Pandemonium broke loose in the proving grounds, as eight volleys of bullets bounced around the walls.
"More of them!"
"Take cover!"
"Woaaah."
"Not the face! Not again! Aaargh!"
The volleys of bullets push us backwards towards the corners, naturally seperating us into four smaller groups.
As I step backwards, I notice that I've been separated from Kyte and Brutus. I consider between choosing to let myself be pushed backwards into this corner, or trying to dash over to one of the other corners where Kyte and Brutus are.
Staying in this corner would be the obvious choice, since I'll probably take a few more bullets if I back over to a different corner. But I feel like I'd be able to do more if I teamed up with someone I knew better. I mean, I know a few people in this corner, but we just don't have the same teamwork compared to me and Kyte. If I hurry, I can move now and join up with Kyte.
I choose to move while everyone is still being pushed back by the robots, but as I start to move, I collide with something chest-height. I then spin sideways onto the floor. I think I must have collided with someone in the chaos, so I pick myself up and start to apologise. The other member spoke first.
"Hey! Watch it! Oh, it's you."
"Sorry, I didn't-"
Orange hair entered my vision.
"-ehem- Was preoccupied with the robots."
Mido was sitting on the ground, obviously unpleased after I collided with him. He stands back up. Before Mido says anything more to me, however, a round of bullets sweeps over both of us. We both raise our arms in a feeble attempt to block.
"Tsk. Ouch! Well, now I think about it, you'd at least make some decent cover."
"Pardon?"
Mido positions himself tactically behind me, then continues talking.
"I saw what you did before. Shield me, and we'll go in close like you and those other guys did before."
I nod. I obviously couldn't meet up with Kyte and Brutus now, but I was confident in Mido's skills, having felt the effects of them first hand. I mean, my original plan was to find Kyte and charge in like before, but since Mido offered to charge in with me instead, I'm fine with going along with it.
"Ready?" I ask Mido.
"Course I'm ready."
Mido and I charge at one of the four robots in front of us.
As we approach, a thin pipe-like object swung out from its wrist, hitting my raised arm. It doesn't hurt, so I grin.
What was that? Compared to those bullets, thats pathetic. Haha. Oh! It's still fast, though.
It dodges a punch I throw, and jumps back. Mido also dives after it, but it spins to the side of him with excessive movements.
"Come on all you lot! Chase it down, ya bums!"
Mido turns to the rest of the people in our corner and bellows. Fortunately, the other three robots seem happy to continue gunning down trainees in the other corners, despite the loud noise Mido is making. Hmm. The other three corners are making a lot of ruckus as well, to be fair.
I glance over at the other corners while playing tag with Cypress-bot. Everyone seems to be in action doing something.
Cypress-bot becomes surrounded by trainees, and his eye starts spinning around his visor.
Yea, this looks like it'll be over soon.
"Haha, good work."
Mido pummels his fists together, approaching a fallen Cypress bot. During our game of tag, it had attempted to fly away. I noticed the movements though, so I made a lunge to grab at it and got lucky. I managed to hold onto its torso long enough for someone else to help me weigh it down, and after some struggling, a few of us each grabbed one of its limbs to hold it down. It's jet boots were still on, but it couldn't shift itself with them.
"And take thiiiis!"
Shockwaves run through my arms as Mido brings his bare fists to the steel- err, its actually wood- chassis of the robot. Ignoring any possibility that he might injure his fists, he continues throwing full force punches.
The orange light on it's visor blinked twice, then disappeared. It's jet boots also stopped functioning, and it stopped struggling. A few people started discussing if the fight was over or not.
"Its deactivated, right?"
"seems so."
"Ahh, well done all."
"Wait, lets give it one more kick for good measure."
"Hiyaaa! Ouch. That hurt!"
"My arms are getting tired. It's stopped resisting, can I let go?"
"Yea, I guess so."
The other three holding onto it's limbs let go, and back away slowly. Seeing that it remains motionless, I also let go of it's leg and stand up.
"Oh, and that's the first one down, three left! You lot around that broken one, take a breather and just watch the others."
Professor Vorsichtiger's voice rang around the room confirming we were the first corner to finish. Although the other corners looked pretty close to finished.
"Take that!"
"Take this!"
"Ouch! My face!"
"Ha! Ha! Hup! Ha! Hiyaaa!"
"This one's for my face!"
Boom.
One of the robots combusts from the joints, and a jet of flames engulfes the upper half on a nearby student. Everyone nearby stumbles backwards. A croaking laughter bounces round the room from Vorischtiger.
"Wha-ha-ha! Two down! I guess if you fill a wooden robot with rocket fuel, that certainly could happen, huh? Well done, second group."
Shortly after, the other two robots were dispatched. Afterwards, Vorsichtiger thanked us for "gathering data" for him, and escorted us up to a lab infirmary to check for any injuries.
Except for one person who vehemently insisted his face was critically wounded, everyone had minor injuries at best. Because of that, Vorsichtiger left everyone outside the lab, while he escorted the injured person to the general infirmary, stating that it was part of safety procedure to leave the lab infirmaries empty if possible.
Kyte, Brutus and I walk back to the lecture hall to study some more. Upon arrival, we sit down at the place we were at earlier and stare at our books.
"Eenie, meanie, miny, moe. Catch a law book by its toe. If it squeals, let it go. Wait! Better yet- if it doesn't squeal, let it go. Eenie, meanie, miny, moe! Haha, it didn't squeal!"
"What are you doing?"
I ask Brutus, who had pushed one of his course books off the table. Perhaps he hit his head during the training earlier.
"I'm not in the mood to study."
Brutus responds, spreading his hands over the table and resting his head on it. Then he continues talking.
"I'm too hyped about earlier. I want to get rid of my leftover energy."
"Are you a child?"
"In both mind and soul."
I guess Brutus was always this type of person.
"Kyte, tell him to work."
Kyte however, doesn't respond, and gazes at the electronic blackboard at the front of the class. Upon seeing this, Brutus speaks.
"See? Even Kyte can't concentrate. Actually, Kyte not being able to concentrate? That's just wrong. Kyte? Hello?"
Brutus waves his hands in front of Kyte. After seeing that there was still no response, he pokes him.
"Kyte? Kyte?"
"Hmm? Oh, were you talking to me about something?"
Kyte finally looks at us, and responds to Brutus.
"Not really. Me and Arg just saw you blank out for a bit."
"Oh. I was meditating. I'm trying to figure out a way to accomplish this dumb task of mine faster."
Kyte explains his plan to us both, who already know the contents of the task.
"So I was thinking of doing it automatically via a macro. That way, even if its a bit slower, It wouldn't get in the way of daily stuff. The problem would be making a macro."
Kyte continues explaining the plan.
"I would need a bunch of different macros for each role in the raid, then the strategy would have to be generalised so it would always complete the level, including various R.N.G. factors. There would probably also be a small amount of code along with it to verify a raid completion."
"Whats the difference between a macro and code?"
Kyte answers my question.
"A Macro is just a recording of instructions, while a code can very the response depending on inputs. So I'd make a macro by recording my mouse clicks and keyboard presses, but then the code would tell which macros to run when."
I nod, not fully understanding why it couldn't just all be called code. Kyte continues.
"And since a run takes fifty members, I'd need to find another forty-five computers to run the game. I think I'll need to ask Misa for help on how to do that."
I sincerely hope Kyte realised we aren't able to fit another forty five computers in our apartment. Otherwise Misa better know how to hang forty-five computers from an apartment ceiling.
Brutus gets up.
"Well that's it, then. Let's go find her instead of doing this!"
"Won't she be in a lecture?" I ask Brutus.
"Are we in a lecture? No, so neither is she."
"Good point."
Convinced by Brutus' logic, and deeming this more important than studying, I also get up.
"Kyte, lets go!"
"Ah, there's no need to go right now. Let me think some more about the matter." Kyte sluggishly responds.
"Think some more about what?"
"If I can come up with a plan that doesn't involve forty-five more computers."
"On second thought, we can wait here for a bit longer. We'll go at lunchtime."
I sit back down and take out a book.
"But! My excuse to leave! I mean! Our plan to help Kyte!" Brutus complains before sitting down.
"Sorry Brutus, but let me think a little longer." Kyte responds.
Brutus smacks his head into the table, and starts making muffled grumbling sounds.
Lunchtime comes around and Kyte has yet to find a better idea, So we choose to walk around SIT's grounds until we find Misa. The first place we check is obviously the dining hall.
The dining hall was a pale-yellow rectangular room with six large rows of grey tables. Around the edges of the room were smaller circular tables of the same colour. I'd like to say they were made out of metal, but I highly doubt they actually were, since they weren't cold to touch. They were probably made out of some plastic look-alike of metal, since fake metals are fashionable these days. One side of the dining hall was connected to the kitchen, and had kitchen-counters full of food. The food was paid for by SIT, of course, due to the overabundance of food production causing incredibly low food prices when bought in bulk.
We find Misa sitting with a few friends on one of the small circular tables near the corner of the room, so we walk over and join them.
