Taking turns covering one another— as they shot their way through the air-conditioned corridors of the bunker— Ren advanced his way down the primary hallway with Amerika taking cover behind the corners of the cleared-out hall behind him.
Filled with a tingling sensation in lieu of muscle fatigue, the dopamine coursing through Ren as he watched a bowman getting his groin blasted by a .357 round caused him to giggle to himself— escalating into a deep chuckle, after he had followed up the goblin's sadistic shot by blowing a hole in the downed bowman's throat.
Kicking the dying man in the head while envisioning his forehead as a ball, Ren heard a loud crack in the man's bleeding neck the moment the tip of his leather shoe made contact— ending the bowman's gurgles, and paying no mind as he began to convulse while suffocating on his own blood.
"Oi, mate! The mainframe room is just ahead; try not to shoot anythin' that glows in there, alright?!" Amerika shouted from the corner of the hallway, while waiting for Ren to get positioned near the last magnetic-sliding door at the end of the fluorescent-lit hallway.
High on painkillers that doubled as a muscle stimulate, Ren couldn't help but to let out a bemused chortle as he thought whimsically to himself, 'What the hell's a "mainframe"?!'
Giving her a thumbs up while quickly regaining his composure, Ren raised his revolver up and took aim at the closed door; the cool air of the duct above him blowing down on the top of his hot head, as he heard the goblin's fast-paced footsteps closing in from over his shoulder.
Upon catching up with the drugged-out child, Amerika reached her hand into her duffle bag while tucking the sawed-off butt of her rifle underneath her sweaty armpit.
"Gonna reload real fockin', before…?!" Amerika trailed off with a baffled tone, and paused momentarily as she kept searching around in her duffle bag, before suddenly cursing under her breath, "S-Shite— I'm out of bloody bullets…!"
Smiling like an idiot, Ren let out a chuckle as he stuck his hand into his leather pouch along his belts. "Here, allow me to…?" The gray-haired boy said, before growing quiet as he felt around with his fingers in the practically pouch.
Stressed and growing twitchier with anxiety by the passing second, it didn't take long for Amerika to lose her patience with Ren. "Oi…?! Are yew gonna fockin' hand me some ammo, or are yew just gonna fock around and-?!"
"-Calm down— I got what you need, riiiiight here~," Ren scoffed with an eye roll, before extending his hand out to reveal all the ammo he had left over from his pouch.
Furrowing her brows and frowning at the single bullet presented to her, Amerika let out an infuriated groan as she begrudgingly took the lone .357 round from the smirking boy's palm.
"Bah…! Better than fockin' nuffin, I suppose," Amerika murmured to herself, and asked while loading the bullet into her rifle's slot, "Wot 'bout yew, Ren? How's yewr ammo-count goin'?"
"I dunno— lemme check real quick," Ren replied carelessly, before releasing the six-shot cylinder with a flick of its small lever, behind the trigger. Making sure not to spill any of his unused ammo, Ren quickly counted the bullets with a primer left, before using the lug rod beneath the barrel to help him eject the used casings of the rounds he had already fired.
"Three— I've got three lucky shots left," Ren announced optimistically, and turned his head over toward the worried goblin girl to tell her assuringly, "But you know what they say about things that come in threes: they're perfect~!"
Giving the grinning boy an amused glare, Amerika let out an elongated groan before taking the revolver out of his hands. "Wotever… I supposed that'll be more than wot we bloody need to put down the last two bastards," she mused, before quickly emptying the last three rounds into her palm.
Watching her toss his emptied revolver into her bag before beginning to insert them into her scoped rifle, Ren reflected quickly on what she had just muttered, before asking her, "What makes you think there's only two left in there?"
Tensing up upon hearing his question, Amerika couldn't help but to feel a sense of dread coursing through her exhausted body— causing her to react by shoving the side of the rifle into Ren's chest, while meaning to only hand it to him.
"I…! I-I was keepin' count of the ones we put down— y-yew really ought to start doin' that yewrself, mate," Amerika replied uncomfortably, and watched as Ren looked down at the rifle before flicking his eyes back up to hers.
"Oh, uh… Yeah, I'll… I'll keep that in mind for next time," he murmured, and paused while wrapping his fingers around the grip of the rifle. "So… H-How many have we, uh… You know? K-Killed?"
"F-Fifty," she quietly replied, while letting out a small whimper before adding, "There were fifty-two of them, by the time they caught up to us in the bloody woods."
"That's… Oddly specific, don't you think?" Ren asked with a curious and wary smirk across his lips, and couldn't help but notice the way Amerika was beginning to fidget as he asked her, "Where did that number even come from?"
"I… I-I say fifty-two because… B-Because that's how many times I was… H-How many t-times…" Amerika tried replying, but grew too nauseated at the horrific memory of what transpired in the forest.
Even while under the influence, Ren had enough sense to recognize the sheer amount of discomfort and heartbreak within the quiet voice of the devastated goblin.
Reaching out to gently grab her by the shoulder, Ren felt Amerika flinching underneath his comforting grasp for but a second, and waited until her yellow eyes met his warm gaze before telling her, "You don't have to finish saying that; if you say that there's two of those monsters left, then I'd say we've got more than enough bullets to take our time putting them both down."
Relaxing her shoulders while letting out a joyless chuckle, Amerika offered him an appreciative, weak smile before softly shaking her head. "As much as I'd love for us to take our time with ending their miserable lives, the truth of the matter is that if those who I suspect are truly behind this door, then… Then it'd be wiser for us to end them as quickly as we're able to."
Nodding his head to acknowledge her word of caution, Ren uttered out, "I see," before going on to ask her while gripping the wooden handle beneath the rifle's barrel, "How should we go about this then?"
Signaling him with a wave of her finger to keep his eyes and rifle on the door, Amerika took out her sidearm as she began replying to him, "I'm going to have yew use the control panel to open up the door, so I can toss the last smoke canister I've got through its crack…"
"… From there, we'll rush in under the cover of the smoke— hopin' that neither of us get hit by a bolt of fire, or some other destruction spell," Amerika continued, and released her sidearm's cylinder to do an ammo check, before popping it back into her revolver and saying, "Once we made into the room, we'll shoot the bastard with the hood first, before movin' on to the tall, metal fock in janky armor…"
"… Don't bother shooting his armor though— shite's enchanted with a protective ward; bullets aren't going to do fock-all to it," Amerika advised bitterly with a look of vengeance replacing the vulnerability she had in her yellow eyes moments ago. "Believe me: we fockin' tried already."
Surprised at what they were facing, Ren furrowed his eyebrows before asking her with narrowed eyelids, "Did you have a plan to deal with that guy, PRIOR to bringing us here?"
"As a matter of fact, I did; I've got the solution right here, mate," Amerika replied with a wicked grin forming across her lips— revealing her sharp teeth, as she reached into her bag to pull out a handheld tool equipped with an elongated nozzle, and a long metal tank beneath its snub-barrel that came equipped with a pilot light.
Befuddled at what he was looking at, Ren cocked his head toward his shoulder as he asked the goblin girl, "What, uh…? Whatcha got there?"
"It's called a "blowtorch," Ren; I'm gonna use it to fuse the joints of his armor together— eliminating his mobility, and giving me the opportunity to burn his face off, like how he fockin' burned my fockin' skin," Amerika explained with her voice growing more sadistic, the more she imagined herself enacting her plan to stop the armored bandit leader.
"Any other questions, or can we fockin' get this show on the road…?!" Amerika asked impatiently, as her fingers tightened around the grips of her blowtorch, and her revolver— sliding her sidearm into its holster, before taking out her last smoke canister from her partially opened bag.
High strung on the influx of information told to him in his current state, Ren took a moment to reflect on everything Amerika had told him, before finally giving her a nod. "Ready," he said confidently, and stood with his knees lowered as he gripped the handle of the scoped rifle tightly in his grasp.
Taking in a quick breath to calm her nerves, Amerika knelt beside the wall adjacent to the magnetically sealed door— keeping her smoke canister ready— before nodding towards the large, rectangular door panel that was mounted on the wall, on the other side of the door.
Keeping his right hand gripped around his firearm's handle, Ren jogged over to the panel to press down on the green button beside the red one— deactivating its magnetic locks, before immediately backing away with his rifle raised toward its center.
Pulling the pin and slamming the metal canister underneath the reinforced door as it slid upward into its slot built above its metal frame, Amerika dove out of the way while unholstering her revolver with her left hand— narrowly escaping the inferno of fire being blasted from the other side of the unlocked door.
"Shit…!" Ren cursed aloud, and fired a single shot towards the incoming flames— hoping to slow down whoever had been waiting to counter their strategic attack.
Before retreating back down the hallway, Ren made sure to pull Amerika up off of the floor just in time to save her from being caught in the blast of fire.
While sprinting back where they had fought through, both Ren and Amerika looked over their shoulder to see the jagged silhouette of a nine-foot figure emerging from the dissipating flames— the armored figure's glowing red eyes locking on to them, before holding his greatsword out and beginning to chase after them.
"You should have stayed dead while you still had the opportunity!" Jag shouted tauntingly from behind them; the plates of his heavy armor clanking against each piece of his suit, while his palms began to glow orange as the long silver-edged blade of his greatsword began to become engulfed in fire.
Both full of anger and fear, Amerika hissed back at the bandit leader with her long ears flattened behind her head. "Y-Yew're fockin' DEAD! DEW YEW FOCKIN' HEAR ME?!" She shouted back at Jag defiantly— causing him to chuckle menacingly at their expense.
"Such bravado left over inside of you, little goblin! How I could have sworn that the lads and I fucked all the "fight" you had left inside that green cunt of yours!" Jag vulgarly insulted— his deep, brooding voice filled with sadistic amusement, as he saw the unbridal tears of his victim trickle down her narrowed eyes.
Unable to contain herself any longer, the reasonable side of Amerika finally snapped as her damaged psyche became flooded with the intrusive memories of the bandit leader forcing himself onto her— vividly recalling the way he made her suck him off during the entire time each of his gang members stuck their dick in whatever hole they saw fit.
Enraged and filled with humiliation, Amerika knelt down to the floor— surprising Ren, as she dug her heels into the metal floor to turn herself back around. "F-Fock y-yew…! F-FOCK ALL OF YEWWWW!" She screamed in a heart-wrenching cry of desperation and despair, before tearfully spiriting toward the direction of Jag's burning blade.
Faced with little choice, Ren spun himself around as well and began skidding backwards on his heels as he raised the lever-action rifle up towards the wall that Jag was about to pass by. 'Goddamnit,' Ren thought frustratingly to himself, before using the scope of his rifle to fire three shots into the reinforced surface of the wall.
Just as he was about to blast the goblin with a blast of fire while she was frenzied, Jag's blade was suddenly struck by a stray bullet that had ricocheted off of the wall— the other two rounds bouncing off of his armor.
Looking up past Amerika's head full of messy brown hair, to where smoke was rising above the tip of Ren's barrel, Jag's glowing red eyes narrowed spitefully at the child, while his greatsword moved out of the way of its intended target.
"That must be the zombie Ola-Guh?!" The bandit leader tried muttering under his breath, before another shot fired from Ren's rifle caused him to lose his footing— the well-aimed bullet colliding with his ankle, and leaving him open to the ravaging goblin's fury.
"RRRRAAAAGHHHHH!" Amerika shrieked with the volume of an enraged banshee, as she leapt up toward the bandit leader's fully-enclosed helmet— grabbing a hold of his horns to swing herself behind her neck, and holding onto one with her left hand as she began using her blow torch to turn the edges of his helmet and his neck guard into glowing, molten metal.
Although his armor couldn't be penetrated, the heat of the molten metals fusing together was felt along his skin— causing his flesh to blister and pop.
Groaning in agony, with enough pain tolerance to remain level-headed, Jag attempted to slam his back into the nearest wall— in order to crush the goblin girl before she could finish fusing the metal that would prevent him from moving his head from side-to-side.
Predicting what was to come, Ren went against ever sense of self-preservation he still had left lingering inside his drugged-up body by sprinting as fast as he could toward the metal behemoth of a man— dropping down into a sliding kick, before getting close enough two direct shots each into Jag's kneecaps.
Due to how close the rifle was to his legs when it fired off, the bandit leader's knees buckled before closing in on themselves— causing him to fall onto his knees, and barely having time to catch himself with one hand as Amerika began using the blowtorch on his dominant shoulder.
Now seeing Ren as an actual threat more so than just a nuisance, Jag allowed for his greatsword that he had been holding onto to fall from his right hand— freeing it, before raising it up to reveal a glowing orange light forming in the center of his palm.
Quick to fire, Ren parried the bandit leader's attempt to hit him with a close-range bolt of fire by shooting his palm— allowing him to mimic Amerika from earlier, by leaping up to the nearest wall before using it to jump over the spell.
Having gotten enough air to leap successfully over the downed bandit leader, Ren couldn't help but to realize upon after somersaulting onto the ground a new tingling sensation forming within his abdomen— one that filled him with both dread, and ecstasy.
'Did I…? Did I get injured?' Ren first thought to himself, before finding his answer by taking a quick glance down at the bullet wound that was leaking blood into his leather cuirass.
'That… That looks new,' Ren thought to himself, before forcing himself to dismiss the growing sense of dread spreading out through his body— not taking into account that he had accidentally ricocheted a shot off of the man's armor.
Even with a bullet buried deep in his stomach, Ren reacted faster than Jag expected when he dove down to kick the greatsword away from the armored man's reach. "B-Bastard!" Ren heard Jag shout angrily at him, as he rolled backwards to narrowly avoid being grabbed by the enraged bandit leader.
Not knowing how effective his shoe would be against the armored man's protected skull, Ren threw caution into the wind once more by firing a direct shot of his rifle into eye-slit of Jag's metal helmet— the shot disorienting the large man, at the cost of the bullet once again ricocheting and finding its way into the eleven year-old's right shoulder.
Letting out an involuntary and maddened laugh from how the pain in his drugged-up nervous system was, the bullet that got lodged deep into Ren's clavicle bone made him feel an intense tickling sensation that caused him to accidentally let slip the grip of his rifle.
Disturbed by the jovial sound of a child laughing in lieu of what should have been an absence of voice from his perspective, Jag attempted to reach for the dropped firearm with his dominant hand— only to overextend and come tumbling onto his side, after discovering that Amerika had finished fusing his shoulder armor with the back of his cuirass.
"Desecrating a mere child with your dark magic…! Does your kind keep NOTHING sacred?!" The bandit leader spat out hatefully to the goblin girl, who had just finished using Ren as a distraction to hastily fuse the bandit leader's knees together.
Too hyper fixated on subduing the armored man to respond to his accusation of her performing dark magic on Ren, Amerika had her teeth clenched together as she manically kept fusing Jag's spike-covered armor together— taking advantage of the vulnerable position she had put him in, and continuing with her handiwork until his legs were fused together side-by-side, while his arms were blowtorched against his broad chest plate.
Seething with an overwhelming amount of vengeful rage flowing within her small body, Amerika screamed out a roar as she tossed the practically used-up blowtorch across the hallway— sprinting beside Ren with her revolver unholstered, as she made a mad dash to where her fleeting sanity suspected the hooded figure to be.
Still fighting to control his involuntary laughter, Ren was beginning to feel lightheaded from all the blood that was leaking out from his bullet wounds— attempting to follow where Amerika had ran off to, before vomiting out blood, and stumbling forward until he lost his balance and fell face-first onto the cold, metal floor.
'It's getting harder to move… This feels funny! Funny, but yet… So, so familiar,' Ren's endorphin filled brain wondered to itself, while finding the grim thought of him bleeding out on the floor hilarious within his extremely inebriated mind.
Though breathing was becoming ever so difficult for him, Ren continued to laugh painfully to himself with his face completely crimson-red.
"A-Ahh, haha~…! A-Amerikaaahh, ha, Ha, HA~…!" Ren called out in an inaudible voice; his chin and teeth coated in his own blood, while leaving behind a trail of the crimson liquid, as he started to drag himself across the floor— toward the mainframe door.
Unbeknownst to the hysterical eleven year-old, Jag laid on his side watching him bleeding out; his cold-heart aching for the boy, as he quietly muttered to himself with horror in his low voice, "T… That's no zombie…! He's still bleeding…! He's still bleeding!"
It was then that the two of them heard a shrill cry of panic and anguish coming from the cold room at the end of the hallway. "GUWAAAAAAAH, RRRAAAHH-NGHAAAAAHH! W-WHERE IS IT?! WHERE THE FOCK IS IT?!" Amerika wailed with devastation in her voice, while frantically searching every corner of the mainframe room for where the golden sphere and the hooded man had gone,
Realizing that both were long gone, the last bit of Amerika's resolve dwindled into hopeless despair— causing her to fall to her knees, and begin bashing her fist repeatedly against the floor while screeching out, "NO! NO, NO, NO— NOOOOOO!"
Hearing Amerika proceeding to let out the loudest wail he had ever heard before in his life, Ren continued on dragging himself across the floor— paying no mind to the fact that his lower body had stopped functioning.
"Hehe, ah, ha, haha~…! I~…! I-I~… IIIII~…!" Ren choked out with a fading smile across his blue lips— his face now completely devoid of color. 'I'm coming! Don't worry, I'm almost there,' Ren tried saying, but could only think it as it became harder and harder to process thoughts— as his brain became more-and-more devoid of oxygen.
Thrashing in his fused-together armor, Jag's protective need to save what he realized was a human child overwrote the contempt he had for Amerika.
"G-GOBLIN! GOBLIN, THE CHILD— HE IS IN NEED OF RESCUE!" Jag shouted from the top of his lungs; watching helplessly as Ren slowly pulled himself forward with just his bandaged-wrapped left hand.
"S-SAVE HIM! SAVE HIM BEFORE- G-Guah…?!" The bandit leader tried shouting once more, before letting out a guttural gasp the moment he saw Ren collapse completely onto the floor— laying completely motionless in a pool of his own remaining blood.
Laying on top of his stomach, Ren had the side of his bandage-wrapped face lying along the cold floor— his right arm remaining extended out above his shoulder, still reaching out towards where Amerika was having her anguished mental breakdown.
'I… I think I did it.'
'…'
'I didn't break my promise this time…'
'…'
'She's safe… She'll be safe here… Won't she?'
'…'
'I… I'm sorry… I wish you could hear me right now…'
'…'
'Please… If by some miracle you can hear me…'
'…'
'Take… Take care of Vivi for me…'
'…'
'Goodbye, Beth… I'll miss you.'