War of Elysium

Chapter Sixteen: Oblivion.

        A droplet of blood stained her cheek as dust kicked into her eyes. Rounds fired off and orders rang back and forth but it seemed in vein, they had no escape. Their shuttle had blown and the pilot along with it.

She pulled out her drone and sent it off to cause some chaos before she drew her SMG and loosed a volley of rounds at nothing in particular. One landed and ripped through the poorly equipped ministry levy, the scarlet spray staining the soldier stood at his shoulder.
She ducked behind a mound of rubble as Lara fired round after round overhead. It was an opportunity.

Her quickened breath fluttered as she stumbled away from the frontline. Three, four, five rounds fired and skimmed around her, one even leaving a hole in her loose white jacket. She vaulted over a final hurdle but caught her ankle on a jutting metal pole, her balance dragged behind her as she tumbled over and landed with a thick thud.

"Iris!" Ade shouted as she reached a hand out. She took it and the young girl helped drag her from the line of fire.
She collapsed heavily behind some firm cover before pulling a tangle of long blonde hair from her face and forming it into an impromptu bun with the help of a long metal stick scavenged from the rubble. 

"Are you okay?" She asked. Her eyes fell not to the girl but to Garrison who still had yet to awaken from his sedatives. 
"I'm fine." Ade answered as she spat away the blood that pooled behind her lip. Serah leant over the girl and slightly adjusted her eyepatch before moving onto more serious matters.

"Reese?" She called out into her comm. He answered quickly though the sounds of gunfire didn't let up.
"Are we ready?" He shouted between pained grunts. She found him across the battlefield, he fought a melee against four men as he talked.
"Yeah. It's spooling up!" She answered after taking a couple of potshots at the men he struggled against. She managed to wing one but was little use beyond that.
"How long?" Lara called out over her own comm. 
"Maybe a couple of minutes?" 
She threw out a small metal canister and a thick cloud of smoke erupted from within, covering the area around the generator in an opaque cover.

The fighting grew thicker as she crawled forth, ducking bullets and explosions. It seemed an endless stream of men flooded in along the fresh dawnlight. The fuller the day grew; the thicker the bastards swarmed. 

Men posed little problem; giants, on the other hand?

A hulking metal beast, probably fifty meters tall and half as broad, ripped the roof from the hangar and readied a volley of missiles; seemingly unbothered by the presence of its own troops. 
She had never seen anything like it. Bipedal, but not made in the image of man - more akin to a Cthulhu with its mass of spiraling mechanical tentacles and appendages. Two main arms held the hangar ceiling aloft while twenty or thirty smaller limbs descended into the ground around them. One landed close enough to threaten Serah with a new haircut, but she managed to duck away before any harm could come. 
It structured itself in the floor and turned rigid before twisting around to reveal a door, and the man stood within. 

He wasted no time on her confusion and blared out his first volley of bullets, two of which struck her and one which only glanced. It hurt, as a bullet is wont to do but she pulled her own rifle and returned his fire in kind. Had he been wearing an SBA like her he may have even survived the half dozen rounds that found and tore through his flesh. One fractured on his vest and another nearly bounded back to Serah after clinging off of his helmet but it was all sufficient to drop him.

        Desperate breaths and sputtering coughs erupted as she fell back to her knees. She checked herself over and found two holes in her clothes, one just below her collarbone and a more jagged tear across her calf. The bullets didn't penetrate but bruising spread like spilt ink on paper. 
She collected herself and crawled onwards into the smoking veil around the Oblivion generator.