DN - Engine Beatdown

While he pulls himself from the trench we dug, I fly over to a nearby parking lot to get a weapon. Because I’m a fangirl and fangirls read too much, I know that you don’t want to hit people with cars like they’re baseball bats. A modern car is mostly made out of plastic crumple zones; it’s not going to hit the kinds of things a superhero fights very hard. But if you rip out the engine block, which is a few hundred pounds of solid metal, then you have something to work with.

With a few sharp tugs I’m able to liberate an engine from the front of an SUV. I charge the purple mecha and use my big hunk of metal to smash its beam sabers aside, then slam it down on the mecha’s shoulder. Once, twice, three times, and it gives way just about the same time as the engine disintegrates in my hands. He slashes at me with his good arm and starts screaming about how he’s going to kill me for trying to mess up his “big chance.” I get my arms around its good arm and set my feet against the shoulder socket. With a great twisting tug, I rip the arm off, hydraulics bursting in a spray of soupy blue fluid. Gerald screams again, and before he gets a chance to think of something clever I’ve anchored myself to the mecha’s chest and I’m pounding at the release catches for the cockpit hatch. A few sharp blows and the hatch’s locks are done; I rip it and reach out to grab him by the front—

Holy shit, what the hell is that?

Gerald is glaring up at me with all the hate he can muster, and I can’t tell where he ends and the machine starts. Segmented metal tubes plug straight into his skin, all red and swollen where he is joined with the machine. His arms are gone, and in their place thick bundles of cables run into a pair of cavities that used to be his armpits. It’s hard to see from this angle, but I’m pretty sure his legs are gone, too. He’s nothing but a torso encased in a metal cradle that’s been slotted into the center of this thing.

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” he mutters.

So I punch him, and man, it feels good. He cries out and snorts blood from a freshly broken nose.

- Dreadnought, Chapter 33