A Waken 11.B.2

Wind blew through her hair as she fell.

The fuck am I doing?!

Alice pulled the launcher to her shoulder and aimed. Air battered at her arms, fighting her for control of the weapon. Her thumb tapped the button above the trigger. The front drum spun, fixing itself into place and she thumbed the next button to load the grenade into the barrel.

I'm blaming Appleseed for this. It's her fucking fault. Damn goodie-two-shoes bullshit.

The ground below swarmed. Captain America was shooting back at a group of men trying to pin her behind a car with two cops. PRT guys were trying to regroup as swarms of little Nazis poured onto the road. A few pickups pulled up and surrounded the big PRT truck.

Kaiser approached it.

Walls of metal shot up on either side of him, forming a corridor leading back to the woods. The damn spikes were everywhere. Big ones, small ones, huge ones holding vehicles off the ground.

Nazi fuck spiked the entire road. Since when could he make that much metal that quickly?

Bakuda took aim and squeezed the trigger.

The launcher kicked into her shoulder and the ground exploded. Kaiser and his little boy toys scrambled. An iron wall shot up to shield the…

I don't watch fantasy damnit!

That was disappointing.

She threw her legs beneath her, the rush of falling stalling her reaction for a moment. She flexed her right and left pinkie toes and the small charges on her boots fired.

She felt the strain in her bones, and cursed.

Fucking shocks.

She hit the ground hard and rolled forward. A pain shot up her knee, but she ignored it. If she stopped she'd get skewered. Alice forced herself to move, pushing her legs against the ground and leaping over the base of the iron spike.

Might need to rethink the trench coat.

Her head snapped left and right.

It looked like chaos from above and it looked more like chaos from below. Nazis here and there. Cops. PRT guys. Some were still scrambling to their feet, moving away from the cratered remains of Kaiser's little wall. He grew a new one of course.

She didn't see Captain America.

Never a hero around when you actually need one.

Alice spun about quickly. There was enough room on the right.

As she looked over the ground, she spotted some PRT guy talking into a radio. She approached him, calling, "Hey!"

He turned.

"Bakuda sighted!" He shouted. And he pointed his gun at her.

"Hey!" She knocked it away, and his other hand pulled a baton from his belt like some kind of baton cowboy. He hit her in the side of the head and she cursed.

Her hand shot out and she flexed her pinkie finger.

The band on her wrist sparked and one of the cylinders exploded, throwing the man through the air.

"Shit!" She snapped. "Hey—"

He hit the ground and rolled, sliding off the road and into the median.

Bakuda glared, then stepped back as another trooper attacked her.

"Fuck me," she growled. "I am trying to—"

His gun went up and she slapped his chest. A small strip slipped off her palm and when she flexed another digit in her boot it exploded and threw the man back.

With her heart pounding in her ear, Alice shouted, "Fuck it, doing it myself!"

Alice raised a hand and turned on the targeting system in her mask. Numbers and lines drew across the lenses in front of her eyes. Objects were marked. People noted. Areas for placing bombs suggested.

It only 'predicted' Newtype, and only because the movements of her damn suits were coded into the engine when Bakuda ripped it out of her system. Newtype and Leviathan. But when was she ever going to fight…

Bakuda kills Behemoth.

Well, the math worked pretty well for other things. It was nice to have a program that could calculate trajectories and blast radiuses on the fly, all while being capable of recognizing distinct objects.

Bending over, Alice grabbed the boot of the man at her feet and dragged him out of the way. Bullets bounced around her. A few hit her coat, but fortunately she'd lined the damn thing with Kevlar.

Still hurt like a bitch. Her legs were still sore from the rocket boots because powers are bullshit.

"Can build a fucking space folding bomb, but I can't build actual rocket boots," she grumbled.

Swinging her launcher over, she took aim and fired. Smoke and fire blasted through the air and knocked a group of squabbling Nazis and PRT troopers apart. She aimed left and fired another round to scatter another group.

"Come down here to help you assholes and you're shooting me," she grumbled. "Ungrateful pricks!"

She dropped the guy's boot and turned back. A group of cops ran around from behind the truck to her left. She pulled a grenade from her bandoleer and threw it toward them.

"This is what I get for trying to be nice!"

The grenade clattered and the men scrambled.

The explosion cracked the ground and threw the truck back. A metal on metal sound echoed through the air, and Bakuda looked along the Truck's side. Kaiser stood there, glaring at her as a metal spike stabbed into the side of the vehicle.

"And then there's the fucking Nazis," Alice snarled.

She aimed her launcher, tapped the controls with her thumb, and fired.

Kaiser raised another wall, but it shattered into goop as the bomb tore through the material. The liquefied metal splattered across the ground and the truck. It melted quickly and hardened into a solid covering over the side of the truck.

"Have fun with that!" Alice shouted as she continued on her way. "You—You—Fuck I don't watch fantasy!"

Looking over the road, she turned against the traffic that wasn't coming. The PRT vehicles were further back, still coming forward. Trying to come to the rescue, she guessed.

Lung.

"This is what I get," she said aloud.

She threw her arm up and blew away two men who tried to ambush her as she walked past the back of the truck. They groaned when they hit the ground. The charges weren't bad enough to hurt them. Probably. Maybe a busted rib or two.

"Seriously, what was your plan? Jump out and shout 'boo' at me? Idiots."

She said it like she was one to talk. The whole scene was fucking chaos, and she jumped right into it. There were no lines. No clear direction. Just a giant brawl with guns and vehicles scattered across the road. And she was throwing bombs into it.

And then she felt like kind of a dick, which she chose to blame on the Nazis for starting the mess.

She reached the bottom end of the spike field and pulled a bomb from her coat. She only had five, but that should be enough.

She dropped the first at the end, then turned and fired her launcher at a cop car hanging from a bigger spike. It exploded and the chunks fell down into the median like that one dick. She started walking back, dropping a bomb every five meters as she went.

How did Kaiser make all the spikes so fast? She'd seen his power once or twice. It wasn't that fast over a wide area. Unless he started before anyone showed up.

Looking at the ground, she spotted little flakes of metal in long flat bits.

What? He camped out along the side of the road, laying down thin patches of metal while he waited? He could grow metal faster from what he'd already made. Maybe even started all the spikes as little bumps. Then he only needed to sharpen the tips and grow them out a bit. Only a few were big enough to lift a vehicle, and maybe a dozen more big enough for someone to hide behind in a gun fight.

That made it almost clever.

Too bad he was in the way. And a Nazi. Maybe that latter one was more important, but Alice felt more slighted by the former.

Some PRT guy tried to come at her with a foam launcher as she worked. She slapped a bumblebee on the ground, without activating the micro-charges. The little grenade popped as the tiny bombs flew out of the casing and started zipping around. She let Foam Man and the rest of the idiots run around like little puppies as the bees chased.

They seemed appropriately baffled when nothing exploded.

"Waste of my Saturday," she snarled, dropping another bomb on the ground. "I'm missing Bugs Bunny for this!"

"What are you talking about?"

She turned, looking at some skinhead who apparently got scared after already getting into the fight and was hiding behind one of Kaiser's spikes.

"I talk when I'm stressed," she warned. "Don't judge. You're a fucking Nazi."

He nodded frantically, hands up.

"And grow some balls! If you're gonna be a little shit at least be proud of it! Don't see Kaiser hiding and all his friends are in jail on wheels!"

Speaking of which.

Bakuda glanced around. The Nazis had pulled back a bit. She still saw fights all across the road, but the lines had consolidated. The Nazis formed up in front of Kaiser's little hallway. PRT and cops on the other side.

Kaiser was back to trying to break into the truck, using two spikes like wedges to pull the wall apart. He was getting somewhere too, but not particularly fast.

Bakuda slapped the chest of a guy who came at her with an iron bar—the dumbest one to try yet—and let the slip she left on his chest blow him back and away from her work space.

The PRT formed a line in front of Captain America. A few of them pointed guns at Alice and she fired her launcher into the ground between them. Smoke and fire rose, shattering a few of Kaiser's spikes. The blast also knocked an overturned van far enough back that it could be driven around.

Bakuda looked through her bandolier and pulled another bumblebee. She drew her arm back and threw hard. The device brust in the air, dozens of tiny bees spiraling out and flying toward the ground.

Nazis scattered as they started exploding, showering the racist assholes in smoke and iron shavings. She set the sensor to go off five feet over the ground. That should keep anyone from being killed and Appleseed from lecturing her about it.

"Sorry," she called.

Kaiser lowered his arm, unphased by the distant blasts. He raised a hand her way. A spike shot from the ground, then another, and another. Alice fired her boots, jumping back and back again, then to the side.

She looked over the spike line and nodded. Now the PRT troopers occasionally shooting at her couldn't see her much.

She threw her launcher over her shoulder and waved.

"Thanks—Fuck! I'm just going to call you Fuck, I don't have a reference for this!"

Alice continued on and dropped her last bomb at the top end of the spike field. The road ahead was clear and empty, save for a few police cars in the distance.

"Now the cavalry shows up."

She glanced up at the sky, noticing the light of Appleseed's two robots flying back and forth in a mech dog fight with whoever the fuck the Dragonslayers were. Probably ripoff artists given the name. 'Bakuda' wasn't exactly inventive, but at least it was original.

Stepping out of the blast radius outlined by her HUD, Alice looked back and checked to see if it was clear.

It wasn't of course, because fuck her life.

A bunch of Nazis wandered onto the left side of the road as lightning came down from the sky. Dauntless flew overhead, that shiny spear of his pointing down as he descended.

Leaning forward, her boots fired. The blast billowed over the ground and threw her into the air. She rocketed down the road and swung her legs forward before she crashed into Idiot Uno. He fell back with a grunt. She slapped her hand on the leg of Idiot Dos and the blast flipped him up and slapped his face into the ground.

"Ha!"

Is laughing at something bad if the guy on the receiving end is a Nazi?

She scrambled to her feet while Idiot Tres pointed a gun at her head. She felt a sharp pain in her forehead as her mask buckled and a pinging sound rang in her skull. She glared up at him and then rose.

"Did you just fucking shoot me in the head?"

He shook.

"Think about what you've done."

She slapped his gut and triggered the explosion.

His eyes bugged out as he flew back and tumbled over the street.

Alice grabbed Idiot Dos and dragged him past the outline drawn by her mask. She turned away quickly, and checked. Clear. Before anyone else could be fucking stupid, she twitched her big toe.

The air knocked her forward and she threw a foot down to keep upright. She felt a few of her hairs crystallize but whatever. She'd been needing a cut for weeks.

"Finally!"

She turned and checked her work.

Instead of metal spikes blocking the road, all that remained was a cloud of sparkling dust and crystals. Nice. Brittle. Crystals.

She turned back.

"Hey! Captain America!"

And the flag cape didn't even look at her. She was pretty far off and there were still guns shooting. And lightning and—

"Goddamnit!"

She fired her boots again, throwing herself into the air as Dauntless flew at her. Lightning cut through the air and she could smell the ionization through her mask. She pointed her arm back and fired the rocket on her wrist. Her body jerked to the side as Dauntless swung past her.

"Drive through!" She shouted.

He didn't seem to hear her, because he spun around with his damn summer child boots that made flying easy. He charged at her again, shield raised and stupid lightning spear pointed.

"Fuck this," Alice snarled. She threw her legs back and the rockets fired. She flew forward, barely flying over an arc of lightning Shiny Pants threw her way. She went under him and grabbed his boot with her hand. She jerked.

He jerked. They spun around.

"You—"

"DRIVE THE FUCK THROUGH!" Alice shouted over him.

Shiny Pants came to a stop, Alice hanging from his boot. He did look down, though she wasn't sure if he was looking at her or the road. He stared for a moment, and then turned his head and started muttering.

"Oh you'd better be doing something useful," Alice growled. "I am real tired of being the spoiler in this stupid three way!"

She released his leg and fell. He didn't chase her immediately. Glancing down she fired her boots again and hit the ground with a roll. It hurt, but she didn't break anything.

Hurt a lot though.

Alice groaned and pushed herself up.

Horns blared.

She rose and turned, watching as the big armored truck barreled through the road. The crystals shattered against it. She fixed her eyes, ignoring the wind that followed the vehicle's wake. It passed in an instant, horn still blaring as it slammed into the van she'd knocked out of place and then pushed right on through.

She ignored the armored vans that came in behind it and pulled off the road. PRT poured out and started moving toward Kaiser. The cop cars drove right through, following after the truck.

Lung's truck.

Alice felt her fingers twitch.

Her stomach turned.

What was that feeling? Was it good, or bad?

Bakuda kills Behemoth…

Sounded like fun.

"Thank you."

Alice turned, glancing up at Dauntless. He hovered for a moment, staring at her.

"You all suck at this, you know that?!"

And why was she talking? Fuck. Stop talking.

A horn blared, and Alice spun about. The pickup barreled through the road, tires exploding as it drove over Fuck's spikes. Alice threw her hand up and aimed her launcher, but the damn thing was too close.

And then it wasn't.

A green jeep slammed into the pickups side and spun it about, popping its own tires as it came to an abrupt stop.

Biscuit's face slammed forward into the airbags and then snapped back.

Alice stared. PRT guys dragged the driver out of the pickup, and Biscuit weakly pushed the Jeep's door open.

"Ow," he mumbled.

"Biscuit!" Alice shouted.

"Huh?" He looked up at her, and then started. "Oh. Thank god. I tho—"

"I just bought that jeep!"

Biscuit blinked. "Oh. Um. Sorr—"

"Fuck it"—she felt the blood rushing as her chest heated up—"blowing up Nazis!"

Alice threw herself into the air, spotted Kaiser stepping out of the truck, and pulled a flare gun from inside her coat. Her mask showed her where to aim to keep the cleared section of road out of the Vista bomb's effect.

"Oi Fuck!" She shouted. Kaiser turned his head up. "Fuck you!"