Live Comments in the Haidett post of an unknown Mercenary causing chaos in the Pleasure Lanes.
- Is that… guy flying?
- Wtf? Anyone else seeing a massive fireball outside their house?
- Third Precinct, right? News hasn’t said what it is, yet.
- Yo, a video just dropped. Apparently two Aerodynes crashed into one another while chasing this… flying guy.
- He’s not flying, there’s some golden wire he’s swinging into the buildings around him.
- The guy has spider arms from his back too, what is that?
- A Tsuchigumo? It’s not as big tho.
- Looks like an Arachne to me?
- An Arachne? LOL, aren’t they like… super complicated and difficult to use? And that’s Externally. Wouldn’t the guy need to be Gold to wield something like that?
- Uh… we just got an update.
- Yuzhou says the guy is a Gold-Grade.
- And that… he’s named Dreadwire?
Ripley
A thick river of metal rained down on me as both AV’s passengers armed themselves with powerful machine guns. It was now that I was truly grateful that I had taken the time to reach Tier II. My endeavors in studying the Shardware Operation curriculum for Mr. Anderson had given me a lot more insight into the gradual changes going up the Tiers gave.
From Tier 0 to Tier I, the Implant was adapting to you, learning how you operate and suiting it’s functions to assimilate with your own capabilities. Tier I onwards, the Implant and the Adapter would begin to form a ‘foundation’, it would branch out and solidify your current abilities in preparation for further growth. That was what Tier II was, the process of expansion.
To push further than ever. Each Tier up, the more of your brain used electrons to transfer thought rather than chemical neurotransmitters, it was a complex process that relied on the Implant being able to read quantum fluctuations between an electron’s state as both matter and energy.
It was an infinitesimally small amount each Tier up, but even the tiniest alterations had exponential potential, allowing your brain to be redeveloped to withstand further loads of information and use Shardware more efficiently.
In summary, I was fucking thankful that I could withstand Hypermind Prime’s insane processing speed as I whipped and zipped amidst mazes of fiery embers that could sear the steel of my bones.
27%…
Though it wouldn’t last for long, I could feel my Arachne giving way to the torture I’d exerted on it today. My legs were barely solid enough for me to stand on at this point, only my arms had been rejuvenated over the facility raid, but the adjustments were still unfamiliar to me.
Fuck… my saving grace was that Quickshot was pelting a steady stream of arrows into the AV’s, but the armor of these machines were barely scratched or tingled with her vast array of arrows, plus… I think she used up most of the good ones in my battle with the Tsuchigumo Exoguard.
A part of me was tempted to try and take cover in the rubble her body was trapped in, maybe patch up my Shardware, but even when I tried to use the facility itself as a hostage, they shot straight towards me and shattered it’s concrete hold.
They didn’t care about the Facility anymore… it was us who they wanted now. I wasn’t sure if they knew we had Goliath, or if they knew it was in me.
28%…
But every second in my head that passed, I was just a little bit closer to permanently bonding with the very machine R0N1N had spent millions trying to acquire. I wasn’t particularly terrified of the nanoswarm itself, at this point it was safer to assume that whatever clearance I’d gained from Ms. Himiko tampering with my Avatar had moved me to inject Goliath into myself for…
Killing a Founder.
The thought was ridiculous, I was struggling with two AVs hovering above me right now. A Founder could control thousands of these, hell, from what I knew Yuzhou’s Founder could very well swat them down like a fly. Instead, I was here counting bullets…
Yes, each and every bullet in that hailstorm of red alloy. And just when the number reached 1,240… the northeast AV’s left side began to reload. As they had once before.
I wasn’t familiar with the weapon, but I knew it took seven seconds to reload based on my previous sight of them.
29%…
I sunk my Arachne tip into the fence above, reeling the Livewire in at full strength. It was strange just how much more receptive the Warp Material was, possibly a result of Shardweave, though I’d have plenty of time to experiment once I escaped with my life. Combined with the Water Tendency, the material felt like a sponge to my commands, the perfect vessel to encapsulate who Dreadwire was.
An architect of ruin.
Flung up high, I was now eye-level with both AVs, at the very least I had to take one of them out. Positioning myself between both, I made sure that the second AV would be left in a situation where they would hesitate to fire out of the possibility of harming their ally.
I reaped that opportunity by bursting momentum towards the opened door and kicking into the reloading guard, only to find that he barely moved thanks to a harness preventing them from being tossed out like I had done to them before. They had clearly prepared this batch from my previous encounter.
That left me with what I was thinking had to be plan D?
Hating myself for this, I pushed all of my Warp Energy into Data Mimicry, harnessing the power of R0N1N’s Feature to its fullest potential. My entire body nearly gave in as it was forced to do everything faster, my lungs stretched so slowly my brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen for what I was planning on doing…
The two rail guards and the one supplying ammo to them were still like statues suspended in the air. Carefully, I pulsed my Arachne to get into the AV enough that I could view it through their cameras and find the control panel.
Then I braced and shot one of the Arachne tips into it. It was normally so fast I had trouble keeping track of it, but now it moved like it was propelled through molten metal, but that time was exactly what I needed.
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“Twilight.” I sent my thoughts to her. “You’re in my head so you can see all of this, I need you to load up your deadliest DataCleaver in there!”
Her voice came responding, but it was slow and drawn out in pitch. “I waaassn’t buuuiiilttt foooor thiiis ammmouuunt oooofff ouuuutpuuut-”
“Just do it!”
I felt the lightspeed input of code surge up my Livewire the second it dug into the control panels, not a moment more… and I flung myself out.
32%…
Those few seconds felt like three minutes to me. If I was right, I was thinking a hundred times faster than I normally had… and the mental recoil was so heavy that my vision went bla-
When it returned, Twilight was maneuvering me by clumsily dragging me along the cover of the facility walls. She clearly wasn’t used to my Arachne, and it showed by how roughly I was being smacked or grated against the stone.
I took back control, reeling myself upwards suddenly as gunfire curved to devastate the facility walls beneath me. The floating Aerodynes maneuvered with ease, if I’d recovered a second later I probably would have been minced.
Though, in a few seconds more, I would have access to the controls of one Aerodyne… but only if-
Identity Confirmed…
Ms. Himiko, as much as she got on my nerves, I couldn’t deny that she was saving my skin right now. With a flex of my mental muscles, I gripped the internal controls of one Aerodyne. And sent it straight for the other.
The two railguards jostled as their vehicle suddenly swayed out of their control, tilting and propelling straight for their second one. They exploded into a bright nova of blood and steel, and I was finally safe to release a tight knot of air that had-
Blood coughed into my mask… my entire body felt queasy from what I’d just done. Forcing myself up I-
My leg cracked, the ankle joint splintering just before I caught myself with an Arachne limb. With just a few seconds to spare, I hastily soldered the steel back together to the point where it was basically fused… I wouldn’t be running with this.
My Arachne raised into the air, and I let it fling me above the fence… and into the city.
———
40%…
Goliath was two-fifths of the way there, and I was barely ten percent of the way to Missy’s safehouse. It didn’t help that there were both police and Yuzhou still on my tail, but the Arachne gave me enough maneuverability to use verticality to lose them. We didn’t have time on our side, neither did we have any sense of durability.
Every swing could be my last… I wasn’t going to make it.
“Ripley, they’re sending another Aerodyne!” Twilight screamed, though it may have been in pain. I wasn’t sure exactly how much damage she had taken through everything we did, but while some parts of her were flared up… too much of her presence had dimmed.
“Shit, shit…!” I couldn’t stop anywhere, I’d be found in moments. My own Shardware was too much of a tell… but…
An idea came to me, an incredibly stupid one. I needed protection from The R0N1N, I needed to be somewhere only Twilight would know.
“We’re not going to the safehouse! Twilight, reroute me to your apartment!” I pleaded, I didn’t have the focus to pathfind as I placed my attention on every siren and buzz in the air around me.
“Whatever you’re planning… here!”
I skirted, not bothering to avoid the shadows in the alleyway as I bravely flew my way through the city highways, until eventually…
———
59%…
My public display of acrobatics had certainly drawn attention, everywhere I flew I found police patrols reporting my location and route. It was simple, according to the direction I was traveling they all thought I was heading to Little Requiem, but little did they know…
Within the Pleasure Lanes, light and sound exploded as the populace took sight of me, holographic images of dragons and tigers flew among my right. A goldfish of golden light swallowing me whole, the perfect time for me to swing my Arachne into the shadows. I danced through the alleyways, my enhanced Energy storage dried to a husk as I finally saw the sight of Elsa’s apartment window.
Twilight opened it up for me just in time as I flew and collapsed onto her floor. I coughed up more blood into my mask, by all means I was safe now… except I wasn’t.
60%…
I had to commit now, Goliath was going to become a part of me. R0N1N was kind to me so far, but… I wasn’t sure he would let me live if I had access to a weapon like this. Elsa’s apartment wasn’t going to be safe, my apartment wasn’t going to be safe. Nowhere was going to be safe if the R0N1N knew where I was.
So I had to disappear.
Elsa’s apartment was just another storage space for some of my prototypes alongside Diamante’s bunker and the old storage unit of my grandfather’s. My Shardware came of me too easily as they fell into scraps, first my arms, which I replaced with some old combat-type weapons, then my legs which practically crumpled the second I removed them.
Finally, after a minute of tinkering, my Arachne’s compacted plates fell to the floor in a clutter of steel, before sewing on some fake skin over their ports to seal the deal. I felt bare without them, despite how recently they’d joined my arsenal. Regardless, I told Twilight to open the door.
“What? Why?”
“I need to get caught by the police.”
“Huh?”
“Okay, well not really… you’ll see!”
Painfully, I made my way into the elevator and down to the streets of the Pleasure Lanes. I was a bloody mess, I knew that I’d get the wrong kind of attraction right now when the city was on a manhunt for Dreadwire. I blew up two Aerodynes… the adrenaline of that still rushed through me.
It took a minute of hobbling alongside the busy police-crowded streets, in which I faked a look of surprise before basically trying to run my way out.
“Hey! You there! Stop!” One of the officers, a garish woman chased my limping body down. “Don’t resist, I’m an officer of the law!”
I brought myself to a skid, I wasn’t sure if it was how purely exhausted I was or if I’d somehow lost the confidence of my Arachne that I basically quivered infront of her. “Of… of course, officer. What did you want?”
“Why were you running?”
“I thought there was a terrorist attack with how many of you there were…”
“Well… why are you so bloody?”
“Bar fight.”
She gave me a look of intense suspicion. Perfect. “…I’m going to need to see your Sigil.”
“…You don’t have the right to do that!” I’d known plenty of horror stories, I knew how to play this.
“…I have the right to do what I damn please!” She grabbed my arm, but I tugged it back with ease. Letting a flow of Bronze Energy flash up my arm.
“Shit… Corporal, kid here’s got an unregistered Implant!” She called her commanding Investigator over, a jaded man who looked like he didn’t have the time for this. However, he focused on me with suspicion, taking the bait I’d placed.
“Issue a Shardware Scan, now.” He told some of his underlings who immediately rustled through their belongings to take the hefty scanner out.
I feigned some more resistance. “Hey, I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“This is just a caution, son.” He brought over the scanner to me, it began to weave light across my body. My spare limbs were fine, but it was my spine and eyes that would draw their suspicion.
“Bronze grade? What the hell is a kid like you doing with tech like that.”
“I built it myself!” I tried to pull back, but his Mutated strength pulled me in place. Then he plucked out his own scanner, and that was when I reached into the one BUG of my Mimicset I kept with me.
Overcome. Black Dragon Tan Long’s frequency blended over my own, and the corporal’s eyes widened as it indicated to him exactly who I wanted him to think I was.
“Shit. Kid’s with ‘Masa.” He told his underlings who brought over Warp Restraints that I pretended to struggle against. “You’re under arrest.”
“For what?” I acted like my strength had faded, it was easy considering I barely had droplets of Energy left in me.
“We’ll figure that out soon enough, but who knows, maybe if you play nice we’ll let you go.” He smirked, and the rest of them hauled me into a car.
The drive was long, and I made sure to give my complaints to the Investigator who repeatedly told me to shut up. Though throughout it all, a certain someone was pulling the strings.
Twilight muttered. “Alright, Rip… I got you transferred over to a low-security holding facility. Just… what are you thinking?”
I sighed, resting my head to stare out at the shimmering lights of the holographic paintings above. On several screens built into buildings, blurred images of Dreadwire with golden wires had the entire bustling streets looking up in awe and fear. I smirked at the sight, a swell of… something rising in me.
But I played it humble for now. “That I need some damn peace and quiet.”
Chapter 114: The Anomalous Nature of Anabelle Grazhe right now!