-95-
The infrastructure of the Tempest Technologies’ facility was quickly becoming highly compromised; it wasn’t the walkers stomping around everywhere or the escaped lizard monsters randomly attacking humans from the shadows. Sometimes they did it in plain sight, but they were quickly dealt with. The lizard monsters were at best doing minimal damage to the infrastructure as they hunted for humans to eat.
The major cause of all the damage happening around the facility was the Puffles running around everywhere. They were bumping into and knocking over fragile things, causing explosions, getting caught on fire, tipping over vats of dangerous chemicals, pressing buttons that had dire consequences for everyone involved and in general causing havoc everywhere they went and there weren’t even a hundred of them on the loose. It was more like eighty seven and they were slowly spreading around the facility through the air vents, elevators and stairs. Some were in groups and others went on alone to do some damage without really meaning to.
The Humans of Tempest Technologies had already taken casualties when it came to capturing the Puffles for study in the first place, it was now worse that they got free from containment and they couldn’t contain the chaos as it started spreading. The walkers seemed to be enough to scare Puffles away or corral them, but capturing them and returning them back to containment was all but impossible. Well it was impossible if they didn’t use laser pointers, at least the walkers could paralyze them for a few seconds and or make them flee an area in fear while squeaking frantically. Walls were coming down, ceilings collapsed inwards and the entire facility was quickly becoming a collapsing mad house to the Humans.
It was good news for Ember and Rarity at least; they’d have plenty of time for investigating their discovery. Meanwhile things weren’t going as well for Mare-Do-Well’s group when one of the facilities three commanders eventually found them, but before that happened they had been discussing Greta’s findings in the safest location for them to be in the facility at the moment.
-
“What are the chances that we can actually nail any government from the UEG? Which governments do we accuse of this specifically and do we have any other hard evidence other than the fact that military drones were sold to what is supposed to be a civilian technology company. It is a company that is known to suspiciously specialize in terrain changing devices.” Even Saffron knew that there was evidence of all the missing people from the climate incidents ending up in the hands of slave traders. Humans always seem to be around to buy the systems and this facility was made to alter the weather and do other nefarious things like it. It was pretty clear that UEG involvement couldn’t be denied, but it could be covered up and explained away. “We only have proof of UEG selling weapons to these people, not about them being directly involved.”
“Rover is thinking, can we at least nail the Tempest people?” Rover received a few nods in response to his question, after that he went back to eating the cheese burger that he had. He stole it from the cafeteria they were currently in. Not like anyone was going to miss some food from this place anyway.
“It’s about as much as we can get out of this whole darn situation near as I can tell, but I don’t really like it one bit that these Humans were trying to take the system from us.” Applejack was being quite honest about this. If she survived this then she was going to have problems with Humans, most likely for the rest of her life. She’d at least try to judge them on a person by person basis, but it’s going to be pretty hard to keep the memories of this incident from rising up or coming to mind. “I’m not going to be able to trust Humans very well after this whole mess.”
“We wouldn’t expect you to be able to, especially because this is several magnitudes of wrong.” It looked a little odd that Viral was mimicking the up and down jaw movements to the sound of Greta’s voice, they were currently in a place that was safe. Nobody would have expected the intruders to stop for food or do so in one of their own cafeteria areas. All the Humans were too busy running around the facility like highly disturbed chickens. “It’s just unfortunate that Mare-Do-Well is correct, we won’t be able to outright nail anyone else aside from Tempest Tech for this. They’ll just deny it if we try and the best we can do is spread the information across every alien race we can so they won’t be able to get away with this again.”
“At least we can do something to prevent this from happening to others; they’ve messed with the wrong Ponies!” Slapping a hoof at the floor, Saffron was rather angry at the fact that they couldn’t get UEG on much more than selling weapons. Like Greta said, that information could be swept under the rug. They didn’t know which of the many united governments did that, it might have been one or it might have been several involved. One thing was for certain, the UEG had its unclean fingers in several pies and the Applon System was not going to be one of them.
“You won’t be preventing anything…” A silky smooth voice sounded out and that caught everyone’s attention to the Human woman walking into the room, her bright blue eyes showing hints of amusement as she had found them rather easily. She was wearing a purple suit that covered everything but her face and the sound of her heels clicking against the floor was unnerving; her unusually nice looking face had a grim smile plastered on it as she sauntered into the room. On her hips she had two pistols and four knives in a belt; she didn’t look equipped to handle the intruders. She was also fairly tall for a human woman and rather thin, there was just something off about her appearance. “To think you have most of this base out looking for you and here you are. I’m Commander Perja Rensada and I believe you’re on our property.”
Saffron performed a scan on this Perja woman, whatever the Mare-Do-Well armor got out of her would have been helpful. The woman that walked in on them didn’t look like she had much to fear and a scan showed higher brain activity than normal for a human, she didn’t have any metal in her body so she didn’t have cybernetic enhancements at least. What if it wasn’t cybernetic enhancements that she had to worry about? Checking again, she noticed that the scans showed enhanced musculature beyond what was normal for a human and it looked like it was sculpted perfectly, which meant she wasn’t normal at all. The higher brain activity was probably something to be wary about then.
“I think we can take you…” Saffron started off while taking a position between this woman and the others, only to be cut off by the woman speaking.
“Your little group is not going to stop us. Eventually our numbers will wear you down even if you could beat me, which I very much doubt you will. You won’t be leaving this place alive either way.” The now named Perja stopped sauntering forward and staring at the three before her, Perja gave off a sincere sounding laugh as the group before her didn’t seem like much. One was a humanoid mutt, one looked like a farmer with that cowboy hat on her parka’s hood and the last one looked like she’ll last about a minute longer than the rest. The strange robot fox looked vaguely familiar, but was negligible as a threat and didn’t look like very much to her. She put hand up to the side of her head. “I’ve found some of the pests; I don’t think I’ll be needing help with them. So why don’t you try to find out where the other rats are, I’ve got this. So what are you, a machine or a Pony’s horrible attempt at creating a cybernetic entity? Doesn’t matter, because we’ll find out what makes you tick when we get your corpse. That is, if there even is one left to study when I’m done with all of you!”
Saffron almost didn’t have to blink before she was skating sideways out of the path of a thunderous amount of energy bullets being fired at her; she had hardly even saw Perja pull out her energy pistols and she was already rapidly firing them by the time she reacted. Of the tens of shots that flew three tagged her shields and Perja performed cartwheel out of the way of her return fire from her front left hoof, weaving between her shots smoothly without pause as she continued to fire in the middle of her wheeling.
After getting a better look at the weapons while trying to weave around the constant fire directed at her, Saffron took notice that these weren’t automatic energy pistols. It was just how fast Perja was pulling the triggers and it was an insane rate at which she was shooting them. The woman was fast and agile as she bounced between the tops of tables to balancing on the back of a chair for a second before rolling off its toppling form to the floor. All the while she continued to fire at Saffron while twisting and moving between every shot Saffron fired as if it were choreographed in advanced which was clearly impossible.
Whoever Perja was in the grand scheme of things around here, she had obscenely heightened reflexes and was rather flexible considering the angles she was twisting into to shoot at Saffron or the other three targets in the room.
The others hadn’t been idle; Rover, Applejack and Greta operating the mechanical fox knocked over the nearest tables or whatever they could use for cover and ducked behind them. Every other shot fired by Perja was aimed at someone other than Saffron who had taken twelve hits to the shields already. This human she was dangerously accurate with her insane rate of fire.
Rover poked his head up and immediately ducked down, an energy bullet passed through the space his head just occupied and managed to hit the hood of his parka. He waved the tip of his rifle over his head and then swung around the side of the table; at least he managed to finish his snack and get his helmet back on before they got attacked. A shot flew where the tip of his rifle could be seen and he started firing a rapid amount of shots in conjunction with Saffron’s, it didn’t seemed to slow down this crazy Human one bit.
Applejack took aim and tried to find a good time to shoot. She was trying to keep up with the Humans wild movements, but it was a little hard to do when Perja could jump to the ceiling and kick off of it at an angle while rotating her entire body to avoid being hit by the crossing fire from both Rover and Mare-Do-Well.
Not only did the Human do this, she was still shooting at everyone as she spiraled to the floor into a handspring towards Applejack. The Earth Pony had to scramble to some other form of cover as Perja landed on the edge of the table shooting at her tail. She started to saunter along the edge of the table balanced perfectly while shooting at Rover, Mare-Do-Well and Applejack. Every shot fired at her, she just ducked, hopped, leaned and bent out of the way of in a slight blur. She was almost ignoring Viral, except the occasional potshot or so in the metal fox’s direction that made Greta quickly direct it away from the danger presented.
Rover had the weapon with the highest rate of fire next to Saffron firing off both of the energy guns built into the hooves of her armor in alternating shots. Neither of them was having any luck hitting Perja as they were spending just as much time avoiding even getting hit by her shots, the most daunting thing about all this was that Perja didn’t even seem to need cover. Even Saffron needed to take a breather as she was taking a lot of hits for very little to show for it, her shields were getting close to having a critical existence failure.
“I think I know what she is!” Saffron called out from behind cover and poked up to fire a few rounds to keep Perja off of Applejack.
“Oh, please do tell me what I am; I’m very interested to hear this.” Perja looked to be a taking a leisurely stroll as her arms twisted and bent to fire and strange angles towards everyone, it was like she was a living ragdoll. She even sent ten or so more shots at the armored Pony who was proving sturdier than the commander would have liked.
“She’s a biofeedback psychic!” It had to be one of the most dangerous types of Human that Saffron had ever heard of. It wasn’t a very good thing to meet one, much less be on the wrong side of a fight with said specific type of psychic.
“Like knowing that will help you.” The woman stated mockingly with a sneer on her face as she suddenly blurred out of the way of a shot aimed for the back of her head by Applejack. The Pony took three grazing shots to the cheeks and neck that burnt away bits of orange fur as she ducked down.
Actually knowing that would help, it’s just that you had to outlast the biofeedback psychic long enough for the detrimental part of using their bodies full capabilities for too long. This one in particular looked to be well trained and could probably handle more stress than a fresh Human who found out they were a biofeedback psychic. Most people didn’t survive a minute, let along outlast one long enough for the double edged effects to kick in and it had been barely twenty seconds, they’d need at least ten constant minutes of fighting to even start slowing her down.
-
Biofeedback psychics could do almost anything with their bodies. They could accelerate their healing, stop the aging process entirely and the one really troubling ability was that they had reaction times that almost bordered on being precognitive. Of the things they couldn’t do, they couldn’t reverse any aging that’s already happened once they learned how to stop it. They also could only heal so much and couldn’t grow back limbs. Not to mention there were severe drawbacks to using their muscles in an unrestrained manner over an extended period of time.
There were Humans that were precognitive, but they never had the power of a biofeedback psychic and it wouldn’t surprise anyone else that Humans have tried to combine the two abilities together. Despite having such incredible and powerful abilities in their race, Humans thankfully didn’t have the ability to create psychic powers through cloning or forced breeding habits, which they’ve probably tried upon confirming the existence of psychics among their race.
You had to be born with psychics powers; they could not be recreated or copied genetically. Surprisingly the Parascine race had the most knowledge on the subject as to why that was. Given a large number of their race had psychic abilities; it wasn’t hard to discern how they learned the idea of what caused said powers to come into existence. The problem with humans is that they thought psychic powers were related to genetics and not random chance; it caused a lot of issues and atrocities in the course of trying to build a perfect biological psychic weapon.
Random chance could have been a little less helpful where Perja was concerned, as she had been in the prime of her life and if she had figured out how to stop her aging, then she wasn’t ever going to get any older. So making her an enemy would mean anyone in your family lineage wasn’t safe until she was absolutely dead, which wasn’t going to be very easy to accomplish.
-
The fact Applejack had already been shot three times in the span of half a second, even if the shots only grazed her face and neck, it was far too close for anyone’s comfort.
Saffron ducked and weaved through the hail of fire as she skated forward at full burst in a zigzagging pattern. She threw herself at the Human to stop her from shooting at the others and Perja just performed a backwards flip and fired straight downwards as Saffron passed underneath. The shots hit the ground all around the armored pony.
At least Saffron was moving too fast to hit, so there was at least some limit to this Human’s ability. The Human landed and twisted around to continue firing at Saffron’s backside only she had already rocketed sideways while knocking over another table to block the shots, said tables were made of a solid sturdy metal and thus made great barriers for the endless stream of energy bullets flying from the two guns. Saffron had only just recently learned that she could skate sideways and possibly in any direction on the dot at a moment’s notice, which is how she got out of the way so fast.
Now Perja was heading towards Rover, only she had to dodge away when she got a chair thrown at her from behind the table. At least her powers didn’t give her the ability to automatically know where everyone was at once, which is why when she got a little confused when she didn’t see Rover after kicking the table with a mighty force that sent it slamming into the nearby wall. She neatly leaned back and forth out of the way of multiple bolts of energy that tried to hit her from the side. She rolled backwards towards the center of the room that was being cleared out by the fight.
Perja came out of her roll to avoid a single shot from Applejack with a handstand, which lead her into an upside down upwards twisting kick that had her dodging five shots from Saffron. She landed on a chair in an athletic pose and a hint of amusement that they weren’t able to hit her once so far. She kicked the chair she was on at the armored mare while she leapt off to start charging for Rover’s position guns blazing.
Rover decided to try something brave and when she was close enough he leapt out to try and punch the Human, only it didn’t go as he had planned. His right paw moved outwards and then Perja tossed her left gun high into the air and grabbed his right arm, she twisted it and proceeded to also twist herself into position to aim her right gun at the center of Rover’s helmet while bringing him to down before her as if to shoot him like the dog he was. Her finger pulled on the trigger and she missed hitting him by an inch. It still put a hole in the hood of Rover’s parka.
The sudden whip of energy wrapped around her arm not only pulled her aim off, but it had been so slow moving that Perja hadn’t considered it a possible threat until it was wrapped around the crook of her left elbow. She was proven to be wrong about the threat as she was bounced off a table and into a wall with a painful sounding crunch as the solid wall cracked with her impact; she was up and out of the way before Applejack’s next shot could even cover half the distance. She hardly even grunted at the blow she just took.
Rover quickly ran off and decided not to get close to the Human Bitch again; he went to take cover in the kitchen where he got his burger from and whined at the feeling in his right wrist. That Human had almost crushed his wrist without trying… or maybe she had. Rover was feeling quite a bit of pain from it and he wasn’t exactly a doctor. He had to survive long enough to meet one, he looked to the nearby stove and an idea popped into his head.
Applejack saw that Mare-Do-Well had Perja’s attention and turned her sights to the pistol, Mare had managed to disarm Perja of one of her guns. She took careful aim and fired, the gun shattered and exploded. Perja had to of realized that she was down a weapon and she pulled out a knife without even glancing in the direction of the destroyed gun.
Perja couldn’t really afford to take her attention off of the armored Pony for long, especially one who had more tricks up their sleeves than was previously thought. She launched herself at Applejack and tried to kick her head in; her foot caught the inside of Applejack’s hood as the Pony ducked down. The kick almost connected with the farmer’s skull and pulled her head upwards slightly.
Applejack eyes flew upwards and she twisted around catching Perja’s foot in the hood and tried to buck out at her. Perja swung out with the knife like a whip slicing free from the hood; she hopped out of the way of the buck and did a backwards hand spring over Mare-Do-Well’s attempt at getting her with the energy whip again.
Saffron was getting frustrated, this woman was impossible to get a solid hit on and she was already firing every single thing she had at the woman. None of the seven shots fired from her right shock wing hit their mark and the facility commander was on top of her within a moment. She attempted to dodge the shots and her readout on her shields suddenly went down to zero and looking at the HUD one of the shots had damaged the armor slightly. She no longer had any protection, she went onto her two rear hooves and engaged close up and personal as long range wasn’t going to cut it anymore.
While Saffron and Applejack continued to try and fight Perja, Rover was busy doing something in the kitchen and ducking a few shots from Perja’s remaining gun every now and then. Greta was waiting for an opportunity to unleash Viral’s mouth cannon on the Human. Even if Greta did shoot, she didn’t think her shots would even connect and she wasn’t about to attract attention to the fragile machine she was in control of that was her only connection to their friends in the field.
Saffron rolled out of the way of the gun fire and deflected the knife swing by popping one of her hoof blades to deflect it and then she tried to jab at Perja with it. It didn’t work out so well when the Human skipped backwards and launched a kicked straight to her chin that sent her flipping backwards and onto her belly with grunt.
If Saffron hadn’t been wearing armor, then that kick might have very well snapped her neck in two. The fact that it even caused her to involuntary flip backwards despite how heavy the armor should be said a lot about how strong Perja was. They were clearly getting their asses hoofed to them by one person and it was technically four to one with the four all being armed more heavily.
Saffron made the blade take the next few shots fired at her as she swung for Perja’s neck, all Perja did was smile and lean away from the blade and fired the gun still in her right hand rapidly raking the shots across Saffron’s armored form doing small amounts of damage as she leapt up and away from Saffron’s attempt to hit her with the other blade she popped from her armor.
Retracting the left blade and pointing her hoof at the human; Saffron fired a pinpoint puller tether at the center of Perja’s aerial form and reeled her in. Saffron pulled Perja back towards her and managed to damage the woman’s suit with a slice, but didn’t even draw blood as Perja had kicked off her chest in time knocking the armored Pony to the floor.
After landing Perja stalked forward firing her pistol at Saffron who popped the other blade again and shielded her armored head and chest. Applejack and Viral started to shoot at Perja, it didn’t stop the Human who continued to dodge their shots until she was upon Saffron kicking her protecting limbs away and stomping down on her chest. This pinned Saffron to the floor and dazed her, the foot also left an imprint in Saffron’s armor.
Perja continued to fire at a single point in the armor while dodging Greta and Applejack’s attempts at getting her off of Mare-Do-Well. After she figured she had damage the armor enough, Perja swiftly reversed the grip she had on her knife stabbed it downwards and Saffron’s weak struggling ceased when the knife dug all the way up to the hilt where her heart was.
“No, Mare-Do-Well!” Applejack soon had the woman upon her and she was pulling out one of her three remaining knives.
“Damn it… no…” It clearly horrified Greta when she watched as the armor became rather lifeless.
“Mare-Do-Well… was that her name. Oh I’m so sorry, but she seems to have a knife in her chest. Now, how could that have possibly gotten there?” Perja didn’t care and then she was moving for Applejack who frantically managed to fire off three rounds, the first two missed, but the third was a lucky shot that blew the other pistol out of Perja’s hand before she could reach Applejack. Once she did reach Applejack she punched the Pony across her face making her drop her rifle and go flying a few feet where she tried to get up from the jarring hit. “I’m sure your friend was very pretty under all that armor. So why don’t I do you favor and make you pretty as well? Let’s start with all this hair, why do you ponies have so much of it?”
Applejack was now sporting a swollen left eye and had a heel pressed into her back and she felt a tight yank on her mane, Greta started firing on Perja for all the good that was doing in getting the woman to relinquish her hold of Applejack’s mane. Now the Human was just toying with them as she dodged the energy cannon’s blasts in slow swaying motions, Greta didn’t fire too many as she didn’t want to hit Applejack.
“If this was all you got, then I should have just finished you all off sooner!” Perja simply crouched down and held a knife to Applejack’s neck while looking back at the fox. “So how about I take a little off the top, starting here?”
Before she could do anything more a sloshing sound was heard and Perja tried to dodge, tried to, because how does one dodge a sudden widespread wall of boiling hot liquid coming at you.
“I would prefer that you don’t!” Rover shouted out following the splashing sound and a blood curdling scream that had Applejack looking up at him. He was holding an empty grease basket that was used for frying food. She quickly got up and retrieved her rifle and moved over to the Diamond Dog before looking to the human screaming on the floor. The Diamond Dog simply commented on the situation. “I am hearing that some oils are good for the skin, yes? At least that’s what Boss Lady tells Rover, though I don’t think that oil is doing her any favors.”
“You bastards, when I get up from this I’m going to…!” Even if she was in agony Perja was still getting up and her eyes were wild with fury, her inflamed red skin was bubbling and her suit was damaged by being soaked with the boiling grease that had blindsided her. She pulled both her knives and was about to get up and drive them into the two, well she would have it weren’t for the metal chair that slammed across the back of her skull knocking her down. She turned her head slightly and saw a familiar if slightly smaller silhouette. “W-what, who… you… how did you…”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Saffron’s EVA suit had a small splash of breach gel around the chest, had she teleported out of the armor a second later…. needless to say it was a close call. The six inches of knife would have gone far enough to have actually been lethal. Silent teleportation was a very useful spell to have for a unicorn; the loud version attracted everyone’s attention far too easily.
Perja was already halfway to getting up when Applejack swiftly bucked her in the spine with all her strength making Perja’s legs go out from under her. She still tried again; the blow to the back of the skull had ruptured ability to control her body to a precise degree and her head was one of her greatest weaknesses. The sudden damage to the spine from a full powered buck was making it hard to stand up and she had slowed down drastically, all the damage and pain to her nervous system was quickly putting her out of commission. While she could shut off her pain receptors, there were a lot of problems with doing that. It was not knowing when you were dying from the strain you were putting your body through and there was a certain point where if you don’t stop, your entire nervous system would deteriorate to a point that you couldn’t recover from.
Saffron, not taking any chances, grabbed an entire table in her magic and swung it for the rising Perja’s head as hard as she could. It knocked the Human flat out and it might have even possibly killed her. At the moment Saffron didn’t care, even if her horn was being pushed roughly from using so much magic at once. She wanted to put Perja down and hard, she had clearly achieved that feat. Now she was rubbing at her chest where Perja had stomped on her.
“I suggest we make haste from the area, can you get back in your armor Mare-Do-Well? I really don’t want to leave it here.” The fox robot turned to the powered armor and watched as Saffron pulled the knife out of the chest of the highly damaged power armor. The knife had a bit of breach gel on it and Saffron unceremoniously dropped it off to the side.
“I can, just… just give me a moment to catch my breath. Oh my chest…” They were all battered from being knocked around and shot at, eventually with enough concentration Saffron teleported herself back into the armor and slowly got up. It was a bit stiffer in movement thanks to all the damage, but at least it was still workable in a similar vein to how Ember’s old armor was workable. “Okay, not doing that anymore… my head hurts, my chest hurts and I just want to finish this thing we’re doing here.”
“I think I have a broken wrist.” Added Rover in a dry tone, he was still holding the empty frying basket with his left paw and he dropped it off to the side like Saffron did with the knife.
Slowly the injured group gathered themselves and set off, leaving the crumpled form on the floor behind them.
-
A few minutes later a hand pressed against the floor and the other grabbed at the knife nearby. Slowly Perja stood up on wobbling legs and was back on her feet despite her recent spinal injury. She definitely wanted round two; she cracked her neck twice to realign her spine and reached up with a hand to rip away a solid mass of boiled, damaged and flaking flesh from her face to reveal the completely unblemished skin underneath.
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I think music from the Terminator would be fitting here. Our the t-1000 theme from T2.
Now I'm wondering how'd they do against Adam Jensen. Or J. C. Denton.
Huh, wait, if Perja was holding Applejack by the mane and holding a knife to her neck, and was then splashed all over with hot grease, also moving aside to try and dodge... How did none of the grease touch Applejack? ._.;
'Rover is thinking, can we at least we can nail the Tempest people?' - remove we can
'as she bounce between' - bounced
'Saffron firing off bother her energy guns built into the hooves of her armor in alternating shots' - firing off both of the energy guns built into the hooves of her armor
'stroll as she arms twisted and bent to fire and strange angles' - her arms
8396698
A very biological version of a terminator, no metal needed.
Depends if Jensen and Denton were doing a pacifist thing.
Humans have taller profiles than ponies, Rover didn't aim directly at Applejack and Perja, he aimed well above Applejack and Perja actually reflexively dodged backward while still be in the path of the hot fluids. It is to be implied that she actually dodged into the boiling grease upon releasing Applejack. Plus it was a small grease basket, he was wielding it one pawed and it would have caused too much of a splash but would cover enough of an area that she wouldn't have perfectly avoided it.