Iron Sisters: The Abomination Engines

Part 3

The group jogged down the street, all along their path was destroyed buildings, rubble, charred skeletons and large pools of dried blood. Newbie, Slaughter, Digit Tarot, were joined by Fireworks, who sported relatively small jet engines on top of her suit's backpack, and Doc, their medic, who walked about with a riot shield, several inches thick, and a brace around her right arm sporting a computer screen, keypad and numerous sensors.

With time being of the essence, the group didn't stop to sight see. They were following the course their holographic HUDs displayed for them inside their helmets, a course plotted by Twinkle-Toes, who was still scouting ahead.

Newbie spotted a sheet of paper, seemingly old with a slight yellow ting, attached to the wall she jogged past. She paid it no mine, but Tarot did. She stopped and stared at it with a look of suspicion for a moment before tearing it off, and throwing it away. She took off, not noticing the similar sheet of paper that landed on the hood of a still burning car. As they took off a black line formed, and open into an eye shape. Then it closed, and the ink faded as the wind came and carried it off.

"It has been far too long since I sank my axes into anything..." said Slaughter. The group had stopped on the side of the street, while Captain spoke to Twinkle-Toes. Her activation of the communication system was signified by her pressing a button on the side of her helmet.

"You think that's bad...?" said Fireworks, on the ground, arms wrapped around her knees, rocking back and forth in anticipation "Try sitting here quietly while all those explosions are going off in the distance..." There was a quivering tone in her voice, as at any moment she was ready to move.

"Damn it, how long...?"

"The abominations are sending out new kinds of units..." said the captain interrupting their conversation.

"What do you mean...?" asked Newbie.

"It seems that the distraction the main forces are providing is doing its job too well, or maybe they sense the act for what it is. Either way, they seem to be sending out scouting parties. Smaller drones."

"How much smaller...?" Before anyone could say anything, they were interrupted by sound of something large, and metallic stomping into concrete, over and over. They turned to the end of the road, to the junction. From the left it came, one of the abominable machines, walking on its spider legs. It stopped and turned, and stared at them with its unchanging, unflinching cartoonish face. Then the inside of its large barrel began to glow with a green light.

Newbie dashed to she side, partially burying herself into the wall by her own strength, and knocked through it by the force of the explosion. The others had scattered by the time she had been knocked down. Fireworks had taken to the sky, her engines carrying her to the rooftop on the other side of the street, but during the trip she fired at the machine's 'face' with her twin slugger pistols. It stumbled turning away to protect its face.

Slaughter had ran towards it and leaped several feet up into the air, and across a few city blocks, bringing her axes down on one of the thing's legs, slicing through the metal like butter. Rather than fall, the large armored half of the leg rose up and flew down the street, electricity sparking. It orbited around Tarot, and as she pointed her staff flew back towards the machine, tip aimed for the face.

It was now it fired its cannon again, melting the limb, at least partially, leaving drops of molten metal to strike it repeatedly. It stumbled back, as Digit climbed up its back, her mechanical tentacles doing the work, and the captain, opened fire on the cannon, taking it out. The explosion rocked it about, but Digit stayed on.

"Now, from my calculations, and estimations..." Digit said, as her tendril handed her, her rifle "Your power source should be right...HERE!" She fired down the top of the central column, her slug, clearly hitting something, that exploded and caused the parts to want to fly off, by where held together by tendrils that made up its mass. It all collapsed into a mess of scrap pieces, held together by these tendrils.

It was now that Newbie ran back out, her armor covered in dust from the concrete and looked about, only to find the battle over.

"Damn it..." she said

"Oh don't feel bad..." said Tarot walking up from behind her "We all started out like that."

"I'ma bio-enhance warrior in power armor, I shouldn't have...been taken out that easy..."

"We don't all start out as...competent..." said the captain, trying to be nice with her words and failing horribly "We all grow and figure it out. Experience is the best teacher."

"I thought that was failure..." said Fireworks coming down.

"Thanks guys, but...do I really belong here...?"

"Of course...!" said Slaughter "Every corpse helps...!" It was fairly obvious that Newbie was glaring at her through the helmet. The captain raised her hand and clenched her fist, and the group gathered together as she turned and continued forward, the group following her. Tarot paused for just a second to look back, scanning the area, before taking off.

It was moments afterwards, when they were gone, that it tried to move. The circular screen that was the machine's face, came undone, behind it a nest of mechanical tendrils. It crawled out like a slug, on its belly, before it stopped and looked up. The boy in the blue coat stood before him, tall, slender to the point of androgynous with pale white skin, silver hair and grey eyes.

"Eye...Eye..." said the machine with a fizzling electronic hiss "I...love you...You-" The boy threw a paper on his the machine's 'face' and it began to fizzle out, as the remains of the glowing core behind the screen, exploded. The paper disintegrated as he walked away, disappearing in a cloud of smaller shredded scraps of paper.