Living Metal: Metallic Soul

Chapter 3: Hard to kill

“You are listening to K-98, the Number One radio station here on Mars. We would like to welcome all of our new listeners near Valhalla Point. It was one of the remaining battle sites of the Great War between our now good friends, the United Earth Government.

Speaking of Earth, we are going to celebrate the treaty between our grand worlds, which was signed a hundred years ago this weeken…sszzzzzzzz!”

An unexpected explosion obliterated the newly built communication tower out on a large mountain formation called Valhalla’s Point, shaking the planet with a fiery roar. Anything within a thousand meters from ground zero instantly vaporized. From its wake, a mushroom-like cloud formed.

Out from the raging fire came Anna’s police truck desperately trying to escape the flames of the dreadful explosion. It was followed by smoldering boulders trying to crush the fleeing driver. With quick maneuvering, and a lot of luck on the Anna’s side, the truck swerved out of the way of certain death.

But to no avail, the intensity of the violent inferno quickly cut off almost all of her exits as more, and more flaming rubble fell around the fleeing truck. A basketball size boulder raked across the right side of the vehicle nearly ripping the door off. It was a close call, but still far away from being safe.

Emergency lights on the consoles of the truck were beeping like crazy as the heat became unbearable. Anna looked back on the only working mirror to see the fire had crept in further into the bed of the truck. The only way out, which was just ahead, seemed to become an impossible task as the flames had nearly consumed her vehicle.

As she looked around her, and only saw flames she thought that this was it for her, until another explosion shook the landscape. Luckily, the shockwave sent the truck soaring away from destruction. Partly relieved from the fiery escape, the danger wasn’t over as she needed to brace for impact as the truck was about to hit the ground. The shock absorbers on the truck’s wheels nearly came apart as it brutally landed onto the rocky surface of Mars.

With panic in her eyes, Anna attempted to regain control of the truck. She looked over to the passenger’s side mirror, and quickly noticed from that another set of smoldering boulders were coming fast to the right. With a tight grip on the steering wheel, she swerved the vehicle to the left. Barely missing the first one she had to quickly fishtail to the right to steer clear of the other boulder.

The truck came up fast to a cavernous ravine which gave her fewer options of with direction to escape from. It didn’t matter to her. With a smile on her face, Anna clutched tightly onto the steering wheel, and sped up. She made a hard turn to the right to miss her certain death. Even though she was enjoying the thrill of the escape, this was far from over and the woman knew that she could not stay here.

The burning rubble from the explosion started to pulverize her escape route. This left her nearly blinded to the oncoming rocks. However, she continued to focus on the task at hand. Up ahead to her right she saw an opening in the road and made a break for it.

Her sky-blue eyes gave and an expression of relief as the blast radius quickly subsided. But her relief did not last long. From the rearview mirror, her eyes widen as she saw a flash of blue light radiating from ground zero of the explosion.

She was far enough to be safe from the detonation, however not far enough for what came after the blast. Within a second, another explosion came forth, blasting white fire in all directions. The intensity of this shockwave pushes everything in its path. This time, there was no escape for Anna. The wave of fire smashed into the truck, sending it barreling out of control.

The thrill she got from the initial escape was now gone. Left with no other choice, the Anna gave up the struggle to save the truck. With a single kick to the door, she scarcely dove out of harm’s way, tumbling hard into a ditch below large enough to keep her somewhat safe from the coming fire.

Behind the blinding fire quickly came another shock wave. The magnitude of the wave forced the truck to barrel out of control, its velocity launching the truck into the air and straight into a set of boulders.

From the combination of the truck’s speed, and the force of the explosion, the front of the truck smacked hard to the top part of a jagged boulder, causing most of the fuel cells to explode on contact. Like a newly lit roman candle going off into the night sky, the vehicle blasted further in the air. Anna could only watch as her truck slammed into the mountainside.

Once the ground stopped shaking, and wind died down from the blast, Anna climbed out from the ditch. She took off her helmet revealing her long flowing red hair. Her protruding ears popped up, and out from each side, twitching a bit from being cooped up in the helmet for so long.

The fiery chaos unfolded around the driver reflected off her crystal sky blue eyes. Her long red hair glimmered with scorching yellows and oranges of the flames dancing around the newly formed destruction. Because of the explosion, the heat was stifling. She unzipped her armor-plated jacket, the insignia of the New Dicon Police Department on each side of her shoulders. Her badge popped out from her pocket.

Anna’s five-foot-five with light muscle tone frame showed no signs of injuries, only an expression of exasperation of what had just transpired. She picked up her badge and placed it in her back left pants pocket. Luckily, she felt that her gun was still in her holster that was connected to her back pocket.

She looked around at the destruction. From the point of the detonation in a two-mile radius, everything inside was completely obliterated by the blast. She wiped the sweat off her brow and placed her hands on her hips with an easy laughed she said to herself,

“Damn, talking about overkill here.”

She sure whoever did this wanted her dead with extreme prejudice. The list of adversaries in her line of work was a mile long. However, from this extent, Anna was worried about how far they were willing to go.

Her assignment was to check out the communication towers on the outskirts of New Dicon City of a possible terrorist attack by the local cyber gangs that plagued the highways outside of New Dicon City. She believed that the bomb was military grade. If this had been in the middle of a populated area, many innocent lives would have been lost. Fortunately, the communication towers were unmanned, and no one was around.

She took off her jacket to show off her light aqua tank top that she normally wears under her officer’s shirt and said to herself, “Damn, first day I was assigned to this truck, and it gets destroyed. Chief is going to be mad about this,”

She turned around, and walked away from the flames. Due to her rough landing out of the vehicle, the communication device inside her helmet visor was fried. The secondary communication earpiece wasn’t responding either. There was no way of contacting command base for assistance. For now, she was stuck in the middle of nowhere at least thirty miles away from New Dicon City.

Just as she took her first steps the other way, the remaining fuel cells from the truck exploded. Other than a single twitch of her right protruding ear, she neither flinched from the sound nor from the blast. With a slight smirked from the situation, Anna just continued to walk away until one of the burning tires from the truck landed a few inches from her feet.

As she watched the burning rubber at her feet, she tightly held onto her helmet. Again, her ear twitched. The smell of burning rubber reminded her of her bad luck. She whipped around and tossed the helmet out of frustration into the burning debris. With a heavy sigh she sat down while slowly gazing up into the starry night.

The twin moons of Mars prevailed over the plush red landscape. Anna watched the last of the flickering flames on the desert’s surface. Suddenly, the communication unit in her ear started to beep.

“Anna, are you there?”

“Yeah, Sarge, I am here,” said Anna.

“Zzzz…We can’t get a fix on you. What is your…shssss.”

There was no response. A few minutes passed by, and still nothing. Anna leaned back, took in a deep breath, and sighed.

She remembered from her classes from her days in the police academy, she learned that since Mars lost the war with the Earth a hundred years ago, the United Earth Government had limited Mars’ military to the point that only Mars’ jurisdiction was in the major cities. Outside was under Earth rule. This was to make sure that Mars would not rebuild their armies.

Even though it has been a hundred years, Earth’s sanctions were still enforced by Earth security forces. Parts of Mars were left ravaged by the war and never really had a chance to heal. Because of that, cybernetic gangs rose up the ravaged lands assuming control and made their own turf to control.

To battle this, the Earth security force needed to separate the civilians from the criminals and created these sanctions. Unless you are in the main cities, Martian citizens including the local law enforcement would not be permitted to travel on the highways at night. Only with proper clearance, citizen would be able to travel.

Because of this, Anna will not have anyone looking for her until morning. She got back up, and dusted off the dirt from her pant legs. Reluctantly, she started down the only road out of Valhalla’s Point. On her way down, Anna noticed a makeshift sign of old armaments, an old Earth’s Regulation billboard with words spray-painted on it, “Welcome to the Badlands, population, minus 1500.”

Badlands, huh, she thought.

Anna grinned at the joke, and started to walk away from the sign. The remains of her old truck started to slide down the mountainside, crashing hard onto the road behind her.

The impact caused another tire to pop off. Her elongated ears perked up at the sound of smoldering rubber. With a blank expression, she just watched as the tire hit the signpost. Anna shook her head and laughed.

The dusty winds gently blew across Mars’ cold landscape. Anna continued her way down the isolated road. As she walked, she started to think about the days before coming to Mars and her decision to go.

Without memories of how she came to be there, Anna was almost helpless to the world around her. Her first memory was waking up in a field of metallic crystalline rocks and a man picking her up. His name was Allen, a geologist who happened to survey the same field that she was in.

At the time she had no idea who she was or what she was. Because of Allen’s kindness of giving her a home Anna was able to have some time to be a normal girl. She looked out to the surface of Mars and imagined playing with Allen’s daughter Millie. It was her who gave her the name Anna.

As she continued to walk down the lonely road she looked to her left. The area was still smoldering from the destruction from the blast. This also reminded her of why she had to leave Allen and Millie. Because once she founded out that she was no ordinary human other people had also noticed.

The consequence of her action, just like the bombing that she escaped from, the events in Carlson city started to spiral out of control. To make sure that Allen and Millie would be okay, she had to leave the mining colony. If she stayed, Anna would put them both in danger. She never told them that she was leaving and hoped that they would understand.

Her thoughts of the past were broken by road forking into two directions. Puzzled by which way she needed to go, Anna stopped in the middle of the road. Since she never had to travel outside this far from the City with no active GPS to follow, Anna was clueless as to where she was. At times like this, she would take out an old earth coin given to her by Allen, an old 1975 US half-dollar coin. It was the only thing that she had to remember him by.

“Okay,” she said, “Heads, I’ll go left, and tails, I’ll go right.”

The two moons of Mars gave the surface an eerie red radiance, and making her more visible to any onlookers. Anna was about to flip the coin when she noticed a parked vehicle not too far from her. It was on top of a hill a half mile away from her. If she went left, she would run right into it. It did seem strange for someone to just be sitting on top of the hill, especially after the explosion.

Her first thought was to go up there. However, Anna decided to take the road to the right, away from the vehicle. It seemed obvious that they had something to do with this situation.

Anna slowly walked away in the middle of the road, making sure that the party inside the parked vehicle easily saw her. If they did not react or take the bait within a half of a mile, she would head back the opposite direction. So far there was no action upon the hill.

Since this was the only road in or out of the badlands, she figured that the hill over there this would be a great place to setup an ambush. The area around the road going up to the hill where the vehicle was at had a lot of boulders littering the area. Anna hoped that the vehicle was abandoned. It didn’t matter if it was functional. With her abilities, she could easily manipulate the metal parts of the vehicle to make it functional.

Unfortunately, that was not the case. Upon the hill, painted on each side of the truck were Red Skulls, the calling card of the notorious Red Skull Society. Inside this truck were two affiliates of this gang, both were ordered to wait, and see if Anna had survived. If she did, they would have the privilege to eliminate her personally.

They knew if she survived the bombing, she would have gone down this road to get back to the city. So instead of investigating the aftermath of the explosion, they waited upon the hill. After waiting for some time, they both started to have doubts about if they were going to get the glory of killing her.

The gang member in the driver’s seat named Razor dressed as if he was from a biker gang. He had a metal plate on his forehead with cybernetic enhanced eyes that glowed bright greed. His body was forty percent upgrade for augmented motor-function designed for speed was in the driver seat. Just as he checked the time out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a woman with red hair coming their way.

His bigger counterpart with his arms crossed had dozed off. Instead of waking him, Razor wanted to make sure that this was her. With bated breath he pulled out his binoculars and checked to see. He bashed on the steering wheel with glee as he confirmed that it was indeed her. His enthusiasm had inadvertently waked up the other larger gang member named Bone Crusher that was in the passenger’s seat.

He was twice the size of the other. His hands were like sledgehammers with retractable spikes on his knuckles. He was over seventy percent enhanced with one purpose and that was to kill anyone who threats the Red Skulls. His eyes glowed yellow as he woke up, and said, “What… oh, finally she’s here. I knew she wouldn’t fall for that…Damn, we bombed that place hours ago, and now she shows up.”

“Bra, it’s only been twenty minutes,” said Razor.

“Oh, who cares?” said Bone Crusher as he saw a woman with red hair in the distance and continued, “That’s her, right?”

“Right,” replied Razor.

The Red Skulls’ were contracted to bomb the communication tower close to Valhalla’s Point. The money was good and the Red Skulls didn’t ask any questions. Their benefactor had given them the perfect opportunity to lure one of their greatest threats to their gang. It was the Red Skull’s idea to leak the information to the police to lure Anna out.

The trap had been set and revenge was in sight. The two-gang members’ boss, the Grand Jaguar, ordered them to stay close by and make sure Anna took her last breath. In some ways, they were happy that the explosion did not work. Now, they will have the glory getting revenge for their gang.

“When I heard that she took down the Butcher,” said Bone Crusher, “I couldn’t believe it. She must have tricked him, or something. I mean look at her, my thigh is bigger than her. There is no way she could have knocked him out in one shot.”

“I heard,” said Razor, “that she was cybernetic enhanced and…”

“Enhance my ass,” said Bone Crusher, “She would need to have my strength, and size to have any chance with the Butcher. No, she had helped… I’m sure of it.”

“Then lets proved that she’s a fraud.” said Razor.

Bone Crusher rose up, and grasped the front of the dashboard with anticipation. For them, there was nothing better proving their strength to their enemies. With excitement in his voice, Bone Crusher said, “Yeah and we are getting paid to boot! The boss was wise to choose us to make sure that she is dead.”

“Ha, Ha, we are like his avenging angels of pain, ha, ha, ha!” Razor laughed as he started the truck’s custom-built engine.

Bone Crusher, glanced at him, and thought that was a bit on the corny side. He shook his head and said, “Whatever man, let’s just do it!”

With a tap of a button on the side of the steering wheel, the truck began to transform. Out came the front bumpers with a huge metal plow with a crimson skull painted in the center. At the top of the plow were protruding metal spikes inching for Anna’s blood.

The roar from the engine caught Anna’s attention. Instead of acting like she had noticed it, she just continued to walk. She waited for the right opportunity to retaliate.

Quickly, the vehicle raged down the hill. At the sounds of the truck’s squealing tires, Anna realized the danger was bona fide and not a low oxygen hallucination. She turned to face the glaring lights that came from the oncoming truck, shielding her eyes and getting a glimpse of a crimson skull on the plow.

The Red Skulls, why am I not surprised? I was wondering when they would make their next move on me.

The truck ripped up the asphalt of this lonely road. Within seconds, it quickly closed the distance to the Skulls’ coming victim. The headlights shone brightly onto her, marking their intent.

Feeling irritated, she softly muttered to herself, “Let’s hit her with a truck! Geez, these idiots have no originality. I guess I’m going to have to teach them a little lesson.”

The truck raced over the hill like a lion chasing after its prey through a wheat field. The gang members were able to see her back facing them. Razor started laughing at the thought of an easy kill. She looked helpless in their path of destruction.

“Ha! Brother, we caught her off guard. Get ready to attack if she dodges me,” said the Razor.

“Right, I am on my way,” said Bone Crusher as he jumped out of the moving truck. Smiling, and with a gleam in his eyes, Bone Crusher in a flanking pattern moved swiftly to the right. If his partner failed, it would be up to him to strike the killing blow. No matter what, he was confident that Anna would not escape his grasp.

The truck made its final stretch upon its prey. She could feel the heat bearing down onto her back. The pressure of the immediate threat did nothing to diminish her confidence. She already knew that she would prevail.

Just as the truck raced a few inches away from running her over, Anna’s lighting-like reflex spun around, and propped one hand to the hood of the truck. With little effort, she jumped onto the truck, slamming her left hand onto the hood. She then used the momentum of her limb as a pivoting point to twist around, and landed on top of the hood.

Eyes nearly popping out of the sockets from shock, Razor nearly lost control as she crouched down on the hood in front of him. With a smile, she tapped onto the glass with her gun. The advantage was hers, but now he had to play with her so Bone Crusher can take her out.

Still, from what she did, he was caught by surprise and trembled in fear as he stomped on the brake. Razor hoped that it would knock her off the truck. However, Anna did not budge from the hood. It was as if the properties of physics did not apply to her.

His eyes peered down at the hood in front of him, and noticed her shoes. To his surprise, he saw that she had embedded her feet within the hard metal frame of the truck. There was no way he was going to lose her. He was tempted to run off the road hit one of the boulders that littered the right side of the road. He when he saw that Bone Crusher was moving in the right side, Razor stopped revving the engine.

“No freaking way,” screamed Razor, as he wanted the glory of taking her out.

Only the sound of a gun tapping against the front window regained his attention back to Anna. He looked up to see her pointing her laser-tip handgun directly to his forehead. Razor knew that if he failed to hit her then his comrade was ready to attack.

Instead of doing anything to make her think that he wasn’t alone, he tried to play it off as if he was surrendering to Anna. Where they were at it would be easy to catch her off guard as the boulder around the road would masked Bone Crusher’s shadow.

Once he turned off the engine to the truck, he then raised his hands up. It was then the other sprang into action. From out of the corner of her eye, she noticed him approaching her left. He was almost twice the size of Razor coming right at her, his intent clear.

Unimpressed by this tactic, Anna was fully aware of his position. She quickly jumped above him, and landed on a boulder behind him a few feet away from the truck. Bone Crusher did not realize when it happened.

The poor reaction of his wild attack punched straight through the windshield. Instead of hitting his target, the cyborg’s fist smashed right into Razor’s face. Suddenly, Bone Crusher realized that he did not hit Anna.

Angered at his mistake, Bone Crusher on top of the truck grabbed the Razor’s shirt collar and pulled him straight through what was left of the windshield.

“Where is she?” he screamed.

The throbbing pain caused by a fist’s impact on his face had Razor in a daze. He opened his right eye only to see a shadowy figure coming above them. Razor then looked up to his enraged partner.

“Behind you, you freaking idiot!” Razor screamed.

As soon as Bone Crusher turned back to looked, Anna jumped off the boulder and was already on her way down with a dropkick. Both her feet smacked him right in the side of his face. The impact didn’t seem to faze Bone Crusher as he quickly countered with a chokehold using his right hand.

“You’ll have to do a lot better than that, bitch!” Bone Crusher said arrogantly. “My body is made from aluminum titanium.”

Bone Crusher pushed her back off to the left side of the road, and slammed her against another boulder, still holding her with one hand. His plan was to keep her off the ground, making her helpless to his aggression. Bone Crusher wanted to watch Anna struggle for life, and fulfill her payment of what she had done to his brothers, or so he thought.

A devilish grin ran across her face which took Bone Crusher his off guard. He momentary loosened his grip which gave Anna the opening to counter strike. With a fluid motion, Anna broke the hold by using an inside block with her right arm, and pushed the hand away from her throat.

Once free, Anna caught her adversary with an uppercut punch to the gut followed by a left elbow shot to the side of his head and an open palm strike to his throat, forcing him back.

In a daze after Anna’s attack, Bone Crusher thought he saw her arms turn into metallic armor. It was too late for him to make any sense of this. Anna’s final barrage of attacks made his body feel like jelly. Her last punch slammed her opponent’s head onto the hood of the truck. It was over.

Smiling, she placed her right boot on top of Bone Crusher’s head. Again, he just looked up at her in disbelief. Anna stood tall and smirked as she pointed her gun to the side of his head, “Now now, boys, we can do this the easy way or the hard way? I really hope your choice was the hard way.”

Anna hopped down from the truck, and took off the metal bars on the hood of the truck. She then quickly wrapped them around the Bone Crusher’s hands. She then forced him to sit a few feet away from the truck.

Her ears twitched upwards as she heard the other one stumbling out of the truck. She turned and swaggered her way to Razor. With one hand she tightly gripped the back of his neck and forced him over to the front bumper.

“Now, where do you think you’re going, skull boy?” she said.

“If you must know, my name is Razor.”

“Razor, let me guess,” said Anna jokingly. “The other schmuck over there is Shaver?”

Surprised, he yelled, “How dare you mock us? You bit…”

Anna shoved his face onto the hood. “Aw, what’s the matter? The big bad Red Skulls can’t take a joke?”

“Joke all you want, lady,” said Razor. “When he wakes up, you will be in trouble. Do you know who he is?”

Unimpressed she said, “Nope, and I don’t care about your silly little titles. What I do care about on the other hand is why you bombed that tower out here.”

While Anna handcuffed Razor, she found a big hunting knife in the back pocket of his pants leg. It was a foot-long blade with ridges running down the blade. Anna took it out of its leather cover.

“Nice knife,” she said, twirling it in her hand.

Once he looked up at her in disgust, she stabbed the hood of the truck right in front of Razor’s eyes, and said with authority, “Okay, I am only going to ask you this one more time. Why did your gang bombed that communication tower?”

Bone Crusher woke up, and overheard her.

“You cannot interrogate us without a lawyer present,” he said. “This is police brutality. You won’t get away with… ”

Anna paid no attention to him as she walked Razor and forced him beside Crusher. Without saying a word, she walked over to the other side of the truck. As she lean against front bumper, she looked toward the desert landscape and said to herself, “This is going to be a long night for me.”

Bone Crusher screamed out in anger, “Hey, are you listening to me?”

Anna looked back with a nonchalant stare at Crusher in and calmly said, “I thought I had gagged you.”

The impudence of Anna’s comment left him momentarily speechless. Bone Crusher stared at her with utmost hate, and as she passed by, he said, “You think that you have won? Don’t know where you are at.”

Anna just smirked as she opened the passenger’s side door.

“This is THE RED SKULL’S TURFF!” He screamed, “We are everywhere…Yeah… that’s right, and don’t even think that your police buddies are going to rescue you. You’re all alone and…”

Again, Anna ignored him. She did not care to notice his reactions as she started to take stuff out from the truck. Bone Crusher’s right eye twitched and he gritted his teeth with resentment.

“That’s it,” he said to himself. “I’m getting the hell out of here, and I’ll be back to finish you off, little miss badass. Then… then you will pay attention to me. Oh yes, you will!”

Razor overheard his mumbling and whispered, “Are you crazy? Wait for our gang to get here.”

Bone Crusher struggled with his bindings and managed to loosen his legs.

“You can wait, but when she gets into that truck. I am out of here.”

Anna hopped onto the truck’s driver seat and tried to hot-wire it to start. As she bent to take a hold of the wires under the steering column, Bone Crusher broke free of his leg cuffs. Quickly, he jumped up to his feet. Razor smiled, “All right, brother, come over here and help.”

Bone Crusher did not say anything. He just ran into the desert.

“What? No, that bastard!” yelled Razor.

Anna’s long protruding ears twitched from the outburst, and she popped her head out of the truck, spotting Bone Crusher making his escape into the war-ridden desert. She then walked without any urgency up to Razor, and briefly glanced at him. “No loyalties, huh? Do you think he can really get away from me?”

He looked up at Anna with disgust and mumbled something to himself. Anna came around him to tighten the ropes on his legs. With a gentle smiled, she looked at him and said, “Now, I’ll be back for you. So, don’t get any ideas about escaping. Because then, I’ll have to do this the hard way.”

Her eyes glowed with an intense shade of blue. Razor got the message across that Anna was not joking. He looked back fearfully and closed his eyes. With a nod of compliance, he reopened his eyes. To his surprise, she was gone. With a baffle expression, he thought about what she said and then screamed, “You mean this was the easy way?”

To be continued