This week’s prompt from Terribleminds had me using this random plot generator. It coughed up the following:

The story starts when your protagonist tries to stop a robbery.

Another character is a messenger who wants your protagonist dead.

I hope you enjoy the result!

The gunshot cut through the muted conversations and soft rock in the bank lobby.

“Everybody on the ground! This is a robbery!”

Samantha hit the ground along with everybody else, quickly taking stock of the situation. There were three of them. All of them had pulled on balaclavas the moment the leader had pulled out his gun, a small automatic. The other two had carried shotguns into the bank under their jackets. The guard close to the door was already down, holding his bloody nose. She risked another glance up: the butt of the guard’s revolver jutted up out of the jeans of one of the guys with shotguns. Definitely amateurs. No pro stuffs a gun in the direction of their junk like that.

Putting her eyes back down as the leader gave a speil about individuals’ money being insured, she tried to remember what she had seen before the situation began. The robbers were wearing jeans and running shoes; from what she’d seen of their frames, they were in their late teens or early twenties. Some of Don Giorgio’s numbers runners were that young, but none of them would be dumb enough to undertake an unauthorized strong-arm robbery. The bank was on neutral turf between the Italians and the Chinese; either of them making a move like this would be suicidal.

It was difficult for her to keep her head down and thus limit her available information. She was next to the counter on the customer side; that meant she was about eight paces from the door. She didn’t know the actual distance to the vault or the offices from where the bank employees and homeowners looking for lower rates were getting dragged out. Samantha risked looking up a bit towards the fresh hostages: three employees, two housewives, one guy who had the look of an accountant, or perhaps an attorney. Either way, none of them were likely to be in a position or inclination to help her.

She heard a grunt from behind the counter, and it definitely sounded like it was above her, not on the same level. She tried not to tense up in anticipation.

“Hey, come here and give me a hand with this.”

So the kid in charge was at least smart enough not to say names. They could be difficult to identify if they got away. As one of the guys with shotguns headed for the vault, presumably to help get a door open or stuff more money into bags, Samantha gauged the position of the third robber. When he was close enough, she started faking a cough, rolling over onto her back. The robber came by to investigate, glaring down at her.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Samantha didn’t respond, faking her cough, looking up at the ceiling. The robber stepped over her, one foot on either side of her, raising his shotgun. She could see the end of the barrel shaking. She would have to be very careful, and very fast, if she wanted to keep her head intact.

She sat up and grabbed the shotgun in one motion, pulling the barrel to the side of her shoulder and away from the others. Before he could react, she brought her knee up hard, slamming into his crotch. His eyes bulged out of his balaclava and he made a noise like a beached walrus. The shotgun game out of his hands, and as she stood, she reached down and pulled the revolver free of his jeans. Shaking her head at the kid, she smacked him between the eyes with the butt of the pistol. He collapsed at her feet.

The other two came out of the vault, but she was already taking aim. “Drop your weapons! Federal agent!”

The one with the shotgun complied immediately. The other one, his mouth a grimace of annoyance, had his semi-automatic pistol in the grip of a trained shooter.

“You useless shit.”

Before Samantha knew what was happening, he was turning his pistol to the back of his fellow robber’s head and pulling the trigger. The people on the floor started screaming as the dead kid fell to the tiled floor behind the counter. Samantha cocked her revolver.

“It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“Yes it does, Agent Barnum. I came here to deliver a message.”

She blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“We’re tired of those old farts taking out their old grudges in our neighborhoods. Other banks in both the Triad and Giorgio territories are going up today. We’re cleaning house, and you’re in our way.”

“Who is we?”

“Die guessing.”

Sirens and screeching tires outside made him glance away. Samantha took her shot. Blood flew from the young man’s shoulder and he staggered, slipping in the blood spreading from his fallen friend. She moved around the counter to get close to him, but as she did, she saw him putting his dead compatriot’s shotgun under his chin.

“Drop it!”

“Have fun with my dental records.”

He pulled the trigger. Samantha winced, feeling warm ichor spatter her face. The security guard had gotten to his feet to let in the cops. Samantha wiped her face with a tissue with one hand, holding up her badge with the other.

“Samantha Barnum, FBI.”

The officer in front nodded to her as he holstered his sidearm. “What’s the situation, ma’am?”

“This was made to look like a robbery, but there’s something else going on. Get on the horn, find out if any other holdups are in progress.”

“We’re on it.”

She glanced towards the vault, then looked again. The robbers had brought in duffel bags, presumably to make their escape with their ill-gotten gains, but one of them was laying open. Samantha saw several grey blocks, a tangle of wires, and large LED numbers, counting down.

“Better get your bomb squad down here, too. Then I’ll need your help getting these people out of here.”

“What’s going on?”

“In a word? War’s been declared.”

Art courtesy Valkyrie Power

This week’s Flash has a two-fold purpose: to meet the weekly challenge over at Terribleminds (Down the TV Tropes Rabbit Hole, my random trope was “Amusing Alien”) and to provide some hot robot action for my friends at Geekadelphia.

From the moment they got the distress signal, Jack knew the mission would be a tough one. While their ship was fast, and difficult to detect at range, they’d be detected once they made orbit, especially once he and Fenris began their drop. Still, it was better for everyone if he hit the atmosphere without engaging his engines, lest the seperate heat bloom catch the eye of SAD batteries on the ground.

“Oh, I hate dead drops like this!”

He looked down at Fenris, who clung to his leg. Fenris was about three feet long from snout to tail, a wolf in miniature size, though the shape-shifting alien had often taken other forms. He still wasn’t sure why the creature tagged along with them. It was good to have a companion when he was sent into hot zones like this, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he’d admit to the rest of the crew.

“Just hold on. We’re almost out of the kill zone.”

The radar system cleared moments later, and he got his bearings on the refugee convoy. He needed to make sure the armored infantry didn’t wipe out the civilians before they reached their ships, and then, provided he survived, he’d have to take out the local SAD battery, or at least blind their sensors, in order to help them escape. It was a tall order, and he was just one guy.

He was one guy in a super-advanced multi-theater fighting machine, but he was one guy nonetheless.

The advantage of doing a dead drop into a fast approach was that he barely registered on ground-side sensors. And if he did, the interceptor mode of the Thundercracker had a very low profile. Most mech units had to be delivered in fat, heavy drop pods that were easy pickings for active SAD batteries, which is why the big militaries of the great powers liked to open hostilities with orbital bombardment. But the Aether Rogues were a more surgical, subtle bunch, at least to hear Captain Boros talk of it.

“Here we go, Fenris. You ready?”

“Most definitely, boss. Radio silence, right?”

“Right. The Alliance and the Confederation are both on the lookout for us, so we don’t want them to know we’ve been here.”

“Means the locals won’t know who to thank, either.”

“We don’t do this for the thanks, Fenris.”

“No, we do it for profit! Money! Cash prizes! At least a free meal! What’s our prize for doing this charity work?”

“A warm fuzzy feeling?”

“I’m already warm and fuzzy. Why do you think I keep this form so much?”

Jack veered the Thundercracker over the combat zone, ready to make his final approach. “You’re the crew mascot. You don’t get a say.”

“Well, I should! I provide a valuable service to the crew!”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“I boost morale and you know it.”

“That’s questionable. Now, hang on.”

He make the sharp, bootlegger turn back towards the convoy, and saw the hulking pacification mechs of the Confederate occupation forces lumbering towards the trucks and transports. They were armed mostly with howitzers and close-quarter autocannons, as they were made more for urban civilian control than open warfare. Their size and slow movement gave Jack the advantage. He hoped it’d be enough to offset the general lack of armor inherent with his variable mech.

He slammed down on the airbrakes and pulled the lever to trigger the transformation. The main thrusters pivoted downwards as armor plates slid into place, and the ramjet intakes rotated into position just above them. Weapons rearranged to a more forward position, to be mounted on shoulders or held in articulated armored hands, and the cockpit’s nosecone flipped down to tuck under the cabin. The sensor cluster emerged from between the missile pod shoulders, and high-gain cameras snapped on behind red protective lenses.

Suddenly, the pacification mechs found a combat mech of unknown design between them and the convoy.

“How many of them are pissing themselves?” Fenris had clambered up onto Jack’s shoulder to get a better view of the scene through the mech’s HUD.

“At least two. Let’s spook the rest of them.”

He fired an arm-mounted particle beam at the nearest mech. His aim was good, and he burned a hole through its neck plate and severed the connection between its cockpit and main sensors. He heard the hissing of the heat sinks along his mech’s arm. In space, heat was less of a problem, save for making yourself a bigger target at range, but planetside it could cripple you to go too hard on your weapons. Jack made himself wait at least three seconds before firing again.

In those seconds, five of the howitzers facing him flashed. He dodged to the right, feeling trees collapsing under the mech as the roadway was blown to pieces. Even though his vision was obscured, he still had a lock on the mechs thanks to his previous view and his uplink to the Aethernaut. He triggered his missile pods and fired half of his payload. As the ground shook from multiple impacts, he carefully got the mech back on its feet.

“Fenris, you okay?”

“We seriously do not get paid enough for this, Jack.”

“You’re the one who begged me to come along!”

“I figured there’d be some lovely refugee daughters who like puppies!”

“You’re incorrigible.”

Jack reacquired his targets. To his dismay, none of them had gone down yet. He took the Thundercracker’s main weapon in both hands, raised it to the mech’s shoulder, and took aim. It slid open length-wise and the magnets crackled to life. Before any of the pacification mechs could respond, Jack fired. A ferrous slug the size of a domestic landskimmer launched from the railgun, broke the sound barrier twice, and was barely slowed by the mech in Jack’s sights. It had torn a massive hole in the machine, just below the cockpit in the chest, and the big mech toppled.

“Okay, Fenris. Which one is next?”