GuNNhead

I am helped up the stairs by the taller one, and a few stories up, they set me down next to a stairwell to nothing to redress the wounds from the drill. While they pull out the rivets and bolts with a tool of some sort, spraying sealant into each hole afterwards. Using this opportunity, they tell me about this giant city they live in. It was an experimental colony made to explore other climate-compatible planets, and inhabit them. However, when their planet was attacked it was the only thing to make it out, forced to leave early when the attack ships were still in approach. It was unfinished at launch, leaving much of the outer rim uninhabitable, and the population a mix of wealthy socialites in control at the center, followed by engineers and those working on it in the middle, and simple evacuees in the unfinished projects.

I look outside of the giant hole in the side of the building to see what they’re talking about. A huge freshwater port, gleaming in the sunset, megalithic cathedralline superstructures trickling down to less ornate steel and glass skyscrapers and finally concrete ones like the one we’re in on the outskirts. They go on and on about this person in the largest tower by name of Duun Strutts, the in-depth history of their peoples and how this city came to arrive here, the struggles of life here, and countless other minutia that all bleeds into a dull roar. I only need my craft and my powers back, then I can kill all of these people, see them crushed under foot for daring to be on my planet. I am alone. Once I hear that my ship may be inside the largest tower, I wrest my hand from their tractable grasp, and though they are still making sounds towards me, I leap out of the hole, and traverse my war to the tallest tower. I make it to the steel and glass buildings before my leaps become more sluggish, and making the leap to a taller one isn’t possible. I affix to the side, and climb the rest of the way to the top. I realize I must have set off some sort of security alarm when turrets pop out of the roof and riddle me with bullets, sending me careening into the alley below.

I stand again, and continue on foot towards the tallest towers. There is one with a large spire on top of it. I know that is where my rightful power is. I affix my sight, stride unabated until I once more have my journey made torpid by an ever-growing force. Oddly familiar, I plant my feet, and exert my power against this nothingness. There is silence. Then, wind swirls about, the ground beneath my feet begins to crack, streaks of lightning emit from nothingness, singeing along their traces, lifting stone into the air. An explosion occurs, and I am flung back a great distance outside of the heavy zone. I get back on my feet, eyes affixed to the tower’s spire, once more walking directly towards it.

As I reform, there are two beings sifting through the remains. Shoving the fallen building from myself startles them, and they approach. While they are asking questions, I observe my surroundings better in the daylight. This zone is trash, but in the distance there are large, gleaming towers. I will collapse them as well. I begin to walk towards the garish soon-to-be gravestones of this invading peoples, but am halted by the two beings, now standing in my way. Their heads were about to be crushed before the short one finally make an inquiry that is not insipid. They ask if I have finally come back for my ship. I state that they will tell me where it is.

I stare at them as they speak, and I believe they go on about a multitude of things unrelated to my craft. Their original planet, how it was destroyed, and how they were pursued here. I drift in and out of the beings’ prattle for the whereabouts of my ship, or insight as to why I lacked the ability to wipe them all off the face of my planet as soon as I learned of their presence. They do not know how they made it through my field, only that it now protects them as well as the continual solar system I adjusted to support it.

In their chattering they give their names, and are overly energetic about their ideas of who I am. They know about the Gravity Surge. A threat, the purpose for a sector of a galaxy becoming a no-fly zone. Absent for over three decades. The story of their arrival here must coincide with key times in my battles within the horrific dimension. It was pure random chance, and yet some believed it was my benevolence that granted them passage. I assure them it was not, and again state that they will tell me where my craft is. They believe it to be deep within the city, although it was found a great distance away up the coast when they were children. Hearing enough, I shove past them towards the city center. My left leg collapses from the damage sustained by the machine’s projectiles, and forgetting I had lost my left arm, there is nothing to halt my descent as I slam face-first into the ground.

I allow them to take me back to their dwellings, they have made a salient point that time will allow me to carve a better path of destruction. I regrow my arm and follow them. Somehow my powers are drastically reduced. I am no longer connected to the gravity of the entire universe, confined to just this one solar system, if that. My former home, a torture. A prison of my own design.

I trek the rest of the way until I am close enough to place my hand against the mossy metallic leg and try to get a sense of the scale before I bound upwards, traversing from greeble to nurnie. I cannot feel my ship, but I can feel its power coming from inside the dome. How is that possible, the unease eats away at me. What is it doing inside of this dome? In short order, I am scaling the final rim, and make my final effort to confront the base of this giant dome. My first punch into it does nothing. It is not a solid structure as I had thought, but some sort of smooth forcefield. It tingles quite unpleasantly. I can feel that I must get inside. As I walk in through it, the further I get into it, the more painful it becomes. Fire and sparks pop and fizzle against my armor as the resistance grows. The energy continues to grow, charring and engulfing me in flames. I continue to walk. Once all the way through, I fall past the encircling rim, down multiple stories into a pile of detritus and rubble.

Still smoldering, I stand, and view a derelict neighborhood. Half built, half torn down. I wander through darkened alleyways and empty streets lined with light poles, finding nothing and no one of note. Coming upon an abandoned construction site, I flip over the fence and land in the foundation. I walk up the stairs of this partially finished building until they stop. I sit to rest amongst the forgotten equipment, but before long I begin to hear a mechanical whirring and movement around me. Thinking nothing of it, I am immediately stabbed through the side with a large drill-arm. I am spun around and flung off into more debris. Before I can regain my composure, the striped yellow and black machine fires bolt after bolt into my body. Red lights attached to it spin around as a warning as I attempt to conquer it, but as I hold its two arms, I find my grip wavering. A buzz saw then emerges from its chest, and cleaves my arm from my body. Its free arm then fills my leg with rivets until I fall, unbalanced. Keeping the drill at bay inches away from my face with my remaining arm, I know I cannot beat this thing. I try to focus, attempt to crush it, but the metal of its build is far too resilient. Out of options, I weigh it down, and force it downwards, crashing through decaying floors and ceilings. Then, the entire building begins to rumble and shake. I keep my focus, and bring the entire structure down on top of it with me in it.

The once quiet streets fill with cacophony and clouds of dirt, but there is still no stirring. A quiet calm once again takes over the borough, and my battered body remains still beneath the rubble.