Turmoil Chapter 4: The Terror And The Tears

“Rico! Rico! RICO!”

Rico - now missing his hat - immediately woke up against a wall. Horrified yet relieved by such a “nightmare” he had, he gasped for a gallon of air. A little while later, he caught wind of his surroundings: a different corridor in the same building, with the same torn walls, the same dirty floor, and the same blinking lights.

He then remembered what happened before. That figure… It came from below. It grabbed his mother’s ankles, breaking the floor that they once stood on. The fall was so long that it damaged some parts of Rico and somehow forced him to deactivate. He didn’t know what occurred after or how he got here.

“Hey… Rico…”, someone murmured from behind.

He stopped for a second. He thought for another. He gulped, and turned around to see his mother who was leaning against a wall, holding onto the far right and left part of her belly. Her breathing sounded a little shaky, and a short gallon of red can be seen spreading out of those exact parts of her belly. A look of relief turned to horror came over his face as he saw his beloved injured mother.

He limped over to her, crying, “Mum! W-What happened?!”.

“N-Nothing happened, sweetie!”, she said with one of her eyes closed, “I’m fine!”.

“What?! No, you’re not! Look at yourself!”.

Worriedly, he pointed at the injuries with both of his hands. She looked down at her stomach, and raised her eyebrows.

“Oh these?”, she spoke calmly, “They’re n-nothing… Just a couple little wounds I got while I carried you and escaped from… whatever that creature was…”

She giggled before inadvertently forcing a little cough.

“Don’t worry about it, Rico, dear… I-It’s not fatal or anything… But it was close to my vital organs… Close… Too close… The blood loss was a lot to handle though…”.

Rico looked down at her hands, and crouched. He lifted them up to see her knuckles bleeding from the fight she had.

“Listen… Rico…”, Setuh whispered firmly, “This is all my fault. I’m sorry for bringing you here, for… thinking about… going on this stupid adventure!”.

She laughed as she thought about what she said. She knows that she’s smart, but sometimes, there are flaws towards her plans.

“If it weren’t for that thing encountering us, we could’ve been fine.”, she then coughed out.

“B-But we’re safe now, right?” Rico whimpered a question, “W-We can get out right now! We can escape!”.

Setuh shook her head.

“We can’t leave it alone. No…”

“What do you mean ‘we can’t leave it alone’? We can! We can just come back after we prepare and heal ourselves at ho-”.

“IT’S NOT THAT F**KING SIMPLE, RICO!”.

She groaned in agony as she held on to her stomach wound.

“Sorry ‘bout that… But… If we cut our losses and run away… Then, there’s a chance that it’s obviously gonna run outta this town and terrorise whoever the hell it sees… And… Ugh… It might even stalk us if we’re not careful and safe with our departure.”

“Stalk us? How?”.

“I’m beginning to think it has a radar system, considering that it’s a bit of a bloody machine… Besides… If it knows us, then it COULD be scheming up some sort of contingency plan… That means we need to make sure it’s gone for good.”

“B-But you’re injured-”.

“Regeneration factor! It’ll take around… ten or fifteen minutes to heal both of my injuries…”

Before the idiotic kid could ask any more questions, the two heard a stomp from afar the corridors. A shock had hit them, as they realised who it was. It’s here.

The two’s heads turned to the direction where they heard the unsetting sound. There, they observed the figure, who was slightly damaged from the previous battle. Its arms had bullet holes dug into their metallic skin, and its robes had a few holes in them too. Despite all this, the aggression in its eyes shone out and grew hungrier for organs and death. Its hands shook in desperation to rip both of its opponents apart.

“You really thought you could outrun me, didn’t you?!”, the monster loudly mocked in Collector’s voice as it recklessly trotted forward, its grotesque, metallic limbs shaking even more.

“Wh-Who a-are y-you?”, asked Rico, standing in front of the resting Setuh, his voice stuttering more than ever, his fingers aiming at the figure’s body in defense, “R-Really, w-who are you?! H-How do you even know us, when we’ve not even seen you before?!”.

The figure stilled. For a long, heavy moment, the figure said nothing. The lights stopped blinking and suddenly broke dead. The atmosphere became much, much worse and crackled with something unseen and pressing. It’s almost as if the ground was about to break apart again.

It then bent its knees, and entered a life-threatening, offensive pose.

“I know you, because I’VE seen you before.”, it scowled in Supernova’s voice, “I have recorded each one of you in my database! If it weren’t for my survival in the battle, none of this should’ve happened!”

“Yet I stayed alive…”

“The battle?”, thought Rico, “What does he mean by that?”.

The figure lunged in long distances towards Rico with its hands honed and strengthened. But just as it was about to slash Rico’s chest in half, Setuh quickly appeared in front of him and reluctantly took the hit. As a result, blood puked out of her mouth and her chest. Her eyes even widened as she choked out even more blood. Surprised, Rico called out his mother’s name, as if he’s about to lose her. Then, the figure immediately pummeled her flat face into the wall, knocking her out for good.

Its neck then snapped towards Rico, who quickly shot at its face in a panic. A small explosion puffed out of its face, which it jerked upward. It stilled again, not moving a single component, until Rico desperately decided to shoot again.

The second shot - aimed at the chest - shoved the robot back. Another puff of smoke bursted out. The third one was targeted at its stomach.

BANG!

The robot staggered back. Sparks flared out of it as its eyes mindlessly stared at the ceiling. Its head jerked to the front, as it saw the little kid, frightened, shooting at it. Then, with the pupil of its eyes shortening to a smaller dot, it rebooted its target systems and dodged the lasers. As graceful as a horse, the figure galloped, understanding every move that Rico was going to make with his targeting. The smoke on its metal skin slowly disappeared into the air as the unknown robot continued its unparalleled, slick movements.

The battle became more unfortunate for Rico as his hands slowly overheated from the shooting that he had done, causing his hands to malfunction. He felt the fire in his hands warming a part of one of his wires, only to realise that he couldn’t shoot anymore.

His eyes widened in disbelief, as he looked at his fuming hands. This hasn’t happened before. Not by a long shot. Poor old Rico didn’t know the drawbacks to using lasers out of his hands.

But before he had a chance to gasp in fear accept the dreadful consequence, a metal fist slammed straight into his face. The impact hit him like a f**king bowling ball, throwing him a few miles back. He was then met with a low sweep to the ankles, which effortlessly thumped him to the floor.

Struggling to get up, Rico tried to concentrate, but his visual systems were failing him. The area around him began to darken. Sirens inside himself blared, signalling the obvious danger he was put into. Hard did he cough, as the punch to his head was worth more than a component of his getting broken. He coughed until a spot of oil dropped from the tip of his mouth. He knelt still and watched the spot stain itself into the war-torn floor. It was only till then did the thoughts of anxiety and fright returned to his metal mind.

“Oh… BUMS!”, he thought before he was hit again in the head.

A foot of the figure jabbed into his face, sending him right back onto his legs. A combo of fists came next. A punch directed towards his stomach, followed by a spear of an elbow which dug further into the belly. A scratch swung and slit his thick neck, causing him to cough up more oil.

The kid quickly grasped onto his neck to stop the bleeding, but only worsened things for himself, when he ended up strangling himself halfway through. Shrieking was all he could do as the pain was intensely unbearable for him.

The figure then grabbed the child by the head, and forced him to the ground. With malice, it sprinted through the corridors, dragging the half-dying child along. As it dragged on, the entity’s grip hardened, and the kid’s metal began to melt as more oil spilled across the floor. The carpet was in the midst of burning too. The alarms in Rico’s systems blared even louder. Rico couldn’t properly hear everything.

This all continued until they reached a window on the 3rd floor, where the robotic entity lifted Rico’s half-molten head with a robotic hiss. After a second of looking at the crying boy, it tossed him out of the window, shattering most of its glass material. He now found himself outside falling through the air. The wind howling into his skin, as he inadvertently barged through it.

The entity observed him, watching his cries and screeches. And for the first time, he felt pleasure in his lethal treatment of the boy. Rico tried to activate his rocket boots, but it was no use… He was dying, running out of oil, running out of energy. He tried, and tried again, but it was at this point he knew it was all over. He stopped thinking of the ground rushing up to him for his demise - he only thought of the faces that had helped him throughout his life, that had gathered his skills and strength for him. Before he hit the ground, his systems automatically turned off, as he accepted the fact that he’s dead and done for…

And the final thing he remembered… was his mother.

Meanwhile, back in the war-torn building, Setuh laid on the floor, bleeding profusely, sobbing from the pain she had to endure, worrying about her little boy. She just woke up to find herself still in this revoltingly depressive state. Her invisible nose bleeding along with her injuries on her stomach and chest. Her breath trembled. Her arms, trying to cover her bruises, trembled too.

She needs to move quickly! She promised to protect him, and never went back on her word. She stood up, but while she did, she struggled to keep her composure and she vomited one lot of blood down to the flat bottom of her face. Limping left and right, she whimpered. This has to be the most physically damaging experience she had to face.

She ambled in the way where the entity was dragging Rico. She was the head marks on the ground, with the seething oil spilled by the two. About halfway through the path, her vision received writhing instances of blacking out, but her worries overshadowed them. While she made her way, she noticed a silhouette of the figure climbing out of the window and into the open. Her eyes widened.

“RICO-“, she blurted before coughing more blood from her mouth.

She closed her eyes, and gasped for air. She knew she shouldn’t give up. She reached to the window, hoping to see her child safe…

“No…”, she muttered in saddening shock before rising up to a shout, “NO!”.

From the window, she saw the worst thing she has seen… Her son lying on the floor, deactivated, dead, broken, missing too many parts: an arm, a head, and a handful of hardware components. Tears streaming out of the steel corpse as if it’s still alive yet traumatised. Bruises and oil covered a few of its components with little sparks coming out of the corpse’s wires.

Then, there it was. The figure, who was crouching down, aggressively scavenging the corpse for parts it could use like a wild dog without its leash…

This was it.

The final battle.

To be continued…

Yo could you link to the last chapters? It’s been a while

Chapter 1: imgflip.com/i/9mj1w3
Chapter 2: imgflip.com/i/9nijnm
Chapter 3: imgflip.com/i/9q2hsc

HE’S BACKKKKK

Bro just decided to resurrect