We fell, thrashing about, through the sky. The air was dry, and it felt like a sandstorm that we were falling through. It took a moment to get a good position going as we plunged farther and farther down into wherever we were.
I was the first to make impact, then Havoc. We did not land gracefully.
Code used his ability to switch places with a piece of sand below where we landed, effortlessly landing on his feet. And Ophelia went through the ground then back up over the sand, looking a bit pale.
We had landed in a sand dune and appeared to be in a desert. Around us, there seemed to be abandoned buildings and towers scattered throughout the place that the sand ate up.
"Where the hell are we?!" I yelled. My voice echoed but got swallowed up by the vastness of the place. The air was a lot calmer from where we stood than up above.
Havoc and I fumbled in the sand, trying to get up. We dusted ourselves off, though it was futile to get all the sand off us completely.
"I don't know. And what was that thing earlier? It must have sent us here somehow." Code responded from a good distance away.
Ophelia looked nauseous and was moaning to herself the whole time while we conversed.
"Can this day get any worse? Come on, man…" Havoc grumbled, dusting his pants.
At this time, the sand below him suddenly began to shift, slowly sinking him in. Six huge, mecha-like arms emerged from the sand and surrounded him, closing in.
"Huh?" he said obliviously, before realizing…
"Havoc!" I yelled.
But it was too late. It swallowed him whole and emerged completely, letting out an odd cry that rippled the air all around us.
It sounded like metal clashing with each other over and over. The thing looked like a mechanical puppet, with its human-shaped head twitching—the eyes on it swirling and locking in at random places. Its six arms also locked in and out as its human-like hands fiddled. It had no legs as it floated in the air.
Its chest was like another face, but that of a monster with mechanical features. It was nonidentical to the mechanical human-like head it had. The chest was where it had swallowed Havoc. The mouth on its chest crunched, and I yelled again, "You ugly asshole!"
I rushed to it, attempting to strike it dead center. But it dodged backward quickly. It was a lot faster than it looked, even though it was twice the size of all of us. I juked it from the left and then sped to the right, catching it off guard there. My right fist, coated in black, nailed it right on the side with a wide haymaker.
But it didn't go down. The thing was tough too.
It spun around, and its arms caged at its center, charging. Then, in a flash, it let out a beam in my direction. I stood there and took it, arms and fists up like a cross. The beam blasted around me, leaving trails in the sand behind me in my wake.
I looked up, my jacket fluttering from the blast of wind. My black coating covered my forearms, protecting me from the blast.
"Give back my friend, you creepy fuck!" I said before I dashed at it again and met it where it was.
We closed in, and it swung a left arm diagonal to me. I dodged it, flipping to my left, only to be met with another arm. This time, a forward strike to me. I spun left again, dodging that as well, then used my feet to pivot in the sand and my right arm to push it away. Another arm from above came crashing down like a hammer. I jumped backward to dodge that, too, but only sideways from the mecha monster itself, giving it a hard-spinning front kick to the chest.
The mecha monster fell back and flipped a couple of times. I chased after it, grabbing one of its arms to reel it back for another punch. I punched downward at it so hard that the sand below us cratered. Then I forced my fingers into the mouth of its chest, attempting to pry it open and save Havoc. It made metal screaming sounds as I did this, punching me in multiple directions with its six giant arms.
Though its arms were huge and its punches were hard, those levels of attacks did not faze me. I ripped open its mouth, and Havoc was in there, passed out and still intact. I used my leg to keep its mouth open and reached in to grab him, throwing him above me, still holding on to his gilet, and the mecha monster's mouth propped open.
"CODE!" I yelled.
Snap!
Instantly, Havoc was replaced by a mana-powered grenade in my outstretched hand. I pulled the pin with my teeth and threw it inside, shutting its mouth as soon as it did and jumped out of the way.
Code, standing atop a tower nearby, stepped off its ledge and began plunging to the sand dunes below headfirst. He fell for a few seconds, propping out his hand in front of him—and then once more…
Snap!
He switched places with the mecha monster on the cratered sand below. From where Code had been, the mecha monster now was, falling to its doom until it crashed into the sand. The grenade inside it went off at the same time, causing an explosion behind him as he stood up straight and faced away from the tower he had just fallen from.
BOOM!
The explosion from the bottom of the tower caused a small dust storm where Code and I were standing. We looked back to see if the mecha monster was still "alive" as the debris and sand faded.
The thing was in pieces, blown to bits. Ophelia had Havoc safe, his head resting on her bent lap as she sat on the sand.
"Alright, so what the hell was that, man? What the fuck is this place?" I burst out, adrenaline still high from the fight I just had.
Code looked upward and was observing something closely…
"You see that in the 'sky'?" he said.
"What is that?" I replied.
The "sky" wasn't actually a sky. Well, it was, but it was more so behind it—it being glass. Toward the middle was a gaping hole that seemed to be sucked upward. The "sandstorm" we fell through was just sand falling out of the giant hole itself in one large area, but other areas seemed still and unmoving.
Code observed the surrounding area again, then concluded, "We're in an hourglass."
Confused and, frankly, quite pissed, I remarked, "What the fuck."