One For The Road

55: Future

Go.

Like a field of cars at the green flag, I charged Sacrilege toward Amazon as the spinner began to fire up like I planned.

I never even had the chance to get the weapon up to full speed against Dragon's Breath and Jingles before they tore the bot to shreds and burnt her to a crisp. But this was a new fight with all-new stakes, and I couldn't lose.

The robots collided, but with the weapons not at full speed, they didn't do any real damage.

Didn't the spinner usually start up faster than that?

There wasn't any time to think about that before Amazon chased after Sacrilege. Her fate was literally in my hands, and it was pretty clear that my initial plan wasn't going to work.

Although I kept us out of Amazon's reach, our horizontal spinner wasn't getting up to the garage door hole-punching speed I knew.

"What the hell is wrong with the spinner?" I shouted over the noise.

I noticed it looked a little odd and shaky at the end of the Clockwork fight, so did that have something to do with it?

"It's not getting up to full speed. Josiah, I thought you checked that everything was working the way it should be," Drake said.

"I did. All the driving was fine and the armor was undented," Josiah said.

I drove Sacrilege along the perimeter of the arena, but all the spinner gave me was a slow wobble.

Fuck.

How could I possibly win without a functional weapon?

"But you didn't check the spinner?" Drake asked.

Josiah didn't say anything.

So that was a no.

Amazon caught up to Sacrilege and tossed her wheels just off the ground.

We were pretty much fucked without any offense. What could I do? Run around in circles until the three minutes were up or she finally broke us down?

No.

Sacrilege still had a lot of fight left in her.

Fuck it. I drove her straight into Amazon's vertical spinner.

"What are you doing?" Drake cried.

I ran into Amazon again, and a piece of metal flew off our baby. "The fight will be a hell of a lot more even if they don't have a weapon either."

"So you're going to go all kamikaze on them?"

Obviously. What kind of stupid question was that?

My only weapon was the entire robot, and like an expensive battering ram, I drove Sacrilege straight into Amazon again.

A little smoke came from one of the robots, and with them so close, all I could do was hope that it wasn't Peanut.

Amazon backed off for a moment to assess what happened. Megha was much smarter than me, but I never liked to give people the respect they thought they deserved. I followed her back into the corner until she knocked Sacrilege up off the ground and back.

If we survived the three minutes, points were awarded for control among other factors. And if I wanted to win, I needed every point I could get.

The smoke was coming from us, but this was our last fight if we lost. And there was no way in hell I was going to go back to Moretti with nothing to show for my no-show.