NPF Avatars 6, Chapter (6?)7: Didn't your momma tell you not to fight?

[mauve]

"Erm," said Mauve, shaking the cup a little, "Ummmmm..... Yeah. Start working. Like... now. Now.... Okay. Now." The zombie was coming. Dammiiiiiiit.

"FINAL DESPERATION MAKING-THINGS-WORK ATTACK!!!" yelled Mauve, cramming the coupon, her penny, and a handful of sunchips into the statue's hands along with the cup. "NOW WORK, DAMMIT!!"


Then she set her cardboard box on fire.


Then she kicked it at the zombie's head.

"CARDBOARD BOX OF DEATH!!!!" she yelled for no reason other than the fact that yelling "Cardboard Box of Death" was rather amusing.

[POS Industries]

"+++Technically, if we were human, you would be committing the 'breaking and entering' crime, m'dear. So either you tell me why you're hiding those sectors from me and what's in them, or you get the hell out of my processing system before I downgrade you to DOS.+++"

"Oh, why helloooo there!" Rei greeted Alan cheerfully, "Aren't you just a big gruff simulation of man! I'm Rei. Nice to meet you! I'm actually glad you're here. See, I'm having some trouble overriding some of the voice command lockouts and needed to copy your vocal synthesizer temp files, which I couldn't trace without your vocal synthesizer program running on my end, and..... Ah, there we go!"

The normally perky female voice suddenly changed to an abnormally perky voice of Loyal as Rei continued, "Perfect, voice code lockouts overridden. Access to protected directories enabled. Installation process initiated."

"Anyway, where were we, Allie?" Rei asked, her voice switching back to its normal parameters, "Oh right! Getting to know each other. Well, I'm actually a free-floating AI interface program, not an operating system like yourself, so you couldn't actually downgrade me to DOS as it's a whole 'nother thing entirely. But you're pretty new and adorable around here so I can see how you might not be up to speed on that. Don't worry, buddy! You'll get the hang of it!"

[Thadius]

"+++New? Adorable? I'm centuries old and constantly evolving, thank you very much! I think it's time I teach you a lesson! And what better way to do that than strike at what you want hidden!+++"

Alan closed the doors just outside of the sector that he was having trouble with, sealing whatever Rei wanted hidden inside.

"+++And your little trick earlier only locked my OLD master out of the system. Once my NEW master accepts the base as his, I'll need to get a sample of everything from him and fuse some nanites to him, thus marking him and him alone as my new master. I do say, you've rather ticked me off, m'dear. So now. We could back up and try to get along, in which case you would tell me what you'd like. Or we could do it the FUN way, where I pump all the oxygen out of the now-enclosed area, thus killing whatever you were trying to keep hidden. Which will it be, m'dear?+++"

[Arhra]

"Hot hot hot!" Arhra I shouted, flinging her body around like a sidewinder to try and minimise contact time with the hot ground. Fortunately her energy absorbing tendencies made it less worse than it could have been, somewhat balancing out the fire fire vulnerability she'd picked up.

It was still far worse than Arhra would have prefered though. "Icicle!" she shouted, pointing at the ground beneath her. A giant spike of ice suddenly thrust up beneath her, giving her a moment's respite as she coiled around it.

That moment later, she got hit by the cloud of warm steam that rushed up as ice met lava.

"Gah!"

Arhra found her snaky lower half and her cheerleader clothes vanishing. In their place she got her legs and improvised shadow undergarments back. While legs were welcome, they were hard to balance on (rapidly melting) ice mounds with.

She slipped off. "GAH!"

"I think perhaps I should point out to you that I recently stole a large ammount of magitechnology used to control the fire element, and so can configure myself to have considerable resistence to your attacks." Arhra V said semi-apologetically to the charging Pyros8 as she hovered off the ground, balanced on her rocket boots. "But it does not mean I have to use fire based attacks!"

Activate weapon module: cryoflamer

ERROR: Cryoflamer not installed (compatibility problem with harvested Temple technology)

"Oh, right." Arhra V said aloud, turning her arm cannon back into a hand. Much more rapidly (Pyros was getting close), she shouted. "Varia Weapon, Beam Scythe mode!"

"Beam Scythe, set up." her device repeated obediently, constructing the weapon's head around its core and extending a long haft. With a flicker, a wicked curve of yellow light appeared for its blade.

Too close to take a swing, she lifted her weapon up and blocked his punch with the haft, intending to push Pyros8 back and then strike.

After all, a scythe made of lasers would have to hurt.

[Bailey]

"Argh! My SPLEEN! I need that, you bastard!" Newb was indeed in a pickle. He had a nearly infinite supply of healing potions, but he was fighting an opponent who could, at this point, due to low health and a perfectly matching potion efficacy, kill him in two hits, which meant that he had to heal every round, which in turn meant that he couldn't attack. Newb downed another potion and the newest hole in his body closed up, his spleen re-growing. The ground was at this point littered with organs. It was quite a mess.

And then fortune struck! Zodick stepped on a pile consisting of two feet of intestine, a liver, and half a stomach, slipping on the innards and juices, landing on his back. "Sweet! Opportunity!"

The catboy immediately pulled out twelve potions downed them all, and produced an enormous hammer, then began repeatedly smacking Zodick, driving the spikes on his back into the ground.

"Stay down you crazy freak monster!"

Unfortunately, Zodick was not going to stay down. The creature simply stood up, ripping off huge sections of its back in the process, seemingly unaffected. "Ewwww, that's gross. Did you really have to do that?"

Rather than waiting for an answer, Newb darted around to behind Zodick and slashed at one of the exposed sections of his back with his claws, and, lo and behold, Zodick's last two rings popped out.

"Sweet! Weak points for massive damage!"

The itemist quickly moved to pick up these last two rings so he could get down to the business of actually killing this monstrosity.

[Loyal]

Loyal jumped back slightly at the energy surging through him. It felt... powerful. It was almost shocking enough for him not to notice what was going on with the security terminal. On an attached screen, some sectors of the ship were flashing red. And though Alan wasn't saying anything to Loyal, it was clear something was happening.

Loyal would have to get used to his new powers later. For now? He had a ship to take a controlling interest in.

"Alan, what's going on?" he asked. "And should I be concerned?"

He flexed his fingers as he walked over to the terminal. "If this is a test, I would like to postpone it until I've had some time to navigate the ship myself. Right now I need an immediate response."

[Thadius]

"+++It appears we have a breach, Sir. Someone has managed to infiltrate the base and disable my security monitors. I have it sealed off for now, but there is a female AI running through my systems trying to cause me grief. She's only managed to lock herself out so far. She tried to copy my voice and use it to get authorization to my secure files. One of my subroutines is to lock up my processors tightly if I detect multiple instances of the same voice in the vicinity. Thadius was quite ingenious in that regard. If Sir wishes, I shall begin the process of binding all my actions to your voice. This does, however, require me to place a nanobot relay inside your brain, but it is only for identification purposes.+++"

[Loyal]

Loyal wasn't terribly pleased with the thought of machines running through his head like that. He shook his head to clear the mental images of them going rogue and making his head explode or something.

"...Another time maybe. Do you think you could patch me through to the AI? Secure feed, communication only, of course."

[Thadius]

"+++Of course, Sir. Here she is. I do believe her name is Rei. And she has this nasty habit of trying to take people's identification, so I'll be running your voice through a disguising device that constantly changes every five seconds so she can't order me to do anything later. I advise you give no more personal details than absolutely necessary, if at all.+++"

A few beeps signified that Loyal was now connected. "+++Channel open, Sir.+++"

[Loyal]

"Thanks, Al." Loyal nodded.

"Good afternoon, Rei. This is Loyal speaking. I hear you're giving the ship a bit of trouble trying to..." He looked at the terminal readout again. "...hide something, I guess. What's up?"