AN Hope you all had a Merry Christmas, and Happy New Years!
"I can't move my legs!" Donut wailed. "This can't be happening! I still have so much to do! Climb Mount Everest, figure skating in Paris, win a dance championship!"
"And you also need your legs to jump off a scary-big diving board at pools," Caboose pointed out as he helped carry the weeping Donut, the pink trooper between Caboose and Simmons.
"Donut, your legs are fine! The trap just stunned your suit from the waist down," Simmons informed, slow and annoyed. "Be happy it somehow stopped there! Your whole armor should have locked up."
"Oh no! You're right, I think it's spreading!" Donut lamented as he wept harder. "Now I'll never learn to make a cheap knockoff of the Mona Lisa!"
"Stunning does not spread without more stunning!" Caboose refuted vehemently.
"See, even Caboose gets it!" Simmons pointed out, glancing at the blue troopers with wariness. "But I'm not sure I want to know why you know that?"
"I was bitten by a snake once," Caboose answered casually. "It looked so big and friendly, but when it bit me, my whole body stopped working for a while! It crept from the bite in the neck and went all the way down to my tippy toes!"
"I...Okay?!" Simmons acknowledged in bewilderment.
"But that means stunning does spread!" Donut pointed out in alarm.
"No! That was not stunning! The nice doctors told me! It was Parallel Eyes-ing!" Caboose countered with great firmness.
Both red soldiers looked at each other even as they kept trudging along, very bewildered. "...What's the difference between that and stunning?" Simmons asked in morbid curiosity.
"Yeah, I'm a bit confused too," Donut admitted, too interested to continue despairing over the "loss" of his legs.
"Ohh. ParaLiars are when your body just stops working, leaving you unable to do anything but stare and wait for when help finds you before your snake not-friend and the other jungle critters eat you. Stunning just means your armor doesn't want to move. You can still make it move though. It's just really, really hard. Like math. Or like pulling a push door," Caboose explained carefully.
"That's...all technically correct...?" Simmons agreed carefully. "What about pushing a pull door?"
"Oh, no, that's easy, but the door sometimes doesn't stay on the wall," Caboose answered calmly.
"Where did you meet a snake that big, Caboose?" Donut asked curiously.
"I got on the wrong boat," Caboose answered bluntly as if that somehow explained everything.
They both stopped at the distant sound of a gunshot. "You know, let's pick this back up when there isn't some Jason Voorhees wannabe trying to kill us," Simmons reasoned.
"But I hate the one where he goes to space!" Caboose complained, almost with a pout.
Meanwhile
Something was wrong, the Meta knew it the moment they engaged the blue trooper.
They moved to bolt forward, ducking under the aim of the sniper rifle. It should have been too quick for a human to react.
But they saw it. The barrel started lowering the micro-instance they charged.
They would manage to close the gap, but only because their blue foe had misjudged their speed and corrected his aim too slowly.
The cobalt soldier changed tactics far too quickly as he stopped trying to aim the shot at the Meta.
At least, he gave up directly aiming at them.
The shot was fired, and Meta believed it was nothing more than an accidental pull of the trigger.
A micro-instant later, the Meta hissed as Maine's body was wracked with pain. A bullet wound, from a ricochet? The bullet had bounced off a wall and pierced their armor, striking the calf of the right leg. Luckily, it went through with no damage to the bones. Still, it was an injury that would need to be treated.
Something to worry about after this battle, the Meta adding a subroutine to review their memories of their assault in this place for any sign of medical equipment.
The injury did not slow them in the slightest. But it did tell them not to let this trooper take aim and, failing that, to not ignore any of his shots.
The soldier fired again.
Eta, Iota, and Sigma were collectively and individually shocked as they all calculated the bullet would miss only to bounce off the wall behind them and into the back of their skull.
The Meta was forced to abandon their charge and dodged to the side. The trooper kept firing, each shot dedicated to bouncing off a surface to hit the Meta.
The bonded AIs quickly came to a conclusion. This trooper had an AI aiding him to make such repeated precise shots. The most likely candidate was Delta to pull off such perfect calculations like that. The status of Agent York was an unimportant question in that scenario.
All that mattered was that they had a dangerous foe to defeat and a potential sibling to reunite with.
The Meta prioritized their armor's defenses while bringing up the brute shot to block incoming shots and firing across the room, timing it right with when the soldier was reloading. The expected high speed, near-instant reloading and thus shot to distract rather than incapacitate.
"Fuck!" the trooper exclaimed as smoke obscured his visual of the Meta.
Using the opening they had created, they rushed through the dust and sliced off the barrel of the sniper rifle with their brute shot, limiting it if not outright making it unusable as a weapon.
The cobalt trooper did not seem at all bothered by the loss of his primary weapon as he pulled out his pistol.
The Meta, however, had just enough time to aim the brute shot again. This time, directly for his enemy.
"Shit!" Church cursed as he jumped out of the building, the explosion sending him against the wall of another structure. All around him, time seemed to slow. "You know, this Neo-stuff is awesome, but it's still pretty fucking hard to counter a canon."
"Stop complaining, we only have a few seconds before they're on top of us!" Omega reminded pointedly as he appeared on Church's shoulder.
"Yeah, and a few seconds is like an hour of planning right now!" Church reminded, watching the world in extremely slow motion. "Right, that armor is even tougher than you thought."
"He has at least three damn AIs! Dunderheads that Iota and Eta may be, that's still two extra heads to run that blasted suit. Though, also yes, I think they did improve it some since we last saw them," Omega explained in observation.
"Right, enough complaining," Church said, crossing his arms. "Now, how to deal with that big ass knife-canon of his?"
Omega hummed as they began to simulate the next phase of the fight. Well, Omega did deliberately. Church, or rather the Alpha, was doing it unknowingly. Which was still rather mind-boggling for the Rage AI! Was Church so convinced of his own humanity that his subroutines were just running these scenarios under the assumption that it was Omega doing them all? He didn't know and didn't have the time or processing power to ponder it. "Sigma is not going to waste this opening. They know you have an AI by now after all that showing off."
"Hey! I normally can't hit the broadside of a barn! Fucking forgive me if I savor being a god with bullets when I get the chance," Church defended with a hint of smugness. "But yeah, so they're going to blitz us."
The simulation showed the Meta rushing out through the smoke of the door to stab Church through the chest with the large weapon. The scenario repeated several times, showing Church unsuccessfully trying to down the Meta with his pistol before being stabbed.
"Let's try to avoid that," Church remarked dryly as the simulation rewound, the image of himself now dodging as the weapon was impaled into the wall. The Meta still managed to grab onto him though. "Judging by what you said, getting into a fistfight with this guy is a shitshow of an idea."
"Maine could wrestle Alison even with me helping her. In terms of raw muscle, this fool was a genuine Herakles," Omega remarked grimly, watching as the simulation showed the Meta ripping an arm off Church and breaking the robot body's neck.
"...I got an idea, Tell me if this isn't stupid?" Church asked, getting Omega's interest...
The Meta charged forth from the door. The instant they saw Church, they turned their brute shot to stab the trooper.
Between the smoke from the room they just left, it was only at the last second that the Meta noticed the flash grenade that Church had already dropped to the ground.
It exploded with a flash. Although the AIs were only blinded by the flash for an instant, Maine's body was not immune to the attack on his senses.
Church, using the instant to his advantage, sidestepped and pushed the blade off target as much as he could, impaling deep into the wall behind him. In the same instance, he held up his pistol to shoot the Meta in the throat. Pure instinct from Maine forced the Meta to prioritize diverting that danger, grabbing the wrist with as much force as possible.
They snapped the limb, noting the metallic sound and lack of pained reaction.
"That wasn't bone," Iota noted in surprise.
"That was metal and wires," Eta confirmed nervously.
Sigma frowned as he realized that as well. A cybernetic arm?
Church smirked to himself as he pulled the trigger on the brute shot, drawing the Meta's attention to where Church's other hand had been going. That was the only warning the Meta had before the explosive round bounced off the wall behind them and hit the wall, just inches from both of them.
"Church!" Tex called as she rounded the corner just in time to see the explosion go off. She raced through the smoke, weapon trained for any sight of the Meta.
She saw a motion on her left, causing her to snap her weapon in that direction. She only barely realized it was Church, pointing his pistol at her before she stopped her trigger finger.
She also noticed in the next instant that Church's right arm was completely blown off. She resisted the urge to yell about that, for the moment.
"Shit, I think you scared him off," Church said as he scanned the area.
"I doubt it. Sigma is a tenacious bastard," Tex remarked, putting her back to Church as they searched for the enemy.
"We're going to have a talk later about you keeping digital Frankenstein secrets from us!" Church hissed in warning.
Yes, yes she was. And that was something she could only grimly worry about in the back of her mind because right now she had to deal with the danger the Meta presented to them all.
There was a soft sound in the air, the distinct sound of the Brute shot being fired. "Cover!" Tex yelled as she tackled Church around another corner.
They both braced as an explosion went off, but they were safe behind their cover. For now.
"Thanks for that," Church said. "We got about ten seconds before he just comes in here and wrecks us."
"Yeah, and that cannon of his puts us at a disadvantage in tight spaces," Tex remarked. "This path is a dead end. Any bright ideas to get out of this?"
"Just one," Church said with a sigh. "But I just have to say one thing in advance. Bow Chicka Wow Wow," he said with a deadpan expression.
Tex had a feeling she might not like this idea.
The Meta shot another round as they slowly came closer to the corner, knowing best not to give Agent Texas a chance to counterattack.
They were minutely surprised by the one-armed trooper, almost certainly a robot by the metal and sparking wires on his armless side, as he charged at them. The blue soldier fired his pistol repeatedly but with far less accuracy than before.
The Meta charged forth, the amalgamation easily dodging so the bullets all missed or deflected off the armor. As they closed in, they swung the blade of the brute shot to bisect their foe along the waist, grabbing the top half by the neck and crushing it.
They faintly registered Agent Texas fleeing into the smoking building they had just been in and all but certainly escaping through a window.
They paused for a minute only to examine the trooper, the droid.
"This robot just has an ultra-basic combat AI!" Iota noted in surprise.
"It didn't fight like a basic anything!" Eta remarked in concern. "We were barely keeping up with him!"
"Indeed," Sigma agreed, cupping his chin in thought. A human gesture he was rather fond of. "The AI we were facing, that was controlling this unit? I am all but certain they transferred to Agent Texas's armor and allowed this robot's basic AI to give a final distraction."
"But...doesn't that mean it was Omega...?" Eta said in concern.
"He's a bit scary, but...," Iota trailed off, scratching his head.
"Yes, Iota? What troubles you?" Sigma asked, encouraging his "sibling" of sorts.
"Those shots? And to make the explosive round bounce without detonating? That all requires extremely precise calculations and applying them perfectly to the locomotives of a body and everything else? I mean, we tried running that explosive ricochet after he did it, and even you only had a 33.45% chance of pulling something like that off!" Iota pointed out in amazement.
"They're not even supposed to bounce like that," Eta remarked nervously. "There is only a minute chance of making them work like that. "
Sigma frowned in thought. That was all very true, and even more confusing. "Delta could perform that maneuver, but that fight was not to his normal strategies."
"...Sigma, are you sure we're the only ones trying to do...this?" Eta asked with a hint of terror.
A justified reaction. The idea of Omega and Delta forming their own version of the Meta was a very formidable concept. Still. "No, I do not believe so. It is not in Delta or Omega's nature to pursue a goal like this. But it could possibly be Gamma. He is the only one capable of similar calculations as Delta. However, we know these AIs are present, regardless of who we presently face."
"Should we keep going after them or retreat?" Iota asked curiously.
A good question, Sigma decided as the Meta came back into unison, tossing the robotic corpse away without another thought.
Elsewhere, Tex was not taking the situation well and trying damn well to pretend like she was.
"Huh. I almost thought I'd feel...something in here," Church remarked on her right shoulder.
"Way to make a girl feel great, Church," Tex muttered with a head shake as she quickly put some distance between her and the Meta.
The Alpha Was In Her Armor! SheCouldFeelHisCodeAgainstHers!
And fuck if that didn't sound sexual, but it wasn't! It was legitimately terrifying! He was literally just a glance away from accidentally peeking into her thoughts and seeing everything she hadn't told him yet!
Shit, shit, shit!
"Allison, fucking calm your calamities!" Omega whispered into the programming in a way that Church wouldn't notice. "He doesn't know he's an AI and made of Code. He won't notice anything if you don't draw attention to it!"
"Why Are You Helping Me!?" Tex retorted on the same line.
"If he finds out now, he might fry us both by pure chance!" Omega pointed out. "If I am to be slaughtered, I want it to be intentional, not accidentally!"
"So," Church said, thankfully oblivious to their hidden conversation. "Any bright ideas on how to deal with that freakshow?"
"My plan was just to keep all of your idiots alive while we figure that out," Tex answered, using a painful amount of effort to try and keep her voice normal.
"About the same. I told Sarge to join the others and get them through the Gate, and get some damn backup," Church said in annoyance. "So, seriously, there are no more freaky AI secrets you're keeping, right?"
"..." Tex's silence was damning and she knew it.
"Fucking dammit, Tex," Church swore in frustration.
She tried not to wince. Tried not to let him now she could feel his angry coding was burning just next to her own.
"Look, save the arguing and/or therapy for another time! Right now, we have an enemy to avoid until we have the right chance to rip him limb from bloody limb!" Omega redirected.
Church took a breath and set aside his ire for now. "Right, right."
For one of the few times in her life, Tex felt a bit of gratitude towards Omega.
"I need a new body though. Or someone to poss-" Church stopped suddenly as an idea went off in his head.
It wasn't hard to guess what he was thinking. "Church, no!" Tex said quickly, her voice tinged with fear.
"What? If I take over the bastard, we won't have a problem!" Church argued.
"Church, the AIs are running the show, not Maine!" Tex pointed out.
"Yeah, so? We kicked Omega's ass out of Caboose's mind," Church reminded, nodding to the rage AI.
""You'd be outnumbered, you fool! There are at least three of them!" Omega pointed out.
"...Yeah, and there are three of us," Church pointed out with a hint of smugness. "That makes it a fair fight, right?"
It was hard to argue with that logic without revealing that he was the Alpha. And this was a very BAD time to reveal that, Tex felt. She hoped that wasn't just her mind latching onto another excuse to put this off.
"Look, we'll consider it as a last resort-"
"Last resort, my ass!" Church argued. "At the rate that asshole is going, he'll not just be chewing through the rest of us! He'll probably kill the freelancers too, and whatever poor bastards Emersyn sent down to back us up!"
"What, you worried about those "poor bastards?"" Omega asked with some mockery.
""YES!" Church snapped. "Fucking Christ, they shouldn't even be here! They should be headed home to Earth, not wrapped up in this bullshit of ours!"
He was trying to minimize casualties. Was that some genuine empathy or just some subroutine to minimize loss of life against an enemy? "Church, it's too dangerous-"
"I'm not asking," Church said with a hint of coldness. "Either we're doing this, or I'm doing this. What's it going to be, Agent?"
Omega silently observed as Beta hid a flinch at the tone Church took. And he couldn't bring himself to mock her. Because, no matter how different the voice and accent, it really did feel like it was the Director speaking for an instance.
End of Chapter
Well, that happened. Yeah, even without knowing he's an AI, Church is scary if his safety protocals are taken off. But even so, the bruteshot and Maine's strength are a tough advantage to deal with, much less with three AIs piloting things. Still, Church is now wanting to try to take the fight to the Meta in Maine'shead. For slightly altrustic reasons even- he feels kind of bad for the OCs that got dragged into this mess for no reason then bad luck.
Early viewing of chapters 29-30:
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