October 13th

Dreadwire

A whip, a true whip unlike my blades, got thinner the further it went. Momentum dictated that as mass decreases, velocity would increase. In the case of a whip, to the point of breaking the sound-barrier. Powered with the might of a Shard Adapter, it was a force to be reckoned with.

A single hit from the two chained weapons of Anissa's would shatter me.

Analyzing Frequency… error; insufficient Data.

I'd hoped to learn a Feature of hers, Overclock would be a death sentence. She stood on the other end of the hallway, her whip snagging the leg of the blinded shotgunner and yanking him towards her. Two black-skulled Metal Heavens grunts stood behind her, none to be wary of.

"Take him downstairs… and that one." She pulled in the second body with startling accuracy, the rifleman who was riddled with holes quickly being carried away. "They can still be saved."

"You want to save them?" I laughed, the thought was almost preposterous. A boss in New California who actually cared about your health.

She kept her chains waiting, and I was ready. "I don't get this… what are you doing here?"

My mission was simple. "I'm here to kill you. Anissa."

Her icy glare opened wider at that, and an almost humorous snicker bore out. "Oh, so that's how it is. I'm being retired by Stokry? I'll just tear you up enough to leave him a warning that he'll have to try harder if he wants to impress Dogwhistler, you'll get your real ass beating from a different kind of Devil."

I only knew one Devil… or was she talking about Los Diablos, who also called some of their ranks as Devils? The criminal world was obnoxious when it came to naming. Only one name would matter. Mine.

I'd have her head on a platter tonight. "It's just a job."

"Is that so?" She rasped, before Silver burned through her chains. "Maybe you don't take every job!"

An assault of serpentine metal ignited in my path. My Arachnodyne twisted me, all four walls of the hallway were my flooring as my inhuman movement twisted me around the curving arcs of those razor-thin ends. I was accustomed to predicting angular motion and I combined that into the Thought Multiplier alongside my knowledge of Shardware.

Thought Multiplier: 'Shardware' X 'Angular Motion'

Memories of Shardware assaulted me, my own whip-blades and assortment of Livewire-based mechanisms blurring to paint a picture of the whips' motions. Their speed, on the other hand, was another conundrum entirely. Hypermind rose a tide of action in milliseconds. To her, I was on the walls evading her chains one second and the next I was right by her face, my SMG pointed to the gaps holding her eyes.

A spitfire of bullets spewed, the rich red embers moving linearly before abruptly all curving to the side of her head. A thin gray haze had surrounded her head… kinetic shielding? Or was that Electromagnetic…

No. I'd seen it once before.

But before I could safely retrieve that data out of my mind, the gray haze coalesced around her arms and struck me in the chest. I'd already been dragged backwards by the Arachnodyne, but the blow sent me out of the hallway like a cannon, the tips of the Arachne scraping embers of the floor to halt my throw before my leg's mantis-blades crumpled the front of the truck that had hauled in.

Anissa walked closer to me, slowly twisting her whips around in the air. "Had enough punishment?"

"I've only just begun." Sonic detonations in my legs rattled the truck behind me, as my Arachnodyne spurned all four blades into a criss-crossing of steel. All four of them struck against that impossible haze and skirted off-angle to be inches off from her armor. It wasn't physical, it was a field of some kind, emerging moments before contact under an automated defense system.

Automated to be efficient due to a high-energy cost.

Then it could only be Hybrid ultrasonic shielding. Ultra-dense high frequency sound waves wrapped with electromagnetism, a temporary high-pressure wall of air that slowed down the momentum of physical matter before a magnetic field redirected it away from her. I was stealing that — that was NeoCore tech.

An imitation of it. Missy's suit during the Shandian Raid left her virtually untouchable even while combating multiple Tier IIIs at once, Anissa's output was limited to Tier II opponents… but how many of them were Gold?

Her whips snapped up like centipedes, ferocious beasts of steel that hungered to tear wire and flesh asunder. All four of my Features surged from their depths to counter that.

Thought Multiplier: 'Whip-blades' x 'Angular motion'

Insight Module Selected: [2B] [Analyze/Network]

Features Identified: [S] Integration; ???; ???

Rivers of data rushed through my mind, jumping from one point to another. Thought Multiplier, Frequency Sync, Defragmentation and the Insight Module gave milliseconds of precognition towards the Preservation Matrix, slipping me through whiplashes with aerial twists, lurches, leaps and flips. My defense working under an autonomous rhythm, Retrofit labored offense onto my right arm.

The weapon was a prototype, a condensed version of the Scrap-gun I'd hobbled up from the Shandian turrets during the raid. It was compacted, wrist-mounted and supremely powerful. As long as I actively repaired it after every shot.

I slipped Gold Energy into it, as Iron Shards fed in from an internal compartment located in my forearm. Meta-Manipulation intertwined both grades, combining several inch-long metal Shards into a dense needle through which streams of Gold powered into a deadly lance.

The sheer output sent sparks haywiring through the gun, but the golden streak worked as intended. The Ripley Donovick termed 'Dreadshot' impacted the hybrid shielding concentrating around Anissa's arm, powering through the haze and crashing into her arm which burst and spilled to the ground as scrapped metal along with the chain-whip attached to it.

"Shoddy work." My Arachnodyne instantly crowded the fuming Scrap-gun, as Anissa's other arm split into a machination of mantis-like claws. Instead of attacking me, they instead reached for the ruined metal on the ground.

In a blur, the littered scrap crawled up the claws and oriented themselves upon the stump, the whip had already reattached. She was going to repair her entire arm quicker than I could fix up a single gun. My dorsal limbs pounced, there would be a gap in her defense during this pivotal moment.

Locked on, my submachine gun pierced that torn veil by her damaged arm, the pellets sparking into her Exosuit like a fiery swarm of bees. That gap in her shielding would soon extend through her flesh, I would make sure of it.

The clawed arm raised too late, my Arachne's blades were already descending as scythes of harvest.

Then my head throbbed. A voice charming its way inside. "I left for three minutes! What the hell have you been up to- oh watch out!"

Her claws reached to spear me, but my body moved prior to thought being conceived. My legs dropped, the weight of my upper body folding my knees forward as the claw's sharp ends just sparked my torso. My Arachne kept my back from hitting the floor, instead they twisted my hips to send a powerful kick into her head that released a thick burst of kinetic energy through the Shriekstone cores embedded within them.

It sent Anissa reeling backwards, the two clashes of sonic offense and defense canceling each other out. She rubbed her cheek, that icy gaze piercing into me. "Since when did you pull moves like that?"

"Since I learned capoeira from SynTeccen!" Starlight boomed in my head. "I also have a catalog of other non-lethal martial arts I learned from Mutant Kombat and Shard Fighter. Kung fu, Taekwondo, Tai Chi, Krav Maga… actually the last one is very lethal."

You were playing games on the Net?

"I was researching." She corrected me, her voice sounding offended. "I simulated over 11,22-"

Just show me. At once, my body moved as a perfect vehicle of my vision, an air-shattering punch exploded from Anissa's left hand — an offensive output of her Hybrid Shielding. It completely missed me as I performed some complicated blur of motions with my arms to twist her limb away, Tai Chi according to my personal Emulect's datastreams. Starlight's guidance acted parallel to my own will, two minds in synchronization housed in a single vessel.

Mental calculations were now instinct, all I had to focus upon was execution.

Literal and metaphorical execution. At close range, her whips had minimal impact and speed whereas her shielding became an offensive tool. I had the advantage as long as I nullified the barrier. Starlight took the data streams running through my Features and converted them into movement that was more dramatic than my liking… while I had repaired my right hand's Dreadshot Cannon.

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I had to stop Ripley from naming things. Everything had either 'Rip', or 'Dread' in them.

At this range, it was a done deal if I got the shot right. I doubted even Silver-Grade Shardware had a good chance at stopping the maximum output of the wrist-gun, but I wouldn't leave my shot so open to be tracked. Starlight… keep me moving.

"Aye-aye!" She put a picture of her saluting on my display, before signals turned my body into a meshwork of flips, aerial tricks and odd manuevers that were both effective and… too dramatic. At one point, I dodged a side sweep of the whip by cartwheeling over it while simultaneously launching Livewire into the ground to pull me down as the second whip aimed to strike me in the air.

"Your Thought Multiplier is really cool, but also very distracting. Why do I keep seeing you and Elsa swinging in the air?"

That was Ripley's favorite moment of angular motion…

In the middle of those flips, I unleashed surgical strikes onto the Shardware from my previous battle with her grunts. Seven of them were lying around here, and there was some leftover scrap from the hand I'd shot off. In the middle of a needle threading between both whips, I grabbed the broken claw.

There. A blue disk was embedded in the metal, while its exact workings were unknown, they were the source of the shielding. Breaking it down would leave the possibility of damaging it… but I had something better in mind.

Starlight, I'll take over defense. Get into her system and synchronize with her.

"You sure? I don't know if I can synchronize with someone without them granting permission?"

Well, now's the time to put Machine-learning to use. See how many permutations it takes.

I felt conscious control weighing upon me like lead in my blood, my movements sluggish compared to the fluid flips I'd done seconds ago. A whip struck my chest. My metallic ribs groaned, nearly snapping, as armor crumpled and cracked. I grasped the snaking chain before it could retreat.

And Starlight streamed up it.

"What the…" Anissa stammered, but the second whip came down as a spiraling river of blurring gray. I acted according to a technique that worked priorly. My Arachne grasped two bodies of unconscious black skull goons and raised them up. The whip came crashing down, but only a furious wind snapped into me along with her voice.

"That's a dirty trick Dreadwire."

"I agree!" Starlight's voice crackled out of Anissa's armor, slightly faded.

"Who the hell is that? Mirage?!" Anissa tapped her arm. "Seraphim, get her out."

"No! I don't think I wi- FISHHOOK NOW!"

I reeled her back in. "Oh fuck! That was so scary! Turns out I found the Datashield… turns out Seraphim is… very, very dangerous. I don't have to go back in, do I?"

"No. But what did you see? Technician?"

"Nada… worse."

Frequency deciphered. Features Identified.

Features: Integration; Sustain; Error-

Error: Source Fragment Identified…

A Source Fragment? That could only mean…

Unique Feature Identified: Restoration

Just going off the name, it was easy to see how she'd repaired her arm so effortlessly. A variation of Technician… specialized in the aptly named Restoration.

She was just like me and R0N1N… a wielder of a Fragment from a Source-Shard. Mine originated from the Shard of Change, I was sure Diana and I were the sole owners of Implants derived from The Infinite.

But now I wanted Anissa's Implant even more. I'd pry it out of her skull.

She was a Silver Tier III, not as strong as Diamante or the R0N1N, but she hadn't yet unveiled all the tricks up her sleeve just yet. I was sure of it.

I had to kill her before she could. Starlight's presence overlapped with mine, revealing hidden details about my opponent. It was reminiscent of how I viewed memories off a BUG. Except, this was like faded background noise too dull to decipher… but I didn't need exact details.

Within my claw and Arachne lay the Procedure Repetition Feature-Link, and her silent whispers echoed through the tips which expanded into tools. Starlight got my body moving again, while I dropped the bodies to operate. Ammunition cartridges of fallen weapons and Shardware cracked, their reactive components splintering and fusing to a rod upon which I wired the shielding disk. And finally, my Gold and Retrofit brought it together.

A Sonic grenade.

As Starlight piloted me through a converging bend of two silver chains, I lobbed the grenade. It struck her barrier, but the lock-on of my SMG provided passage for a single bullet to strike its fuse. A wave of sound and energy burst out into a cacophony that erased the haze off her.

My Dreadshot struck true. A perfect locked-on headshot… or it would have been.

Metal spilled into the air, chain-links raining down from the split-second motion upon which her whip curved from its original trajectory and into the path of the bullet. She hadn't even flicked her wrist…

"Fuck." I whispered, as Anissa charged for the first time.

"Oh, you thought that I would lose a battle of Shard Operating?! You didn't even do proper research to figure out who I am? Did you?!" Anissa bellowed as the Arachne flew me into the air. Then her body ignited as blue fire spewed from her joints. She flew up towards me.

"Oh, shit! She's got a standard fly unlike your rising dashes! You don't have many air-zoning tools, either!"

Her left fist wreathed with a gray haze that empowered the strike crumpling into my chest, Preservation Matrix trigerred my Arachne to outstretched to soften my crash landing. One of them had their joint snap right off from the sheer force of the impact.

That wasn't all. A second chain whipped from both arms, and now they moved independently of the angular prediction I'd beset upon them. They curved, straightened and pierced in all directions.

Towards the fallen Shardware around us.

"Let me show you how it's done, Dread." Metal tore into her grasp, a blur of mechanisms fitting and reorienting in a moment to fit onto her ruined right hand as a gauntlet. It was ugly, heavy, but radiated power.

That made it beautiful. The gauntlet raised at me, a singular glowing point blinking before a beam of light struck another Arachne limb exactly at the first joint. The limb slacked down like it had been dislocated, completely unresponsive.

I was fast, but I wasn't beating the speed of light. The speed of her aim, mayb-

Blue flames detonated her into my face, her gauntlet struck me again on the torso. I exploded backwards, launched into the side of the truck which folded around me, then her whips came dashing forward, slithering in irregular patterns that neither me nor Starlight could see through. Desperate, my remaining two Arachne limbs crimped into the metal of the truck behind me.

They flipped me onto the top of the truck once more, taking a thick slab of its steel that angled just right to deflect two of the chains that curved upwards in a helix. The sloppy shield tore in half, but the blow only glanced my mask. The last whip stopped just short of the piece of the truck I'd torn off, her eyes glancing into its contents, before the chain curved around to entangle me.

I ducked right below it, but it swooped and accurately ripped off both other Arachnodyne limbs. She'd been aiming for them the entire time.

"Now your little toys are all broken!" Her voice carried into the air, the blue fire jetting out of her backside to keep her elevated. "Are you ready to-"

I aimed my SMG down at the truck. She had something in there she didn't want damaged. Or she would have pierced the truck from the inside and jabbed the whip from under me. Wordlessly, I kept my aim on the truck as the spiderling entered through the break in its hull to observe its contents.

Bodies. Alive. Four of them, shackles on their frames, their bodies worse for the wear and unkempt. Homeless… with dog tag tattoos.

She didn't want them hurt.

"Dreadwire-" Starlight began, but with a single push of my thoughts, I turned Starlight quiet. She was just a Protocol after all, able to be turned on and off.

I faced Anissa, her gaze watching me intently and her whips waiting to snap at me. My voice echoed, low and steely from the depths of my mask. "Turn off your Shardware, or I'll make sure that-"

The mask that had been damaged by her whips. The mask that, just then, crumbled to the ground.

Ripley

"-that…" I blinked as fragments of my Dreadwire mask fell to the ground. Dog tag tattoos? "…Wait a second."

I reoriented my thoughts, Stokry wanted Anissa dead on behalf of The Dogwhistler. "…what exactly are you doing to these people?"

"Giving them a chance to live!" She hissed, her serpentine friends spilling out of her arms almost miming the action. "Now the drop the gun or-"

I dropped the gun. "Okay, okay! One… second, I think we got off onto the wrong foot."

"You used my men as human shields!" She neared me, the heat from those blue flames was noxious. "Put holes in two others!"

"Hey, that was in self defense! I left all the others alive, right!" Thank you, Starlight.

She didn't say a thing, oh, right… I'd turned her off. A blink later and her voice returned.

"-I don't think she's a bad person!… Did you turn me off?! That was very mean of y-! Oh, hi dad!"

Sorry about that. I mentally apologized before deciding to verbally apologize. "Look… uh, let's just say I took a bad contract. Sorry about that."

"You didn't think so?" Anissa sarcastically sighed. "Diamante told me you were a dumbass! I didn't think you were this much of one, you brat!"

"Diamante?" I shook my head. "You… know him?"

"Who do you think is helping me get these bodies?" She nudged downwards. "Now, get off the damn truck so I can-"

"Are you his Shard Operator, by any chance?" I dropped down the truck, taking a look inside with my own two eyes at the unthinking bodies within. "And you're… rehabilitating those who Dogwhistler has taken control of?"

The silence was an answer on both counts, but I pushed ahead with the only thing I knew I wanted to do. "Do you want help?"

"Excuse me?" Her Shardware powered down, the jettison of fire stopping as she dropped down to join me next to the truck.

"I mean… to repay all the damages I've done here today!" I quickly explained. "It's basically slavery for a day."

"Three days." She sighed, and I put no rebuttal. "You're not slick. Be glad it's not your Shard Operating I want."

"Uh, what is then?" I got nervous, there was a lot she could ask for. And she was in Metal Heavens.

"That… thing you sent into me. Was it a Daemon you encoded? Or a proper AI you're cultivating?" Her icy gaze dug deeper into me.

"It's… why's that important to you?"

She stared at me judgingly, before relenting to a bit of honesty. "I built Seraphim myself, she's the Adaptive Datashield that kept on warning me about the rabid dog barking at her defenses. Poked a few holes through her as well. If that's what your scrapped up software can do, the Dogwhistler could tear Seraphim down like wet paper."

"Who's she calling a rabid dog! I'm more of a butterfly, thank you very much!"

I put Starlight's complaints aside for now. "Okay, that makes sense. I guess you want to train them up against one another. That would probably be for the better, Starlight's a bit… inexperienced."

"When was she established? Di didn't tell me about her." Anissa hopped into the truck through the hole.

"…today." I admitted.

"Well, fuck me in the greaser." She said loudly. "Today?! How the hell did you even make her?"

"Spaghetti." I responded. "I don't really know what that means, but she keeps on calling it that. Let's just say… a few circumstances lined up. That's all you need to know, Anissa."

She thought for a second. "If you're helpin' me out. Name's not Anissa. It's just the identity I used sneaking into Metal Heavens for half a decade… had a lot of names and faces over the years. Call me Maiden. As for you, still gonna go by Dreadwire?"

I chewed my mind on that, before shaking my head as I reached into my cargo pants. "Nope. Instead, Maiden, you get to know Dreadwire's Shard Operator…"

I pulled the goggles over my eyes and became-

The Ripper

A snickering smile creeped over me, my arms curving as I bowed down and my voice yearned for being heard by all. "You get to meet none other than your friendly neighbourhood 'The Ripper'."

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