Instructions Unclear

Weakspot acquired.

It came in the form of a crack and a leak in the outer foundation walls, pressed up to the slope of a storm drain along the western wall of the place. The spurt of incoming rainwater gave Mr. X the opportunity to mostly rinse the fresh gore from its right hand before it pushed sharply and found that a two-foot section fell outward with barely any effort.

Shortly, a massive fist exploded up from the forgotten storm drain, opening up a hole wide enough for the gigantic bioweapon to squeeze himself out, back into the fetid rain still trickling on and off into the apocalyptic city streets. Snorting at water that ran down his heavily-grooved face, the Tyrant huffed for breath while on hands and knees a moment, gaze turning to inspect his dominant hand again. Small flecks of blood still clung to the creases between his fingers, and with a narrowing of his eyes he scraped these areas upon a rough corner of concrete rubble to be rid of them. Disgusting. Worse, shameful. Its aim had never been called into question before—nor had its temper. He had never thought himself a particularly angry Tyrant. With a deep sigh, Mr. X creaked up to his feet and blinked out over the mist of evening drifting through this side-courtyard. Ringed with chain link, the area was largely holding up and devoid of infected, with the exception of one crawling on its hands and… lack of knees along the outside edge of the fence, unable to coordinate or comprehend how to go either over or under the barrier.

In a dim recognition, T-00's pupils tracked a new movement from within the fenceline—small, keeping low like a preyed-upon animal, and crouching by one of the ornate windows, it moved… human-like. But so small. Human juvenile. This was not an R.P.D. target, not an infected creature.

She stood up. Light-haired and light-skinned, and wearing a largely white and pale blue school uniform, she would have stood out in the damp, grim shadows even to a less enhanced onlooker. And she was holding something, turning it over and over in her tiny hands. Something deeply familiar.

The child was on the verge of hyperventilating—having been dodging brutal death, climbing her way over fences and barricades ahead of snarling hordes, and trying all the 1st floor windows of the police station for hours—all after finding the main entrance and the parking garage barricaded shut. The fine-wooled, sleek-lined hat had thrown her off for a moment, wondering somewhat darkly if it had fallen from a detective who had not survived the assault of zombies in Raccoon City…

She stood bolt upright at the series of wet, plodding footfalls behind her—as if a heavy hauling beast had figured out how to stand up and walk with human-like cadence.

T-00 halted a few meters back from the child, remembering the lesson of his first introduction to such small people. He waited, watched, as she sensed the laserpoint eyes on her and flinched around. His hat was clutched tight in a two-armed grip as she backed into the brick windowsill—logically alarmed by the sudden appearance of the enormous man—easily twice her height and God knew how many times her weight—so close behind her in such a horrific scenario. She sucked in a deep breath, holding the hat in front of her now like a shield. Mr. X studied her, careful but inquisitive, pondering how to inform her that she had no enemy in him.

"Hrmmm…" he rumbled, letting his eyes wander to the much-missed headgear, a heavy brow twitching up in interest. The girl slowly lowered the hat from obscuring her face, revealing features more clearly. Those visual indicators clicked into place. Sherry Birkin. The Tyrant could not believe his luck.

He forced his movements to be soft, slow, and reached out his left hand. He held it slightly open, still quite a ways from being able to reach her, with the palm up—asking as politely as he knew how. The girl's sharp eyes shot around, as if for help at first—and then settled on the large hand, and then the hat she held. The hand. The hat. Then, as much as she was frightened to, she studied the mutant's grooved and gray-hued face.

"Is…" she choked, sounding pitifully hoarse from her journey to reach here alive against the odds, "Is… th-this yours?"

Mr. X blinked placidly, nodding. Finally. Someone who made sense. Someone who had some manners! And not a twinge of implant-based intrusion. Timid, Sherry took a babystep closer and just barely stretched out to put the hat into range of the giant fingers. Mr. X clamped his index and thumb shut, allowing her to retract her outstretched arm before lifting his precious hat back up. Brushing some lingering ashes from one of the peaks, he rumbled with satisfaction and settled it back where it belonged. Yes.

"Are you a detective?" the girl's question brought him back into the moment, and to his mission. The Tyrant's mind raced to deduce a way to get across his lack of speech; bringing a hand up to his throat, he set two fingers across where his chin met his neck.

"Oh… You can't talk," she sounded more than a bit disappointed at this, but bounced back with another question, "Can you help me… please? The gates are all down, I can't get anyone to let me in, and my mom told me if things got bad I should go to the police station."

Her mother. That would be Annette Birkin; his eyes widened in realization. That Dr. Birkin was still in good standing with his masters, and so it certainly could not hurt to assist the tiny figure whether she held a G sample or not. The Tyrant took a pace closer and made a few soft, rapid nods, eyes scanning over the tall, decorated window and contemplating how to remove it as a barrier—or, if it was more advised to do so on a less zombie-infested level.

Then, the Tyrant paused. Sherry Birkin—she should have something he needed for his mission. Either a dormant sample of the Golgotha Virus, or a keycode for reaching those samples. What no one knew, not even his superiors, was what she had which concealed that crucial item… He… was not very well-versed in it, but held out his hand again and made a few beckoning crooks of his massive fingers.

"Umm…" Sherry danced lightly between her feet. Ready to run at all times—a necessary adaptation. "Y… You'll help me?"

Mr. X nodded. Of course. She needed help.

"Are you like, a special agent or something?"

He supposed that was a close enough description of his role, and replied with another short nod. She took a few more tiny steps towards him, locking eyes apparently without issue. Very brave. Another necessary adaptation.

"Do you know where my parents are?" Sherry ventured, "I… haven't seen them in days…"

Mr. X's eyes practically flew open, expression twisting with alarm far more automatically than was usual for him; this was… not adequate supervision of juveniles, but considering the circumstances, it was more likely a bad sign. He was bound to infiltrate the N.E.S.T. facility below Raccoon City eventually anyhow, and his best bet for finding either of the Birkins was there. The quarantining and the protective measures down there ought to be far better than in the common city buildings, so there was the hope that Annette was simply holed up below—able to survive but unable to leave that relative safety. Tentatively, he gave a slight nod, though Sherry obviously spotted the hesitation.

"You're not sure, are you," the flat tone of disappointment had the Tyrant sucking in his breath like he was back in training, being swiftly corrected and redirected after an error. Reluctantly honest, the bioweapon's gaze lowered even past her eye level and shook his head slightly. "Oh… well, I don't know what else to do. I wanna find mom."

T-00 weighed his options over a deep inhale. Wherever the girl's mother was in this viral hell, she would be much safer searching while in the shadow of a creature more dangerous than anything unfettered microbes could produce. If he took her to N.E.S.T. now, there was the best chance of reuniting her safely with at least one parent, all while being able to retrieve that primary objective… as for the secondary objective, he doubted if any R.P.D. officers were still alive—and the longer they were hidden in the chaos of their hidey-holes the less likely any would still be alive when he went back onto the task of hunting them. Including that young… pretender? Unaccounted for hire? Whoever. That young man, he'd pay. Eventually. His rage towards that one could take a far backseat in the face of this more vulnerable situation.

Remembering a gesture which Mariposa had often encouraged from him, Mr. X reached out a hand with the palm upwards, relaxed—and low enough for the anxious girl to take hold of a few massive fingers. Sherry startled for a split-second, then reeled in her defensive panic and began to tentatively reach up to meet the gesture.

A pulse crept from the base of his skull, down his spine.

No.

Perhaps the handler at the control servers had known better with regards to that hat-shooting bastard, but here… this impulse to kill truly defied logic. It defied emotion. It defied even… principle! The Tyrant's blood froze as his offered fingers tensed hard as steel, tendons standing out like stony ridges with resistance to the implant's command.

Sherry had jerked back, intuition and a finely-honed survival skill warning her of the sudden change in the giant form, the enormous… man? Regardless, when the strangely gray, heavily grooved cheeks and mouth drew apart with a grimace that was almost like an electrical jolt of pain had shot through him—she scrambled back several feet and watched in horror as her one friendly encounter rapidly turned horrific.

Mr. X's left leg lurched awkwardly forward, displacing grass and mud out in a crater several inches wider than even his very-wide boot. However exhausted Sherry was, she was at least quick-witted and quick to act, bracing herself on the building's wall to reduce the slippage on the wet ground and scurrying towards the back corner of the place. The Tyrant's right leg now lurched further, the impulses from the control implant trying to force a run now. Without his cooperation, however, the living weapon's footing slipped and he ended up splaying out onto all fours on the muck of the side-yard. Pulses shot through him in rapid-fire, forcing him after the child anyhow—first at a pitiful crawl before whoever was manning the server station developed another shred of patience, and with all the numbing jolts in its power the implant coordinated a return to his feet. Sherry was not as fast as even an adult human, but in this delay he was relieved to see she had already rounded the building's corner in the direction of the parking garage.

But… she had said that the entrances were blocked, hadn't she? Mr. X snarled to himself as he fought the heavy, finesse-less plodding that Umbrella was puppeting him into. But then, she was small—she could break his line of sight, she could hide. So long as whoever was hijacking his body—and presumably his senses—could not see her or where she'd gone, she would be safe from him. With a deep, unhappy groan, he realized that he had been wrong. She would not be safest with the Tyrant in her shadow—at any moment, its pure force could be turned against her. Whether T-00 wanted it or not. There was a plug straight into its brain. A plug which promised vicious punishment if he resisted—and worse if he ever tried to unplug it. Umbrella had thought ahead, he grudgingly realized, even though the handler in the pilot's seat was incapable of that.

Rounding the R.P.D. to the back, Mr. X tried to force his gaze upwards to the third floor's windows for a few long seconds—feeling a sharp ripp in the smaller muscles around his throat as the commands jerked his head back down. Stunned for a moment by the soreness and bruising spreading under his chin, he just barely registered Sherry ahead of him, slipping her legs down into a wide but shallow storm drain out of sheer desperation.

Faster.

Go faster, he willed her, as he stiffened every muscle group he still had partial control over and scowled in defiance. One stomp—two stomps—three. Rubble rattled over the concrete and the scraggly weeds poking out from the drain's edges shook with the oncoming force.

Sherry vanished from view into the depth. Mr. X bared his teeth, resisting for a few more seconds in the hopes she would have retreated too deeply for the one controlling him to bother. The deep sting of stress shot through his vast chest; there was no guarantee that she'd be safe there. But… she would be safe from him.

Damn this handler… As if to illustrate how poor of a person was in control of his implant's connection, Mr. X felt his fist connect heavily with the top slab of the storm drain, splitting it in two with even the reserved force. How could a human—presumably—see a juvenile human in such a state and… decide to pull the trigger? Even the child of a colleague? Perhaps it was the "anonymity" of it. They felt nothing if one of their own bioweapons did the deed.

But then… would that handler do the same if the weapon was unfeeling and inanimate? An attack drone? An automatic rifle? A hammer?

…Maybe. Perhaps T-00's inability to imagine it was no measure of humanity's grimmer capacity—or a measure of the Tyrant's paradoxically kinder one. He did not know enough to say, and if about this particular member of Umbrella staff, he did not care to know better.

The pulses running through his major nerves began to weaken, and with a low grumble he rose and tore his attention swiftly away from the collapsed drain entrance. No need to give the damn handler any ideas; he fixed his attention instead on the awkward rear wall of the 2nd story—boiler room, steaming helicopter hole and all. There was an odd bump outward in which there were no windows, with a few particularly decorated, un-barricaded windows towards the east and around the corner. This was… the Chief's office, if he recalled the R.P.D. floorplans correctly. He had yet to see any body—upright or not—identifiable as one Chief Brian Irons. It made sense to check there—if he was still alive at all.

Dull-faced and morose, T-00 dug his powerful grip into the mortar gaps in the bricks and heaved himself up until level with one of these fancier office windows. Taking his trilby protectively to his chest, he shattered the glass using only his bare cranium—blood and glass spraying the lush carpet and the fur of an unwatchful bighorn sheep taxidermized and forever standing in the nearest corner. Once he had pulled himself indoors, he took a moment to tear one of the curtains—strangely intact curtains—from its fastenings and cleanse the thin spurts of blood from its scalp as the thin slashes closed themselves up. He tossed the fabric aside. His weight hardly caused a creak here. It was not just the comfortably lush carpeting, though that assisted. There must be structural integrity here already built in—perhaps associated with that elevator along the back wall, close to the projected N.E.S.T. entrance. Not quite. It was probably associated, and maybe even connected at some point. He made a note of it.

Many pairs of eyes fixed onto him as he peered up to seek any inhabitants, and with a twitch the Tyrant's entire frame went rigid with fright at the sudden surround. A beat passed. His shoulders slackened. These eyes… were even less alive than those of the cloudy, flailing zombies infesting the city, and yet somehow more unsettling. They looked too alive. A large beast—cat-like and almost as big as the Tyrant himself—snarled perpetually at something a few inches to his right. He did not know what it took to preserve corpses or tissues this exactly without the cryogenics Umbrella used, but whatever method had been undertaken here, it… rubbed him the wrong way. Something about the animals' poses was… dishonest. They were dead. But their owner wanted them alive. Or… wanted to have them, as if alive. Or… instead of alive.

Mr. X tried instead to focus on the various large furnishings, pulling open all the tall cabinets in case a hiding spot was within. He held still—ears trained to even the slightest shift. Irons may have other hiding places close to the elevator's easy escape.

There was a heavy rumble of machinery, and a few bassy scrapes of large architectural pieces sliding past each other in the hidden wall spaces just behind him. Below him. Almost exactly below. That would be… the main hall.

Who would know of such an entrance—hidden in plain sight within the main hall—but Irons? Mr. X exhaled sharply and carefully squeezed himself through the door to the upper east hall. He tried not to think at all as he stumped at full power-walk to the main hall's upper landing. Thinking hurt at the moment. He did not want to think of what the small girl might find in the water reclamation system—or even outside if she found her way out, with no one… and only rabid citizens, shambling on base instinct and viral imperative.

The Tyrant snuffled and shook his head. More important to pay attention to what was ahead of him. As he took the grand staircase he spotted a figure fidgeting in front of the tall, elegant statue between the two wings of the steps, and whipped around the railing's corner to close the final meters.

This was not Chief Irons.

He ground to a halt at the twelve-foot mark, brows cinching in with confusion. Definitely not Irons—not even from behind—this human was trim, red-haired. A woman. Young. She seemed to be nervously waiting on the rattle of movement from the statue's pedestal to finish. Since she was so interrupted, she'd whipped about—the barrel of a grenade launcher of all things leveling at him, and promising much more difficulty than any of the simple pistols others had used on him. He watched the broad barrel closely, silvery eyes widening somewhat. Impressive weaponry for a civilian combatant… but not at all beyond what he had already met with in training. She had likely salvaged it from the station's own armory lockdown.

"Jesus…!" She hissed, but kept the grenade launcher's aim level—right on his chest, "Stay back!"

At the moment the Tyrant was quite happy to oblige. Shifting a bit from one foot to another, he took stock not only of her, but of what she had put in motion:

The statue, grinding upon hidden tracks, was retreating into a hidden wall space. Perhaps the reason the rest of the wall spaces were so cheaply reinforced…

"I mean it," the heavily-armed woman warned, and most sharply as she adjusted her aim for center mass, "Fuck off!"

T-00 took a short step back, eyeing—and sniffing—curiously. His memory lit up. It had been her, not the hat-defiler, who'd been active on the uppermost west hall. And she had apparently raided the police armory in the time prior, judging not only by the beast she had braced in both hands but the row of hip pouches, a revolver holster, and a shotgun strapped to various points on her shoulders and belt. There were already not very many women in the R.P.D., so it was not hard to disqualify her from that list after a swift study, but he stood tense. In the face of military-level gear, and military-grade pain, he feared the stupid, stupid whims of the handler at his control station so much more…

The machinery she had activated was taking so damn long…

"Who are you?" She shouted.

The Tyrant now sniffed out of pure surprise. No one had asked him that question before. Who. It had been explained for him before, of course, when introduced… With Mariposa. He repressed a growl, trying harder not to remember. Not here. Not now.

Mr. X distracted himself with a glare over to the base of the statue where now a plume of dust was rising as a segment of the flooring sunk down a stairstep's depth just behind where this woman was standing. She jolted away to avoid tripping from the sudden sinking, but then focused back up on the colossal brute facing off with her. He blinked, his attentions flicking from her face to her weapon, to her stance—and to the still shaking floor at the base of the statue—before returning once more to the whole of her. Was it just him or did she seem barely older than juvenile, for a human? And yet, here she was, ready to fight not only the infected hordes of former citizens, but with a state-of-the-art bioweapon that outweighed her eight times over.

"What do you want?"

They both were alarmed by the question, and while the woman took the opportunity to back down the partially-formed steps, Mr. X stood transfixed. What did he want? To… complete his objectives, of course. To… eliminate surviving R.P.D. members, to retrieve the G-virus sample… to… urf. He had done very little of either, prompting an automatic flush of shame. He had been interfered with at every turn, and by his own masters it seemed. What… what did he want, then? If this were not happening?

Mariposa stood in the verges of the pasture's fenceline, giggling up at the sight of the flower-crown resting around the brim of his hat as he stood with an otherwise intimidating creak of leather and steel. The Tyrant produced a rumbling purr deep in his cavernous chest, eyes managing to smile slightly as he guided the girl safely back towards the garden, her tiny hand looped around just two of his fingers…

Mr. X blinked. Nasty reality—and the barrel of the grenade launcher—faded back in. The Tyrant felt his lips purse slightly into a frown, eyebrows lowering as he was reminded of how he was working. Deployed. Loosed on the company's targets, until the "job" was done, and recovery could be undertaken…

…What if it was not?

He blinked sharply. That was too much. He tilted his head instead, trying to examine what model of grenade launcher this person was aiming at his sternum:

A GM-79. As far as he could tell, loaded up with a standard incendiary round—usually used by Umbrella response staff when infected subjects were loose. Why this police station possessed any stocks of these rounds, or even this weapon, was very unknown to him but could be guessed by its proximity to the main entrance to N.E.S.T. It was as if the R.P.D. had its ties to the Umbrella Corporation, entangled in its web of deals and arrangements…

But then… why was his objective…?

He cocked his head aside, obvious confusion to the tough-veneered, tensed woman aiming the quite nasty weapon. Perhaps, like before, he would allow the newcomer to the situation to decide whether she was going to be a problem, or was going to leave unharmed… though, here, was he not the newcomer? The last time he'd allowed a human to go about their business in his presence, he'd been shot. Then, had a terrible wrinkle-headed monster shred up his ear. Then been shot again. Then fell down a hole. Not an amazing history to work off of.

And this woman, unlike the last, had every right to believe herself to be at the advantage. Best advised to fire away—even if only to deter any creature that pursued her escape, but… She held tension on the trigger, but held back. Her fit shoulders trembled, as if despite her strength she was already holding on to her last dregs of energy. The frantic, determined expression she wore was both exacerbated—and undermined—by whole-body shivers.

She was not trained for such things. Not trained was the one feature that stood out most for Mr. X. She'd never aimed a killing blow at anything, not before today, in spite of whatever extensive firearms practice she'd had. Mr. X was torn between taking pity on her and admiring her steadfastness, and with a nearly infrasound-low rumble sidestepped to be slightly closer without seeming to be approaching. She wasn't blind to this, and her grip on the launcher clenched tighter and she swiveled to track him. He stopped short, turned his torso away and matched her wide-eyed glare with an extra sprinkle of annoyed disdain. This standstill could not last—especially not as the last set of sinking stairs clunked into place, and an archway to a secret door was finally revealed with a downward spray of unseen dust.

This. This seemed like one route into the N.E.S.T. complex, if there was any within the station itself. The woman had planted her feet and blocked the low arch into the narrow passage, still eyeing the Tyrant with no less strength training her aim onto the broad target.

The Tyrant decided at last there was no benefit to sticking close while she was on edge. The longer he hung about a survivor between him and an objective, the longer he was giving his utterly wretched, incompetent handler a chance to force a pointless assault. With a low snort, T-00 tore his eyes away from the woman ducking into the secret passageway and began to tromp away back towards the frontmost counter area.

"Wh—" she'd choked herself mid-word. It was probably obvious why; one does not square up with a nearly 8-foot monstrous humanoid being, using a grenade launcher, and ever expect to simply be let go. Behind her, the intermediate door had softly creaked and clunked open. And the Tyrant had just come level with the back of the main hall's counter in its retreat.

The pulses started weak, this time. Mr. X growled deep as he shuddered to a stop, frown furrowing his brows as far as the thick, striated skin would permit. He held still, limbs trembling like those of an overworked horse.

No. Stupid. No! Why even was this compulsion coming to him so much weaker? Perhaps headquarters had sanctioned the handler. Perhaps the handler had simply reevaluated their tactics for ensuring obedience. He hoped for the former. But it seemed too soon.

Stiff and jerky, T-00 was made to turn about. With a resistant groan, the Tyrant slowly began to be walked heavily back up to the mysterious opening the unknown woman had begun sneaking down. She had not taken her eyes off of him the whole while. Smart. He could appreciate that. He squinted tightly, seeing the grenade canister firing, centered on his solar plexus.

It burst, and flooded out from his chin to his knees with fragmentary bits of the metal casing, followed right after by the infernal heat of the flammable compounds sparking and flaring up into the near-white register. Fortunately his Limiter gear was highly heat-resistant and fire-retardant, and while his skin was not exactly as resistant as the enhanced Kevlar, it did hold up far better than any human's would under the splash of fire thrown up against it.

That said:

FUCK.

OW.

HURTS.

The Tyrant buckled over, shielding its face with its forearms as best it could. He held his breath, sensing the heat would scour his innards if it even had the slightest chance to enter his lungs at peak temperature. Throwing aside the last smoldering fragments and poking his nose out into cooler, safer air, the Tyrant rebounded fast from the heavy ordinance. The implant's pulses jabbed into its spine to pursue right away; with an awkward two steps he followed the frantically-reloading woman down the short stairs and into the small tunnel.

Urgh. Tight space. So narrow, his pressure to follow had forced him to tilt his tremendous shoulders diagonal just to fit. Mr. X absolutely hated it, and gave every indication of the opinion in physicality and sound. But the pulses still forced him onward. Though perhaps the claustrophobia had helped his conscious resistance; it did give the woman the chance to fire one more fiery round straight down the passage to burst open against the beast's bent knee. T-00 tucked his head towards the passage wall, throwing up both arms against the wave of flames shooting up towards his face.

The woman took that chance at an elevator door, at the side of a small hexagonal chamber, jamming hard a few times on the call button before reloading another incendiary into her GM-79. A low grinding sound echoed up from below, the elevator car rising at not a snail's pace, but something she dearly wished was faster…

Mr. X doubled over, pawed at the regenerating stretches of outer skin on his throat and chin, twitching for a few seconds as the thick, rhino-like hide regenerated itself outward. In the span of about four seconds, it was as if he'd never been burnt at all… He tried not to be angry. The implant's prodding was enough of goading him on with that added difficulty. Be angry at the foolish handler's uselessness instead; her replies to what this handler was making him do was quite reasonable. If only the handler suffered the consequences…

Emerging from the dying bursts of orange flame, Mr. X struggled to pursue the woman at only a slug-like pace, but was made to take on a tortoise-like one by pure stride length and nerve pulses. He hissed at the high heat, flicking a hand out to blow some aside with a deeply cranky noise as the handler went on pushing forward… Pushed, pushed. The woman heard the elevator make a muted "ding!", and shot a look back at the indominable living weapon coming closer. She seemed to recognize that while the fire was hurting it, the broad and shallow damage was not going to do it for long enough that she could get that elevator out of his reach. She flung the grenade launcher back into the sluggishly-opening doors of the elevator and with a swish unholstered the shotgun strapped across one of her shoulders:

"Shhrrr…" T-00 pushed back against the forward commands, feeling tiny muscular strands in his back and abs tearing against the graceless nerve spasms. Shit. Well. The opposite, really. Hopefully her aim was excellent, and not just okay. "Okay" would, if she pumped enough rounds his way, stop him long enough to stop this damn handler's violent tirade.

Excellent would stop him long enough—with minimal agony.

BLAM.

Mr. X was instantly winded; this was a higher-end, larger-gauge shotgun indeed. The one he'd heard being unloaded on the level above him before that odd provoking woman had led him into the wall spaces. If more of those long-tongued and skinless monstrosities were involved, no wonder he'd not encountered more of them. Aimed well enough, a shot from this would put one of those out of commission instantly.

Staggering a few steps back, and stamping out a few bits of still-flaming matter, the Tyrant brought a hand up to his mouth. His… mouth. He'd felt sure he had intact lips before. His upper lip was rent in a large split with small tears close by, and his gums bled profusely through the holes. As disturbing as the discovery was, he could already feel the jaw, gum, and epidermis associated with the region heating up with the increased bloodflow—the tissues stretching, expanding, hooking and sealing back to their ordinary shapes with only a few trivial ounces of bleeding as a result. He spat a gout of loose blood to the side, shaking his head to clear the dizziness.

BLAM.

Another cluster of lead balls crashed into the right side of his head, ripping through his ear again in the process. The CRAK of the speediest missiles against his skull reverberated through his inner ear, staggering him another step. Still dizzy, the dull schlorp! of his most vital parts rejecting the embedded bullet fragments as his skeletal plates tactilely… popped themselves back into place along their cracks… urgh. Shreds of lead pellets dropped out to the floor as the bloody impact of the shotgun blast began regenerating inside-out. He felt again quite fortunate he had an empty stomach, given that sensation.

He wished he could back out. He fixed his (occasionally doubling) vision onto the woman, going rigid against the commands for as long as he could manage.

BLAM.

She did not hesitate, and with his consciousness growing weak he felt thankful for that. He instinctually caught himself as he slumped forward onto one knee, watching the blurry spurt of blood as one of his severed facial arteries spread a pint of deep crimson slurry onto the once-pristine white floor. He'd been damaged this much before, of course. In training. It was a mandatory part of it—to ensure the genes in charge of rapidly restoring any broken or battered flesh would kick into high gear at the proper times and not go wild otherwise. Much like the unlimited form tests, the strength tests, the stamina measures… this was… normal. This was normal. He could expect this, especially in the field.

Under the fog of half-consciousness, he distinctly heard the pneumatic swish and clunks of the secret passage's elevator beginning to lower down into the depths. Wherever it went, Mr. X was silently pleased with the sound. She was away; the damn handler was foiled, proved wrong again. How many more, before this idiot recognized that he did not know better than the very specific objectives given to the Tyrant itself? Almost drowsy now, Mr. X let his eyes slide shut and his only movements for the next minute or so were the light twitches of his eyelids and fingers, and the raising and lowering of his massive shoulders as he fell into a steady breathing. He'd be well again, and soon. But whatever model that shotgun had been—he would remember it. Damn. She'd either chosen well, or been extremely lucky. Perhaps both, considering the other madly-powerful weapons she'd found…

A thud shuddered up from far below. Wherever she was bound, she was there now. Mr. X took another deep, recuperative breath. Soon enough, he'd be on his way, and hopefully (but regretfully) she would never figure into his deployment again.