Ladybird Chapter 3, Scene 1

Chapter 3

Ameran President Gary R. Shrub picked his words very carefully during his meeting with the Joint Chiefs. He had to both sound reasonably troubled that a woman with military-grade weapons was destroying one of Amera’s most iconic cities, but he also needed that firm, heroic resolve that was characteristic of the Ameran Presidency. When the video footage of the spider-like machine and its implausibly destructive chain-guns and its pocket-sized missiles was shown to him, he thought the opportunity had arisen to prove himself once again.

“That is troubling,” is what he said. His tone conveyed that cool, emotional yet distant mystique that all leaders should have. It said to the audience, in this case his trusted staff, that, while the situation was dire, he was convinced he would be able to play video games after it. This was not exactly part of his plan, it merely came naturally. President Shrub quite honestly believed he would get to go back to his office and play video games once this crisis was resolved and nobody would mind it.

“Troubling, sir?” Asked the Minister of Defense. He was too stern a character for President Shrub’s liking, always concerned with silly things like budget or the so-called Menieda Convention. Both these things seemed fictitious to President Shrub.

“Yes, quite troubling. However, I believe that the strength of Amera can get us through this situation.”

His father had taught him that one. Patriotic statements were enough to resolve most things. At worst, they would get his staff to answer the troubling questions in his place. At best, they were great quotable for the media. At the very best, they were both. For the President, life was about quotability and getting other people to answer questions for you. And loving Amera.

“Sir, with all due respect, there will be innumerable civilian casualties if we do not stop this woman,” the minister pressed on, “Wherever she acquired this weapon from, it is clear that the local authorities cannot resolve the situation. We must mobilize ground forces immediately to plan a tactical assault–”

“No,” President Shrub said, “That’s too messy.”

This was becoming annoying. Why did they always want to send the army everywhere? The army was for killing people overseas, not for killing people in Amera! Just like the police was for capturing Adhanians, not for all this “upholding the law” nonsense! They had the ABI and the AIA for spying on citizens and doing things inside Amera. He was about to suggest using those two agencies, but then he had a far better idea.

“Where is my daughter right now?” He asked.

The joint chiefs blinked and rubbed their eyes in elegant synchronicity. Their bewilderment clearly befitted their status as joint chiefs. “She’s, um, in the Oval House, sir. She’s safe.” Said the Minister of Ministers. She was President Shrub’s favorite minister. He had forgotten her name too. Maybe it was Sally. He liked that name also.

“Oh, I know she’s safe. Please tell Alt to take her to Rosewater immediately. She’ll know what to do.” President Shrub said. He punctuated the statement with a big, fatherly smile.

* * *

Nellidae found Libel to be quite burdensome, but she was not slowed down by the weight one bit. Libel found this assertion extremely insulting. She took great care of her scrawny figure! She was totally within her ideal weight!

“Wait, who cares about that?” Libel asked, “You learned to fly!”

“Learn? No, I just kind of knew how.”

Libel nodded. There was an odd, sudden strength to Nellidae’s voice. The way she was dressed up either underscored her seriousness and conviction or made her look completely insane. Libel was undecided.

Nellidae’s wings buzzed and fluttered so quickly that they seemed a collection of shifting lines behind her rather than anything solid. Her body did not seem to have changed at all – she was still rather short and unassuming, displayed quite clearly by the strange sleeveless leotard-thing she had decided to wear. But her antennae had grown back thicker and better-armored, and there seemed to be a glint in her eyes. Her flying was smooth and calculated, though her movements were not complex at all.

“Where are we going?” Libel asked.

Smoke blew out suddenly from below as Coulter fired a missile at a nearby shop.

Nellidae circled the disaster area created by Coulter’s machine, which was thankfully contained to a single city block. She flew past the tops of the nearby office buildings, wondering where to drop off Libel. Realizing there was nowhere really safe, she turned around in an arch and flew back down towards Coulter. The machine guns clicked, rose and fired a spray her way, but Nellidae sped past the bullets, sweeping over Coulter and towards a smaller shop around the corner.

“I’m going to drop you off where I can see you, but stay out of this!” Nellidae said.

Libel nodded again. What could she possibly do anymore? Nellidae was in charge now, strange as it seemed to her.

* * *

Coulter was at a crossroads.

She could quite easily continue to destroy every city in Amera, beginning with this city block and working her way up. She certainly had the drive required for this. Her college professors had told her that she was very ambitious, just before she froze them for use in cyborg experiments which she forgot to conduct after a while. She was busy with her Tician Certificate work and they just did not have priority.

But the allure of getting her revenge on the little glasses girl she was sure had been the one to somehow knock her off her building and injure her forehead was difficult to resist. A good compromise would have been to continue generally destroying this area – after all, she had a practically infinite supply of exploding needles and bolt gun bullets stored in this machine, and could always pop new ones from the gumball machine if she needed them.

Coulter nodded to herself, agreeing with that general course of action.

Then that thing had flown overhead.

In a panic, thinking it might have been some kind of aircraft, Coulter raised the guns and fired a daunting spray of bullets its way, the bursts crossing paths just where she expected it to move. But it had gone much too fast, and blazed past between both streams. Baffled, Coulter turned the C/S Gun Nightmare’s cockpit around on its axis, but the thing had flown past too quickly. She had video of it playing on one of the half-broken screens, but the computer could not decipher anything. It was too damaged. Coulter, by eye, realized it was too small to be an aircraft.

The machine clumsily turned around, lifting and setting down one leg after another in a curious dance. The main gun, the tank-like cannon thus far unused, clicked and thudded. Its shifting innards primed it for combat.

“Alright then, I will begin clearing the block until I find the glasses girl. Starting with that pet shop over there–!”

Coulter’s excitement was interrupted by something appearing right in front of her. The HUD displayed a strange girl hovering just above the ground. She had an odd cape that was divided into two and looked like hard skin. Wings, too, buzzing frantically behind her. A pair of goggles, a backless black plastic halter leotard thing without sleeves that seemed at home on a magician’s assistant girl, or maybe at some kind of costume play convention. The antennae were the most bizarre feature, and Coulter could have sworn the oh-so-slightly bronze skin and flat, long black hair with that dumb hair band were familiar to her.

Then the creature pointed at the machine and said:

“Coulter, you’re terrifyingly stupid for a genius!”

The voice clinched it. Eyes widened, jaw unhinging, Coulter gaped with the realization that she staring at that…that Ladybird.

“Ladybird?” Coulter whispered, the machine voicing her question aloud.

“YOU STILL DON’T KNOW MY FRICKIN’ NAME?” The girl replied, stomping on the ground in a childish display of anger.

“Wasn’t it Nellysomething? Ladybird is much better anyway, especially since you’re running around as some kind of dime store superhero.” Coulter joked. “Anyway, hop inside. You can ride shotgun!”

Ladybird grit her teeth and clenched her fists. “I’m not getting in that death-trap you idiot! I’m here to stop you!”

Coulter frowned, scratching her head. “Stop me? If I recall, I am still holding the gun here.”

The buzzing allayed and Ladybird stepped foot on the ground once more. She stretched her hand, wiggled her fingers as if preparing to demonstrate something. She then turned her fist on the concrete, punching a hole straight into the floor. Cracks ran across the street. The ground rumbled quite lightly, though Coulter felt none of it herself. Her stability sensor went off.

Raising her fist again, Ladybird turned it to Coulter’s machine. “Same thing happens to you if you don’t stop this, you maniac!”

Coulter golf clapped. “Amazing, you can punch inferior gravel streets.”

“I have super powers and stuff! Can’t you see?” Ladybird protested.

“Well, that’s plain and visible. You got louder and more obnoxious. Superpower indeed.” Coulter replied.

Ladybird showed her teeth again and this time, as if for variety, stomped the ground with only one foot instead of two. Cracks began to show on the surface, becoming more pronounced with each stomp. Coulter was becoming quite bored of this immature outburst when her computer came back to life suddenly. The HUD began to zoom in on Ladybird. The screen, in spite of the flower-shape of cracks across its surface, began to display a different light spectrum for Coulter to see, in which Ladybird was almost entirely green and purple.

Coulter went mouth-agape anew – but this time the expression quickly turned into a smile.

“Of course,” Coulter said to herself, “The verdite, the bug, it all makes sense. My time machine made her a mutant – verdite has metastasized inside of her!”

“I can hear you!” Ladybird shouted, throwing a rock which bounced harmlessly off the machine’s leg, “Turn off your loudspeaker if you’re going to have important ruminations about me you failure as a human being!”

The machine’s legs shifted with mechanical cracking sounds, raising the monstrosity higher from the ground. The chainguns, missile launchers and main gun all pointed downward, alone dwarfing the insect girl in size. For a moment, only a low chuckling issued from the hidden loudspeakers, accented by a strange clicking from the various deadly instruments aimed Ladybird’s way.

Ladybird in response, gulped and tugged on the tight synthetic rubber neck of her clothes.

“I have a dream,” Coulter said.

“Oh boy,” Ladybird replied, “I do wonder what that is. Let me guess, you want to take over the world?”

Coulter laughed. “OF COURSE!”

In an instant, a hailstorm of bullets, missiles and previously-unseen laser fire rained upon Ladybird’s spot.

Concrete and tar chunks flew every which way as the onslaught tore apart the epidermis of the city – but Ladybird seemed to be nowhere in sight. The guns clicked, casting off large cylindrical cartridges, missile shells and oddly enough weird toner-cartridges. Coulter’s instruments were hard at work, but crippled, they could not identify Ladybird.

Not until she was right on top of them.

Ladybird flew down on Coulter as the guns reloaded, raising her hands over her head and swinging down for added force, crashing both fists at once into the main turret. The Machine shook and Ladybird was pushed back. One of the machine’s legs tripped and the whole contraption shifted back a yard while Ladybird flew the other way. She had bounced off the armor, just like the rock she had thrown before. The HUD inside the machine captured her expression of helplessness perfectly.

“Nice try,” Coulter said, as the machine recomposed itself and raised itself anew, “But I don’t use any cheap metal for my inventions. Ladybird, I would like to offer you a chance to surrender yourself for the good of mankind.”

Circling around cautiously, Ladybird did not stop for a second even as Coulter spoke. “Are you kidding me? For the good of mankind?”

“You don’t understand. Your body, right now, is a source of infinite verdite-based fuel! You are the only biological organism in the universe with a 32% verdite content in your bloodstream. I could bleed you out right now and have enough fuel to power even this fuel-guzzling contraption for a few months.”

Clearly disgusted by the suggestion, Ladybird began to fly even higher. “Go to hell! I’m not letting you experiment on me!”

“What experiment? This has already been confirmed. After I capture you, I’ll have an infinite supply of fuel! Even a verdite stone can run out of power if not given time to rest between heavy usage. But your blood…or I guess, hemolymph, makes you a little buggy battery. You will of course suffer nigh-eternally until you inevitably die of abuse, but until then, who knows how vast the quantities of fuel we can harvest from you would be?”

“That sentence structure was incredibly convoluted.” Ladybird replied, and stuck out her tongue, before zipping down towards Coulter anew, plummeting towards her like a bullet.

The machine’s legs shifted and its innards clicked and slid in preparation. “So be it!” Coulter shouted back.