left hand, and, with the momentum of his flight, sent it onto an off-kilter spin, its arms spread and swiping, and its legs stomping in uneven trounces. “Okay, bad idea!” Shawn wailed as he hovered over the speeding mace.
“No, it works; keep shooting!” Turrisi ordered as he fired at the machine’s head but then ducked as its outstretched and turning leg rushed over his back. Behind him, jogging down the road with hands ablaze, Nate rushed for the machine and shot an electric burst for the top of its mace, in turn, maintaining its gyrations.
“No, Shawn, that was a bad idea!” Erik averred as he deactivated his flames, slid down an adjacent building, and pulled back to fire a blast at the automaton’s head. He jumped back up the building’s side, however, as its left hand swiped below him.
As those four did sporadic battle, David’s arms lifted from the bottom of his craggy bed, and, with a steady clasp and a careful rise, he pulled himself to his feet. “Not bad”, he murmured as he looked at his armor, the plated outfit then colored a dull charcoal devoid of his green stripes. Aside from a few tears along his sleeves and the bottoms of the pant legs, it was intact; however, as he sighed, he felt the air squeezing through the material around his chest. “Watch out for the eye-lasers”, he told himself as he looked to the spinning colossus, “and watch out for the arm”, he continued as he looked to Bryen, who rolled onto his front and then pushed up. “B, you have one minute; any longer will cost you extra!” David proclaimed. Bryen gasped as he looked down. “All right, fine; two minutes”, David called as he stretched his arms but stopped as he felt the action burn his torso. “Getting too old for this”, he moaned as he started into an even and gradual jog in time with the colossus’s gyrations. He accelerated as he passed Bryen, moving into a superhuman race and then slowing for another takeoff. He knelt as broken glass chimed from the next road, and he inhaled as a more obstreperous peal erupted to his left.
David winced, and he turned as debris cascaded behind him. As he turned, the causer of that eruption slammed into the road in a pavement-rending slide, its dense frame shredding and uplifting asphalt as it ended its flight fifty feet behind him. It turned to David, it locked onto him, and it pushed off, a burst of azure exploding from its feet to launch its alabaster frame. It then landed twenty feet behind him, and, with one more push-off, it leapt, outstretched its right, and squeezed.
A ring followed. David heard it, and he discerned it, and, with eyes widened, he started to look to it, but, as he turned to his right, that white machine reached its zenith. With another second and its blade pulled back, it could cut down David, just as it had cut down Sterling Blue before him. From the corner of his eye, David locked onto the alabaster machine lunging for him. He looked to its blue eyes, gleaming as they glared back with that unblinking and emotionless radiance, and he looked to those cracks darting across its chest; he knew the most probable means of hurting it, perhaps defeating it, but, as he picked up the bone-rattling churn of its exhaust and as he watched that outstretched and scuffed blade held by its side, he found himself defenseless. It had pounced at the right moment, was moving at the right speed, and bore the right weapon. David had concentrated on the colossus and the second white machine controlling it. The first white machine intervening was the last possibility in his mind, and, because of that, he was unprepared. It’ll contact before I can… David exhaled, and the machine closed in; he blinked, and a bash sounded in front of him.
David opened his eyes and found the machine diverted to the right, its form contorted, and its eyes spinning towards its interjector—towards the clasping and bounding shape of Bryen, his eyes widened and his teeth slammed shut as a bestial howl sped from his lungs. David watched as that alabaster form’s trajectory was altered by inches, and then feet, until it shot past his side. He turned after it as it continued, and he watched, once Bryen released his grip, as that machine latched onto Bryen’s shoulder to hold him in place. David tensed as Bryen gasped, while the machine skyrocketed alongside of a building, slammed Bryen against its top corner, and accelerated out of view. Then there were five.
David was still as he looked skyward. His mind replayed that act, and his hands shook as any signs of either that alabaster machine or its hostage were nonexistent. He looked down with a frigid glare, towards his teammates, who as well, had stopped, forsaking the colossus and trying to conceive the events leading up to that point—the ambush, the interception, and then the counter—and trying to understand the happenings which had engulfed their teammate and spirited him to parts unknown by the first reaper’s grasp.
“B-MONEY!”
David shot into the air, following that machine’s path to the inch, and accelerating but spinning away as the colossus’s mace scraped past him and launched a wave of that blue energy—enough to slam into him and to throw him to the ground.
“Why?!” Turrisi roared as he loaded a grenade and fired it for the machine’s head. With him, Shawn launched a flurry of papers, Erik blasted a fiery surge, and Nate unleashed an electric blaze. Behind them, David bounded to his feet and darted into the air. Growling, he accelerated, tearing past the sound-barrier after a moment of flight. Roaring, he hammered into the colossus’s gut, the force of his strike launching the automaton from its feet. David heaved, driving it onward even as surges of the blue energy coursed through his frame and launching into the air for two hundred yards. The colossus slapped, head-first, onto the ground and bounced for one hundred yards more, its mace slamming and launching it bursts at surrounding structures before it came to rest.
David then landed in a skirting drive, but, instead of further decelerating, turned to his left and pushed off. He was caught. David jumped back as Erik pulled him to the road and clasped his shoulders. “Garcia, let go!” David wailed, his face stretched, “It got B-money! We have to stop it; we have to save him; that thing killed Sterling Blue_!”
“Dave, I know, I know!” Erik fired off as he kept his grip steadfast.
“No, Erik, I barely survived it; I can’t let him go like that, I can’t…!” David wrapped his hands around Erik’s wrists.
“Dave, please wait!” Erik barked as he spread his legs.
“Garcia, we’re wasting time; every second we stand here_!”
“I know! Every second we stand here, is another second that B-money is left alone fighting
for his life against something that seems to have been built solely for ripping people like us to shreds! But how much more will you be able to do!? You’ve fought it before, and Sterling Blue was killed by it, and with that experience, it anticipated your movements to the tee. It knows your strengths, your weaknesses, and your fighting style. It ambushed you at the right moment! You’re exhausted, and now you’ll be distracted! Why do you think it took him? Why didn’t it start fighting us, why didn’t it try to kill him right here? It’s baiting you because it knows that you’re exhausted, and it knows that it’s able to beat you! If you go there, it’ll be prepared, and if that happens, you won’t win.”
“Then, what the h*** do I do, Erik!?” David bellowed as he pulled Erik’s hands aside and stepped away, “Do I pray he’s okay and wait for back-up to come? So they can look for his remains?”
“Send me”, Erik gasped. “It hasn’t fought me—neither of them have. I might not be as strong, or as fast, or as durable as you, but I have the training, and I’ve taken less of a beating. I have enough confidence in my abilities and enough control over my emotions to not worry about dying.” Erik paused as David pouted and stepped back. “Dave, at the very least_”
“Okay”, David sighed. “Okay”, he repeated in a softer grunt. The stomps of the rising colossus drove him to look over his shoulders.
“What about that thing?” David and Erik looked to Shawn, Nate, and Turrisi jogging up to them. “What’ll keep it from following you?” Shawn asked. “It seemed like it was trying to stop Dave from taking off; not trying to kill him—not that time. What’ll keep it from deciding to cut a swathe through the city to go after Erik and B-money?”
“We will”, David replied with a nod.
“How; we don’t know how to kill it”, Nate remarked.
“We won’t kill it; we’ll disable it, enough so that we won’t have to worry as much about it running after them”, David explained. “Garcia, on my signal, and no later, you’ll go. If you see an opening yourself, be my guest.”