Ito Ai: A New Dawn

Ai quickly covered Mai's mouth which made a muffled scream. A metal claw that was nothing more than a sharp blade glimmered in the dim moon light right above their faces. Ai's eyes narrowed looking at it as she pulled Mai into her embrace, pushing her face into her chest so that Mai could not see what was going on. She did her best to cover Mai's ears as more metal claws pierced through the sides of the vehicle. 

Mai felt as if her heart was going to stop. Her whole body was shaking and if not for Ai holding her down and trying to keep her quiet she would have screamed bloody murder and tried to escape by now. She had no idea how Ai was keeping so calm in such a situation.

Ai laid as flat as a board as she quietly got Mai into a fetal position so that the blades would not hit her. Luckily they were short so Ai did not have to worry too much about Mai being hit if she was curled up into a ball. Another good thing was that Mai seemed to be very responsive and Ai was able to move her without any resistance. Normally when you are scared you clam up and are more rigid but Mai was letting Ai adjust her legs and head as needed.

But their safe haven did not last too long because Ai heard the sound of one of them on the hood of the Bexterra. Ai's face sank as she slowly began moving towards the back of the Bexterra, dragging Mai along with her. 

"Mai, we will have to fight now. It seems they have locked on to us. We may not get out of this uninjured, so please pull yourself together or we will both die here okay?" Ai pinched Mai's thigh to try to bring her back to reality. 

This seemed to have worked because Mai gave a nod and took a hold of her machine gun and struggled to get her backpack on. Ai did the same as they both pushed their backs to the rear door. "On the count of three, I will open it. Shoot to kill. There is one to the front on the hood, one on the top, and one on each side. I will take care of the one on top and the one to our right, you take the left one. The last one we will take out together. Can you do it?"

Mai nodded her head quickly as she took a deep breath to calm her nerves a little. She was truly frightened but she had no choice but to pull herself together. "I will do my best."

"1..."

"2..." 

"3..."

Ai quickly opened the hatch and poked her head up on top of the roof with her machine gun firing five shots stopping the first type machina in its tracks. At that same moment, the machina on the hood of the Bexterra smashed the windows and charged towards Ai. Mai acted quickly firing at the machina shooting off its legs making it unable to move. Ai ducked her head back in and fired two more shots causing the eye of the machina to turn dull. 

"Quickly push in!" Ai yelled grabbing Mai by the scruff of her shirt pulling her into the Bexterra while turning around and firing more than twenty rounds out the back of the vehicle. The two Machina that were about to jump in got hit by the bullets knocking them back out. Mai and Ai took this chance to finish them off. 

"Come on we got no time to sit around. Those machina already sent out a signal for any machina close to come to this location. We are sitting ducks if we stay here." Ai said before pushing the side door open and quickly climbing out. Mai followed quickly behind her.

"Ai are we in trouble?" Mai asked her voice and expression filled with fear. 

"We will be if we do not move. Luckily we did not get hurt this time and can move quickly. Your reactions were right on. But we definitely notified any machinas close by." Ai continued running forward. Her whole body felt heavy from not getting any sleep and the long march she had already done but she had no choice but to persevere if she wished to live. It was either, enter an endless sleep from dying to a machina, or find a safe place where she could catch a few hours of sleep. She preferred finding a safe place. 

The two girls moved quickly. Ai did not even take the time to check the ground to see if there were any vibrations. She did not dare waste even a second. One slip up at this time would mean their end. 

As the light of the morning began peeking over the horizon Ai could hear the sounds of metal against metal and numerous ones at that. "There is a pile of corpses up ahead come on!"

She did not want to have to do this but she had no choice. There were six corpses all collapsed on the ground. Ai pushed Mai to the ground and began piling the corpses on top of her before shuffling her own body underneath two of the corpses and curling up underneath them. They were in a bad spot because there was nothing but steep cliffs on each side of them which gave them no place to hide. This highway was only 2 lanes each way and cut right through a mountain. It was not the ideal terrain to be running into machina on.

*Clink!* *Clink!* *Clink!* *Clink!*

***

If you are not reading this at [W.e.b.n.o.v.e.l .c.o.m.], then the content you're reading is stolen! Please support the author at [w.w.w.w.e.b.n.o.v.e.l.c.o.m./.b.o.o.k./ito-ai-a-new-dawn_17791889705928505] remove periods for address since some sites monitor warnings like this.