Chapter 3: Plop
The twins were bickering like there was no tomorrow.
Summer, the self-proclaimed older twin, had long, glowing ruby hair that cascaded down her armored exo-suit like the tail feathers of a bright phoenix, spilling out from beneath her helmet and reaching the soles of her feet. Winter, on the other hand, had short hair, so there wasn't any coming out of her helmet, but her figure was slightly better than her sisters.
Both twins were about four feet five in height and quite petite, but their stature betrayed their age. Lloyd could still remember the fates of all those who tried to treat these women like kids. He was glad the thought never glanced at him when they joined Unit 68.
Lloyd had no idea what it was this time that they were disagreeing on, and he had no plans on finding out. Getting bullied while trying to rest would not be very conducive at the moment.
Unfortunately for Lloyd, he stared at them just long enough for the twins to notice him, and it was already too late. Summer walked up to Lloyd like she owned the area he existed in, stopping just close enough to completely disregard his personal space. Lloyd acted like he couldn't see her, but ignoring her wouldn't make her go away.
"Is there a problem, boy?" she asked while getting closer and closer, her hand about to grab his neck.
Winter tried to jump in and diffuse the situation, but as she took a single step, she was interrupted by a large explosion just a few tens of meters away from her.
The explosion was massive and powerful, carrying layers of snow, mud, and dust off the ground as it appeared. Colt didn't even need to give out orders before everyone began sprinting away from it. They had been too occupied with their stupid chatter to truly understand that they were on the battlefield.
The explosion came from one of the shells used to cleanse the land once it had been invaded. The fact that such a weapon had been deployed proved one thing. The frontline had fallen, and the higher-ups had decided to initiate the first stage of cleansing.
Lloyds' face shifted into confusion as he thought about the situation. Could the frontline have already fallen? That didn't make any sense. It had only been a few minutes since the ground strike had been initiated. How could the first line of defense be defeated so easily?
Summer and all other members had the same thoughts. The soldiers of the frontlines wouldn't be taken out by any normal creature. It had to be something more powerful than what they had seen exit the spires. It wasn't the first time humanity had dealt with chimeras from the realm of flaming corpses. Such creatures should be unable to eradicate a full squad of limitless humans in such little time.
Their thoughts were soon silenced by a voice spontaneously appearing behind them.
"Oh, are you guys thinking about me? Awwn. How sweet. You're gonna make me blush." A hollow voice spontaneously manifested behind Summer and shook everyone.
In an instant, all members of the unit had their eyes fixed on Summer, but they couldn't see her. Couldn't sense her either. It was like she disappeared, like she was never there.
No one could breathe for a few seconds. Something had taken Summer, but it wasn't her disappearance that scared them the most. It was the fact that no one was able to notice it until it was too late. Just what could this malicious entity be? They wondered in fear.
"Plop." A seemingly round, hairy object fell from the sky to the ground. It was no larger than a basketball, but the sound it made was more than enough to break the silence.
Colt was the first recognize what it was, and as soon as he did, his usually emotionless face twisted into a complex mixture of fear, anger, and sadness. His jaw clenched, and his eyes seemed to change with some strange inner turmoil. The lines on his forehead wrinkled, and his lips trembled intensely as tears fell from his eyes. The expressions of everyone changed one after the other as they too realized what it was.
Lloyd took the longest to understand, and as soon as he did, his face turned bland. As if all the joy that could be seen on his face was vanquished in a second.
"Summer…?" he said.
"NO, NO, NO… NOOOOOOOOO… SUMMMMMMMMMER!" Lloyd screamed at the top of his lungs as his bland eyes started leaking.
"You're way too f*cking loud." The voice that spoke before Summer disappeared spoke once more. And the moment it did, Lloyd could feel his body being pushed away.
From Lloyd's perspective, the world was a little blurry. It took him a few seconds to realize his feet had even left the ground. While his body moved, he took a look at where he was before he found himself gliding through the air, and saw something strange.
He wasn't there anymore, but something else was. It was a man, no, it was far too tall to be a man.
Briggs was a giant in his own right, but that thing made the seven-foot-tall giant look like a child. Its head was a nightmarish fusion of an owl and a human skull. It had a large feathery cloak which covered a majority of its body, its skin like wet latex in the rain, its fingers like long black spiky sticks, and its eyes glowing with crimson, a color so bright and bloody, it could demoralize the strongest of wills. A terrible monster attempting to take human form, standing in the rain.
Whatever this thing was, Lloyd concluded that since it could talk, it couldn't be one of the chimeras that exited the spires. Creatures from the Umbra lumen shouldn't be capable of speech, so it couldn't be one of those. A failed experiment from a rival military fraction perhaps? But that wouldn't make sense either. Why would they be attacked in the same moment they were protecting the nation from a spire attack?
As Lloyd was blasted away by an unseen force, he broke through multiple trees. With every tree he destroyed, a piece of his armor shattered as well, until there was nothing left.
When Lloyd's body came to a halt, he was left brutally battered on the floor, his blood slowly seeping down his smooth chocolate skin, his military uniform now covered in blood, mud, and wet snow. He couldn't move. He felt like every bone in his body was broken, and every blood vessel ruptured.
His left hand still felt usable, but the rest of his body was in shambles, his left leg twisted in the wrong direction, his right hand's bone shattered easily like a stick, now protruding out of his flesh, his right leg swollen from internal bleeding, a few broken ribs, piercing his organs, causing them to rupture.
His breath was heavy and barely audible as he struggled to speak. "Shit. With this amount of damage… I'll be dead in just a few minutes. I need to find it… I need to find the stim," he said as he breathed like a dying beast resting at the bottom of a tree.
His eyes frantically searched for something among the debris of the shattered armor that once covered his body. He needed to find it before his body gave out.
Lloyd's caramel eyes lit up slightly as he spotted what he was looking for.
"There it is." Lloyd said with a shaky voice and slowly crawled towards the fallen chest plate of his armor, using only his left hand to drag himself forward. All he could think about at the moment was reaching it.
By the time Colt noticed that Lloyd had been attacked, Lloyd was already a few meters away. Consumed by fear, he could barely move, only able to slightly tilt his head to observe what attacked them.
Of all his years working for the military, he had faced monsters amongst monsters.
Some could turn concrete to dust with a breath, others had skin as durable as iron. Perhaps all the praise from defeating such foes left him feeling braver than usual, like he could handle even greater threats. But never in all his days had he ever come face to face with true power. He couldn't move, none of them could move. They felt like prey, desperately hoping that their ends would be quick while facing the ultimate predator.
No one could speak but Lloyd, who was now holding a stem shot with golden fluid within it. With a swift movement, he stabbed it directly into his chest, flinching slightly as it pierced his flesh.
Lloyd giggled lightly as he looked at the ten-foot-tall abomination and screamed at the top of his lungs.
"Two minutes. I only need two minutes!"
Watching Lloyd's display, the creature blurted out words loudly. "Do all you humans laugh when you face death? How fascinating, how fascinating indeed."
Hearing Lloyd's words, Bruce lunged at the owl monster with enough force to break the bones of an elephant. It didn't damage the being in any noticeable way, but Bruce's impact at least sent the creature skidding across the snowy, muddy ground, cracking stones easily as it moved.
Everyone else began to move as Bruce sent it flying, and Colt stepped forward.
"Lloyd's talking about time? Him? The kid who can barely keep up with our warm-ups?" Colts' gaze steadied as he looked at all of them. "You hear him? He's still fighting. While the rest of us stood there ready to die."
"Don't you feel ashamed? Don't you feel ashamed that the only one who still wants to fight is the guy without a complex, that's now at death's door?"
"We're buying him those two minutes," he roared. "All of them. I don't care if this thing breaks every bone in our bodies. We will buy him that time"
Colt stood before the owl monster, Bruce and Briggs flanked him, and the rest followed.
Thirty seconds had passed since Lloyd asked for time.
One minute and thirty seconds left.