Hiroshi’s doing an admirable job of avoiding her bullet wound. If she were of the right mind she might find that cute, unfortunate then, that she isn’t. She didn’t get any sleep for one, and she’s still reeling over the fact that there are dragons who would gladly flaunt the founding principles of the gang over jealousy. She told Aki and Sasha of course, the former promising to ask Ellie, the latter making her promise not to leave Lost Hope on her own going forward.
She can’t help but ruminate as her bokken is swatted aside and a jab makes its way to her temple. She dodges absentmindedly and goes for diagonal slash.
She did get armour though and about six more bullets, before heading back home, she guessed that anyone who’s after her wouldn’t be stupid enough to go after her twice in the same day. Good thing the idiots had enough creds to get a rudimentary vest and a durasteel demon mask. She’d prefer full coverage but the mask is enough for now. She’s going to need to paint them, so that people don’t get confused when she wears them. Aki joked that the Oni aesthetic suits her.
A slash that she blocks, followed by a jab that morphs into an uppercut after she blocked it. The blade almost hits her, but she tilts her head just enough for it to whiff. She responds with a flurry of jabs mixed in with a few slashes, pushing Hiroshi to a comfortable distance.
What’s she supposed to do about this? Hide away until she becomes a Scar? She wishes she could just confront whoever’s pulling this bullshit directly and put a bullet between their eyes. Huh? When did she get so cavalier about murder? Did adding two more to her body count make her numb already?
She strikes at every weakness she can find, and somehow, there are many. Hiroshi puts up an admirable defense, but anyone with eyes can see that if this continues he’ll lose.
No, she wants to kill them because they made her kill two random fucks who didn’t even know they were pawns to some random game of bullshit.
Hiroshi manages to recover his stride and solidifies his defense while trying to find a chance to strike. He blocks an overhead and goes to bash her face with the handle of his blade, she steps back and sends forward a jab that he barely manages to block.
She’s angry at herself, if she just killed idiot#2 from the get go, she wouldn’t have had to kill the other one, and more importantly she wouldn’t have gotten shot.
She tries to break his guard by clashing blades and copying his manoeuvre of using the hilt to disorient, it works.
She can hear gunshots in the distance, the war has started in earnest it seems, if she can hear it from all the way here. Noise pollution in Arthas tends to mask gunfire at a certain point. She worries for Vicktor.
A jab hits Hiroshi in the sternum, she turns it into an uppercut and hits him in the chin, then she brings it down in a diagonal slash that crashes into his neck.
Her reverie is broken as Hiroshi crumples to the ground.
“Oh shit!” she says “are you ok?”
Hiroshi groans “First you beat me, then you pity me? Truly, how far I must have fallen.”
“Sorry”
“You can apologize by telling me what I did wrong”
Some heat rises to her cheeks “I don’t know”
He squints at her “you don’t know?”
She blushes harder “I wasn’t really paying attention”
Both his eyebrows meet the sky.
-
“So…Ellie responded” Aki says
“Why do I feel like that’s not good news” Alex replies
“Well she gave us a new job. Didn’t really acknowledge your predicament”
Alex groans “What’s the job?” she asks reluctantly.
“You guys remember Gamma, 21st floor?”
“Yeah?” they both answer skeptically
-
As the elevators open to the 21st floor the three teen gangers are met with silence, complete and utter silence. No cries of battle, no moans of the wounded, not even the sound of merchants haggling.
“Creepy” Sasha voices their thoughts.
“Huh, they’re really gone” Alex says
“You thought Ellie would take us on a wild goose chase?” Aki says
“No, It’s just hard to believe a whole floor evacuated in just a few hours”
“Or that the corps haven’t already taken care of it” Sasha adds “This is technically their jurisdiction”
“Well let's get this done before they show up and we get caught in the crossfire” Alex says
They nod and draw their weapons as they walk down the empty streets. The stacks, once lively, for its brand of lively, now stand in desolation. No one walks the bridges, no one climbs the ladders, and all the only lights are the artificial ones on the ceiling. They go slowly, keeping to a triangle formation as they travel the empty streets. Sasha’s invested in a Raptor revolving rifle, leaving Alex as the only one with her Katana drawn. Sasha’s only got two bullets but they’ll probably need them for this job.
And besides, the pay’ll be more than enough to buy more.
Ten thousand credits. An absolute mind boggling number, but they wouldn’t have taken the job otherwise, and proper mercs would probably ask for more.
That last detail’s probably why they got the job honestly.
Alex is honestly curious about what goes on in that woman's head, first she apparently claimed Alex as hers, now she sends them on a job with a very real risk of death. Wouldn’t she want to give challenging but safe jobs to someone she’s apparently sacrificed political capital for?
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Then again, problems that need gangers or mercs don’t tend to be safe to begin with. Ah well, it's not as dangerous as their first job, and that’s good enough for Alex. Hell, her tengu might even be able to punch through the borgs armor now, still would probably die if she tried to though.
They hear something clatter to the ground not far from where they stand, and all of them turn with guns raised. There are a few beats where nothing happens. Then they hear the distinct sound of sniffing. They tense and form a line facing the noise. What emerges is a caricature of a grizzly.
It has a crown of eyes circling its skull, its jaw splits into three, and it has no fur. Its body is twice the size of a normal bear, and has muscles that bulge to the point of being grotesque. Bone poke out of the skin of its back, it has seven claws per paw.. It makes no noise as it hobbles towards them.
Sasha shoots it in the face.
Half its head is blown off and it slumps to the ground.
“Huh” Sasha said “that was easy”
“Yeah, I kinda expected more considering how fucked that thing looks” Alex adds
“Let’s take the wins when we can get them,” Aki says, taking a few pictures.
They start walking back to the elevator.
“How’d it get to this floor anyway? bionic horrors don’t exactly know their way around an elevator” Alex asks
Aki shrugs “Ghoul labs owns a few floors in this building”
“So you think they just dropped their failed experiment down to a lower floor for the laughs?”
“It’s what makes sense”
Sasha shivers “and they say the gangs are bad”
“COWABUNGA BITCHES”
They turn instantly.
The bear is there, head fully intact.
So is a half naked man, jagged pipe in hand as he soars towards the bear.
He jams the pipe into the bears back before jumping off and settling into a sumo stance, or an interpretation of a sumo stance at least.
“Come on big girl, papa’s eating good today” he says with a manic smile on his face.
The bear roars and charges the man.
It tries to bowl him over but he grabs under one of the bears arms, and fucking tosses it into one of the stacks. He cackles like a madman as he stomps repeatedly on the bear's head.
The kids, during all this, have just been staring in shock at the scene before them.
The bear swipes at the man, digging into his chest and throwing him towards them, blood arching through his flight.
He rolls and bounces to his feet, turning towards them.
“Well kids, what’re you standing around for? Start shooting!” he rushes the bear, meeting its charge before throwing it at them.
They panic and scramble away from the several tons about to crush them, which they luckily avoid. “You’re fucking crazy!” Sasha screams before Alex hears her Raptor use up it’s last shot. Alex levels her Tengu and starts blasting while Aki pumps his Ramus. The madman jumps onto the bear's back, heedless of the bullets, and pulls out the pipe before stabbing the poor thing repeatedly.
Alex’s tengu clicks empty, and her left arm feels numb, she loads her last three bullets and keeps shooting.
Soon Aki has to switch to his pistol as he runs out of shells.
Sasha’s…contributing with her pistol.
The bear’s still moving.
Matter of fact it’s healing.
“Nanites!” Aki yells.
Alex curses, if that’s the case her normal pistol ain’t gonna do shit, she laments her fate and charges with her katana.
The man’s still laughing and stabbing as the bear tries to shake him off.
Alex rushes to the bear's side and starts hacking through furless flesh.
There’s little technique to it, it’s not supposed to be used against animals, especially not gigantic lab experiments gone wrong.
The bear tries to swipe at her while attempting to shake off the madman.
Its split focus is the only reason Alex can dodge out of the way, but she doesn’t stop cutting, she’ll have to resharpen the blade after all this is done, but whatever she does, she can’t stop cutting.
Nanites can only be dealt with in three ways.
One, rip out the core.
Two, deal enough damage to overwhelm the nanites.
Three, complete obliteration.
Options one and three aren’t feasible, leaving only option two.
Which means she has to keep cutting while weaving around swipes.
Aki and Sasha are shooting it with their pistols on the other side.
Pussies.
The madman jabs in a new spot every time, likely looking for the core, until the bear finally manages to shake him off. Alex has less than a second to dodge a swipe that comes faster than she can see. Somehow she manages, breathing heavy, ribs in agonizing pain as she’s pretty sure she’s reopened the wound.
She backs up as the madman shoves his pipe down the bear's throat and runs towards Aki and Sasha.“Gimme” he says before snatching both katana’s from their scabbards, and rushing back to the bear.
“The fuck!” “Hey!”
Alex honestly agrees with the madman in this instance, if you’re not gonna use them you might as well give them to someone who will. Alex has never seen a two-sword style before, that takes advanced bionics or normal cybernetics to be feasible. Even then, it’s still less practical than the normal style. Alex isn’t surprised when he proves to be a horrendous swordsman, still, he manages to cut, and that’s good enough for this fight.
Alex joins the bloodbath on the other side taking turns kiting the bear as it tries and fails to kill one of them.
The fight’s pretty straightforward from there, they just keep cutting until, eventually, the bear falls, wounds no longer healing.
“Aaah meat, lovely, scrumptious, meat. How i’ve missed you my darling” he throws away the katanas, leaving them to clatter on the ground, (which gets some yells from Sasha and Aki) and jams his fingers into one of the wounds before ripping off a piece and, well, eating it.
“Gross” Sasha scrunches up her nose, going to pick up her sword.
“Ih’s dehlihshus thank’uh’you very mhuch!” he says with a mouth full of raw meat.
Alex has noticed at this point that the wounds on his chest have healed, not a scar to be found.
“Who are you?” Aki asks in wonder.
He swallows “I, my good sir, am the magnanimous Micheal!” he takes another bite of raw meat while Alex starts cutting into the bear.
“What are you doing?” Sasha asks
“Looking for the core, that thing will net us more than this job by a lot, help me out” Alex says. “You sure we should be doing that?” Aki points at the madman.
“Goh ahead,” he swallows, “just leave the meat.”
That’s all the encouragement he needs as he starts digging through the corpse alongside Alex and Sasha. The core ended up being attached to its heart, it took them a while to find but eventually they managed.
Aki took a picture and sent it to Ellie.
Immediately he got a phone call.
“So” starts the madman “what brings you here little gangers?”
Alex just points at the bear.
The madman arches an eyebrow “You I can understand, but you’re friends are kinda useless”
“Hey!”
“They try”
“Fuck off!”
The madman chuckles “Oh to be young and stupid again. Kinda miss it, kinda don’t”
“Who are you?” Alex asks
“I already told you!”
“No, I mean who are you. Homeless people don’t just walk around with nanite cores, or throw giant bears around”
“Trade secret” he says, ignoring the homeless comment “But who knows! Maybe someday you’ll find out, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing each other again little monster”
“I’m not a monster though?”
He smiles a thin smile.
“Keep telling yourself that”