Greetings, dear reader. I hope 2021 is finding you well.
Just a brief announcement.
Finally got my Twitter page off the ground. Search for Simkin Hart (i.e. @HartSimkin) to find me there.
I plan to use it more than Facebook.

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– IV –

It had bothered me since our first exchange of gunfire on the terrace courtyard.

It bothered me after I shot her up on the building’s balcony.

Why didn’t she dodge?

Why did she stand and take the bullet hits, one after the other?

The answer was simple: she didn’t need to.

As soon as I terminated her mechanical body, she would start up another one and resume the fight.

I’d already expected to run into her again, so it was something of relief to be proven right, but it wasn’t a cause for celebration.

Far from it.

Her reappearance confirmed that I was facing the prospect of fighting countless Miss Ponytails, and with the clock down to 02:43, I was definitely feeling the pressure like never before.

So I chose to stop wasting time.

Firing a double shot directly at her head, I started backing away as soon as I saw the air ripple in emerald waves in front of Miss Ponytail.

It confirmed what the Argus System had detected moments ago.

As soon as Miss Ponytail had come into view, a barrier-field had been cast across the boarding gate’s entrance. Not only did that barrier protect her from my bullets, but it prevented me from entering the tunnel connected to the Promenade.

“That’s really not frekking fair,” I lamented.

However, it was time for Plan-B, which was why I hastily retreated to the stairwell.

To cover my retreat, I switched the Punisher to single-shot mode, and fired at one second intervals directly at Miss Ponytail’s face.

It pained me to spend bullets this way, but I had no other means of keeping Miss Ponytail at by within the boarding gate, and thereby behind the barrier field.

And the longer I kept her there, the better.

Why?

Because Miss Ponytail had ditched the sniper rifle for a five-barrel Gatling gun.

The moment I stopped firing, she was certain to unleash a Hell storm with that minigun.

At the landing, I fired twice before sprinting up the helical staircase.

My destination was the top floor of the tower.

Miss Ponytail didn’t waste time either.

As I ran up the stairs, she stepped past the boarding gate and onto the twelfth floor.

I heard the whine of the minigun’s electric motors a moment before a stream of bullets ripped up the staircase around me.

Taking the steps four or five at a time, I leapt out of the stairwell and fled onto the fourteenth floor.

The minigun’s high velocity bullets chased me as I ran over and around the postmodernist furniture of the tower’s topmost level.

Though they were small – the Argus System judged them at 5.7 mm in diameter – the bullets’ tremendous momentum carried them through the intervening floors. As more of the glass was perforated, bigger holes were made, and scores of bullets sailed through the openings and struck the tower’s transparent ceiling above me.

I darted left and right, zigzagging wildly as I tried to keep one step ahead of the bullets.

When I wasn’t running a ragged course between the furniture, I was jumping about from one piece to the next.

All that training in the obstacle room had improved my agility.

I was noticeably nimbler, but I couldn’t avoid all of the torrential gunfire spewing out of the minigun.

Some of the bullets that were turning the fourteenth floor into Swiss cheese struck the Princess Regalia, fluttering her skirts and peppering my legs.

Surprisingly, the bullets failed to penetrate the material, but my legs felt like they were being devoured by a school of perpetually hungry piranhas.

The pain was enough to cause me to stumble.

I lost my footing and landed on my knees, but then rolled desperately to escape the worst of the gunfire that tore up the floor around me.

Scrambling to my feet, I succeeded in jumping onto a sofa set just as the glass beneath my feet was shattered into fragments by a burst from the minigun.

The sofa was next in line for demolition as it was caught between me and a stream of bullets.

As it was being destroyed, I leapt from the sofa to a table, then hurled myself some fifteen feet through the air, and over another set of sofa seats.

I landed beyond them somewhat awkwardly before regaining my balance.

Then I was running again, but I was quickly being cornered.

In a few seconds, I would have no place left to run to.

My plan of climbing to the fourteenth floor, breaking through the tower’s glass wall, and then jumping down onto the Promenade was a bust.

Miss Ponytail and her minigun had seen to that.

As the bullets crossed through its sensor-field, the Argus System had estimated they were being fired at 2,000 rounds per minute, at a speed of 900 m/s. That was enough for them to tear through the thirteenth and fourteenth floors, as well as strike the glass panels of the ceiling. The net effect was that I couldn’t approach the northside of the tower. Instead, I’d been pursued by bullets in a long semi-circle through the southside of the fourteenth floor. And now I was being corralled back to the northside.

If I stopped running, I’d be caught in a fusillade from the minigun.

If I ran the other way, there was no certainty the fourteenth floor would survive being sprayed again by the minigun. The glass floor was barely keeping together after the first pass. If I ran over it, I was likely to come crashing down into the thirteenth or twelfth floor. That would be bring me back to square one.

The second problem was the Princess Regalia.

The outfit that had protected me above and beyond expectations wasn’t able to cope with the minigun’s rate of fire. When struck by bullets, the material would harden then ripple as it worked to disperse the kinetic energy delivered by each small round. Unfortunately, the Regalia was being overwhelmed by the number of bullets landing hits on me, and this was despite my best efforts to outdo Br’er Rabbit in the Briar Patch. Thus, if I stopped making myself a hard target to hit, I was going to be feeling the pain of those minigun bullets several fold.

Miss Ponytail didn’t need to kill me with her minigun.

All she needed to do was incapacitate me with pain, and if I couldn’t move, I wouldn’t be able to save Erina.

In short, Game Over.

To avoid that bad end, I needed to keep moving, but as I mentioned earlier, I was running out of room to flee.

I had no choice but to bite the bullet and take the plunge.

In other words, I needed to stop running.

Coming to a stop hard stop that had my booted feet skidding along the glass, I then leapt backwards with all the sudden haste and strength I could muster.

I tucked myself into a ball as I flew briefly through the air.

The bullet stream chasing me struck my legs and skirts, but then passed me by a split second later.

Yet the pain was so intense that tears burst from my eyes, and I screamed hoarsely in agony.

Distracted, I failed to stretch out my legs beneath me, and thus landed off balance.

I fell onto my butt and had to quickly brace myself with my free hand to remain seated on the floor.

However, for a couple of seconds, I was now behind the bullets and stationary.

I didn’t waste time standing up.

Sitting on my butt, I aimed the Punisher held in my left hand down at Miss Ponytail.

Shooting back at her meant firing through the glass floor, but I didn’t believe that was going to matter.

That’s because I had a trump card up my sleeve.

“Overlord!” I yelled.

[*Engaged.] the Punisher replied.

I squeezed the trigger and held it down.

Up until now, whenever the Punisher fired in either single or double-shot mode, there was a soft boom and a tiny flicker of flame before the muzzle as the AP rounds superheated the air upon exit.

This time, a long tongue of flame belched from the rifle and a loud boom followed.

Fired in single-shot mode, the armor-piercing bullet scorched the air as it left the Punisher.

The kickback was too much for the anti-recoil system to handle, and my butt scraped along the floor as I was knocked back a few inches.

With my awareness hyper-accelerated, I watched the pointed slug burn a path toward Miss Ponytail.

Actually, I couldn’t see the bullet at all – it was moving too fast for Mirai’s eyes to register.

Rather, what I was seeing was a perfectly straight line of hot air that ended at Miss Ponytail’s chest.

This was the route the AP round had travelled after being fired at nine times the speed of sound.

And with my finger squeezing the trigger down, the Punisher again gushed hot flames as it fired another round a full second later.

A third shot, then a fourth, then a fifth AP round followed – I watched them all as they burned hot trails through the air.

The first bullet to strike Miss Ponytail barreled into her chest with enough force such that her right breast literally exploded.

I saw a red cloud burst into the air in front of her as artificial skin, musculature, and that crimson GER fluid sprayed out from the remains of her breast.

The second AP round followed a parallel path to her sternum, and more of her skin, flesh, musculature, and that red liquid erupted out of her body.

The third round tracked into her along another parallel trail and blew apart her left breast.

With each bullet hit, Miss Ponytail was punched back a full step, requiring that I adjust my aim.

Unfortunately, I was still sitting on the floor, braced with one hand, and the recoil was making it difficult to keep the Punisher on target.

Firing from this awkward position was only possible because of Mirai’s enormous physical strength, but executing precise shots at Miss Ponytail’s head was out of the question.

The best I could hope for was to continue aiming for her chest and torso.

With the armor-piercing rounds inflicting maximum damage in Overlord mode, I was certain to eventually penetrate the twin hearts powering her body. It was down to a question of which of the two would give out first: the Punisher or Miss Ponytail.

The linear rifle wasn’t meant to operate in Overlord mode for more than a dozen rounds. Then the auto-shutdown would kick in, forcing the Punisher into a cool-down interval that could last a minute.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a second rifle to switch over to.

Once the cool-down phase started, I’d be at Miss Ponytail’s mercy once again—

No—I have her gun!

How could I have forgotten?

I had Miss Ponytail’s oversized handgun holstered against my back by the right armature.

And it had ten explosive tipped rounds left in the magazine.

That was ten bullets I could use to keep Miss Ponytail preoccupied while the Punisher ran through its cool-down procedure.

Then there was Miss Ponytail herself.

The rifle’s bullets had blown fist sized holes into her torso, and she was no longer shooting the minigun. In fact, she appeared to have trouble remaining upright.

I watched her drop to her hands and knees just as the Punisher fired the twelfth round with a loud boom, and then the auto-shutdown engaged.

The rifle trembled in my hand as its field-emitters used effect-fields to blow air through the barrel and casing.

As the weapon began to cool, I struggled back up to my feet, wary of the state of the floor beneath me that was riddled with bullet holes.

However, I was also wary of Miss Ponytail who remained motionless on her hands and knees with her head bowed down.

Red GER fluid dripped down onto the floor, forming a crimson puddle beneath her.

Not knowing any better, it was easy to believe that she was bleeding to death. However, if this mechanical body was like the other one that I’d used as a shield, then that wasn’t far from the truth.

Miss Ponytail wasn’t hydraulically driven. Instead, she possessed thick artificial musculature that relied on the GER fluid to function. The packs containing the fluid had the ability to self-seal, but the Punisher’s rounds appeared to have ruptured them beyond repair. As she continued to bleed the precious liquid, her muscles weakened, making it harder for her to move.

However, while she was down, she wasn’t out for the count.

Through a supreme effort of mechanical will, Miss Ponytail pushed herself upright onto her knees, then reached out with a trembling arm for the minigun lying on the floor beside her.

I summoned the right holster, and the damaged armature delivered Miss Ponytail’s gun into right my hand. Mirai’s wetware took a half-second to pair up with its A.I., during which I pointed the massive gun at Miss Ponytail’s head.

The explosive tipped rounds had succeeded in damaging the Princess Regalia where other bullets – barring the sniper rounds – had failed.

Now we would find out how much damage ten of those bullets could inflict on her.

Gently depressing the trigger, I was briefly startled when the gun’s point-and-shoot system projected a targeting reticule into my vision, but I quickly centered it over Miss Ponytail’s forehead.

At that moment, a faint rumble ran through the tower’s weakened floors.

At first, I thought the glass was breaking apart, but in the corner of my eye, I saw someone standing at the boarding gate.

Arnval!

His appearance made me hesitate with my index finger on the trigger, thus handing back the advantage to Miss Ponytail who now had the minigun back in her hands. But she saw him too, and like me, she was distracted by the unexpected sight of Arnval waving her goodbye.

Yes, he was waving at her and not me!

Then the boarding gate’s doors closed, blocking him from view.

The tower rumbled once more, and from my vantage on the fourteenth floor, I looked through the transparent glass to see the tunnel connected to the Promenade begin to retract by compressing like an accordion.

Arnval jumped the gap as it continued to widen, and he landed gracefully inside the glass gondola.

Turning around, he resumed waving goodbye, only this time he was waving at me with a big grin on his face.

If I could have shot him and not wasted bullets in the process, I would have emptied the magazine into his face. Unfortunately, the bullets were explosive-tipped, not armor-piercing, and would have failed to penetrate the tower’s glass skin. Also, shooting Arnval was likely to earn me another penalty, and I couldn’t afford any more of those.

But sadly, I had unfinished business with Miss Ponytail.

Yet no sooner had I resumed targeting her with her own gun, when I was taken by surprise once more.

The Punisher piped up, reporting that it had complete its preliminary cooling phase.

It was ready to resume normal operations.

In other words, Overlord mode was out of the question, but firing bullets at Mach 6 was entirely possible.

However, I’d made my choice to use Miss Ponytail’s gun on her.

With the targeting reticule firmly squared on her forehead, I pressed the trigger.

The recoil was worse than what I’d experienced firing the Vipers back in the desert.

The gun kicked up in my hand, and the first explosive bullet detonated over an inch off target.

The blast knocked Miss Ponytail’s head down while simultaneously rocking her back on her knees.

Crap!

I quickly aimed again but braced my body better against the recoil as I waited for Miss Ponytail to stop swaying.

When she stopped for an instant, I fired again.

The second explosive round hit closer to the mark, though it was off center and above her right eye.

The third deeply cratered the space between her eyebrows.

The fourth was close by, the fifth was wasted above her hairline, forget about the sixth altogether, but it was the seventh shot that finally hit pay dirt.

Miss Ponytail’s remaining eye went wide, and her whole body grew abruptly rigid.

She remained on her knees but was motionless.

Surprisingly, she didn’t topple over despite the weight of the minigun held by her right hand.

So why was she still on her knees?

Goddamn it—just how tough are these machines?

Miss Ponytail’s head pivoted on her neck, and she looked up at me with her one eye.

Her face and head were a hideous mess, so it was like being stared at by gruesome cadaver that had been mauled to death.

You’d think that after playing so many Zombie games, I’d be inured to such a sight, but what made it hard to endure was that she smiled at me.

For the first time in a long while, at least since becoming Mirai, I felt a trickle of fear work its way down my back.

“You’re too late,” she said. “Just give up.”

A cold shiver was poised to rip through me, but it was quickly evaporated by a flash of anger.

Through clenched teeth, I growled back a reply. “I’m so sick of people telling me what to do!” Steadying the gun in my hand, I aimed it at the big hole in her skull. “Is that the last body you’ve got?”

It was strange to hear her laugh without moving, but that’s exactly what Miss Ponytail did. “Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. You’ll just have to wait and see—”

I fired and the hole in her head grew bigger.

I continued to fire until the gun clicked empty two rounds later.

By then Miss Ponytail’s forehead was more or less non-existent, and she slumped back on her knees with her head bowed, yet once again she failed to fall over.

However, I knew she was quite dead.

The Argus System had scanned her body with its sensor-field and reported back.

Both her power cores had been smashed by the Punisher’s bullets, and her last moments had been powered by an auxiliary battery cell located within her cerebellum that lacked the power to drive the rest of her body. With the mechanism inside her skull wrecked by the explosive rounds, the link to her operator was broken.

Yes, she was indeed quite dead.

“Bitch…,” I whispered down at her, then directed my gaze at the Promenade drifting away from the tower.

Since undocking, it had travelled around a hundred feet in a northerly direction.

I queried the wetware for the countdown.

[*01:33….]

That’s just bloody great.

It wasn’t just anger and scorn that I was struggling to contain.

It was frustration as well.

When I realized that boarding the Promenade via the gate was a no-go, I’d decided to get onto it instead. The giant gondola had transparent panels along its dorsal hull, so my intention was to jump onto the craft and then shoot my way into it from on top. That’s why I’d climbed to the top floor of the tower, but I couldn’t get anywhere near the north side of the fourteenth floor.

My plan to leap dramatically onto the Promenade had been scuppered by Miss Ponytail and her minigun.

To make matters worse, she’d torn up the translucent staircase.

Going down was going to be a long jump to the twelfth floor.

But leaving that aside, I was stuck in the tower while the floating gondola continued to sail away.

How the Hell was I going to get aboard the Promenade now?

My gloves creaked when I tightened my grip on the gun and Punisher.

At the same time, I squeezed my eyes shut and fought down tears of despair and frustration.

What the Hell do I do now? What the Hell can I do? Sprout wings and fly after the Promenade?

Could I even do that? Those black wings that had saved my life had emerged on their own, so I had no idea how to summon them.

As I struggled to find an answer, a heard a loud cracking sound and felt the floor underfoot vibrate strongly.

I opened my eyes in time to see a large section of the floor on the northside of the stairwell collapse. It fell along with several pieces of furniture to the level below. However, since the thirteenth floor was caught in the middle of the furious gun battle it wasn’t in a good state either, and the falling furniture and glass debris crashed through into the twelfth floor.

I stepped back quickly toward the southern face of the tower, hoping that it would hold for a while longer.

I needed time to think things through, and it helped that I was overclocked, yet I suspected all the time in the world wouldn’t help me now.

In desperation, I looked up and implored the heavens.

Please, God, help me. Help me save my sister—uh!

The tower’s roof was a transparent glass dome supported by a web of metal beams.

I stared through it at the red sky overhead.

The Argus System followed my gaze and swept its sensor-field over the habitat’s ceiling, and then confirmed what I was seeing.

I closed my eyes as I bowed my head.

Thank you, God. Thank you….

I had one last option left open to me.

But it was going to take one helluva jump and one helluva fall for me to save Erina.

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Apologies for the delay.
With end of year, and the start of 2021, I've been busy with working on my Twitter account, re-editing and polishing Book 3.
And working on the Remnant Fiestas too.

I've also decided to resurrect the story that is the distant ancestor to GPR: The Pride X ReVamp Series.
Some of the names for the characters, the Sarcophagus, and so forth made their way into the GRP universe.
There is no TG in the series, so it probably won't appeal to the readers here.

Book 1 - Pride X Familiar ReVamp is available on Amazon Kindle for a dollar.
It's poorly written as I was still trying to figure out my style, and getting a better grasp of how to write.
But it's still a fun read for the perverse minded. But as I mentioned earlier, there's no TG.

Book 2 - Pride X Valkyrie ReVamp is being posted on Wattpad. Slightly less perverse, darker, and much better written. A more fleshed out plot as well.

If you check my twitter page: Simkin Hart (@HartSimkin) you'll see it mentioned there with appropriate links.

As I wrote before, I'm sorry that the links to previous and next are mixed up. I can't see the full reference to the previous chapter when I add the chapter to the chain.

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.