A Devil's Grace 1930

| Chapter Seven |

The sudden sound of a mechanical hum breaking through the air answered the question the two of them were thinking in their minds. Just where were they? Valen couldn't see them with his eyes, and for sure, Tanya couldn't see shit within the forest!

"That doesn't sound good..." Uttered Valen as he could recall the sound of a twelve barrel machinegun being warmed up as ammunition was being fed into it by a belt system. 

Tanya immediately sent herself smashing into Valen's side, she knew exactly what kind of weapon was coming to their way. It was no crank weapon, it was a Fokker-Leimberger, an Imperial Prototype weapon that hardly saw time during the war due to mass malfunctions.

The second her body impacted his side, her arms wrapped around his waist. Considering how short she was compared to him, she practically torpedoed him in the side of the abdomen as she dove into him.

With the air knocked out of him, Valen found himself falling as the sound of several dozens of bullets going off per second could be heard. 

These bullets tore through the surrounding trees, clear through the one he had once been taking cover behind. Just as he landed on his side, he immediately moved on top of Tanya to cover her.

Bark and splinters were going everywhere. Leaves falling from the trees were assaulted by a hail of bullets they never knew could exist. It was as if they were being hit by some sort of rotary cannon mounted on an aircraft.

The very idea of someone walking around with such a weapon made a shivery go down his spine. Those kinds of weapons could knock a mage out of the sky without enough mana to counteract the damage against their shields. 

"Which direction are they shooting from!?" He shouted over the hail of bullets.

"Nine degrees South, South West," Tanya lightly pushed at him as she was peering out from under him in their general direction. It seemed there was a makeshift stand holding the weapon up. She aimed her gun in their general direction, placing a hand over the operation orb. Could she pray to Being-X? Would this orb work the same way as her previous one? She could almost see the self-proclaimed god's eyes smiling down at them in this storm of bullets.

She had to make this shot as if she only had one bullet left, otherwise, they'd get them. Though for some reason she felt that this choice of machine gun was a bit much. They wanted her alive right? Or had the Union become more split than they had been during the war.

Clenching her jaw, she took in a deep breath, channeling her operation orb into casting a known mana targeting spell. As Adrenaline rushed through her system, the world itself almost slowed.

Tanya could see as each bullet was loaded into the mechanism, and witness closely as each brass casting was ejected. She felt as if she was back on the battlefield for real this time.

She couldn't help but grin deviously, from ear to ear, her heart was beating out of her chest with pure excitement and nostalgia. "Commie Bastards..." Exhaling these words as she finally pulled the trigger, her hand jerked slightly back from the recoil having used one hand.

The feeding box suddenly exploded, causing a chain reaction of bullets going off inside the loading mechanism and along the belt. Soon enough the box exploded, killing the remaining communist agents in the immediate vicinity with shrapnel and their own bullets.

After several seconds, there was just silence. The smell of burnt metal filled the air as the Fokker rotary cannon was bent badly out of shape. 

"Huh... You really are something, you know that?" Raising his head slightly, Valen looked in the general direction of the dead gunners.