Chapter 9: Vengeance is God's job. But...
"GABRIEL TENMA WHITE!," Vignette thought as she took cover behind the silverback's wide robotic leg. "WHAT HAVE YOU GOTTEN US INTO?!"
"Pick up ammo as you kill them!," Luca yelled with Viking ferocity over the intense gunfire. "Hahahahah!"
"Vignette! Taking fire!"
Vignette looked up and began taking off the enemies' heads with laser precision, and no wasted bullets. Two of them fell off the rooftop which they were fighting, and Gabriel promptly ran over to them and stripped them for their ammunition. Almost all seven of the individuals who had chosen to take back the base had begun using the opposing force's standard issue M22 automatic carbines, after mowing their way across the base. Almost, being Raphiel, who had positioned herself at the tallest watchtower in the base, supporting the group with sniper cover.
"You beaut'! Right between the eyeballs!," Luca laughed as he heard the encouraging thunderous roar of a sniper rifle, before the soldier's head exploded into little bits.
"GGRR! FUCK! IT CAN'T...TAKE ANYMORE!," Gabriel heard in her radio from the silverback pilot. She jumped off the rooftop and ducked into the armoury.
"Just a little longer Simon!," she yelled into her comms. She shot the lock off the iron bars and ran between the stocked shelves of the weapons store, smelling the familiar scent of gunpowder and metal. She was in charge of keeping stock here once, so she knew exactly what she was looking for. A crate of incendiary grenades she lifted with one hand, and in the other was a light machine gun.
"LMG here!," she yelled as she ran out the armoury and started laying down some fire with her carbine. Luca ran over and kissed the mass of iron, before dispensing judgement with a guttural roar. There were balls of flame accompanying the firefight, from the grenades Gabriel threw to her teammates. Enemy soldiers ran out of cover, screaming and convulsing, trying to remove the napalm stuck to their clothes.
"For what you did to that kid...," Gabriel thought, watching as they burned alive. "For what you did to Vignette. For what you did to everybody."
"...and in exchange, each member of this here squad will receive a million Japanese dollars each," Luca finalised, shaking hands with Gabriel. "Sound good to you ladies?"
"Y-Yeah...sounds great!," Vignette agreed nervously as he eyed Luca up and down. She was intimidated by his arm and neck tattoos, of angels, swords and other religious symbols. He was also a foot (forty centimetres) taller than Vignette, making her have to look up to talk to the boisterous man.
"How are you so sure Kasai will pay up Gab-chan?," Raphiel asked, already knowing the answer. She just wanted the company to be sure that they will be paid.
"Four million is pocket change in terms of military budget. I'll have a word with General Kasai and he'll understand. He would've spent more trying to take back the base anyway. Waaaay more," Gabriel explained.
"I just radioed in command, told them our transport's bust. We have about eight hours to get this done, clean and right," Isaac informed Luca.
"Munitions at full capacity!," Max shouted from atop the silverback. "Let's fuck some shit up!"
Luca racked his rifle and smiled. "You girls ready to kill?"
"Born ready," Gabriel confidently said, accepting Luca's callused hand to climb on top of the mech. It roared to life, inciting a cheer from everyone on top of it, and it marched forward, crushing cars and concrete underneath it like it was made of glass. The trio were about to take back what was painfully stolen from them. Although they can't revive their friends, the best they could do for them was to kill. To take godly revenge with the help of a 7.62mm gatling gun at full capacity, 40mm grenade launchers and a lot of small homing missiles. But Vignette was less than pleased at the scenario. Even if she was the one who came up with the plan to attack with the Oculus in the first place, she expected Gabriel to be safe inside the machine, not whatever this was.
"If she dies, it will be your fault. Don't forget that. It will be your fault that you didn't stop that reckless, selfish, stupid angel!-"
"-Vignette!," Gabriel yelled over the roar of the engine. Vignette looked up at the blonde loli, a wide smile plastered on her face. Vignette thought that she actually looked like an angel, her face illuminated by the midday sunlight, and her hair blowing in the wind.
"So pretty...so...alive and happy...!"
"I won't die!," Gabriel declared loudly. "What about you?"
Vignette beamed a wide smile back. "Never! Never in a million years, will I die!"
"I want to spend all of eternity with you. Gabriel stupid, reckless, selfish, annoying, adorable, Tenma White. I love you!," Vignette thought happily, using it as her motivation to fight and protect, with all her being.
"FUCK! TAKE OUT THOSE AT'S QUICK!," Luca yelled, directing his fire to a ditch where soldiers were hiding with anti-tank weapons.
"WHICH ONES?!," Gabriel yelled back, shooting back and forth between the windows of a small building and the ditch. "FUCK! TOO MANY! RAPHIE, A LITTLE HELP HERE?!"
Gabriel heard the rate of sniper fire increase, but it still wasn't enough to stop just one unguided missile from exiting a barrel, and punching a hole through the silverback's torso. The mech slowly fell backwards and crumbled on the ground, sparks and oil spraying out of it's damaged hull.
"MAX!," Luca roared, sprinting over to the downed mess of metal. "MAX YOU BETTER BE ALIVE YOU PIECE OF SHIT!"
He ripped open the damage metal plating covering the pilot, and saw that the cockpit was covered in blood and chunks of Max's intestines. He was still breathing however, and he had a large grin on his face.
"Fuck me...," he chuckled, coughing up blood. "...that was fun...wasn't...it...Lu...cas..."
His final words breathed out slowly, before his head went limp against the seat.
"...Max...," he whispered. He suddenly turned around and continued firing his light machine gun at the soldiers in the ditch, screaming something incomprehensible under the gunfire. Gabriel ducked for cover and as she was reloading, noticed bullets fly in and exit the other end of Luca's abdomen, shoulder and thigh, but he still stood to take out as many Ares as he could.
"Surely...surely that must be something divine no?," she managed to joke in her head, before a barrage of bullets shredded her cover into lose bits of metal. Gabriel reacted with a hair trigger, popping up and burying lead inside the skulls of three soldiers.
She panted, aware that her shots echoed out throughout the compound. Everything was quiet. She scanned the battlefield through her optics, and only saw dead bodies and destroyed machinery.
"Gab!," Vignette called urgently as she ran over. "Let me patch you up!"
"What?"
Gab looked down, and noticed that her sides were bleeding. The adrenaline her brain was pumping slowly faded, and she could feel it was getting harder to breath. Especially on her right side.
"You've been shot in the lung!," Vignette chastised as she sat Gabriel down and removed her vest. Vignette ignored how she felt the plate carriers crumble in her hand, and lifted her friend's shirt to apply the XSTAT (gunshot wound filler syringe) before keeping the foam in place with a bandage wrapped around her chest.
"...say...Vignette...," Gabriel quipped after she coughed up large amounts of blood. "...you're not sick to the bone at the sight of my blood?"
"Shut up...just...shut up...," Vignette said as she continued her work on Gabriel's other gunshot wounds while holding back tears.
"...aw...you're no fun...," Gabriel laughed tiredly, like she was about to go to sleep. "...scold me...yell at me or something Vigne...you cutie..."
Vignette reached into Gabriel's medic bag and pulled out a plastic syringe of combat chemicals. "I will...after you get better. We're going to go home now, okay?...then I'll give you the worst scolding you've ever had...!"
Vignette made an attempt to be scary or intimidating, but only ended up sounding like she was pretending. She grabbed Gabriel's forearm to help her get up, but instead she got pushed down by the blonde, who pulled a bandage out from her bag.
"Vignette...," Gabriel said in her normal voice. "You don't have to use XSTAT on every GSW (gunshot wound). Yes, it does stop bleed outs, but these are limited and expensive, and should be used only when the pen hole is larger than a bottlecap or so. For wounds such as yours..."
Gabriel looked down at Vignette's bloodied pants. The blood was darkest at her thigh.
"...where it's just a flesh wound, a simple tourniquet will suffice."
"Gab...," Vignette deadpanned as she wrapped a bandage around her wound in less than a second. "No one likes a know-it-all."
Gabriel smiled at the purple-haired girl and helped her get up. She quickly jogged with a slight limp over to Luca and the rest of the team to patch up their wounds.
"Luca!," she called as she patched Isaac up. "Get down here, you're covered in red!"
The tattooed man didn't respond, his machine gun hanging limp from his hand as he looked down into the cockpit of the destroyed mech. It was like it was his friend's grave and coffin, and he was paying his respects.
"Luca? Is Max still alive-"
He suddenly jumped down onto Gabriel, pinning her to the concrete ground by his hands around her neck.
"No. No Max is not fucking alive you bitch," he snarled as he gripped harder.
"HEY! LET GO OF HER YOU FUCKER!," Vignette shrieked, with her carbine muzzle touching the back of his neck. He only continued to increase the pressure, and stare down at Gabriel.
Gabriel was turning blue. She felt like her eyes were about to burst.
Luckily, the enraged War Dog let go, and he was dragged away by his two other co-workers.
"You fucking killed him...," he growled under his breath. "YOU FUCKING-"
He was suddenly knocked in the side of his head with the butt of a carbine, and then fell unconscious. Gabriel gasped and sputtered for air, feeling the blood rush back to her eyeballs.
Vignette held Gabriel's back. "Just breathe Gab...lay down-"
"What...the...fuck...?!," she sputtered in between coughs. "Why-"
"Don't think you're off the hook. You seriously fucked up. You'd be fucking dead by now if it wasn't for the cash," Isaac cursed, staring daggers at the blonde.
"We tried to stop it...the anti tanks...too many..."
Raphiel came running in and noticed her friend rubbing her throat.
"What happened here?!," she huffed, slinging her sniper over her shoulder.
"IT WASN'T MY FAULT! THERE WERE TOO. FUCKING. MANY!," Gabriel yelled with a coarse voice.
Isaac and Cooper noticed movement in their peripheral, and scrambled for their weapons after laying Luca behind cover. Gabriel, Vignette and Raphiel did the same, and all barrels were pointed towards the dust cloud. There was a silhouette of a row of soldiers, as well as two large mechanical legs behind them.
"Oh fuck," was all Gabriel could utter. She knew that silhouette belonged to an Oculus, no doubt. The group ran behind cover, not knowing what to do against the same type of machine they used to kill a thousand soldiers.
"GAB-RI-EL!," a voice proclaimed on her headset. "Come and face me coward!"
"Thank God I know that stupid voice," she thought with a relieved sigh. Much to everyone's shock, she got out of her cover and stood in the middle of the road, waiting for the small army to approach her. They were moving slowly, looking around and occasionally letting off a shot or two to finish any soldiers not completely dead.
They stopped about ten metres in front of the lonesome Gabriel, and let the red painted mech strike a pose in front of them.
"Gabriel!," the feminine voice boomed on its speaker. "Tis' time for battle!"
"Oh would you shut it," Gabriel chuckled on her radio. "I've had a long day..."
"...Satania."
AN: Yay another chapter! I tried to keep the combat and action stuff to a minimum, let me know if it's too much and your eyes glazed over at it and skipped to the Vignette x Gabriel bits. I enjoyed writing about Vignette healing Gab; she said she was scared of blood, but she sucked it up to heal her.
