She nodded, fascinated by the interaction she witnessed. For a moment, she almost envied the children the way they could move freely in the Outside and enjoy the company of animals she had only seen here or there in manus and instructional vids.
"There's movement on that hill," Windchime said over the commlink and highlighted the location on their HUDs.
They turned their attention to a smaller hill that overlooked the town. A building atop it looked impossibly old and appeared to have been put together with a mixture of old wood, using concrete slabs for a foundation. Despite the fragility of the timber used, it was tall and likely reinforced with steel like the other houses around it. A large brass bell was visible inside the structure at the top and a wooden cross rose from the pinnacle.
Mini zoomed her view into the movement Windchime had noted and focused on a large group of people herded from the back of the building. They were harried by what looked like older versions of the Cinder 500 series of mech that toted their massive shotguns and launched bursts of flame to keep the people in order.
Their obvious captors began to push them into the wooden building as a larger mech moved into sight. This was much larger than its companions, almost impossibly so, and stood almost a quarter as tall as the building itself. It was covered by a tattered cloak draped over its shoulders, and Jessica13 squinted in an effort to identify something at the top of the helm. Although they were too far to see what it was exactly, she knew that it would resemble an owl or another kind of bird of prey.
Athena—she had to assume it was her—carried what appeared to be a spear that, when planted in the ground, was almost five or six times the size of the humans who were shoved and jostled into the structure.
"What are they doing?" she asked and winced when the humans attempted to resist. Their efforts were futile and stopped quickly when a couple of them were annihilated by the Cinder shotguns.
"I don't think you'll want to watch this," Windchime warned her.
She had a feeling he was right but somehow couldn’t drag her gaze from the scene. The last of the people were pushed inside and the doors were sealed. The Cinders launched what seemed to be the fuel from their tanks over the building itself and, without any warning or ceremony, ignited the flamethrowers themselves.
"Oh, prophet," Jessica13 gasped. She wanted to cover her eyes as the flames licked up the wooden frame of the building, fed by the fuel that had soaked into the old, dry boards. Smoke billowed into the cloudless sky.
"Do you wish for me to deactivate the HUD?" Mini asked and she almost thought she could hear disgust in his voice.
"No," she whispered although she immediately regretted it. She could only stare in horror, unable to even cover her eyes, as the building was rapidly consumed with the people inside. "Why? Why would she do that?"
Tinker looked at her. "Because she can. Maybe to send a message to make sure none of the others in the town resist or call for help. Or perhaps simply for fun. I don't want to even try to explain the madness that would drive her to do what she's done."
She shook her head and Windchime moved closer to place one of his mech's four hands on her Minato's shoulder. "Don't worry, Jessie. We'll take care of you and won't let anything like that happen to you or Mini ever."
She tried to force a smile and hastily swiped away the tears that trickled down her cheeks.
"I wish we could have said the same to the people inside that building," Tinker said. His voice had taken on a growling, gravelly quality she'd never heard from him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The smoke continued to spiral from the burning building, but there was a limit to how much time they could give to respect and mourn the dead. Jessica13 wasn't sure what else they could do, but after a few long hours of their silent, shocked vigil, they seemed to agree that it was time to move on and begin to work on the reason why they had come all this way in the first place.
"That was her, wasn't it?" Windchime asked and finally dragged their attention away from where dozens of people had died a horrific death. "That was Athena leading those Cinders."
"The mech is a little more ragged-looking than I recall, but aye, that would be her all right," Tinker replied. While they talked, she kept a watch on the town below them. "The size of it is a dead giveaway, and if it weren't, the helm and the spear would be enough to seal it for me."
"Well, I guess that should be sent back to the Beast. I'm sure Hammerhand would like to know we have visual confirmation that at least Athena's mech is here," Windchime suggested. "Although we can't tell if it's actually the woman herself or maybe someone who killed her and took her mech."
"From the burning, I'd say it's still her riding the damn thing," the older man stated decisively. "She liked to burn the folks she didn't care for. Even back when it was only her and Hammer hunting pirates, she would set them aflame and let them burn inside their own mechs."
"Well, in that case, what do we do about it?" his teammate asked. "The three of us would be hard-pressed to take on three Cinders on their ground, much less an Excalibur. Do we wait out here and let folks die while we twiddle
