— Saturday, February 18, AD 2130 —

“Jesus Christ, y’all really don’t know when to quit, do you?!”

“We’ve always been told that tenacity is a positive character trait!” Danielle cheerfully replied as she took on the form of a massive humanoid mech before attempting to grapple EA’s own mech.

“Tch…!” EA snorted dismissively as he fired the Rail Wolf’s titular railgun right into Danielle’s chest, knocking her over onto her back. He then looked to the side just as two rockets slammed into the Rail Wolf’s flank, flaring up its shields and filling the air with smoke — though EA quickly piloted his mech to lunge through the smoke, slamming its massive metal paws down onto the ground where Kate had been standing a moment prior.

“Gonna have to try harder than that, you big fuck!” Kate shouted back as she slapped a handful of plastic explosives onto the Rail Wolf’s legs, only to then be slammed to the ground by the mech’s other leg. Before EA could begin applying pressure, however, Mark bounded onto the scene, leveraging his halberd and his incredible strength to smash the Rail Wolf’s side and send the mech staggering into Danielle’s waiting arms.

“Alright… fine!” EA exclaimed, a combination of irritation and exasperation coming across in his tone. “If you really want to fight this to the very end, then so be it!”

“Okay—!” Danielle began to reply, but EA quickly maneuvered his mech’s leg — still burdened with Kate’s explosives — to place its paw on Danielle’s mechanized flank. A second later, the Rail Wolf’s shields glowed all over, followed by it emitting a pulse of energy that detonated all of Kate’s explosives. Dirt, smoke, and debris rapidly clouded the air as Danielle fell away from the Rail Wolf, while the mech itself easily survived intact thanks to its hardy shields.

“…I know you’re talking big,” Mark commented apprehensively, approaching Kate as EA and Danielle soon re-engaged in direct combat. “But this situation really isn’t good for us. I mean, just look around…”

Mid-reloading her rocket launcher, Kate paused for a moment to follow Mark’s suggestion and look around. Over an hour had passed since Mark and Kate first started fighting EA and his Rail Wolf mech, and in that hour, Kate’s explosives and the Rail Wolf’s high-powered railgun had fully decimated the massive train yard all around them. Gigantic craters filled with broken rail cars and the twisted wrecks of robots littered the yard, while heavy smoke clouded the air and skies above. The Interstellar Gate still stood at the far end of the yard, but virtually every single train and robot that had previously occupied the yard now stood in ruins as a result of collateral damage or being used directly as weapons in the fight with EA.

Upon taking this all in, Kate snorted dismissively — though still wore on her face a weary scowl. “…Fuck that. We’ll still win.”

“An hour ago, I would’ve agreed,” Mark said, “but I think EA’s boast about spacecraft-level shielding might actually be true. We’ve never fought anything that’s taken as much punishment as that mech of his.”

“The fact that it’s got some kind of beam jammer built-in is a real pain in the ass, too…” Kate muttered.

“Yeah. And our own shields will barely last for much longer; mine are already out. On top of that, you’ve already used your Overdrive four times, today, so you really can’t risk using it again — so that’s a trump card that we don’t have, anymore. I hate to say it, but I think we’re reaching our limits.”

Kate opened her mouth to argue, but faltered; on one key thing, Mark was right. Repeated Overdrive usage carried with it the risk of completely losing her Chaotic abilities for a full day, which would be catastrophic in the immediate term. Thus, using her Overdrive any further was out of the question. However, she soon shook her head and shouldered her rocket launcher, taking aim at EA’s mech once more. “Bah. I agree that bastard’s mech is way hardier than it has any right to be, but I’ll be damned if I let him pull one over us!”

“I should’ve known you’d say that…” Mark replied with a sigh as Kate fired a series of rockets at the Rail Wolf. Despite his trepidation, however, Mark quickly bounded back into the fight, seeking to relieve Danielle of her apparently losing struggle with EA. Thunder rolled across the scarred yard as Kate’s rockets exploded, creating massive clouds of smoke that Mark used to cover his approach — and then slam his fist into the Rail Wolf’s head, which contained the cockpit. Brilliant golden light from the mech’s energy shields shone through the smoke all around as it recoiled from Mark’s blow, only for a massive, hypersonic projectile to slam Mark into the ground. Before he could recover from being hit by the mech’s spinal cannon, the mech lunged forward, simultaneously batting away Danielle with its paws and swinging its barbed tail in an attempt to stab Mark.

A second later, another thunderous explosion heralded a new cloud of smoke, giving Mark just enough cover to dodge the Rail Wolf’s tail and jump back to his feet. Through the smoke, he could hear the sounds of the giant mech’s flared shields as Danielle again took on the form of a giant mech and tried to pummel the Rail Wolf, but it wasn’t long before EA swiveled the spinal cannon around and fired, instantly hitting Danielle and launching her clear across the yard.

“INCOMING!!”

The moment Kate’s shout reached his ears, Mark lunged backwards, attempting to make some distance between himself and EA’s mech. With Danielle recovering across the yard, there was now little reason for Mark to try and fight the Rail Wolf up-close — not while Kate was still lobbing her explosives around. So Mark took the next volley of Kate’s rockets as an opportunity for a quick breather… that is, until the Rail Wolf suddenly appeared in the air right on top of him. “What the—?!” he exclaimed in surprise, but was little able to react before the mech slammed its paw into him and launched him into the air, where it promptly fired its spinal cannon at him to launch him through the skies over the base — only to immediately be slammed back to the ground as the Rail Wolf appeared in the air over him again and smacked him with its paws.

“Ungh—!” Mark grunted as he hit the ground. With his energy shielding down, all that was left to protect him was his inherent durability as a Duratechnic — which for now was enough to block any pain, but his surprise at the Rail Wolf’s sudden teleportation-like movements left Mark moving somewhat sluggishly. As he climbed to his feet, he looked upwards, and then threw himself to the side just in time to avoid being crushed by the Rail Wolf as it crashed down to the ground — though the mech’s follow-up pounce was too fast for him to dodge, allowing it to pin him to the ground. With an annoyed scowl, Mark leveraged his Forcetechnic superstrength to lift the giant mech’s paw and throw it off of him, giving him a chance to jump to his feet. Quickly, he summoned his green and silver halberd, but as he did, he noticed something peculiar about his surroundings:

Standing all around him was not one Rail Wolf, but four.

“Ha ha ha!!” EA laughed over the mech’s loudspeakers as the four Rail Wolves began to slowly circle Mark, not unlike a pack of hungry wolves. “Bet you thought I didn’t have any more tricks up my sleeve, didn’t you—?”

His taunting was cut short, however, as Danielle charged onto the scene herself, still in the form of a giant mech — and with Kate riding her shoulder. Immediately, the four Rail Wolves dove aside, but not before Danielle could swing a giant mechanical sword right through one of the mechs… and swing cleanly through, as if the mech wasn’t physically present. “Oh, so it’s like that robot—?!” Danielle began to shout, but before she could finish her thought, the Rail Wolf that she had just sliced through whipped its spinal cannon around and fired at her, producing a very real projectile that knocked her to the side. “Ack—!” she yelped, quickly forming new energy shields to protect herself as she and Kate cautiously looked around at the four Rail Wolves. “Or… not like that robot…?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Kate questioned impatiently, all while carefully watching EA’s mechs with her rocket launcher. “Are you saying that only one of them is real?”

“I’d almost believe that, if not for the fact that one of the mechs seemed fake one second, and real the next…” Mark muttered, having backed up to join Danielle and Kate. “But wait, look at the cockpits, they all have EA in them. How can he be in four places at once, but also not…? What’s going on?”

“Heh…” EA chuckled, an action that sounded all the more ominous when broadcast over the Rail Wolf’s loudspeakers. “You know, Danielle, you’re half right. The Rail Wolf comes equipped with very similar technology to what I included in Iota. But this goes a step beyond…” At that point, the spinal cannon on all four of the Rail Wolves began charging with energy, all of them pointed square at Danielle’s currently mechanical self. “…And in the name of avenging Iota, I intend to make full use of this tech to kick your fucking asses!!”

“Avenging—?!” Kate began to respond incredulously, but was cut off as Danielle leaped high into the air, just in time to escape being ravaged by the Rail Wolves’ spinal cannons. Once in the air, Danielle transformed into a fighter jet and took to the skies, with Kate now positioned in the cockpit. “Who the hell is Iota?” Kate questioned, pressing her face against the cockpit canopy in an attempt to better see the ground below. “And where the hell are we going?!”

“I figured taking to the skies would be a good idea against a ground-based enemy!” Danielle remarked, her voice conveyed through a speaker in the jet’s cockpit. “…But I guess it isn’t very useful for you, huh?”

“Yeah, no shit! Let me out!”

“Okay! I’m coming around for an attack, so—“

“Fuck waiting, just let me out now!”

“Uh, if you say so…!”

A second later, the cockpit’s canopy exploded upwards — followed by Kate, as Danielle ejected her. The transformed jet quickly rolled to the side to avoid colliding with Kate, who continued sailing through the air over the pock-marked train yard that served as their battleground. But despite being a couple hundred meters in the air, Kate paid the incoming ground no heed, instead fabricating a new rocket launcher and firing a rapid volley of rockets toward the Rail Wolves, which were currently harassing Mark. As if timed with Kate’s volley, several other missiles rocketed overhead, fired from Danielle’s wingtips to rapidly converge on EA’s position and impact the ground with roaring explosions. Just as the missiles hit, however, one of the Rail Wolves fired a hypersonic projectile straight at Kate, successfully nailing her mid-air and flinging her across the yard, all while her shields flared brightly to protect her.

“Ngh—! Fuck!” Kate swore as she tumbled haphazardly to the ground. In anger, she leaped to her feet — just in time to watch the Rail Wolves appear in front of her in a flash of white light. Eyes wide in surprise, she quickly ducked to evade one of the mechs swiping its paw at her, followed by diving to the left to avoid getting shot by the spinal cannon — though the incredible impact forces from the hypersonic projectile catapulted her through the air regardless, where one of the Rail Wolves caught her in its paws and then slammed her to the ground under its foot.

“Hmph…” EA snorted as he glared down at Kate through the Rail Wolf’s cockpit canopy, watching as she ineffectively struggled to free herself. “Face it, you can’t beat me! Just fucking surrender and leave, already!”

“Over my FUCKING GRAVE!” Kate snarled back, in that moment fabricating a layer of explosive paste between her back and the ground below her — along with a C4-like detonator, that she quickly tripped. The explosion forced the Rail Wolf’s paw off of her and flung her into the air, where she quickly fabricated an even larger explosive and prepared to chuck it at the ground… only to pause for a split second as she observed the Rail Wolves. Notably, only one of them had pinned her down, and thus only one of them had been subjected to her most recent explosion — and yet, the tell-tale golden glow of energy shielding covered the front right paw of all four mechs.

A moment later, Mark came barreling onto the scene, attempting to swing his halberd down on top of the Rail Wolf that had pinned Kate — only for his weapon to swing through thin air, as though the mech were nothing more than a hologram. In that moment, as Kate dropped back to the ground, an idea formed in her mind. “Mark!” she shouted as both she and him began dodging around repeated paw swipes from the surrounding Rail Wolves, “I need you to throw me!”

Mark passed her a brief glance; he hadn’t the slightest idea what Kate intended, but upon locking eyes with her, and spotting the explosive in her hands, he could tell that she had a plan. Without any further words, Mark lunged toward Kate, bowling the both of them to the side just in time to evade another paw swipe; then, using the momentum from his own lunge, Mark grabbed Kate in what almost appeared to be a hug before whirling around on his heel and then flinging her through the air, using his superstrength to launch her past EA’s mechs. But just before he released Kate, she quickly whispered an order to him, an order that he quickly made to follow:

“Jump!”

With his Forcetechnic strength, Mark leaped high into the air — and barely a second later, Kate detonated the massive explosive in her hands. Thunder and shockwaves again shook the yard, and smoke rolled over and obscured EA’s wolf-like mechs, masking the golden glow of their energy shields. A mere moment after that, Danielle swooped down to grab Mark with a grabber arm on her undercarriage and carry him over to Kate, who had been flung nearly a hundred meters away under the force of her own explosion — but as soon as Danielle made to fly towards Kate, the latter shouted into her communicator, “no, clear the smoke! NOW!”

“Uh, alright!” Danielle responded in confusion, but nonetheless made to follow Kate’s suggestion. Quickly, Danielle shapeshifted again, allowing Mark to jump to the ground below as she herself turned into a massive fan. She immediately began blowing strong winds towards the smoke cloud covering EA’s mechs, rapidly sweeping it away to reveal EA underneath them. The Rail Wolves turned to aim their cannons at Danielle, but as she returned to her human form and made to dodge, Kate let loose a whoop of triumph.

“I’ve GOT IT!” she shouted into her communicator. “There aren’t four, there’s only one!”

“Explain!” Mark demanded as he bounded forward to help Danielle fend EA off.

“That explosion was a gambit!” Kate replied, fabricating another rocket launcher to begin firing at EA as well. “You know how shields flare up when they’re hit? Well, if there really were four of those fucking mechs, then you’d expect the shields on all four to flare up differently, since the explosion hit them all in different places. But it didn’t! All fucking four had their shields flare up on the right side, even though I detonated that bomb right on one of their asses!”

“…So?”

“So only one of the things is fucking real, the others are just holographic copies! EA’s probably just beaming around to pretend like they’re all real!”

“But I thought it had a beam-jammer!” Danielle exclaimed.

“I do!” EA retorted, flooring Danielle with another shot from the Rail Wolf’s cannon. He then glared off to the side, where Kate was standing with a rocket launcher still on her shoulder. “…But I’m sure you already know that it’s easy to ignore your own jamming. And over short distances, it’s quite easy to brute force through SERRCom’s jamming.”

“I fucking knew it!” Kate shouted, pumping her arms in self-congratulations. “That mech’s entire schtick is just a fucking trick!”

“…I’ll give you this one,” EA conceded. “I was afraid you’d figure the tech out, which is why I waited so long to use it. So much for that…”

“Ha! That’ll fucking show you to underestimate me!”

“Don’t be so sure. After all, just because you figured out the gimmick…” EA replied as the Rail Wolf and its holographic images reared up in preparation to continue the protracted battle. “—Doesn’t mean that you’ve beaten me! You’d better prepare yourselves, because this fight is far from over!!”