Cale Cooper’s squad of Empowered nervously shift their weight. Wendy, a fellow squad leader, and the only other 2-Star in the entire platoon leans over and whispers to him.

  “Cale, look. It’s Machina.”

  The 2-Star warrior looks where Wendy is pointing before slapping down her hand.

  “Don’t point!”

  Machina and the Colonel are discussing something, quietly and far away enough that even Cale’s superhuman physiology isn’t enough to make it out. After a moment, Machina gives the Colonel a slight nod and approaches the platoon.

  Cale can feel his footsteps shaking the earth, each one sending puffs of red sandy dust into the air. He moves slowly, but with purpose. A strange, smooth grace guides each movement, every step telegraphed.

  Being closer to heavy armor than person means he has to be careful, after all. Even a slight tap could be lethal for a Typical.

  The robotic knight towers over them all. Even Cale’s impressive physique—only magnified after becoming an Empowered—is nothing when compared to him.

  “As the harvesting team, you will enter five minutes after me. It’ll give me time to clear out anything close by.”

  He looks out over the unit.

  “I can’t promise that I’ll be able to protect you. Cat-3 Fractures are incredibly dangerous, and I’m only one man. I can only promise I will do my best.”

  Cale grimly nods to himself, quickly inspects his twelve man strong squad. They might not be able to stack up to the kinds of monsters in a Cat-3, but they don’t need to kill anything. Just buy time for Machina.

  The stoic Ascended leaves for the Fracture, entering without another word.

  Wendy leans over again.

  “What is with that guy? I can’t get a read off him.”

  Cale shrugs.

  “I’m sure he’s got a lot on his mind.”

  Cale’s squad leads the way, quickly moving into the Fracture after the five minutes are up. Despite Machina clearing it out ahead of time, the mood is still tense. A Cat-3 is still a Cat-3. Hell on Earth, supposedly. Well, not on Earth, but the point still stands.

  Cale pushes through the shining light and staggers slightly as the sensation of diving into the pocket universe throws his balance off. His experience in clearing lower Category Fractures has only slightly helped with the sense of vertigo.

  The Typicals fare far worse, most of them losing their stomachs. Cale puts them out of his mind, as he surveys a war-torn battlefield. The trucks rumble through, and one of them bounces as it drives over a crater in the sun baked dirt.

  A half dozen corpses of spiky frilled lizards lay around, all of them gutted. Most of them lie in several pieces, and one is missing most of its upper body. The bloody red smear that arcs away from it for nearly forty meters is probably where the rest of it went.

  As the harvesting team reassemble themselves and start working on cutting up the monsters for parts, Machina approaches Cale. He’s covered in blood and red dust. His massive sword, twice Cale’s height, rests on his shoulder. A circular saw whirrs to life in the background, wielded by a Typical harvester.

  As it moves, new stars come into view and others disappear.

  It’s like a window into another universe.

  “The area should be clear for now. I’m sure there’s plenty more of these things. Be careful, they bury themselves in the ground. They’re pretty quick,” Mach says.

  A huge canyon drops out of sight a few hundred meters away, and Machina points towards it.

  “I briefly had a look into the canyon, and I’m pretty sure the boss is in that direction. The canyon is pretty big, goes on for a few miles. Terrain isn’t too rough, I could make it pretty quickly, but for the rest of you it might be slow going.”

  With a crack, a circular saw blade explodes, sending shrapnel flying. No one is hurt, fortunately. Machina looks over.

  “I guess their skin is tougher than I thought.”

  Machina begins to walk towards the shaken harvesters, and Cale barely notices a patch of sandy dirt vibrating.

  He doesn’t even have time to call out as the massive lizard lunges towards him, mouth wide open. It’s nothing but a blur, and Cale is—

  Machina is simply there, with his huge hand clenched around the lizard’s throat. One of its claws scrabbles at him, each one longer than Cale’s arm.

  A blast of wind nearly throws Cale off his feet. A rooster tail of dirt is sent high into the sky.

  “Damn it! I’m sorry, Sergeant Cooper. I missed one.”

  Machina crushes the lizard’s neck with a sickening crunch, and drops it. Gore stains his gauntlet.

  Machina turns back to him, and Cale can feel his Aura.

  Stand tall, it says. I am here. Together we stand.

  Cale’s spin straightens.

  Together we stand.

  “I’ll go do some more sweeps. Are you all taking care of the lizards?” Machina asks.

  Both Cale and Machina notice Typicals are still struggling to cut up the monsters for dissection. Machina looks down at the mostly intact corpse at his feet. He carves it up into pieces before leaving, not waiting for a response from Cale.

  “I’ll be back, Sergeant Cale. I’m going to go ahead and clear the path as best I can.”

  He takes off for the canyon, his long loping strides devouring the distance.

  It’s not long after he disappears that the sound of thunder and explosions can be heard echoing from the canyon.

  Once the harvesting team fills the first truck with the partially dismembered corpses of the lizards, they move on. The filled truck returns back through the entrance.

  The platoon nervously makes their way into the canyon, on the look out for monsters. Without Machina nearby, a single one could tear through most of the group in seconds.

  For the second time today, they find a warzone. Dozens of craters line the wide canyon’s walls, and they pockmark the rocky ground. Over two dozen lizard corpses can be seen in various states of obliteration.

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  One is literally pasted onto the wall. Chunks of flesh flop down out of a crater deeper than Cale is tall from the cliff face, landing on the ground with a disgusting splat.

  “Jesus Christ,” Wendy mutters. “Talk about a mess.”

  There’s a few red-gray crystals growing out of the walls of the canyon, and a few harvesters go to pry them out with drills and crowbars. They’ll have to carry them back to the trucks, the canyon’s rocky terrain is too harsh for them to get close.

  The Lieutenant orders Wendy to take a few Empowered and guard them.

  “Are you sure about splitting us up?” Cale asks.

  He nods.

  “Machina can’t be far ahead, and I think anything that was alive around here isn’t anymore,” the Lieutenant says.

  Wendy salutes, and hand picks a few of the Empowered from the rest.

  “You, you, you, and you, come with me.”

  The rest of the platoon moves around a slight curve in the canyon, and they come across Machina blurring across the rocky, jagged terrain. Boulders explode into gravel under his weight.

  A lizard lunges for him, and Machina backhands its head clean off, gore coating the canyon’s sheer cliff face. One drops down on top of him from a cave high above. He cuts it in half with a contemptuous slash.

  Machina’s sword screams through the air, and Cale can see it leaving behind vapor trails as it tears through monster after monster.

  “Holy sweet Jesus.” One of the harvesters behind him mutters.

  Cale hears a hissing noise from above, and barely looks up in time to see a lizard dropping down from above.

  Oh shi—

  An explosion knocks them down, dust and gravel filling the air. Cries of fear and shock echo out. A 1-Star Aeromancer sends the choking cloud of dust away.

  Machina is twenty feet up, sword impaled through the lizard and into the rock wall behind it all the way to the hilt. Cale hears the sound of scale on rock, and turns to see a horde of more lizards.

  Machina leaps off the rock wall in a smooth motion, flipping over head to land onto another monster, squashing it flat. Even though the monsters close in, Machina dances among them all.

  He belies his bulk and mass, graceful sweeps and careful steps cutting down monster after monster without even slowing. Powerful strikes echo out with rhythmic certainty, giving the whole fight a musical-like quality.

  One lizard jumps on Cale, and he pours all his Potentia into his sledgehammer. The strike leaves him exhausted, and the lizard rocks back.

  The monster lunges for him again, quickly shaking off the attack. Before it can take Cale’s life, Machina’s blade of stars swipes through its neck, and its head falls onto the ground with a thump. The sunbaked soil greedily drinks the monster’s blood.

  A heavy kick breaks another monster’s back and throws the corpse into one of its allies. The targeted monster stumbles for just a moment, and that moment becomes its last as the blade comes down again.

  Machina weaves and ducks and slides among the fray, dancing around the harvesters without hesitation and through the monsters without fear.

  A powerful body check shatters another lizard, sending more gore flying into the air. A stomp crushes a leg, sending the lizard flopping onto its side with a hiss of pain. A kick ends its torment as its skull explodes.

  A lizard leaps for Machina, and he ducks low, raising his blade up. The monster falls into two pieces, cut in half long ways by its own momentum.

  A lizard charges a Typical harvester, and Machina grabs it by its tail. With a heave, he tosses the entire thing so high into the air it tops the canyon.

  The man he saved hadn’t even hit the dirt yet from his panicked dive before the lizard was long gone. Every single one of Machina’s movements sends blasts of air and dust buffeting them all.

  Watching him fight is like watching someone underneath a strobe light. He flickers between lighting quick, blurry motions and brief moments of stillness. He looks like a statue with each strike, each attack bringing a moment of stoic certainty.

  Machina calls out orders. Something charges his voice with an aspect of magic, of power, of leadership. Everyone, including Cale, obeys before they can even process what was said.

  “Fall back!”

  Despite Machina’s overwhelming assault and immovable presence, the lizards still swarm in ever greater numbers.

  A 1-Star warrior goes down screaming as a monster gets him by the arm. With a crunch, it disappears down the creature’s throat, and blood gushes from the injured man’s arm as he writhes on the ground. A vicious claw comes down, impaling him. He dies in an instant.

  A wordless shout, something more magic than sound, a combination of Aura and Potentia explodes out of Machina. Everyone and everything reels, Machina’s very soul hammering down on all of them. What Cale feels from it is more primal than words.

  Rage. A fury so deep, so complete, no human could ever hope to feel it.

  The few Typicals still standing fall to a knee.

  “Sergeant Cooper, get them out of here!”

  Cale staggers to his feet, forcing his body to move despite his magical-exhaustion.

  Done more with less.

  He drags a few injured harvesters away, new found strength filling him. Despite Machina’s best efforts, casualities still mount. Debris flies around, pelting them all. The Lieutenant goes down screaming to an errant rock, leaving Cale in charge.

  Another lizard drops down from above, aiming for the backlines. Machina is too far away, outside of even the prodigious reach of his sword. Cale watches in horror as the lizard aims for the weak and squishy Typicals. No one is close enough to interfere.

  With a smooth motion, Machina throws his sword, impaling the lizard and throwing it into a wall. The blade slides into the cliff faces without slowing, and the lizard goes limp, dead. The corpse is pinned to the rock wall like a grisly painting. Machina turns back to the rest of the horde, marching on them like an avalanche.

  A brutal armored knee shatters a skull. He grabs one by the jaws and rips it down the middle like a zipper. He hugs one close, shattering its rib cage. The slaughter goes on, never stopping.

  Cale continues to retreat, and Machina only accelerates the farther they get. What was a dance of violence he could only watch turns into a blur of gore he can only guess at.

  Rocks, shards of bone, and shattered claws clatter against the canyon walls. A chunk of flesh slaps into the wall next to Cale and they all retreat out of sight, though not out of hearing.

  Wendy rushes over to Cale, and helps him with the injured harvesters. She gives him a wide-eyed look.

  “Are you alright?!”

  “Thanks to Machina, more than we should be.”

  The sounds of a massacre echoes from where they just retreated from. They can both pick up what sounds like hisses and screeches of fear with their magically infused senses.

  “I didn’t know monsters could feel fear.” Wendy says weakly.

  It takes a few minutes, but the slaughter ahead eventually comes to a close. Whether that’s because all the monsters fled or committed suicide by Machina, Cale’s not sure.

  Eventually, Machina returns, heralded by the thunking of his footsteps and the crunching of boulders being hammered into gravel. When Cale finally lays eyes on him, he gasps.

  Not a single hint of his dull gun-metal gray armor peaks through. He’s entirely coated in bloody mud, made by dust and lizard blood. Pieces of bone, scales, and chunks of flesh fall off him with each step. The only thing not covered is the fire that fills his helmet, still burning a bright blue.

  When Machina notices the injuries of the harvesting party, gouts of flame pour out from his helmet. Cale can taste ozone and petrichor, the smell of a recent rain.

  A deep agony. Every loss is a tragedy.

  “I think it’s time for you all to return. I can’t protect you, and I don’t know how many more monsters there are.”

  Machina looks at the singular body bag. The platoon managed to recover the warrior’s body before the monsters ate what was left of him.

  “Please. Go back.”

  “Sir,” Wendy starts. She catches Machina’s glance, and stutters. “T-t-the crystals are valuable. They’re magical. Who knows what we can do with them?”

  Even now, Machina’s Aura washes over them all. They can taste a hundred different emotions, but the most prominent now is the salty flavor of desperation.

  “Sir, we all volunteered for this. Sacrifices have to be made. For the greater good. If we don’t… we all may die,” Cale grimly adds.

  Machina’s inner fire roils away, giving away nothing. His Aura speaks volumes, though.

  It wasn’t this powerful before, was it?

  Cale can feel the weight of Machina’s gaze, a metaphysical burden on him. It asks him a wordless, silent question.

  Can you do this? Carry the weight of leadership?

  Cale squares his shoulders, pulling himself up.

  He’s a 2-Star warrior of the Australian Army. Empowered with not only strength of the body, but of the mind, too. He’s stepped up, volunteered to dive into places the vast majority of humanity cannot go. To do things they cannot do. To be their shield when monsters claw at the gates, and their sword to hold the line.

  Machina nods, evidently noticing Cale’s resolve.

  “Alright, Sergeant. We continue. Together.”