Melissa was late to the briefing. As usual. She'd gotten used to it. Nowadays, her best mode of transportation was the bus, which always dropped her off at least a couple of blocks away from where she actually needed to be. At least her legs were reliable. Autohacks just weren't worth the risk anymore, not unless she had to move quickly. This was almost never the case.

She didn't know much about ENKI, other than the rumours and stuff everyone already knew. She didn't care much about it either, up until now anyways. But then, ENKI didn't know a thing about her either, she wagered. Some small comfort, she figured.

With a steady step, and umbrella in hand to keep her dry, she walked onto the parking lot for the leaky faucet. She was fairly sure she wasn't followed, she'd triple-checked. Twice. Some kid had already worked his way into a van, and was still getting through the process of setting the autopilot. A warbot stood not too far away, perplexed.

Her coworkers, she inferred, drawing attention to themselves already. She figured she'd give them the benefit of the doubt, and maybe none of them owned a car or something, and a giant killbot wasn't going to be subtle enough to walk all the way to wherever it was they were going.

She walked up to the robot, somewhat apprehensively, since the kid was clearly busy. "You're with Steelhead, right?", she asked. "I missed the briefing by just this much, you wouldn't mind catching me up, would you?"

Ash threw both of his hands up in the air, "DONE! Okay, it is set up to head out... Guys! Are you re-" Ash turned his head around as he noticed someone new individual, near the Killbot. Ash blinked as he paused for a moment. Waaaait... It can't be! Ash pointed his metallic hand at Melissa, "GWAH! MY Censors indicate that the person is infected with the Cooties Contagion! Ultramax! Shoot it! Purge it with fire! NO GIRLS ALLOWED! THIS IS AN EXCLUSIVE SECRET AWESOME FUN CLUB, AND THE ONE RULE THAT MUST BE FOLLOWED, STATES NO GIRLS ALLOWED!" he howled out. He clenched his metallic hand as he shook his head, "No, no, no, no, no, this can't be happening! Many theories state that if you apply enough pressure upon the epidermis to activate the neurological pathway which allows you to sense the outside stimulus... You may determine whether or not you are in REM!" Ash quickly pinched himself, "Ow... OH NO! This is not just a bad dream, there really is an individual who contains the cootie contagion near us! WE NEED TO QUARANTINE THE SOURCE!"

Ultramax eyed the newcomer, running her face through his Active Steelhead Employees, a necessary precaution when one considered the frequency with which Steelhead lost and replaced assets. "Friendly identified: comrade Marweather, Melissa. Ultramax is with Steelhead. Current mission parameters: travel to WHITE CENTER BARRENS SOUTHGATE ROLLER RINK". Ultramax turned to look at Ash as he had been told it was a nice thing to do when others talked to him. "Ultramax detects no pathogens known as 'cooties'. Request for friendly fire: denied, insufficient clearance." He stopped for a second, and when he resumed his voice had changed into that of a pleasant female, since he was simply playing back some manner of Steelhead advertisement. "Steelhead Inc does not discriminate by age, race or gender. In addition to having lucrative openings for both augmented and non-augmented personel, even robots may find gainful employment with Steelhead Inc".

Ash's face grew red as Ultramax just told that girl about his association and identified the target as friendly. "NO! NO! NO! Bad robot! You are not supposed to divulge this highly secret and fun stuff to a girl! How did you get in the secret cl-" Then Ultramax spoke like some female from an advertisement, "You've been infected! How!? You are a robot, but you sound like a girl! They who are known for having that contagion!" Ash feel down to his knees as he threw both of his hands to the sky, "No! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to Hell! ... I was hoping for manly adventures with explosions, and chainsaws, and maybe like dinosaur robots! And exploding dinosaur robots who have chainsaw wielding clowns on them! But noooooo!" Ash stated with a huff. He grumbled a bit as he got into the Van proper, "Co-ordinated are set. I need to ride..." He stated with a clearly dissatisfied tone.

Melissa snickered. "Well, you seem to have something of a playful side," she said, examining the overbearing hunk of skulls and steel. "Not something you'd expect out of a warbot. Glad to have you on my side."

She made her way towards the van, and pulled out her cellphone. It had the form factor of a small brick, with a cracked screen, and various attachments soldered outside the case. She pushed a few buttons, and started a query-daemon, looking for any information at all on the roller rink. Not that she expected much to come out of it, but she didn't want to arrive there totally blind. She put the phone back in her pocket, it could be a bit before she got anything out of it.

She got in the van, taking the shotgun seat, right next to Ash. "So, tell me more about these 'cooties' you're so scared of," she said.

Ash lunged back to the door, as he pointed at Melissa, "NO! NO! NO! That seat is reserved for Ultramax! OR any manly man!" He scowled at Melissa, "You are infected with the Cootie Contagion, it is similar to the Dreaded Lurgy Disease! Girls are walking biomes of disease and ickiness!"

Kwu opened the driver's door and looked at Ash.
"I'm the driver here you know? If something goes down, we need a good driver, not just some A.I. Plus you'll be more useful shooting."
He took place in the driver's seat and started the engine loudly, revving it a bit to test it's capabilities. When he was satisfied, he launched the car in an unexpected high speed departure and drove right out of the garage.
"Welcome aboard, Nǚrén. I'm Kwu Cho-Jao, former member of the white tiger clan, and you are?"

Kwu was driving fast, real fast. Zigzagging between cars to get to the rink faster.: 3d6 12 No point in wasting time.

"If you wish to get infected with the Cootie Contagion, be my guest, mate!" Ash crawled over the the hand rest, quickly and efficiently, as he sat himself in the back seat. "AT least there is still one man for manly action adventure.... Ultramax has been infected!" Ash sat in the back, as he reached into the pocket of the seat in front of him in the van that was hijacked for the purposes, of well Ash thinking it was a cool and awesome idea. He wiggled his left hand in the pocket as he pulled out a half-eaten, and partially melted candy bar. "Jolly good day!" He quickly began gobbling down the candy bar.

Kwu, indeed, did not waste any time, and in spite of the GPS attempting to detour the group to a nearby MaxAttax, the team made it there in record time. They pulled into a dilapidated parking lot; a great, hulking building, bleached from its original blue coloration by time and acid rain, a sign above the entrance ramp with the letters barely readable, for they too had been reduced to the faintest of marks. The GPS utility didn't lie, though- or if it did, it was doing a very good job of it- this was indeed the Southside Roller Rink.
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The daemon came up with a few old newsclips- looks like the rink had been shut down along with the rest of the barrens after hurricane Jessie a number of years back. Since then, the barrens became a haven for those criminals who were either unable or unwilling to bribe the police. More immediately useful to a group of armed mercenaries was that the eastward-facing wall had taken some serious structural damage in the storm, and hadn't been repaired since.

Ash glanced outside the window, "Hooray! Also I call dibs on all viscera!" Ash frantically turned his head around, "You heard me, I called dibs on their innards!" Ash rubbed his hands together, "Oh boy, I can tell this is gonna be fun! Hopefully there are like, a lot of people, so they can all be skinned! OOOH! OOOH! Yeah, that'd be fun. Or maybe burning them! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! Fire is fun, and they'd probably scream a lot like..." Ash coughed as he began talking in a mocking voice, "Waaah! I'm on fire! I'm on fire!" Ash stuck out his tongue as he began giggling a bit, "Eheheheheheh.... AH, I wonder if they are screamers." He raised his metallic arm as he leaned his chin on it, as his face turned into a much more serious expression as he began moving his left hand with his index finger stretched out as he moved it up and down. "KAY!"

"Melissa Marweather," she replied. "I'm an informational security specialist," she added, deliberately using the most long-winded way of saying hacker. She skimmed the information from the daemon on the way to the roller rink.

Once there, she stared at the dilapidated building ahead of them, then turned towards Ash. "You know, we still need them mostly alive to find ENKI," she said. "I'm fine with eviscerating them afterwards though, just try not to kill them before they tell you anything useful." She supposed that was easier said then done.

"Anyways, any ideas on how to get in? I don't suppose we could just knock on the door. From what I gather, one of the walls is a little flimsy, we could probably bust it down, but after that, I got zilch."

"As a matter of fact, I am going to knock on the door." Ash said with a matter of fact tone of voice. He opened the door to the van, and stepped out. Ash looked around the dilapidated parking lot for a moment, before walking straight towards the Roller Rink. Ash paused for a moment as he was heading there, as he adjusted his hoody, as he placed it fully on. Excellent, now ooh, make sure to judge this place for a potential facility for my Drug Empire! He thought to himself. Ash rolled his neck around, as he stretched out both of his hands, intertwining the fingers and revealing the palms of his hands. Ash glanced back, towards the van as he shouted out, "Hurry up! ... If you don't feel like knocking on the door, such as myself, just go around. But I for one am just going through the front door." Ash headed forth towards the entrance of the Roller Rink, as he looked for the door to knock on. "Aha!" Ash found a door and knocked on it.

The ride to the rink was uneventful as far as Ultramax was concerned. The building itself was nothing he'd never seen before either. Though there were a variety of tactical options available to them, Ultramax just wasn't made to consider them, even with his newly attained sentience. He was a direct assault robot, a bipedal tank for all intents and purposes, and unless directed otherwise, he'd always act like one. Stomping down to where Ash was, he planted himself between the door and his small, still considerably fleshy co-worker. "Ultramax is built to act as a frontline heavy duty unit. Ultramax will take the front".

Kwu made sure his pistol was loaded and ready at his side, hidden under the flap of his black suit.
"Yeah, I'd let Ultramax here take the front, metal plating catches bullets better than flesh."
"I advise everyone to stay on the calm side, we don't know what's in there yet. If it's nothing to be scared of though... We can pop their kneecaps if they don't want to talk. I know this great method that makes it quite an effective way of getting people to talk."

Ash glanced at Kwu, "Personally I prefer cutting the heel and giving them the chance to run away before talking. But I guess that is a matter of taste." Ash did stand back behind Ultramax, "PLUS he can infect the people inside with the Cooties Contagion!" Ash nodded, "Actually make use of the biological agent he has on him, instead of just endangering us." Ash glanced again at Kwu, "Well you and me anyway, we still risk being infected."

"And I thought using blackmail was a bit too cruel," she said, standing directly behind Ultramax, and mostly behind the group. Compared to the rest of her criminal co-conspirators, she was terribly underequipped. She pulled out a palm sized can of GUITAR SOLO DERMAL LIQUIFIER, with a picture of a melting face and bright warnings against it's use on pregnant women and young children. Advertised to cause blindness and shortness of breath for at least 48 hours, or your money back. Not quite as good as a gun, but better than nothing.

"Well, I'm as ready as I'll ever be, but gunfights aren't my strongpoint. I'll stick around back, and see what I can mess with." With that said, she figured she might as well get a rough idea of what tech they were up against. A passive scan, sniffing for any wireless transmissions would do the trick. Wasn't much, but it was a start.

Aside from the signals coming from the party, the area had surprisingly little noise- not necessarily silent, but definitely less than the usual buzz. Most of the stuff coming off of the rink was comms, lights, some jury-rigged cameras and motion sensors, and miscellaneous half-working equipment like vending machines and arcade games. Nothing too fancy but hey, it wasn't exactly a corp arcology.
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There was some scuffling and muffled speech coming from within the building, something about spotlights, a fog machine, getting into postitions- looks like the kid's knock hadn't gone entirely unnoticed.

Ash smiled, "See they are going to be polite enough to open the door. So we should be polite when killing them. It is the English way, alongside many other ace practices. Oh back to what I was saying, well be polite in killing most of them. At least one to live to talk about ENKI." Ash's eyes glimmered as he grinned ear to ear, "OH! And we gotta keep two friends alive and make them fight each other to the death! Ooooh! Oooooh! Or making the one friend watch as we torture the other one! Ooooh I call dibs on slashing off the eyelid of the one that watches, so that they can't close their eyes and refuse to watch!"

Ash let out of huff as his cheeks puffed outward and his lips curled into a frown. "I don't like it when they try to refuse to watch." He crossed his hands over his torso as he shook his head. "But nooo they go..." Ash held up both his hands as he waved his palms and spoke in a whiny manner, " 'But they are my friend! I can't watch them be tortured, even though you would think it'd be totally awesome to watch! Waaaah waaaah' Those people suck! Like junkies who try to avoid paying the deal-" He blinked as he paused for a moment. "Actually those blokes are righteously funny, and then besides watching them collapse quicker than a cardboard box on a rainy day, they get charged more and eventually pay up more!" Ash cackled as he threw both of his hands in the air, "But YAAAAAAAAAY!!! This is going to be fun! Ooooh! Remember I called dibs on the innards and I get first torture rights! Oh also I'm calling dibs on any candy and treats they may have there!"

"Acknowledged, Ultramax will leave exactly three targets functional. Ultramax, engaging". Without waiting to see if anyone actually answered the door, he simply walked right through it, weapons primed and ready to fire against any hostiles. His voice, metallic and monotonous, boomed as if magnified by a loudspeaker of some kind. "SURRENDER YOUR DATA ON TARGET:ENKI OR BE DESTROYED". No one had ever bothered or dared to try and explain the concept of subtlety to him.

The sound of wheels on poorly-maintained floors echoed through the building, half-visible figures moving along at breakneck speeds. Spotlights roved along the floor as fog crept in from the sides of the rollerblading arena, and a disco ball began to spin and cast small, dim patches of light all throughout the room
The spotlights centered on a man who stood in the center of the arena, dressed in a flamenco shirt and bicycle shorts. He was chrome from the thighs down at the very least, his feet replaced with top-of-the-line blades. Balanced on his nose sat gaudy sunglasses commonly known as Sights, so called because they were used to aim skull guns by superimposing a crosshair upon the user's vision.
"I, the most excellent Ricardo Ramirez, do no know of this ENKI that you speak of-", The man adjusted his Sights and pointed an accusatory finger at the party, "-but what I, the most excellent Ricardo Ramirez, do know... is that you are on our turf!"