"To the best friends I'll ever have!"
As soon as the bride-to-be raised her glass of sparkling wine to the light and the life and the laughter in the room - all here to celebrate her in her final day as an unmarried woman - the sickening snap of steel and crack of brick rolled in from outside, close outside. She glanced in the direction of the sounds, as did the rest of the party's guests. A couple muttered amongst themselves about construction and demotion scheduled to occur soon, and others whispered about rumors of 'country boys' come to terrorize 'city life' for... one reason or another. No one could quite agree on the details, but they could agree on one thing - whatever was happening, it was getting closer.
Closer.
Closer.
So close you would swear the dining hall itself was collapsing.
Then, for just a moment, it stopped, and everyone sighed a sigh of relief. The world had righted itself, all was as it should be, and the horrid sound of destruction would trouble them no -
CRASH.
Gigantic golden claw-tips - each easily the size of two or three men - broke through from the outside, impaling the walls of the dining hall. Half the bachelorette party screamed and began to run about like beheaded chickens. Half couldn't muster the emotional wherewithal to manage even that, legs like lead and jaws lain slack. The bachelorette could only manage a somewhat shallow breath inwards herself, the whites of her eyes like dinner plates as she looked at what she could only rationalize as some strange kind of punishment from the gods, a sign from the universe that - somehow - every decision she made that led her here was perhaps a complete fuckup.
But before what could have been attached to those claws could finish worming its way through the wall, the claws were suddenly sent dragging through the side of the exterior wall, brick and glass and attendee wailing in unison as the gash laid bare what the fancy frosted windows that used to be there only disguised - a wave of destruction and blood carved through the once-glimmering streets, now illuminated only by fire. And right there, enormous clawed hand knocked from its hold in the wall and staggering away, was a unicorn crimson beast with piercing red eyes and a maw dripping with what looked like blood.
The guests that had been screaming stopped at the sight - screaming no longer served the kind of abject terror that sets in when you're beholden to what could only be some kind of monster sent to cleanse the Earth, or - or something.. Even as they were trying to process the sight, however, they were not ready for a gigantic knight built like a war-machine to leap at it, as though it were dealing a follow-up strike to its blood-soaked nemesis. Perhaps it was only half the size, but when you're this close - and when you're this panicked - it becomes difficult to care about the scale of machinery the size of entire buildings.
As it landed unsteadily against the monster, back-mounted propeller spinning and providing enough lift to keep it mostly upright, its head turned to look to the guests, to the staff, to her. And unlike the beast, which only let free unsettlingly vast breaths, the knight-machine spoke over the roaring blaze engulfing the city, and spoke in the voice of one of those rural country-girls (she assumed; in truth, she'd only been aware of the most stereotypical version of the 'country' accent, and the voice from the machine bore only some resemblance.).
"Hey! We've got this handled, okay? We'll lead her back out of the city, so -"
The beast in crimson shoved the knight off, and it only barely missed clipping the wall by twisting away. It managed to land on its feet, one arm crossing its front as though it were waiting to draw something from its waist.
A second voice came from the knight, visor still pointed toward the party.
"Run or stay or whatever, I don't care. But we're going to do our best to keep the thing from doing any more damage, so whatever you're doing, live to see it through."
Its head turned back to the beast. What looked to be the color-wheel of one of those older tri-chrome cameras spun up at its collar, as thought it were taking photographs of its foe and the destruction. Some of the guests tried to get back to the food laid out across the party, only to return to the gash to watch the battle unfold with a morbid fascination.
She spoke up, finally. "... one more dance?"
The few people that heard her over the roaring and the crashing looked back, then moved to the dance floor.
She smiled. Maybe there was something salvageable about this party after all.