That sound… It’s so familiar…
Max glanced back and forth, forced by the optically restrictive helmet to shift his entire head to change his field of view. Just as soon as he cast his sight down the long straight road behind him, something metallic rattled under the boy’s feet. Alarmed, he hopped back and looked downward to find a grenade, primed to detonate. Max’s eyes widened and his blood went cold. Rebelling against his fight or flight response, he suppressed the urge to kick the explosive away. This was a populated area and, behind any city wall, a family could be enjoying a late lunch. Instead, he courageously leaped onto the grenade and flattened himself against it. Head down and back arched upward, his armor formed a rudimentary blast dome over the explosive. Max now awaited the inevitable.
The gut punch from hell that he had expected, however, never came. Instead, there was little more than a pop, muffled underneath the knight candidate’s carapace. After a few seconds of stunned confusion, Max’s nostrils were assaulted by the smell of burnt metal and chlorine. Startled and believing himself to have been poisoned, the boy braced the sides of his claws against the ground and forced himself back up to his feet. As he rose, a thick smoke overwhelmed him almost immediately.
“W-what the fuck is t-this?!” coughed Max, accidentally gasping in another lung full of the viscous chemical fog.
His eyes stung and his chest burned. Knowing that long-term exposure to such a compound could have severe consequences, Max burst forward from the cloud and attempted to take in clean air. Unfortunately, the smoke had previously filled his helmet, and he succeeded only in inhaling another breath of burning chemical gas. Again, he dropped to his claws and knees. Shaking his head violently, the boy did his best to disperse the fog lingering within his armor. Though it took substantial effort and what seemed an eternity, Max eventually succeeded. Vision blurred from watering eyes, he was able to make out the rough shape of a small figure ducking into an alleyway on the other side of the road.
One of the elusive suspect’s apparent features left him questioning his sore eyes. Was that a tail? Max questioned internally. What was that thing?
Resolving that the specter’s appearance was unlikely to be coincidental, the boy gave chase. He dashed across the street before charging into the shadowed alley, knocking over the receptacles at its entrance. To Max’s surprise, he found absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in the brick pass and came to a skidding halt.
“Hey, if someone is back here, ya better come out right now!” he shouted angrily.
There was a harsh pattering, like the scurrying of a mid-sized animal rushing through to open toward cover.
“I’m serious! If you threw that shit at me you’re gonna regret it!” Max raged. “Come out now so I don’t have to smear you across the walls!”
A chattering giggle rose above the ambient wind. “Oh yeah?! You’d have to catch me before any smearing happens!”
Spurred by motion from the corner of his eye, Max turned to see a long shadow cast across the towering dead-end wall at the end of the passageway.
“And yeah, I hit you with that smoke bomb… You should just be happy it wasn’t a real one!” the high-pitched, distinctly female voice cackled.
Ignoring the taunts, Max hollered back, “Are you the one who tried to bomb the SS office, too?! If so, ya’d better off surrendering to me than letting them find ya!”
The shadow reared up further as if intrigued. Only now was Max able to make out two large ears atop the head of his assailant. Immediately, the boy knew exactly who he was dealing with.
So I did see a tail, after all… What are the odds of running into them here?
“Johanna!” exclaimed Max, stomping his feet into a combat stance, “You are Johanna, right?! Look, we both know ya can’t beat me, so give up and I’ll help ya get out of this whole deal!”
The silence was deafening.
Hoping to end the operation swiftly, Max pressed his luck further. “Come on, there’s no way you wanna take part in this kinda shit, right?! I can help!”
After another pause, the girl finally answered. “You’d… help me? You really mean it?”
“Of course!” Max said excitedly, elated that she seemed receptive. “We’re the good guys, that’s our job!”
“I… I guess you could help me…” Johanna continued, voice momentarily softening as she remained out of sight. “All you’d have to do… is take that big ugly claw of yours and slit your own throat!”
Max’s heart sank. The other had warned him, but he didn’t want to believe it. It seemed that Johanna was willfully complicit in the terrorist actions of her allies.
“Ya really want to do this the hard way, huh…?” Max growled under his breath. “Fine… but once I bring you in, you’re gonna face justice for what you’ve done…”
Despite the distance between them, Johanna’s sensitive ears allowed her to hear Max’s grumblings clearly. “For fuck’s sake, do you hear yourself, kid?! ‘The good guys’? ‘Justice’? You’re a fucking fascist! You don’t know shit about any of that!”
Clenching his fists with fury, Max straightened out his carapaced back and cracked his tail off the asphalt ground. “That doesn’t mean much coming from a fuckin terrorist!”
“Terrorist, huh? Well from where I’m standing, you look like the terrorist to me…”
Johanna’s voice was closer now, as if just over Max’s shoulder. Right when he turned to face her, however, a large man burst forth from the brick wall with a colossal, shining, greataxe. Reacting swiftly, the boy narrowly managed to block the shimmering weapon with his claws.
With a strained voice, Max asked, “Who the hell’re you…?”
The man delivered a solid kick into Max’s armored sternum, breaking the deadlock and sending the knight candidate skidding back across the ground with a terrible grinding sound.
“Your executioner…” the man replied grimly.
He was tall- at least two meters, and of a stocky build. Around his forehead, he wore a brown wrap, while a red neckerchief covered the lower half of his face. This color combination was the signature motif of the Red Front’s foot soldiers.
Max knew that somewhere behind him was the quick and agile Johanna Ratzinger. Still, to turn and seek her exact position now would certainly invite an attack from the axe-wielding Communist facing him down. For now, the boy just had to hope that the slight Johanna had no means of causing him significant harm.
“So… no chance we talk this out?” Max inquired, already knowing the answer.
The man only tightened his grip on the axe.
“Yeah… I figured…” huffed the knight candidate before exploding into action.
He charged forward, slashing wildly at the axeman with both claws. Several of these swipes made contact, tearing into the stressed brown fabric of the enemy’s jacket and pants, but none were sufficient to stagger or disable the man. In response to Max’s imprecise barrage, the Communist took advantage of a brief opening to drive his fist upward into Max’s stomach. While this succeeded in rattling the boy, his armor held, and no major damage was done. Because of that fact, Max was able to quickly recover, and slam the heavy front plate of his helmet directly into the man’s face, shattering his nose and launching him backward into the dead-end wall.
Before Max could follow up against the downed enemy, Johanna capitalized on his restricted field of view to scurry along his tail, around his trunk, and up to his back, where she then gripped two horn-like protrusions at the edges of the boy’s helmet and attempted to wrestle his head backward. Fortunately, even the strength of Max’s neck alone was too much for her to handle. Despite leveraging her full might against the back of his shell, Johanna’s gambit was unsuccessful. Max bucked forward, reached around behind his helmet’s broad frill, and snatched the murine girl by the arm. He then easily tore her from his shoulders and rifled her into the side of a nearby trash can, denting it with a loud crash.
“You guys got any more friends?!” Max howled triumphantly. “Maybe if ya bring five or six next time, ya might stand a real chance!”
Wincing in pain as she clambered to her hands and knees, Johanna replied, “I think my friends are a bit busy… killing yours…”
“Nice try,” scoffed Max, “But we both know damn well ya got no idea who my friends even are.”
Johanna’s lips twisted into a wicked grin, exposing her prominent incisors. “Arthur, Magnolia, and Gustavo ring a bell?”
A bell?
The ominous threat, now backed up with evidence, pierced Max’s armor like no physical attack could. Losing control of his temper, the boy stomped forward, cracking the pavement beneath his clawed greaves. “How do you know their names?” he growled menacingly, leaning his masked face just centimeters from hers.
Vulnerability was quick to show through the girl’s false bravado. From her point of reference, a titanic monstrosity was towering over her, and it was all she could do to keep her nervous, twitching smile intact.
“Y-you don’t think we noticed your druggy captain following us everywhere? That one-eyed fucking creep is a lot of things, but inconspicuous isn’t one of them…” she answered, forcing a weak chuckle.
“Who’s after them?!” snapped Max, slamming another nearby trash can across the alleyway with his tail.
The sudden noise was enough to make Johanna squeal in fright. “You know who! The rest of my comrades- the ones the Pervitin-fiend was stalking! W-what are you, stupid?!”
Out of nowhere, Max felt a substantial force pull on his tail. He pivoted to face the source but was too late to stop the axeman from splitting through his armor with a vicious downward cleave. The blow had struck the weakest point between two segmented plates, severing his tail half a meter from the base. Though there were no nerve endings in the artificial appendage to cause Max any pain, the strike had been enough to throw him off balance, and without a tail to act as a counterweight to his armor’s massive headpiece, he promptly collapsed forward onto his face.
“Ha! Great work, Kibo!” Johanna exclaimed, scampering on all fours to the axe-wielding rebel’s side. “I knew I could count on you!”
Max groaned as he attempted to right himself, to no avail. Looking upward at his assailant, he found the sun’s rays spilling over the roof above, casting golden beams that illuminated the alley and refracted through the myriad polyhedral angles of the enemy’s glistening axe. For the first time, it was apparent that the weapon was made of glass.
“Now,” the girl continued, her dish-like ears twitching anxiously, “off with this fascist’s head so we can move on to the next one!”
Kibo, eager to comply, lifted his axe’s sparkling edge high into the air. Pinned under the weight of his armor, Max was helpless to guard against the impending coup de grace.
ns 15.158.61.48da2
