Fiction Fragment Friday
This story inspired by my love of Power Rangers and Voltron took quite a few turns as it was coming out. The battle was straight forward, but the ending evolved with a tonal shift coming with each evolution. I had three very different endings come to mind two of them ended up merging together to become what you are about to read.
My head was pounding, my vision blurry, and every inch of my body sore. The smell of burning circuit boards assaulted my nose as capacitors burst throughout the cockpit of my Lightning Dragon mech. The voices of my teammates yelling for me broadcast through the radio in my helmet, but I was too dazed to comprehend what they were saying at first. It was far from the first or last time I would take a hard hit, but it was the worst I had experienced up to that point.
“Evan, talk to us, man. Are you ok?” Micah’s voice crystallized in my head. He might be my friend, but I just knew he was waiting for the chance to take over as leader.
“I’m fine,” I said, gritting my teeth and trying to keep the pain out of my voice. I realized that my tone was harsher than I had intended, so I softened it. “Or I will be. Everyone hit-and-run tactics. It’s strong and trust me, you don’t want it getting its hands on you.”
On my console systems were coming back online. My monitors flashed back on, showing me I had been buried under a pile of boulders. It was still so hard to think, but I remember being tossed through the air into the side of a mountain. I must have caused an avalanche. My mech groaned, straining to push itself free. As the head emerged, I could see my team barely avoiding the wild swings of the Petrabeast. Thankfully, it was slow, but nothing they were doing could get through its stone skin.
“This isn’t working, guys. We can’t even scratch it.” My normally unflappable Daphne sounded worried. I knew part of that was having seen me get tossed around. Ever since we started dating, she had gotten protective of me in the field. It didn’t matter that I was the better fighter and had a more powerful mech.
“Time to unite. Combination sequence initiating.” I have to wonder why we even bother even fighting with our individual Elemental Dragon Mechs. Every fight we have to unite into Draconis. If we just started combined, it would probably save some time. My mind often wanders like that as my mech reconfigures itself and connects with the others. The five mechs generate a strong force field around themselves while uniting. If they didn’t the creatures, we fight would just hit us while we are joining and can’t fight back.
All five cockpits slide through the insides of the mechs combining deep in the core into one control room. My team was once again by my side, but I didn’t give them more than a quick glance and nod of acknowledgement. We all had to monitor the power sync. If any of the dragons were out of phase with the others, the union would fail. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen very often and this time we merged with no alarms triggering. One giant humanoid robot, instead of five smaller dragons. We all called off our system checks even though no one ever pays attention to them. We say them just out of ingrained routine and to remind ourselves not to overlook them.
“Draconis online,” I said with a smile on my face, hidden under the helmet. “Let’s pay this thing back for that cheap shot.”
Draconis built up momentum, running shoulder first into the Petrabeast. The creature flew backwards from the impact, knocked off its feet and to the ground.
“That’s more like it,” Audry said from my left. I could see her hands flying across the controls. Sometimes I think she was born to pilot an Elemental Dragon Mech. It took the rest of us weeks to master ours, but she was flying circles around us within an hour. She just goes into a zone where everything but the controls fade away.
Our Mech’s right arm raised to point towards the Petrabeast. Four rockets popped out of the wrist encircling the fist before launching. Each rocket impacted the downed stone creature. They barely cracked the outer stone shell of its armor. A crack was all Joel needed, though. The left hand was formed from the head of his Water Dragon and as it opened its mouth, a high-powered stream of water shot out of it. The water focused on the cracks, working its way into them and spreading them further apart.
“There’s our opening. Redirect power to the energy lance.” I could see power outputs shifting on my displays as the team followed my orders. In Draconis’s hands, a beam of plasma held together by an electromagnetic field formed a solid lance. It didn’t come to an actual point so much as a rounded end. It fit perfectly into the opening in the stone armor, though. We stabbed deep into the creature. Lightning generated from my dragon that formed the torso traveled down the lance and into the creature, bypassing the stone shell it had previously just bounced off. The Petrabeast screamed as it was destroyed from the inside out, finally bursting under us. The stone shrapnel buffeted Draconis, but we managed to stay on our feet.
I could hear sighs of relief around me in the control room. The fight had been closer than any of us cared to admit in that moment. We were victorious, though, and the creature had not gotten close enough to the domed colony to do any damage. I was going to have bruises the next morning in places I didn’t know could get bruises, but my friends all made it out without a scratch. As much as I hurt for the next week, I would give anything to go back to that moment. The last fight before Micah betrayed us and Joel fell in battle. The last time I could look in the mirror without hating the person staring back at me for driving Daphne away when I needed her most.
I would lead many versions of the team over those five years after, but none of them would ever feel like family again. That was the sacrifice I had to make to keep protecting the colony. I never thought I could ever let anyone get close again, but I was wrong. Like so many times before, your mom would prove me wrong. Only Audry could break through my defenses and show me I was protecting everyone else’s lives without living one of my own anymore. That is a story for another night, though. Don’t you groan boys, you asked for a bedtime story of one of my toughest battles and that is exactly what you got. Time for bed.
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