Sometimes you need to backtrack in order to go forward.

That’s what I decided when I ran back to the building and the balcony where I’d left Miss Ponytail’s mechanical avatar for dead.

At sight of her broken body lying on the wrecked balcony, I briefly dropped to my knees and almost cried tears of joy mingled with relief.

Then I bounced back onto my feet, and I hurriedly pulled her body into the apartment.

In order to get to the balcony, I’d run back to the building, broken into it through a ground-floor entrance, then hurried up to the sixth floor where the apartment that was home to the scene of the crime was located.

Getting inside the apartment was easy.

Guided by the Argus System, I fired through the walls at the security bolts that locked the apartment’s entrance. This released the sliding door that I then pushed aside with ease. Venturing hastily through the spacious residence, I arrived at the smashed remains of the glass wall leading out onto the wrecked balcony. And there she was, just as I remembered her – a bloody mechanical mess with her head still attached to her neck. Nonetheless, regardless of the state she was in, finding her on the balcony was cause for celebration, and once I had her inside the living room, I studied her remains with a critical eye.

She’d taken a lot more of a pounding than I’d realized.

The Punishers ten-millimeter AP rounds had done a number on her clothes and skin, punching narrow craters into her skeleton that were between one and two inches deep. Her breastbone was pitted and cracked, and some of the heavy bullets had penetrated all the way through to the power core that served as her heart. I was surprised when I saw that, and then wondered if she had a second power core.

I decided to take a closer look at Miss Ponytail’s innards and asked the Argus System for its help.

When I’d fought the Gun Queen of Ar Telica, I’d failed to inspect her body.

As such, beyond Mirai’s imprinted memories, I knew very little of what a Gun Princess was like on the inside.

But it wasn’t curiosity that drove me to study Miss Ponytail’s internals.

I needed to know if her beaten remains to could serve me as a shield.

In other words, could she survive a dozen sniper rounds of the fourteen-millimeter variety?

The Argus System scanned her body and provided me with a clear picture of her internal structure.

Miss Ponytail’s avatar had no organs. Beneath her layers of artificial musculature was a flexible honeycomb structure surrounding a complex arrangement of gel packs filled with GER fluid. Several of those packs had been ruptured by AP bullets and showed signs of having resealed afterwards, indicating they had the ability to self-repair. There were no hydraulics inside of her, but she did possess dozens bio-electric motors operating numerous tiny pumps. Some of them were embedded within a network of arterial conduits that emerged from her power core and spread throughout her body. By tracing through her arteries, I was able to locate her second power core.

So she has two hearts. Good to know.

However, while that was all very fascinating, it didn’t interest me nearly as much as knowing whether she could stop the sniper rounds from penetrating her body.

The Argus System against scanned her body, and replied with an ambivalent—

[*Maybe….]

I grumbled in my throat.

*Come on! Give me a better answer.

[*Your plan may work.]

*What? That’s it?

[*It has an eighty-seven percent chance of success.]

“Eighty-seven percent, huh?” I straightened as I looked down at the dead machine. “Fine. I’ll take those numbers.”

I glanced at the countdown displayed on the apartment’s holo-vid system projected against a living room wall.

No matter where I went, there was no running away from that clock.

05:37…and counting.

My plan to use Miss Ponytail’s mechanical body as a shield had cost me eighty-three seconds thus far.

I couldn’t afford to waste any more time.

However, before I could venture forth, there were a few things I had to take care off.

After unholstering the damaged Punisher that was no useless as a weapon, I removed both of its battery packs and then slapped them onto a skirt flap. Then, I detached the Punisher’s magazine feeder and quickly attached it to the working rifle. Now, I had a Punisher that could source its bullets from two magazines rather than one. This made the rifle a little heavier, but nothing that would trouble Mirai or affect my aim.

Next, I queried the weapon for an ammo count.

There were sixty rounds in the right magazine, and thirty-two rounds in the left one.

For a second, I debated swapping out the half empty magazine, but ultimately chose not to because than the magazines fitted to the Punisher, I had two fresh magazines remaining, and both of those were stuck to my skirts.

In other words, I’d spent more than half the ammunition I’d started with.

Upon realizing that, I holstered the Punisher against my left shoulder blade, then hurriedly searched Miss Ponytail’s body for spare ammunition.

Turning her over, I found a slim ammo mag stuck to the back of her short skirt. I had to pull it free, just like I would with the magazines attached to my skirt. The Argus System scanned it, and I discovered it was loaded with twenty-four, .50 caliber explosive tipped, caseless rounds.

The magazine in my hand made me remember leaving behind Miss Ponytail’s two guns on the balcony, and so I hastily ran out to retrieve them.

Returning to the living room, I inspected both weapons.

Mirai’s wetware took a couple of seconds to link up with their A.I.’s. Apparently, the guns had no qualms about who they worked with, because they readily reported their status to me.

The heavy gun with dual ammo drums was worthless. During the firefight, I’d shot an AP round through both drums and destroyed the electric motors that drove them.

However, the second gun was undamaged.

The weapon resembled an oversized submachinegun and there were ten rounds left in the slim magazine. The bullets it fired were like anti-aircraft shells, exploding in close proximity to their target rather than on impact.

This was the gun that had brought me so much pain, but it was now working for me.

That didn’t stop me from giving it a sour look as I handed it over to the right holster arm.

Despite having a chunk bitten out of it by a sniper bullet, the armature continued to function properly. It took the gun from my hand, then fluidly swung back to its holstered positioned against my right shoulder blade.

As for the gun’s spare magazine, I slapped that to my left skirt.

Thus prepared, I fixed a grim look upon the mechanical corpse lying at my feet.

I wasn’t going to salvage anything else from Miss Ponytail.

It was time for her to become my shield.

- # -

Lugging Miss Ponytail on my back was rather uncomfortable because I had to drape her body over the mechanical holster arms.

Fortunately, she didn’t suffer from rigor mortis, though it had been only a few minutes since her death.

Thus burdened with her, I chose to avoid exiting out onto the street. Instead, I travelled from building to building by making use of the enclosed bridgeways.

I kicked and shot my way through the closed glass doors I encountered, expending twenty AP rounds in the process, before I finally arrived at my destination – a ground floor exit with a perfect view of the parkland, and the tower rising high about 150 meters away.

Like the other glass doors that I’d smashed my way through, the ones across the exit were locked shut.

I was going to have spend more bullets weakening the glass so that I could crash through them.

However, this time I chose to rely on Miss Ponytail’s super-sized handgun to do the honors.

That said, I decided to swap out its half empty magazine with the fresh magazine I’d appropriated from her back at the apartment.

Once the weapon was loaded and ready, I used Mirai’s preternatural strength to pick up the dead mechanical avatar.

Hefting Miss Ponytail off the ground with my left arm, I wielded her gun in my right hand as I took aim at the glass exit.

“…here we go…,” I muttered, then fired six shots into one of the two doors.

The explosive rounds blew fist sized holes into the glass.

Thus weakened, I would have no trouble crashing through it.

But no doubt, my shooting of the door had alerted the sniper to my location.

“…can’t be helped…,” I whispered as I holstered the oversized handgun, then grabbed onto Miss Ponytail with both hands.

Holding her aloft such that her feet dangled off the ground, I held Miss Ponytail out in front of me as I charged at the glass door.

The Argus System was projecting into my mind an image of the ground ahead of me.

This way I didn’t need to look around Miss Ponytail to see where I was going.

Since I’d already given myself away by shooting at the door, I decided to belt out a war cry.

It really served no purpose other than to psych me up.

Feeling my blood burning with both desperation and determination, I was stilling yelling loudly when I smashed into the glass door with big holes in it.

A heartbeat later, I crashed through it, and then out of the building.

I stumbled.

The impact, combined with Miss Ponytail’s hundred kilo weight, adversely affected my balance.

Her limp feet dragged on the pavement, almost pulling me down onto my knees, but I somehow managed to regain my balance.

In desperation, I hoisted Miss Ponytail before me like the shield I intended her to be.

I had to hold her high such that she would hide me from anyone standing on the dorsal hull of the Promenade.

That’s where the Argus System had determined the sniper was shooting from, and no sooner had I lifted Miss Ponytail up before me when I felt a tremendous blow strike her chest.

My arms buckled a few inches as the impact knocked her body into me.

The Argus System issued a harried report.

A sniper round had punched through Miss Ponytail’s armored sternum and lodged deep in her chest. Without her blocking the way, the bullet would have penetrated my exposed neck that wasn’t protected by the Princess Regalia.

I suddenly wondered if I was wrong about the sniper.

Was she trying to kill me after all?

That question sent a chill running through me and I willed my legs to run faster.

However, I was weighed down by Miss Ponytail’s body, and my running speed was compromised. Instead of an eleven second sprint to the finish line – the northside entrance into the tower – I was facing a fourteen or fifteen second dash. In addition, with Miss Ponytail shielding me, I was having to rely on the Argus System to be my eyes, and the view it provided wasn’t picture perfect. Thankfully, I had sense of the ground ahead of me because of the sensor-field the Argus System was manifesting, and the paved path I was following led directly to the tower.

All I had to do was keep Miss Ponytail’s body between me and the Promenade, and not trip over like some hapless damsel in distress.

A second round punched deep into the mechanical avatar’s chest.

The bullet lodged into the laminated armor that lay beneath the breastbone and ribcage.

The blow again buckled my arms, but I kept my footing and raised Miss Ponytail a little higher as I closed the distance to the tower.

In contrast, the sniper was having to aim lower with each shot.

My breathing sounded loud in my ears, as did my heart pounding away in my chest.

My footfalls felt heavy on the hard pavement.

I certainly didn’t feel like I had wings at my heels as I ran down the wide path.

A third round ripped through Miss Ponytail’s torso, tearing a path through the honeycomb structure that strengthened her abdominals without compromising her flexibility.

The armor-piercing bullet tore out of her lower back and slammed into the Princess Regalia protecting my midriff.

I gasped sharply at the sudden pain that flared across my gut, feeling as though I’d been knifed, and I struggled to regain my breathing’s rhythm.

Despite the pain I was enduring, I strongly believed the Regalia had kept the bullet from puncturing into me.

Then again, I was reluctant to look down and discover that Mirai had sprung a leak.

Leaving my well-being to the Regalia and the Angel Fibers, I concentrated on what I could see through the Argus System, doing my damnedest not to stumble and fall.

Then a fourth buried itself into Miss Ponytail’s left shoulder.

The impact twisted her body around in my hands, and I almost lost my grip on her.

Just as I succeeded in righting her above me, a fifth round struck her right shoulder, rocking her the other way.

Again, I struggled not to lose my hold on her.

As strong as Mirai was, she was much lighter than Miss Ponytail, so having to hold the avatar high overhead threatened to tip me over.

Widening my running stance helped a little, but it was uncomfortable and further compromised my speed.

However, I had no choice but to continue raising her higher the closer I ran to the tower.

That was because the angle of elevation between me and the sniper atop the Promenade continued to increase.

Groaning loudly through gritted teeth, I now held Miss Ponytail above me like an umbrella against a tremendous downpour.

On the plus side, I could now see ahead of me since I was carrying Miss Ponytail well overhead.

The sixth bullet struck her so hard I almost believed someone had dropped onto her.

The seventh bullet staggered me when it tunneled through Miss Ponytail’s belly and out of her lower back, striking my right shin in mid-stride.

The eighth bullet almost had my number on it.

It sailed through the tunnel in Miss Ponytail’s neck, and grazed the back of my head, taking some of Mirai’s hair with it.

Stunned by the near miss, I reflexively looked up through the opening in her neck, and straight at the sniper.

She had dropped her camouflage field and was aiming a huge anti-material rifle at me while standing on the leading edge of the Promenade.

I had but a heartbeat to duck my head as the ninth bullet centerpunched Miss Ponytail’s forehead with an awfully loud crack.

For a brief moment, I thought the heavy AP round would penetrate out the back of her head.

But Miss Ponytail had a thick skull, and the bullet failed to break through.

However, the impact knocked her head back, almost snapping it off the remains of her neck.

A split second later, I had run under the Promenade.

Now I was like the shark that had swum beneath the fishing boat.

Yet for another anxious moment, I feared the sniper would start shooting at me through the glass hull of the Promenade, but there was no tenth bullet.

Nonetheless, I was too wound up to relax.

With her legs and arms dangling around me, I continued to carry Miss Ponytail over me as I ran for the tower.

Ahead of me, the ground floor entrance was coming up fast, and I needed to do something about its closed glass doors.

The obvious solution was to shoot my way through them, but I had both hands busy with Miss Ponytail.

Then I remembered that the holster arms swung down under my arms, and right now my arms were raised high overhead.

With a thought pulse to the right holster, I instructed it to target Miss Ponytail’s oversized handgun at glass doors.

With gun in hand, the armature smoothly swung forward from below my right shoulder.

*Fire, I yelled at it in my head, and the gun belched fire as it pumped ten rounds across both glass doors.

Heavily fractured, they refused to shatter.

But I was out of time and distance, so I quickly commanded the holster back into its stored position against my right shoulder blade.

I may have been weighed down by Miss Ponytail, but Mirai was carrying a Hell of a lot momentum, and that momentum was going to help me get through the weakened glass doors.

Lowering Miss Ponytail so that I held her out in front of me, I used her like both a battering ram and shield.

The doors shattered almost immediately when I crashed into them.

However, I’d no sooner stepped into the tower when I tripped like a damsel on the run.

I dropped Miss Ponytail in an effort to lighten my load and recover my footing, but it was to no avail.

Landing on my belly, I yelped in pain as Mirai’s large breasts were crushed beneath me.

Then I was rolling uncontrollably across the smooth floor, eventually sliding to a stop on my back.

Staring up at a translucent glass ceiling, I breathed heavily with sudden exhaustion, then silently patted myself on the back…until I turned my head and caught sight of the countdown on display on holo-vid projection inside the tower’s ground floor foyer.

04:01…04:00…03:59….

Swallowing down the bittersweet taste of success, I used my elbows to push myself up off the floor.

Then I stood up on unsteady legs.

With a thought-pulse, I summoned the Punisher, and it was delivered smoothly to my waiting hand.

Holding the linear rifle at the ready, I gave my surroundings a closer look.

I honestly felt like the fly who’d driven an armored truck into the spider’s parlor.

The only problem was…where was the spider?

---

Thank you for following the webversion of Book Three.
The eBook version is about 50% re-edited and corrected.
I'm managing to get through about 40 to 50 pages a week.
I've also started planning the cover for book 3.

I would like to clarify something.
The new "Remnant Fiestas" series is intended to be a sequel to the Gun Princess Royale series, but only after GPR ends at book 9 (though I may write up to 12 novels depending on time, etc).
So it is not a story that picks up after Book 3.
I will make that clear when I post the next chapter of The Remnant Fiestas.

I finally started a Twitter thread for GPR.
Hope to post stuff at least once a week to start with.

If you are new to the GPR series, and are interested in reading of purchasing Books 1 and 2 of the Gun Princess Royale, the links are provided below:

Book One - Awakening the Princess

Book Two - The Measure of a Princess

A percentage of the purchases made through the links will go toward supporting the website.

I wish you all well.

Please, stay safe.