[Hanoa Station] Between Machine and Machine men (closed)

"Your straightforwardness is appreciated." One case did not make a successful research, but if Kai'Fenrer was positive inh is outlook towards geth, it meant not all quarians wished their death. It was progress towards Flash's goal.

Armed response team had now arrived to where the engineer had alerted them to with the two other sniffers. They moved in to assume positions at the hallway's opening, triggering the cameras.

Flash of Light suddenly bolted up from its chair and tore the robes away, drawing an assault rifle from its back.

"There is an armed group of nine at the hallway entrance, quickly approaching our cubicle from the right. Prepare for combat."

"What."

What else could be said, really? Kai just sat there, slack-jawed, hands in his lap, staring at the rifle-wielding geth across the room. Even the Transgression seemed to be slow to respond from the sheer jarring switch.

"Why are people trying to kill us!?

"Six individuals are heavily armed, three are wearing lighter armor and handling omni-tools. Speculation: combat engineers."

Activation of the cameras hadn't gone unnoticed either. One of the engineers brought the group's attention to them, and soon a gunshot rung out, cutting feed off the nearer camera.

"Confirmed: they spotted network traffic from the surveillance cameras. Geth technology is still rarely seen outside Perseus Veil, it is possible they are trying to apprehend me for their own purposes." The geth spoke as it moved into position by the door. "Suggestion: send your mech to secure left side of the hallway for withdrawal. I will engage them to enable our exit."

"I... but... I... what!?" Kai stood shakily, his chair clattering to the ground. His eyes flicked back and forth, searching in vain for some sign that this was all just a joke. He raked his fingers down his cheeks, his mind racing. Then he looked down, noticing the Transgression looking at him for confirmation.

"R-right. What he said. Secure the left side hallway," he ordered. The Transgression obeyed, and was out the door in a split-second flash of silvered armour. Which left Kai alone with an armed geth, about to fight for his life against strangers. He squeezed his left wrist tightly, taking some small comfort in the sensation. His left fist clenched, and the omni-tool integrated directly into the synthetic limb came to life in a flurry of holographic screens and AR panels. Incinerate, Overload and Cryo apps all ready to go. Flame, thunder and frost at his fingertips.

The warmech jumping through and shattering the shutter door caught the nearest engineer by surprise, sending him scrambling to the ground. Behind him, the rest of the gangsters reacted. Hail of fire followed Trangression, scoring light hits until it got out of the firing lane.

Flash of Light took advantage of this surprise and peeked briefly out from cover to spray the prone human with gunfire. There was no time to doublecheck as rest of the gang retaliated, shooting off one of the expressive headflaps from the geth.

"One hostile is lying down right around the corner, possibly incapacitated. Remaining eight are situated in firing positions along the corridor. Suggestion: utilize offensive programs with blinding or weapon disabling effects against remaining hostiles."

High priority task: faciliate withdrawal. Secondary priority: eliminate opposition. Secondary priority: escort Kai'Fenrer nar Tonbay. Secondary priority: escort warmech.

"Do you have a vessel prepared for departure?"

Superficial damage. Only glancing rounds, the Transgression's profile low and difficult to target. Kinetic barriers above 80% integrity and rising. It paused for a moment, relatively safe in the cubicle across from Kai, and 'thought'. Its central processor was chock full of battle data and tactical awareness protocols, preserved with very little error during the emergency transmission. Returning to the hallway would be suicide - the hail of fire would bring it down before it managed to kill more than one, maybe two, of the targets. It turned and looked at the wall, connecting its cubicle to the next. Cheap, flimsy things. Practically no better than cardboard sheeting.

The Transgression backed up to the other end of the room, synthetic muscles bunching as it crouched. Then it took off like a rocket, mono-edged claws leaving great gouges in the floor as it rammed head-first into the wall and kept going without an appreciable reduction in speed.

Meanwhile, Kai was struggling not to panic. "N-no, I came here from a chartered ship!" he replied. "I... h-hold on!" He ducked out the doorway for only a moment, desperately throwing out his hand in the general direction of their attackers. Sub-atomic particles streamed from his palm, streaking down the hallway and striking the closest upright man square in the chest. Like a miniature winter, frost blasted from the point of impact right across and down the hallway. Four metres across all in all - hopefully more than one got caught in that. Either way, he'd drawn some attention by probably freezing someone solid.

Which is when the Transgression burst back into the hallway via wall like an angry canine Kool-Aid Man. For a moment, only the ruby red of its bright optics was the only visible thing behind the shower of dust and debris. Then the tip of its tail unfolded, the signature electronic 'whick' of an omni-blade being forged reaching their ears. The man at the very back of the group never even got to turn around. The Transgression thrust its tail into his back, the molten ceramic blade burning a gash in his armour even as it shattered. The tail kept going, through the gap between his ribs. Bursting his heart. Finally it broke through the ceramic breastplate, glistening wet with blood in the open air.

Outnumbered, but outflanked. What next for the mysterious aggressors?

"Sweet clutchmother! It gutted Ako!" shrill wail of a panicked salarian could be heard. The other salarian in question went limp. Not a lot one could do with a heart gone missing.

"Kill it! Kill that thing before it kills us!" The group's moral backbone had gone down the flusher. Most of their rifles had frozen solid and there was a giant murder machine at their backs. Guns clattered as they were tossed aside and backup pistols brought to bear at the Trangression, but frozen hands couldn't move quickly. Nothing a decent kinetic barrier shouldn't be able to handle.

Flash of Light swung to the hallway when their attention was elsewhere. The man on the ground was still breathing, coughing blood from punctured lungs. He tried to raise his SMG at the geth, but it kicked the gun away and hoisted him up to serve as living shield by the throat.

"Kai, get behind me." the short order came. With the geth's KB's and the shield's own ballistic vestments, there should be enough buffer from gunfire once the gang got their attack back in order.

Gutting was the wrong word. Ako's death would have been much slower then. The Transgression threw the impaled salarian off its tail like so much meat, flicking most of the blood from its tail in a flourish as the tip slid open once more. Not an omniblade this time, not one large knife made for piercing armour and bone. It forged clusters, each knife about the size of a krogan's finger. It flicked its tail back and forth twice, two clusters of three, with the kind of pinpoint accuracy only a machine could possess. Six of the remaining seven took knives to the chest - and while they may not have been instantly lethal, they did not help matters re: their sudden panic of being surrounded.

Kai didn't need to be told twice. He huddled behind the geth platform, trying to make himself as small a target as possible. Ironically, his own synthetic frame had a far healthier build than his organic one. When once he could have vanished completely behind Flash of Light, now he remained worryingly visible. And while his body was a machine, and could easily survive a few gunshots, he would really prefer not to be shot. Especially since he had no armour plating or inbuilt kinetic barriers. "Keelah I don't want to die!"

"Remain quiet and likelihood of your death will stay low." came back the answer. The trio was backing down the hallway away from the murdercluster, the geth's arm hooked around tightly enough that the unwilling meatshield couldn't yell for help, another arm pointing its geth rifle down the corridor.

Meanwhile at the other end, the two gang engineers merely fell down to clutch at the knives now lodged in them. The hardsuiters fared bit better from the sudden blade attack. The lone not-stabbed and very pissed-off looking turian had gotten back into the saddle of things and discharged his anti-mech rated tazer at the Trangression. Two bolts shot at gunpowder level velocity latched onto the mech and began to discarge high voltage, high current zappage to scramble the machine beast's operation the best it could

"Fuckin' varren knockoff! Your head's going onto my wall!"

Too late, the Transgression had 'realized' that such slow-moving projectiles would be a threat. It began to convulse as the current started to flow, its body betraying it in much the same way an organic's would in the same situation. Its vision became a mess of blur and static, its bladed tail lashing wildly back and forth as it sought to end the debilitating torment. Kai saw.

"No!" he shrieked, moving out from behind the geth. The fabricators inside his left arm whirred to work once again, for a rather different flavour of death. This time it was plasma, so hot that even omni-blades paled in comparison. For a moment it coalesced in his hand, hovering in its fragile containment field inches from his palm pads. He flung out his hand and it flew, scorching the very air. It struck the middle of the group.

The Cryo Blast and Incinerate apps did not play nicely with each other.

The reaction was paradoxical. White-hot plasma splashed over everybody in the group, especially the turian that was in the process of electrocuting his beloved drone. And yet it reacted with the artificial frost his first attack had left explosively. A fresh wave of crystalline ice blasted forth, saturating the group yet again.

He'd always been capable of such feats, having worked on his omni-tool almost as exhaustively as his drone for two years solid. But having it built directly into his body, to feel the power of a quarian's technical mastery inside him... it was quite a different feeling. He'd have to remember to appreciate it if he got out alive.

Needless to say, after that combo of hot and cold their aggressors were nowhere near to being able fight anymore. The lone standing turian's low quality armour had exploded from the heat difference, leaving behind shrapnel-laden singed and frostbitten flesh underneath. The others were barely any better.

Flash of Light merely tossed aside its human shield and walked over Kai and Trangression, stepping over huddled and groaning thugs.

"Threat assessment for these hostiles: minimal. We should leave the station before more can be mobilized against us."

Kai immediately picked his way through the carpet of dead, dying or incapacitated strangers to reach the Transgression. Out came the omni-tool once more, performing a diagnostic scan as if Flash of Light hadn't even spoken. He yanked the tazer darts out of the mech's plating, tossing them aside. "Are you okay?"

"No lasting damage," the Transgression replied. Kai waited a moment, and sighed in relief as his scan turned up the same information. He straightened and turned, facing the geth.

"Okay, so... where do we go? I don't know how to deal with people coming to kill me."

"Did you fight in the Evening war? Or do you differentiate between fighting geth and organics?" Flash asked, now that Kai had indicated a definite lack of fighting experience, unlike the geth had expected.

"We will acquire the means to leave this station, without further violence. Maintain low profile."

It folded the gun back to its back and walked to the trashed interview cubicle. Moment later, the hooded quarian-like figure emerged again. Granted the robes were somewhat torn from the hasty removal, but it was more stealthy than walking guns up onto the docks as geth.

"Suggestion: we seek a shuttle to Omega and continue on our own ways from there. Waiting here on Hanoa is too risky." it spoke with the faux-quarian vox voice again.

"I... no." Kai went rather quiet. "No, I didn't fight in the Evening War. I was on the Citadel. I never left. I... didn't answer the call for Pilgrims."

It really didn't take a genius to work out that Flash had unknowingly struck a nerve. He tugged awkwardly on the hem of his shirt, dangerously close to slipping into full-blown guilty navel-gazing at the thought. That was the great thing about repression - when shit went wrong it went wrong all at once. He was so distracted that he didn't seem that fussed about the prospect of being on Omega, however shortly.

"Sounds good."

"Acknowledged." Kai'Fenrer was turning out to be quite the sample against norms at this rate. But for Flash, these were just notes into his file for the research, data points for graphs later on. "Follow me."

As the three were making their leave, meanwhile at the kingpin's lair, heads were about to roll.

"What do you mean the whole group was routed by those three?!" the asari crimeboss fumed, glaring death and daggers at her underlings delivering the news.

"It was a bloodbath there! Ako's heart was torn out of his chest and Ormus will need a replacement arm, and the rest have burns and frostbite all over them!"

"Shittides, did a tech-savvy banshee get loose on the station? Ugh, it doesn't matter anymore. We don't have the muscle. Did our boys at least make a dent on it?"

"No, not that they'd remember. That mechavarren just tore through the walls and then it was hail of fire and ice down there."

"Fuck it, get someone to the docks to watch. Maybe someone will want to have a try at the tincan and its pet. We'll sell this onward."

Back on the dockside, Flash of Light was gauging whose services it should use to get them to Omega. With the Transgression with them, odds of regular liners taking them in was very low...

"Kai, what arrangements did you make with your own transport regarding the warmech?"

Kai stuck close to the geth, deeply regretting his decision to accept the interview offer in the first place. But there would be time for proper second-guessing and regret later, when he wasn't in danger of being shot to get to an intact geth platform. So he just shifted nervously from foot to foot and hoped, because that was pretty much all he could do at that point.

"I said he was for personal protection," he said. "He's officially mine and anything, and they let me put him in the cargo hold so long as I deactivated him." And I felt kind of bad about deactivating him even if it was just for the trip but on the other hand he probably would've gotten bored just sitting around with the cargo and oh Keelah listen to yourself.

"... is he going to be a problem?"

"Unknown. Personal weaponry does not raise alarms, but your mech is uncommon and large. Question: You have assigned a gendered pronoun to it. Why?" The disguised geth turned to face Kai. This was a question it seemed to put much weight on.

"... oh. Uh. I... don't know." He hadn't even consciously done it. At some indistinct point in the past he'd stopped thinking 'it' and started using 'he'. Everyone look at Kai, he likes to give drones names and genders and act like they're his friends.

"Because it... has a male voice synthesizer? I don't know!"

There was an audience here, and it did not serve their goal of stealthy exit. Flash was also using too machine-like language there and it didn't help either. Time to adapt to the situation.

"You're weird." it shrugged before walking over to the nearest shuttle ticket kiosk.

"We need tickets for two to Omega, next leaving shuttle. Also, do you accept cargo? My friend has a mech with him." Flash gestured at the Trangression following Kai. The batarian manning the desk leaned over to look at the thing and gave them the dirtiest look she could after seeing the state the mech was in.

"Wipe off the gore before you shop, sheesh. I don't want to know why its caked in three different types of blood but it better be clean or the compartment will stink like something died there!" she waved dismissively. "Come back when its not looking like it came out of a slasher movie!"

"It seems we need to find a public bathroom." the geth turned back to Kai after the exchange.

"Thanks for that."

Somehow, Kai had managed to completely miss the fact that his mech was soaked in blood. From all the vicious murder it had recently been doing. Which, really, was his own stupid fault. So while a million weak excuses died on his lips, he just mumbled some apologies and started looking around for somewhere to wash it off.