Chapter 40: Bad Deal

Diamante’s arm was loud, a Silver glow buzzing through with pulsating circuity. “Let me start this by saying, you’re making a mistake… if you’re lucky and smart, you’ll finish the deal with me making it out unscratched. And also, I don’t know when my reputation hit such lows that a goddamn Finger thinks they can kill me. You’re not that good, Razorpede, if you’re smart, you’ll know it's time to apologize.”

The whip-armed woman was named… Razorpede? She snickered, her crimson eyes stoked with a deeper flame of rage. “I know enough to be aware that you’re only strong if you have time to prepare — you’re not wearing that body. And you, kid, what’d you say your name was?”

“Ripper.” I confidently said.

“Ripper?” She tried to hold back a laugh. “Bold name for someone who’s clearly still wet behind the ears, just take the Devil’s Frame and scan through the logs once we’re done with him. Don’t worry, if anything, Black Sand Union’s gonna be happy. Less money falling down their drain if they’re only paying one merc.”

“I’ll… just make them pay the full amount to me.” It was the smartest thing I could come up with. “Look, I ain’t betraying him.”

She scowled. “Tch, Yamato… take him out.”

The gun in my left hand spurned to motion as the man behind her moved like a blur, leg modifications driving momentum that he swerved across his shoulders and elbows until his sword was over my head in a blink.

My right forearm caught the blade, it lodged deep into the metallic shell until the metal had chipped. I shoved the man, pushing out all the Bronze in it to leave him stumbling back. Diamante still didn’t move, either at me or Razorpede, he just stood still.

Razorpede’s whip-arm snapped in his direction, like an enraged metallic centipede lashing out to score his body deeply with legs of knives. Or at least, that’s what I would have expected to happen. A firework might as well have blown on top of him from how many sparks had just been grated off his motionless form.

“Ripper. Let’s see what you can do. I’ll keep her busy.” Diamante clicked his tongue, looking utterly unphased. The whirring of of his left arm cascaded into a shrill pierce, a long cylinder pulling out of it with various wires feeding into it’s barrel. He shot forward a blue pellet at Razorpede that she dodged, when it hit a car — the entire vehicle tipped over as a crumpled mess.

That was the last of what I could see before I was consumed by my own battle as steel swerved to dig my flesh out. My Preservation Matrix kept me calm, any thoughts about to boil up into anxiety quenched by an artificial pulse of my Warp Energy. I allowed the Gold to act up for this, while the converted Bronze flowed up my limbs.

Yamato struck several more times with his blade, my right arm acting as my only shield from such a weapon. The gun in my left hand attempted to initate a few times, and each time I raised it my foe expertly weaved behind the plethora of cars and scrap piled around me. It was only with the Matrix acting up to the slightest sound or peripheral sight that I could react to him pouncing from the sides.

I wished my Matrix could do more right now, it didn’t urge me to move in a way that was predatory. Instead, I dashed to cover of my own while he vanished away, my mind thinking best of ways to survive rather than win.

The two weren’t mutually exclusive. So while my subconscious acted on the defense, my own active thoughts had to deal with the trouble of offense. If I had to gander, his legs were his main outputting Shardware, after all the rules of Accomodation meant that the more Shardware you spread around your body, the weaker each individual piece had to be.

I thought it through, each time he swung, he made sure to take a big step and lean on that force rather than push out from his arms. Made sense, the arms were a more vulnerable area to attack as my own scarred right arm was understanding first-hand. Take out the legs, you take out his true weapon.

So I swallowed up my dry mouth, and pushed into action. I didn’t see him, not immediately, but when a crunch of glass spiked my nerves to action I twisted my body just in time to react to the incoming blade.

He had a gun aimed at me and a proud smirk.

Overclock acted through my left leg, the fleshier right one aching as I rolled away into cover. A pitter-patter of exploding glass and metal trailed behind me, the heat of sparks and rattling vibrations of one bullet impacting my left arm gnawed up the stump I’d only recently started healing.

That had been close. But now he was reloading, and Overclock acted again at my disposal, an equally powerful kick launching me into the air above the car with my own weapon aimed at his legs. The yellow lock-on symbol slowly grew smaller, taking around two seconds until it turned red.

But two seconds was a lot in combat, he had already made way towards me and I was still in the air. It was ironic in a way, that I had to land on the leg that had been broken by my last fall to keep my other one stable, my lack of balance was noted by my opponent.

He took every advantage of it, the blade coming down from my left onto my neck. This time blocking it with an arm caused an ugly wrench of metal that stopped only once I sheathed it with Bronze Warp Energy, my left arm’s lower durability showcased clearly for him to witness.

I tried punching out with my right hand, but he had slipped away like an annoying fly. He stopped just out of reach of my fist, after all, it’s not like someone’s fingertips could launch out? That’s where he was wrong, he tried acting up again, his blade angled to let me know he was advancing right into the trajectory of all five fingers.

I’d trained my aim in my spare time, it still wasn’t good, it had never been. But the odds increased when you could shoot five of them at once at close range, and I’d managed to manipulate fortune in my favor when two of them sparked metal and one bit into flesh.

Bronze-sheathed wires snapped back just as quick as they launched, his chest, shoulder and knee all reeled and twisted out of their predicted paths, some wires criss-crossing over each other to turn his body in different directions — his knee being pulled up while his chest and shoulder were yanked clockwise.

Except, my own arm dragged me forward faster than I pulled him, it was one hand versus three different body parts and force acted equally and oppositely, my advantage being that he was already in motion and I was predicting this. His stomach folded around my steel knee, my neck strained from the angle at which I’d needed to keep it to avoid that blade… faint blood dribbling down my cheek and into my shirt.

“The fuck was that…!” He groaned, his hands still clenched onto the blade which he tried to dig into me. My right arm took the force again, a weaker strike that was easy enough for me to leverage Bronze strength against his Iron hold over the weapon, and I smacked it out down into the gravel.

Then with my Matrix acting up, my other arm struck his elbow to prevent him from taking out his pistol. Five digits expanded into becoming intricate tools of Shardware manipulation, each spawning fine blades and scalpels that dug through the joint and froze it into place.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

A sudden impact into my jaw sent me rolling back in pain. Tears fell down in a waterfall carrying that agony, but it was stuffed to the back of my mind as he came at me again. One of his elbows was locked stiff, the other swung loose, but he failed to notice the truth of my past actions.

The Founder of Yuzhou had once famously said that a war could take years to end, it being the culmination of all the battles that took place in it. A battle could take a few minutes to a few hours, until all the souls on only one side remained. And a soul took only seconds to either live, or perish.

Five fine threads still bound us together, while my left arm had gone for his elbow, my right latched on his legs. With a Bronze fueled tug, I swept him off balance mid-stride, then I activated my Energized protocol through each string. Warp Sink.

I’d seen a little of what it could do on the coffin, it was a massive slap of my Warp Energy into neural-wiring. I’d tested it out a couple of times on other Shardware, and if I’d used my Gold then the Iron Grade legs would probably short circuit due to a low Integrity.

Except I’d switched over to Jailbreak the second I’d leaped above that car. And now…

Mimicking complete, you now have access to the Feature Jailbreak V.1.00

My Bronze swept through both limbs like a high tide over a poorly planned beach house, drowning the Iron Energy he fed them and wrestling them into nothing but weight dragging him down. His body skidded on the floor, his left arm locked in place and his right failing to do a one-armed pushup.

I strode around his body, standing on the opposite side of his working arm’s attempt to flail that machete… it was kind of pathetic. A quick shot from my right index finger struck his elbow, just as quickly pulsing Bronze in it to freeze in place… then I held up his sword, both of his eyes glistening as the weight of his life weighed above him.

“Don’t kill him, Ripper… just take some souvenirs.” Came Diamante’s calm voice, lazily swatting away one or multiple lashings from Razorpede’s deadly arms. His trenchcoat was scratched off to expose the bulky robotic body underneath, completely unharmed, and he only shot out as though he was trying to keep the woman at bay rather than kill her.

“Souveniers?…” I asked, but Diamante responded as though I’d asked a different question, but it still explained my own well enough.

“Better to have them go back with a lesson, it’s unlikely they’ll willingly tell the others not to mess with us. We need them to show why.” Diamante laughed, taking a beating as he explained.

“Got it!” I raised my thumb, which sparked into three blades along with my other fingers. My hands plunged down to take the spoils of battle. I was rough with my work, mostly dislocating the joints near his hips, it was the muscles he had that were extraordinary.

Then just for show, I swept up his machete, it seemed to be a bit of External Shardware. The man sobbed silently through the process, and it kind of dug through me deeper than if I had just killed him outright.

Was I really going to kill him? The thought shivered through me, in all my other fights they hadn’t ended until my attackers were dead so it troubled me just how naturally I’d assumed that to be the case here.

“Now Ripper? You want to help me out here?” Diamante said, blocking a red blade with his face.

I stared at the woman, her entire body twisted in fury that swung out her two-meter-long arms which formed a shifting mass of iron ribbons that deflected off my ally’s body. They moved too fast for me to track, and she seemed so deadly intent on killing Diamante that she didn’t even register that I'd taken out her ally.

“Do I uh… have to? You seem to have this pretty figured out.” Yeah those fingernails looked sharp, and even the sides of her metallic plates had jagged edges that could pierce me in a second.

“She’s got a Protocol that keeps her only on one foe. Just give me a suitable opening.” He said as he lazily shot a bullet, whizzing inches from her ear.

Okay… so a test of sorts. I took sight of everything about her, Bronze Energy chaotically spasming out every corner of her Shardware, all focused on her back and arms that thrashed about like rabid centipedes. I could try sweeping her off her feet, but the lashing from each blade was a tornado of metal I wasn’t sure I could pierce…

An idea floated in my head… if she wasn’t focused on anything I did… then… yeah, if I stood far enough that she couldn’t see it. I tapped the Neuroframe of my fallen foe, a fiery spark from my finger digging deep until I melted and fried his frame so he wouldn’t be awake to see it as well.

Then I walked around to a suitable position, leisurely taking my time to aim up my claw as I braced my metal leg against a car’s door. It was good my knee was reinforced, because this was going to hurt. Five claws shot and they all dug into metal, past her back and into a car’s hood.

“Ripper… you missed.” Diamante deadpanned me, letting a surge of blades whack against his head. They ricocheted and cleaved through another vehicle with ease.

“Just watch.” The Golden wires began to snap back to me, my foot digging deep into the door as the hood of the other car snapped off, slamming into her body and knocking her down like she’d been hit by a meteor. Then the slab of metal rattled into my car.

“Ow.” I puffed as my knee stung with the impact, which fortunately freed my tips out of the hood as they clicked back into place on my right hand. “That work?”

“Uhh… sure.” Two shots from his transformed arm blew into her legs, metal chips spraying into the air. Then he kicked her in the face, the metallic eyes rolled up until they were a void of black in her sockets. “Feel free to scavenge.”

I did just that, carefully prying out both arms from her body… each weighing a considerable amount. It took a few minutes loosening all the intricate locks that kept it together, and I was a bit nervous that she’d wake up so the dismantling wasn’t the best.

Then as I was done loading them into the trunk of our car, I surveyed the scene which was kind of humorous in retrospect. A guy with no legs and a girl with no arms… yeah, that would definitely show Crimson Soul. Diamante scavenged out a Datacube, laughing hysterically the whole time even as we got seated in the car.

“Oh Delilah’s gonna have a field day when they get back.” He started the engine, while I propped up an eyebrow.

“Who’s Delilah?”

“The woman who hired us to beat them down.”

“I thought you said it was Black Sand Union who hired us… don’t they have a policy of secrecy? You sure you should be sharing their name out loud.”

“Oh yeah no, it’s not Black Sand Union who hired us. Besides, if you were hired by them… you wouldn’t even know it. They work through fixers, not direct contact.” We began to drive out onto the highway, this would be a long drive back so hopefully my confusion could be abated.

“Then where’s Delilah from?”

“Take a guess.” He continued driving.

…

…

…

“Did Crimson Soul hire us to beat down their own goons?” It was the only possible outcome where we didn’t start an immediate gang conflict.

“Oof, I was really hoping you’d continue to make a fool out of yourself.” Well, that confirmed it.

“You going to tell me why? Or should I guess it myself?”

“Tch, I’ll entertain your tiny brain today. Delilah’s their boss, you see, Razorpede and Yamato have a habit of trying to make extra Shardyne during any deal they try and work out. Puts alot of jobs at risk, and with the Crimson Soul’s last big transfer getting busted that meant it was even worse. So Delilah organized a whole fake deal, made sure that at some point they had seen my bounty and just loaded the cube with a bunch of porn instead.”

“So we were sent to knock some sense into them? All gigs… like this?” I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointment.

“Nope. We were hired to discipline them, pretty sure you’ve learned now that the best way to learn the consequences is by experiencing them.” Diamante looked at my left arm through the rearview mirror.

“Yeah… okay but why keep this a secret from me?”

His metal throat boomed with steeled joy. “Because it was fun seeing you so freaked out. Gotta bully the rookies a little bit!”

“Fun?” I turned my head to the window, staring at the passing road-signs with a slight smile on my face. “Maybe.”