Rise!

“Ouch.” Oscar whispered with a grunt, a warm sensation of pain returning to every fiber of his being. Everything was dark and Oscar could feel himself almost unable to move.

He wanted to wipe his face, but his hands were both weighed down by something dense and heavy.

‘How far did I fly?’ Oscar found himself thinking, hands feeling around his metallic armor.

‘Am I going to die here? Being buried alive is NOT how I want to go!’ Oscar thought with panic building in his chest.

By this point the buried firefighter already knew he was trapped under a collapsed house.

Pain slowly returned to his senses. His eyes were burning, his ribs hurt like crazy, ears were ringing and his head hurt so bad he thought it might fall off.

After a moment of futile kicking and screaming, Oscar relaxed his muscles breathing deep painful breaths. ‘What can I do?’ he asked himself to avoid panic ‘What is the next best step?’

He felt with his hand at the hilt he was holding and the memory of all the comic books he ever read flooded back, he remembered how in its first issue the Gawain got out of a bunker by melting the stone with the Excalibur weapon system.

Before his common sense could return to protest about the danger of overheating the blade ignited facing the sky. In one stroke the stone melted like butter, splitting in half while slag fell on Chestnuts already busted leg.

The weight lifted off him as one half of the reinforced concrete slab rolled over from its own weight. Revealing the wreckage of a residential house that he just now got out of its basement.

Oscar’s panic flared with intensity the moment he breathed fresh air.

It morphed as if an ember reigniting to a blaze. Instead of directing that energy inwards Oscar got mad. All of his worry, sorrow and anguish seemed to melt together into a ball of molten rage.

He slowly limped out of the wreckage. ‘Chestnut’s left leg is busted, but I think mine is still good enough.’ He thought walking towards the destroyed Gawain frame.

After what felt like forever, Oscar finally got to the frame.

He opened his cockpit and started to work, fueled by his molten core of rage.

Everything hurt, but giving up was worse. So, he worked faster.

Within what felt like no time, Oscar managed to make Chestnut operational once more.

He fixed the broken armor on the back, reattached the fallen canister of fuel for the flame thrower, covered it with more armor, and made the previously unmoving leg working again.

He also took the opportunity to cannibalize any and all of the parts of the Gawain frame to fix and upgrade Chestnut. When he was done Chestnut looked like a whole other beast.

‘Screw them!’ Oscar thought to himself while he was about to wrap up and enter his cockpit again. ‘I just wanted to eat my soup. But NO! These no longer humans shitheads who fell from grace wanted to blow shit up just when I started eating.’

He completely ignored his injuries, not out of negligence but because Oscar was so angry he forgot about them. He only remembered the limitations of his flesh once he got into Chestnut once more and felt his shins and ribs hurt so bad he forgot about his headache.

A sudden burst of light in the distance disrupted Oscars thoughts just as Oscar was fully incased in his mech. He turned his head to see a trail of red, white, and blue lights ripping through the fog around the Eiffel tower.

With his visor now fixed Oscar could see the light was hot even from this distance.

And the lights just kept flashing, as if a whole rock concert or thunderstorm took place there.

Instinctively Oscar walked towards the man made lights and sounds of metal.

‘I am NOT getting left behind again.’ He thought determinedly, walking up the destroyed streets and through ruined buildings.

The closer he got to the lights the more the sound of gunfire filled the misty evening.

Even the sky seemed to be on fire at the end of this awful day.

Oscar passed through a big open space and could not help but stop and look

It was filled with holes in the ground and mountains of fresh Crystalline corpses.

The statues that once adorned the place were destroyed and though he did not recognize the place the cracked glass pyramid at the center looked important.

‘Luckily I fixed the visor so now I don’t have to smell the blood’ Oscar though at the sight of the pools of red stains on the floor and debris. He ignored the sights of the carnage and kept going towards the light.

Either it didn’t take him long to get to the river or Oscar was so absorbed in his, once again, growing rage, he did not notice the walk at all. He was planning to cross the bridge and powerwalk towards the light, but a small street sign stopped him.

“Soup Populaire” was written in black on a white sign in the shape of a steaming soup bowl.

Oscar stopped, for a moment filling his heart with hope that was quickly shattered when he saw the dilapidated state of the store attached to the sign.

The walls caved in, and the ceiling collapsed, dust covered everything and what used to be the kitchen was now no more then bent metal and leaking pipes.

Oscar just kept on walking.

In no time Oscar was across the river, the sound of gunshots echoing ever closer to him, promising an encounter with what had to be humans.

But the promise of seeing those monsters again reignited Oscars molten core.

By the time he got to the battlefield what he saw was pandemonium.

The Humans were being overrun!

Before he knew why or how he managed to do so Oscar yelled out.

And though a part of him regretted it, another part of him truly believed in what he started to scream.