Shattered - Prologue

Prologue

The soft noise of raindrops echoed in the dark basement. There were a few high metallic shelves and some wooden boxes covered by leather mantles occupying most of the already small place, leaving not much room to feel comfortable there. The place was very dirty, webs lay on the walls and some water was pouring from the roof. A trembling silhouette could be seen in one of the corners: a medabot.

The medabot seemed to be in very bad shape, the shadow covered most of its body, therefore, it could barely be noticed. What could be seen from this poor mechanical being was its damaged torso and head: the white face covered with scratches, the pink eyes have lost their brightness, the blue head not better than the face, the rose bow in the back of the head severely damaged and part of it was missing, the torso even worse than the head part. Judging by what's been just seen, there's no telling on how bad the rest of the body might be.

Brass just sat there and wasn't moving. She was worried. 'How... How could this have happened? What did I do?' She thought and regretted her decisions from that day. She noticed she was almost "fainting". 'Erika, Metabee, Ikki... Please... Be careful.' She longed and prayed. All she could do was wait... Wait for them to come for her. But that probably wasn't going to be a simple rescue mission...

Then something came to her mind, a memory: she was hanging for her "life" at the top of a very high building with Belzelga holding her leg, making both way too heavy for her only functioning arm to hold on; then, when her grip gave up, Metabee's hand grabbed hers, saving her from a horrible fall. Even though both his legs were totally damaged, Metabee managed to reach her just in time. She knew he'd try to beat all the odds. She just hoped it wouldn't lead them to danger as well.

Suddenly, a very bright light filled the room as a door opened, snapping Brass out of her dream. She couldn't see it at all, but she could hear everything, and somehow her head wasn't damaged enough to make her scan function cease completely, so she was still able to track movement around her, though with not much accuracy. Cautious steps could be heard, as if whoever was there either has never been there before or was a bit unsure of how to get inside and explore the place. Probably the first possibility. By what her scanning could tell, it was another medabot and it seemed to be perfectly fine. 'Could that be...?'

"Brass! Can you hear me?" - a voice shouted but in a low enough tone, just a bit louder than a whisper. The voice startled her and warmed her medal: he did it! He had managed to get to her. 'Metabee...' She tried to stand up, but in vain, she was too weak. Instead, she crawled to the side a little and poked her head slightly out of her hiding corner.

"I'm... Over here." - she said, her voice was completely modified, showing she didn't have much juice left. Steps came closer at a very quick pace. Brass noticed Metabee was beside her, and by the noise from his movement, she could deduce he was kneeling to be able to look at her. She curled a little to hide her body in the shadows and allowed some of her power to be used to partially fix her bow in an attempt to make her scanning system better since all she could track was very confusing and fixing her eyes was out of question at the moment.

"How bad is it?" - Metabee asked with concern on his voice, Brass couldn't see it, but he was frowning. She remained silent for a second and just moved her head so she would be "looking at" the floor.

"I'm not sure." - she said, her voice sounded more and more as if she were going out of juice. Her head started to shake a bit due to the lack of power, her torso could barely keep itself up and was almost giving up, but then she regained some control of it. - "Sorry."

The male medabot just shook his head frowning even more, as if he were saying she didn't have to be sorry for anything.

"It's okay, I'll get you out of here." - he replied then reached out his right arm for her, but she moved away from his grip's range. She noticed him leaning his body forward trying to grasp her right arm she was hiding. His torso reflected the light coming from the door, sending it in front of him. He used his left hand to shield his eyes from the hard light's reflection coming from his chest, clearing his vision and then he looked at Brass again, finally being able to see her properly: he froze, and she turned around a bit, making her body face the wall and hide her injuries.

"Don't worry about me. I-I can get fixed." - she said, but he remained frozen - "There's not much time, the power from my medal is almost gone." - she warned, then reached her left arm out and rested her hand on his right arm - "Metabee... If I don't make it..." - her head pointed downwards - "Just... Just keep going and get out. Don't stay here... This person that brought me to this place... He means business."

Metabee suddenly snapped out of his frozen state and grabbed her hand.

"No way! I'm not leaving you here." - he said in a serious tone, his stare was deep, but she couldn't see it - "I promise I'll take you to Erika. She, Ikki and the guys are coming."

Those words gave Brass some hope: nothing could deny how brave the KBT-type medabot was. They had to try to escape quickly. Little did they know everything was just going to get worse.