Welcome to Gaia! ::

Azora blinked, what was going on? She knew she wasn't hurt or anything, but why the maintenance? The room was working fine, as she tripped over the dummy she killed.

Baltazaar sat in the corner, with a very thick plaster over his eyebrow. He had a certain kind of word for people who were not very fond of technicians, and the passion which he put in this hate could match with the Librarians most notorious bad gestures.
"Ugh?", said the Librarian, and sat down next to Brian / Tech, grinning and pointing to the laptop.
"Yes. First of all, thanks for the glasses. Yea, you can have them back. The embedded camera has done the job. "
He looked at the film sequence, which he had put on the 29 Inch Plasma TV. Both him and the Librarian smiled, when the camera autofocused.
"1280 x 756 my butt, dude. This is HDTV-peeping! This is most excellent cinema. The only thing more excellent then this is what will happen if the nice lady that has dared to mess with that beautiful head of mine so meanaceingly if she tries something fishy..... Like continuing to use the keyboard despite my objective warning. "
The Enter button brought the four different cameras onscreen, that he had mounted as a part of the Nanites system. all showed the training room from every angle possible. OOh, he thought, and let the cameras focus on the voice of the Captain.... is this a voice sample usable for revenge that I see before me?
"Well, we are very close. I am saving this for future generations of sysadmins that day.... aka.... what can happen if you do not listen to what the geek says...."
He smiled, leaned back in the beanbag-chair, grabbed his can of Mountain-Dew, and ashtray and some Doritos, and watched the scenery unfold.

Brian grinned, and high-fived the Librarian. This was going to be most exclusively fine.
"Ten bucks she is going to do it, and I am winning. "
"Ugh. "
The Librarian peeled himself a new banana, and reached for the sac of peanuts they had raided from the cafeteria-thingie.
"She is just a woman. besides, she is not like us. She is largely a trigger-finger. Good for pointing and shooting at things, and maybe for smashing some obviously innocent teenagers on the head. Nope. she has accepted the challenge, and she knows what is coming to her. "
He looked at the door in the room. it was very thick, steel-reinforced, and according to the current floorplan, it was just a storage area in the basement, for toilett supplies and TP. He grinned, and munched some peanuts. This woman was in for a surprise.

Brian almost giggled. It was too nice. exactly according to plan..... This woman understood nothing of tech, or what it could be used for.
He presented his laptop to the Librarian, who grinned as a maniac.
"You understood phase two and three of the plan? Well, then, my dear librarian, let us engage in battle. After you, my dear friend, since I am already villanious enough. "
The librarian tipped the key with his toe. Both of them giggled, nd nothing much happened. They scared for the screen. Slowly, but assuredly, they saw using the outer cameras that the woman was calling up implementations and programms.
"10, 9, 8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1....."
Two little nanites, as he had programmed them, went to work. too small to be seen with the naked eye, one of them rode on top of the bigger one, which started to drill a hole in a very crucial piece of the computer equipment. The cooling fan suddenly stopped working, and withing a second, the temperature of the machine began to rise.
The second one waited for a few seconds, just enough for a nice little programm to be launched. It did not revive any secret guardian. it did not help any nanites. It mainly copied a new set of instructions to the dummys in the room. This one, mainly thanks to extensive betatesting in various videogames, gave the dummys a new set of moves, and was able to be executed much faster, approximately 10 times. It was a one hit, though, and operated under the layer of normal programming.
As the code was exchanged, the second nanite jumped, ladden with energy from the cable, and reached a very crucial point at the old and not standartised unix mainboards, where it activated it miniature termite charge. The keyboard stopped working, and slowly but steadily, more thick grey smoke came out of the computer.

Brian grinned, and highfived the Librarian.
"Most excellent, Librarian! I must again say: To be a true villan does not mean fighting at the same level as the hero, but beating the hero senseless. "
he checked again if the mainframe was still reccieving picctures of the cameras, and grinned. he pressed enter, and saved the camera-dfeed in the deepest space of the server. That would give her an asswhooping she never forgot....

Brian began to jogg as he heard the sirens of the automatic fire alarm in the contoll boot go of. he shortly checked his laptop, only to see that the girl had shot out two of the eight cameras he knew of. he had installed them very obviously, and he was sure that the wireless connections would have been surely destroyed.
As he jogged around the corner, he saw one of the handy fire-extinguishers in the corner, and took it in running. His laptop went back into his bag, which was shock resistant and waterproof to 2 meters when closed. he grinned as he heard the second ping. Stage two would be initiated. He flexed himself for the surprise, and stormed the room.
"Allright, everybody, I am Tech and this is tech...."
He was unable to continue, as the first machine punched him in the stomach, and sent him flying to the next wall. His last thoughts were that all had been recorded. every move of the little lady. how she oh so smart had stuck her knive in the wiring. Even he assumed that the main computing units were in the dummys. on whose ram he had loaded the little progra,m, so the next time they would be started again, they would know nothing of their former actions. Likewise if they had been defeated. Then, he hit the wall, and everything went dark.

Brian woke up, and imediatelly realized he was sucessfull. He knew he not only had footage of how the tramp had sprayed a normal fire extinguisher into the computer station, which estimated worth amassed to about 280000 $, and which would be useless once the spray had dried. He also had her abducting him.
"Where am I? have you shut the machine down? what is Burning?"
He looked around the room, and then at Captain Eva.
"I understand you military types are good for a joke, but I have to look after the system, so please set me loose. "
He looked at her with the special kind of innocent look only teenage boys had.
"Please, you are scaring me!"

"Yea, Captain Eva, you have had your fun. Yea, I am sure that you are bigger and badder then me. But if you want to check, my actions are absolutely legit. I can produce The recceits and the repair schedules of the room. OOh, and you have never heard of hardware malfunction? I am sure the stuff has nothing to do with what you did. I am just saying that I came there with the clear intention of repairing the main machine, like I have done to the entire other computers in the station. I have nothing against you, and I do not know which delusions may cause you to think so, but I do not want any trouble. I know perfectly well that you are capable of hurting me very much, like you have proven on various occasions. Why would I have anything against you? I mean, it would be suicide to have anything against you! I mean, you are quite intimidating, and I am sure you have got much things that is nice, so basically, please accept that I do not have anything against you!"
He smiled, and relaxed a bit.
"so, since I assume that you are a normal intelligent human being, i am very sure that you understand my deep apologies. I also want you to notice that i am completly unarmed, and I am ready to take anything you give me..."

The Librarian timed his jump carefully. The stupid machine-dummy was not really a threat to his superiour strenght. He jumped on its back, and began to unscrew its head. A small crowd had gathered, and was cheering the Orang-Utan, as he mainly eeeked, and with a noise like a ripping USB-Cable, held the head of the android in its paws. The rest of the guy came down pretty quickly, and fell on the floor, so he had to just jump a little of it, and he was safe. He simply had to....
"UGH!"
He posed on top of the guy, that still emitted bursts of static electricity, and smashed his fists against his steellike chest-muscles.

As he was sure that the crowd had been impressed enough,he hopped down, and grabbed the head between his teeth, and pulled the now still android at its ankles towards the training room where it had come from. He was not sure if that was what the handbook called for, but he was pretty sure that he had the job done. From his years in Librarian Training, it was pretty certain for him that nothing did not respond if you went for the head.


Brian smiled, and managed to reach his casio wrist-calculator. He had learned that the sharp edges provided more then just a slight inconvenience at the LAN-Partys.
"Well, captain, as far as I see it, you are baseing your assumptions on completly wrong theories. For example, why my stuff? I mean, I am not even trying to convince you, as you must have a better understanding of yourself as i do, but I am not payed as you to do the job. I have to order the components from my own money, and install them myself. Then, if the Commander likes it, I am able to present the bill for my work, which will most likely get resented, shortened and much more. So, do not tell me how tough your surroundings are, because mine are equally as tough. "
He wriggled on, and silently popped the little cutter-blade he had hidden in the casio-wristcalculator. A leatherman, or how they called these damn tools for everything at once would have worked as well, if not better, but he had trained with the casio, when he had been with his contacts from the Yakuzza. Too bad most of the professionals did not seperate the geeks from their watches...

The librarian threw the last of the dummys on the heap inside the floor. He kicked the dummys again, just in case,but none of them did move. He had to smile. This was almost as nice and pleasurable as being a Librarian, without the actual being yelled at, and the combatttants seemed to stay dead afterwards.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noted that the Boomerang-Laptop was blinking. He was not sure what to do, so he flipped the screen up. Yes, the laptop. It was worth the time, as Brian had explained to him, to install distress signals with Active on Demand tracers that got activated when they were seperated from the person the computer belonged to. He looked at the list Brian had written him. "A fitting and educated response for a hostage situation. "

Brian was halfway through, as the light came. The light first came from the door, and he was prepared. He closed his eyes, as the lock of the room just melted, and smiled in relief. He had talked his mouth fuzzy, and had been talking a lot of personal s**t the last few minutes,just because he had to keep her distracted. As the door swung open, he was safe as the Librarian released a hail of bullets. His eardrums werent. As he opened his eyes again, he saw that the captain not only was alive and well, which he regretted very much, because he thought a few very indecent photos would even the score very much, but was facing the Librarian with some kind of weapon. He grinned. Mexican standoff.
The Librarian had followed his suggestion, and had wrapped himself into every available piece of armour that he could find. The result was that he looked like a kevlar sausage, because he sure was a little biit longer then the usual sizes, and a bit bigger. In his hands, which he cad covered with four kevlar gloves, he held the biggest gun Brian had ever seen. Six barrels of death, rotating in a disorderly fashion. How did the americans call that? AAh yes, Gatling gun.....
"OK, I would suggest that you, Librarian, keep your gun down. No,keep it up.... but higher.... I do not wish for anyone to stand at the wrong side of this thing. DO IT NOW"
He stood up, and stretched his feet and legs. After being hogtied, and knocked down by a wild robot, it was a bit painfull, but he had to stop the Librarian from killing anybody. He had to grin, as the Librarian took the back of the gun down, resting it against the floor on which he sat, but held the ever-rotating barrels nearly straingt. The full motorcycle-helmet hid his features, but Brian was pretty sure the ape was grinning.
"This is not an attempt to care about hostages, it is an attempt to meet.... see? I have my hands and legs free, I am cool....Allright, "he said, and motioned to the ape," I think you have proven your point..... Earned yourself a raise. I say, 4 % more bandwith of the TCp-7 protocoll-series.... and you are allowed to install the new mailserver...."
The Librarian ooked, and slowly moved backwards out of the room, various layers of Kevlar stretching around his body, blowing him up like the michelin-man. Brian looked at the Captain.
"Captain, if you may, as we have already discussed, I am no thread to you, and frankly, I do not care if you point any weapons at me, because now,at least we are acting like adults, not like schoolground bullys. Now,two questions: You have kicked me in the head, destroyed the things I was supposed to work with, and have attempted to hold me hostage to torture or worse. Now, you have done that,because you think I am threatening you. Now, have you any evidence that I am behind all of this? Because if you haven't, then you are nothing more then the conspiracy-theorists who are mad at the gouvernment for giving them bad sex.
Second part of my question: You asked me why I thought that you were anything like me, Captain Eva. I will answer to you. I once thought you were something like me. I thought you were at least an exception among the triggerfingers, an unworked diamond in a whole lot of s**t.
I was wrong. You are nothing like me, and I do not wish to be anything like you. You know why?
You complain too much. OOh, you have been given a squad full of not top of the line soldiers. Well, look at the company name, and tell me if you would have expected anything else. You curse about the people given to you? Heck, at least they are all of the same species. You know what makes me different from you? I care about my troops, my surroundings, and the people I work with. I may only have one person with me, but i know that I can trust this one person 100 %. I know that if you now kill or maim me, he will kill you without a second thought. And you know why I know that? Because I ******** care. Because to me, he is not some schlob, or some unfit ape. I would never even dare to use the same kind of words for him as you did for your squad. To me, he is of the same profession as me, which makes him worth dying for. I wonder, just exactly how many of your men and women would do the same for you? I mean, except the Commander, who has probably managed to get what true leadership is about. Yes, I am nothing without the people around me, on whom I can rely. But I do not need to hurt people to get my kicks. I do not need to bash the newbie, who is new to the job, by destroying all what he has worked for, and then claiming he has some kind of unreasoned grudge against me. Please, do explain your motives. Otherwise, shut the ******** up and listen to my last comment on the state of your affairs, captain. "
Brian breathed deeply, and looked at the captain. He was not sure where he had her, but he knew he had her.
"If you really do not care about that job, then quit. Or, if you cannot bear the shame,then do what cowardly unfit leaders have done since the dawn of time, and shoot yourself a bullet through your head. I think at last that should be possible for a woman of your intellect. I have entered here because i wanted to do something. I wanted to dedicate myself to a cause. Now, If I, wo actually care about what I do, and how my troops are, am a mere civillian, and you are a captain, then I think even the Librarian would be able to point out the error in this picture.
Now, if you, however, still insist of hurting me dearly: At least wait untill I have been assigned a rank and a squad. Then, I promise you a duel in the morning, wherever you want to, whenever you want. Since I have proposed, you have the choice of weapons. If you do not want a duel, I will be most gladly surprised that you do still have some honour and common sense in yourself, but in your current mood you seem to be more inclined to kill myself, so I cannot stop you. As it is clear, while you are big and strong, and your weapons mostly have a trigger or a blade, I am compared to you weak and tiny, and my only weapon is my intellect. I have nothing against you, so, do you accept?"
He looked at the captain, almost spitting out the last words.