Lisa couldn't help but give a brief nod of approval at how they were a-okay and had moved on from that whole 'You gotta whore your ass out for Magos, Brian' thing now, and all it took was for her to sincerely apologise… with 30 grand. Brian was professional like that. But boy did that teach her a valuable lesson of not relying on her stupid fucking powers to try and guess people's intentions while lacking accurate data!
Was previously aware of power limitations concerning intentions of Thinker-resistant Magos, Lisa is the idiot for ignoring such limitations.
Known history of delusions of possessing great intelligence corroborate this conclusion.
…Fuck you too, power. This is exactly why she hated it when her power got into the topic of herself.
"The job is to run around the city and cover PRT outposts in your smoke." Lisa finally replied as she pouted from her power. "Starting with PRT Outpost #17 just outside of Magos' manufactorum."
"We're going in loud?" Brian surmised with his usual distaste for anything resembling a direct approach, "The boss better know what he's doing…"
"It's not the boss…" Lisa awkwardly had to explain just to them just now.
"What do you mean?" Alec piped up- raising a professionally plucked and graceful eyebrow (That she totally wasn't jealous of) as he looked up from his tablet. "Lisa… did you just make us all into independents?"
"Hah! I wish." She responded with a bitter bark of laughter, "But no, as it turns out, the boss has… loaned our services to a rogue. Apparently, we're going to be doing someone else's dirty work for a couple of missions. My guess is anywhere from 4-12 missions in total."
"Oh god…" Brian whispered in fear- his skull-faced helmet turning to look at her with what was almost certainly a pleading expression underneath. "Don't tell me that it's fucking Magos on the other end of those comms."
"Ehehehe… nah, it's not Magos." Lisa truthfully answered. Okay, it was technically true, which was the best kind of true in her opinion. They weren't taking orders from Magos, but she just didn't have the heart to tell Brian that they were now taking orders from Magos' sex doll… A particularly well-programmed sex doll that was proven to work during an Endbringer fight, yes. But it was one thing to listen to a sex bot regurgitate some first aid instructions, and it was whole nother thing for a machine designed to take dick be their commanding officer for a mission.
"Thank fuck…" Brian smiled relieved under his mask. Oh, ignorance was such bliss…
"And before you ask: Yes, we still get paid." Lisa was able to happily report that part at least, "More generously than with the boss too! About an extra ten grand for each mission."
"The extra money is nice." Brian nodded, "But anything sounds good as long as we're not taking orders for Magos."
Lisa just grinned- hiding the wince that she felt. Yeah, better that Brian didn't know that their lives were now in Chloe's cum-encrusted hands and that they were relying on the tactical acumen of a literal walking onahole to get them out of this mission alive.
She could feel it in her bones: This was going to be one of those Tuesdays in Brockton Bay.
[Elsewhere in the city] (Present time)
Estimated Time before Dragon's death: 14 minutes 59 seconds.
Distance to Manufactorum: 16.8km.
Well with Dragon and Eidolon loaded up onto the Onager Dunecrawler, we blazed a swift pace back to the manufactorum. The servo-motors of the Onager Dunecrawler and going as fast as we could.
There was still a lot of ground to cover, but thankfully, the Archaeopter will be here in a minute to airlift us back to the base even quicker.
Then my manufactorum blurted out a warning- announcing the arrival of trouble. Our unwelcome, but not unexpected guests, and they weren't exactly subtle either.
Heed! Multiple airborne contacts diagnosed.
(44) airborne signatures matched to {Dragon's Dragonflight} witnessed on north-western bounds of Brockton Bay airspace.
Through the private messaging function of PHO, I received a single message.
Concerned_Citizens: [Goodbye_ ]
Saint's fugly mug appeared in the pre-recorded message. Bald headed with a brown goatee, he had that odd electric-tattoo made him look like he had smeared blue-green jam and glitter across his eye.
"Magos, I know that nothing I will say will convince you of the dangers of AIs." Saint solemnly said, "You could have been a great Tinker, Magos. Thus, it brings no pleasure to say this, but… you know too much about the construction of AIs, and you must die. Your workshop burned to the ground by the same Dragon Suits that you fetishise. This is goodbye. For both you and Dragon."
It would have been intimidating if Saint didn't misunderstand one thing…
: Are you serious? It's not even my birthday yet.
Concerned_Citizens: What?
How can I be intimidated when all 44 pairs of Dragon's panties were flying through the air? Towards me? Straight into my hands? I wasn't about to just get Dragon. I was going to get Dragon and her entire wardrobe too! Who doesn't like having their waifu have a lot of outfits and lingeries?! And all I had to do was to avoid their supercharged energy weapons, weather their high-ex missiles, carefully shoot the Suits down and salvage them. And after I've dealt with Ascalon, I'll make it a point to fuck Dragon while she wore each of those 44 Suits at least once.
Oh, Omnissiah, even Dragon's aquatic operations Suit was there! The AI equivalent of a two-piece bikini!
It was one thing to expect for this to happen, and another to actually see it occur.
Excitement and excitement filled my circuits, and I would have started drooling if I still had salivary glands.
"Well, slap my ass and call me Trazyn the Infinite, because it's time to start collecting."
[The skies above Brockton Bay]
Saint inhaled through gritted teeth as the G-forces kicked in.
It was still hard to believe how ludicrous this all was: If Magos manages to take her to his manufactorum, the whole of humanity will teeter off into the abyss and into a cruel technological apocalypse that would make that old Terminator movie look like a children's story… and it was all because one specific person just happened to have a robot fetish.
But regardless of how absurd it was, their hand was now forced and they were compelled to show all the aces that they had hidden up their sleeve.
Forty-four Dragon Suits. Twenty thousand kilograms of cold-forged armour plating, precisely milled assemblies, stable plasma reactors, delimited concussion blasters, high-pressure containment foam sprayers, high explosive air-to-ground micro-missiles and other mind-bogglingly incomprehensible tinkertech. Each one possessed the strength to pry open armoured tanks and crush men in their jaws. Even as limited as their numbers were, they were already an S-class threat all on their own. Dragon, rightfully shackled as she was, was already capable of being a threat to match the Slaughterhouse Nine, the Three Blasphemies, Sleeper and the Endbringers.