7.14 Goddess of the Machine
“Alright everyone! If you’re armed, put down your weapons! If you’re not, just move out of the building, quietly!” Annie shouted over various screams as her group entered Hayder-Katsuya’s headquarters. On the way they picked up Katsuya himself, who looked less than thrilled as he was escorted inside by the ragtag group of orcs, goblins and humans alike. At this point, they split up: a select group fortified the reception, toppling couches and desks to create makeshift cover, while the largest part of the group entered through the already shattered doors to follow Bellona and wipe out any security forces that went after her. Annie, Katsuya, and a select group had a different plan altogether, though.
Annie shot once into the air, and the smart bullet, without a clear target, flew in a circle in the air before it hit the ceiling and exploded, causing some of the civilians to scream and huddle together.
“Christian Hayder is dead! His headless body was brought in here an hour ago!” she declared, and this caught the attention of a few people, so she continued.
“We have come here with the rightful successor: Masao Katsuya! Guide us to the administrative center to confirm his biometrics and this will be a peaceful transition!” she announced, and some more people exchanged confused looks. Her orc allies soon brought her a man in a suit who appeared to look down on all of them, despite his situation.
“Big man. Has keys,” Garnuk spoke to her, and she nodded, pointing her gun at their captive.
“You better lead the way unless you want to be the newest piece of modern art decorating this reception.”
She didn’t quite like the methods they were choosing, but she had to admit that this was the fastest way to get Katsuya into power, to turn the corporation around, while all of Hayder’s forces were busy chasing Bellona into the depths of the facility.
There was also the issue of Hayder’s hologram. She had to find where his consciousness was stored and wipe that place clean, or their plan could backfire spectacularly. She hoped that Bellona would keep its attention for a while longer, and finish what she started.
***
Bellona expected the involvement of a Deogemma in this world, but nevertheless the reveal of Fraus herself being here sent her into a rage.
The deaths of the villagers in the mountain village of Capitolium vividly came back to her. She remembered how she and Nerio were mocked by the crocotta, Fraus’ pet creatures, mimicking the voices of their loved ones. She remembered how the creatures mimicked a soldier and tricked Fabius, almost biting him in half, before Fraus ran him through with her stinger, all to taunt Bellona, to get under her skin and render her careless enough that the beasts could overwhelm her.
She only managed to defeat the creatures thanks to a partial, short-lived awakening of her powers. Unlucky for the crocotta, then, that she had achieved said powered-up form by now and was all-to-willing to use it against them.
She had her trusty halberd in hand again, with her gladii floating around and shooting laser beams at the tough creatures. Their growls filled the air around Bellona, and the smell of burned fur filled her nostrils as she beheaded the first creature in front of her, while another got cut into multiple pieces by her flying gladii.
“Fraus! Show yourself!” Bellona shouted into the large hall, with her voice echoing off metal walls, but the goddess of deception’s answer was missing. Instead, the crocotta laughed at her with human voices.
“You’re so silly, Bellona! It’s just us, relax!” one spoke with Minerva’s voice, and she promptly beheaded it for the insult to her loved one.
“Why are you hurting the doggies?” another asked with Arisu’s voice as it lunged at her. Bellona caught its charge with her halberd’s shaft, though as the creature bit down hard, she could hear the metal of it groan. More crocotta approached, still laughing with the voices of everyone Bellona cared about, ready to tear her to shreds.
One approached from the left, preparing to bite deep into her neck, but before it got close enough, one of the flying gladius drones approached at rapid speed, embedding itself deep into its eye and brain in one swift strike, making the creature collapse. Bellona wrestled with the crocotta on top of her, which wildly shook its head from side to side, trying to rip the weapon out of her hands, so she indulged it and simply let go, before she manifested a spear which she drove straight through the creature’s black heart.
“You’re so cruel… they’re just animals!” Ayame’s voice chastised her as Bellona let out a war cry, gathering her gladii behind herself and using them as propulsion to drive herself forward, off the ground while toppling the dying creature that was on top of her. She let go of the spear and summoned a greatsword into her hands, cleaving the one that dared to imitate Ayame clean in two.
“You’re such an… inelegant brute,” Hayder’s hologram mocked her as she fended off the charges of two more crocotta and slowly advanced towards the giant statue in the distance. She didn’t pay him any mind, even as his hologram blinked out of existence and reappeared further ahead to grin mockingly.
The herd of crocotta was significantly thinned out by now, with three more of them attempting a coordinated attack from multiple sides, though Bellona swiftly summoned a naginata into her hand. With the flying gladii closing in from behind and Bellona readying a wide swing from the front, the animals were trapped with no escape. Legs, tails and heads went flying as Bellona didn’t even spare them the tiniest bit of mercy, then she continued with large steps towards the statue.
It was enormous. The faceplate alone was larger than Bellona was tall, with the opened chest cavity housing a dozen compartments that fit a person each, plus a strangely familiar, glowing tube behind it. Bellona squinted into the dancing lights as she approached, and then her eyes went wide as she saw a vague resemblance to the machine she destroyed to shut down the game and stop the attack on her world.
Her gladii were flying through the air behind her and making short work of the remaining crocotta with focused energy beams that cut straight through them, while Bellona reached out to release one of the trapped humans in the compartments.
Her hand didn’t reach. The entire structure moved away from her, and it was only a moment later that she realized that what she saw wasn’t a statue at all. Servos and motors whined audibly as the mech wearing the appearance of the goddess of deceit came to life, and Hayder’s laughter filled the air around Bellona.
“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” his mocking voice echoed out of the speaker system that was installed somewhere inside the ever-neutral face place.
“The goddess anticipated someone coming for her machine and her offerings. And what safer place for both than inside the ultimate weapon?”
The ground shook as a long snake tail uncoiled down below in the hangar bay of the mechanical construct. The chest cavity closed, with two heavy, shaped pieces of steel swinging close to seal the people inside. A giant gemstone, green as venom, sat right at the center as the obvious power source, and the fine hairline fracture across its center confirmed Bellona’s suspicions.
“Fraus. I see you still haven’t entirely recovered from the beating I gave you the last time…” Bellona commented, but Hayder laughed again.
“Oh, she’s fine. She has been feasting on the energies of our world. And in turn, she has advanced my dream of eternal life! And now, I… no, we, will crush you, terrorist!”
The giant mech clenched a fist, with its expressionless face plate still looking at Bellona, unchangingly.
“And you thought that I was done for when my flesh perished! Now look at me! Look at us! Witness perfection as it wipes the stain of your existence off this world! As I-”
The voice stopped, and the mech’s movements got jittery. Bellona readied her weapon to use this chance to attack it, but as she launched herself off the ground, the snake robot’s long tail came around and smacked her out of the air, making her hit the nearby wall and fall down all the way towards the mech bay’s floor. She was still reeling as the mech spoke again.
“No! No, what are you doing, my goddess? Haven’t I done everything just as you wanted? Please don’t do this!”
The mech’s movements were still jittering. The lights behind its expressionless eye sockets flickered, changing colors between a deep crimson and the venomous green of Fraus’ crystal.
Bellona took a moment to orient herself. The bay was deep, almost thirty meters, and the snake-bodied mech filled it handsomely. There were rails on the walls, and she now noticed that the bay’s ceiling was far off in the distance compared to the rest of the hall. She was in a giant elevator shaft, which unclamped from its resting position with a screech before the walls passed Bellona by as the elevator made its way to the surface.
“Oh, Hayder. Foolish, foolish Hayder. You are already dead, yet you cling to that comforting lie I told you,” a familiar voice boomed out of the mech’s mask, slightly distorted. Fraus’ voice.
“Wait! What are you doing?! Stop that! Stop it!”
“You are a mere copy. Hayder’s soul has passed on from this world. You are a simulacrum, mimicking him. And you are so… easily deleted. All lives are expendable if it serves their betters, indeed.”
The flickering of the lights died down, and they firmly settled on the venomous green of the goddess of lies who was now in control.
The mech reached for a lance, secured firmly in a rack next to the mech. It was a paradoxical thing: a spear and a gun at the same time, from what Bellona could tell.
“And here you are, Bellona. I can still feel the pain from when you maimed me. When you took my stinger and my arm! But there won’t be a repeat, not with the pinnacle of this world’s martial sciences at my disposal!” the mech barked and swung her large weapon right towards Bellona.
Steel creaked and groaned under the goddess of war as she summoned a greatsword to catch the blow and transferred the full force of the swing into the ground she stood on. She gritted her teeth and sent out her gladii to search for weak points to attack, but just as they left her immediate proximity, the mech’s tail moved. A stinger-looking contraption containing a multitude of energy weapons swung around and saturated the surrounding area with hot energy projectiles. Her gladii, under her direct mental command, dodged the best they could, but one after the other, they were shot down and vanished, returning to their mistress as energy.
Fraus tried to force the tip of her large spear towards Bellona to shoot her point-blank, and even as she managed to prevent it from doing so, she found no end of trouble, as she noticed the mech arming rocket pods that were mounted on its hips.
I got my work cut out for me…
“This is what you fucking terrorists get! No one fucks with Hayder-Katsuya!”
The captured executive’s taunting shouts echoed over the thunder of gunfire as Annette and some of her orc companions hid behind corners, only occasionally taking potshots at the advancing cyborgs in the middle of the corridor.
Their way up to the top level of headquarters was uneventful until the moment they ran into a hologram depicting a young Christian Hayder, who very much acted like he was still alive. He pointed at them, gave a command, and within seconds the hallway was flooded with augmented soldiers, the same kind that stormed their underground city, with smart guns that spelled death for anyone who dared to be in too shallow cover.
“Can someone shut that guy up? I need to think!” Annie shouted as the man they dragged all the way up to the executive floor laughed and waved towards Hayder’s hologram, as if the CEO who didn’t even know about his existence would give a damn.
“Hm… only need eye for scanner? Could rip it out!” Garnuk shouted over the hail of bullets and Annie scrunched up her face.
“Don’t even joke about that! Just knock him out, we can drag his body over to the scanner later!”
She crawled away from the corner as the tracking bullets impacted a little too close to her for comfort and signaled for some of her orc allies in the back. They had been busy dislodging heavy steel doors from conference rooms and brought them forward to act as crude shields as they poked their guns out the side and returned fire. And just as the man in the business suit wanted to shout another taunt, he tasted the stock of Garnuk’s gun.
“You miserable insects! I knew I should have exterminated you all the moment you crawled out of that portal! There are enough gangers to blame abductions on, I don’t need you!” Hayder’s hologram hissed as it simply phased through the shields, startling the orcs behind them.
Annie did her best to try and access the projectors on this hallway to shut him up, but the security of Hayder-Katsuya’s headquarters was a few levels above her skill, if she was honest. She grimaced and looked for the physical projectors on the walls and the ceiling instead, pointing towards them.
“Can we shut this guy up, too?!” she shouted, though before anyone could answer, Hayder looked panicked.
He looked around, and he moved his mouth, like he was talking to someone, then he gestured wildly. He shouted and screamed, though his voice wasn’t being projected by the hologram, then he suddenly flickered out of existence. Annie could barely make sense of what she just saw, then the gunfire in the hallway stopped, as well.
The modified humans lowered their weapons and stared at the ground, as if they were just shut down.
“What the…?” Annie muttered, but Garnuk immediately seized the opportunity, firing into the immobile mass of bodies – and without them fighting back, he made short work of them. A mercy, considering how they became these things.
“Path’s clear! Let’s go!” he barked, and Annie quickly followed to the large door of the administrative center. The unconscious suit’s eyelids were pulled open and the iris scanner beeped, then the group could enter.
The workers had already evacuated, thanks to the building-wide alarm, leaving large terminals unattended. One terminal was placed up a few stairs, higher-up, overseeing everything. The terminal of the CEO himself, which, theoretically, would grant full access to all systems that he wished to access.
“Are you alright, Katrsuya?” Annie asked quickly, and the man nodded timidly, then she escorted him up to the terminal.
“Are you sure he didn’t lock you out, yet?” she whispered as they were out of earshot of their allies, and Katsuya nodded.
“The company’s internal systems were my father’s design. He knew Hayder would betray him sooner or later, so he made sure to hide some of the functions from him.”
Katsuya took place in front of the terminal and took a deep breath. There was a hand scanner next to the screen, and he put his hand on it without hesitation.
“Welcome, Masao Katsuya. You currently have: Guest Privileges,” another engineered customer service voice spoke to him; he cleared his throat and spoke.
“I am declaring Code Cyan.”
“Processing… the death of former COO Kenji Katsuya has been confirmed. Transferring all rights to his declared heir, Masao Katsuya. You currently have: Full Administrative Rights.”
“…that was easy. Have we won?” Annie asked, though Katsuya shook his head and immediately went to work on the terminal, navigating through menus faster than Annie could even keep track.
“We have access to the systems, and with that, technically, we control the entire city. The problem is the human factor. People don’t like change, especially when it’s rapid. Hayder-Katsuya also got some… military units, a few of them offshore to procure resources. I need to inform them in the gentlest way possible that their CEO is dead and there’s a successor without them suspecting foul play or lies and deciding to return to home base to, er, ‘restore order’.”
“How are we doing that?” Annie inquired bluntly.
“Well, I was going to start by finding out where that damned AI copy of Christian is located so I can delete it properly!” Katsuya cursed, then he furrowed his brow.
“…it’s gone.”
“What do you mean, it’s gone?” Annie spoke impatiently, looking over his shoulder. She saw plans for a strange snake-shaped mech, and next to it a log, detailing its inner workings. And according to that log, the mech’s memory banks were accessed externally and deleted what was evidently the AI copy of Christian Hayder’s mind.
“…well, that just means less work for us,” Annie said with a grin.
“That would explain why the augmented security forces were just going limp. Christian was always the staunchest proponent of the Great Man Theory and wanted to control everything himself if possible.”
Just after he finished his sentence, the entire place rocked, and Annie had to brace herself against Katsuya’s chair.
“What was that?!”
“The thing that used to house the AI is… moving? It’s an active mech, and…!”
He cut himself short as an explosion ripped a hole somewhere into the outer walls of Hayder-Katsuya’s headquarters. The snake mech that was previously only on the screen flew out of the building, propelled by antigrav engines while letting missiles and laser beams illuminate the night sky as it chased Bellona. Katsuya turned pale and immediately typed away at the terminal again.
“What the- what in the world was that?!” Annie exclaimed and was met with a serious stare from the man.
“That’s a weapons platform that can level a city, so I’m sending out a city-wide emergency warning! People need to get to shelter!”
Bellona readied a barrier as Fraus shot a barrage of missiles her way. The magical shield was potent, but the sheer number of explosives that went off behind it made it buckle and, finally, shatter. More missiles followed as Bellona was launched towards the elevator shaft’s walls, and she quickly utilized her floating gladii like thrusters, dodging numbly to the side, though she was launched towards Fraus right after as the missiles hit the wall behind her.
The giant machine was ready for her. Fraus thrust right towards her with the spear and Bellona summoned a longsword into her hands, holding it in front of her body. Sparks flew through the air as she managed to use her blade to scrape along the side of the giant machine’s blade instead of being impaled and eviscerated by it.
The mech reacted promptly; as soon as Bellona touched the flat of the blade, it swung the heavy blade sideways, catapulting Bellona back towards the elevator walls. She hit her back hard and let out a short scream, then she immediately dashed towards the side with the help of her gladii as the mechanical scorpion stinger pointed her way and shot a high-charged energy projectile which melted the steel of the elevator with ease, deforming it in place.
As the platform passed the hole, the molten slag hardened against the passing metal, causing the elevator to stop. The elevator’s motors groaned, working against the obstacle and emitted smoke, all while Bellona ran around the giant mech, dodging and deflecting more barrages from its seemingly endless weapons.
“You worthless little pest! I will pick you apart! I will gouge out your eyes! I will dismember that little daughter of yours!” Fraus hissed through her comms, attempting to agitate Bellona.
It worked, but only once she mentioned Arisu.
Bellona launched herself towards Fraus, swapping her halberd for a heavy axe and encasing it in destructive energies. She aimed straight for the snake body’s midsection, though before she could commit to the strike, she stopped and fired her gladii’s propulsion jets to fly past the giant machine’s torso, cursing her carelessness.
The people I want to save are still inside this thing!
Her mind was racing and she was looking for options, all while Fraus laughed at her the moment she understood the Magical Girl’s predicament.
“Oh dear! What a hero you would be, killing the very same hostages you came here to save! How disgraceful it would be! That’s right: simply let me do my work, and none of them needs to get hurt…!”
Bellona’s eye twitched after that provocation and she decided not to engage Fraus directly. Instead, she decided to make use of the dark goddess’s obsessive hatred towards her. She launched herself up the elevator shaft, daring Fraus to follow her, and she did.
Bellona saw no flames of thrusters or jet engines, yet the snake-bodied mech followed her up the shaft, flying silently, all while both her tail’s stinger and her spear’s integrated laser cannon took potshots at her, forcing her to fly in an erratic spiral.
The ceiling approached rapidly, and Bellona recognized it as a sliding hatch. It didn’t open, as the elevator it was connected to was still stuck way below, now fused to the walls, but Fraus’ repeated laser fire followed Bellona, melting convenient, glowing holes into the metal doors.
She zig-zagged and flew through one of the freshly made holes, emerging in what looked like a hangar. The ceiling was covered in catwalks below sturdier steel beams, with the typical mech suits of Hayder-Katsuya’s security forces secured on clamps, with their cockpits opening neatly on top of the catwalks. Currently, those were occupied, with pilots and engineers scrambling to board the mechs, and Bellona immediately intuited that they wanted to intervene with Annie’s operation in the building.
She heard a loud crash and creaking metal as Fraus collided with the hatch below her, and she swiftly dodged the laser shots of the stinger cannon as Fraus poked it through one of the holes and fired indiscriminately into the hangar. Bellona cursed, flying faster and throwing herself in front of a pair of pilot and engineer who were about to get shot. The energy collided with her magic barrier and radiated an incredible amount of heat before it dissipated.
“You again!” the pilot behind her shouted and she turned her head, recognizing the reckless pilot from both her first appearance in this world and her highway chase.
“I don’t have time for you! Get out of here, that thing doesn’t care about who it kills!” She shouted as mechs around them got struck by the wildly firing laser cannon. Machines fell off the clamps to shatter on the ground or exploded while still attached to their fixtures and tore the catwalks apart.
There was hesitance in the pilot’s expression. His hand wandered to his holstered weapon, but he flinched as another mech nearby exploded. He gestured for his engineer to run before he followed suit, looking over his shoulder.
“Good boy,” Bellona remarked sarcastically, just in time for Fraus to break through the hatch. She launched herself towards the mechanical snake, aiming to sever its head or arm, but the goddess in control of the machine was ready for her.
The mech fired a barrage of missiles, forcing Bellona to zigzag through the hangar. With little room to navigate, the missiles simply struck what remained of the mechs as well as the hangar gate, engulfing everything in flames.
It kept firing at a rapid pace, now, both with the spear’s laser cannon and the array of weaponry in its tail, forcing Bellona to fly around and dodge, until the high-powered energy projectiles had almost melted down the hangar doors. Another missile barrage aimed at Bellona exploded the them entirely, with a stray hit against one of Bellona’s barriers catapulting her outside.
She was about twenty stories up, with the city sprawling behind her as the busted hangar door grew distant. Fraus immediately followed, propelling herself towards Bellona and taking more potshots at her.
Bellona cursed quietly as she realized her new precarious situation; she was now in the middle of a city, surrounded by innocent people living in their homes. Dodging Fraus’ attacks in this space meant to condemn someone else to an explosive deathm unless she used her Realm of Duels in time.
“Bellona? Is that you out there?” Annie suddenly spoke in Bellona’s earpiece.
“A little busy, but yes! How are things on your side?” Bellona asked as she erected a barrier to intercept the next barrage of energy shots and missiles. She sent her gladii out, taking potshots at the giant mech and forcing it on the defensive.
“We gained access to the city’s systems. We’ve issued an evacuation order, but it will take some time until people are in their shelters. Please avoid going all-out with this thing for fifteen more minutes!”
“That’s easier said than done, Annie!” Bellona shouted. She flew towards an area with fewer high rises, with Fraus following close behind her. Bellona groaned from the strain as she caught more of the machine’s fire with her barrier, shielding the surrounding buildings with all her might. Another barrage approached her, and she quickly shifted into her pocket dimension, together with the ordinance flying her way. In this space, she dodged the missiles and let them collide with the copied buildings, with no one inside to be hurt before she shifted back to reality.
In that time, Fraus gained on her, swinging her large spear at the Magical Girl and trying to bisect her, while Bellona used her gladii’s propulsion to narrowly escape the sweeping attack. Once she was out in the open, she turned to face Fraus, who came at her with murderous intent, pointing her tail’s array of energy weaponry right at her.
“How long until everyone’s in the underground shelters?” Annie asked impatiently as Katsuya kept staring at the screens in front of him. He shook his head, turning around in his chair.
“The mega-hab elevators are completely unsuited to this kind of emergency. It’s going to be ten more minutes at the very least.”
Annie let out a curse, running to the large observation window to look outside at the city. She saw the giant snake-shaped mech in the distance, and the light of its laser weaponry and its missiles’ explosions on top of that. Sometimes the lights vanished, only to reemerge a few seconds later, as Bellona doubtlessly used her special ability to prevent any hits to the surrounding area.
She clenched her good fist as she felt utterly useless again. First as Zach died, and now she could only watch as her friend took on the thing that made their city the hellhole it was today. Self-loathing filled her as she was reduced to the role of a quiet observer who had to let someone else perform the heroics.
She would have stood there and sulked some more if she didn’t hear the speaker on a nearby terminal crackle.
“HQ, this is Valkyrie Zero-Alpha! I repeat! This is Valkyrie Zero-Alpha, do you copy? Over!”
Annie looked at the terminal. By its markings and the name plate this was the seat of the head of the local security forces.
“Don’t answer that. We don’t have everything under control just yet. If they knew that we’re in the command center, it would take a mech only a few shots to wipe us out through that window,” Katsuya cautioned her, and Annie nodded. Still, she walked over to the terminal and had a look.
The man on the screen looked rather distressed as he turned on his machine’s systems one by one.
“Just on the off chance that someone’s listening, then: I’m going to chase after that snake mech. It took out our entire armada of mech suits, so we found the least wrecked one and I’m going to set out to assist that so-called terrorist, since it’s very clear to me that she’s the one trying to keep everyone safe. If you’re listening to this, Mister Hayder: consider this my two weeks’ notice.”
Annie looked over her shoulder at Katsuya, who clenched his jaw. It was apparent that he wanted to shut the call down, but at the same time, he wanted to see where this was going. Annie took that as an implicit invitation to take over and sat down at the station, putting on a headset.
“Valkyrie Zero-Alpha, this is HQ… under temporary new management. We hear you loud and clear.”
The man on the other end of the call looked surprised, then he laughed.
“Well, I’ll be! What happened to Hayder? Brain soup aside.”
“He got deleted by whatever is piloting that new mech, so you’ll have to hand your resignation to someone else,” Annie spoke over the comms, and the man let out a snort.
“Deleted? Just like that? Can’t say I feel sorry for that guy. I won’t ask too many questions, just… give me a few pointers for where the fighting is happening, alright? This thing is currently being held together by duct tape and prayers. It’s headless so I’m looking out of the view port and all it has is twenty rounds of AC ammo.”
“Don’t you worry. I’ll be your eyes and ears,” Annie confirmed, navigating the menus to access Prosperity City’s various surveillance systems.
***
“Your interference ends here, little pest!” the machine shrieked. Erratic swing followed erratic swing, with missiles’ smoke trails filling the air as Bellona goaded the mech into firing at her while she only had the night sky behind her. Explosions bloomed above the city’s skyline, with the goddess of war zigzagging between them, while her gladii took several potshots at the giant construct that was still on her tail.
“You should lie down and let me end your useless struggle! I still contain the people you want to save! You wouldn’t cut through them just to get to me, would you?”
The hateful words coming out of the expressionless mask just gave Fraus another layer of inhumanity. Bellona gritted her teeth and accelerated towards the mech, readying her blade in response.
She aimed to hit the crystal on the mech’s chest directly, without cutting too deep, but the moment Fraus saw her movement, she suddenly swung her spear to the side and fired a shot at one of the distant skyscrapers.
Bellona let out a curse and dragged them both into a pocket dimension, but as she did, Fraus swung her spear, seemingly at nothing. The forming interconnecting lines of Realm of Duels were separated and the pocket dimension collapsed, leaving no time to stop the already flying shot of energy.
It grazed the building, tearing a hopefully empty room apart, and the display was enough to make Bellona stop her attack, flying back to a safe distance.
“You’re still the same weakling I faced in Capitolium. Always concerned for the little people. The insignificant worms who should be nothing but livestock to feed your powers! And don’t even think of bringing us into your pocket dimension, kin! You saw that you cannot truly stop me with that just now, and the moment you utter so much as a ‘Realm’ or ‘Duel’, I will unleash all of these missiles on the surrounding buildings!”
Bellona reacted to the provocation with a few potshots off her floating cyber gladii. The energy beams grazed the mech’s cheek, and its tinny voice let out a laugh.
“Does that make you angry? Being reminded that humans are nothing? You yourself realized that you fight better when they’re not involved, didn’t you? I saw you, through Hayder’s eyes! I saw you cowering behind that barrier, desperately trying to save everyone, which rendered you weak and docile! I saw you making short work of the soldiers in the hallways, when no one was there to get in your way! Come on, Bellona! I know that deep within you don’t want to hold back on behalf of these inferior creatures!”
Bellona’s eye twitched. There was a time when she would have agreed with this. Objectively, it was the truth that humans only got in her way, but that was no reason to compromise her morals and leave people to die. The days she spent on Mars’ farm introduced some much-needed peace to her heart, and she wouldn’t abandon it now, least of all at the behest of a crippled would-be goddess who relied on the science of the people she called lesser creatures to be able to move.
Bellona saw a silver glimmer behind Fraus – and realized that she had a golden opportunity as she identified it as a rather beaten-down mech that approached – and judging by the markings, she knew the pilot.
“You’ve got a friend approaching, Bellona. I hope he can be of use and won’t get in the way,” Annie spoke over the earpiece. Bellona didn’t respond, but she raised her halberd and pointed it at Fraus.
“You say trying to save people makes me weak, Fraus. But there is something that you are overlooking.”
The tinny voice of the mech laughed again, and the apparatus floated a little closer.
“Oh, yes? Then do tell me what that ‘something’ is supposed to be!”
“Saving people occasionally means that you’re making allies,” Bellona spoke as she saw a muzzle flash. And only half a second later, a high-explosive ballistic round hit Fraus in the back of her mechanical head. The lights behind its emotionless eyes flickered and the machine let out a loud curse as it attempted to turn around to face the source of the newest offense. Its stinger opened fire and the mech dashed through the air, barely avoiding the incoming barrage.
Turning its back turned out to be a bad mistake in Bellona’s presence.
Bellona immediately rushed her with all the speed she could muster, raising her halberd and swinging it with all the power she had, straight through Fraus’ right arm, repeating the manner in which she defeated her the last time.
The arm fell down into the streets below, together with the oversized spear, and the impact kicked up dust before car alarms filled the night air. Bellona let out a loud war scream as the mech tried to turn her way again and summoned a nodachi into her hands. She flew a half circle around Fraus, turning just a little faster than her, then she rammed her blade into the metal making up its snake tail. She continued her battle cry as she slid down the mech’s body, tearing it wide open in a spiral pattern as she kept circling around the mech, and, finally, she reached the stinger.
Bellona tore the weapon out of the metal frame, built a little distance and charged her martial energies into the blade. She released a razor-sharp energy blade with a quick, horizontal slash, and it sliced straight through the stinger, ripping it apart with a violent explosion before the slash left a crater in the asphalt below.
Fraus was furious. Her mech let out a shrill scream, and her missile pods fired a full salvo in the surrounding area, aiming for the buildings around them.
“You worthless creature of lower birth! Your soul has been so diluted from being born so many generations away from our grandmother that you can’t feel her presence at all! I will take every single one of these cattle you care so much about with me!”
Her screams of frustration, however, got even more agitated as Bellona’s cyber-gladii nimbly flew through the air and shot missiles out of the sky. They missed some, but those missiles soon exploded before reaching their targets as an anti-air burst tore them apart, shot from her new friend.
Bellona flew back up the mech’s body, slicing off one of its missile pods, then the other after circling around, and then she finally landed on its chest, on top of Fraus’ true form, the venomous green jewel sitting in the mech’s chest.
Fraus was now falling out of the sky. Whatever systems she used for propulsion and keeping herself in the air had to have been located in the tail, which was now a ruined mess. Bellona used her Gladii to break the machine’s fall, straining as Fraus reached out with her remaining hand and tried to crush her, though she was only met with another slash from Bellona’s blade that severed the last of her limbs.
The pair crashed into the ground, barely cushioned enough by the propulsion systems, and the expressionless mask of the machine couldn’t hide Fraus’ rage.
“You may have won today, but ultimately, we will win! Everything will be annihilated and the universe, grandmother, will return to her proper form! We will all be one!”
“As long as I draw breath, I can assure you that won’t happen,” Bellona replied. To finally end the threat posed by Fraus, she summoned a rather simple tool into her hand: a rondel dagger.
She grabbed it in reverse grip, placing the tip in the pre-existing crack on the gemstone’s surface, braced it with her left palm, then she put her entire weight on it.
Fraus’ screams came through the machine’s speakers, and as the crack widened, she went through the entire process of cursing Bellona and her entire family, before a loud shattering sound echoed through the abandoned street – and with it, there was finally silence.
Bellona lifted the shards of Fraus in her hand. As she expected, there was a weak little shimmer in one of the fragments. No matter how small she hacked this crystal; in a decade, or century, or even a millennium, Fraus would return as the dark goddess of deceit.
But for now… she had peace from her. She had one less person thirsting after the blood of her daughter or desiring the end of the world. Bellona took solace in that.