Yakusoku (Avara Stadium Book 1)

Exceptions

The crowd grew faster as the police officers moved in on Akiko, Jack still clinking off Gaman. Akiko grimaced. She needed perfect timing to land the bludgeon, and it was hard between the input lag on her controller, and the police trying to arrest her.

"Wait!" Hatoyama called, and the two officers seemed more than eager to step back. "If you get involved, the robots are going to go out of control!"

That was a blatant lie, and it worked. Akiko liked this girl.

Jack came in for a tight orbit again, and Akiko sent Gaman in a straight line. Tatsuo couldn't orbit a moving target like that. It clipped Gaman and skittered off into a puddle, throwing a spray of water up as the sawblades dipped down.

The older officer shoved the younger one's shoulder. "Call for backup."

Morning broke on the horizon, the blue ambient glow glinting off the glass panels of the Sakamoto building as Jack came in for a head-on strike and narrowly evaded a bludgeon, taking another piece of the hull out.

The crowd packed the street full, all making a wide berth around the whirling death machine that wheeled around barely under control. There were four reporters filming, three of them with full professional recording equipment, before a full police squadron showed up.

"Police chief Tachibana!" an old man in uniform called. "Power down the robots or we will resort to force!"

Tatsuo was sweating, hard. She could tell even in the rain. She wasn't.

She was feeling better than she ever had since the accident.

She narrowly missed another bludgeon. Jack the Ripper came in, closing a tight orbit, and this time when she tried to move out of it, Tatsuo clenched his teeth and managed to follow her.

No use this time. He'd made it. Picked up enough on the fly to cut it.

Police chief Tachibana, an ancient man in the cleanest uniform she'd ever seen, approached slowly with a gun held down to the pavement. "We will shoot to disable the robots!" he called. "Deactivate them!"

Akiko moved. She put herself between the chief and Gaman. "Shoot me if you want to deactivate it!"

Jack came in closer, and started the first pass of his killer orbit.

He bounced off. It didn't even leave a scratch. Akiko almost dropped her controller she pumped her fist so hard.

"What?" Tatsuo gasped. Jack's blades ground to a halt against Gaman. The crowd gasped, yelled, cheered.

Of course a blade can only strike a solid metal object in the rain so many times before it dulled. Gaman, indeed.

This time, as Jack ground uselessly up against Gaman's hull, the bludgeon connected.

Jack sputtered and drove back, and Gaman moved in. After the stun bludgeon hit, there was no way it was getting away from a followup hit.

The second one took off one of the saw blades. The third tore through the hull, and the fourth smashed the core.

Jack the Ripper fell to pieces. Gaman was barely scratched.

And Tatsuo laughed.

He dropped his controller and threw his hands up in the air and shouted, "Your win! Your win!"

"Put the controllers down!" the chief shouted, and Akiko yielded, dropping the controller and putting her hands in the air. The crowd cheered, and Akiko took long strides towards Tatsuo, who bowed deeply.

"Thank you," he said. "Thank you so much for the fight. That was good. That was really good. I'm glad I got to face you."

"Put your hands up now!" The chief pointed his gun at Akiko. She put her hands up, still facing Tatsuo.