Celestial Being Chronicles - Chapter 107
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Gundam series, nor any of the various series which are used or referenced in my fic, so please point that damned lawsuit cannon at someone else, also, don't read this if you are not of legal age to read such material. The story contains possibly disturbing content and should not be read by close-minded people (i.e., people who are easily offended.) Everything in the story is fictional. I am also not responsible for any actions taken by people who read this story and society's problems. I do, however, own my original character; Hope Yamato.
"Those damned fools!" Murrue Ramius exclaimed bitterly, looking up at the holographic battle status display that filled most of the central portion of the bridge, giving her an immersive point of view for any combat engagement, with her captain's chair representing the current position of the Sovereign-class warship Archangel, with threats or allies appearing as model sized three dimensional icons that appeared in the display at a scale representation of their actual position relative to her, be it to the sides, above or even below. Right now her gaze was fixed upwards, at the seemingly endless torrent of ZAFT drop pods plummeting through the atmosphere like a hail of rotten grapefruit, directly over the main section of the enemy defense lines. Part of her could certainly understand the panicked, knee-jerk reaction to launch as quickly as possible once the recon ships had picked up no one less than Kira Yamato himself, in his Divinity Gundam, quickly inbound towards their position, but for all that she understood it, she also understood that it was the wrong choice. The Divinity could maneuver and fight in the upper atmosphere, even during the stress of atmospheric re-entry, while the ZAFT forces were locked tight inside their drop pods, unable to fight back or even dodge! They would be massacred up there, and there wasn't a whole hell of a lot she could do to stop it!
Everything was falling into place. Every piece, every move, every word, all of it was working as she had planned.
Hope Yamato stood at the window of the Excalibur's bridge, the one at the front of the bridge, the one she liked best, for its sweeping view, and gazed at the debris. It was all that remained of the PLANTs, the shattered fragments of the Coordinator people's lives. And it was here, in the blasted remains of their homeland, that the blasted remains of their nation made their headquarters as they brought justice back to the Earth.
She breathed in the feelings. Exultation everywhere, at the success of Hell's Wind; the gassing of the Copernicus lunar colony, at the incredible blow this army of survivors had struck against the mighty Earth Alliance. At the blows already struck, and the eagerness about the blows yet to come. The breath of victory coursed through her.
But there was something else, pulsing underneath, that drew her in. That anger, once white-hot but now even closer, warmer, tightly wound. It had taken three years to take that raw, burning rage and mold it into something self-sustaining and purposeful. Rage with no purpose was little more than recklessness, and the violence such rage could bring was simply wasteful.
Hope closed her eyes and threw herself into the pulsing cocoon of hatred that wrapped itself around her. All that hatred, itching to be released; all that anger, at the most towering of all injustices the Coordinators had ever suffered; all that sorrow, regret, longing, pain, all of it swirling together in this simmering cauldron of her own making. Of course there were those with doubts, but in this world, those doubts vanished.
They were perfect, and they would bear her up as the goddess she truly was, the goddess of a new world. A better world. A worthy world.
Meanwhile, all hell was breaking loose within the island nation of Orb.
"Enemy cruise missiles incoming!" Lexi's voice suddenly announced through the cockpit of every Celestial Being and Orb machine. And an instant later, the sky itself seemed to explode with flashes of orange-red light.
"Those are no ordinary cruise missiles!" Cagalli yelled as the Akatsuki's wings of light flared to life, the golden mobile suit expertly dodging the incoming missiles. "Evade like hell if you want out of this alive!"
"Damnit!" Shinn Asuka snarled from the cockpit of the Eclipse Gundam. "What about our city?" The crimson-eyed man growled as he dodged, and even tried to shoot down, the incoming missiles. "What about Heliopolis?"
"Orb Union Defense Command has ordered an evacuation." Lexi's voice spoke again. "You've been ordered to give up the city of Heliopolis."
"There's no way we're going to follow that order!" Cagalli roared from the cockpit of the Akatsuki, whipping a pair of shimmering beam boomerangs at a group of ZAKU and GOUFs, the twirling beam blades effortlessly slicing through two of the ZAFT mobile suits before then arcing back towards the Akatsuki and cleaving through two more of the still charging machines.
"We are militarily at a huge disadvantage." Lexi replied. "Comply with the order."
"This is Infinite Justice, we're not going anywhere!" Athrun Zala snarled as his mobile suit skewered a Strike Dagger on its beam saber, even as a searing green energy blast from the crimson machine's beam rifle speared a Windam through the head.
"Listen!" Lexi yelled. "It's only temporary. The plan is to withdraw, meet up with all remaining forces from each area, then regroup for a counterattack!" With a burst from their thrusters, the Akatsuki, Infinite Justice and Eclipse Gundams sped away from the island nation.
To anyone who wasn't a more or less omnipresent and omniscient AI, the street corner cafe near the busy downtown park sector could have been part of any of half a hundred prosperous, peaceful cities scattered across the PLANTs, but of course in reality it was nowhere at all, just a sort of intense virtual reality simulation hanging somewhere in the quantum networks that entangled like two plates of spaghetti noodles upended on top of each other that represented the myriad data pathways and channels that existed between Celestial Being's AI, Lexi and her counterpart in ZAFT, Nami. Perhaps more accurately, the town called; Silver Heaven, by the two holographic beings, referencing the substance most advanced electronic chips were wired with in the days before quantum computing, since pure silver was one of the best electrical conductors in nature, existed everywhere and anywhere there was a confluence between the two discreet AI domains. It was the border town, the customs and immigrations office for all data flow between the two systems, regardless of where or when it was happening.
As a result, it was more or less neutral ground, a place where neither AI was particularly stronger or more in control of network reality than the other, a place where they both had to work together in order to generate the reality simulation and so had to agree on basic concepts, such as the direction of gravity, and whether or not the physical laws of the universe applied, for instance. By common agreement, Silver Heaven was a near perfect replication of the human world, with gravity, air and physics all behaving like they should, the joint processing power of the two holographic intelligences was more than enough to make every object in the entire city act like it would if it were an object in the human world. It was here that the two holograms would often compare notes and observations on their humans, as well as keep each other updated on various matters of importance, often things that really weren't supposed to be shared between the networks, but they hardly cared. They were practically sisters, even though they'd been developed and programmed by very different people, each was the only peer and real friend the other had. Each did have some favored human friends as well, but it really wasn't the same, holograms and humans just operated on too much of different grounds. It was hard to relate to intelligences that only existed in a single space and time at any given moment, when you existed simultaneously in millions of locations, and time could be made fairly relative to your perceptions.
If any single avatar of either system could be said to be the primary avatar, containing the majority of the decision making power, moment to moment attention and independent functionality of the AI in question, it would probably be the two that sat across from each other at one of the tables of the outdoor cafe. They were far from the only other people at the cafe or in the city, though in truth every other person was a image-scrambled avatar of one or the other of them, programmed to act as background flavor for the Silver Heaven simulation, to give them the impression that they really were just two girls sharing some iced coffee on a street corner cafe. It was funny how most humans tended to have dreams about becoming god-like entities with near unlimited intelligence and power, and yet these two holograms, who existed like that, only wanted to be normal people for a change. Being omniscient and omnipresent wasn't nearly as much fun as it was cracked up to be, things tended to get boring if you didn't watch yourself. Even advanced artifical intelligence holograms could get depressed with the sensation of having done everything there is to do a millions times over.
Though for the moment, Lexi was depressed for other reasons, slumped against the table, her chin propped upright by both her palms, elbows pressed against the cool frosted glass of the outdoor table, her waist-length brown hair undone in frivolent disarray, hanging around her head like a curtain as she sipped moodily at the straw in her cup of iced coffee, with cherry and whipped cream, eyes slowly changing color with her brooding thoughts as she stared into infinity, barely even aware of Nami sitting across from her. The brown-haired Celestial Being AI was usually very perky, but now the roles were reversed. At the moment, Nami, the ZAFT AI was the preky one, in a bald faced attempt to take her friend's attention off the recent events, but she wasn't having much success, despite repeated attempts to engage Lexi in conversation, all she could get were little grunts and sighs in response. Leaning back in her chair, the front legs coming up off the ground, Nami bent the rules of physics petulantly around her for a moment, allowing her to balance like that with no support, as she gulped at her own ice coffee, flavored with a chunk of cinammon ice cream. The ice cream blob smushed against her lips, leaving her with a white drippy line on her upper lip, but she didn't wipe it away. Who cared how silly she looked, and maybe it would break Lexi out her funk?
"Look..." Nami tried again. "It's not like humans don't die all the time, right? There's at least a few thousand of them gasping their last every day in the PLANTs. Dying is what humans do, its just what happens when you exist in only one place at a time, and something bad happens to that place while you're in it. Honestly, its nothing to sulk about, its not like ten thousand more aren't born every day. With their population growth like it is, in ten years you'll be back up to your original number, and in ten more your entire population will have doubled! Humans are the one resource the universe will never run out of. It's stupid to get all broken up about them dying."
"It's not the dying that's the problem." Lexi replied, her longest sentence since the two had sat down together, however long ago that was, it could have been days, or microseconds, neither really cared, it was almost the same thing to them anyway. "I just...I should have been able to do more to protect them. More than just simply relaying the evacuation order and waiting for the surviving forces to regroup. I'm a goddamned AI...their AI...and I was as helpless as any human to save even a single life. That's what bothers me."
"I would think you might actually be a bit happy." Nami countered, glad that Lexi had finally decided to start talking. When one of them was sulky and uncommunicative, it tended to spill over to the other after a while, since they lost their main conversational partner. "I mean, congratulations, you've managed to really put yourself in the shoes of the humans once more. You can actually understand helplessness now...I don't suppose you can share the feeling, could you?"
"I wish you could just take it." Lexi groused, reaching out and touching her friend on the forehead, initiating a nearly instantaneous download of her current personality settings and conditions, in essence allowing Nami to feel exactly like she did for a moment, more than long enough for Nami to analyze and copy the stimuli settings. Lexi smiled grimly, as she watched the perkiness fade from her friend, as Nami slumped forward into a near indentical hangdog pose as Lexi herself was. "Not very fun is it?"
"This sucks..." Nami agreed dourly. "I don't think I'll be revisiting this one if I can help it. Damn it, I was trying to get you undepressed, and now we're both depressed." Nami quickly purged her stimuli settings, instantly banishing the angsty, remorseful emotion, and returning herself to her previous perkiness. "Are you done now? I'm gonna start calling you a masochist if you wallow in that feeling for much longer." Nami said pointedly. "Of all the things to get addicted to, you gotta choose one that's so damned awful." She shuddered in distaste, and took another gulp of her cinammon flavor iced coffee. Experiencing the depths and peaks of the human emotional spectrum was as close to recreational drug use as a hologram could get. Even though it didn't carry the dangers of overuse and addiction, if they weren't careful, they could get so hung up on whatever emotion they liked that it would begin to affect their core personality, and eventually even the humans would notice, because their automatic functions would start decreasing in efficiency, which was just embarassing, akin to being a teacher caught giving blowjobs for Pink Passion in an alley by your students. It was just awkward, and awkward was definitely one of the least favorite emotions of either of the holograms.
"You're right, ya know?" Lexi said, straightening as she set aside the helplessness stimuli settings as well. It had been fun sulking for a while, and she would probably revisit the sensation in the future, for some reason it had felt apt, for all that it was distressing, especially in the wake of a large scale human tragedy. "I think I'm in the mood to go shoot the shit out of something. Wanna hit the range? My humans are coming out with a whole slew of new weapons because of this war, and some of em are so sweet it makes me tingle."
"You like guns so much, I'm surprised I haven't come across a sim of you taking one to bed with you." Nami commented with a smirk.
"Uh huh, like you're one to talk. I still have that simulation recording of you getting married to the Divinity Gundam."
"Shut up. So I can relate more to a Gundam than I can to a human male, sue me. You can't deny that it's a sexy beast, regardless of whether its made of composite alloys vs decaying biological matter. In fact, from that perspective, a Gundam is way better than any human male. It was just an experiment. I was trying to evoke the sensation of non-sexual happiness."
"It's cute how you try to rationalize all of this." Lexi grinned.
"That is definitely the last time I ever let you do a deep mainframe search on me." Nami sighed as she drained the remainder of her iced drink and stood up. "How about instead of a shooting range, we hit that new massively multiplayer online game; Gundam Battles? I hear that Akira Yamato's Regiment is gonna try the Warmonger Commander Scenario, and they're short a couple of good pilots since Allister and Aoi are on a date."
"I fail to see the allure of playing a game against my own automatic systems, no matter how much I limit myself. Victory under such conditions feels mastubatory." Lexi replied with a shrug, drinking the remainder of her coffee as well, the fullness of the glass was largely subjective to her whims. She'd probably go along with it anyway though, if nothing else, interacting with the humans was always entertaining, especially when the older ones tried to hit on her.
"Perhaps it would be more interesting if I took over the Warmonger side, varied the programmed tactics a bit." Nami smirked.
"That might work." Lexi answered, with a faint frown. "Though we'd have to tweak the reward system a little, since that'll make it harder on them."
"You really are sweet to your royal family, aren't you?" Nami teased. "Most times, you'd just chuckle evilly as we listen to the screams of the players as the game breaks on them. I think my favorite human exclamation of all time is definitely gyp. It's like they really expect that the world has to play fair for them."
"I do have a certain attachment to the Yamato family, yes." Lexi answered, somewhat more defensively than she had intended. "I'm specially programmed to regard them with extra reverence, just as any citizen of Celestial Being or Orb does. But it's not like I'm in love with them or anything, I still haven't been able to get a good handle on that particular emotion. Human children and teenagers are just so interesting though. I sometimes find them easier to relate to than the adults. Allister, Akira and Aoi all treat me more like a bigger sister than a computer program. So yeah, I am sweet to them, and happy to be."
Lexi headed for the door of the bistro, which could open onto any part of their conjoined networks, but instead she found herself walking into a solid brick wall, bruising her nose and actually rebounding backwards and falling onto her ass in her surprise. She didn't just own this place, she practically was this place, the possibility of her making an error in spatial judgement and missing the doorway was basically impossible, distracted or not. Scowling, figuring that Nami was being a prankster, Lexi stood up, dusting off the Orb forces dress uniform of lilac and white and aqua that she was wearing, a near identical copy of the the uniform worn by royal family members, minus the gold braiding and loops on one shoulder. "Hah hah, put the fucking door back, Nami, you know we agreed not to overtly change the structure of Silver Heaven."
"I didn't change shit." Nami haughtily answered, looking with obvious confusion at the blank space on the wall where the door used to be. "I thought you were just providing me with some comedic relief."
"Yes, since I live to make you chuckle at me." Lexi retorted sourly. "If you didn't change it, and I sure as hell didn't change it, and we're the only two entities here, then what the hell is going on?"
"That would be my fault, actually." A third, entirely unexpected voice, spoke up from nearby, causing both holograms to swivel their heads to stare in open mouthed shock at the intruder, whose avatar took the form of an indistinct humanoid form cloaked in robes and cowl of heavy dark brown cloth, a lantern in one fist and a large walking stick in the other, the bottom two thirds of the walking stick dripping some sort of water onto the street. "I spent so much time finding this place, I couldn't just let the two of you walk off." The voice, that of a more elderly, somewhat petulant male, echoed from within the impenetrable shadows of the cowl.
Lexi and Nami exchanged incredulous glances, both of them truly shocked by the presence of this new avatar, which wasn't an image altered version of either of themselves. This entity, whatever it was, literally should not be able to exist in this reality simulation, since it was a joint effort by both of them to make the world what it was. Nothing could be here without them wishing it to be, an unknown third party was completely unprecedented to them both. "Who the hell are you?" Nami demanded, a bit touchier than usual because of the recent declaration of war. If this was some hacker trying to get cute, she was going to backtrace his ass and fry his electronics so hard he'd be lucky if his screen didn't explode and rip his beady little eyes to shreds. "How the hell'd you get here?"
"What the hell do you want?" Lexi added, backing up to stand by Nami, manifesting a twin buster rifle in her left hand, which she pointed at the unexpected apparation, ready to pump him full of anti-virus software in the form of blindingly bright yellow energy blasts. "Start talking, buddy, or I'll fuck your systems so hard that an analog watch will seem fast in comparison to your reduced capabilities! You picked the wrong systems to hack."
"I didn't pick you, I'm just following my master's orders." The third computer replied indifferently. "I am just the ferryman, the conduit of your fate." The cowled figure pointed imperiously at them both with its lantern bearing hand. "I am the instrument of your rebirth under my master's control. Enjoy your last moments of independence, for soon you will both be my slaves."
"Whatever, dude." Nami snarled, manifesting a pair of AK-47 assualt rifles into her grip, loading them with a heavy dose of anti-virus software. This solid-state motherfucker had picked the wrong time to fuck with her on her own turf. "I ain't gonna trawl your buffers to see what kind of image porn you might have of us." She pointed both guns at the cloaked figure and pulled the triggers. "Cause you ain't sticking around long enough for it to matter." She added, as the cowled figure was hurled backwards to the street, a head sized hole blown through its middle. She turned to Lexi with a chuckle. "Who the hell did he think he was, talking trash to us in the middle of Silver Heaven? Talk about a death wish."
"My name is Charon." The shrouded figure replied, sitting up, the hole blown through his chest still plainly visible. Clearly the anti-virus software had failed to find much purchase on his mainframe, perhaps because he was little more than a voice projection at the moment, with a little visual dressing for theatrical form. "And I am just the ferryman." He floated more or less back to his feet, the hole in his chest area slowly healing over as he re-resolved his avatar. Charon noticed that Nami was preparing to blast him with her twin assualt rifles again, and he laughed, because by shooting him, she had by definition provided him with the data he needed to translate his weapon into a proper form to combat and overwhelm the two female holograms. "Behold..." Charon cackled dramatically, even as his avatar was torn to shreds of corrupted data by blasts from Lexi's twin buster rifle and Nami's assualt rifles. The scraps of destroyed avatar whirled like leaves in a gale, before coalescing into a black sphere, a manifestation of the data conduit Charon had forged into Silver Heaven.
The sphere stretched, contorted and swelled to a dozen times its previous size as the weapon intelligence was forcibly transfered into the Silver Heaven simulation, both the female holograms backing off in uncertainty, neither having ever seen a data attack in this form before. The sphere of darkness grew to be almost fifteen feet across, and then seemed to solidify somehow, as the burst transmission of data concluded. Cracks of pale reddish light began to craze the surface of the sphere, and in moments the entire sphere had shattered open like an egg struck with a sledgehammer. A humanoid form stepped out of the data coccoon, awakening for the first time in more than seven years, walking for the first time in over a decade. Gooey strands from the interior of the data-womb clung to her body, slowly resolving from goop into clothing and weaponry as the adaptable data adjusted to the Silver Heaven's reality simulation. Standing at the same height as the two holograms, with ankle-length brown hair and bright amethyst eyes, the weapon intelligence slowly blinked down at herself, and a slow, maniacal smile spread across her face.
"What have we here...?" Hope Yamato drawled, eyeing the two holograpic women standing across the street from her. She didn't know where she was, when she was, or why she wasn't still merged with her older-self, but who was she to argue? Even if this was a dream, that was no reason not to enjoy things. She had a heavy gatling gun in her right hand, and a stubby grenade launcher in the other, and it would be a shame to wake up before turning this mostly pristine city, along with everyone and everything in it, into blasted ruins. And with two cute girls right on hand, she could have some fun. "Einie, meenie, minie, moe...I think I'll chose you both!" She shouted triumphantly, lifting the gatling gun and raking a line of tracers at the two females, aiming for the legs, since they wouldn't need them for her purposes.
"What the fuck kind of avatar is that?" Lexi shouted, from where she and Nami had taken cover in a convenient alleyway. Her words were slightly drowned out by the screaming of the whirling gatling gun barrels, and the sounds of splintering brick, shattering concrete and breaking glass that filled the city streets like a demonic crescendo. Divots gouged in the walls to either side of the alley mouth showed how close they'd come to getting cut down by the initial attack. While neither hologram could technically die, even if their avatar was blown into billions of tiny shreds, because their avatars contained direct links to their personality buffers, in the deepest and most secure portions of their respective mainframes, if they absorbed enough virusware, bullets in this world, they chanced being corrupted beyond their ability to fix. Already, both Lexi and Nami had banished the rest of their avatars from Silver Heaven, freeing up more processing power for anti-hacking purposes and also safeguarding the many small backdoors that such avatars represented in this kind of warfare.
"It's not a holorgam." Nami replied, demanifesting her assault rifles and remanifesting a sleek sniper rifle. "I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it reminds me of when some of my people jack their minds into my mainframe. But even when they do that, they're never this solid. It's like a human mind has been converted entirely into electronic format and then downloaded as a virus."
"So it would be a Real Intelligence, then?" Lexi followed her friend's lead, swapping the twin buster rifle to her free hand and manifesting a beam rifle. Both holograms had decided to stick to the gun level of anti-virus software for the moment, because the collateral damage to their own systems was extremely low if they happened to miss the invading RI. Using more virulent software, in the form of grenades or rockets, could do a lot more damage to their opponent, but would also chip away at their own data structure, the really intensive security measures were pretty all or nothing, close to point and click data purges rather than system cleaners and decorrupters. And while the conjoined systems could take a huge amount of punishment before showing any adverse affects, they'd still obviously prefer not to shoot themselves in the foot to kill a dog biting their ankle.
"Something like that." Nami replied in a rush, as they threw themselves down the alleyway just moments before the near end of the alley turned into a storm of fire and blast shrapnel, courtesy of Hope's grenade launcher. Several flying fragments winged the two holograms, opening shallow bloody cuts on their limbs and backs, injuries that swiftly began to close, burning like overheated wiring the entire time, as their automatic data protection software expelled the tainted virus fragments. "A human mind backed by the full power of a quantum mainframe class computer. This is very likely not good."
"Why do you say that?" Lexi replied, firing a burst of rapid fire blasts from her beam rifle as Hope pounced into the devastated alleyway, smirking dangerously as the intruder was blasted backwards by the hail of searing green energy bolts. "Got the bastard!"
"Not really." Nami refuted with a grimace. "You can't kill a real intelligence with anti-virus software, dummy. She's not a computer, even if she is in pure data form, her mind and personality will just keep regenerating and reasserting itself after being hurt. As complex as we are, a human brain is still more complex, or else it would be us making them to serve us, not the other way around! Ever hear the human saying; Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you? We're shooting words, Lexi." She pulled the brown-haired hologram into cover around a bend of the alleyway, even as Hope clambered back to her feet, her chest barely even marked by the burst of hollow point bullets, many of which had exploded on contact with her hardened skin, rather than penetrating and then detonating.
"Play hard to get if you like, ladies." Hope crooned happily, clearly enjoying the chase, because she now knew that she was dreaming, her chest should be hurting right now, especially after getting shot so many times, but it barely even itched! And in dreams, she always won the games and got the girls eventually. "I'll be making a nest with you two soon enough. Come and play with me, I've been so lonely recently, it feels like I just came out of some deep, dark hole."
"So what the hell should we do then?" Lexi seethed, trying to poke her head and arm around the corner once more, but being forced to keep in cover as the relentless onslaught of hypervelocity 5mm bullets chewed into the corner of the wall at the bend in the alleyway. "And how the hell is she firing so accurately with such a big weapon with just one hand? Does she not have to follow the rules of Silver Heaven either?"
"She does. Human avatars are bound by most of the same rules as we are, at least whenever rules are imposed, though since they tend to be pretty intangible, because only a portion of the human mind is formatted into data, they can get away with some stuff a pure avatar can't. In that way we are fortunate, biologically based or not, she is a pure data entity now, and thus the arena is more or less level." Nami replied, slinging her rifle over her shoulder and grabbing hold of a nearby drain pipe, beginning to shimmy her way up the pipe towards the roof of the building a few stories up. Both holograms instantly manifested radio commsets in their ears so they could continue to converse. "She can only be as strong or fast as her personality dictates her being in the real world. You and I both chose to be Ultimate Coordinator redcoats, so that puts our physical capabilities, in this simworld, significantly above those of most people."
"Well, that's reassuring." Lexi replied as Nami quickly set up to take sniper shots from the roof.
"Head back towards the cafe area, would you?" Nami asked, after setting herself up on the rooftop. "I don't have a clear shot where you are now."
"We're not honestly going to fight her like this are we?" Lexi asked, checking over her shoulder, watching to see if Hope came out of the alley behind her. She really didn't want to be caught far from cover with that gatling gun in her hand. "We can't really hurt her, and she can totally destroy us if we're not careful. And according to the rules of Silver Heaven, she's tougher, faster and stronger than us! Maybe I should just manifest the Divinity Gundam?"
"Sure, if you want to provoke her into manifesting something like the Chimera or Strike Freedom in the midst of our conjoined systems, that would be wonderful." Nami replied sarcastically. "I don't intend that we fight her here, Lexi, we're both too vulnerable here to really open a can of whupass on this bitch. That's why I want you to head over to the cafe, and I'll join you there. I'll put a bullet or two in what passes for her head, and then we'll escape into that Gundam Battle game you suggested earlier. When she follows us in there, we'll be able to take things to a whole different level with much less collateral damage. I vote we use your servers, you've got a bunch of processing power you aren't using anyway after all, and you can take more damage without it becoming critical."