The Shot Heard 'Round The World

"I second that." Cory said, wincing. "Did you..." he began turning to Hina.

She looked up from the screen happily.

"Ok." Cory said. "Well, let's get ready then."

Hina nodded, looking around. "Lots little... One big!"

"Alright, You go for the little ones then Hina, I'll see what I can do about...that." Cory finished lamely as the flesh and metal aberration roared at him.

Hina nodded, and dashed towards the flood of heat signatures.

Cory took a deep breath, and took a step towards the awakened creature. "Alright then... Do it for the loot."

"Shit wait don't-" Zu rushed after Hina, struggling to keep up with her. Neither of them had to run too terribly far, four Malfunctions blocked their path. Two perched above them on either side of the hall and two in front of them. All four creatures froze and watched carefully.

The Malfunction Corey was facing rose to it's feet and unreasonably swift movement was above and behind him, poised to pounce.

Hina looked curiously at the creatures surrounding her, her eyes betraying little more than interest, and a spark of hunger. "Will Melt." Hina hissed happily. "Squishy."

As the creatures leaped at her, Hina bent herself in half, her spine twisting, as she avoided each of the slashing limbs. She flowed forwards, her legs spiraling down to lay one foot on each creature's head, her hands braced upon the third's back.

"Break." She murmured, and with a sound like breaking sheet-metal, three columns of blood plunged from Hina's limbs, puncturing through the unfortunate animals below, and impaling them to the floor. She stood with a grin, and whipped her head towards the last creature, a dart of blood sparking off of its head armor.

Cartwheeling off of the deceased creatures, she bared her fangs at her final opponent, and then, dashed forwards.

She leaped at the last second coasting off of its back with a shower of sparks. The two regained their balance, staring each-other down. Survivors it seemed, were not an option.

---

Corey whipped around, watching a monster watching him... watching a monster. Well, that was interesting. Armor plated. Looked pretty tough. Obviously fast... hmm. Better punch it.

Corey acted on this thought pretty immediately, his hands becoming steel-hard as he jumped forward and aimed a respectable hay-maker at the metallic monstrosities head.

Zu was quick to produce a blade and in one fluid motion, slit her wrist. Blood spurted up in a fine mist, splitting into two wyrm-like creatures.

"Terrorize." She murmured, and her eyes flashed red only a second before the wyrms' eyes did the same. They launched forward, crashing against the creature's shoulders. It was little more than an irritating bumping, but the fact that it repeated itself multiple times made the Malfunction...ornery. The wyrms were engulfed in sparks for a moment before congealing and dripping to the floor.

"What the fuck..."

The malfunction bared its metal teeth to Hina. Zu saw it tense, saw the exposed muscles ripple for just a moment, and curled her fingers into claws.

"Restrict, command." She said, planting her feet firmly.

As it tried to launch to the side, to disappear behind the machines for an ambush, the Malfunction felt all of its muscles pull backwards. It yelped, obviously startled, but pulled forward regardless.

[Creature slowed, speed reduced to 50 while concentration is maintained.]

Zu fought the beast's pull. Her jaw clenched tight under the strain, eyes locked onto her target. There wasn't enough blood in it's body for her to pull it back all the way, but she could sure as hell make it a real pain in the ass to move.

-------------

Corey's fist connected with the side of the Malfunction's head. Although it jerked under the impact, it seemed largely unaffected. [10 hp damage, set disoriented]

It dug its claws deep into the machinery, which proceeded to discharge a large wave of electricity. The sound of metal on metal approached rapidly. At least two more, from the sound of it. It may have sounded like a fight to Corey, but it sounded like dinner to the mother's friends and family.

Hina smiled, which looked terrifying, and launched herself upwards. As she reached the ceiling, she drove herself back downwards, spiraling in a midair twirl as a large heavy blade of blood formed around the end of her tail. She came out of the spin with a front flip that whipped the blade down at the creature's neck.

The blade smashed into the creature's neck, shearing through a chunk of its armor and sticking halfway. Hina hissed, her tail slithering out of its casing, leaving the heavy cleaver stuck in the creature's plating.

Hina glared at it, but suddenly seemed to have a bit of an epiphany. "Zu. Wedge." She said, pointing at the stuck blade.

---

Corey winced as the electricity fizzled through him. That was incredibly uncomfortable but... It didn't really hurt. At that moment, Corey got irritated.

"Bad dog!" He snarled as the creature attempted to ram its metallic head into him. "I think..." He said, grasping the creature's front limbs with crushing strength "...You need..." He wrenched upwards and backwards, holding the large beast entirely vertical for a moment "TO LIE THE FUCK DOWN!"

The bridge was perfect, the impact zone direct. The perfect suplex had been born. With a roar, Corey smashed his opponent into the ground, driving it down with all the force his augmented musculature would allow.

He lay panting beside it, and grinned. "They aren't gonna believe this shit." he rasped. The creature was sticking out of the metal floor, held in place by its head, which was entirely encased.

The battle was over.

"Wedge?" Zu's mind was a bit occupied, but Hina's meaning reached her quickly. "Oh! WEDGE!"

The blade shuddered and sunk down, angled slightly by the positioning of her hands. Released from Zu's pull,the creature lurched forward, pulling itself straight through the blade. It collapsed, cut in half, against a hammock of wires.

"Holy hell..." Zu panted. Adrenaline coursed through her in the best way. "You're one hell of an executioner, Snake."

--------

Corey did not have time to rest, critical suplex or not. Two more Malfunctions appeared, one perched atop machines on either side, and let out distressed cries as they saw their dead friend. Bolts of lightning arced from their armor to the machines around them, setting off several small shockwaves.

[Hit, miss, hit. 12 damage total.]

"Yay." Hina said twirling around with the malfunction's head in her outstretched arms. "Fun murder."

She looked quite happy indeed. After a few moments however she stored the head under her arm.

"Corey?" She inquired.

---

"Ah fuck." Corey grunted, seeing the two new enemies. "That figures." He was then sent toppling across the room by the force of the first shock wave, only to be buffeted back by the last. He gritted his teeth as he rolled to his feet, glaring at the metallic animals that had just arrived.

"Lovely, more minions." He said, sounding more exasperated than anything.

"Well, let's go then. More metal for me." So saying, he released his glamour [Jabberjaw] and dashed forth to take a bite out of the left malfunction's skull. At the very least he figured he could crush its brain.

"That was fucking cash money son." Zu panted, admiring their work. "Corey? He's probably fine. We should probably catch up with him though. You know, just in case."

The sound of crunching metal gave her an idea of where he might be.

-----

The creature wound up headbutting Corey in the mouth, it's momentum driving his teeth through the thick metal plating on its skull. Dangerously close to sensitive brain tissue, the creature squealed and began to writhe about.

From behind Corey, the Malfunction's companion launched itself at his back.

Hina nodded, seeming to suddenly become bored with the head, and tossing it over her shoulder. "Corey." she said with a nod.

She could see him as a noticeable red and white splotch in her thermal vision, significantly hotter than most of the things around him. That and...

"Spikes!" Hina exclaimed, waving excitedly at Zu.

----

Corey felt metal giving way in his mouth, and briefly considered how gross the entire thing should feel. Instead, he felt pretty good about the whole thing, at least until metal claws made contact with his back, at which point he suddenly felt a lot less good. His brain struggled for a moment to think of what to do. His mouth was stuck in a skull, and now there was a metal monstrosity trying to remove his spine. Apart from being a sentence he had never considered needing to think, that was a pretty significant problem.

He was sure that by the time he had crunched through the monster's thick head, he would be down a few vertebra. What he needed was to get the metal thing off his back. 'What I wouldn't give to be a porcupine right now.' he thought idly.

Cory made a noise like a startled cat through his mouth-full of skull as his back suddenly erupted, sprouting ten razor sharp blades. The feeling was not so much unpleasant as incredibly unexpected for Corey. For the thing on his back however, things were quite a bit more lethal. The spikes sheared through its metal plating like it was paper, impaling it completely, and leaving Corey with an unwanted fashion statement in the form of a metal backpack.

Corey stood up, eyes wide, and noticed that he had taken the top portion of a skull with him. He chewed absentmindedly for a moment, before it occurred to him that eating what was in his mouth would likely give him heavy metal poisoning. Yeah, things were going interestingly. He had changed his mind about being a porcupine though.

The sound of a metal body hitting the floor, and the retraction of his spikes roused Corey from his momentary lull. Well, that was convenient.

Hina and Zu would have arrived just in time to see the spikes retreat into Corey's back. Zu had trained alongside Corey before, back in the Gauntlet, but she had never seen him do something like that.

"Dude. Wicked." She mumbled, rushing forward and running her fingers up and down Corey's spine, feeling for damage to the tissue. His blood hummed with an energy she could only describe as "itchy".

Save for the hideous screeching of dial-up modems, there was no more sound or movement from the shadows. The canopy of wires above wheezed slightly, but otherwise there was no indication that any more Malfunctions were waiting in ambush nearby.

They were nearing the circular clearing indicated on the map.

Corey shivered slightly as Zu's fingers brushed over the newly reformed skin on his back. He swatted at her. "Gah, stop.... DOING that." He said. "I am ticklish and I just bit a metal thing's head in half."

"Tickles." Hina said, brushing the hairs on the back of Corey's neck and making him shiver again. She darted away giggling as he turned around to glare at her. "Oooooohkay. Well now that that's done, we should keep heading down right?"

"Nice." Zu smirked, admiring the littering of dead bodies at Corey's feet. "Yeah, we should probably keep going. We're supposed to be 'investigating' and shit."

Whatever they were expecting to find in that solitary clearing on the map, it probably wasn't what they found. Caution tape dissuaded access to a central console covered in screens and keyboards and miscellaneous buttons. It extended far up out of sight. Each monitor displayed a string of indecipherable symbols, flashing past rapidly.

Around this console was a ring of....bleachers? They were covered in frayed wiring and chewed up scraps of metal. Probably, Zu noted aloud, where those metal menaces nested.

A path branched off to the right, unblocked and disappearing into the heart of the room.

Corey Looked over at the console. "I am tempted to see what i can find here, one sec." He said, looking over the screens. He couldn't quite follow what was going on, but it looked like code, albeit terrible spaghetti code going by at the speed of sound. Corey tried to stop it, getting a few glimpses of the code. "Ok, it looks like this is going to do something bad if we hinaDONTdothat." Corey finished, pointing at Hina, who looked as though she was preparing to lie on the central console for warmth.

He glanced back down at the keyboard as Hina paced around sulkily. He sighed. It didn't really look like he was going to be able to do much. He glanced idly at the arrow keys, typed a few more lines of useless interrupt code, and finally decided to have a bit of fun. With the practiced hand of someone who had been entering it from the age of six, Corey input the Konami code.

Zu squinted at the consoles and shrugged. "I have no idea what any of this means, so I hope you've got something up your sleeve Mega Maw."

At the input of the code, all of the screens stopped. Somebody in Hell had a sense of humor. Or Konami sold their souls to Satan for success. Either or. The strings of code were replaced by the words "Debugging Enabled" and a blank space preceded by a flashing ">".

"Right...uh, well let's try..."

[
setArray;
return navQ <incident_reports>;
]

He hoped that that would do the trick. Bringing up the locations for all recent incident reports was a good start if nothing else.

Corey ran a hand through his hair and sighed. Hina also ran a hand through his hair, but Corey chose to ignore that.

"Alright, now we just wait for this to spit out the locations ideally."