• The Brutal Ballad of Axl

    I awoke with a start, looking around; all I saw was the ruined remains of what was probably once a great lab. Computer terminals, crushed and shattered, other equipment pulverized…. And robot parts.
    HOLY CRAP! I’m trapped in a tube. This thing was about 3 times my size, about 19.5 feet tall and 9 feet wide.
    “Why am I in here, dangit?” much other than two words: Axl, and Sigma. I could remember that I had powers but I didn’t know what they were. Then something bounced against my legs, I looked down to see two holsters, complete with guns, and a sheathed sword. As I said the tube is roomy, so I figured it was worth it to give blasting my way out a shot, no pun intended. I pulled one of the guns out of its holster, and aimed at the glass. When all of a suddenly thing that looked kinda like a green rectangular monocle popped out in front of me, from…… Something behind/on my ear, that kinda looked like a Bluetooth… it started scanning the glass, and homed in on one spot, I shifted my aim to match, and fired, the glass shattered into thousands of pieces. I stepped out. I must’ve been sleeping for a long time, because I was as stiff as a corpse after rigor mortis has set in… I started walking around to loosen up, then I heard something, I whipped around, and I touched the earpiece, and out popped the monocle, I wondered how it worked.
    I said “scan for life.” No response, so cross out vocal, so I thought… low and behold, it worked. Back to the story, it started scanning, and picked up a small life form about six by four inches long and wide. I walked over to it and… wow, it was a small green bunny looking thing, with red beady eyes, after about thirty seconds of just staring at me, and it spoke,
    “Hi mister, what is your name, I’m Gino.” I was dumbfounded, I managed to stammer
    “I don’t know Axel I guess. What are you?” When I thought about it he had a high voice like that of a small child. He or she twitched its nose before answering,
    “I’m a grunnie, a genetically enhanced bunny.” I nodded and sat down cause there was a lot I needed to learn and I didn’t feel like standing.
    “Umm… Gino”, I guessed he was a boy “I need to know where, when and WHAT the hell I am.” He walked over and sniffed my leg
    “Well, the where is an old shutdown lab on the outskirts of Able city, the biggest city of the world. When is 3672. What, you smell like both a human and a reploid.” I could feel the beads of sweat on my head.
    I asked “uhh… okay would you mind telling me exactly what a reploid is?” Now he was the dumbfounded one. One of his ears went limp and his eyes bulged.
    He breathlessly asked, “Dude, how long have you been in there?”
    “I don’t remember!”
    “Well, I’ll accompany you. You are going to need some help.”
    “Thanks, Gino”, I replied gratefully.
    “No problem!” He hopped up on my said saying, “Hop!” as he did and made himself comfortable.
    Gino said, “Alright! Let’s get out of here.”
    “Which way?”
    “Straight ahead, CHARGE!” And charge I did right to an opening in the wall. At that opening I stopped instinctively.
    “What, the…! Why did you stop?”
    I said, “Look down!” Turns out my instinct was right because below us was a chasm that seemed infinite. I hoped that monocle thing would help. I turned it on and it calculated where I need to be when I jumped and how fast I needed to be going. The where was easy but the fast, that’s where it got complicated. I had to be going about 70 miles per hour, at least, to cross safely. I tested my running speed, 40 miles per hour. At this point,
    Gino drooped into my face and said, “Um, you’re part reploid. Use your dash ability. Focus your energy into your feet and discharge it. You’ll almost triple your speed for about 10 seconds.” So I tested it in the direction we’d come from and it worked. So then I got a running start and dashed as I jumped. I went flying. I floundered as I did it but it worked. All I needed was a little practice. But I landed on my feet and then my face. It hurt A LOT. Gino was laughing so hard he fell off my head.
    “I’m going to leave you behind…”
    “NO WAIT! There are things out here that’ll eat a little guy like me!”
    I could feel my eye twitch “Then hurry up and qui...”
    “KA-BOOM!!!” there then was an ear-splitting explosion strong enough to destroy ten city blocks, and I mean totally LEVEL that space. I turned to see a tower collapsing.
    “GINO! HOP ON WE HAVE TO HURRY!”
    “Right, two steps ahead of ya’”

    I ran like hell, and reached the area in seconds. I saw androids, slicing the building, blasting them to pieces, and in the middle of it all was a beautiful girl. Voluptuous figure, long flowing tan hair, with armor like mine, but more female suited, and a kind face. Her leg was stuck under a large piece of building. A tower was falling on a collision course DIRECTLYAT HER!
    “Gino hang on! Its gonna get rough!” I dashed off the hill we were on gliding with the wings I didn’t know I have whipping out my sword, I slashed every piece of falling concrete to mere dust. I dropped, and landed deftly on my feet. Gino hopped down
    “umm… partner, don’t look now, but there are a lotta baddies coming this way!”
    I spun, “goddang, that’s a lot” and it was they numbered somewhere in the millions, about 3.678 mil.
    Gino looked greener than usual, “great, that’s what, three of is, one who cant fight and three million of them?”
    “that’s just the way I like it” I growled, smiling and giggling like a madman.
    He went totally slack “are you frigging INSANE!?”
    All I did was cackle wildly into the pale darkness surrounding the full moon, I could feel the adrenaline pump, I whipped out both guns, and put the reactors in overdrive, bombarding the oncoming reploids (I guessed that what they are) with a hellstorm of plasma bolts, turning the first wave into swiss cheese (although swiss cheese doesn’t spark at the holes) Gino stood up on his haunches, his mouth aglow with a red orange and yellow light spilling out the sides, suddenly… *fwshoom* he unleashed a wave of fire six feet high and about twenty feet wide, turning the reploids in front into slag, and turned the others into extra crispy bacon. The fighing went on for about ten minutes, at the end, the last one tried to sneak up on us. I promptly sliced him in two. When I did it, the sword was glowing blue, and the division was rough, and I was sure I could do it again, so I named the technique “rough divide” and I turned to the beautiful girl.
    “Are you okay? How bad are you hurt?”
    “not bad, I’ll be okay” she tried to stand “Ahh!” and fell again
    “ill get you to a hospital” I turned to Gino “where is the nearest med center?
    He twitched and answered “about a mile north”
    I nodded.
    “lets go little guy” I picked up the girl and after Gino got on my head, I dashed upward, and then horizontally I glided the entire distance, while in flight, the girl and I chatted
    “So, may I ask the names of my saviors’?”
    “I’m Axl, the little guy is Gino, he’s a grunnie. May I ask the same of you?”
    “I’m Alia, I came from a lab not far from here, only a few hours ago, I was in a tube, I couldn’t remember anything.”
    “Hey, the same as you mountain man” Gino interjected cheerfully.
    I growled “I thought we agreed to keep that under wraps until we got somewhere that’s a research facility!”
    I could see he was nervous, he knew I’d drop him if he went too far “right, sorry big guy…” he chuckled nervously “please don’t drop me”
    And in the middle of it all, Alia laughed so hard she nearly fell out of my arms, I almost killed myself trying to saver her.
    “HEY! What are you laughing at?” I said jokingly, I made a fake serious/angry face
    She laughed even harder, damn even her laugh was beautiful, I think I’m falling in love with her…
    Apparently Gino can read minds in addition to fire breathing “he-he, you got no chance compared to me” he chuckled “dream on lover boy, dream until your dream comes truu--------ue! Sing with me, sing for the year, sing for the laughter sing for the tears, sing with me if its just for today, maybe to morrow the good lord will take you away-hey! Dream on, dream on, dream on, dream on!!!” *credit to aerosmith*
    “Okay, dude cheap 80’s music references aside, were here.”
    “every time that I look in the mirror, all these lines on my face getting clearer, the past is goooooooone it went by like dust at dawn!”
    “Hey, skeezicks, get it in gear!”
    “Pain in my a**”
    “That’s my line you little fire breathing jukebox”
    “Tin can!”
    “Rodent!”
    “Scrap heap!”
    “Alright silly games aside, let’s go, I think Alia’s condition is deteriorating!”
    He looked concerned and shocked at the same time “Alright, let’s go big guy, CHARGE!”
    “Ya know, the “CHARGE!” thing is getting old.,. the caps take up a lot more page space than regular text!”
    “Dude, no breaking the fourth wall, remember? We will be fired! And cut the exclamation points, this aint a cheesy Japanese TV show, we don’t exclaim, in every sentence.”
    “Whatever, we need to hurry.” I said both passively and concernedly at the same time, grimacing as I saw Alia getting paler, I wasn’t going to let her die, I had to protect her… at any cost…” I swore to myself that I would die to protect Alia.
    I dashed into the building, almost crashing into the desk, the receptionist almost fell over.
    I roared “Get this girl help! She in bad shape, her leg was badly damaged in an attack on the outskirts.”
    The receptionist took a moment to answer but when she did “I assume you two are reploids?”
    I smiled a painful little half smile/sneer, “Actually, we are both human and reploid. We came from a lab about a mile and a half south of here.”
    She went as white as a ghost “no way, but project X got shut down years ago! How did you two survive? Dr. Light must have left the stasis gel in your maturation chambers, so therefore you developed on your own.”
    I was confused “Okay, what’s project X?”
    “It…”
    “Never mind, there’s no Alia is only getting worse, tell me later, I’m Axl by the way so you know who to ask for later. Lead the way.”
    She nodded “alright, I’m Laura by the by, come on kid,’’
    I twitched at that one, as I walked I griped, “your no older than me, I’m 17 dangit it!” that last one I said under my breath
    She flinched “Dang it bobby, I’m 17 too, in this day and age, almost everyone was able to get a job somewhere, the Maverick Hunters, where you’ll probably be going, your little girlfriend too. But she’ll be relief force, you’ll be front line fighter.”
    Just to change the subject, I said in a friendly tone “so, what are you, Hunters or Relief, or what did you want to be better yet?”
    She sighed and took a moment to answer, she looked sad “I’m a human, so I can’t be Hunters, my dad wanted me to be though”
    “hmm… so, what did YOU want to be, that’s all that matters, if someone else doesn’t like it, tell them “screw you, it MY life, I just wanna live while I’m alive, and I’m gonna live it MY way. Ya know?”
    She led me into the room I laid Alia gently on the bed, and sat on the chair next to Laura.
    She smiled at me “Ya know, you’re not half bad Axl, thanks, I needed that, I wanted to be a scientist, but my dad always yelled at me saying ‘NO YOU WILL BE A HUNTER! I don’t want a geek for a child, I want a hard-boiled soldier.’ Even though his dream killed my mom, she was killed by a maverick at the Hunter base. My dad then committed suicide because he didn’t want to live without my mom, I was 12 at the time, then I met Jacob and Ben… they raised me as their little sister and leader, they are loyal, and usually lovable, but ya gotta beat sense into Jacob occasionally… but they are my brothers, and I love them all the same.” She smiled, “so, what’s your family like?”
    I frowned, :I don’t remember my family…”
    She let it drop...
    And so ends our story for today, this is just a trail run for the full: “The brutal Ballad of Axl” story. Check to see it soon on a blog near you!
    “I SAID NO MORE EXCLAMATIONS”
    “no caps either”