"You know, I'd have thought getting shot would hurt more." Filia said as she dangled awkwardly underneath her scuttling hair. She noted how quickly jumping from rooftop to rooftop had lost its novelty as her hair leaped across the gap from one tombstone grey building to another. Filia, Samson, and their hair had gone from Maplecrest's beautiful homes to New Meridian's sterile, poorly lit clerical district over the course of a few hours. The bright, golden lights from the grand cathedral only a few blocks away did nothing to illuminate the rooftops at this time of night and only barely kept the cathedral itself from fading away in the blazing neon horizon created by the city's downtown.
"For most people, yeah. It would," That was the first thing Samson had said to her in the last hour that wasn't 'You'll be fine. you'll be fine.' or 'Just let me concentrate.' and that made Filia feel a little better, "but you should know you aren't most people anymore Filia. See if you can get the bullet out."
"What?!" Filia didn't know anything about medicine, but she knew digging around in a bullet wound would be unsanitary and painful.
"Have you even looked at the wound, yet?"
"Well, no," Filia hadn't even taken her hand off of the wound since she got it, "but, what if-"
"Come on, don't be that squeamish! Just give it a look. You'll see what I mean."
Filia gulped. Trembling, with only one eye open, she pulled her hand away from her shoulder, "Samson, stop! We need to go back!"
"Why?! What happened!?" Filia's hair skidded to a halt, barely an inch away from the edge of the roof.
"The bullet fell out! I think it landed back on that last rooftop, should we go get it?"
Samson sighed "Sweet trinity above, I'm stuck to a dumbass!"
"Hey! Won't I bleed out if it's gone?!"
"Okay, one, that's stab wounds, and two, are you even bleeding?!"
Filia struggled to bring her eyes to her shoulder. Red stains around the hole to her uniform confirmed that, yes, she was bleeding at some point, but now all that was there was a scab and a bit of bruising.
"I'm gonna take your stunned silence for a no."
"So... I'm bulletproof?"
"Hell no, you're just, uh, bullet resistant, plus you'll heal quick."
"Wow… Like, a guy from a shooter game?"
"You're welcome, Master Chief."
"That's… kind of ridiculous."
"You're in kind of a ridiculous situation right now, have you noticed?"
Filia looked around at the six long, spidery legs coming out of her head. "They said something about a 'parasite' back there. Would that be referring to you, Samson?" She asked as she felt along the bandages that have been wrapped around her forehead since she woke up. It felt fine. She unraveled them and sure enough, her forehead felt smooth and scarless.
"I mean, our kind has had nicer names then 'parasite'," Samson said, "but- shit, GET DOWN!"
KRA-BANG!
As the sound of the high-caliber gunshot ripped through the air, the spider legs behind Filia had already curled up into a spiral shield that caught the bullet with a CLANG that reverberated in Filia's ears. Though the bullet was stopped, the force was still strong enough to shove Filia and her spider-hair off the edge of the building, into the alley below. It happened so quick, Filia didn't even think to scream, but Samson swore loud enough for both of them as they dropped several stories into a wide alley. Filia hears a loud POOF like a burst of air, and before she can even realize that this isn't a fall she should be able to survive, she lands gently on a springy bed of soft, curly hair.
"Fuck! I thought we would have lost him by now." Samson growled, "Alright Filia, this Ottomo guy, he's not a joke, no matter how much he looks like one. No more farting around. I'll cover you, but it's time for you to actually run!"
Filia could barely hear him over her ringing ears and racing thoughts. Did her hair just turn to metal back there? Was she laying on some kind of afro crash-pad right now? Was the baseline from Smooth Criminal now blaring from the top of the building she was just shot off? Was she going mad?
"I… I think so…" Filia stammered.
"Glad to hear you agree, but YOU STILL AREN'T MOVING!" Filia felt her bangs reach down and give her two quick slaps across the face, "Get up now! This is serious!"
Filia's mechanical assailant stepped to the edge of the roof he just shot her off of; its lanky, unnatural figure accentuated by the building's height. Its chrome skin gleamed bright with the dull light from the near-by cathedral, and its harsh, beak-like metal face grinned like a maniacal bird as Michael Jackson played from a speaker where its mouth should be. "Before the fisticufs commence," its voice echoed through the alley below, along with the opening of Smooth Criminal, "I would like to apologize for my abrupt changing of footwear," Ottomo said, sliding off his shoes, "but these are my good Oxfords you see, and what a dog's dinner it would be if they were to be stained with your blood! Hoho!" He pulled two bullet magazines from his coat and leaped from the building in a somersault, clicking each one into a slot where his toes should be at the end of each metal foot as he hurtled down towards Filia.
"Do I have to do everything!?" Samson yelled as Filia's hair threw her to the side. She stumbled, but stayed on her feet as the robot slammed into the concrete, then began steadily moonwalking towards her as Smooth Criminal's lyrics began.
"I'm sorry Samson, I'm just a little-"
Bang! Bang! Bang! Samson shielded Filia from the three round bursts coming from the gunbarrels on the heels of Ottomo's feet as he danced closer, "You're a little DEAD if you don't START RUNNING!"
Filia took off screaming towards the end of the ally. The robot kept close behind, his long legs giving him a massive speed advantage over her, even while he wasted his time with a backslide and stomp every third beat.
"Can't we talk about this?!" Filia screamed.
"If he wanted to talk, he wouldn't be shooting at us, would he!?"
"Your friend makes a jolly good point!" Ottomo shouted down the alley as he did a pirouette, elbows out and cocked. Each fired a blast of buckshot towards Filia. Samson caught most of it, the force throwing Filia out the last stretch of the alley and the sidewalk, but stray buckshot grazed Filia's ear, taking a chunk of flesh with it. It burned like fire, warm blood dribbling down her cheek, but she hurried to her feet just in time to avoid another shotgun spin as MJ began asking Annie if she was okay.
Filia sprinted down the street, yelling for help at the top of her lungs, but there was little foot traffic around these office buildings at this time of night, and the few who heard just ducked into the closest building.
"Samson! Why isn't anyone helping?!"
"Gee, I dunno, maybe there's something a little INTIMIDATING about this scenario!?"
Ottomo came out of the alley, jazz hands locked and loaded as a hail of bullets engulfed Filia. Samson kept most of the shots from hitting her, but even the ones that weren't grazing her exposed legs were throwing the duo back and forth until Filia stumbled behind a parked car.
Looking down at her blood covered legs, she could already see the wounds slowly healing, but the pain was intense and she bit back tears, "Suggestions, Samson?"
"Shit, we were so close to Little Innsmouth too... Uh, maybe we can make our way to the Cathedral? It's only a few blocks away, and it looked pretty busy from the rooftops. We could slip away in a crowd that-"
"No! I'm not bringing a psycho robot gunman to a crowded church!"
"We can't sit here and argue either! Unless you got a better plan-"
"Can we fight it?"
Now it was Samson's turn to be dumbstruck, "You… You're serious? You want to-"
"My hair can block bullets and has enough strength to throw me from building to building. If we get in close we can probably take him." Filia blinked the tears out of her reddened eyes leaving only a boiling, determined anger behind them.
"Damn, kid… Heh, I KNEW there was a reason I liked you!"
Deep inside Ottomo's suited and armored chassis a pink, fat, and very small little man was bouncing around from behind a row of computer screens, "You've been hit by OOMPH! you've been HIT BY, OWW!" A slimy little thing named Tom sang and bounced around to the beat in his padded chair behind Ottomo's control console. He was hardly even watching the monitors displaying Ottomo's status as he click-clacked away on the keyboard, making his faux british robot electric slide closer to the target hiding behind the car while his cockpit echoed with the sound of the robot's mechanical limbs and the hum of its motors, all perfectly on beat to the little man's musical choice.
"Operator," The bot's AI chimed in with its static-y accent, "might I be so bold as to request a music change?"
"Hmm, yeah, MJ's kinda run his course… lemmy browse my playlist a bit." The little man turned down from the monitors displaying the fight and began browsing his MP3 player, ash from his cigar tumbling down and staining his already filthy wife-beater. "Can you believe that shit the boss was saying about giving Black Dahlia our job? I swear, you mess up once in this business and everyone's jumping to have you replaced with someone edgier."
"Well, pardon my devil's advocacy, but she's-"
"An Ex-ASG soldier with over five hundred confirmed kills blahdy, blah, blah. That was like, a hundred years ago! The bitch needs to retire if you ask me, she's a living fossil! Surprised she wasn't fired after losing the big guy's gem all those years back." Tom chuckled as he brushed through his music, "You feelin more of a Nervana mood tonight, tin man?" He asked as he added Smells Like Teen Spirit to the que.
"Actually, I was thinking Behtoven would be exemplary accompaniment."
"Oh barf! Not this again," Tom rolled his eyes as he idly typed in the command for Ottomo to flip around to the front of the car and open fire, "Look, guy, I told ya that your fru fru parlor music doesn't work during killing time. It just doesn't fit. Now, eighties to nineties pop, that's different,"
"Operator, our target isn't here."
"those genres got more of a kick to 'em. You can really get up and move to- Wait, what?" Tom looked back at the screen to see he had Ottomo firing at an empty spot in front of the car for the last several seconds, "Well, trinity dammit you metal moron! Where did they go?"
"Under the car, sir."
"Wow, some escape plan," Tom rolled his eyes, but before he could think up some kind of dance move to make bending over and firing under the car look cool, the whole vehicle was suddenly lifted up and flew right at Ottomo.
"Requesting permission for automated maneuvers."
"Wha-?"
Tom was too slow and Ottomo stood there as the car collided with his torso, throwing him back and pinning him under its hood as it smashed upside down onto the street. Smooth Criminal was replaced with a blaring car alarm as Filia slowly got to her feet, jaw slack at what she just did.
"I'll be honest," Samson said, "I didn't think it would go that well."
Filia just kept staring.
"Come on kid. I get it, we're awesome, but we've got places to be."
"Uh… yeah… Samson, are we superheroes?"
"Damage repor- Ack! Urhgh!" Tom sputtered and coughed from the ash still in his mouth. The impact had made him swallow his entire cigar as well as almost crush him in Ottomo's chest cavity where Tom's tiny cockpit was located. This collapsed the wall behind his desk pinning him into the back wall with his workstation and slamming a monitor against his bulbous nose with enough force that it was likely broken.
Ottomo's voicebox glitched and fizzled, "Hand m-m-mounted weAPONs off-offline." "HeeeeeEEEEeel mouunte-ted repeaters offline. High caliber rifle-"
"SAVE YOUR BREATH! I can see it's offline!" Tom sniffed, whipping blood and mucous from his dribbling nose and clearing his throat before spitting out a wad of paper and tobacco. "Ottomo, I think our careers might be in jeopardy... It's time to take the gloves off."
Filia began her walk towards Little Innsmouth. Slowly at first, her legs still ached from the bullet wounds, though only about as much as a scrape along the pavement. Then, after just barely turning the corner from the sight of her crushed pursuer she heard the sounds of metal screeching against metal from behind her and broke into a run. Then she heard the beginning of a Nirvana song closing in behind her and she broke into a sprint. At the end of the street she could see a metal railing looking over the calm waves of the bay. She could smell the salty sea-air. She was so close.
"I'm watching our rear." Samson called out, Filia's hair forming a shield again. "If he tries to chaise us I'll-" Samson was interrupted by a garbled and damaged speaker crying out,
"T-t-t-TALLY H-HO!" As Ottomo dived at them from a side alley. Samson tried to push him off with Filia's hair but the robot came in from an awkward side angle and its long, steel arm was able to reach through the flailing black tendrils and grab Filia's neck, pulling her to the ground with the robot on top as it began to choke her.
"That was a cute trick back there," A voice the pair hadn't heard before came in glitchy and disjointed from Ottomo's speaker. To Filia it sounded furious, but at the same time very small and squeaky, almost like a chipmunk. She would have laughed if she wasn't being choked to death. "But nobody busts up my bot and gets away with it!"
Filia's hair was wrapped around the machine's arms and between it's fingers and hands, doing all it could to stop it from crushing Filia's windpipe. Just when it seemed to be making progress, ripping one of the robot's hands away, there was a harsh clack as Ottomo's internal machinery chambered a shell into its upper arm and the robot angled it's gunbarrel-elbow down towards Filia's face.
"Load up on guns, bring your friends…" the lyrics of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit still seemed to come in cleanly through Ottomo's busted speaker, then Filia realized that voice was way too feminine and far off, as the gleaming gun barrel was brought to her head, she briefly wondered if it was a cover band that was playing, "...it's fun to LOSE!"
CLANG!
Something about the size of a bowling ball just collided with Ottomo, knocking it sideways as its shotgun went off, into Filia's ear tearing it into a bloody stump and sending it ringing hellishly. As Samson screamed a series of curse words she didn't even know existed, Filia's hair formed a single fist the size of a van and collided with Ottomo hard enough to collapse its head into its chest and send it skidding across the street with a shower of sparks. Meanwhile the projectile that saved Filia rolled back towards her, and through the gunshot ringing, it sounded to her one remaining ear like it was still humming the rest of the song. Filia would have liked to see what it was, but her vision was blurry from a lack of oxygen. Ottomo tried to stumble to its feet and take aim once again, but another figure had just jumped down from a rooftop directly on top of it, bringing it back down to the ground, hard.
The fight that happened next was too fast for Filia to make out much of anything besides a bloody tangle of limbs striking and pinning and gouging pieces out of the other's body, but unlike the robot, this new girl's limbs were stretching back and forth at unnatural angles, seeming to break and even detach before attaching themselves to strike at the robot again like nothing even happened.
"Hey," That Nervana singing bowling ball said, "You two weirdos alright?"
"Weirdos?" Samson sounded offended.
"Two?" Filia sat up confused. As far as she knew it was just her and the voice in her head.
"Yeah, Two. Hairball and his plus one." Filia focused down at the little orb and could make out two pale eyes and a smug little fanged grin. Filia almost thought it was cute before realizing with a start that it was, in fact, a grinning, severed head. "You two okay?" The head asked, like nothing unusual was happening at all.
"Who you callin' hairba- oh, I get it now." Samson chuckled seeing the head's pointed cat ears; one tilted towards the fight, flickering at the sounds of impact, and the other focused at them. "Good one." he said.
"Thank you! thank you, I'll be here all night." She smiled wide while the horrible battle continued raging behind her; flesh and metal tearing, blood and oil mixing in the gutters, "I also do weddings, birthdays and bar mitzvahs! I'd give you my card, but I'm a little tied up at the moment." Filia watched as the body, now ripping some sort of synthetic organ out of Ottomo with its claws, gushed red blood from the stump where it's head should be.
"Haha! I like this one." Samson gushed "Filia, why don't we see if we can give our friend here a 'hand'? Eh? Eh?" the hair hand coming from the back of Filia's head flexed its fingers.
"Finally! Someone who respects the comedy! What's your names Hairdo and… uh…" The cat-girl-head now sees the blood pouring from where Filia's ear should be "Trinity, girl, you don't look so good!"
"Nah," The hair hand gives a casual wave, "Filia's doing fine. Ears grow back, ain't that right master chief?"
"..." Filia said nothing before the shock of all the pain and violence overwhelmed her and she fell backwards. Samson and this new girl both called out to her, and as she drifted off into unconsciousness she watched the headless body deliver a final kick to the unmoving robot, and then begin frantically running towards her on all fours.