The Last Remnants

[Leon]

Roy awoke sometime in the early evening, realizing that he was buried under a pile of rubble. Oh man... What happened earlier? He thought as he began to pushing rubble off of himself, coughing a lot as a result of all the dust that was in the air. After getting himself out of the massive pile of rubble, he realized that the rubble was the remains of a general store. The last thing he remembered before he was knocked out was helping a group of people being pursued by buzzer bots and some mechs.

After Roy had gotten up, he checked himself to make sure that he wasn't missing anything. M19...Check! Mk.22... Check! Ammo... Check! Knife... Check! Okay so it seems that I have everything with me. Now lets try walking. To his surprise, he was able to walk perfectly, meaning that he didn't have any broken bones or any pain at all for that matter.

To think, only a couple of days ago, this part of the city was full of people but now... Now they're all gone. Everything that stood here was once in great condition, but now most of it is in ruins. He was right of course, with the attack on New Westopolis came a great wake of destruction, especially in Central Square. Sure there were still buildings standing, but many of them have suffered great structural damage.

Roy continued walking the streets of the Central Square as he continued to think. I've already gotten my family out of the city, I came back to help any other survivors to get out of the city and instead I get buried in the remains of a general store. "I hope that the others were able to get out of the city on their own... Well, I guess all that's left to do is to leave this-

Roy lost his train of thought as he began hearing the sound of metal against concrete a little distance around the next street corner. Can't just throw some luck in my direction can you Chaos? He thought as he pulled his M19 out of it's holster and readied t has he slowly approached the street corner.

[Glyph]

Corner Market was a popular cafe--if not because of its affordable prices and delicious pound cake, then for it's patrons. All manner of folk, Mobian and human alike, frequented the little restaurant-slash-bakery, every day, from eleven to ten. It's signature bell--customized to play a chirpy Flicky call whenever the door was opened--could be heard all the way down the street, and the owners were a kind hearted family of humans who were very much loved through out the adjoining neighborhoods.

But now, no bells chittered in the broken rubble where the business once stood. Smoke wafted from the flames of the small fires that had broke out after the building had collapsed, and now smoke hung thick in the air, obscuring the remains of the battered walls.

From within the haze, something thumped, and a chunk of debris shifted with a metallic thud. Corner Market was dead, but not everyone--everything--was gone.

[Leon]

As he came closer to the street corner, Roy had begun moving closer to the ruined walls of what used to be the Corner Cafe. By the time he had reached the end of the wall, he had went from standing to crouching with his back against the wall. The sound of metal marching through the street had certainly grown louder, though now a new series of metallic thuds had begun. The thuds were much louder than the marching meaning that there's another one in there. I gotta move fast!

Roy looked to the left and saw a overturned hover car.Okay... Maybe if I can get behind there quick enough the one in the street won't see me. At least until the one behind me sees me. Roy turned ad put his hand at the end of the ruined wall, and quickly peeked around the corner but quickly brought it back in. The mech he had seen was a heavily modified E-1000 with improved weaponry. It was facing sideways as if it was scanning one of the buildings.

Roy waited sometime until he first set of metal began to move again. At that instant, Roy quickly shifted from crouching to a sprint. He quickly;y covered half of the distance between him and the vehicle. In the middle of the dash, he quickly glanced back to the mech in the street and saw it turning toward his direction. At that instance, he dove into a roll and stopped just barely behind the vehicle.

Damn! They better have not seen me! Out of habit, Roy quickly clicked the magazine release, grabbed the magazine as it fell, and checked to see how many bullets were left. Seven shots... Should be enough to deal with at least one of them... Hopefully... He thought as he pushed the magazine back into the gun and pulled the slide mechanism.

[Glyph]

The mech making a sweep of the street hadn't yet spotted the movement ahead, but the click of Roy's gun made the robot picking through the debris give pause.

Abandoning the ruins of Corner Market, a metal slot raised from the shoulder of the hulking E-series, and a line of green light began to sweep the area in a slow circuit--checking for abnormal heat signatures.

The green glow flickered when it reached the upturned hovercar, and the robot hesitated. Sensors indicated a bright blob of color shimmering against the ambient temperature of the car doors, but the presence of the nearby fires was complicating matters, throwing its processors haywire in bursts of color.

Slowly, the mech turned away and went back to rummaging for any unlucky survivors... But it's scanner was kept at the ready, backlit by the glow of its ever-present arm cannon...

[Leon]

Roy's heart skipped a beat as he realized there had been a green line just above where he was sitting. Had he paid attention to a mission briefing long ago, It wouldn't have taken so long for him to realize that it was part of the Mach's thermal sensors. The fact that it's using thermal must mean that it didn't see me, but heard me instead, but none of that matters now. Roy waited for a few moments, expecting some kind of sound indicating weapon fire, but nothing happened.

Roy was a bit puzzled when he got up onto one of his knees to look over the hover car only to find that the mech had returned to it's , most likely, futile search for other survivors. How did it not see me behind the car? Especially since I probably stick out like a sore thumb with these fires behind me... He shifted back into cover as this went through his head.

Roy spent the next two minutes thinking up of plans and possible out comes that would end in his favor. So far, the only one that appealed to him the most was a little risky. The plan was that he would take a small piece of concrete and throw it to where he believed the Corner Market's famous bell had been in order to create a short distraction, one that would hopefully keep the mech's attention long enough for him to dash past the mech and unload a couple of shots to disable, or at the very least take out that scanner on it's shoulder.

The only thing about this plan was that there was a lot of room for error. For one, he can be wrong about where the bell is or he can be right about where, hit it, and then the mech may pay no attention to it. Also, there was the chance that he does disable the first mech but can't deal with the one that is actually in the cafe.

Roy shook his head, and grabbed a piece of concrete from just under the upturned vehicle. He tossed the piece up in the air a couple times and watched it as it went up and down. On his fourth toss up, he grabbed the piece from the air and then brought his arm back. For the love of Order, please let this work. He then threw the concrete piece through the small window right above the cafe's door. A few seconds later he heard the famous Flicky call the bell makes.

As the bell died down, Roy immediately sprinted from the left side of the overturned vehicle. As he begun his dash, he took a quick note of where the mech had been standing. In the midst of his mad dash, he unloaded two shots in to the scanner's general area, two more into it's metallic knees, and then three final shots into it's chest. After the last bullet had been fired, he clicked the magazine release, and immediately grabbed the next clip from one of his ammo pouches, quickly loading it into the pistol.

[Glyph]

Roy needn't have worried--at the sound of the bell, the robot whirled, firing a preemptive blast from its arm cannon into the collapsing building. Before it could realize that there was no charred flesh on the other end of the cannon fire, a bullet had taken out its thermals from behind. A second tore through the hydraulics in its knees, bringing it down with a crunching hiss of air and momentarily disabling it.

However, the wild shots had caught the attention of the robot out on the street, and it immediately altered course, clumping toward Roy with enough force to take down an elephant.

[Leon]

Roy pulled the slide mechanism once more until it couldn't go back any further and released it, thus bringing the first bullet of the fifteen round magazine into the chamber. He looked back at the mech he had shot it and saw that he had, if only temporary, disabled it. That enough gave him a feeling of accomplishment. Yeah! Take that you piece of junk! Now, where's that other-

"GAAHH!" Roy yelled out in pain as he was slammed by the second mech. The impact from the blow had sent him back two feet in the air and had caused him to lose hold of his weapon. When Roy had landed, he had began to tumble backwards three times until he forced his legs to allow him to skid to a stop. Roy put left hand down on the ground in order to help slow him down. When he finally came to a stop, his left palm had been hurting badly from the friction of being dragged along the ground and his left ankle had been hurting as well because of it's key role in stopping him.

That last painful sensation didn't keep him from diving to the left so he could take cover behind a smoking wreck. After he was behind it, he grabbed his lower left leg and swore a bit. "Ah damn! Why Chaos!?" He yelled out. He pulled up the pant leg of his uniform and saw that he had begun bleeding. He put his pant leg back down and tried to stand on it. Although he grunted as a result of his pain, he was still able to stand on it. Now the only question was could he get his gun back and take out this mech.

[Glyph]

Roy's gun clattered away, sliding to a stop just out of reach of the rampaging 'bot. It's momentum hadn't ended with it's collision with the Mobian, and it plowed forward through another pile of debris, stopping only when its chassis gave an ominous creak.

The first robot, having had time to recover from its fall, raised its cannon and fired, but it's shots were mostly wild, impeded by its vulnerable spot on the ground.

The wreck Roy was hiding behind was, of course, smack dab in the middle of the two.

[Leon]

"Oh man!" Roy yelled as he swung the right side of his body to avoid the cannon fire. The damage the cannon was doing to the wreck caused one of the doors of the vehicle too become loose. This gave Roy an idea. He turned to face the vehicle and then began pulling at the door. Eventually, the door broke off and from that, he almost lost his balance as the door was held over his head. When he finally regained his balance, he took a shot to the back of his shoulder, which caused him fall back down onto his knee.

"No... I'm not going down..." He said as he had begun breathing harder. At this point, adrenaline had begun to kick in and had certainly given him the boost he needed. He turned to face the mech that had once been downed, but now shooting him, and began running toward him with the car door acting as a shield from the blasts.

During the charge, the door had been taking a great deal of damage. As he came closer to the downed robot, holes had begun to appear in the metal. Time to drop this. After the thought, Roy pushed the door into the ground and continued pushing it afterward. From there, the shield had become a substitute for a pommel horse. He grabbed the top of the door and then swung his body over the door, releasing it from his left hand first. At one point he saw that the second robot had been preparing to fire at him. It was at that instance that he had briefly believed that he was going to die, but the thought immediately left his mind as he pushed against the door with all of his strength he could find in his right arm.

That final push had given him enough momentum to perform a flip in the air, but he quickly broke out of it as he began approaching the crazed mech in front of him. Just a little ways behind it, Roy was able to see his gun. He knew that he would most likely need it for the next time he got up to face the second mech. In a final desperation attempt to gain some more distance before he landed on the ground, Roy threw up his hands and then threw them downward and then behind him as he stomped on the first mech in order to gain some more momentum. This trick had worked because rather than just landing right behind the mech, he had landed two feet behind him.

Just as he landed, Roy performed a forward roll in order to minimize the pain. When he stopped his gun had been just next to his right hand. Perfect! He thought as he picked it up and quick-turned to face the mech ,which at this point, was still firing in the same direction he had been prior to the jump as a result of it's now destroyed thermal scanners.From there, Roy ran as fast as he could until he came up just behind the first mech, in which he had then skidded to a stop. At that point, he pushed his right hand down on the mech's shoulder,causing it's knees to buckle. He then picked up his right foot and then stomped down on back of the mech's right knee, causing the whole lower portion of it's leg to break off. He then took his left hand and put it under it's arm cannon and pushed upward, thus giving him control of the direction the cannon's fire would be going, which would be firing at a continuous rate for it seems that this one had lost control of it's weapons system.

Now that Roy had full control of this mech, he dragged it along,using as a shield, until he had a the second mech in plain view. From there all Roy had to do was aim the arm cannon at it and let the hay-wired weapons system do the rest.

[Glyph]

Unfortunately, the damaged robot was made of tougher stuff than that, and seemed to have other ideas--ones that didn't involve pesky Mobians hanging from its arms. The moment Roy began trying to drag it, it shifted its weight, throwing itself to the side and putting all its force into the motion, trying to crush the fox beneath its sheer bulk.

The second robot, while sparking wildly from the hits it had sustained, leveled its good arm at the struggling pair, readying its gun to fire...

[Leon]

"What the!?" Roy said out of shock as his hostage had turned things around on him. The struggle between the fox and the damaged mech didn't last very long. What was more so a fight that determined whether or not the fox was be crushed under the weight of a E-1000 mech or not, luckily for him though, he was just barely able to push the mech to the right as he lost his balance and fell back. It was as he was falling back though that his luck went from okay, to worse.

As would anyone else's reaction to falling, Roy turned his body and extended his left arm out in order to stop his fall and with that motion, came the grotesque SNAP. The pain from his now broken arm caused him to yell out a swear, which should probably not be repeated, and only added to the pain his left shoulder felt as another shot from one of the mechs had hit him as he had just barley recovered from the fall and began to run. Unlike the first shot he took, this one hadn't hit the flak jacket that he had only begun wearing yesterday, and so he felt the shot go right through his shoulder.

At this point, all Roy could do was run even though with every step that he takes, the pain in his arm becomes more and more unbearable. But because it was the only thing he could possibly do, he began running in the direction he had originally came from, but even with all this pain he is suffering, he still managed to look back and fire into the sparking torso of the second mech. He fired off seven shots within twenty seconds and then rounded the street corner opposite to the Corner Market. He prayed to the gods that his shots actually did something as he kept running.

[Glyph]

Unable to follow, the downed robots took to shooting after the fleeing fox. Every shot went wild, though a few of the returning shots managed to score hits on their metal bodies; one of the Mobian's bullets even took out the core processor of the first E-series, putting it out of commission for good. In the end, Roy was met with nothing but silence as he rounded the corner, leaving the final mech behind him to gravel and crunch in what would have been anger, if it had an emotion chip installed.

[Leon]

Roy hadn't stopped running since he escaped from the two mechs, and it seemed that wasn't going to stop anytime soon as continued running for two more city blocks. The adrenaline rush that he had went through earlier was beginning to wear off. The pain he had been feeling earlier was nothing compared to how badly he was hurting at this point. The fox had momentarily lost focus on his surroundings and then ended tripping over a piece of asphalt that had been much higher than the rest of the street.Instead of trying to break the fall, the fox fell onto his right arm.

"SON OF A--" He began to say but then decided against finishing it. Whatever parts of his body that weren't in pain were just sore now. "Damn it..." He said as he rolled over onto his back, sending another jolt of pain through his body. "God damn it!" He pounded the bottom of his right fist onto the ground. "What was I thinking coming back into this city the gods have obviously forsaken!?"

For awhile, the fox just laid down on the ground and stared into the sky. He couldn't tell if it was still the evening or if it was night time because the sky was still orange from the dying fires of the city. For the next hour or so, Roy laid there in the middle of the street, resting his body for the time being, especially his left arm. Soon though, he will get up, and find some kind of first aid in one of the buildings that remained intact.

[Glyph]

Luckily, there was a little pharmacy on the street Roy was currently using as a bed. It sat, not too far away, in the shadow of two larger, ruined office towers, which just so happened to be why it was still standing in the first place.

Out of the gloom, a pair of eyes appeared, scanning the street nervously before disappearing back into the depths of the building as quickly as they'd come.

[Leon]

Come on bro, don't tell me you're giving up now! Get up!" A voice had said teasingly in Roy's mind. At the thought of actually have heard the voice, the fox quickly sat up and looked around him. "Lee!?" he called out expecting a response. After realizing that no one was around, Roy shook his head and looked up at the orange sky, which had grown a bit darker since the last time he looked at it. Damn. I must fallen asleep or something because there is no way that he could be here... I'm just lucky I wasn't spotted. The thought of his former brother in arms being here was insane being that Roy was the one who had killed him two years ago. He often tried to put this behind himself, but always found it to be difficult on account of all that they had been through together.

In the next moment, Roy stood up and began walking down the street, holding his left arm on account that it was still hurting. What was wrong with his arm was that the forearm portion had been bent too far in the wrong direction as a result of his fall earlier.

As he continued walking down the street, the fox surveyed the buildings, searching for some place that may have some first aid kits or something of the sort. "Well alright" Roy said as he began to grin as he saw the little pharmacy that had been sitting next to the two ruined office buildings. The fox quickened his pace as he drew closer to the small establishment. To his surprise, he was able to see that the lights of the pharmacy were working, at least to some extent being that some them had been flickering on and off.

As he entered the building, the fox had made his way toward the center aisle. He didn't necessarily find a first aid kit, but he did find the things that would belong in one such as a wooden splint, a roll of medical gauze, a sling, some thread and a needle. Now all he needed was a mirror, and lucky for him, there was a full body mirror at the very end of the aisle. He then took all of the supplies he had gathered and brought them to the end of the aisle, where he then cleared off the top shelf of everything else and placed his things. Now that he was ready to begin patching himself up, Roy took off the uniform's jacket and the flak jacket under it and hung it on the shelf's corner along with his gun holster.

The first thing that caught his eye was the wound that remained as the result of the shot that had hit his left shoulder. The wound was still bleeding at the time, and to add on it, there was a similar wound on the backside of his shoulder, which was where the bullet had originally entered his body. The fox then touched the front wound and felt a great amount of pain. Afterwards, he opened up the bottle of rubbing alcohol and poured it on his left shoulder in order to begin patching himself up.

Half an hour later, Roy had finished sewing up both of the wounds on his shoulder and the one that was on the back of his left leg. Now all that remains was his arm that had bent to far back. What he was thinking of doing seemed insane to most people, but this was something he had to do in order to push onward without risking doing even more damage to it. Plus, this was something that he has done on three other separate occasions.

Roy reached over to the top shelf in the aisle and grabbed the wooden splint and moved to the end of the shelf, got down on one knee, and then put his back against the flat surface of the shelf's end. He then took in several deep breaths, and then proceeded to put the wooden splint in his mouth for him to bite on. Roy's breathing rate quickened as he brought his right hand up and took hold of his left forearm. The sound of him breathing turned into grunts, and his eyes had become watery as he readied himself for the next thing he was about to do.

5. 4. 3. 2... 1... SNAP

Roy had pulled his forearm back into it's proper position, and with it came that grotesque snap. The action caused him to shriek in pain, or at least it would have had he not been bitting down on the wooden splint, and also made him bang his head back into the shelf as well as bring him off his one knee and down onto the ground. The fox had been writhing in pain for quite sometime with a couple of tears ruining down his cheeks. Shortly, his breathing had returned to it's regular tempo.

The fox then sat back up against the shelves and took the splint out of his mouth. From there he took the remaining roll of gauze and began wrapping it around his arm, with the splint being wrapped closely to it to act as a support. He then placed his hand in the sling that had been put around his neck. Roy stood up and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked like he was returning home after his first assignment in the Special forces Unit.

Now that he had mended his wounds, Roy began looking in the other aisles in search for some food and water. As he searched for those, the fox had realized that the pharmacy was in a worse shape then it had appeared from the outside. There was a bunch of cans scattered across the aisles and the glass of the refrigerator doors have been shattered.

All that didn't matter though, for he was able to find a few unopened cans of tomato soup as well as four or five bottles of fresh water, unopened as well. He took all of these and brought it back to the end of the center aisle and hen sat down under where he had hung his uniform's jacket , the flak jacket, and his holster, which had his M19 in it. After taking his seat, he took a can opener he had grabbed from the other aisle, opened one of the tomato soup cans, and began to drink the soup from the can. The soup itself tasted so delicious to Roy that they may as well have plucked the tomatoes right off of the vines and had immediately made it into a soup. This so called meal was the only thing that Roy really needed right now.