[center][b][u]Lost Haven The French Quarter 5426 Moore Blvd. Around 6:00 P.M.[/u][/b][/center] The warehouse stood tall, lights filtering through the upper stories filthy glass panes. These lights were aimed upwards, moving by some unseen force inside. If one were to watch carefully, you could see small, spiderlike silhouettes skittering rapidly and emerging from what looked like surgically cut holes in the glass, before rapidly spreading out to clamber on the roof, cling onto pier rails, or otherwise move onto the adjacent storage lockers and abandoned office complexes that surrounded the area. Moving towards the building itself, were what looked like child sized metal boxes with wheels slapped onto the bottom. These parked close to the warehouse, then their back hatches opened like an APC, and a multitude of spider drones clicked and clacked out onto the lowered back door, various alien organs, fingers, and other viceri duct taped tightly to their "backs". These seemed to make a point of being visible, of being observed, taking their time to crawl back through the same holes the other drones were crawling out. Two flood lights, which if the other groups that had been alive to see it would have said weren't there before, stood pointing outwards on the lower, jutting entrance building. The light barely revealed the forms of the last four unfortunates who had been tasked with coming here, contorted in painful repose, their skin sickly and jaundice yellow. The exploded heads of the first two were being pushed off the side of the dock, by a few of the box like drones simply ramming the bodies off the side of the dock until they slid down into the briney depths below. Perched on a rooftop a block and a half away, a single figure , laying flat on their belly and peering over the lip of the roof with a pair of binoculars, wathed the warehouse carefully. They were dressed in worn fatigues, with a radio hand-set with its own dedicated pocket and strap sewn into his jacket. "This is Whiskey-Two. Eyes on two casualties. AO is hot, robotic spiders Galen told us about." He subvocalized. "How do we want to do this? Over." A crackling voice replied. "Whiskey-One here. Normally I would say we just stay put, stake the place out, wait to see if anybody tries to sneak in groceries. But getting paid by the hour isn't the hottest take with bombers passing overhead so frequently. Over." "Whiskey-Three here," Another voice chimed in, "Looking at the blueprints Galen gave us, place is roughly four stories...has a single suspended office along the Eastern wall. Multiple inclined skylights, North and Southwards facing. Service entrace and loading dock in the Western extension. Already calculating nominal vantage through the skylights from the nearest superior rooftops, I'll be back with you all on that. Over." "Whiskey-One here. For the time being just cycle vantages and work out a good view of what you can, see if these drones have any kind of pattern to them. We'll complete a circuit and then see about getting eyes through the office and skylights. Out..." [hr][center][s]888888888888[/s][/center][hr] [center][img]https://fontmeme.com/permalink/200921/a0d9f0c951eb4c885b4ac93efc0f5799.png[/img][/center] [center][b][u]Not Too Far Away...[/u][/b][/center] Little Lo, once again trying to act as the voice of reason to Lo's still meat and synapse based emotional state, said calmly through the comms on Lo's laptop, "No, we can't just blow up the entire warehouse. You know how hard it was to establish this manufacturing line." Lo, agitated, walked around the room, sometimes stopping to carefully fold her clothes before shoving them into a transport drone before it wheeled off. She said, [color=d9094b]"We haven't seen anyone! Anyone! I'm telling you, it's ninjas."[/color] Little Lo sighed, "We're not in Shanghai anymore, Little Sister." [color=d9094b]"Turn of phrase. We were never in Shanghai."[/color] "We're not in the providence of the CCP. There aren't Ninjas in America." [color=d9094b]"Are you sure about that one?"[/color] "I...well, there is Ninja-man. I don't really count him as a ninja though." Lo threw up her arms, [color=d9094b]"See? They probably hired a Ninja-man!"[/color] Little Lo, who was watching a faint glassy glint she could just, swear, was coming from a rooftop a block away, said, "Ok look, you know what, we can rebuild. But you can't just keep running every single time someone finds our home. Also, if the authorities ever discover we blew up this warehouse, we're going to prison. Probably forever." Lo stopped near her laptop, withdrawing a small usb from her pants pocket and plugging it in. The screen flashed green, then red, before a big, bolded, and underlined series of words appeared on screen: Detonation in five minutes. She said, [color=d9094b]"Robots don't go to jail! The U.S justice system just hasn't prepared for the sudden providence of artificial intelligences. They'd just call you property and scrap you."[/color] Above, clinging to the dirty panel windows, and in various corners of the warehouse, was a rather impressive swarm of drones. Lo had called back almost everything she had and rigged her manufacturing line to blow. There were even drones underneath her feet, in the sewer network, to make sure this building sank into the depths of the Earth. Little Lo said, "Scrap? I really don't want to do this now." Lo plugged a pair of earbuds into her laptop which she was now carrying around like a waiter carrying an entree. She stuck one bud in her ear just so she could hear how she sounded, doing a pitch and vocal perfect impression of Hal9000, [color=d9094b]"Code 9 initiated. Assimiliation of meatforms into Codestack network. Prime directive: Kill all humans."[/color] She saved this recording and jacked it up completely, copying the lines and overlapping the audio, until it sounded like a child, a woman, and a man were saying the lines all at once through glitchy audio. She closed her laptop and held it under one arm. Little Lo said in what would sound like a pained tone if she could feel pain, "I'm not sure if they're going to, exactly, fall for that, but I have faith in myself." Lo grinned, [color=d9094b]"So do I! We're so alike, you and I."[/color] She tied a black bandana around her smirking mouth and paused at the back door, unfolding her laptop again, and saying, "Make the drones that aren't being used for demolitions to scatter out and play that audio. Just have them set to passive and freak everyone out, I'm sure there's some people hiding nearby who could help sell the story." She slowly, opened the backdoor, which opened towards the harbor. She could barely see anything, however, she didn't need to, exactly. Little Lo was directing her steps via a bud still coming from her underarm held laptop. "Ok, go left. There's a few storage buildings you can get lost in which, if anyones watching, wouldn't be the first place they'd pick for a stake out." Through her buds, she could hear, "Time until detonation: two minutes." Her drones began to scatter out, emitting "Code 9 initiated. Assimilation of meatforms into Codestack network. Prime directive: Kill all humans." Every ten seconds on the clock. Anyone they found who were either homeless or simply hiding away from the carnage near the middle of the city, found themselves being assaulted by spider drones, who while easily fended off, left them with wounds that would require hospitalization to properly deal with. After two minutes, the warehouse detonated, the blinding flare of a massive blue explosion first starting from the top of the building and moving downwards. Windows ruptured, aluminum walls bulged then ruptured open, sending shrapnel flying in every cardinal direction. The remains of the structure collapsed inward, then fell into the Earth. Bits of drone that had failed to detonate before their cpus were completely destroyed were sent flying outwards, disintegrating on impact with the brick walls of adjacent buildings. Lo, at about the exact time the warehouse exploded, drove from a opened storage locker on her CFMoto 650TK, and did her damn best to make some distance from this place. Looking up towards the carnage of crashing alien vessels, and some crashing capes, she wondered if she had made the right decision. [hr][center][s]888888888888[/s][/center][hr] [center][b][u]Southern Lost Haven Oubliette Safehouse The Next Day...[/u][/b][/center] Sitting on a black leather couch in a garishly-wallpapered room that would not have been out of place in a nightclub, a brutish golem of a man wearing a furred flight-suit with a misshapen jawline and what looked like a nail protruding from its underside thoughtfully nursed a drink as he examined a photograph in the other. The lighting was dim and musky, and generic techno remix thrummed in the background. [color=736665][sub]Th[/sub]is wa[sub]s[/sub] rea[sub]ll[/sub]y [sub]t[/sub]he be[sub]st[/sub] y[sub]ou[/sub] [sub]c[/sub]oul[sub]d[/sub] [sub]g[/sub]et?"[/color] The mercenary sitting in the fold-up chair across the matte-black coffee table from him shrugged sheepishly. "Sorry boss. Quite frankly it's probably pure luck we even got this much. From the looks of all the hardware they had to leave behind, they were probably hesitating about destroying it all - hence how one of us was even able to get close enough to take that. But like I said, it was basically down to chance." The man with the crooked jawline took a pull from his tumbler and then casually tossed the half-profile, distant shot of Router as she left the building across the surface of the coffee table. [color=736665]"I un[sub]d[/sub]er[sub]st[/sub]an[sub]d[/sub]. No[sub]t[/sub] mu[sub]ch[/sub] we [sub]c[/sub]an [sub]d[/sub]o wi[sub]th[/sub] [sub]th[/sub]is un[sub]l[/sub]ess we ge[sub]t[/sub] a me[sub]t[/sub]a [sub]th[/sub]at can wor[sub]k[/sub] wi[sub]th[/sub] pi[sub]ct[/sub]ures. [sub]T[/sub]al[sub]k[/sub] to [sub]G[/sub]alen, he'[sub]ll[/sub] ge[sub]t[/sub] y[sub]ou[/sub]r [sub]p[/sub]ay."[/color] The mercenary nodded gratefully before standing up and leaving the room. As he did, a long hand with elegant piano-fingers traced over the surface of the coffee table and neatly plucked the photograph up between a middle and index finger. The hand's owner, leaning over to pick the photograph up from besides the couch, leaned back against the wall as they examined it. [color=d9a779]"Oh yes. I'll be adding this one to my 'must haves.' Any objection if I have this one?"[/color] The man with the crooked jaw shrugged as he nursed the tumbler some more. [color=736665]"No[sub]t[/sub] rea[sub]ll[/sub]y a who[sub]l[/sub]e lo[sub]t[/sub] [sub]t[/sub]o i[sub][/sub]t. Eve[sub]n[/sub] i[sub]f[/sub] we [sub]k[/sub]new [sub]wh[/sub]o [sub]sh[/sub]e wa[sub]s[/sub], i[sub]t[/sub]'s no[sub]t[/sub] wor[sub]th[/sub] [sub]th[/sub]e e[sub]ff[/sub]or[sub]t[/sub] [sub]t[/sub]o [sub]p[/sub]u[sub]t[/sub] any[sub]th[/sub]in' ou[sub]t[/sub] on [sub]h[/sub]er. [sub]F[/sub]ee[sub]l[/sub] [sub]f[/sub]ree."[/color] [color=d9a779]"Somebody to save for a rainy day then..."[/color] The other figure whispered in a breathy voice. [color=d9a779]"Another pretty little thing to be mine some day..."[/color] The man with the crooked jaw rolled his eyes ever-so-faintly. [color=736665]"[sub]Ch[/sub]an[sub]c[/sub]es a[sub]r[/sub]e [sub]w[/sub]e're [sub]n[/sub]e[sub]v[/sub]er e[sub]v[/sub]en [sub]g[/sub]o[sub]nn[/sub]a [sub]h[/sub]ea[sub]r[/sub] [sub]f[/sub]ro[sub]m[/sub] [sub]h[/sub]er a[sub]g[/sub]ai[sub]n[/sub], [sub]T[/sub]ri[sub]b[/sub]a[sub]l[/sub]."[/color] [color=d9a779]"Oh no, I have the most lucious feeling about this one."[/color] The other man said as he tucked the photo into the inner pocket of his coat. [color=d9a779]"It's [i]fate.[/i]"[/color] [color=736665]"[sub]Y[/sub]ou [sub]s[/sub]ay [sub]th[/sub]a[sub]t[/sub] a[sub]b[/sub]ou[sub]t[/sub] e[sub]v[/sub]eryo[sub]n[/sub]e [sub]y[/sub]ou [sub]f[/sub]a[sub]n[/sub]cy [sub]y[/sub]ou [sub]w[/sub]eir[sub]d[/sub]o."[/color] The crooked-jawed man snorted right before throwing back the tumbler and draining the rest of it.