Chapter 8: Run Away!
"Twenty-eight minutes!" Squall shouted as they left the tower. They had just over twenty-eight minutes to cover a distance that had taken over an hour and a half to cover before, so understandably, the trio of cadets were running flat-out through the double-doors.
Despite the huffing and panting from their breaths as they left, Zell thought he heard something overhead, far above them. A metallic clanging sound. He glanced up, and spotted something up on the platform where the cadets had just fought for their lives.
A huge, black shape was up there, walking to the edge of the platform. Then, it leaped, dropping down towards them.
"Look out!" Zell shouted, catching the attention of his comrades. They spun around in time to see Zell scrambling back-
-and then a huge, black machine dropped down right where he'd been standing, the mechanized weapon landing nimbly on its four legs. With a thunderous, mechanical piston-like stomping sound, its legs spread out, balancing the heavy weight of the machine. The weapon turned its attention towards the cadets, as if sizing them up.
For a moment, no one moved. Squall had never seen anything like this. It was huge, twice Squall or Zell's height, and as wide as it was tall. It had a long, rectangular body, supported on four large, cylindrical legs, spread out like the legs of a spider, with sharp, clawed tips. It was painted matte black, excepting blueish designs on its legs, red markings across its body, and the steel-gray grating on the front of the machine. Behind this grating, something glowed a dark red, a sensor perhaps. Whatever it was, it was looking directly at the cadets. A quartet of turbines in the back powered the machine, and a pair of black and gray metallic pinchers, like those of a scorpion, waved around like that of a real scorpion just in front of the gray grating of its "head." On its side, in blocky, Galbadian script, one could read the number and letter designation "X-ATM092." Scrawled beneath in crude, white paint were the words "Black Widow."
The machine, apparently finished with its analysis of the trio, stepped forward, its metal legs gouging chunks out of the concrete bricks below them.
"Watch it!" Squall shouted, raising the Revolver as the machine came forward. It suddenly stopped and drove its two forward pinchers into the ground, then one of its legs rose up, and the claw shot out at him, driven like a piston. Squall ducked and spun away, the claw catching him on the shoulder and tearing his jacket, and drawing blood from shoulder skin. He came back around and slashed his gunblade across, the sharpened edge slicing into the metal leg but doing little damage.
The leg retracted and the machine drew its pinchers out of the ground, just as Zell came in and launched a quick combo of punches into the machine's "face." His GF-enhanced strength resulting in some satisfyingly dented metal, but the machine did not seem to be noticing until it raised a pincher and attempted to slam it down through Zell's skull. The agile martial artist backed away, and the claw only smashed stone.
Then, sparks and lightning flew all along the machine's front end as Selphie unleashed a Thundara spell, the powerful lightning bolt playing hell with the front end of the machine, and the electrical blast being carried all throughout its body by its metal armor.
Still, the weapon stood, and came forward again, pinchers jabbing at Squall and Zell. Both cadets ducked and dodged, and Zell hopped over the pincers to land a powerful kick into the machine's front end. The sheer power behind the kick caused the machine to stumble back, almost through the Comms Tower's doors.
Squall, meanwhile, went under, slashing his gunblade up into the underside of the machine's "head." As the Revolver sliced in, Squall fired a quick blast, the blast shattering through the heavy armor to damage electronics within.
Another Thundara roared in and blasted the mechanized weapon, and Squall had to leap back as the machine toppled forward, Selphie's spell finishing the device. It dropped down into the ground and was still, and the cadets breathed a sigh of relief.
"Let's get the hell out of here!" Zell shouted, reminding them of the limited time they had to spare. Immediately, the cadets ran up the trail that would lead them back down the mountian, leaving behind the Galbadian war machine. The brief battle had only lasted a minute, but that was a minute the cadets did not have.
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Galbadian computer technicians and programmers were quite skilled, and their programming capabilities were shown in their ability to program the army's military robot forces. They had even developed an advanced artifical intelligence program, which was still being experimented on. That AI program was capable of learning from its mistakes and adjusting for them, as well as developing new methods and solutions to a problem. Such an AI had yet to have been tested in the field, so the Galbadian military command had decided to put it into use on a relatively minor military conflict, to determine its effectiveness. That conflict happened to be the one in Dollet, and the AI was included in the latest model of the Galbadian "X-ATM" series, X-ATM092, along with advanced targeting programming, new weaponry, and highly advanced redundant systems and heavy armor. The engineers were proud of their new weapon, which promised to dominate the future world battlefield.
Those engineers would not have been dissappointed in X-ATM092's seemingly easy defeat at the hands of the cadets. In fact, those engineers would have merely smiled at the cadets who now thought they were safe and the weapon was destroyed. In fact, the weapon was far from destroyed; a few spells, some punches, and a couple of cuts and a relatively weak explosion wouldn't stop this mighty a weapon. In fact, were it not for the spells, X- ATM092 wouldn't have even fallen over at Squall and Zell's abuse. And even with the spells, which themselves were not powerful enough to stop the weapon, the damage the machine had taken was relatively minimal.
Even as the cadets fled, within X-ATM092 tiny robots, controlled by the central AI, swarmed over its overloaded and damaged electronics. Like a horde of frenzied mechanics, the tiny robots reassembled and repaired X- ATM092's wounds.
In the meantime, X-ATM092's artificial intelligence reviewed its stored maps of the Dollet region, narrowing down its prey's escape routes. Contrary to whatever the cadets had thought, the machine's sensors had actively tracked their escape and knew where they had fled. It immediately realized that there was only one trail its targets could use to get down the mountain.
With that done, the machine then focused on what it had learned from its targets. Two were close-quarters specialists, and while agile, they did not seem strong enough to stand against the weapon for long in melee. The third target, the smallest, was the most dangerous. Acting in support, that target could deal out tremendous damage with electrical magic. It made a note to eliminate that one first.
Three seconds before the repair robots had brought X-ATM092 back onto its feet, it had already marked its own attack route, had assembled a number of contingency plans to ensure its prey could not escape, and was preparing its next plan of attack. Fully repaired, X-ATM092 stood and marked the path of its targets.
Its piston-like legs pumping and clanging, X-ATM092, the Black Widow, resumed the hunt.
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The cadets had almost managed to work their way back up the trail to the spot where they had spied on the Galbadians earlier, and still had about twenty-five minutes left. By Squall's estimation, if they kept up this pace, then with their GF-enhanced strength fueling their speed they should be able to reach Dollet in about seven minutes and be back at Lapin Beach in another ten.
Seifer would almost certianly beat them there, Squall knew. Was that his plan all along when he'd stolen the elevator? To reach the beach before Squall? It sounded like the kind of petty competition Seifer would try to one-up Squall on, and-
Squall was jolted out of his thoughts by a familiar metallic stomping, and a quick glance behind him confirmed his sudden fears.
The Galbadian machine was hot on their heels, seemingly undamaged by the brutal barrage it had suffered earlier.
"The hell?!" Zell protested, as both he and Selphie had heard the thing approach as well. "I thought we already busted that thing up?!" Squall was equally surprised, especially at the weapon's complete recovery in a matter of minutes.
On the tail end of that thought was another: that they couldn't risk the time to stop and smash this thing again. They would just have to outrun it.
"Forget it!" he ordered as the machine stomped up the path, its sensors locked on the trio. "Let's go!" The other two cadets nodded, and they hurried up the path, scrambling even faster than they had been before. They quickly left the machine in their dust, judging by how its metallic stomps faded into the distance.
They soon passed the cliff top where Seifer had observed the Galbadians and Selphie had joined them, and continued down the path. Squall led the group, while Zell was in the middle. Selphie was right behind him, only trailing by a few feet.
Then, a black multi-ton mass of metal, legs, and destruction leaped straight up the cliff face and missed Selphie by inches, its legs swooping down towards her head and almost scoring a hit. She cried out in surprise and ducked, rolling away as the machine landed nimbly on the rocks above the cliff top. It spun around immediately and charged again, aiming deliberately for Selphie once more.
Zell and Squall met it, the gunblade-wielding cadet hurling a Thundara at the machine while the martial artist dished out a mighty flying kick into its grille. The spider machine was knocked off-balance for a second, long enough to allow Selphie to recover and add her own Thundara spell to the attack while Squall joined Zell in close-quarters combat.
X-ATM092 took several damaging blows to its front before stepping back and turning to the left, almost defensively. Squall and Zell followed up, trying to disable the machine quickly. They immediately realized their mistake as the machine's forward right leg shot out in a sweeping slash. Zell backflipped out of its way, but Squall took the clawed end across the chest and was knocked off his feet. The machine came right in behind its own attack, stomping over to the downed cadet and attacking him with a pair of raised pinchers, which dove down at Squall's prone form.
The cadet rolled out of the way frantically, the pinchers burying into the rock mere inches from Squall's side. That wasn't the end of Squall's rolling, as he had to scramble aside again as the machine raised another of its legs and attempted to drive the piston-powered claw into his chest. Squall came out beside the machine on its left side.
Then, Zell was overhead again, once more pounding away with superhuman strength into the weapon's front grille. A third Thundara struck the machine, which still stubbornly stood. It tore its pinchers free of the ground and stomped forward, forcing Zell back. The machine shifted its angle slightly, bringing it in line with Selphie once more.
A fourth powerful Thundara blasted the machine's backside, hitting its turbines precisely, courtesy of Squall, who was now located behind the weapon. The electrical blast overloaded and destroyed several of the turbines, and the weapon stumbled, losing power to critical systems. Its legs suddenly stopped moving, but forward momentum still carried it towards Selphie. She dove out of the way, barely getting clear as the huge weapon hurtled past.
And then it fell right over the edge of the cliff, tumbling down to smash into the concrete bricks below. It didn't move.
All three cadets paused for a second to catch their breath. Squall shook his head at the difference in the machine's attack this time, and at its surprising tactical and strategic skills. Instead of blindly pursuing them, it had apparently doubled back on its attack route and instead ambushed them. And the attack had been deliberately focused on Selphie this time, an intelligent move considering she'd blasted it down with powerful magic the first time.
"That was close," Selphie remarked. Zell nodded.
"Yeah," he agreed. "But we can't stick around! We gotta get moving!"
Squall nodded in agreement and the trio charged down the mountianside, leaving X-ATM092's wreck behind them.
Or at least, they thought they were doing that. But only about two minutes down the mountian, they once again heard the familiar metallic stomping.
"Aw, hell no!" Zell denied, looking over his shoulder. The weapon was once more on its feet, and had leaped back up to the spot where it had ambushed them minutes ago. Still, that was a fairly great distance, and the machine only looked like a distant and ominous black shape up there.
"Don't worry!" Selphie shouted, sounding hopeful. "It can't get to us down here! We're too far away!"
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If X-ATM092 could have had emotions, it would have felt a combination of irritation and respect for its targets. Its ambush had not gone off as well as it intended; the sword-wielder was surprisingly agile and also seemed to be able to deal out electrical damage to a devastating degree. It made the artifical intelligence equivilant of a mental note about that, filing the sword-wielder away as the most dangerous of its targets.
It also made a note to not expose its backside to attacks, especially electrical ones. The failure of the turbines had been most unfortunate, and it couldn't allow that to happen again. It would make sure to keep its foes in front when at all possible.
X-ATM092 also decided to change its tactics. It seemed mere brute force, using leg swipes and pincher attacks, was not going to defeat these targets; it was going to have to use its more powerful weaponry, and make more effective use of its mighty speed and jumping power.
That done, X-ATM092 stood at its position, watching the targets flee. It wasn't watching in helplessness at how the enemy was so far away. Far from it. It knew it couldn't possibly catch up to its prey, at least not quickly, by pursuing them on foot down the trails, and its current location offered it an excellent vantage point. It paid particular attention to the path its targets took, and how the trail narrowed at several points. One of these points, it noted, was at the top of one of the many artificial stairways leading up the path. An excellent position from which to strike at its targets.
The weapon hunched down low, its legs preparing to spring and hurl it up and then down onto that location. Its computers calculated the distance, and factored in the wind speed and direction. The weapon made the appropriate adjustments, all the while watching the trio of cadets below.
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Squall, Zell, and Selphie ran down the stairs, hurrying as fast as their legs could carry them. They still had twenty minutes left and were not too far from the edge of the city proper. The bridge crossing the ravine was visible ahead, further down the path.
Squall kept glancing over his shoulder at the huge war machine, despite Selphie's proclamation that it was way too far away to threaten them. The spider machine still stood up there, looking ominous yet impotent. Squall could still see the faint red glow of its sensors, even at this distance.
While he had been checking, both Zell and Selphie had gotten further ahead. Those two had gained on and passed Squall earlier up on the trail, who himself had fallen back almost unconciously. He was still concerned about the machine, so he had taken up rear guard so as not to give it another shot at either of his comrades.
"Hurry, Squall!" Zell shouted as the gunblade-wielding cadet stopped halfway down the steps to look back at the machine. It still stood there, mighty but harmless, watching them flee. He turned back to Zell and nodded, then began to run down the steps again. He almost reached the bottom when he looked back up.
It was no longer at the top. Instead, the multi-ton killing machine came right down the side of the mountian, leaping the entire distance to slam down onto the steps no more than ten feet behind Squall. The shockwave from its impact knocked Squall off his feet, but then he stood back up quickly, backing away in preparation for the machine's coming assault.
It didn't advance. Instead, even as the cadet was pulling himself up onto his feet, the machine was spreading its legs out wide, as if bracing itself. Both its pinchers folded up around its head, and suddenly, steam poured out from its turbine engines, rising up over the machine's back. A glowing ball of energy began forming directly underneath the machine's "face."
Squall barely had time to react as a yellow beam shot out from that ball, striking the ground right in front of him.
Then he was airborne, hurled up and back by the force of the explosion as the machine's attack blew the ground at his feet apart like an artillery shell. Squall came down right on top of Zell, who, along with Selphie, had spun around to face the suddenly very real danger that the machine posed once more.
Selphie wasted no time launching another Thundara the machine's way. The electrical blast staggered the machine as it had before, but didn't come close to stopping it. In response, the weapon set its feet once more, and a second ball of energy formed.
"Scatter!" Squall shouted, diving away from Zell. Selphie backed away quickly, and Zell dove in the opposite direction in an attempt to avoid the weapon's beam.
The energy ray shot out again, but to the cadets' surprise, the beam arced along the ground at their feet. Another tremendous explosion, arcing in a semicircle, blasted the surprised cadets off their feet.
"Oww," Selphie muttered as she stood back up.
"Dammit!" Zell roared, leaping to his feet and preparing to charge the Galbadian machine. "You just don't know when to quit, do you?!"
Squall struggled to his feet as well, grabbing a potion from his item belt and downing the blue liquid. As his wounds began to mend, he looked back up at the weapon.
A third ball of energy was forming.
Once more, the cadets were blasted off their feet by the energy attack, the ground now sporting multiple gashes from the unusual ray weapon. The machine, apparently satisfied that its targets were sufficiently weakened, advanced down the concrete steps.
The trio of cadets couldn't keep taking this degree of an assault. They were going to need heavier firepower.
"Zell, Selphie!" he shouted as the others rose to their feet and the machine closed in. "Quick, summon GFs on it!" The others nodded as Squall rose to his feet. At that moment, he noticed that the weapon was angled toward him now, advancing with a single-minded intent. It charged quickly, its pinchers raised. Squall dove out of the way, barely dodging the stabbing metal. He glanced over his shoulder to see Zell and Selphie concentrating, eyes tightly closed.
Squall would have to keep the machine busy until they were finished with their summons. He charged at the machine suddenly, diving right between its pinchers and slashing the Revolver across its grille. He fired a shot as he cut in, and was rewarded with an explosion that forced the weapon to take a couple of steps back. As it turned back to him, Squall noted that the weapon's glowing red sensors seemed dimmer. It took one step forward, then froze in place, as if assessing a new threat. Squall knew immediately that he had bought at least one of the others enough time, and dove out of the way.
Ifrit hurled a massive pair of fireballs at X-ATM092, the fires scorching, warping, and melting metal. The weapon stepped back, caught off guard by the GF's summon. It turned to face the Guardian Force, as if preparing to attack it, when the entity of flame vanished. In an instant, the intense fires and heat faded, replaced by bone-chilling cold.
Shiva's icicle rose out of the ground and shattered, revealing the ice Guardian Force. She wasted no time, hurling an intense shockwave of pure cold at the machine. The frigid air struck the weapon, the cold freezing and immobilizing the machine under a thick layer of ice. It remained under the ice, unmoving, and the ice GF faded away, taking the cold with her. Moments later, the ice around the weapon shattered, and the trio of cadets readied to hurl spells at the unstoppable machine.
Apparently, though, the ice had only shattered due to the weight of the weapon as it fell over on its side, disabled by the fury of the GFs.
Still, Squall held no illusions of safety.
"Let's move!" he shouted, turning around quickly and waving the others to run on. They also spun around, realizing that they had probably stopped the seemingly indestructable machine for only a moment.
Indeed, even as they came within sight of the bridge, the familiar mechanical stomping assaulted them once more as the weapon charged down the trail. All three cadets put on more speed, running with all their GF- enhanced strength. They pitted their supernatural speed against the machine's engines, and for a moment, the trio thought they were faster. The weapon was not gaining on them as they passed through a particularly narrow part of the trail, rock walls rising up on either side of them. A few moments later, the machine slammed into the rock walls, not able to squeeze its unyeilding metal bulk through the gap.
Within seconds the cadets were on the bridge and running flat out. Meanwhile, the weapon still struggled to get through the gap, its own bulk and mechanized power straining against the rock walls. Cracks formed in the granite as nature contended with Galbadian engineering.
"The city!" Squall shouted. "We might be able to lose it inside!" Zell and Selphie agreed and put on as much more speed as humanly possible, hopping over the bodies of the dead Galbadians that Squad B had dropped earlier. They were almost entirely across the bridge when X-ATM092 had managed to squeeze through the gap, or rather, had widened the gap to accommadate itself. It stomped out onto the bridge in time to see the cadets nearing the far end.
Squall looked back at the weapon as it stood at the far end of the bridge, and expected it to chase them across its length. Instead, the machine crouched low to the ground like a cat about to spring, and then it leaped.
The machine covered the entire distance of the bridge and more, landing ahead of the cadets at the very end of the bridge, right where it met the street. It spun around and stomped towards the stunned trio.
"What now?!" Zell asked desperately.
"We have to disable it again!" Squall replied, raising his gunblade. But then, the machine stopped. For an instant, Squall thought it was going to use its ray weapon again, but instead the pinchers folded up in front of the weapon's face, almost as if sheilding it. It leaned back on its legs, once more looking like a pouncing cat, and then hurled itself forward at the cadets.
On the narrow bridge, the cadets couldn't hope to get out of the way of the simple but brutal attack. X-ATM092's muli-ton metal bulk slammed all three cadets and hurled them back off their feet, practically to the far end of the bridge.
"You got to be kiddin' me," Zell complained, pushing himself shakily up on one knee. Selphie sat up, but didn't try to stand, instead gesturing at the advancing machine and loosing her last Thundara spell at it.
The machine stumbled, but didn't fall as the electrical energy interfered with its movements. It continued stomping forward when Squall rose to his feet and charged, gunblade raised.
"Use your GFs again!" he shouted, dodging a jab of a pincher and slashing across with his gunblade. An explosion accompanied the cut as the Revolver fired off another blast. The others nodded and repeated their summoning.
X-ATM092 wasn't stupid, and it realized that the powerful attacks its foes had used before were being employed again. It didn't hesitate, setting its feet once more and ignoring the swordsman as he slashed it across its "face" again. The ball of energy formed underneath its sensors and then the yellow beam shot out at the two cadets.
The explosions hurled them off their feet and right out of their summons, though they weren't injured as the sheilding GFs protected them. The GFs, on the other hand, were not so lucky. Neither Zell nor Selphie could feel the thoughts of the Guardian Forces they had attempted to summon anymore. The GFs were still there, in their minds, but they could not contact them.
That was one of the few weaknesses of Guardian Forces. While being summoned, the GF would project a field of protection around its summoner, powered by its own magical energies. If that protective field sustained too much damage, then the Guardian Force lost its connection with its summoner and was unable to be called forth again for some time. It could not be permenantly damaged, but the entity was unavailable until it had recovered.
Both cadets struggled to their feet, shaking their heads and feeling slightly disoriented. A sharp clang of metal on metal drew their attention, and they looked up to see Squall still fighting with the machine, his gunblade scoring hits on the weapon's armor and the hybrid weapon's blasts damaging its internals. He was doing well, but they both knew that he couldn't hope to stand up in melee for much longer.
Their GFs had been disabled, so neither Zell nor Selphie could summon those again. They also doubted that the weapon would give them a chance to summon up any more GFs. Magic would bring the machine down again, but Zell had no Thundara or Thunder magic on hand, and their other spells were nowhere near as effective against the armored enemy.
"I'm out of Thundaras!" Selphie moaned. Zell agreed with the sound of her voice. Without Thundaras, they didn't stand a chance of defeating the machine, or even beating it off without heavy firepower. "We need a rocket launcher or something! Something big and powerful!" Selphie shouted. Zell agreed, but what could they use? He looked around quickly, frantically, for anything. He spotted the dead corpses of some of the Galbadians they had killed earlier . . . .
And then Zell noticed the grenades on a nearby soldier's belt.
"Selphie, distract it!" Zell shouted as he bent down next to the corpse and snatched a pair of grenades off its belt. "Get its attention!" She nodded and immediately loosed a basic Fire spell on it, the flames scorching but hardly serious to the armored weapon. It turned its attention towards her for a second, allowing Squall to get in another slash into its "face." It stabbed down with a pincher at him, but Squall just hopped back away from the attack.
Even as Squall moved back, Zell leaped forward, hooking his thumbs under the pins of the grenades and popping them free.
"Get back!" Zell shouted as he ducked under the pinchers and came right up in front of the machine's "face." His hands shot out, dropping the grenades through the gaps in the machine's grille. Wasting no time, the martial artist leaped up and kicked off the top of the machine's "head," his superhuman strength hurling him up and back into a somersaulting leap.
Then the grenades detonated.
X-ATM092 was practically blown onto its back by the explosions, its front end lifting up with the force of the detonations as chunks of its "face" flew everywhere. The weapon's front dropped back down, slamming down onto the bridge and laying still, its entire front section ablaze.
"OH, YEAH, BABY!" Zell shouted, pumping his fists triumphantly at the dead hunk of metal in front of him. "You like that, huh?!" Selphie joined him in a cheer of victory against the spider machine. Squall, meanwhile, wasn't as thrilled, though he was relieved now that the machine was down. He glanced at his watch, then tapped Zell on the shoulder.
"Twelve minutes," he alerted them, and the others stopped cheering.
"Time to haul ass," Zell remarked.
Squall couldn't have agreed more.
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Other nations often cursed the Galbadian weapon engineers for their resourcefulness. It wasn't uncommon for a military force to encounter a Galbadian weapon, then meet up with a similar one a short time later and find it armed with completely new and completely unexpected weaponry or equipment. X-ATM092 was no exception, employing not one, not two, but three redundant power cores and four seperate internal AI computers. What resulted from this internal redundancy was the fact that the weapon could not be destroyed unless everything was eliminated before the AI cores could repair them. Needless to say, doing so was a difficult task in and of itself.
So, while Zell's daring grenade tactic had succeeded in disabling the forward sensors, one power core, and two seperate AI computers, and had knocked out the DH-22 Ray Bomb cannon, it was little more than an inconvienience to the machine.
The repair robots issued forth once more and rapidly worked over the machine's blasted front. Within only a few minutes the front end had been mostly repaired and the forward sensors were reconstructed. The repair robots didn't have time to perfect the repairs, but they got the machine's sensors and forward equipment, particularly the DH-22 Ray Bomb, operating once more.
Five minutes after Zell had blown X-ATM092 down, it was back up on its feet and hot on the trail of its prey.
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Dollet's streets were as empty now as they had been before, and Squall, Zell, and Selphie hurried through them, knowing they didn't have much time to get to the beach. The tall buildings loomed up overhead like the rock walls of the mountian trails had minutes ago.
"Seven minutes!" Squall warned them as the saw the Central Square ahead. They should be able to take the side road from the Square that lead to Lapin Beach and get there in under four minutes if they continued with the flat-out run.
Then, the impossible happened.
Thunderous metallic clanging sounded down the street behind them.
As one, the cadets spun around, and saw X-ATM092 charging down the street, still bent on its singular purpose.
"That . . . No way!" Zell shouted. "That's imposible! Its supposed to be dead!"
"Go!" Squall shouted, spinning back towards the Central square. "Go! Go!" The cadets took off and charged down the street, the machine hot on their heels. Squall looked back over his shoulder to see the machine closing even faster with them. Despite their GF-enhanced strength, the weapon was faster than them on the straight, narrow streets. They wouldn't be able to escape it.
And in their current condition, wounded, tired, incapable of summoning Guardian Forces in heated combat, and with little or no electrical magic remaining between them, Squall doubted that the others could survive another encounter with that thing.
As the cadets entered the Central Square, Squall spun around next to the fountian and focused, closing his eyes tightly and reaching into his mind and touching the GFs there.
"Squall!" Selphie shouted, noticing he'd stopped.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Zell also shouted.
"Get out of here," Squall responded quietly, barely audible over the sound of the metallic clanging as X-ATM092 neared the Square. "I'll hold it."
"But-!" Selphie began, but Zell only nodded and grabbed her by the shoulder.
"We gotta move!" he replied, and ran down the street towards the beach. "We don't wanna be here when that thing arrives!" Selphie hesitated, then turned and ran as well.
Moments later, X-ATM092 stomped into the Central Square, spotting the lone enemy. It took a step towards Squall, but then paused, realizing its target was summoning a GF again. Its legs spread outward, and the turbines pumped once more, and the DH-22 Ray Bomb powered up.
Then Squall opened his eyes, his summoning complete.
The skies above Dollet, or rather, just above the Square, suddenly sported ominious, spiraling storm clouds. Ran began to pour down upon the Central Square, and then, from the center of the spiraling clouds, a single mighty lightning bolt struck the ground. But, instead of scoring the concrete pavement, from the impact point rose a spinning yellow entity.
It took on the form of a mighy yellow bird as it continued spinning, rising up and growing bigger, crackling blue electricity running along its length as if demanding to be released. Within an instant, the creature had fully manifested, a great yellow bird with black markings across its body. Except this bird had no feathers, or beak, or even face. Its neck and head resembled that of a serpent's, but without eyes or mouth. In fact, the whole body was smooth and yellow, with many white lights playing across its surface as it hovered in the air for an instant.
Quezacotl looked down on its foe, and then the lightning Guardian Force's head snapped forward, seeming to spew lightning from where the mouth would have been on a snake. The lightning swiftly surrounded X- ATM092, then began to form a dome of electrical energy around the weapon, high above the ground. From the apex of this dome, a single brilliant bolt of energy lanced down, striking the weapon dead center and sending tremendous amounts of electricity throughout the machine. Components exploded, the turbines blew apart, and within an instant, X-ATM092 was down once more, this time at Quezacotl's hands.
Its duty done, the Guardian Force faded away, and Squall retreated from the Square. Something told him that the weapon was not dead, even in the face of Quezacotl's fury.
He was right, for even as he had exited the Square, X-ATM092 was back on its feet and continuing the pursuit. It crashed through the archway over the street Squall ran down, plowing under a car parked nearby and charging on.
Squall knew he couldn't outrun his pursuer, so he opted instead to evade it. The cadet ducked down a side alley, X-ATM092 in hot pursuit. The weapon, not an advocate of subtlety and not able to fit its bulk between the buildings, opted to smash right through the walls. A tremendous crashing sound, like a battalion of wrecking crews had been let loose behind him, alerted Squall to X-ATM092's straightforward approach.
Putting on more speed, the cadet glanced back to see the spider machine smashing through the brick walls on either side of the alley, tearing apart metal support and concrete, with multiple tons of construction falling down on top of it as it advanced. Still, the weapon was slowed somewhat by the intervening walls, giving Squall the chance to pull away and reach the far end of the alley. He exited the alley on another street, and quickly bolted down the road, hoping to find another alleyway to continue the evasion in.
Meanwhile, X-ATM092 had finished transforming the alleyway into another large Dollet street and burst free, taking sizable chunks of the buildings that had stood in its way on either side with it. It spun around, scanning for its target and analyzing the maps of this section of Dollet for any hiding spots usable by its prey.
The weapon spotted Squall as he ducked into another alley, and the chase was on anew.
Squall sped down the alley, aware of the all-too-familiar crashing the machine made as it was walking. However, rather than coming from behind him, at the entrance to the alley, the sound was coming from beside him . . .
Then, more tremendous smashing and crunching accompanied the metal clanging, and suddenly Squall realized that the weapon wasn't chasing him through the alley, it was smashing straight through the buildings to get at him!
X-ATM092 exploded out of the wall directly behind Squall, bricks and other random objects flying as it came to a stop and brought its pinchers up for the kill. The cadet rolled away desperately, evading the pinchers by mere inches and running flat out for the far end of the alleyway. The weapon was right behind him, slowed again by the intervening walls but still continuing the dogged pursuit.
Squall burst free of the alley again and ran flat out for the end of the street. At the far end, just beyond the archway marking the end of the road, Squall could see Lapin Beach and the waiting SeeD Salamanders.
X-ATM092 had little use for windows, but in that instant, as it was smashing through the alley's walls, it spotted Squall through one of the windows of the building on its left, fleeing as hard as he could down the road. Rather than continue the process of bursting through the alleyway, X- ATM092 instead simply turned, recalling its maps. It recognized that this road gently curved, meaning that if it went along a straight path while its prey took the road, it could intercept its target. The only thing standing in the machine's way were the buildings, after all.
Squall soon neared the "Shining Bomber" tavern, where Squad C still stood at the overhead walkway, ready with their rifles.
"Withdraw!" Squall shouted at them. "Squad C! Withdraw! Get out of here!" Ordinarily, Squad C wasn't under Squall's command, but the frenzied way he was running and the sounds they had heard moments before, of something big smashing through the buildings in the area from which Squall had emerged, was enough incentive for them. Not wanting to meet whatever it was Squall fled from, the squad simply leaped down the walkway and ran flat out for the far end of the street.
Squall was about five seconds behind them, legs pumping hard. Somewhere to his left, Squall could hear the sound of crashing and brick walls collapsing. He turned to look that way, but now the sound was no longer beside him, it was behind-
-and X-ATM092 smashed through the buildings behind Squall, hurling debris and a nearby car across the street and charging after the fleeing cadet, with all its horrible, unstoppable fury.
-------------------
"Instructor!" Zell shouted as he ran across the beach, Selphie right behind him. Quistis was standing by their Salamander, the last one without any cadets on board, and still waiting for their own squad to return. Xu was also nearby.
"Zell!" Quistis called, looking over his shoulder. She could see two other cadets, from Squad C, hurrying across the sand, but no one was behind them. "Squall?! Where is he?"
"Behind us!" Zell shouted. "There's some kind of Galbadian weapon chasing him, and-" Metallic crashing from the direction of the street caught everyone's attention, and they spun in that direction in time to see X-ATM092 crash right through the archway, hurling debris and then standing at the top of the street, overlooking Lapin Beach.
Among that debris was a human, Squall, who landed in the sand. He began struggling to get up, and the huge weapon turned its red gaze down on him.
"Squall!" Selphie yelled, her shout echoed by Zell and Xu a moment later. The martial artist turned to Quistis.
"Instructor!" Zell shouted, turning to Quistis. "We've got to . . . ."
But Quistis wasn't there.
-------------------
Get up and run, Leonhart! Squall mentally screamed to himself as he stood up. Behind and overhead, X-ATM092 took a step forward, setting one of its clawed feet on the starcase leading down from the street to the beach. The staircase didn't support the monstrous machine's weight, and X-ATM092 suddenly lost balance and went toppling right over the edge of the street to crash into the sands below.
By that time, Squall was up and hurling himself across the beach, running with every once of strength his GFs could give him. He hurried across the sands, spotting Zell, Selphie, and Xu up ahead. Zell was pumping his fists and waving his arms in the universal "hurry up" fashion, while the other two stood intently, watching and calling for him.
As Squall's boots tossed up sand, X-ATM092 stood back up, surprised by the failure of the stairs to support it. It turned its attenton to Squall, locked him in, and charged.
Squall's movements across the beach were quick, but the spider machine's were even faster. It closed the gap between itself and the cadet, pinchers ready to stab out and grab or impale him.
Squall put every last ounce of his strength into running faster. The vessel's open doors were only about fifteen feet away, but the machine was an equal distance behind and approaching much more quickly. He wouldn't make it!
"No!" Squall denied, his leg muscles tensing. He put everything into one final, desperate lunge for the open doors. Squall leaped, his supernatural strength hurling him across the fifteen-foot distance, a length no man could normally cover. It didn't seem Squall would either, for the machine was directly behind him, pinchers ready to knock him out of the air halfway through his flight.
Then, a new and unbelievably welcome sound assaulted Squall's ears: that of the high-power, high-caliber machinegun mounted on the top of the vessel opening fire. He looked up, just in time to catch a bit of blonde hair. Quistis!
Quistis held the trigger down and held the weapon steady, the bullets from her machinegun ripping through the Galbadian weapon's heavy armor. The sheer force behind the bullets kept pushing it back, kept it from stabbing down with its pinchers into Squall's body. He sailed safely through the open doors, colliding with the metal decking. Inside, Xu screamed for the pilot to pull away. He gunned the engines, but X-ATM092 was still out there.
No longer was the machine aiming for Squall. Instead, it tried to stop the vessel from escaping. Its legs rose up, trying to stab down into the vessel's hull and hold it fast. But Quistis kept on firing, her bullets forcing X-ATM092 back. Hundereds of holes now dotted the machine's outer body, the metal slugs tearing apart electronics and ripping through power cores. The AI computers began issuing repair orders even as the weapon made its final lunge, but then they fell silent, and the weapon stopped thinking, as Quistis's bullets tore apart the computers. The weapon's interior quickly came to resemble shredded cheese as more bullets stuck it, and continued to hit it even as it fell down. Smoke issued forth from the dying machine's shredded corpse, and fires erupted within.
Moments later, the vessel pulled away, and as Quistis watched, X- ATM092 detonated, the explosion hurling chunks and components out over the ocean.
Inside, Squall sat back against a bulkhead, and inhaled, feeling as if he hadn't breathed at all since the Central Square. Selphie, Zell, and Xu, also inside, let out their own held breaths.
"Heh," a voice called, and Squall looked up to see Seifer, seated in the same spot where he'd been during the breifing, his feet propped up on the table and boredom apparent on his face. He looked almost as if he'd never left his spot in the whole Dollet battle. "Squall," Seifer asked, smiling. He cocked his head to the side, as if surprised at something.
"What took you so long?"
"Twenty-eight minutes!" Squall shouted as they left the tower. They had just over twenty-eight minutes to cover a distance that had taken over an hour and a half to cover before, so understandably, the trio of cadets were running flat-out through the double-doors.
Despite the huffing and panting from their breaths as they left, Zell thought he heard something overhead, far above them. A metallic clanging sound. He glanced up, and spotted something up on the platform where the cadets had just fought for their lives.
A huge, black shape was up there, walking to the edge of the platform. Then, it leaped, dropping down towards them.
"Look out!" Zell shouted, catching the attention of his comrades. They spun around in time to see Zell scrambling back-
-and then a huge, black machine dropped down right where he'd been standing, the mechanized weapon landing nimbly on its four legs. With a thunderous, mechanical piston-like stomping sound, its legs spread out, balancing the heavy weight of the machine. The weapon turned its attention towards the cadets, as if sizing them up.
For a moment, no one moved. Squall had never seen anything like this. It was huge, twice Squall or Zell's height, and as wide as it was tall. It had a long, rectangular body, supported on four large, cylindrical legs, spread out like the legs of a spider, with sharp, clawed tips. It was painted matte black, excepting blueish designs on its legs, red markings across its body, and the steel-gray grating on the front of the machine. Behind this grating, something glowed a dark red, a sensor perhaps. Whatever it was, it was looking directly at the cadets. A quartet of turbines in the back powered the machine, and a pair of black and gray metallic pinchers, like those of a scorpion, waved around like that of a real scorpion just in front of the gray grating of its "head." On its side, in blocky, Galbadian script, one could read the number and letter designation "X-ATM092." Scrawled beneath in crude, white paint were the words "Black Widow."
The machine, apparently finished with its analysis of the trio, stepped forward, its metal legs gouging chunks out of the concrete bricks below them.
"Watch it!" Squall shouted, raising the Revolver as the machine came forward. It suddenly stopped and drove its two forward pinchers into the ground, then one of its legs rose up, and the claw shot out at him, driven like a piston. Squall ducked and spun away, the claw catching him on the shoulder and tearing his jacket, and drawing blood from shoulder skin. He came back around and slashed his gunblade across, the sharpened edge slicing into the metal leg but doing little damage.
The leg retracted and the machine drew its pinchers out of the ground, just as Zell came in and launched a quick combo of punches into the machine's "face." His GF-enhanced strength resulting in some satisfyingly dented metal, but the machine did not seem to be noticing until it raised a pincher and attempted to slam it down through Zell's skull. The agile martial artist backed away, and the claw only smashed stone.
Then, sparks and lightning flew all along the machine's front end as Selphie unleashed a Thundara spell, the powerful lightning bolt playing hell with the front end of the machine, and the electrical blast being carried all throughout its body by its metal armor.
Still, the weapon stood, and came forward again, pinchers jabbing at Squall and Zell. Both cadets ducked and dodged, and Zell hopped over the pincers to land a powerful kick into the machine's front end. The sheer power behind the kick caused the machine to stumble back, almost through the Comms Tower's doors.
Squall, meanwhile, went under, slashing his gunblade up into the underside of the machine's "head." As the Revolver sliced in, Squall fired a quick blast, the blast shattering through the heavy armor to damage electronics within.
Another Thundara roared in and blasted the mechanized weapon, and Squall had to leap back as the machine toppled forward, Selphie's spell finishing the device. It dropped down into the ground and was still, and the cadets breathed a sigh of relief.
"Let's get the hell out of here!" Zell shouted, reminding them of the limited time they had to spare. Immediately, the cadets ran up the trail that would lead them back down the mountian, leaving behind the Galbadian war machine. The brief battle had only lasted a minute, but that was a minute the cadets did not have.
-------------------
Galbadian computer technicians and programmers were quite skilled, and their programming capabilities were shown in their ability to program the army's military robot forces. They had even developed an advanced artifical intelligence program, which was still being experimented on. That AI program was capable of learning from its mistakes and adjusting for them, as well as developing new methods and solutions to a problem. Such an AI had yet to have been tested in the field, so the Galbadian military command had decided to put it into use on a relatively minor military conflict, to determine its effectiveness. That conflict happened to be the one in Dollet, and the AI was included in the latest model of the Galbadian "X-ATM" series, X-ATM092, along with advanced targeting programming, new weaponry, and highly advanced redundant systems and heavy armor. The engineers were proud of their new weapon, which promised to dominate the future world battlefield.
Those engineers would not have been dissappointed in X-ATM092's seemingly easy defeat at the hands of the cadets. In fact, those engineers would have merely smiled at the cadets who now thought they were safe and the weapon was destroyed. In fact, the weapon was far from destroyed; a few spells, some punches, and a couple of cuts and a relatively weak explosion wouldn't stop this mighty a weapon. In fact, were it not for the spells, X- ATM092 wouldn't have even fallen over at Squall and Zell's abuse. And even with the spells, which themselves were not powerful enough to stop the weapon, the damage the machine had taken was relatively minimal.
Even as the cadets fled, within X-ATM092 tiny robots, controlled by the central AI, swarmed over its overloaded and damaged electronics. Like a horde of frenzied mechanics, the tiny robots reassembled and repaired X- ATM092's wounds.
In the meantime, X-ATM092's artificial intelligence reviewed its stored maps of the Dollet region, narrowing down its prey's escape routes. Contrary to whatever the cadets had thought, the machine's sensors had actively tracked their escape and knew where they had fled. It immediately realized that there was only one trail its targets could use to get down the mountain.
With that done, the machine then focused on what it had learned from its targets. Two were close-quarters specialists, and while agile, they did not seem strong enough to stand against the weapon for long in melee. The third target, the smallest, was the most dangerous. Acting in support, that target could deal out tremendous damage with electrical magic. It made a note to eliminate that one first.
Three seconds before the repair robots had brought X-ATM092 back onto its feet, it had already marked its own attack route, had assembled a number of contingency plans to ensure its prey could not escape, and was preparing its next plan of attack. Fully repaired, X-ATM092 stood and marked the path of its targets.
Its piston-like legs pumping and clanging, X-ATM092, the Black Widow, resumed the hunt.
-------------------
The cadets had almost managed to work their way back up the trail to the spot where they had spied on the Galbadians earlier, and still had about twenty-five minutes left. By Squall's estimation, if they kept up this pace, then with their GF-enhanced strength fueling their speed they should be able to reach Dollet in about seven minutes and be back at Lapin Beach in another ten.
Seifer would almost certianly beat them there, Squall knew. Was that his plan all along when he'd stolen the elevator? To reach the beach before Squall? It sounded like the kind of petty competition Seifer would try to one-up Squall on, and-
Squall was jolted out of his thoughts by a familiar metallic stomping, and a quick glance behind him confirmed his sudden fears.
The Galbadian machine was hot on their heels, seemingly undamaged by the brutal barrage it had suffered earlier.
"The hell?!" Zell protested, as both he and Selphie had heard the thing approach as well. "I thought we already busted that thing up?!" Squall was equally surprised, especially at the weapon's complete recovery in a matter of minutes.
On the tail end of that thought was another: that they couldn't risk the time to stop and smash this thing again. They would just have to outrun it.
"Forget it!" he ordered as the machine stomped up the path, its sensors locked on the trio. "Let's go!" The other two cadets nodded, and they hurried up the path, scrambling even faster than they had been before. They quickly left the machine in their dust, judging by how its metallic stomps faded into the distance.
They soon passed the cliff top where Seifer had observed the Galbadians and Selphie had joined them, and continued down the path. Squall led the group, while Zell was in the middle. Selphie was right behind him, only trailing by a few feet.
Then, a black multi-ton mass of metal, legs, and destruction leaped straight up the cliff face and missed Selphie by inches, its legs swooping down towards her head and almost scoring a hit. She cried out in surprise and ducked, rolling away as the machine landed nimbly on the rocks above the cliff top. It spun around immediately and charged again, aiming deliberately for Selphie once more.
Zell and Squall met it, the gunblade-wielding cadet hurling a Thundara at the machine while the martial artist dished out a mighty flying kick into its grille. The spider machine was knocked off-balance for a second, long enough to allow Selphie to recover and add her own Thundara spell to the attack while Squall joined Zell in close-quarters combat.
X-ATM092 took several damaging blows to its front before stepping back and turning to the left, almost defensively. Squall and Zell followed up, trying to disable the machine quickly. They immediately realized their mistake as the machine's forward right leg shot out in a sweeping slash. Zell backflipped out of its way, but Squall took the clawed end across the chest and was knocked off his feet. The machine came right in behind its own attack, stomping over to the downed cadet and attacking him with a pair of raised pinchers, which dove down at Squall's prone form.
The cadet rolled out of the way frantically, the pinchers burying into the rock mere inches from Squall's side. That wasn't the end of Squall's rolling, as he had to scramble aside again as the machine raised another of its legs and attempted to drive the piston-powered claw into his chest. Squall came out beside the machine on its left side.
Then, Zell was overhead again, once more pounding away with superhuman strength into the weapon's front grille. A third Thundara struck the machine, which still stubbornly stood. It tore its pinchers free of the ground and stomped forward, forcing Zell back. The machine shifted its angle slightly, bringing it in line with Selphie once more.
A fourth powerful Thundara blasted the machine's backside, hitting its turbines precisely, courtesy of Squall, who was now located behind the weapon. The electrical blast overloaded and destroyed several of the turbines, and the weapon stumbled, losing power to critical systems. Its legs suddenly stopped moving, but forward momentum still carried it towards Selphie. She dove out of the way, barely getting clear as the huge weapon hurtled past.
And then it fell right over the edge of the cliff, tumbling down to smash into the concrete bricks below. It didn't move.
All three cadets paused for a second to catch their breath. Squall shook his head at the difference in the machine's attack this time, and at its surprising tactical and strategic skills. Instead of blindly pursuing them, it had apparently doubled back on its attack route and instead ambushed them. And the attack had been deliberately focused on Selphie this time, an intelligent move considering she'd blasted it down with powerful magic the first time.
"That was close," Selphie remarked. Zell nodded.
"Yeah," he agreed. "But we can't stick around! We gotta get moving!"
Squall nodded in agreement and the trio charged down the mountianside, leaving X-ATM092's wreck behind them.
Or at least, they thought they were doing that. But only about two minutes down the mountian, they once again heard the familiar metallic stomping.
"Aw, hell no!" Zell denied, looking over his shoulder. The weapon was once more on its feet, and had leaped back up to the spot where it had ambushed them minutes ago. Still, that was a fairly great distance, and the machine only looked like a distant and ominous black shape up there.
"Don't worry!" Selphie shouted, sounding hopeful. "It can't get to us down here! We're too far away!"
-------------------
If X-ATM092 could have had emotions, it would have felt a combination of irritation and respect for its targets. Its ambush had not gone off as well as it intended; the sword-wielder was surprisingly agile and also seemed to be able to deal out electrical damage to a devastating degree. It made the artifical intelligence equivilant of a mental note about that, filing the sword-wielder away as the most dangerous of its targets.
It also made a note to not expose its backside to attacks, especially electrical ones. The failure of the turbines had been most unfortunate, and it couldn't allow that to happen again. It would make sure to keep its foes in front when at all possible.
X-ATM092 also decided to change its tactics. It seemed mere brute force, using leg swipes and pincher attacks, was not going to defeat these targets; it was going to have to use its more powerful weaponry, and make more effective use of its mighty speed and jumping power.
That done, X-ATM092 stood at its position, watching the targets flee. It wasn't watching in helplessness at how the enemy was so far away. Far from it. It knew it couldn't possibly catch up to its prey, at least not quickly, by pursuing them on foot down the trails, and its current location offered it an excellent vantage point. It paid particular attention to the path its targets took, and how the trail narrowed at several points. One of these points, it noted, was at the top of one of the many artificial stairways leading up the path. An excellent position from which to strike at its targets.
The weapon hunched down low, its legs preparing to spring and hurl it up and then down onto that location. Its computers calculated the distance, and factored in the wind speed and direction. The weapon made the appropriate adjustments, all the while watching the trio of cadets below.
-------------------
Squall, Zell, and Selphie ran down the stairs, hurrying as fast as their legs could carry them. They still had twenty minutes left and were not too far from the edge of the city proper. The bridge crossing the ravine was visible ahead, further down the path.
Squall kept glancing over his shoulder at the huge war machine, despite Selphie's proclamation that it was way too far away to threaten them. The spider machine still stood up there, looking ominous yet impotent. Squall could still see the faint red glow of its sensors, even at this distance.
While he had been checking, both Zell and Selphie had gotten further ahead. Those two had gained on and passed Squall earlier up on the trail, who himself had fallen back almost unconciously. He was still concerned about the machine, so he had taken up rear guard so as not to give it another shot at either of his comrades.
"Hurry, Squall!" Zell shouted as the gunblade-wielding cadet stopped halfway down the steps to look back at the machine. It still stood there, mighty but harmless, watching them flee. He turned back to Zell and nodded, then began to run down the steps again. He almost reached the bottom when he looked back up.
It was no longer at the top. Instead, the multi-ton killing machine came right down the side of the mountian, leaping the entire distance to slam down onto the steps no more than ten feet behind Squall. The shockwave from its impact knocked Squall off his feet, but then he stood back up quickly, backing away in preparation for the machine's coming assault.
It didn't advance. Instead, even as the cadet was pulling himself up onto his feet, the machine was spreading its legs out wide, as if bracing itself. Both its pinchers folded up around its head, and suddenly, steam poured out from its turbine engines, rising up over the machine's back. A glowing ball of energy began forming directly underneath the machine's "face."
Squall barely had time to react as a yellow beam shot out from that ball, striking the ground right in front of him.
Then he was airborne, hurled up and back by the force of the explosion as the machine's attack blew the ground at his feet apart like an artillery shell. Squall came down right on top of Zell, who, along with Selphie, had spun around to face the suddenly very real danger that the machine posed once more.
Selphie wasted no time launching another Thundara the machine's way. The electrical blast staggered the machine as it had before, but didn't come close to stopping it. In response, the weapon set its feet once more, and a second ball of energy formed.
"Scatter!" Squall shouted, diving away from Zell. Selphie backed away quickly, and Zell dove in the opposite direction in an attempt to avoid the weapon's beam.
The energy ray shot out again, but to the cadets' surprise, the beam arced along the ground at their feet. Another tremendous explosion, arcing in a semicircle, blasted the surprised cadets off their feet.
"Oww," Selphie muttered as she stood back up.
"Dammit!" Zell roared, leaping to his feet and preparing to charge the Galbadian machine. "You just don't know when to quit, do you?!"
Squall struggled to his feet as well, grabbing a potion from his item belt and downing the blue liquid. As his wounds began to mend, he looked back up at the weapon.
A third ball of energy was forming.
Once more, the cadets were blasted off their feet by the energy attack, the ground now sporting multiple gashes from the unusual ray weapon. The machine, apparently satisfied that its targets were sufficiently weakened, advanced down the concrete steps.
The trio of cadets couldn't keep taking this degree of an assault. They were going to need heavier firepower.
"Zell, Selphie!" he shouted as the others rose to their feet and the machine closed in. "Quick, summon GFs on it!" The others nodded as Squall rose to his feet. At that moment, he noticed that the weapon was angled toward him now, advancing with a single-minded intent. It charged quickly, its pinchers raised. Squall dove out of the way, barely dodging the stabbing metal. He glanced over his shoulder to see Zell and Selphie concentrating, eyes tightly closed.
Squall would have to keep the machine busy until they were finished with their summons. He charged at the machine suddenly, diving right between its pinchers and slashing the Revolver across its grille. He fired a shot as he cut in, and was rewarded with an explosion that forced the weapon to take a couple of steps back. As it turned back to him, Squall noted that the weapon's glowing red sensors seemed dimmer. It took one step forward, then froze in place, as if assessing a new threat. Squall knew immediately that he had bought at least one of the others enough time, and dove out of the way.
Ifrit hurled a massive pair of fireballs at X-ATM092, the fires scorching, warping, and melting metal. The weapon stepped back, caught off guard by the GF's summon. It turned to face the Guardian Force, as if preparing to attack it, when the entity of flame vanished. In an instant, the intense fires and heat faded, replaced by bone-chilling cold.
Shiva's icicle rose out of the ground and shattered, revealing the ice Guardian Force. She wasted no time, hurling an intense shockwave of pure cold at the machine. The frigid air struck the weapon, the cold freezing and immobilizing the machine under a thick layer of ice. It remained under the ice, unmoving, and the ice GF faded away, taking the cold with her. Moments later, the ice around the weapon shattered, and the trio of cadets readied to hurl spells at the unstoppable machine.
Apparently, though, the ice had only shattered due to the weight of the weapon as it fell over on its side, disabled by the fury of the GFs.
Still, Squall held no illusions of safety.
"Let's move!" he shouted, turning around quickly and waving the others to run on. They also spun around, realizing that they had probably stopped the seemingly indestructable machine for only a moment.
Indeed, even as they came within sight of the bridge, the familiar mechanical stomping assaulted them once more as the weapon charged down the trail. All three cadets put on more speed, running with all their GF- enhanced strength. They pitted their supernatural speed against the machine's engines, and for a moment, the trio thought they were faster. The weapon was not gaining on them as they passed through a particularly narrow part of the trail, rock walls rising up on either side of them. A few moments later, the machine slammed into the rock walls, not able to squeeze its unyeilding metal bulk through the gap.
Within seconds the cadets were on the bridge and running flat out. Meanwhile, the weapon still struggled to get through the gap, its own bulk and mechanized power straining against the rock walls. Cracks formed in the granite as nature contended with Galbadian engineering.
"The city!" Squall shouted. "We might be able to lose it inside!" Zell and Selphie agreed and put on as much more speed as humanly possible, hopping over the bodies of the dead Galbadians that Squad B had dropped earlier. They were almost entirely across the bridge when X-ATM092 had managed to squeeze through the gap, or rather, had widened the gap to accommadate itself. It stomped out onto the bridge in time to see the cadets nearing the far end.
Squall looked back at the weapon as it stood at the far end of the bridge, and expected it to chase them across its length. Instead, the machine crouched low to the ground like a cat about to spring, and then it leaped.
The machine covered the entire distance of the bridge and more, landing ahead of the cadets at the very end of the bridge, right where it met the street. It spun around and stomped towards the stunned trio.
"What now?!" Zell asked desperately.
"We have to disable it again!" Squall replied, raising his gunblade. But then, the machine stopped. For an instant, Squall thought it was going to use its ray weapon again, but instead the pinchers folded up in front of the weapon's face, almost as if sheilding it. It leaned back on its legs, once more looking like a pouncing cat, and then hurled itself forward at the cadets.
On the narrow bridge, the cadets couldn't hope to get out of the way of the simple but brutal attack. X-ATM092's muli-ton metal bulk slammed all three cadets and hurled them back off their feet, practically to the far end of the bridge.
"You got to be kiddin' me," Zell complained, pushing himself shakily up on one knee. Selphie sat up, but didn't try to stand, instead gesturing at the advancing machine and loosing her last Thundara spell at it.
The machine stumbled, but didn't fall as the electrical energy interfered with its movements. It continued stomping forward when Squall rose to his feet and charged, gunblade raised.
"Use your GFs again!" he shouted, dodging a jab of a pincher and slashing across with his gunblade. An explosion accompanied the cut as the Revolver fired off another blast. The others nodded and repeated their summoning.
X-ATM092 wasn't stupid, and it realized that the powerful attacks its foes had used before were being employed again. It didn't hesitate, setting its feet once more and ignoring the swordsman as he slashed it across its "face" again. The ball of energy formed underneath its sensors and then the yellow beam shot out at the two cadets.
The explosions hurled them off their feet and right out of their summons, though they weren't injured as the sheilding GFs protected them. The GFs, on the other hand, were not so lucky. Neither Zell nor Selphie could feel the thoughts of the Guardian Forces they had attempted to summon anymore. The GFs were still there, in their minds, but they could not contact them.
That was one of the few weaknesses of Guardian Forces. While being summoned, the GF would project a field of protection around its summoner, powered by its own magical energies. If that protective field sustained too much damage, then the Guardian Force lost its connection with its summoner and was unable to be called forth again for some time. It could not be permenantly damaged, but the entity was unavailable until it had recovered.
Both cadets struggled to their feet, shaking their heads and feeling slightly disoriented. A sharp clang of metal on metal drew their attention, and they looked up to see Squall still fighting with the machine, his gunblade scoring hits on the weapon's armor and the hybrid weapon's blasts damaging its internals. He was doing well, but they both knew that he couldn't hope to stand up in melee for much longer.
Their GFs had been disabled, so neither Zell nor Selphie could summon those again. They also doubted that the weapon would give them a chance to summon up any more GFs. Magic would bring the machine down again, but Zell had no Thundara or Thunder magic on hand, and their other spells were nowhere near as effective against the armored enemy.
"I'm out of Thundaras!" Selphie moaned. Zell agreed with the sound of her voice. Without Thundaras, they didn't stand a chance of defeating the machine, or even beating it off without heavy firepower. "We need a rocket launcher or something! Something big and powerful!" Selphie shouted. Zell agreed, but what could they use? He looked around quickly, frantically, for anything. He spotted the dead corpses of some of the Galbadians they had killed earlier . . . .
And then Zell noticed the grenades on a nearby soldier's belt.
"Selphie, distract it!" Zell shouted as he bent down next to the corpse and snatched a pair of grenades off its belt. "Get its attention!" She nodded and immediately loosed a basic Fire spell on it, the flames scorching but hardly serious to the armored weapon. It turned its attention towards her for a second, allowing Squall to get in another slash into its "face." It stabbed down with a pincher at him, but Squall just hopped back away from the attack.
Even as Squall moved back, Zell leaped forward, hooking his thumbs under the pins of the grenades and popping them free.
"Get back!" Zell shouted as he ducked under the pinchers and came right up in front of the machine's "face." His hands shot out, dropping the grenades through the gaps in the machine's grille. Wasting no time, the martial artist leaped up and kicked off the top of the machine's "head," his superhuman strength hurling him up and back into a somersaulting leap.
Then the grenades detonated.
X-ATM092 was practically blown onto its back by the explosions, its front end lifting up with the force of the detonations as chunks of its "face" flew everywhere. The weapon's front dropped back down, slamming down onto the bridge and laying still, its entire front section ablaze.
"OH, YEAH, BABY!" Zell shouted, pumping his fists triumphantly at the dead hunk of metal in front of him. "You like that, huh?!" Selphie joined him in a cheer of victory against the spider machine. Squall, meanwhile, wasn't as thrilled, though he was relieved now that the machine was down. He glanced at his watch, then tapped Zell on the shoulder.
"Twelve minutes," he alerted them, and the others stopped cheering.
"Time to haul ass," Zell remarked.
Squall couldn't have agreed more.
-------------------
Other nations often cursed the Galbadian weapon engineers for their resourcefulness. It wasn't uncommon for a military force to encounter a Galbadian weapon, then meet up with a similar one a short time later and find it armed with completely new and completely unexpected weaponry or equipment. X-ATM092 was no exception, employing not one, not two, but three redundant power cores and four seperate internal AI computers. What resulted from this internal redundancy was the fact that the weapon could not be destroyed unless everything was eliminated before the AI cores could repair them. Needless to say, doing so was a difficult task in and of itself.
So, while Zell's daring grenade tactic had succeeded in disabling the forward sensors, one power core, and two seperate AI computers, and had knocked out the DH-22 Ray Bomb cannon, it was little more than an inconvienience to the machine.
The repair robots issued forth once more and rapidly worked over the machine's blasted front. Within only a few minutes the front end had been mostly repaired and the forward sensors were reconstructed. The repair robots didn't have time to perfect the repairs, but they got the machine's sensors and forward equipment, particularly the DH-22 Ray Bomb, operating once more.
Five minutes after Zell had blown X-ATM092 down, it was back up on its feet and hot on the trail of its prey.
-------------------
Dollet's streets were as empty now as they had been before, and Squall, Zell, and Selphie hurried through them, knowing they didn't have much time to get to the beach. The tall buildings loomed up overhead like the rock walls of the mountian trails had minutes ago.
"Seven minutes!" Squall warned them as the saw the Central Square ahead. They should be able to take the side road from the Square that lead to Lapin Beach and get there in under four minutes if they continued with the flat-out run.
Then, the impossible happened.
Thunderous metallic clanging sounded down the street behind them.
As one, the cadets spun around, and saw X-ATM092 charging down the street, still bent on its singular purpose.
"That . . . No way!" Zell shouted. "That's imposible! Its supposed to be dead!"
"Go!" Squall shouted, spinning back towards the Central square. "Go! Go!" The cadets took off and charged down the street, the machine hot on their heels. Squall looked back over his shoulder to see the machine closing even faster with them. Despite their GF-enhanced strength, the weapon was faster than them on the straight, narrow streets. They wouldn't be able to escape it.
And in their current condition, wounded, tired, incapable of summoning Guardian Forces in heated combat, and with little or no electrical magic remaining between them, Squall doubted that the others could survive another encounter with that thing.
As the cadets entered the Central Square, Squall spun around next to the fountian and focused, closing his eyes tightly and reaching into his mind and touching the GFs there.
"Squall!" Selphie shouted, noticing he'd stopped.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Zell also shouted.
"Get out of here," Squall responded quietly, barely audible over the sound of the metallic clanging as X-ATM092 neared the Square. "I'll hold it."
"But-!" Selphie began, but Zell only nodded and grabbed her by the shoulder.
"We gotta move!" he replied, and ran down the street towards the beach. "We don't wanna be here when that thing arrives!" Selphie hesitated, then turned and ran as well.
Moments later, X-ATM092 stomped into the Central Square, spotting the lone enemy. It took a step towards Squall, but then paused, realizing its target was summoning a GF again. Its legs spread outward, and the turbines pumped once more, and the DH-22 Ray Bomb powered up.
Then Squall opened his eyes, his summoning complete.
The skies above Dollet, or rather, just above the Square, suddenly sported ominious, spiraling storm clouds. Ran began to pour down upon the Central Square, and then, from the center of the spiraling clouds, a single mighty lightning bolt struck the ground. But, instead of scoring the concrete pavement, from the impact point rose a spinning yellow entity.
It took on the form of a mighy yellow bird as it continued spinning, rising up and growing bigger, crackling blue electricity running along its length as if demanding to be released. Within an instant, the creature had fully manifested, a great yellow bird with black markings across its body. Except this bird had no feathers, or beak, or even face. Its neck and head resembled that of a serpent's, but without eyes or mouth. In fact, the whole body was smooth and yellow, with many white lights playing across its surface as it hovered in the air for an instant.
Quezacotl looked down on its foe, and then the lightning Guardian Force's head snapped forward, seeming to spew lightning from where the mouth would have been on a snake. The lightning swiftly surrounded X- ATM092, then began to form a dome of electrical energy around the weapon, high above the ground. From the apex of this dome, a single brilliant bolt of energy lanced down, striking the weapon dead center and sending tremendous amounts of electricity throughout the machine. Components exploded, the turbines blew apart, and within an instant, X-ATM092 was down once more, this time at Quezacotl's hands.
Its duty done, the Guardian Force faded away, and Squall retreated from the Square. Something told him that the weapon was not dead, even in the face of Quezacotl's fury.
He was right, for even as he had exited the Square, X-ATM092 was back on its feet and continuing the pursuit. It crashed through the archway over the street Squall ran down, plowing under a car parked nearby and charging on.
Squall knew he couldn't outrun his pursuer, so he opted instead to evade it. The cadet ducked down a side alley, X-ATM092 in hot pursuit. The weapon, not an advocate of subtlety and not able to fit its bulk between the buildings, opted to smash right through the walls. A tremendous crashing sound, like a battalion of wrecking crews had been let loose behind him, alerted Squall to X-ATM092's straightforward approach.
Putting on more speed, the cadet glanced back to see the spider machine smashing through the brick walls on either side of the alley, tearing apart metal support and concrete, with multiple tons of construction falling down on top of it as it advanced. Still, the weapon was slowed somewhat by the intervening walls, giving Squall the chance to pull away and reach the far end of the alley. He exited the alley on another street, and quickly bolted down the road, hoping to find another alleyway to continue the evasion in.
Meanwhile, X-ATM092 had finished transforming the alleyway into another large Dollet street and burst free, taking sizable chunks of the buildings that had stood in its way on either side with it. It spun around, scanning for its target and analyzing the maps of this section of Dollet for any hiding spots usable by its prey.
The weapon spotted Squall as he ducked into another alley, and the chase was on anew.
Squall sped down the alley, aware of the all-too-familiar crashing the machine made as it was walking. However, rather than coming from behind him, at the entrance to the alley, the sound was coming from beside him . . .
Then, more tremendous smashing and crunching accompanied the metal clanging, and suddenly Squall realized that the weapon wasn't chasing him through the alley, it was smashing straight through the buildings to get at him!
X-ATM092 exploded out of the wall directly behind Squall, bricks and other random objects flying as it came to a stop and brought its pinchers up for the kill. The cadet rolled away desperately, evading the pinchers by mere inches and running flat out for the far end of the alleyway. The weapon was right behind him, slowed again by the intervening walls but still continuing the dogged pursuit.
Squall burst free of the alley again and ran flat out for the end of the street. At the far end, just beyond the archway marking the end of the road, Squall could see Lapin Beach and the waiting SeeD Salamanders.
X-ATM092 had little use for windows, but in that instant, as it was smashing through the alley's walls, it spotted Squall through one of the windows of the building on its left, fleeing as hard as he could down the road. Rather than continue the process of bursting through the alleyway, X- ATM092 instead simply turned, recalling its maps. It recognized that this road gently curved, meaning that if it went along a straight path while its prey took the road, it could intercept its target. The only thing standing in the machine's way were the buildings, after all.
Squall soon neared the "Shining Bomber" tavern, where Squad C still stood at the overhead walkway, ready with their rifles.
"Withdraw!" Squall shouted at them. "Squad C! Withdraw! Get out of here!" Ordinarily, Squad C wasn't under Squall's command, but the frenzied way he was running and the sounds they had heard moments before, of something big smashing through the buildings in the area from which Squall had emerged, was enough incentive for them. Not wanting to meet whatever it was Squall fled from, the squad simply leaped down the walkway and ran flat out for the far end of the street.
Squall was about five seconds behind them, legs pumping hard. Somewhere to his left, Squall could hear the sound of crashing and brick walls collapsing. He turned to look that way, but now the sound was no longer beside him, it was behind-
-and X-ATM092 smashed through the buildings behind Squall, hurling debris and a nearby car across the street and charging after the fleeing cadet, with all its horrible, unstoppable fury.
-------------------
"Instructor!" Zell shouted as he ran across the beach, Selphie right behind him. Quistis was standing by their Salamander, the last one without any cadets on board, and still waiting for their own squad to return. Xu was also nearby.
"Zell!" Quistis called, looking over his shoulder. She could see two other cadets, from Squad C, hurrying across the sand, but no one was behind them. "Squall?! Where is he?"
"Behind us!" Zell shouted. "There's some kind of Galbadian weapon chasing him, and-" Metallic crashing from the direction of the street caught everyone's attention, and they spun in that direction in time to see X-ATM092 crash right through the archway, hurling debris and then standing at the top of the street, overlooking Lapin Beach.
Among that debris was a human, Squall, who landed in the sand. He began struggling to get up, and the huge weapon turned its red gaze down on him.
"Squall!" Selphie yelled, her shout echoed by Zell and Xu a moment later. The martial artist turned to Quistis.
"Instructor!" Zell shouted, turning to Quistis. "We've got to . . . ."
But Quistis wasn't there.
-------------------
Get up and run, Leonhart! Squall mentally screamed to himself as he stood up. Behind and overhead, X-ATM092 took a step forward, setting one of its clawed feet on the starcase leading down from the street to the beach. The staircase didn't support the monstrous machine's weight, and X-ATM092 suddenly lost balance and went toppling right over the edge of the street to crash into the sands below.
By that time, Squall was up and hurling himself across the beach, running with every once of strength his GFs could give him. He hurried across the sands, spotting Zell, Selphie, and Xu up ahead. Zell was pumping his fists and waving his arms in the universal "hurry up" fashion, while the other two stood intently, watching and calling for him.
As Squall's boots tossed up sand, X-ATM092 stood back up, surprised by the failure of the stairs to support it. It turned its attenton to Squall, locked him in, and charged.
Squall's movements across the beach were quick, but the spider machine's were even faster. It closed the gap between itself and the cadet, pinchers ready to stab out and grab or impale him.
Squall put every last ounce of his strength into running faster. The vessel's open doors were only about fifteen feet away, but the machine was an equal distance behind and approaching much more quickly. He wouldn't make it!
"No!" Squall denied, his leg muscles tensing. He put everything into one final, desperate lunge for the open doors. Squall leaped, his supernatural strength hurling him across the fifteen-foot distance, a length no man could normally cover. It didn't seem Squall would either, for the machine was directly behind him, pinchers ready to knock him out of the air halfway through his flight.
Then, a new and unbelievably welcome sound assaulted Squall's ears: that of the high-power, high-caliber machinegun mounted on the top of the vessel opening fire. He looked up, just in time to catch a bit of blonde hair. Quistis!
Quistis held the trigger down and held the weapon steady, the bullets from her machinegun ripping through the Galbadian weapon's heavy armor. The sheer force behind the bullets kept pushing it back, kept it from stabbing down with its pinchers into Squall's body. He sailed safely through the open doors, colliding with the metal decking. Inside, Xu screamed for the pilot to pull away. He gunned the engines, but X-ATM092 was still out there.
No longer was the machine aiming for Squall. Instead, it tried to stop the vessel from escaping. Its legs rose up, trying to stab down into the vessel's hull and hold it fast. But Quistis kept on firing, her bullets forcing X-ATM092 back. Hundereds of holes now dotted the machine's outer body, the metal slugs tearing apart electronics and ripping through power cores. The AI computers began issuing repair orders even as the weapon made its final lunge, but then they fell silent, and the weapon stopped thinking, as Quistis's bullets tore apart the computers. The weapon's interior quickly came to resemble shredded cheese as more bullets stuck it, and continued to hit it even as it fell down. Smoke issued forth from the dying machine's shredded corpse, and fires erupted within.
Moments later, the vessel pulled away, and as Quistis watched, X- ATM092 detonated, the explosion hurling chunks and components out over the ocean.
Inside, Squall sat back against a bulkhead, and inhaled, feeling as if he hadn't breathed at all since the Central Square. Selphie, Zell, and Xu, also inside, let out their own held breaths.
"Heh," a voice called, and Squall looked up to see Seifer, seated in the same spot where he'd been during the breifing, his feet propped up on the table and boredom apparent on his face. He looked almost as if he'd never left his spot in the whole Dollet battle. "Squall," Seifer asked, smiling. He cocked his head to the side, as if surprised at something.
"What took you so long?"
