Collab post
Oh. Shit.
Barely half an hour in and he had made a mistake. Miles, in his weird mansplaining of a monologue, was at least a little bit right. His gun was also impressive. At least impressively scary, but how much heat was it really packing? He watched it load in all its energetic glory, his brain going a mile a millisecond. Could he take that shot, in the face?. His craneal armor was a black box, but there were orifices for the optic nerves and shit, so he was going to at least turn his head and throw the tea in his face when he heard- yes! a dream come true.
Immediately, his ears turned forward sharply and he looked past Milo to the darkness outside. His eyes focused on an apparently random spot.
“Point that behind you right fucking now, I heard company!” He said, very fast. Unexpected company, for Miles at least.
Miles raised an eyebrow. “Look behind you?” Seriously? The oldest trick in the book. He shook his head and smiled.
“Not gonna get out of this that easily, bud. Just drink your te–oh shit!” He realized that Jace was telling the truth only when the first round made contact a couple of feet from his head, a puff of powderized stone exploding from the point of impact. He wheeled about, flattening against the cave wall for a smaller target, and spotted some muzzle flashes from the firing weapons. He pointed his still-charged pistol at one of them and released the energy.
Supersonic plasma fired from the weapon and bore down on its target, striking true. An explosion 6 meters across accompanied the impact, leaving a crater in its wake. Red mist from the couple of assailants in the vicinity rained down into the newly-formed basin. Miles, who’d never shot his pistol in this mode, gasped audibly at the carnage.
He turned to his companion who, suspicious as he was, was apparently also on the wrong side of this conflict. “Get to your weapon. I’ll cover you,” he offered, and began laying down suppressing fire with both his plasma pistol in his robotic hand and his automatic pistol in his organic one.
Jace threw the tea to the side and not at Miles because he did, in fact, need cover. But he snarled again.
“You were pointing that shit AT MY HEAD, FUCK YOU JACKASS”. He pretty much barked without looking in the other man’s direction. Instead he bolted for cover, and for his rifle. He got to it and started shooting. Their enemies were making enough noise that he barely had to look to aim. A shout let them know one of his rounds of shots had struck a target.
“I wouldn’t have shot you if you just drank the damned tea, Jace!” Miles replied. He reloaded his right-hand pistol and took that moment to tap his wrist, bringing up the holoscreen. THe cameras he placed up were still building the map that he’d initially used to track Jace’s arrival. “3 bogies, 10 o’clock. 2 at 12 o’clock. 4 at 3 o’clock,” he reported, and then transferred the holoscreen to a night-vision representation of the space. It was awkward since he hadn’t added the targeting system yet, but he was getting the hang of it. He fired to the left, taking down one of the three, and the only one he could actually see.
“I’ll admit I would have been fucked up too at that range. I underestimated this thing’s power,” he added.
“Fucking idiot himbo!” Growled Jace, who to be a dancer turned civilian… could apparently shoot pretty well and followed Miles’ directions down to a T. Sadly, one of their enemies moved back to have clearer vision and quickhacked Jace’s energy rifle. It stopped shooting, it wouldn't for the next five or ten seconds.
“FUCK, they have a netrunner” He said, barely dodging a shot. Then another grazed his forearm and he whimpered in pain. He started running an internal analysis of the damage, knowing it wasn't severe because he could barely smell blood.
“Your Armageddon gun better not have intranet access, motherfucker!” He hid against the walls of the cave. But they were trapped in it. Even though Jace had shot down at least another two of them and wounded another before his rifle got temp-hacked. All pre-apoc weapons were built with intranet connections that made them vulnerable to hacking, especially now without firewalls or ICE.
“It would have if I’d finished it. It was designed for use on an android, and you know the safety protocols for those. Guaranteed remote weapons lockout, etc.” He took out one of the guys on the right with a headshot using the energy weapon, and mowed down another one in the center with his automatic pistol.
“It’s the boring part though so I didn’t build that feature in yet, and when I just adapted it to this arm I hardwired it in. So… yeah, I guess this is an illegal weapon, but I don’t see any cops around to arrest me for it.” By this point Jace’s rifle buzzed back to life.
“I am no netrunner but I may be able to counter-hack next time if you give me enough warning,” he said, lifting his left arm to show the holoscreen, where he seemed to control most of his own tech from.
“They’re moving weird!” Was all the warning they got when Jace saw a pattern he didn't recognise and he threw his arms in front of his face.
“Flash- gah!” When it blew up it was close enough to throw them both back a little.
“Shoot blindly at the entrance. Opposite side of my voice!” He yelled, knowing what was coming next. They wanted them blind to get closer or to flee. And they had lost enough of their party that they were unlikely to give up now. So Jace reached for a hidden dagger in his boot and waited, crouched.
Two times in as many seconds. That’s how many times he’d wished the targeting module was hooked up in recent memory. He saw the flashbang come in, but without enough time to actually react to it. He shut his eyes, but the bright flash still disoriented him, and the sonic blast it unleashed temporarily deafened him. Jace was yelling something prior to the flash, but he lost everything after that. So in that brief moment, he contemplated the enemies’ strategy to decide what to do next.
First, they had sent out a flashbang. You didn’t do that unless you were going into close quarters.
Second, Jace’s weapon had been hacked. He predicted it should be back online any moment now, but he couldn’t be sure that it was. That made Miles the bigger threat. Neutralize the archers and then dominate in melee.
Third, Jace was an exotic. Miles suspected he had more mods than met the eye. Additionally, he’d admitted to being a dancer (exotic dancer?) prior to Walpurgisnacht; he had to be more physically capable than himself.
So if he was planning the assault, what would he do? He’d take advantage of the disorientation to assault the major threat. That was, unfortunately, himself. How could he counter?
Well that was simple. Just fire wildly on their assault so that they have to attack on Jace’s side. Hopefully Jace had some sort of hand-to-hand training, and could last at least long enough for the gunman to regain his senses.
So that’s exactly what he did. He got his bearings and fired at what he hoped was the entrance to the cave, and on his side. He favored his energy weapon in case he was incorrect in his aim; he didn’t need to have ricochets do the raiders’ jobs for them. And he set it on the lowest energy setting and highest rate of fire. He sent a steady stream of small bursts of plasma downrange, to hopefully corral them toward Jace.
The first couple of shots hit the wall over Jace's head, but then Miles thankfully redirected his shit ass aim that he had chosen to unveil just now. He had acted weird, like he hadn't heard- oh. What. What? Who the fuck didn't have an audio suite installed and subbed optics in this day and age?? In their past day and age??. He was going to open his own eyes when he got hit in the head, hard. Thank the fucking non-existant gods for his reinforced cranium. He was hit in the head by some sort of metal bar, rusty too, and thrown back against the wall of the cave with a grunt of pain. But he attacked too, and his desperate lounge with his dagger found purchase. After that he opened his eyes and he was back in the game. His HUD highlighted the bodies of his enemies, picking up on potential weak spots. Miles still looked off, but he was keeping the third motherfucker at bay with his weapon. Jace grinned and turned off his pain receptors, so his head stopped screaming at him as he kicked one of the guys in the head with a spike soled boot. And gained terrain and momentum with the other. Clearly none of them expected Jace to be as adept as close quarters as he was. By the time Miles opened his eyes one was hesitating in how to advance, and Jace had his teeth on the other’s throat. He pulled it apart, his fangs ripping through the soft flesh like he was eating pulled pork. Only gorier.
Miles’ vision was slowly coming back–what the fuck?! Did he just–Miles shook off what he saw of Jace’s assault and turned his attention to the outside of the cave. Miraculously, he seemed to have one of the marauders pinned down by firing blindly. Now that he could see, he took out his automatic pistol and strafed the target, causing him to move into a much more open shot for the plasma rounds, which blasted through their skull. One more was getting away, and Miles tried to line up a shot, aided by his holoscreen, and missed three times. The bastard would get away at this rate.
That’s three, Miles mused. I guess I’m gonna work on that damned targeting system asap.
With the threat outside neutralized, Miles took the opportunity to double-tap the two that had gotten into the cave with particularly potent shots from his weapon. No use risking them merely being unconscious; it’s hard for them to fake it without a head.
“Who were they here for? Me? Or you?” he asked once he was satisfied with the carnage.
Gunnar would pick up the one that ran. None of these little rats could be allowed to return and report back to their bosses.
Jace spat a piece of the man’s throat, and blood. His pain receptors came back on with a whirl and he leaned against the wall, breathing through the pain. His arm was bloody as well from the bullet that grazed him earlier.
“I don't fucking know. You were the oneghh… fuck… the one bragging about…gh. About how cool and wanted you are.” He must have some sort of microfissure, because his body was self-repairing something and it wasn't the external would.
“Misconstruing my words into hubris isn’t helping anything,” Miles snapped back. “Either way, I cannot stay here. It’s shitty, but I’ve gotta go find a new place to stay, and so late at night.”
He sighed, then brought up his holoscreen. With a single button the cameras he’d placed went airborne on little drone propellers and began to migrate back to his bike, each mounting magnetically along the fuel tank. He then set about gathering up his camping belongings, and humping them back out to his motorcycle’s saddlebags. He then went and dug up the precious power supply that people were after, then carried it back over to his bike.
“Can you move? As in, if I leave you here will you not die?”
“You would never find out if you just abandon me out here Miles, guess you’ll have to take me-ghg with you!” Jace winced at the volume of his own voice and walked over to Mr. Grumpy hermit extraordinaire.
He was whimpering very, very quietly and his ears wouldn't stop twitching. Already there was a nasty bruise forming under a scrape, and his arm was still bleeding and dirty.
“I think I’d be dead if you hadn’t been there to cover my ass. Of course, who knows if I would have noticed them coming earlier if we hadn’t been having our little tea party.” He looked a little bit awkward and fidgety at that. “Regardless, how are you on a bike? You’ll have to ride bitch, sorry about that. Probably not the most comfortable way to travel with those injuries.”
Miles strode to his vehicle and walked it out from the brush that camouflaged it. As he sat down, he opined, “You recovered quickly from that flashbang. I may have to look into some sensory tech to help out in the future. I didn’t have much need to mod myself in the past. I only took the arm because Walpurgisnacht claimed my real one. Maybe I can pick your brain about stuff like that.” He patted the passenger seat behind him. “I don’t have any sissy bars; you’ll have to hold on to me. I… don’t often have passengers.”
Claimed his arm… ouch. Was he trying to be funny about him riding bitch? He wasn't impressed, but he just sighed softly. At least he had the decency to look slightly nervous about the sleeping potion he had concocted earlier. Which was now all over the floor.
He got on the bike behind Miles, positioned himself properly and held on to him. Tight, but not enough to hurt him. Even if he wanted to dig his claws into him a little bit.
“This is fine, we did just fight together… and it's been a while since I've given a hug free of expectations.” He said, only half joking by the end. His ears flopped back a little, the pain wasn't receding for now and was getting sharper in some spots. It was a good sign, it was the self-repair or so his internal diagnostics said. But fuck… he would have drank that tea now.
