She preferred the missiles to her hip-guns. They weighed less, she could fire them all at once if she needed to, and they could even track around corners! Sure she couldn't say that she had 'killer hips' anymore, and she only had eight shots now, but the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. No wonder the big guy used to use these before his frame update, they were great!
She wasn't sure when she stopped being so afraid of the big guy, but that early terror that used to be always present had faded over time to the occasional bout of wariness and little else. The big guy was simple and predictable, and that made him easier to handle. He liked to kill people, he didn't like to talk, he didn't like to socialize, he appreciated loyalty and hard work, and he would outright tell you if you fucked up.
Big guy never tried to play games with people, never tried to lie to them. He knew what he was, and was absolutely sure of himself about it. There was a comfort in that, in being around someone who was as solid in their beliefs as Adam Smasher was. Davey, as loveable as that puppydog-eyed gonk was, was never the most stable guy around. He started off messed up, got a little better, then everything just started going to shit when Pilar died.
She grunted as she reloaded her arm-missiles. It cost 100ed per full reload of her arm-launchers, an amount she would have considered bullshit a year ago.
Pilar was a dumb asshole who got flatlined while complimenting a hobo's dick. Her brother was a fucking gonk through and through. If he was a little less stupid then he'd still be alive today, maybe…
Who was she kidding, he'd probably rant about the big guy's lack of an asshole and then get turned into wallpaper and paste halfway through. Pilar was doomed the moment he forgot his brain at home, which was always. That didn't mean she didn't miss him.
Missiles reloaded, she stood up and slung her gun around on the shoulder-strap back into her hands.
"Kyah!"
She stared at the gun. The woman on the little optical screen was blushing, and wasn't looking her in the eye. A woman with shoulder-length black hair, wearing glasses and a three-piece black suit. Her most notable feature was her rather impressive posterior. Rebecca would have been jealous if she was an actual person rather than a cute little chatbot on her gun.
Sure, might be a rather fancy chatbot, but that's all it really was when you got right down to it. A pre-programmed personality that will respond in certain ways, and change over time to be more appealing to whoever owned it. It was cute, it told her that gonks were sneaking up on her, that's all it really needed to be. Rebecca prided herself in being a realist, even as strained as that was getting to be these days with the kung-fu magic robots apparently roaming the earth. She felt like the only sane person in a crazyhouse sometimes, that no one seemed to point out the inherent ridiculousness of that.
Most people around her seemed to shrug and accept it! Barely a reaction!
Whatever, most people were accepting it and moving on, so there probably wasn't any point in her kicking up a fuss about it either.
She glanced over to Gloria, who was nervously holding up her new riot shield in between Lucy and the potential flank route Bowlcut pointed out. Speaking of not kicking up a fuss…
The big guy had told them about a project Arasaka was doing over the past few months. It started with bad news and only kept getting worse as he kept talking. David had looked distant the moment big guy mentioned the cyberskeleton, the same way he did whenever anything reminded him of it. Lucy had shut down entirely when big guy mentioned the children.
In the end, Bowlcut was the one to run damage control. She had been too busy worrying about Davey and Lucy to look away from their faces, while Bowlcut said they shouldn't mention it to Gloria. That snapped Davey right out of it at the time, and he locked eyes with him before firming himself up and nodding sharply.
'The power of guy-to-guy communication', she thought slightly bitterly. They understood each other almost intuitively, it was downright unfair.
In the end, it had been agreed amongst them that Gloria shouldn't know, she was already traumatized enough being a corpse for a year, better to let her think the corporation that brought her back to life wasn't torturing babies to death. That was probably a good idea. Big guy had ended up grunting, he didn't really care one way or the other after all.
Standing up and moving over to Davey, she nodded to signal her readiness. They had found an underground passageway earlier, and the Bowlcut procedures told them to regroup and rearm before moving forwards. It only took about a minute and it made sure no one was out of ammo at a critical time.
Bowlcut was good at strategy, as it turns out. Better than the rest of them were, by her best guess. They were more of 'on-the-spot' planners, while Bowlcut was better at actual prep. He had only been here for a couple days and he already found a niche that he was good at. Unlike her, who was still fiddling around trying to find some way to be useful.
David was a brawler, and easily the scariest they had in a fight. Lucy was the all-important netrunner support and now overwatch too. Gloria was the medic, which was incredible to have after the fights to make sure everyone stayed alive. Bowlcut slotted right in as a better planner than the rest of them, even if he wasn't worth much in an actual fight.
That left her, Rebecca, not doing particularly anything that someone else couldn't do better. Nothing she could figure out yet at least. The sniping was good, but she was too far away and in a big heavy ACPA. The skates and metalgear were good, but she was too small and lightweight to counteract the bulk and recoil.
Big Guy was just unfair to compare herself to, so she wouldn't, but here she was copying him with the arm missiles anyways.
She just wanted to figure out where she fit in now.
She looked around. Davey was talking to Bowlcut and Big Guy as they prepared to move in, Lucy was checking what she could in the underground passageway as she idly chatted with Gloria. She was just standing around with a gun in her hands.
…Maybe it would have been better if she wasn't here to slow them down.
Lucy froze and narrowed her eyes at the screen she was typing away on. Big Guy noticed and glared over at her.
"What is it?"
"We have something on the seismograph, moving below us…"
Big Guy narrowed his optics, and turned to look at the entrance to the underground doorway. It was a cellar door design, a set of large steel plates that folded over the entrance to some sort of stairway. He considered it for a moment.
His optics widened slightly. Her world lurched.
Suddenly she was disoriented and flying through the air to the side. The doorway exploded outwards.
A three-meter giant of rusted steel plates smashed its way out of the underground, a thin visor serving as a set of eyes. The crash of the steel smashing against steel was immediately followed by the roar of a jet engine, plumes of fire from its back, evidence of a thruster park. It crashed against the concrete floor, cracking the ground and filling the air with the squeal of wheeled feet.
She saw it for half a moment before it collided into the slightly shorter form of Adam Smasher.
He braced himself, it didn't matter. The rocket-powered wheels accelerated them both through the warehouse faster than she could fall out of the air. From the steel giant came a feminine voice.
"I'm gonna fuck you with my knives!"
They broke through the far wall as she rolled against the floor.
—
For a meatbag, getting shoved at seventy miles per hour through a brick wall by a one-ton humanoid warmachine would be lethal, crippling even if they do survive. For him, it was the mark of a potentially good fight.
"Gonna fuck a thousand new holes into you!"
He knew that it was seventy miles per hour, and a one-ton warmachine (technically one-thousand, nine-hundred, and sixty one pounds, but who was counting?), because he was familiar with the sensation of being tackled by a US Army 'Grunt' ACPA. It was a fight he had played on repeat more than a few times, mostly because he didn't get to fight ACPA too often. The few times he did get to was always a rare and special event for him.
"Then fuck them with my fucking knives until they connect inside!"
Of course, this wasn't a Grunt ACPA. The fact that its armor plating was a series of rusty plates welded together in layers was the first tip-off. The second was the heavy modifications to the weaponry. He saw the original monoblade in the right arm, a second, non-monoblade in the left arm, and a total of four flak cannons. One in each arm and two on the right-shoulder mount.
"Till you look like swiss fucking cheese!"
They had the frame, thrusters, and maybe the hud of the original ACPA, everything else was jury rigged together. It was a Junkerknight, the blanket term given to any ACPA that gangers were able to salvage together from spare parts. Not as deadly as an actual ACPA, but more than enough for basically anything you could find on the streets, and enough for the local police to start bringing out their real scary weapons.
"You got that, you fucking cocksucking meatfucker!?"
All of this was in his mind as he was carried by the powered skates at the bottom of the ACPA's feet, propelled by the thruster pack roaring at full burn on its back, and ignoring the angry screams of the meatgirl piloting it. While it was irritating to be pushed back like this, it was to be expected.
"I'm gonna fuck you until you bleed!"
He was six hundred pounds, in his non-CCPL Dragoon frame, and stationary. The Junkerknight was three times his weight and rocket-powered. Force was a function of weight and speed, and right now neither was on his side. How fucking infuriating. He activated his sandevistan.
The world slowed to a crawl. He pushed back from the clash of the two blades against his raised arms, using the Tsunami Helix to brace his other arm against the mismatched retractable blades. That was another piece of evidence that told him that this was specifically a Grunt model. If it were anything stronger then the grooves the monoblade cut into his arm would be twice as deep.
Now with a little space to work with, even as he had to apply constant pressure to avoid being forced back to where he started again, he began his plan. It was simple.
He ducked. He grabbed the torso-plate with his left hand, and braced his arm with the gun. Then he stomped the ground as hard as he could at a slight angle.
The Junkerknight was forced up slightly off the ground even as his feet tore grooves in the concrete. That was enough. The Dragoon was rated for about seventeen-hundred and sixty pounds. He couldn't lift this normally, not in this frame. But the fucker was giving him rocket-thrust to work with here, more than doable right now.
Letting his entire frame work in tandem, he pushed it up while bracing his arms under its arms and against its torso. His sandevistan deactivated. He raised the ACPA up and it began to tilt down. The jockey cut out the thrusters as her view was suddenly filled with concrete instead of the distant building she was taking them to. It was too late.
At seventy miles per hour, he performed a front-facing suplex to the rocket-powered ACPA. With a wonderful scream of metal on concrete, they skid for another hundred feet before crashing through the wall of the distant building at the end of the street. He could feel the all-teeth grin on his face behind the folded-down armored mask.
Rubble showered the interior of the building as they smashed through the brick and concrete wall. Panicked screams of meatbags echoed from the outside and around him as he rolled to a stop and quickly pushed his way up again.
The Junkerknight was standing up as fast as a one-ton warmachine could, armor covered in a fresh new set of shiny streaks from where the pavement had grinded a layer of steel away. Raising his right arm, he let the slugs scream out from the rotary barrels to crash against it. The monoblade was snapped in two, one half of the blade embedded in the far wall and the bottom half still perfectly functional. Meatbags were running away from their location rapidly, although some were hiding behind rubble and other cover to film it.
Some were on the ground, now a distinct smear from where twenty-six hundred total pounds of plasteel and myomer crashed through the wall and crushed them. He wasn't allowed to go out of his way to kill meatbags anymore, but he certainly appreciated the view nevertheless. This day turned from boring to great real fucking fast.
Thirteen-hundred rounds per minute meant about twenty-two rounds per second. It took three seconds for the Junkerknight to stand up. That meant that he had unloaded sixty-six screaming shots into the ACPA before it moved.
There was something he hadn't considered, as his sandevistan was going through the process of cycling itself for the next usage. That the ganger in the ACPA might have a sandevistan of their own.
A sandevistan-boosted, rocket-powered, one-ton fist crashed into his torso. If the monoblade hadn't snapped off, it would have probably breached his reactor immediately.
He flew through the air into the street again, vitals screaming at him that his armor was slightly damaged. His armor could reliably handle rpgs without issue. Needless to say, this was a very hard punch.
His sandevistan cycled as he rolled across the ground. He pushed up as soon as he could and began unloading more screaming lead into the now slowed ACPA that was chasing back after him. He had a clear view of the damage he was inflicting on it as he fired.
Little dents and chips. He grit his teeth. Fucking ACPA. This one was made of literal scrap and it was about as well armored as he was. Adjusting his aim, he directed every single one of his shots to collide with this meatgirls helmet instead of anywhere else. It was the only place he could expect to do any real damage here.
He wasn't getting through that torso with this gun. He might get through it with a good kick, but nothing else. This was looking to be a long-drawn out fight then. He'd have to play it carefully to prevent himself from taking too much damage, while dealing damage and conserving ammo. The Helix could hold enough ammo in a magazine for about two seconds of continuous fire. When hooked up to one of his custom extra-large ammo hoppers, it had enough ammo for about two minutes of continuous fire.
He had already spent a little more than half of that earlier. He'd have to chip away slowly, then take it out in one decisive blow to a section of weakened armor. His sandevistan deactivated as his last shot impacted against the heavily armored helmet of the Junkerknight. Glimpsing the damages, it was still dents and chips, but slightly deeper than on the torso.
Their sandevistans were not in sync. His massive speed advantage didn't matter, because his was cycling while hers was active. He grit his teeth and prepared for pain as the Junkerknight crouched slightly while rocketing towards him.
He was surprised to see it appear in the air before him, moving fast but slow enough for him to react. He glanced down to see the boy rolling on the street with his chrome leg broken…
The boy had tackled the Junkerknight's legs just as it jumped forwards. His leg had broken under the strain of trying to move one ton of rocket-powered plasteel. He grinned viciously, good shit boy, actually contributing to a proper fight now.
His foot clamped down, flat talons tearing through concrete to lock him to the ground. He spun and delivered a mule-kick to the ACPA flying through the air at him. His servos screamed at him as he kicked it up to soar above his head.
It flew over him and rolled across the street, turning a number of parked cars into scrap as it crashed into them. He checked his vitals. Five percent internal damage taken from the strain of that maneuver. That was more than fine, he'd scrap it before it could do anything else. He turned to raise his gun at the rising, and screaming, warmachine.
Eight missiles screamed out from the side and collided with the form of the Junkerknight as it rose, exploding against it tremendously and sending it staggering back to smash against another car, crushing it spectacularly. His optics glanced over to see the Blueberry, arms still raised after unleashing her volley of micromissiles. That wouldn't do much damage individually, but the armor ablation was certainly useful here.
His optics kept traveling over to see bowlcut close to the blueberry, and further away the woman and girl to the side as well. Bowlcut was giving rapid-fire commands through his comms. He grunted in approval, at least they were doing something.
The ACPA struggled to rise, before it spasmed suddenly and seized up. Uriel narrowed his fire and looked through the net to see the prismatic wires of net-influence signature to the girl strangling the Junkerknight.
…They were doing better than expected for a test, but they were also ruining the fight. Too many chefs in the kitchen and all that. He grumbled at nothing. He walked over to put the thing down with a couple good kicks, this had gotten boring all of a sudden.
It was then he realized that he forgot that most ACPA come standard with a scatter-pack. A lightweight one-use weapon that used explosives to fill a cone with munitions. Two plates of armor opened up on the Junkerknight's back. His optics widened, he glanced back.
The boy was on the ground. His investment was in danger. He activated his sandevistan and quickly learned exactly what kind of scatter pack it was equipped with. Two BFCWA Flechette clouds, a one-hundred and eighty degree arc of thousands of needle-like shards of metal propelled by a small bomb. Good against meatbags, useless against anything with heavy armor like him.
He crouched in front of the boy, and let the shards of metal crash against his armor. They wouldn't do jackshit to him, but a lucky bunch might go right through the boy's plasetech duster. He was too far from a Trauma Team center to revive him reliably.
He wasn't losing his goddamn investment here, to some random ganger meatbag.
The wave of shrapnel washed over him. Once he was sure nothing was hitting the boy, he jumped forwards. This fucking meatbag in a scrap-can dies now.
He flew through the air. His vibrating armored foot crashed against the slightly opened and heavily damaged torso in a panzerfaust-enhanced jump kick.
Needless to say, his foot crashed right through and turned the soft meatshit's organs into paste. His sandevistan deactivated as he stomped the one ton of scrap into the concrete ground.
He heard a scream of pain behind him. He rose from the stomping crouch and turned.
The boy was fine.
The woman had her riot shield covered in metal shards. She and the girl were fine.
The bowlcut was in front of the blueberry. His chrome arms were raised in front of him, predominantly protecting his head and torso. He couldn't get everything however, and a number of metal shards had torn their way through his lower torso, right through the armored suit. His limbs would be fine, being made of metal instead of meat, but his organs were in trouble.
He grunted as the bowlcut collapsed and the woman rushed over with her medical supplies. He'd need to get better armor for that one. He paused, grumbled again, and called the Trauma Team hotline. They would probably be needed for a scatterpack injury like this. Yet more shit that he would have to pay for.
The brats crowded around the bowlcut as the woman worked. He glanced around the street and observed the devastation wrought by that quick little skirmish. All-in-all, it was a rather good fight.
"Trauma Team hotline speaking." The voice of a tired man came over the call.
"If you don't have a team at my location within three minutes, I'll walk into your HQ and kill everyone I see."
"...Location marked, have the payment ready for our arrival."
He grunted and ended the call. He didn't hate those meatbags, they did their jobs.