“Hmm…It’s probably not gonna be anything heavy when I get back. I don’t wanna work too hard, I don’t think.”
Sunmi mused, pulling on her vape and looking up as the mechanized monstrosity assembled itself in front of her. The sheepie patissier stretched her legs and rotated her shoulders. Limbering herself up as best she could before the assembly was done, and she could engage. Her mind was, after all, not on this machine and its defeat, but on what she’d have to bake for the Saturday night crowd that she’d be running into. “This thingy is giving me…Monkey bread energy? Let’s see.” The multi-armed tank had finally been assembled and placed in front of Sunmi as a threat of sorts. She was intruding, after all. This robot’s job was to stop intruders. As far as even she could tell, there was nothing anyone had done wrong. “But that does make me the robber,” she said. Another long draw from her vape filling the silence with a light whistling.
“INTRUDER ALERT!
INTRUDER ALERT!
TERMINATION PROTOCOL ACTIVATED.”
Finally, the machine stood complete. Tightened together by the rapidly cooling metal and plastic from its rapid assembly, this tank was not designed to be fought. Well over her head and slower than she could ever dream of being, this machine was designed to fight off the sort of people who may have robbed a fabrication facility in the world from the last age. An arm swung towards her. Her forearm rose to parry it. A move that worked, but not without its costs to Sunmi, who felt the full brunt of that attack, shaking her arm and pulling on the collar of her top after impact. “This thing’s still so hot. Huh…Stiff bread? Was honestly expecting something softer.” With that, Sunmi’s assault on the robot began in earnest. One by one, her strikes began to rain down on the freshly hardened joints and clearly undersupported legs. Strikes that would rattle the machine, to be sure. Though the blows fell against the machine like the pounding of heavy raindrops on a hot tin roof. She couldn’t help but feel her strikes ring oddly hollow. Her hands and sleeves, burning with every strike against the still fresh-baked behemoth. “Eh…Real stiff bread. Oh, that reminds me! I have those loaves of brioche in the display at the shop. I should get rid of those; it’s been like four days.”
Sunmi’s relationship to this fight seemed to be largely out of obligation rather than any sort of desire. As she understood it, there was nothing to be harvested from this thing, and the fight was meant to be something easy. As such, she wasn’t willing to overthink or overcomplicate her relationship to its defeat. Shaking her hand, the patissier pulled on her vape one more time before slipping it into her sleeve. “I believe that this is going to be a good and easy fight, so it has to be.”
What proceeded from there was a brilliant display of Sunmi’s mastery of the martial arts. Her strikes targeted joints, soft panels, and other points of general weakness in a poorly designed security robot’s armor. Strikes landing against her target were bright, strong, and undeniable. Each attack broke a bond that held something up, and before long, she’d exposed its raw hide.
As she pulled away from the automaton and exposed its thick plastic endoskeleton, she nervously laughed and turned back to Ji-ho, “Heeeeey, girlie. Is there a phase two? I don’t…Uhm…I don’t DO second phases usually.” Ji-ho, though, was occupied with her own war against the swarm of attacking drones.
“You got this, babe. Sounds like a rare drop!” Ji-ho said as she passively skipped from perch to perch. Dragging the buzzing machines from Sunmi’s assault on the walking tank. “Means I might have something fun for me too. But make it quick~! I’m down to ten!”
Pulling the attention of the peppering drones from Sunmi and to herself, Ji-ho’s movements were as disinterested in safe dodging as one could be. Because of the fang’s mission, she needed only to keep Sunmi’s ranged foes busy. This manifested as Ji-ho choosing to stock bolts of magic into her kiseru as she’d been smoking through the journey. While she was no marksman, it only took one hit from any of these bolts to snap and crackle out on contact. A brilliant flash of purple energy roared through the swarm like a bolt of lightning. Streaking violently from drone to drone until there was no more energy to leave behind. Melting drones again and again in these huge batches. “I just KNOW somehow Haerin is better at this than me…” The fact of the matter is that Ji-ho was a swordswoman. So as she moved to be Sunmi’s fang, she couldn’t help but look over now and again. Working her way slowly through her ammunition and watching her partner. Who seemed to be at least on the other side of her work. Calling out to the sorceress, Ji-ho looked for an ETA on finishing. “What’s the word, Sunny!? Need a hand~?” And in typical Sunmi fashion, she responded with action.
The multi-legged tank had been largely stripped of its armor plating, and that plating was scattered about the side of the warehouse where the fight took place. As if when ‘hand’ left Ji-ho’s lips, Sunmi’s fist found its penultimate mark. The final joining point of one of its last supporting legs. The warehouse shook as the printed behemoth came crashing down on the concrete. Turning back to the fox, Sunmi waved a hand while plumes of blue smoke poured out of her wide smile. “Nah, I’m about done. You can g’head and pop any ults you have!” Ji-ho’s ears twitched as she nodded, waving her kiseru back in reply.
So off she went, skipping through the hot air of the warehouse. She’d done, by all accounts, a serviceable job protecting Sunmi from their swarm of autonomous attacks. “and yet…”
Finally, she was able to wrap this up. Gathering the last of the magic stored in her charges by pulling deeply on her kiseru and blowing out a steely blue cloud of mist into the collective swarm of drones that she’d still been fighting. This was the whole reason she’d taken the kiseru at all. Hoping she’d have a chance to use this trick she’d only recently developed. Her odd-shaded royal eyes glimmered as she watched the cloud swell up before her. There was some showing off, certainly. After all, cute girls were watching.
As the first of them closed the distance, she held up a finger and tapped the top of the drone. Sending off a spark from her that seemed to find the shortest path from Ji-ho’s charge to that of the air above the dense cloud she’d exhaled. The resulting display wasn’t that unlike a tight storm cloud, holding in a wicked lightning and roaring thunder. The flash could have been seen from Lamplight if anyone cared to look in that direction. It was definitely seen by the Library. One by one, the drones fell out of the storm cloud as fast as they seemed to funnel into it. “Damn shame these aren’t worth shit after they’re slagged…Eh.” Sitting in front of the ionic storm she’d created, she looked over to Sunmi, who was sitting atop the pile of metallic armor from the tank.
“I hate when I have the camera,” Ji-ho mumbled. More than a little annoyed that in the setup and execution of her ion storm, she wasn’t able to see whatever cool move Sunmi used. At least, Ji-ho assumed it was cool. It left the machine’s shell mostly together, but given that the shell was hollow, Ji-ho was sure that they had to be something different. “What style you use again, Sunny? It’s all Chinese Kempo right? I know you say bajiquan but…”
The patissier grinned, her sweater singed, and her hair a frizzy mess. Though for all her work, she seemed quite at peace between her gulps of air. “Maybe I do. Maybe more than that, even. According to your mom, I’m ‘what a threat used to look like’ before your other mom did her deicide thing. Oooh! Does that mean we get to be offish?” Ji-ho shrugged as the auxiliary power to the facility seemed to settle, and all that was left for the pair to do was collect their spoils.
“So what’s next?” Sunmi asked, hopping off the defeated machine. “I know you mentioned the arms before, so that’s cool! But like…Do we just go or…?” Ji-ho was already sprawled out on the somehow still icy concrete floor. Softly, the patissier sashayed over and sat beside the exhausted ally. Pulling on her vape, Sunmi sat down beside JI-ho and moved her just a bit. Placing the fox’s head in her lap and stroking her head. “Sure sure, take a nap. You’ve earned that much.” After that, Sunmi took out her slate and called Haerin to tell her everything she’d need to know.
“Haebae~! We’re all done…She did that ion storm thing and passed out. Can you send some maids to me for the slag?…Yep, fights over. I was able to get some of that tank’s armor, though. Jiji wanted that…Transport, please! And make it three?”
After that, Sunmi closed her slate and looked back at Ji-ho, who was still deep in her exhaustion. “Mission complete!” Sunmi said with a smile, “Good job, Jiji.”