Meeting the Monster

//Another report from the pilot of SLUG Des Icebreaker.//

I met Vetr today. I finally met the creature I had been fighting against for months.

The light was green and Icebreaker had been brought out to one of the ice-skating rinks where they play hockey. I'm not exactly sure where it was -- they only tell us the locations when it's relevant and it wasn't relevant right now -- but I could see the stadium seating and the ice that had been just recently cleaned.

Through the SLUGs speakers, I could hear singing. Someone, a young boy, was singing "Winter Wonderland." The speakers cut out after a few seconds, however, and a warning light appeared. My phantom leg throbbed.

I took two steps forward in the SLUG and there he was. He was wearing a gray hoodie and doing figure eights in a pair of ice skates. I could tell from the way his mouth moved that he was still singing, but I couldn't hear it. I thought his eyes would be black like those children he remade, but they weren't. They were the bluest of blue.

He stopped doing his figure eights and looked at the SLUG called Icebreaker and then waved. The camera made it seem like his motions were shaky, pixellated -- but perhaps that wasn't the camera, perhaps that was how he simply looked. If I had been there in person, would he have looked unreal, like he was simply an image projected into the air? Was he real at all?

At that moment, I didn't care. This was my target. This was my chance.

The saw blades on the edges of Icebreaker's arms were already in motion. I pushed him forward, ready to take a run at Vetr, when another warning light appeared and the motion of the SLUG's legs stopped.

I felt my phantom leg grow cold. Something was wrong. The others hadn't been like this. They hadn't controlled the cold like this. Icebreaker was trapped, its heat quickly draining away from it. I watched the internal temperature gauge. The legs had already frozen in place. The sawblades started chipping away at the ice, but it would take too long.

The cameras caught Vetr skating towards the SLUG. He was still smiling, but the distortion was worse on his face now and his smile seemed grotesque.

I activate the grenades. The ice around Icebreaker's arms is too much, I know, the grenades have no chance of being let out. They jam in their launchers. And then they explode, causing Icebreaker's arms to be destroyed, shrapnel from them raining down on the rink. All of this only causes Vetr to laugh.

Icebreaker's arms are gone, but not it's electrical charges. I fire two at Vetr and he catches them, 200 joules of electricity running through his body. He convulses and I watch as his face distorts even more, his skin cracking.

Then it stops. He holds the charges and then drops them. They had done nothing.

My phantom leg feels so cold now, I can hardly stand it. The feedback is too much. This needs to end. I break the glass over a button I hoped I would never use. The pilots call it the "Star Trek" button, but it goes by another name: self-destruct.

The arms of Icebreaker are already destroyed. The charges in his legs go off first and then it's torso, scattering shrapnel throughout the rink, but never hitting Vetr. He stands there, in the middle of the destruction, like the Devil frozen in ice.

The head blows last and then the feed and signal are over. My leg is gone and I don't know if I will ever truly feel it again.


I don't know if I want to, not when the last thing I saw was that monster on the ice, his pale grin making my blood run cold.

//They have retrieved the SLUGs parts and are currently rebuilding it. The pilot has not yet stated whether he wishes to continue piloting, although he still attends to mandatory therapy sessions.//