A simple job

Chapter One

"This is the last job I'll do for that slaving bastard." Sum thought angrily to himself as he hid behind a piece of rubble. His hands were shaking as he desperately reloaded his pistol as fast as he could. This wasn't the first time he made that promise to himself, (it was his sixth) but he really meant it this time. It didn't matter how much money he was promised or how easy and simple the job sounded, he wasn't going to do it. Actually, he wasn't going to do any more jobs for any Navedite nobles, because they were all lunatics.

Sum could hear the false angel stalking around the ruined buildings, crunching rubble underneath its metal feet and barking out the same words repeatedly in its broken staticky voice. Sum couldn't even understand what it was saying, since it was speaking in what he could only assume to be ancient Murkian. He muttered out several very creative curses directed towards the princeling who had hired him. If he had stuck around instead of wandering off to God knows where maybe he wouldn't be in this mess.

Sum finally finished reloading his pistol and jumped up from behind his piece of rubble, unloading several rounds into the false angel. It paused its march, letting the bullets leave small dents in its rusting inner layer of armor. The bullets would've merely bounced off of its outer layer of armor if it still had it, but that outer layer had been long lost to time. He watched as its one remaining wing lit up and it began to rocket towards him. He barely managed to dive out of the way in time. If it was in its prime it would've been able to realize he was going to try diving away from it and adjust its trajectory as necessary to still catch him. Fortunately for him, it wasn't in its prime anymore, and its ancient mechanical mind had been broken down by time just like its body. It just barely managed to stop itself in time before it could smash into one of the few still-standing glass towers left in the ruins.

While he knew his pistol wouldn't damage it, he was hoping the noise would get the princeling's attention, (plus it made him feel a bit less helpless). The princeling, for all his many faults, was one of the most deadly things Sum had ever witnessed. Sum had full confidence the princeling could destroy this over-glorified rust bucket. So as soon as Sum picked himself off the ground, he began to shoot at the false angel, only getting two shots off before it tried flying at him again.

Thankfully, its mind was too broken to still be able to learn from its failures, so it just barely missed him yet again, albeit it was a far closer call this time. Sum used his very limited time to try and put a bit more distance between himself and it. As he ran he heard the false Angel's rockets begin to growl, so he tried diving out of the way again. Unfortunately for him, one of the few remaining engines in its wing finally stopped working at that exact moment, causing its trajectory to go off course in just the right way so that it would be able to catch him this time. Fortunately for him, before the false angel could reach out to grab what in its mind was a particularly annoying runaway slave, a small storm of explosions suddenly struck the false angel.

Back during its prime, before it had been abandoned along with this city to rust away and be forgotten, it would've taken anti-air or anti-tank ordinance to pierce its thick armor and put it down. But it was no longer in its prime. One of its wings was missing, alongside one of its arms. The entire outer layer of its armor had rusted and fallen apart long ago, and a few small holes were starting to form in the inner layer of armor, exposing the circuitry that kept it alive. If it wasn't for the complete lack of any sort of wildlife in this city, a bird might've been able to make a nest inside of it. This is all to say that by this point, despite only being meant to blow up groups of lightly armored people (like bandits or protesters), the caliber being fired at it was more than enough to shred most of what little remained of the false angel to pieces.

The momentum of its rockets still propelled it forward, although its direction had been altered even further by being blown to hell. Instead of grabbing at or even crashing into Sum, the false angel's corpse hurtled off into the distance. Since there was no longer even a broken mind left to guide it, the false angel's rockets carried it for as long as they could before they ran out of fuel, making it leave the city it once guarded behind to never be seen again... at least by Sum.