Today's Armor battle was shaping up to be an epic David vs. Goliath bout. On one side of the arena was Priscilla in her quick, compact, and constantly agile Brownie. The opponent was a lumbering metal gorilla that was twice Brownie's size when it was crouching. It sported a black hull, a menacing array of black cannons mounted on its back, and a cluster of storage tanks filled with bubbling black oil. Everyone was on the edge of their seats anxious to see if Priscilla would pull an upset, or take a little dip in whatever those tanks were warming up for her.
Brownie hopped forward in a zig-zag pattern and thrust at the opponent with her spear. The opponent launched globs of crackling black sludge toward her in rapid bursts, but the smaller Armor elegantly strafed each one as she got closer.
Inside the massive Armor, two shadowy young men were sitting one behind the other in a dual cockpit arrangement.
"Lookin' good today, Pris," the pilot named Will sneered at his cockpit screen. "But we'll make you look better."
"Impressive set up you got here," said Fred, the plucky and sarcastic wingman-in-training behind him. "What do you call this bad boy, anyway?"
"It's called Calamity Gundnon," said Will.
"You sure about that one, buddy?" Fred asked.
"Huh?" Will blinked.
"It sounds like you're having a little trouble deciding if it's called Calamity Gundam or Calamity Ganon," said Fred.
"I have no idea what either of those things are," Will shrugged. "This one's called Calamity Gundnon."
The pilot aimed again, pulled a lever, and fired a medium-length blast of lightning and toxic oil slick. Brownie sharply cartwheeled to her side and nearly avoided a new paintjob.
"What exactly are you trying to accomplish here?" Fred asked.
"These cannons are filled with electrically charged chemicals designed to interface with enemy Armors," Will said. "Once you get a nice amount of it breaching an Armor's frame, it infects the control systems with a viral AI and brings the entire thing under our control."
"Let me guess. You guys call it the Parasite Missile?" Fred asked.
"No," Will shook his head in confusion. "It's called the Jabberwocky Formula."
"Well that's an interesting spin on things," Fred said to himself.
Will swiveled two cannons forward and gave Brownie a double buckshot. The tiny Armor dodged over it with a backflip and came back down with a diving spear. The black Armor lifted his arm and blocked Brownie's attack with pure brute force, but she instantly chained it up with a jet-powered roundhouse kick to his thinly-shielded optics.
Half of the screens inside the opponent Armor flickered in static. Will shook his head in frustration and opened a new panel on his control HUD. After a quick boot-up, corner of the main screen filled with live combat diagnostics. Every precise move Brownie made and the probabilities of the next move she would make flashed in front of Will's eyes as an endless stream of numbers.
"No need to get your digits in a fritz, Priscilla," he said jokingly to the screen. "We'll get you sorted out in no time."
He pulled the lever that activated the Armor's overdrive thrusters.
Brownie hopped forward with another spear lunge, but then the hulking opponent Armor was simply gone. Brownie cutely poked her head toward the left. She cutely poked her head to the right. The entire arena gasped, and she curiously looked straight up.
The towering black Armor was looming over her back, all cannons locked in the downward position and ready for discharge.
"Time to hit the showers, Pris," Will chuckled as he squeezed the trigger.
Brownie was lost under a black flood of electrified diesel muck. Her flailing motions became sluggish in the filth, slowed to a crawl, and then locked up completely. The tiny Armor stood like a motionless statue reaching out for help as the chemicals and electrical currents seeped deeper and deeper into her panels.
"So what's going on with the pilot in there?" Fred said.
"Oh, that little oil sponge? They come as part of the package if they don't Eject first. The virus loves merging with organic matter just as much as Armor systems." Will said.
"So you keep them alive?" Fred asked.
"Yeah, in a biological sense," Will replied.
"Oh. I thought it was really going to be a Calamity Ganon thing," said Fred.
"I still have no idea what you're talking about," said Will.
The motion capture cable strapped to Priscilla's tailbone started to feel really funky. She tried to wrestle her hips free, only to invite the pool of black sparking sludge forming around her feet to climb further up her ankles. More of the grime was seeping through seams of her panoramic cockpit screens and dripping down from the vaulted ceiling. Her wailing cockpit alarms told her Brownie's ventilation systems were almost completely clogged by the gunk and were struggling just to keep her air supply online.
None of the controls worked. None of the manual overrides were responding. Priscilla's spandex pilot gown was supposed to fit her perfectly, but she found out the hard way this new material could shape itself to her contours even more perfectly. It grew further and further up her legs and continued past her waist, mimicking the form of her fight dress on the way up. The grime affixed itself to her in ways she never could have imagined.
Priscilla screamed as the virus scanned every inch of her body, covering the sides of her face in black webs and forcing her eyes to turn digital black. Then the corruption reached her mind.
A detailed anatomical wireframe of Brownie's pilot suddenly blinked into the corner of Will's screen, confirming the assimilation was a total success and her life signs had safely returned to normal. Will typed out a command that made the lewd wireframe broadcast on the arena screens, so everyone could see the full unambiguous results for themselves. There was much cheering and applauding from the audience.
Brownie slowly began to move again under new ownership. She used her exhaust systems to "dry" off, which is to say the bulk of the grime cleared up but still left her covered with patches of black blobs and weathered stains. She still had all of her speed and agility, but now she looked she had been through Petroleum Hell.
Brownie shook her head on her rattling, grime-encrusted servos. She glanced up at the taller Armor like they were siblings made from the rugged same production line and he was her big brother. She turned toward the people in the bleachers watching in suspense, turned toward the scoreboards showing her pilot's anatomical loadout, and finally turned toward the mechanics gathered around the arena hangars.
Brownie lifted her spear and charged into action.
"So… what are they going to keep the pilot around for, anyway?" Fred said to Will. He sounded like he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer. "It's not like we'll really need her after the virus AI completely takes over Brownie,"
"Oh, we'll still let her hop in and fight the old fashioned way once in a while so she can get a good workout. What the company does with assimilated pilots is supposed to be top secret, but I think she's the type who would make a good couch warmer for the VIP lounge. Something to slip your gearshift in for a few minutes while you're watching the fights."
"You can do that?" Fred asked in surprise.
"Well, sure. All that gunky stuff comes off pretty easily. They've only got a little bit of slime stuck to 'em once they're naked," said Will.
"But I mean, all those toxins floating around in her. Aren't you afraid of… catching something from her?" asked Fred.
"Welcome to the game of risk and reward, my bro. Git gud or git grimed." Will cracked his neck, revealing a quick glimpse of the faded black veins in his throat.
Priscilla's haywire Armor was sweeping through the trenches of her own pit lane and stomping over anyone in her path. Will and Fred watched the chaos unfold through their magnified screens.
"Uh-oh, there's some sort of massacre happening in the Brownie corner!" the arena announcer excitedly boomed over the field speakers. The crowd cheered in bloodthirsty approval.
"Team Gundnon spills through another messy victory! We hope you enjoyed today's match!"
"Looks like our job is done here." Will stretched back into his cockpit chair. "Now we've just got to debrief this little scuzz sparrow."