The Bodyguard IV
The summons slowed over the next few years, until one day an urgent alert opens the steel hatch in front of her, allowing light upon her once more. She took off into the sky with a loud and piercing screech. Pausing in the sun for a mere nanosecond, she peered into the office of Duun Strutts from above, and saw him on the floor by his desk, clutching his arm. Over him stood a figure heavily clad in white chitinous armor that covered his robust figure from head to toe. His helmet had, large, glowing red eyes. It didn’t matter what he was, only that he was clearly her target. She didn’t need to process the situation any longer. She lunged, crashing through the window and impaling the unfamiliar figure and taking him into the sky, away from her master. While smashing this being into surrounding skyscrapers, Andrea picked up a unique energy signature within him thanks to her electronically wired brain. Without need for thought, she was able to disrupt it using the talon impaling his abdomen.
Once she was in the sky, she didn’t need anything so direct as being given an order. It was as if Andrea instinctively knew to take the fight beyond the city and into the unfinished zone. She obeyed the order the instant it was triggered. With the man still impaled on her talon, she took flight at such incredible speeds that windows shattered as she whizzed past the high-rise buildings all around. Andrea left a wake of destruction, using the passing buildings as blunt force weapons, somehow knowing light property damage was not the reasoning to take this fight away from the Inner City.
Passed the barrier, she detached him from her talon by throwing the man through the window of an abandoned, half-finished shopping mall. She followed him, not sparing him a second to recover enough to retaliate. Grabbing the being who was somehow still alive by the neck, Andrea dragged his body down the side of the building making a mess of the brickwork in the process. Halfway down, she let him freefall, adding to his acceleration with slashes from her razor-sharp talons. His body makes an impact when it slams into the ground. Andrea wasn’t done with him. She took off into the air once more, spinning gracefully before dive-bombing back down onto her target’s dented metal body.
Her arms were a flurry of brutal slashes, effectively tearing off the man’s armor which was getting in her way of doing some real damage. From there, she expected a clean kill. Something had given her opponent a second wind, however. He rose to his feet even after a barrage of attacks that should’ve left him as dust. He counterattacks, impossibly catching Andrea off guard and relieving her of one of her legs. She let out a piercing, inhuman screech of annoyance.
Lacking balance, she shot into the air once more to gain the lateral advantage. But there, with the backdrop of a full moon, Andrea noticed that the shield had come down. She didn’t make the connection between that and her opponent’s sudden strength. Instead, her concern was only the barrier. Something in her programming told her without it, it was pointless fighting the man. A machine brain made the decision to retreat. In the seconds it took to process that all, the man had fired a powerful gravity sphere attack. The minute distraction was not enough to gain the upper hand as Andrea easily deflected it back at him in an impressive mid-air flip and flap of her one wing. She didn’t wait to see if the volley hit. Andrea zoomed off back to the tower.
Her heightened senses alerted her to a presence close behind. Still moving at full speed, she cast a glance behind her to see the man was hot on her tail. He was unusually resilient. A being unlike any she’s encountered before. It was only then did she start to consider he was something more than human. Like her. She would’ve enjoyed the challenge if she was capable of feeling. He was gaining on her, scaling buildings and running along rooftops at a speed that should’ve been impossible. She was almost at the tower, then she would lose him and –
The man, or whatever it was, leapt into the air with amazing timing and grabbed onto her remaining leg, using it to throw her with incredible force through the roof of Stutts’ tower. The roles were now reversed. This would’ve been an apt time for Andrea to feel a sense of dread, yet even now, nothing… It was his turn not to give her a chance to defend herself. Unleashing his full force, he went for her armor – cracking through it like a nut with an expert dropkick. She retaliated in kind with a slashing of her wing which sent at him a flurry of metal feathers as sharp as throwing knives.
Despite some piecing his armour, he was undeterred. Andrea’s scarred face contorted into something that resembled a frown. She had never met a foe anywhere near this formidable. Her processor brain calculated a tactical retreat would be wise. Her advantage was in the air so that was where she withdrew. She was followed outside but not into the air. The man instead continued to scale the building to the very top where the deactivated Spire stood motionless. He ripped the stilled power conduit from the foundations. Then, taking only a moment to lock onto her position in the moonlit sky, swung the thing at her like a giant bat that sent her back into the tower. By the time Andrea got her bearings, the man had altered his grip on the Spire, wielding it now like a javelin with agile ease.
Her eyes widened as the thing was hurled towards her, filling the whole room and leaving her with no escape route. Andrea attempted to brace herself but that was a difficult task with one leg. The Spire impaled her. Her attacker pushed down and twisted so the thing screwed into the ground – pinning her there while she was blinded by her own blood and oil that sprayed from her ruptured body.
Even her advanced body couldn’t survive that injury. Her regenerative cells couldn’t fix the gaping hole in her torso with the Spire still inside her. As she bled out, her consciousness became a fickle thing to cling to. Andrea watched her target through increasingly blurry eyes. She had failed her master who was now in danger. Attempting to move only elevated the rate at which she felt the life leaving her. Helplessly she watched as her foe – the man or being that defeated her. It should have been impossible. In the place of what should’ve been a sense of despair at her failure, was instead a hollow feeling. The desk Duun was covering behind was tossed aside. Andrea reached out an arm, growing weaker by the second. Though her senses were diminishing, she could still hear the sound of two more people in the room. Her vision was too blurry to make out more than the silhouette of one tall person and one short. They were approaching her but she had lost the cognitive ability to work out why. She let her eyes close and gave into the darkness.
GuNNhead 
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