[https://i.imgur.com/xLc49IQ.png]
Still stuck in Shaileen’s warehouse, Harridan continued her efforts of futzing around with her commlink, having endless struggles with figuring out a model so wildly different from her original. Thankfully, she managed to avoid biting it in frustration and she managed to figure out the NeuroLine to endlessly harry those who she knows. Not so much for Hotrod, given that Harridan's in the middle of hurtling out another message towards her.
[https://i.imgur.com/4dZJPlA.png]
This was likely the third or fourth time that the bird has sent this message, despite Hotrod's responses. She was either anxious, or impatient. It's hard to tell.
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Hotrod, fully reclined in the driver's seat of her MT Pitbull, nodded her head along to the thrashwave track that blared from her speakers. The van rumbled along the selected route, its AdaptiCamo outer coating shifted to a drab grey with streaks of dirt and dried mud, advertising itself as Kenzo Laundry. She stopped her head bop when Harridan's message came in. Again. She looked over it and composed a quick reply.
[https://i.imgur.com/KDZgvwC.png]
Off the message went, as she resumed nodding along with the music.
Hotrod's journey en route to Harridan's place was uneventful, with go-gangers and otherwise not finding much interest in the neighbourhood which was nothing more than a refuge for Twelve Volt addicts and mutant rats. Rows and rows of husked out pre-Inferno apartment habs made up most of the terrain, largely unfit for anyone beyond the most desperate of individuals.
The roads were almost just as barren, any vehicle parked on the street vandalized to the point where they could no longer be deemed a form of transportation, but instead works of modern art. Occasionally, a glimpse of an unmarred sedan or coupe could be seen on a side street; no doubt a peddler dumping off Twelve or some other kind of cheap-ass drug. Scrambs could be an option if anyone here had the creds to afford the required 'ware.
Hotrod brought her van to a stop when she reached the specified address of Harridan's place, which matched the dozen apartments before it in both style and condition, only looking slightly more liveable than the others. There were at least a few letters still attached above the faded blue entry awning, ‘Fame Heights’ only being legible in completion due to the staining left on the stone surface.
Regardless, it was pretty dark out and there didn't seem to be any lights on inside the building at all.
Hotrod killed the music and rested her gaze on the seemingly dead apartment building. Too dark for her tastes. She glanced at the NSF Nereid rigger console mounted next to the steering wheel, the screen displaying real-time diagnostics of her drones. A quick NeuroLine command brought Johnny and Sylvain online, the twin TDE Flügelgeist drones whirring idly in the rear cabin. Better send the boys out to scope it out first.
Another NeuroLine command popped open an inconspicuous top hatch and the drones hovered upwards and out, the mounted cameras feeding footage to newly-opened AROs.
The exterior of the apartment is remarkably… unremarkable. Eight storeys tall, with a faded blue exterior that comes off closer to a white through the drones' low-light cameras. The lack of maintenance on the place became more evident on Hotrod's feed: rusted out fire-escapes and shattered windows lining the stone monolith. It's going to need more than a few screen doors and buckets of paint to fix the place up. The only—presumably—unshattered window on the third floor also happened to be covered with a security shutter, making it impossible to get a look inside without prying the thing off the exterior wall itself.
Hotrod switched to thermographic cameras, immediately picking up two things of interest. First of which, a metric fuckton of mutant rats around the area that seemed less than interested in the presence of the airborne drones, scattering for cover. The second? There's a Thunderer parked up on the grass on the other side of the building, its engine running warm enough to make it stand out against the dull background signatures of the nearly empty surroundings. It must have sat there for a while with its climate control left on.
Hotrod clicked her tongue to herself when she spotted the Thunderer's silhouette on her feed. Great. She recalled her drones, the twin Flügelgeists coming back through the hatch and resting on the rack. With the Nereid now nestled inside her armored jacket, she stepped out of the van, circling to the rear door and popping it open.
The rear cabin was set up in its mini-workshop configuration, the drone rack on one side and various toolboxes on the other. With a hydraulic hiss, yet another hidden compartment opened up, containing a variety of firearms. Her slender fingers moved deftly and affixed AM-77 assault rifles on both Sylvain and Johnny's gun mounts, all the while whistling the last tune that was playing. The Flügelgeists took to the air once more, flanking Hotrod as she sent a quick NeuroLine message to Harridan.
[https://i.imgur.com/J0yv1Kq.png]
She reached inside her jacket pocket for her pack of Lucky Thirteens and lit one up, waiting for a response before making her next move.
----------------------------------------
Harridan's eyes focused on the ceiling above, tracking a small house fly that managed to find itself in the confines of the warehouse. That was, until she received the NeuroLine message, causing her to jolt back to attention.
[https://i.imgur.com/Ncn6T1w.png]
She fired off the NeuroLine and immediately became distracted by the fly again, no doubt weighing the advantages and disadvantages of shifting to fly up there and eat it.
----------------------------------------
There was no movement from the direction of the Thunderer, or even the apartment, sans the squeaking of still-scattering mutant rats.
Hotrod discarded her barely smoked cigarette and crushed it underfoot, the scent of apple-menthol now clinging to her jacket and hair.
[https://i.imgur.com/Di5jMny.png]
Slender fingers plucked a dark red chip that said ‘Hypervig’ in black lettering from her jacket pocket and slotted it inside the datajack behind her left ear. She shuddered when the Hypervig began to alter her brain activity and tweaked her senses. She patted herself down, checking for the trusty baton tucked inside the waistband of her synthleather pants and the Mühl AMP machine pistol concealed behind her jacket. Satisfied, she grabbed the duffel bag with the 'B&E' AR tag and slung it over her shoulder. A pair of Tsuchigumo crawler drones chittered to life, dismounting themselves from the rack and skittering over to climb inside the bag. A series of NeuroLine commands killed the van's engine, locked the doors, and engaged the security system.
With Sylvain and Johnny leading the way, Hotrod finally moved towards the apartment's entrance.
Approaching the monolithic hab, past the front doors, there was an incredibly disused lobby. The decor itself told that this place's heyday was long prior to the burn, considering the peeled away paint and wallpaper revealing the drywall and gyprock covering the structure's interior. Hotrod scrunched her nose at the outdated wallpaper. Does anyone else besides Harridan even live here?
The unmanned service desk at the front, instead of some form of ARO or terminal, was rather telling as well; Hotrod noted a strangely out of place 95CS with a threaded silencer laying beside the customer service bell. Just past the service desk lay a set of stairs and an obviously out of order elevator, a faded sign that said 'Out of Order' propped up right in front of the closed sliding doors. Judging from the piled up dust surrounding it, that sign had never been moved in the past few decades. A set of lock-and-key mailboxes were mounted on the wall just to the right of the stairs, several of which have had their room numbers scratched off.
She unholstered her AMP and disengaged the safety, continuing to move as a pack with her drones towards the stairs, occasionally glancing at the camera feed AROs. Coast is looking clear so far.
Her jaunt up the stairwell continued to showcase how old the place is, the wood of each step creaking and feeling like it was about to give way. Rather detrimental to her attempts at being sneaky.
Hotrod stopped dead in her tracks on the first landing. Her elfin ears twitched as it picked up the distinct noise of an ongoing argument coming further up the stairs. It was rather muffled, which made it hard to tell what was being said via natural hearing. Turns out the apartment wasn't that abandoned after all.
She ordered Sylvain and Johnny to hover by her in overwatch mode, cameras and assault rifles pointing in both directions of the landing. It was time for her babies to do their thing.
As if on cue—because it was, thanks to the NeuroLine command sent out by Hotrod—the tiny Tsuchigumo crawlers made their way out of her duffel bag and skittered upwards in the direction of the muffled argument. Upon reaching the threshold that leads to the third floor, their mounted mics immediately picked up and transmitted the conversation to Hotrod.
“—still dead! Why are we even here?” a deep voice hollered out. “Did we come here just to mope over a screwed job? Get over it!”
“Shut your mouth. We're here for the consolation prize. The least we can do is make some creds off of this screw-up,” a second gruff voice shouted in return.
“Consolation prize? All I see are… Fruity-O's.” There was the characteristic sound of a box of cereal being shaken. “Look. There's no consolation here. Just fucking… cereal. That's all. There's like – I can't even count that high.”
Hotrod grimaced as the crawlers' mics picked up the words ‘Fruity-O's.’ If Harridan was adamant on subsisting on cereal, she would get her a better brand to munch on.
She directed the crawlers to move towards Room 369 and brought her Mühl AMP to bear, tiptoeing her way up the stairs. She stole a glance at the camera feed when the crawlers reached their destination.
The door to Harridan's apartment was wrenched open, looking like someone simply decided to bypass the mechanical locks by ripping segments of the wall out. The hallway was a giant horrible mess of debris, with spent shell casings strewn about just outside the door.
The first voice seemed to belong to a dwarf who—disconcertingly—has no beard, and the second belonged to a human who looked like he stole said dwarf's beard and put it on his own face. They shared a similar fashion sense, both wearing the street samurai special of ‘big-ass black trench coats,’ their near identical outfits making them look like the human participated in ‘bring your son to work’ day. Both were visibly armed with Harcourt Model-M SMGs, and were now pointing them at each other as they continued to argue.
Just past the duo, there was a corpse of what appears to be an ork. It's hard to tell. Whatever it once was looked like it horribly lost a fight with a wild animal, because it was more gore, intestines, and otherwise than ork at this point.
“We take the case, we pop it open, and sell whatever's inside. Call it a day,” the human barked, agitation riding hard in his voice.
“And that ain't gettin' revenge at all. What, we sell her fucking family photos? You don't even know what's in the bloody thing.”
Both were completely unaware of the approaching drones and elf.
Hotrod smiled to herself when she saw the scene unfold through her feed. Hah, infighting. Perfect. Time to make the most of it.
She blitzed her way to Room 369 and rolled towards the door, ending in a kneeling position, her AMP now aimed at the dwarf. Johnny and Sylvain took up position on her flanks, their AM-77s now trained at the duo as well, whirring menacingly as they hovered in place. Hardly the most subtle entrance, but she hoped the sudden noise and superior numbers were enough to catch them off-guard.
The dwarf's stern look of disappointment shifted when he noticed the trio at the door, eliciting the human to turn and look as well.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Not wanting to be stuck in a Netlamachtillitlan standoff—or worse, having the fractured allies reunite and turn on her—Hotrod sent a NeuroLine command to Johnny, prompting the Flügelgeist to spit out a short burst of rounds from its mounted AM-77 onto the bearded man.
Alas, he was not as fast as either drone or bullet. He stumbled backwards, spending the last few moments of being conscious—and possibly alive—weakly trying to cover his brand new breathing holes before falling sideways, smacking his temple against the counter of a nearby cabinet.
Dwarf McBeardless whipped his Model-M at the door in less than a fraction of a second and sprayed a long burst in a cone. Just her luck. Of course his reflexes were wired up.
Johnny and Sylvain managed to avoid getting hit, their evasion programming kicking in flawlessly. Hotrod shifted her weight to the side but still had the misfortune to catch two rounds in her shoulder. Her robust armored jacket did its job and absorbed the full impact. The flattened rounds clinked onto the decayed floorboards. Seems like her opposition was too much of a skinflint for armor-piercing rounds.
Hotrod snapped her aim towards McBeardless and let loose a short burst in retaliation, her Mühl AMP going brrrt. Sylvain followed suit via a quick NeuroLine command, almost in concert as the staccato of both guns reverberated throughout the apartment unit.
He never stood a chance, the barrage of lead flying down range tearing him to literal shreds. You wouldn't think that low- to mid-caliber rounds would be capable of making someone explode into a shower of viscera and gore until you've witnessed it. And witness it Hotrod did, the dwarf's cranium cracking open like a ripe watermelon and sending gore plus grey matter to the four winds.
An ARO popped up in her peripheral vision, tearing her attention away from the sight when she brought it into focus.
[https://i.imgur.com/sJ3evus.png]
Hotrod stepped inside the apartment proper, approaching the sprawled bodies with her AMP still trained on the human. Sylvain and Johnny followed behind her, whirring softly.
[https://i.imgur.com/Ni6MRfm.png]
She glanced around to spot the prize of this hunt: Harridan's floor safe. Jackpot.
Harridan's room was now far more of a mess than it originally was, being fifty percent cereal boxes and fifty percent corpses. The no-name brand bearded man wasn't getting up any time soon and was likely to meet his maker in a few moments without any form of medical attention. He doesn't even look like he's conscious.
A sudden distraction came from the stairway. Heavy boots hurdled down onto the third floor landing and continued on downwards; sacrificing any form of stealth for speed. Whoever it was, they were moving quick and they were not stopping to inspect whatever Hotrod was getting into.
Hotrod shifted a couple of cereal boxes aside with her boot, bringing the floor-safe into full view. She holstered her AMP and picked the safe up, using both arms to tuck it in an awkward sideways football carry. A flurry of NeuroLine commands sent the Tsuchigumo crawlers skittering back inside her duffel bag, with Johnny and Sylvain now hovering wordlessly and leading the way out of the room.
Hotrod struggled with going down the stairs without breaking her neck, the safe's dimensions forcing her to do a bit of finagling around corners. The one saving grace was that it was relatively light, still within the realm of what her augmented musculature could handle.
[https://i.imgur.com/7U3P6mY.png]
[https://i.imgur.com/V18wXH5.png]
She proceeded to make her way down the stairs, Sylvain and Johnny still ahead of her. The only difference in the journey down the stairs from the journey up—besides the awkward safe—was the muddy prints that now decorated each step down.
Well, that, and the fact that the 95CS was now gone from the service desk. And there was also a freshly dead body visible from the front doors, laying in a puddle of blood on the cracked and pocked sidewalk.
Random dead bodies. That's so Big Slag.
Right?
Hotrod continued her move towards the entrance. She took a moment to look at the dead body when she got close enough.
An elf, currently deceased. His shaved head made it evident that his cause of death was a single shot to the back of the head, and his apparel suggested that he was either an operator or a rather well off go-ganger. Either that, or he stole all of that stuff. It's the Slag, after all. Whatever happened, he didn't have time to draw his weapon.
And his combat boots were pretty muddy.
The stillness of the night was shattered by distant reports of gunfire and the revving of engines. It was hard to tell if it was approaching or heading away just from the way sound bounced off the nearby defunct apartment blocks.
The sudden auditory stimuli was enough to make her ears twitch, urging her to hurry it up. Hotrod rushed over to her Pitbull, the rear door swinging open on her approach. She stowed the safe in a corner and obscured it as much as possible with her duffel bag. Curiosity got the better of her and she doubled back to the body, giving it a closer look for… something.
Closer inspection revealed that he was likely with the operator crew that Hotrod encountered moments earlier, given that the trademark shape of a Harcourt Model-M was pressing outwards from under his jacket. Otherwise, he seemed to be sans a commlink, but he did have a datajack, so the possibility of an internal 'link was there. Concerningly, the missing firearm doesn’t seem to be on his person.
Hotrod clicked her tongue to herself again, running back to the van. Once inside the driver's seat, she placed her NSF Nereid back on the mount and opened an ARO that showed the van's external camera feed before she leaned back in her fully reclined seat. Might as well take a breather and see what's what.
She reached inside her jacket for her Lucky Thirteens and lit one up, her gaze occasionally darting to the camera feeds.
What happened looked pretty cut and dry. The elf shoulder-tackled the doors open at full sprint, looking like he's on the verge of shitting his pants but managing to keep it together enough to not scream at the top of his lungs. Smart enough to know that being loud at night in the Slag attracted things that you don't necessarily want to contend with when you were already close to soiling yourself.
Still didn't look like he had the 95CS.
The microphone managed to pick up the signature report of a silenced pistol. Paff. You could almost mistake him for tripping over a crack in the sidewalk if it wasn't for that.
Things started getting a little bit more complicated past this point. The thermals weren't picking up jack. It's like there was nothing out there.
Hotrod didn't like that. That was her cue to get the fuck outta here.
[https://i.imgur.com/n1UTO4X.png]
The Pitbull came to life with a smooth rumble with thrashwave projected through the speakers, albeit not at a deafening volume like before.
[https://i.imgur.com/TJX9xAB.png]
The short drive back to the relative safety of Banshee territory was uneventful and the Pitbull rolled to a stop in front of the warehouse, its tires scraping against shifting gravel.
Hotrod walked up to the front door, now carrying the floor safe like an awkward first-time mother.
Harridan was waiting at the door. Not that much different from what she normally does, because waiting was a large portion of her chosen career. It seemed like she hadn't moved at all and left the door open this entire time.
“…I do not have the credchits on me at this moment,” she said as she vaguely pointed to the safe.
“Yeah, gotcha. Let's head inside.” Hotrod stood there, letting Harridan lead the way.
Harridan did a terrible job at leading, taking a few moments too long to realize that she should do so. She awkwardly stopped adjacent to the cargo container she found herself in a week or so ago, as if that's where she suddenly decided the safe needed to go. “You are not injured, are you?”
Hotrod followed suit, placing the safe on the floor next to the cargo container, glad to be rid of the unwieldy burden. “Not a scratch on me. Can't say the same for those guys.”
She opened an ARO, replaying the footage of the argument before the shooting. “There were these two…” Her fingers danced in the air to open another ARO, this one showing a still of the elf's corpse by the sidewalk. “…and this one. Look familiar or nah?”
Harridan's attention jumped between the two things presented to her, freezing in the unfortunate position of half-standing and half-squatting. She pointed at the dead ork in the first ARO. “I recognize him. I do not recognize the others.”
Hotrod nodded, adding the information to her notes.
Harridan flattened her brow, staring at Hotrod now before asking the dumbest question possible. “—Why were they in my home?”
“I dunno, I was hoping you'd recognize them. They mentioned something about a fuck-up or whatever. I didn't stop to ask.”
“I assume they were referring to the ork.” Harridan finally squatted down to fiddle with the mechanical lock on the side of the safe. “He did not follow proper breaching procedure and entered the room by himself.” The birdwoman cut her story short and continued to fuck about with the lock that she was having an unreasonable amount of time solving.
“What, he got done in by traps in the room?” Hotrod paused. "I thought there's nothing in there to harm me, if I was the one who broke in and entered." She planted her ass down on a metal crate, watching Harridan struggle with the lock. She picked out another cigarette from the pack.
“No. I killed him before I arrived here.” Harridan stopped her jiggering of the lock and pointed at where the ARO was. “He is the one that stabbed me with the rebar. I do not know why he was not armed with a proper knife, nor why what might have been his team left his body there.”
Hotrod glanced at the ARO again, ears twitching as she recounted the splattering of the dwarf's head.
“The Thunderer is most likely theirs, then. There's something weird about it, though. See the skinhead elf there? That wasn't my doing.” The ARO that contained the elf's still image now played the thermographic footage. “No heat sig, nothing.”
Harridan put all of her attention to the safe for a grand total of two seconds, popping the lock and leaving it closed. “I do not know. Magic is unlikely. Thermal dampening, perhaps,” she stated with all the emotions of a text-to-speech program. “It is likely that they had a bounty on their heads.”
“Probably, yeah.” Hotrod let out an exaggerated sigh. “Now some shithead is going to cash in that bounty after I did the work. Oh well.”
“I presume that they were not worth much if they were loitering around in the Slag,” Harridan stated simply, going counterpoint to the fact that there is a hefty bounty on her own head. “Regardless, it is likely to be some kind of trap to lure more operators in.”
“True enough.” Hotrod leaned back, blowing O rings towards the ceiling. The AROs were swiftly dismissed, zooming off to the side and fading away into thin air.
Harridan finally stopped dicking around and popped the top of the safe off, revealing its contents. There were various Pre-Pre-Inferno CD cases lined up neatly, what appeared to be an old-as-hell walkie-talkie, a handful of credchits, and some other miscellaneous knick-knacks stuffed into the lining.
And, of course, her pride and joy: a partially disassembled XBR rifle firmly sat snug in an enclosure of foam.
She snatched up one of the credchits, offering it up to Hotrod in one smooth motion and crossing her legs like a kid about to watch a Saturday morning cartoon in the process.
Hotrod smiled to herself after getting a glance at the safe's contents. She pulled out her Kyberværker CT-3 and accepted the proffered credchit, slotting it into the commlink to receive the funds inside. She was now 1,000 credits richer.
Harridan's attention shifted back to her rifle, on which she promptly began the process of assembling; threading the barrel in first. She was actually moving with some fluidity to her motion, taking enjoyment in doing this simple thing. “I apologize for the complications, however. I would have warned you of the dead body if I knew that they had not moved it. I was not able to do it myself.”
“Hey, no problem. Would've been too simple otherwise.” Hotrod pocketed her commlink and kicked herself off from the crate. She stifled a yawn when she removed the Hypervig chip from the datajack behind her ear, tucking it and the now-empty credchit inside her jacket pocket. “Right, think I'm gonna head back to mine. Hypervigs always make me sleepy afterwards.”
“Hypervigs?” Harridan parroted, contorting her neck at an inhuman angle to stare back at Hotrod. “I am not going to sleep. I have to ensure that my rifle is in working order. And potentially see if I have further work for you.”
Hotrod tapped the currently vacant datajack behind her left ear. “Chip. Makes me hyperaware.” She glanced at the XBR in Harridan's hand. “I'll leave you to it. Just message me if you got more work. Was fun.”
“You can remain here if you need to sleep and you feel as if you are unable to return to your place.” She looked up from her rifle briefly to make eye contact and decided to clarify to make it sound less awkward. “I am not sleeping, so you will have the bed to yourself.”
“Yeah? Okay sure, I'll take you up on that.” She shrugged off her armored jacket, revealing the plain black crop top that barely covered her inked skin. She habitually ruffled her own hair, not managing to stifle the second yawn. “Just head to the back, yeah?”
Harridan stared blankly as if it took a moment for her brain to translate that.
“…Yes. The back. I have not moved the bed. I do not feel as if that would be appropriate for me to do,” she responded in her dull tone, reaching down to absentmindedly play with the walkie-talkie as she talks. “It is not my bed to move.”
“Nah, feel free to rearrange shit to your liking while you're staying here. Might as well make it comfortable, yeah?” She staggered over towards the back room, calling over her shoulder before fully disappearing inside. “Just wake me up if you need me!”
“I will consider it.” Harridan's tone was still as flat as a soda left out for a few days, her hawk-like gaze holding in the general direction of the back of the warehouse. She pondered to herself if she was even remotely close to being in the clear. An invisible bastard offing operators was a very good sign that things were going to get worse before they got better. The fact that she might have dragged other people into this mess was something that conflicted her even further; working alone was always much more her fashion.
She shrugged off the distracting voice in her head for long enough to flip the walkie-talkie out of the safe, clicking the push-to-talk a few times in a trained rhythm. And then she waited for a response.