1497/Automated Assassin VII

Automated Assassin VII
Date of Scene:	05 February 2015
Location:	Earth-<GITS>
Synopsis:	Kotone is targeted by the seventh of the Collective's mysterious assassins.
Cast of Characters:	Kotone Yamakawa, Staren, 411, 596, 673

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Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone had some good work doing restoration work of old ground craft, it was a decent living really. A bit spotty but there were a lot of rich persons here in New Port. So generally she made enough off it and normal mechanic work, however she was making her way back riding amusingly on public transit, the rail lines in the city were very good and it wouldn't take too long or So Kotone thought. She didn't stand out in this city a large number of the population was argumented in someway and there were likely several dozen people on this train who were full conversions like her self. She leand back closing her eyes for a mment.

The thought of a moment of normacy away from the insanity of the multiverse was a nice one, a very nice one. She was reaching the stop near her home.

Kotone exited the train as it reached the station as she strted for home, it was evening now the neon lights of hte city were lighting up the night, and if one were agumnted the AR addtional just only added to the light show. She took a moment to check movie times and a few other things even as she walked over the net. All and all it been a very good day, it was time to get home and just crash for the rest of it.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    A very good day up until now at least. Kotone may have heard something to the effect by now, but ever since she went to work, she's been under surveillance by a particular machine intelligence entirely foreign to her world. One without any basis in human consciousness or engineering whatsoever. Politely, it allows her to go about her day in peace, not so much as rearing its head in the corner of her peripheral vision, but when she is left completely by herself in the semi-dark of the nighttime city, it finally decides to make its move.

    Like the others, the Type-7 Anti-Cyborg, very much similar to the Type-2 Anti-Deebee that had assaulted one of Kotone's acquaintances less than a week ago, strangely decides to disengage its active camouflage for a moment where Kotone can easily see it, perched atop a street light on its three, multi jointed legs, and staring down at her with the same number of trackball sensor pods. It's like a baby version of its predecessor, little bigger than a small dog, with the same beetle-like body shape and spider-like forelegs. She has about a second and a half to notice it before the AR half of her vision cuts out completely; either jammed, hacked, or having had the power cut to their broadcasters. A moment later, the lampposts in the immediate vicinity shut off completely as well, suddenly plunging the street into a deep shadow in which she can just barely get the impression of movement.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa was perhaps off guard on her world, it's home right? She's jut moving along at this point, she's about home at this point and she's still unaware until the moment her AR shuts off. A split second before she did notice something it was almost like a bug, but at this point the AR goes out and then the lights follow suit she does however kill her own wireless connections rapidly knowing whatever is going on? It would be bad to have her self open to outside connection. If this bot wants to get into her it would have to use the jacks on the back of her neck in all likelyhood.

Kotone has enough experianc eot know it's time to push for home she has gear there, and she can't call for help right now with things being cut like this. She does however sense movment, she's being hunted, but by what?

Zwei (596) has posed:
    A smart move from Kotone. Squandering the inexplicable warning she had received would have inevitably lead to a machine hundreds of years more advanced than her world's standard of hardware accessing her cyberbrain. There's no telling what kind of things it could make her do at that point. Most likely 'walking out into the highway' would have been the least offensive of any of them. As it stands however, the Type-7 now requires a manual connection, and it seems to know it, because as Kotone begins moving, it begins following. She can't really see its black chassis in the penetrating dark, but she can hear the subtle clinks of its legs as it leaps from object to object in the background, completely avoiding touching the ground.

    There's a good chance it might have just been following her to locate her house, because it only makes its second move once she's almost there. A quiet, hydraulic pop sounds out behind her, and something goes sailing through the air over her head, clanking against the ground hard enough to bounce. A moment after it lands, the marble sized EMP emitter will discharge a crippling wave of electromagnetic energy in a ten foot radius around itself, likely totally paralyzing Kotone should she be caught in range.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa has always been uneasy about her brain being wired up like that, it's not that she isn't prone to make use of it? She just never will entirely trust it. After all she knows what can be done to computers, she doe snot wish to do the same to her brain. She now knows she has to pick up peed and now she does pick up speed as hshe's making for the garage at this speed. She does hear it's movment she now gets the idea she's being hunted. This understanding from her time with XCOM get this much of an understanding. She keeps moving and keeps her senses open for anything that might be able to.

She hears something she's not sure what it is but she know to move she leaps laning hard but just out of the EMP range and she now makes a full out scramble for her garage as fast as she can make for it sheading ny idea she's human with how fast she's moving.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Kotone can physically feel the static as the EMP goes off. Even in the dark, the way the air shivers from its detonation is visible just from the flicker of light given off by the understated flash of electrical sparks crawling over the ground and arcing into the nearest metal objects, leaving a faint scorch on the sidewalk. The Type-7 leaps down from its perch with a quiet click, hitting the ground as if it weighs nothing at all, as Kotone makes a break for her garage, stopping only long enough to pick the spent pulse emitter up off the ground with one manipulator arm and retract it back into an internal dock to be recharged.

    The other arm swivels up towards her as she shuts the garage door behind her, folding back the fine equipment at the end to expose a tiny, needle thin gun barrel. The Arma is a stealth hacking and capture unit, so its weaponry is relatively unimpressive, being little more than a pair of miniature railguns set to rapidly fire small anti personnel rounds. This still poses an extreme danger to Kotone however once it begins firing straight through her garage door, punching a straight line of deceptively wide holes through the sheet metal as it rakes its fire across the room from left to right at roughly chest level, embedding over a hundred ferric tungsten slivers into the support struts of the wall behind it, and smashing anything lying around in between.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa does feel the static it's got EMP and she feels if she'd not shut down her wireless she'd be having horrible things happen to her. She keeps moving as she gets back up to he feet. She's able to get for the the Garage thankfully and she's inside she shuts the door dor all teh good it will do. She now scrambles for the arms locker and move to get it open and pulls the side arm out of it.

That's at the moment the unit opens fire and she's forced to hit the deck the door is just civilian grade steel, it's not going to do much against this at all. A good deal of her mechanical gear is just ripped to bits, it's a good thing she delivered her latest project.

"Damn it who the hell is this?!"

She aks for a momenr and attemps to track from where the shots are comming by firing back through the garage door hoping it's not moved yet. The weapons fire is going to get attention soon, she thinks. She's got to hold out as long as she can.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    A good thing indeed, because just about everything in Kotone's garage is getting trashed. From the tools on her table to the windows of any vehicle she has parked in there, a seemingly never ending salvo of flechettes rattles around the inside of her garage, filling it with the deafening cacaphony of breaking metal, shattering brick, snapping wood and exploding drywall. It stops after pumping in roughly three hundred rounds, giving her just long enough to fire a sequence of return shots through the gaping gestalt hole now left in her garage door, through which the interior light spills out onto the driveway.

    The first couple of shots strike dead on, but reflect into the pavement off to the sides rather than colliding dead on with the Arma's small body. It's almost impossible to see under such so light, but Kotone might be able to just barely make out the distinctive energy shield common to Collective technology. Still, as impressive as shielding on such a small target is, the little tracker can't be all that durable, because rather than soaking more gunshots, it skitters out of hte way, leaping onto the roof of Kotone's garage, punching a hole through it with a double tap, and then launching the second EMP ball from its other arm mount directly at her feet.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone's lucky she's got insurance? Or will this even pass? She has no idea and fight now the flachettes are just wracking her place she's managed to keep down but she's does see the shield, just barely even as she keeps moving. She attemps to meep moving now a she hears it moving. She's got to be able to find it, the shots come in form above and she sees the EMP unit falling.

Again she leaps she knows she's only got about 20 more shots in the clip of her pistol and that might not be enough with what she's facing, still the outage and the weapons fire will draw the newport police sooner or later. Then again the bot's likely done it's work well to delay or out right prevent that. She hits the ground hard and pulls out her smart phone and tries to get a message off.

"It's after me I think one of those things are after me, wireless is out, power's out and it's got shields!"

She doesn't even know if she gets through as she's got ot get on the move again. Damn it this is pushing her system specs pretty damn hard...

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Strangely, Kotone's communications haven't been jammed. It's a good question to ask why, if someone has really sent the Type-7 here with the express purpose of assassinating her. It's not a big and beefy combat unit, likely only just barely enough to take on a military trained cyborg from her world with decent luck. Logically, it should want to prevent her from scoring backup, especially if it hasn't hacked her yet. One thing to its credti however; it is very fast. As soon as it ascertains that she's dodged the second EMP, it shoots its way through the garage ceiling, hops down, recovers the ball, and then leaps after her in the blink of an eye, moving like a freakishly large jumping spider rather than anything of its natural size category.

    Flitting from shadow to shadow, tree to fence to roof, it clambers onto the top of her house next, cutting off her way forward. Retracting the mini railguns for the moment, it fires something entirely unique to its design rather than copied or downscaled from the one that had fought staren; a pair of high powered conduit darts aimed straight for both of her arms. Should one or both of them hit, they'll unfold like a trick arrow inside of her body, latching them into place, whereupon they will immediately apply enough voltage to completely fry the motive circuits in either limb.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
What does happen however Kotone's forced to drop the phone and it clatters to the gorund after a moment it's going to shut down and kick out as an poiwer saving featuire but right now she's trying to trakc it. She fires off severals hots. She not sure what's comming the darts to catch her off arm and the unfold they latch in place and she screams as she one, feels pain and two well the limb is no longer working she tries to fire off several more shots.

"You ... bastard."

She keepos mocing trying to get a good shot but if it gets another attack off on her like that it's going to be the end. IT's already pretty bad right now...

Zwei (596) has posed:
    One out of two is apparently good enough for the little Arma. The second dart simply snaps its hooks into the back walkway and remains inert, not receiving the wireless trigger to discharge its electrical payload. The first remains firmly embedded, despite being functionally useless after one firing. Again, the first few bullets from Kotone's firearm manage to catch it relatively head on, though after the slugs spark off its shield, it begins moving once more, lunging sideways off the roof onto the fence, and then making a dizzyingly fast jump across the back yard to make a harder target of itself, launching from each surface with powerful flexes of its delicate looking leg.

    Skittering along the opposite fence, it disappears out of view behind the garage, keeping Kotone's location fixed in its memory by reading the tracking beacon in the dart planted in her arm. Without exposing any more than its manipulator arms from cover, it opens up on her from around the wall at head height, hosing her with another hundred round burst from both guns simultaneously, splattering dirt and shattered stones up her back stairs as it walks its line of fire into her.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone may or may not suspect there's another effect to the thing that's disbaled it's arm she does however get a hit in but she knows the shield can't last forever, right? She hwoever is put off as the thing seems to have run off. It's trcking her and she's not sure about just what it's doing. She now finds she's comming under fire form the roudna nd how many frekaing round can that little things? She's trying to not get hit but it's a losing battle with all thsoe rounds comming at her she's able to evade some of her stairs are just gon there's no getting back in the house she shoots another burst and tries to move.

"...it doesn't want me dead it could have killed me eariler but what is it up to now?!"

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Set behind the garage as it is, making full use of it small size and multiple jointed limbs, the Arma is an exceptionally difficult target, especially for a handgun. Only one of the rounds manages to hit one of the arms peering around the side, being of a shot similar in difficulty to shooting a pistol out of another person's hand. In the dark like this, it's all but impossible to tell how badly the shield has been affected and how much juice it has left, but Kotone can safely assume that there isn't much, because as she fires on it, it abandons its shoot position, leaps out onto the grass, and then lunges a good thirty feet in the blink of an eye, soaring through the air and slamming into her directly.

    Predictably, the Arma barely weighs anything at all; far less than something made of even relatively lightweight metal should at that size, so it's unlikely to send her on her back. The blunt tips of its insectoid legs stick to her body via electromagnetism; something that wouldn't be possible were she not a full body cyborg. Clinging to her like a grotesquely oversized spider, it clambers over her shoulder, poises itself on the back of her neck, and then jabs both manipulator arms at her cyberjacks, aiming to connect manually to her cyberbrain after she had shut off its wireless capabilities.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone is putting up qutie a bit of a fight here that much is clear but the drone's just keeps comming. She fires off several more shots as she thinks she's weaking it. It looks like it doesn't have much left. She knows what it's doing there's darning bit of horro as it gets ahold of her and latches on to her. Kotone now drops her gun as it wont do any good here she 's struggling as it moves to access her cyber jacks and force it's way in she's got a barrier and a pretty good civilian one it should hold for a moment or so she hoeps as she teis to grab the thing and pull it out of the jacks before damage can be done.

"GET OFF ME YOU SOULESS THING!"

Kotone but this point has disable her hardwares limiters and pushing her strngh beyond whar normally's safe.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Kotone will certainly be needing that extra burst of strength, because as she begins to yank at the Arma, it cranks up power to the electromagnets in its 'feet' proportionally to the force she uses. It's very strong for its weight and size, but not objectively as strong as Kotone's cyborg body is running with its limiters off, and so it has to rely on this magnetism rather than being able to physically grapple her while it works. unfortunately, it manages to jab both arm tips -- perfectly sized for her data ports -- into the back of her neck before she yanks it free, at which the caps on its arms simply detach entirely, switching to a wireless connection to the main unit. It doesn't attempt to try and reclaim its position on Kotone's back, instead dedicating its attention to cracking through her cyberbrain's security barriers one after the other.

Rory White (673) has posed:
    Rory can't teleport, but she did burst from the nearest warp gate at full speed on what appears to be some kind of motorcycle-like vehicle. It's going fast, MUCH too fast. And yet somehow it manages a perfectly efficient path through the neighborhood... if a slightly messy one. A few inconsequential trash cans might've been knocked over and a few people might've freaked and ran out of the way.

    Rory has only a few seconds to observe what's happening. She hasn't brought drones lest they be turned against her. She has disabled all wireless lest she be hacked, and a physical connection to the cycle's her main method of control.

    A few seconds are all she needs to decide on her course of action. She has no weapons. Her durability won't stand up to war all that well. And by roaring in with such speed (even though the machine is mostly silent) she cannot hope to catch an enemy by surprise.

    But she does have a weapon.

    "Don't... TOUCH.... KOTONE!!!"

    Roaring with rage and quite probably scared in more ways than one, Rory just attempts to PLOW her low-riding high-speed cycle into the assassin-bot and drive it into the nearest solid thing!

Staren has posed:
    Staren teleports into an alley near the garage. He... looks like he Walked Out as his ALO avatar, actually. He's wearing his fantasy armor plus a dark red cape and wide-brimmed wizard hat. He's already drank a potion of Armor of Ithan. He cares not one whit for what this makes the people on the street think.

    Of course, his implants, and any other tech that has the option, has had their wireless turned off, because he's not letting himself get hacked while trying to save Kotone!

    He hurries to the corner and peers around, spying the hole in the door, he motions for his accomplice to follow. (Upon realizing he'd probably need magical backup, Twilight, among the most powerful wizards he knows, was asked to disguise herself and come along.

    Staren runs up to the hole, drawing his raiser pistol. It's dark inside, but as he peeks into the hole, he can see through to the back yard, where Kotone is yelling! It's on her... and going for her cyberjack! Shit! He takes aim, then realizes that if he misses, on its current setting, the results might be rather bad for Kotone. And he can't quickly adjust it or use smart aiming because he shut off the wireless... damn!

    He seems to have a similar idea to Rory, because he starts running towards them... only to have someone on some kind of cycle get there first!

Twilight Sparkle (411) has posed:
     Twilight appears right behind Staren when he teleports in, then follows him into the alley beyond. To keep her identity more secret and keep people in the town from panicking, Twilight has adopted the human form she used when SAO was still up and running. Just in time to see that machine detach from Kotone and leave those...things in her neck. Staren seems unable to hit that small of a target right now, so she does what she does best. She casts a spell! She targets a teleportation spell on those datajacks, trying to transport them right out of Kotone and into her hands.

     "It's alright, Kotone! We will not let whatever this thing is get you!" Twilight calls out before flinching as Rory rams that little machine. Twilight's eyes widen a bit. She thought Rory was a calm, kind, demure robot thing!

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa is very much afraid there's fear it's latched on to her, it's into her jacks. It doesn't want her dead it wants to /do/ something to her, take something from her, or worse turn her into something else. Kotone stugles now with her body running with it's limiteers off. She manages to get it off her back, but there's soemthign left behind she's going to throw it but she's going to try to crush the thing, then it hits her the thing's left some sort of wireless. A Paramilitary grade barrier or military barrier would still be holding out right now but her top shelf civilian has given out as she tries to crush the thing.

She sees others are comming but is it too late she doesn't know as she despately tries to crush the thing. However that's when her limbs stop responding and she collapses.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Unfortunately for Kotone, the Arma's spheroid shape and carapaced design, combined with the materials comprising it, makes it exceptionally difficult to break by applying compressive force. It feels like trying to crush a block of tungsten carbide with her bare hands despite how light the thing is. Very much fortunately for her however, she has friends to back her up. Nearly the instant she releases it, Rory manages to connect head on with the wheel of her bike, as the Type-7 has no means with which to maneuver itself during its short fall to the ground.

    The vehicle is moving at such a velocity that the impact trips the shield, which shivers steadily under the grinding of its wheel as it becomes momentarily pinned underneath before managing to slip out, affixing itself to the side of the house and scampering up to a higher level, where it aims both of its miniature railguns and fires one at Staren and the other at Rory's bike. It dumps one pill-bottle sized block of flechette ammunition straight into the engine of the vehicle, and another at Staren's chest, aiming to suppress both of them while it breaches the last layer of Kotone's security and quickly maps out the architecture of her cyberbrain. It only gets so far as suddenly downloading a rather large number of memory files before Twilight teleports the jacks straight out, causing it to lose its connection entirely.

Staren has posed:
    As soon as Rory sends it flying, Staren starts snapping shots off with the raiser pistol (hey, Kotone's insured, right? But he's not thinking about that anyway). The flechettes bounce off an invisible magic forcefield, because Staren is a cheating cheater. Staren stumbles back a bit from the impacts anyway, estimating the spell can take maybe one or two more bursts like that, but he's not about to encourage the drone to /test/ that. Hedips his hand into his bag, exchanging the pistol for a magic wand. Like, seriously, a stick with a crystal-studded star shape on the end, it could not be more stereotypical. He makes a swishing motion in the drone's direction, causing a tiny spot in the air nearby it to superheat immensely and explode in a fireball a few dozen feet across!

    He'll have time to feel sheepish about his property-damaging methods later, when Kotone is safe.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone tries to scream but it's a strange toroted wail as she can't move to get the things out of he neck she feels it rteaching into her mind past her ghost barrier and just starts taking from her it copies her mrmoies and gets quite a bot before Twilight Sparkle manage to use her powers to yank the jacks out. She lays there shudderinginward and if she could still shead tears she's be sobbing this thing came for her and it was tyring to copy her it might have even figured out how to copy he Ghost given the tech difference she has no idea but for now she can only watch her saviours get to work at stopping this thing.

Rory White (673) has posed:
    Rory wasn't expecting the thing to be so RESILIENT! Her daredevil assault surely bought some time, but at what cost? "-Ahh!" The bike's struck right in some volatile parts. The engine rips itself apart and with it, the bike explodes - just without much of a fireball. Rory's thrown clear, tumbling in a clunk-thunk ragdoll mess for a good hundred feet. Sparks fly during some of the impacts, ripping the synthetic flesh covering away and exposing bare metal underneath. There's blood - something that looks like it - to spare.

    When she ets up though she seems neither pained nor weary. She doesn't breathe after all, and doesn't tire... "Was that really the best strategy I could manage right then?"

    Instead of attacking the Killbot, Rory runs to Kotone. PRIORITY ONE: SAVE KOTONE.

    Destroying the murderbot is only one way of managing this.

    So with damaged, sparking limbs, she scoops up Kotone and attempts to just RUN for a warp gate. "Hold on, Kotone! Just hold on!"

Twilight Sparkle (411) has posed:
     Twilight blinks as those datajacks appear in her hands. It worked! Quite often when she tries something like that in the Multiverse, something interferes. She tosses the datajacks upward, then thrusts a hand up at them and fires a beam of destructive magic to try and destroy them. No telling what kind of danger they might be! Then, Staren uses his wand, making Twilight's long hair go fluttering in the wind from that explosion.

     With the heavy fighters working on the evil drone, Twilight runs to Kotone. "Kotone! Are you alright?" The two haven't met before, so they probably don't recognize each other. Staren just told her who they were going to help. Twilight looks pretty worried as Kotone collapses. But, she can't do much in the way of medical treatment. Rory picks up Kotone and runs, so Twilight refocuses on the fleeing drone. She uses her magic to teleport up onto the rooftop, then looks toward where Staren exploded things a moment ago. If the drone is still moving, she holds out her hands and attempts to form a magical barrier around the drone. She is really hoping she can lock it down, because if she can, they will be able to either destroy it or trace it back to wherever it came from.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Taking several raiser bullets to the shield puts the little Type-7 in a fairly bad position, compounded by the fireball that detonates straight on top of it, all but completely clearing out the battery capacity of its barrier. It fires off another salvo for Staren, and then sweeps its fire across the lawn towards Twilight as she vapourizes its detachable jacks, steadily backing off over the roof. As soon as it halts fire, it finds itself cut off by the Equestrion, and subsequently placed in a local variant of force cube that it lacks the firepower or magical ability to break out of. It remains perfectly still for several moments, during which there is a brief, incredibly dense spike in gamma emmission aimed predominantly skyward, and then it collapses onto the roof tiles, power cut completely. Before everyone's eyes, the machine begins to disintegrate, dissolving into a fine, atomic mist of various semi-metals and toxic rare earth compounds.

Staren has posed:
    Kotone is in whatever state she is -- as long as the drone is here, it's a threat. It might hack her, who knows? So Staren pursues it. Rory's got Kotone, anyway. The second volley of needles continues to hit some magical forcefield, and Staren deploys his wings and flies over to the drone, pondering how to deal with it and wondering why it hasn't self-destructed yet.

    Oh, there it goes. Unfortunately, he hasn't got the sensors on him right now to notice the gamma-ray burst, but as it starts melting, his eyes widen and he shouts, "STASIS SPELL!" Maybe, just maybe, they can finally take PART of one of these things for analysis!

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone is grabbed by Rory while STaren goes after the horrible drone thing that just basically attacked her mind in a very horrible way. It's very much a mercy it wasn't cut and pasting her memories, which could have left Kotone a half empty shell. That is a mercy she's picked up and it would be seen that she's got a spike of some sort in her arm which seems to have done something to it and the look on her face is one of horror.

"My...memories it was ...after my memories."

she says to Rory as she's pulled awya. and Twilight's sitll been a huge help after all, she saved her entire mind from being copied.

Twilight Sparkle (411) has posed:
     Twilight Sparkle actually lets a little bit of a proud smirk cross her face as she catches the drone. But then...it just starts disintegrating! "H-hey! No! Don't do that! Bad drone!" she exclaims, her arms flailing a bit. She tries to close in her force field to at least contain the particles. Even if the thing disintegrates completely, the elements that make up the drone might give them -some- clue as to its origin. Maybe.

     It's all she can think to do, but Staren leaps in with a stasis spell. Maybe that will do it! She keeps her containment field up, but shifts it just enough to allow Staren's spell through before she seals it up again. Then, she calls out over the radio. "Is Kotone alright? Did it cause her any damage or data corruption?" she asks as she waits to see how well her containment field is working.

Rory White (673) has posed:
    Spotting weird stuff stuck in Kotone's arm, Rory makes a mental note to remove it as soon as possible. But that means 'after they are clear.' And when it becomes clear that the enemy has been dealt with she stops running and ALMOSt seems about ready to stand Kotone up.... but then decides setting her down is better witht hat look on her face.

    She's not THAT bad at body language.

    ".. A forced upload....?!" There's no mistaking the fear in her own tone. That reeks of TITAN chicanery!