The fight begins without me.
A few of the vulture-like skyswarmers are swooping in from above. My heart skips a beat when they arrive but they don't seem interested in me, focused more on Razor. She's a total blur, only leaving a trail of indigo plasma behind her movements as she slashes the snake's tail off. It in turn dodges her followup with Pathos but she cuts it a second time and removes another segment.
Between my attack and hers, the beast is nearly dead.
We only need to finish it off.
To all our dismay, Taser just can't hack it. Her pins bounce uselessly off its armor. Without even noticing, the snake hisses in rage and thrashes its body. Like a whip it flips its tail out, sweeping the area in front of it with a blindingly fast swipe. The impact slams Razor in the gut, sending her flying. I scream in horror as the snake descends on her, wrapping her in its constricting hold.
I have to do something! Fast! "Uh! Uh! Oh no! Um! What do I do? What do I do? Ace?"
"Kill it, Witch! Save her!"
Fumbling, I prepare an L2 Prism Bolts and tune it to green chroma. Darts of fetid festering acid shoot through the air and all three pierce the snake with shocking precision. Its head jerks back as it dissolves, and the body falls limp, releasing Razor from its hold.
"I–I did it! I did it!"
"That's our Witch! Fuck yeah! Keep going!"
"Thanks!" Razor calls out, picking her sword up and jumping back into the fray.
Ace's rifle shatters the air twice, punching one swarmer out of the sky and then nearly decapitating it. Tune clears the distance and finishes it off, grabbing it by the wings and tearing it in half. Tossing the parts, she turns and raises her fists just in time to get slashed by another one. Their claws are IndigoTech infused too, and the energy rips through her frozen mercury with ease.
"Ouch!" she yelps, eyes flashing red. "Status critical! Damage Index at sixty percent!"
The second one tears a gash through Razor with similar ruthlessness. Cyan transmitter fluid splatters the snow, glowing a stark contrast of neon cyan on white. She gasps and tilts away, clutching her side. She's hurt bad!
I–I don't–I don't what–No, I need to do something!
But my Conduit is still cooling down! Shit!
The swarmers spare us no pause, emitting soundless shrieks at supersonic frequencies that I can't hear but can detect. I watch in horror as three more of them dive from the clouds, wings pluming as they join the fight too.
Taser just can't catch a break, but Razor manages to gather herself and keep fighting, cutting at the swarmer in front of her. Logos and Pathos make debris of it with one sweep, and she exhales a sharp breath as she moves to attack the one fighting Tune. Trailing transmitter fluid, she swings Logos but the machine dodges.
Oh, no! What–What do I do? Ahh! I don't know what to do!
In that moment, a memory of my own flashes across my GPU. Louis and I, playing video games on Scribe, and he's telling me the fundamental rule to combat in the genre of computer role playing games.
You either crowd control, or you get crowd controlled. But the best method of crowd control? Making the crowd dead!
Three's a crowd, but what does that make four?
My Conduit pings my onboard, ready to fire.
"Look out Razor!"
She dives to the right. Tune does too. I activate my last L3 Charge, opting to forego the Explosive for a more suitable option–Lightning Spear. A jolt of powerful electricity courses from my chest to the Conduit in my palm. A claw of yellow energy explodes out from my Conduit, sending my hand way up again and knocking me onto my butt in the snow as the flash blinds me and the thunder roars.
I can't see what happened. My optics are overloaded.
Ace's rifle snaps and she calls out, "Damn! Clear! But we have more coming! Headsmasher and biters!"
"Please stand by for repairs, Razor."
"Badeep has me covered. Repair yourself."
"Affirmative. Damage Index reduced to thirty percent."
Hands take hold of me and I'm dragged to my feet. "You're amazing, Witch!" Ace cries, keeping me standing. "Only a little left and then we're clear!" She lets me go and fires again, the violent break to the silence making me flinch. "Shiver their timbers, Taser! Keelhaul those landlubbers!"
"Tweet-twee-tweeee!"
I hear the familiar zap and pop of her namesake killing biters. My optics start to come back in time to see Razor engage the headsmasher and completely annihilate it with her blades. Logos cuts through the rusted metal like it's paper and Pathos does the exact same, reducing the headsmasher to superheated bisected debris.
She killed it. It's dead. So fast. Holy shit. We've come so far.
My vision returned, my Conduit cooled and ready for more, I prep my next attack, opting for another shot of green tuned Prism Bolts so I can target multiple of the remaining biters. We're done, more or less. Boss fight defeated. It's just time to sweep up the adds. I can make quick work of that. Targeting the ones further back, I shoot acid darts and make them pop like the insects they are.
Ace laughs as she runs to meet the rest, Air Burst's indicative pressure flaring from its Cylinder port. Rocketing two blasts back to back, she turns the last five Anklebiters into scrap, then ejects the rest of her pressurized steam with another amused chuckle.
"Damn. That's pure efficiency. Good shit, girls."
My hand slowly lowers to my side, the Conduit still hot in my palm, blinking red. The fight is over. Machine corpses are everywhere I look, littering the snow. More anklebiters than I can count, the constrictor, the swarmers, the headsmasher.
Oh, Turing. It's over.
I drop to my knees as the reality of it hits me.
I participated in a realfight. I survived a real fight.
Not just that, I contributed too! Really contributed!
It was easy. Too easy. I'm unharmed and only spent a few Tech Charges. Blowing up the constrictor with my Overclocked Explosive, piercing Lightning Spear through the swarmers, it was me. I did that. It wasn't a meek effort either, some adequate show of some adequate Technomancer, no, I kicked ass.
It's like Ace said. With this Tech at my disposal, I am a menace.
What do I have to be afraid of? Nothing can touch me!
Something leaps from the snow. I shriek in alarm as an anklebiter throws itself at me. Its pincers clamp onto my overshield but bounce off. I'm unharmed, but that doesn't matter. The shock of it was enough to lose sustain on Fearless. With a bloodcurdling scream I drop onto my backside, frantically kicking myself away from it. The jaws snap and chomp at me as it advances, almost like it's toying with me.
I'm done for. I'm dead. This is it. It's over. I'm dead. I'm going to be anklebiter food, stripped to the bone, scrapped for copper wiring and tungsten plating.
A leg point pierces through it from above.
I'm next. Whoever stomped on it will kill me after.
"Look at this fucking mess," a familiar voice sighs as my soon to be killer approaches. "You Neps just can't help making a wreck of things, can you?"
I pry an eye open to find Zenith standing above me, offering a hand.
I hurriedly take it, scrambling upright. "Oh, thank Turing it's you. I thought I was done for. I can't be out here another second I need to go home I think I'm going to lose it I'm so fucking scared right now, Zenith, please don't let me die–"
"Easy, easy, soldier," he says, looking me over. "The immediate area is clear. You're not in any danger unless you press on North, closer to the factory."
I whirl on Ace as she draws near. She speaks over me with, "Might consider RTB at this point. We'll have our hands full carrying all these corpses, and we need some armor built before we risk a deeper dive."
"Or we might not," Razor responds, coming over with Tune at her back. "Looks like the spider has been here recently, moving farther East. The tracks are only an hour or so old, but if we don't follow them soon we'll never find them again, not once they're snowed over."
"How are you able to know that? Show me what you're seeing."
"Fine. I've given you access to… all sensory input. No, all systems. You have full and total access, Ace. Give me the same."
"Oh, yeah, wow. Done. All permissions. Look at this… I thought you were just picking up on it normally, but these are highlighted. Biters, armrippers, headsmashers, the constrictor trails, all of it. There's the spider's path, no kidding. That's some serious utility, babe."
"Believe me, I'm aware, and I intend to fully utilize it." She checks on me with a distant glance, top to bottom. "You're done for, aren't you?"
I furiously nod, shaking from head to toe. "Home. Please. I beg of you."
"Take that into account, Ace. It's your call as leader."
She emits a long sigh. "Damn. Forget the spider. This time. Pack it in. Let's scav up these bodies, treat our injuries, and get some better armor plating. We'll RTB, make more gear, then hit this area ASAP. As eager as I am to get even with that spider, I'm not tracking it down half-cocked. I want at least another L3 Tech handy to start us strong."
"Hm. Consider me impressed with your restraint. I'm not sure I would do the same if I had my killer in my sights." Razor takes my hand and drags me along with her. "Witch and I will cube the scrap. You two keep watch. Come on, Tune."
I glance over my shoulder to see Ace and Zenith locking eyes and bitterly turning away from each other. It doesn't make sense to me. Zenith claimed to owe us Neps for Ace's sacrifice. Now that Ace is back alive again, why isn't he trying to make amends? Why isn't she doing so either, having given up her own life for his sake? I don't understand the animosity between them, but I don't plan to get involved whatsoever.
Razor is seriously hurt, despite the gel patchwork from Badeep and its autoinjectors. She's biting hard on her lower lip, still clutching the gash in her side from the skyswarmer attack. Holding her hand, I lift my other to the wound in her side, drawing on my final L1 Charge for a Repair CyanTech.
"Don't," she states. "I'm fine."
I obey, too scared to go against her or argue.
"You start with the biters," she says, retrieving the case from Tune and handing me a bunch of cubes. "Prioritize the ones with their acid canisters still intact. Grab as many as you can manage. Tune and I will work on the bigger bodies."
She's the one who Henna showed how to harvest from them. I don't protest, fumbling my cubes and having to pick some of them up from the snow.
Standing over a biter corpse, I find myself frozen in place. It looks dead. Is it? If I reach down to cube it, will it suddenly wake up and bite me? My overshield is nearly done for, and it will only take one more hit before breaking. Then I run the risk of genuinely being hurt. If I try to cube this biter, and it attacks me, I will be made susceptible to damage, and then the others will wake up and attack me too, and Ace will shoot me, and Razor will stab me, and then I will be torn apart and die in agony, left to rot as scrap for the feral machines to scavenge.
I drop the cubes and run.
"Damn it! Ace! Stop her!"
I'm blindsided by another tackle, hit so hard that my overshield breaks. Ace plants a knee on my chest, a hand around my throat as she pins me to the snow again. She's grinning, an evil satisfaction to her pleased sneer.
"You didn't think you could outrun me, did you?"
"I didn't–I–Not at–I didn't think!"
"Clearly." Shifting her weight, she sits on top of my hips, removing her hand from my throat, though I'm still at her mercy. "I didn't care before, but now I do, because this shift of yours is… disturbing. I thought you were making progress, but here you are, running scared once more. How did you go from one to the other so damn fast, hm? Why are you backsliding on us, Witch? Answer me."
"I–I–Let me go! Please! Please, please, plea–"
"Because this is a serious issue. If you're fine one minute then fleeing the next, we really cannot count on you." She lifts her head, jabs a finger toward Zenith who's coming over. "Back off. This has nothing to do with you."
"Get off her. All you're doing is–"
"Zen," Razor says, and he stops in place.
I stare at him, silently begging. Help me. Please.
He doesn't, choosing instead to watch.
Ace sighs, stroking her fingers through my hair. She looks sad. "Come on, Witch. I'm sorry for tackling you again but I did warn you it would happen. I'll start trying to be more gentle. Next time, I'll just grab you. But what's going on with you? Be honest with me."
"I told–I told you. I'm a coward. 251 fear integer here!"
"Mhm. But why only sometimes?"
I lift my arm, showing her the display readout of my remaining Charges.
She takes a look but shrugs. "What am I supposed to see here? Say it plainly."
"I only–" I have to pause, choking down a block in my throat. "I only used two L1s. In the fight. Two. But I have four L1 Charges total."
"And you only have one charge left, for some reason."
"F–Fearless," I exhale, letting my head fall back into the snow and gazing emptily at the gray clouds. "I used the Fearless CyanTech. Right when we left the Station. I've been focusing on sustaining it ever since. The last biter s–scared me… scared me into losing sustain. So now I'm back to–back to normal…"
"Okay. Pretty ingenious," she nods, trading a look with Razor, then caressing my face and brushing my cheek with a thumb. "You did great, Witch. That's worth praise. Good job. I'm proud of you for being so brave, even if it took Technomancy to do it."
I turn my face into her palm and nuzzle, closing my eyes. It feels nice to be praised, and be held like this. Her weight on top of me is kind of comforting now. "I'm sorry. I–I really am useless without it… I was basically faking everything, all of the progress you think I made–It was a lie. I'm s–sorry for deceiving you. I should have said something…"
"I flat-out told you not to bother explaining it earlier," she huffs. "And I don't believe you're telling the truth, to me or to you. You didn't fake anything. You blew up that bodybinder and blasted those swarmers right out of the sky. You did that. Fearless Tech or not, it doesn't change your accomplishments. If anything, it adds to them, because you were able to work around your fear."
"Why aren't you mad at me? You should be. I am…"
"How could I be? I see so much potential in you. It just needs a little help to be made manifest. You will get there soon enough. And we'll be there helping you all the way."
"We will," Razor confirms.
Zenith nods. "Sure will, Witch."
Ace stands up off me, offering a hand. "Now come on. Bag up your kills, Witch. You earned them. And yes, they are dead. As soon as you're done, we'll head home and you can scurry off to hide under the blankets."
"Okay! Okay! Th–Thank you!"
I dart back over and pick up my cubes, compressing biter corpses by the dozens. They sure are dead. Not one of them is pretending, or lying in wait for me to let me guard down, only to chomp on my hand when I least expect it. They're just… dead.
I killed a number of them myself.
The feeling is surreal.
Doing exactly as I'm told and nothing more, I finish the job and anxiously wait for the others to finish up. Zenith is giving them an explanation of the bodybinder and its purpose and background but I'm not listening to a word, hopping in place and on the verge of tears. Whatever Ace may have to say, I am a useless, pathetic coward, and the proof is all consuming as I experience the bone-rattling anxiety of someone being hunted by wolves.
Finally, Razor closes the cube case and puts the backpack on Tune, then nods. I hurry home, there's no incident along the way, and I drop my gear at the workshop before sprinting and scurrying to the bunks and diving under the blankets to hide away forever.
I'm never going out there again.