Titanium Rain

Chapter I

My eyes opened to a dark space, and heaved as I tried to feel my way around. My hand was immediately greeted by solid wall.

I then remembered where I was. In my ATLAS titan.

That's when it's dark inside was illuminated by my jump kit’s ambient light.

This was a strange occurrence, as titans never fail. I pressed the button that would usually open the entrance, but got no response.

With a sigh, I opened the hatch above me manually. I was greeted by light filtered by dark trees.

This is when I started to wonder what was going on. Just a minute before, I was on Demeter, but now I was in some kind of forest with blue sky above me. I squeezed through the hatch, my Spitfire LMG making it a tighter fit than it should be.

I stood on top of the Atlas, and saw that my titan was sitting, and that it was covered in some kind of moss.

The XO-16 Chaingun it was equipped was barely visible, as it was almost completely covered in moss, and I could see some rust from what was not covered.

All around me was of course, trees. I would need a vantage point. I used my jump kit to jump to the closest tree’s branch. I continued to climb until I was on top of what I estimate to be a fifty foot tall tree. In the distance, there was nothing but desert in front of me.

I could see creatures fighting, one species being some kind of horse with gold colored armor. They were clearly outnumbered and pinned down by some kind of large four legged bird species that wore a grey metal type of armor.

I looked around for anything else, but only more forest could be seen.

I looked back at the battle, only to see that the horses had surrendered. Their dead was in the dozens.

There must have been a whole battalion of birds, while the horses at most only had one company if the dead bodies had anything to say.

I decided to take a closer look. I jumped from the tree, and used a boost to increase my speed. With this, I bunny hopped out the forest quickly, dodging trees left and right.

I soon made it to the desert, and stopped the hop. I went prone on top of a sand dune, and observed. There were twenty four horses left, and all were forced to lay on the ground.

Then, what looked like a officer (he was the only one without armor, and had a grey uniform) came to his first prisoner, who had purple armor unlike the other’s gold. The horse cowered as the officer observed him.

Without warning, the officer pulled out a sword from a scabbard I did not see before, due to my angle of view.

The officer held the sword with one of his talons for a few moments, taking in its details. Then, he plunged the sword into the neck of the prisoner. He struggled a bit to take it back out, and all the while the prisoner gagged in agony.

I had to intervene. It was against Militia code to kill unarmed people, may they be civilian or military.

I jumped from the dune, quickly closing the hundred meter gap. I wasn't noticed until I was ten meters away, and spraying lead into the five hundred bird army.

The large bullets tore through multiple birds, taking them out of the fight or out of the land of the living. The loud cracks did almost nothing to deter them, and they kept charging me, not realizing at first that my Spitfire was killing them all. My box magazine clicked empty, but by then there were endless bodies on the sand, some groaning in pain as blood gushed out their bodies, but most lay silent.