Adam stood, club raised in a defensive posture, in the hangar bay of the Paris luxury-megatower. In front of him was the knight, massive shields raised to its sides, ready to crash into any oncoming blow, sword-arms ready to stab out in retaliation. The knight's torso armor was damaged, but not very much. To his side was the now one-armed half-meat, awkwardly raising a weapon meant for two hands in one.
The ground about them was cracked and damaged.
Adam grunted in frustration. This was like fighting a fucking snapping turtle, which brought to mind the time Uriel had to kill one. Adam banished the thought, he didn't need any distractions right now. Right now he had to figure out how the knight was able to explode an armored chrome arm with a quarter-inch of penetration.
It had to be panzerfaust, of course, but the exact method was unknown. Was it simply that much better at this than he was? That was a possibility, but he couldn't plan around a skill difference. That also didn't help him figure out that invincibility trick. It was not like the counter-vibration trick the first one pulled, Adam knew how that worked at this point, this was different.
The knight took a heavy step forwards. It wasn't going to give him time to simply sit and think, which meant that he had to get creative. A noise to his side reminded him that half-meat was still here. Adam grunted at that, he couldn't focus on fighting and worrying about a backstab from some chinese fucker while he was at it. Uriel had a suggestion for getting him off his back. He opened a message line with the half-meat next to him as he readied himself to clash with the panzerbot.
[Hang back and observe.]
[I can still fight, do not pity me!]
[I will engage, you will figure out his invincibility trick, then he dies.]
[...I shall.]
Good, now all Adam could actually focus on fighting the knight without the half-meat getting in his fucking way. Adam was never good at this defensive thing, but he was a quick study when his life was on the line. The best way to block an attack was to meet it half-way, before momentum had built up too much, so that's what he did.
Their sandevistans activated. They both stepped forwards. Adam swung his club down, which was met by the twin shields of the knight. It stabbed at him with its swords, which Adam parried by drawing his club back a tad, letting go of its handle with one hand, and twisting his hand that was still holding the club 360 degrees to knock the blades off to the side of his body.
Their sandevistans deactivated, the ground cracked beneath the knight's feet. Adam had a hand freed up and already reared back. He punched one shield as hard as he could, the ground cracked again. This is the benefit to planning ahead, scrapfucker.
Test one successful, his melee attacks directly correspond with the damage that the ground takes after an attack chain is concluded. Moving onto test two.
The knight stabbed forwards again, blue optic glowing in malice. This time with only one blade, reserving the other for now. Adam batted it off to the side with his club, sending the arm off to pair with its fellow. The knight's entire body was wound up now, ready for a massive double-slice at him.
Their sandevistans activated, the knight began to swing, starting a heavy step forwards. There, that was his cue. Adam moved forwards, abandoning any defense for a full-on attack at the knight's half-exposed secondary arms with his club. Mid-step, he immediately abandoned his step and stomped his foot down where it was, aborting the swings for a quick block instead. The sword arms blocked in time.
Their sandevistans deactivated. The ground cracked around the knight's feet again. Test two successful, the knight doesn't want to be attacked while moving under any circumstance. This probably meant that the invincibility trick had something to do with staying still. That, and the knight couldn't do that immediately, at least not during sandevistan time, he had to have a moment after staying still to become invincible, as evidenced by the fact that he blocked rather than just take the hit.
Adam was fairly certain of that already, but he had been prepared to lose an arm in that exchange in case he was wrong. When combined with the results of test one, it made for a fairly clear picture.
When he attacked the knight, if he was firmly standing, then he could redirect the force of the blow from his attack to the floor instead. It wasn't an invincibility trick, it was a redirection trick, he was forcing something else to take the force of the blow. That was how he managed to explode the half-meat's arm earlier, he had forced it to take the combined power of Adam's and half-meat's own blows.
Adam was glad half-meat was here to take that first hit for him now. Had he been hit by his own blow and the blow of the knight then he would likely lose a limb, and then he would have been too crippled to win against that defensive bullshit. It would have been fucking embarrassing to run away from some antique bot.
Now, he had his hypothesis, but he had to confirm two more details. Time for test three.
Their sandevistans activated. Adam stomped forwards again, club swinging down from on high. The scrapfucker raised both shields above its shoulders to block it and prevent him from guarding fast enough. Shame that this was a trick, dumbass.
Right as his club impacted, Adam had already let go of it and crouched as fast as he could. He glared triumphantly up into the knight's optics as he fired three missiles at point blank range. Adam slid back a bit, pushed back by the force of the explosions. He had managed to negate the damage with the counter-vibration trick he stole from the first panzerbot. His paint was scorched, correction, he had been able to mostly negate it.
Unfortunately, what he had hoped wasn't quite true. The smoke around the knight faded to reveal that it was only slightly scorched, and the ground around its feet was cracked even more. So test three was successful, it was not just melee attacks or bullets, it was all forms of kinetic energy that came his way that he was able to shunt off.
Adam didn't have any non-kinetic form of attack, a weakness he resolved to correct in the future. Missiles, melee, and guns were his only options, and all of them the bot in front of him could ignore if he was standing still. Which meant that in order to win… Adam had to either attack in a way that didn't allow for kinetic dispersal, or get access to a non-kinetic attack.
The only two methods of something like that he had access to was Uriel's hacking and…
[I have seen through his mystery! He can redirect attacks to his bladed and spiked components!]
…The Gun-Dao of the half-meat that was a little slow on the update. Come on, brat, he had figured that out during the last exchange. Although, thinking about it, he had revealed something to Adam after all. The spikes on his feet and the blades on its arms were the only places the knight seemed to redirect energy to. While it was possible that those were the only places he had wanted to thus far, it seemed correct to Adam's gut feeling.
[I will hold him in place, ready your thermite launcher.]
[Affirmative!]
Adam got into a grappler's stance, which he was sure that the knight noticed. He wouldn't be able to actually hurt the scrapfucker with a hold, but he didn't need to this time.
Their sandevistans activated. Adam rushed forwards, firing three more rockets at the knight's feet while he approached. This created both a smoke cloud and a lot of kinetic energy for the knight. Kinetic energy that the fucker wanted to use really badly no doubt.
He was proven correct about that, but not in the way he was expecting. As he moved to sidestep another stab and grapple the knight, he was met with a spin kick through the dust cloud that crashed into his upper left arm.
Their sandevistans deactivated. Adam rolled across the floor, tearing a gouge in the ground until he crashed into the far wall. For a moment, he lost track of what he was doing.
He did his best to shake off the pain, and used his left arm to brace himself. He pushed himself up, and took note of the damage.
His right arm was gone, his torso armor was orange. From one of those monstrous fucking kicks. He couldn't afford to take a hit like that again.
"You have done well for yourself. But I am the Recited Song of Roland 66, no warrior of the purely material can best me."
It was unbelievably satisfying when a thermite round crashed squarely against the distracted Chrome Quixote's back. Good job, half-meat, he will be sure to learn your name after this. The knight growled mechanically before a depressurized hiss came from him, a section of his back armor unlatched and with it went his shield arms, carrying the still burning thermite with it.
The knight was down to two arms now, both of which were attached to massive 3 foot blades. Those shields alone probably weighed about a fourth of his total weight. Adam realized something quite concerning in that exact moment.
The knight had a sandevistan and a kerenzikov. He was faster than him while he was still around his weight. He had just lost about a hundred and fifty pounds of shield-weight.
He activated his sandevistan. The knight blurred to be in front of the half-meat, swords crossed and ready to bisect him. Adam couldn't get over there in time. Uriel could however.
Normally, in order to hack much of anything one had to first gain access to a given system. You had to be let into the system by an administrative code based on pre-recognized credentials. Uriel had no time for that, so he resorted to a quick-and-dirty solution to preventing the knight's legs from moving.
A DoS attack is when an individual simply overloads a given system by inputting too many invalid requests, draining resources until the target is unable to respond to legitimate requests. If the attacker had enough material for invalid requests ahead of time, then it was the fastest form of net-attack. Uriel had access to thousands of Adam's previously recorded fights, a compilation of his favorites.
Uriel moved and bound the knight's legs in chains of fiery code, overloading the system with thousands of false signals that Adam's own legs made in the past. His legs locked as he approached the half-meat, and abandoned its attack to stab a sword in the ground to prevent falling over. The knight's optic locked onto the DoS-chains, then onto Uriel, then onto Adam.
Their sandevistans deactivated, the knight flexed and shattered the junkcode bonds. Uriel started preparing the next net-attack.
"Your Daemon is a weak, pallid thing. Did you think such fragile chains could bind me?"
The knight turned fully to him, optic glowing in fury.
"I am the bearer of the word Mountain."
The data-shadow of something began to emerge from the panzerknight. The ICON twisted, and its tail of IP Rejection smashed into Uriel. Uriel was pushed back, righting his electronic tumble in time to kneel next to Adam. Gold-white flames flickering from the assault before re-solidifying.
"Master of the great beast of Saint Martha."
The data-shadow began to solidify around the knight. A reptilian ICON with six clawed legs, a tail with a hook at its end, a face like a stunted snapping turtle. A great thorny shell was upon its back and a kingly mane around its head.
"Tarrasque."
Adam wanted the fucker to shut up already. He fired his last burst of two missiles. He had two left in his arm, but he was now missing an arm and didn't have any left in his shoulder launcher. This was a distinctly poor situation for him to be in, he wanted to alleviate some of his frustration.
The scrapfucker stood completely still as the missiles hit. The floor cracked again. His blue optic glared at him. Good, keep all your attention on him, and no one else, certainly not anyone in the room that may or may not have a thermite launcher.
Adam rolled his shoulder and pantomimed cracking his neck. Uriel pretended to display warm-up stretches behind him. They were clearly mocking the knight. The knight's arms began to shake in rage. Adam sent the half-meat a message.
[Be ready to fire.]
Their sandevistans activated. Adam charged the knight with a kick to clash against his blades. He was angry enough that he wasn't even trying his trick now, as crippled as Adam was with a single arm and no weapon. Their attacks clashed, Adam's foot lost thirty percent structural integrity. The thermite round crashed into the knight's back again.
Their sandevistans deactivated. The knight screamed in rage. He turned to go chop the half-meat into the aforementioned halves. Dumbass.
Uriel forced Adam's sandevistan active again. The knight was turned away, and one foot was lifted off the ground, the other foot unsteady. Adam twisted into a second kick against the leg that currently bore all of his weight. The leg turned into shards of chrome that scattered across the hangar bay.
Uriel deactivated his sandevistan, Adam's nerves growled at him. The scrapfucker fell on his face and skid across the floor before flipping over and using one sword as a crutch to stand up. The swords tearing two massive lines in the concrete floor. His optic was glowing brilliantly in rage.
"YOU!"
The knight stilled, before rage left it. A calming sigh left its speaker.
"No, it is not becoming of a knight to hate his enemy, you have done well to-"
A brute-force attack was when a netrunner spammed data-requests at a given subject on as many signals as possible at once. It took some time to set up, but once done it could potentially breach even top-tier ICEs with at least one signal command going through. Uriel had been preparing this since his DoS attack failed, and so had quite a few signal frequencies to use.
Uriel sent as many commands for the Optic to shut off and for the AI's mind to simulate pain as he could all at once on as many frequencies as he could manage. In short, Uriel punched the so-called Tarrasque in the eye. The knight's optic short circuited and he used one hand to grab at its helmet.
"ENCULÉ DE TA MÈRE!"
Another thermite shot hit the knight in the arm that it was using to brace itself. Adam activated his sandevistan as the knight bellowed and rushed at the half-meat like a murderous spinning top.
Adam's sliding kick crashed into his other leg, reducing it to scrap as well. The knight flew into the wall, crashing against it with a thunderous boom. More shouts and cursing came from the
Adam grinned and began for his club. Time to beat a fucker to death.
A data-shadow loomed over him. A DoS-claw crashed down on him.
Adam collapsed, limbs refusing to operate, a full half of his systems offline from the overwhelming number of invalid requests. Uriel was forced back into his systems. It hurt quite a bit for some reason.
"You die now, Adam Smasher."
Adam and Uriel were pinned under a fucking mountain. An ICON-mountain with a toothy beak that was looming closer and closer. Uriel was reminded of the time he had to kill a snapping turtle.
He was fishing that day, as all good young country boys ought to do. It was getting late, and he put his hand near what he thought was a rock only to realize too late that it was a snapping turtle instead. He jerked his fingers back and down, dodging the bite and moving his hand to its extended neck.
How does one kill a snapping turtle without a weapon? Simple, you strangle it.
DoS-Chains of Uriel's golden white-fire came from the sole online broadcasting implant and lashed around the Tarrasque's exposed command-kill prompt. Uriel poured every scrap of fire he had to the effort. The overgrow turtle choked on its meal before it could take a bite. It began to thrash, sending a thousand kill-commands a second.
Uriel clung as hard as he could. If he failed here, Adam and he were dead. That was an unacceptable outcome. So he poured all of his relatively meager processing power into squeezing an extended neck. Spamming the command-prompt with as many invalid commands as possible.
The DoS-claw pinning Adam down loosened just enough for him to send a message.
[Kill the attacker.]
The turtle kept thrashing, Adam's systems flickered on and off at random intervals. Uriel's DoS-chains were beginning to break.
The ICON-turtle disappeared. Adam's systems slowly rebooted as he tried to get up, Uriel rededicating power to try and get it done faster.
He pushed himself up and looked over to see the half-meat had unloaded all of its remaining thermite into the knight's torso, now only a melted ruin of metal.
He stood fully, and turned to look at the half-meat, who was similarly staring him down. They could fight here…
But that wasn't in their contracts right now. A good merc doesn't pick a fight if he doesn't need to, and Adam was the best fucking merc in the world.
"Your name?"
"Chi Tu Ma."
Adam snorted, and walked over to pick up his club. It was mostly fine, he latched it back onto his shoulder mount. He then walked over to see if he could recover anything from his shattered arm. It was not looking optimistic.
He went ahead and messaged his charges that he won, and that he needed them to send someone to pick him up. As he waited for a reply, he walked over to a cleaning bot and sat on it. It whined as it tried to go about its business trying to clean the now thoroughly destroyed hangar bay. It could not with his weight on it.
Sorry bot, you were convenient right now.
Adam sat upon a bot in a destroyed arena, Chi looking contemplative as he scanned the area and melting panzerknight, and he waited for a reply so he could be picked up.
This fucking week, he couldn't wait to get back and get repairs, missing an arm got old after the first ten times.
—
He was Chi Tu Ma, the product of the greatest minds of glorious Kang Tao working nonstop for years to put together the ultimate soldier. His body was given the greatest treatments and injections required to improve combat capabilities, his cybernetics were of the highest and most-cutting edge technology known to his people, and his mind was refined from years of rigorous training.
He had come close to dying three times in the fight that he was just in. A fight that lasted no more than perhaps a minute or two.
The first death missed him by scant inches, a bare pinprick into his upper arm that turned the entire armored cybernetic into broken fragments. If that had hit his torso just a few inches over, he would have died.
The second death was avoided by the legs of the armored reaper suddenly giving out. Upon review of the footage, he learned that they stopped due to a sudden code-attack by gāojí zhànshì Adam Smasher. He did not know that Adam Smasher was capable of net-attacks in that matter, he found himself fortunate for it. For the twin-blades of the armored reaper had paused just before they would have come down upon him. Thus his second death was avoided by quick action of the gāojí zhànshì he fought with.
The third death was avoided, again by the actions of Adam Smasher. A tremendous crash of hundreds of pounds of metal crashing into the remaining leg of a fellow chrome giant. The giant that was on course to cut into him like a river cutting earth.
The product of the most brilliant minds of Kang Tao working for years, and years of their most rigorous training regimes, and he had no ability to preserve his own life in the face of a true monster.
Chi found himself in a state of horrified awe. He was mighty, there was no denying that. He could sever divisions of soldiers and sunder the walls of houses. He could move faster than a sprinting cheetah and jump farther than a waterfall-climbing carp. His armor was enough to outright ignore lesser arms, and endure many strikes from greater arms.
He had thought himself near the peak of the mountain. Then the clouds cleared, and he realized that he was only on a lesser peak, the true height of the mountain suddenly revealed to him.
There were monsters in this world, and Chi was still a man.
His remaining fist clenched around the handle of his guandao, the servos in his fingers groaning under the force he put on them.
He looked up to the hallway that led into this hangar, filled in its entirety with blood and viscera. The remains of a hundred of some of the best warriors and guardsmen in the world. All torn apart by a sole chrome giant.
He looked over at the burning remains of the chrome giant in its shattered depression in the wall. A giant that would have killed him three times over were it not for the interference of his temporary ally. A giant that would have killed him dozens of times over had he been fighting alone. A giant that crippled him with a tap.
He looked over to the Tiě Jùrén that sat on the hapless cleaning servitor. A battered, one-armed giant that endured the fury of the army-slayer long enough for him to figure out the secret of its invincible scales. A giant that saved him thrice over, even while suffering immense damage himself.
Chi Tu Ma's eyes finally saw Mount Tai, and his burning heart filled with a determination to climb.