Wasteland Warlords Episode 2 - 11 Aussie fight

In his whirring mech suit, Flynn “Gearhead” Lynes stood seven foot tall and looked like a half-human tank.

Clay could vouch for the accuracy of that appearance, almost having been crushed to death by the angry Aussie in their last meeting.

“It doesn’t need to go this way,” Clay said, putting up his hands. “I know we got off to a rough start, but no one needs to die. Blowing up your lab was never intentional, and we’re happy to make restitution.” He waved a hand at Smilerfax’s hoard. “Hell, take this place. It’s yours. There’s more than enough to make up for whatever you lost back in the junkyard.”

Gearhead advanced a clanking step that rattled the FUN HOUSE and sent coins sliding off their piles.

“I intend to take the gold, all right. But I’m gonna do it the right way, ya bloody drongo. Keep what you kill, that’s the rule.” He stabbed a metal-clad fist at Clay. A mini cannon popped out of the wrist, its insides glowing red as a burning coal. “I’m gonna gut ya, so’s I can spread your insides all over this fair like bloomin’ Anzac Day streamers. Then I’m gonna go the same to your budgy-smugglin’ brotha, and that little bird you call a wife. Then, and only then, will I take all the bloody gold for myself. Keep what you kill, thems the rules.”

Anger burned through Clay like a firestorm. No one threatened his family. No one. Joe and Alex were the only two people in the world he gave a shit about. Incant or not, Gearhead was going to regret coming at them.

“Last chance,” Clay said, barely restraining the growl in his voice. “Take the gold, we part ways, our business done, and I’ll generously forget what you just said. But I promise if you try to hurt my family, I’ll rip off your gearbox and shove it down your throat.”

“Big words, fucker. Let’s see ya back ’em up.”

“Now,” Clay barked.

While he’d been talking with Gearhead—distracting him—Alex had crept around to his flank. She swept forward like a tidal wave, slamming her shoulder into the Aussie’s side, then twisting into a brutal elbow strike, which knocked the cannon away from Clay. Gearhead staggered drunkenly, knocked off balance by her rush. Staying with him, Alex blasted the Aussie in the jaw with a vicious follow-up hook.

Gearhead tumbled to the ground from the sheer force of the blow, but a second later he rolled back onto his boots with the grace of a giant robotic cat. The move should’ve been impossible given his bulky armor.

Joe whistled. “The gyros on that beast!”

“More like the dex potions,” Clay grumbled. He grabbed a magicka potion from the foot of the throne and downed it.

“Six of one, baker’s dozen of the other,” Joe replied, shrugging. He jerked Bertha’s starter cord and the saw roared to life, preparing to charge.

Clay grabbed his brother’s arm.

“Wait!” he yelled loud enough to get the Gearhead’s attention. He focused on the indicator light at the center of the Gearhead’s chest plate and cast Control Lights. “Haul ass, guys!” he hollered, doing his best to sound panicked. “His suit’s about to melt down!”

Gearhead’s thick brows furrowed, and his face twisted with fury. But he looked down at the light, which was now burning with the same insanely bright light the iron golem’s had shined with just before it blew his workshop sky high.

The distraction worked. Alex darted in again, snagging him by the throat then hooking her foot behind Gearhead’s heel. With a deft lift and pull motion, she swept the leg, slamming him flat on his back. The second he hit the ground, she threw a series of quick body shots to a squealing servo on the side of his suit. The tiny motor sparked. Lynes floundered for a second like a turtle on its back.

“Seriously,” Clay said, jerking his head at her and Joe, “time to go.”

They came running, Alex in the lead with Bacon Bits in her pocket.

“Mayhem!” the teacup pig squealed gleefully. “Violence! Havoc!”

Clay and Joe followed along behind, with Chonk hard on their heels. The five of them crashed through the FUN HOUSE door.

An army of electrical snakes had converged on the exit, hissing and spitting and slithering over one another angrily. Strangely, none of the cord cobras moved to attack as their little group raced out into the dim gloom of the carnival. They stayed staring expectantly at the FUN HOUSE door.

Clay, Alex, and Joe barely made it ten yards down the midway when a roar like a tornado shook the air. Something boomed, metal shrieked, and heavy-duty canvas ripped.

The Aussie exploded out the top of the FUN HOUSE, blasting into the air like a space shuttle. Boosters had been attached to the bottoms of his boots and at strategic points along his suit to stabilize his flight. He raised his cannon arm again and pointed it at their group.

Clay had told Gearhead that if he picked a fight, he wasn’t going to walk away, and he intended to see that promise paid in full. But they were completely outmatched and outgunned. Alex was tough, fast, and hit like a sledgehammer, but Gearhead had to have twenty levels or more on her—not to mention superior gear and buckets of extra stats, thanks to his potion manufacturing hustle. Clay and Joe weren’t bringing much to the table at this point. Tinkering with the lights on Gearhead’s suit was Clay’s magical ace in the hole and it wasn’t going to work twice.

If they were going to survive this, they would have to fight smart… and pray they got lucky as hell every step of the way.

“Scatter,” Clay bellowed, plan already forming in his mind.

They all bolted in different directions. Clay and Alex tucked and rolled under the Tilt-a-Whirl, while Joe and Chonk dove into a wagon shaped like a giant lemon which purported to sell Frozen Lemonade.

Red light flashed. Thunder boomed, and dirt and scorched grass rained from the sky. The spot on the midway where they’d been a second before had turned into a charred crater.

“How’s yeh like that, ya wankers?” Lynes crowed. “Decided I needed a ranged banger after our last little tango so’s I could cook me some chookshit tumbleweeds.”

“I’m gonna kick his ass into next Thursday,” Alex said, starting for the dented ride skirting.

Clay grabbed her shoulder. “Not by yourself, you’re not.”

“I love you and Joe dearly,” she said, “but I’m the one with the Incant powers. If we’re going to walk away from this thing, it’s on me.”

“Just because you’re an Incant doesn’t mean you can go ten rounds with him,” Clay said, trying to make her see reason. “The psycho’s probably been shotgunning stat potions from the time he learned how to craft them until now.”

As if to confirm Clay’s theory, the wreckage of the kiddie coaster soared past and landed in a twisted heap on top of the Tilt-a-Whirl.

“Hiding in there, are yas?” Lynes flew out of Clay’s field of vision. “Come out, ya buggers, or I’ll smash you out.”

“What exactly are you proposing?” Alex asked, looking through a rust hole in the Tilt-a-Whirl floor at the smoldering, sparking wreckage of the coaster.

“We turn the dungeon on him. He’s powerful, but did you see those cord cobras? They were pissed. He didn’t play the games. Didn’t pay the price of admission into the Funhouse. We did.” Clay peeked through the awning. The Target Shoot still had 240s sitting out and the Test of Might was going wild, corded arms flailing about with heavy, spiked mallets. “I think we can turn the games on him. That’s our edge. I’ll get Joe on board. You just get to the Test of Might and be ready. We’re going to drive him to you.”

“How?” she asked.

Clay winked. “Do you trust me?”

She scowled. “You know I hate those movies.”

“Yeah, but you love me. I promise this’ll work—I’ll make it.”

Another screech made Clay flinch as Gearhead ripped out the basketball toss and hurled it through the air. Like the kiddy coaster, it landed on the Tilt-a-Whirl with a crunch, rattling the scant protection covering Clay and Alex. The stink of hot metal singed his nostrils.

Clay ignored the noise, the heat, the chaos, and focused instead on the small pool of Magicka churning inside his body. Last he knew Joe was in the lemonade stand, and so far he hadn’t seen his brother abandon it. He spoke—just a whisper—and cast the very first cantrip he’d ever learned, Beguiling Call. It was a basic glamor spell, which allowed him to throw his voice to another location within line of sight.

Joe had laughed when Clay told him about it and immediately asked if he could throw farts with it too. Despite the mockery, Clay had known it had some handy combat applications. And yes, it turned out he couldthrow farts with it. Fart sounds, anyway.

His voice vanished and power drained from his body as the words resurfaced a hundred feet away. “Draw him out, Joe. Distract him long enough for Alex to make a break for it, then use the automatic pitching machines at the Milk Bottle Throw to drive Gearhead toward the Test of Might.” Just speaking the few sentences exhausted Clay to his core and left him feeling hollow and empty. Draining Magicka without having the ability to regenerate it was no fun. Thankfully, he still had a potion in reserve.

He chugged the brew while he silently hoped and prayed. Beguiling Call wasn’t telepathy, so there was no way to know if Joe had actually gotten the message.

Just when Clay was about to give up hope and go it alone, he heard his brother’s twang.

“Yo, Waltzing Matilda, why don’t you come pick on somebody your own size?” Joe yelled, gunning Bertha’s engine. Chonk’s little hedge trimmer echoed the war cry. “You scared of Lumberjack Joe Jaeger?” He sauntered into the center of the midway, back straight, head held high. “’Cause buddy you should be.”

“Now’s our chance,” Clay said.

“Fine, but if this works it’s going on my save counter,” Alex grumbled.

“You have a problem, woman.” He gave Alex a quick kiss—before she could protest further about how dumb and reckless this was—and pushed her into motion.

She turned and bolted across an open stretch of midway, angling toward the ring toss booth.

Clay ran his thumb over the silver band on his ring finger, the Hatchling Naga’s Band of Quickstrike. It was his replacement wedding ring and a reminder of what was on the line here, what he was fighting for. It also happened to give him an additional dex boost and a small bonus to movement speed, which he would need to pull this off.

He took one more glance at his brother. Joe was still running his mouth, while slowly circling toward the Milk Can Toss. Good. Now it was Clay’s turn to buy Joe a little time.

Clay pulled up the Tilt-a-Whirl skirting and took off at a dead sprint toward the Target Shoot, arms and legs pumping like mad. He slid to a stop and pulled the 240 Medium Machine from counter. The electrical cord cobras swayed, heads bobbing, but they didn’t seem particularly interested in stopping him. Clay and the others had already played Smilerfax’s game and won. The cobras were now more or less indifferent to him.

To Gearhead? Not so much.

Snaking cables slithered toward the pitched battle between Joe, Chonk, and the enraged Incant.

Joe leapt over the Milk Bottle counter and co-opted one of the automatic fastball pitchers, which were now filled with spiked metal balls.

“What would win in a fight?” Joe taunted. “Gearhead McAussie’s fancy-shmancy beer can suit or Joe Jaeger’s infamous deadly fastball? ” He slammed a fist against the ignition button. “Batter up!”

The pitcher whirled to life and metal balls exploded from the basket feeder with a whomp. They whistled through the air like missiles and crashed into Gearhead’s mech suit, leaving huge dents. The hits slowed his approach, but didn’t knock him back. Too much power in the suit and strength in his stats.

“Reckon I’ve had about alla ya fuckery I can stand,” the Incant spat.

Gearhead batted the next spiked ball aside with his armored fist, then leveled the barrel of his cannon arm at Joe and the pitching machine. So much for Joe’s distraction buying time. Clay had to act now before the Incant blew his brother’s head off.

Utilizing the full speed of the naga ring, Clay broke left and circled around so that Gearhead was now sandwiched between him and Alex at the Test of Might.

The Incant’s cannon glowed red, a heartbeat from firing.

Clay planted his feet, jammed the buttstock of the stolen carnival machine gun into his shoulder and let it rip. He’d used 240s back during his days in the Corps, and they weren’t meant to be fired from the shoulder. Thanks to his enhanced strength, he managed to keep the barrel more or less on target, but it was still a fight. Screaming rounds chewed into Gearhead, sparking madly and pinging off into the night.

The Incant’s shot at Joe jerked wild. With a snarl, Gearhead snapped a metal helmet down over his face, protecting his head from the incoming 240 rounds.

“Done hidin’ then are ya, ya bloody bunga?” Lynes took aim at Clay, his cannon flaring red. “Welcome to the piss-up!”

“Croikey, mate, I wasn’t done with yeh yet!” Joe drawled in an offensively bad Australian accent. He grabbed the pitching machine and awkwardly straddled the counter, somehow managing to shoot off another volley of spiked fastballs as he went. “Have anotha shrimp fah the bahhhbie!”

A spiked ball clanged off the back of Gearhead’s helmet. His head whipped toward Joe.

Clay moved closer, sending more rounds pinging off the Incant’s suit. Bombarded from both sides, Gearhead started to move back, trying to get them both in his field of vision.

“Hold still, ya wankers!” Lynes picked up speed, backpedaling unknowingly toward Alex.

While Joe kept blasting fastballs at him, Clay stayed on the move, keeping the pressure on and himself just out of Gearhead’s line of sight.

It was working! They’d made it halfway across the midway and toward the Test of Strength when Gearhead finally launched his counter assault.

“Enough of this shite!” Gearhead yelled, slamming his forearms together with a thunderous clang.

A bright light flared, and his arms seemed to temporarily fuse together. A huge steel tower shield emerged from the forearm plates, covering him head to toe. With a roar, Gearhead lumbered into motion, charging Joe. The steel fast balls continued to hit with rhythmic thuds, but the conjured shield was just too damned thick.

“Get out of the way!” Clay yelled, but it was impossible to be heard over the din of the battle. “Joe, move!”

Joe wasn’t fast enough by half. Gearhead slammed into him like a rampaging rhino. The pitcher machine absorbed the brunt of the blow, but Joe still went sailing, tumbling ass over teakettle. He smashed bonelessly into the side of the Lemonade stand and dropped to the ground, down for the count.

Clay’s blood ran cold. It seemed like an eternity, but finally, he caught the steady rise and fall of Joe’s chest start up again. His brother was alive, though for how long now depended entirely on Clay and Alex.

Or maybe not entirely on them.

Chonk raced forward, dragging one of the bear traps from the Milk Bottle Toss behind him. The mechacoon leapt as Gearhead closed on Joe and swung the bear trap by its chain. The trap smacked into Gearhead’s shoulder and snapped closed on impact, the heavy teeth punching cleanly through the metal in a way Clay’s bullets had failed to do. God rest his monstrous soul, but Smilerfax sure knew how to build a quality trap.

With the beartrap lodged firmly in place, Chonk launched a fresh assault, scrambling up one of Gearhead’s legs.

“You bleedin’ ungrateful traitor!” Lynes roared. “I created you!”

The mechacoon gnawed and clawed at his armor, trying to rip the suit open at the knee like the non-mecha version of his species cracking open a crawdad on a riverbank. The furious Incant kicked and batted at the little trash panda.

A lucky punt sent Chonk flying after his unconscious owner.

The scuffle with the trash panda had pushed Gearhead even closer to the Test of Strength, but now it was all on Clay.

“You want to face off man to man?” Clay pulled the Wand of Inferno. “Let’s see who’s got the bigger fireballs.”

Gearhead grinned, the mechacoon already forgotten. “A’right, then, catch!”

He pointed his cannon at Clay and fired.

Clay dodged, thankful for all that extra dex, and fired off the first of his eight shots for the day.

Gearhead blurred out of the way and the crackling bolt of Inferno blasted the Pick the Duck pool sky high. Rubber duckies were still raining down as the Incant took aim at Clay again. That answered the question of whether Lynes had min-maxed his stats. Obviously, he was keeping them all equally topped off. The Incant’s speed and dex made Clay look like Alex’s meemaw during her double broken-hip period.

Red light flared behind Clay. He tucked and rolled, using his own dex to come out of the dive. He leveled the wand with his off hand and unleashed a second fireball that streaked across the midway, leading Gearhead by a fraction of an inch. The Incant tried to correct course when he realized Clay had anticipated him, but he was a hair too slow. The fireball caught the meched-out Incant full in the chest and knocked him back a good ten feet. A plume of smoke drifted up and an angry scorch mark adorned Gearhead’s chest plate. Otherwise he looked unharmed.

“Barely even stung,” Gearhead gloated. “Here you were talking a big game about killing me, and ya can hardly even scratch my paint job.” He thumped his chest. “Have a go, I’ll give ya a free shot, just so you can see how right fucked you are.”

Clay wouldn’t pass up an opportunity like that. Without hesitation, he released not one but three more fireballs in rapid-fire succession—thoom, thoom, thoom.

Fire enveloped Gearhead and a cloud of debris billowed up, making it impossible to see. Clay held his breath, hoping that Gearhead’s hubris was more powerful than his armor.

But no. As the smoke and dust cleared, Gearhead was still standing, his armor charred but serviceable.

“Ya bloody yanks never stood a chance,” Gearhead mocked.

“I wasn’t trying to kill you,” Clay replied. “I was just moving you into position.”

A second later a spiked-studded mallet, wielded by the sentient Test of Strength machine, sideswiped Gearhead. He folded like a cheap lawn chair. Another mallet whistled toward the Incant from overhead. He saw it at the last second and rolled, narrowly avoiding the blow.

What he didn’t avoid was Alex’s kusarigama. The chained weapon flashed out and the heavy spiked ball on its end clanged into Gearhead’s jaw, knocking his helmet loose. It went spinning into the night, clattering on the dusty asphalt.

The Incant hastily scrambled back to his feet and wiped blood from his bottom lip, glaring at Alex. She was standing on top of one of the swaying, hammer-wielding cobra arms, outside the swing of the mallets.

“The rumors are true, then, are they?” Lynes asked, eyeing Alex. “You bleedin’ tumbleweeds actually managed to kill Katotes. And the sheila’s got his power, eh?” He aimed the cannon at Alex. “I could always use a little more strength. Throw in with me, leave these fucksticks behind, and I won’t hurt ya. Unless ya like it rough. Whaddaya say, little bird?”

“Eat shit,” Alex said, launching a fresh attack with her kusarigama.

The chain shot out, but Gearhead sidestepped the ball.

He raised his arm and tried to take aim, but Alex was too fast. She darted in between the swaying hammer-arms, drawing Gearhead in after her. The Test of Strength hammer arms rained down, pummeling him from every side and exacting vengeance for his refusal to play the game. From the protection of the swinging arms, Alex threw attacks with her kusarigama. Lynes tried to retreat, but the snaking cobra cords picked that moment to spring their insidious trap. Thick cables wrapped around the Incant’s ankles and slithered up over his arms, miring him in place.

“Bugger off and get stuffed, ya fuckin’ extendy cords!” he yelled struggling to free himself. A panel on his forearm plate flipped open and a huge buzzsaw merged, slicing mercilessly at the cords, but more were slithering in from all over the carnival.

Despite the hammer blows from the machine and Alex’s weapon strikes, Gearhead remained standing. Reluctantly, Clay abandoned the 240 in exchange for the M4 dangling from its sling and raced toward the action. Incant or not, a .556 round to the face was going to eat the hell out of his health pool—Clay just needed to get close enough to take the shot. Even with his elevated dex, there was too much chaos going on to shoot from a distance. Plus, the chances of hitting Alex were just too high for comfort.

Know your target and what lies beyond it, he reminded himself.

Clay ducked around the Mount Everest rope climb and got into position behind the Test of Strength machine. He needed to be close, but not too close; he had no doubt that those hammers would target him if he got in range. Alex was only alive because of her uncanny ability to dodge the wildly flailing machine.

“Enough muckin’ around!” Gearhead thundered. The overlap plates covering the Incant’s chest had pulled back, revealing a pulsing orb of brilliant white energy. “Suck the snag, ya bungas!”

Clay raised the rifle and squeezed the trigger in a single fluid motion. Too late. In the same instant, a column of light erupted from Gearhead’s chest, shooting toward Alex.

She threw herself to one side, but the lance of energy clipped her and sent her flying. In its wake, the Test of Strength exploded.

Eyes wide, Clay backpedaled, but the expanding beam caught him like a freight train. The world spun and he landed in a sprawl, stars winking on and off in his vision. He smelled something burning. Skin. Probably his own, though the pain hadn’t set in yet.

He tried to sit up but couldn’t.

Alex was squirming on the scorched grass twenty feet away, but she seemed to be in only slightly better shape than Clay felt.

Gearhead was bent over and looked winded from their mallet-kusarigama-M4 attack, but otherwise he was doing dandy. The Test of Strength game was gone, nothing left but a smoking ditch in the earth, and the cords that had been wrapped around him had melted to his suit. Their days of defending Smilerfax’s carnival were over and done with.

“Last chance, girlie,” Gearhead growled, stalking toward Alex. “I’ll treat you nice, so long as you learn your proper place—”

“Havooooooc!”

Gearhead stopped in his tracks as the howl of a gas engine cut through the night, and a mechacoon chittered out a bloodthirsty war cry. The dune buggy smashed through the carnival fence with Joe in the driver’s seat and Chonk strapped in next to him, cradling the havoc-crying Bacon Bits. Still winded, Gearhead turned, and his eyes flared wide.

Clay could barely get his body to move, but he had enough juice left in the tank for one last cantrip. He mustered the Magicka trickling through his body and shaped it according to his will. A thin sheen of slick oil appeared beneath Gearhead’s feet, spreading out in a ten-foot radius. Gearhead lurched into motion, but his steel boots found no purchase.

“What the bloody—”

The rusty off-road vehicle plowed into the Incant. His laser blast went off, streaking harmlessly into the night sky.

With a thud and clank of metal, Gearhead and the dune buggy careened into what remained of the FUN HOUSE trailer. The buggy pinned the Incant in place, just long enough for Joe to leap from the driver’s seat, and onto the hood with his chainsaw in hand.

“Ain’t nobody messes with Lumberjack Joe’s family!”

“Fuck me dead,” Gearhead said, in disbelief.

“If you insist.” The chainsaw growled as Joe gunned the gas and drove the blade down, straight into the Incant’s unprotected neck. Blood sprayed, painting the side of the FUN HOUSE red.

With a clatter of metal, Lynes dropped over the front of the dune buggy, dead. Turned out, somethings were lethal no matter what kind of power you had at your disposal—a chainsaw to the neck seemed to be one of them.

The booming sound of tribal drums drowned out the warped carnival music, and an invisible force lifted Joe into the air. He was covered in gore, whooping like a happy hound, and had Bertha lifted above his head like the NASCAR cup.

It was like when Alex had become an Incant, but that didn’t make any sense. Weren’t people only supposed to gain Incant powers if they killed a dungeon lord?

Clay didn’t dwell on the thought long. That final spell had taken everything else out of him. Black invaded from the sides and the last thing Clay saw as the curtains came down on his vision was his brother glowing with brilliant golden light as the blood and bruises burned away.