138: An Ill-Fated High-Five Attempt

The sky seemed to shake as an explosion tore through the mall’s parking lot. As the shockwave flung automata warriors outward, one poor mallgoer’s car ended up dented, like a meteorite had just slammed into it for the fun of the game. Considering the size of the mangled up mech, though, it might as well have been a meteorite. As for those unaffected by the explosion—as in most of the mechs, the guild members, and the bystanders—they watched as the smoke cleared to reveal a now-regenerated Ryker.

“I’m glad we got him regenerative clothing,” Celeste descended, hovering the air just a little above the ground as she turned to Electra. “I don’t know how they got it, but it might’ve been the technology department’s greatest contribution in the last decade.”

“True that,” Electra crossed her arms. “Suprising that there are so many bystanders though. “Like it’s the middle of the week...”

With her words, Celeste turned to look at the now-growing crowd of bystanders. Her eyebrows furrowed as she watched a couple braver members try to inch forward. The cat in her arms, ever-curious, also turned to look, only to lose motivation and lay back onto the warm shoulder provided to her.

As the cat shifted in her arms though, Celeste couldn’t help but crack a smile as one man rushed to the front of the crowd before falling to his knees. “MY CAR! THAT WAS MY CAR!”

“We’re going to need to reimburse him,” Electra shifted her weight onto one leg while cracking a smile of her own, making a mental note of the dude’s appearance before pulling out her phone to take a picture of the car’s license plate.

“Yeah, I shouldn’t laugh, but... that reaction is straight out of a movie,” Celeste chuckled before patting Nyssa. After seeing the army of mechs just floating around them in an invisible stalemate all their visors pointed at Ryker who stood out front with a beaming smile, she took a moment to check in on Nyssa. “You okay?”

“Sleepy...” Nyssa mumbled back, her voice a half-meow. “Your body warms up too much when you fight, which makes me think you have a fever, but then I remember it just happens... so then I just get sleepy.”

“Understandable, very in character,” Celeste scratched Nyssa behind the ears before flying back into the air. “Hang on tight, I’m gonna try and get you out of here. There’s too many mechs building up.”

With an affirmative meow floating into her ear, she did a twirl in midair, scanning the airspace below her. As several mechs began moving in their direction, she turned her attention back forward. Her body heated up further. A starry mist came out of her mouth with every exhale as she shot lasers behind her. Her heart, pounding like a rhythmic drum, filled the air with the sound of its beating.

As she and Nyssa came up on the first agreed upon meeting point though, Celeste grimaced. Mechs had overrun the area. The ground, though, featured no hostages or fallen allies. “So, that’s a piece of good news, Nyssa, but that just means that everyone is probably scattered right now. I feel like the safest bet would just be for the vice-guildmaster to just summon her emperor dragon, but... I don’t know, I guess there are regulations for doing that in the normal city-scape.”

“Many,” Nyssa mumbled, “I once tried to transform into a dragon in the middle of the city and got into a lot of trouble. Where to though?”

“We’re still a fair bit clear of any pursuers, but we’re picking up more and more of them as the seconds pass,” Celeste spun in the air to check behind her once more. “Yep, a lot more. Can confirm. Actually, you can be the checker. But, yeah, I’ll just swing by all the agreed upon outdoor meeting points. The mall’s not that big.”

“Got it, got it, makes sense,” Nyssa peeked out from Celeste’s shoulder. “There’s a big horde. Are you sure I can’t attack?”

“... Maybe a little is fine,” Celeste forced out after a moment’s consideration. “Considering the fact that I'm beginning to tire as well.”

Gleeful, with her eyes lighting up like incandescent bulbs—literally—Nyssa began happily firing ‘Celeste-style’ laser beams at the encroaching enemies. She extended her claws, gripping onto Celeste’s shoulder while pulling herself upward to get a better view of the enemies. Her lasers, though a touch less powerful, still tore through the mechs like a knife through hot butter.

Or like a bed through her motivation.

“Meeting point two, also empty. I really don’t know what’s happening,” Celeste scowled, her voice a little scratchy. “Maybe there was a section of the plan I forgot to read? I swear I read all of it though...”

“I mean, I don’t think we expected to run into even a quarter of this many enemies, so it's unsurprising that our plan completely collapsed,” Nyssa kept her lasers going, transforming to have an extra head to shoot more lasers.

After her words though, she fell quiet, focusing on the task at hand. The main problem she kept running into though was... that there were just too many of them. Any swath of enemies she wiped out, no matter the number of mechs she sent crashing into the mall’s rooftop, were immediately replaced. Like a swarm of locusts, they just seemed to never end.

“Yeah, I think they’re going for a capture mission, since gathering point three is also empty. Or they’re on the chase because Gideon got taken,” Celeste swooped downward, blitzing near the ground, only to pull up to avoid the crowd below.

The crowd below—against all safety regulations and common sense—stood there and watched with their mouths open in amazement. Some had pulled out their phones, recording as the stream of mechs tore through the air right behind Celeste. The stupidest among them, reached up and tried to touch one of the mechs.

She, in a rare moment of karmic justice, received a bloody palm as a reward for her lack of advanced critical thinking ability. Her screams of pain, though, galvanized the crowd, dispersing them like fish through water as everyone began panicking. Some tripped, others just bolted, all though, seemed like they had suddenly woken up from a bad dream.

Nyssa, having paused her lasers to not harm the bystanders, narrated the entire scene to Celeste. As she watched the fourth person trip over the same curb, she couldn’t help but let out a sigh. “I can’t tell if what you did was good or bad for them.”

“I don’t know either... regardless I had to do it to check if those people were our teammates or not,” Celeste shrugged as she stayed low and zipped through layers of a parking structure. “How is this going to end? Are we just going for attrition? Because I don’t think we’re surviving a war of attrition against... robots.”