Artifice

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"Nah. I wouldn't be a normal girl without these. Because I sure as hell could still whoop your ass with or without them." She would've crossed her arms at this point, but unfortunately, that was a maneuver that was probably far more impossible than normal, what with her power fists firmly mounted and all. Things were, after all, simply too damn big. The entire aspect of him prancing around with bat wings and screeching in his voice, 'cheater cheater' was simply, well, hilarious to her. She hid her rather quickly growing laughter underneath a stony frown, of course. No reason to give him the satisfaction of making her smile.

She yawned loudly after that, glancing over to Resic and Aeon and shrugging. "Whaddaya gonna do. Oh well. Anyways. Unless you got some kinda bout set up for me, I'mma head home."
 
Aeon wasn't concerned with the ignorant ramblings of a very uninformed hacker who thought he was invincible. It was of no concern to him, really. All he cared about was getting a good fight in so he could see about getting his paintjob redone. Punchgirl was sassing him out, which gave Aeon an expression that could be biologically read as pleased. However, when the brat hacker put his arm around the small woman, something set him off.

"Get your hands off of her, you ignoramus. I'm going to hurt you and if you don't get your hands off from her, I'll rip your goddamn wings off. Either way, I'm going to fuck you up, got it?" If he had sleeves, he'd be rolling them up, but instead, he swung his head from side to side, working out the kinks in his mutated vertebrae - CRIKRACKRICK! He was plainly ready to mess this prick up.
Gracia handily caught the gun and got to work on the hack, her neuroprocessor working her arms as usual while her natural one slung her shotgun for a moment so she could make a crude barricade at the opening of the cubicle she was holed up in, thus allowing her to effectively defend herself and taking a weight off Caesar's shoulders and her own.

"Use whatever supplies you can to barricade yourself in. I'm going to switch clips on my MP to lethal - you see that watercooler? I shoot the tank and the water will start dribbling out. My HUD read a little while ago that this room had a slight hill down towards the door - the water will dribble their way and a stun bolt will set the water alight. Might end up killing them, or just a mass stun."

Pretty observant, she thought. Gracia did as she said she would and took an arm off the hack to reload her MP, which she laid on a desk for easy access. When she needed it, she could have an arm grab it and shoot the tank.
 
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Caesar yelled at the current occupants of the building, having Brutus translate it into Old Russian and mod his voice, so it sounded like an strong, veteran Russian screaming at them while pointing toward the exit. Most of the occupants didn't understand the language, and so the confusion was all the greater. He used nearby desks, plants, and miscellaneous other items to barricade himself into the cubicle next to Gracia, using his mechanical arms to punch a hole in the wall so they could see and talk to one another with ease. Switching his rifle to hollow point rounds, he shot the cooler, out of which water began to spill, slowly making it's way to the door. He shot two others in the room, flooding the tile floor enough for their purposes. He wasn't taking any chances in waiting for them to come before he set the trap. "How long should this take? I wouldn't think a simple office would have that tough a security system." he commented, adding a reminder for her to hurry. The sirens were growing closer.
 
Jordan figured that 863 might appear scary to the person inside, who knows when they were frozen, Jordan marked the GPS coordinates on his map and had 863 close the container, he couldn't lock it again, but it should be fine as it is.

863 continued jumping from building to building when it fell in on a building that was structurally weak. Luckily no one was inside, but that won't stop people from being curious. Jordan quickly reacted and made 863 go into compact mode. Hopefully, people will think that 863 is just something that fell off the framework of Upper Regalia
 
Client from earlier? Jaxer scratched the top of his head, looking at the woman confused. He had no idea what she meant by client and he watched her slip out of his grasp but he didn't care. The 'bat' stood there for a moment with crossed arms, tapping his foot on the sidewalk before finally noticing what she meant. He looked her up and down once more before chuckling.

"No no no, you see I am a gentleman! I don't do what you think I do miss. I like to take my girls out on nice dates, a little bit of dinner, take em back to my place and you can guess on from there. I guess that does include using money on you like you were previously talking about but oh well!"

He turned back to Gwen, hearing her comment about how she could still whoop his ass and he shrugged. She was just trying to hype herself up more than she really was. She wasn't anything but a hard ass behind large gloves. Jaxer heard her finish her statement, saying that she was going to go home. He grinned at that fact, and was about to sweet talk Resic even more before Aeon said that he was going to fucking kill him or something of the sort. Jaxer than heard a series of popping sounds from the brute before sighing and he gave him a disappointed look.

"I'm pretty sure you don't want to fight me. I don't wanna embarrass you in front of all these people boy."
 
Resic's head tilted to the side as she listened to Jaxer's words; doing his best to make himself not out like the men that she slept with. But the thing was, some of them had done those sort of things with her. Not everyone just wanted her to show up, get naked with them and then take off once the deed was finished. Some of them actually wanted to have a meal with her; make it seem like more than just a paid session of sex. She had even had one client just pay her to spend time with him. They never had sex, merely sat there and talked about whatever came to mind. It had been strange for her, but a nice change from the normal men that asked to see her. But that had been over a year ago. And she had never seen him again after that.

Her eyes went to Gwen as the woman spoke of going home if no sort of bout was going to take place. Resic was a little sad about her wanting to leave, but what could she do to stop her? Her hand reached into her pocket to pull out her contact information, but her motions stopped as Aeon began to shout at Jaxer once again. His words hit her ears and made her look at him with frightened confusion. Was he telling Jaxer not to touch her? To be honest, she did not want anyone fighting because of her; or over her as the situation seemed to be heading towards. The reasoning behind Aeon and Gwen almost fighting seemed so much more acceptable to her. Resic was not worth anyone getting hurt over. That had been made apparent the many times that people had found out that she was a prostitute. When Jaxer retorted to Aeon, Resic decided that something had to be done about the two of them. Straightening her back and shoulders the female cyborg stepped between the two and faced Aeon. "Stop it right now! You two will not fight over something as foolish as 'who can and cannot touch me'. I am the one that decides that. Do you understand?" Though her body was facing Aeon, she did shoot an angry glance behind her toward Jaxer. Surely her taking a stand against both of them, who were easily much taller and heavier than her, was quite surprising. She took a breathe and then pulled her hand from her pocket and handed a card toward Gwen. On it was just her first name and her number. "Thank you again for saving me, Gwen. Feel free to contact me anytime." Resic looked over toward Gwen and gave her a smirk. "No charge for any time spent with me, of course."

Now though Resic had a cybernetic body, inside she still had various organs. And right now her heart was pounding away in her body. She hardly ever stood up for herself, and never had she stood up to a mutant who seemed on the edge at the moment. But though she could feel fear moving throughout her body right then, she did not back down from Aeon. Perhaps she should have been facing off against Jaxer? No, Aeon was the one she needed to calm down. And so there she stood with her body straight and her eyes saying she would not let him start a fight because of her. After handing her contact information to Gwen, Resic moved her eyes back toward the large mutant before her. "Fight over your paintjob or anything else, but do not fight over me. I am not worth your blood or pain." Her voice was low as she spoke to him. For some reason the idea of him, or anyone, becoming hurt because of her did not sit well at all. Perhaps it was something that had happened to her before she was found in Neutra...
 
Gracia didn't understand Russian - only English and French. She could, however, follow suit, and began responding to him in French. She was a bit shocked by his sudden shooting of the water tanks, spreading water on the floor preemptively. "I suppose that could work," Gracia said in French, a smirk striking her face once again. With the elephant in the room now a puddle on the floor, she pocketed her MP again, but kept in the back of her mind - and the quick recall of her Neuroprocessor's logs - that it was loaded lethal. She had to remember she couldn't use that in most current situations.

"I'll be done in seven minutes," she relayed to him in French, her attention poised to the opening door to the office room, hiding behind the fairly well-barricaded cubicle. The number was produced by an ETA calculator function in her neuroprocessor which calculated estimated time of completion in the current task of focus. "We'll be out of here before old Johan Smith has time to wake up," she said, also in French.
The prick was suicidal as well as a womanizer - Aeon had never approved of mistreating women, even when he was a slave. He had never killed a female in his career as a gladiator, but had beat a few down for both of their safety. At the time, circumstances provided that he felt he was doing the woman a favor. However, on the other hand, the small girl stepped between them, piping up at him from her ground-level perch. "We won't fight over you, my lady, we will fight over the fact that this man insulted me - a former gladiator champion and now professional mercenary assassin - and had the gall to insinuate that he could defeat me." And the batty idiot had indeed insulted him ,and he was incensed. Aeon was ready to bust heads.

"So step aside, my lady, I would hate for you to get caught in the middle of this, quite literally, and metaphorically. This has naught to do with you and aught to do with honor. I am going to shred this chiropteran moron into fine ribbons and decorate the gates of my home with said ribbons." Aeon had taken a tough-looking boxing stance by now and from his relaxed hands, claws began to peak out from his fingertips. Razor sharp and caked with the blood of previous kills which he could not clean out in time. "I was trained to avoid deadly hits and endure tiring strikes. I can survive sustained gunfire. I am a juggernaut of speed and strength, and you had better keep an eye on me, bat-boy, or you may lose sight of me - and that will mean certain death for you, since this isn't a gladiatorial match, so I have no crowd to please."
 
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The sheer fact that she was given a card, and possibly a bit of a flirting look more confused Gwen than anything else. She never considered herself to be some kind of hero, nor attractive, nor actually swinging that way. She shrugged once and said, "Eh, just put the card in my tanktop strap or something, really can't grab much of anything with my fists on." Admittedly, she never really gave it a thought, since she never really had her mind much on romance in the first place. She got her kicks out of punching people more than other needs, so, eh. Regardless, however, there appeared to be a fight brewing, so maybe she'd stick around for a bit longer, mostly because she was gonna see someone get wrecked no matter what.

Regardless, however, she felt her own blood boiling more than anything else at the moment, so she simply glared at the two of them, before saying, "Hey. Asstwats. Didn't you hear the lady? Stop fightin' over her. Buncha fuckin' horndogs." She snorted once, feigning disgust, although really, again, she couldn't give a damn less. Men would be men, after all. She had enough experience to know that they were, more often than not, rather lecherous in most regards. The pistons inside of her fists slid back with a loud hiss and a click once they reached their maximum pressure buildup.
 
Jaxer was listening to all of Aeon's gobbledygook or whatever you called it. His words theoretically came in one of Jaxer's ears while going out the other. He did catch the part about how he was a proffesional mercenary assassin which he thought was odd. The man was from Forma Regalia or something so why did he even need to be a mercenary? Jaxer wouldn't question him about it. His left hand moved over to his leg while his right to his pants pocket, about to withdraw his SMG and cybernetic knife when Gwen's words stopped him. Asstwat? That was a new word. He would have to add that to his long list of compliments later. His hands relaxed and went back to being by his side before shrugging. He made his way to Resic's side once more before placing his head on her shoulder.

"Fight over her? Ha! That is RICH! If I was the one who asked her out first, then she is mine. Of course, two girls are better than one!"

He gave Gwen a sly wink and knew that she would have tried to do something there but he was too close to Resic for her to attack.​
 
Aeon had had enough of his bullshit. With the precision of any honed assassin, Aeon thrust his arm into Jaxer's armored torso and ran him into the wall, Jaxer's armor saving his internal organs from becoming ground beef and instead making them feel like gelatin. He held back a Hell of a lot, as he didn't want the prick to die - yet. He was ready to kill him, but death was too good for this piece of shit. He growled and snarled his ugly and fearsome frown at the batboy, his eyes narrowing at him.

"You have no right to claim any sentient being as yours. Be they cyborg, pure human, or mutant, nobody belongs to anyone else. The girl and the boxer belong to themselves. They are not your property. They have the choice about whether to go with you or not, but your attitude makes me want to make sure nobody has that option." On that last point, he twisted his razor talons about the wrist to emphasize his point, shooting pain up Jaxer's spinal cord - even when he was holding back, he could still do a Hell of a lot of damage. "And you and your fancy guns couldn't scratch me - I use my mutations to my full advantage, and one of them is dermal armor. I would like to see you take me down with small arms fire, you little shit."
 
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The female cyborg listened as Aeon claimed that they were not going to fight over her. That they were, in fact, going to be fighting over honor and insults that had been tossed at one another. And to be quite honest, Resic did not fully believe a word of it! Sure Aeon may claim that this fight was not going to be about her, but with the way he kept getting upset with Jaxer's intentions toward her, she had a feeling that he really would fight the bat because of her. Jaxer made a comment about him making the first move and so she belonged to him. Such words would definitely get the mutant's anger rising... Seems she would not be too far from the truth on that one.

Thankfully she was able to move quickly enough, Resic jumped to the side and nearly ran into Gwen as Aeon moved past her and slammed Jaxer into the wall. These two were quite unbelievable! "Will you two stop it?!" Resic gave an exasperated sigh and covered her face with her hands. It seemed that no matter what she said, they were not going to listen to her. They were just going to keep prodding at each other's pride till one of them ended up seriously injured or dead. Fine then! Guess she would just have to deal with the matter another way. "Gwen, I am sorry for any trouble I caused you. As I said, feel free to contact me for any reason." She gave a smile to Gwen, straightened her back, and then walked past the two mutants who were having a pissing contest. If she was going to be the center of this fight, then she would remove herself completely from the whole situation. Perhaps that would get them to settle down? "Goodbye you two. I have others that would be willing to actually spend their time with me instead of fighting over who's cock is bigger." She lifted a hand in a wave and did not look back at the two as she started to walk away. Though to be perfect honest, it was a bit hard for her to walk away from them. A part of her did not want to see either of them hurt; while another part of her wanted to stay and learn more about them. Either way, she hoped that her choosing to leave would make them stop fighting and possibly send one of them after her. And if not? Then she would just go home and go about her usual life of trying to pay off the amount of money she owed the Artificer for saving her life and giving her the body she now had.
 
Brutus was programmed to translate all language unknown to Caesar into English as it passed through the jelmet's audio receptors, so the message came through in a way he could understand.
"Brutus, switch voice output to French. Copy that, Gracia. RPD will be here in three and forty-two. I'll hold them off with the electric current on the floor."
He slung his rifle over his back, pulling out his pistol, still containing stun rounds, and waited for the arrival of the police force.

Moments later coops burst into the building, and Caesar shot at the floor. The electric current travelled quickly, travelling up the metal and Kevlar armor of the advancing police unit. They fell to the floor, twitching. More sirens were approaching, fast. There was no telling how long the electro-water defense would hold them off.
 
Something told Gracia that what with this being an Upper problem, the PD would soon bring forth Rubber Suit Troopers. The trouble with them was that they were armed to the teeth and most ranged non-lethal was useless. Sure, if she had, say, a shockbow or something else that could easily penetrate the Rubber Suits, she could stun them, but stun bolts wouldn't do it. She'd never had to deal with them before, considering her preference for lethal defense, but she knew of them - the greatest defense against mercenary professionalism was to make a trooper that you couldn't stun. From there, it was all about stealth and penetration, unless you were willing to forgo the whole professionalism ideal.

"The pigs aren't smart, but they aren't stupid, either. When do you suppose they'll send in Rubber Suits? I've never had to deal with them, but I don't think we're in a position to. Not even my shock nets can take down those guys, and I don't have a shockbow, or really any non-lethals that can penetrate their armor. I'm loaded lethal on my MP, but do we want to do that?" The boss always had his way, and right now, Caesar was the boss. He was one of the first who didn't want her to kill potential hostiles on sight. She almost got banged up the first time, since she didn't have stun bolts, or any non-lethal weaponry, except her own fists. Luckily, she's got pretty hard heels.
 
Caesar thought about it for a moment.
"Switch to lethal. If they send in R-Suits, aim for the legs and arms. Take 'em down, and kill them if they get past the third row of desks. I want to maintain the professional appearance for as long as possible. I want the Upper Pigs to know we're businessmen, not think we're common thugs." he said, switching his pistol from stun to lethal.

As if on cue, the sirens stopped and navy blue rubber suit officers burst through the door, quickly advancing toward the fallen regulars. They pulled them out to relax their muscles and advanced once again, those first in being shot in the knee by Caesar's rifle.
 
Then it was a damn good thing Gracia had the recoil shell in her right arm. It worked with pistols and rifles, but in different ways between the two. With pistols, like her MP and in most instances, her shotgun, it would absorb all shock with the skeleton and filter it into the shell to be dispersed via subtle vibrations over time. This means that she could literally shoot an Action Express revolver perfectly, but with pistols, she'd have to wait for the recoil to disperse before she could fire again, otherwise the shell would overload and she'd be affected by the recoil. However, her MP was small, 9mm, and a rather low recoil for its firing rate, on top of that, a 24 round magazine. She could fire off a fair seven magazines in succession, if you don't count dispersal during reloading, without having to rest her recoil shell.

With a rifle, like her PDW, and if she chose to put a stock on it, her shotgun, the shell acts differently. Instead of absorbing and dispersing the recoil, since the butt of the rifle is laid against the shell, it will kick against the rifle to counteract the recoil, although if the shooter is untrained, this could lead to intensified recoil spread. Anybody who was properly trained how to shoot a rifle can forgo considering recoil with the recoil shell. This can also instantaneously disperse all pistol recoil stored in the shell, thus meaning that Gracia would do well to invest in a stub stock for her shotgun, as she could use it both rifle-grip and pistol-grip.

So Gracia immediately withdrew her MP from her satchel, slinging her shotgun on her back. Her left arm was still working the hack, which means she didn't have a HUD, but she did have full use of the rest of her body without having to worry about her motions synchronizing accidentally, like most organic people will do. "Shoot to incapacitate, roger that," she shouted as she tagged one up the shin with seven rounds, tripping him immediately in pain and injury. He'd easily survive, but his tibia would be shattered. Another one came with a gun that looked like an updated MG-42, to which she responded with quickly taking cover. If her left arm wasn't busy, she could use it to effectively blind-fire the man, but she'd given Caesar an ETA that she intended to stick to, so she'd have to leave him to take the risk, since he was actually armored. "Aim for the arms so he can't pick the gun back up!"
 
"On it! Brutus, auto-calibrate arms for recoil impact, steady aim, and add crosshair to visual display. Add targets to selected areas Knee, Elbow, Shin, Forearm."
As he spoke, his mechanical arms adjusted to hold the rifle more efficiently, his helmet's visual display changing on command to something like one would see in a videogame, a cross hair appearing where he aimed his rifle and spinning red crosshairs targeting key points on the officer's bodies. He set the crosshairs on the elbows of the MG-42, which were bent enough to expose them.

He fired, sending hollow point rounds through the joints, then sent four more, two to a knee cap. Not only could the man no longer hold the weapon, but he'd likely not walk any time soon. He targeted several more wielding the standard MP5 with silencers, taking them down with ease. They had started targeting him more directly now, and he took three bullets to his chest armor.

"C'mon, Grace, they're getting better at this! Hurry it up!" he called over his shoulder.
 
Gracia got started on a one-handed reload for her shotgun while Caesar took care of the big guy. The room was small enough that she could easily kill a man unless she just shot off a limb. "Is dismemberment an acceptable course of action, or should I stick to my MP? I can cause a LOT of trouble if I can use my shotgun. Either way, I got three chambers loaded with shock nets in case we come upon any coppers, and three loaded with standard shells in case things get really bad. Now that you're the target, I can pop out and aim, but they'll get pretty fucking scared if I take off a leg or three!"

That was the idea, anyway. Demoralize the enemy and you win the fight. She fully intended to come back later sometime and kill every man who could've seen her face, since she didn't have the chance at the moment. Perhaps she should've worn a mask - although her eye color was quite hidden by her hair and the neuroprocessor working to project an image over her vision clouded her eyes. They probably weren't too focused on her anyway. "You know, my face could get on the news pretty soon. You better have something in store for me when we get done with this job, or I'm going to go crazy."
 
"Dismemberment is fine. They got tech these days to keep 'em from bleeding out, and Artificers can just replace the limbs. Have at it!" he replied, taking down another with a few bullets to the leg. He took cover behind a wall as he reloaded his rifle. The were coming in more hesitantly now, knowing that they were being taken down with ease and there seemed to be no damage done to their targets.

"Oh, yeah. I got a few old masks of mine I used before I got Brutus and the helm. When we get home feel free to use any of them." he replied, shooting the face of an officer unlucky enough to get past into the designated kill zone.
 
Dismemberment was fine, which meant she would have a fun time now. Immediately, she peeked out of her cubicle and shot a rubber suit's leg off. He started screaming and grabbing at his soon to be nub. Gracia smiled and licked the corner of her mouth. "Honey, when I said something in store for me, I didn't mean a mask, not that I'm turning you down there. You better start following along or you and I might have a few misunderstandings in the long-term." Tipping over a filing cabinet, Gracia made some head-down cover connecting the two cubicles while she stayed close to the access point for the hack. She tipped her head behind her, gesturing for Caesar to come to her - in the middle of a firefight, no less.
 
Caesar laughed. "Sorry about that, Love, battle-minded over here. Brutus, guide arms to fire at previously selected targets while I move." "Copy, Lord Caesar."
As the mercenary slammed through the makeshift barricade, the AI in his helm took control of his arms, simultaneously helping the body keep balance and firing behind him at the officers. "Let's go!" he yelled, rushing past Gracia and towards the back exit, where the Imperial awaited, ready to be loaded up and take off toward Neutra, where the Upper police forces would not follow.

"C'mon, Grace, get in the car! Brutus, prepare the Imperial for getaway." he called, sliding into the interior of the hover car.
 
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