****Hardcase****

Oh my god, I was sitting on his lap, Natalie thought, burying her face in her hands as the water trickled past her ears, carrying the sweat away with it.

“Something wrong?” Wraith asked from the other side of the shower room.

“Iwasinhislap,” Natalie muttered into her palms.

“Huh?” Wraith cocked her head, her normally fluffy golden hair darkened and weighed down over her shoulders by the water.

“I was sitting in his lap!” Natalie said, her voice almost breaking.

“Yeah, I saw that. I figured you guys were zoned out on nerd-tech.”

“Yeah, but…but. But.”

“But?”

“But my mom said it’s not what nice girls do!”

“ Yeah, well, your mom kinda sounds like a cu-“

Wraith was interrupted by a girlish shriek emanating from the outside.

“He better be in danger,” Wraith muttered, breaking into a sprint for the entrance.

Natalie, not entirely sure what was going on, ran after her, skidding to a halt on the damp tiled floor to throw on one of Perry’s shirts that she’d found folded in the locker.

When she sprinted out into the gym, Paradox was taking shelter behind the steel punching bag, covering his boy parts with a buzzsaw.

“LCC, remove foreign robots!” Paradox shouted.

He glanced furtively around the steel tube. Hardcase followed his gaze, spotting a metallic scorpion about the size of a large dog, sporting a gatling gun and a single buzzsaw forelimb. Judging by the shadows on the wall…there were more.

“Why isn’t it working!?” Wraith shouted.

“The LCC can’t reach the bathroom easily!”

“It built the bathroom, didn’t it?” Wraith demanded, rolling out of the way as the gatling gun began firing a strangely quiet volley of metal projectiles.

I wonder if it’s magnetic propulsion that makes them so quiet.

“I actually made a special frame to carve out the shower rooms, then took it out once it was done. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to walk through the gym without running into invisible machines.”

“Great thinking!” Wraith shouted.

“Hey, I wasn’t expecting a security breach to come from the showers!” Paradox shouted back as the gatling gun scanned the room, turning towards Natalie.

“Hardcase, get to your mechsuit!”

Natalie nodded and screwed up her courage before running toward the danger. Retreating back into the women’s shower room would cut line of sight and keep her safe for a short time, but it wouldn’t help anyone.

She wanted to help people.

Unfortunately running fast was not high up on her list of skills.

***Perry***

Dangit, Perry thought as Hardcase began running, the killbot able to track her easily.

The dozens behind it as well.

Perry hauled back and threw the killbot’s purloined buzzsaw into its face before sprinting over, picking up the slowpoke, and hauling ass towards the lab.

HP:4

HP:3

HP:2

HP:1

Perry caught a few bullets as the strangely silent gatling guns tracked him across the gym. He made sure to keep himself between the guns and Hardcase, who, among the three of them, was exceptionally vulnerable to getting shot.

“Where are you going!?” Heather demanded, clinging to the ceiling where the killbots had a hard time seeing her.

“Somewhere the LCC CAN reach!” Perry shouted back towards the gym as he barreled out the door.

There was no need to stay in the gym and fight a losing battle when they could get suited up at their leisure in the main lab with LCC watching their backs.

Heather followed them out of the gym, crawling along the ceiling like a spider before swinging off to the left, dodging a burst of silent gunfire.

“You think those things are magnetic?” Perry asked the tiny tinker in his arms.

“I was thinking the same thing, but the electromagnets would have to be-“

“In the gatling tubes!” they both said at once.

“So like, is it Tinker-tech level elecromagnets in the tubes, or is the propulsion just some other form?”

“I think if someone managed to make nano-magnetics, they could do it.” Hardcase said with a shrug.

“Yeah, it doesn’t sound like air pressure. There’d be more of a ‘fwomp’ sound.”

“Dorks!” Heather shouted at them from the locker where she had oozed into her hyperweave in a heartbeat. “Stop geeking out and get with the smashing!”

She led by example, jumping back to where the LCC was shoving the killbots back into the gym over and over again, landing on one of the robots, her arms turned into massive scythes.

“Save the tail parts!” Perry shouted, hustling Hardcase over to her Mech and giving her a boost.

“We should save the tail parts, right?” He asked.

“Ideally we should have enough scrap to reassemble a complete one, given how many of them there were.” Hardcase said, reaching up to grab the roof of the cockpit and draw it down.

“Sweet.”

An instant later, her mechsuit whined to life.

“Wraith, give me some space!” Hardcase said, lumbering forward, her own gatling gun spinning up.

Perry turned away, assaulted by the deafening sound of hot lead and shattering killbots while he ran for his own suit.

I really do have to give dad props for the HP system. It’s saved my life…what three times, already? Five?

It was very handy against sudden attacks that he had no method of avoiding. Today being a case in point.

Perry pulled the chestplate down over him and launched into action.

Hardcase’s mechsuit was gridlocked at the entrance to the gym, unloading a seemingly endless hail of gunfire that trashed dozens of the killbots and forced even more backwards into the men’s showers.

Perry broke into a sprint and slid under the mechsuit, entering the gym, where Heather was waiting on the ceiling for the gunfire to stop.

Seeing Perry enter, Hardcase shut off the gatling, allowing Paradox and Wraith to charge forward into the stream of killbots, throwing them up as they ran like ocean spray.

“So, you tunneled into someone else’s lair! That’s kinda rude don’t you think!?” Heather asked.

“They don’t exactly put them on the city blueprints!” Perry retorted, steel slugs bouncing off his armor as he smashed through the infestation.

Blades.EXE (5)

These killbots were just the right size and durability to take out with his more fuel-efficient finger-length blades.

The blades shot out and punctured machine after machine in a rapid staccato.

Paradox and Wraith left a trail of destruction behind them as they forced the killbots back to the hole in the wall.

“As you can see, they tunneled over to me.” Perry said, motioning to the pitch-black hole in the wall disgorging mechanical monsters.

“Can you seal that up!?” Heather asked.

Perry’s first thought was to go back to the lab and engineer some kind of foaming glue, then he nearly smacked himself on the head.

I made a floating armament for exactly this sort of situation.

Blanket.EXE.

A large blanket of connected metal panels manifested in front of him, and Perry shoved it up against the hole.

“I knew this would come in handy,” Perry said as he and Heather poked the creature’s various limbs back underneath the blanket, settling it flush against the wall.

Ting! Ting! Ting! ZZZZ! The killbot’s attacks from the opposite side made the blanket ring, but it didn’t deform.

“How long is it gonna last?” Heather asked, panting as she took a cautious step back.

“I’ve actually had to take the paint off so it doesn’t get on my bed when I go to sleep recently, sooo…” Perry shrugged. Between refining his technique, and advancing his Attunement, the Floating Armament duration had grown by leaps and bounds.

“So we got some time.” Heather finished.

“Guys, come take a look at this!” Hardcase shouted from the gym’s entrance.

Perry and Heather glanced at each other then headed for the gym, where Hardcase was leaning out of her open cockpit, waving at them.

As they approached, Hardcase leaned down and handed them her phone.

“I did an image search for killbots of that design, and I found this guy,” She said.

It was an article with a picture of a guy with a bald head, goggles, and big, high-tech bracers on his arms. He was riding a veritable wave of the scorpion killbots.

Underneath it described how he’d been killed in battle with a cowl.

“It says here Magneton has been…dead for three years.” Heather said, reading over Perry’s shoulder.

“Magneton, master of magnetism.” Perry read. “Explains why his robots shoot like that.”

“I was thinking the same thing!” Hardcase said. “I can’t wait to get some samples of those-“

“Guys!” Heather interrupted them. “You do realize this means all the loot his lair is finders-keepers, right?”

Perry frowned for a moment.

“Taking over another tinker’s lair is extremely dangerous for everyone except maybe an AI tinker who can reprogram the entire base without setting foot in it.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Death traps.” Perry said with a shrug.

“Pff, Tinkers aren’t that bad, who do you know who had death traps?” Heather said.

“What do you think the LCC is?” Perry asked, brow raised.

“My death-traps almost cut off my dad’s head when he wandered into my lab.” Hardcase explained. “I forgot to add his biometrics since he never came in before.”

Heather blinked, glancing between the two of them.

“Are you guys serious?”

“Death-traps have a long and noble history among Tinkers.” Perry said solemnly.

“We also don’t like people stealing our tech,” Hardcase said, to which Perry nodded enthusiastically.

“I don’t know if I’m ever gonna understand Tinkers,” Heather said, shaking her head.

“Okay, so my suit is largely non-ferrous, and this guy seemed to have a stick up his butt about using magnetism. I figure if I go in first, that’ll be the best way to sound the place for traps.

“Is your suit EMP immune?” Hardcase asked.

“I don’t…know,” Perry said “It never came up. I imagine it’s resistant by default because of my powers, but it wasn’t designed to be shielded.” Perry pulled out his phone while Hardcase did her own research.

“As long as your external armor can’t feed a current into your circuits,” Hardcase said, “You should do pretty well.”

“I don’t thing it can, but worst case, I’ll pull myself back inside with the blades.”

“I thought you guys just said it was super dangerous,” Heather said.

“Yeah, but…” Perry and Hardcase glanced at each other. “As much as Tinkers hate getting their tech stolen…”

“We love stealing it from other Tinkers.” Hardcase finished.

“I mean, think of that loot,” Perry said. “I could finish my order for Locust just by stripping the lair down.”

“You’re making stuff for Locust!?” Hardcase gasped. “She’s a cowl!”

“And a legitimate businesswoman.” Perry said. “You remember that ‘coup’ we ‘stopped’?”

“Oh yeah, that was disappointing.” Hardcase deflated. “Well, dibs on the Magnitech.”

“There’s gonna be plenty for everyone, you can’t have dibs…this is my lair!” Perry said.

Hardcase, seemingly channeling a bit of Heather’s attitude, stuck out her tongue.

“I really hate to be the responsible one, but how are you going to guarantee that one of those death traps doesn’t actually kill you? There’s no guarantee it’ll only be magnets, right?” Heather asked.

Perry opened his mouth, paused.

“I’ve got an idea.”

It took Perry half an hour to rig up a magical remote control for his suit. It was essentially creating a floating armament that could interface with a controller he made.

Then Perry could follow cautiously behind, using his empty suit like a ten-foot pole in D&D.

Just to play it safe, Perry put the controller in one of the blank suits. He didn’t want to lose his magitech again.

About forty-five minutes later, Perry was standing in his armor beside a duplicate suit, ready to jump into the hole in the shower wall.

The bots on the other side seemed to have calmed down, and had deactivated their intruder-murdering programming.

“Ready?” Heather asked, her arm bulging and ready to shove killbots back into the hole.

Perry nodded.

“Go.”

Perry lifted the blanket and dove into the hole behind his trap-triggering suit.

Perry and his ten-foot pole landed nearly simultaneously and unleashed sudden death on the loitering killbots before they were able to reactivate.

Perry scanned his surroundings.

He was in dim hallway, the only light coming from behind him.

The hall was filled with killbots whirring to life.

Something struck him as odd, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Perry unleashed Dregor’s Flacidity on the assembled killbots while his empty suit pressed forward, smashing the softened killbots.

Did he have an automatic factory, or just a ton of these little buttheads? Perry thought as they smashed through the opposition, with little to no resistance.

The death-trap sprung hard and fast. As is tradition.

Boom!

HP:0

Perry didn’t even perceive the two sides of the hallway smashing into each other.

One instant he and his ten foot pole were pushing into the hall, and the next, Perry was discombobulated, his empty suit was a pancake, his own suit was crumbling off of him, and there was a Perry-shaped divot in the right-hand wall.

Crap, crap, crap!

Perry immediately started backpedaling towards the hole in the wall as a series of lasers appeared at the end of the hall and began whipping forward at exponentially increasing speed.

Thinking fast, Perry called the blanket towards him through the hole and managed to wrap it around himself, tucked into the fetal position.

The metal blanket became griddle-hot as Perry used it to throw himself back through the hole.

Perry tumbled back into the shower room, his skin scalded, his hair smoking.

INTRUDER INTRUDER

Perry flung the blanket back up against the wall as the killbots reactivated.

Heather reached over to a shower above where Perry lay panting. She turned on the cold water, dousing his smouldering hair and burns.

“That’s what was off about the hall,” Perry snapped his fingers as ice-cold water soothed his skin.

“What’s that?” Heather asked.

“It didn’t have any rooms connected to it. Logically if I connected to another person’s lair it wouldn’t be a hallway, it would be one of the rooms sticking out from the hallway. That whole hall was a death trap.”

“Why would a cape have an entire hall dedicated to being a death trap?” Heather asked.

“I can think of two reasons,” Perry said as he climbed to his feet. “Either his lair can rearrange itself to repel intruders – super cool – or…”

“Or he was a giant dick,” Heather supplied.

“I think we should come back to this tomorrow,” Perry said. “My HP needs to come back.”

“How did it go you guys?” Hardcase asked, peeking into the shower room.

Perry couldn’t help but chuckle at the shirt she was wearing that hung down to her knees.

^

Seating for two

v

“Did you bring that shirt?” Perry asked.

“I thought it was yours?” Hardcase said, glancing down and reading the shirt for the first time, her eyes gradually widening in horror.

“I didn’t buy that one.” Perry shook his head. “I had Sophie stock the lockers, but…I definitely didn’t buy that one.”

“Sure you didn’t. You know you’re naked again, right?” Heather asked, handing him a towel.