System Wars: Here Comes the Heroes!-Chapter 37: Stand-Off

"Who the hell are you?" Nitropulse asked in disbelief.

As an intergalactic criminal, he had seen all manner of dumb acts of rebellion and lawbreaking, but he had never known anyone dumb enough to break into a Salbanbo warship except himself.

Not only that, he had never seen anyone still use powder weapons in this day and age.

All that stated though, Tin Star was too busy focusing on the two hostile Salbanbo soldiers to answer Nitropulse's question.

More specifically, he was too busy threatening the everliving shit out of them.

"Alright, I'm just going to take a wild guess here and say you guys are probably minimum wage soldiers at best," Tin Star stated as he pointed his revolvers at the two aforementioned Salbanbo soldiers. "So I'm going to cut y'all a little deal."

"A deal?" one of the Salbanbo soldiers asked with a clearly intrigued voice. "What kind of deal?"

"Simply put, you two drop your weapons, drop whatever constitutes a key around this place, and I don't make it so your families will have to foot funeral costs at a steep premium," Tin Star delivered in one smooth line. "Deal?"

The Salbanbo looked at each other for a brief moment before looking back at Tin Star.

A part of the cowboy vigilante hoped that these two were going to accept his deal and walk away.

Instead, he was forced to respond to some deliciously deranged dogma.

"Death before profit loss!"

"No deal!"

"Ah, well."

After making their intentions known, the two Salbanbo soldiers attempted to lift their rifles and blast Tin Star into smithereens. Unfortunately for them, Tin Star was a better shot.

Bang! Bang!

BOOM! BOOM!

"GRK?!"

"Whoa there!"

In the exact moment the Salbanbo were charging up their shots, Tin Star fired off two bullets that flew directly into the barrel of those rifles.

These bullets were perfectly timed so that the moment the electronics inside the rifle began to resonate with the sound-making element in the chamber, the bullets were the ones getting energized instead. The end result of this overload of energy: the bullets would then explode in the rifle, causing their destruction and blowing up the rifle in the Salbanbo soldiers' hands.

Thud! Thud!

"Damn," Nitropulse exclaimed in shocked admiration. "Just...damn! I didn't even know somebody with a faster trigger finger than me existed in the universe."

"Yeah, well, the universe is full of surprises," Tin Star said while holstering his pistols.

"Yeah...wait, why didn't you just blast their heads open? I know weapons, and I know that those pistols are something beyond normal technology," Nitorpulse observed.

"To truncate a needlessly long exposition dump, their equipment is designed to send back the cause of death to the ship's database, probably so that the captains can wriggle out of insurance payouts or something vile like that," Tin Star explained. "Anyways, I figured that having them die by equipment failure was a lot harder to explain away on those forms and much easier to hide my existence. Well, look at that, I did them a favor even when I killed them."

"Uh...sure..."

Staring at the bodies of the blown-apart Salbanbo, Nitropulse could only nod and agree in a quiet voice.

"But now that they're out of the way, you're probably wondering why I went through the trouble of taking them out in order to talk to you, right?" Tin Star asked rhetorically, "In a bullet casing, I believe the Sheriff would be very interested in recruiting you, but I'm going to need your assistance first before establishing that particular meeting."

"Sheriff? Recruit me? Assistance" Nitropulse repeated in a confused tone. "What are you on about?"

"You'll meet him after this is all done, but allow me to elaborate," Tin Star began to say while leaning against the cell's doorframe, subtly drawing and placing his pistol against a small opening. "Do you know how to pilot, hijack, or sabotage the spaceship we are currently in?"

"Uh..."

Sensing that there was only one correct answer to this question, Nitropulse determined it was better to be honest and say it.

"I know exactly how to take over or take down this ship faster than you can possibly free me from this cell."

"Alright then," Tin Star nodded with an impressed smile on his lips. "Consider this the starting shot then."

BANG!

______Eye Catch! _______

Name: Nitropulse

Occupation: Intergalactic Criminal

Special ability: Omni-Nitroboost

Description:

A cybernetic outlaw who managed to install an incredibly advanced nano-warp engine into their chest. Despite being wanted in seven star nations, he is considered a folk hero amongst the lower-ranked masses around the cosmos.

______Eye Catch Ends!______

[Quest: Defeat the Salbanbo Raiders]

[Defeat Salbanbo Contractors: 75/100]

[Defeat Salbanbo Shift Managers: 17/23]

[Defeat Salbanbo Regional Manager: 0/1]

...

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"It's over, villains! I suggest you surrender now before things go from bad to worse!" Gaia Mask (SK) proclaimed while looming over them in his sand giant form.

The remaining forces under Alpha-887 had gathered whatever hover tanks they had left and attempted to form a makeshift phalanx of sorts.

In a strange parallel, the huddled Salbanbo resembled the Lumenlithics that they were harvesting just moments ago. Granted, unlike the Lumenlithics, they definitely earned this nightmare scenario.

Not that Alpha-887 realized or cared.

Instead, his mind was preoccupied with an idea on how to turn this entire situation around. But first, he needed to cause a little noise.

"Hateful activist! How dare you destroy Salbanbo-branded equipment? You owe us compensation!" Alpha-887 roared indignantly.

Parroting their leader's sentiment, the other Salbanbo began to hurl insults and derogatory words.

"We will send you to a lab and determine what materials can be crafted from your remains!"

"Hateful sand! We shall melt you into glass for communicators meant for children!"

"You ruined my holiday bonus!"

"Art thou serious?!" Platiknight yelled in disbelief while still maintaining the protective bubble around the Lumenlithics. "You were harvesting the lives of innocent people for profit! None of you have any right to demand compensation! If anything, you owe these people hefty compensation!"

"Yeah!"

"The metal man is right!"

"Give me back my family!"

Emboldened by the protection provided by Platiknight's and Gaia Mask's existence and riled up by the words of their slaughterers, the battered Lumenlithic used this as an opportunity to air their many grievances with the Salbanbo Empire.

As this screaming match continued between the two factions, causing a massive ruckus that distracted SK due to the sheer amount of noise, Alpha-887 used this moment as an opportunity to activate a hidden feature of his cybernetic implants.

'You think you're so big and dangerous, fine! Two can play at this game,' Alpha-887 thought to himself as several compartments on his body began to open up and release a terribly loud hissing noise followed by the sound of scuttling legs that were all muffled by the sound of yelling and angry screaming. 'I'll be sure to compensate the company properly with your corpse!'

"Silly crystals! You should consider it an honor that your bodies can generate so much prof-wait a minute, what the fuck?!"

"Oh, that's not good," Gaia Mask commented once he fully processed what was happening.

In the middle of all of this arguing, Alpha-887 had activated several canisters worth of a special type of nanobot that he had spent several billion units on.

These nanobots began to crawl all over the remaining Salbanbo assets, as well as the destroyed ones, and actively broke them down into components that were more suitable to Alpha-887's desires.

Everything from the hover tanks, to the weapons, to even the armor and gadgets of the rank-and-file were broken down, and rearranged into a gestalt mechasuit that had Alpha-887 at the center.

Needless to say, the soldiers underneath Alpha-887 were not pleased by this development in the slightest.

"Regional Manager! This is highly inappropriate behavior for a superior!," one of the lower managers complained."Cease this activity at once, or I shall report you the SR Inquisition!"

"All things are fair in the pursuit of profit!" Alpha-887 roared in a mad voice. "Be grateful for this merger and that your equipment will be used with the utmost care."

Eventually, enough time went by that the nanobots could finish their deed, force the now naked Salbanbo to get out of the way and finish reconstructing themselves so that Alpha-887 was piloting a mech that matched the height and weight of Gaia Mask's current form.

'Aw, hell.'

It was also in this moment that SK realized that there may have been more truth to the phrase, "ruthlessness is a mercy to oneself", than he had initially thought.

"Behold, activist! My almighty nano-mecha, with a cost that can only be offset by capturing you and forcing every Lumenlithic here to be processed into AI cores!" Alpha-887 howled with an electronically enhanced voice. "Now prepare to be total bankruptcy!"

"Is every word out of your mouth just some kind of threat focused on money?!" Gaia Mask roared in annoyance. "Bring it on!"