Word Play 12 (Patreon)

Word Play

Chapter 12

-VB-

The Sister

When she found father, he sat in wet carpet stained with blood and viscera of her older brothers and sisters. 

She knew what happened here. They gave their lives for father’s. 

But father…

His eyes were finally clear yet even more distant than before. 

She looked over at her … new sister. 

Her new sister was not beautiful or elegant like her older sisters and brothers. She was crudely made in haste and desperation. Unreal-rebar, time-stone-flesh, and stitched souls lit the room like a beacon for those who can See but the room was as dark as the moonless night otherwise. 

She glanced down at her… their father.

He sat there in the blood of his children, wailing and clutching his face with his bloodied hands.

This was the best he could do to save what little remained of her siblings. 

And then the amalgamation moved.

The sound was all too familiar to her. The grinding of stone.

The amalgamation of her siblings placed one of its hands on father’s head. 

It only made him cry harder.

-VB-

Armsmaster

The attack of the Stone Angels came to an end. Brockton Bay was safe. For now.

“We’re being reassigned?” Colin asked incredulously. 

“Yes,” Director Piggot replied with a grimace. “If you have been listening to the internal network or even the national news, then you know that all of Dragon’s factories have gone rogue, either because someone arrested control of them from Dragon herself or Dragon herself has been compromised. Each and every single one of those factories are producing cape-comparable autonomous war machines.” She grimaced. “One of the reasons why our reinforcement requests have been denied; every single cape and PRT agent that can be spared has been sent to reinforce the new containment sites. We were the only ones spared so far because of our own crisis at hand.”

“A crisis that has not yet ended. The Stone Angels are missing, not neutralized.”

“Chief Director Brown doesn’t care. She wants half of our capes reinforcing whatever position needs reinforcing,” Piggot scoffed. “It’s funny how they ignore us for years on end when we are the ones requesting reinforcements but when they need it, it’s an order.” She took a sip of water. “But you will be staying.”

“... Why?”

“Because you are a Tinker. It has been noted that this new S-class disaster has a liking to tinkers and tinkertech. So unless you want to end up as a brain in a jar, then I suggest that you don’t go out to fight this new threat. We already lost half a dozen tinkers to it, and the public got to watch their brains get pulled out like some sick horror film.”

Dragon being MIA did not help, though it was … more or less confirmed that she was no longer with them. It was different from hearing about Hero’s death. Hero had been his mentor and hearing about his death … he grieved for far longer than he had for his own parents. Dragon’s last words haunted him. She had been desperate and scared even as she did her best to lock all of her tinkertech down and counter the attack on herself. 

Her death didn’t make him sad with grief. For the first time in a long time, Colin felt wrathful.

And now, he was being told he could not fight the pieces of shits that killed her. 

He took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. 

“Understood.”

He turned and left. 

He would not join the fight. He understood that he would only be making the enemy stronger. 

He would, however, make sure that the homefront, his city, would be secure. 

Armsmaster was on the hunt for the Stone Angels.

---

When Colin set out to find the Stone Angels or at least determine what their source was, he expected to encounter more Stone Angels and not a lot of clues. 

He did not expect to run into what looked like a caricature of the Stone Angels. 

Worse, it’s electronic interference ability seemed to have improved if the alarmingly quick drain on his power armor’s battery was any indication. It was a serious issue when his battery life dropped from one hundred ninety hours to one hundred eighty hours after investigating the potential Stone Angel for ten minutes. If one minute realtime equaled one hour of his power armor’s battery life drained, then he had less than eighteen minutes to end this.

However, eighteen minutes was a long time in combat. 

Especially if his enemy could not move while he kept his eyes on it. 

“Stone Angel, you are under arrest. Surrender.”

It did not respond. 

He didn’t even bother to blink. Stone Angel didn’t interact with people. His demands were just for the record. 

He switched his halberd’s plasma blade and struck. He brought the blade down vertically right on top of the malformed Stone Angel’s head.

And it did nothing.

He disengaged, but the abrupt movement made him jolt within his suit when he jumped back.

The Stone Angel disappeared in that instance.

He whirled around in place to find the damnable thing but he couldn’t find anything. 

… This was very unusual for Stone Angels.

“Armsmaster to Console. I’ve encountered a malformed Stone Angel,” he reported. “Stone Angel disengaged. Will explain in more detail during debriefing. Armsmaster out.”

The sudden appearance and disappearance irked him. It was a deviation of their usual behavior. Why did it look like it did? Why did it disengage? 

He found more questions than arrests today.