Chapter 12: Fighting In The Village? Seriously?

When the dust finally thinned, Aina’s breath caught in her throat. Towering over the ruins of what used to be her home stood two mechas the height of two storey houses. Looking at them, she almost shed a tear.

One gleamed in blue and black, a monstrous drill whirring on its right arm, the other arm ending in a heavy grappler fist. Its opponent bore a red-green paint scheme, its right arm a snarling chainsaw blade and its left a broad buckler shield. If not for the glaring searchlights mounted on their torsos, she might never have seen their colors at all in the night.

Without warning, they moved at the same time.

The two giants slammed into each other like brawling wrestlers, each strike loud enough to rattle the Aina’s bones, their feet pounding homes into rubble. They grappled and smashed their arms against each other. Sparks showered down as metal screeched against metal, their struggle painting the night with violence.

Her breath staggered. She panted not from fear, but from recognition. Servos… pistons… hydraulics…

The blue-black strider seized the red-green’s chainsaw arm, locking it in its grappler. Its drill spun up with a piercing shriek as it drove for the cockpit. The red-green twisted desperately, buckler grinding against the drill head, the teeth of its chainsaw spitting sparks as it hacked at the grappler’s elbow. Neither could gain an edge; neither yielded an inch. The ground shook with their stalemate.

“Mother!” Irek pointed, eyes wide. “Isn’t that the red-green strider from last time? The one that fought the mountain beast?”

“Mother, isn’t the red-green strider the one that came to fight the mountain beast last time?” Irek asked.

Aina squinted through the haze. At first she wasn’t sure, but then she saw it, that telling scar. Three long gouges on the back of its left thigh plating, probably a souvenir from the beast that it had fought almost a week earlier. Its ruined shin part was replaced with gleaming, unpainted steel, fresh from some mechanic’s hands. The scarred armor part remained, untreated and ugly.

She almost laughed through the dust. A field refit! No way that’s factory work. The mechanics just slapped a replacement on and hoped for the best. Every flaw, every shortcut, leapt out to her trained eyes. Idiots. Even if you can’t afford to replace the part or you don’t think the damaged part would affect performance, at least smooth and weld the fracture lines. Any point of weakness can be a point of mechanical stress and any point of mechanical stress can lead to total mechanical failure!

And yet, her fingers itched for it. Her legs urged her to climb inside. Her hands tingle for a touch of the rumbling cockpit. Her lips eager to kiss and lick the metal, to violate it with her germs and make it hers.

The fight lurched closer, barely twenty feet away. Her family cowered back, but Aina leaned forward, spellbound, her excitement mounting even as her skin prickled with danger.

“Mother!” her son Irek called when he saw that one of the feet were merely feets away from Aina.

“Rinia Virell!” a villager shouted hoarsely from the road. “What are you standing there for?! Everyone’s moving to Hunter Gen’s! Run!”

Dragged by Irek, she stumbled away with the others, heart torn between terror and exhilaration. They fled up the dark streets with only their hands and each other, leaving behind homes they’d never see whole again.

Aina couldn’t remember the name of the villager who spoke, but she was grateful regardless. She recalled he was the one who had a forge in his house. According to Varn, he used to fix everyone’s farm tools. Due to the drought and nobody having money to fix their farming tools anymore, everyone just used their broken tools instead of having them fixed. At the time of the exodus, he was one of those who decided to stay because he didn’t have provisions for the long journey.

By the time they reached Old Hunter Gen’s house on the slope of the first mountain, the remaining families of the village were already gathered, staring down at the chaos. From her new vantage point, Aina’s heart leapt. There weren’t just two striders. There were five.

Two locked in the brawl by her house. And across the village, three more clashed in a brutal, desperate melee. One strider fought alone against two, battering one back with a crushing body slam. The downed strider skidded across the dirt, its torchlights flaring skyward before going still.

But the second enemy took advantage of its moment of distraction and pounced, slamming drill-first into the lone strider. Sparks exploded as the drill made a hole in the side of the strider. The lone strider rammed its blade arm into its opponent’s torso in desperation, Both toppled, rolling on the ground. Then both got on their feet with great difficulty, before both planted their main weapons into each other’s torso. Minutes went by until they both sagged down against each other, kneeling together in a tangle of smoking steel.

The villagers gasped, but Aina barely heard. Her mind roared with equations, material stress tolerance, and even heat load. Every motion was a problem to solve, every weakness a challenge. If I had tools, if I had material, I could fix that actuator. No, I could improve it. Lighter frame emphasizing cutouts and lattice structures, reinforced joints to increase durability, torque realignment…

To Aina, the mechas in front of her were fabulous marvels of engineering but were also terribly inefficient machinery. In her mind, even Asu, a prototype, moved smoother and more agile. If only she had the money to build her own mecha with modern world technology, she could easily kick all of this world’s mechas to the curb. She hated how the modern world was insistent on efficiency and cost-cutting measures, that there was no more room for romance.

Back near Aina’s ruined home, the duel still raged. Both striders slowed, circling each other warily, their lights overlapping into a single blinding stage, creating a bright zone in the middle of a wreckage of houses as if it was an arena. For a heartbeat, the night held its breath.

“What are they waiting for?” Rhielle whispered.

“Maybe they are tired?” one of the villagers said.

“Or an opening,” muttered the Kurn patriarch, his voice grim.

Varn snorted, puffing up. “If it were me, I’d just throw an uppercut and be done with it.”

As if answering him, the blue-black strider lunged, drill screaming toward the red-green’s cockpit. But the red-green twisted aside, buckler snapping the drill away. The counterstrike came quick. The red-green’s chainsaw teeth sparking as it carved for the grapple arm.

The blue-black strider punched its opponent’s chest with its left arm, making the blue-green lose its balance. Seeing the chance, the blue-black strider pushed forward, keeping his left fist pressing against the red-green strider. The clash sent the red-green staggering, almost falling.

Shortly after he said that, the two striders charged forward. The blue-black strider aimed its drill at the opponent’s cockpit but was quickly sidestepped and parried by the blue-green’s buckler. The blue-black strider punched with its left arm, making the blue-green lose its balance. Seeing the chance, the blue-black strider pushed forward, keeping its left fist pressing against the red-green strider, causing the red-green to stumble and fall backward to the wreckage.

The blue-black pressed the advantage. It slammed forward, shoulder to chest, hammering its opponent back into the rubble. The ground shook as the blue-black jumped on its belly. The red-green sank deeper into the wreckage of houses, pinned beneath its rival’s weight. The blue-black pressed down with the drill against the red-green’s buckler arm, The tip of the drill merely inches from piercing the cockpit canopy.

Aina leaned forward, chest tight, half in horror, half in awe.

In a desperate counter, the red-green drove its chainsaw blade into a protrusion behind the blue-black’s torso. Metal screamed and sparks geysered as the blade went deeper into the machinery. Smoke belched skyward from the ruined part of what appeared to be the engine section.

For a heartbeat, both striders froze, the red-green’s drillblade arm fell to the ground.

Suddenly as if waking up from a dream, the red-green strider thrusted its drillblade upward. Its blade rammed through the blue-black’s cockpit, likely killing the pilot inside. Then the drill fell still. The blue-black strider slumped unmoving, its dead weight collapsing onto its foe. With a heave, the red-green shoved the carcass aside before sagging, its own lights dimming and flickering, before finally dying out.

Thick smoke from the battle billowed to the sky. The village laid in ruins with only a few houses standing. The battlefield now silent save for the crackle of burning wood.

The battle was over. At least for now.

But Aina’s hands trembled with something else. Not fear. Not relief.

It was overflowing excitement. Ravenous hunger. And uncontrollable desire.

She had seen them up close. Real mechas. They called it striders here, but just like mechas, they were machines of war and marvel. And now, more than ever, she wanted one. One for every day of the week.