The door flung open, finally relieved of the pressure strained on it containing some two dozen people inside. SMILE filled out the reception area as fast as they did the bathroom, and in no time at all the neat and tidy interior was turned into a den of stray dogs. Chip and a few others stood on tables and desks whilst others took to watching any and all doorways, some even hung from wall fixtures and chandeliers.
Flick walked up the receptionist, much calmer than before, and asked in the politest way he muster, “Could you evacuate the building?”
His request was supported by a blade or two pointed in the her general direction, however her demeanour didn’t change even with the threat. The woman simply reached below her desk, clicked a button and got up to leave, an alarm blaring behind her.
Flick recognised this as the patented ‘I’m not paid enough to do this’ attitude, one he was about as familiar as one could get with. He waved down the crowd of people to let her leave, seeing no particular threat.
Once she left a slow trickling of people began descending from the floors above, there was a giant ornate stairwell right in the middle of the reception area that looked as though it came from an era far before its time. With banisters that ended in swirls of wood and gold, and carpeted steps that mismatched with the occasional tile.
It was all very baroque on the surface, but the contrasting modern tech surrounding it made it seem like a desperate attempt at returning to an era no one now belonged to.
It wasn’t long before the stairwell overflowed with suited men and women, tearing down the stairs as fast as they could in the groups they were moving in. Flick was sure the décor had some appeal before, perhaps an angle that made them appear sublime in contrast to how they were prior. However, by the time the last few employees stumbled down the steps any sense of elegance or class was lost, replaced with torn and fractured pieces of what once was.
“ALRIGHT!” Flick announced, joining a few kids with standing on the receptions desk, “HERE’S THE PLA-“
He was immediately interrupted by scratch, bumping him off of his makeshift stage into the sea below.
“Alright listen up here’s the plan,” Scratch announced once more, taking his rightful place as leader of their little crusade, “Ten of you stay guarding the doors, reinforcements will come so take care of it! The rest of you work your way up to the top, kill any soldiers you see and try not to get killed yourself.”
He repositioned himself to face Pop and Flick, “As for me, Pop and Flick were gonna head straight to Isaac,”
The fear on his face was almost visible, but the yellow mask he bore served its purpose, with a crooked black smile.
“We need to have a little chat with the big man. As for the rest of you? Cause as much havoc as possible!”
A roar of voices arose as Scratch thrust Caliburn skyward. Unanimously SMILE bounded across the reception floors, ten situating themselves with engine blades brandished towards the automatic door. A particularly smart, or accidentally so, child leapt up and slashed at a small black box above it successfully preventing the automatic door from automatically opening ever again.
The remaining twenty or so members rushed up the stairs, with some balancing along the handrails and kicking off the walls to turn corners at the top.
Flick Pop and Scratch joined the latter in ascending up the tower, still unsure about how to actually find Isaac when they know next to nothing about the tower they’re fighting in.
Just then, as they reached the apex of the stairwell it split in two directions with their destinations being hidden somewhat by yet another set of corners at their ends. They looked to be going in roughly the same direction, with both eventually turning north anyway, but unless you had been there before you couldn’t be absolutely sure both sides would eventually meet.
Flick chose to go left as did Pop, however Scratch and Chip ducked away to the right last minute seeing the splitting paths as nothing more than a weird quirk of the building.
“SCRATCH” Pop yelled over her shoulder, a slight panic tingeing her voice,
She waved him down to join the left side instead of the right and he eventually obliged, tapping Chip on the shoulder as he went back. It was smarter, in Flick’s opinion anyway, to stick together more often than not. However it wasn’t that smart to provoke her to be so desperate. Something about Pop when she yelled rubbed Flick the wrong way, it was unnerving seeing he panic over something so trivial in comparison to what they’re about to go through.
Her panic proved justified though once they turned the second set of corners at the top of the stairs, revealing a long and somewhat narrow corridor.
The space seemed average at first glance, with potted plants and small desks adorning either side. But, on the far-right side of the hallway where there would be a wall or even a shared space connecting to where the other stairwell led, there was instead a large glass pane.
On the other side of the window the remaining SMILE members appeared, the ones who went opposite to Flick and the others, looking just as perplexed as they were. For some strange reason that no one could comprehend in the moment, the large glass pane separated the left and right sides of the tower, even though they seemed virtually identical in layout.
Moreover, there were odd contradictions on either side of the tower. A bench on one side where on the other there was an empty brown table. Matching light fixtures that, every three paces or so, either misaligned or refused to switch on. But there was one difference that made Flick’s heart sink. At the very end of the corridor on his side a giant golden elevator, but beyond the glass only a normal plain door lied in its stead.
The glass, the diverging stairwell, the confusing décor and different doors. This wasn’t just lazy building planning, it was calculated. Psychopathic. If what Flick was assuming was correct, then this whole building was a labyrinth designed to mess with intruders.
The exhausted ding of the elevator sounded as it strained itself to a stop in front of them, its doors slowly sliding open. One after another men and women clad in tactical gear poured out, vests strapped over skin tight ladybug fabric and armoured gloves that went up to the elbows in steel and onyx clad stripes. Each one had identical black helmets like Flick’s, but it was clear theirs were much better taken care of in comparison. Of course, they all had engine blades of extremely high quality with some even steaming as though fresh out the stoked fires of a forge. On the other side of the glass a similar situation occurred, only the horde of soldiers appeared from a dingy stairwell instead.
“Trespassers.” One person said, stepping forwards from the crowd and pulling at the sword strapped to his back,
He looked square at Scratch, not in the painted eyes of the mask but exactly where his eyes would be beneath it. He pulled more of his sword until the blade gained a slight glint from the light above and continued.
“Final warning.”
Scratch, despite the cocktail of fear and nerves swirling inside him wasn’t fazed by the warning. Just as the words finished leaving his mask he reached for the hilt of Caliburn slowly, waiting for the perfect moment to cut the man down in front of him. The two had grenades in their hands, pins removed and fingers wrapped around the lever waiting for right time to let go. A duel.
In the last second however, just as both the soldier and him held their breath in anticipation to strike, Flick silently moved past Scratch. His hand was hanging down behind him, a gunslinger stance without any firearm to draw. From the front it almost looked as if Flick was lost in thought, mindlessly wandering into the no man’s land between the two sides, but from behind the children could see his hand hovering over the holster on the back side of his belt.
A silver blur shot out from behind him, moving fast enough to catch the man in front off guard, and the sound of a metal trigger cracking rang from Flicks outstretched arm. Before the pillar of fire could fully reveal itself Flick had already stopped moving, having slashed at the man’s abdomen in a blur of movement, leaving only a trail of burning flesh in its wake and a line of glowing reddish orange that hovered in the air before dissipating into heat.
There was something about being in a labyrinth that pissed him off. So much so that he didn’t care about the reputation Isaac had, or the supposedly ‘strong’ the people who worked under him were. This was a labyrinth. Isaac wanted this. There was never a possibility of handling this nicely, no chance of convincing or even just talking. He wanted a fight, and he wanted it inside his rat cage.
The cut landing so well was like a sponge that had been absorbing all the tension in his body suddenly getting wrung clean and made fresh again. Flick never imagined the relief and clarity that could come from fighting so… properly. He felt like someone he wasn’t, someone who knew what he was doing.
When he went to admire his work though he noticed that in that short of a time span, between when he drew the fusion cutter and turned it off, the soldier reacted. As Flick looked over his shoulder, at what he imagined to be a corpse, he saw an engine blade hovering just a few inches above him. At the end of the blade Scratch stood blocking it with his own.
At the last possible moment Scratch drew Caliburn and blocked the soldier before it could harm Flick. Any and all confidence he gained from the attack faded the moment he remembered what position he was in, and he quickly hopped back next to Scratch anticipating the remaining soldiers would pull a full frontal assault. As the man’s body collapsed to the ground, lifeless yet still somehow tense, the others behind him simply watched him fall. It was only a couple seconds later that they would finally draw their engine blades, slowly and methodically poising themselves.
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And then, steel came rushing towards SMILE.
There were spears, hammers, claymores that struggled to breathe amongst the others and whips that struggled even more so. Daggers flourished in between cramped gaps in bodies.
Daggers and smoke and blood.
The blood. It flowed skyward like rain, every other sound of scraping metal was followed by skin and fabric being torn in a cacophony of snapping threads and a pools worth of blood defying gravity and painting the ceilings in red.
Flick barely managed to keep track of everything going on, only catching glimpses of fights around him as he moved. He didn’t have much time to register if the bodies on the floor around him were people he knew or just more faceless soldiers.
Luckily he was more towards the frontline side of things as Scratch Pop and him had to reach the elevator before anyone else, it meant if there was SMILE members going down he definitely wasn’t seeing them, although the thought still lingered on his mind.
A stray knife flew near Flick’s chest in the chaos, close enough to pierce skin. He stepped back quickly before it cut, then quickly stabbed at the attacker before switching his cutter off.
Being at the front also meant he could do quick little stabs, like that, here and there, but already Flick was noticing that it was the only thing he could do. It was too cramped for something like his fusion cutter, he could kill half of the kids in a single swipe with everyone so tightly packed together.
Everyone struggled in the tight hallway, with only the ones at the very front being able to swing their weapons even if it was only vertically. Scratch and Pop were no different, the boy was unable to use the complex mechanics of his own tool instead having to be forcefully dragged back to barbaric lunges.
Flick’s effectiveness, to his surprise, wasn’t as bad as he thought he would be, the huge spewing tongue of fire that forced itself out of his fusion cutter was more than efficient in sweeping among the crowd of soldiers whenever a poke presented itself. It had became more of a flamethrower than a sword though, unlike how he usually preferred to use it.
There were moments where men or women took quick slices and stabs at Flick whenever he moved in for an attack. But just as soon as they tried to attack, Pop saw her opportunity and lunged a fraction faster, with surgical precision she either nicked the tendons on their hands or outright severed their arms altogether. It was a defensive strategy, but considering the sheer effectiveness of Flicks cutter in such a crammed space it proved to be the best choice of action for anyone.
These were soldiers, trained professionals who could best anyone in sword combat, from what Flick could remember. The kids shouldn’t be winning this, it didn’t make any sense, but the tightness of the corridor, the suffocating tightness of the corridor, reduced all of them to meat bags.
Barbaric. Flick thought about if Isaac was watching them, on a camera through a screen.
It wasn’t long before they somehow managed to get into a strategic formation, with Flick as a machine gun turret of fire and the kids around him as a steadfast wall.
Slowly but surely the soldiers were pushed back to the elevator doors, but with only five or so people left Flick noticed his cutter getting progressively less and less effective. At last after wading through a dozen or more people, now charred and smouldering, he moved his weapon away to see in front of him.
It was brief, but Flick caught the glimpse of just a single woman, with the other four lined up behind her. In the vast world of engine blades he would never have imagined one being designed specifically for defence, and yet the woman in front had one that erected itself into a large shield.
The layers upon layers of steel, intersected with gears and cogs, stood large enough to cover two or three people huddled side by side and it proved more than durable enough to withstand Flicks steady stream of fire. However, the moment he moved his cutter away a small head poked out from the shelter of the giant shied followed by a sliver of silver shooting towards Flick faster than he could react.
It sliced at his wrist, a desperate attempt to disarm him, only managing to cut the bony sides and spilling just a few drops of blood as opposed to something potentially fatal. He quickly pulled his arm back to his front, pointing the nozzle towards the shield simply to keep them occupied for the time being and hopefully prevent them from attacking him again.
“What’s up?” Pop asked, tapping Flick on the shoulder,
“HUH?” Flick responded, the sound screaming from his cutter was making him deaf in one ear.
“WHAT’S UP?”
“SHIELD”
he didn’t tear his eyes away from it, fearing the soldiers would find an opportunity in the moment of lapsing focus if he did. It was a roadblock that Flick couldn’t deal with, nor even think about how one would given the small army living behind it. He was concerned also with how much fuel he was using concentrating his blade on the blockade, and what would happen to him if it just so happened to run out.
Even more concerning was the other side of the tower. They began fighting around the same time and yet now, as Flick saw in the sudden moment of stillness in his own fight, there was almost no movement. His view was impaired by the windows being smeared with blood, but even so movement would be obvious. Flick feared the worst, that leftover soldiers from the fight across the way would creep up on them from behind and slaughter them like cattle, there was a good chance the people behind the shield were thinking the same thing too.
Flick ran the situation over and over again in his head, trying as hard as he possibly could to take care of the problem without getting himself killed in the process. But with each passing second the little doubts in his mind fluctuated and filled his every thought with visions of failure, and suddenly the shaking in his hands started to look a lot more like it was caused from his weapon running on fumes instead of the mounting anxiety in his chest.
Flicks felt a small shoe print press into his back before abruptly pushing his whole body down, above him he saw Chip soaring towards the shield with the slab of steel of a sword held high above, almost scraping through the ceiling. It was clear in that moment Flick was used as a spring board for the small red headed child to fling themselves recklessly at the enemy, although it was hard to tell what Chip was actually thinking behind the mask that dwarfed his body, it was almost obvious he bore a barbaric smile nonetheless.
Flick wanted to stop him the moment he saw the small boy overhead, but he was already far out of reach by the time he’d noticed it was Chip in the first place. Instinctually, he turned his fusion cutter off not even realising in the moment that Chip was about to enter the tempest of fire, seemingly by choice, which only confused those standing by even further. By the time the current ceased only a few lashes of electric heat rested on the small boys shoulders, as he now sat squarely in the middle of the shield like it was a platform designed for him and him alone. He brought his gargantuan blade down beneath him, stabbing below his feet at his newfound ground.
Of course, the tip of the blade only clinked against the layers and layers of steel and simply rested there in the tiny divot it carved out for itself. Flick felt his heart through his lungs as all time stood still alongside the sheer anticipation of how the soldiers would react, and more importantly how Chip would react to his now certain demise. Instead of fear though, he cackled beneath his huge yellow mask and pushed the bladed further into the shield despite the blade refusing to budge.
The sound of what could only be described as a missile being loaded into a chamber echoed through the room as the handle on Chips sword suddenly clicked into itself, like a key shoddily finding its way into a lock. The room rapidly grew hot and in the same moment a shock wave of lighting scattered across the floors and walls. This wasn’t the electricity generated from something that was designed to do this, it was the charge created from such an explosive force being summoned out of nowhere, like some law of physics suddenly broke just so that it could exist. A flash of light emanated from the blades tip and abruptly lifted itself from the rest of the sword. The full two foot long point at the end of Chip’s claymore fired downwards, shot out of the cannon that was his engine blade.
The shield crumpled like paper, as did the soldier behind it as she became instantly pinned to the floor below her.
The force that escaped was far too much for air to contain, ripping past everything in attempts to escape. The blast shattered the surrounding windows and any glass that remained on objects such as clocks or watches, luckily Flicks helmet remained one of the few inanimate things that weren’t wrecked by the blast.
Chip fell down onto the freshly made corpse, sandwiching it between the ground and what was left of the shield he was stood on. He poked around with his almost gun like sword for a second before finding the tip once more, attempting to slot it back into its cartridge.
Even still, with the sheer ferocity of Chips attack and the ensuing shock wave the remaining soldiers weren’t phased, the second Chip looked to the ground two blades came careening for the neck of the child that destroyed their wall so easily. However, neither blade reached the boy, with both being held in place by Caliburn.
Scratch, sensing the oncoming death of his friend, had moved the moment the shock wave passed and slid quickly beside Chip as the soldiers rose their swords to meet him. The two swords attached to Caliburn, one that belonged to Thunk and the other being his usual whip like blade he was more akin to using in battle, sat tauntingly in the way of the soldiers attacks with one blade blocking a strike from the left and the other parrying the right.
Scratch pushed the two’s attacks away and flourished Caliburn in its new double ended configuration, clicking the button on its handle to make them spin even faster.
As they whirred Scratch moved Caliburn about his body before cleanly slicing through the chests of the two in front of him. There were two more soldiers lined up behind them, like a conveyor of robot fighting machines moving in to continue the fight of their lost brethren. He stepped to the side and stopped Caliburn from spinning any further, thrusting an end into the stomach of one and manoeuvring the other blade on his hilt with careful precision to cut at the other.
In the end, both went down without much difficulty and Scratch was left with a form of Caliburn that looked more like a pair of scissors than its previous double ended sword appearance.
The battle was over, at least in the corridor they stepped into. Flick looked around briefly, concerned with how relatively easy these particular enemies were, beaten by children. However, the ego that came with this vanished quickly as more soldiers turned the corner behind them. Ten or so, all covered in heaps of blood, ran up the stairs they were previously on, weapons drawn and already rushing for more bloodshed. The thing Flick worried about most became real, the other corridor wasn’t as lucky as they were and chances were that all of them lied in lifeless heaps just across from where he stood.
Perhaps it could’ve been the unorthodox nature of Flicks fusion cutter, or the fact that all three of the SMILE’s most mature rebels were bundled on one side leaving the other almost completely defenceless, but Isaac’s soldiers were very clearly not as easy as their defeat may have made them out to be. It was even more concerning that they only ever saw one engine blade use its abilities as opposed to the potential twenty that they could have seen, and how that single blade almost completely halted their progress.
Flick didn’t have time to process what it could’ve meant, or what could’ve been if it wasn’t for the chance circumstance of them being in such a crowded space, Scratch was already dragging him into the gold plated elevator.
“HOLD THE LINE” Scratch commanded the remaining SMILE members, “MAKE THEM REMEMBER WHO’S BLOOD IS ON THEIR CLOTHES, WEIGHING THEM DOWN!”
