I don’t know how the Army of Olwiun has done it, but they have made a giant mech that can appear and disappear out of thin air.

I am a pilot of the Valiant Dead. We are a special task force serving our nation of Ycan in this war against Olwiun, the enemy neighboring nation. The war has been going strong for a year now with no signs of stopping any time soon.

So, the Valiant Dead. Right. The idea behind our squad name is that we were dead the moment we signed on in, but at the same time, all of us did it willingly. The name holds true, though. I can no longer count the casualties within the many outings I’ve been sent on, but it seems like the god of luck is on my side, as well as on the side of the other familiar faces within the Valiant Dead. I do feel like that luck is just payment for something extremely unlucky later on, like a bad dice roll.

I never got the chance to know my teammates better other than recognizing their faces and their respective callsigns. Part of why we never got to bond outside of the fights was because it was part of the deal when signing on to the team. Apparently, the higher-ups didn’t want us to become too attached to each other and wanted us to focus on our objectives. The closest thing to bonding we all have been on the field. There’s still that silent respect whenever us old survivors within the team bump into each on the way to the hangar to board our Coffins.

Coffins are what we call those 15-meter giant mechanical bodies we were trained to pilot. A ‘robot,’ if you will. But if you want to be a smartass like me, call them ‘mechs.’ They’re officially named as “Bipeds,” but Coffins are the fancy nicknames to the Bipeds assigned to us Valiant Dead pilots, and are specifically fitted to carry out the tasks we are deployed to do. The Biped does the same roles as a jet, tank, and whatever a 15-meter humanoid could do in one.

"Why not just pilot a jet or tank," you say? I just like the all-purpose aspect of the Coffin. Some say we Biped pilots are luckier than jet pilots and tank operators because of the thicker and more durable material, and we get to do both of what they can, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that we are still as mortal as the ones they compare us to. “Dead” is in the name, mind you.

There's also rumors of a prototype Biped our nation has been building behind-the-scenes and aims to be the most strongest one of all, I hear. I can tell the one who’ll be deployed in that thing is going to get one hell of a hero complex. In the meantime, us lower-ranked, more expendable Biped pilots are sent out in our Coffins to do the usual dirty work.

This brings me back to the mission I wanted to talk about in the first place. How the hell are you going to fight a 25-ish meter Biped that appears and disappears undetected?

We only saw a glimpse as ten of us arrived on the scene. Our mission was to intercept it. Usually, I could sense if Mission Control was on their on-a-need-to-know bullshit, but this wasn’t it. They’re just as baffled as we are. We have no more orders other than to destroy it.

The enemy Biped, who we later gave the nickname of “Thanatos,” was already finished with what we think it's supposed to do — to erase one of our strongholds in one go. It was just standing in front of the inferno it had caused. We only saw its silhouette, backlit by the flames, slowly turning its head around as it noticed us arriving. We saw no other detail other than those small little lights it has for eyes. The thing looked like it was proud of its little sick art show.

The only option we had was to shoot it down. As payment for our fallen Ycan brothers.

As we opened fire and tracers started to fly, Thanatos turned tail and ran straight into the wall of fire. We followed suit through the fire, flying past debris and corpses that decorated the smoky ground below. As we reached the other end of the fire and into the cold, open wasteland, we saw Thanatos had vanished. Mission Control couldn’t tell how either.

Again, I don’t know how the Army of Olwiun has done it, but they have made a giant mech that can appear and disappear out of thin air.

The perfect war machine, as we Ycanians are forced to admit.

The Valiant Dead fighting Thanatos, who is named after a certain god of death. It’s the dumbest naming scheme the higher-ups have ever thought of in their comfy headquarters.

The next mission was given to us the following day. We had to help salvage whatever we find that can be saved or reused, flesh and metal. Only two surviving personnel, and a few functioning war vehicles. That’s all that was left. The charred bodies often made it hard for our Coffins to walk as their new coloration was now one with the scorched ground they all laid upon. We don’t often even realize we were walking on top of a body until we feel a jolt and hear the sickening crunch of bone. Is this Olwiun’s prototype Biped that they want to be their ace in the hole? If so, those Ycan engineers better keep up and get our own rumored prototype biped running. Unfortunately, we can’t just wait for a lone hero to save us like that. This matter was still in our hands, and we’ll do our damn part in taking Thanatos down.

Few missions have passed since the last Thanatos incident. This may be our longest streak of having no casualties in the team despite the same old risks we had to face better. I don’t think the other guys have explicitly said it, but I can feel we’re all thinking of the same thing — this is our training for our next tango with Thanatos.

Thanatos has since been reported wiping out other Ycan territories and for the first time in a while, as opposed to both sides of this war being on equal wins and losses, we were now on the losing side by a landslide.

Then the mission briefing us Valiant Dead have both been dreading but yearning for arrived:

Mission Codename: Flame Snuffer.
Objective: Intercept Thanatos.

The tacticians have chosen to sacrifice a certain Ycan territory to bait out Thanatos. All personnel have been evacuated, and dummy vehicles and Bipeds were left in their usual placements. Our mission was to ambush Thanatos the moment it chooses to manifest itself on top of the base similar to its usual tactic.

During the wait, Mission Control noticed six Olwiun crafts fly near the territory, circling it at different locations. They weren’t jets, but more similar to flying war machines. Nearly quiet ones at that, with the howling wind of the wastelands partially to blame. There were now twenty of us Valiant Dead lying in wait, the ones nearest to the flying Olwiun crafts kept an eye on them, including me. That’s half of our numbers, while the other half kept their watch for Thanatos. We were hidden, while they were still out in the open, albeit hiding in and out of the clouds across the night sky. We had all assumed that if they already saw us, they would have already opened fire. Are they scouting for Thanatos? Scouting for enemies?

I was starting to worry if the bait was too good to be true for those Olwiun scouts and they saw through it.

But then, as those thoughts nearly began to distract me, the alarms went off.

Thanatos has arrived.
A flash of light lit the clouds and Sir God of Death himself descended from it and straight into the base.

The next few moments were a blur. Twenty Ycan Bipeds against a lone, giant Olwiun Biped. While our eyes and weapons were aimed at Thanatos, we still tried to keep track of any of those Olwiun scout crafts from earlier, but they were no longer seen both on the sights and motion detectors of our twenty-person squad on the field, and Mission Control’s radars.

Ammunitions ran out. Valiant Dead members were shot down, or swatted out of the sky one by one. I got hit dead-on by one of Thanatos' missiles that I failed to evade. Alarms blared inside my cockpit letting me know about the damage. No shit, I can already tell myself with the shrapnel that got through and impaled my left arm. I was then shot out of the sky while the damage distracted me. I hit the emergency thrusters and made at least a sad attempt at a landing. With my Coffin's optics messed up, I misjudged the landing and crashed into one of the base's hangars.

Systems alarms went off, and the radio chatter became an incomprehensible mess. Sparks were shooting out of the Coffin. Only just now did I realize the crash landing hit my helmet and shattered the visor. I couldn’t see anything past the cracked helmet, so I felt my way through the controls and hit the lever to open up the cockpit. After hearing the familiar sound of the Coffin opening up and letting out pressurized air, I ripped off the now-useless helmet and threw it out. I felt I was starting to drift off to eternal sleep, so I broke open the emergency case inside the cockpit and took out an adrenaline shot, and jabbed it into my leg. 

I won’t join the dead just yet. Not while the asshole was still up and running.
I close the hatch and start the thrusters back on, and burst out of the fiery hangar for round two. 

It didn’t seem like we were making a dent on Thanatos. At least until one clever bastard decided to ram his Coffin into it at full speed. 

The explosion managed to stagger Thanatos, and by a miracle, was able to detach its left arm. We’ll mourn later for that genius, but this development is enough to make us celebrate in our Coffins.

We shouldn’t have been too confident after that small feat though, as the detached arm was held stable in the air by its thrusters before it even crashed into the ground, and rejoined the main Biped body, connected by a line of what looked like lightning, like what a Tesla coil could produce. We attempted to shoot out the reconnecting limb, but it was too fast to be hit out of the sky, on top of Thanatos retreating.

At that moment, Thanatos turned around to greet us remaining six Coffins, and aimed both arms at us. Its hands retracted, and was replaced by missile launchers each. Anti-Missile Flares were frantically fired from our Coffins and desperate evasive maneuvers were made evading the missiles we didn’t get. One of us bit it during that.

As the smoke cleared, we continued pursuit to see Thanatos running away before using its thrusters to fly up into clouds. As it did, its four limbs, torso, and head disconnected mid-air and flew off individually, boosting and disappearing into the clouds of the night.

It was too late when I realized what that meant. The six goddamn flying crafts from earlier combined made up one whole Biped.

That’s how Olwiun did it — smoke and mirrors.