RP: NSS Sledge Mama Ep. 5.5 - I Hear You Like Cats?

"Good, I'd hate to have risked my ass for that thing just to have her die on me anyway," Alexis acknowledged.

She took another sip from the lowball glass and then shoved it towards the Super Militant who seemed to be Robotting the bar just at the moment. Glancing it over, eventually Alexis nodded forwards at Kelly, tucking her silver bangs back behind her ears and giving the automaton a second look-over.

"I take it this one is one of yours, then? I almost blew its head off, again, just to see how many more would wander up here."

With Stripe's help Richard kept the cyber neko still, he was a bit concerned about accidentally using too much force if she struggled and it would all be for nothing, but he could rest a little easy. He constantly brought his eyes from Jerry to Ylfa, his concern written all over his face. "When we get through with this...drinks are on me." He let out a sigh and tried to maintain focus, keeping out of the way but still keeping a hold on Jerry.

Jaime looked to the sniper and raised an eyebrow for the moment, before letting it back down as he spoke. "Oddly enough, yeah. I still don't know how she got through here." he looked at Kelly then back to the sniper. He gave a sigh, "Considering you haven't tried to gut either one of us so far, I guess I'll give a name. I'm Jaime. He locked eyes with the sniper with a slightly exhausted face, his ear had stopped bleeding completely and began to dry. He tapped at his ear and winced slightly to which he muttered slightly over his breath with an odd smile, "Well it still works..."

Bar at the End of the World

The question that Alexis asked, and the faint glimmer of hope that came with it was left up in the air as the Freespacer ignored it for the time being.

"So this is what it's like. Next thing I know, you're going to ask me for a sammich," Kelly's faintly digital voice answered the marine. Without objection though, the war machine poured him another whiskey on the rocks. She wasn't sure if it was even good, but considering that Jaime wasn't complaining, it must have been at least ok. She felt a bit disappointed by Sawyer though. "O-M-G," her voice crackled a little in annoyance. "It was a joke. I was hoping for something more witty." Playing the sound of a sigh from its speakers, the Super Militant that Kelly was installed within slumped its shoulders as best it could.

"I'm right here you know," Kelly reminded them all. Seriously. They were talking like she wasn't even there wasn't even there. "I just cooled down from that overheat and dragged myself into one of these things. Grabbed myself some parts that looked nice. Nothing fancy." She looked at Kelly for a moment after Jaime gave the other woman his name. "You can call me Kelly."

"Hell's Operating Room"

On hearing Yuriko briefly detail her service, Ylfa snorted.

"Yeah, people call that being a war hero apparently," she tried grinning. By now though, she had grown as pale as a ghost, and the grunt of discomfort she gave wasn't entirely reassuring as she finished bandaging herself up. "I can lose every scrap of flesh and live, but, they never said I'd feel so god aweful," the marine admitted, pulling her top back down. Looking at Stripe, she rolled her eyes. "They probably never taught you about blackblasts or concussion waves, did they Stripe? Heh. Makes sense, since everything boils down to power armor," Ylfa tried to laugh. Without the pump, all the guts and organs she had kept installed to try and be human were literally dying.

This wasn't their biggest concern though. As Alec was handed the tools he needed, both Stripe and Richard found themselves in the front row seat to a horror show. Already, the servos were slowly whirring to life, fighting against the massive weight of their power armors, the movements feeble. But her face. The Cyber Neko's jaw slowly opened and closed as its eyes rolled up and about in their sockets, her neck twitching as she lay there. It was through all this that Alec had to open up the cyborg. The covers and bolts coming out, the chestplate coming up and off, he revealed what was inside, and it wasn't the most pleasant sight. Half digested food was splattered about from the artificial stomach, mixing with hydraulic fluid as hemosynthetic fluid slowly dripped from the very thing he was looking for.

Her shattered heart.

"If the lines are intact, just pull the remains of the old pump out and plug in the new one. Red to red and blue to blue. Then, hook up the power cord," Ylfa explained. She shot him an annoyed glare considering what he said. "I'm flesh optional, so I think I'm in the same boat as the Robo-Kitty here. What do you think?" It was obvious; her mood was slowly going down the drain with the rest of her body, and time was simply running out. As Richard and Stripe held down the twitching, dying, nightmare wracked body, a long moan escaped from its lips. Ylfa however, simply laid down.

"Hey. Yuriko. Could you put me back in the suit?" she quietly asked.

Stripes brow furrowed in worry as he watched Ylfa. He tried to think of something to say, to keep her talking, distracted from her plight- but really, what do you talk about while someone is dying after having volunteered their heart to keep an crazy Cyberneko alive?

He let out a snort, as he imagined how she'd react if he asked if she came here often. That... probably wouldn't go well. For him, anyways- Ylfa would probably become the very image of health as she laid waste to him and all witnesses.

"Alexis," said Alexis, "Kimball-Styrling. Most people just call me Arms."

She flexed hers; it was, of course, bare to the world while the other was armored in silvery-gray metal that seemed to catch light. But the automail was black, and red, with stylized muscles and visible support near the elbows and against her shoulder, where it was fitted in to an older-style cybernetic base that looked like it had been installed, and created, during the Kennewis Rebellion. The contrast between the high-yield performance part and the pretty standard old military medical garbage was pretty stark. But, judging by the way she'd been shooting, it damn well worked for Sniper.

"Used to run Alexis Arms back before the Mishhu invaded. Fought my way out of that, lost this, and now I'm a chair of Styrling. Funny how shit just keeps, like, happening to me."

She set the metallic elbow down on the edge of the bar counter, her brief spurt of bravado over as she half hrrmed, half sighed out, "I didn't, like, figure peaceful looking kitsy freespacers would be using my gear to go berserk on Yamatai. I'm not liable. I'll repair the gear I broke, like that powered minigun, pro bono, if it helps. And I'd like a ride off this tub. Someone blew out my engines when they farked off with the robed, crazy robot."

"Hell's Operating Room"

Richard let out a heavy sigh and looked away from the scene below him as the cyberneko was opened up. Blood and gore was something common on the battlefield and he could deal with it when he was full of adrenaline but in times like theses he just chose not to look. In exchange he tightened his hold to make sure she didn't move. He noticed Ylfa's condition worsening but he wasn't sure what they could do, and it worried him that she might not be able to move the armor. "If you come back looking so down, they're gonna think back at Sledge Mama that we just sat on our asses while you did everything." He tried making a joke to lighten things up.

Jamie took his drink looking to Kelly with a smirk, but not saying anything. He downed the whiskey like a champ and looked to the Corporal, "It's your call, Corporal." He looked back to Alexis and seemed to give a worried smile once his thoughts began to wonder around. He thought back down to the operations being done on the lower floor. He seemed to sigh out of time and not say anything, just looking out towards the floor below. He still sat quite upright, and still could get to his Hostile if it became needed again, he just wondered how everything was going on. He jsuted hoped that everything would go smoothly, and no one else had to die.

"Yeah, keep talkin' Tin-Woman," Yuriko grouched after fobbing the implant off on the would-be doctor. Granted helping Ylfa back into the suit was no easy task, even for a Geshrin. "Fuckin' hell, what'd you eat, another person?" complaining as she helped the woman back in and then turned back toward the single most ghetto operational procedure she'd ever seen.

"You want to complain about machines, Nugget? Well, we're all machines. Just she's half-in-half. Organic Machine and Metal. All doctors are, are mechanics for fleshy bits."

"Hell's Operating Room"

Looked down at the components, feeling a wave of relief come over him. "Just like the simulations..." he muttered to himself as he reached for a pair of small vice grips. He gently removed the lines from what remained of the shattered synthetic organ, clamping down the lines with the vice grips to keep anything from getting in or out of them. "Used to be able to do this one handed..." He quickly removed the power cord to the old heart before grabbing Ylfa's.

"Well noted ma'am," The medic tried to talk as he worked on removing the clamps and plugging in the new heart into the cyber-neko. "Just more suited to working with the fleshy bits than the metal ones." As soon as the pair of lines were unclamped and plugged into his sergent's heart, he waited for a second with the power cord. "Please don't wake up and strangle me..." he said before plugging it in.

Sawyer would shrug before offering the woman his hand and saying rather simply. "Pleasure to meet you Alexis. That's good of you to make that offer and I'm sure we'll probably end up taking you up on that, but first we'll have to talk it over with Top, and see what she says, so I guess at this point you should probably consider yourself to be our prisoner, at least until we can sort all the institutional scab picking that this massive clusterfrag is going to result in."

"Hell's Operating Room"

Ylfa chuckled.

"Eat someone else? Maybe after this is all over. That'll cheer me up, right Richard?" the Sergeant joked, her grin rather lopsided. Still, as Yuriko helped her over, it quickly became apparent that she didn't need the extra help supporting the weight - she was more machine than woman now. No, there was something else on her mind. Holding Yuriko close to her stone-cold flesh, she whispered in the Geshrin woman's ear, "The IPG are coming. Try and keep the squad safe, yeah?" As the suit's heavy plates slid closed with a hiss, the body that Richard and Stripe held down stopped moving entirely. The little mechanical heart that Alec had installed efficiently, silently pumped away as red flowed through the Cyber Neko's tubes.


"Bar at the End of the World"

As the marines tried to make small talk in the sad, lonely bar, its sole bartender continued to clean the crystal tumbler in her hands.

"Looks like she's awake now," Kelly remarked.

"Yes. She is," the deep baritone voice of a black painted Hostile agreed. Taking a few steps over to the broken windows, footfalls heavy and strong, the agent spoke down to the soldiers below. "We'll take her into the machine shop nearby if you don't mind." The red monoeye settled on Ylfa. "Master Sergeant Diadottr. You might want to come along too - there's spare parts there after all."

It was clear now. Their trip down the Rabbit Hole was only beginning.

Stripe sighed in relief, getting up and stretching as he thought about what to say. "Right... that happened." he mumbled under his breath as he decided to grab a Militant corpse and drag it over to the bar with a small grin.

"You folks come here often?" He asked as he a heaved the mechanical corpse on a table to take apart later and glanced at his comrades drinks. He breathed in the fumes and smiled. "I'll have whatever is strongest please, uhm... Mech-Bartender? Kelly the Second?"