RP: Die Screaming [Die Screaming] Glass Jaw Pt-II: Good Men Must Die.

Lupin made fast work of gritting his teeth and tightening the sides of his plate carrier, hopefully putting some extra pressure on that bleed would keep him in good-enough shape long-enough to make some headway. He'd been shot in the chest already, survived a point-blank headshot from the fearsome Deuce, he could survive this little scratch~

Just stop bitching about it the sniper internalized as spit foamed between his gritted teeth, pushed by a muffled hiss of agony. It only hurts when you've got enough time to think about it, so just get busy.

Tobias had re-emerged and hopefully that was a good thing, hopefully the gore on his hands and sleeves was the warden's, the lad was relying on an unjustifiable amount of hopeful thinking. One thing was certain, the collective attention of the guards had been divided, even if only for a few moments.

Lupin threw himself, a little past Molotra's protective bulk, onto his good side. A few pounds of pressure was all it took to empty half of his carbine's magazine towards the guard Tobias was trying to talk down, recoil thumping into his shoulder and bicep as hot casings spilled against the weathered concrete, fireballs spitting from the thing's short barrel. The shots started at the less-armoured legs of the guard's golem suit and worked their way upwards a few degrees in anticipation of the figure buckling.

Warehouse - All

The young marine dodged Claytons quick-shot grenade only just barely in time to dive unfortunately out of the growing smoke cloud and practically to the feet of the new arrival with a slide. He did not rise but instead lay with clear heaving and clutching his gut with one hand and half unmoving.

The medic may very well have sprung to his aid had Tobius not spoken up. She did not speak, though looked over her shoulder apprehensively, thoughts unclear behind the golems mask. Before anything could happen however a burst of automatic fire struck around not only her but Tobius as well forcing him to jerk back into the doorway to avoid being friendly fired.

"Fuck off, pole-jerker!" A voice shrieked at him and the butt of a pistol struck the meat of his bicep ineffectually as Francis Euphoria half hit, half shoved him almost back into the line of fire when he backed directly into the former star empire commissar. Other than verbal there was no actual hostility in her posture beyond the usual misandry, and the pistol was back to being lowered but at the ready, as she turned her sneer from him to look back out into the warehouse expectantly.

There was a train of thought as to Francis had left ahead of him and with-

Right as a mental query cycled and brought about confusion. In his backups, Tobius had the accumulated data and memories backup up from the wardens brainspider that effectively made up the personality of Colonel Hargraves. It was all there, taking up a not unsubstantial amount of data and showing no visible errors. But upon querying it Tobius received... Nothing... The request had no failed or run into any encryption but had just turned up nothing at all despite seeing the data packets right where they should be and knowing it was all there.

There was little time to figure it out when a sound almost half missed caught his attention. It was a sudden cut-off cry and then a foreign sound like the crushing of a large can of meat.

As the smoke clouds grew nothing happened. There were no shots, no sounds, no words, and no targets to see. The only reason any of them managed to see the silhouette was due to the massive size of the warehouse easily dispersing the smoke around evenly and thinning it out enough that the shape was quickly identified by its unique shape and not easily mis-constructed as one of their enemies. It stood at almost nine foot tall with thin at the claw but widening at the thigh cybernetic limbs like a grasshopper or more true to her name; A Locust for those that knew it.

For the others she was Erin Zelegar.

But as the smoke cleared she seemed neither. One leg was perched on the squirming form of the newly arrived medic and with casual disinterest, the cybernetically enhanced newcomer was restraining the armored woman with one of her taloned feet on the faceplate mask of the now prone woman who struggled hopelessly to lift the hundreds of pounds of durandium armored leg off of her face.

The smoke cleared enough for everyone to bear gruesome witness as with no more effort than pressing down Locust-easy crushed the mask, helmet, and skull underneath like stepping on a grape. Amongst the SMDIoN there were fewer sins greater than killing a comrade. Doing so to not only a medic, but destroying the brainspider...

She did not so much as look at what she had done and instead simply looked into the warehouse with a macabre grin that one team might recognize (Lupin especially with recent memories of Duece flaring), and another team might feel was completely opposite of the usually deadpan and stoic monotone of a seinor sergeant. To capitalize on the recent cruelty she tilted the barrel of her SPAID down just slightly enough that even if they could not see him in the smoke the young marines cry was only brief enough that the unnecessary 20-odd rounds unloaded into what could only be his still prone position was considerably more overkill to finish off a single prone opponent.

The fact that she did not glance toward the final marine meant he had either gone unnoticed or was likely already dead.

She just simply... Stood there... Like a horrifying sculpture or statue.

Then she turned her head ever so slowly to the left, and then the right. Her cold and uncaring eyes did not reflect the death's head grin she now wore like a mask. Despite the fact she had just ended the fighting completely might have reassured some, But there was an unnatural apprehension that grew in the gut like being stared down in the presence of a deadly predator.

Not seeing what she was looking for, the grin dropped ever so slightly and still standing amongst the carnage wrought finally spoke up only just loud enough to hear her oddly raspy but now emotion-filled question.

"Where... Is Carina Sanroma?" The question seemed simple enough for those who did not recognize the name, and even cut some of the tension just to hear Sergeant Zelegar speak with enough clarity to not seem like a complete lunatic.

While Locust did not sound immediately hostile, a single person present knew her on a strangely but gruesomely intimate level as still hidden away and out of sight of her seeming eternal partner of hide and seek, a cold sweat added to the sting of her new burns as repressed memories of a hundred simulations of killing and being killed by Lima Kilgee; Locust bubbled to the surface of her subconscious.

Perhaps if nobody had yet realized it yet, Carina Sanroma knew deep down to her core that only one of them would leave this planet; Let alone the next few minutes alive, and if for her own twisted and sick obsession with her, Locust knew it as well and that their terminal encounter was about to begin.

And every single person present was collateral for the conclusion of their shared destiny...

Clayton knelt there for far to long as he watched as the enemy medic was killed beneath the foot of Locust before she gunned down the incapacitated soldier. slowly he began reloading his again empty weapon systems grenades and ammo. Only glancing down briefly to take account of remaining ammo, 3 mags and 3 granades left. with his eyes trained back on Locust. He didn't know why but somewhere in his gut this whole thing felt wrong like more wrong than starting a coup on a prison world. He didn't know who this Carina Sanroma was but he had a bad feeling in his guts that if this thing were to learn that then that person might be next on the killing floor.


Racking his rifle for the third time he rose to his feet. "Ma'am She wasn't part of the brief So we don't really know." He stated keeping his rifle up, the statement was most likely a half truth if he really had to guess the person she's referring to is either behind the door where the new guy slammed it open or with the second team. Either way he'd rather not let the new possible allies lose more people so some misdirection might work. Turning his head to the side to their metal legged Spaid gunner he decided to ask. "Hey thunder thighs how you holding up? Matches you okay over there." he asked the last part swiveling his head over to their other teammate who took a few rounds to the back.
catching his breath from the whole fire fight he should have felt relived but with the new tension in the room he couldn't help but feel there would be one last battle in this decrepit Wearhouse were the past goes to die.

“That bitch, is hard jacking my style, but beyond that, fucking peaches,” Vaishnavi said, hints of her musical accent slipping through her clenched teeth. She used the lull in the action to displace to a new bit of cover. Pumping her own cybernetic legs. She slid in behind a stack of shipping crates. The newcomer had killed one of the assholes shooting at them, but not a single fiber of Vaishnavi’s body considered her an ally. Currently uniforms weren’t the best IFF signal. Blue and Matches (Caff) were her only “friends” here. That other squad might also be “friends”. Usually in these situations, there’d be some kind of challenge and code word, but she’d just have to improvise.

Popping her own SPAID out of cover, she spoke in an imperious voice, “Who are you with and what do you want? Start talking or I start shooting.” Fuck insubordination, fuck blue on blue, fuck this entire shit day. She kept her holo-sight trained on the sadistic sergeant. She was already a convict, what would they do: judge her by twelve again?

Thus Spoke Catastrophe.

"I have a plan sir!" A nasty voice whined from the doorway as private bollrik slid into the enclosed room and past the few remaining marines still upright to kneel beside the lieutenant who was fiddling with the large puck-shaped IED charge that was secured to the wall.

"Really bollrik," He cursed with a wince as someone screamed outside and the staccato of gunfire ebbed. "A cunning and subtle one?"

"Yes sir." The wirey private nodded enthusiastically. As boots, light as the neko were, still stomped quickly and audibly closer as the few live marines winced and pulled themselves together with what little ammo they still had between them.

"As cunning as a neshaten who's just been appointed professor of cunning at kennewes university?" The lieutenant did not so much as take his eyes off the improvised bomb as he sparked two wires together, a yellow light flashing in the small display once to green and then back to yellow.

"Yes sir." Bollrik nodded again, the perfect image of a bobbing duck as he looked from his leader to the piles of dead or dying marines stacked almost like firewood in the hall and entrance to the room. The hole in the hull they had blown to get into the ship was just the next room over...

"Well, I'm afraid it will have to wait." The officer sighed as the light turned green again and he secured the tiny latch closed and turned away from the device which had begun to hum almost imperceptibly. "Whatever it was I'm sure it was better than my plan to get out of this by screaming bloody murder like a madman and trying to outrun-"

With a shriek of absolute rage, the nightmare exploded into the room without even slowing, three armored neko right on her heels as Bollrik hollered and the lieutenant drew his 45. Before he even had it raised a tentacle from the terrifying beauty was mere centimeters from his chest when time froze and as slow as a glacier for a fraction of a nanosecond a white light seeped out from behind them to embrace them. And then faster than the exhalation of a breath matter expanded for a hundred meters in every direction and then just as fast imploded in on itself as everything inside and out of the ship for a hundred meters simply ceased to exist at a near molecular level.

Those safe from the epicenter did not even register the blast before it expanded again a hundred times to size and out is every direction as the implosion exploded vacuum and pressure from the withdrawn space outwards in a blast. There was not even time to recognize what happened as the shockwave traveled out like a wave and collapsed the already fragile shells of buildings and underground structures alike. For if there was one thing that was not considered was that the fragility of the city could not stand a blast of that magnitude and that the surrounding buildings would brake the shockwave like a reef.

At the same time, the ground rumbled a moment later the shockwave reached the factory both teams were in. Locust was mid-leap from standing and laser focussed on Carina's location somehow before anyone could act when the entire structure collapsed ontop of them all in less than a second and all went black.

26 Hours Later

"Over here, got another signal!" A marine shouted as forms converged on the section of rubble and a suit of Cyclopse powered armor carefully heaved up a piece of girder and rubble under the supervision of an engineer and a couple medics.

"Shit, got a bunch of them!" One of the medics shouted and forms carefully started extracting corpses from the rubble.

Not... Corpses... A medic pushed someone out of the way as a groan escaped the battered form of what looked like an elysian if the remains of its wings were to be considered. With signs of a survivor the effort redoubled and one after another nine bodies were pulled out of several pockets in the rubble and laid out on triage while several more were pulled out very much dead.

With survivors present a member of the IPG was instantly on the spot and examining them with a datapad with a frown as he cataloged their identities and crimes. and made immediate notes while to the annoyance of the medics and first responders cuffed wrists together even with broken arms or jellied limbs.

When he reached the last two he froze and drew his HHG on instinct at what his datapad showed him on reflex. It was for not as the medics pulled apart the two intertwined bodies. One was a massive android full of too many holes and a knife embedded in her very eyesocket down to the brain that has set off the alert to the long list of crimes that even a member of the IPG flinched at.

The other was just a girl; Battered, beaten, half dead like the rest.

Regardless he secured them both, even the corpse of Locust, and marked the dead for brain-spider recovery or examination. It was him, his training taking over that alerted him first when he realized one of the bodies had simply vanished. HHG still already drawn he prepared to sound the alarm when a weight settled against his back, a hand on his shoulder, and someone leaned close enough that he could feel the pistol still pressed in his back as a single word was spoken.

Two Days Later.

On board the SickSlayer, the jackdaw class flagship of the 4tf Fleet, a Grand Admiral sat in his private office across a single man.

"This is quite the story to be believed." The booming cybernetically augmented voice of Lysander Calloway mused while looking at a dataslate in his hands as he carefully looked from it to the alleged IPG operator across from him. Still secured to the seat and with his protection detail just outside it would take just a thought for them to barge in and end his life if he so much as struggle.

"All this just to get an audience with me, mr.Kilgee." He growled with humor that clearly did not reach his eyes. "All according to her plan, I suppose?"

The senior intelligence officer of the 4th fleet bristled and shared a glance with his admiral from behind the prisoner who nodded back in affirmation.

"Half Past Twelve." He summoned the ships ACE AI and in an instant the form of a young, early pre-teen girl in a black dress was sitting on the edge of his desk, feet dangling and swining casually as she locked eyes with the grand admiral without emotion.

"Twelve," The senior IPG intel officer got the AI's attention who looked over her shoulder at him despite the fact that the AI was essentially the ship itself and not the avatar. "Report all data packets leaving this vessel to my mindware over the next instance."

With a flash of light in the officer's eyes he shook his head at the admiral and addressed her once more. "Again, if you please, Twelve."

This time the man looked grave and then nodded to his superior.

"Half Past Twelve. Perform complete activation of your secondary replacement and upon completion terminate." Calloway spoke slowly and coldly. There was a pause from the AI's avatar, and even a slight widening of her eyes as she looked back to her superior of half a decade before slowly nodding. Before she winked out the man held up a single hand to pause its ordered suicide.

"Thank you for your service, Half Past Twelve." Calloway nodded, and the AI blinked out of existence. His mood visibly darkened as he turned his steel gaze from where the AI had been to his chief Intel officer.

"The report was the same. All diagnostics the exact same in key locations about outside packet transfers; It was in our systems and in the AI leeching data and sending false positive reports to mask itself."

"I was briefed on the Kiss Of Spring when I was promoted. I am well aware of its purpose though not the lengths it had gone to achieve them." He addressed the restrained operator again. "If what I am led to believe is true, then Abigail Kilgee truly arranged this meeting by sheer precognitive predictions to prove it has completed its instructions just as it did when it predicted my promotion and Delta Kilgee sat before me and I told her that to sanction the project further and endorse it through my fleet when none of the other admiralty or the sky marshal would that I would need proof; That when she told me this very meeting would take place I was more than skeptical."

"And what will you do now, Admiral?" The Intel operator asked, clearly excited about the possibilities now that not only Nepleslia, but the 4tf Fleet would have access to a Macro AI of such proportions and what it would mean for the future.

"I am convinced of the effectiveness of nothing else." He answered, steepling his fingers and leaning against his chair which creaked with the bulk of the man.

"But I am not convinced in the manner in which the results were achieved." He frowned, and even his Intel officer looked shocked. "Were Abigail Kilgee truly possessed of the ability to predict events to this point it would know my next actions and never had approached me in the first place; Take the type-twos' virus out of quarantine and upload it into Lima Kilgees brainspider and transfer her, under guard, back to the vault in the swamp. Kilgee may have gotten the results she wanted but it was through manipulation as much as calculation and must learn the lesson she imparted on her own agents that a tool acting of its own volition against the wishes of its superiors will be punished. That I will not take it from its vault and put it on my station until it has learned from its mistakes"

"And what of the Motoyoshi? By Kiss of Springs's own actions in the death of the boy they were involved and still awaiting the investigation even now. The Motoyoshi girls death has put unneeded pressure on us from a mere county of yamatai as large as the Democratic Imperium itself"

"Another time. For now, we must mind what to do with Kilgees tools." He turned his attention back to the lone operator sitting across from him.

"Most of them, pawns as they are, I will relinquish back to the swamp. Do not use my name officially but send through pardons and alter their records to minor charges and lock the records with standard group encryption at a senior officers level to avoid suspicion; I can not have the daughter of one of the founders of the very Democratic Imperium and an illegitimate prince though he may not know it to shed light on this incident through a paper trail should they follow in the footsteps of their predecessors."

"At least a few of them have connections to her as well, sir." The officer nodded, and with a light in his eyes nodded that it was done. "What of the rest of them?"

"Hargraves was what he was. But a bad leader was not one of them. Any of the injured from the subterranean triage with a criminal record below category-3 reduce their time to time-served and mark them for re-indoctrination by the next warden to begin re-integrating back into society or other marine and navy units, take your pick of the category 3-4's for the group and freeze the rest with five years served as promised by their contract. Any of the survivors from Kilgees group mark as having completed their sentence once healed and re-integrate them back into their units."

"And what of him, sir?" The officer asked, nodding towards the still-silent man in the chair.

Calloway studied the man for a moment before waving him away. "If I turn you away, Mr.Kilgee, what will you do?"

For the first time since the meeting began, Rungo Bungo leaned forwards and spoke.

"I spent almost ten years, and ruined my very reputation to be locked away just to sit in a room with you, admiral."

Calloway nodded, and with a few presses on his dataslate decided the man's fate.

"You are a loyal man, Alpha Kilgee. Until your master needs you it will know where to find you."

And with that a small avatar appeared beside the desk. It was the image of a young girl of perhaps nine with a stoic deadpan and severe lack of readable emotion.

"Good day, Grand Admiral. I am designated H11FFT5-Omega. What are your orders?"

As the mutant was led from the room and the IPG agents swarmed around the prisoner the grand admiral let the encounter wash from his mind as he moved onto more important things as he looked out the window of the ship and onto the world his men now held as the last dregs of the NMX were purged from Ukk.

"Change designation. Your new designation is Half Past Twelve."

-End Conspiracy Arc.