Chapter Nine: First Sortie

TW:

PTSD, Animal Death

There’s a certain primal elation that comes from the movement of my Mecha, one that speaks of undeniable power and weight. Each step of the Doberman’s feet leaves an imprint of my presence upon the world, a message to any who come across it that a titan walked upon this place. It’s almost intoxicating, and at this moment I can almost understand why humanity has been so obsessed with power for its entire existence. It even only gets more cathartic as I begin to speed up, inertia pressing me back into my seat more and more as time goes on.

The noise of all this is probably deafening to anything around me, but protected inside of my capsule I can barely even hear it, beyond a dull thump each time a foot hits the ground and a hiss as the complicated artificial muscles that allow for this monster to move release some of the heat that they create.

I quickly crest a small hill, upon which I pause as I can finally get eyes upon my first targets as an actual Engine. It’s a rather decently sized herd of Longhorn Beefalo led by a rather huge ignited bull, which makes an unfortunate amount of sense considering the accidental full-burst of my power that I did. All but the leader seem to be rather panicked about this entire situation, just seemingly following behind him as he leans towards the fight instead of flight.

Honestly, the fact the glare of the leader is so intense I can feel it through the screen is a bit disconcerting. There’s no way my power does anything to him when he’s like that. Violence it is I guess.

I sigh, tapping my foot against the ground. “Hey, you there assistant?”

The crimson orb appears in the corner of my screen. {“Indeed, how may I be of service?”}

“How far would I go and how much damage would I do to the frame if I activate my jumpjets as I leap from here towards the stampede?”

It pauses as it calculates, then slowly responds, {“Distance sufficient to reach the herd if done in about five seconds. I estimate insignificant to minor structural damage, but significantly higher odds to cause damage to the Engine. Please refrain from self destructive actions please.”}

Better than I expected. A small smirk appears on my face as I push the Doberman into a low stance, building up power in its muscles. There’s a high pitched hum that begins to ring out from behind me, that I assume is the jumpjets heating up. I tense up pretty hard as the Mecha is about to launch, only to have all the air knocked out of my lungs as it shoots forward like a cannonshot.

It’s weirdly serene as I fly through the air, with the only thing I can hear being the quickly approaching sound of hooves upturning dirt. The world almost seems to move slowly, and I get a good look at the herd as I fly towards it. Then we reach the crest of the jump, and my stomach drops out from under me as gravity reasserts itself upon the Doberman and I. It’s everything I can do to not pass out as we accelerate towards the ground, the sheer sensory overload of everything happening at once threatening to steal me away at the worst possible moment.

Then we impact, slamming right into the bull’s upper back. It and I fall together into a frankly terrifying roll where we seem to completely run over several innocent female Beefalos. I manage to barely catch my breath, then thankfully notice the herd diverting around the huge roadblock, us, to the south instead of to the north. Technically my goal is complete, since I redirected the beasts away from the train, but as I stand back up a glance over at the bull tells me it isn’t going to let this end just like that.

The hulking beast loudly whines as it flails to get back onto its feet, almost seeming pitiful until I see the plainly visible rage in its eyes. Once it’s standing again, the Bull scrapes the ground in front of it with its hooves as it huffs, whereupon a steady stream of literal black smoke begins to flow out of its nostrils. Before my eyes the beast grows , it’s fur changing to a fiery orangish red as it does.

“Oh, that can’t be good.”

{“Caution: the bull is displaying signs of advanced ignition, namely the increase in muscle mass and appearance shift synonymous with boost augments.”}

Rolling my eyes at my copilot stating the obvious, I clench my teeth and activate my own boost. Advanced ignition means that it’s either V2 and I’m fucked, or it’s been mutated in some way through it’s dimensional energy. Both suck for me.

“Fuck…”

The increase in DE drain from using my boost with the Mecha is more than I expected, and I’m forced to recalculate how long I even have to win this fight. It wasn’t exactly great before, but now…

Well, the decision is made for me; I very quickly decide to ignore the entire power situation as the Bull abruptly begins to rush at me. In the split second I have before it hits me, I shift the Mecha into its bipedal form and dive to the side, doing a handspring to land on my feet just on the edge of the stampede. I look up just in time to see the bull seemingly stepping on thin air as it redirects its momentum towards me like it’s running along the edge of a bowl.

{“Recalculation complete. It is only V1 like you, according to the power density readings. The bull’s primary power seems to be related to the smoke it’s creating, as it is solidifying beneath its hooves with each of its steps, while its mutation is related to the increased boost statistics. Recommendation: Dodge anyway.”}

“YOU DON’T FUCKING SAY?!”

I barely manage to sidestep the second charge, taking the chance to dig my claws into its side, leaving a nasty flesh wound trailing down its body but not doing much damage otherwise. The bull doesn’t take this sitting down, as it begins a super tight turn towards us whereupon I find it’s literally smoking blood creating a thick wall right beside me.

Unsure of the level of strength that the obstacle can display, I make a snap decision to take a chance considering my swiftly dwindling DE levels. I shift into a lower stance with my arms held out in front of me, and then rush forward at the bull.

{“Intentions understood: active action assistance activated.”}

The way I move in the next second is unlike anything I have ever managed before. Smoothly as we are about to collide, the Mecha’s hands slip around the Bulls horns, clutching tightly when they are in the perfect place to apply the most torque, before I pull down and to the side as hard as I can. The Bull’s rear flips over itself, but before it even hits the ground there is a sickening snap as its spine breaks.

And just like that, it’s over.

The bull, paralyzed and bleeding out as it lays still upon the ground, whines loudly in a way that makes my heart break. I freeze for a moment as I stare at it, at the sheer violence I committed against an essentially completely innocent creature.

All of this, for the crime of being scared?

A heavy shroud of a variety of emotions covers me as I approach the dying beast, and with one swift movement, I strike the center of its forehead with one of my Mecha’s claws. All of its life leaves its eyes at that moment. Numb, I swap the Doberman back into its quadrupedal form, stepping away from the still rampaging stampede.

My world is covered in a dull haze as I run back towards the train, which had managed to get a decent distance away in the rather short fight that I was in. It takes a couple minutes but eventually I manage to catch up, whereupon I hop up onto the hangar car and have the Mecha lie down once again.

Silently I climb out of the Mecha, my legs wobbling beneath me as I slowly clamber down to the ground. With a whirr the hangar begins to close automatically, and as I stumble towards the workshop, now in relative safety, everything seems to hit at once.

I run over to the trashcan and puke my guts out into it. It’s a disgusting process, probably far longer to me than it actually was, and by the end of it I groan and flop limp onto the ground beside the bin. A deep exhaustion, one that I can’t explain away through just the operation of the Doberman, takes hold.

The question at the forefront of my mind during all of this is, why am I having so much trouble with this? It was just a random cow! If I have so much difficulty with killing it, how the hell am I going to handle humans? What makes this so much different?

My mind, flooded by mental images of the cow and that ghastly noise it made, begins to overflow. They flow down the sides and unto the surrounding ashes, where they begin to dig up memories I buried long ago. Times I considered best left forgotten, for my own sake.

I do my best to push them away, but they rise up nonetheless.

I’m sitting in a hospital room, holding the distressingly lukewarm hand of my mother. Misting against the oxygen mask on her face, her breaths are shallow, wheezing. I’m too tired to stay awake, but she won’t last much longer so I can’t sleep.

Tugging the ragged windbreaker tighter around me, my jaw involuntarily trembles as I trudge forward, fighting against the frigid wind. The crowded world, the ever present lights of the cityscape of DFW, are dead, frozen to nothing. My hand, stiff and slightly purple, raises up to shield my face from the incessant sleet.

Burning blood drips down my face, and I wearily look up with the only eye I can open. A girl screams in the distance as a masked man drags her backwards, a hand held out towards me. My crushed leg refuses to budge, and I watch helplessly as they get into a car and drive away.

Curled up into a ball, I cover my ears in a futile attempt to block out the storm. The thunder is nearly deafening regardless, but what truly makes my heart slam in fear is the unsettling rumbling, not unlike the distinct noise of a train moving, that dominates everything.

Standing above the dead blonde man, my breaths are heavy as I clutch the vicious shard of glass hard enough that it slices into my skin. Crimson drips down the makeshift dagger and pools on the ground beneath us, though at this point I can’t tell mine from his. I take a step back away from the still warm corpse, then turn and run.

I watch muted as the man I killed burns away atop a bed of paper flowers, mourners crying in the stands beside me. I feel no guilt when I look at them, not like other things I’ve done, but something about all of this still sits awful in the pit of my stomach. Am I broken?

With a gasp I return to reality, stuffing those damned memories once again back into the desolate crypt they belong in. My entirety aches in a way that I can’t put into words, and I shakily stand before stumbling over to the computer chair and sitting down. A quick check of the time finds that I only lost half an hour, which is better than I tend to expect when I go through something like that. I have a sinking suspicion that I’m going to see that poor cow again in my flashbacks in the future.

There are about fifty missed calls on the company messaging software, so I send a short confirmation to my coworkers that I’m okay before I slowly stand up and leave the hangar. Something I notice as I step into the sleeper that I hadn’t before is that there is barely any noise from the outside making its way through the walls, not even the sound of the train tracks beneath us. I sigh in relief, then flop down onto the bed before curling into a ball.

For a moment I just lay there, until the phantom pain I was trying to ignore is too much to handle. I silently brush my hand against the scar across my face, finding that as I expected, my old wounds have stayed closed. It’s strange, I don’t usually see that day when I have flashbacks, why did I-

Oh.

My stomach does a flip as I realize that what I felt at that moment was likely exactly what the Beefalo did. Helpless to do anything but watch as your world crumples before you, helpless as you lose what little you truly had.

I can’t help but feel like I’m going to have trouble sleeping tonight.

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