Sharar's Story

"Hey! I'm not giving... giving you a second warning!" cried the young girl, pulling the trigger on the gun.

Because she was a trainee, she wasn't allowed to use something fatal. It was a stun gun. Loaded with small, thin rounds that barely went through the skin and delivered an electrical charge to its target. She'd been shocked with one before, though as a cyborg, it had hurt her more than a normal human.

The rounds hit Sharar in the arm, who didn't even notice their impact. When they activated their charge however, the xupran soldier seemed to tense up, eyes darting to look at his arms. His flesh and muscles spasmed and contracted, halting his movement for a bit of time. He managed to stay upright by gripping onto the desk he was in front of, waiting for the charge to dissipate.

His computer systems were hardened, but it did not stop the incoming voltage from overloading his connections, severing him from the servers and computers he was downloading information from. His hand formed a tight fist, and Sharar turned to glare at the child.

He didn't say a word as he ripped the probes out of his arm. Nor did he speak as he reached a hand down into his pocket.

"I said stop!" roared the child, rushing towards him. In the midst of a leap, her whole body shifted. One would normally have seen a young, human girl, completely organic and ordinary in every way. However, once her body came apart, all the machinery inside said otherwise.

Before she hit the ground she was a large catlike cyborg, sprinting toward Sharar in a frightened, but desperate fury. She leaped for him, trying to tackle him down and pin him.

Click.

All it took was a simple press, done before the child had even hit the ground when her transformation was complete. A wall of Dust and concrete erupted between Sharar and the young girl, cat, thing. One of the packs that Sharar had hidden exploded, and with another click, the second, hidden in a server tower, detonated within two feet of Vin's left shoulder.

The explosives were placed so that the shock wave would be powerful, but non-lethal. He doubted the bits of computer turned shrapnel were strong enough to actually hurt her, but the force of the explosion would surely be enough to throw her into the wall, he guessed anyway.

Moving a hand to his waist, Sharar gripped a very large handgun and stepped towards where he expected her to land.

When the computer exploded, it wasn't a shower of nuts and bolts and wires that came down.

It was a splatter of viscera.

There was a scream- so human, so very human- that erupted from the room. It wasn't the little girl, who was unconscious on the ground. It had been the room itself that had screamed.

A torrent of fluids spilled out from the damaged systems, red and green and a pasty yellow-white. The room itself undulated.

"Hey!" cried out a voice from the doorway, which was rapidly closing with some sinewy substance. Crawling in with a Supremacy special Mertieth 8 assault rifle was Sich, the woman Sharar had first encountered on this world. "Get away from her. Drop everything. Hands on the ground!"

It wasn't his proudest moment, he drew no pleasure nor satisfaction in it. But on this planet, where computers screamed and bled, where his brethren were carried off as prisoners, he was fighting to survive. A war of survival. And war was an ugly thing.

Ugly. Like pointing the barrel of a loaded gun at a child's face.

Sharar stepped on the young female's chest, just enough wait on his foot to keep her pinned should she wake. His weapon's sights were leveled with her forehead, while his own eyes glared at the woman who'd dragged off his fellow Xi.

"Enough games." Sharar said in their tounge, they'd finally be able to understand him. "Make your choice, drop your own weapon and tend to this one. Or I end her life along with that of my species."

His grip tightened and his finger pressed slightly on the trigger.

"You have five seconds to comply."

Sich's eyes widened, her finger trembling on the trigger. You wouldn't, she wanted to say, but she knew better. She had been in this situation before.

Just... never with her sister.

With a snarl, she set down her gun on the floor. In the very least, he'd have a hard time figuring out she had on caster gloves, set to energy shields. The door was shut, though, and the room was filling up with fluids.

"I'm unarmed," she told Sharar, standing up slowly.

"Open the door, face the corner when it's done."

Sharar kept his eyes glued to Sich, and his foot heavy on her sister's center. The gun hovered over Vin's face just out of her arm's reach.

He didn't want to, but if the situation degraded anymore, he wouldn't hesitate. Even now Sharar found himself trying to think of contingencies.

"I... I can't," said Sich. "It's a security measure, and I don't have the tools I need to open it." She tilted her head in the direction of the fallen cyborg. "But she... she can communicate with the computer, if you didn't blow up the part that'll allow her to do that."