A burly man covered in a black robot suit was fighting Beatrice and Inghild. Jeremy, on the other hand, appeared unconscious.

Hope cowered behind a supply vehicle, holding a pistol in both hands.

Inghild avoided the burly man's punch and countered by firing his rifle at him. It bounced off his armored suit, barely scratching its sleek metal.

"We need to retreat, we can't hope to defeat a Vasquez," Inghild said as he kept dodging the Vasquez's punches.

"No can do." The Vasquez smashed the ground, inevitably sending rocks flying towards our team. One of it hit the supply vehicle where Hope was hiding and he whimpered.

Vasquez s.h.i.+elded his face from Beatrice's fire and smirked. "Oh? You're aiming for my unprotected head. Good choice." He swung his right arm at Beatrice and she ducked in time. Vasquez tried to kick her but she jumped over his leg and fired a few shots at his chest.

It did not scratch him.

Beatrice avoided his punches and kicks and fired at his body continuously. Her rifle stopped firing and she reloaded with a magazine she had carried at her waist.

"Inghild, distract him. I'll figure something out," she shouted.

"Whatever you say!"

My spikes pushed the Vasquez immediately upon impact. His armor had a dent from it.

"The Aegis girl is here too. I'll take you with me," he said.

He proceeded to jump so high I had to tilt my head to follow his movements. His large body plummeted towards me and landed on my crystallized s.h.i.+eld. Even then, his body weight was not enough to make me fell. My s.h.i.+eld supported his weight with ease. The s.h.i.+eld sent him flying but he landed, grazing the road and stopped.

He scowled. "The higher-ups are looking for you. It's time for you to come back."

'What does he mean?' My mind trying to wrap up what he said.

Beatrice moved behind him and she fired repeatedly at the Vasquez's head with her rifle. He dropped toward the ground from that sneak attack.

"Did we do it?" Inghild said.

"No, wait!" I shouted. I'd noticed the Vasquez's head was filled with wires and metal. From a glance, he looked like a robot.

He stood up and cracked his head as nothing happened. "Ah, an attack from behind. How cla.s.sic. We, Vasquez, are not the same as we were the previous generation. We're the third gen. More powerful, more indestructible." He turned around and opened his fist, firing a beam at Beatrice.

She dodged it, but the beam followed her tracks as she did that.

I grabbed his right arm with my red gauntlet and the beam destroyed the road beneath him instead. He proceeded to fire another beam from his other hand and I formed a s.h.i.+eld to stop it from hitting me.

Simultaneous activation of Aegis seemed to drain me, and the gauntlet ceased to form. My head then swirled in a painful headache.

"You're not that good, are you? Unlike the others." He ran at full speed while maintaining his beam attack and swung his other fist to my side, sending me cras.h.i.+ng into the barrack. The ground floor of the building barely withstood the impact. "Don't be dead yet. I still need to bring you back to HQ."

My broken back immediately regenerated before I could felt any pain as I crawled back up. Fortunately for me. the s.h.i.+eld had enlarged itself to cover my side just in time to absorb the punch.

A bullet caught the Vasquez in the face.

It was Hope, firing his pistol at him repeatedly.

"That won't work. My entire body was made out of enhanced Damascus steel. It's quite hard."

My spikes were clawing at the Vasquez. He tried to hit it but get pushed into the wall behind him.

"You are hard to defeat. So, I just have to keep you in place," I said to him.

He fired his beams into the narrow spikes but it remained unscathed.

I saw Beatrice and Inghild appeared from both of his sides using Teria and fired the golden guns at him twice. His armor shattered from the first barrage and his body broke into half from the second one.

Despite that, he was still alive, metal wires and blue liquid popped from under his upper and lower half. The blue liquid melted the chunks of bricks beside him. "The Carthia guns. . . They were lost a few years back. So, you guys stole it, huh? Too bad they can only be fired five times before it is rendered useless. The mechanism could not withstand too much heat generated from the condensation of air," the Vasquez explained.

"You know your stuff," Beatrice said.

"I was an engineer involved in its development." He forced a laugh. The Vasquez held out both his hands at Beatrice and Inghild to fire his beams. Beatrice quickly jump kicked him in his face and fired her Carthia gun directly at it. His arms fell back and the lights coming out of his armored suit died off. His head was not in its place anymore, completely destroyed from Beatrice's shot.

"That gun is useless now," Inghild pointed out. He sheathed his own Carthia gun at his waist.

"Yeah, I used it too much. Have to apologize to Boss when we get back. We are not supposed to use it. These guns were a wild card in our fighting for a long time ever since we procured it." Her voice was calm. She must have gotten used to fighting on the front line. I wondered how much experience she had until then fighting. I wanted to stop Beatrice before to ask Vasquez about 'them' but it was the least of my concern right then.

Hope emerged from hiding and Beatrice went out of her way to kick his stomach. "Oof!" His breath was knocked out of his lungs.

"You're hopeless. You didn't do anything!"

Hope crouched while hugging himself. "W-Well. I did shoot him in the face. But guess it didn't count."

The ground vibrated. We looked at each other and faced the direction where the vibration was coming from. It was a tank, and it had its aim on me.

"Ava!" Inghild shouted.

A large projectile went at me and the area shook from the impact.