full image - Repost: Titan Reborn ch.3 (from Reddit.com, Titan Reborn ch.3)
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Whooo! Here we go people, and this time with a sub half a year of writing time, really proud of myself for that one. Really hoping you like this one.Take care!—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------She woke up.But instead of being greeted by Alex’s face, resting on her maintenance rack, she wasn't quite sure where she was.She couldn't move, more so, she couldn't see. She felt… alone, and confused? She never felt like this before. She quickly decided that didn't like this.. thing. ‘Where is Alex when I need him? He's taking awfully long..’She decided to kill the time by reading the mission brief like she has done too many times before to bother keeping track, sure that Alex would be here before long. ‘The coffee machine probably broke,’ she concluded, her circuitry lighting up with yet another unknown feeling at the thought. She had to make sure that Alex scheduled her for full maintenance after this.She did not doubt that he was going to apologize to her profusely once he comes back, like always, even though she was sure that he knew by now that she wasn't programmed to be bothered in the first place.Strangely today was different, today for the first time she wished she would have said something all those times, something like "It is alright, pilot Alex" or "I don't mind, Alex." Well, no matter, she would this time. She was sure it will brighten his groggy, coffee-less mood.Her idle musings were soon interrupted by a struggle to find her today's mission brief. She could find no patrol route, no extermination coordinates, nothing.‘That's strange..’ She tried pinging the base. First, she tried the internal network, but nothing pinged her back. Pinging satellite communications gave her whole another load of nothing. 'What the hell?' she mentally exclaimed as she checked her boot logs for anything out of the ordinary.Hurriedly opening them she was hit with an orbital bombardment worth of errors, helpfully informing her that almost half of her onboard systems were nonoperational or damaged. 'What happened here?!' she thought with rising panic, hurriedly skimming over the logs.It seemed like her coms equipment was almost untouched, but she wasn't getting anything from the satellites. Her reactor was offline, and from what she could tell she suffered heavy damage to her superstructure, almost the entirety of her back has been blown out at some point, barely avoiding a pilot cabin breach in the process.But no matter how she tried she couldn't recall why she ended up like this. "Dammit!" She cursed to herself.She wanted to just deactivate and curl up into the comfort of nonexistence until someone came here and brought her to a repair bay, wherever she was. But just as she was ready to put herself into hibernation yet again she got a ping from her motion sensors. Curious, she accessed one of the few undamaged cameras overviewing that sector.Strangely, most of the working cameras were still blind. But in the end, she found a single cam that could see the area from where the ping came.Apparently, she was located in some kind of a clearing, the sun gently shining down onto the sickly-looking grass. But what caught her attention were two strange creatures, sauntering through the clearing.Looking somewhat close to a bipedal fennec fox, only with their eyes being bigger and a mean-looking stinger on the ends of their swishing tails. They didn't look very big to Cleo, but without extra cameras, she could only guess how far away they really were.As she watched, she spotted the smaller one approach the larger one and seemed to beg for something, the bigger one responding by producing a piece of meat from a sack and handing it to the smaller one.'Maybe a pair on a hunt?' She wondered. She noted that the smaller one seemed overall thinner and less broad than the other. 'Probably a female,' she concluded. 'It has to be asking the larger male for a piece of the catch.'She did notice that besides the sacks both appeared to be wearing some kind of a sash with various items hanging off of it, far too small to be made out in a detail by one of the simpler cameras in her arsenal.'Probably smart ones then. Should I say hello? But I wouldn't want to scare them.' She pondered her options as the two of them chittered away. At least she thought they did, she couldn't hear them from this far away.Her confusion and mounting panic from being in an unfamiliar situation started to slowly give away to curiosity, and even surprise as the little ones seemed to conclude their session, got up, and seemed to go straight for her, although she supposed that her livery would quite stand out against her surroundings. And so she watched with held breath as they made their way to her, able to make out more detail.The sashes seemed to contain a knife of some kind each along with a plethora of various trinkets, bits, and bobbles, probably decorational in nature. 'Aww, look at those little fuzzballs, so cute!' She thought to herself. 'Wait, cute? I never noticed such things before, that isn't tactically viable information! What's going on? I am not supposed to think like this!'Being distracted by her own problems, she completely missed the two creatures disappearing in her blindspot, thankfully she was still aware of them thanks to her proximity sensor, telling her that they were more or less on top of her arm. 'Yup, they definitely found me,’ she concluded and resigned herself to having to figure out a way to talk to the little buggers.Now that they were this close she could listen to them talk. As she listened into her microphones she got bombarded with a wall of chitters, yips, and squeals. 'What a strange language. How the hell am I supposed to talk with them?.'She worked away on a way to say hello without scaring the little things, listening to their chittering seemingly getting more agitated and confrontational. Scared of them fighting, or leaving her alone, she sped up her efforts, trying to figure out anything that she could use to communicate, only for her spirits to drop when her sensor told her they were slowly moving away.She was about to try her luck and roll with what she got when her microphones picked up a very loud roar, deafening by human standards, emanating from the way the two of them came. 'Oh no.' She knew this sound, and unless she was mistaken and it was their mom or something like that, all three of them were in a lot of trouble.She quickly rotated her camera back toward the source of the roar. ‘Nope, definitely not mum.' It was exactly as she thought, one of the apex predators in the area. A bipedal creature covered in thick bony plates. Cleo had experience with these, being sent out herself many times to get rid of a fledgling nest, too close to the Terran bases of operations.And so she was sure that this one must have been ancient. Bigger than any she has ever seen, its bony armor covered in deep scars and cuts, she watched it give chase to the small little furry things, already bolting as fast as their little legs can carry them, dropping to all fours, which seems to give them an additional burst of speed.Cleo watches the scene, worried for the small creatures. ‘Sure they seem to be faster than the big bastard, but can they maintain the speed? No, no they cannot.’ So much is obvious as she saw the smaller female already slowing down, yelling at her partner for help. But it seems that the male had other plans than to valiantly defend his mate, glancing back onĺy briefly before leaving the smaller one choking on his dust, sure to be eaten by the hunter.While a tactically sound decision, as the big one had no way of efficiently fighting the creature, it just felt so cruel and unfair to Cleo, she had to do something. And she had to do it now.Peering back into her shell, she called forth the power left in the capacitors, feeling her oddly stiff body respond to the flow of electricity, she pushed aside the flood of warnings and errors, reports of stuck servos, and blown-out fuses. She redirected power where she could, and little by little, much slower than she would like, but still, she felt her body animate. The hum of servos, the whine mechanisms, and the spark of exposed wiring filled the air around the titan as it animated.Cleo felt disturbed by how damaged her body was, it was barely moving, damaged in ways that did not suggest battle damage, at least not entirely, she felt rusty and decayed. Yet with no help coming, she had to move, she had to get back to base, and these creatures could help her. And so against the protests of every component of her warform, she beckoned her body to rise.And her body obeyed, rising from its grave, left to rust and decay for god knows how long, it slowly erected, moss and dust falling from it in droves. Turning to the creature Cleo gave her form the command to move forward.The titan rose once again.—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Nira ran as fast as she could. She could no longer hear her brother begging for help. She could only hear her own heart pumping hard as she sprinted away, not daring to look back for a second time.But as she reached the tree line she was plagued with heart-ripping guilt. No matter how hard she tried to not think about it, she felt like a monster for leaving her brother to die.Nira didn't get long to think, startled by a loud screech, sounding nothing like she had ever heard before, forcing her to look back.As expected she saw her brother, lying on the ground, cowering against his doom. But she didn't see the monoch looming over him. Instead of it there stood a gigantic creature made of rock.It stood there, looming over her younger sibling, standing many times taller than even the biggest of men Nira ever saw. But instead of finishing him off, it seemed to focus on the monoch, who was now slowly getting up, seemingly pushed and fallen over as the giant pushed it.It had to be a stone spirit, its singular arm raising up in challenge towards the recovering beast. Its entire body emitted terrible screeching as it slowly moved, almost like stone grinding against stone, but far more painful to the Niras ears.Nira considered running, following her brother's example as he scrambled away the moment he saw he was no longer the point of attention of either of the giants. But something made her stay, she never heard of a spirit animating to help a person before. And she wasn't going to waste the opportunity.And so she hid, and just in time. The monoch finally scrambled up to its feet and roared a bone-rattling challenge back at the spirit who dared to interrupt its meal.The beast charged at its target, its powerful feet shooting it forward like an arrow. To Nira's confusion, the spirit stood completely still, as if unconcerned by the mass of teeth and muscle dashing toward it.Only when the monoch got but one of its massive paces away, did it react. It jumped to the side, a stream of light too bright for Nira's eyes emitting from its back, only to splutter and die, replaced by fire as the titan's back turned into a roaring inferno, making it stumble and fall into its belly. Fire flowed like water rushing from its back, quickly setting the grass around it ablaze.'That must have hurt! But where did that fire come from? A fire spirit perhaps? It certainly can't fight for clack.' Nira thought, surprised at how weak the spirit seemed.The heat and flame dissuaded the monoch, forcing it to circle its opponent a respectful distance away. Nira knew this was because its kind was scared of fire, proving essential in defending their homes from the bloodthirsty beasts.Just as Nira thought the fight was over before it even had the chance to really had a chance to start, she saw a movement within the pool of flames. The fire spirit slowly rose to its feet, rivers of fire pouring down onto the ground. It bent down with some difficulty and picked up a handful of soil, throwing the burning concoction at the monoch with another of those sharp stony screeches.The predator, already seeming much more careful with its now fiery opponent, let out a pained roar as the soil hit its head, making its eyes and maw slam shut to protect itself from the flame. It turned around frantically, shaking the burning dirt off, making it blind to the fire spirit's rapid advance.Quickly closing the distance, its fist split the air like a flying boulder, the strike connecting to the monoch's chest with a sickening crack that made Niras ears flatten in disgust. Not seeming to intend on giving the predator any time to recover, it raised its mighty fist, wet and purple with moloch gore, and delivered a quick strike to one of its legs joints, sending the beast thundering down into the dirt with yet another crack.But the beast seemed to not give in so easily. Just as Nira silently hoped that it was slain, its head shot out, clamping around the leg of the spirit with a screech of stone on teeth. But much to her surprise, the tree-snapping force of its jaws seemed to do very little to the spirit's appendage, the beast unfruitfully trying to jank the leg from under its opponent.The spirit responded with a quick blow to the back of the hunter's head, the blow making it lose grip on its leg. Nira thought that the beast has been finally slain, but then the giant quickly stepped back, stomping with all its might onto the middle of the carnivore's back, the foot sinking into the creature with a wet crack, letting out a pained roar, the beast thrashed around, its lower body limp as its stubby forward limbs desperately tried to push it away from its foe.Giving mercy to the beaten monoch, the fire spirit punched the back of its thrashing head, stunning it for just a moment, and with a mighty heave that sent more sparks of fire flowing from its arm, it arched the entire massive monoch's neck back and up, until, with a final sound, akin to a tree snapping in half, the predator finally fell limply to the ground with a thud, never to get up again.Nira stared in awed silence, she never imagined that a monoch could be felled so easily. The fire spirit achieved in moments what a union of tribes struggled to achieve in a long and drawn-out battle.Tearing her eyes away from the spectacle for a moment, she spotted her brother hiding in the foliage at the edge of the clearing, and rather poorly at that, she thought. She was about to motion to him to retreat further to remain hidden when another screech made her turn her head to the now silent battlefield.The fire spirit was looking right at her, its massive frame backlit by the fire behind it, colored in monarch gore it stood there motionlessly.She froze. She didn't know what to do, she wasn't sure there was anything she could do. Her mind run wild with theories as the two sides seemed to stare each other down. ‘Is it going to kill us next? Did it really help us at no cost? Do we own it our souls now?’The rather one-sided stare-off was interrupted as a horrific-sounding voice erupted from the spirit, sounding like nothing a living creature had any right to sound like. Stuttery, raspy, and broken, it jumped pitch and volume, from a deafening shout to a near whisper.‘Nope, not brave enough for this!’ She had no idea what the spirit's message meant, or what it intended to do with them now, but she certainly had no intention of staying to find out. And so she yipped a signal for her brother to retreat as loud as she could before turning around and bolting off, breaking line of sight with the spirit and running for her life. She still had no damn idea what just happened or how either of them is still alive, but she knew one thing.‘I am sooo letting the adults handle this.’
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