Chapter 35 #2
He shook his head, his Ghul’s movements so distinctly his own that it almost felt like we were two people simply clad in armor. Two people facing off on the battlefield. The only difference between now and our time on the mat was that, for once, I actually stood a chance.
“Whether you lose at the start or the finish, you’ve still lost. History won’t care about what almost was,” he said, always in his teaching voice.
“Philosophical,” I said coyly.
“Honest.” He replied with far more melancholy.
And then I lunged for him, my blades in hand, ready to start our dance.
Sebastian dodged with precision and fluidity, just as he always did.
He was so smooth in his Shinka, far removed from the hard edges and brutality that was Elio’s fighting style.
He ducked swiftly, and he controlled our distance in a way that controlled the entire flow of the battle.
I deflected his blade, then he deflected mine.
We clashed and reassessed, and I did everything to pick up on all the tells I’d learned from sparring with him all these months.
Neither of us used our cannons or projectiles yet, Like some sort of unspoken gentleman’s agreement, we kept it purely to swordsmanship and footwork.
Sebastian swung hard, and this time, I ducked beneath the blade, and used the opening to go for his right hip.
He was off balance for only a fraction of a second, then the following fraction of a second before my blow connected, he placed a hand atop my head, and used my own Shinka as the fulcrum to pivot over me, before flowing into another strike to my back that sent me crashing face first into the nearby wall.
Fuck, he was good. I knew that, but it was different when we were in machines like this.
I dusted myself off—a silly motion considering I was in a robot I’d covered in a thick layer of mud, but the mind sync really made it hard to not slip into normal human idiosyncrasies.
“Considering my mission is to sacrifice myself for the greater good, I’m not sure victory exists for me anyway,” I said as I got my wits about me, buying a little time with conversation I knew he would engage me in.
He’d always respected and responded when I challenged him, and he’d regularly challenged me.
“Maybe the world would go on, but if I never get to see it, then what’s the point? ”
I’d already run away from being the martyr who was to sacrifice my body and womb for the greater good of the population. To pretend I was noble enough to give my life for anything was a misnomer.
I’d risk it, but I wouldn’t give it.
“That’s a selfish way to think for a soldier,” he admonished me as he returned to that impossibly guarded stance of his. “When you enter the cockpit of a Shinka, your life is your currency, and your country and everything it contains is the only thing up for auction.”
I bit my tongue, conflicted on how I felt about that.
I loved my brother, and I loved my home, but did I love my country and everything else it stood for?
I didn’t know. I wouldn’t be here if I was happy with what my life was.
I couldn’t be here if I’d done as I was expected to.
Was I a fool to be here at all? Or was I just trying to compartmentalize, focusing on the things I needed to protect, even if it meant preserving things I wished would crumble.
Patriotism was complicated, because I wasn’t blind enough to be content with dying for people who couldn’t even offer me the dignity to live my life as I saw fit, and yet I would do it anyway, because this was the flag that waved over the heads of the only people who mattered to me.
I couldn’t think like that. I was already living enough lies. This had to be the one, single one I believed in.
He moved in first this time, and I was ready for him, blocking his strike, and pushing him back with one of my own.
Our swords clashed, and I was moving with him, evading, blocking, evading again.
I blocked a high strike, then caught the low strike before he could transition fast enough to connect.
I was holding my own when our strength was matched.
I could do this.
I didn’t need to defeat him point for point. I just had to get past him, then I could take down the reactor core.
I jumped over a horizontal swipe, then instead of coming down, I activated my heel propulsion, flipped over his head, and made an attempt on his unit’s core.
He spun around so fast and frantic, I didn’t have time to read his movement, and the double sided blade was knocked from my hand, hurdling into a nearby rock.
Fuck, fuck—
His blade was through the stomach of my armor in a flash, and I felt that searing fucking pain all the way through my human soul.
Thinking fast, I recalled what Elio had said about the abdominal and neck area being the most vulnerable points of attack, even on a Shinka. I recalled exactly the way he’d aimed my gun into the belly of the target, before he snaked a hand up my back and gripped me firmly behind the neck.
“This is the biggest flaw of the human skeleton.” he’d said at the time.
The biggest flaw.
I wrapped one arm around Sebastian’s shoulder, and I grabbed the back of his Ghul’s neck.
I started to squeeze the metal appendage with all of the grip strength in my machine.
Sebastian jerked back, but I refused to let go, keeping us locked together in stalemate, his sword still in my stomach, my arm holding his fist to keep it there, our bodies too close to get momentum, and my fingers starting to crush the metal linkage to his machine’s visual center.
He used his one free hand to grab my forearm, and start firing shots into the joint, trying to sever my elbow before I could sever his Ghul’s neck, and there was an uncharacteristic sense of panic in the move.
Had I made Sebastian Takeyama panic?
The thought should have been satisfying, but I didn’t have the mental currency available to enjoy it right now.
I started walking us backwards, slowly, one forced step at a time, while he fought me every step of the way.
I backed us through the gate. Three-hundred meters would put us on the reactor.
I only needed to cover 250 of those, and my Shinka could do that in seconds.
He took off my forearm at the joint, but I kept us together with that grip on his neck. He activated his shoulder cannons in addition to his forearm guns, and I didn’t let go until he used them to blast both of my arms, destroying the narrow connection between the torso and the shoulders.
He sent me flying from the impact, but the combined force was enough to rip the head of his Ghul clean off its shoulders. We were both propelled backwards in a massive cloud of red dust.
He wasn’t broken, but he wouldn’t be able to see. This was the cover I needed.
Ignoring him, I turned on my heel and went into a full bore sprint for the reactor, aiding my run with my propulsion jets in my heels. My back unit had been damaged in the fight, but I didn’t need it for this.
I was less than a hundred meters from the reactor when Sebastian slammed into me from behind, grabbing onto me and sending us both tumbling into the reactor platform in a cacophony of metal clanging into metal and rocks and the cold hard ground.
He couldn’t see, but he’d guessed my movements even without a visual aid.
He was good.
And it didn’t matter.
It was already too late.
He was on top of me, a knee pinning me to the floor, his gun drawn and shoved into the heart of my beast, and my core milliseconds from being blasted to pieces. But that tackle had thrown us onto the precipice of the reactor.
I was close enough. If this battle continued, I’d be dead. On a level playing field, I wouldn’t have stood a chance. He’d have won, and I’d be hanging my head defeat.
But the objective here wasn’t to win.
This was a suicide mission, after all.
His finger squeezed the trigger at the exact second I initiated my explosion sequence.
The shot of pure, vicious, unstoppable energy destroyed my core. Heat seared my body and my unit went still, no longer under my control.
But the bombs were already primed.
I felt every burning, disintegrating inch of myself as my Shinka went up in a violent explosion, and the enemy base and everything around it was erased from the simulation.