Aim to Win [Closed, pre Beyond the Sea Plot]

[thewunderkind]

The excitement of the poddrop had died down after a few days and Lash found herself back to her usual routine on the ship. It was rather amazing how much she could manage to do each 'day', from working in the labs, to shop management to training in the sensoriums. Truthfully, everything served to keep her occupied, which was an excellent thing--if Lash ever got bored anywhere it was a sure setup for a disaster of terrible repercussions. Probably explosive ones. Speaking of which...

"Fire! Fire!"

One of the ship's sensoriums was now being taken by her as she played it wisely and used it to tested out various prototypes before building them. They'd come out with a lot of robot parts to build thanks to SHODAN's rampage, and she was going to make the most use of what she'd gotten. With a typical Lash twist and flare, of course.

The soldier obeyed and fired the first cannon with a button press, the cannonball flying out and landing far away. Lash kept tabs using a CO pad, analyzing how the prototype fared. Upon landing, the cannonball opened itself up amongst the surprised enemy soldiers and turned into a small robot with turrets built on each side.

"Tee hee! It works, it works! Now, if I adjust the energy here, I should be able to build a small army, and that would be useful to aid during away missions..."

As she was about to approve it, the robot exploded. Soldiers, trees, dirt and burnt robot pieces flew into the air, landing close by.

"Oh oops! Hmmm...better not put that much energy into that one. The crew could lose a few arms and legs like that!" She said it with such a calm voice too, even if she was speaking to no one but herself and the nearby soldiers. With a small flick, she brushed off a piece of cracked robot, and began another prototype test.

Just another typical day for a wunderkind.

Comments

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Quietly -- how unusual for Zetta! -- the Overlord stepped into the Sensorium. Behind him, a massive labyrinth of armor, shields, traps, gun emplacements, tripwires, pungi pits, and general death and dismemberment appeared behind a sign that cautioned those who might nose their way in to "STAY THE HELL OUT!"

This needed no interruptions.

"Hey."

[thewunderkind]

"Hey!" she replied back, grinning. Lash tossed what looked like a glowing ball of red...glowy stuff things, wondering just where it would fit best on this robot.

"I'm trying to utilize all of that scrap metal we got since the whole SHODAN incident," she explained. "We've already used some of the turned robots to help with the farming." A pause. "Anyway, how are you?"

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Normally this was where he'd give some pat, or arrogant, or snide answer. But the first cut was always the most painful. He'd been forced to be honest with Lash, a lot more honest than he probably ever had been before. Having done so... it seemed easier to be truthful.

"Frankly? Confused," he said, shrugging as he joined her.

[thewunderkind]

And a rather unexpected answer for him to say on Lash's end, if her confused look back was any indication. The bright red glowing ball dissipated into thin air before she had a soldier walk off with the robot. Wait, what were you supposed to say during those times?

"Uuuuuuuuh...anything in particular?" Well duh obviously, she mentally scolded herself, but at least she was trying.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"Duh," he said, a bit of his usual attitude leaking through. "After everything that happened we still haven't dealt with... you know."

What they said. Worse, what they MEANT when they said it.

[thewunderkind]

"What do you--oh! Right!" For half a second, she thought he meant either the events from SHODAN before she realized what he'd really meant. She fidgeted her hands around a bit nervously, before scratching the back of her neck. "Right. That." She ushered all of the remaining solders away and told them to just fight on their own without her before speaking again. It gave her a few seconds to think of how to say this.

"You mean the whole...thing...with the....stuff?" Wow that sure had helped. "I--dammit! You know what I mean!"

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"Yes, I know what you mean!" he said, just as easily irritated by this whole topic as she was, for many of the same reasons. "It was easier to... you know, say, when we were half in each other's minds, wasn't it."

[thewunderkind]

Lash was totally cool watching them jump into the water, right into the Kraken's waiting mouth.

"I didn't think they feared me THAT much." She looked up at her chair. "Although I guess that probably helps a lot, tee hee hee!" She looked over at the other ship which mostly had confused prinnies and nothing else. "Maybe we should populate it more. Just so there's a proper battle."

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Zetta had to admit, she got excellent results. "Hey, the more Prinnies you want to terrify, the better, as far as I'm concerned."

Actually he found her abuse and torture of Prinnies pretty damn hot. (At this rate they were going to develop some pretty alarming foreplay habits.)

[thewunderkind]

I think you meant exploding, not hot.

"Well you did say that their entire existence was made to suffer, sooo..." In many ways it gave Lash a lot of advantages - her newfound conscience in regards to armies, allies and humanoids in general meant she couldn't really think of them as expandable, nor did she honestly want to. There were many good points to having friends and people she liked being around with and she had a feeling that wouldn't change back to the old way of thinking she used to have. However, Prinnies allowed her to delve into that again, with the added bonus of being able to simply say that they were made to suffer because of what they'd done in their past lives. Or the fact they were just made of Zetta mana's or something like that. Regardless of the explanation, it gave her a chance to delve back into a slightly more terrifying way of thinking...without too many consequences.

Poor, poor Prinnies.

So then, the ship changed into something a little more modern, the cannons replaced with laser ones, the hull a dark black with polished silver highlights and the Prinnies on the other side looking more like robots with metallic wings. And guns. And jetpacks. They also had little adorable turned over fishbowls as space helmets.

Needless to say, the Prinnies on this side didn't stand much of a chance. Good thing Lash neither cared nor worried about that. But they did get some laser swords for their trouble. All sorts of colors too!

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"And it's even good for them." Technically, it was meaningless in the case of these Prinnies. A proper Prinny contained the soul of a sinner; these were just facsimiles. They couldn't achieve Red Moon redemption any more than a peanut butter sandwich could. Still, what did Zetta care about this details? He just enjoyed watching Lash make them suffer... and that was the correct way to phrase it. Either the girl's amusement, or her swimsuit, kept him looking mostly at her rather than the glorious spectacle of carnage.

"You know, it'll kind of suck when we actually have to build, or steal or buy, vehicles instead of just conjuring them up like we do here," he said, as the ship transformed.

[thewunderkind]

She stopped orchestrating the entire thing to look at him with a grin, her left eyebrows raised.

"Are you kidding? I love to build things!" Which was something he probably knew already. "Maybe we won't be able to do it as fast, but that depends how many minions I can get to build in a sufficient and fast manner. Remember!" she used her right hand to point at herself, "I was able to rebuild buildings that would normally take fifty days into only twenty! So maybe not as fast as here, but, well...stealing would be pretty fun actually. I've always had my invention blackprints (please notice how she called them blackpints and not blueprints because blue was blue moon) and weapons stolen by the allied nations, now it's my turn to do it!"

Now that he had brought up the subject, however,

"So how does it work in the Netherworld? Do you have warehouses? Workshops? Giant factories?"

Her stomach took this time to grumbled a bit. Apparently all this talking and making ships appear had distracted her from that.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"Well, DUH, you love to build things. I'll be lucky if you have ten minutes for me once you have the resources of the Netherworld at your disposal," he grumbled. "But even fast, there's something nice about the instant gratification. It kind of loses something if we suddenly want to shoot the Prinnies with a Demon Nega-Cannon, but we have to go build it first."

Honestly, Zetta had never been much for the sciencey-engineering stuff, but Lash had really clued him in to the fine points of using it for mayhem.

"Normally you get a vehicle as a reward for completing a stage," he said, way off into meta territory again. "But we have factories and stuff for parts."

[hit_girl_mindy]

There was little that would have convinced Hit Girl to go and start bothering someone during their Sensorium session. For Hit Girl, she had been enough out of commission with training that she wasn't about to go and waste her time with getting to learn about someone and their weird Sensorium fantasies.

Until of course, she saw the sign telling her to keep up. Really, that might as well have been telling her to push the red button. She needed to do this, simply for the joy of defying whoever the hell it was trying to keep her out.

One look at the traps and danger and pits? There wasn't a doubt in her mind who had put this together. As far as she knew, no one (s?) was this over the top and crazy unless it was the Overlord and Lash, and that alone was enough to get her to want to get through this. It crossed her mind this was likely a test to see if she could get through the traps, and she kept this in her mind as she side swiped, jumped, kicked and generally got bloody and dirty as she moved on. There were a few close calls, and certainly she'd need someone to attend to the wounds, but finally she reached the end, panting and exhausted and certainly tussled but grinnin.

She still had it.

[ruffntumblenut]

And then Ruffnut crashed into her from behind while riding a demonic looking sheep. Apparently the viking had stumbled in on her own and made a game of it as well. If Hit Girl looked a little banged up, Ruff looked like she had been through a war. Apparently she hadn't used nearly as much grace or skill to crash through the traps.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

On the ship, Zetta went deadly still except for his hands, which tightened on the arms of his chair till the wood splintered.

"I don't believe it," he said, deadly calm.

[thewunderkind]

And what a beautiful image this could have been, as both girls were greeted by the sound of a bunch of alarms going off, as a series of cannons, guns, and man-eating sharks looked up at both of them (the sharks were swimming in the air quite comically). The palm trees and beach looked quite normal and if they squinted, apart from the fact all the coconuts opened to reveal more guns and they could see. The boats were farther off away, the wooden and metal ship contradicting each other.

The warning windows Lash had planned and set finally caught up, as they opened in thin air, telling the commander that someone had breached the place, holy shit. The beeper in her hand was also making so much noise it was a wonder it was not melting from overuse. Quietly, she squeezed it hard enough that her knuckles turned white and made it burst, as the ship was suddenly quiet again. Even the Prinnies had stopped fighting, leaving the entire affair eerie, apart from the blinking red lights close to Lash and the waves gently rocking back and forth on the sandy beach. Her entire stomach was in a turmoil brought from sentiments of amusement, intimacy and joy, now knowing there was someone else (well two) watching left her with a strange pit in her stomach, burning.

"How did they..."

[hit_girl_mindy]

Holy shit. Holy SHIT THEY WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE.

She could see that immediately. The warning to keep out she took as a jab by the Overlord to make them try. And for Hit Girl, who had been spending the last few days baking and sort of moping, she couldn't have picked a better situation. The Overlord daring her to go farther, putting traps that made those stupid robots look lame in comparison, getting cut and bloodied and having her heart beat in her chest at the next dangerous thing?

WITH LASH'S PERSONAL TOUCH?

It was a dream come true (so it seemed). It was a direct challenge, and Hit Girl intended to meet it, pulling and pushing and maneuvering her body in ways even she would admire later. It was like the last few days had forced her to think on her feet, and the blood and the frustration and the near spills were godsend!


And then she realized it was meant to keep EVERYBODY out. It was just supposed to be those two, she knew exactly how this sort of thing was. So there was nothing, NOTHING to do but save face.

"That.." she said, tossing aside her thoroughly singed wig, "was one of the best things you guys have ever made. Seriously."

[ruffntumblenut]

Ruffnut casually hauled her demon sheep steed off of Mindy and tossed it aside like it was a bag of laundry offering a hand to her partner to help her back to her feet.

"What's with all the noise? Did we win?" The viking obliviously stuck a pinky in her ear and wiggled it as if trying to clean out the excess noise admiring the sharks floating in the air threatening them.

"That's really cool." She had that masochistic crazy look in her eyes but a relaxed smile.

[thewunderkind]

"Well that was certainly something," Lash said when it was all said and done. She tossed her bowl of popcorn behind her and cracked her hands loudly.

A bunch of new traps sprung up from the entrance of the sensoriums to replace the others. If they had managed to come in, it meant they needed to be even deadlier.

"You really taught them a lesson I bet they'll never forget." Now that they were alone again, she could joke about it a bit.

The Prinnies still had no idea what they should do not. Go back to shooting and get accused of making noise? Stay there and get accused of doing nothing? Fall into the sea and just explode?

[badassfreakingoverlord]

The Overlord hadn't calmed down yet; he stood in silence on the beach, fingers still curled to put his claws to best advantage, breathing heavily from sheer rage. Mana power swirled around him still, almost tangible as pressure.

His attention was entirely on the sensorium door, though, even after it vanished behind a maze of traps.

[thewunderkind]

As the Overlord kept looking at the door that was no longer there, his gaze might have been broken by one hand that appeared in the middle of his view, before swinging back and forth from one side to another, as Lash jumped on his back, and used the other arm to grasp herself around his other elbow.

"Hey," she called out. "I don't think they'll be coming back now. Or anyone else for that matter." Lash paused, trying to think of a way to help him cool down, realized she had never been in that type of situation before, and thus decided to go with his ego. "You were really awesome."

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Just the ego appeal alone might not have been enough to assuage Zetta's wrath, but when she combined it by climbing on him a little, well... He relaxed, very visibly and tangibly.

"Pff. I wasn't really even trying. I mean, seriously, if I hadn't held back?" He let her picture this for a moment, then added reluctantly, "It's all the sensorium anyway. It's not like I COULD have hurt them, not really. Damn... I've let them get too insolent. Hopefully now they'll remember they're not anywhere near Overlord level yet."

[thewunderkind]

"Tee hee! Well, they are teens," Lash replied, in a way that sounded more like kettle calling pot black. She really wasn't that much an adult herself, especially with her general attitude. And as much as Zetta wanted her to imagine that, it was rather hard to do so, simply because she had a feeling he wouldn't do that to them. Then she added Zedd in the middle and okay much better. "Anyway, it's not like they're demons right now either. Kinda like giving a soldier a gun and telling him to charge against ten megatanks, you know? The only way to really beat that would be if Nell was your CO since she controls luck."

Lash wasn't good at examples at all. She continued to dangle her legs behind him.

"Point is, maybe you didn't see them from your point of view, but they definitely weren't smiling when you threw them out, sensorium or not!"

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"...I gave soldiers guns and told them to charge tanks all the time," Zetta said blankly. If the soldier was competent and well-leveled it was a good fight all around. "Anyway, so long as they got the hint."

A moment of thought later, the Overlord chuckled. "You know, this whole admitting-our-feelings thing kind of worked out. Now we have a reason to throw them out, instead of just sitting around looking awkwardly at each other and wondering why we felt bad when they wandered into us having fun together."