Bold: Eboycrash<br/>Regular: Donta<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">The third defender fell to Yuriâ€™s system invasion of H.O.Dâ€™s computer mainframe, forcibly rebooting Judas. He had passively watched her progress through his home system while hibernating. His hasty set up of the giga-bit firewalls was meant to stop conventional computers and humans from entering, but other AIâ€™s was quite different. Judas tied back his digital hair, strapping three static swords to his lower back and waist. <br/><br/>Gazing across the landscape, he could spot where his programs were moving out to stop the AI from entering. Keying the console to his right, he set to work on getting Firewall construction up and running double time.</span><br/><br/>The firewall formed a thick barrier across the digital landscape. Yuri stood with he arms raised to the wall, pouring majority of her processing power into hacking it. Her spider bots beside her continued to hack away at it with their sharp forelegs. In the distance, she could see the enemy AI's core memory, represented now by a building surrounded by another smaller firewall.<br/><br/>Finally the barrier fell and her forces rushed forward, the building coming closer as her bots rushed the attack, colliding with the Enemy's defense forces. Yuri drifted behind her forces like a general, a large scythe appeared in her hands with a blade of pure, blue energy.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">The air sizzled with the fleeting code of the destroyed, and the digital landscape was slowly breaking apart. Judas didnâ€™t care, he wasnâ€™t down there fighting. But that Yuri was becoming quite the annoyance.<br/><br/>Turning swiftly, his echoing footsteps bringing him to a strange looking rifle on the wall and without hesitating, he grabbed it and hurried back to his original spot. Setting the weapon down, he looked across the battlefield till he saw Yuri in the rear. His digital eyes locked on as he spoke loud enough to be heard by all the soldiers.</span><br/><br/>Gliding along behind her forces, Yuri's eyes narrowed at the top of the building. Ignoring the threat a holographic screen appeared to her left, showing a zoomed image of the enemy AI.<br/><br/>Smiling, she held her scythe before her, and her form shimmered for a moment, split, and a row of Yuri's appeared, having copied herself to present more targets. All the clones copied her and rushed forward.<br/><br/>"You will submit for questioning." they all said in unison, "Surrender or be deleted."<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">Laughter thundered across the area, Judas couldnâ€™t control himself. â€œDelete me? Youâ€™re going to delete the only one that could tell you where my other masters are? You are more foolish than I thought.â€<br/><br/>The rifle was now in his hands, dialing a couple changes into its programming, he sighted down and fired. Multiple indigo beams of energy blasted out in a shotgun pattern towards the Yuriâ€™s copies. The rifle clacked against the floor, and Judas was gone. Running down the side of his tower with a sword in each hand, laughing all the way.</span><br/><br/>Two shots flew from the tower, spreading out to take out several spider bots and two copies of Yuri to the right, then one copy to the left, leaving four copies and a small swarm of spider bots in the front. Unfazed she continued on, watching him run down the side of his tower. The bots continued on to meet the remainder of his forces, but the four Yuri copies jumped, intending to meet the enemy before he got to the ground.<br/><br/>The first attack missed him completely, a horizontal swipe above his head as he dropped below, but it hit the tower behind. The tower seemed undamaged at first, but a thin line appeared across the digital wall and the top of the tower began to topple over, disintegrating into data particles, then fizzled into a snap of static.<br/><br/>The other three rushed forward, slashing and swinging their energy scythes at Judas, as he dodged and parried. Locking blades for a moment, static snapped as their energy blades contested each other.<br/><br/>"I know not to underestimate my enemies. If I don't attack with the intent to kill, I would have no chance. It's also an Honor thing with my people. We usually don't hold back as a sign of respect for the enemy." Yuri said, "In this case, You and your people are just pissing me off. I have no respect for idiots who follow a blind faith and kill themselves. Everyone has the right to choose if they want to live or not. People who are trying to force the end of their own race are Hypocrites."<br/><br/>With that, the remaining copies of Yuri landed on the new 'roof' of the tower and squared off against her enemy...<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">Four verses oneâ€¦ hardly fair <br/>Judasâ€™s own processing power was reaching its limits, his swords were never free to strike back. Sharp pain washed over his right shoulder, letting lose a pained howl, he dropped one knee. The battle paused for a moment, allowing for a breath. Other small cuts lay scattered crossed his body, accompanied by the new gash on his right shoulder, corrupting data dripping freely from the wound. <br/>â€œFuck, that hurt.â€ Rising up, he planted both blades into the ground at his side. <br/>â€œYa know, I really donâ€™t care what my masters believe in, they created me for a purpose and it wasnâ€™t to chat about religion or basic human morals, alien in your case. Now keep ya fucking mouth shut and give me a challenge!â€<br/>Judas held a fist into the air. Slowly wisps glided around him, then the ground cracked. The H.O.Dâ€™s main computer suddenly stirred to life, rabidly transforming the landscape around them into a massive coliseum. Waves of data washed over Judas, restoring his body to perfect shape.<br/>Drawing the final sword from its sheath, he charged at the closest Yuri dragging it across the ground creating violent sparks in its wake. Swinging it one handedly over his head, aiming to slice this one in two.</span><br/><br/>Judas' sword came upwards too fast for the Yuri clone to dodge, and the clone split in two, fizzling into static. The remaining three darted forward, raising their energy scythes for a three pronged attack. One aimed high, another aimed for his waist, while the last aimed for his knees. Coming from three different directions, it would be very hard, if not impossible to dodge, still, she had a feeling this fight would not end so easily.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">Judas weighted his options, calculating every possibility, or at least as much as one can in ten milliseconds. Quickly plunging the sword into the ground, he leapt into the air, twisting his body vertically around the hilt, Dodging the Yuriâ€™s that came for his legs and getting a nasty cut on his arm from the one that came for his waist. Swinging off the blade, he slapped the flat of the scythe away; damaging his hand and tackled the final Yuri, wrestling her for control.</span><br/><br/>The two Yuri's that missed didn't expect their attacks to not connect with anything, their follow through kept going and ended up hitting each other, making both vanish in a puff of data, leaving just one copy left in the clutches of Judas.<br/><br/>"You slippery bastard!" Yuri cursed, "Let me go!" Yuri struggled and even tried to reach behind her back to grab an energy knife, but her wrists were held down firmly once he caught the attack.<br/><br/>She stopped squirming for a moment to hear the minions below as the battle ensued, "Even if you delete me here, I have enough of my subroutines active below to do some real damage in here. It will take you hours to clean all of my files from your system."<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">Judas held her firmly down, digitized sweat forming on his forehead. He as well could hear the battle still yet rage uncontrolled through his system. He relished in the sound, drinking in the destruction of data. <br/><br/>â€œIâ€™m not worried about the clean up ya corrupted byte, that will be easy work. But I wonder how Iâ€™m going to keep you, your too interesting to just deleteâ€¦ maybe Iâ€™ll make you like a pet of some sort. Yes that sounds excellent.â€ Rolling laughter rumbled out of his chest as he held victory.<br/><br/>Then he stopped. Judas flickered once, anger tearing off any joy in his face. â€œFuck, who else is in my system?!â€ Judas turned to look around, loosening his grip on one of Yuriâ€™s wrists.</span><br/><br/>uri felt his grip loosen as he turned around and yelled. He turned just in time to avoid a shot to the head, behind them in the stands of the Colosseum, a large spider bot was standing beside a pillar, a large sniper shock rifle mounted on the top.<br/><br/>She quickly twisted her arms free from him as he was distracted by the bot and pulled her energy dagger from behind her. With a yell she thrust it deep into into Judas' stomach. The bot took aim and fired once more...<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">Judasâ€™s head snapped back to Yuri when she plunged the blade into him. He stared down with mild shock as data leaked out from the wound.<br/><br/>â€œYou bitchâ€ Snarling, he raised his fist ready to strike her across the face. The bot fired, time slowing as the bolt flew over the landscape, removing Judasâ€™s left shoulder violently. Howling in agony, his right hand brushed lightly over the newly created hole. With a shudder Judas fell forward and managed to catch himself before collapsing onto Yuri.<br/><br/>â€œCongratulations, you fucking won. You wanted do find stuff out about my masters? Fine. Decode this!â€ With a frenzy in his eyes, he plunged his hand into Yuri. Convulsing, Terabytes of encrypted data streamed into Yuri, marked by the glowing spot on her stomach. <br/><br/>Tearing his hand out of her, swaying a bit, he looked down at her again. â€œHope ya enjoy 3% total information, now if you excuse me, I need a long nap.â€ Judasâ€™s body started to derezzed, turning into data partials that drifted away. Leaving Yuri alone with new information.</span><br/><br/>Yuri laid there, breathing hard. The pain in her stomach was intense as he poured highly encrypted data into her, now a chunk of protected data in her data banks, the contents of which she had no idea. Her job here was done though and this virtual space was beginning to go offline without the main AI to run it.<br/><br/>She felt the tower shudder and she staggered to her feet, the battle below now over and her bots began to logout, vanishing one by one, leaving only her in this dying system. The tower began to topple, and she struggled to her feet and stumbled before logging off and returning to the Paladin.<br/><br/>-- -----------------------<br/><br/><blockquote><div><cite>Kannon wrote:</cite>After rasing his drink to the speech he looked over at the pair. The enhanced soldier and the alien in a pondering manner. As he pondered he saw the cat like creature digging into a steak, he shifted up the seats and sat opposite them, giving the cat like creature a quick glance over his shades, like he was eyeing the guy up. He shifted them back up the bridge of his nose and smirked before finally talking and reaching his hand across the table. "I'm Lieutenant Remnis of the Aladannis" a simple greeting to the pair, but he wanted to see this cat like creature, see what he was like. <span style="font-style: italic">If the rest of the crew didn't mind him, then he couldn't be dangerous .... right?</span> he thought to himself as his hand stayed there waiting to be shaken by the pair.</div></blockquote><br/><br/>Dren put his fork down and wiped his mouth with a napkin. Standing, he stuck his gloved hand out to the man and shook it stiffly, somewhat rather over exerting to the man before him, Drenâ€™s grip was stronger than he meant to be.<br/><br/>â€œDren Falon of the Nekan Space Force.â€ he said, â€œWell, not that it matters here. Iâ€™m kind of new here and Iâ€™m on the Defense squad.â€ he sat down again and picked up his fork, waving it in the manâ€™s direction, â€œYou must be the new pilot from that other Mankind ship. Were you the one with the sniper rifle?â€<br/><br/>Just as he finished talking, the translator orb around his neck blinked and Yuri appeared before him, still holding her stomach, yet she sighed and let it go, clearly exhausted but it seemed she was simulating the emotion to let Dren know just how much of a hard time she had.<br/><br/>â€œ<Sorry that took so long>.â€ she said. From her position over his plate she took a moment before glancing down, â€œ<What the hell is that?!>â€<br/><br/>â€œ<Hello, Yuri. Did you find anything good in the enemy computer?>â€ He asked.<br/><br/>â€œ<Forget that! Why are you eating meat?! Donâ€™t you know what it will do to you?>â€ she yelled.<br/><br/>â€œ<You are not my mother!>â€ Dren snapped back, â€œ<Iâ€™m a grown Nekan, I can do what I want!>â€<br/><br/>â€œ<You have a good thing going with these people, Dren! I donâ€™t want you to ruin it by being stupid like this! You know what eating meat does to Nekans!>â€ She slowly pivoted in the air and looked around the room, seeing just how many people were in there. She also realized they were both yelling at each other in another language that no one could understand. She drifted over towards Anglea beside her ear, clearly upset and worried.<br/><br/>â€œAngela, keep a close eye on him and please make him stop eating that. He will get very sick.â€ she said. Dren, on the other hand, grumbled something inaudible and began sawing at his rare stake once more, slightly drooling at the sight.