NEWSFLASH! Dieselpunk Flash Fiction From The Legacy Universe

8TH FLASH: PING PERSONIFIED (May 22, 1919)

A dozen hands blocked out the sun, let vision witness a frightful miracle. Up where the pale blue sky carried a single strand of hollow cloud, another object busied itself with descent. Smoldering. Ear wrenching tearing.

Skyschiff. A mighty behemoth, dominator, German made to conquer the world. But this coarse ship of the air moved without the straight, haughty flow the people of this southeast Chinese village were accustomed. She had not stopped here to steal their water nor harass their women like last week. The ship moved at high speed, beyond them, only to stop, smoke, grind, and plummet. One of its thirty-foot diesel engines detached from its mooring, ripped with a tumultuous howl like lions, dying within a a metal canister.

Lightning struck the ship. From a clear sky, darting at a sideways angle it came to stab the skyschiff. Electrification under a sunny demeanor. The vessel rocked side to side, thunderous carnage of steel and materiel. 

Villagers perceived men falling, ants without wings, to their deaths in the jungle below. Their screams gave them pause. The German enemy, ravager of their nation, conquerors, forced out of heaven. No one should die in such a way.

Half of the vessel continued on its downward propulsion, spiraling out of control. Ears heard it splash into the South China Sea as thousands of sundered bits and pieces rained down on the jungle floor. Small fires peaked in the distance. 

The bolt of lightning, flying in a zigzag pattern about the atmosphere, made intrusive stabs at the men falling to their end. One by one, it hit them, causing bodies to shiver and shake on the way down. When it pulsed through the final man, it arced up into the air...

...and came for the village.

Villagers fumbled. Palms sweaty. Teeth gnashing. Women in robes, many barefoot, scrambled to snatch up their young and head for the hills. Men, once drilled by the previous overlords, the defeated French, rallied to defend. Iron ricepicker hats as helmets strapped on with chin guards. A single 75 millimeter field gun, uncleaned, wasting away, was rolled out and loaded in naked haste. Dozens upon dozens of French rifles came out of domed straw huts, LaGras, bolt action pieces from the last century. Men carried them as pikes in the feudal age. Rounds loaded. The field gun went off with a bang!

Missed. Lightning darted in the sky straight. Stop. Left. Halt. Right. Stop. Down. It toyed with their future, made emotions run wild. What other threat must they face? Why was Indochina so worthy of the aggressive attentions of outsiders? Simple people had nothing to give except their lives, and on certain days, even they did not want them. 

As they argued over where the last few shells for the field gun might be, others aimed their rifles for the fight to come. The lightning took a direct course for them. Levers cocked. Bullets exploded from decades old barrels. Younger men brought to bear rectangular iron shields made from destroyed French armaments, a desperate village building whatever it could to endure this malevolent era.

But the bullets, struck nothing. They hung, lifeless, in the air, ahead of the electrical charge. A swarm of paralyzed wasps, good for nothing. Men looked on, shell-shocked. They prayed for quick deaths. The bullets, began to return to them, a high rate of speed. Lightning, followed right behind. 

They ducked behind the shields, others behind an embankment of earth and bamboo. The rounds penetrated the ground, reverberated off of the shields. The lightning passed over their covered heads, striking a hut a dozen yards behind the men. It exploded in fire and rage while a path of destruction scoured the ground in a straight line across the entire village.

Men regained their composure, what little soldiers' appetite they had, and crept toward the other end of the village. Could an enemy of the German be their friend, or something far worse?

Around the flaming hut they wandered. They followed the trail, a streak two inches deep, smoking, shrapnel in abundance. The air hummed. Rifles vibrated in their hands. Sparks jumped out from random pieces of metal.

They found him. Lightning had a man's form, small and tragic. A sheath, no, a cloak of rusted metal fragments roved about on his back in the wind. He possessed an Asian face, like their own, but more rugged and tanned, leathery and scarred by age and atrocity. He wore nothing but metal. Steel and black iron, bits, screws, plating. All of it haphazard and tight, pressing into his old flesh, even along the face and all around the feet in cumbersome boots. He had long nails, several inches, all of them spires of distorted steel that arced sharp pitchforks of electricity along shiny artificial hands. Exquisite hands. Hands of death and hope.

The man raised his head, sniffed the air. "Men. I can smell your terror." He turned to face them. They readied their rifles, but the weapons would not face him directly. Barrels angled away, no matter how much strength was applied to aim them. 

"Do you war against me as well?" His voice contained all the anger of the entire war, venomous. "Am I a monster to you also? Or a tool to be used?" Electricity spouted from his eyes, more trailed out of his boots and went behind him, cracking ground, splintering trees. "Do you not know of me?" He demanded the inquiry.

Most eyed him, afraid to look anyplace else. Others fought with their guns. A single boy, one carrying a disheveled trio of books and a ripped magazine, spoke, "Ping. You are Ping. Th-the liberator of Singapore." He ducked behind soldiers after calling out the invader.

Ping moved to the army. As he walked, rifles forced themselves out of the mens' hands and went into the ground, upright like thrown daggers. They witnessed a lifetime of terrors in the glassy, vicious eyes of Ping, a million cuts, screws twirling inside of his aged hide.

"No boy. I am no Ping. He was useless, and died useless. I...am Perilous."