Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates. I now have the finals behind me, I hope I can upload more often.
The armory was always the place with the most compatibility with the movies. It was an underground facility with a bunch of grown men in bullet proof vests, brandishing tacky equipment, and fiddling around with buttons and switches, trying to get used to them. Like all of them, Allen also grabbed the standard uniform, which the company proudly produced as the 'best combat suit ever made.' After Allen finished suiting up, he headed towards the shooting range. Lavi was already there, checking the weight of various guns in his hands, and looking down the sights. Kanda looked like he was already done with, polishing his favorite blade.
"Why not pick up a ranged weapon?" Allen asked casually, his eyes scanning the weapon rack. "It doesn't make sense swinging around a sword in a fire fight."
"It makes about much sense to have a machine gun in public, Moyashi," Kanda retorted, not looking up from his busy polishing. "By the way, I'm sure that the gigantic gun you're about to pick up won't scare the civvies. This is an urban mission, not a war zone one."
Allen looked like he just got slapped in the face, and put the F2000 back on its rack. Kanda resumed his polishing with a triumphant grin on his face. Lavi chuckled in the background, and helpfully pointed Allen at the rack behind him, where the more concealable weapons were at. Allen, grumbling, turned to get a more appropriate weapon. His eyes eagerly scanned the Bolt Single Action Army, but with Kanda's eyes burning at the back of his neck, chose the regulation USP instead.
"Don't forget your combat knife," Lavi hummed, field stripping his own handgun. "The new S30V looks real nice you know."
Allen tucked in the knife with a grunt into the holster in front of the left side of his chest. This was much too routine than Allen ever wanted it to be. Being hired guns was never his job of choice to begin with. When he was threatened within inches of his life, when he was looking at the end of a barrel, or listening to rattling gunfire all over him, it was pure instinct. His experience took over, and he shot whatever was in his way. However, it always failed to help him sleep at night. When it came to urban missions, it became worse. There were too many lives to account for and too many innocents to look after. Even if the bullet wasn't from his own gun, if one civilian was down, it bothered him like nothing else.
This is why he had to stop TME. Before they take any, and before they force him to live with the guilt of all the lives he had to take.
Before the three of them boarded onto the jet, a flapping reached their ears. Allen automatically threw his left eye into night vision, and scanned the area. Bats were not uncommon within the confines of the passage way from the armory to troop transport. It was damp and cold, and sometimes the flying rodents found ways to get into the facility. What made Allen nervous was the fact that it was in no way an organic life form.
"The hell is that thing-" Kanda muttered, putting his gun barrel up.
"Wait, don't shoot!"
The voice didn't come from the three of them. It was from the flying object was unidentifiable. Soon it snapped what seemed to be its flash light feature. It was a small black thing with what they identified with a camera lens slammed into the center of it. Flapping energetically, the flying thing exerted Komui's voice.
"Thank god I caught you just in time," it said, looking at Allen. "Marvel at our most modern piece of technology ever conceived! Bask in the glory of-"
Before he could finish the sentence, however, the kicking down of a door, loud voices that included Reever's, and Komui's shrill shriek in terror punctuated the voice of the thing. The three guys looked at it in confusion. It was rather…creepy to hear the speakers ring while the flying object flapped its wings like nothing happened. After a brief radio silence, Reever's voice came to life.
"Sorry about that," Reever's voice said, "the chief was not getting his work done, and this is still a prototype by all means. We were about to send it to the lab for further development, but somehow he got his hands on one."
"What is this thing?" Kanda asked, tapping the lens of the object.
"Hey knock that off! This is delicate!" the flying object dodged Kanda's continual pokes while trying to keep its balance. "We call it a Golem, a new age communications device. We were trying to develop a brand new way to communicate with our boots on the ground, efficiently, and wirelessly. So we decided to put wings on the thing and wire it to the commercial satellites to boot."
"So this thing's a glorified cell phone?" Allen asked, staring at it.
"C'mon, give the R&D Department some more credit. We attached a live video feedback camera and built in mike. If we wanted to, we could record everything you so and make it into a war flick if we felt like it. We constructed an AI for it as well. It can assess all battle situations and move accordingly. Since we built it for mobility, it has no weapons or on-site support attached to it, but it can serve as a reliable source if you want to contact us or simply leave messages and keep field reports. If no one is on duty to monitor it, it will automatically save, and send it to us."
Reever's voice was riddled with soft pride, as if he was making a business presentation to a group of CEOs. Lavi and Allen clapped, but Kanda scoffed and threw a delicate question.
"What's the catch?"
"Well, it can't take extensive fire, or rather, it can't take fire at all. It had literally minimal protection, and easily seen. Camo is completely useless on the thing since it flies with wings. As a failsafe though, it will fly back to us in case of an emergency of any kind."
The trio looked intrigued by this new piece of technology, and it was small enough to conceal in any type of brief case. Mission logs were tedious, and no one was looking forward to lug a lap top around wherever they went, especially on an urban mission.
"Why not take the chance and try it out?" Lavi offered, smiling into the camera. "Practice makes perfect you know."
"It's a little risky," Reever murmured, grunting a bit, he seemed to have adjusted his seat judging by the squeaking of a chair. "We just released it, and we don't want people to go around poking at it and taking it apart. This thing cost us millions to develop you know. Mass production won't be as expensive, but it's like Apple's new tech to Steve Jobs."
"Sometimes you gotta run before you walk Reever," Allen said, becoming quite fond of the objet already. "Might as well try it out. If you're planning to go into mass produce the things, they're going to be deployed at one point."
Reever groaned a little longer, and finally sighed in defeat. "Fine. We'll take this as an opportunity to try our first golem. Just promise me that you're going to take good care of it and bring it back in one piece."
"No problem."
