Ten minutes after that aggravating elevator revelation, around three hundred rebels lay dead, with the fifteen hundred or so survivors unloading hundreds of lasers, bullets, and even a few plasma shots at the shipping container Autumn and Fate were behind. They had chosen a container in the corner to the left of where they exited the armory, preventing the rebels from flanking them.
The container was perpendicular to the leftmost wall, allowing Fate to cover the right corner and Autumn the other. Autumn rarely carried a gun, however, so her "covering" of the corner was merely tossing any grenades or bombs back at the throwers and crushing the skulls of anyone trying to get close with her TK. The 800 or so workers had fled to the back as soon as the fighting started.
"This isn't going well!" Shouted Fate over the noise of bullets hitting metal and stone, the dying screams of rebels, and lasers burning into various materials.
"You don't say!" Autumn shouted back. "We need to push forward, or we'll be here all day!"
A few more seconds of silence between the two followed as Fate continued shooting at the rebels. Then, "I have an idea."
"What is it?" asked Fate.
"This shipping container is empty. Think a few of the nearby ones are as well."
"And?"
"Remember when I said we need to move forward?"
"…Oh. That might work. Really well, actually. We should toss some bombs for cover as well," Fate yelled, killing another two rebels.
"Alright… NOW," Autumn shouted. Grabbing Garvon gas grenades and hydra bombs off their belts, they used their TK to toss them all over the warehouse-turned-battlefield within five hundred feet from where they were.
When the Hydra bombs went off, they used that as their signal to move forward. Lifting the container with her TK, Autumn moved it a few hundred feet toward the back wall, her and Fate both sticking close to it. When she set it down, they were less than twenty feet from another ten shipping containers, stacked on top of each other.
Using those to cover one side, Autumn set the lifted container parallel to the left wall, which was now behind them. She then used her senses to find large groups of enemies and lifted the nearby containers with her TK, throwing them at these groups and killing a few dozen each toss, along with one or two from the containers' bounce.
This tactic, plus the bombs from earlier, brought the rebel numbers down to 1100, give or take a few dozen. Of course, Autumn ran out of containers to toss within minutes (excluding the one they were using for cover), so they stopped to think and shoot for a second. "You remember how to form a shield, by any chance?" asked Fate. "Of course," replied Autumn. "That's the first thing we learned."
"Alright, here's what I'm thinking then. Turn this container into a bunch of shields, and use it to cover our rear and sides. Use your TK to cover our front, and we should be untouchable. Meanwhile, I'll pop in and out of the safe zone you make to wait for Null to cool down, and pick off the bastards while they're focused on you."
Autumn agreed that that was their best shot at the moment, so she started tearing the shipping container into pieces with her Prodigy power, "Hercules." Hercules allowed her to infuse her already monstrous TK rating of 8 into double the physical power, allowing her to lift 9000 pounds of material with her arms and grip things in her hands with her base TK power of 4500 pounds as grip strength.
This was why she never carried a gun, because she could crush dozens of skulls at once and utterly destroy almost anything within a range of 125 feet, and could inflict double the havoc on anything within punching distance. Using this terrifying strength, she made extremely short work of the container, tearing the closest side of it into five jagged pieces of differing sizes. She then telekinetically shoved the remains toward a large group of rebels, crushing them.
Lifting the "shields" with her TK and forming telekinetic shields, she made a safe zone with a radius of about 10 feet. Fate activated his Null, tossed her his railgun and a pouch full of ammunition for it, pulled a Breach knife out of a sheath on his hip, and went to work with the Breach knife in one hand and his Jenghang H-6 in the other.
True to the plan, all rebels converged on Autumn, unloading clip after clip into her shields. She made sure to block the bullets with the hunks of metal she carried to be safe, letting the lasers hit the invisible wall she had up.
Suddenly, about three minutes in, the fighters heard several loud, long, simultaneous yells. Those who looked over saw several Clunkers charging toward the group, hands raised into fists. 'Ah, shit. The workers have some spine,' thought Fate. He was currently waiting in Autumn's makeshift safe zone for the headache from Null to pass.
The rebels made way for the clunkers, which pounded on the TK shield and the metal hunks. Each hit broke through, as these industrial mechs were capable of punching with about 5000 pounds of force, easily tearing through the metal and shearing apart Autumn's TK shield.
Letting out a shout, Autumn launched the hunks of metal into nearby rebel groups while Fate reactivated Null. Keeping her shield up to block any stray lasers, she punched the mech in front of her while Fate shot the face of the operator of another mech.
Autumn's punch caved in the metal torso of the mech, causing a horrific screeching sound to emanate from it as it was sent hurtling through the air. It landed about fifty feet away, the operator inside cut in half by the warped metal.
Autumn continued punching any mech that came close, while Fate picked off the few gunpowder firearm-using rebels that were left. Those gunpowder weapons were the biggest threat to their TK shields. Every minute or so, he would hide behind a nearby destroyed mech or container to wait for his headache to subside.
Several hours later, Autumn and Fate stood panting, surrounded by hundreds of corpses. After resting a bit, Autumn used her TK to block the door leading to the armory with a shipping container and then did the same to the elevator.
The two then proceeded to comb the miles-long cavern for any survivors, dispatching those they found. After that, they moved to the very back of the area, where there were several tunnels holding Light Platforms leading hundreds of miles away, presumably used to transport everything in this cavern. A few tunnels lacked the Light Platforms, indicating escapees. Leaving that for later, they opened the door set into the wall between two of the tunnels.
A laser hit Fate's TK shield upon entering. Looking at the source, he saw a middle-aged bald man with black eyes. He was dressed in very expensive combat armor made to stop even plasma projectiles, which told Fate he was probably the leader of this rebel cell. He was standing behind a small metal desk with a computer on it.
A quick glance showed there were no other doors in the room. Motioning to the bald man, Fate said "Break him." Autumn used her Tk to break the bones in his arms and legs, forcing him to drop his gun and fall to the floor, screaming in agony. Autumn picked him up and took him to the large area. She dropped him onto the ground, Fate behind her, and they got ready to extract some information from this man.