The Foundry | Part Two | Chapter Twenty-Three
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Foundry
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two | Rebuilt; Refound; Reclaimed
Part Three | Dominion
Chapter Twenty-Three
Apocalypse felt a home to Echo nowadays. It was nice to be back. She had taken to calling her mech Betsy, despite the fact they’d not the capability to speak or communicate by any means. There were endeavors made to start the battle in a most unusual form; Echo wasn’t attacking Rory.
The opening moments had proven a draw. Both women were waiting to see a first move from the other, but Rory was unprepared for her opponent — they’d clearly not been watching the feeds in that way she’d imagined — almost as unready as she’d been for the length of time in which Echo had been willing to wait.
There was one word going through Echo’s mind as she stood in this face-off, a mantra told by her intuition, one she’d wield in hope it would see her to victory; react. She would fight in purest defense, allowing this planet to crumble around them.
In her practice simulations she’d sought some advantage for this fight which she had long seen as an inevitability. In her pouring through the data of Apocalypse’s complete recorded histories, even those of its many secret years of usage before that mainstream acceptance shepherded at Rory’s behest, she’d seen the longest it ever lasted was just over fourteen minutes, and by this very opponent she now faced.
Echo wanted to see how far it really went, so she’d taken it past thirty. There wasn’t a shred of planet left when she’d fled that run of Apocalypse in worry of what might come after the complete collapse of its planet’s top layer.
Eventually, Rory had drawn the long rifle, firing pot shots which forced Echo to move. She’d not had a problem picking them out at that distance and forcing difficulty with the continued availability of a clear line of sight. She’s fired left side thrusters on full, with touches of blast off the force generators in her gauntlets. She’d held her palms forward to push herself back on the hover, creating more space as she’d circled the outer limits of that city’s already crumbling structures.
Rory had risen above the highest reaches of its buildings, so far in the distance, they appeared as only a speck in those secondary scopes Echo had trained on their position. The focus had been on the ground ahead, knowing this portion of land would soon be falling beneath her feet.
Echo flipped priorities only in time to catch it on that higher quality feed.
They’d let go of the little ‘demon-bitch’ programed to glint in the reddened gleam of this hellscape’s sun every time. The briefest warning of an almost inescapable fate, and that only sign you’d get before it stuck your hull and left you without power for a dreadful, if reasonably short duration of five seconds. In Apocalypse, that was more than enough.
She’d taken to flight in that moment, and burned straight up, transforming fully into the warship, building such height before Rory would choose to react in any way — either through fire or closing that distance herself — which would protect Echo without doubt from the fall now inevitably coming at the hands of that EMP’s doings.
The time Echo counted before Rory had begun to fire a hapless volley of torpedoes was a whole dozen seconds. Something in them must have been stunned by her choice to erupt skyward. Those missile’s velocity was much slower than either her or that demonic little enemy so recently released, and she would have no problem dispatching them on her fully-powered descent.
From there she would react.
Rory couldn’t believe what was happening. Ten minutes had passed by the count of that timer on her AR display. She’d never made it this far into Apocalypse, not in a fair fight.
Everything she’d done had been counteracted, anticipated, or proved a quite worthless means of attack. Echo was beyond that woman she’d been when they faced her here before, and a hundred-fold. There was nothing of what she saw coming from them now, which she’d ever expect out of that meek little push-over they’d been when they had their fun.
It was somehow crippling the anger she’d brought into this engagement with intention to wield into a most furious victory. Rory almost felt herself rooting them on. There was no stranger notion to her than feeling inspired by Echo, especially in the face of what she’d most recently done. That was so far beyond what she’d ever deem forgivable, there wouldn’t be a realm within which she’d know to categorize the unfairness they’d perpetrated upon her.
No matter if it was in response to her own awfulness, or how she saw the wrongness of her own actions on a level — especially that vicious final stroke of applied counterforce — there was no part of Rory prepared to let this woman win.
Apocalypse was hers.
Eighteen minutes and counting. This is where things really got interesting by Echo’s estimation.
Not a building was left standing in the city. It was a pile of rubble covering the planet, now ever erupting by its own exhumations flung skyward before churning to great landfalls which bore into the depths. Apocalypse’s crimson sun seemed to grow a more saturated shade as you got this deep into the simulation, although Echo had never measured that by anything other than her own observation.
There hadn’t been a shot landed on Betsy the entire time, and she’d not fired a single in return, apart from those which served as needed defense measures. Her plan to react had led to a resolution now coming into realization — a plan nearing fruition — a trap almost sprung by her prey.
Gratitude was where Echo had been settled in that present moment, feeling so completely into those senses gifted to her by this simulation, along with the bliss found by the wrought intensity of it all. There wasn’t another place she’d rather be than right here, battling this woman to reclaim her honor, and finding within the ways of her own greatness some strange hope for transcending what had become of them.
Still, she’d not be wasting the chance to send a clearest message in the meantime, and they’d landed right where she thought they would.
“Oh, hi,” Echo spoke through comms — the first words shared throughout the this battle.
“I guess I’m out of moves.”
There’d be a moment where Rory would think they had her. They’d opened the comms themself once in that time to say exactly nothing.
“You know — we’re setting a record right now,” Echo goaded.
Echo couldn’t imagine what was happening in the classroom. They would have as many screens as necessary, projected to cover the action most thoroughly, and there’d been quite a display. Regardless of what happened in the end, Echo wasn’t leaving The Foundry. She’d realized right there how she was probably projecting about Rory planning on doing the same, but Echo hadn’t cared at all.
While Echo would always choose a fair fight, every time, that didn’t mean she was honest.
She’d sworn it to anyone who would listen for such a length of time afterwards — there was nothing she’d heard beyond the scope of her own auditorily receptive capabilities so clearly before what came in that moment.
That most satisfying clink Echo would hear, even when she hadn’t, was somehow felt through every part of her body. Rory obviously hadn’t seen it fired. These next five seconds would prove the best of Echo’s entire life by the transcendence of healing found within, and her cinderblade was showing itself quite ready for the task as she’d struck its ignition.
Infernus, is what she’d been calling the big fella. He was Betsy’s favorite guy. There hadn’t been a chance to do her ‘main move’ throughout this extended stretch of purely reactionary warfare, and the planet would shortly be failing to provide enough landing spots which might allow that to still happen. Echo was a little disappointed.
Approaching Rory is when it dawned on her; what she’d do, how she might exploit this situation for the greatest gain of herself alone, that way in which she’d chosen to end it there, and the means by which Echo would reclaim the very most of her power.
She looked down upon them and thought of Ashe, how the way she’d dispatched them had been a placeholder for Rory all along, seeing visions of that future so clearly in her mind. She’d almost heard them shouting their hatred over the comms. There was no part of it which felt right to Echo.
The cavernous craters surrounding this remaining stronghold of standing earth beneath them were encroaching most quickly. Echo had held her cinderblade above her head, and then thrown it quite clear of the ledge.
Using all the strength of her mech, she’d stood Rory up and held her there while they couldn’t move. Echo embraced her like she’d wanted to for so long, as that planet fell into itself all around them. It wasn’t the same as in would’ve been in reality, and she hadn’t known if they were seething or crying along with her in their own warship. That wouldn’t matter to Echo — this was for her — it’s what she needed.
There would have been more to come quite surely. Perhaps, Rory would have proceeded to dismantle her. That would never be known.
This Apocalypse was cut short; someone outside the simulation had ended it.
