I
Insomnant
Guest
Original poster
On Russian engineering's resilience to high temperatures, Jackie Diamond could not speak. But his own personal war chassis had been specifically crafted for combat in this environment, and when working in an environment where hasty departures of space ships with blazing engines was the norm, that meant an impressive defense to the exact sort of fiery blaze roaring around him. Flickering in the middle of the fire was the irate, frothing insectoid crime lord, his loader-mech's thermal shield wavering in the intense heat.
With a groaning leap the entire 30-foot tall behemoth jumped up onto the hangar floor proper. What landed was a burnt, battered, partially-melted vehicle but now all four limbs glowed nearly white-hot. They sagged as they moved but visible distortions from the heat wavered above the raised arms ready to grab Brent, as Tick was out of sight for the moment. "The true warrior is not defeated by adversity, but grows all the stronger for it!" he screamed- his voice was getting shrill and pained. Clearly that thermal barrier hadn't protected him from all injury.
"ALL-CONSUMING LOYALTY HOLOCAAAUUUUST!"
A handful of gangsters suddenly arrived. Not by door or by ship, but rather by dropping down from the ceiling! Looking up revealed move clinging thugs crawling along the rafters before letting go to plunge down toward the battlefield. They landed on pulses of hover-pack assisted deceleration.
The first to drop threw his head in a violent full circle, popping every vertebrae in his neck before loosing a hollow, rabid scream that was soon joined by a dozen ragged throats. Foaming from the mouths and with eyes rolled up in their sockets, the drug-pumped crazies hurled themselves at Brent with blasts of their jet-packs to aid their frenzied tackles. Hands crackling with static, they lunged in to deliver their electric hugs, firing shock-pulses from their packs' batteries, anything to slow him down long enough.
And with them in play, Diamond forced his mech into movement against the sag of its melting limbs, to the screeching complaints of straining servos. "Noooooow you die!" He launched himself right at the dogpile, intending to burn all of them to a crisp beneath his shielded cockpit!
A bit of skill and a few choice codes did not- it would seem, make up for crippling stupidity. For all his past successes against the pair of infiltrators (ineffective though they'd been), it was now time for this exterminatorbot to be made the shadowrodent! "Khhhh khkhkhkh!" Frank was still laughing maniacly at his successfully triggered shock trap, hoping that he'd wired it correctly to render whoever had messed with his security system into so much barbecue. The thought actually made him salivate more. Upon confirming they were fried he might just head down there for dessert!
But to his chagrin he noticed that someone was still hacking around on his virtual turf, dammit! Tapping at buttons on his wrist device and fingering holographic commands he furiously called up additional defenses and queued his makeshift IC bots into movement. The agents were gutted leftovers from GC's cyber ops so they frequently malfunctioned, but for something as simple as blasting an intruder with endless chungs of garbage code they served well enough. Frank sat back and grinned as the trio of script executors threatened to bring down the entire node in a hail of errors and stack overflows.
Imagine his surprise when- instead of ending the problem- he found himself targeted by it! His eyes lit up with horrid pink warning signs, disabling much of his frightened flailing efforts at damage control. Heaving for air in the midst of a panic attack, Frank plummeted off his chair in the middle of the cafe, and after bouncing back off the ground he waddled with all his speed toward the counter. No one expected such a short, fat blob of a hacker to be able to vault over the pastry shelf with such ease, but he moved like a man with pants filled with attack dogs made out of fire running toward a pool full of extinguishing dog treats.
In Rosa's view Frank's avatar soon disappeared, his connection suddenly yanked without so much as a word. She might consider that the end, but likely her experience told her that she'd not defeated the keyboard warrior, only forced him to temporarily retreat.
And besides, there were other, more pressing matters... For instance, his cyber security protocols were still in play, and had been let loose. The three twitching approximations of riot control police now turned toward her, shouting garbled messages to stand down and unleashing what looked like pepper spray on her avatar. The resulting exchange was just about as blinding as actual pepper spray would have been, the data sent corrupting her processes.
More importantly though, Myuri could hear a hissing. It was either one extremely consistent snake with a practically endless set of lungs... or else there was a gas leaking into their enclosure. From multiple points, in fact. The disposal unit vent! Somehow every single gas vent had been turned on, unleashing an enormous amount of methane into their enclosure. Which wouldn't be an issue considering their environmental suits, right?
Except that the electric trap from before had already been activated, and the electrodes were beginning to hum with pent-up lightning once more. All of that flammable gas in there with them, and the spark was almost ready to set it all off...