24. take your bets, how much am I worth?

Waking up a short three hours later, to the rumble of dozens of vehicles coming from a distance. Hearing this Silver comes to with a jolt, bashing the roof of the vehicle. "Wake up ladies, we are out of here now!" With that Silver jumps into the cockpit of the machine, firing it up, the thrust packs firing up letting out a loud boom, shaking the grogginess from the group, making them grab the things they unloaded and tosses it in a heap inside, micah hopping into the rear turret, swiveling it with a loud metal screech as silver had forgotten to grease all the turret bearings. As soon as everyone is in,Silver punches it, sending the beast into a neck breaking acceleration, a cold sweat on her brow as her sensitive ears can hear the hum of much faster and much more equipped mercenary machines hot on their tail. "Place your bets, how much do you think I am worth? I say at least fifty million!" Silver says, laughing a bit, trying to ease the tension, whoever threw the axe the night before was at least a mid tier combatant with a focus on strength and dexterity, knowing this, silver can only guess the strength of the forces on her now. "Only fifty? I bet no less than seventy-five million easy." Micah laughs, as he speaking, racking the bolt on the large dual guns. When the sword girl chimes in with a nervous smile. "For the storm? I would put no less than one and fifty million on her, otherwise it wouldn't be worth the risk of being turned to dust." And at this, the whole group laughs hardly, calming many nervous hearts, all the while the bounty hunters are inching closer and closer to the beast. "Micah, I have an idea, let them get in close, within fifty meters, and tell me if any are directly behind us!" Silver calls out. Her blood singing a sweet tune of violence to her. "What on this beautiful plain do you have in that crazy ass head of your NOW?!" Micah screams out the last, having a minor panic having anything that close without shooting at them? 'Why do I have to like the only batshit crazy one?' He thinks, before getting his reply. "I was thinking of dropping a few things off, ya know the saying, immovable object meet unstoppable force? Well..." Leaving it there, Silver lets out an evil chuckle raising the hair on her party's arms. Micah ducks down, as much as he can in the turret as the vehicles start shooting at a range roughly one hundred yards away. 'Shit!...feth!...' He curses to himself as Silver cackles upfront, well aware of his thoughts as several rounds ping off the cobbled and welded on scraps. "Hey, fire child and thunder girl, be ready, don't attack too soon, let them get in real close, and go all out, try your best to slag their vehicles!" Silver calls out her orders, getting the girls out of their nervous stupor, the two immediately creating a fire ball and lighting rod respectively, charging it up as the wait. Then its a waiting gaming, rounds dancing off the armor causing a ringing in the cabin, and light vehicle lasers burn the surface of the alloys, making everyone sweat. Eventually micah calls out one word before letting his machine guns loose. "Now!" And with that, Silver's mana eye glows as she spawns two artillery turrets less than five meters in front of the vehicles directly behind them, leaving no room to dodge in time. The first and second vehicle slam into the incredibly dense turret bases, at first, the lead vehicle is only partially damaged, the gravity plates crumpling, but then the second vehicle slams into the first. The impact causing a chain reaction, disabling both. But unfortunately for them, the turrets survive aiming their barrels down, in a self destructive manor, firing directly into the top of the vehicle, causing them to explode and erupt in flames, and they continue to fire, all the way until their structure finally gives destroying the high quality turrets for the first time since silver had them. Hearing a ding from her System, Silver ignores it for now as she starts summoning her turrets ahead of them in a tunnel fashion that silver drives through, listening to the turrets and micah unleash hell a smirk on Silver's face as she steers the machine, though the controls are meant to be used with two arms, the city guards always order their war machines to have disability control options built in too. And a good thing for that as Silver would never be able to control the gravity plates properly if the two sides was independent like it was supposed to be. And like this, the beast keeps taking a beating, but so do the bounty hunters and mercenaries, as she continues to resummon her turrets, putting them all over the area, some ahead, some beside, some behind, making it hard to guess or to creep up on them, though two of the faster ones are inching ever closer, nearly coming along the sides, despite the fire they are receiving, and the obstacles, but little do they know the danger they are in. When they reach only five feet from it. "Slag em!" Silver says, and the girls give a determined nod, sticking out and one throws a bolt of glowing blueish purple lightning, while the other tosses what can only be described as a planets core at the other vehicle, are this range, given no warning, the attacks land, and one can smell the results as one is literally turned to molten slag and the other violently explodes, knocking the beast around on its course making both Silver and micah curse along with everyone else panicking at the rapid change all of a sudden. Eventually, and somehow despite only having half the control, silver manages to salvage it, and get the beast running straight again, though at the cost of giving up ground. "Feth! I said slag em not blow them up!" Silver says, only to get a quick reply from the blue haired girl. "Sorrrrry, I don't know how to do that!" And like that, silver realizes these girls are still very new to their power, much like she is, maybe a bit less creative and more restricted but still new. "Feth...alright, next time, focus on the plasma aspect, imagine the glowing center of lightning not the electricity, if you manage to manipulate the lightning to produce super heated plasma who can turn virtually any object into a slag, the lightning is destructive but explosive so focus on restraining it or channel it deeper into the plasma to increase its heat!" Silver says, giving her a quick tip on the uses of lightning, all of this just from her time getting struck by said lightning, but it'll be a good enough lesson foe the right path if the girl is smart. And with that, the girl looks startled as she thinks it over. "You can do that? Just channel lightning into a different form?" Silver glances at the girl before refocusing, having long broken into a swear from the constant exertion. "If a earth wielder can focus on metal or from his stone and make iron walls, then a lightning wielder should carry every property of lightning at their disposal, the creator of the dwarves citadel city was an earth mage, but he summoned one hundred meter thick metal walls to surround the city. Focus!" Silver shouts, having not prepared to be a teacher in the middle of a rolling fight, but at least they shed four of the vehicles off.

And like that, the fight continues, the two tossing fire balls and lightning bolts like their free as they both practice, her parents aren't ideal either as they run ammo to micah, and eventually the two shield bearers take to the side turrets propping their shields in a manner to provide as much cover as the can for themselves as the open up with smaller faster firing machine guns, though the noise is deafening, no one pays any mind, the blonde girl stays busy healing micah, and making sure everyone's ears are in good shape despite the constant rattling. "Persistent fethers!" Micah roars, pissed at how hard these hunters are chasing. "I have a bounty on my head large enough to get them in a tier 2 city, wouldn't you be tempted in their shoes to hunt me down til death for one or the other?" Silver laughs heartily, shaking off her own growing nerves. "Just be lucky they don't have launchers! I am surprised this scrap armor handles lasers much less bullets, goes to show I didn't waste time on it haha!" With this, the fight continues with eight vehicles doing their best to tear the beast apart, but it holds, somehow. Up ahead after over an hour of driving, a desert portion of the region appears, with dust picking up and nearly blinding silver and the rest in the process. "Feth!, Didn't know this region had a desert!" Silver quickly pulls a cloth from the bags finding it a shirt, before wrapping her head with it, shield her eyes quickly as it picks up, cursing the lack of glass on the beast, knowing the other vehicles are not going to suffer as badly. "Baton down the hatches! Get your heads down, we need to shake em or kill them!" Silver says, as she waits for micah to rush up front. Plans running through her mind, ideas, tricks, anything that can be used potentially, unfortunately she is limited in options. "Feth! Feth! Feth feth!..." With that a loud clambering and then micah appears plopping in the cockpit in the free seat. "What are you cursing now?" With that Silver flashes a nervous smile before replying. "I hate doing this an the already dogged thruster packs, but i need you to manually disengage to safety protocol on them, it'll burn far more power but we have the juice to spare. " silver says looking at the manual switches on the dash, some still labelled like the thruster packs, and the safeties. Micah seeing Silver's nervous look, he reaches over, flipping them all off, and instantly the cores dim, and the beast lurches forward with a thunderous boom, the heat being produced Starts turning the thrust vector plates cherry red as the beast rockets forward, leaving the hunters behind in a wake of sand and dust and hellfire. "Yeeeea hahaha baby! She is holding! Lets shake these bastards!" Without a further word, Silver pushes the beast to it limits, the speeds it starts reaching causing vibrations all through the vehicle, and pieces to rattle, but its all ignored in favor or getting distance on the hunters. And over the course of only fifteen minutes, the beast pulls away from the heavy vehicles behind them, eventually creating enough of a storm between them to force them to break off, much to Silver's relief, the thruster sensors that work reading all sorts of overheat damage going on. 'Just hold on, a Lil longer...please...I like living.' She thinks, giving a small prayer to the beast to hold out for her.