But the moment I hauled myself up and started running again, I heard a roar.
"By torch and candle, the Emperor's will shall scour the lurking fiends!"
The familiar bellow shook the broken glass on the ground into a chattering rattle. Several black-armoured women emerged from the firelight and smoke not far away. I saw two figures who tried to resist get swallowed by a golden fire-dragon tens of meters long. They didn't even get to fire a shot before they became heaps of burning charcoal in an instant—one of those horrific flamers.
And the black-armoured woman carrying the flamer didn't even slow her stride. She was still chanting in that tone, like she was reciting poetry.
"Only in flame can sin be cleansed~"
Madness.
Every last one of them was insane.
And then—
Clang.
A manhole cover beside the street bucked upward, and a figure shoved her way out.
A slim silhouette with dazzling fire-red hair.
"That's… Lucy?" I stared.
It was Lucy the "Red Flash"—the orphan-king who'd once stolen my clothes and then brought a whole pack of kids to beg me to treat them.
Now she kicked out with those thin legs and sprinted like she owned the world—like a red fox in full flight, like lightning itself—charging at the flank of the black-armoured women closing in on me.
"Eat shit, you tin-can bastards!"
Something like a spinning flail dropped into the middle of their formation with a dull thump—but instead of fire and smoke, it burst into huge clots of green-brown muck. The women were splattered head to toe. Their visors vanished under sludge, and they stumbled into chaos, colliding and reeling blind.
"Lucy! That's the regular army! Run!" I shouted.
Lucy glanced back at me through the dust. Her face was smeared with blood (or maybe it was her hair hanging down) and filth, but she grinned like she'd never been happier. Then she raised three fingers at me in blatant provocation—probably our "three nights" deal from before (scratched out), which now translated to: I owe you three lives.
"Big idiot! Don't stop! Run!"
She moved like a rabid red fox, ricocheting through the smoke-filled, narrow street and between the illegal shanties on either side—more agile than a monkey. That weird-looking shotgun in her hands kept spitting fire, but she wasn't trying to punch through their armour. She aimed for visors and joints—nothing else.
"Paint rounds! Blind 'em!"
She shrieked orders to her people.
"Corrosive rounds! Hit the joints!"
A swarm of street kids—who'd been hiding God knows where—burst out all at once, like a plague of rats boiling up from underground. Screaming, they flung balloons, bottles, plastic bags—everything—stuffed with unknown liquids and thick chemical goo, launching them from garbage heaps, behind rubble, off rooftops.
Thump! Thump! Thump! Pop! Pop! Pop!…
The black-armoured women, and the ground around them, were instantly plastered in every colour imaginable. Some of it was stringy and adhesive. Some of it hissed and smoked. Those once-imposing soldiers turned into something ten times more disgusting than I'd been when I first arrived here—slime-creatures thrashing around like headless flies.
They roared in fury, fumbling at their helmets and faces, trying to wipe their visors clear, trying to scrape muck off plating, trying to force jammed mechanisms to move.
"Throne above! I can't see!"
"For the Emperor! For—agh! What is this?! Why is it so sticky?!"
"Filth! FILTH!!"
"Officer! The servos are jammed! I can't move!"
…
Half-dead with exhaustion, I watched the spectacle and nearly laughed out loud.
That was lower-district wisdom for you.
But I didn't have time to enjoy the farce. I had to keep running. Keep going. Don't stop.
Suddenly Spark halted so hard I nearly slammed into her back. I looked up—
Two black-armoured women with flamers blocked the way forward. They were burning the buildings on both sides, singing bright, lilting prayers as they worked.
I looked around in despair for another way through, ready to turn and bolt—
Then—
VROOOOM—!!
A hoarse engine howl rolled over the gunfire.
A red bolt came screaming down from the top of a rubble pile at the far end of the intersection.
It was a heavily modified heavy motorcycle—its front fitted with a spinning industrial circular saw blade. With a thunderous impact and a teeth-grinding shriek of tortured metal, the blade failed to cut through the armour, but the sheer momentum launched one black-armoured woman clean off her feet and smashed her into the wall beside the street.
"RAAAH—!!!"
Iron Tail.
The Red Scorpion Gang's top enforcer—the one I'd treated.
He was bare-chested, strapped up with a mess of belts and gear. The huge scorpion tattoo across his body flexed with his muscles like it was alive. He wasn't holding a gun. Instead, he raised a massive club that looked like a thick pipe ripped straight out of a wall—still spewing steam with a furious hiss.
"Anybody touches the doc, I'll cook her done!"
Like he was playing polo, he used the bike's forward surge to swing that club into the second flamer-wielding woman with a clean, brutal arc.
A gigantic boom followed—like a train collision.
Scalding high-pressure steam erupted in an instant, wrapping the black figure and blasting her like a cannon-shot into a burning building across the street.
"Go! Doc!"
Iron Tail reached behind his bike, yanked something free, and turned back—carrying two enormous Molotovs made from modified metal buckets.
No.
That wasn't gasoline. I could smell it.
"I paid through the nose for this shit back in the day!" he howled, laughing like a man possessed. "Now I'm giving it back to you! Taste your own holy oil!"
He hurled the two buckets left and right into the black-armoured women.
A wall of fire rose behind me, cutting off the pursuit.
"Iron Tail!" I locked eyes with that face that used to make my skin crawl. "Th—thank you!" I shouted.
He turned. That brutal, twisted face broke into a simple, almost boyish grin. He thumped his chest.
"Told you. Iron Tail of the Red Scorpions doesn't leave debts unpaid! Go! My life's yours—if it gets spent today, that's only right!"
Crack!
A bullet from somewhere punched into his thick shoulder and burst into a spray of blood. Shredded belt leather and broken bits of gear flew off him in fragments. He grunted—but he didn't fall. If anything, he only got crazier, raising the club and gunning the bike straight back into the enemy.
"GO!!"
I clenched my teeth and forced my legs to move again—heavy as lead. Tears and sweat ran together into my mouth, salty and bitter.
I couldn't stop.
Stopping would be the greatest insult to them.
(End of Chapter)
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