"Well, look at this beauty!"
Yeah. A total beauty. Sure.
The man patted the tank's sides, as it finally came into view. It was more than apparent that it was a prized possession of his, but I was certainly not impressed. Who the hell would ever be impressed by the thing that was supposed to kill them!?
Or hurt them... Or whatever they were actually planning to do with the damn thing!
"Now do you see how much of a rut you are in, kid?" Moustache-dictator here asked me. "I think you would agree that it'll be best for the both of us for you to just go and tell us the truth. We won't harm you!"
He raised his hands into the air, as if that would convince me shit!
"Like hell, that's going to happen!" I retorted immediately, feeling both my heartbeat and head-throbbing intensify in the background from the strain of my throat.
Come on, rope! Work with me for crying out loud!
Ever since the word 'tank' had been uttered, my discreet attempt in freeing myself had begun. At first, it was only a desperate plan, but I quickly came to realise that the bind around me itself had been done rather poorly. Whoever was responsible for it clearly did not know his way around tying people, which I shouldn't be that surprised about. After all, that was probably what you'd get when you spend most of your life just killing people on the get-go!
I was simply just happy to have been able to make use of such luck.
"Now, that's not really the answer I was looking for," moustache's voice pulled me back into reality "I see no fear in your eyes, but I don't know whether it's foolishness or not that is blinding you, my boy."
"I think there's quite a good reason for that, to be honest."
"Hmm?"
WHAM!
In a blink of an eye, surprising everybody but myself, I broke free from my binds and delivered a kick straight towards the jaw of the man. The kick was packed with so much force that I swore his moustache could've fallen off. Hell, that'd be an amusing sight but I knew better than to waste any time.
Everything slowed down.
As soon as I was free to move, I immediately went for white-hair in order to grab his rifle. Jab, uppercut, take. I loaded the rifle and began opening fire. Whatever was in my sight, I shot down, no care in the world. One second had passed, and I jumped out of the way, taking cover behind one of the shops which was oozing signs of breaking down at any given moment.
Bullets began to fly past from behind me.
Breath suffocating, chest tightening, I jumped down onto the floor and barely dodged the barrage of bullets sprayed by the tank. Bang, bang, bang. There was no end to it. There truly wasn't. I rolled out of the way, got back into cover, breathed deeply, cursed some more and tried to formulate a plan.
Sadly, it seemed that the whole structure did not support this plan of mine.
"Bloody old piece of shit!" I uttered.
As soon as the rain of bullets stopped, I seized my chance and continued my run.
Left, right. Left, right. A gunshot from right behind me. Dodge left. Turn right. Shot whatever I could. Hit one of the men, a really bulky guy I hadn't seen before. Fuck this shit. Turn back. Continue on running.
In a sheer matter of seconds, more than ten things had happened, and my brain couldn't process it fast enough to allow myself a clean escape.
"He's going to the second floor!" Moustache dictator's voice bellowed. "Bucko, stop him from getting on that damn walkway!"
Fortunately, I managed to get on said walkway just in time. Unfortunately, that said walkway was being showered by bullets, which caused it to be destroyed into rubbles in mere seconds.
"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!?" I cursed in outrage, as I tried to outrun the carnage behind me. A tank — a bloody tank! — was chasing after me!
How the hell did things even come to this!? And where was that damn Reaper!
Damn git.
As soon as the opportunity presented itself, I jumped onto one of the ledges present on the second floor. No moment of hesitation, I quickly made my way to the other side, away from the destroyed walkway. As soon as I got across, I disappeared into one of the small hallways present there and blended into the shadows.
I needed a breather, and this was the perfect time to do so... I hoped.
Panting heavily, I cursed my luck for having given me such a crappy situation to deal with.
"A territorist group with a bloody tank," I complained into the darkness. "Like what the actual he-"
BANG!!!
The walls just inches away from me suddenly turned into shambles as my hearing became momentarily impaired. Constant buzzing occupied my auditory senses, and in that short amount of my time all of my senses were shut down by the sheer impact of the shot.
The tank had armed shells, it had shells! It just shot one! Oh God!
With everything ringing, I tried to assess my whole situation. Thankfully, nothing seemed to be hurt badly. Well, at least for now that wa-- Ah, shit.
Not giving me a break at all, a bullet suddenly grazed my left arm while I was recuperating. Great. Totally what I needed. Realising that blood was dripping out from the scratch, I tried to use the a piece of my clothing to bandage it.
Sadly, those pests on the other side had different ideas.
With another shot nearly hitting my head, I decided that what I was doing was not worth it. I needed to find a better place to patch up. Moving even deeper into the shadows, I steadied the rifle on my right and prepared for a 3-on-1 gun fight.
The odds were not looking towards my favor, but I had nothing better in mind.
Besides, it would only be a matter of time until the tank actually hit me, so I couldn't waste any time idling about. Hell, I could even hear another shell being loaded.
Wait-!
BANG!
Spoiler alert, it didn't.
Narrowly avoiding yet another round, I was pushed even further back and this time there was a huge gaping hole in the wall! Now, with my one and only source of cover gone into smithereens, I was finally forced to move out and get going.
As soon as I got out of cover, I aimed immediately at anybody in sight but this was a mistake.
What I failed to realise was that my left hand had been damaged much worse than what I expected, causing me to have difficulty in aiming. Curious indeed as a normal bullet couldn't have led to such a deep wound.
Still, I had much more pressing matters at hand than worrying about a bullet!
At least, for now that was...
As I ran through the barrage of artilleries thrown at me, I tried my best to return fire. Although such an attempt only granted me a little distraction, I used it to my full advantage to start a direct sprint towards the edge of the mall.
Behind me, all I could hear was destruction.
Bullets, gunshots, near misses; if I weren't the one running, I'd bet my heart would. Faster, faster, faster; that was the only thing I could tell myself in order to calm down. Just a little bit there... Just a little bit more!
The bullets kept on coming though, and I swear I could hear another shell being popped into the tank's turret. Whether I was right or not, I didn't want to wait and find out.
"Come on!!!" I exclaimed.
Fortunately, reality seemed to have answered me for a large stainglass appeared in front of me. Finally, a real chance in escaping!
I prepared my rifle once more and aimed towards the glass which was about to be gone within an instant. I opened fire, and with a serenade of broken glass, a new opening had come up in front of me. What was left was only the sight of the big ole' blue sky.
Hell yeah!
"Goodbye suckers!" I let out as I jumped out of the mall and onto the slippery surface of a glass slope. Maintaining my cool, I easily navigated my way down onto the streets below and landed perfectly without hurting my left arm even further.
It only dawned on me then that what I had just done was a potential suicide, but I brushed off the thought.
At least, I was alive!
I mean, even if Death was the one to be on the other side of that glass, I'd make it damn sure that the Reaper wasn't getting off the hook. Besides, it wasn't like the tank could break through the wall or anythin-- HOLY SHIT!
BOOM!
As soon as I saw the head of the tank emerged through the wall, I immediately fell flat on my back, shocked of the sight unfolding right in front of me. Like a monster suddenly clawing its way out of the abyss, the tank came all guns and blazing as it made a huge giant hole on the center of the abandoned mall's walls. The noise that was produced would've been enough to cause me to stagger on my feet, but the impact of the whole visual immediately made me weak on my knees.
What in the actual hell!
I turned around as quickly as possible, ran on all four before getting onto my two feet. It didn't take long before the other men got out as well, and surely enough, shots were being delivered yet again.
Now that I think about it, how did they get their hands on so many firearms!? In the Outlands too, no less!
Sadly, I didn't have time for this pondering. With all of my might, I shoved through my weakened knees and dove into a corner of an alleyway to cover myself from all of the lead being sprayed.
"What in the actual hell!" I repeated, completely pissed.
Once I was out of harm's way, I looked back down onto my left arm, and surely enough, it was inflamed pretty terribly. I already had a sneaking suspicion of what kind of bullet had caused me such troubles, but I tried to push the thought away.
Hopefully, it isn't true, I thought to myself.
The fact that I couldn't even feel anything aside from the pain didn't give me that much comfort as well. All I could do then was to finally patch things up with a bit of my clothing, and continued on running.
Looking at my surroundings, I found myself to have just entered a small alleyway. It didn't look anything particularly peculiar, but it surely had a striking amount of greeneries filling it up. Further proof of how much civilisation had fallen, I guess.
But nevermind that, I needed to escape not to spend time dawdling on such irrelevant things!
The sound of the tank was becoming more and more audible, and with that the bells of Death echoed louder and louder in my ears. I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I surely didn't want to die from having stayed immobile while a tank was slowly catching up to me!
Knowing this, I decided to just wing things out, and ventured myself deep into the vine-filled alleyway.
Whatever that lay in front of me couldn't be worse than what was behind me now, could it?
The sound of gunshots and incomprehensible screamings continued to haunt me from my back, as I made my way through the alley. Never did it occur to me that I had made a full escape, for I couldn't tell how close they were. The vines were such a pain that I couldn't make it through the whole terrain anymore easily than it was to get through quicksand, and this bothered me a lot! It was like I was being dragged away from where I was actually going!
Maddening!
"Oh, whatever!" I said, giving up as I raised my gun. Not feeling it anymore, I decided to shoot my way through the annoying creepers. I didn't care if it was loud, I was not going to be cornered!
And things were actually going great after this! In fact, I was about to reach another patch of street before things finally went wrong.
As I was just a few steps away from freedom, I suddenly felt the ground below me shaking.
An earthquake?
No! It was something worse!
The moment the ground below me crumbled right underneath my feet, I had completely no time to react at all, and ended up landing hard. On my injured left-arm no less!
"Ah, screw this!" I cursed, wincing at the pain. "Damn trees with their roots!"
Still, I knew I didn't have much time to waste. I could already hear their voices coming over...
Wait-- Water?
I got up as quickly as I could, and took the time to take in my environment. There were pipes of all shapes and sizes running around the walls, water underneath my feet and a smell of absolute sick hung in the air.
No doubt about it; I was in the Biouldeon's sewers!
"This is so not good," I commented, as I slowly made my way into the darkness. I had no choice, it was the only thing I could do if I were to lose the people behind me. Unfortunately, it seemed that my search for my things would have to be postponed for now.
I let out a sigh and once again cursed both my luck and the Reaper, who was still yet to make an appearance.
Feeling annoyed, I was just about take one step forward when things once again went wrong.
Out of nowhere, a rotting piece of hand came up from underneath me, clawing its ways deep into my skin. Unable to let go of this unwanted presence, I tried to shoot to no avail; my arms were simply just too weak!
"Damn it!!" My final words were.
Before I even knew it, I was plunged down into the darkness that was not only blinding but also suffocating.