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The white halls of Violence gleamed like bone. Silent, hollow, and pristine with no blood yet to stain its walls. The air was still, save for the low ambience of distant machines and husks — and the slow, deliberate sound of metal footsteps in a chamber to the left.
V1 entered without hesitation. His sensors hummed, scanning the layout of the room — a long hall with tall windows and a curved ceiling, filled with a variety of stimuli for him to detect. The scent of oil. The scrape of metal on marble. Liquid trickling.
He raised his weapon, the Railcannon in his grip glimmering and ready to fire.
From the far end of the hall, a voice rang out.
'Well, look who finally crawled out of his scrap pile.'
V2 stood in the light of a shattered archway, her red plating polished to a mirror finish, the contrasting gold of her new left arm gleaming like a saint’s relic. Her optics flared with recognition — and hatred.
'Third time’s the charm, right? I’d congratulate you for surviving this long, but really, trying to kill you is like trying to stamp out a colony of rats.'
V1’s internal machinery whirred louder, building in pitch — rising from a low hum to a high growl. His arms flexed: one after another, mechanical fingers curling, uncurling. Blue, red, green. Each glowed faintly with power.
V2 began to approach, the shotgun in her arms clicking as she pumped it ominously.
'You took my arms, my parts, my pride . . . and for what? More blood to bathe in? You’re nothing but a leech with a gun.'
The blue machine hissed in both frustration and anger, head twisting to track her movement as she circled him, metal soles ringing against the marble.
'And now, are you here to defeat me once more — to add another arm to your collection?' She flexed her new gold arm, admiring the glowing pad in the centre of its palm. 'I made this from pieces of the angels floating around Hell. I call it Divinity, a mockery of Heaven. Would you like to see what it can do?'
V1 crouched defensively, grip tightening on his gun. But his curiosity could not be tamed, and almost inadvertently, the machine let out a questioning beep.
V2 laughed and laughed, her mechanical voice carried a sadistic amusement. ‘Well, let me show you!’
A blue flash emanated from her as she raised the Divinity and fired.
A lance of incandescent light tore through the hall, cracking stone and filling the air with the smell of molten metal. V1 was already moving, launching himself sideways, Railgun raised. The beam hit the wall behind him and shattered into a thousand burning fragments, V1's complexes screaming warnings as the shards tore into his thin plating and sliced past wires, bleeding thin crimson streams.
One chunk tore straight through the barrel of the Railgun, twisting and denting the gun until it was useless. He flung it away with a snarl of frustration and readied his arms instead. His Whiplash coiled around V2 before she could dart away, closing their distance in a blink. The Knuckleblaster glowed hot red as it discharged point-blank, the deafening blast sent them both spinning apart.
V2 hit the ground in a roll, sliding, chest armour blackened. A sensor in her side wailed as it detected the Whiplash cable lashed toward her once again, spinning like a striking serpent. She caught it mid-flight, twisting her arm to deflect the pull, and dragged V1 toward her instead.
They collided in a blur of bullets and sparks. V1 let out an excited chirp as he viciously raked the Knuckleblaster's claws over V2's torso, her fresh blood mending over the scrapes and dents in his plating. The red machine kicked and twisted, but V1 held on grimly, wrestling V2's shotgun from her hands before she could prime it.
V2 snarled, raising the Divinity instead and snatching a handful of his wings.
'Fuck you,' her speakers growled, the flash of blue illuminating their intertwined forms as she fired again.
Burning light ripped through V1's wings, incinerating them in an instant. His sensors howled at the sudden, agonising damage, every gun he had stored in his wings vaporised by the Divine light. No amount of blood from V2 could fix this. Desperately, he tried to recalibrate his synapses to numb the pain in his back, ripping away to escape V2's grip. She retaliated with a kick that sent him sliding halfway across the marble floor in a flurry of sparks and metallic grinding.
'You think you’re perfect,' she hissed, cocking her shotgun as she watched him flail with cold detachment. 'But you’re just an inferior Version One.'
V1 roared in fury, throwing up the Feedbacker to parry her shotgun's blast as she fired, sending the bullets ricocheting into the ceiling. Dust and marble shards poured down around them like gritty rain. V2 stumbled as a chunk of rock struck her in the head, leaving her momentarily dazed and giving V1 enough time to recover and lunge.
He drove a fist into her midsection, denting the weaker plates of her waist, and brought the Knuckleblaster back up under her chin to fire.
But she was faster.
Her metal fingers closed around the wrist of the Knuckleblaster in a crushing grip, twisting it aside. In the same move, she curled around V1 and slammed him down with a thud that seemed to shake the whole chamber, the floor cracking under the impact. She pinned him there, one knee plate crushing into his chest, her Divinity glowing with stolen angelic power. V1 shrieked and writhed, optic filled with rage and distress.
'You took everything from me,' V2 spat. 'Let’s see how you like losing a limb — or three.' The Divinity hummed as it closed around V1's shoulder, ready to blow off all his arms at once. V1 spat sparks and thrashed, a dark horror creeping up within him as he realised there was no escape —
— when the ground trembled.
A deep, seismic rumble rolled through the chamber, louder and louder until dust poured from the already-cracked ceiling. Both machines froze, optics flickering in confusion.
Then came the siren. A distant, deafening mechanical howl, echoing through the landscape like the heaven's roar.
V2’s limps went slack, disbelief filling her. 'No . . . that’s not possible.'
V1 shoved her aside, both rising to their feet as the walls began to quake again. A low vibration grew underfoot — heavy, rhythmic, deliberate. Somewhere, a minor deity moved. Massive. Crawling. Grinding metal and screaming hydraulics echoed over the halls of Violence.
The sound of an Earthmover.
V2 hissed, her speakers rattling. 'You idiot! You drew it here!'
V1 turned to her, head tilting, optic narrowed. His systems reloaded, Knuckleblaster recharging.
'Don’t look at me like that,' she snapped, raising her Divinity. 'We’re both dead if we keep fighting and let it catch up.'
A shadow flickered over the vaulted windows of the pristine chamber. The Earthmover’s bulk tore into view — a colossal silhouette of steel and light, blotting out the dark sky like a murder of crows.
V2 glanced at V1 again, optic irising. 'I'm running. If you want to stay and fight it, rat, then fight it. You won't get far without your weapons.'
V1 said nothing. But his stance shifted — the briefest tilt of his head, the faintest hum of readiness. Agreement, although hesitant.
'Get your own Hellevator, then.' V2 backed away, wings still spread defensively. 'I'll find you again, V1. And when I do, there will be no distractions to stop me from tearing you to scrap.'
With that, the red machine whirled and dashed away down a hallway, the echo of her boots smashing into the stone floors slowly beginning to fade. V1 hesitated momentarily, clenching and unclenching his Knuckleblaster. The rumble of the Earthmover grew closer and closer.
Maybe he could have fought it. After all, destroying Earthmovers was his purpose. But weakened from his fight with V2, without his wings and his weapons; it was plain suicide.
The Earthmover blared its siren again, sounding almost like it was right over the building. Dust rained from the ceiling at every thunderous step.
V1 beeped as if cursing, turning to escape through a hall opposite to where V2 had gone and seeking out the Hellevator he knew led to Limbo. He wasn't sure where the other machine had gone, but he did know one thing: he hoped he didn't see her for a long, long time.
The sirens of the Earthmover and the memory of V2's laugh reverberated through the Hellevator shaft as he jumped through it, fleeing the place where he had — for the first time — truly feared for his life.
And on the other side of Violence, V2 seethed as she climbed higher and higher up her own Hellevator, grimly aiming for Heresy. There were dozens of machines there, she remembered; or at least, the scrap piles left from both hers and V1's separate rampages through Hell. She could repair herself, refuel on pools of blood . . .
And come back to show V1 what true vengeance looked like.