Armored

A very short and perhaps entirely one-sided little conflict

He moved with an eye-watering speed. His arms blurred as his legs pumped. The iridescent armor gleamed and sparkled as he tore through the high grass accelerating up the hill towards the group of bandits that were raining fire and laser bolts at him.

The armored juggernaut had begun his run barely a hundred feet away, when the leader of the bandit group had peeked out of the doorway of the ruined bunker rotting and sagging atop hill Five Two. They had locked eyes, or perhaps sensors, the two of them. The bandit, Criticus as the tattoo on his forehead proclaimed, lurched backwards in shock, his cybernetic lenses tilting and whirring in surprise as he took in the towering giant in shining green lumpen armor. Toughened as he was, Criticus's shock lasted less than a second and he whistled his fellows to the alert. Ten more of them spilled out of the bunker door, and following their leader's gaze looked down the hill and immediately opened fire.

The giant had not even hesitated, the helmeted head tilted sideways momentarily even as his torso swung into a stamping run. The hands were empty, but by the second stride were balled into fists. The too large, black fists promised a wrecking ball impact and indeed as the giant crested the hill it cannoned into the bunker and laid about itself with those implements of destruction.

The impact of the giant's fists was catastrophic. Each blow pulped flesh, shattered bone and cratered the concrete of the bunker. The giant was impossibly massive, and his body too was a weapon that he wielded with a supreme martial viciousness. He shoulder-barged two of the bandits who were attempting to bring a crew-served heavy weapon to bear and then stamped down hard on the abandoned weapon flattening it. In the same flowing movement, he kicked another of the bandits - his enormous metal shod foot actually burst through the man's torso. The bandit folded and sat down slowly as if all the fluid pressure holding him upright had drained. He made not a sound as he died.

The giant was not done and he spun in place, his foot dragging entrails from the man he had just destroyed. A fist opened and he grasped another of the bandits by the head and hurled him into another. They bounced off each other like pins and sprawled to the dirt and scrub. Both began scrabbling for their weapons dropped as they went airborne. The giant silenced them by simply jumping onto them, turning them into a mulch as he landed atop them with both feet.

In the span of four seconds, the entirety of the bandit coterie had been utterly annihilated. The only exception was Criticus, who thanks to his cybernetic augmentations had been able just barely to follow the fight. He swallowed as the thought rose into his mind unbidden. "This is an execution. Not a fight. What in the nine hells is this thing?" As he completed the thought, Criticus made to run, firing his plasma pistol over his shoulder as he did.

But, Criticus had not even completed a single step when a giant hand encircled his head and hoisted him into the air, legs milling. Then a voice spoke. Sepulchral, yet with a booming note of promised violence.

"Halt."

The voice emanated from a massive grill set in the front of the giant's helmet. Criticus screamed in pain as his neck stretched, forced to support the weight of his body. In his bionic eyes, red edged text warning of pressure limits on his spine began to scroll.

"You have a moment of life remaining, coordinates to the orbital launch facility now!" Still holding Criticus by the head, the giant pulled his arm in until Criticus and helmet faced one another. There were no eye holes in the helmet, it was a featureless green, save for the grill. But its tilt, and the unrelenting pressure of the hand made things clear. Criticus was just a bug to be ungently observed, questioned and ultimately discarded.

"Speak." That voice again. Only this time, accompanied by a further squeeze of the hand.

Criticus's vision yawed and a spike of pain thrust through him. He squeaked out a stutter of words. "At the magenta mountain line! The line! We -"

The giant's other fist slammed down atop Criticus's head, crushing his skull down into his spine, and dropping the broken body to the churned, blood-soaked slurry that now covered the ground.

Vision fading, Criticus had a momentary glimpse of an enormous boot, its complex tread crisply clear for some reason and then it smashed down crushing his entire existence into the mud and waste. Bursting his body like a balloon and sending jets of vitae in a fan about the pulped mess of flesh and bionics.