Kimiko looked around, confused. X had just given the command to reset the
Simulator, but nothing was happening. He went for the control panel, but
was answered by a soft, male voice.
"I'm sorry. I can't let you do that, Jim."
And then the room flickered and twisted...
And it wasn't a room anymore.
X and Kimiko looked around again, realizing that they seemed to be standing on some highway or other.
"What the hell?"
There was a dry cackle, seeming to come from nowhere in particular. Kimiko shivered as a chill ran down her spine. The laugh itself wasn't particularly disturbing, but the voice doing the laughing..
A grating voice emanated from everywhere at once. "Well, well. If it isn't the little boy blue. We had hoped, of course, but it's great to see you here! Why don't you come and find out what's going on, X? Oh, and any friends you've got along with you might want to prepare. this isn't a game. Not anymore."
Kimiko looked to X. "Ecksu-san, what is going on?"
X shook his head. "I don't know, Kimiko, but it's giving me a bad feeling." He switched on his helmet comm. "This is X to MHHQ, do you read? Hello? ...Is anybody there?"
A frown crossed X's face. "I hate to say it, but I think we're locked in- and the comm block is still in place."
Kimiko nodded. "What was that about this not being a game, though?"
X's frown deepened. "I don't know for sure, but I'll bet whoever did this also turned the simul all the way up- there's no point to just putting someone in stasis, this program's probably set to destroy. I think you should turn off your SIOE."
Kimiko nodded, turning off the simul-interface program, returning her buster to normal power levels and causing her display to revert to real Internal Operations Energy. Nodding to herself, she returned her attention to the world around- and tackled X to the ground.
An instant later, a huge blast of plasma flew over them, missing by inches, then ate a wide crater into the road surface.
Propping herself up to look, one hand on the road, one on X's chestplate, Kimiko gaped for an instant before hopping to her feet.
"What is THAT thing??"
X rolled over onto his front, also popping up into a standing position. He stared, jaw hanging somewhat slack, until a large cannon fired.
The two prereploids dived in either direction.
X shouted over the roar of the exploding shell. "The Death Rogumer!!! A deadly flying fortress-"
"From the first Uprising!" Finished Kimiko, stopping for a moment. "So what do we do about it? It's heading this way!"
X sized the situation up. Their side: X, with no armor sets, and no special weapons. Kimiko, also with no armor sets (assuming she could have any) and no special weapons. Neither one with any Heart Tanks or Sub Tanks. No backup, no reinforcements. And a sneaking suspicion that Sigma was behind this.
Their opposition: One damned huge airborn gunrack, complete with a full hangar of Bee Bladers and lesser robots. And a basically infinite capacity to create more equally nasty weapons.
"RUN!!" Shouted the blue Hunter, dashing away from the Death Rogumer.
Kimiko gladly complied, a crater forming behind her where another ball of plasma landed.
******
Boron, still at the janitor post, continued his work as though nothing were the matter. Wouldn't do to look suspicious anytime within the next few days, anyways.
******
Ochre slowly began polishing the pane on the front of his Landchaser that covered the nose-cannon. Something about Boron was still bugging him. Then again, he had always felt uneasy around people who talked to themselves.
It was probably just his imagination, he mused, continuing on to the left support strut for the front hoverdisc.
******
They'd been running for five minutes, and already Kimiko's nerves were shot.
She and X constantly had to shift between looking where they were going, and glancing at the Rogumer to keep track of the constant potshots it was taking. She'd managed to run into three 'no parking' signs before she could manage to avoid obstacles while looking backwards, and her cheek still hurt. At least she hadn't suffered a noticable loss of Internal Operations Energy from it, but those cannon shells kept getting closer.
In fact, looking back at it again, she realized to her dismay that the Death Rogumer was also doing so. She altered course to go near X.
"Ecksu-san, it's gaining on us!"
For a moment, X gave no sign of having heard her, glancing back and forth to make sure not to run into anything or get shot.
"Ecksu-san!!"
Kimiko was surprised when X nearly growled. He was usually so calm.
"Fine!" He shouted. "Then we'll have to go in close! Beware of the lasers, they're only good at the middle ranges, and once you get in close, you have to worry about the swarm missiles! And keep your eye out for those Bee Bladers, they're murder at close range!
"Ready?" X called, already charging his buster.
Kimiko nodded.
"ABOUT FACE!!"
Mid-dash, Kimiko was forced to spend the rest of the burst using her jets to slow down. X, meanwhile, hopped up and rebounded off of a lamppost, pulling a long dash-jump towards the airborne juggernaught.
Automatically, Kimiko began jinking her course as she started her charge, dodging various shells and plasma bursts. Before she knew it, she had passed through the distance the lasers could fire at, and the Rogumer was looming large overhead.
Then the carnage really began.
Following X, Kimiko nearly got herself sliced in half by a burst of chaingun fire. As it was, three bullets had found a new home in her abdomen, cutting her Internal Operations Energy by a neat six percent. She managed to land on her feet, enabling her to jump to one side and avoid the concerted plasma cannon fire. Desperately, she scrambled for her balance, narrowly avoiding a rough landing on her head. Forced to jump back by another spatter of bullets on pavement, she took the opportunity to release her supershot and follow it up with a random spray of rapid light shot.
******
X was already on the Death Rogumer, wall-jumping and dash-jumping all about, taking every possible opportunity to slag a weapon or six. There had been a few narrow misses from the short range plasma cannon, but on the whole he was dishing out a lot and taking none. Of course, the Rogumer could take quite a lot. Even with the melted remains of numerous weapons dotting it's hull, the huge ship had weaponry and to spare.
The hissing sound of doors opening was all the warning he got before a huge rack of missiles popped out of a now-missing section of the hull. Reflexively, X jumped back, unleashing a flurry of plasma into the front of the rack, and was rewarded with a rather nicely-hued fireball. A few stray missiles triggered and spiraled off into the distance, lacking targets.
There was a distinctive whoosh of missiles launching, and X increased the pace, no longer taking the opportunity to slag anymore weapons. The twenty or so small missiles following him weren't so careful, and a few miniguns bit the dust. It took X a couple of minutes to loop around and destroy the second launcher in the area, but at least by then the remaining missiles had either run into obstacles or out of fuel. He took an instant to wonder how Kimiko was doing before letting fly at another cluster of plasma cannon.
******
Kimiko had basically been alive for not much more than a week now. There had been quite a few moments during that time at which she had sworn she would never hate anything.
She hated the Death Rogumer quite powerfully.
Every time she managed to destroy a weapon on it, the shots tracking her got a little bit closer.
The previous bullet wounds had already been sealed and were almost repaired, although there were still holes in her purple bodysuit, which had been stained darker with her blood. Even so, the pain remained, and she had no desire to repeat the experience. She had to concentrate. She had to keep from making a pattern with her motions, so that she would not get shot.
She had to figure out which curse was most appropriate for suddenly finding yourself between a Rogumer, two squadrons of swarm missiles, and a Bee Blader.
******
Zero was getting impatient. X was three minutes late. How was he supposed to keep track of Kimiko for a while if she wasn't anywhere nearby?
Grumbling, the red reploid set off for the simulators. Maybe it was taking longer than expected. He knew she hadn't seemed like much of a fighter.
******
Boron hummed as he directed a cleaning robot in one of the quarters. Wouldn't do to have any of that filthy human dust floating around where there weren't any humans. His fingers danced lightly over the controls.
******
Immediately, Kimiko began running between the Bee Blader and the Death Rogumer, the opposite direction from the clusters of missiles. The Rogumer's plasma cannon and chainguns tracked her, still missing, and the Bee Blader turned as well, trying to catch it's targeting systems to her location.
She was still ahead of the shot.
The plasma cannon and miniguns raked the side and front of the Bee Blader as it turned, and then a freak shot detonated the gunship's missiles as they emerged from the launch tubes. The Bee Blader's chaingun shots slammed into several of the cannon on the Rogumer. Into the carnage of small explosions and bullets flew the hail of missiles, many of them becoming confused by what was effectively a heavy spray of flak, and either getting caught or tracking each other. With an immensely lucky dash jump, Kimiko managed to fly out in front of the roiling fireball that became of the insectoid helicopter, narrowly missed by a few pieces of shrapnel. Glancing about mid-jump Kimiko caught sight of one of the missile racks, smoothly rotating to face her.
Shifting midair, she came down facing the launcher, and leapt into another dash jump, finally going up the side of the airship itself, over the few missiles that survived the barrage, landing right next to the missile rack. Running on the curved surface of the hull, she followed the rotation of the Swarm launcher, always staying behind the massive box, hoping that the guns tracking her would do the job for her, allowing her to keep her concentration on not getting shot.
******
X took a moment to calm down a bit as he scanned the area of the front hull he was clinging to. None of the arsenal of weapons in the area were still functional, and he'd taken out the Bee Blader that had shown up to take him on. He hadn't gone unscathed himself, he'd taken a few shots from plasma cannon before he could finish up. The damage was relatively minor, however, and already fixed. Jumping up to a flat area, he started running around the curve of the air fortress towards where he expected Kimiko to be.
He was not disappointed. As he neared Kimiko's position, sounds of a firefight began reaching his ears. Glancing at a few of the destroyed weapons dotting the hull of the Rogumer, he noted a gradual increase in accuracy in the direction he was heading. Rounding one last curve, he reached the far edge of the massive airship just in time to witness the third and fourth Bee Bladers going up in a massive fireball.
There was no time for thought, however, as he spotted Kimiko, thrown backwards by the explosion, heading out an arc that would take her well away from the Rogumer, with a stunned expression that indicated she wouldn't be landing on her feet.
******
Things had not been going well. First the other guns had totally failed to destroy the missile rack Kimiko had been hiding behind. Then, to make it worse, a pair of Bee Bladers had shown up and started firing at oblique angles to try and hit Kimiko without risking the launcher. Forced out of hiding, she had begun running a widening spiral around the missile launcher, blasting away chaingun and plasma cannon at every opportunity.
She had discovered the other missile rack when one of the missiles managed to clip the back of her helmet. Quickly altering tactics, she had paused for a moment directly between the missile racks. The last chaingun had almost tagged her, but she melted the barrel with a snap shot, and, as the missiles neared, had jumped almost straight up. Almost, but not quite. Arcing away from the following horde of missiles, she had kept up the dodging, while the two racks continued to add to the explosive army following her.
One rack had gone down when she'd triggered the warheads on one volley as it was being launched, the steel box blown wide open. That had left her with the two Bee Bladers and the last rack. Spiraling in this time, she managed to draw in the Bee Bladers, which were holding their fire, while closing on the swarm rack.
In retrospect, perhaps ducking behind the missile rack hadn't been the best idea. The sheer number of missiles following her had more than ensured the destruction of the missile launcher, and, as she'd hoped, had managed to get the attack helicopters as well. That was good. They had also had more power than she'd expected, and that was bad. The heavy impact on her back had been followed by a sense of weightlessness, but the explosion had knocked her optics and internal sense of balance completely offline, not to mention completely stunning her.
Thus, it was with a sense of futile dread and panic that she fell limply towards the unhappily distant ground. Her rather graceless flight was interrupted by a slight impact, and the feeling of weightlessnes returned again.
Odd. I thought that would hurt more. And I didn't think I'd bounce. it wasn't that high.
Her vision cleared, to reveal a profile view of X.
Huh?
******
Still holding Kimiko in the cradled position, X landed in a crouch, then straightened up and placed Kimiko on her feet. It took the green prereploid a moment to catch her balance, then she turned to X.
"Arigatoo, Ecksu-san."
X waved it off. "No need. I really don't think I can let either of us get hurt any more than absolutely necessary, particularly by minor mistakes. I have this really bad feeling that this whole thing is just the beginning."
There was a grating laugh from the direction of the Rogumer, and both X and Kimiko whirled, to find a most unpleasent sight.
A well-known purple helmet with a T-shaped visor peered out of the cockpit of an equally well-known blue-and-yellow combat mecha. A single, malevolent red eye glowed from within the visor.
"Indeed, it is." Vile grated out. "Indeed it is."
Big uh-oh. REALLY big uh-oh.
Remember, when X didn't have any armor or special weapons or anything, Vile totally creamed him with that particular Ride Armor. And none of X's shot did any damage.
Not to mention that neither X nor Kimiko is at 100 % (particularly not Kimiko).
And what about Zero, Ochre, and Boron?
And will Stamp, Turk, Arnie or Turtlava ever show their faces again?
Would you believe I'm not sure?
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" "Okay, but what about me? I bet he doesn't know what lurks in the hearts of women!"
"I'm sorry. I can't let you do that, Jim."
And then the room flickered and twisted...
And it wasn't a room anymore.
X and Kimiko looked around again, realizing that they seemed to be standing on some highway or other.
"What the hell?"
There was a dry cackle, seeming to come from nowhere in particular. Kimiko shivered as a chill ran down her spine. The laugh itself wasn't particularly disturbing, but the voice doing the laughing..
A grating voice emanated from everywhere at once. "Well, well. If it isn't the little boy blue. We had hoped, of course, but it's great to see you here! Why don't you come and find out what's going on, X? Oh, and any friends you've got along with you might want to prepare. this isn't a game. Not anymore."
Kimiko looked to X. "Ecksu-san, what is going on?"
X shook his head. "I don't know, Kimiko, but it's giving me a bad feeling." He switched on his helmet comm. "This is X to MHHQ, do you read? Hello? ...Is anybody there?"
A frown crossed X's face. "I hate to say it, but I think we're locked in- and the comm block is still in place."
Kimiko nodded. "What was that about this not being a game, though?"
X's frown deepened. "I don't know for sure, but I'll bet whoever did this also turned the simul all the way up- there's no point to just putting someone in stasis, this program's probably set to destroy. I think you should turn off your SIOE."
Kimiko nodded, turning off the simul-interface program, returning her buster to normal power levels and causing her display to revert to real Internal Operations Energy. Nodding to herself, she returned her attention to the world around- and tackled X to the ground.
An instant later, a huge blast of plasma flew over them, missing by inches, then ate a wide crater into the road surface.
Propping herself up to look, one hand on the road, one on X's chestplate, Kimiko gaped for an instant before hopping to her feet.
"What is THAT thing??"
X rolled over onto his front, also popping up into a standing position. He stared, jaw hanging somewhat slack, until a large cannon fired.
The two prereploids dived in either direction.
X shouted over the roar of the exploding shell. "The Death Rogumer!!! A deadly flying fortress-"
"From the first Uprising!" Finished Kimiko, stopping for a moment. "So what do we do about it? It's heading this way!"
X sized the situation up. Their side: X, with no armor sets, and no special weapons. Kimiko, also with no armor sets (assuming she could have any) and no special weapons. Neither one with any Heart Tanks or Sub Tanks. No backup, no reinforcements. And a sneaking suspicion that Sigma was behind this.
Their opposition: One damned huge airborn gunrack, complete with a full hangar of Bee Bladers and lesser robots. And a basically infinite capacity to create more equally nasty weapons.
"RUN!!" Shouted the blue Hunter, dashing away from the Death Rogumer.
Kimiko gladly complied, a crater forming behind her where another ball of plasma landed.
******
Boron, still at the janitor post, continued his work as though nothing were the matter. Wouldn't do to look suspicious anytime within the next few days, anyways.
******
Ochre slowly began polishing the pane on the front of his Landchaser that covered the nose-cannon. Something about Boron was still bugging him. Then again, he had always felt uneasy around people who talked to themselves.
It was probably just his imagination, he mused, continuing on to the left support strut for the front hoverdisc.
******
They'd been running for five minutes, and already Kimiko's nerves were shot.
She and X constantly had to shift between looking where they were going, and glancing at the Rogumer to keep track of the constant potshots it was taking. She'd managed to run into three 'no parking' signs before she could manage to avoid obstacles while looking backwards, and her cheek still hurt. At least she hadn't suffered a noticable loss of Internal Operations Energy from it, but those cannon shells kept getting closer.
In fact, looking back at it again, she realized to her dismay that the Death Rogumer was also doing so. She altered course to go near X.
"Ecksu-san, it's gaining on us!"
For a moment, X gave no sign of having heard her, glancing back and forth to make sure not to run into anything or get shot.
"Ecksu-san!!"
Kimiko was surprised when X nearly growled. He was usually so calm.
"Fine!" He shouted. "Then we'll have to go in close! Beware of the lasers, they're only good at the middle ranges, and once you get in close, you have to worry about the swarm missiles! And keep your eye out for those Bee Bladers, they're murder at close range!
"Ready?" X called, already charging his buster.
Kimiko nodded.
"ABOUT FACE!!"
Mid-dash, Kimiko was forced to spend the rest of the burst using her jets to slow down. X, meanwhile, hopped up and rebounded off of a lamppost, pulling a long dash-jump towards the airborne juggernaught.
Automatically, Kimiko began jinking her course as she started her charge, dodging various shells and plasma bursts. Before she knew it, she had passed through the distance the lasers could fire at, and the Rogumer was looming large overhead.
Then the carnage really began.
Following X, Kimiko nearly got herself sliced in half by a burst of chaingun fire. As it was, three bullets had found a new home in her abdomen, cutting her Internal Operations Energy by a neat six percent. She managed to land on her feet, enabling her to jump to one side and avoid the concerted plasma cannon fire. Desperately, she scrambled for her balance, narrowly avoiding a rough landing on her head. Forced to jump back by another spatter of bullets on pavement, she took the opportunity to release her supershot and follow it up with a random spray of rapid light shot.
******
X was already on the Death Rogumer, wall-jumping and dash-jumping all about, taking every possible opportunity to slag a weapon or six. There had been a few narrow misses from the short range plasma cannon, but on the whole he was dishing out a lot and taking none. Of course, the Rogumer could take quite a lot. Even with the melted remains of numerous weapons dotting it's hull, the huge ship had weaponry and to spare.
The hissing sound of doors opening was all the warning he got before a huge rack of missiles popped out of a now-missing section of the hull. Reflexively, X jumped back, unleashing a flurry of plasma into the front of the rack, and was rewarded with a rather nicely-hued fireball. A few stray missiles triggered and spiraled off into the distance, lacking targets.
There was a distinctive whoosh of missiles launching, and X increased the pace, no longer taking the opportunity to slag anymore weapons. The twenty or so small missiles following him weren't so careful, and a few miniguns bit the dust. It took X a couple of minutes to loop around and destroy the second launcher in the area, but at least by then the remaining missiles had either run into obstacles or out of fuel. He took an instant to wonder how Kimiko was doing before letting fly at another cluster of plasma cannon.
******
Kimiko had basically been alive for not much more than a week now. There had been quite a few moments during that time at which she had sworn she would never hate anything.
She hated the Death Rogumer quite powerfully.
Every time she managed to destroy a weapon on it, the shots tracking her got a little bit closer.
The previous bullet wounds had already been sealed and were almost repaired, although there were still holes in her purple bodysuit, which had been stained darker with her blood. Even so, the pain remained, and she had no desire to repeat the experience. She had to concentrate. She had to keep from making a pattern with her motions, so that she would not get shot.
She had to figure out which curse was most appropriate for suddenly finding yourself between a Rogumer, two squadrons of swarm missiles, and a Bee Blader.
******
Zero was getting impatient. X was three minutes late. How was he supposed to keep track of Kimiko for a while if she wasn't anywhere nearby?
Grumbling, the red reploid set off for the simulators. Maybe it was taking longer than expected. He knew she hadn't seemed like much of a fighter.
******
Boron hummed as he directed a cleaning robot in one of the quarters. Wouldn't do to have any of that filthy human dust floating around where there weren't any humans. His fingers danced lightly over the controls.
******
Immediately, Kimiko began running between the Bee Blader and the Death Rogumer, the opposite direction from the clusters of missiles. The Rogumer's plasma cannon and chainguns tracked her, still missing, and the Bee Blader turned as well, trying to catch it's targeting systems to her location.
She was still ahead of the shot.
The plasma cannon and miniguns raked the side and front of the Bee Blader as it turned, and then a freak shot detonated the gunship's missiles as they emerged from the launch tubes. The Bee Blader's chaingun shots slammed into several of the cannon on the Rogumer. Into the carnage of small explosions and bullets flew the hail of missiles, many of them becoming confused by what was effectively a heavy spray of flak, and either getting caught or tracking each other. With an immensely lucky dash jump, Kimiko managed to fly out in front of the roiling fireball that became of the insectoid helicopter, narrowly missed by a few pieces of shrapnel. Glancing about mid-jump Kimiko caught sight of one of the missile racks, smoothly rotating to face her.
Shifting midair, she came down facing the launcher, and leapt into another dash jump, finally going up the side of the airship itself, over the few missiles that survived the barrage, landing right next to the missile rack. Running on the curved surface of the hull, she followed the rotation of the Swarm launcher, always staying behind the massive box, hoping that the guns tracking her would do the job for her, allowing her to keep her concentration on not getting shot.
******
X took a moment to calm down a bit as he scanned the area of the front hull he was clinging to. None of the arsenal of weapons in the area were still functional, and he'd taken out the Bee Blader that had shown up to take him on. He hadn't gone unscathed himself, he'd taken a few shots from plasma cannon before he could finish up. The damage was relatively minor, however, and already fixed. Jumping up to a flat area, he started running around the curve of the air fortress towards where he expected Kimiko to be.
He was not disappointed. As he neared Kimiko's position, sounds of a firefight began reaching his ears. Glancing at a few of the destroyed weapons dotting the hull of the Rogumer, he noted a gradual increase in accuracy in the direction he was heading. Rounding one last curve, he reached the far edge of the massive airship just in time to witness the third and fourth Bee Bladers going up in a massive fireball.
There was no time for thought, however, as he spotted Kimiko, thrown backwards by the explosion, heading out an arc that would take her well away from the Rogumer, with a stunned expression that indicated she wouldn't be landing on her feet.
******
Things had not been going well. First the other guns had totally failed to destroy the missile rack Kimiko had been hiding behind. Then, to make it worse, a pair of Bee Bladers had shown up and started firing at oblique angles to try and hit Kimiko without risking the launcher. Forced out of hiding, she had begun running a widening spiral around the missile launcher, blasting away chaingun and plasma cannon at every opportunity.
She had discovered the other missile rack when one of the missiles managed to clip the back of her helmet. Quickly altering tactics, she had paused for a moment directly between the missile racks. The last chaingun had almost tagged her, but she melted the barrel with a snap shot, and, as the missiles neared, had jumped almost straight up. Almost, but not quite. Arcing away from the following horde of missiles, she had kept up the dodging, while the two racks continued to add to the explosive army following her.
One rack had gone down when she'd triggered the warheads on one volley as it was being launched, the steel box blown wide open. That had left her with the two Bee Bladers and the last rack. Spiraling in this time, she managed to draw in the Bee Bladers, which were holding their fire, while closing on the swarm rack.
In retrospect, perhaps ducking behind the missile rack hadn't been the best idea. The sheer number of missiles following her had more than ensured the destruction of the missile launcher, and, as she'd hoped, had managed to get the attack helicopters as well. That was good. They had also had more power than she'd expected, and that was bad. The heavy impact on her back had been followed by a sense of weightlessness, but the explosion had knocked her optics and internal sense of balance completely offline, not to mention completely stunning her.
Thus, it was with a sense of futile dread and panic that she fell limply towards the unhappily distant ground. Her rather graceless flight was interrupted by a slight impact, and the feeling of weightlessnes returned again.
Odd. I thought that would hurt more. And I didn't think I'd bounce. it wasn't that high.
Her vision cleared, to reveal a profile view of X.
Huh?
******
Still holding Kimiko in the cradled position, X landed in a crouch, then straightened up and placed Kimiko on her feet. It took the green prereploid a moment to catch her balance, then she turned to X.
"Arigatoo, Ecksu-san."
X waved it off. "No need. I really don't think I can let either of us get hurt any more than absolutely necessary, particularly by minor mistakes. I have this really bad feeling that this whole thing is just the beginning."
There was a grating laugh from the direction of the Rogumer, and both X and Kimiko whirled, to find a most unpleasent sight.
A well-known purple helmet with a T-shaped visor peered out of the cockpit of an equally well-known blue-and-yellow combat mecha. A single, malevolent red eye glowed from within the visor.
"Indeed, it is." Vile grated out. "Indeed it is."
Big uh-oh. REALLY big uh-oh.
Remember, when X didn't have any armor or special weapons or anything, Vile totally creamed him with that particular Ride Armor. And none of X's shot did any damage.
Not to mention that neither X nor Kimiko is at 100 % (particularly not Kimiko).
And what about Zero, Ochre, and Boron?
And will Stamp, Turk, Arnie or Turtlava ever show their faces again?
Would you believe I'm not sure?
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" "Okay, but what about me? I bet he doesn't know what lurks in the hearts of women!"