Wild Cards

Cody ducked and jerked the unmoving M.U. to his left. A sword slashed through the M.U., but not enough to get him. As he used his hand to drop the hunk of metal and grab for the hand holding the light sword, he jerked it downward. The pilot went lower before jerking against him, but Cody wasn’t trying to throw his enemy off balance. He was using his boosters to lift himself off the ground. With the arm being used as momentum, he leapt over the shield long enough to smash at the head with his left hammer hand. Immediately, the shield was raised to knock his own hand into a useless appendage, making the grapple feature disabled. All he could do now was use the arm like another battering tool.

“On your OC!” came the voice, a beam of light shooting the one that bashed at him.

OC? Again with optical jargon… it meant optical center? Why—shit!!! Cody thought as he saw three closing in, with him at the center.

He dropped, using his boosters to dive into the water. Luckily, the first fallen had sunk and disturbed the water, or else he’d have stopped as if going into a solid wall. Still, the clash held some resistance.

For a brief moment, he saw what hell may look like. Hundreds upon hundreds of M.U.s fell to the watery depths of no return, some hands still swinging in a desperate attempt to swim upward. The futility in their struggle made Cody want to swim after as many as he could save before they sank too deep and the water pressure crushed them. Their inner tube last resorts must have been punctured or unable to activate due to damage. A single M.U. seemed to favor this area, daringly jumping off sinking pods toward others. Before he grabbed the M.U. under him and was about to use it as a battering ram, he saw the rogue M.U. rip at something on a fallen M.U. and the large yellow inner tube activated for it to rise. It seemed someone else had his idea.

To get the one that would have got behind him, he waited for his boosters to fully charge and now burst from the water in a surprise attack, taking out its legs. But in doing so, one of the others took out Cody’s own left leg with their blade. Now with only one thruster, and that one now needing to recharge for another boost, he was a sitting duck.

“Get out of there!” shouted Ashley.

Suddenly, a very Canadian accent that sounded very familiar sounded aloud on his com. “Serry ’bout that, aye. Eww, serry!”

It burst into one of the enemy M.U.s and landed on the enemy with its feet, doing the splits as it spun from the thrusters to turn into a kicking top. Then, turning upside down to grab one of the legs of the shielded men, it used its boosters to plant its feet into the shield and pushed its legs off with a simultaneous kick-off boost. Both knees crushed into the latter of the two, as it let go and dived into the water. It then jumped behind the surviving one and grabbed his shoulders as it lay its feet on the enemy pilot’s head. As if about to spring off, it simply said, “Sup… bitch.”

The thrusters went full blast and burnt out into the head while she made sure to hold the Vatican M.U. there. The jet stream from the boots reached halfway down the torso, as the flailing enemy’s arms sank to its side while probably cooked alive in the pod.

As the mystery deus ex machina savior let herself sink back into the water with both middle fingers pointed at the way the Vatican came from, she said, “You’re in my turf, don’tchya know!”

“Stephanie?” Cody called out, to no answer. But he couldn’t delay in his own fight either.

Using his grabbing hand to dig into the swordsman’s midsection, whose legs were disabled, before using his dead arm, which was his hammer, to bash against the U.M., he disabled the sword arm at the shoulder.

Suddenly, laughter cackled over the radio while several screams echoed, both distant and near. That laughter was beautiful, belonging to a woman—yet unnerving, sending a chill up Cody’s spine.

A dual-wielding U.M. with laser swords slashed away without discretion. She stabbed precisely in those brief moments, took legs if they blocked high, took heads if they blocked low, reading opponents, severing an arm that held a sword before putting away her own blade. Catching the arm in mid-air and using that very blade to kill the same one she took it from, she ran past the U.M. and threw it like a ranged attack without even looking back, knowing it embedded in the head of her latest victim in her dance of carnage. Only to retrieve the previous blade she once held while she moved forward, a cyclone of death as she had to chase the enemy because all near her attempted to flee for their lives.

Cody couldn’t afford to be distracted, and though she was horror incarnate, luckily for him, she was on his side.

Lifting his eyes from the spectacle, he saw an enemy with its shield rushing him from above. He connected his belt cable to the now defenseless U.M. he held and let it fall under him.

“Redi hinc usque unde venisti, satanae proles!” the defenseless one shouted as he fell into the water.

“Return henceforth from which you came, Satan spawn!”

Cody felt his remaining leg thrown off balance as the Vatican warrior had dropped its shield and attempted to grab Cody’s leg as a desperate last attempt to help his comrade.

The two were now falling hard into the water. The crush would kill the grappler, but not before giving his ally ample movement, high ground, and an edge to have a free hand with that deadly sword.

“Qui effuderit sanguinem hominis, manu hominis sanguis eius effundetur,” the voice came calmly, speaking as if saddened by his actions, cutting at Cody’s hammer hand and making it fall uselessly to the side.

“He who sheds man’s blood, by man’s hand shall his blood be shed,” the screen read as the man slowly raised his sword.

Cody growled the only Latin he knew—the very phrase used time and time again toward violence he was forced to face.