“And who the hell are you?”
Watt found his entrance greeted by only an outcry of confusion.
The Tyrant Rhino had destroyed anything and everything in the city as it saw fit, transformed into the very embodiment of cruelty as it crushed all those who dared stand before it. And there, standing against the towering, massive Tyrant Rhino that looked down on it, was a much smaller Mild Bull whose entire length was only the size of the larger Mechsteel’s chest. The sight of it was so absurd that it could only be taken as some sort of joke.
“Father!” Anna shouted.
“Master...you...can’t! He’s really...tough!” Meddié said painfully from Agile Gazelle, lifting her torso up from where she lay.
“You did a great job, Meddié. You just leave the rest to this old man,” Watt said, addressing her from the Mild Bull he was piloting.
“What absolute nonsense.” The men piloting the Tyrant Rhino were stunned. It wasn’t even a Brute-class Mechsteel he was piloting—it was nothing more than a mere Livestock-class machine! What was the fool even blabbering on about?
It wasn’t just a matter of being larger than the Mild Bull—across each and every metric, the Tyrant Rhino was crushingly superior. It would’ve been more accurate to say that even attempting to compare them in the first place was wasted effort.
“Hmm... Yup, can’t say I’ve seen that model before! Guess it’s a new one they just deployed, huh? Gotta admit, it does look pretty tough.” Any proper attempt to think about it would make it painfully clear that he had no chance of winning. And yet, even then, Watt continued to speak, entirely unbothered. “But you went and made my daughter cry. You can apologize all you want, but I ain’t lettin’ you off the hook!”
There was nothing difficult about it. The Mild Bull was nothing more than a mere work machine—if they just flattened it without a second thought, it’d all be over. The Tyrant Rhino placed its weight on the arm Watt was holding only for a violent cloud of steam to burst out from the Mild Bull. With far more than the standard amount of magic energy circulating through it, its power output spiked in an instant.
“Down ya go!”
Alongside the comically out-of-place remark, the Mild Bull stepped out of the way of the Tyrant Rhino’s fist, with the full weight the Tyrant Rhino had been placing on it now driving it off-balance. While the Tyrant Rhino’s massive body stumbled forward, the Mild Bull took a single step forward as well before dropping its small frame down and taking an even lower stance. It leaped forward, reaching for one of the Tyrant Rhino’s tree-sized legs with both hands.
“Right here—that’s every Mechsteel’s weakness...and don’t you forget it!”
The Mild Bull charged forward, adding momentum behind its own weight, slamming all of the force into the Tyrant Rhino’s knee joint. It didn’t matter how impenetrable its armor was—the joints were moving parts and couldn’t be protected. In fact, the armor constantly weighed heavily on the Mechsteel’s joints, a fact that Watt took advantage of.
With an enormous weight cast upon it all at once, the joint gave a piercing snap before shattering. With one of its legs destroyed, the Tyrant Rhino staggered to one side before being forced to kneel down.
“What just... What did you do?!”
The men in the cockpit were frantic. They still had no idea what had just happened. There shouldn’t have been a single reason why their state-of-the-art Tyrant Rhino had just had its knee broken by the lowly likes of a mere working machine.
“How dare you!!! You’re just some pathetic little nobody!”
Indignant, the Tyrant Rhino swung its arms around, only for the Mild Bull to calmly keep its distance. For all the destructive force its fists carried, not a single blow landed, leaving only the hollow sound of its swings tearing through the air in their wake.
“Impossible... What the hell’s going on?! This can’t be happening!”
After finally beginning to regain their composure, the men were in the process of realizing their current predicament. A Mechsteel with its leg destroyed couldn’t move. While it could still crawl, what would be the point? It didn’t matter how much the Tyrant Rhino outclassed its opponents in specs—a Mechsteel that couldn’t move had no hopes of winning.
The word “failure” flickered across the men’s minds.
Despite having secured their target at one point, they had not only suffered the loss of their new Mechsteel—at this rate, their target would be snatched away from them as well. It was a terrible, inexcusable blunder.
It was then that an idea crossed the desperate men’s minds.
“That’s right... We’re not done. This isn’t over yet!”
Forcing the Tyrant Rhino up, the men raised the hand clutching Anna high in the air.
“Look at her! Don’t you care what happens to the girl?!”
“Hey, hold on now! I’ve heard of being a sore loser, but...!”
Watt had a good enough idea of what the assassins after Anna had been charged with doing. If Anna were to be injured, they wouldn’t just lose any chance at success—they’d only make their failure even more colossal. But with the men having now transformed into cornered, reckless beasts, anything else besides what was immediately in front of them didn’t matter at all.
“It doesn’t matter what happens to me!” Anna shouted from the Tyrant Rhino’s grip. “But you have to defeat these bandits!”
“Urgh... Enough out of you!”
In that very moment, right when the men were distracted by Anna’s pleas, Watt burned through the whole reserve of magicyte left in the Mild Bull, its Mech-Heart growing so burning hot that it was moments away from bursting apart. Suddenly filled with an abundance of magic energy, the Mild Bull began to surge with an unusual amount of power.
“’Fraid I can’t go along with that idea. What kind of parent could ever sacrifice their daughter?!”
The Mild Bull slammed into the ground with all its might, propelling itself forward all at once with the recoil from the impact. Thrusting out the Mild Bull’s disproportionately long arms, Watt reached out with the Mechsteel’s gigantic hands, just as he had when he saved Anna from the collapsing freight. The Mild Bull was small and weak, but in that moment, Anna couldn’t imagine a more reassuring sight.
Sharply thrusting its palms forward, the Mild Bull’s hands pierced the Tyrant Rhino’s wrist. While the force from the blow destroyed the Mild Bull’s own hands, it tore through the Tyrant Rhino’s wrist, sending its fist flying into the air.
“There!”
The Mild Bull continued forward, dashing off after the fist clutching Anna that was now soaring through the air. Trying to catch her before the fist slammed into the ground, the Mild Bull stretched out its hands—only to lose power and suddenly topple over from its knees and sink to the ground.
“Bwuh?! Now’s when you decide to give out on me?!” Watt exclaimed.
He’d continued to drive the Mechsteel to its limits, and now there wasn’t so much as a drop of power left in it. Looking out through his machine as it crumbled, Watt could only watch as the fist clutching his daughter plunged to the ground.
“I was so close!” he cried.
“Leave it to me!”
A shadow darted past. Transforming into a swift gale, Agile Gazelle slid along the ground to catch Anna and the fist holding her.
“There! Made it just in time!” Meddié said.
Seeing Agile Gazelle hold on to Anna with care, Watt finally let out the breath he’d been holding in. “Phew! That was way too close! Looks like I owe you one, Miss Meddié...”
I was too confident there at the end. Watt came face-to-face with just how long he’d been out of action. Merely falling back on his old experience could spell trouble from here on out.
“Guess that’s about all you can handle, huh?” Watt said, patting the surface of the Mild Bull’s cockpit. “Nice work out there. I appreciate it.”
After expressing his gratitude to the Mechsteel, Watt opened up its armored shell and stepped outside. No sooner had he done so than he heard a heavy scraping sound echo in his ears. Watt looked at its source only to see the Tyrant Rhino clumsily trying to crawl away and make its escape.
“Centurion, we must escape at once!”
“Nonsense! We’ve been given a state-of-the-art Mechsteel, and you think I’ll just accept such a wretched defeat?! We’re taking her back no matter what it takes!”
They were such poor losers that it was almost shocking, but then again, perhaps that made the victory all the more satisfying. But either way, their fates were already sealed; all their efforts were nothing more than meaningless floundering. After letting Anna down, Agile Gazelle walked over before stepping on the writhing Tyrant Rhino’s back.
“The choice is all yours,” Meddié said. “Either I crush the whole cockpit with you in it, or you come along quietly.”
With not so much as a word left to say in response, the Tyrant Rhino froze in place. As if they’d finally come to terms with their defeat, the Mechsteel’s armor opened up a short while after, revealing the two men with their hands in the air.