Mac leapt away from him and Aoba has his eyes to his sights, picking out his targets. In the end, the Vex made for remarkably convenient targets. A body was a wider target than a head, and the glowing white sections of their abdomens practically broadcast their positions. Even when they ducked their crested heads in the way, craniums shattering under the gunfire and driving them berserk, all he had to do was keep aiming.
He heard Declan more than he saw him. Felt him. That thud against his back, the fury he radiated. When the Titan stepped, Aoba read him and stepped to. He was no Guardian, no Hunter, not trained and probably never would be, but the contact Declan made with him was electric and somehow, Aoba read it right away.
Maybe it was because only moments later, the Titan was something just as feral as Aoba’s core was. And somewhere in that madness, Aoba was laughing.
One of the hulking chassis, the kind called Minotaurs, escaped Declan’s swathe of destruction and thundered Aoba’s way. He fired the last shots in his magazine, shifting his stance when his trigger pulls earned only dry clicks, focusing all of his attention on that shimmering white core-
-at lot more happened at Aoba’s perspective than the outside. Between one step and the next the Minotaur uttered a warbling, distorted keen and the light went out as it buckled to the ground. As for Aoba, he snapped out of a moment that had gone on for eternity and pulled off his helmet, turning to survey the battlefield with wildness in the brilliant gold of his eyes.
They weren’t as impossible as Mac thought.
“VEX!” he shouted, voice flanged and resonant, something a normal human throat would have never formed. He ordered their attention, not the Guardians’, and all across the battlefield the mechlike creatures staggered and froze, red eyes all turning his way.
Sitting targets for Declan and Mac to be sure, not one reacting even if the Guardians continued to mow them down, but Aoba was absolutely not about to be content with that.
“YOU DO NOT FIT THE PATTERN,” he told them. “BE REMOVED FROM IT AND BE DESTROYED.”
And then what happened to the one Vex happened to them all. In chaotic synchronicity they screamed in their myriad voices, collapsing in on themselves, the white lights of their liquid minds going dark and leaving their metal shells empty as they fell to the Venusian soil.
By the end of it, only the Guardians, and Aoba, still stood.
no subject
He heard Declan more than he saw him. Felt him. That thud against his back, the fury he radiated. When the Titan stepped, Aoba read him and stepped to. He was no Guardian, no Hunter, not trained and probably never would be, but the contact Declan made with him was electric and somehow, Aoba read it right away.
Maybe it was because only moments later, the Titan was something just as feral as Aoba’s core was. And somewhere in that madness, Aoba was laughing.
One of the hulking chassis, the kind called Minotaurs, escaped Declan’s swathe of destruction and thundered Aoba’s way. He fired the last shots in his magazine, shifting his stance when his trigger pulls earned only dry clicks, focusing all of his attention on that shimmering white core-
-at lot more happened at Aoba’s perspective than the outside. Between one step and the next the Minotaur uttered a warbling, distorted keen and the light went out as it buckled to the ground. As for Aoba, he snapped out of a moment that had gone on for eternity and pulled off his helmet, turning to survey the battlefield with wildness in the brilliant gold of his eyes.
They weren’t as impossible as Mac thought.
“VEX!” he shouted, voice flanged and resonant, something a normal human throat would have never formed. He ordered their attention, not the Guardians’, and all across the battlefield the mechlike creatures staggered and froze, red eyes all turning his way.
Sitting targets for Declan and Mac to be sure, not one reacting even if the Guardians continued to mow them down, but Aoba was absolutely not about to be content with that.
“YOU DO NOT FIT THE PATTERN,” he told them. “BE REMOVED FROM IT AND BE DESTROYED.”
And then what happened to the one Vex happened to them all. In chaotic synchronicity they screamed in their myriad voices, collapsing in on themselves, the white lights of their liquid minds going dark and leaving their metal shells empty as they fell to the Venusian soil.
By the end of it, only the Guardians, and Aoba, still stood.