mrblah Wrote:"Naturally, my dear. As you've said; with such dangerous men about... I can't let young beauties such as yourselves walk alone and vulnerable. I'll accompany you both for however long we'll remain on this ship." Said Mattia, with a smile.
[Companion acquired! Mattia Romano!]"And you are quite right, Raelia. In fact, I
haven't danced with Aesha." With a surprised tone, he replied to Raelia's strange assertion, apparently not at all bothered by the girl's random thought. Clearly they were on the same wavelength, as Mattia swiftly turned back to Aesha with a winning smile. "Dearest Aesha, wouldn't you care to help me rectify this problem? I'm sure we have enough time for just one more dance. Here, I'll put on the Fran -"
"Certainly, User #240398." The sound of VI's voice interrupted Mattia. Someone must have messed with her volume settings, because she was way louder than normal. "There are some dangerous people at the leftmost exit, armed with weapons and charged with the intent to do harm. I believe they are preparing to suddenly accost you three now. Does this match your criteria of 'bad people'?"
... The doors were then kicked open at that moment, with a group of 5 behind one lone and
vaguely off-putting woman. Her face was completely and totally impassive... until a small and pretty
but creepy smile blossomed on her face. "So this is where you are... and you have friends? Hm hm... okay. I'm fine with that. It's more fun with more people." The woman licked her lips, then snapped her fingers, calling for her men behind her to move into the room. They spread out on either side of her, with their hands in their suit jackets, all in unison. How professional.
"Ah... what awful timing." Mattia mumbled. "I do believe we have some trouble on our hands. Raelia, dearest, please do bring me my weapon? I'm afraid we'll have to get rough with our new guests." He was rolling up his sleeves, revealing his surprisingly muscled forearms as Mattia glared at the men and the women. If he recognized her, he said nothing to suggest so. But just before anymore can happen; another woman's voice played over the intercoms. "Hey assholes! Shut up and listen!"
"... Let's just ignore that one for now and continue. Raelia, if you would?"
_____________________________________________________________________________________________Raelia had just finished using her foot to gently kick Mattia's gun across the floor, to rest at his feet, when suddenly the enemies that VI had warned them about burst into the room. Raelia immediately slide into position behind the table and kicked the leg out from under it, to form a shield. She then shouted over to Mattia and Aesha the most profound thing she could think of "Take cover!"
In response to Raelia's shout and receiving his weapon, Mattia simply picked it up, followed her example of kicking over the table he and Aesha sat at, and hid behind it. He, of course, left enough space for Aesha. "My, the after party's a little early, aren't they? What say you ladies to showing them the door they so rudely burst through?"
Aesha froze up for a second, completely put off guard, but Raelia's shout and Mattia's words brought her back to reality, and she quickly ran to the nearest table, kicking it over and taking cover behind it as well, thinking that being besides Mattia will just make them both more vulnerable. "F-Fine with m-me"
The gangsters flooded into the rooms and took up positions by the door along the wall, all readying their weapons and waiting for the 'go' from their leader. Said leader, the masked woman, walked up to the center of them and raised her hand lazily. "Please try your best to make this entertaining. Live as long as you can~" And with that, she threw her arm down, and a barrage of bullets began shooting up everything by the positions of the Romanos.
Raelia waited for one of the enemies to start reloading and hefted Mister Thunder, firing a shot at the head of the closest grunt, shouting "Mister Thunder says BOOM!", the shot rips through his shoulder, nearly ripping his entire arm off, then she ducks back behind the table and whispers to the Butler that he should teach the enemies how to dance, however, the Butler starts downloading instructions instead of doing anything helpful.
Aesha rubs her temples, trying to think of a plan to get out of this mess, she takes a moment to look over the table and at the ceiling and walls. There wasn't anything useful on the walls, just... Wall, but the ceiling had multiple chandeliers on it. Ducking back into cover, she turned towards Mattia. "Hey Mattia, You see that chandelier over in the corner? I'm gonna try to shoot it down, if I manage to do it, shoot a rocket at the wall next to it, that should send shards of glass flying at high speed into the enemy. However, it's going to be a hard shot for me, so don't get to trigger happy." She smirked at Mattia, and once he confirmed his cooperativeness, she would quickly pop out and aim for the chandelier. She had to do it very quickly however, and it wasn't like she was a great shot in the first place, so while she got close to hitting her mark, it was no cigar. "Dammit!" She cursed at herself and jumped back down. "Sorry, I tried."
"No no, it's more than fine, my dear." Mattia responded, giving a relaxed smile to Aesha. He apparently didn't register the gunfire coming from across the room. He waited for another lull in the grunt's offense, and when the opportunity was presented, Mattia poked himself out of his cover immediately and fired a rocket straight down the line, headed towards the masked woman. His rocket would fly past her as she spun around it, giving a twirl and laughing playfully. It could have been elegant. "Hm. I do believe most people can't dodge rockets, but -" Mattia had to duck again as more bullets went flying down the room.
The Alfonsi gangsters began moving closer to their group, firing more and more bullets as some of them focused entirely on Aesha's position, destroying her cover. She was able to clumsily fumble out of the way of the bullets raining down on her position, however.
Raelia whispers something which nobody can hear to the Butler, to which the Butler responds by grabbing onto Raelia's shirt, ignoring her hoodie. She fights with it briefly, and manages to knock it off of her, but not before it rips her shirt, exposing her lilac and black striped bra. She starts to frown, as she liked that shirt, however, she sees the enemies break apart Aesha's cover, and gets upset over that instead.
She yells at the enemy as she pops up and fires Mister Thunder at the grunt who nearly lost their arm "HEY, YOU SHOULD SPLIT!" her shot rips through the grunt's chest, spraying a fountain of blood over the wall and table behind him, after which his lifeless body drops to the floor in a heap.
Aesha yelps as her cover gets destroyed, and she starts flailing around wildly as her position got shot up. She got hit once, but given the amount of lead in the air, it was practically a miracle that was all. She quickly grabbed two chair's and brought them together, making a makeshift barrier. She looked over to Raelia and yelled at her "R-Raelia! This is no t-time to try and have some f-f-fun with the robot b-butlers!" Growling in frustration, she turned to the nearest butler to her. "H-ey! C-c-can't you see th-there are t-terrorists smashing this p-place up-p? Do s-something about it to help us d-defend ourselves!" Having demanded action from the butlers, she breaks cover for a moment to fire at one of those grunts, but once again, she proved her aim was bad. "F-fuck! T-this isn't my f-forte guys!"
The robot butlers all stopped their unlawful assault against Raelia as they received new information. They stalled, taking a minute to process whatever the hell they were... then they all simultaneously beeped. "CopyCops notified. The proper authorities shall be here shortly. Please remain calm as we handle the threat." Slowly, the hovering robots all began moving towards the gangsters... or more specifically; they began to move to the masked woman. She seemed completely unconcerned, and was sitting on a table watching the fight.
But not for long. Mattia popped up out of his cover again and fired another rocket down the line, aimed towards a grunt next to the woman. The obvious result was very little being left of the man, and the masked woman got caught in the explosion. She yelped out in pain, falling off her table and glaring at... or at least, she probably was? Hard to tell with the mask. "Rude... I'm just trying to take a break, so I'd appreciate it if you stopped throwing rockets at me!" She plopped herself back on her table, sulking like a child.
Raelia lifts her table and stands up, crouching so she can stay behind it as she moves, and sets it back down when she's closer to the enemy.
While the woman seemed to be distracted, by the exploding grunt, Raelia fired at the woman, this time without shouting, as the previous shouts were to force the enemies to assume Raelia would shout every time she was aiming and wouldn't expect her to fire a shout without doing so. This strategy, however, fails as the woman simply turns slightly so the perfect head-shot misses completely. Raelia is briefly stunned, however, quickly remembers that she should get back down behind the table. Slightly upset that she's the only person with ripped clothes, Raelia yells something to the Butler nearest to the mystery woman, with a mischievous expression on her face.
In her indignant anger, the masked woman ordered her grunts to focus fire on Mattia. They do as commanded, tearing his improvised cover apart and getting a few shots into his custom shield. He laughed a bit. "Oh, how scary the anger of a woman is... don't feel to bad, dear! I'm just doing my job!" The man rolled to the side to get out of harm's way, moving to get behind another cover.
Meanwhile; one of the robot butlers had gotten to the smiling masked woman. "Hello~" She greeted, not at all aware of the orders the butler received. "Are you here to offer me tea - wagh!" She was suddenly accosted by the robot, pinning her to the table she was sitting on. It tried to carry out its orders and grabbed hold of the girl's black dress, before a mass of lead punctured through its chest, ending it forever. The broken machine was then tossed to the side, and a fuming masked woman sat back up. "That was a mean prank. I'd rather like to take off my clothes on my own, rather than have them ripped off!"
Aesha's gun was out of reach, meaning she needed to get closer. What a pain. Grabbing a chair, she went behind the nearest robot butler and used him as a shield, plopping the chair down as well to duck behind, she then took a few tentative potshots at one of the grunts, and missed of course.
Mattia pops up again, trying to grab hold of one of the robot butlers on their way to the masked woman to hold it in place for use as cover. Unfortunately, the robot was simply too strong, and continued to jog over to the girl. Without any cover, he simply aimed and fired another quick rocket at one of the remaining grunts. Point blank explosions are still really deadly, so the guy's kinda not alive. His friend next to him also got caught in the fire, with the blast even carrying over to his chair and destroying his cover.
With him being the only one standing out of cover, the masked woman had apparently decided to target poor Mattia. With a pretty and adoring smiled aimed right to the man, she lifted her finger to point directly at him, silently commanding her drone-like gangsters to focus on him. Even without her saying anything, they understood. The blank-faced men turned their guns on him... but there were only two of them now anyway. They fired down the line, and Mattia had to duck behind more cover to escape the gunfire. "This is really a bit much, don't you think!" He called out, with the masked woman ignoring him as she sang from a table she'd just jumped to. He was in a pinch.
Raelia decided that shooting at the mystery girl at this point would be a complete waste, so she popped back up over the table and whistled at the Grunt closest to her. As soon as he turned his head, she fired Mister Thunder at him, blowing his head to bits, after which the body crumpled to the floor, just like the last one.
Aesha takes aim at the last standing grunt, hoping that she could at least land one hit during this entire fight. Luckily for her, the grunt gave her ample time to aim, and she popped a bullet right into his heart, a chunk of flesh coming out of where it used to be. She then moved forward with her mobile chair-shield in order to get closer to the last target.
Seeing that there had only been one enemy remaining, Mattia lowered his RPG, smiling victoriously as he took a few steps towards the masked woman. "I do believe this is the end of the line for you, my dear; it's three of us against one of you. Now's the time to surrender while you can." He said confidently to the girl... who still seemed unconcerned. Rather, she was smiling in a relaxed manner, kicking her feet from the table she sat on. "You really do have a pretty way with words, mister~" Her tone of voice was rather sing-songy. "You really must be stupid, though... I guess you kind of countered this a little, but can't you tell I have a plan~?"
Suddenly, the supposedly dead bodies of a few of the grunts began to stand, groaning in pain from the effort. Their eyes glowed red, and they all turned to the shocked Mattia, staring at him as their wounded and badly damaged bodies protested against their attempts to move. Suddenly, all three of the 'alive' gangsters charged Mattia, who barely had enough time to try and dodge away from the first one's grab -- but not the second one. From there, the other two surrounded him and grappled him to the ground, and then with a shout... they exploded. Mattia's weapon went flying over to Aesha, somewhat damaged but surprisingly functional. The masked woman laughed a bit. "He looked really surprised there... didn't he? That was funny."
Realia looked over at Aesha and called out something as profound as the usual "People aren't supposed to blow up!" as she looked at Mattia's KO'd body. She shook it off, though, and aimed down her scope, firing at the girl, however, she ducked it, causing the bullet to whizz passed her.
Aesha noticed that the girl moved right into range of one of the many chandeliers, and so attempted to reenact her previous plan, minus the explosion this time. It went even worse than last time, only managing to break a window somewhere the maintenance people will have a pain in the ass getting to.
The masked woman laughed at their attempts, looking completely unfazed and amused as the situation progressed. "You two are really persistent... but I like that! It's more fun when they keep trying." She taunted, remaining in the same general area she had been, unaware of the enemy approaching from behind her. That one moment of negligence costed her, as in the next moment, the sneaky robobutler had her pinned down from behind. She grunted at its roughness, kicking away another butler that came to help its fellow robot. "Ah, so this is your idea? Ha ha, it's a cute one! What will you two do now?"
Raelia stands up over her cover and pulls out her Cold Pistol and shoots at the masked girl "Dodge this!", she shouts, the cold shot hitting her since she's distracted by the robo butlers.
Aesha switches her weapon to her secondary in order to completely nullify the chances of the girl escaping. She aimed right at the girls head and sent quite the electric shock through the girl.
The masked woman's laugh cut off from the attacks, apparently less amused by the pain than she was at being pinned. Her struggling to escape seemed to be futile with the efforts of the robobutlers, and she remained where she was. "1 out of 3, then... hehe, I suppose that's not a bad haul." Her low murmuring voice slowly built into a loud laugh, with her mask glowing a bright red.
"He's not even dead... doofus." Raelia murmurs before shooting her with her cold gun again, striking her in the shoulder.
Aesha sighed. "I think you'll be surprised what that crazy man has survived before." Aesha then switched to her revolver and shot the girl in the chest, hoping to finally finish her off. "Yet it seems like I might be able to say the same to you."
The masked woman didn't respond, simply smiling up at the ceiling as her shield was broken by the final shot from Aesha. The impact of the bullet had been softened, but it'd be leaving a harsh mark on her skin. Yet even despite this, she remained silent and seemed to calm down... until her shining mask stopped glowing, and the unnamed girl calmed down. Seconds passed... and for a moment, it almost seemed like she'd fallen unconscious somehow, until her voice sounded from the table she was pinned down on.
"... Would you two kind Romano ladies please take me prisoner? I'm done for, as you can see. With my shield broken and my men dead... well, I'd like to surrender."