Room #63
Tsuguka made a low guttural sound as Wazu and Bronzi became bogged down behind her, annoyed at the lack of inertia which had stalled what was originally such an efficient progress. As the carnage grew, it was less like a security situation, and more like kicking the hornet's nest. The damn walls were coming alive. She could hear the machine in the room ahead screeching, not quite defeated by their much too light-handed treatment. Maybe not even alone anymore.
///
Wazu heard a weird screeching, too. But not the same one. Something more disjointed and otherworldly than a simple broken robot.
A
Mindy that was not a Mindy folded into existence about ten feet ahead of him, buffing the thin air with a thunder crack of dissipating ions, shredding up some of the alien moss with it's twisted and uneven hooves. It had three heads and six wings, too many arms and disjointed barrels to count. Half the joints didn't fit quite right in their warped sockets, juddering and grinding together.
The nightmare rapidly spat death from a hideously curved grenade tube and exploded half the corridor back from the direction the scientist had come from, ending any chance of the bug's continued resistance in a single furious volley.
"
We need to break for room one. There isn't any more time." The ill-fittingly calm and concise words of the abomination just made it more painful to look at. It was Tsuguka. The devil-neko's voice. "
Please take these and assist this action, Mister Wazu. I will of course lead the way."
A piece of the horrid shape snapped off in its own hands, righting itself only when passing through some unseen barrier that surrounded the monster. An
ODM 10mm pistol and an
incendiary grenade.
It didn't wait for confirmation. It was gone, back to deal with the robots up ahead.
Faster than it had any right to be, half the time moving in the wrong direction that it's foul body posture would suggest. If the giant drone's dome-like sensor pod had survived the first attack, it still would have had a hard time tracking this.
Tsuguka Toyoe unleashed her fury utterly, finally letting go of any stealth or subtly. The stakes had become too high, and the value of their time too much at a premium for silly notions of scaring the enemy.
A cloud of mini-missiles, a clunking spree of grenade shells, and the rippling energy of her Aether-Scalar SMG ripped the entire room apart. Nothing anti-armour, since they were intentionally armed for support, but... Shockwaves were shockwaves. The dance of shrapnel and crumbling floor and ceiling panels turned the decks in on themselves, throwing off the enemy machine's aim so uselessly that it's AI couldn't even manage a pot shot.
The second one, standing behind the first drone in the opening of the corridor beyond, was not quite so stunned. Not quite so fooled by volumetric tricks. Tsuguka hit the wall and bounced ahead into a lunge without the space to realise it existed, and found herself facing down a hail of laser fire in a point-blank artillery brawl.
Beam glowed a distinct sparkling red as it cut through the dense cloud of flying metallic particles, then struck Tsuguka's shoulder missile pod straight on. Fortunately empty, the beam passed straight through without meaningful damage.
Five meters to target. Another beam struck the shoulder-mounted shield at an angle, melting the molecure tape and causing the KEAA plates to all strip off in sequence, like a deck of explosive playing cards.
Two meters to target. She rolled under the legs of the first drone, obscuring line of sight for just a second. The second unit didn't predict this and took grenades to both it's rear knees, bucking it upwards and onto it's cylindrical face.
Zero meters. Using Aether fire against top armour at this range was just like snipping the limbs from a paper model. It spun out in a cataclysmic fashion and continued to fruitlessly gyrate at the waist joint until it collided with a wall, firing wildly until it was out of angle.
Still more lasers. Tsuguka was informed about the defective aim of the remaining robot by having a suit's ear blown off from behind, then another glancing along the back of her SMG, and a third striking her in left side of the small of the back.
Huh. Couldn't see out of her right eye now, and the SPINE interface was freaking out. Swapping to neural control was easy, but not quite fast enough for comfort. Caught the following laser and maximised the protection by angling her shield right towards it, but the face of death smelled pretty damn close.
Then, in one fluent motion, back under the drone she went.
Gambled that it wouldn't shoot itself in the leg when she wrapped her arms around it, then heaved upwards, wrangling the damn heavy thing onto it's back.
Did she just break her own back doing it? Hard to tell. Couldn't feel a damn thing. Alive and dead, tired and electric, blind and pure reflex, all at once.
It shot the ceiling in defiance.
No energy to finish it off, Tsuguka just lent into it with all of their body weight. A little anti-gravity assistance, too. The Mindy was a second skin, responding to every nuance like an extension of her body after all these years.
A shrug. Knocked another grenade into the second drone just to make sure it stayed useless.
Hard-light talons found their way into the subtle little joints of the one she was holding down, bending inside and feeling out the resistance like a lockpick.
Slowly, it died a death, and at last all was quiet.
And then, in a feeling of euphoric stupor, she was needled in the heart by a certain tinge of melancholy, not being able to record this unique emotion for another being to witness somewhere down the line.
Catharsis.
Time to let Wazu catch up. Then they could move up to room one, and the pincer move would be complete.
