How Beauty Killed a Beast
Chapter 2
Years earlier…
Although each day in the New Outback is a fight for survival, one thing is certain, the nights are still beautiful. When the sun goes down, the lights are off, and the timing is just right, the night sky at the bottom of the world is incredible to behold. If one were to just take a moment and look up, they would be treated to the sight of countless stars dotting the night sky, distant planets doing the same revolutions that they had been doing since the beginning of time, and the occasional comet darting across the night sky.
On one day, early in the morning, one such sight to behold was a comet darting across the sky, but unlike before, it kept getting closer, and closer, and closer, until like a piece of a midnight sun, it shot across the outback and crashed into the badlands.
After a few hours, the red hot satellite began to cool off, slowly turning black, and when ready, the large black ball rolled out of its crater, unfolding its four spider-like legs and began to walk out of its landing site. When free from the hole it had dug, the top of the quadrupedal tank opened up, revealing Hammond sitting at the controls of the mech.
Free from the shielding of his escape vehicle, he looked across the horizon, shocked what was to behold before him for the first time. Gingerly, Hammond climbed down from the helm of his spherical vehicle and stepped on the earth for the first time. The dirt, dry and unpleasant, was strange to feel for the first time. He looked up, seeing the blue sky, and the edges of the horizon all around him. It was frightening in a way to have all of this boundless freedom at once, not only to see that there was more land around him, but for the first time to be able to go there, to be limited by nothing but his own ambition rather than the glass of the Lunar Colony.
It was then that he took a deep breath and exhaled, his plan to escape the moon was to use the magnetic grappling hook on his escape vehicle to that one Gorilla's rocket ship and just tag along as he reached escape velocity. Even for his ingenuity in creating a craft that could survive reentry, he hadn't really considered what would happen if it failed or what he would do when he was forced to disconnect. The earth was 2/3's water, and he thought for sure that he would land in one of the oceans before he saw his trajectory was approaching one of the only landmasses in the southern hemisphere.
"Oi, look at that over there!"
Hammond turned, seeing a large truck made from the parts of several other vehicles parked nearby and two humans getting out of the passenger compartment.
Hammond scrambled to get back to the operating seat. Luckily, he had installed his text-to-speech translator into his mech in preparation to communicate with the humans here. He was in the midst of typing his greeting when the two men were upon him. The one from before commented, "We ought to make a fortune outta this at the scrap sale!"
Hammond then erased his message and prepared to explain that this was not for sale when the speaker said, "there's a scrawny lil' rat on it. Scram!" and with a backhand slap, Hammond was knocked from his seat.
The strangers accomplice then mentioned, "Look at 'im. He's a fat one. We oughta catch it for dinner!" a knife was thrown, and it was only by Hammond's hamster instinct that he was able to dart out of the way to save himself from being impaled.
The man approached to grab his knife once more, and Hammond darted forward, shooting up the man's leg, into his pants, and as the man tried to swat him off, climbed up between his legs and bit.
The man was down, and as he fell, Hammond darted from his tumbling form and dove for his mech, and hit the big red button in the center of the console, causing the automated voice to announce, "Activating countermeasures."
Present…
In a raised pedestal above the common seating of the Scrapyard, a woman with fiery ginger hair sat in a throne made from old truck tires and welded truck mufflers. Although her clothing still had the wear and tear of the common Junkertown aesthetic, they were clean and still in good condition. Over her clothes, she wore a set of armor made from the melted down scrap of the Omnics that had led to half of Australia being nuked for its own survival.
When the time was ready, she stood, raising both hands up and gaining cheers and applause from the junkers all around her. Like the great emperor Ceaser, the woman who commanded all of the Scrapyard to rise was their ruler; their Queen.
A microphone was lowered to her, where she took it in her hand and addressed her subjects. "Today, we have a new challenger. A trio of outsiders who think they can challenge our champion." A round of laughter filled the arena, the queen waited for it to subside before continuing. "Let's give a warm welcome to our 'esteemed guests.'"
One the far end of the battleground, one of the walls opened, and from there Mercy, Winston, and Soldier:76 entered and were met with proper Australian hospitality through a shower boos and insults.
The three surveyed the arena, Soldier:76, from his younger years, looked around and the uneven dirt floor and thought it reminded him of the Monstertruck rallies he used to watch on television when he was younger. Doctor Winston, upon dodging a beer can heading towards his fuzzy form, adjusted his glasses and surveyed the arena, looking at the wreckage of conflicts past littering the arena. Armored cars, spider tanks, mechanized armored vehicles, all lay dead in the dirt and only partially removed from the conflict.
Mercy's first instinct was to take a step back, performance anxiety beginning to bite at the back of her mind, but like always, she fought her way through it. She was aware that the battles were public events, but she didn't necessarily imagine that there would be this many people here. But, after coping with the fact that there were thousands looking at her, she then observed the crowd and made a rather startling realization. Putting a hand up to her chest, she said, "be careful where you fire, this place looks very unsafe."
Although quite the understatement, she did have a point. There were no protective barriers, or crash netting, or shields around the arena. The only thing between the combatants in the arena and the crowd in the raised spectator seats around them was air. It seemed that to the people here, the battles in the Scrapyard were worth endangering their lives over.
After the jeers from the audience subsided, the queen spoke once more, "Now, time to introduce our reigning champion here to defend his honor." The crowd began a chant, quietly at first, but then gradually gaining volume. "He's the half-pint homicider, the breaker of dreams, the beast of the bad lands…"
At that point, the crowd became one single, loud voice, filling the stadium with their call of their hero, "Wreck. Ing. Ball! Wreck. Ing. Ball!"
"Wrecking ball!"
The garage on the far side of the arena opened up, smoke billowing out from the inside. A light turned on from the back of the room, illuminating the shadow of quadrupedal mech. Then, a large shadow appeared in the illuminated smoke and walked forward to his weapon of choice. He kept walking, growing smaller and smaller with each step, until he stood next to the spider-tank and looked to be no more than a few inches tall. He climbed up, and as the smoke cleared, a fat and round rodent stood in the cockpit of the battle robot, taking in the applause of his beloved fans.
Mercy stood in awe for a moment. Sure, she had been told what their objective was when they entered the Scrapyard, but it wasn't until she was standing there looking down a hamster that the gravity of it all sunk in.