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The pale plating of the Spino Sapper shone dully in the sun as Moira trudged across the wasteland. Although her GPS map was still pointing her in the right direction, she felt as if she had no real idea where she was going. Heck, she didn't even know if the rumours she was following up were more than just rumours. And yet, here she was, hot and uncomfortable and watching as grains of sand wormed their way into the cockpit. Damn, she was going to have a hell of a time cleaning it out later...
Still, it should be worth it - according to her information, there were Wild Zoids running loose in the ruins around here. Wild Zoids that hadn't been stripped of their useful parts by cheap pilots and bandits yet. Why? Well, the why of it concerned Moira a little - apparently they were extremely violent. She took a breath - she was being silly - Violent or not, they were apparently all light-class things, so she should have no problems in her heavily armoured dinosaur, even if she hadn't bothered to equip extras to it yet.
Eventually, the flat landscape changed - there was a building in the distance. And then another. And then another. Moira made an impressed gasp as she drew closer - from the looks of it, it was an entire ruined city. It was... Bizarre. It looked almost as if it had been frozen in time somehow, despite the damage. Dead Zoids were collapsed on the road, as if they'd been patiently queuing in traffic when something killed them. If she was totally honest, it frightened Moira a little.
She came to what she could only imagine had been a market place, wide open and strewn with mouldering rags as it was. She froze - on the other side, something moved. From under a pile of rubble, a Molga emerged. Was this a Wild Zoid? They were supposed to be light ones, so this would certainly fit the bill. The insect zoid chittered, apparently nervous, and made a break for it. It was settled in Moira's mind - it was definitely wild - no human would ever make a Zoid do that.
It wasn't a very long chase - around the corner, Moira realised she had walked into a trap - standing in the side road, picking over the bare skeleton of some unfortunate mech, was a Dimetrodon, accompanied by yet another Molga.
There was quiet, for a moment, whilst Moira stared at the Wild Zoids, and the Wild Zoids stared at Moira. Silence. Quiet. And then a missile screamed out from the back of a Molga and the spell was broken. Moira urged her Zoid sideways and the missile slammed into the ground beside her, spraying dust and soil everywhere. Moira’s hands were on the controls, reaching for the trigger to return fire when the Dimetrodon charged through the dusty battlefield, jaws agape and screaming. The finned lizard sunk its fangs into the Spino Sapper’s chest. Armour groaning under the pressure, the Sapper’s beam saws roared into life, illuminating the pair in a deadly blue glow. They arced down and tore into the Dimetrodon’s armour, leaving a huge gash in its side. Still, it didn’t let up and the armour in its fangs finally gave way with a horrendous tearing noise.
Moira pulled the Spino Sapper away, and not a moment too soon - the shattered building that had served as her shelter from the missiles disintegrated as the other Molga took to the fight, slashing its stinger in the spot where Moira had been standing just moments before. It stabbed again, and it took all that Moira had to overcome her surprise and dodge the strike. The Dimetrodon snarled and charged, jumping heavily onto its teammate, and then at Moira, using the poor caterpillar as a springboard. It was right on top of her. A wave of fear washed over Moira as she realised what it was headed for. She reached for the cannon trigger - maybe she could blow it up before it got her? The Spino Sapper reacted before its pilot, and swung a saw. The weapon sliced through the Dimetrodon, bisecting its face like a knife through butter. The remains of the Zoid twitched on the floor for a few moments as the mechanisms that drove its limbs ground to a halt, and then it moved no more.
The Molga which had been so eager at first to get to melee range suddenly seemed to change its mind, rolled backwards into the wreckage it had emerged from. Its back opened up and a single missile fizzed upwards and out. Moira watched, still stunned from the reaction of her Zoid: she hadn’t been aware that it could move on its own. As far as she had been concerned, it was a vehicle, and not much more. Apparently, she had been mistaken. The missile’s trajectory swung downwards towards the Sapper, but the dinosaur Zoid had moved forward. The Sapper’s jaws opened wide, ready to take a chunk out of the caterpillar, but when they snapped shut, there was nothing there but a pile of disturbed earth. It had burrowed away.
Looking around, Moira realised that she couldn’t see the other Molga, either.
“Uh oh…”
That wasn’t good. If she couldn’t see them coming, how would she counter them? She kept her fingers on the triggers this time - one on the machine guns on the front, and one on the pulse guns at the back. The Sapper let out a low growl - seemed it didn’t like the situation any more than Moira did. The earth burst open behind them and Moira screamed, grip tightening on both triggers at once. The machine guns, of course, struck nothing, but the Pulse guns caught the Molga mid-air, flinging its body across the ruins like a child’s doll. Somehow, the caterpillar righted itself before it struck the ground and let rip with its own guns, peppering the back of the Spino Sapper before it had a chance to react. Screens flashed red in Moira’s eyes - less than 50% of body armour remaining. Not good. Not good at all. The insect’s back opened up again, and another missile soared into the sky. Moira tugged on the controls, leaning sideways in her seat as she prayed for her Zoid to move quickly enough. The Sapper did indeed move, but not in the way Moira wanted - it turned to face the missile.
“No, no, no! What are you doing?!” Had she bought a suicidal Zoid? What on Zi was going on?!
Suddenly, the cockpit was bathed in a warm red glow. For a moment, Moira was flummoxed.
“… What the?”
And then the laser engulfed the descending missile in a spitting, hissing stream of pure, unbridled energy, and Moira understood. It was the Excavation Laser - the ‘weapon’ she never used. After all, she had thought, what was the point if it couldn’t do damage? She had a great deal to reconsider today. The sky seemed to turn dark for a moment, as the explosion from the missile above rained down smoke and debris onto the Sapper. There was a rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire, but the blast still rang in Moira’s ears, and it sounded so far away. And then, plunging through the smoke with a shower of dirt, the other Molga made its appearance. Its segmented body drifted sideways on its wheels, brandishing the sharp point at the end of its body, and the insect found itself with a cannon shell blasting through its body. Like its comrade, the heavy weaponry of the Sapper tossed it aside. Still, it was a tenacious creature, and it simply refused to lay down and die. Following its brethren’s example, the Molga’s armour opened up. Or, at least, it tried. Its back had been warped by Moira’s cannon and now it was stuck. Well, no way was Moira going to wait around for it to get it to open. Reaching into the short row of switches above her, the pilot flipped one, and waited as the computer locked on to its target.
The Spino Sapper straightened, and from its gut came snarling a missile, barbed with short, vicious fins. The Molga’s back snapped open, and the missile inside lit, but not before Moira’s own missile slammed into its target and the blast consumed the Zoid, projectile weapons and all. A feeling of relief welled up inside Moira. Just one more to go. Just one more that had vanished underground again. Ugh. She’d just have to wait, she supposed, for it to attack her. It would eventually, although the longer she waited, the less sure she was about that.
Suddenly, Moira saw it - not the Molga though - it was huge, rocketing through the topsoil faster than anything Moira had ever seen. It was everything she could do not to be hit by it as it sped by. Without thinking, she let rip with her machine guns, spitting bullets towards the rushing thing. They connected. Probably. They vanished into the ground with a metallic pinging, but made no difference to the trajectory of the creature.
And then everything exploded.
Moira thought the Molgas had made a mess, popping underground all the time - this, this was ridiculous. It was a living cable, thrashing and coiling and thrashing with no apparent features. And it was glowing. It was glowing with such intensity, that Moira couldn’t bear to look at it. Big mistake. She didn't see the tail until it was too late, and the Sapper careened into a building. Moira was blinded with red as warnings flashed and blared in her face. 'Danger!' it said. Yeah, she could see that. As the Spinosaurus struggled to rise from the ground, vents snapped open all over the creature's body, and huge clouds of steam poured out. The Spino Sapper eventually rose, but Moira could barely tell - every direction looked the same: up, down, left and right was just shifting white steam. The beam saws undocked from the Sapper's back with a click, and their characteristic roar was soon shifting the steam - not in any helpful way - into a disorientating maelstrom of shifting gas.
Something dark suddenly appeared to Moira's left, and she lashed out instinctively with a saw, reducing the building there to a pile of rubble. She let out a short breath. It was easy to forget where she was with all the mist about. Another shape! Moira struck again and this time she caught sight of her enemy's face, mere meters from her own.
It was... It was a monster, no doubt about it. Darkly scaled skin clung weakly to its metal hide, and a myriad blinking eyes pointed sightlessly in every direction. Moira didn't even have the breath to cry out.
Just as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone. Moira blasted away with her machine guns, but the swirling mist simply devoured them, noise and all. She had to get out of the mist - firing blindly was doing her no good, and besides, it was really starting to freak her out. The Sapper lurched forward into its ungainly run, saws held level in front, slashing at whatever poor building dared get into her way.
Without any warning at all, the world reappeared. Turning, she could see the mist swirl as the creature flew around within it. She tried to ignore the sinking feeling she felt seeing that it not only burrowed, but flew, too. She had to put it down - whatever that thing was, it was wrong. The second and third of the Spino Sapper's missiles vanished into the mist, followed by a deafening explosion that ripped the shroud of steam apart. The creature was revealed once more, beating the air with its odd segmented wings. The skin hung from its body, scorched, suggesting that she'd hit it with at least one missile. Still, it wasn't dead yet - not by a long shot. It plunged forward towards Moira, announcing its anger with the rattle of gunfire. The misty air in front of the Spino Sapper was plunged into a red haze as the dinosaur's laser fired, vaporising the hail of bullets before they ripped into their target. The monster wasn't done though. It turned sinuously in the air and landed a good solid thwack on the Sapper with its whiplike tail. The spinosaurus stumbled, and fell heavily as bullets whipped over its head, narrowly missing killing Moira outright.
In reply, the tail-mounted guns of the Sapper fired, but they struck nothing - the creature was already gone. Moira scanned the sky. Where was it? It couldn't disappear too, could it? She realised too late - the ground seemed to rise up around her, and she and her zoid vanished in a writhing, biting mass of metal and skin. Moira lashed out with all the weapons she had. The beam saws and the pulse gun roared their battle-hymns, underpinned by the percussive rattle of bullets leaving chambers. But nothing seemed to stop the fury of the monster. Nothing stopped it from tearing at its victim, biting through plating and cable and weapon until finally, finally, it ground to a halt. Both combatants stood as best they could, wiring exposed and holes chewed in armor and limbs. Neither of them could last much longer, but the monster could certainly have won the fight and killed Moira. Clearly it had wanted to, judging by the copious amounts of headshots. So, the question remained, why didn't it?
As if in answer to her question, the monster began glowing. As it did so, the skin covering it bubbled and boiled away, seemingly incinerated in the heat of its radiant shine. And then, the light left it, and it crumpled into a heap. Moira brought her hand to her neck and scratched nervously. An old habit. What was going on? That was a zoid, right? So why had it looked so... Like that? It was getting too creepy for Moira - as quickly as she could, she input the coordinates for home and the Spino Sapper lurched off in that direction. She had her fingers on the trigger for a long time - long beyond the point where they cramped and she'd have been no good to anyone. But it made her feel better at least. Felt like she wasn't so defenceless in her torn-up zoid, in the ruins where real, honest-to-goodness monsters lurked.
WC: 2429
Still, it should be worth it - according to her information, there were Wild Zoids running loose in the ruins around here. Wild Zoids that hadn't been stripped of their useful parts by cheap pilots and bandits yet. Why? Well, the why of it concerned Moira a little - apparently they were extremely violent. She took a breath - she was being silly - Violent or not, they were apparently all light-class things, so she should have no problems in her heavily armoured dinosaur, even if she hadn't bothered to equip extras to it yet.
Eventually, the flat landscape changed - there was a building in the distance. And then another. And then another. Moira made an impressed gasp as she drew closer - from the looks of it, it was an entire ruined city. It was... Bizarre. It looked almost as if it had been frozen in time somehow, despite the damage. Dead Zoids were collapsed on the road, as if they'd been patiently queuing in traffic when something killed them. If she was totally honest, it frightened Moira a little.
She came to what she could only imagine had been a market place, wide open and strewn with mouldering rags as it was. She froze - on the other side, something moved. From under a pile of rubble, a Molga emerged. Was this a Wild Zoid? They were supposed to be light ones, so this would certainly fit the bill. The insect zoid chittered, apparently nervous, and made a break for it. It was settled in Moira's mind - it was definitely wild - no human would ever make a Zoid do that.
It wasn't a very long chase - around the corner, Moira realised she had walked into a trap - standing in the side road, picking over the bare skeleton of some unfortunate mech, was a Dimetrodon, accompanied by yet another Molga.
There was quiet, for a moment, whilst Moira stared at the Wild Zoids, and the Wild Zoids stared at Moira. Silence. Quiet. And then a missile screamed out from the back of a Molga and the spell was broken. Moira urged her Zoid sideways and the missile slammed into the ground beside her, spraying dust and soil everywhere. Moira’s hands were on the controls, reaching for the trigger to return fire when the Dimetrodon charged through the dusty battlefield, jaws agape and screaming. The finned lizard sunk its fangs into the Spino Sapper’s chest. Armour groaning under the pressure, the Sapper’s beam saws roared into life, illuminating the pair in a deadly blue glow. They arced down and tore into the Dimetrodon’s armour, leaving a huge gash in its side. Still, it didn’t let up and the armour in its fangs finally gave way with a horrendous tearing noise.
Moira pulled the Spino Sapper away, and not a moment too soon - the shattered building that had served as her shelter from the missiles disintegrated as the other Molga took to the fight, slashing its stinger in the spot where Moira had been standing just moments before. It stabbed again, and it took all that Moira had to overcome her surprise and dodge the strike. The Dimetrodon snarled and charged, jumping heavily onto its teammate, and then at Moira, using the poor caterpillar as a springboard. It was right on top of her. A wave of fear washed over Moira as she realised what it was headed for. She reached for the cannon trigger - maybe she could blow it up before it got her? The Spino Sapper reacted before its pilot, and swung a saw. The weapon sliced through the Dimetrodon, bisecting its face like a knife through butter. The remains of the Zoid twitched on the floor for a few moments as the mechanisms that drove its limbs ground to a halt, and then it moved no more.
The Molga which had been so eager at first to get to melee range suddenly seemed to change its mind, rolled backwards into the wreckage it had emerged from. Its back opened up and a single missile fizzed upwards and out. Moira watched, still stunned from the reaction of her Zoid: she hadn’t been aware that it could move on its own. As far as she had been concerned, it was a vehicle, and not much more. Apparently, she had been mistaken. The missile’s trajectory swung downwards towards the Sapper, but the dinosaur Zoid had moved forward. The Sapper’s jaws opened wide, ready to take a chunk out of the caterpillar, but when they snapped shut, there was nothing there but a pile of disturbed earth. It had burrowed away.
Looking around, Moira realised that she couldn’t see the other Molga, either.
“Uh oh…”
That wasn’t good. If she couldn’t see them coming, how would she counter them? She kept her fingers on the triggers this time - one on the machine guns on the front, and one on the pulse guns at the back. The Sapper let out a low growl - seemed it didn’t like the situation any more than Moira did. The earth burst open behind them and Moira screamed, grip tightening on both triggers at once. The machine guns, of course, struck nothing, but the Pulse guns caught the Molga mid-air, flinging its body across the ruins like a child’s doll. Somehow, the caterpillar righted itself before it struck the ground and let rip with its own guns, peppering the back of the Spino Sapper before it had a chance to react. Screens flashed red in Moira’s eyes - less than 50% of body armour remaining. Not good. Not good at all. The insect’s back opened up again, and another missile soared into the sky. Moira tugged on the controls, leaning sideways in her seat as she prayed for her Zoid to move quickly enough. The Sapper did indeed move, but not in the way Moira wanted - it turned to face the missile.
“No, no, no! What are you doing?!” Had she bought a suicidal Zoid? What on Zi was going on?!
Suddenly, the cockpit was bathed in a warm red glow. For a moment, Moira was flummoxed.
“… What the?”
And then the laser engulfed the descending missile in a spitting, hissing stream of pure, unbridled energy, and Moira understood. It was the Excavation Laser - the ‘weapon’ she never used. After all, she had thought, what was the point if it couldn’t do damage? She had a great deal to reconsider today. The sky seemed to turn dark for a moment, as the explosion from the missile above rained down smoke and debris onto the Sapper. There was a rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire, but the blast still rang in Moira’s ears, and it sounded so far away. And then, plunging through the smoke with a shower of dirt, the other Molga made its appearance. Its segmented body drifted sideways on its wheels, brandishing the sharp point at the end of its body, and the insect found itself with a cannon shell blasting through its body. Like its comrade, the heavy weaponry of the Sapper tossed it aside. Still, it was a tenacious creature, and it simply refused to lay down and die. Following its brethren’s example, the Molga’s armour opened up. Or, at least, it tried. Its back had been warped by Moira’s cannon and now it was stuck. Well, no way was Moira going to wait around for it to get it to open. Reaching into the short row of switches above her, the pilot flipped one, and waited as the computer locked on to its target.
The Spino Sapper straightened, and from its gut came snarling a missile, barbed with short, vicious fins. The Molga’s back snapped open, and the missile inside lit, but not before Moira’s own missile slammed into its target and the blast consumed the Zoid, projectile weapons and all. A feeling of relief welled up inside Moira. Just one more to go. Just one more that had vanished underground again. Ugh. She’d just have to wait, she supposed, for it to attack her. It would eventually, although the longer she waited, the less sure she was about that.
Suddenly, Moira saw it - not the Molga though - it was huge, rocketing through the topsoil faster than anything Moira had ever seen. It was everything she could do not to be hit by it as it sped by. Without thinking, she let rip with her machine guns, spitting bullets towards the rushing thing. They connected. Probably. They vanished into the ground with a metallic pinging, but made no difference to the trajectory of the creature.
And then everything exploded.
Moira thought the Molgas had made a mess, popping underground all the time - this, this was ridiculous. It was a living cable, thrashing and coiling and thrashing with no apparent features. And it was glowing. It was glowing with such intensity, that Moira couldn’t bear to look at it. Big mistake. She didn't see the tail until it was too late, and the Sapper careened into a building. Moira was blinded with red as warnings flashed and blared in her face. 'Danger!' it said. Yeah, she could see that. As the Spinosaurus struggled to rise from the ground, vents snapped open all over the creature's body, and huge clouds of steam poured out. The Spino Sapper eventually rose, but Moira could barely tell - every direction looked the same: up, down, left and right was just shifting white steam. The beam saws undocked from the Sapper's back with a click, and their characteristic roar was soon shifting the steam - not in any helpful way - into a disorientating maelstrom of shifting gas.
Something dark suddenly appeared to Moira's left, and she lashed out instinctively with a saw, reducing the building there to a pile of rubble. She let out a short breath. It was easy to forget where she was with all the mist about. Another shape! Moira struck again and this time she caught sight of her enemy's face, mere meters from her own.
It was... It was a monster, no doubt about it. Darkly scaled skin clung weakly to its metal hide, and a myriad blinking eyes pointed sightlessly in every direction. Moira didn't even have the breath to cry out.
Just as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone. Moira blasted away with her machine guns, but the swirling mist simply devoured them, noise and all. She had to get out of the mist - firing blindly was doing her no good, and besides, it was really starting to freak her out. The Sapper lurched forward into its ungainly run, saws held level in front, slashing at whatever poor building dared get into her way.
Without any warning at all, the world reappeared. Turning, she could see the mist swirl as the creature flew around within it. She tried to ignore the sinking feeling she felt seeing that it not only burrowed, but flew, too. She had to put it down - whatever that thing was, it was wrong. The second and third of the Spino Sapper's missiles vanished into the mist, followed by a deafening explosion that ripped the shroud of steam apart. The creature was revealed once more, beating the air with its odd segmented wings. The skin hung from its body, scorched, suggesting that she'd hit it with at least one missile. Still, it wasn't dead yet - not by a long shot. It plunged forward towards Moira, announcing its anger with the rattle of gunfire. The misty air in front of the Spino Sapper was plunged into a red haze as the dinosaur's laser fired, vaporising the hail of bullets before they ripped into their target. The monster wasn't done though. It turned sinuously in the air and landed a good solid thwack on the Sapper with its whiplike tail. The spinosaurus stumbled, and fell heavily as bullets whipped over its head, narrowly missing killing Moira outright.
In reply, the tail-mounted guns of the Sapper fired, but they struck nothing - the creature was already gone. Moira scanned the sky. Where was it? It couldn't disappear too, could it? She realised too late - the ground seemed to rise up around her, and she and her zoid vanished in a writhing, biting mass of metal and skin. Moira lashed out with all the weapons she had. The beam saws and the pulse gun roared their battle-hymns, underpinned by the percussive rattle of bullets leaving chambers. But nothing seemed to stop the fury of the monster. Nothing stopped it from tearing at its victim, biting through plating and cable and weapon until finally, finally, it ground to a halt. Both combatants stood as best they could, wiring exposed and holes chewed in armor and limbs. Neither of them could last much longer, but the monster could certainly have won the fight and killed Moira. Clearly it had wanted to, judging by the copious amounts of headshots. So, the question remained, why didn't it?
As if in answer to her question, the monster began glowing. As it did so, the skin covering it bubbled and boiled away, seemingly incinerated in the heat of its radiant shine. And then, the light left it, and it crumpled into a heap. Moira brought her hand to her neck and scratched nervously. An old habit. What was going on? That was a zoid, right? So why had it looked so... Like that? It was getting too creepy for Moira - as quickly as she could, she input the coordinates for home and the Spino Sapper lurched off in that direction. She had her fingers on the trigger for a long time - long beyond the point where they cramped and she'd have been no good to anyone. But it made her feel better at least. Felt like she wasn't so defenceless in her torn-up zoid, in the ruins where real, honest-to-goodness monsters lurked.
WC: 2429
