The steady downpour of rain, the distant rumble of thunder, the bright flashes of interspersed lightning. There was nothing more soothing than the thunderstorm to him. A time in which all life retreats to their dens and homes leaving only himself in an empty and turbulent world. This was his private and sublime pleasure, his delectable luxury. To stand in the midst of a storm.
It was the primary reason how he decided his first path of combat to master.
His sensors read the winds, he grounded himself, and raised an arm to the heavens. His sandevistan activated, and for an entirely too short timespan he could track the hammer of the gods.
His stern-right arm sent forth an invisible beam, digging a channel through the very air. The lightning flowed down through it, through the thick chain of carbon-nanotubing wire to his stern-left arm. He had already dug a second channel with an unseen ray, and the lightning raced down it.
He was Aryas, he was a conduit.
It crashed against the black-rock roadwork, turning it into a brilliant column of freshly steaming slag, cooled by the constant rainfall. His target had activated their own sandevistan just in time yet again, and had barely dodged the smiting god-force.
The Red Sun Asura was an utterly sublime foe, Aryas had nothing but respect for his combat prowess. His behavior was another matter entirely, but there was no disregarding the proficiency of his abilities. Lightning, hammer of the gods, was the second-fastest of all celestial things that act upon the earth. Second only to light itself within the domain of the world.
Adam Smasher was not dodging it. He, even at his fastest, could not hope to approach it in speed. Smasher was not dodging the lightning, he was dodging Aryas. Aryas was a hair faster than him, the combination of kerenzikov and sandevistan barely surpassing Smasher's own. There was but a single motion in which Aryas had to perform slowly, which was the channeling of lightning.
Every motion had to be careful and deliberate, lest he improperly ground himself and be struck down for the disrespect for nature. Once the stance was established though, the lightning traveled as fast as it was ought to. Fast enough to be but a blink to him, even in the deepest stages of self-acceleration.
Smasher was dodging it by moving just as his stance was established, barely a fraction of a second to react, activate his sandevistan, read Aryas' stance, and move. There were perhaps no more than two-hundred individuals throughout all of history who could perform such against Aryas' speed, and no more than a handful who could perform such reliably. Most of those individuals required a kerenzikov, a sandevistan, and boostermasters for both.
Smasher only had the sandevistan and a boostermaster, as far as he was aware.
His sandevistan expended, he had no way of dodging all the bullets that rained down on him from so many guns. The sound of bullets, so similar to the sound of rain when massed, potentially as efficacious as lightning when properly coordinated. It was the reason he chose his second path of combat to master.
He directed his newfound army to fire in staggered shots, to ensure a constant stream of bullets. He split them in twain and twain again, to allow four positions to be targeted at once, maximizing the chance that some amount of damage would be inflicted. He did this without sound, without motion.
His new tiger-warriors did not need verbal commandments, they were within the light of his Anja, they knew his directions as surely as they knew each other. They were united in battle under the light of his combat-crystal. All that one beheld, they all beheld. All that one knew, they all knew. All that he demanded, they obeyed.
He was Aryas, he was a commander.
It was how he knew that they were not alone in this district, in this storm. There was an observer that one of his warriors had spotted, a woman with the ears and eyes of a cat hidden behind a stealth system. Normally she would be invisible to him, but the falling rain rendered her as obvious as Smasher was, outlined by the descending water.
He hesitated for a moment. The chiefest quest of the Ordo Panzer was in secrecy, in suppressing the knowledge of the art as best they could, in preventing disastrous escalation in force. By all rights, he should strike her down where she lay, and ensure the secrecy of this battle.
But that would oppose his virtues of compassion and temperance. She was a bystander in this battle, merely an observer. He was loath to slay those that he did not need to, and his duty in this quest was the defeat of Smasher. He was under no standing order to ensure secrecy, nor was he obligated to fight to destruction in this encounter.
This was a matter of convenience. He had been instructed to attempt to take Smasher's life if possible as an afterthought by Scars of Herakles 2. The raging storm and his close proximity would be their best chance outside of sending forth multiple grandmasters, or one of the single-digit grandmasters. Any other objective was a goodly bonus, and the primary objective was not critical.
Roland's mistake had already compromised the feasibility of the chiefest quest. There was no real need to maintain grand secrecy anymore. So he allowed the unseen woman to be left to observe unmolested. There was no need to strike her down, and he had no interest in sublimating violence.
Other grandmasters would have no issue with the deed, having long since left behind the individuals of humanity in dedication to humanity as a whole. He was incapable of such detachment, his mantled eidolon allowed it not, and he was glad for it.
He was Aryas, he was a champion.
Smasher had lept backwards, and had immediately started running for cover in the nearest building. It was a dilapidated ruin of a thing, but the liquid-stone was still thick and sturdy enough to deter the shots of his tiger warriors. Smasher was struck many times by the firing line directed to aim there, and his movement was chased by the other three. He narrowed his sight upon the building. The storm would not last forever, and when it went so too would his chance to destroy his target.
Aryas did not pursue the path of individual combat prowess, as so many of his siblings chose. Such a path did not sing to him. He had chosen to call down the hammer of the gods, he had chosen to become a commander and tactician. This was the path that he chose to pursue. In a duel, he was among the weakest of his siblings.
In a war, he was among the stronger of them.
In a storm, he was among the strongest.
Here he was in the midst of a storm, with an army to lead. The number of individual warriors that could overcome him in such a situation were perhaps three throughout all of history. The founder Gilgamesh, the traitor Solomon, and the king Arthur. Not even Herakles would be able to overcome him here.
Smasher was not among that number. Not unless he was…
No, that was not for Aryas to determine. If Smasher survived this night, the Ordo would decide in moot.
Now, how was he to approach Smasher in this situation? The most simple and least effective method would be to send his warriors inside, thus dooming them to being destroyed one after another in close combat.
He could potentially knock down the building by having the children ram against the support structures until it fell. That would trap Smasher beneath the rubble, but leave him no method to actually destroy him afterwards. It would have to be discarded.
Very well, he would have to use the children entombed in legged vehicles instead of wheeled vehicles. He directed a tiger warrior to send the appropriate commands, calling the steel beasts to their location.
When he usurped the loyalties of the tiger warriors, he had discovered what they had been guarding in that deep fortress in the bottom of the bay. The horrors of such nearly drove him to an early attack against the ones responsible, it burned against his virtue of compassion, burned into a white-hot rage.
Children should not suffer at the hands of adults, and yet that was what he had learned there. Immediately he commanded his tiger warriors to slay all inside and escape with the children, and they rushed to obey. It was quite difficult to defend against one's own former army all simultaneously deciding to turn against the comparatively defenseless galvanists.
The children had suffered too much, and yet their potential aid was too much to discard immediately. He had to recruit them for one final mission before they could rest, it burned at his virtue of compassion. Only the ones that had suffered the most, bound in that effigy of humbaba, he had sent forth to the nearest fortress of the Ordo.
He had his anima destroy the datafortresses within immediately. Nothing less than complete annihilation was acceptable.
He would ensure they would have good lives after this, for as long as they wished to live afterwards. Even if he had to raise them himself. The children obeyed him, for they knew no better. No better than torture and battle. His virtue of valor demanded he strike against their captors. His virtue of temperance demanded he fulfill his duties first.
While he was determining the best method to force Smasher from the sheltering ruin, he was alerted. A tremendous boom echoed out, and a hole opened in one of the near-corners of the ruin. Moments later, a second boom echoed out, taking out another chunk of the building's walls nearest to him. Smasher was destroying his own cover? Why was he…
His optics widened, immediately he ordered all his warriors to leap to other buildings on the left and right. He raced to follow them.
The building Smasher was in groaned titantically, and the entire tower began to collapse towards the building he was just standing on. A few moments of falling, and they crashed into one another. A massive cloud of quickly-wettening dust burst forth and covered the street.
This was a rather clever tactic, taking advantage of his immense strength to create a more favorable environment. Aryas ordered all units to look for movement in the streets. As soon as they spotted something, they would fire. He ordered them to continue moving in an outwardly-spiraling pattern, to ensure they were not easy targets.
A tremendous boom alerted him. A squad of units was sent forth as fast as possible to observe. It had come from where one of the children had been driving. He had ordered them to move up and down the streets in a specific pattern to ensure the Smasher had as few paths available to him as possible.
He had gone for them first, not Aryas and not the warriors. His virtue of compassion demanded blood. His virtue of temperance reminded him that Smasher was not told of the children according to the files. Smasher likely thought they were mere automatons, although knowing their true nature would be unlikely to stop him.
The squad he had sent forth got to the edge of the rooftops of that street.
He promptly lost connection to them, one after another. The other warriors witnessed chunks of rubble, flung at high speeds from below, crash into their frames and destroy them.
His tiger warriors were also disrespected by their creators. Minds of efficacious and proud warriors, placed into bodies of cheap mass production and substandard weaponry. It was downright insulting to behold. All those that survived he would get new arms and armor for, he would ensure it. A commander is worth little without his men.
He had just lost a squad to flung rubble, he was losing ground. He instructed his units to bait an attack and then observe as he ran over and scaled the nearest tower that could overlook that street.
Smasher had just landed on the engine-block of one of the children, destroying their body's ability to move, but leaving their precious biopods intact inside the steering mechanism. He held the armored steel hood aloft, bent partially around one arm as an improvised shield against the array of guns that had not relented in firing upon him. The other hand had discarded the shotgun, and was in the process of throwing heavy rubble instead.
Another of the children was racing for him from the end of the street, charging as a raging bull. Aryas prepared a stance to strike him as he dodged, no doubt leaping above it.
Smasher rooted his stance in a familiar way instead, readying his improvised shield and drawing a foot-long knife with his other hand. What was he doing now, practically ignoring the bullets coming down and leaving little pricks in his armor.
That stance was familiar, but where had he seen it?
The child raced closer. Aryas recognized the stance as one of Rolands.
…no.
The child raced closer still.
It took Roland twenty years to master his chosen art! Smasher had a single battle with him!
He ordered the child to stop immediately. It was too late.
The child rammed into the shield. The shield shook with the blow. The shaking traveled up Smasher's arm, through his chest, and through his other arm. The shaking traveled into the knife, and Smasher sliced it against the center of the vehicle in nearly the same instant it struck his shield, holding it in a backwards grip and ascending.
There was a terrible screech of metal hitting metal. The vehicle burst into two large halves and many thousand scraps, split in twain at the point of the relatively small blade in Smasher's hand. The child suffered a blow with all the force of its own weight and speed, but compressed to a point no wider than a knife's edge.
Three vehicles and five of his warriors were already destroyed.
Aryas had nothing but respect for the Red Sun Asura's combat prowess.
It was unfortunate that he had left himself open at that moment. Aryas activated his sandevistan.
Aryas already had his stance in place. He had already adjusted it to be accurate. He opened his wrist-chakras, and dug a channel between sky and Smasher.
The hound of the gods raced down through it, and struck Smasher squarely upon his back, turning the armor there into slag. His sandevistan deactivated.
Smasher was sent skipping across the street, the kinetic energy of the heavenly hammer enough to send him crashing into the depths of another ruined structure. That was only part of the hammer, the other part in heat energy.
Aryas hummed in frustration. Smasher had shielding against electro-magnetic disruption, so that element was not expected to succeed. The thermal damage was expected to be greater than merely slagging his back armor. That level of heat would outright destroy the vast majority of warriors, flesh and metal alike. They would have had their core melted through as their systems struggled to contain the sudden temperature spike.
Smasher's armor was rated against heat then, and was frustratingly more durable than their previous estimations. Several potential materials were crossed off the list for what it could be made of in that one strike. He would need more than one smiting to destroy, that was an incredibly rare accomplishment. His respect for him grew with every clash.
Aryas checked his reservoir of power. He could perform seven more safely, and fifteen if he needed to. He checked the status of the storm again. It was predicted to last another one and a half hours. This situation was well within the range of his abilities.
He looked at the edges of the street. The children in the legged vehicles were soon to arrive. He sent them words of thanks. They did not know what that meant.
His four virtues cried out for them.
—
Adam pushed the stone column off his body, his sensors screaming in protest. If he had to describe what he was currently feeling, it would be 'bullshit' and 'pain'. He muted the automatic warning of his critical temperature levels, and the potential core failure if it continued to rise. Uriel went about micro-managing his subsystems to regulate the heat as best as he could, disabling whatever they could and preparing to activate them if need be.
It was not an unexpected realization, but it was certainly an unpleasant one. Adam was not faster than lightning, who knew? He wasn't faster than sparky was either, except for when the bot got into that stupid looking yoga pose. That was his only time to dodge.
This was horseshit. At least the fucker was taking the fight seriously. He wasn't making a single noise the entire time, that was one less annoyance Adam had to deal with.
He checked his vitals. Back armor completely fucking gone, entire internal structure suffering micro-damages due to the brief but intense heat, nervous system just a little bit cooked. As it turns out, lightning hurt real fucking bad, who fucking knew? At least his Biopod was completely fine, given the multiple redundant layers of protection it had.
The shotgun was worthless in this fight, he was better off throwing rocks, so that was what he was doing.
Three cars and five bots later, and he had a smoking hole in his back. At least three cars and upwards of ninety-five estimated bots left to go. It would be fucking easy if not for the fucker throwing lightning at him.
He got up from his seated position on the floor, and looked out to the streets, rain still pouring down upon them. That entire street was no doubt being watched by all the fucking guns.
Alright, not going outside of cover again if he can avoid it. Sniper rules here, no poking out his head unless he can guarantee a kill and a quick retreat.
Those fuckers weren't about to come to him though. He had to take them down from street level, while they were on the rooftops. He rolled his shoulders and legs around, to loosen up anything that might have partially welded together from the lightning.
Alright, so bringing down a building they were in front of didn't work last time. How about bringing down a building they were on?