"Oi everyone, get your asses to the Atrium. We're moving out early! Rethar out." The loudspeakers cut a knife through Tapper's quiet contemplation and stitched in a conundrum: Should he continue his search for his proprietor, or head directly to the source of those endangering her? The past hour of carefully sneaking through the wide hallways and constantly rerouting to avoid raiders, sample carts, and random unknown anomalies had yielded no results. Nothing besides mounting frustration. Maybe if Tapper hurried he could reach the Atrium before most of the raiders and stop Zero right now.

He could not. A sizable crowd of raiders had already gathered on the ground floor of the grand Atrium, but the second floor only held a few raiders leaning over the railing. Tapper managed to stash his backpack and hide behind the large rock outcropping of the waterfall, clambering over the top. From there he could watch in safety as over two dozen raiders yawned and rubbed sleep from their eyes, milling about to help wake each other up.

Any grumblings about the hour ceased the instant Zero stomped onto a stage in the middle of the floor. At least Tapper assumed it was Zero, as very little of the bulky humanoid was recognizable from when Tapper first saw them in Fableton. The hand that Struzick shot off was replaced with a serrated claw, almost all of his torso was covered in plating now, and both of his eyes glowed with cybernetic enhancements.

Every raider showed an equal amount of awe and fear towards their boss, except for Rethar walking by his side. The right-hand man surveyed the crowd with a look of annoyance and shouted, "Where the hell is everyone? You don't want to keep the boss waiting!"

One voice in the crowd answered that not everyone had recovered yet from the poisoning and broken bones at the bar. Another reported that the spa was ambushed, and a third voice complained that it was 4 in the morning. The reports turned into chatter, despite Rethar's attempts to corral the crowd, and a rumbling growl from Zero instantly silenced everyone. Rethar looked distraught at his waning control over the audience, until he pulled out a small rubber inhaler and sucked in a big lungful.

Whatever drug it contained flushed his skin and left him panting, and apparently that's exactly what he wanted. He stomped back to center stage and shouted, "You all know the rules, those that can't pull their own weight get left behind! No excuses, no freeloaders!" With the crowd properly mollified, a now slightly twitchy Rethar grinned wide and continued, "For everyone else, the plan's still the same! We got all the gear charged and we'll hit Belvidere —"

"Wait!" The sudden shout lit the crowd with confused murmurs and Rethar's eyes bugged out at the interruption, disbelief turning into a snarl when he saw the source. Steffo appeared on the upper floor and rode the escalator down, standing tall in the super soldier armor from the museum display. Complete with a laser rifle on his shoulder, sleek black and fully charged.

"We don't need to do this! We've been living good in this mall for months now, if we start attacking everyone then we can lose that!" Steffo reached the bottom of the escalator and the crowd parted for his approach, various quiet voices making vague sounds of both assent and dissent. "And for what? What's the point? Don't we have enough?"

Every breath held and every eye stilled on the boss, anticipation building to see how the plea would land. Zero answered the plea with laughter, a horrible screeching that burrowed into the ears like tearing sheet metal and gave a nervous edge to the crowd as they joined in. Ret stepped forward with his hands upraised to say something, but before he got a single word out Zero backhanded him off the stage. "No! It's nnnever enough! Not until it's aaaall miiine!"

"That's it!" Steffo shouted back, bracing his rifle and shocking the room into silence. "I mean it, Zero! Tell everyone to cool off, or else!"

Zero returned a growl and eyed the wavering laser rifle in Steffo's hands. "Or else you'll shoot me? Think you're finally maaaan enough?" He leaned forward, and Steffo leaned back. "Go on, do iiiit. I said, DO IT!"

Everyone felt the force of that shout and flinched back. Steffo accidentally fired off a shot from his rifle, and a thin red line scorched into every unprotected cornea unfortunate enough to be looking in that general direction. The beam sailed wide of Zero, melted a storefront sign into cinders, and the mall blared a klaxon in response.

This alarm was similar to the first time Tapper heard it on the audible wavelengths, but carried a different code regarding vandalism. Meanwhile, Zero knocked Steffo's weapon to the ground and picked him up with one hand holding the scruff of his armor. Zero didn't say or do anything besides hold his little brother aloft, but a voice emerged unbidden within the crowd and others quickly joined in an eerie chant.

"Feed the hand that feeds... feed the hand that feeds..." A security robot rolled into view and started scanning everyone in search of the vandal, and when it reached the stage Zero reached out with his clawed hand to delicately keep it in place. He threw out his other hand and hoisted Steffo higher, the crowd's chanting growing in fervor.

The library of adventurer knowledge finally broke through Tapper's stunned attention to tell him what was about to happen, screaming with concepts instead of words. But it demanded to be heard all the same and Tapper fed that energy into his emotional subroutines, opening the floodgates to the world.

Tapper leapt to his feet on top of the outcropping and cranked his volume all the way to max. "Unhand him, you cur!" All eyes snapped to him, and Zero growled. "Remember me, or has the lunacy taken you? It is I that fought you in the square of Fableton, it is I that poisoned your men within your very own lair! I am Tapper the Machine Mage, if you want a real fight then have at thee!"

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Rethar scrambled back onto the stage, still with his senses somehow intact after Tapper’s shocking display, and waved his arms to get Zero's attention. "Boss wait, don't forget about the securibot! Be careful or you'll damage it!" For his troubles, Zero kicked Rethar right back off the stage, and his clawed hand tore halfway through the security robot in one swipe.

The security klaxon blared louder. Zero didn't care. "KILL THAT BOOOOOOOT!"

Small clouds of dust puffed around Tapper's feet as bullets struck the rocky outcropping. The only ranged weapons that the raiders could pull out on short notice were small personal air pistols, but Tapper's new legs danced out of the way and threw him off the outcropping. Most of the raiders only had melee weapons, if they had weapons at all, and struggled amongst each other to climb the double set of escalators to the second floor.

Those that weren't first onto the escalators had to contend with a fresh wave of securibots that arrived to avenge their fallen brethren, still stuck on Zero's claw. A few raiders attempted to defend their boss, but anyone that engaged with a securibot without numbers on their side quickly found themselves subdued with extreme prejudice.

The chaos and the bottleneck kept most of the enemies off Tapper for the moment, but five raiders were already watching from the second floor and the only thing keeping them from Tapper were a couple dozen paces. Tapper turned and ran towards the nearest hallway, but it was immediately apparent that he wouldn't outrun anyone like this. Curse this numb legs debuff, he really was running 11% slower than he could manage with the first pair of legs!

Tapper had no plan, and that swirl of bombastic emotion that put him in this predicament only wanted to turn around and be the big hero. At least until he thought of something better, he had to fend off these raiders one at a time. His emotional center cheered on and suggested that Tapper 'gird his loins'.

The first raider already met Tapper by the time he managed to brace himself for combat. A felanid male with a small brown mane and a silver-tipped snarl swiped at Tapper and scored a tally of marks down his chest plate. Tapper tried to shove him back but instead sent them both tumbling into a familiar tarp-covered structure that responded with a familiar flourish and a beaming holographic woman.

"FREEEE SAMPLES! P-P-PERSONALIZE FOR YOUR LOVED ONE!"

Unlike his last tussle with these crazed machines, this raider was more concerned with his own self-preservation and prioritized getting away from the cart. He shoved off Tapper to get some distance and Tapper couldn't keep his balance, falling into the display space within the canopy and scattering the cart's contents.

Before Tapper could get his bearings the cart lurched and he struggled to hold onto the cart's edge, lest he fall off and crush underneath its wheels. He realized the cart was busy collecting all of its spilled contents, small carved wooden figures, and when Tapper tossed a figure over the side it instantly changed course to retrieve the novelty. Tapper's eyebrows wiggled, and that hunch planted the seed of a plan.

A quick scan over his bed of novelties gave Tapper a sufficiently rounded figure, which he crammed into his vacuum nozzle and aimed at the felanid raider. Too much movement to properly calculate a trajectory, just pray and "Spray!" Tapper could feel that this was an unreliable course without a great deal of practice, but thanks to luck and close proximity the figure hit the raider square in the chest. He caught it on reflex, confusion turning to horror in the split second before the sample cart ran him over.

[Cat Scratch Raider lvl 3 defeated! +4 XP for participation]

Bowson metrics fed a positive feedback result through his logic gates for dispatching of a thief, but his emotional subroutines felt more negative and he wasn't sure why. Was it for the indirect method? Maybe the permanent nature of the defeat? Before he could begin to unpack those feelings, they were all replaced with panic when a fresh barrage of bullets pinged around the sample cart. Tapper lurched to the side and one hand, still holding onto a second figure, leaned over the edge of the cart. His ride moved with him as its own metal arm tried to retrieve its goods, and Tapper's budding plan grew a little bit larger.

He jammed the novelty into his vacuum, held onto a canopy support strut with both hands, and stretched his spindle as far into the open air as he could reach. Just as he calculated, his spindle was just barely longer than the cart's retrieval arm and it chased after Tapper's carrot with increasingly frantic speed. It wasn't graceful and it wasn't safe, but Tapper could steer the sample cart now and the raiders quickly realized that they could either stay out of his way or get crushed. He felt powerful in his perch, but that wouldn't mean anything if he couldn't figure out how to get on the ground floor and save Steffo.

Tapper was so focused on calculating whether the sample cart would fit on the escalator that he didn't notice his neon-clad proprietor step onto the walkway. Her outfit distracted him, his ride distracted her, and it was too late for Tapper to gently stop the cart.

He wrenched his spindle to the side and the cart's simple computer followed dutifully, without caring for balance and tipped over. Luckily, Tapper managed to stay with the cart instead of getting thrown off. Unluckily, Tapper stayed with the cart because it crushed his hand underneath.

[Injury: Broken hand

Limb is unusable; weapon can be lashed to arm and used at disadvantage.]

A familiar and very welcome face poked over the canopy and the message vanished. "Tapper? What're you doing on this thing?" The cart groaned and righted itself with its integrated arms and Tapper waved Phanya out of its reach. He didn't want the cart to try a sales pitch on Phanya, but while it collected all the spilled wares it didn't seem interested in giving out any free samples.

"Quit playing around, we gotta get out of here while these goons are busy fighting the securibots." Phanya reached out for him, but Tapper was already clambering back onto the cart.

"My apologies, Miss Phanya, but I cannot leave yet." From his raised vantage Tapper could see over the balcony's edge; approximately half of the initial raiders and security robots alike had destroyed each other, with reinforcements for both trickling in from the various hallways. But Tapper's focus was Zero, who was using the demolished security robot stuck to his hand as an impromptu club while Steffo ragdolled about in his other hand. "Zero has captured an innocent, and I cannot leave him behind!"

Phanya leaned a little closer to the edge. "That guy? How are we supposed to — hey wait, is that Rethar? Screw you, Ret!" Phanya yelled the last part to get Rethar's attention, but she squealed and backpedaled when it worked. Rethar made an unpleasant face, crouched, and leapt the entire six meter gap to the second floor.