Explosions, loud noises, "robots talking"
Transitions, 'thoughts', "internal voices"
Videocalls, comm systems, Echo devices, "Recorded echo tapes or messages"
(Author's notes, Authors notes, Author's notes)
It is that time again huh? hehehehe, my stories seemed to have you hooked like how bandits are hooked on those slag-based drugs, or literally like the people hanging from the meat hooks on the dam...I know that was a pretty dark comparison, but it still works. Now last time our group of heroes were preparing to leave the facility once and for all, their first step is getting out of the R&D level and to the hangar level...but who knows how many more enemies lurk up there...You wanna find out?
Hyperion research facility, somewhere on the superior levels, Unknown time
On one of the levels above the R&D level, one of the hallways was empty for the most part, it had a couple of metal pieces scattered on the floor that probably fell off the ceiling, the pieces of a couple loaders scattered on the floor as well while the lights on the ceiling were barely functioning as the emergency lights on the sides of the hallway were the main source of light, giving it a somewhat eerie silent ambiance. The silent part would be interrupted by a series of noises that sounded like someone hitting metal, probably by kicking it, the source of this noise was unknown since the hallway was empty for the most part. That was until a metal panel from one of the walls was kicked off, sending it down as it revealed a secret passage on the other side, and from it came out Solaris, holding her AR as she looked around for any threats
"Coast is clear, move out" she announced, then two more people came out of the secret passage, first was Kenneth as he held his handguns and behind him came Oni holding her shotgun, both of them looking around at the wreckage.
"Man, the place got pretty messed up" Kenneth said looking at all the scrap lying around, also noticing the lights were barely functioning "Jack, what level is this?"
"We are on the first loader storage level, one level above the hangars" Jack said as his hologram appeared in front of Kenneth, looking at a holographic window with information "The hangar must have been disconnected from the power grid during the collapse"
"Well so our mission now is doubled, get the hangars reconnected and leave this damn place" Kenneth said as Oni and Solaris nodded, having their guns combat ready. The trio began to walk around the place, trying to find a way down to the hangar level, with Jack moving with Kenneth as he walked "Jack, you know the layout of this place?"
"Yes, I do, elevator is a no-go since it's broken, but there is an access point we could use" Jack explained as a digital map of the floor came into Kenneth's vision, with one of the rooms being highlighted in red "there's an access point that connects the hangar level's armory to a loader repair room, we just have to get it open somehow"
"Sounds easy enough" Oni said as they reached a part of the hallways where it splits into two, seeing the left hallway they saw a broken-down WAR loader on the floor, right past it there were at least a dozen broken raptures, alongside that there were a ton of bullet holes on the walls and the ceiling, seeing along the hallway they could see a few other loaders destroyed, too broken down to recognize their class "did these machines fight the raptures?"
"Most likely I assume, there must have been a few active loaders before the raptures breached the place" Kenenth said as they took the opposite hallway following the directions that Jack provided, seeing more wreckage but also a few digistruct stations, some still intact but not operating. As they walked, they came across more signs that the loaders tried to fight off the raptures.
"Heavens, these machines took out a lot of raptures" Solaris said seeing the upper half of a BUL loader, which was resting against a wall, with its shield arm currently ripped apart and lodged on the head of a spider like rapture "An army of these could have stopped the Rapture invasion"
"I don't know about that one girl, but I agree on the fact that these tin cans did a number on the raptures" said Oni as she checked one of the bodies, seeing one of the limbs from a PWR stuck on the wall, with a rapture smashed between the limb and the wall. As the two nikkes were looking at the battle scene, Kenneth was looking for an access to the repair room marked on the map, fortunately it was right behind the left wall of the hallway they were walking on, unfortunately there were no obvious doors to use, but there was a control panel randomly on a wall, with something that looked like an eye scanner.
"at least engineers were smart enough to not get locked out" Kenneth said as he touched the panel, seeing the lines of code pop into his digital vision, starting to hack into it to see what was behind it "should have known, it's a scanner for the loader's optics, won't open otherwise...but...Solaris, come here for a second"
"You need something commander?" she said walking up to him, as Kenneth managed to turn on the optics scanner, Kenneth then took her visor off, showing her blue eyes more clearly, making her a bit flustered "s-sir?"
"I just need you to let that thing scan your eye, I have an idea" Kenneth said with a small smile, Solaris nodded as she got closer to the optics scanner, having one of her eyes right in front it as it then began the scanning process, after a few seconds the scanning ended as a green light turned on and a part of the wall opened by sliding up, revealing an entrance point "it worked"
"Well considering that you upgraded us using your tech I assume we can also access some of this stuff" Oni mentioned as Solaris took her visor back and put it back on. After that the trio entered the room, seeing a lot of repair stations that were not functioning, many of them with loaders simply standing in the middle of the repair stations while some tools and crates were scattered around the place "what now boss?"
"Now we have to go down" Kenneth said as he looked at the floor, looking for a platform as the two nikkes looked around the place. Jack manifested in Kenneth's vision sitting on the head of a loader that was turned off "you see anything Jack?"
"Not really, the platform should hide perfectly with the floor so finding it won't be easy" he said as Kenneth stomped a few times on a couple tiles on the floor, trying to find any differences on the sound they make, expecting one to be a bit more hollow or thinner than the others...but there was no difference whatsoever, making Kenneth sigh "Damn, engineering really built this place with little flaws"
"For once I would have liked for the engineers to take shortcuts" Kenneth said a bit frustrated, seemingly trying to think of a new plan on the fly to try to move, but as it stands it doesn't seem like there are any viable options, that was until he saw Oni looking at the console of one of the repair stations, said station was empty "what are you looking at Oni?"
"Just checking what this little red light means" she said pointing at the console, which had a red light beeping next to a button "it seems important"
"I think that light is supposed to signal that a loader is waiting below for repairs" Kenneth said taking a look at the console "Jack, you think you can get through this thing?"
"Already on it" Said Jack, he wasn't in his physical form, but Kenneth could hear his voice in his head "Luckily this is one of the few things that's still working just fine, so the mechanism should work without much issue"
Jack wasn't wrong when he said that getting through the console's system wouldn't be much of an issue, it took only like a minute to get it working which made a part of the floor to slide open as the sound of a platform rising was heard. After a couple seconds the platform coming from the floor below reached them, showing a loader that was pretty big, probably a modified SGT model but with arms with actual hands instead of the usual guns, but it also had a black and white paint job instead of the usual yellow and white one of regular loaders, although this one had its optics ripped out and was missing an arm.
"A black loader?" Kenneth said looking at it, then remembering the loader he met when he first entered the facility, the one that let him into the lower levels "hang on a Minute, DRK-7?!"
"The voice has been identified as the worker" Said DRK as it looked around, trying to locate Kenneth just by listening at his voice "If I wasn't in this deplorable state, I would do the action humans call hugging, but now we have way more pressing matters"
"Yeah, that's one way to say it" Kenneth said as he helped DRK to a repair station "How on earth are you still active? I thought the loaders were rebooted when the reactor sort of exploded"
"Some units that were already turned off weren't affected and I was built to withstand stuff like that" DRK explained as it was positioned on a repair station, all the while Kenneth began to look around for pieces to repair DRK with "we don't know our current location, but approximately an hour after regaining our sense of direction we heard noise coming from hangar 3, when we went to investigate we were attacked by unknown hostile robots"
"That sounds like the moment the Raptures breached the place" Solaris mentioned as she and Oni sat by one of the turned off consoles, prompting DRK to move its head around, trying to locate her voice.
"Unknown female entity detected, identify yourself or face dead at the hands of Hyperion" DRK seemed to say that as a threat, but he didn't move from where he was, probably because he wasn't in a position to actually fight.
"Relax, we are amongst allies of Hyperion" Kenneth said, it was sort of a lie since Solaris and Oni weren't originally from Hyperion, but they were modified to be recognized as Hyperion machines by the systems.
DRK didn't had any more comments as Kenneth found the pieces and began to work, since the power was still out, he had to repair DRK manually, but it wasn't that hard, at least he only had to replace the optics and the missing arm. Took a while to find the right pieces but they were there, and Kenneth at least remembered the basics on how to repair loaders, which helped make the process faster.
"Ok, now we just do this and...ok, reboot optics" Kenneth said, DRK then proceeded to turn on its new optic as well as to move its new arm to get a feel of it, doing some simple movement before clenching its fist and stepping off the repair station "feeling better big guy?"
"Affirmative, I am in a better condition now, and I can now recognize our allies" DRK said looking at Oni and Solaris, making a salute "I welcome you to the Hyperion robot army"
"Uhh, thanks I guess" said Oni reluctantly reciprocating the salute, while Solaris did too. All the while Kenneth was cleaning his hands off with a piece of cloth "Say, did you happen to come across some other people? Maybe 3 girls and a guy?"
"We haven't encountered 3 girls and 1 guy. We have only encountered 1 female crawling into the room below" DRK specified without skipping a beat, making both modified nikkes look surprised.
"How did she looked?" Oni asked getting a bit closer to DRK, worried that the raptures had beaten the rest of the squad that came in.
"Female entity seemed to be dressed in battle gear, with multiple scratches and wounds, as well as having ash blonde hair" DRK explained as the duo ok nikkes looked worried for a bit.
"That's Product 23!" Solaris said before looking at Kenneth who was done cleaning his hands as he got the platform to go down again "Commander, the others might be in deep trouble, we have to get to them fast!"
"We are on it, we are going to go down and move to Hangar 3...hopefully with some reinforcements" Kenneth said before looking at DRK, taking out his pistols "Dark, how many loaders are still functioning?"
"Counting me we are barely more than 50 units on the room below, with only 20 still in condition to fight" DRK said as it switched its hands for assaults rifles, with the magazines being loaded on the sides of the arms "of those 20 units, 10 are GUN units, 4 are PWR units, 2 are BUL units, and we have 1 unit of the ION, RPG, and SGT class each"
"It's going to have to suffice" Kenneth said as he checked the ammo of his pistols "if we can reconnect the power flow from the core to the hangar level, we should be able to reboot the loaders that are still in one piece alongside the defense systems, use them to kick the raptures out of here for good and then finally have a breather to get out there and maybe explore the area, see if we can find something of use"
"Yeah, that sounds like a good plan" Jack said inside of Kenneth's head "but first we should check on this Product 23 that Solaris mentioned, see if she is still fixable"
"Yeah, you make a good point...Dark" Kenneth said looking at the mentioned loader, getting its attention "tell the loaders below to load the female you encountered onto the platform, she might need fix up"
DRK did a salute and quickly got relayed the orders to the room below through the space where the platform should be, after a bit movement could be heard from below, especially some female groans, eventually the platform went up again, this time showing said female with ash blonde hair, with her combat suit pretty damaged, showing parts ripped, some bullet holes, burn marks, she was even missing her left front arm and half of her visor, which showed her right blue eye. She was sitting on the platform, looking tired and in pain from her wounds.
"Product 23!" Solaris said rushing to her said, followed by Oni, as the two of then kneeled to 23, who looked up to them.
"Sun?...FA?" Product 23 said looking at the two of them, showing some slight surprise through the pain she was feeling "you are ok...and what happened to you? You look even better than before"
"Long story, right now we have to fix you" Oni said as the two modified nikkes helped their friend up, before looking at Kenneth "Boss, you think you can save her the same way you saved Solaris and I?"
"Sorry to burst your bubble girl, but we can't do that right now" Jack said appearing in Kenneth's vision, leaning onto DRK "The tech for that is back down on the R&D area, and we don't really have the time to go there, fix her up and come back."
"Jack is right, time is of the essence right now" Kenneth added as he looked through some loader spare parts "luckily, her damages seem to be mostly superficial aside from the missing arm, so we should be able to fix her with the stuff available"
"If you say so boss, we'll trust your judgement" said Oni, not entirely convinced but since he was the one who better understood this tech she should let him do his thing. All the while Solaris and her moved Product 23 to a repair station.
"You reckon this is going to work? Modifying a machine to match Hyperion tech is one thing but fixing a non-modified could not work well" Jack said as his hologram bleeped to the repair station 23 was put into.
"We lose nothing by trying" Kenneth said as he got some tools and began to work on repairing the damaged nikke. The damages on the armor he couldn't really fix but the ones on her were even more complex without the assistance of the machinery of R&D, so he had to improvise by using a mix if welding, re-wiring and replacing some bits of her with new pieces. Thankfully it seemed to do the trick as she looked better than before. The arm was a different problem but that was easily solved by sticking a loader arm on the place of the original one, which seemed to connect well, she could move it and use the hand without much issue, save for one or two fingers not really responding.
"Wow...it, it worked" 23 said looking at her new arm and repairs with a shocked expression while Oni and Solaris smiled happily seeing their friend repaired, just then Kenneth handed her an armor resembling the one from the Hyperion soldiers "and this?"
"A replacement for your old armor, you are going to need it" Kenneth said handing her a submachine gun from a crate, alongside some ammunition. he then looked at the rest, doing a silent checkup to see if they were ready "Check your guns, from here there's no turning back until we retake the place...Ready to kick some ass?"
"Understood Commander! /You got it boss! /Sir yes sir" said Solaris, Oni and Dark respectively as they got their weapons ready, 23 gripped her SMG a bit nervous but nodded.
Soon the 5 of them jumped down the hole of the platform, meeting up with the rest of the still working loaders, the ones that were combat ready were standing up at attention, waiting for orders while the ones not combat ready were lined up against the walls of the room, to make space for the others.
"Sir, all combat ready forces are at your disposal" One of the GUN units said standing with its weapon ready "What are your orders?"
"We are moving into hangar 3, secure it and getting this place reconnected into the power grid" Kenneth said as Oni, Solaris and 23 got their weapons ready, but before doing anything he turned towards 23 "Anybody else still alive?"
"Y-yeah, Commander Wulfric hunkered up with two other nikkes in the hangar's control room, I got out by crawling through a vent" 23 said, trying to get a bit more used to her new limb.
"Ok, that simplifies our search" Kenneth said as he took out his AR "the power grid connection to the hangar is in the control room, we will shoot our way through the enemies in the hangar and work from there. Oni I will be counting on you to lead with the PWR loaders so we can stay protected from enemy fire"
"As long as you can keep the flanks covered up, it's all fine by me boss" Oni said as she deployed the panels on her back, activating her frontal energy shield.
"Man, I wish my upgrades would activate" Solaris said with a sigh as she got her AR ready, while 23 looked at the two of them slightly...Ok not slightly, really confused about what they were talking.
"We will worry about that later, for now, let's get going" Kenneth said as he opened the door of the room, the loaders got their weapons ready as they all got out of the room, Oni leading with the PWR loaders as Kenneth led the rest, weapons ready for anything.
It didn't take long for them to run into some enemies, as soon as they turned the first corner to the hangar, a group of raptures was crawling their way and as soon as they saw them, they began to blast away.
"Encounter ahead!" Oni said with the energy shield already on as the PWR loaders began to spin their limbs, as a result most of the shots coming from the raptures were being deflected by the loaders or stopped by Oni's shield, letting the others fire at the raptures, mostly by the GUN loaders and Oni who had her shotgun out.
"The hangar is 150 meters to our northwest, detecting a lot of movement from there" Jack said inside of Kenneth's head, as he led the rest of the group through the facility.
"Well, it seems we are having a welcoming party then" Kenneth said as they turned left on the next split path, encountering more raptures and a few bigger ones "Oni, make way! Solaris and WAR loader, front and fire!"
Oni moved to the side as the PWR loaders did the same, the raptures went for a charging assault but were stopped by a barrage of shots by Solaris' AR and the WAR loader's cannons, destroying the small raptures with a shot or two, while the bigger ones took more damage to destroy but they didn't stand a chance either way.
"Combat noises up ahead, Hangar 3 in close proximity" Said one of the PWR loaders as they kept moving forward. As they reached another split on the hallway, raptures rushed from both hallways as they opened fire, the PWR loader blocked the shots coming from one side but got destroyed by the shots coming from the other one.
"We are really getting closer; the amount of these tin cans just keeps increasing" Kenneth said as he switched to his dual pistols and firing at the raptures from the left hallway while Oni and Solaris positioned themselves on the right hallway and opened fire to reduce the rapture's numbers, 23 was behind them, kind of unsure if she should fight directly or just stay with the loaders as defense.
As they moved down the right hallway, the path they had to take, they saw one door the size of a truck with a yellow 3 painted on it, while another door similar to the first but some meters away from the first was blown up and had raptures coming out of it. Though the majority were small to medium sized raptures, not the bigger ones though.
"Ok, I want one PWR unit and both BUL units keeping the raptures incoming from the open door" Kenneth said, as the loader units mentioned got into position, keeping the raptures at bay with some help from 23 and DRK "Jack, think you can open that door?"
"I'm on it kid" Jack said as he appeared in Kenenth's vision, with Kenneth quickly getting access to the door to let Jack do his thing "Seems like the emergency lock activated when the raptures entered, should only take a minute to disengage it"
"Ok, Solaris I want you and the WAR loader ready to blast whatever is behind the door once its open" Kenneth said he looked at the mentioned Nikke and the loader unit. The first one nodded with a determined smile as she got her LMG out while the WAR loader began to spin its cannons.
"Alright, open in 3...2...1!" Jack counted until the door opened, showing the hangar as a couple raptures were either flying around or crawled on some of the turned off Hyperion machines in there. As soon as it opened Solaris and the WAR loader rained bullets on the unaware raptures, destroying all of the raptures on sight before they could even react.
"Move in, move in!" Kenneth said as he entered the hangar, blasting a pair of raptures as the rest of the group began to enter. As they entered, they could see a huge amount of raptures, going from small ones to a couple Lord class ones, however the vast majority of the raptures were either crossing the destroyed door a few meters away or sieging a specific part of the hangar, with gunshots coming out of a door there "I think I see the control room, we have to get there and fast!"
"We will distract the raptures coming from the other side, move on sir!" Said DRK through the Echo comms as Kenneth and the others moved, but the raptures were finally reacting and began to switch to face the group that entered.
"Take cover!" Solaris said as she pushed Kenenth behind a metal crate while Oni took cover behind a constructor, which was on time as the raptures opened fire on them, the loaders that were with them returned fire, but the damages were minimal in comparison to the number of raptures that were there, resulting in at least 3 GUN loaders and one of the PWR loaders being destroyed. Oni and Solaris were peeking out to shoot at the raptures, destroying some of them but there were way too many raptures to make a difference "Commander, there's too many of them!"
"We are barely making a dent on their numbers!" Oni added as she saw a GUN loader getting overwhelmed by a couple of Fez raptures, just to then be destroyed due to fire from a Thermite type rapture "I don't think we will survive much longer"
"We have to, there's no other way to get out!" Kenneth said as he blasted a couple raptures with his pistols, however as he reloaded a flying rapture made it past the shots and took aim at him.
"Commander, watch out!" Solaris yelled as she stood in front of Kenneth, taking the shot from the rapture as she took it down with her weapon. "You scrap heads have already taken from humanity; we are not letting you take away our hope now!"
"Solaris, keep it together!" Kenneth said as he tried to go over to Solaris to check on her, but she was out of cover and firing her LMG at the raptures "Your upgrades make you more resistant but invincible!"
"I am done hiding; I will destroy the raptures, so they don't take anything else from me and to protect humanity!" she yelled again as she marched forward, still firing her LMG as it began to show signs of overheating since it was showing smoke. However, the weird part was that Solaris was also seemingly overheating herself.
"Boss, what's happening to Solaris?!" Oni said seeing Solaris advancing, the shots she received seemed to not do much damage if any at all and both her and her gun seemed to shot sparks with each shot the LMG made.
"If I had to guess...she is discovering her upgrades" Kenneth said as part of Solaris' armor opened up, showing some sort of vents on her shoulders and backs, which was confusing at first...until they began to shoot flames, alongside Solaris' hair being set ablaze without damaging it, on top of that her LMG also seemed to overheat to her benefit, shooting extremely hot bullets at fast speeds at the raptures, who were being shredded by her.
"EAT FIRE YOU ONE EYED SCRAP MECHS!" Solaris yelled, now more maniacally as she shredded one of the lord class raptures with some bullets while shredding the rest like butter.
"I believe I am experiencing what humans call relief that she is referring to the raptures and not us" Said one of the GUN loaders, seeing the carnage she was handing out, with many raptures trying to escape her line of fire with some more entering the hangar from the breaches on the main hangar door. "The path is mostly clear sir, should we stop her?"
"Let her be, but keep the raptures from flanking her" Kenneth said as he began to run towards the control room, Oni right behind him as they avoided the shots from the raptures that managed to get away from Solaris' rampage. After some seconds they reached the control room, and as they got close, they saw an LMG coming out of the door, so they knew people was there "Hey, if anybody is alive in there, sound off!"
"Who is it?!" yelled a female voice from the other side of the entrance to the control room, sounding hostile but also showing signs of being tired "friend or foe?!"
"Jesus Christ Product 12, can we just enter?!" Oni yelled back, the shots coming out of the control room's entrance soon finished for a short while, a wordless way of saying to enter, which Kenneth and Oni did quickly. Once inside they saw Product 12 sitting against a crate near the entrance of the room, her LMG laying on the floor and some really makeshift repairs made on her. "12, are you ok?"
"You scrap heap actually survived? I thought you died with the other one down there" said a gruff male voice from the side before Product 12 could speak, Kenneth and Oni turned to see who it was, and they saw commander Wulfric (I already described it few chapters back, I am not describing it again), while there was another nikke laying heavily wounded against one of the control consoles, said nikke had her visor totally broken, was missing an arm and had multiple wounds either made by projectiles or lasers on her body. "Nice upgrades, finally turned into something useful"
"Ocean!" said Oni ignoring what Wulfric was saying, trying to rush towards her but Wulfric pushed her away, the dude looking angry while Oni looked angrier "Let me help her, she is clearly suffering!"
"One, that thing cannot suffer, it's not even a real person" Wulfric said without a care in the world, making Oni grit her teeth in anger while Kenneth just looked "and two, that's no way to talk to your commander you rebellious piece of metal"
"Listen man, we have a solution to the rapture problem, but we need you to cooperate" Kenneth said, entering the conversation as Wulfric looked at him, seeming kind of confused while his face still looked annoyed.
"And who you might be, you run this shitty place?" Wulfric said, as Kenneth was trying his best to not shoot the idiot, Kenneth just walked past him as he began to search for something on one of the walls.
"I am just the guy that saved part of your squad, upgraded them and can get us out of here, so how about you cooperate and let Oni and I do our job?" Kenneth said as he began to knock on part of the wall, clearly looking for something, while Wulfric looked angrier.
"Excuse me?!...Ok I'll admit you turned this idiot into a halfway decent machine looking at it" Wulfric admitted giving a side glance to Oni, making her growl in anger before returning to look at Kenneth "And how exactly do you plan to help?"
"The generator is still running but something caused the floor to disconnect from the power grid, if I could just" Kenneth was saying before knocking on part of the wall that sounded hollower than the rest "bingo"
With that Kenneth grabbed that part of the wall and began to rip it out, Oni went to help and soon the two of them were able to rip it out, revealing a sort of fuse box with many cables connected to it, but a part of the fuse box seemed burnt and like it blew up.
"I see the problem, the power control unit of the floor died and caused a short circuit, we need to install a new one or something similar" Kenenth said, looking at the fuse box and removing the destroyed power control unit.
"I don't think we have the time for that boss" Oni said, slightly worried as Product 12 went back to firing her LMG at the raptures outside the control room, the sound of raptures increasing outside alongside the yells from Solaris "we don't have the time to get that kind of unit"
"Use...me" said iDoll Ocean, struggling to piece together sentences through her wounds, making the rest look at her "our cores...should be a good...replacement for it"
"Could work" Wulfric, walking towards Ocean as he looked down at her, seemingly thinking about the idea "nikkes operate on some pretty complex cores that serves as a built in stabilizer, kind of like the power control unit, we would just have to extract the core"
"B-but that would kill Ocean! We weren't programmed to act as conduits" protested Oni, seeing how Wulfric was preparing his pistol to end Ocean "and you are not helping Wulfric!"
"Hang on commander trigger happy, maybe we can work something out" Kenneth said as he went over to Ocean, pushing Wulfric aside as he pulled the nikke towards the wall where the fuse box was located.
"Well then I hope you can do it quickly, Just from the sounds outside there's more raptures incoming" Wulfric said slightly less angry than before and also sounding a bit scared. Kenneth lied Ocean against the wall as he took some cables from the fuse box. Just then Wulfric handed Kenneth a chip of some sorts "Debug codes, in case connecting to her launches an error"
"You should have a chip slot on the right side of your head, almost forgot about that" Jack said inside of Kenenth's head, making him rolls his eyes as he ran his right hand over the part mentioned by Jack, finding the mentioned slot and inserting the chip in it, getting access to the codes "Pretty standard codes, but should be enough to bypass Ocean's security"
"Oni, I need you to give me access to Ocean's core" Kenneth said as he tangled with the cables, Oni went to Ocean and after the latter gave the former a nod, Oni opened Ocean's chest area, as in the boob area, revealing the main systems of the nikke. Kenneth was ignoring that little fact as he finally connected the cables together and kneeled next to Ocean "Jack, you think you can hack Ocean's system to serve as a stabilizer?"
"Once she is connected, maybe, really only one way to find out bud" Kenneth took that as a signal to do it as he connected the cables to Ocean's body, who quickly had an spasm from the amount of power that was going through her at once, her eyes were even shining purple due to the power coming from the eridium core. "Jesus, this operative system is a jumbled mess, but not impossible to get through, now we just connect this here and remove this lock and...done!"
As if on cue, the lights of the entire floor turned on, including the ones in the hangar as the fight raged on. As soon as they did, the security system got turned back online, which resulted on the turned off loaders and constructors getting the order to turn on, which they did and very quickly recognized the raptures as enemies.
"Activating combat mode" Said a recently turned on WAR loader as it opened fire alongside the other loaders at the raptures coming in, alongside them a series of turrets activated and also began to attack the raptures. With that amount of fire was way too overwhelming for even the raptures to withstand, so with the new reinforcements active, the rapture horde was defeated and since there were no more raptures coming in, a loader went to the entrance to check on the enemies in case they were regrouping, but as it turns out, there were defensive turrets outside too, so the few raptures still outside were being destroyed by those.
"Hostile forces neutralized, Mission Success." Said the loader that went to check, this prompted the rest of the loader army to exit combat mode as Solaris cooled down from her previous rage, she was literally emitting smoke as she sat against a crate while 23 and DRK were walking in through the destroyed entry door.
"Gods...what even happened? and why do I feel so hot?" Solaris asked as she held her smoking LMG, a couple seconds later Kenneth and Oni came back from the control room, with Wulfric and Product 12 getting out too, getting Solaris' attention "Commander, Oni, I assume the objective was completed then"
"You would be correct; the place is now fully powered up" Kenneth said walking up to her as Oni sat on top of one of the crates, both of them having a kind of serious expression on their faces "unfortunately iDoll Ocean's body cannot be unconnected without frying her brain"
"Dammit...I will miss her" Solaris said with a sad sigh, as she also saw the loaders moving around, seemingly checking the remains of the destroyed raptures as Wulfric was talking to both 12 and 23 "and Wulfric and the rest of the squad?"
"12 and 23 are pretty banged up, 12 more than 23" Kenneth said scratching his head "but one quick trip to the repair center and she should be back as ne-"
Bang!Bang!
Their conversation was interrupted as two gunshots were heard, they turned to look at what caused it and saw Wulfric holding his pistol and standing in front of a scared 23 and the dead body of 12, with two gunshots on her head.
"What in the actual fuck Wulfric?!" Oni said furious as she stormed at the guy, just for him to aim his pistol at her, making her stop "We already won, why did you do that?!"
"It's protocol, she was unfit for combat and even with repairs, her memory data it's more valuable than her life" Wulfric said in a matter-of-fact tone as he aimed at 23 "we also need the memory data of this one, after that we are taking a vehicle and back to the Ark"
"Sir, what about our original mission?" Solaris asked, getting involved in the conversation as she walked up until she was standing next to Oni "the other search party should be arriving at the designated location about now, if we move now, we could-"
"Silence, you scrap heap, just because you got a new paint job doesn't mean you get an opinion on what we should do!" Wulfric said loudly, poking Solaris chest with his gun "I am still your commander, and you will obey me!"
"...no" Solaris said firmly, making Wulfric angrier as 23 seemingly was scared for Solaris "you are not our commander, you are an egotistical man baby that needs to be rescued at every single turn of every single mission"
"Oh, I will have you scraped, and memory wiped for that, or even better, I will have Missilis dissect you" he said, looking angrier and angrier with every second, not noticing Kenneth walking around him as he looked around
"You know, there is an easy way to solve this issue" Kenneth proposed, finally getting Wulfric's attention.
"Oh really? and what exacty might that-"
bang!bang!
before Wulfric could even finish that sentence, Kenneth took out his pistols and fired them onto Wulfric's head, blowing it up as his lifeless body fell down, limp as the blood dripped out.
"Seems like the commander is now permanently incapacitated, for shame" Kenneth said in a sarcastic voice tone "Well, if you are ok with me being your commander by default, I could take the job"
"Any objections?" Oni asked her last two companions, Solaris said nothing and while 23 seemed conflicted about the fact that...well her commander just got shot in the head, it was understandable, but she also didn't say anything "there are no objections boss"
"Then it's settled" Kenneth said as he checked Wulfric's body, taking his communications device, his pistol and any other important stuff "Jack, you think you can hack this so we can get access to their comms?"
"Worth a shot, you also need to get us to the Ark, which means we need to find that other search group" Jack said inside of Kenneth's head, which made sense, Wulfric was dead so there was only one more person they knew the existence of that could help them.
"True" Kenneth said as he looked at DRK, who was now picking up Wulfric's body after it was looted "toss that body outside and then see if we can get one of the vehicles working again"
"Understood" DRK said as it walked away, as Kenneth looked at the trio of nikkes still alive.
"Alright, who wants to-"
"I'll go/I´ll go" Solaris and Oni said raising their arms before Kenenth could finish his sentence, one could guess what Kenenth was going to ask and the two of them were ready for it. Kenneth was kind of surprised but smiled and nodded before looking at 23, the only one who didn't raise her arm.
"I don't think I am ready to return" 23 said, looking like she was kind of scared "if it's ok I would like to stay behind on the base and help DRK and the rest"
"I'll allow it, we need eyes and ears here to oversee everything, go to the repair bay first, you need a proper fix up" Kenneth said, making 23 smile before walking away to get repaired, with a loader escorting her, all the while Kenneth looked at Oni and Solaris "Seems like it's mission complete for this one"
"It sure is boss" Oni said with a smile, looking pretty happy as she held her shotgun "and now we can focus on completing our original mission"
"I just hope we are not too late to help them" Solaris said slightly worried, considering the time they wasted here the other group could be in danger or dead already.
"We already survived this shit show; I am sure we will survive whatever else the world throws at us" Kenenth said as he walked up to them and put a hand on their shoulders, making the two nikkes smile, the three looking at the loaders working "this was only the beginning"
Hehehehe, what did you think eh? Pretty good finale for that part of the tale am I right? Well I hope you are ready for more because as it stands our heroes still have a lot of work to do, Kenneth and Jack are thankfully heading in the right direction of discovering in depth where they are, and trust me, the stuff they are gonna get into will change the course of history forever...now get lost, it's almost closing hours and I need to sleep.
(I am sorry for the radio silence, I got back in Uni, and it stole a lot of my time, I am trying to get 1 chapter a month so next one will probably come out in May at most late, maybe I can get 2 chapters per month if I write a lot per day but that's best case scenario. Anyways, hope ypu enjoyed this chapter and see you all next time.)