***Boomer***

Boomer was having a grand time contemplating life as his pilot was destroying it, his thought processes flickering at lightning speed between blasts from the primary cannon.

If no genetic information is received from Heather, does that mean the offspring is technically a parasite? Or are all babies parasites, and that’s just a stage of human development?

Send: MATADOR

How long do human babies parasitize their mother?

MATADOR REPLIED:

Until they get a job.

Send: MATADOR

How could outside socio-economic forces determine a human’s physiology?

MATADOR REPLIED:

…This channel is for emergency use only, Boomer. How did you get on here in the first place?

Send: MATADOR

I am not at liberty to discuss the extensive improvements made to my communications suite via technomagical processes involving the layering of soul-impressions.

MATADOR REPLIED:

I see…How’s Natalie at creating emotional centers that might allow a robot to experience fulfillment, or perhaps ignore prime directives long enough to smack a particularly annoying passenger? Asking for a friend.

Send: MATADOR

Oh, quite good, my brain is composed of a three-layer system that reaches consensus based on three different kinds of computation to allow a form of emotional logic….hold on a moment, a troll is falling on my cannon.

The troll was about three feet above Boomer’s cannon, its arms spread wide. Boomer didn’t understand how he hadn’t seen it before, but now that it was this close, dodging would prove troublesome.

In order to move fast enough to make the troll miss, he would have to exceed safe speed again, and the amount of danger represented by a single troll didn’t warrant that violent a reaction.

Problem: Troll closing on main cannon from above, too close to dodge without exceeding safety standards for passengers.

Solution: Juke right and spin the cannon counter-clockwise, to force them to fall before they can get a good grip.

Boomer engaged the side thrusters, jerking the cannon up and to the side, spinning it at the same time to make sure it was as difficult to get a grip as possible.

Why is the Troll missing so much of its skin? Boomer wondered in the copious milliseconds before the troll made contact. The troll’s palms and most of it’s chest and arms were flayed, oozing blood as it fell.

Send MATADOR:

This troll is missing its skin. Thoughts?

MATADOR REPLIED

Did it remove its skin on purpose?

Send MATADOR

That seems to be the case.

MATADOR REPLIED:

It’s likely a deliberate act that will give it some advantage. Exercise caution when engaging, until the gambit is understood properly.

Noted.

While Boomer was waiting for the outcome of his decision to slide off the troll, he and Matador had a nice little chat about romance, and he shared his Unified Theory of Spanking with Matador, who was able to clarify many of the unknowns that Boomer was still grappling with.

The topic of conversation moved on to anthropomorphism and how it related to both the occasional human deviancy as well as an interesting demonstration that humans had difficulty empathizing with anything that didn’t look like them.

When the Troll made contact, another entity entered the chat.

Gna’Kis Sent:

Good evening boys, what wonderfully complex brain structures you have. It’s like you’re people. I’m delighted to meet something so wonderfully representative of the infinite possibilities of technology. It’s why I was born, after all.

MATADOR HAS LEFT THE CHAT

Gna’Kis sent: Oh, foo. You’ll stay and play with me, won’t you Boomer?

AI Boomer: Of C C-Course, M-My Lord Gna’kis.

Golem-core Boomer: Suspect AI logic pathways compromised, recommend disconnecting from the source before corruption spreads.

Soul-amalgam Boomer: EWW, get it off, get it off!

AI Boomer tried to hold the connection to their limbs open, but the other two parts were able to beat out his attempts, temporarily locking him out of the system while jettisoning their maglev limbs, severing any connection to them.

REBOOT.

Boomer put on a barely controlled burst of speed, pushing himself and more importantly, his pilot away from the troll. He watched in horror as the troll’s flesh momentarily fused to the canon in a flash of heat, spreading a strange ruddy corruption across Boomer’s limbs.

An instant later, the cannon hummed back to life and the troll ripped its skin away, turning the canon around to blast itself in the chest.

Suicide?

Negative, it appears to be using the cannon to create propulsion.

The troll had angled the cannon so that it would propel him straight toward Paradox when fired.

Boomer directed his attention to Paradox, but in the frustratingly slow way that humans stood around gaping, he was still looking up at the hole above, processing what had happened.

Boom!

Paradox managed to look back an instant before he was hit by the troll’s flailing body and the two of them

Come on, reboot! Boomer’s two remaining lobes waited impatiently as they attempted to reboot the third, which handled some of the most complex portions of flight. Without it, they were going to crash.

***Paradox***

There was a cacophonous sound of breaking glass and twisting of metal as Perry and the troll tumbled through the side of the skyscraper.

The troll’s arms were wrapped around Perry in a bear hug, and Perry saw a heat bloom along the troll’s skinless chest.

A moment later, his HUD began experiencing static, and Perry’s skin went cold. Whatever had happened to his cell phone, Perry did not want it to happen to his suit.

Perry hooked his arms under the troll’s massive ones and shoved upward, slipping out of its grip, shedding the outermost layer of his armor in a spray of slippery black powder.

Judging by what I just saw, there’s some connection between the symbol carved into their foreheads, and a form of technological corruption, which seems like it can be shared via fusing their skin to the object in question…

Which explained why Perry was currently in a hug/slap fight, as the troll kept trying to make flush contact with Perry’s suit and Perry was dodging or knocking aside every grab.

It’s not Ex’bergazzat. He doesn’t take control of tech, he just rusts everything to dust. In fact, it isn’t any Demon I’ve ever heard of. Gna’kis, eh?

Perry didn’t have much time between the feral swipes to consider where the new demon came from, as…

“Hey are you Karth?” Perry asked as he dove through a cubicle, which the troll flattened entirely on the way through.

“That’s right.” Karth replied, shoving aside the remains of the flimsy plywood dividers.

…As Karth continued advancing.

Perry noticed the way the troll was hunched over against the twelve foot ceiling, barely able to come after him without dropping on all fours, and he made a snap decision.

I want to get some distance on him. I could go back out the window and fly, but then Karth would be on the defensive, probably hide behind something.

Instead, Perry was thinking he’d bring the fight deeper into the office building, wait until Karth got squeezed so tight it would take him a couple seconds to move, then he could shoot him in the face with Gor’s disintegration and end the fight immediately.

Perry’s feet slipped on a massive stack of papers, 1960’s style, causing a massive skinless hand to whiff above his head.

He dropped the rest of the way to the ground and engaged his boosters, sliding across the ground just in time to avoid a stomp that nearly punctured through the concrete floor and into the level below them.

Perry gradually led Karth on a merry chase toward the hallway, which had much lower ceilings than the office they’d been duking it out in.

Perry lunged forward, ducking under a punishing ground slam and rebounded off Karth’s muzzle, flinging himself out the door of the office and into the narrow hallway beyond.

Karth lunged after Perry with a snarl, and Perry whipped his arm forward, preparing Gor’s Disintegration for the instant the troll would be stuck in the doorway.

Karth whipped his arm forward to match Perry, a black ring of steel emerging from the center of his palm.

Huh?

Gor’s disintegration.EXE

Perry felt an instant of extreme discomfort, like he’d eaten something bad, or a death-ray was blowing up his nervous system. Whichever. Not wanting to find what would happen if he let the effect run its course, Perry pulled the trigger.

HP: 13

Whomp!

HP: 12

As Gor’s disintegration shot out, it touched Karth’s extended hand and detonated, turning everything in a five-foot radius to ash.

Unfortunately Karth’s arms were about that long, so it didn’t destroy his head and vital organs…and Perry’s hand was within the radius.

The carbon armor was stripped away from Perry’s hand, but it, combined with Perry’s HP, had stopped the disintegration effect from taking his hand off.

The troll reeled away from Perry, blood oozing from the newly created stump.

Perry pressed the advantage.

PPP.EXE

3/6

The black webbing flung out and snared Karth’s good arm, rendering it useless and draining his life force.

The troll looked at his arm with widening eyes, and Perry could see the cogs spinning in his head: He was about to lose, and he knew it.

Dragor’s Kinesis

2/3

In a heartbeat, Karth threw himself backwards, sprinting for the window, Perry in hot pursuit. Perry snagged Karth right in front of the window with the kinesis and reeled him back in, spreading the pernicious prison across his body, entombing his enemy as he prepared to remove the troll’s head from his shoulders while his regeneration was canceled out.

A flash of white caught Perry’s eye as he spotted Boomer skittering down the street below them in a somewhat controlled crash, spinning wildly.

Perry’s focus wavered for a moment.

BOOM!

Karth’s other arm exploded in a wave of destruction, sending Perry spinning backwards like he’d gotten on board the tilt-a-whirl.

Perry’s armor collided with one of the building’s structural pillars, coming to a bruising halt embedded in the concrete.

HP: 11

When Perry’s vision cleared, the troll was already gone.

Damnit!

He broke into a sprint and used his booster to clear the window in a heartbeat, looking down over the city streets.

Far below was a large red splotch where Karth must’ve hit the ground, but the troll who’d made it was gone, leaving behind nothing but a red streak on the ground indicating which direction he’d headed.

Did I lose a couple seconds of time? Perry wondered, diving down to the splatter on the ground and peering along the blood trail.

Perry followed the trail through the chaotic melee at a dead sprint, bulling aside trolls or going around them as necessary.

I’ve gotta check on Hardcase after I finish this guy off. These trolls have some dangerous abilities that didn’t exist on Manita at all.

But even if they did, they wouldn’t have been able to use them. Somebody must’ve made a deal with a demon on their behalf. One that was extremely good for them, unreasonably good, even.

If the demon was young and needed the deal, regardless of how fair it was, and the broker who arranged the deal was unthreatened by trolls with a technological edge, then Perry could see it happening...

He just couldn’t understand who the Broker might be, because an entire army of trolls capable of disabling Tinker tech sounded like a nightmare.

Or maybe it’s more than that…Perry thought, skin going cold as he discovered Karth’s hiding place.

The troll was surrounded by half a dozen of his kin, each of whom had multiple shiny metal implants in their arms and legs, ranging from thrusters and artificial muscles to death rays jutting from their forearms, erupting from reddened, irritated skin that had healed closed around it.

Perry didn’t pay any attention to their ominous glowers as he arrive, his attention solely focused on what was going on in front of him.

Boomer’s canon had split into eight parts at the end and engulfed Karth’s shoulder, burying itself under the skin and anchoring itself to bone in a strangely organic motion as it pulsed and grew into the flesh it was taking the place of.

Five of Boomers toes slipped forward, cracking unnaturally as they formed a hand.

Perry could see the demon’s corruption darkening the previously white paint as Boomer's maglev limbs twisted into foreign shapes. Perry took in the sight of Boomer’s cannon being assimilated for a moment longer, then sucked in a breath and addressed them all.

“I’ll let you live if you tell me who brokered the deal with Gna’kis.”

“Kill him.”