[center][color=tan][h3]Courier 6[/h3][/color]
[b]Level 3[/b] - (22/30) EXP
[b]Location:[/b] Scrapyard - End
[b]Word Count:[/b] 762[/center]

Everything went from bad to worse in one hell of a hurry. The pickaxe, despite how much stronger and faster it made the Courier, did absolutely nothing to harm the Omnic tank. Even the combined force of his swing and gravity meant he only scratched the paint. That he could deal with. Get away, change tactics, it wouldn’t be too big of a deal. What came next he couldn’t.

Multiple shots rang out across the battlefield, shots from a sniper rifle. But not an anti-material rifle. That meant the only one who could have made those shots was… [color=tan]”Zer0…”[/color] the Courier wheezed, gripping his gut. He didn’t need to look down to see what had happened, he’d witnessed the assassin’s shooting first hand already. Those bullets had pierced straight through Bastion, and then straight through his gut. The padded armor of his duster didn’t make a difference. The NEMEAN subdermal armor didn’t make a difference. Whatever Zer0 shot, he shot straight through.

In an effort to deal with the sudden pain, stumbling to stay up on two legs, Six pulled out his bottle of whiskey. Sadly instead of taking a deep swig of delicious amber liquid he only coughed up precious red, which mixed ominously into the bottle. Then he suddenly lost his foot, though through no fault of his own, as the Omnic Bastion made a sweeping motion with its cannon barrel and, pardon the pun, barreled right into the Courier’s torso, tossing him aside like a rag doll. He couldn’t even grunt or yell as he fell and hit the ground, his bottle of bloody booze rolling away.

Vision growing hazy, the Courier heard explosions all around him, but couldn’t be bothered to truly see where they were coming from. He had enough of an idea, at any rate, but it didn’t matter. If he didn’t make it to Blazermate in short order… 

No.

[i]No.[/i]

[color=tan]”No!”[/color] he cried out in defiance. He had a god damn job to do, and he never left a job unfinished. Death may have been hovering over him, black and bleak, ready to take his immortal soul to the next life, but that asshole would have to wait. That Bastion unit still needed to die. Bowser still needed to get into the castle. That overgrown lightbulb in the sky still needed to be put in its place. Not today, Death. Not. Fucking. Today.

Gripping his new pickaxe with renewed vigor, the Courier felt its power coursing through his body in even greater amounts than before. He felt practically superhuman, and it was time to rejoin the fight! He looked up and, wait, Death was actually here? That wasn’t a hallucination brought on by blood loss? And he was fighting on [i]their side?! [b]And he was utterly destroying the robot?![/b][/i] 

The remains of Bastion burst into ash not too far away, leaving behind a large floating spirit just as all the other deaths. The Courier bit his lip so hard he drew blood and spat it out (or was that blood already there?), then put all his effort into moving one foot in front of the other. Step. Step. Step. Even as strong and powerful as he felt with his pickaxe in hand, it still took everything he had just to move, but he could do it. He had been in worse places before. Hard to beat getting shot twice in the head and buried in a shallow grave. Hell, hard to beat having your brain [i]surgically removed[/i] and still walk around. The Big Empty was [i]weird.[/i]

Ignoring everything else in the battlefield, or perhaps simply too exhausted and injured to notice anything else, the Courier waded straight to the Bastion spirit. Finally, mere inches from it, he reached out with one hand and took hold of the thing, then fell to his knees. He released the pickaxe and suddenly a roaring wave of pain overcame him. He seized up for a moment, having to get acclimated to it all over again, but it was a necessary evil if he was going to reach into his pack and pull out the lakelurk spirit.

He remembered seeing King Bowser do the same with those hammer throwing turtles, and the rabbit. Damn, just speaking took so much effort. [color=tan]”I need a posse. You’re gonna be my hombres. Capiche?”[/color] Still gripping the spirits in both fists, tight, the Courier fell to the ground on his back, still bleeding out profusely.