Kimiko stared down into the gorge. This was all wrong.
X-san was one of the two greatest Hunters ever. To lose out to a simulation of someone he'd defeated before.
Were she human, Kimiko would likely have been occupied being sick. A fall of that distance, even to a Reploid, was nowhere near anything to be sneered at.
Suddenly, the world went blank.
When things cleared up, Kimiko found herself in a desert. Sand slowly swirled about, and nearby was the entrance to a very familiar underground complex.
She shuddered. X-san was. gone? Dead?
She sincerely hoped not. She wished it not to be, with all her soul. It was not right for someone who'd stopped four Maverick Uprisings to lose out to a. a computer glitch! Outrage filled every fiber of her being as she stood upon the warehouse. Her father had told her to aid X in his fight to help the humans. If he was dead, then she had failed..
This would not be tolerated. Her father would not have, and neither would she.
And so, Kimiko ran. This place was already familiar to her, thanks to her training earlier with X. This time, though, she paid the scrivers, helidrones, and corridor-blockers no heed other than to move around them. No snags in her motion, she ran, too fast for the robots to keep up with.
As she reached the empty elevator shaft, a reflexive shot upwards, without even looking, took out the hovering robot, even as it reached out to grab the walls.
Still not using her dash jets, waiting for them to finish recharging enough from her short flight earler, she scrambled up the wall, using her gauntlet- claws to maintain purchase, moving too quickly to backslide any. A curious mixture of fury and despair warped her face as she crested the edge of the elevator shaft, and ran down the hall, heedless of the gigantic parts racked on the walls to either side.
A scriver was unlucky enough to hop up at her during this last stretch of hall, and met first with her left fist, and then with the wall, tumbling to the ground with a clatter, finally being terminated with the bang of a gigantic foot falling on it.
Kimiko reached the downwards stretch leading to the lair of the gigantic purple robot, and simply fell down it, not bothering to build a charge in her buster. With a crash of metal, her booted feet landed on the topmost girder, and she stood stock still.
The instant the mechaniroid landed before her, she sprang into action. Leaping forwards, she ran across its shoulder onto its head. Predictably, it responded by swinging its morning-star fist at her.
Kimiko's eyes widened as she rapidly dodged, using a small burst from her dash boots to land on the opposite wall from where the robot was facing. The spiked ball slid through the air just over the Mechaniroid's head, swinging down to rest at its side once more. It hadn't smashed its own skull!
To Kimiko's dismay, the gigantic robot, rather than turning around, simply span its head to face her. She watched its arms, careful for its next attack. Even as she did, she began building a charge in her buster. Obviously, there was something she was missing here. There was a way to defeat this thing, of that she was sure. But if it wasn't by forcing it to destroy itself, then there had to be some way she could have an effect on the metallic behemoth.
But what was it?
**************************************************************************** **********
Zero tapped his foot, metal clashing on metal.
"Well? Can I go back in yet?"
The last of the Hunters set to removing the destroyed pieces of metal clambered out from the good-sized hole in the wall.
"Go for it, sir!"
A short, abrupt nod, and Zero dashed forwards, between the few still- evident pipes and circuits within the wall.
As the sound of metallic mayhem ensued from within the wall, Stamp arched his neck over, bringing his head down near Turk.
"Wow. I've never seen Commander Zero like that before."
Turk chuckled. "You've never seen him in combat, then?"
Stamp blinked, then thought a moment.
"Actually, no. This is how he acts in the field?"
"Worse, really. He's holding back a lot, because he's trying to keep from breaking the wrong thing."
There was a metallic clang, followed by cursing from within the confines of the thick wall.
"Where the hell is the cleanup, huh?!? Get this shit out from under my feet!"
Several of the techs backed away from the hole a bit, while a few of the Hunters just shook their heads and moved in.
**************************************************************************** **********
Kimiko clung desparately to the underside of a set of girders. She'd managed to temporarily lose the attention of the huge purple robot, and sincerely hoped it would stay lost long enough for her to get some thinking in.
Shots to the arms weren't working. Shots to the legs weren't working. Nor to the body, the feet, the 'hands', the joints- and her shots at its head were blocked when it interposed one huge weapon in front of itself. Obviously, the head was the weak point, and she'd have to fire when it couldn't defend its head- but with both spiked 'fists' in motion near- constantly, that wasn't likely to ever happen. Maybe if she-
Kimiko's train of thought was derailed as one of the massive weapons crashed into the topside of the girder she was hanging from, flinging her down into the steely platform below. The shock jolted the connections in all of her systems, leaving her momentarily stunned. She watched dazedly for a moment as one wrecking-ball swung down at her. This was it- she was going to.. No. She wasn't.
A full-power blast from her Dash Boots, and she was spiraling through the air, twisting to land on her feet on the next girder, even as one of the mechaniloid's weapons utterly ruined the platform she had occupied only instants before.
Almost before she had landed, she was starting into another jump, back in the direction she had come from, and rebounded off the side of the upper platform, using that as a rebound point to make her way up the structures, until she was even with the robot's head.
The mechaniloid ripped its limb free from the platform, swinging it through several others, bringing its other weapon around as well, as if to clap Kimiko between the spiked orbs.
This was her chance.
Leaping forwards off the platform, Kimiko arced up, over, and down, heading straight for the mechaniloid's face. As she approached, heading somewhat downwards, she engaged in an inadvisable use of basic dash-jets.
She used them to accelerate midair, but not up or to the sides. Instead she simply increased her velocity in the direction she had already been going. With a wrenching crack, she swung her arm out, literally shoving her fist into the center of the mechaniloid's face, the softer steel- titanium alloy of the robot's head giving far more easily than the rest of its titanitefloalloy construction would.
Leaving her arm in place, Kimiko shifted her hand into a buster, and ripped loose shot after shot into the robot's skull. Within seconds, the entire contents of the robot's head were a charred, melted ruin, and, unbalanced, it began to fall.
With a kiai of effort, Kimiko wrenched her arm free, and jumped clear.
And then both of the robot's arms swung past her, clipping her helmet, creating a large dent in the side.
The prereploid spun out of control, falling into the darkness of the huge room.
**************************************************************************** **********
Ocher grumbled as he worked at the terminal, scanning the access logs. It had to be in here somewhere.
File after file, the text flowed up the screen, some items tagged, some not.
Ocher reflected that it was somewhat ironic that it was someone purely useful in combat duty who would be the only one to think of checking the access logs. Then again, X was very important to the Maverick Hunters, and it only made sense that he would be the first concern.
Either way, he absolutely hated scanning through all these times and dates.
Finally, one caught his attention.
21XX, 15th August, 2:57 PM Maintenance Station Halbert File Upload Completed 14.74GQ
"Today.." Ocher muttered to himself. "Halbert. Halbert.. Wait, I was just there. Only Boron and I have been in there since last night.."
Ochers expression darkened considerably as he uploaded the information to a small datapad, and sent it by chute to Dr. Cain. It didn't matter where in the building the man was, the computer would find him.
Then he stalked off down the hall. He had to have a little. talk. with a certain sanitation engineer..
**************************************************************************** **********
Kimiko blinked twice, not quite registering the sight before- or, rather, above- her.
X, landing, having caught Kimiko yet again, looked down at her and smiled slightly. "You've got to stop dropping in unexpectedly like that."
The logical side of Kimiko's mind went 'Guh' as it completely failed to process the presence of a person who was, by all rights, totally destroyed. The rest of her was in a similar state of confusion, so, even as the pieces of Mechaniloid fell about them, she only managed to babble a little.
"Wha. a.. E-ecksu-san.. The. canyon. falling. nani?"
"Good to see you too."
As X put her down, Kimiko found that having her feet on firm ground seemed to help her ability to process what was going on.
"What. How did you survive that, Ecksu-san? The fall."
X nodded, smiling slightly. "Would have killed me outright if I had fallen all that way. The thing about a canyon, of course, is that it has two sides. I was able to shove off from Armored when he started flailing in panic. I slammed into the far wall of the canyon, but was fortunate enough- or unfortunate enough- to run into an outcropping. Gave me a bit of a gash."
Indeed, there was a small tear across the belly of X's bodysuit, but the synthskin had already almost completely sealed up over the wound. Kimiko nodded, glad that her friend had managed to come through it alright. "Why didn't you shout to me, Ecksu-san?"
X chuckled slightly. "You rushed off too fast. I- whoops."
And the world TWISTED.
Looking up, Kimiko saw that she and X were standing amidst a few crates, next to a huge warehouse. Off in the distance, tiny flying robots flitted about, and more warehouses could be seen, in steady, even rows. The entire scenery was in the dull greys of steel, titanium, and ferroconcrete. Kimiko blinked a bit.
"Ecksu-san, where are we now?"
X frowned, looking around the area. This place was familiar- and very unwelcome. "This looks like the warehouse district from Dopplertown- circa the Third Uprising. It also looks like we've got a small breather- How are you holding up?"
Kimiko shook her head. "Not well, Ecksu-san. I'm down to forty-five percent. You?"
X frowned. "I'm at eighty-six. This isn't good. You've been averaging fourteen percent down each instance we go through- And they're only getting harder. Maybe-"
"Iie, Ecksu-san." Stated Kimiko. "I can keep going. It's getting easier." X gave her a sidelong glance.
"If you're sure. I just don't want to risk anyone dying in here- If you get in serious danger, you'll have to let me take over. You understand that?"
With a faintly sour look on her face, Kimiko nodded. "Hai. I would rather not be a burden, though."
"Understood. Now, this is going to be fairly easy at first." X turned, and gazed at the warehouses. "But if we have to fight who I think we do at the end of this, it's going to be extremely difficult. You've read the files on Blasé Horneck?"
Kimiko paled slightly. "Yes.. The simulator for him gauges him at A-level difficulty and up- noone with a lower grade is even allowed to be in a training sim involving that Maverick."
X nodded once, shortly. "That's why I was worried. You've been doing exceptionally well for someone completely untrained, but this may well be a good bit over your head."
Kimiko sighed, looking down somewhat. "I am aware of that, Ecksu-san. Still."
X chuckled grimly. "Very determined. That can be a good thing. C'mon, let's move it before they start coming out to look for us."
"Hai."
**************************************************************************** **********
And there's part 11. Took me longer than any of the others, because life has taken to kicking me in the head of late. Dammit.
Anyways, there you all go, and here I go, of to continue writing. By all means, review! Ja ne!
-Selene Starblade, 11/16/03
X-san was one of the two greatest Hunters ever. To lose out to a simulation of someone he'd defeated before.
Were she human, Kimiko would likely have been occupied being sick. A fall of that distance, even to a Reploid, was nowhere near anything to be sneered at.
Suddenly, the world went blank.
When things cleared up, Kimiko found herself in a desert. Sand slowly swirled about, and nearby was the entrance to a very familiar underground complex.
She shuddered. X-san was. gone? Dead?
She sincerely hoped not. She wished it not to be, with all her soul. It was not right for someone who'd stopped four Maverick Uprisings to lose out to a. a computer glitch! Outrage filled every fiber of her being as she stood upon the warehouse. Her father had told her to aid X in his fight to help the humans. If he was dead, then she had failed..
This would not be tolerated. Her father would not have, and neither would she.
And so, Kimiko ran. This place was already familiar to her, thanks to her training earlier with X. This time, though, she paid the scrivers, helidrones, and corridor-blockers no heed other than to move around them. No snags in her motion, she ran, too fast for the robots to keep up with.
As she reached the empty elevator shaft, a reflexive shot upwards, without even looking, took out the hovering robot, even as it reached out to grab the walls.
Still not using her dash jets, waiting for them to finish recharging enough from her short flight earler, she scrambled up the wall, using her gauntlet- claws to maintain purchase, moving too quickly to backslide any. A curious mixture of fury and despair warped her face as she crested the edge of the elevator shaft, and ran down the hall, heedless of the gigantic parts racked on the walls to either side.
A scriver was unlucky enough to hop up at her during this last stretch of hall, and met first with her left fist, and then with the wall, tumbling to the ground with a clatter, finally being terminated with the bang of a gigantic foot falling on it.
Kimiko reached the downwards stretch leading to the lair of the gigantic purple robot, and simply fell down it, not bothering to build a charge in her buster. With a crash of metal, her booted feet landed on the topmost girder, and she stood stock still.
The instant the mechaniroid landed before her, she sprang into action. Leaping forwards, she ran across its shoulder onto its head. Predictably, it responded by swinging its morning-star fist at her.
Kimiko's eyes widened as she rapidly dodged, using a small burst from her dash boots to land on the opposite wall from where the robot was facing. The spiked ball slid through the air just over the Mechaniroid's head, swinging down to rest at its side once more. It hadn't smashed its own skull!
To Kimiko's dismay, the gigantic robot, rather than turning around, simply span its head to face her. She watched its arms, careful for its next attack. Even as she did, she began building a charge in her buster. Obviously, there was something she was missing here. There was a way to defeat this thing, of that she was sure. But if it wasn't by forcing it to destroy itself, then there had to be some way she could have an effect on the metallic behemoth.
But what was it?
**************************************************************************** **********
Zero tapped his foot, metal clashing on metal.
"Well? Can I go back in yet?"
The last of the Hunters set to removing the destroyed pieces of metal clambered out from the good-sized hole in the wall.
"Go for it, sir!"
A short, abrupt nod, and Zero dashed forwards, between the few still- evident pipes and circuits within the wall.
As the sound of metallic mayhem ensued from within the wall, Stamp arched his neck over, bringing his head down near Turk.
"Wow. I've never seen Commander Zero like that before."
Turk chuckled. "You've never seen him in combat, then?"
Stamp blinked, then thought a moment.
"Actually, no. This is how he acts in the field?"
"Worse, really. He's holding back a lot, because he's trying to keep from breaking the wrong thing."
There was a metallic clang, followed by cursing from within the confines of the thick wall.
"Where the hell is the cleanup, huh?!? Get this shit out from under my feet!"
Several of the techs backed away from the hole a bit, while a few of the Hunters just shook their heads and moved in.
**************************************************************************** **********
Kimiko clung desparately to the underside of a set of girders. She'd managed to temporarily lose the attention of the huge purple robot, and sincerely hoped it would stay lost long enough for her to get some thinking in.
Shots to the arms weren't working. Shots to the legs weren't working. Nor to the body, the feet, the 'hands', the joints- and her shots at its head were blocked when it interposed one huge weapon in front of itself. Obviously, the head was the weak point, and she'd have to fire when it couldn't defend its head- but with both spiked 'fists' in motion near- constantly, that wasn't likely to ever happen. Maybe if she-
Kimiko's train of thought was derailed as one of the massive weapons crashed into the topside of the girder she was hanging from, flinging her down into the steely platform below. The shock jolted the connections in all of her systems, leaving her momentarily stunned. She watched dazedly for a moment as one wrecking-ball swung down at her. This was it- she was going to.. No. She wasn't.
A full-power blast from her Dash Boots, and she was spiraling through the air, twisting to land on her feet on the next girder, even as one of the mechaniloid's weapons utterly ruined the platform she had occupied only instants before.
Almost before she had landed, she was starting into another jump, back in the direction she had come from, and rebounded off the side of the upper platform, using that as a rebound point to make her way up the structures, until she was even with the robot's head.
The mechaniloid ripped its limb free from the platform, swinging it through several others, bringing its other weapon around as well, as if to clap Kimiko between the spiked orbs.
This was her chance.
Leaping forwards off the platform, Kimiko arced up, over, and down, heading straight for the mechaniloid's face. As she approached, heading somewhat downwards, she engaged in an inadvisable use of basic dash-jets.
She used them to accelerate midair, but not up or to the sides. Instead she simply increased her velocity in the direction she had already been going. With a wrenching crack, she swung her arm out, literally shoving her fist into the center of the mechaniloid's face, the softer steel- titanium alloy of the robot's head giving far more easily than the rest of its titanitefloalloy construction would.
Leaving her arm in place, Kimiko shifted her hand into a buster, and ripped loose shot after shot into the robot's skull. Within seconds, the entire contents of the robot's head were a charred, melted ruin, and, unbalanced, it began to fall.
With a kiai of effort, Kimiko wrenched her arm free, and jumped clear.
And then both of the robot's arms swung past her, clipping her helmet, creating a large dent in the side.
The prereploid spun out of control, falling into the darkness of the huge room.
**************************************************************************** **********
Ocher grumbled as he worked at the terminal, scanning the access logs. It had to be in here somewhere.
File after file, the text flowed up the screen, some items tagged, some not.
Ocher reflected that it was somewhat ironic that it was someone purely useful in combat duty who would be the only one to think of checking the access logs. Then again, X was very important to the Maverick Hunters, and it only made sense that he would be the first concern.
Either way, he absolutely hated scanning through all these times and dates.
Finally, one caught his attention.
21XX, 15th August, 2:57 PM Maintenance Station Halbert File Upload Completed 14.74GQ
"Today.." Ocher muttered to himself. "Halbert. Halbert.. Wait, I was just there. Only Boron and I have been in there since last night.."
Ochers expression darkened considerably as he uploaded the information to a small datapad, and sent it by chute to Dr. Cain. It didn't matter where in the building the man was, the computer would find him.
Then he stalked off down the hall. He had to have a little. talk. with a certain sanitation engineer..
**************************************************************************** **********
Kimiko blinked twice, not quite registering the sight before- or, rather, above- her.
X, landing, having caught Kimiko yet again, looked down at her and smiled slightly. "You've got to stop dropping in unexpectedly like that."
The logical side of Kimiko's mind went 'Guh' as it completely failed to process the presence of a person who was, by all rights, totally destroyed. The rest of her was in a similar state of confusion, so, even as the pieces of Mechaniloid fell about them, she only managed to babble a little.
"Wha. a.. E-ecksu-san.. The. canyon. falling. nani?"
"Good to see you too."
As X put her down, Kimiko found that having her feet on firm ground seemed to help her ability to process what was going on.
"What. How did you survive that, Ecksu-san? The fall."
X nodded, smiling slightly. "Would have killed me outright if I had fallen all that way. The thing about a canyon, of course, is that it has two sides. I was able to shove off from Armored when he started flailing in panic. I slammed into the far wall of the canyon, but was fortunate enough- or unfortunate enough- to run into an outcropping. Gave me a bit of a gash."
Indeed, there was a small tear across the belly of X's bodysuit, but the synthskin had already almost completely sealed up over the wound. Kimiko nodded, glad that her friend had managed to come through it alright. "Why didn't you shout to me, Ecksu-san?"
X chuckled slightly. "You rushed off too fast. I- whoops."
And the world TWISTED.
Looking up, Kimiko saw that she and X were standing amidst a few crates, next to a huge warehouse. Off in the distance, tiny flying robots flitted about, and more warehouses could be seen, in steady, even rows. The entire scenery was in the dull greys of steel, titanium, and ferroconcrete. Kimiko blinked a bit.
"Ecksu-san, where are we now?"
X frowned, looking around the area. This place was familiar- and very unwelcome. "This looks like the warehouse district from Dopplertown- circa the Third Uprising. It also looks like we've got a small breather- How are you holding up?"
Kimiko shook her head. "Not well, Ecksu-san. I'm down to forty-five percent. You?"
X frowned. "I'm at eighty-six. This isn't good. You've been averaging fourteen percent down each instance we go through- And they're only getting harder. Maybe-"
"Iie, Ecksu-san." Stated Kimiko. "I can keep going. It's getting easier." X gave her a sidelong glance.
"If you're sure. I just don't want to risk anyone dying in here- If you get in serious danger, you'll have to let me take over. You understand that?"
With a faintly sour look on her face, Kimiko nodded. "Hai. I would rather not be a burden, though."
"Understood. Now, this is going to be fairly easy at first." X turned, and gazed at the warehouses. "But if we have to fight who I think we do at the end of this, it's going to be extremely difficult. You've read the files on Blasé Horneck?"
Kimiko paled slightly. "Yes.. The simulator for him gauges him at A-level difficulty and up- noone with a lower grade is even allowed to be in a training sim involving that Maverick."
X nodded once, shortly. "That's why I was worried. You've been doing exceptionally well for someone completely untrained, but this may well be a good bit over your head."
Kimiko sighed, looking down somewhat. "I am aware of that, Ecksu-san. Still."
X chuckled grimly. "Very determined. That can be a good thing. C'mon, let's move it before they start coming out to look for us."
"Hai."
**************************************************************************** **********
And there's part 11. Took me longer than any of the others, because life has taken to kicking me in the head of late. Dammit.
Anyways, there you all go, and here I go, of to continue writing. By all means, review! Ja ne!
-Selene Starblade, 11/16/03