Chapter 26:

Chapter 26: Now Or Never

Transmigrated Into A Famine World, I Became A Mecha-piloting Villainous Mother


“Now!” Aina screamed, Aina screamed as she snapped on the mecha’s spotlight. The beam cut through the night like a spear of white fire, blinding the beast. It reared back with a guttural roar, thrashing its barbed tail as if the light itself were stabbing into its eyes.

Yet she knew that nobody could hear her. Everyone was too far away, but that was by design. She was not the trap, neither was she the executioner. She was the bait.

Yet as if her cry carried on the wind, the ballistas loosed their payloads. Guided by the glare of her spotlight, the first volley whistled through the air. These were no ordinary bolts but steel syringes packed with concentrated White Wings toxin. Unlike the earlier arrows, these had real weight and power, their sharpened heads punching through hide and sinew.

They struck deep. Once embedded, the plungers driven forward by inertia, rammed the toxin into the beast’s bloodstream.

“Next one! Next one!” the leaders in charge of each ballista commanded.

Two more bolts thudded home in rapid succession, burying themselves in the creature’s back. Then another. And another. The villagers, voices raw with urgency, reloaded and fired without pause. For ten heartbeats, the night was filled with the hiss of ropes and the crack of impacts. Within seconds, the beast carried enough White Wings venom in its veins to paralyze an entire village

The villagers cheered as each bolt struck true. But their celebration ceased almost instantly. The monster staggered, but it did not fall.

The beast snarled as it clawed at the shafts in its flesh, trying to rip them free. Its rage gave Aina her chance. She surged forward and drove the drill arm into its lower back, hoping the toxin and her strike together would cripple it.

The drill merely made the beast yelp in shock. Aina looked at the right arm and saw that the drill had already stopped functioning, the electric motor inside had already given up its fire.

Aina gritted her teeth in frustration. “Why now?” she asked. But there was nobody to answer her.

But her assault, useless as it seemed, distracted the monster long enough for the ballistas to switch to the giant boulders that required two persons to carry onto the ballistas. The shots were slower and fewer, but when they hit, they slammed into the beast with bone-cracking force. Each strike carried the impact force of the fist of a mecha.

While Aina could no longer deliver damage with her drill, she could certainly keep pulling its aggression. With her grappler arm, she continued to keep the beast in place. With her spotlight, she ensured that the beast remained blinded and an easy to see gigantic target in the darkness. With this tactic, the ballistas could easily pummel the beast from afar with relative safety.

The beast roared before it pushed Aina’s mecha aside, causing her to fall on the ground. The beast grabbed the intact barricades on the ground and seemingly randomly, threw them in the direction of one of the ballistas. Its eyes were still blinded, but its body was still very responsive. It couldn’t see where the attackers were, but he certainly could tell the general direction.

“Run! Abandon it!” Kurn patriarch bellowed.

The warning came too late. A barricade smashed into one of the ballistas, reducing the weapon to splinters. Its crew dove aside, but not all escaped. Old Hunter Gen’s adopted son screamed as he was caught beneath the wreckage. Shouts rang as the others scrambled to pull him free, even as more debris rained down around them

With only one ballista still functioning, the stakes had risen higher. Aina had to ensure that the last one remained intact as it was their only chance of dealing damage to the beast.

Aina stood back up with difficulty screaming into the machine’s controls, cursing her oversight for not including a system for getting up once downed. Once her mecha was back up, she smacked the head of the beast with her shield, pulling its attention back to Aina’s mecha.

Aina could see that its movement had slowed, its punches weaker. It shook its head as if to clear the cobwebs in its mind. Aina was delighted to see this, because it meant only one thing. The white wings could affect beasts and it was working its magic.

Aina pummeled its face with the shield as the remaining ballista continued hitting its back with the boulders. The beast roared again, weaker in volume but still delivering chills to everyone who heard it. It slapped away at Aina’s left arm, while at the same time, it swiped a large gash into Aina’s back plating with its barbed tail. Alarms subsequently rang as the battery indicators flashed crimson.

Aina knew what this meant. Somehow, the tail swipe successfully cut power to the batteries. Aina now had less than thirty minutes of operation. Even lesser the more she strained the batteries. She thought she was already on the way to winning, but just one moment of carelessness turned the situation to the worst.

The revelation that she was going to lose this fight startled Aina. It made her unable to think, unable to react. This momentary distraction was enough to give the beast space to grab her cockpit and crush it with its left claws. Now the beast and Aina were looking at each other eye to eye.

The beast tried to grab Aina with its claws, but Aina finally awoke from her shock and delivered a punch straight into the beast’s cheeks with her useless drill arm. Then Aina delivered another punch, but with her grappler left arm, before following up with an upward smack with her left buckler.

Aina fought like a woman possessed. Whenever she could punch with her right arm, she would do so, then she would follow up with the left up. Then she would again punch its face with her right arm. Unfortunately, she was all alone now, the ballista had long run out of its ammunition.

With her cockpit wide open, Aina felt strangely focused. She couldn’t hear anything else, couldn’t see anything else. All she could see was the beast in front of her. She could feel the pain of the damaged right arm, she could feel the impact of the left arm’s buckler. She could feel the scraping of the beast’s tail barbs on her plating, as if it was her own skin.

She felt everything as if it was her own sensations. As if she was no longer piloting the mecha. As her eyes became cold, she felt like she was the mecha. She punched the beast with her own broken hands. She felt her own skin being sliced by the claws. And she felt her own body weakening as her punches weakened.

In the end, the beast’s body and face was bloody and broken. As for Aina, she fell to the ground on her knees before falling backward, her batteries completely dry. With eyes still cold, Aina unlocked her seat belt, grabbed the revolver under her seat and stood atop the shoulder of her mecha.

The beast saw her come out, and it laughed. It was a disgusting laugh, like the laugh of hyenas but shrill, like sick canaries. It crawled slowly forward towards Aina, its body clearly weakened under the influence of the toxin. Once in front of Aina, it reached out to grab her small body.

Aina was not afraid. She raised the revolver to its face, and fired into its eyes. It howled in pain, covering its face with its palms. It reached out again, trying to grab Aina but fell short by just a few feet, only the wind from its movements could reach Aina, blowing her dress around.

Before it could try again, a large metallic foot pinned the beast’s hand to the ground. Then a large chainsaw whined before it buried itself into the back of the beast’s neck. Blood spattered everywhere, but for Aina, it was a beautiful sight.

The red-green strider’s canopy hissed open. Out stepped a familiar man, his face clean unlike hers, He grinned like a mischievous boy as if he’d arrived at a festival instead of a battlefield.

“Hey, corpse! I hope I’m not too late!” Darus Kael called, laughing.

Aina’s lips curved into the ghost of a smile. “Heroes always arrive late, soldierboy.”

Then the world tilted. Darkness claimed her as she collapsed onto the twisted plating of her fallen machine.

Ima Siriaz
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