"Hold still, you oversized tin bucket, or I’ll take a sledgehammer to your remaining functional gears!" Gen barked, his face blackened with grease and sweat as he lunged forward."I am standing as still as a man made of scrap metal possibly can!" Kaito retorted, his voicebox crackling with an angry burst of static as the old blacksmith shoved him back against the damp, moss-slick stone wall of the subterranean foundry."Not still enough," muttered one of the other grease-stained engineers, a heavy-set woman with a welder’s visor pushed up onto her forehead. She spat a glob of dark tobacco juice onto the stone floor near Kaito’s iron-shod boot. "Look at his chest plate. It’s swollen like a tick after a summer rain. If that core cracks open while we’re down here, this whole cavern will go up in a flash of white-hot plasma, and we won't even leave enough ash to fill an urn.""I thought you said you were fixing me," Kaito rasped, his optical sensors flashing a warning red as Gen reached f

"Keep your hands off the secondary valves!" Gen shouted, waving a smoking wrench at the heavy-set engineer. "If you cross those lines before the pressure drops, we’ll all be coughing up hot lead by midnight!""I know what I'm doing, you old bastard!" she snapped back, shoving a greasy shoulder against Kaito’s exposed side. "Just hold him steady before his thoracic casing blows right through the ceiling!""I'm right here," Kaito grunted, his voicebox vibrating with a sharp metallic screech as he tried to shift his weight away from the damp rock. "You don't have to talk about me like I'm a broken plow left out in the rain.""You're worse than a plow," Gen muttered, leaning in with a pair of long-nosed pliers to yank a sputtering wire from Kaito’s open chest cavity. "A plow doesn't leak volatile fluid all over my floorboards. Hold still, I said—"The subterranean calm shattered.From the vertical shaft high above, a heavy, deafening metallic crash echoed down the stone tunnel. It wasn't

“Hold him down!” Vane shrieked, spitting a glob of black grease onto the damp stones as he struggled to drag his shattered harpoon rig from beneath Kaito’s crushing iron boot. “If the core blows now, we’re all nothing more than a greasy stain on this damn rock!”“You should have thought about the mess before you dropped into my workshop, you rat-faced bastard!” Gen roared, hurling a heavy iron spanner that bounced harmlessly off Vane’s reinforced shoulder plating.Kaito didn't waste breath on the banter. With a vicious, hydraulic hiss, he leaned his entire two-hundred-weight frame forward, planting his iron-plated knuckles directly into the dirt and burying Vane’s remaining functional chain-spool into the mud. The metal groaned, protesting under the immense torque, before snapping with the sharp crack of a dry branch.“My arm,” Vane gasped, his eyes widening in sudden, unadulterated terror as he stared up at the towering, half-open chassis looming above him. “You—you broke the linkage

The salt-flats stretched out before them like an ocean of shattered glass, blindingly white and infinitely desolate under the bruised, heavy sky of the coming dawn. Every breath Kaito took was accompanied by a harsh, mechanical wheeze as his internal regulators fought to filter out the stinging, sulfurous dust riding the morning wind. Beside him, Vane stumbled forward, his boots crunching rhythmically into the jagged, crystallized crust that coated the flat expanse. The hunter’s face was drawn, his lips chapped and bleeding from the dry, alkaline air, but he dared not slow his pace. Every time the smaller man lagged behind, the iron-shod tether binding his wrist to Kaito’s heavy elbow joint jerked taut with a bone-jarring snap that threatened to dislocate his shoulder."You’re killing me, you iron bastard," Vane wheezed, spitting a glob of thick, gray saliva onto the pristine white salt. "My boots are dissolving. My skin is cracking. If we keep this up, there won't be anything left of

“Move!” Vane shrieked, diving headfirst into a shallow trench of gray brine as the colossal steam-sentry hauled back its two-handed cleaver with a deafening, hydraulic screech.“I don’t need your tactical advice, rat!” Kaito roared back, his left arm shooting out in a desperate, last-second parry just as the razor-edged blade descended with enough kinetic force to cleave a bullock in half.The impact was a bone-jarring catastrophe of clashing iron that sent a blinding shower of white-hot sparks cascading across the salt-crusted ground. Kaito’s internal gears shrieked in protest, the internal linkages screaming as the sheer weight of the blow threatened to drive him straight down into the mud.“Is that all the old world has to offer?” Kaito grunted, his optical shutters flickering furiously as oil sprayed from his strained elbow joint. “A rusty wind-up toy swinging a meat knife?”The Sentry didn't answer with words; its massive internal boiler simply vented a searing cloud of grey-whit