Chapter 4 – Cyber Solutions
“Emi! Emi, answer me dang it!” Becky shouted into her headset, watching as all of her data readouts from Emi’s armor suddenly went offline. The video feed from Emi’s visor had shown the vault door flying at her in the last half second of the feed, then had cut out. There was no reply from her radio either. “Shit shit shit!”
Becky’s mind went a hundred different directions at once. For a normal person that might have been a problem, but in her case, she simply ran a hundred different thoughts through it in the span of a handful of seconds, most of them concerned with exactly what could have failed on Emi’s armor and whether it could have survived that impact. There were of course a few random thoughts relating to what she had been entertaining herself with earlier, namely several video streams from various porn sites, all of them having some amount of BDSM involved.
Being a child of the internet age, Becky was no stranger to porn, and like any good cyber surfer, she was just as likely to be distracted by it, especially given her particular kinks. Though since she’d had her change six months ago, she had been testing herself to see exactly how much data she could process, and with no less than two dozen monitors all showing different things arrayed around her, she had kept all of her data feeds clear and distinct in her mind. It was kind of like having multiple processors in a computer, each one dedicated to its own tasks, and a whole lot of RAM to assist it.
She had been fully aware of Emi’s situation, had been monitoring her armor’s data feeds, running over a dozen background checks on the various faces she’d seen through the visor, and enjoyed the porn streams, all at the same time. So many different places one could focus their attention, but she’d been just as focused on all of them as she could have been on one of them.
Well, except for that moment she had been trying to get herself off with a vibrator when the whole situation had started, but that was before the life and death struggle part. Emi didn’t really need to know that.
But now there were much more important things to worry about, namely the safety of her friend. The tracking signal in Emi’s armor was still online, as it was part of the ‘black box’ they’d installed just in case something unexpected had happened, and so far Emi’s position hadn’t changed. The vital signs that were being transmitted by the black box were still strong, but her heart rate was through the roof, as were her stress levels.
“Guess she’s got every right to be freakin’ out right now…” Becky said, turning back to the display showing Suzie’s police record, frowning as she started focusing her mind on the jewelry store. Not sure how much Emi had heard before the explosion, Becky knew that Suzie was no little girl; she was in her mid 20s, and had a record a mile long, most of her crimes violent and destructive. She’d apparently had training with demolitions and explosives from prior jobs, and then suddenly six months ago she had tried to change her identity completely. She had to have had help with that, though. Someone had buried her past records deep, basically wiped them cleanly from most databases, and with her body having changed to its current state six months ago, she was basically a whole new person. It was a professional job, to be sure. Government spook levels of professional.
Becky could only wonder what kind of freak show the pink-haired maid was if she was working with Suzie. Though she’d probably be finding out shortly.
With her destination in mind, she began transferring herself to the site over the city’s internet, hopping from one network to the next, dashing through a switch here, a router there, leaping over a wireless bridge to the next internal network down the line at the fastest speeds the fiber optics could manage.
Which meant she was there in less than a second, slipping out of a wireless access point in the back of the store that was still online and reforming herself from a digital state in the same room as Suzie herself, though she had yet to make herself visible, hiding on the edge of cyberspace just out of normal sight for your average human. At least, that’s what her tests with Emi had indicated; for all she knew the pint-sized, foul-mouthed explosion addict in front of her could see her perfectly.
“Hey, Pinkie, go see if you can carve up that piece of shit tin can; I’ll get the fucking diamonds,” Suzie said, slinging her MP5 as she turned from the gaping hole where the vault door had went flying to the gaping hole where the vault door had originally been mounted.
Dropping down from the ceiling was the pink-haired maid, landing noiselessly on the singed floor tiles in a low crouch. “Someone’s feeling bossy today,” said the pink-haired maid in a low tone, reaching behind her to either side of the bow tied at her lower back, drawing out a pair of large knives; additional knives were strapped around her thighs, though these appeared to be designed more for throwing. She rose and slipped out of the room toward the foyer, again without a sound.
Knowing that she had no time to waste, Becky tapped into the net, running a quick search for what she needed for her hastily formed plan. She had received plenty of first aid training growing up and after she’d joined the FBI, but she was not a trained medical professional by any means. Still, running dozens of searches and confirming what she needed only took a fraction of a second, and in the next moment, she held out her hand and willed an object into existence. She still didn’t entirely understand how that part of her powers worked, but she could create a multitude of tools and equipment, from a simple knife or screwdriver to complex machines like guns or vehicles, and even chemicals and compounds like the gunpowder inside the bullets of her created guns. They were all temporary, and maybe not entirely real, lasting maybe an hour before they deconstructed themselves and returned to cyberspace from whence they came, but until then, they functioned exactly as their real-world counterparts.
As such, she had a gun in hand, though not one that fired bullets. Stepping lightly despite the blaring alarm and the first distant sirens, Becky spotted Suzie as she pulled open several drawers, then stopped and stepped back in surprise. “What the fuck is this?!”
“Nap time, bitch,” Becky replied as she stuck her gun to Suzie’s neck and pulled the trigger, fully materializing and revealing herself. With a faint snap, the injector shot a heavy dose of sedative into the little maid.
Suzie whirled around, reaching for her MP5, but her small form was already succumbing to the drug’s effects even as she tried to register exactly who she had been looking at. “The…fuck…are…you…?” she slurred, the gun slipping from her hand as she staggered forward and fell to her knees, then fully onto her face on the vault floor, out like a light.
Becky hadn’t actually decided on a final look for her heroic persona yet; she had been waiting on Emi to get her armor built and tested before making a true debut, but she had a general idea what she’d wanted. She’d worn only a t-shirt while she was in her room watching the situation, but when she had made her appearance, she looked drastically different, even from her normal self; one with her particular talents could apparently photoshop reality, or at least herself.
So she had appeared as a tall, shapely, and rather pale-skinned woman with brilliant green eyes and dreadlocked hair spilling past her shoulders, though her hair looked more like bundles of fiber optic cable, filled with shifting colors of light across the spectrum. As to her outfit, she’d hastily assembled it as she’d skimmed the edge of cyberspace along the city wireless network, and constructed it as she’d materialized herself. It consisted firstly of a pair of green-tinted goggles with night-vision capability, a black respirator-style mask with a voice changer to further stymie any attempts to identify her, black and neon green opera-length latex gloves and matching thigh-length stockings, with a neon green fishnet bodystocking over them. Atop those she wore a black latex one-piece swimsuit, a black latex pleated skirt with a neon green fringe that came about halfway down her thighs, a looser type corset style bustier, and black leather platform boots that gave her another four inches in height. The final layer of accessories consisted of some personal flare, namely a set of leather ankle, thigh, bicep, and wrist cuffs complete with neon green locks, the bulk of the cuffs themselves in the same neon green, with the actual strap being black. A matching collar was around her neck, the front D-ring adorned with a circular charm, which glowed not unlike her hair, though only in green with an embedded symbol of the Eye of Ra; that last bit she had just pulled off the net at the last moment to spice it up a little.
“Score one for the off-button hypospray,” Becky said, kicking the gun away from the little maid. She noticed that the drawers Suzie had opened were empty, well, all but one, which had a black and white photo laying inside of a very sexy woman with a feline look to her, spread out on the floor and winking at the camera as she blew a kiss to the viewer. It was signed ‘Pink Pussy’ in bright pink ink.
Tucking that detail away for later, Becky turned and slipped toward cyberspace again, making a split-second teleport to Emi’s side.
The pink-haired maid crouched upon the vault door, still laying atop Emi’s armor, which still wasn’t moving. The maid had her knives scraping along the seams around Emi’s neck. “I don’t think this is a robot, Suzie; I think this is some kinda armor,” said Pinkie, pulling her knives back to give her more penetration on her coming stab. “I just wonder what I’ll get when I poke a hole in it…blood or oil? Maybe both?”
The readouts from the armor were still not reporting back, and Emi’s heart rate had shot up even higher; the comm was still down as well; it had been about a minute since the door had impacted her. Becky went for Pinkie’s neck with the injector.
Impossibly, the maid twisted at the last second, her head jerking clear of the injector tip as she lashed out with her leg and the knife in her right hand. Becky avoided the lethal edge of the knife, but was caught by the maid’s sweeping leg and fell back, hitting the debris covered floor with a grunt.
“Just where’d you come from, Goggles?” Pinkie asked, already leading from the door, both knives angled downward to stab at Becky.
Becky reacted on instinct, rolling to the side as the two knives stabbed down where she had been only a heartbeat earlier. Almost before she could react, Pinkie was already shifting her blades for the next strike, coming in with a sideways stab close to the floor, angling for Becky’s kidney, while the other blade spun in her hand, coming to rest in an underhanded grip.
Unable to keep up with the maid’s speedy strikes, Becky pulled her arm back, the knife stabbing into the plastic injector, cutting through it like it was nothing. In the second it may have bought her, she shifted to cyberspace, coming out on the other side of Emi. If she could just touch the armor she could find where the problem was and fix it. She crouched, one hand reaching for the exposed part of the chest plate.
In the next instant, a boot crashed against her face, dazing her and sending her back to the floor, though several feet away from Emi. “So it’s armor then, and you’ve got a friend inside it, huh?” Pinkie crouched by Emi’s head, one blade held at her throat. “Seems pretty tough, but there’s always weak spots. And I keep my knives real sharp.”
Groaning, Becky gritted her teeth as she looked at the maid’s position,and how close that knife was to Emi’s throat. The armor could certainly stop a bullet, but what was Pinkie actually capable of with her knives? Maybe she could cut through it… Becky slipped into the network again, coming down from above toward Pinkie, intending to deliver a double-booted impact to her pink-haired head.
Again, Pinkie seemed to sense her, and rolled to the side, though only far enough for Becky to land atop the vault door, then delivered a powerful kick to Becky’s back, sending her sprawling. “You’re pathetic!” Pinkie said, laughing as she leapt over the door and came down with a stomp to Becky’s midsection, followed by another kick to her side that sent her rolling a few more feet away from the maid.
Becky groaned, curling up to grasp at her sides, sucking in deep gasps of air through her mask. She was hardly a brawler; granted she’d been in her share of fights growing up, but she was much better with a gun. Through gritted teeth, she downloaded a Glock 17 into her hand, then rolled onto her side, unloading several shots toward the maid. She’d tried to play nice, but if it came down to her life or the maid’s, she chose her own. She was from Texas after all, and self-defense had certainly been established.
Not that it mattered, though, because Pinkie was just too damn fast. The moment the gas-masked maid had spotted the gun, she had ducked, weaved, and leapt aside, landing against a support pillar before she bounced off it and leapt higher, going to the ceiling. Somehow she scrambled across it, Becky’s fire taking out several lights before she leapt down and out of sight behind one of the still-standing display counters.
Somehow during her swift evasion, Pinkie had managed to throw a knife, because as Becky tracked toward her new position, it impacted the barrel of the gun and stuck there. “Shit!” She had just barely avoided pulling the trigger, and instead tossed the gun aside. There had to be a better way to deal with that maid!
And then suddenly it occurred to her. She’d never actually tried it, but there wasn’t any reason it wouldn’t work…right? “Sure, right…” she muttered, struggling to her feet as she headed toward Emi again. She tapped into the net, pulling in several searches at once, reconfiguring the data from simple information to something more useful. She had already reshaped her body before, and she could feel it changing subtly again as she implanted the reconfigured data into her brain, her muscles hardening and becoming more defined, her body starting to move differently as she stepped over the vault door.
A flurry of knives flew toward Becky as she reached for Emi, and she dove out of the way, rolling into a crouch as Pinkie came at her from above, knives out and ready to bring them down into Becky’s torso.
This time, however, Becky met her attack head on, quickly shifting her position, catching both of Pinkie’s wrists in her hands and holding them there, the knives dangerously close, but held at bay. The way Pinkie’s head shifted, Becky could only imagine a surprised look on her face behind the dark glass of the gas mask lenses, doubly so when Becky delivered a quick knee to Pinkie’s gut and hip-tossed her onto a pile of broken glass. The maid managed to roll aside as Becky came down with a stomp toward her head, and got back to her feet, knives held up underhanded in a defensive manner.
Becky smirked behind her own mask, shifting her stance into a defensive one. “I know kung-fu,” she said, raising a hand and motioning Pinkie toward her.
“That wasn’t kung-fu,” Pinkie replied as she took a wary step to the side. “You just got lucky.”
“Try me then!” Becky replied, mirroring Pinkie’s step. She’d downloaded everything she could about knife fighting, and how to counter it. Unarmed was the worst way to do it, but if she needed a weapon or a shield, she could get one.
Pinkie ran toward her in a low run, coming in on the left. Becky saw through the feint and countered, stepping inside the thrust from the first blade, then snatched Pinkie’s forearm and twisted, dislodging the second knife from her grasp while simultaneously making the maid yelp in pain. Not letting the maid’s momentum go to waste, she used her own legs to block Pinkie’s, tripping the maid and sending her to the floor face-first.
Becky came down with another kick at Pinkie, but the nimble maid was already moving, pushing herself backward. As Becky’s foot hit the floor where Pinkie had just been, the maid twisted and kicked upward, striking Becky in the lower back, causing her to stagger forward.
Pinkie lashed out again with her remaining knife, swiping at Becky’s back, cutting into her corset as she turned to face her. Wincing at the line of fire that had just been seared across her back, Becky weaved back and forth, narrowly avoiding the rapid strikes of the blade. A couple she managed to deflect with her bare hands, but she just couldn’t manage to find a good way to try to get the knife out of Pinkie’s hand. Deciding that she had to have something else to do the job, Becky started to call up some more appropriate tools.
The maid then suddenly switched her attacks, stepping forward with a trio of quick kicks, one hitting Becky in the stomach, the other two striking each of her knees.
Becky cried out in sudden pain and surprise, stumbling to the floor. She’d seen the attacks coming, but with her focus so much on evading the knives, she hadn’t been quick enough to avoid the switch up. A fourth kick landed against her side, knocking her over, and then a knee crashed into her face. Her vision filled with stars, and then more filled her vision when her head struck the floor.
Pinkie was on top of her in the next moment, the maid’s knees pinning Becky’s arms out to her sides as one hand took firm grasp of her hair, the other bringing the knife up to her throat, the razor-like edge drawing a line of blood with only the slightest pressure. “You couldn’t adapt fast enough, Goggles. In a fight like this, you have to be ready for anything. Time to die!”
Hope you’re enjoying the action! This was an interesting experiment for me, trying to work the fight scene to be fast-paced and believable while keeping in mind the various abilities and limitations of everyone involved. I think it came out pretty well, but would love to know what you think of it! Would very much appreciate any thoughts or criticisms you might have, or any questions that may have come to mind.
Shoot me a message over on DeviantArt or just hit me up on my Discord server!
