Unexpected Aid

Ben gathered up all my gear, aside from a small sack of tools on my back in case I needed them, and held up Yuri to go look for something that could float them both up to the top of the lake once this chamber got filled. The water was rising fast, so both of us needed to work quickly to save each other's partners.

I threw a stick of gum in my mouth and blew one really kick ass bubble, mentally preparing myself for swimming over and freeing Sadie. Not only that, but I needed a way out too. That was a problem for future me to solve.

Calling upon diving skills I didn’t know I had, I leaped into the water and began swimming toward the colossus. The waves and rising tide were tough to push through, especially with the wound on my shoulder, not to mention my utter exhaustion, but this was all part of the job.

This might have been the worst situation I'd been in to date. The combination of troubles we'd run into really pushed me past my limits. Normal people might say this day sucked, but as long as I was still alive, things were going just fine.

One good thing about all this water was that I didn't have to climb up a reactor to reach this big ass bot. I was up to its torso by the time I got there, so I just used a little metal ladder embedded onto its side and climbed right up to the dome.

I knocked on the glass, seeing if Sadie would wake up, but she wasn't responding.

“Fine…” I started searching for the release thing Yuri mentioned. “It should be a handle Or something embedded into the surface… Aha!”

I cheered as I found one on the right of the dome. There was also one on the left. Both had to be pulled out in order to release the glass.

I pulled the emergency releases, which lifted up the cockpit window. Sadie was hooked up to a lot of machines with wires and IV’s, less freaky looking than the people downstairs, but still not a good look for her.

Getting her out like this was not going to be an option. The water was too high at this point for me to get back to the others with her, and that was only if I could get her undone from that mess of mess plugging into her head and skin. Instead, I closed the hatch, watching as we were flooded over by the falling lake. Thankfully it was water tight in here.

For a bot, this cockpit looked pretty mech-like, as if someone ‘could’ drive it. There were even controls in front of me.

Once I sat down, the cockpit lit up with red lights all over, as if reacting to my butt in the seat, followed by a solid grey color that covered over the glass dome and blocked my view of the Titanic 2. The outside of this bot wasn’t much of a mystery though.

The dome turned into a screen for the colossus’s computer systems and controls. A prompt appeared over it…

“Navigation data required for activation…”

Even though it turned on, this bot wanted some sort of AI that could coordinate movement. But as far as I could tell, this thing didn’t even have any legs yet. How was it supposed to move at all?

“Doubt a giant robot can swim.”

I looked in the slot that required the AI chip to be implanted. It was surprisingly small, kinda like a USB or something, but much smaller scale. I’ll called it a T-USB. T meaning tiny.

My bag of tools didn’t have anything that could fit in that, much less something with a navigation card on it.

“Wait, don’t the Yu-Yu pets use one of those to move around?”

Some of the bits left over from Moukia were in the sack of tools I took with me. I started sifting through it until I saw a soot covered chip with a tiny male plug that was almost the perfect size for the navigation port. Problem was, the chip was fried, but still in one piece.

With a quick dust off, I placed it into the slot anyway. Things couldn’t get any worse, yeah? After a few loud hums and beeps, a prompt on the glass dome informed me that the navigation chip I’d inserted was “dirty or damaged,” and that it was “attempting to make repairs.”

“No way this is gonna’ work…” I crossed my fingers, hoping for the opposite of my expectations.

Those navigation cards were like the brains of the Yu-Yu pets. All the information they had on traversing an environment came from that. In essence, I’d just put Moukia’s brain into this bot.

The colossus’s systems were giving me a very detailed rundown of all the things that it was repairing. I’m sure if I were as smart as Yuri, this computer junk would have been pretty easy to understand, maybe even dispel my anxiety a bit.

Suddenly it all shut down. Every light around the cockpit dimmed and I was sitting in the dark, my only source of light was the life support Sadie was on behind me.

“Damn it!” I kicked the control console. “I knew it wasn't going to work!”

Just when I thought we were FUBAR, the lights turned back on, but green this time as opposed to red.

“*SQUEAK!*”

A deafening noise filled my ears, the kind the mice liked to make.

“What is with life trying to blow out my eardrums today!?!” I shouted with my ears covered.

“Squeak squeak…”

“Moukia, is that you?” I said, when the sound had been turned down significantly. “You remember your old mama?”

His voice did sound a little deeper than before, almost like he'd matured into a macho man… Macho rat.

“Squeak squeak!”

Another dialogue box popped up on the dome screen… It asked if I wanted to switch the language to English.

“No way is this real…” a smile broke on my lips as I giggled like an idiot. “No freakin’ way…”

Once I’d selected yes, something magical happened…

“Mum, can you hear me?” said a sophisticated Englishman's voice.

“Hell yes!” I cheered. “Moukia, that you?”

A little lens raced across groves in the cockpit, looking down on me from above.

“Of course, Mum. It seems that my core was repaired and merged with the systems of this colossus, evolving my once feeble potential.”

“Welcome back, my kickass rat!” I threw a fist up in the air, accidentally hitting the glass dome and hurting my hand. “Listen, since you have this new body, can you get us out of here? We're kinda’ running out of time in here.”

The control console beeped a few times.

“Yes, mum. I’ve noticed that you are currently in a rather perilous position,” replied Moukia. “I would highly recommend utilizing the thrusters attached to this war machine to escape. They are rated quite well for water and air travel.”

“Whatever.” I replied. “Just get us the hell out of here, now!”

“Affirmative, mum!”

The rocket engines lit up and began blasting hot flames straight into the water, propelling us upwards. I could feel them rumble beneath my feet as they instantly boiled the water.

The speed at which we were rocketing up was slow at first, but picked up quickly. We’d be out of here in no time!

An abrupt stop and jerking motion caused me to fly upwards and hit my head on the dome. I saw stars again, making this my second possible concussion for the day.

“Damn it!” I growled, rubbing my forehead. “What the hell was that?”

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize we were still coupled to the thorium reactor,” he said. “That poses a significant issue, seeing as this robot does not have a dedicated power core installed.

“Oh come on…” I mumbled. “So, what does that mean? Are we cooked?”

“Negative,” replied Moukia. “This robot has an emergency ejection failsafe protocol which will jettison the control pod incase of danger or malfunction. The force of the ejection should be plenty to reach the surface of the lake.”

If that wasn’t enough, he explained that the control pod also had the ability to float just in case things went south inside the bot, so we were going up one way or another. He started giving me other details about what the pod was made of and could do, but all that wasn’t important and really aggravating my headache.

“Look, just shut up and get us out ASAP!” I shouted.

“Yes, mum! And please, seatbelt yourself this time.”

“Whatever…” I was getting really dizzy from two head injuries and blood loss, especially since my adrenaline was running low. We needed to be done already.

Moments later, there was a loud explosion behind us and we felt some fast motion forward. The greyed out dome windshield displayed everything in front of us as we traveled quickly through the water.

At this point, the only things still active were the life support systems. Everything else, including Moukia’s ability to communicate with us, went offline. Once we hit the surface, my last action with what little strength I had left was to push open the windshield and let in some fresh lake air.

“Thank God…” I breathed out, laying across the front of the colossus’s floating control pod.

When I looked up and saw a few boats surrounding us, my hopes of escape were dashed out as I realized warlord bandits were riding them and aiming a diverse array of arms down on us. Yuri and Ben were their hostages too.

“This really can't get any worse…”

I was completely tapped out of energy and practically laying out to dry like a wet rag. For a second, I considered just letting myself slide into the water and let the current take me away, pretending I was already dead, but then they probably would take their aggression out on the others. Unfortunately, the best course of action was to surrender and see if I could sway them with a silver tongue.

At the peak of my defeat on this Murphy's law of a day, one of the bandits decided to read my thoughts and take a swim, although he just kinda floated with his back upwards.

I almost laughed at how comedic it looked, but then another dropped in with him, followed by a few more.

“What are you fools doing…” The guy leading them at that moment ended up falling in too.

Blood started floating up alongside the bandits in the water, so they were actually dying to some invisible force. I didn’t believe in magic or anything like that, so there had to be a reason for this.

All of them were dropping to their right sides, which made me turn to my right and see someone on the roof of Iron Manor wielding a large rifle.

“It’s that assassin…” I noted. “Why did she just help us?”

Maybe it was too soon to say she was on our side, or maybe I looked like a corpse too just sitting here. She couldn’t have been that stupid. Regardless of why she’d done us a service, she left as soon as there weren’t any bandits remaining to harass us. The boat Ben was on cleared out quickly and he was able to commandeer it. He tossed me a rope and I tied it onto a bar on the control pod.

“Get us out of here!” I shouted to him.

The boat's engine revved up and he rode us quickly away from this trouble. I was happy to leave all that mess behind.

“Hey, Sadie…?” I fell back in the seat and enjoyed the ride while I was still conscious. “How much do you think this hunk of bot tech will sell for?” I wasn’t expecting a reply from her. “Work for me, and I’ll give you guys a share of it. Okay? Say nothing if you agree.”

Her silence was all the confirmation I needed to know we were going to make great business partners.