"It's Guardian 12, next to mine it's the most advanced model there is."

  Kitten could only guess how many tons the Guardian weighed. Dwarfed as it was by the surrounding towers and buildings, it was still massive. Even then it felt light as a feather, lighter than her body ever had. "It's amazing." Kitten whispered.

  "It's all yours." Sora promised. "You can go anywhere do anything while inside of that."

  "Fly." She said, almost as a reflex.

  With equal speed The Guardian shot straight into the air. It streamed passed the shinning spires of One Week, and into the clouds. Soon the clouds vanished, and so did the atmosphere. In just a few moments Kitten and her Guardian were orbiting around earth.

  "Beautiful isn't it?"

  "It's gorgeous!" Kitten gasped, She'd though the corporations had bleached all the color out of the world, but the ocean was still so blue.

  "Almost worth saving isn't it?"

  "From up here it is." Kiitten agreed. "When you're living on it, not so much."

  She felt Sora's empathy flood her body. Somehow without seeing her, Kitten could tell what she was feeling. "Where I'm from, we had nothing at all. It was all ash, and we still chose to fight."

  "Sora, I'm fighting." Kitten said resolutely. "But sometimes having nothing, is better than having a lot of a bad thing."

  "Then that makes your character all the more grand." Sora said, transmitting pride into her newest pilot. "Feel free to stay up there, you'll be getting a closer view of the apocalypse than most."

  It was still hard to believe it was going to happen. A comet was going to circle the earth, and open a hole into some hell dimension. It was equally hard to believe that there were mechs from the future here to save them, and yet here she was.

  "Just make sure you don't stay up there when the fighting starts, little lady." Came the long slow drawl of Rex. "Mr. Clay and me can't do all the work."

  Kitten ignored the jab, and danced about the stars. This is what freedom felt like. A lot of the people on the streets said her kind of life was freedom, she got to live outside of the corporations. No eighty hour work week, no company housing, no regulations. Those people usually ignored the other three masters of her realm, the gangs, the drugs, and the police. All of whom, serve the highest master of all, the all mighty dollar.

  No, up here she was free.

  Her only question was if she wanted to visit the moon, or go straight for the Mars colony? He eyes looked hungrily beyond both. She could do it, her Guardian was telling her so. She could run away, truly away. It suited the human race, for all it had done for her. Maybe there was peace somewhere amongst the stars. Considering the alien invasion she doubted it.

  The others were chattering over the comms as the comet came. There was a bit of a learning curb, and the four of them had never been in combat. Let alone giant robot combat. Still they seemed resolute, but they'd have to see how long their resolve would last. She doubted any of them had killed before. They'd never had to strangle a kid in a puddle. Kitten had, she wasn't proud of it, but this world was drown or be drowned. In this thing there wasn't a ganger alive who'd drown her. Maybe she didn't want peace in the stars, maybe she wanted bloody vengeance in the streets of One Week.

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  Kitten was the first to catch the big green ball as it entered view. It hardly seemed like the herald of doom from Kitten's point of view. With the sensor's of her Guardian it just looked like a big dirty ball of ice. Pretty color, but Ice all the same. "That's it?"

  "Not everyone can ride in on fancy mechs." Sora said calmly. "Everyone prepare for the horror."

  Kitten had a plan. With little more than a thought her Guardian rocketed past the moon, and toward the comet.

  "Kitten what are you doing?"

  "Getting a closer look."

  "Refrain." Sora's anxiety was palpable in the communication. "Please rejoin us on the ground."

  "There's static on the line." Kitten lied. "Can't hear you."

  Sora didn't say anything, but Kitten could feel immense disappointment directed towards her.

  Guilt started to creep in.

  "Great." Kitten muttered to herself. The first person to ever give her a chance, and she was letting her down.

  No.

  She wasn't. Kitten was about to save the day, the world. Then after that space, anywhere she wanted.

  The comet was getting bigger in her view. What had been a ball in the sky was quickly becoming a seven mile long monument. Her plan was sounding dumber by the moment, but she was already so committed. Besides, what if she was right?

  She kept flying until she got into range. Her Guardian could feel her desires and pointed out the weakest part of the comment with a nice red dot. "Come on." she whispered to herself, or maybe the Guardian. It was hard to tell the difference, but there was a difference.

  Little panels opened up along the torso of Guardian 12. A missile fired out of each slot, five in total. They swarmed hatefully towards the comet, and rushed forward. These five missiles eager for the glory of an early and historic victory bit into the comet, and detonated. You could see the explosions rock the comet, ice shed from all across it's surface jumped into the air. A plume of green dust shot into space, and obscured the crater Sky had just made.

  The best was the crack that developed along the comet. Like a nut that had been cracked a strong fissure emerged. To kitten's delight a huge chunk of the comet broke off, maybe as much as a mile. It tumbled away and started it's own separate journey through space, as the cloud of ash and ice expanded.

  Of course a mile wasn't the all-encompassing victory she was looking for. She wanted to blow the thing to pieces, not chucks.

  "I need more energy." She said aloud, a few more salvos like that, and this would be over.

  "Chhhhu....shasssssh,....crrrrr." There really was static on the line now, Though the panic in Sora's message was still clear, or maybe that was from Kitten. Either way there was panic. There shouldn't be static. Wasn't this some kind of psychic link?

  "Do these things have range limits?" Kitten asked.

  Her guardian told her that they didn't. Something was interfering.

  "What's interfering?"

  Warning lights appeared in Kitten's vision. Alarms and sizzled across her screen screen.

  "Life/Star/Anomaly detected." Her computerized voice indicated something beyond the cloud, but spoke over itself to try to identify just what it was. Screens popped up with biological signatures, then more screens depicting black holes collapsing. Yet more that were simply symbols, runes from a nonhuman civilization humanity had yet to meet. There was chanting and praying and heathen sacrifices to heathen gods. There was a name and that name was too great for this world. The screens cracked, they shattered, and The Guardian bled.

  The lights went out, the guardian we dead. Kitten found herself once again in the piloting pod, and complete darkness. Yet somehow in the core of that metal mountain, she could still see the dust billowing away from the crater she'd created. Away from the hole that had opened in the comet, and to the other side, where something simply watched her.

  "Aaaaah!" She screamed not in terror, though she could have. It was in pain. Just as her blood leaked through the cracks in the Guardian, it's blood now flowed through her. They were one, and hot plasma shot through her veins. Her arteries popped and sizzled, and burned her alive.

  She screamed.

  She died.

  Then she screamed some more.