Runaway

Chapter Eighteen - The Speed Demon

Thunder boomed, startling the six mecha creeping through the streets of their territory.

The storm wasn't close enough to worry too much yet, but they knew they had to keep moving.

Lightning flashed again, and one thought he saw movement.

"Hey. Did you see that?" he asked over the comms.

"See what?" asked another.

"Something just darted out of that alley and across the street down there."

"How big?"

"I didn't see anything," another added.

The first mech pointed where he thought he'd seen something while the sky had been briefly lit. "It was hard to tell. Something small and dark-coloured."

"Probably just a cybercat."

They all brushed it off and moved on.

Thunder and lightning again made their presence known. Something ran behind the last mecha, brushing past him lightly.

"What was that?" he hissed, spinning to look behind himself.

The others paused again and scanned their surroundings.

"You saw something too?" the first mech asked.

"No, but something just touched me!"

"Calm down," the group leader said. "The storm just has us all unnerved."

A quiet, slightly sinister laugh met their audios then. It sounded like a creepy laugh of a youngling, highly reminiscent of horror holovids they'd seen.

As one, they all turned to face the dark alley the sound came from.

The moment they did, it stopped. A few astrokliks later, it started again from behind them in a different alleyway.

This repeated several times, each time they looked in the direction they laughter came from, it moved to a different spot surrounding them.

Thoroughly spooked, a few yelped at the next crash of thunder. When lightning next brightened their surroundings, they spied a small figure down at the end of the street.

But only for an astroklik. It disappeared with the lightning itself it seemed.

They didn't notice the presence of other enemies. Of a rival gang who's territory they'd stepped into.

A doorwinged youngling suddenly stood not far off with a sharp grin on its faceplate as thunder followed once more.

They noticed him. But were distracted. They didn't notice the rest until it was too late to run and they were suddenly outnumbered when a third of their group was dropped to the ground by two throwing knives from two different directions.

///

"Did you hear?"

"Hear what?" grumbled the gang leader, eyeing the slippery mech acting as messenger. 

Or gossip sharing. You never knew with this one.

A slight frown crossed the thin mech's faceplate, his shifty optics glancing around before answering in whisper. 

"Gauntlet has itself a new member. One of the gangs between us got raided two orns ago. The survivors that came back from the scuffle told the rest."

The leader didn't interrupt, not caring at the moment how his mech heard all this.

"They say the new one is just a wee youngling." The messenger paused, an odd look crossing his expression. "They also say he's a ghost that no one can hear or see coming."