Scene #1471: Automated Assassin IV

Owner	Pose
Alexis Maaka	It's been a long time coming, but Alexis has come home to hunt. The undercity regions of Neo-Fuji are something of a wild west to the Izunagi. The crime situation is more or less unchecked, where the Yakuza, Triads, and other crime organizations fight for control. Only through their Yakuza contacts does the Izunagi have a stake in things, but they can't afford to butt in personally without a full division of SAINT troopers. Alex the Red makes her way down the street, a lot of people giving her plenty of space as they recognize that black coat and the cyborg's distinctive red hair. Nobody seems to want to go out unarmed, and the EM-GASH rifle slung on her back seems no more weird than what the next fellow is carrying, if a lot more modern and advanced than any vintage AK or surplus guns from the big companies. She stops just short of a warehouse, scanning ahead as she arches a brow. The job for her today's just to look over one of Zhiang's stockpiles. Nothing too difficult, right? Nobody's gonna pick a fight with the Red Specter even on this night anyways, so hey.
Zwei	Alexis isn't the only thing has come to this particular area of Neo-Fuji on the hunt. Something else has been following her movements ever since she'd arrived at the transit station, tagging and tracking her movements from afar as she goes from street to street. Her enemy has all of her vital data; her measurements, her biorhythms, her implant signatures; everything needed to single her out from a crowd no matter how dense her surroundings become. Her real adversary has planted itself in one of the top floors of a distant skyscraper building cordoned off for rennovation, but a handful of its minions, tiny drones the size and shape of black, carbon wasps, follow her at all times from various heights and distances, coasting along on completely silent antigrav. She'll have to guess why her enemy has waited for her to clear the busy streets to engage her. She'll likewise have to guess why it hadn't simply attempted to kill her as soon as she stepped foot into the warehouse, rather than seemingly giving itself away deliberately. One of the drones zips into her field of vision with an extremely obvious movement, stalling in front of her where it quickly paints her with what is obviously a laser targeting module due to the way her own sensors register the otherwise invisible beam.
Alexis Maaka	Her sensors do indeed begin to give off some unusual signals as Alexis peers inside the warehouse. Zhiang's go-between had brought up that there were some unusually shaped drones hanging around the place before she got there, and there was a lack of contact after a day or so worth of silence. Removing the rifle from her shoulder, she turns on a flashlight and begins to stalk across the crates, containing inactive mechs, weapons and drugs to sell, illegal pornography and other knicknacks. Her eyes blink as she notices the black wasp looking things as she advances down a row of storage crates. "The hell?" Already she's getting very leery here, and she begins to seek cover. "Okay, where's your boss, you little bastards?" She mutters under her breath.
Zwei	Even if their master had an answer for Alexis, the drones certainly don't. No effort has been wasted in their design, or that of the Type-4 anti-Izunagi Arma that commands them, on things such as communication. The wasp follows her as she moves, gliding through the air with its laser fixed on her center of mass the entire way, as if were attached to her by the beam. Outside of the warehouse, a number of its companion units are gathering, moving to the windows and exits to survey the interior from multiple angles, and map it out as a three dimensional grid in real time, giving their controller a better idea of its contents than any one set of eyes could have. With the Type-4 at such a significant distance, the announcement of its presence is, for an instant, jarringly understated. A hole opens up in the warehouse roof at the eastern side with a sharp, subtle clang, letting in a beam of dying sunlight as an identical hole opens up in a metal rafter, the catwalk underneath it, the loading arm of a cargo crane, the outside of a reinforced crate, the opposite side of said crate, and then the floor in front of it, all in the blink of an eye. The next instant, the punctured crate goes off with a deafening roar of combusting fuel, casting the entire warehouse into the ruddy glow of firelight as the ammo stores and fuel tank of the loaded mech inside cooks off in a gigantic fireball that catches Alexis at almost ground zero.
Alexis Maaka	Alexis peeks her head out just to hear a loud BANG, before suddenly ducking back behind cover as she raises her rifle and scans about alertly for the source of that shot. "-fuck me." She mutters under her breath, before suddenly she sniffs. Sniff sniff. Her eyes glance towards a spark of flames where a smoking hole lies in one of the stored mechs, and then her heart sinks to her stomach and her nose is filled with fumes as fight-flight kicks in. "SHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT!" She books it, sprinting in the opposite direction of the explosion before she's knocked to her stomach, her armored coat protecting her for the most part, but she still curls up into a ball. Zhiang's not going to like this at all, once she gets wind of some mystery sniper taking potshots and blowing her stuff up.
Zwei	With the interior of the warehouse up in flames, the Type-4 decides to move its drone in closer, maneuvering them through each of the openings presented to them, or outright cutting their way through the flimsier sections with tiny lasers where necessary. If Alexis pays close attention, she can see their shadows flickering against the walls and floor as a full twelve of them swarm into the disaster zone, splitting up one to each row of crates as they do a flying pass over to map out all of her potential cover and avenues of escape. The one shadowing her seems to have been blown away in the explosion, so a replacement comes in immediately, locating her in the seadily thickening smoke and broadcasting precise coordinates to the sniper. The upper wall of the warehouse rips open this time as another bolt travels through it, slicing through girders and crates in an almost instantaneous straight line aimed directly through Maaka's stomach. It's a long distance raiser weapon, with its photon packet fully set to 100% kinetic simulation. The bolt itself isn't explosive, but it penetrates like an infinitely hard solid projectile, making just about any form of material cover essentially worthless. The only upside is that it's travelling at a sub-C velocity, giving Alexis a very brief window to try and anticipate where the sniper is leading her and make an opposite movement.
Alexis Maaka	Alexis begins to run, scanning upwards to spot for the little wasps as she takes note of how they seem to flutter in through the bullet holes made. Growling, she swaps to NV mode, and her vision is dimmed in green hues. The daylight is going to be gone soon, and the warehouse is gonna be covered in darkness. Tightening her grip on the rifle, Alexis narrows her eyes as she pokes out to scan through her rifle's scope at towards where she detects the most recent hole made from the sniper. Only this time, she only barely avoids getting ripped apart by the projectile. She feels it graze her stomach as she grunts in surprise, before firing towards the hole made in a roar of anger. "WHERE ARE YOU!?"
Zwei	Again, there comes no answer to Alexis' outburst. Her opposition is over a kilometer away, and separated from any and radio contact, relying on proprietary quantum dot entanglement with its drones to instantaneously send information back and forth. It is also completely mechanical. The only time it diverts to analyzing anything she says is for the purpose of psychological profiling; attempting to predict her next series of actions for the purpose of combat. Alexis' return fire streaks in past the balcony and through the open window that the Arma's gun barrel pokes from, striking its energy shield directly and sending the coilgun slug ricocheting up into the roof with a puff of crushed lightweight cemenet. The machine behind it, a bulky, three legged tank of a design, affixed with an enormous asymmetrical barrel and generator pairing, doesn't so much as budge. Over such a huge distance, physical rounds lose most of their energy due to wind resistance and gravity. It's specifically built to be a defensive and offensive powerhouse at the cost of most of its mobility, so it isn't at all concerned about losing in a sniping duel with a softer target at an enormous distance and elevation disadvantage. As long as Alexis remains pinned down in that warehouse, surrounded by its sensor drones, it calculates extremely little threat from her. Its next shot disengages ten percent of the bolt's kinetic simulation, allowing that tenth of its energy to exist purely as black body photon gas until it impacts the warehouse floor at Alexis' feet, which instantly craters the concrete for a meter around into a slurry of molten gravel and sublimated metal.
Alexis Maaka	Fuck this. Alexis knows that if she stays here she's gonna get dialed in and taken out eventually, and those drones watching her every move doesn't exactly help either. The rifle takes aim at one of the drones when it gets into Alexis's sights, and she fires away before she begins to smash open crate after crate after crate, rifling through to find hardware she can use. Porn, blow, old liqor, really fucked up doujin, the list goes on, until Alexis remembers the crates are often categorized. She runs down the corridor, looking at the inscriptions until she finally locates a sign reading "Hardware." Guns and ordinance, glorious things. Her fist smashes into the crate, splintering wood and leaving packing peanuts everywhere as she reaches in and gropes about until she feels a cylindrical device. "Bingo." Her hand pulls out a bandolier's worth of explosives, and she checks the markings until finding three letters she's been waiting for this entire firefight. E. M. P. Priming one of the grenades, Alexis immediately begins switching off her subsystems as she tosses it into the air, bracing herself for the sure of electricity as the EMP goes off. All inert equipment will be spared, but hostile signals such as the drones meanwhile...
Zwei	Predictably, the first drone is turned into a shower of spalling metal fragments the moment it is hit with any kind of significant firepower whatsoever, exploding electronic guts all over the warehouse floor. It takes a moment for the Arma to get another one on her by navigating through the smoke and flames gradually filling up the warehouse while also keeping enough of a distance from her that she won't be able to see it and shoot back. A second shot rips through the ceiling and blasts the crate behind her into a fine scattering of ash and metal vapour mere instants after she abandons it. The Arma is just tracking its aim for the new crate when the EMP smart bomb goes off, filling the mangled warehouse with the crackle of electrostatic energy and the smell of ozone as the remaining ten drones are fried instantly, not being shielded in the least due to their small size and disposable nature. It deploys another wave as soon as the first is disabled, but it'll take time for them to catch up to Alexis over that great of a distance. In the meantime, the Type-4's strategy to not lose her is simple. Blow the roof off. A raiser bolt at 99% thermal discharge clangs against the corrugated ceiling, and then blows a gaping hole in it so large that the wave of lasing heat that comes off of it melts a hemisphere into the floor directly below. If Alexis isn't immediately in sight, it'll keep shooting until it can spot her somewhere inside. Though its onboard sensors have incredible precision and magnification, the hundreds of meters of buildings that could potentially be in the way of Alexis should she make a well calculated movement will block out its line of sight effectively enough.
Alexis Maaka	A massive hole is spotted as Alexis peeks out, still in cover as she rifles through a similar crate. Wait for it...wait for it... She finally gets something worth using, a massive railgun the size of an AS-50 and similar in design to the anti-materiel rifle. The weapon gives off a hum as Alexis slides in a powerpack and begins synching with the scope, getting it zeroed in as she carries the weapon. She begins to climb her way up the rows of crates, leaping and climbing as she heads towards a window to climb through. She punches the polyglass out before taking a leap towards the neighboring building, continuing her ascent with her gloves adhering to the side of the building. Once she's on the roof, she throws down a smoke grenade of some sort before she sets up with the railgun, scanning with the weapon at the ready...
Zwei	While Alexis makes her getaway, the Arma is busy peeling apart the warehouse shot by shot, blasting away huge sections of the roof, and then as it disappears completely, the walls, ripping it down to its foundations with flash after flash of gigajoule tier thermal radiation. The street outside is a mess by now as dock workers evacuate en masse and the local law enforcement struggle to surround the perimeter, likely to meet the syndicates who own stakes in those warehouses sooner rather than later. The confusion isn't really enough to distract the Arma from its quarry, but it forces it to spread its new drones over a gradually wider area as time passes by and the number of routes Alexis could have taken multiplies. Of course, popping smoke on that rooftop makes her stick out more than anything. She would have been spotted the moment she raised her head, so obscuring herself in a cloud of refractive gaseous chaff was a good call, but that doesnt' prevent the Type-4 from taking its shot entirely. Rather than nuke the building out from under her and risk losing sight of her again, it switches back to an entirely kinetic payload, and then drops the charging sequence of its weapon by an order of magnitude, drastically cutting the power of each bolt in exchange for increasing the rate of fire. Starting with the dead center of the smoke cloud, it begins snapping off shots based on well calculated estimates, steadily raking the covered area one bolt at a time. Alexis meanwhile, can judge its firing position by the dots of white light that rip through the air from the vacant tower.
Alexis Maaka	Alexis is thankful for the brief window of cover she has from the assault of fire on her position. Down on street level, it seems that a good portion of the local Triad forces have noticed the shootout, and they're not happy with some jackass taking shots at random property or freelancers. A small group of toughs, all wearing black coats and sporting cyberware much more noticable than Alexis's own augmentations, are already pinpointing the tower where this Arma is shooting from. They begin to set up a position at the base of the tower, firing away with their automatics in an effort to provide cover. If whoever this guy is targeting is who they think it is, they'd rather not incur the boss lady's wrath when one of her favorite freelancers is being targeted and they did shit all about it. Whether or not that gets the Arma's attention, Alexis begins to scan towards the tower...only to find a person-sized tripedal mech. "I coulda been at a barbecue..." She mutters, before taking the shot. That railgun is capable of making smoking holes in trucks with the amount of force each shot carries.
Zwei	Whatever anyone else does but Alexis seems to be of no cncern to the Arma. It is entirely focused on its singular task of taking down its target of choice. It's dubious as to whether it'll even bother to return somewhere after the job is complete, or if it's even built to do so. To that effect, it completely ignores the gunfire from below, letting the few shots that actually do manage to get through the window ping off its shield harmlessly so that it can remain fixated on its target. The sensor drones deployed earlier have just abought caught up to her position, circling around the smoke cloud and diving through its edges to find her, where they can broadcast their coordinates as a triangulated firing solution and thus bypass the need for a direct visual. Alexis manages to land her shot first. Mere moments before the drones get their bead on her, the anti-materiel railgun round tears through the intervening distance, directly along her enemy's firing lane, and smashes straight into its shield like a speeding semi. The barely visible bubble of distortion shudders violently, and then bursts altogether, knocking the loose clutter in the room spinning as the backwash fills the room. Now knowing exactly where Alexis had fired from from the angle of impact and the disturbance in the smoke from the slug's passing, the Arma exchanges the power cycling of its weapon even further. It sights directly for her center of mass, and then lets off a burst of fire so quick that it appears to be a shotgun spray; a flying curtain of hard-light bullets that spray across the rooftop, turning where she's standing into a beehive.
Alexis Maaka	"Aw hell." Alexis grunts as she sees the shot only impact on a shield of some sort. She immediately begins to relocate, sprinting across the roof before she coils her legs and takes a leap across the gap towards another building. Grunting, she tucks and rolls as she makes the landing and takes another shot with the railgun. The weapon kicks against her shoulder, the round blasting away against the tower as it's followed by a second shot, trying to wither the shielding down before a second blast busts through.
Zwei	The Arma reacquires Alexis the moment she breaks from her cloud of mobile cover, fixing her with its own sensors in conjunction with those of the spotter drone swarm following her. The barrel of its gun follows her with perfect smoothness through her full jump, sighting her down the instant she touches heel to concrete, and then letting loose another explosion of deadly light the moment she fires off her own round. The raiser bolt and railgun slug pass by each other in mid-air, skidding millimeters apart from each other, before the latter impacts the remains of the Arma's shield and takes them offline completely, and the former sails straight on towards Alexis' leg. The double tap seals the deal. Arriving on the tail end of the first one, Alexis' second slug hits between the charging cycles of the type-4's weapon, puncturing straight through its 'chest' and erupting back out the other side in a pressurized spray of kerr lensing fluid induced into hydrostatic shock. The result isn't especially flashy or explosive, but detecting that it is no longer able to fire, the machine shuts down, and then begins to disintegrate. Sabotage nanites are released into its system to decompose it molecule by molecule, turning it, along with its drones, into so much free floating carbon ash on the wind.
Alexis Maaka	There's a pause, but it's not as long as if material weapons were being used as the slug takes out the drone. Alexis spots its disintigration before she grins a little, pumping her fist in a little show of victory. "Fuckin' A..." Her optics scan at the disintigatrion, before she logs it away for later. The entire scene's been logged for this, really, it should be useful for reference if she manages to get someone who'll know about this attack. Now...to explain to Zhiang why the whole warehouse is a smoking ruin for the time being. That's...going to be messy.