Carlotta's face is a shade of purple now, tears run down her cheeks.
"I knew this wasn't going to be easy, but I guess I did make it out alive. When I heard the Afterburners learned about me, I knew I was about to fight for my life. Shit, you certainly got me sweating."
My body is stiff, I can't move it. I try to crawl to Carlotta, but my limbs are forced into a constant state of constricting.
Carlotta's clutching hands drop from Clockwork's wrists, but then they go back, and suddenly, she's fighting for air again. "Killing you was so much fun the first time, I thought why not a second? Or a third? Fourth? Fifth?" Clockwork brought her back to life just to strangle her to death again. This is sick.
I notice that every time she reverses something, it's not just her target that gets reversed, but the whole area to an extent. My body will do things it did previously, but only if that's what she wants or isn't paying attention. Otherwise, when she threw the letter opener and reversed it back, my body would've gotten out of the way twice. But it didn't, that means she can sort of control it if she really concentrates.
Carlotta continues to die. Clockwork continues to reverse it. She keeps doing it again and again and again. Clockwork is obviously unhinged. She keeps reversing us, I'm forced to live breathless much longer than my body intends to.
And then, Clockwork's power works against her.
A pair of strong, beefy hands wrap around Clockwork and throw her off Carlotta and into the wall. Clyde is conscious again, but he still doesn't have his tongue. He turns to me, absolutely terrifying looking, and pulls out a metal stick from his pocket. I know what he wants to do, and I try to squirm away.
He quickly slides towards me, his bleeding mouth dripping over my face. Without a tongue, he appears to be a bloody monster straight from a nightmare. The metal stick he has is short with open ends on either side. I try to wiggle away, but my body betrays me.
The stick is stabbed through my throat with extreme force. It hurts like hell, but the pain blockers quickly diminish it. I can breathe again through this device, but just enough to keep living. I still don't get a lot of air down in my lungs. The blood from my wound pumps more wildly, losing more than when I couldn't breathe. Hopefully, there's still enough juice to keep me running.
He can't talk, so he just gives me a thumbs-up.
"Yeah, I can breathe," I say, my voice raspy and struggling.
He stands up and heads for Clockwork still stuck in the wall. She feels her legs getting pulled out by Clyde, and falls to the floor kicking around.
"How!?"
"Meugh!"
"My Playback! It must've reversed you all the way back to consciousness. Dammit, I should've been paying more attention!"
"Muh-huh."
"Playback!"
Clyde's movements are slowed again. Her feet are still firmly clasped in his grip, and no amount of slowing down will loosen that. If she reverses him, she'd have to deal with getting put back in the wall. She pulls hard enough and slips out of her shoes, her bare feet slipping through his grip.
She stands up and tries to hurt Clyde, but Carlotta is kneeling and ready to fight again. She may not have brought a gun, but she does have her blazer. She quickly removes it and tosses it at Clockwork's face. Her instinct causes her to freeze the blazer, letting Clyde free from the slow-mo.
Clyde wastes no time in kicking her legs out from under her in a sweeping motion. She falls hard on her head, but she reverses it and jumps over the kick. As she jumps over it, the blazer lands on her face and blinds her. Clyde grabs one of her flailing arms and throws her over his shoulder. She lands hard on her back and makes a wheezing sound as the air gets knocked out of her.
Clyde's boot comes flying downward, but she slows it down to roll out of the way. She sweeps his standing leg to return the revenge, and he starts to fall in slow-mo too. Carlotta lugs her tired body back into a fighting position and tries more martial arts. Clockwork is still capable of defending herself at normal speeds, but Clyde remains slowed.
My body is difficult to move, but I make my way to the machine and restore Clyde's speed. He falls at a normal rate, recovering quickly. I try my gun again, the bullet goes into her foot, but it gets reversed back into my gun.
Now Carlotta and Clyde are both fighting her at the same time. She can only slow down one person at a time, so she can't stop the onslaught of attacks coming from two trained combat specialists. Carlotta throat chops her, Clyde's fist targets her open wound, there are several kicks to her legs, and punches to her face. Eventually, she gets thrown by Carlotta and falls right in front of me and the machine.
"You're not coming with us alive, are you?" I ask.
Bloody and shaking, she still manages to squeak out, "Never…"
I almost applaud watching her get up and stand on her two wobbling legs. I don't have the strength to fight back, so I stand aside and let her taunt Carlotta and Clyde until they both launch a kick into her so hard that she bounces off the wall and falls flat on her stomach.
She reverses the kicks, but her power seems to be weaker. We only go back one second, so she gets kicked twice, landing in the same position. Now that was just karma.
Carlotta bends down and picks her up by the ears again. "Enough! Just quit!"
"I'm…I'm going to be the next Character."
"The relic didn't bond with you. It never will. You don't have the blood it's looking for."
"You don't know anything about the relic. Stop pretending like you know how any of this goes."
"And you're not coming with us to help you remove your curse?"
"It's no curse…it's a gift. If you keep me around, I'm going to kill you and all the agents who work under you."
"Then I'm making the decision that you are irredeemable. Clyde?"
Clyde's uncanny face contorts to a snarl with furrowed brows and gross grunts. He takes her ears away from Carlotta and starts dragging her body toward the window.
"No wait! Wait, wait, wait!" Clockwork begs.
With no mercy, Clyde hurls her body out of the window. It shatters into pieces, and she plummets from the complex a full four stories. Only, she would've if she didn't slow herself down to soften the descent.
I drag the machine over to the window and give the nozzle to Carlotta. She can handle this one, there's enough blood on my hands.
Carlotta leans out of the window to face her. "So much loyalty for The Key. Why? What did they promise you that made you put your life on the line for them?"
Clockwork speaks from slowed speed in a normal tone. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, it is her power after all. "There's going to be a new world run by those who've earned it. My only regret is that I won't be a part of it."
"The Animatrix, how does it grant people powers like yours?"
"The relic is impossible. It shouldn't exist in this reality, but it does. We spend time with it, train with it, and if it likes you, you'll be crowned as The Character."
"The Character? The one Agent Hearth put down?"
"The Character has the ability to use all the powers! It can reshape reality itself. If given enough time, they'll be so strong that even the thought of someone coming after them would kill that person before they even made a plan."
"And what about you? These are your last moments. Did you really think you would become the next Character?"
"No, it doesn't matter how badly I want to be. The relic wants perfect blood, and thanks to that filthy fox you've got, we have no idea where to look. Strange, isn't it? How did he beat such a man of stature all by himself? It's like he has a power of his own. After all, he tracked me with the relic scent, and you can only smell that if you've messed with the relic. Got any powers you're hiding, foxy?"
I shake my head. "Maybe I'm just good at what I do."
Carlotta sticks her head back out. "So you're going to die topless and barefoot. Do you want any of that stuff on the way down?"
"Are you fucking joking right now?"
"Just want you to go out with some dignity."
"Fair point. How about this?" She throws both middle fingers our way and smiles. "I think I did really well. I took on three agents and almost won. Technically, I killed you several times, Miss Pants Suit! Did you like it? What was the afterlife like? Is it real?"
"I guess you're going to find out." Carlotta shoots the particle accelerator at her, and her fall resumes a normal speed. She doesn't scream on the way down, and we all watch her body bounce on the street below. No movement, most likely dead on impact.
"You think that hurt when she landed?" I ask.
"Uh-huh…" Clyde murmurs.
"I think she broke her neck, could've been painless," Carlotta explains.
"I hear sometimes its not, and the pain is excruciating. You can't scream either. Crazy stuff."
"Why do you always have to make the mood worse? Anyway, don't forget to put 'deceased' on her report."
"Another one bites the dust."
"She wasn't going to come quietly."
"I'm just glad it wasn't me that pulled the trigger. Racking up a body count has a way of haunting your sleep."
"Troy, seriously?"
"Sorry, I don't mean to rain on your parade. Especially since the rain is Clockwork."
"Troy!"
Clyde laughs in a silly and horrifying way.
"Right, come along then. We should get you boys back to the safe house for some medical attention. Don't worry, Clyde, Dr. Nivans can make a new tongue for you."
"So case closed?"
"Case closed. I'll have to ask a team to collect any blood we left behind."
"Ah-ah! Don't forget about the couple that saw us fighting."
"Of course."
"And you'll have to pay for the damages that we did to this place."
"I know."
"And don't forget—"
"Troy, I know how to handle fieldwork! Get your fluffy butt down those stairs!"
Animatrix Victim: Clockwork
Curse: Playback!
Type: Physics Bending
Status: Deceased