Chapter 101: Northern Team
4:51 AM August 30th
Yuzhou Squad Alpha-3 (Northern Facility)
His name was Izuki Tanaka, Silver-Grade Commander of Yuzhou’s Alpha-3 squad, one of the finest in all of New California. Together, he and twenty of his squadlings were responsible for fending off the ongoing mercenary attack on three separate Yuzhou facilities. Originally stationed in the western Facility, orders came for him and his men to move through the transporter into the Northern Facility currently besieged by known mercenaries Mirage, Quartz and a droid suspected of being the infamous Iron Devil.
The current state of the facility they had abandoned was unknown, communication was all but blocked off at this depth and relayed only through direct communication via direct uplink to their DataDelvers. Most of whom had been massacred by Mirage, so he had his batch of new Delvers working in and out to solve their comms issues, while messengers from squads Beta through Delta had relayed to them that the situation above was steadily falling under their control.
It seemed Mirage had taken control of the Iron Production line and its autonomous War-drones, but with reinforcements piercing her from top to bottom, there was only time distancing her from demise. However, an asset like her would be wanted to be taken alive.
The same could not be said for her allies currently cornered in the Bronze Production floor, the Iron Devil, Quartz and Stonewall were all being driven back at a steady pace. It had been the right move for Yuzhou to move their forces away from the R0N1N.
Still, it was rare for the company to move their forces away from the mercenary who had made a reputation as their nemesis. With every attack he performed, his supporters emboldened, and the company lost billions in stock. They had the numbers here to take him out, but the decision to secure the asset had been what the company had decided was most important.
“Sir! We’re receiving an incoming transportation from the Western Facility!” One of his underlings yelled, one of many masked men whom he’d trained into this fine squad.
“Any attached message?”
“It says they’re research, Bronze clearance.”
Tch… so that was what was happening. They’d been betrayed by their own kind.
“All of you!” Tanaka roared. “Take your stations around the Transporter! The R0N1N’s incoming!”
“Sir!” His men didn’t question his orders, after all, who were they to even doubt their superior? All at once, his men maneuvered and took positions around the transporter, the circular platform whirring as disks began to whir with life and form a spherical buzz.
Light and dust glowed as golden strands of Warp Energy fed into the machine, bending reality to allow passage between two simultaneous points of existence. The electrical hum reached a crescendo, marked by the drumming raise of his squad’s weaponry towards the settling sphere.
In which a shadow had now appeared.
Then it vanished in a blink, and the next thing Izumo Tanaka knew, his point of view had tilted sideways. His head rolled on the ground as the R0N1N’s masked form slid behind and around their forces, his blade dragging across their semicircular formation before either of them could utter a word.
Only once the mercenary had stopped to prevent his body from overheating did the world rush into place with the orchestra of death finally releasing its music of falling corpses, dozens of souls whisked to the reality in which they'd forever become memories encoded in their Implants.
And as the R0N1N left shadows chasing to keep up with him, all of Yuzhou would only ever be that one day. A memory.
———
Mirage
Digging deep into the sub-Net of this Facility was taking a toll, Mirage was trapped between measuring her physical world and the realm of ones-and-zeroes - all the while taking a host of over several dozen different automatons that would put anyone else’s head at the risk of exploding.
It’s a good thing then, that she had four heads in one skull.
“Incoming DataCleave from Yuzhou Delver Tang!” Midnight’s body blurred from one floor to another, quickly burning digital agony into the mind of one poor DataDelver.
“Anti-Intrusion Countermeasure broke through our DS!” Daylight screamed as she patched over numerous warring tentacle-like apparitions of Warpcode within their shared digital landscape.
“These damn soldiers keep on coming!” Twilight existed in a physical roar of metal, gunfire breaking her body down into scrap as it shattered into pieces.
Oh well, she had many more bodies where that came from. Iron-grade automatons weren’t the best she could do, but it had its advantages in numbers. After all, each mechanical body, whether it was bestial or humane in shape, was expendable and robust. Not needing to conform to the laws of human anatomy lent them weaponry that would otherwise take a toll on an organic form.
They could overheat to the point of melting, and she wouldn’t feel a thing. So, as she called a swarm of buzzing drones to explode atop the flanking Yuzhou guards, they were seared by the igneous metal raining over them.
“Mirage!” Diamante yelled over the secure comms line she’d built. “How long until I can actually fight!”
“We got it into the elevator!” Mirage yelled, taking manual control over the various doors and subduing the Yuzhou comms for the hundreth time — that wasn’t a lie, these bastards were persistent. “Twilight, forget about me! Get Diamante’s body secure!”
“You sure?!” Twilight was always the last to do what she said.
“I’m sure!” Mirage strapped her ammo clip onto the submachine gun she carried for missions like this, but not before retrieving Midnight into her mind. Her eyes grew a fearsome red as control vanished over her body.
“Fucking finally.” Midnight spoke from her throat. “I’ve been meaning to see some real blood!”
Mirage’s voice echoed only in her mind. “Easy there, don’t show too much… Remember, we still have ways to get out of this alive.”
Daylight had to chime in, of course, she did. “Oh but that means contacting Himiko! I hate her, or at least, the old me did? She’s so haughty for someone like us!”
“Hey now.” Twilight had her say in this. “It’s a last resort, just like Skeleton. We keep her out of this as long as we can.”
Mirage mentally affirmed the consensus, dividing them again into their own tasks. Now, Yuzhou began to pierce back into their mainframe, it wouldn’t keep her out for now, but soon they’d have contact with their forces again.
It wouldn’t matter though, once Diamante was secure.
———
Diamante
Oh for fuck’s sake! Diamante’s body rattled as it tried its damned best to run, but these god-forsaken Shandian synths were about as useful as a tincan. He was never letting Twilight come up with a plan again.
Oh, it’s easy! We’ll just put Diamante into an experimental Yuzhou robot, have him blend in with the rest so he could get repaired at their super-secret research level to do some extra scouting! Never. Again. It was humiliating! Acting like a subservient robot, spouting bullshit about broken protocols and whatnot every turn of his foot.
And not to mention, this thing could barely hold a gun! If it weren’t for Mirage spoofing Stonewall and Quartz into becoming registered maintenance workers in their database then he would be alone through all of this!
“That’s the synth under Mirage’s command!” Two of the Yuzhou guards pulled up from around the corner, their weapons heavy on his much more fragile body… except.
And Quartz
Their weapons turned, unnaturally forced off his frame and pulled onto the masked man behind him. Quartz, dressed in thick rags and a mask concealing every inch of skin of his body, dragged their attention the same way a hurricane pulled the wind. With their focus drawn on him, he raised his hands. The lights flickered, all spectrums of light absorbed from their surroundings to feed into him like a sponge.
Everything grew dimmer, but despite that the bullets shot forth aimed at his head. Only to shoot right through the hazy image of himself which melted into air. Nearly a dozen copies of his body reappeared in seconds, crowding the hallway but despite it all they had immediately locked onto his real body.
Such was the curse of being ever visible.
It was a good thing then, that one of his illusions had grabbed a hold of the leading guard’s gun, yanking it upwards to shoot straight into their unarmored neck. The threads of a masquerade snapped off Diamante’s synth form, turning the weapon immediately on the second, guard.
“I’d appreciate it if you acted quicker.” Quartz said through the layers hiding his skin. “I can’t always be your distraction.”
Stonewall erupted behind them, cannoning through the corner in which, true to his name, he tossed bits of gravel which swelled into an honest stone wall. “But you make a fine one boy! Why hide what makes you valuable?!”
If what makes you valuable is every gun pointed in your direction, then you take my damn Deviant Mutation, Quartz thought, but he had long learned not to draw the eyre of those who could crush his head at a moment’s notice.
Diamante jogged ahead of them hurriedly, his metallic joints straining to get where he wanted to the most.
“Diamante! It’s heeeere!” Twilight chimed in his ear just as he reached the maintenance elevator he was given the directions for, the doors opening to reveal a wolf-like robot with strange purple eyes wheeling a heavy trunk that could survive a Bronze-Grade explosion.
Not that what was in it needed protection like that in the first place. With one input of a code, the trunk opened to reveal his greatest masterpiece. Or well, the legacy left to him, the curse he was forced to carry ever since that day.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Heavy chunks of black steel fused and arranged with thick plates humming in strength. Standing at eight feet tall, it was a war machine contained in the shape of a human, the chest thickly armoured to protect the ‘neural center’ and power core, limbs crammed with every type of weapon you could think of, with the hands and legs ending in razor talons. Its head was sleek and skull-like, with a glossy visor of black-and-red running horizontally and finally, crowned with two angular horns at the side.
In between it all, there was a peculiar cowboy hat attached to the skull, but Diamante hadn’t noticed it yet as his droid body began powering down.
“So that’s the body of The Infamous Iron Devil!” Stonewall’s cheery attitude cooed over the sleek metal of Diamante’s most powerful weapon, it was heavy and intimidating but at the same time sleek and rounded to maximize every facet of what the human body could do at Silver Grade. But Diamante was no ordinary human — Metal Heavens had made sure of that.
Even the R0N1N would struggle against it.
“Stonewall.” Diamante’s speakers relayed through the speakers still receiving power. “Guard the corridor, there’s still a Silver Wardrone hunting us. Quartz… I’ll need your help.”
Stonewall clicked his tongue, heaving his heavy shotgun down the corners as he made his true thoughts all too clear. “Fine! Keep your secrets!”
Quartz gave a simple nod once the merc had left, tapping on The Iron Devil body’s chest to open up a sizable crater filled with all sorts exposed connection ports and wires thrumming about. Then Diamante split the chest of his own Synth open.
Exposing his brain.
———
The tide of the battle shifted as The Iron Devil walked out, bullets tickled his body even from Silver-Grade weaponry and his own cannons were thrice as effective at creating explosive mists of red. Once pushed back, Yuzhou struggled to even keep sights, only witnessing a terror of blackened steel unphased by their weaponry moving with swiftness and devastating might.
Then it began to fly with thrusters spewing red flame from its back to begin an aerial bombardment. Rockets shot from compartments in its forearms and all manner of blood and steel was eviscerated into scrap. When one hulking Exo-guard shot a harpoon from their arm, wrapping around the Iron Devil’s waist, all it needed to do was pull as it easily lifted, lurched and swung the bulky soldier back down into their allies.
Talons glowing red-hot, the Devil snapped through the chord still attached to it, laughing as the thrusters led a descent. “You’re in trouble, now.”
But his body twitched, falling to the floor like dead weight. The Exo-guard steadily reclaimed their footing, a saber of energy sparking in their grasp.
“Oh shit!” Twilight spat in their ears as Diamante’s mind readjusted to being in a stronger body. “Something quick is coming! Reboot quickly!”
“What?” Diamante’s systems came back online as he readied the cannons in his arm, preheating them to begin the hellfire.
“Oh nevermind. It was just the-“
“Oh fuck!” Stonewall yelled as something came crashing from above his various stony defences. A blurring figure too fast for the naked eye to see, but not to Diamante. It was one he’d grown familiar with throughout their MAL hunting sessions.
The Exoguard was still walking forward when their upper body fell off, the legs stumbled after. A swordsman stood with two blades in his scabbard, made of elegant machinery patched up with clunkier bits.
“So you came… R0N1N.” Diamante spurned his speaker into making the sound of a clicking tongue. “Dreadwire not with you?”
“Enroute to Missy… what’s with the-” The R0N1N began pointing to his head, but was silenced by Quartz grabbing his attention, a rare occurrence for Topaz’s twin to purposefully remove his cloaking. Quartz motioned zipping up his masked mouth.
R0N1N shook his head as he removed both swords from their scabbards, the motion both clunky and smooth paradoxically, his body had certainly seen better days. “That Hydra is a force to be reckoned with, I’m not surprised to find you all cowering in the face of it.”
Stonewall coughed up behind them. “You’re telling me twice? That thing was built to fight Silver MALs, what the fuck is Mirage doing? Shouldn’t she have taken down the Delver controlling it by now?!”
A voice retaliated in his ears.
“I would’ve, but it’s being manipulated by an outside source.” Mirage echoed. “To be specific, it’s being manipulated by someone who's downloaded a part of themselves into it. There’s no one controlling it externally. There’s only one person I know other than myself that would do that. Well, two, but I doubt Skeleton's here.”
R0N1N’s blades glowed deeper, seemingly etched more fearsomely into the weave of the world itself. “We hunt her down then.”
“Dammit, so Himiko was predicting this?” Diamante’s body steamed under the coolant suppressing his nerves. Though he had never itched more to use this body.
With that, they moved back into the Bronze Production line, Diamante and R0N1N each were a mastercraft at the art of death with their assigned tools. Just as bodies split under the heavy arcs of the swordsman’s blades, Diamante’s various weaponized limbs became a storm of overwhelming gunfire that left craters in his foes' armor.
All to meet the massive automaton guarding this fortress with three Silver Adapters armed beneath it. The massive floating Wardrone, a Hydra, streamed five large tubes in their direction from out of its shielded oblong body, each ending with a plasma cannon capable of disintegrating a building. Resistant to Silver-Grade weaponry, even their armada of firepower would be about as useful as a stick is to damaging a rock.
R0N1N raised his blades, blood vibrating off them to welcome a clean kill. He didn’t care whether his Shardware was one use away from crippling or not, he would capture this fragment of Miss Himiko. Of Amaterasu.
———
Topaz
Missy and Quickshot were quite the distractions, not that he needed any. Sidestepping a whole platoon of the guards, he yawned as they moved past his unseen body without batting an eye. Oh, the blessing of a never-visible form!
Carefully pivoting into a corner and taking ample care not to trip any motion detectors with a careful spike of Twilight’s Datacleaver, he slipped right on into the restricted zones of the research floor.
“Yes, yes, we’re doing what we can!” Some of the researchers were already being screamed at by their superiors, oh, the poor things! Eh, Topaz didn’t really care…
Now, where is Goliath? He took a seat right onto a chair hidden away in the corner, lodging a probe into the computer… and now… he waited.
———
Missy
She hadn’t donned this suit in forever, the Exodus Mk. VII was NeoCore’s pride and joy during the Fourth Swarm, saving the lives of thousands of operatives with its multitudes of functions.
Those had all been removed from her suit by the course of war. A war that began after her time in the Swarm. And to think, another was approaching. This raid wasn’t going to change anything, not really, but it was going to send a message. She was here, and she was strong, she was unafraid to rebel.
She could still remember it, all those voices she had failed. All the souls who had trusted her, only for NeoCore to take them from her. Because of her.
No. Now was long past the time for regret. She had little time left, every action she could make, in any hope that NeoCore or the corporations would listen would be to her benefit. It would either take all of them uniting, or the entire world tearing the corporations apart for humanity to come as the victors.
Because, soon, The Uncaged would make their move. That enigmous bastard known as Mr. R would strike out against the Founders and humanity as a whole. But she knew the pieces were already being shuffled around this chess board, and that the transport of the Gold MAL through The Toxin Club was just one of those pieces.
She hadn’t told Ripley everything about how that particular deal came into play, strangely he hadn’t even asked much about it. The truth was, it wasn’t ever their job to transport it through The Toxin Club. It was Mirage’s job. She had been the one contacted by The Dogwhistler and she had then come to them for assistance, knowing something was off about the package when she couldn’t ascertain its contents.
But that itself lent suspicion to her. Right, Missy wasn’t an idiot as to why Mirage had joined in with them, especially considering her close affiliation with Mr. Skeleton.
That was also why she took the risk of bringing Mirage and Ripley closer. Mirage might be in control of her own mind, as for her Personas? They were individual personalities with their own rebellious streak. If Ripley’s influence as an outsider could change them, forming unique relationships with either of them then…
That didn’t stop her from finding Ripley and Mirage’s relationship worrying, beyond just the fact that romance in this line of work was a bad idea. She had firsthand experience after all, the rush of the danger and the moment of betrayal.
She was using Ripley. She always had been, he was easy to manipulate with his grand ambitions and stunted potential. That didn’t mean she didn’t feel guilty about it.
But as she felt Warp Energy sink into both her flesh and metal, an Energy she never found any joy in, she knew she had to do what was necessary.
———
Ripley
I whipped my Arachne’s arms just in time to strike off the wheel of a motorbike before the blade-wielding rider could lash against me, keeping my eyes straight as I heard their crash boom behind me.
How long could I do this? Between me fluctuating across all of my Modules and sending scores of Energy between my Arachne limbs, Thought Multiplier and guns, this was tiring me out. The only thing worse was that by now, they had to have figured out where I was going. The front entrance would be guarded, and with my luck probably have a Silver.
One of Seven Silvers in the Southern Facility. It was an obscene amount of firepower when I thought about it, each turn of my bike was leading me to an earlier grave. If I didn’t die getting there.
The vehicle was thrown and thrashed about like it was a rusty piece of scrap I used to get my frustration off. Several diagnostic scanners in the machine had indicated numerous damaged pieces by my abuse. And those replacement parts?
God were they expensive. This bike was a novelty item known more for its rarity than its performance, so as much as it pained me, I knew what I had to do with it.
I rewired its engine as I neared my destination, at the Bronze Grade it was a considerable piece of tech that I was dying to learn more about, but some things you realized too late. Hearing the roar of engines around me, I quickened the bike about as fast as I could, the map directed that I was only a few minutes away from the facility now.
Everything hurt. It wasn’t just R0N1N’s Shardware who had taken a beating today, my own pieces were nearing their limit. Even the Arachnodyne, my most robust tech, had numerous diagnostic errors as I pushed it beyond what it was meant for with Hypermind.
The best way for me to survive was to avoid as many fights as I could. To leverage my ingenuity over my still limited combat prowess, everytime I brute-forced my way to victory using the enhanced Energy of a Gold, I was just worsening my next dillema.
The bike’s handles heated to the point where my skin would have blistered holding it, but I’d timed it just right. The tall gates stood proud and large, a battalion of Iron and Bronze guards stationed with their guns drawn on me. One tall and mighty Silver Exoguard raised their holoshield in preparation.
My Arachne tips fired behind me, the jerk pulling me off the bike as it jerked up and flung towards the cohort of soldiers. The heavy machine was still moving fast enough to pulverize a concrete wall, and it slammed into a wave of broken bones and blood before the engine reached its limit.
The last time I’d caused a Bronze-Grade explosion was in that damned club. Back then, I’d misjudged just how powerful it was and sent many of the guests there to the gates of hell. This time, my expectations were met perfectly as the gate rattled under a devastating expansion of heated air and shrapnel that expanded with a mist of red, devouring all those who dared to contest me.
Still zipping across my Livewire, I hailed down a stream of death using my Scrapgun bracer, launching a river of absolute ruin over the guards who were busy escaping from the fiery confines of the explosion. Blood wept across my sights, the blind hail of Iron more than sufficient to whittle them down.
Then, sending my Warp Energy into the golden wires wreathed through my Arachne. I commanded Hypermind Prime to activate. The contraction was so intense the steel and concrete girders of the buildings supporting my Arachne spear tips cracked and bent, my body feeling constrianed by the intense wall of air resistance attempting to slow me down.
I flung across the air above the blinded and shattered defence, the weightlessness should have been marvelous but I was so exhausted it could have invited me to a nice nap. Forcing myself to keep on going, my legs spawned their mantis blades as I saw the roof of the facility growing beneath me.
This landing wasn’t going to be pretty, with my legs primed they met the onslaught of concrete and friction as the blades dragged and scraped my momentum down. A snapping crack ripped up my leg, my left leg’s mantis blade torn off as the shift in velocity upturned me and sent me rolling across the roof.
Thankfully, my limbs didn’t have organic bones, I peeled myself off the roof, scanning down my body to know if I’d suffered any fractures to my ribs or hip. The stealth suit did its job protecting me, but other indications in my feedback of the tool did alert me that it had suffered damage to its concealment ability.
Shit, just getting to the Southern Facility had lost me a bike, part of my leg, and damaged what was sure to be a suit out of my budget. It was just my luck to hear metal climbing its way up, a heavy and robust spider limb gouging the concrete beside me.
My eyes opened wide to witness the Exoguard who’d taken the brunt of my distraction baring four external limbs at me, each wide and heavy — much larger than my Arachnodyne. This was a Tsuchigumo, an Exosuit designed with much the same aesthetic of my own Arachnodyne. In ways, it was cruder, requiring the female Silver Shandian soldier to wear thick bracers across her leg to support the weight.
In other ways, it was much more dreadful than even my own limbs. Heavier, daunting and each limb armed with electromagnetic cannons. The air crackled with static at the Exoguard's presence.
Chuckling, I laughed at what Yuzhou was trying to do here. They were comparing us, a contest to know which out of us would come on top.
Well, I was always a sore loser.