On Bronzi's heads-up display, the ping that Echelon and Allison were sending was close to his and Enzo's location. Seiren could see this ping too.
"Flattery 'll get ya nowhere, blueballs." Melissa replied tersely over the radio to Bronzi.
"Keep givin me compliments an imma take yer sweet pink arse on a date." Bronzi snorted. Bronzi then flagged Enzo silently to let them now they had a way point to go and check out. Bronzi stood up and grabbed his weapon. Holding it gingerly he flagged Melissa with his indicating that he and his partner were on the move.
"Make sure ya don't shoot me in the arse."
"Get Enzo to cover ya, and I cover Enzo, roight?" She replied. "I can see the greens 'n reds in 'is eyes from here." She then radioed Seiren: "Oi, follow the jolly blue giant - if its tech, he'll smash it."
"Aw, naw!" Seiren's voice crackled over comms. "Can't you send the walking refrigerator to do it? I'm closer to the plant!"
"1 H34RD TH4T!"
"I know you did! That's the point!"
Bronzi hopped off of the roof top effortlessy. His bulk hit the ground with a thud but his reaction indicated that this was normal...and he fluidly started moving. Bronzi began doing a combat run. His hopping strides were deceptivly graceful, and he advanced towards the HUD's position. He slowed only to check corners, but trusted Enzo enough not to bother checking behind him. Not even missing a beat Bronzi ignored the fact that there was a door to the building, and plowed clean through the door with some effort, sending splinters and chunks of plaster sailing through the air.
"I dun' trust the big guy wiv Tech." Melissa replied to Seiren. "Now go! Zeta can catch up!"
"Sheesh! So pushy! I'm coming, I'm coming. Sorry Zeta!" Seiren sighed, shutting his comms off and beginning to run towards Bronzi's location.
He stood in the room covered in dust, sheetrock and paint ships with his gun ready. "At the way point." He called over the radio. Slow advance."
Bronzi lowered his stance, and began creeping through the building. As he passed a room his shot gun and helmeted head would peek in. "No movement on my motion tracker..." Each pulse from his motion tracker was coming up empty. Occasionally, he'd look around the room and see the occasional rat moving around in the open, giving the motion tracker a weak return pulse.
Blip! Then there was some motion behind him. Through the Bronzi-shaped hole in what was once a merely flimsy apartment door, Seiren stepped through.
"Eyo."
Bronzi could smell him. He did not flinch, but kept forward, and confident that if it was something hostile...Enzo would have dumped on it. "Babydoll." Bronzi growled cheerfully.
"Stay behind meh. Don't need a bandit er somethin takin you alive and makin you their woman."
"It's hard for me not to!" The Yamataian remarked, glaring daggers into the back of Bronzi's head. "And I can handle myself, thankyouverymuch!"
Bronzi's tail flicked. He then raised his shotgun to the ceiling. "Arite. So I reckin you won't mind if I let ya go on a head...alone? In the creepeh building...in a town where a buncha people got killed by some other probably well armed people?"
". . . You're a jerk, you know that? And as far as we know, nobody has been shot!"
"We don't know shit. Better careful den dead."
"Says the guy who didn't take a stroll through town."
"Naw, I just took a stroll through a recentally used camp in the middle of town."
Bronzi and Seiren could smell the clamminess hanging thick in the air before them as a place that merely looked like a tornado armed with spraypaint, beer and drugs had gone full circle and left nothing but wreckage in its wake, so to speak. Bronzi and Seiren were used to seeing the fineries of Nepleslian artistic expression such as 'Crude picture of a penis in blue spraypaint upon concrete #1953' and its many imitators on the wall.
Broken glass crunched beneath their shoes as they continued moving, their feet looking for bare patches of floor to navigate on safely without slipping or injuring themselves. A claustrophobic sense of dread came over them as they started moving and the moisture in the building got heavier.
Bronzi snorted a smile and went back to taking point. He observed the art and decor carefully. The stench of back wash still hit him in the face. The noise he was making would be obvious if any were waiting in ambush so he slowed his steps and avoided anything that would give away his position. "This place was a home...after..it was somebody elses..."
Bronzi spoke over the radio, over the sound of running water into a puddle. "This whole set up is off."
Bronzi switched his radio off. A finger shot up that indicated he wanted Seiren to linger behind him.
Seiren sighed and stayed silent, his GP-13 sliding out of his right sleeve. Of course it had to be in a creepy, dark, partially abandoned apartment complex that hadn't seen a plumber or painter in weeks. The ping on their radars had come from one of the rooms in here, but this place didn't look like it had been lived in for a long time. You couldn't tell if the rubbish on the floor and lining the walls was made a year ago, a month, a couple of days ago or just now.
Bronzi pushed on. His motion tracker had not given him anything to worry about, but if anybody was here they could be sitting still. Bronzi's hand reached up and touched his helmet. A visor slid down and he switched to thermal imaging as the slowly closed in on the waypoint.
"So, uh. . . Found anything yet?" Seiren asked, wanting to break the eerie silence that surrounded the place.
And then Bronzi's nasal motion detector could make something out amongst the gloom and the moisture that pervaded the building. It smelled pink. Seiren, meanwhile would notice that there were freshly installed wires on the ceiling, running through their floor - not branching out to other apartments, and just going into one. Bronzi would recall seeing a dish on the roof of the apartment, but wrote it off as just another piece of the Nepleslian cityscape.
"Yea." Bronzi whispered.
"Uh, tall, dark, and stupid. Look up. New wires. In a place that's kinda. . . run down. Strike you as odd?" Seiren pointed out, tapping Bronzi on the shoulder.
"Yea. Explains the dish up top."
They were insulated from the elements, and of excellent quality. Seiren guessed that anyone using them would probably have a ping of 5 if you played
NSS Deathwish with anyone else in the building, and 25 for anywhere else on the planet.
Bronzi pushed forward and eventually followed his nose to a room. Still silent. He had no idea what to expect when he came around that corner. He indicated to Seiren that this was the place. He paused for a moment. Then like a viper he snapped around the corner finger on the trigger and ready to fire. Bronzi delivered his foot into the Hinge area of the door. The Kick was a snap, but his powerful legs sent the door tumbling off of it hinges and into the room.
"HANDS UP!" He barked.
Seiren decided it was in his best interest to use Bronzi as a shield and did so promptly.
It was the room of an artist. Plastered on the walls were pictures, pictures of people, of places, and of faces. So many happy, smiling faces on the walls, disrupting and breaking the gloom. Seiren would recognise one of the faces immediately as the girl that he was talking to just a few moments ago. Bronzi could see someone sitting cross legged in the middle of the room, wearing headphones that were threatening to be swallowed by the curly pink hair.
She didn't seem to pay them any notice as she continued typing feverishly, as though she was attacking the keyboard itself. "No, no, no." She could be heard whispering to herself.
"Welp, I recognize one of those pictures. And she's got pink hair. Either she's a conveniently pink-haired mass druggist, or she's that pink-haired girl that Zeta saw," Seiren remarked upon seeing the girl.
Bronzi just shrugged. Then pulled the trigger on his gun. There was a crack of thunder, and a set of holes appeared on the girl's computer screen as it fizzled, sparked, and popped.
The girl's fingers were still typing for a couple of moments on the keyboard as she looked towards Bronzi: "Oh - its you. Guess what, you just fucked
us all over you blue idiot." Her face was twisting into distaste and disgust.
'Yea. Its me. Yerr data drive is fine, we can get ya a new imaging device if you play nice." Bronzi reached into his back and tossed a flat rectangular device in his left hand. "I'll give it to ya
"Just for the record, I don't lay any sort of responsibility for this moron's actions!" The inventor piped up, peering around the side of Bronzi's bulk.
"That water plant started doing something, I was trying to stop it." She growled at the gartagen. She then put her finger into the VGA port of the laptop, and she closed one of her eyes. She still had a visual on what was going on.
"Go to the apartment, Mel says. More important, she says. D'you know I was just about to head there? One of my friends is still en route, tho'. And I met one of your friends, I think. Aoi, was it?"
"I am Aoi." She said, keeping one eye closed and the other on the two, still sitting on the floor. "You were probably speaking to Yuuka. She had black hair, shoulder length, hoodie jumper with a pocket on the chest?" She described the girl Seiren had been talking to earlier.
"That's the one! She was all. . . amnesia-ey."
"So are Tanaka, Taro, Hiroyuki, Misha, Wakamoto, Chiyo, Annata, Mai-" Her voice was beginning to break as she listed each name. "-Shiko, Kikyo, Billy, Hotaru, Hanako, Reiko, Genno, Sasaki and Morimoto. I remember them because they can't."
Bronzi Turned his Radio back and spoke to Melissa and anybody else on the band. "We made contact. Name is Aoi. Non-hostile."
Bronzi Turned to Aoi. "That is all good an gravy...but what the hell happened to this place? Who did this?" Bronzi looked at the pictures, and it was as if the wheels in his head started turning.
Bronzi was brutish and blunt, maybe even to the point of being seemingly cruel. He leaned in to Aoi. "What are you doing here?" He said with a snarl.
"We came here to party, but now I'm here to fix whatever the fuck's gone wrong with this town. It's destroyed my friends' minds, but it hasn't mine yet."
"I dunno what it is...but somebody put IT here...." Aoi shook his head at him - she didn't put it there.
Bronzi handed Aoi the extra moniter. "Here. Show Babydoll what you know. He is smawt. Knows shit."
"Well, just out of curiosity, how'd you do the volumetrics so well?" Seiren asked, fully emerging from behind Bronzi.
"Its my trade. I'm an artist. I spent more time drawing and creating than killing people, so much so that I wanted to make a career out of it and keep the body." She answered. "I can assure you though, everything in this room is real."
"So you're a ne- waitaminute, not the problem here. So, uh. . . got a communicator hookup for your computer?" She pointed to a wireless signal on the laptop. The communicator picked it up. He pulled out his device and began flipping through settings until he found the right signal. It was the strongest one broadcasting, obviously. She typed a couple of commands in with one hand, while her finger was still in the VGA port of the laptop. One of her eyes was still closed, so it was safe to assume that she could still 'see' what she was doing on the computer.
"Who are you guys anyway?" She asked.
Bronzi Looked at Seiren then to Enzo. "ISC Phoenix II. We're the Crew.-"
Seiren cut off, "-of the phenomonal Luca Pavone! Otherwise known as the world's coolest guy! I'm Seiren! And this walking wall is Bronzi!"
Bronzi nodded, but lowered his weapon. He figured Aoi was not hostile, because Aoi had not shot him yet.
"Wait." Aoi's eyebrow raised. "
The Luca Pavone?" She divided her attention for a moment to look out the window, and narrowed her eye out into the Oil Derricks. She could see three figures, a car, a motorcycle and one of the figures was getting angry with their communicator. "So that's who that is."
"Yep! There we were, reuniting in a bar, then all of a sudden a guy crashes through the ceiling with a smushed nose! He was from here, but he didn't seem all amnesia-ey!"
She was ignoring Seiren as she looked over to a suitcase, popped it open and produced what looked like some sort of tube and a rocket that looked like it came from a fireworks shop. "Oh, him?" Aoi replied as she slid the rocket into the tube. "He didn't stick around for long, and I think he misses his old town. My friends still had their minds back then."
Bronzi had taken to inspecting the room. He sniffed around but continued to silent while the two yamataians bantered. "So what took their minds. Where did yer friends go? Runnin off nekked into da sunset?"
"If I knew we wouldn't be here." She said as opened the rocket and placed a communications beacon in the shape of a sphere into it.
"Uh. . . What exactly are you doing with that rocket?"
"Helping your friend." She said as she pushed the rocket into the tube from the breech. "There's no phone reception where he is. Shit coverage in general. Gonna give him a helping hand." She pointed tube at the window, opened it, and rested it against the windowsill as she tried to get her aim. "Someone light the fuse for me, please?" She then kept her arms completely still.
Bronzi looked at Seiren. 'i'm sure ya get this a lot Babydoll...but you got some pretty eyes."
"Uh, yeah, sure. One sec."
Seiren searched his person, going through many pockets until finally a lighter was found. Simple rectangular metal thing, but handy to have. He lit the flame and stuck it next to the fuse, holding his arm out so he didn't get burned.
Tttssssssssssssshhhhhhh...
Pchooooo! Guided by the tube, the rocket flew out and started spiralling through the air towards the oil derricks, stabilising and making an arc across the skyline of Handler's reach. Melissa had been listening in to what was going on, but didn't expect what she saw to be that drastic. "Crikey!" She yelled, taking her eye off the scope.
-
"I pay top dollar for-" Luca grumbled before hearing the distinct sound of fireworks and looking to his left. "-Oh look at that!"
KABOOM!
From the smouldering piece of fireworks, a more solid looking sphere landed by Luca's feet, he wondered exactly what it was, but he felt his communicator vibrating. He flicked it open to see what it was bellyaching about this time.
Code:
╒═══════╡New Connection - AOINET╞═══════╕
│ You are now Connected. │
│ Your signal strength is: 172% │
│ Your Provider is: AOITAKAHARA@YSE │
│ Enjoy! ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ │
╘═══════════════════════════════════════╛
He grinned.
"Communication is back!" Luca stated happily as he watched the communicator's signal indicator glitch out upon having so much signal. "So, did I miss anything?"
"SH1T'S H4PP3N1NG. SM1TH 4RR1V3D. W3 H4V3 4N0TH3R FR13ND T00."
"Was she responsible for the fireworks?"
"Yeah." Melissa chimed in.
"I ain't go no idear what just happened...but uh...how are things Melissa?" Bronzi said over the radio. "Still up fer dat hang n bang we talked about?"
"Wot, 'as yer right hand gotten some sense into it 'an left?" She replied teasingly.
"With yer looks...I dun think bitchy is the way to go...HUR HUR." Bronzi said, clearly in gest.
"Scott, Panther, hop on the network and tell us, and our new friend what's going on to the best of your knowledge." He then sent Scott and Panther the photos of the medical and perhaps chemical waste he took earlier. "Vita, Ellen and I are closest to the Water Plant, if anyone wants to help me storm the place, be my guest!"
It was a short drive to the water plant, and there were lots of unattended cars with their keys in the ignition. Such was life in any good city in Nepleslia - and even moreso here.
