Chapter 444: Metal Shells

The dilapidated storefront exploded with metal and tiny pebbles of tempered glass. Throwing out a huge wave of dust when the giant insects burst out into the open with no regard for damage. To set their ambush the cockroaches had entered in single file, carefully picking their way through the rubble to not leave an obvious trail. Now, they ignored all of that and skittered out in a wide line. Their front halves were plated with a silvery metal, similar to what the ratmen made their weapons out of. In the air, a dozen of those rifles were floating, from where they had been firing on the ratmen who once owned them. They all spun in place and aimed towards the oncoming armored roaches.

Crystal shards shot out and there was a sound of shattering when they struck against the armor plates. Many shots flew towards the giant cockroaches, but most of them did nothing. One of them struck one of the riders, the ratman was fully covered in armored plates, but one of the shards flew between the gap in his helmet and right into his eyes. The roach continued to charge even with the rider on its back slumping over. Another of the shards struck the leg joint of a roach and caused it to careen over to the side, bumping into another roach and ruining their charge. Three of the roaches still charged towards the two wearing gas masks while the riders took aim with a strange weapon that looked like a cross between a cow catcher, a dozer blade, and antlers. It looked somewhat like the antenna of the cockroach had been enlarged and multiplied a dozen times. Now that they were charging forward the ratmen on their backs pulled on levers and the many antenna swung forward into a ram like shape.

Just before they were stabbed full of holes, the pair in blue coveralls flew off into the air. They moved much slower than the Fisher Punk had, but they were fast enough to avoid the charge, lifting straight up to remove them from the range of those sharp horns. Their grey tortoise shell backpacks were lifted up higher in the air than them, the harness on the pack lifting their bodies and pulling them away from the assault.

They avoided the deadly charge of the giant roaches, but they were also distracted from their attack upon the other ambushers. Many of the ratmen had been burned by flames or disarmed and shot by their own rifles, but there were still many more of them remaining and they opened fire on the two as they floated through the air. The floating rifles fell to the ground when one of the shards struck the woman’s arm. She flinched from the pain and the man to her side reached out for her. His head turned rapidly, darting around and causing fire to blossom in a dozen different places, but it didn’t stop all the weapons fire. Then he threw his arms out and huge sheets of flame fell from the sky. The large walls of fire didn’t block the crystal shots, but it did block the ratmen’s view.

Sage watched from underground as another projectile struck the woman’s leg and then two of them hit upon the man’s abdomen. They continued to float through the air, not daring to go back to the ground where the roach cavalry were, instead they moved towards the nearest building and flew into an open set of windows. Sage moved the Warp Worm underneath the building, but there were too many obstacles for his Spiritual Sense to get a good picture of what was going on. He sent out a Blacksilver Pawn and had the Twin Soul tag along. The Blacksilver Pawns were like an additional limb, but they didn’t have sensory organs which made them difficult to control and limited their usefulness from a distance.

Inside the building, the ratmen were no match for the two psychics. Out in the open, dozens of them had been focusing fire, but inside the building there was so much obscuring cover and narrow doorways that the two psychics easily killed the dozen ratmen on the floors near them. Outside, the other rats had set up a perimeter with the roaches, a new rider replacing the fallen one and the injured roach compensating for the damaged joint without issue. The five of them crowded around the ground floor entrances of the building while the other rats moved into the surrounding buildings. A few shots flew into the windows, but then other shots flew back.

Seems they’ve cornered them… nevermind.

Just as he was wondering if the psychics would get killed, fire bathed the giant cockroaches. The armor didn’t seem affected, but the roaches inside let out high pitched squeals as they fell to the ground and burned up. The riders were fully armored, but the heat of the burning flames beneath them roasted them inside their metal shells. In just a few moments the five armored roaches were dead.

Boom!

The building where the two psychics had been hiding exploded. Or at least three floors of it did. The massive boom was followed by a second, and then there was a low rumble as the entire skyscraper began to collapse. The floors above the pair of explosions came falling down smashing through the five floors below them before the top of the building careened off to the side and smashed against one across the street. The force of the impact caused that building to smash apart and tip over as well. Some of the ratmen were in that building and they suffered from the collision of buildings, many falling or getting crushed by debris.

The falling structures finally settled into silence after a few minutes, the battle having come to a pause as the combatants ran for their lives. The Blacksilver Pawn squeezed itself out from underneath a fallen concrete beam. Sage had also fled a block away with the Warp Worm, not wanting to know if any of the damage would transfer to the underground. The Pawn moved through the ruined building, looking for the remains of the two psychics. Already he could hear the yells of the ratmen outside as they regrouped and took a headcount.

Across the street in a different direction, the cause of the devastation showed itself. The giant roach with the huge cannon on its back was being tended to by a ratman standing beside it. The big bug was being fed and praised for doing such a good job stabilizing the cannon. Then there was a flash of light and a red mark appeared on the roach handler’s forehead. A rifle had lifted out of a holster on the roach and shot him from behind. Then it spun and shot the other ratman riding at the back who was operating the cannon. The other ratmen near the building started to yell and run, but then the cannon tilted and fired at them.

There was another booming explosion as the largest group of the ratmen was blasted into bits. Purple crystal shards, grey fur, and bloody red chunks were splattered over the street. The cannon fired three more times, and another one of the buildings was toppled. Rifles floated out of hands, flipping over in mid-air and shooting their owner. Sage watched on as the remaining ratmen fled or were killed by their own weapons. Eventually, the woman limped out of the rubble of the fallen building. Behind her, the man was unconscious and floating through the air on a makeshift stretcher made out of an old table with the legs shorn off. Then, she pointed at the wall the Blacksilver Pawn was hiding behind and yelled something. The wall was ripped away and revealed the strange black tar like skin of the Blacksilver Pawn.

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