RP: ISC Phoenix [Interlude 5] - The Making Of

Upon landing the little droid skidded ungainly to a stop, quickly it reorientated and looked around, when it saw Luca on the ground it reached into this chest cabinet and pulled out a small first air-kit as it ran to the scene on its short legs.

"Ernie requests calm! Ernie has medical sup-" that was when Aerin took off. Leaving Ernie, whose sole purpose in the universe now was the protection of the man she was carrying, behind.

The little droid paused as its sensor cluster tracked their progress, making a distinct whirring sound as it thought. Finally, he threw its medkit back in its chest and seal it with a snap before marching over the the fallen Fake Luca and shunting the dildo from earlier into the corpses mouth.

"Ernie reports property has now been returned." It announced simply before folding down into its suitcase form as if sulking while it thought about how it was going to get back to its Primary buddy.

"Nah, Uriel, you should knows dis," Enzo lectured, swooping in closer on his airbike, "Lifetime o' sufferin' is worse thans a moments o' pain. Where's yous cold logic now, Feathers? Juss cuts on him and let me nabs 'em."

Enzo kept a polite tone as he slowly slipped between the two of them at an awkward angle, and snatched at the lapel of the wounded mobster.

"Besides," Enzo added. His voice started to travel downward while his lips curled into a wicked smile, "Who knows what ole' Enzo will do if he has to does anudder job what don't pays him for his work?"

Zeta sat on the ground. She was deep in though and only let Aerin off with a nod. She was mad at herself, at the ID-Sol that hurt Luca and at all world. Mostly on herself though, she knew he wanted to do this alone. She was still supposed to be by his side all this time, but she was not. She messed up big time. It was not even for first time she did this. What kind of bodyguard is she? Zeta felt that she was just a joke.

She took a deep breath and tried to focus on something else. If Luca saw her brooding like that, he would probably smack her. She slowly stood up and looked around. Smith was there but he could not help her with what she had in mind. Little robot could though. She walked to him and knocked on him.

"Hey little robot. Can you scan for explosives or something? We need to get the explosives off before they can set them off." She said to small robot.

As Zeta knocked a small hatch in the front slid open and the familiar robotic sensor cluster peaked out. It listened to Zeta before transforming back into its mobile form.

"Ernie will commence scanning for explosive devices." It announced, before walking all of two feet to the detonator that Fake Luca had been holding, grasping the wire trailing from it, yanking it out and beginning to trail it towards the statue.

"Ernie welcomes all possible assistance." The robot said as it marched off.

"Well let's do this little buddy," Zeta said and followed wires too. She wondered if there will be one bomb or many small ones. SHe also hoped there was no timer, but that would only mean that they fought someone really dumb this time. No. There will definetly be timer.

Neither prospect seemed too good to the One Zero. Die by the hands of a physical manifestation of justice, or be put behind bars and suffer death at the hands of a judicial system and lose his credibility as a gang banger, to be forever heckled and eventually killed by his own men or executed by the police.

Either option didn't seem too good for One Zero, and instead, he reached for his grenade launcher and upturned the tube towards his chin whilst his other hand tried to fiddle for the trigger despite his shoulders being cut open.

If he were to succeed, he'd be beyond unrecognisable.

-

The stimulants in Luca's system were kicking in and his eyes opened at the worst possible moment - in the arms of what could be mistaken for an angel wearing a custom-fit Impulse rapidly ascending towards a space ship. He had no choice but to flail and yell: "Dagnabbit, I thought I was on my way to Valhalla!" Alas, he was instead being escorted to the SS Raider.

He then found himself set down on a gurney and escorted to a med bay as the doctors chittered about how to approach the situation and took flash X-Rays and administered drugs to knit bones and numb the pain.

"...did I mention his ribs look like gravel?" The head medic then turned his attention to the patient, "How the hell are you conscious?"
"Because," Luca smiled.
"Moreover, why are you talking?"
"Because I can, and I need to keep leading my team - even from afar. I've had worse, anyway," He sighed listlessly as he rested his head into the pillow, "Plus, you're pumping me full of painkillers. Its not a foreign sensation to me."

The medic looked worried, "Just TRY to stay back and recover, okay? You have a compound fracture in your forearm, six of your ribs are broken, and yet you're still able to hold friendly conversation!" He tapped Luca's head indignantly. Luca frowned and eyed the finger tapping his skull, "What the hell went wrong when they were wiring your brain?"

Fine... "Zeta, Smith, dismantle and hurl the explosives into the water! Quickly!" Luca was quick to command from his bedside. He heard a familiar crackling happen on his end of the line.
"I return." Echelon's electronic bandsaw voice said, "There was some slight interference at the Crimson Kestrel. The threat has been neutralised."

"Define slight interference," Luca said, balancing his communicator on his chest and putting up the video feed of Zeta's helmet camera, "Where's that little droid you promised me?"
"Patching his camera to you now..."
"Wait, what about-"

Luca could see the little droid following wires in first person, and making note of them in space, "Hey, uh, droid thingy - keep it up. You're doing a good job." It was a little hard to muster the enthusiasm with crushed ribs and from bedside rather than out and with them.

He then looked to Aerin, who was probably following him: "Get back down there and help the others. I want to make sure that if the bomb DOES go off, it at least goes off in the water, where less harm will be done."
He then sighed and gave her a headlong glance, "Besides, I'm in no shape for you now."

That's when Zeta discovered something. One last failsafe: There was a timer and some sort of convoluted detonation mechanism filled entirely with red wires. The timer said that there were two minutes, thirty six seconds left to go. There were six bombs to hurl into the ocean, each of them were the size of a barrel, and smelt of petrol - simple ANFO explosives with the detonators sticking into them.

Zeta whistles when she was all the bombs. Six barrels and only some two minutes to get them all out. She ran to the frist barrel and picked it up, even with PA she could feel that it was heavy. It was still bareable though.

"Okay, Smitty start dragging the barrels to the edge and I will start ferrying them into the water. Ernie you get on radio and tell cops or somebody to stay clear from the island. THere will be big boom in the water!" She said to others, then picked turned back and flew away on her way to dispose of the first bomb.

"Explosives acquired." the little droid reported somewhat redundantly when they arrived.

The robot turned and watch Zeta fly off before suddenly making modem noises, it's sensor cluster refocusing like crazy as stuff began happening behind the scenes. It felt the return of Echelon into its network and gave the closest a robot could to a relieved welcome.

Quickly it asked Echelon to patch it into the teams radio, it then inquired into its new Primary Buddy's status. Satisfied with the answers it began trying to getting a handshake and connection to the city management AI network. All of this happened in a split second.

After a few seconds the droid reported back to Zeta. "Miss Five, the city is currently in some disarray due to large-scale violent activity. I was unable to ensure a response from emergency services, however a bulletin has been logged."

Ernie then turned to the mass of wires in the middle of the room. It requested to download a bomb defusal function through Echelon and examined the device further.

Echelon was more than happy to hurl a bone to the little robot, so to speak.

"Uploading now... would you like to learn kung-fu as well? Maybe Tantric Massage? Disc Jockeying? Voice acting? I can give them all to you..." Ernie would suddenly find his speakers involuntarily playing freespacer music - electronic and so heavy on undulating bass that sometimes, it would feel like you were having a brick shoved through your ears lengthwise. It played for all of a few seconds before stopping. "Hee hee. Don't worry. You can disarm explosives now - make them too..."

"Echelon, what did you mean by 'slight interference' anyway?" Luca asked again, trying to get her attention. He could hear every word she was taunting the droid with.
"You will want to bring a cleaning crew. I do not know how we can reach the ceilings of the cargo bay and with all of the blood caked on them..."
"WHAT?!"

"Woah, hey, smart-guy!" Enzo swooped around on the airbike and stuck a firm heel over the barrel of the massive weapon being drawn painstakingly up to One Zero's face and nudged it off to an angle.

"Dissus betweens the twos of us, you don't getta say'nit, pal."

"Oh, so you're the one giving orders this time?" Aerin cracked by, a grin on her now unhelmeted face.
"I guess I can understand the importance of not blowing up expensive things unless they are enemies though, so I'll be on it" the CEO conceded, throwing her helmet back on (How she got her hair in without trying was a mystery) and then rushing out of the med-bay. She had somehow tacked into the communications though, and told Luca "You keep in touch- Anything you guys need, tell me and I'll see what I can do, though somebody's paying for the stuff you guys have nicked from my hangar."

Soon, she was out of the ship again and headed down to the statue like a bullet, searching for a bomb to remove.

Ernie wasn't used to speaking to other machine entities in analog speech, it kept its transmissions strictly digital. It was only a little droid after all, it didn't really understand taunting or humor.

Instead, Ernie got to work trying to defuse the giant ball of wires with the countdown in the middle of room. Ernie instantly coming to the decision to ditch the first step of his new guide telling it to "Cut the red wire."

As Zeta and the little droid marched off after the explosives, Smith did the smart thing; get a wheelbarrow from the under-construction site. It wasn't even hard really, but by the time he arrived, the Ori-Rep couldn't help but mentally groan.

He watched as Zeta hefted one of them - big, giant explosives that had to weigh at least a hundred pounds each. "Of course Miss Five." At that, he laboriously hefted one of the explosives into the wheelbarrow, the veneer of the implacable-man-in-black breaking to reveal a person who's back strained like any normal person's would.

As he panted upon placing the first explosive into the barrow and began to push it away, Smith braced himself for a sharp, witty remark that would demean him or other. Only, it didn't come - Naoko was sound asleep aboard the ship, not even caring if they succeeded like the cat she was. Unlike Dogs, the Cats often tended to have no true loyalty combined with minds as sharp and perceptive as can be. A dangerous combination.

Even though the two didn't talk to each other much, even today, she always did find just the right words to say at just the right time. As odd as it was, Smith had to admit that he was caught off guard by the lack of her remarks as he got ready to dump the first explosive over the edge.

Like it or not, he'd simply gotten used to her. It wasn't that different from old times, now that he thought of it. Not that different at all. His attention then suddenly came back to the now as he stubbed his toe through his immaculately black shoes, marring the leather. Smith looked up again and followed Zeta more carefully to the edge, silently staring at her back.

"Are you alright Miss Five?" he then decided to ask - now that Smith thought of it, he wasn't the only one who seemed to be stewing in his own juices. Was she angry that Luca had gotten hurt? She may have been his body guard, but the man was alive, right? That meant that Zeta would get paid despite this little slip up. "Even if Luca deducts a little from your pay since he got hurt, it'd should still be a sizable amount, if that's what's bothering you," he spoke coolly.

Zeta just ditched the first barrel into the water at least 30 meters from the shore and flew fast back. It seemed Ernie was trying to defuse the bombs. Risky, but it could pay out. She flew as fast back as she could, which was pretty fast with assault-bag. She flew to see Smithy draggin one of the barrels. What he said seriously ticked him off.

She strode to him and took the barreld from him. She was silent, but her faceplayte neared his face. She would almost like to put her helmet off.

"You are lucky I am so busy or otherwise you would loose few teeth you bugger." She told him with grave voice. "If you think I am worried about money then you would deserve worse." She added and then turned around and took off.

Uriel frowned at Enzo. Really, of all of the times for them to come to a head, it was now? Even so, logic could still prevail. "You make wealth enough for a family of six to live luxuriously. You're likely to earn a stipend for all this civil duty, I doubt Luca would let us go empty-handed for saving his public face, and I can't imagine you let anything valuable out of your sight: that casino was quite lavish, if not pornographic. And yet you still beg for more?"

"Men and women have lost their lives for this man's desires and decadence. My decision stands." Then to the Zero: "Your time is up; a shame you wasted it on silence and attempted suicide." His free hand drew the Tiger's Tears, pointed the massive barrel at the Zero Boss's head and pulled the trigger twice.

Enzo spent every ounce of strength to keep from snarling at Uriel over his claims. He actually lost his composure when Uriel pulled the trigger, cutting his bounty down to the 'dead' option. He took his own Tiger's Tears to the freshly shot up One Zero and filled the chest with hot firey postmortem mortem while growling lowly with barred teeth. Then, with a swoop and a kick, he pulled the body onto the airbike and hung it over the fuselage giving Uriel the same look as a Wolf staring down an intruder in its den.

"Why you dirty, hypocritical, self-righteous Elysian c***-nosed bitch!" His accent disappeared almost completely in the furious ranting, "How dare you pretend you are any less selfish than me! You were just pissed off because he duped you, and that's all. That's what I never liked about you religious book-slappin' sons of bitches! You use that dirty little book as an excuse to get what you want and you know it! Your god isn't watching! He ain't lookin' at any of us! He isn't real! He's just a big stupid fairy-tale made up so your people can put their boots on anything and everything and pretend it's all okay."

Enzo gunned the accelerator on his airbike, but the transmission wasn't in gear, so the bike just rose slowly and whined loudly under the stress the enraged vagabond was putting on it.

"Don't you ever talk to me for any reason, you pompous shit-for-a-dick!"

The whining grew so loud that his final words were barely recognizable over the sound of the engines, "Or so help me, your god, I will drug you in your sleep and tear every single one of your feathers out one by one and take a fuckin' shit on your face."

And then, just like that, Enzo kicked the bike into gear and zoomed off towards the horizon, in the opposite direction of the Raider or anything really of interest.

Well, that was... Uriel wasn't quite sure what adjective to use. Colorful, exciting, childish, and so on; it was hard to pick just one. That said, he silently vowed to do just as Enzo had asked: the Elysian and Nepleslian would never again speak to each other.

Uriel still couldn't suppress a smirk though: Enzo had taken the body, which could only mean he still intended to turn the man in for a bounty. All that anger because Mr. Hisshana cut Mr. Bortelli's bounty in half. How greedy could a person be?

No matter. That was settled, most likely for good. The Patrician cleaned his blade, sheathed it, and replaced the two spent shells in his revolver. Then he rose to the air once more, seeking the rest of the team. He found them not far away. He came to rest beside Zeta- or at least he would have if she hadn't taken off in such a hurry. He was left alone with Mr. Smith.

"What's the situation here?" he asked.

Aerin flew over the heads of Smith and Zeta, Tossing her burden in the bay before flying back towards the now arguing duo. "You know, Smith, there are things beside money that people find important- sometimes it's objects, sometimes sex, sometimes people. Let her worry about what she wants to worry about, and you can worry about money." She stopped her hovering, and landed on the ground. "I should hope one of my most senior representatives would be more sensitive than that." The CEO shrugged, then got back to work- running to the nearest bomb and working at hefting it so she could ferry it to the bay.

"It's all clear here Mr. Hisshana. We're just performing bomb disposal now since they seem to be rigged to a timer as well as remote detonators," the Origin representative explained, continuing to roll his barrow back to the clusters of explosives. When Aerin spoke however, he came rapt to attention and listened to every word she said.

"Of course Miss Tatst," Smith professionally replied. For him, money was just a means to an end - it wasn't the end all, be all for Smith like it was for some fools. But it was still pretty damn important. With it, he could buy things people took for granted - food, water and safety. Even more importantly, a future could be bought as well. Not for himself though. As Smith loaded up his wheelbarrow again with another one of the large explosive charges, he looked at the larger power armored woman.

"I hope you don't mind me asking Zeta, but if that's not important to you, what is?" Smith asked her with a hint curiosity in his voice.

The wheel on his barrow was now squeaking as he set off to discard the bomb.

Then the Patrician was no longer needed. "Take care," he said in farewell and took flight yet again. All this flying was becoming tiresome and he was more than a little excited to let his sore shoulders rest.

Before that, however, there were prayers to be given, forgiveness to be requested, and sins to count. He felt uncomfortable doing so on the Origin ship as it lacked a place of solitude.