Gear Crash

Chapter 17

"Simon! Where are you Simon!" Kyle ran through the streets, shouting, desperately looking for his best friend. A young passerby and her child stood and stared at him. He didn't care. He needed to find Simon, and he needed to find him now. He sprinted past 6th street, past the place where team Gearcrash had defeated Ant Lord.

Suddenly, Kyle heard a crashing noise. He turned around to find himself staring at a massive, giant-sized ant.

"I see you have encountered yet another one of my pets!" Ant Lord called, from the top of the metal ant's head. "Scared yet, little boy?"

"No, not really." Kyle replied dryly. The Ant Lord glared at him, offended.

"Well you should be. Because I'm about to rip that little head off your back-talking shoulders." The metal ant clicked it's pincers, then lunged forwards at Kyle. Kyle jumped aside, easily dodging the clumsy machine. Ant Lord's eyes bulged. "YOU FOOL! HOW COULD YOU LET HIM ESCAPE!" 

"This guy really gets worked up about small things, doesn't he?" Kyle muttered under his breath. He lifted his shooting arm, and prepared to fire a missile straight at the ant. He pushed the red button on his arm. Nothing happened. "What the.." he muttered to himself. He pushed it again. Still nothing happened.

"Having trouble, cutie pie?" A voice mocked him. He turned around to find Tara, standing at the top of an ant, her wavy hair flowing in the sky. She held up a little device in her hand. "I've disabled all of your little tricks. There's no way you're getting out of this little party unscratched." As she spoke, Kyle's suit lost all energy, and began disabling itself. It played an automated message.

"Shutdown process begins. 5 minutes until total lock-down." 

"Looks like you don't have that much time left, puny human! You'd better try to outrun us!" Ant Lord cackled.

"Tell. Me. Where. Simon. Is." Kyle demanded through gritted teeth.

"Well, all you had to do was ask." Tara smiled sweetly. She tapped on the head of the ant she was standing on, and it's mouth opened, revealing an unconscious Simon laying in the center of it's mechanical tongue. "You want him, you come get him."

Kyle jumped forward with surprising force, lunging straight at Tara. She jumped aside, and spit out a wad of gum at him. Kyle turned his body, and the gum whizzed by his head, barely missing him. The second it hit the ground, it exploded, rocking the sky with a booming force. Tara took another stick of gum out, preparing to chew it and launch it at Kyle. Kyle, anticipating this, jumped up and yanked Tara's hand down.

"OW!" she yelled, as Kyle pulled her down from the ant, and into the ground.

"4 minutes until total lock-down" Kyle's suit announced. Kyle swung open the ant's mouth and pulled Simon out. He laid him on the sidewalk, then threw a struggling Tara into the robot's gaping  jaw, and shut it. He then turned around to deal with Ant Lord, with three minutes on the clock. He surveyed the area. Ant Lord was nowhere to be seen.

"Looks like he ran with his tail tucked in between his legs." Kyle muttered.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that..." He heard a voice say from under him. The ground burst out from underneath him, revealing a massive swarm of robot ants, crawling straight up towards Kyle. Ant Lord climbed out as well, and pointed a futuristic looking gun at him. "Serving the Scourge does have it's perks, namely giving me access to all of these little goodies. One shot will melt your brains." He turned a knob on the gun. "He wants you alive, so I can't completely burn you, but I think brain dead still qualifies."

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Kyle said. He wasn't paying attention to Ant Lord's rambling, just at the numbers popping up in the inside of his suit visor. 1 minute left.

"Just shoot him and get over with it." Tara rose from the dust, brushing herself off. 40 seconds left. "No need to monologue."

"I'M HAVING A MOMENT, OK? THIS IS MY TIME TO SHINE. NOT YOURS, MINE!" Ant Lord screeched. 10 seconds. 9 seconds.

"Just hand me the damn gun, I'll do it" Tara grabbed at Ant Lord's hands. 2 seconds. 1 second.

"Ka-Boom." Kyle whispered. His suit fell apart at his feet, and the entire street filled with black smoke. "Two can play at this game, Tara." 

Kyle ran over to Simon's side and grabbed his tranquilizer gun. As Tara and Ant Lord bent over coughing, he quickly shot two darts into them, incapacitating them. He then grabbed Simon and ran away from the smoke. He definitely didn't regret having Sophia put a defense mechanism inside his suit. If it was ever forcefully shut down, it would produce a large amount of smoke, allowing Kyle to vacate the area and come back and get it later. 

He finally reached a safe spot behind the corner of a building. He laid Kyle down on the ground, sat down, and waited for the smoke to clear.

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"You're very experienced in this, aren't you? All those times someone's hired you to do their dirty work, you must be an expert at playing with swords." The Scourge was taunting Sophia, trying to make her enraged and throw off her form. It wasn't working. Steel clashed on steel as the two dueled each other. They were a pretty even match, Sophia thought. She lunged in for a charge, taking the Scourge by surprise. She triumphantly thrust her blade into his breast. He glanced up, in anger, then sneered. 

The Scourge dissolved into smoke, then reappeared behind her, and wrapped his arm around her neck.

"Now, the games truly begin." His laugh echoed throughout the chamber.