King Me

The King of Tanks

The slug dropped dead, slumping to the ground beside Aurelia, pinning her legs beneath its massive frame. Yancey's purple beams were already hurling in that direction, so she simply redirected them, giving them a new purpose. Control the slug. Kill the vendetta. Tendrils of purple pierced the slug's hide, a dull gurgle bubbling from its throat. It rose, Yancey carefully guiding it off of Aurelia, and the massive bulk of slug shifted forward. Only problem was, it was slow as all hell, and was no longer leaking oil. It had lost all potency, and Yancey suddenly realized it had caused her quite a bit of energy.

She wasn't sure how exactly she knew, but she knew she only had a few good shots left. She turned, searching for her opponent, only to find it standing, staring a distance away. She could hear its dual personalities chattering, "They got Voorooshesal. Continue mission! But we are the last. Think of our people!" It paused its ramblings, glancing down at its elongated arms, at its elongated hands, "I wish to think of myself. No, you wish to surrender! I hurt. Coward! Yes, I am,"

Yancey glanced away from the rambling mess. She set her sights on the worthless slug, far too slow to be of use, and was beginning to release her control of it, when a thought occurred. Strategically speaking, it was slow, unusable. But emotionally... Yacey changed her commands. Don't chase; cry, cry to the vendetta, beg for its help. The slug did, too, a long, guttural cry, followed by the words Yancey fed it.

"Help me, please!" It cried, words forced unnaturally through its throat. Yancey wondered if it could speak at all.

The creature confirmed her fears, "Voorooshesal needs me! No, she cannot speak! And yet cries for help?! Trap, it's a trap! SILENCE!" The creature screamed and burst towards the slug. Yancey's eyes followed its movement, but something caught her eye in the background as the haze from the slug's poison began to dissipate: Conner.

He hid behind a downed tree, avoiding the circling cyborg's blasts, blasts of pure energy that continued to vaporize the tree. He returned fire, raising his rifle up, taking shots, only to duck and tumble around behind the tree, his cover disintegrating with every blast the cyborg sent back at him. The tree was shrinking, cyborg closing in, and Conner raised up one last time. Instead of firing at him, the cyborg shot forward, reaching a hand forward to slap the rifle from Conner's grip.

With one fluid motion, the cyborg raised the other hand, releasing a pulse of energy that narrowly missed Conner's head as he ducked down, reaching for the rifle. He snatched the wrong end, grabbing the barrel, and the cyborg released a triumphant laugh as it placed its palm before his head once more. And then, instead of attempting to correct the rifle's position in his hands, Conner simply swung it like a bat, slamming the butt end across the cyborg's head. He hit it so hard, its metal head cracked, and it screamed, tumbling down to the ground.

It glanced up at him from the ground as Conner took a moment to correct the barrel, leveling the firing end with the cyborgs head. It closed its glowing eyes, and cried one single sentence that Yancey could hear, even at a distance, "I have failed to avenge you. Now, "

And then, Conner paused. The cyborg's eyes were leaking green fluid, maybe from the damage to its head, but more likely, it was crying. Conner held his rifle in its face, watching, "You're a good soldier, kid. I'd have liked to have you on my side,"

The cyborg spat at his feet, "Do not patronize me, bio scum! Kill me!"

Conner smiled, "We're all the same, kid. We all cry," Conner raised the rifle, placing it beneath his own chin, and fired. His head simply vanished from existence, and the close proximity to the rifle seemed to instantly singe his veins and arteries close before they could even bleed.

"NO!" Yancey screamed, watching Conner's body topple down to the ground. The cyborg looked at it in disbelief, shaken. It didn't have time to contemplate the situation, glancing towards where the numbers circling Faust were dwindling and shot off to join the fray.

"What happened?" Aurelia called weakly over to Yancey, and she realized that just like the cyborg, she didn't have time to contemplate it either.

"Conner... he's gone." Yancey replied.

"Remain vigilant. We have no time for sorrow," Aurelia replied, cementing Yancey's decision to stay focused. Yancey gave herself a light slap that ended up being wet: blood. She didn't know when she'd started bleeding, and again put it from her mind. She turned back to the slug, her vendetta busy trying to-- Yancey's heart broke. The thin creature was attempting to pull its dead ally, the ally that moved because of her manipulation, out into the woods.

The slug must weight at least a dozen tons, but the skinny vendetta was working tirelessly, focused entirely on getting its ally to safety. It had left itself entirely open, and Yancey raised her sickle. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Bursts of purple energy shot out, weak, and she commanded them to join together to become one decent shot. She knew that her energy was out, and prayed that her one last shot could do the job. The beam did strike true, smashing the skinny creature in the side of the head, disintegrating part of its skull.

It screamed with pain, yet with no surprise, awaiting the moment Yancey would return her sight to it. It went down... Alive. It, like Conner's cyborg, started to cry. She was beginning to see the pattern. Everybody here had been living their life until this sick tournament had disrupted their daily lives. She'd been staring at a damn computer screen, wasting her life, and what was wrong with that? She hadn't hurt anybody before, and, she could tell by how desperately the creature still attempted to pull along the slug, that neither had it. Head crushed, bleeding, it still attempted to pull its ally along.

Yancey's purple energy left it, and the slug collapsed. She was completely out of energy. Her enemy still attempted to pull along its collapsing friend. It was in agony, and Yancey needed to finish her deed. She couldn't even manipulate her own body anymore, and stumbled towards the skinny vendetta. The vendetta hadn't made it far, but Yancey's body screamed with pain, the tournament having taken its tole. It still had one more to collect.

She staggered up behind the crying creature, eyeing a nice spot where the bone on its head had been blown back, revealing a nice meaty spot for her to bury her sickle. She raised it up, just as the creature turned weakly towards her. It had been a mighty, proud creature, but now lay beside its dead ally, in a puddle of its own blood. It sobbed, tears streaming out of its own good eye, as she'd blown the other out. It didn't attempt to struggle, simply watching as she came above it.

It wasn't like when Aurelia had waited for her best chance to kill the slug; the creature was simply done fighting, she could tell from the look in its eye. An epiphany crossed her mind, I'm not different from the corpses I manipulate. Doing the bidding of some god, killing off others, with no choice of my own. Like some worthless NPC on the computer screen, unable to make any actual decision. We all cry. In the end, we all cry.

Yancey's hand lowered, down to her side, unthreateningly. She started to drop the sickle, but purple energy pulsed out from her hand, moving itself. Not her own purple energy, but from the fake bones had implanted in her hand. "No!" She screamed, snatching her hand with the other, and glanced around to find Faust, a pile of bodies around him and his tree, watching.

"No? This is what we are here to do. What do you think would happen if you let that thing kill you?" He asked, watching her struggle.

"Go to hell Faust!" Yancey screamed, and he laughed.

"Hell, you say? Are we not in it? Do you not try to pawn it off on me?" his eyes filled with disgust, "Selfish coward. Allow me to introduce you to hell,"

Yancey's hand forced the sickle down, not into the creature's head, but its remaining eye. "I'll kill you for this, Faust!"

"Silence!" Faust screamed with inhuman volume, shaking Yancey's whole body, "You wished to let it kill you, I can see it in your eye! And then what?! It would attack me, and it would still end up dead! But you just couldn't do it yourself, you regressed! For all the progress you made, you became weak, a parastic worm, who would pawn the killing off on me!"

It was true. Yancey was going to spare the creature, she was going to die, and she knew that Aurelia would be safe because Faust would just kill it. Faust continued, "You remind me of my wife. You're tender, lighthearted, motherly. But unlike her, you're also weak, a helpless little wretch, who's only power came from me."

And with that, Faust most have thought he'd gotten his point across. Yancey's sickle buried itself in the vendetta's head, and the tournament was over.