Denotation time: unknown

Arcee was growing anxious now. She wasn't sure how much time had passed now, thanks to no communication, and she had approximately three minutes to defeat her sworn enemy before she had to blow her cover to the local police. That would be the icing on the cake, she thought warily. She was already breaking rules by being in a populated area.

Luckily, it was a Saturday, and almost all the houses were completely empty. Some had lights but they were a little further down and in order to see her, people would have to come out of their homes. Something which very few people would do, considering the fact that there were explosions just outside their homes.

Airachnid lunged, her extra limbs propelling her forward. Arcee met her midway, crashing her shoulder into the spiderbot's torso and sending them both crashing to the ground. Airachnid hissed and lashed out with a bladed leg. Arcee parried, bringing one blade up to block the blow, and the other to strike the slightly exposed joint just ahead of the weapon. Airachnid released a cry as the blade flew end over end through the air.

Jack's sense snapped back into full alert as he heard the cry of his would-be murderer. He looked up toward the battle as one of Airachnid's fatal blades flew up into the air and began to fall….directly towards him.

Ignoring the pain in his re-shattered arm, Jack rolled instinctively away. The blade fell, point up, directly where his head had been moments before, it's momentum driving it through the asphalt.

"Hey!"

The teenager painfully, slowly looked up, his gaze meeting that of a weathered-looking old man. It took a moment for Jack to focus, but once he did so, he was surprised to see that the man was glaring at hi with intense dislike.

"All an old man wants to do," the man scowled, "is have some rest. Now you get you and your trouble-making buddies out of here or I'll call the police on you for setting off black-market fireworks."

Jack blinked, and then looked over to where Arcee was starting to slowly back away from her adversary, continuing to block the numerous blows being rained upon her. The sirens were growing ever louder.

"Hey, now." The man craned his neck and squinted against the setting sun. "What do you have there?"

The pain in his arm was growing ever steadily, and his head was aching and ringing, echoing the sounds of the man's questions and the sirens. And then he couldn't hear anything at all, because Airachnid had loosened her final missile and sent him flying through the air.

His ears were not working. But his other senses were working fine. He could taste the tainted earth on his teeth; taste the separate granules of dirt and ashy grass. He could see the ruined lawn in front of him, and he witnessed the front door opening and a young woman running out, her eyes bulging in fear. And worst of all, he could feel the sticky blood beneath his fingers as it trailed from the old man's crushed skull. He could feel the broken pieces of asphalt that had been bred from its larger counterpart upon the man' chest; could feel as the steady beat that had allowed them to quiver slowly died away. And though he could not hear, he knew the young woman was screaming, at him, at the old man to wake up, please wake up. And then a flash of blue-green light erupted from nowhere, shining brighter than the lights of the police vehicle and the flashes of gun muzzles. And strong, warm metal hands seized him and turned the woman's face into a blur as they whisked him away into another place, a place with sound, because the silence was so much more painful.

Arcee's joints ached, both from the blows struck by her foe and painful vibration of bullets from human police. The explosion had sent her flying back, where she had almost impaled an arm on the blade she had severed just moments before. It lay just in front of her, its blade adopting the blue hue of a partner's blood for a single second. And then she was scrambling up, grabbing the immobile blade on an unusual whim.

The police had arrived, sirens screaming bloody murder. That description wasn't far off, she realized, tanks lurching as she spotted two unmoving bodies on a human's lawn.

Airachnid turned, hissing as the officers opened fire on both bots. Arcee used the distraction to hurry over to her partner. The older human beneath him was dead, if the caved in skull was any indication. A woman no older than June was screaming desperately for the older male to wake up. Arcee paid her no mind as the familiar whoosh of a groundbridge reached her audio receptors. Seizing Jack in her hands, she hurled herself backwards and to the side through the portal, and landed hard on the concrete of the silo floor.

"I don't suppose you could wait any longer next time?" Arcee froze, sprawled on the floor. She knew that voice all too well.

Slowly, her optics traveled upward, past the army of masked men to the human's area of the base, where Silas was standing, looking for all the world like the proverbial child on a Christmas morning.

"Scrap."

Fowler grunted as he narrowly avoided yet another slash. The commando was starting to get on the last of his already frayed nerves, and not for the first time, Fowler's hands wanted to hold a gun.

He continued to turn facing his opponent, waiting for a chance to land a good punch to the face. But the MECH agent was having none of that, and continued to dart back and forth, successfully confusing Fowler.

With a sudden lunge, the Commando lunged again, seemingly aiming Fowler's stomach. The agent jumped backwards once more, but the Commando was not done. Pivoting on a single foot, he brought one of his blades upward in a devastating slash, where it finally met a target.

With a howl of pain, William Fowler sank to his knees, clutching the stump of bloody wrist where his right hand had been. He looked up into the eyes of the commando, his vision swimming in and out of focus with pain. The blade glistened with hi blood as the man raised it for a killing blow.

Suddenly, the headlights of a car came on just meters away, and for the first time, Fowler heard the sound of an ever accelerating engine. Hurling himself to the ground, Fowler landed on his back in time to hear a solid thump and a nasty crack, and see the car stop directly where he had been moments before.

The last thing he saw before darkness claimed him was June Darby's tear-streaked face as she hurried to him.

I really like writing Fowler's POV. I didn't think I'd be able to write him as a have.

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