Prototype Ra-Re in Tech + War Machine combined transformation illustration
The Mech Leader approached with his fists up, his feet navigating unfamiliar and broken territory. Jubey rose his electrocuted limbs, and one of the Red officials ran out to the perimeter of the fight.
“Engie, our energy cell deactivated! That Blue Leader is intending to activate an electrical oversurge! Once your forces are hit by that laser cannon, he’ll mop them up in no time. Please be careful!”
“Thanks, but I already overloaded his machine.” Jubey waved him further away. The Mech Leader looked between them both and laughed. “I’m just like you, you see. I shine in the moment of glory. I don’t scream in the moment of terrifying combat maneuvers, though. I’m afraid I heard that.” Jubey wavered in his poise to recall the embarrassing moment strapped to the Frankendevice, then straightened his frame with fighting spirit. The Leader ran the last few feet towards him and launched a right hook.
Jubey blocked the blow and sent his arm flying away with a shock burst, and the Leader swung around to hit him again. Jubey blocked again, and winced as the electric cuff needed to recharge. “Elementary mistake to repeat the same move. And yet it can be effective,” growled the Leader.
He stepped away. “Big hit of juice from a cable can make a Mech do all kinds of crazy things. Remember when I was a rookie pilot, our army still laughed at Red walking tanks. But one day there was a little accident in the Mech hangar, one of the first 3 ever built… massive surge made my machine as nimble as an acrobat, and with the firepower to match. Well, couldn’t separate myself from them after that, but I kept it my secret move.” The Leader came running back in, and Jubey sent a right blow towards his shoulder. He wove his upper body away from a beatdown punch, and hit his stomach from the left. Somehow, he knew how to keep the cuffs from activating, and waited a split second for the elbow drop and used them to disengage. The Leader whirled back from the shock. Jubey stumbled, having gotten a bit of the flow. “It’s normal for my Mech to shut down after all that juice, but normally I’m done. I clamber out onto a battleground of eerie dust, blackened skeletons and broken armor.” He flung his fists into boxing position. “Never before was there a reason to keep going.” The Leader came charging back in, sending a punch sailing past his temple. Jubey dodged around like a cobra… like a cobra? Where did that idea come from?… and chopped into the leader’s back. He was chopping again when the Leader whirled around with a haymaker, and Jubey’s cuffs were microseconds from being charged. He swung backwards like a threatened cobra, and the cuffs had enough time to engage with a disc-shaped energy burst.
The Leader swung in wild rotations with his momentum, directly towards the Red official. A shout came from the upper windows beneath the walkway arch, but the Leader landed with his fist sending shockwaves into the broken-open dirt. The ground was fractured, and he raised his body chuckling. “Keep that up, and they may demote you… but of course, your Commander shares that glamorous demotion.” The praise settled deep into Jubey’s gut, where something wirey and gushing like a river struggled to accept the rawly powerful change to his fighting spirit.
The Leader huffed, curled onto his feet, and rushed at Jubey. As they met he pulled his punch towards the head and whirled into his chest, and his left chest exploded in pain due to the thin muscle. The blow flowed radiating further in rings, feeling like a blooming flower of rawness. Jubey was faced with a lot of momentum, and he used it to flip him over his back. He went down with a double punch, activated his cuffs, and the Leader bounced on the dusty ground, choking. Then he pulled Jubey above him, flinging him with improbable purchase. Jubey landed on his back as well. The light of the Rings was blinding. He coughed. The Leader rasped: “I remember when my drill sergeant shamed my vulnerability to ground throws. Didn’t matter much, since I became a Pilot. But here I am. Least I learned something. Would’ve never done that throw in boot camp, even against a lightweight.” He shifted onto his stomach, Jubey peering over his. “Piloting a Mech teaches you something about your own body. But you. That’s not it for you. The red and blue lights hidden in the sky above… they’re spelling out your name. Used to stare into the sky so long after successful battles. I know it. Fate. Destiny. Let’s play out my place in yours.”
He shuffled and limped to his feet, then recovered his strength. Jubey got to his. The Leader shouted: “Can I beat the daylights?! Can I beat the Rings’ favor?” His flurry was intense, and Jubey’s head dodged rapidly. He wanted to strike, but so easy to mess up a dodge and receive a crippling blow… he was getting good, and was thinking he could tire the Leader, then his cheek and chest got grazed. His left fist shot out, popping the Leader on the chin, and he flew back. “K-KO!” said Jubey, “…will there be a Round 2?”
The Leader laughed. Jubey looked beyond him across the courtyard, where the blue Mech still fighting was getting punched by long zigzags of his Mech’s crane arm. He couldn’t hear it, but the blue Mech was trying to send a message the AI kept rejecting. The Leader spoke while raising himself: “My wife would have liked you. She had a thing for geeky, brilliant nerds. She knew just the right way to rescue them from getting lost in their heads… the right joke about their favorite games.” The Leader’s heavily armored Mech spasmed and began to whirr to life. “Looks like your stun’s wearing off. Shall we resume in our suits?” The Blue assault mech approached the long stairs to reach them, and Jubey’s Mech whirled through the air in a long jump to land near him. Watching the maneuver, he was glad he wasn’t inside, as he would surely either snap his belts, pass out or be crushed. The Leader remote-aimed his chaingun behind his autorocket, and Jubey’s Mech connected with his suit so he could use the curtain gun to riddle the Assault with bullets. The Assault hid. The Leader lowered his arm. “Best if we stay on the ground.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Jubey’s Mech watched as they exchanged blows, leaping and sailing across the ground in dust clouds. “Come on, kid, you’re wasting your energy punching exfoliates of buildings!” The more they moved, the more dust, and the Leader resembled a tan silhouette. “Double blows, triple blows, make a wound crippling. My drill sergeant always emphasized aiming the same spots.” The Leader abruptly stopped speaking and swung like a dust devil, bruising Jubey’s left thigh. “There’s a certain art to spreading them out, though.”
The dust was reducing effectiveness of the shock bursts, and Jubey led where the reddening silhouette would next be in the next cloud. Bashed skull, the Leader swirled out of the cloud and Jubey followed to where he held his knees. He looked up, his coarse skin wrinkling. “Well? Think you can win Round 2?” Jubey whispered: “that’s where the stamina surge kicks in in the game…” the Leader cackled. “I wish. All that kicks in for me is aching wounds.”
The Leader rose. “If you do follow the pattern the Rings are blinking into your head, do remember never to fight near your home. No choice right now, if you consider your facilities home… but do your best to make distance. Keep something to come back to some day.” He panted, winced. “Blood trickle. Impressive.”
Again he charged, and they fought for another minute. The Leader blinked blood and smiled. “Home’s a place to grow, to flourish. Make it bigger. Fuller. Never… never emptier. When you find someone… something that can make it more homely, it’s time to go back. If it’s there.” He swung, and Jubey dodged. “War can wait. Home can’t. Might even… might go black, if you do.” He punched, punched, smiled. “Then you won’t know what to do. So never wait.” Jubey replied: “I’ll try not to. My AI’s calculating those decisions for me right now, though, so he’ll have to try not to too.”
Jubey dodge-rolled through the dust. A weak spark deflected the next punch he received. They were sailing wide, and Jubey stepped backwards. The Leader’s forward thrust took them both out of the clouds. The final light was blinding again as a massive Ring emitter passed by in the sky, with night quickly following.
“Nice clear air. Remember to widen your field of vision. No tunnel vision, take in everything you see. That way you won’t be surprised.” He stumbled back, then rushed with a punch at Jubey, who caught it in his hand. “Nice job. That was coming up real fast, and I had an opening for my other fist but you shifted your right leg back.”
“Me, I was just remembering one of my favorite fighting cartoons. I’m no original…” The Leader snorted. “We all start out copying past greats. Sometimes a warrior can bring out something crazy in him no one’s seen before… but that's rare to do early. To perform such rapid recall for your situation to defend yourself, that's brilliant. My wife would point out all the little tinkering tricks that slipped out of me… uh, while in my mech suit.”
The Leader slowly stepped back, then rushed him again. “Can you do that again? What other scenes rush around in your mind?” He made a slight leap with a wild swing, and a small gunshot erupted in his chest. He clutched his chest where blood spread from the left of it, then fell down.
A member of the Red government was behind him, clutching a tiny six-shot magazine pistol. Jubey stared at him as he walked across the field to his Red inferior. “I saw him nearly strike you, and came as fast as I could.” The Red official seemed surprised. “I… I was fine.” Jubey studied the scar on the right of his jaw, memorizing it to distinguish from the many scars in administration. The politician continued: “Our forces have nearly driven back Blue military from this city. The remaining Mech is the final holdout.” He looked towards Jubey, but something made him say nothing, and he walked across the courtyard to the next building. Jubey looked down. The Leader was dead. His dog tags clinked as they danced from a mysterious wind, and Jubey took them. The underside of each medallion pictured a beautiful foreign city flourishing with nature, and the carved words “A reminder not all places are blackened.”
Jubey stared at the door seconds after the politician left. He walked over to his Mecha, which lowered its ladder. The AI said nothing, and they tracked the Blue mech to the abandoned military base just outside the city. As night fully set with the whirring of the Rings beyond filling the air, the Mech came out. At first Jubey held his fire, but when the Blue pilot shot at him he lost it. The Blue held up his hands as if unsure of how to engage, but a full salvo landed from the curtain-gun and tore apart his Mech. He ejected, screaming words Jubey could not hear.
In the flaming ruins of the Mech, Jubey saw insulated photographs of the Leader and his 2 soldiers, as if he wanted them to survive in the wreckage. Jubey came out of his mood, and unlocked communications with the Beetle. The Blue Pilot within sniffled and stammered: “…we should go after him! I know he had something important!”
Jubey turned the Mecha. The Leader’s Mech stood behind him, with a red glow and jagged motion going through it. The infection… It made it move. The AI spoke: “Jubey, I… I can make use of this machine. Give me 5 days and your scientists. However, a certain… source of information told me there's something inside we should take for ourselves.”
Jubey walked out into the night air, a wind bringing a mystical energy that opened his awareness to another dimension both inviting yet too dim and morbid to enter. He snapped out and fully immersed himself in the world, and walked around the Leader’s Mech. He opened the back compartment, and it creaked slowly. “Jubey,” said the AI, “I am glad to join you in your military journey, and I will always be with you.”
Inside was the Electrical Overdrive component, and on the formerly securely locked door to access it was a photograph of a woman with lovely bright blonde curls. White pen wrote a message: “This is the only thing that makes me feel the same as you did! - Love, Javin.” The same words were written on the component in spray paint.
Jubey took it to install in his Mecha.
Next: Return to Scientific Home
Would you work with soldiers of the enemy?
