--Excerpt from an interview with Dancer, 2037
We took care of the adventuring Four fairly easily, Bdes poked it with his spear a few times while dodging tentacles with ease now that he was expecting them. In the meantime, Boo and I pruned them a little shorter and took the barbed ends off of them.
"Okay, how do we deal with the big chuckle fuck?" Boo asked.
"We could, you know..." Bdes spoke up as the Model Four continued to dissolve just around the corner behind us. "Hit it till it's dead."
"Yeah!" She cheered.
I facepalmed with a groan. "This is not some mesh game, we die if we are killed."
"Hehe, I know Nonon. In all seriousness tho, from what I know those things are hard to kill, regur bullets just ping off of it, and it can take a few anti-tank rounds? I have a feeling that our weapons will do just fine, but it will be death by a thousand paper cuts."
"I saw a samurai go at it with a chainsaw once and come out on top." Bdes said.
"I don't think that was a regur chainsaw." I cut in.
"Ooooooh!" Boo said starry-eyed, then whispered in aww. "Void Terminus Chainsaw!"
"That... no that makes no sense."
A chainsaw is for moving dispced material, and Void Terminus weaponry removes material outright. It's completely pointless. Cinder commented.
"Not if you make the bdes pointy." Boo replied with a grin.
And besides, it would not be cssified as a "Fixed Point" weapon in the first pce.
"True... Anyway, Bdes, how about you distract the Six, while we deal with the Threes? Throw in a few resonators to disorient them all."
"Yeah, sounds good to me." He said and caught two cylinders out of the air.
I recalled the scout drone, so Boo now had all her fingers again too.
Bdes turned to us, grinned and pressed the button on top of the two grenades and chucked them over into the middle of the group of Threes, then charged at them. "Come, and I'll show you why they call me the legendary- FUCK!" He shouted as he tripped over a curb.
We were not far behind, with me on his left and Boo on the right. We ran past him just as the harsh noise of the resonators filled the garage, dazing the Model Threes charging at us. She makes quick work of 2 Threes while I cut the legs off of one, and cut most of the head off of another, then sent the half-legged one flying with an elegant twirl.
"Bdes! You okay?" Boo asked.
"Please don't get yourself killed." I said as I dove over another Three that was aiming for my legs, nded in a roll and in one smooth motion cut off two jaws off of another one.
"Got it!" He replied, and my sensors picked up his footsteps rushing off to the side.
The fight felt like an intricate dance of bdes and weird alien shark dogs, and I could not help but add little flushes here and there, just because they felt good to do so. When I had time to gnce over to Boo. In contrast to me, she was taking full advantage of her new arm to move her weapon from foe to foe with deadly precision. Moving at a blinding speed, no regur human should be capable, cutting the aliens into ribbons with not a single wasted movement. All the while, she had a rexed expression on her face, like someone who was thinking about a list of groceries to pick up on the way home and not fighting off pnts that want nothing but to kill her.
My moment of lull didn't st long, as it abruptly ended when we heard Bdes shout. "Out of the way!"
When I looked over I saw him, running right at us along the length of the garage as the furious looking behemoth casually punted a hover car aside struggling to change direction.
"Fuck me." Boo swore as my sensors alerted me of another incoming Three.
It jumped at me, but I was able to lean out of the way just in time. I gnced at Boo again and spotted the opening of the garage. We were some 64 levels up and beyond the opening was a sheer drop, all the way down to the hard pavement below.
"Cinder, this thing can't fly, right?"
No, it can't.
"Good! Give me a Flesh Melter, but make it a kunai with void bdes. I have an idea." I said then moved out of the site line just off to the side of where the tank would pass. "Boo! Take care of the st Three, then run for it!"
Oh, I see. I will put it on a deyed activation.
New Purchase: Mark I Flesh Melter (Modified).
Points Reduced to... 191.
I caught the kunai out of the air just after Boo finished off the remaining Three and threw it over to her. "Sis, catch!" And she did so in a reverse grip. I turned back to Bdes just as he was about to pass us and shouted. "Teach it how to fly!" And took off towards the opening as well.
"Oh! Good thinking!" Boo praised, then with practised ease flipped the kunai and raised her hand into a throwing motion.
Bdes stopped just a few steps away from the drop, then gnced at me as I crouched behind a mangled minivan. I nodded, he then turned back to the charging behemoth. We waited until the st possible second.
"Now!" Boo threw the modified Flesh Melter into the side of the charging beast.
Just a moment ter, I shoved Bdes out of the path of the raging pnt. I was not so fortunate, however. It managed to clip my ankle while I was midair and sent me right into the pilr framing the entrance and over the edge.
"Oh no." Was all I could say as I could feel myself plummeting and pulled my awareness back from the swarm of drones.
In the console, I could see the automated functions taking over and giving the command to scatter the swarm. Out of curiosity, I opened a video feed from one of the drones serving as a sensor array and saw a cloud of bck metallic spiders being blown against the building by the wind. One by one, they tched on and started the skitter back up.
Just out of curiosity, I took direct control of the drone and turned it around to see how the Six faired with the nding. Needless to say, it was not the fall that killed it, but the sudden collision with an automated delivery van at the end of it.
"That... Was a way to deal with a Model Six, but I never want to do that again." Bdes sighed.
"You can say that again... Seeing Nonon go over the edge like that was... Yeah..."
"I know, even I was scared for a moment before I remembered that I'm not actually in the armor." I admitted sheepishly.
Good job, and really creative use of the environment, Shinon. Cinder said. Altogether you killed 13 Model Threes, and a Model Six, for a combined 160 Points.
"Huh, 80 Points, not bad." Bdes said, then he turned back to the elephant in the room. "Dealing with the Eight will take a while..."
And he was entirely correct, there was a lot of stabbing just to open a hole on the armoured sea slug's side so we can drop in a Flesh Melter that should take care of it in time. Enough time for my swarm of drones to climb back up to us and for me to run a full diagnostic scan.
"Girls, I know that this is the really boring part, just waiting around for a clean-up team... and dealing with this thing." Bdes said, as he spped the armored carapace of the Model Eight. "Why don't you two take off, get some rest? It's a lot to take in all at once."
“Nah, we’ll..”
Boo was about to reply when an alert went off. The tracking virus I pnted in one of our neighbour’s augs went offline and the automated message with the st known location popped up in our vision.
“That’s not good.” I said after muting the call. “Something happened to Elena.”
"On second thought tho? Yeah... A shower would be nice." Boo sighed. "Tho..." She frowned, "How will we get our weapons back home?"
"Oh, that one is easy. You just have to hold it against the armor and the drones will hold on to it." I said.
"Like a sheath?"
"Nnnot exactly." I said, drawing out the first sound of the word. "More like some hundred-odd spider legs gently hugging the shaft to our side."
"That..." Bde shuddered at the mental image.
"That works." Boo said, then sighed. "Now we just have to find our bike."
"I saw a bike in that corner over there, but it did get a little scraped up."
She just squinted at him and demanded. "What color?"
"I... Omm... Silver? It was a sport bike-looking thing."
"Gods damn it!" Boo stomped off towards it. "We just had it buffed!"
"Auntie said it was only 200 points but Boo loves that bike to bits." I said to Bdes.
"I can tell..." He said, as he looked at, Boo climbed up and over a car. "She can be kind of scary at times." He whispered to me then frowned. “Wait, auntie?”
"I heard that!" Her shout echoed from behind another car.
"I… Omm… Ah." Bdes turned to me. "Have to go, I think my alien is melting."
I just giggled. "Sure. See you around sometime."
"Yeah." He said and scurried off to poke some more holes in the armoured sea cucumber.
I went and picked up our weapons, then made my way over to Boo to give her a hand.
"It doesn't look too bad." I said when I saw the dinged-up bike and ran a diagnostic scan just in case. "And everything is working just fine."
"Gods, poor girl, you will need a fresh coat of paint..." She cooed over the bike.
"We can deal with that when we are home." I said as I pushed a wrecked hovercar out of the way.
"Yeah..." She sighed and hung her head low.
"Let's go home after this, okay?" I hugged her from behind. "It's been a while since we visited."
"That sounds good." She smiled. "What do you think their reaction will be?"
"Hmm... Probably worried?" I giggled. "Then you are going to get chewed out for feeding our arm to a Model Three."
Boo just groaned. "Don't remind me..." She sighed then continued. "Anyway, let's get out of here."
"Sure." I said with a smile in my voice as I commanded the swarm to form an armor around her and remotely started up the bike.
You girls don't worry about traffic ws, just head straight home.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
I will tell the mean w enforcement drones to eat sand and leave my little girls alone.
We both giggled at that. "Thank you, Cinydr." Boo replied as we left the parking garage then, punched it whizzing through the congested airspace of London towards our apartment block.
"Cinder, do you have something to fix our ear? Or just get us new and better ones?" I asked.
"And Maybe some way to disguise our chrome bits... We don't really want to draw attention to ourselves." Boo added.
Yes, I have. It's more of a sensor array than the ears you are used to. It's from your Css II Moon Gazer Catalogue, The Zerda Sensor System. The instaltion is a little bit intrusive, and it will repce your current ears. It has sensors from ultrasound to ser microphones for hearing at long distances, a Geiger counter just in case, radial sonar and motion sensors, selective sound filters, spatial recognizers. Essentially everything that your drone swarm already had sensors for but more specialized, and a few like the ser microphones that it didn't have.
"So if we wanted to, we could hear someone's heartbeat through a wall?" Boo asked.
Given that there is no or next to no background noise and the right filter settings? Yes.
"Nice! We'll take it," She said.
"First you should ask the price." I chided.
Your sister is correct, Shinobu. And the price is 75 points.
"Not too bad." Boo replied. "And what about the hiding of chrome?"
For that, I would recommend the Mk9 Tactical Appearance Imitating Light System for 100 points. It's a highly sophisticated light projection system that allows you to mask your appearance or mimic someone else's.
"Sooooo... Stealth tech?" She asked.
Yes, while full invisibility and your goal to camoufge your cybernetic enhancements is not its main intended function, it can maintain the projection for a significant amount of time.
"Wait, what was its intended use, then?"
It was developed by one of the Moon Gazer's core intelligence agencies, they did simir work to what you see in your old spy movies.
"I see, so if we have enough data on someone, we could just borrow their identity." I mused. "Also, nice acronym."
Thank you, sweetie, I'm quite proud of that one. And if you ask me, it's much more imaginative and descriptive than its original name.
"What was the original?" Shinobu asked as we squeezed through a tight gap between two hovering vans.
The original was just a model designation, "XJB-1 9B" or the closest possible transtion of it anyway. Like I said, unimaginative.
"Okay, onto The List they go. I assume that we need to nd somewhere to install the ears?"
Yes, that would be for the best Shinobu.
"What about the 9 T.A.I.L.S.?" I asked.
The T.A.I.L System is just a single drone, that can integrate into Shinobu's arm seamlessly, but to avoid any possible distraction and subsequent injuries, we should hold off on the purchase until nding.
After that we all fell silent, just enjoying the ride home as Boo weaved in and out of traffic. After another 20 minutes of flying, we were on the approach to our building.
"Omm... Nonon? Can you shut down the cameras? Or just loop the feed for a bit? Maybe do that for the stairs, and a few random floors too."
"Can do." I said and opened a terminal window to connect to the right back door I left in the security system. "Mmmmm... Aaaand done, our regur spot is still in the blind spot, apparently repcing a camera is not in the budget for this pce."
"Not surprising." She replied as she pulled into the parking garage. "Let's hope for no pnts here..."
"Now you gone and jinxed it..." I compined, then sighed. "I think we should get the T.A.I.L.S first, if my guess is right, it can help hide our weapons?"
Correct, But coverage is going to be limited and likely imperfect.
"Should be enough for us to get them inside and people not notice it right away if we bump into someone?"
Yes, if it's somewhere in their peripheral vision.
"Well, people usually don't look up." I commented. "I can have a few spiders crawl along the ceiling with your naginata, and my kamas can easily be hidden under our hoodie."
As we parked, and got off the bike, I commanded my spiders to disperse and hide and a notification pinged with a new incoming message.
"Oh, we just got a message from Pointsource, she wants us to try a virus she made."
I opened the chat to see what she sent us.
< Pointsource -15:34 > "Hey girls, I just made a little thing that I think Shinon will enjoy poking at."
< Pointsource -15:34 > "It should allow me to project a hard light construct into the view of a camera infected with it."
< B&N_Foxes - 15:35 > "N: Sure, I'll take a look at it."
< B&N_Foxes - 15:35 > "B: I'm sure we can find something to test it on."
< Pointsource - 15:36 > "I tested it on my local network but not on external ones, but it shuuuuld work."
< B&N_Foxes - 15:36 > "N: I'll look through the code too just in case you missed some bug that's hiding."
< Pointsource - 15:38 >"Thanks!"
< B&N_Foxes - 12:39 > "N: “We gotta run, we were in the middle of something."
< Pointsource -12:40 >"Ah, okay I won't hold you up then, talk to you ter."
"Okay, ready." Boo said.
We closed the message window and she held out her hand in front of her.
I will assume you don't need the box.
New Purchase: Mk9 Tactical Appearance Imitating Light System.
Points Reduced to... 125.
A spider, just like the ones that made up our new arm, appeared just above Boo's hand. The only meaningful difference was the on its back with the, same red sun motif as on our palm. As soon as it nded on the back of our hand. It immediately started to climb up to our shoulder where it burrowed itself into our shoulder, the other drones shifting this way and that to allow space for it.
Moments ter a shimmer rippled along our arm almost like the surface of water in the sun, leaving the imitation of our hoodies missing sleeve in its wake. Boo turned our hand around just as the shimmer passed over it, and I just marvelled at the fwless-looking skin on our hand.
"Wow!" Was all I could say.
"Neat." Shinobu said. "Okay, let's go before someone notices that the cameras are messed with." Then leaned her naginata against the wall where some of my spiders could grab a hold of it then tucked my kamas under the back of our hoodie.
It took a little bit of finagling, but I managed to get it through all the doorways. We were opening the door of our apartment when someone called.
"Emily!" Our neighbour, called out as she jogged up to us, her short curly blonde hair rustling from the motion.
Boo turned to the woman. "Katelin? What happened?" She frowned as the distress filing her grey eyes registered.
"Did you see Elena anywhere? She said she is going to ask you for help with her homework."
"Me? I just got home. When was this?" Shinobu frowned.
"About an hour ago." She said, even more distressed now. "And she is not picking up my calls."
"That's not like her..." Boo murmured. "Let me change, and I'll look around, see what I can find. I'll call you as soon as I have something. Go home, in case she turns up."
"Thank you. And please find my little girl."
"I will do what I can. And you have my word, I will find her." Boo said, her voice full of sincerity.
Katelin nodded with tears in her eyes, then turned to return to her unit.
We quickly went inside and locked the door, then rested our head against the back of it.
"No rest for the wicked eh?" Boo chuckled to herself.