Dinosaurs, slugs and AIs. Oh, my! Part 2

Who: Andy, Rufus
Where: Blue Dwarf, Corridors
When: 5 minutes after previous post.
<Snip>
"OI!" Andy yelled as he quickly ran past the boy. "I'M the one with
the gun here. Stay behind me." "I'm sorry, I thought you were too busy
being afraid of your own shadow." Rufus replied bitterly. "I don't
know what you're so scared of," Holly chimed in "You're both armed…
opps, sorry Rufus."
A prolonged indignant silence occurred. The AI wisely decided to keep
out of conversation from then on
<End Snip>
`K, take a left here.' After a few minutes Holly's voice was reduced
to background noise.
"Damn it. I know I'm eventually going to be stuck with cleaning up
after all this." The cleaner admitted sourly as he looked up and down
the halls. "… You're kidding right?" Rufus asked over the sounds of
their boots slamming into the ground. "What? That I'm already talking
about when this is over?" "No, that you'd be the one to clean it up."
The scientist corrected, who did this guy think he was- A one-man
cleaning crew? "Well, maybe not the battle damage, engineers will do
that, but definitely everything else. My trio of … duo, of Skutters
and I are the ones that mostly do everything that involves cleaning up
a mess. It was really their jobs anyway… what do you think happened?
That the toilets magically cleaned themselves?"
Gears went spinning in Rufus's head as he looked down at the steel
floor that quickly passed them by.
Then with a sudden yell and a perfect back flip, Rufus slipped and
fell to the floor with an almighty crack. Andy skidded to a halt,
hyper-friction boots kept him pinned to the floor better than ice
cleats on… well… ice.
"You okay?" Andy quickly asked as he reached down and hoisted the boy
up by his elbow. Rufus groaned and held his head as he finally
regained his feet. "I slipped on something…urgh, my shoulder." The
cleaner kneeled down and inspected the floor. A slippery substance did
indeed coat the floor. Scooping up a sample with his index and middle
finger he held it up to his noise. "…Slugs…" Andy muttered, placing a
hand on his bazookoid.
"Dudes," A distant voice muttered. "You may want to look up ahead for
a moment."
The two dwarfers planted their backs against the corridor and looked
out at the squad of three, heavily armed, SWAT-like Aliens.
Rufus pointed over Andy's shoulder. "There… they're looking at a
computer screen." That they were, most importantly, they were in front
of the Express lift that they so desperately needed to get to.
"…Okay…" A subtly larger slug stated in a distinctly smooth voice.
"According to these schematics I've managed to hack, the hanger should
be right… two kilometres." The others nodded and did something with
their weapons. Andy guessed that they were reloading. It didn't take
much of a stretch of imagination that those barrels of darts they were
loading into were not unlike those that got him before. "Remember,
stay alert. Squad one has gone for the ship. We don't know how many of
those creatures are still here. Don't worry too much about humans- the
drones would've gotten them already."
"Sir, I've got movement!" One piped up. The whole squad hunched over
for their weapons. "Where?!" the leader demanded. "Wait… I think it's
just a couple of insects or something. Those things would have rushed
us by now… nothing to worry about."
"Can they hear us-." Andy was quickly silenced by a slap over the
mouth by Rufus. Fortunately, they weren't. "Holly, how did they get
the schematics? I thought you were hack-proof!" Rufus spoke in a whisper.
"I am." The AI confirmed. "Then why do they have Blue Dwarf's
schematics?!" The teenager replied." "Well, they were being pretty
annoying so I caved in and let `em have it." There was a small twinge
of pride in the AI's voice. "You, what?!" Andy joined in on the
Spanish inquisition.
"Yep, according to the schematics I gave them. They'll be finding
their way to the lady's restroom on the third floor of the empire
state building."
Andy looked back at Rufus with annoyance. "In my day, we didn't have
AI Jerks. We just had regular ones, so when they acted like that we
just got to smack `em, ahh the good old days." The 23-year old cleaner
cooed like an old man before looking back out at the team.
Then something odd happened.
The Express lift began to make blaring obnoxious noises.
Then the lift doors opened.
Then something else very odd happened.
The Screaming screeches of animals echoed through the halls. The
sounds of charging feet stomped soon grew so loud that it felt like
that a marching band was playing his ear drums with his feet.
"… Get ready to make a run for the Lift. The Triassic period is coming
to visit." Holly rambled with a somewhat evil tone.
"Oh shit." Andy grabbed Rufus by his shoulders. "What? What's going
on?!" The teenager demanded to know why he was suddenly manhandled by
a man in a disposable brown/green plastic suit.
Andy slapped his hand over Rufus's mouth as the boy's eyes suddenly
bulged at the sight of Noah's ark, Spielberg edition, charging down
the hall.
The dinosaurs; none being higher than Andy's waist skittered, ran,
leapt and crawled past the two, ignoring them completely, and right
into where the three-slug team where taking five. Needless to say, the
results were immediate.
At first the team was professional and disciplined; easily dispatching
anything that came their way. 2 minutes, and 80 dinosaur corpses
later, it was a different story.
"I'm running out of energy!" One yelled before a rustling of cloth of
heard over the chaos. "NO, you fool! They'll go straight to the-!!"
+=Meanwhile, on Mollopod=+
A distinctly nerdy-looking overlooked the steady supply of humans
warping into the sandwich line. Slithering from restraint to restraint
in checking that each holster was prepared to hold a fully grown, and
powerful, human could have no hope of escaping.
Although quite surprised when he found a bizarre-looking reptile warp
in; it amounted to nothing when he saw the creature quickly and easily
slides out from under the restraints. The Velociraptor took little
time to take in its environment and even less time to make short work
of the confused slug.
Had it been just one it wouldn't be so bad. It wasn't. Soon a steady
supply of evolution's rejects began to pour in.
And they just so happened to like the way these slugs tasted…
+=Returning to the insanity=+
"What the hell is going on?!" Andy yelled at the AI, all the while
trying to keep a handle on the squirming Rufus.
"Well, I've started to emit a sonic noise all over the Blue Dwarf."
The AI half-yelled over the chaos. "Dinosaurs can't stand it, so
they're running in whichever direction is most bearable, being just
outside that Express lift."
"…So…?" The cleaner drawled.
"The Dinosaurs aren't attacking, Slugs did that. Now the Dinosaurs are
retaliating. And by the way, if you don't want to be trampled you
might want to get on the lift now."
Andy looked down at Rufus. They both nodded. Releasing his hands from
the boy's mouth they half-charged, half-climbed through the dinosaur
graveyard. Even through all the insanity, the slugs were putting up
one hell of a fight. Yet they were too busy tele-dodging or roasting a
velociraptor than to worry about two sudden humans trudging over the
corpses.
Their luck didn't last. "Humans!!" A slug cried before taking aim with
the dart gun. A well aimed shot was rendered useless as Rufus tripped
over a sprinting raptor, watching the projectile sail overhead.
Andy finally dove into the lift, more and more darts flickered past.
The once crack-shot aliens rendered uselessly by the horde of
dinosaurs using his back as an improv jumping castle.
Andy's arms flopped out and quickly dragged the scientist into the
safety of the Expresslift. "Shut the door, shut the door!!" Andy
screamed up at holly.
With a pronounced, airy huff, the Expresslift door slammed shut.
The two took a long, long moment to catch their breath. "Holly,
science deck… now." Rufus mumbled as he shakily got to his feet. A
small jolt of motion and the lift began to move along the line.
"You okay?" Andy asked, still huffing, still sitting on the floor
clutching the bazookoid.
"I've been through worse." Rufus replied, hunched over with his right
arm resting on his knee.
The cleaner suddenly noticed that something was sticking out of the
end of the leather strap of his bazookoid. "Hey… what the hell is
this?" The object was… odd… it looked like a perfectly chrome dart,
upon its side was a long band of blue with strange markings through out.
He was about to pluck it out before Rufus quickly realised what it
was. "Don't touch it!" The scientist wrenched the weapon away from him
and tossed it to the ground. Standing back from it like the bazookoid
was on fire.
"Rufus, what the hell-?!" "That's the darts they use to teleport
people." The teenager theorised but not making eye contact. "Do not
touch it. After we get to science deck, I'm going to study it in the
proper conditions."
The two's attention was quickly diverted as the elevators door opened.
A large painted symbol on the front showed `Science deck' in big bold
letters. Rufus turned back to Andy. "I'm going to Genetics lab. Take
the bazookoid but hold it as far away as possible from the dart."
"... And what are you going to do with a dart?" Andy couldn't possibly
understand why he would want it, unless he wanted a one way ticket to
an Alien's stomach.
Rufus smirked deviously, placing a second hand on his mother's arm.
"Triangulation…"
<DUN, DUN, DUN... Tag Rebecca!>