Chapter 16-10 Armor (II)

Chapter 16-10 Armor (II)

+Listenlook, fuggin, just, like, listen, consang

I think we should stay off the streets for a bit, yknow?

Just buy a months worth of kovoli rolls and hole. Hole deep and dark for a bit somewhere safe. Or jock ourselves a ride outta this district.

Yeah, I knowI know we dont got much imps left but Racker, brother, fuckers be dying out there. Like, getting snuffed left and right. You know how the Three-Fingers were supposed to be the next big thing, right? I told you no one cuts a carity like them? Well. Theys done already. Broken. Someone tore through 'em in like a daya war's echoing out from the Bazaar, fucking whoever went after thems still gunning for whats left.

Couple hours back, one of the guys I used to run with got snuffed while I was synced to him. Used to do some basic snuff-work for the Hundred-Eights and he just dropped like a vegetable while I was trying to bum a new middler to get work from since Hannel got Big Emptyd by that Reg sow.

Outta nowhere. Didnt even see the shot coming. I think it might be Dread Draus cleaning up some more.

Yeah. I know. Fuck that run. Shouldve known better than to gun for a Regstupid, stupid shit.

Point is, Squires be dying left and right and up and down, and theres something that smells real bad in the air. I think we should just go cold for a bit. Wait for things to even out again, yknow.

Warrens are getting real hot these days. Too hot. Someones out to cull the Syndicates, and last time that happened, them Guilder fucks started throwing their pocket shine around.

Aint wanna be around when that happens.The initial posting of this chapter occurred via Ñøv€l-B!n.

-Thoughtcasts between two Street Squires

16-10

Armor (II)

The minds of most independent gangers were infused with a delightful taste of precarity. So close to the edge in life and habit, their lives ran the borderlands between predator and prey, exploiting the vulnerable and hiding from Syndicates, for it was the former that kept them fed, and the latter whose territory they trespassed.

As such, with veins thickened by the viscosity of joy and nerves tight from the constancy of tension, when death emerged from the spot where it lurked, the final notes passed from their ghosts were not of surprise or terror, but an exhale of relief and release.

For all the citys faults, New Vultun was a buffet that offered so many unique emotionsframes of thoughtperspectives that could never be found anywhere else, from anyone else.

Some prey just tasted sublime.

Poor shits, Chambers said, shaking his head as the air crackled and Draus new favorite gun sang its rising whine. Muffled cries and wild gauss fire followed, but the sound of a ringing crack cast everything back into silence thereafter. Dust rained down from the paint-flecked ceiling as Avo watched seven more accretions wink out on the floor above. Several more targets were moving, desperately fleeing for the windows or stairs, their blood and breath brushing his Frame with each pulse of their straining hearts.

A few of them would reach the edge of the block soon. But it didnt matter. Not with the Manta layering itself across the windows, coating the exits of the structure itself and catching any stray shot from bursting past the walls and becoming some FATELESS misfortune.

Sync Chain (ACTIVE): [Draus-001] -> [Avo-001] -> [Chambers-001] -> [Kusanade-001]

Bringing up Draus visual display, Avo watched as the Regular unlatched a new gun from her armor, the flowing smart-matter receding as she took hold of the weapon. Multiple indicators and icons littered her visual display, highlighting the estimated positions of her enemies and tracking them via a variety of sensor-enhancement functions.

As her Meldskin flowed into the gun and interfaced with it, a new gauge appeared indicating the ammunition, effective range, temperature, gravitation curvature, and a myriad of other trajector-based calculations that worked in tandem with her armor to ensure unfailing accuracy.

Three desperate gangers hid around the corner, waiting to ambush her. The outlines of their bodies had two clad in retrofitted industrial rigs with fusion cutters at the ready. The last of the three had her lower body replaced by a spider-like No-Dragon bioform, with each leg digging into the worn tissue of of the rotting walls to better brace the alloy cannon she was sporting.

Lehnsherr X-1 Polarizer GravMag Linear Rifle

Ammo: 1KG / 1KG

Charge: 100%

->Recommend expending 0.2% of capacity for current targets (soft)

Accuracy Estimation: 100%

The Polarizer was five feet in length and two wide. Ferromagnetic fluid filled the transparent cartridges slotted toward the back end of the weapon. Fused with the Meldskin, there was little chance for Draus to drop the gun, and with the additional circuits being quick-fabbed through the smart matter, the issue of running dry on power would be a distant one indeed. Additional details about the tool were loaded through their shared Neurodeck connection, but its functionality was simple enough to understand.

Draus clenched her fist, and the trigger was pulled. Flaps lifted along the square-barreled gun and electricity danced from each protrusion as a single globule was pulled free from the ferrofluid cartridge. A speck of mercury darted out with a low hum of the gun, the initial shot a subsonic projectile visible even without a reflex booster.

It was only when it reached the corner where the ambushers awaited that the full functionality of the gun declared itself with a crackle. Lightning leaped out from the extended pylons, whipping into ferrofluid as Avo felt his Woundshaper shiver. Suddenly, the currents flicked right and the projectile twisted ninety degrees.

Broken glass, screaming metal, rising dust, and spraying gore erupted out from the hall as the Polarizer hyper-accelerated projectiles far beyond the confines of its barrel.

Yeah, Chambers said, stepping right beneath the half-finished mezzanine, I used to do it all the tim

The first flechette struck the crown of his helmet dead-on before skipping off sideways a second later. More shots rained down. Impacts danced and deflected from Avos body now, and the ricochets beside him indicated a similar case with Kae herself. With each shot, he felt his Meldskin brace and push, the armor nudging direct shots off-course in a manner not so unlike his haemokinesis. With the smart fluid hardening into impenetrable densities on the exterior, deforming just enough to redirect the projectiles, and sustaining a gel-like cushion along the interior, not even blunt force touched their bodies.

Physics still had a say as Chambers and Kae lurched due to the paltriness of their weight, but neither of them had trouble standing or enduring the onslaught.

Armor Integrity: 94%

->Adapting to kinetic damage

->Forming fullerene spines

And then the flechettes started shattering against them outright. Thin blades of matteredges narrower than the tungsten needle itselfsplit hardened alloy into parted pieces. Clicks and whines of empty magazines screamed out from the guns above, and Chambers chuckled to himself, shaking his head.

Fuck me, Avo, he said, getting nabbed by you was the best thing that ever happened to me. Look at this shit? Loogatitdd. He gestured to the countless spikes laying broken at his sides, broken against his new skin. Another life and Id be one of the poor shits shooting down about to die. About to die.

Armor Integrity: 100%

->Structure Stabilized

Wearer Status: Optimal

As gangers upstairs scrambled to reload their weapons, the soberer ones breaking and running, Chambers body language grew stiff and distant. Another life, Id be killing myself. I was one of them. I was.

Chambers? Kae said. The man gave no response. Aedon? Are you alright?

Snapping out of his trance, he swept out a hand and the floor vanished in a vortex of flames. Screams from lungs and servos bled into one another. Bodies cooked inside the rigs that once protected them. Two gangers flung themselves down before Avo, tearing helmets from faces, the heated metal taking skin along with it.

The relief was short-lived as bugs speared out from the fires and burrowed into their orifices. Kae flinched as a burst of force surged out from the Chambers Meldskin.

{Thrusters,} Calvino explained. {Back in the day, we had to have dedicated module for that, but with self-arranging materials}

I tire of the machine's constant boasting, master, the Woundshaper interrupted, leering as Chambers shot through the floor above and waded into the blaze unscathed. What specialty is this? Flight? Truly? Even the mule can do such a thing. How special could it be.

The Galeslither spat a weary scoff. Not special at all. Which is why your people imagined you to be a tower. Rooted to the ground. Incapable of walking, let alone flight.My structures would have consumed the world!

Yet, they never made it free of the cancerous hell you call a home. A dirge is in order for your lost potential.Bah. I will speak no more of my glory to you, mule. All you know is mockery. You would have never even endured a day in the harshness of the Skuld. Only the truestGhoul. I have changed my mind. I no longer wish to be free. I only wish to be free of her.

--Avo? Avo? Kaes voice cut through the argument. Are you alright? You were just staring off for a moment.

Gods arguing again, he said. Calvino. Was saying something?

{Hm? Oh, no, Ill talk about that later. Say, can you go back to focusing on your Heavens again? I like listening to them argue. The other EGIs will love to hear it as well.}

Avo grunted and acquiesced. Shooting another look at the rapidly vanishing pockets of thoughtstuff upstairs, he restrained his own desire to kill and let Chambers have this.

Besides, he was rapidly losing the taste for this slaughter.

Killing gangers, enforcers, the small

He thought he was beginning to understand what Draus meant by weight. Soft meat was bad for ones fangsbad for ones living if harshness was on the horizon.

Perhaps that was what Chambers glimpsed just now. The wretch that he was, the wretch that he could have been, if only for a single poor run, a single bad decision, and the single intersection between him and Avo that spared him from lesser living.

Calvino sighed. {Ah. Thats the ugly-beauty of the universe, Avo. Your free-will only gets up to the tip of your nows, but a whole lot of who you are is already grooved to fit the world you're born into.}

I have to change more, Avo said. Going to face the Guilds. Going to hunt other Clads. He looked down at the bugs feasting on the cooked flesh of the dead gangers, at Kae, standing off to the side, unwilling to join in with Chambers. Saw the raging intensity of the fire, and the last member of their cadre; Chambers thoughts wild but mind empty.

Kae. Come. The Agnos shot the ghoul a look as he gestured for her to follow. Lets go. Find the vat. Find one of my brothers. Alter Heavens afterward.

But what about Chambers?

It is his catharsis, Avo said. His struggle. Let him have it. He should get to be someone too. Avo stomped down on the skull of a dead ganger, crushing bone outside and bugs within. Someone meant to be more than a corpse.