014

                                    

                                          
      Ambrose felt like the whole world stopped. The look on Sep's face was enough to tell him that things had just gone to complete shit. He was thrown from Sep's grip, rolling against a tree, and looked up in time to see Sep swing his axe into the Omni Codec's face. He pushed himself up, his head still throbbing with memories old and new, and then he saw the blood. 
                          
      Sep's side was drenched in blood. He leaned on his axe as Alastair distracted the humanoid alien, it's screeches vibrating throughout the woods. But he didn't hear it. All he could see was that blond boy who sat in the opposite cell, who was replaced with bloodstained metal, who smelled like outside. 

      That blond boy got himself into something he wasn't going to get out of. Now, Sep faced against something Ambrose wasn't sure if he could defeat. He certainly hadn't been able to. The Omni Codecs ripped away his humanity, his memories, they turned him into an Artificial Demon with their horrid experiments and mind-numbing elixirs. But now, he felt like he was going to lose everything all over again as he watched Septimus lean harshly on his axe, and he couldn't do a single thing about it. 
                          
      "Septimus!" he yelled, but the bloodied Irish man just looked over his shoulder and smiled. Then Alastair was thrown against the tree next to the spot where Ambrose laid. The dark haired man groaned and slowly slid himself to his feet, wincing as he popped his back. Ambrose gaped at him as he ran forth and swung his sword at the white fabric of the alien. He just got right back up...Hardly a scratch on him. Ambrose was beside himself. How does one get thrown by a nine-foot-tall flesh-eating alien into a tree and survive?
                          
      Ambrose slowly got to his feet, his head still teeming with sparks and smoldering embers, but he got up. Leaning on the tree until his legs stopped wobbling, Ambrose's indigo eyes bore into the Omni Codec. He hated it. Oh, he hated it with a burning passion, and would not let it take the life of his best friends.
                          
      The alien seemed surprised when it's prey kept on getting up, Ambrose noticed. It'd started to retreat back into the building though not without putting up a fight. The cloth on it's arms and legs were torn, revealing nothing but metal poles and wires on the inside. That's when all three seemed to realize that these things, these Aliens, were just drones. Their actions, the noises they made, all determined by lines of code in their programming. All three swelled with the audacity to think that they had won. 
                          
      With Sep, holding his bleeding side with his mechanical arm, taking both hands to swing heavily at the retreating Omni Codec and Al, now jabbing his sword into the fabric. Ambrose saw his bag of items on the ground from where he'd been thrown and snatched it up quickly. He shoved his fist in; first to grab a smoke; the second to grab a marble in his hand. 
                          
      Unceremoniously, the velvet bag hit the floor, his shoes collecting mud and crushed grass as he strode towards the fight. The Omni Codec's visor snapped towards him, training on him like he was something shiny to a magpie and with one final squeeze, the marble broke in his hand.
                          
      Dark smoke billowed from his palm, all of it concentrating in the air above him as it took a shape. The shape, with eyes made of burning chunks of ash, surged into the shape of an amphitere. Smoke wisped away from its form, rejoining it at the last second to be blown away again. The red eyes of the flying-snake like creature narrowed at the alien, and hurriedly swept forward to engulf it in smoke. 
                          
      The party covered their ears at the obnoxious amount of screaming, wincing as the claws of the Omni Codecs could momentarily be seen clawing at the ground. Then, there was nothing. The smoke dissipated into the air leaving a charred tangled mess of burning cloth and metal skeleton. 
                          
      Ambrose could not get to Septimus quicker. He buried his face in the mans chest, pulling away as soon as his hand touched his blood-soaked shirt. 
                          
      "Okay-okay, uh, we need to get you to the hospital-or Ray." He counselled and tugged the blond forward. However, Sep just chuckled softly and grabbed his hand. 
                          
      "Slow down," he hummed, his metal hand coated in blood from holding his side which Ambrose couldn't stop looking at, "Ambrose, I'm so proud of you. I love you." The sentence was punctuated with a kiss which Ambrose was taken aback by but wasted no time in kissing back in. Meanwhile, Alastair fangirled next to them, squeeing softly.