You better watch out!

“YOU BETTER WATCH OUT!” The words rang out loudly, electric and static, from the sky. People in the city looked up to see two, thirty-foot tall, blue, robots descend on pillars of flame coming from their backs.

The robots landed, crushing a parked car of two as they did. Their eyes glowed red, and they scanned the area. People screamed and ran, knocking over decorations and spilling presents. Large metal fangs extruded slowly from their mouths as they watched the panic around them.

Rays shot out of the fang’s tips, green and crackling. Everywhere they hit joy left. Presents lost color, decorations crumbled, and people’s spirits fell. The robot’s eyes glowed brighter.

A flash of gold and red shot seemingly out of nowhere and where it hit the ground a woman in a long red coat appeared. “All right, enough of that, then,” she said, staring at the robots. “Leave while you can, before I have to teach you…lessons.”

The robots turned their fang-beams on her, but she moved too fast, grabbing a stick off her back and swinging it around as it blossomed into a large red axe that blocked the quadruple beams.

“YOU BETTER CRY,” one of the robots said.

“Every year,” she said, leaping and rolling clear of the beams, “I have to fight you giant robot jetpack vampires. And every year you lose. You’d think you’d learn by now.”

“WE HAVE MADE UPGRADES,” a robot said. It reached for her, snagging the end of her coat.

Swiping her axe down, the woman cut off the corner of her coat and glared at the robot hand in front of her. “You’re faster. And it achieved what? You made me ruin my coat? Do better.”

She crouched, gathering herself a moment, and leapt onto a robot. A leap that defied belief. A leap so powerful she landed near the robot’s neck. She looked up into its eyes. “Every year. Every! Year! Well, I guess it’s time to let them ring.”

“LET WHAT RING?” the robot asked, even at it reached for her.

“My slay bells,” she said as she swung her axe in a mighty crossways chop, cutting the robots neck. As the axe passed through the metal, a tinkling, ringing, sound could be heard.

The robot’s neck sputtered and shorted, and its eyes darkened and went out. She rode its body to the ground, watching out to make sure no one was under it when it landed.

The other robot fired it’s jetpack and started to rise into the sky.

“Oh no you don’t,” she said and ran along the back of the felled giant robot, swinging her axe to cut free its jetpack. Almost three times her size, she gripped the jetpack, jamming one hand into its severed mechanics. The jets fired. She held on tightly, rising into the sky and giving chase.

Across the night they went, a giant robot jetpack vampire chased by a normal sized woman, standing atop a giant jetpack of her own. They spun and spiraled. They whizzed and dashed. Finally the woman saw they were over open water and draw her arm back.

Throwing her axe hard, it spun through the sky, intercepting the robot as it tried to dodge the woman on the jetpack. Cutting cleanly through the robot’s jetpack with a scream of metal, the axe kept going.

As she flew faster, catching up with the arc of her thrown axe, so it didn’t fall into the waters below, she watched the robot spin downward, smoke and sparks showering from its back. A giant splash and the robot vanished from sight.

“Maybe I should keep this. Paint it, fix it up…it’d be more fun than Beam Travel, at least,” she said to herself as she passed over the city. People cheered, not sure what had just happened, or how they were going to remove the fallen giant robot, but glad they seemed to be safe for another year.