Portal 2 spoilers and Payback influence ahead.
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1!
"Overtime! Overtime! Over-time!" GLaDOS announced. She looked to her left and giggled briefly in her regular computerized voice. It was anyone's guess as to why GLaDOS would do that besides being stuck in a human-like form for a prolonged period of time. However, the mercenaries and others were more concerned with what was to occur in the city.
"And off we go!" said Wheatley.
"Shall we?" replied Spy as he pulled out his Ambassador revolver.
Kshzzzt!
"They're coming!" shouted Francis.
"Get ready!" warned Zoey.
"Oh my God. Here they come!" yelled Louis.
Kshzzzt! The inhibitor signals returned to the city.
Vrrak-BANG!
Sure enough, the green onion missiles arrived in massive numbers and rocketed straight for the scattered groups on the field and at the stage.
"It was a neighbourhood game!" yelled Scout in disappointment. He took out his baseball and used his aluminum bat to send it flying at the oncoming missiles.
PLING! BLAM!
Scout, having managed to destroy one of the missiles with his baseball, quickly took out his Force-A-Nature gun from his inventory and fired two shots in quick succession.
BANG BANG!
"Ding dong!" yelled Scout. Now in a frenzied panic, he reloaded his Force-a-Nature, snapped it shut, and fired again.
BANG BANG!
Scout continued to yell at the top of his voice. "Ding dong! Dinner's served! Come and get it!" He reloaded his Force-A-Nature again.
Pyro raced toward two oncoming missiles with his flamethrower in hand. He let loose a burst of compressed air in front of him.
Pfffft! whoosh-B-BLAM!
The airblast had forced one missile to crash into the other one behind it, explosively destroying them both. Pyro raised his flamethrower above his head and imitated maniacal laughter.
"Freedom!" shouted Demoman. Using his stickybomb launcher, he fired bombs one at a time into the air toward another group of missiles, and detonated each one before they landed.
Pkt! beep-beep-BOOM!
Pkt! beep-beep-BOOM-BLAM!
With his second shot, Demoman managed to destroy one of the missiles. "Couldn't you see the bloody bombs?" he taunted.
Meanwhile, at the stage, Rick was on the stage floor with the five bandmates. He was playing an intense rock song from his unseen vocoder speakers.
Yui, with "Gitah" around her shoulders, pretended to strum on it. She moved her wrist up and down in front of "Gitah"'s strings and tilted her head to her left and to her right along with alternating beats, all while smiling. Why Yui would even pretend to strum along using that random action pose was anyone's guess.
Ritsu seemed to be having more fun. In an overly energetic manner, she pretended to play a drumset in front of her while standing. Her hands were closed as if she held drumsticks, and she flicked her wrists up and down and seemed to land the cymbal crashes and drumbeats perfectly. It was also anyone's guess as to why Ritsu would also pretend to play along to this rock song.
The other three bandmates were watching Yui and Ritsu's impromptu "session". Azusa happily clapped her hands above her head to the rock song's beat, much like Ritsu had done with her "un-tan" attempt from earlier. Tsumugi had her right hand wrapped around her left on her chest as she nodded to the beat. However, Mio smiled as she reluctantly watched with her hands on her hips.
Spy walked over to the bandmates and placed Wheatley on the ground. Mio noticed Spy as he walked over to stage right to assist Sniper.
Scout's voice was barely heard by the bandmates and personality cores. "What? Am I gonna have to defend this thing by myself?"
Wheatley then said, "Dare it. Dare to dream! Shoot for the stars!" Mio looked down at Wheatley and nodded. She then found herself... waving at him. Again, it was anyone's guess as to why.
Vrrak-BANG!
Suddenly, a naive robotic teenage voice shouted rapidly, "Oh my God oh my God oh my God oh my God oh my God! I'm in space!" Space Core's human form had managed to grab onto one of the green onion missiles as it reactivated and blasted off into the sky.
"Hurggh," Engineer groaned from the middle of the field between the stage and the main street. He believed that boy could ruin it for everyone if he was dragged into a group of missiles by the one he had a tight grip on. Nevertheless, Engineer aimed his Frontier Justice shotgun at another group of missiles and fired three volleys.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
It didn't matter that his gun had a sentry-and-revenge-critical-based tradeoff; Engineer was going to use it anyway. He reloaded it and fired three more volleys.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Just then, someone behind Engineer shook his shoulder before he could reload again. Engineer turned around and saw a young teenage girl with red-pink hair wrapped into drill-like spiral curls at both sides of her head.
"Dammit!" Engineer yelled. He had just discovered another close ally to the #SK09-HM10-07XX subject: the girl who was tugging on his shoulder. Her name was Teto Kasane. Besides her pink spiral hair curls, she wore a purple headset and a gray outfit with a pink-edge motif: a shirt that was similar to a school uniform shirt, a short pleated skirt, detached sleeves, and thigh-high boots without laces or zippers. There was a red "0401" branding near Teto's left shoulder, and her fingernails were also painted red.
Engineer and Teto heard Medic's voice coming from the main street at the far end.
"Get on the point!" Medic called. He aimed his syringe gun at the group of missiles that Engineer had fired upon. Medic let loose a volley of needles at the missiles.
Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop! BLAM! BLAM!
Medic destroyed two missiles before he ejected a pneumatic cartridge from the back of the gun and slammed a new one onto it.
At stage right, beside the touchscreen instrument, Sniper had his rifle's scope to his eye and looked to his right while Spy watched him. Sniper locked onto a missile flying toward the field and fired.
BANG! BLAM!
"Nice shot," said Spy as he gave a thumbs-up. He then spotted another missile to his left, aimed his Ambassador, and fired.
BANG! BLAM!
Spy was surprised that he'd even managed to destroy a missile with one shot.
"Good shot, mate!" cheered Sniper as he returned Spy's favour with a thumbs-up of his own. He pulled his rifle's lever and raised the rifle by the scope once more.
"Time to get bluttered!" they heard Demoman call out.
Meanwhile, Rin stood near her road roller at the main street. She looked over to her left and saw two incoming missiles, which suddenly dived in and flew at a low altitude along the main street.
Rin also saw Heavy nearby, who quick-drew his finger-gun gesture toward the missiles.
"Pow!" Heavy called out.
BLAM! The missile in front exploded.
Rin quickly acted on instinct and also threw a finger-gun gesture toward the remaining missile.
"Poof!" she yelled.
BLAM!
"Ha ha!" Heavy finished his speech and pretended to blow out his finger-gun. Then he looked at Rin and said, "You did well!" Rin smiled at Heavy briefly, but then she saw another missile coming from her left. She ducked and threw her hands in front of her face as the missile soared above her.
"Trying to intimidate me?!" yelled Scout, still at the top of his voice. He fired two more shots from his Force-A-Nature at the oncoming missile.
BANG BANG!
"Didn't help!" finished Scout. However, his shots completely missed, and the missile flew right into him.
BLAM!
"Aaaaaah!" Scout screamed as the resulting explosion threw him into the air.
Luka, who was still at the stage's entrance ramp, had seen the missile's explosive collision with Scout. With a loud gasp, she threw her hands outward. However, she accidentally made the heart shape with her fingers.
shing-BOOM!
She flung another Companion Cube from her fingers; luckily, it flew toward a passing missile and crashed into it.
BLAM!
The cube rebounded back towards Luka and landed just in front of her. Luka barely heard the newly-injured Scout's call for help over the missiles.
"Medic. Medic! Doc, come on, man!" called Scout.
Luka then looked back at the stage and realized that a different song was playing there.
Rick was no longer playing the rock song from his unseen vocoder speakers. However, with the piece of music that was playing, Ritsu was still flicking her closed hands around. She showed off her mimed-drumming skills to the beat as the other four bandmates watched.
Suddenly, Ritsu and the others heard some clattering at stage right, from its building entrance where the touchscreen instrument rested. Then, two medium-sized white square signs were thrown out of the entrance and landed in front of the bandmates. Ritsu stopped "drumming" while the other four jumped back and turned to look at the two signs.
One of the signs had a circular "no cameras" symbol plastered onto it, while the other had a triangular "tripping hazard" design on it.
Mio felt something troubling her as she walked over and picked up the "no cameras" sign. Even a bassist like her thought that whoever was forced to carry those signs would be under what some may call a "cool and unusual punishment".
Wheatley spoke up and drew Mio's attention. "You know what? Just..." he began. "We'll iron out the details, um, as we go."
However, there was more clattering from the entrance, and the silver ovoid turret that Ritsu had landed on earlier flew out.
"Wheee!" the turret shouted.
CLANG. It landed in front of the bandmates.
This time, Spy noticed the turret and the signs that were thrown out from the entrance. He cleared his throat and drew Sniper's attention.
"Ahem. Mentlegen," Spy said with a chuckle. Like the Spycrab pose, Spy had adapted a mashup of his 'Gentlemen?' line into his mannerisms. Of course, it was required after Spy gained access to Neru's communication line.
Sniper looked at the turret and exclaimed softly, "Holy dooley!"
"These things happen," said the turret. "That was nobody's fault."
While Ritsu had a look of surprise on her face from seeing the turret again, Yui suddenly gasped in realization, and then ran off past Sniper and Spy and down the stairs at stage right. Tsumugi also left the stage and headed down the stairs at stage left.
Even with a face-off against incoming green onion missiles, Rin was back to her mischievous ways. She was standing on the roof of her road roller with her hands at her sides. The road roller was being driven by Len, her counterpart, but Rin continued to stand on it without falling off. Rin saw two missiles flying toward the stage and threw her finger-gun gesture twice with her right hand.
"Poof poof!" Rin called.
BLAM! BLAM!
Meanwhile, Heavy stood near the main street. Behind him was the Companion Cube with the pink "EXE"-branded laptop on top of it. Heavy also stood beside his minigun "Sasha", and a white boombox. Sure enough, Black Rock Shooter, the boombox's presumed owner, was in front of Heavy. Tsumugi was also present; she leaned toward the boombox in anticipation with her hands clasped.
"I just get Huey Lewis tape," Heavy told BRS and Mugi. "He keeps spirits up on battlefield."
Heavy then lightly punched the boombox, and a rock song started playing on it.
Take me away, I don't mind
But you better promise me I'll be back in time
Mugi stood up and looked at Heavy with a happy hum. BRS found herself nodding once at Mugi before Heavy spoke again.
"You, help defend!" Heavy pointed to BRS. In a prompt silent reply, BRS brought her giant gun upward and scanned the sky for missiles. Heavy then picked up "Sasha" with both hands.
Gotta get back in time
As the rock song continued to play, Heavy and BRS noticed another large group of missiles. Tsumugi then realized that it was going to be really loud where she was, and jogged back to the stage while smiling.
Heavy revved up his minigun with a loud whir; he saw a group of missiles flying toward them from the distance. He let loose a storm of bullets at the missiles.
Brbrbrbrbrbr BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
The minigun fire destroyed some of the incoming missiles; the explosions sent a few others off course. BRS turned around at some of the missiles that Heavy missed and unleashed a rapid volley of shots of her own.
KrkrkrkrkrKRAK! BLAM!
Heavy mimicked his minigun while he continued to fire. "Vzzzzzt! Rahrahrahrah! Vrrrrr! Hahahahaaaaaa!"
Meanwhile, Space Core still had his tight grip on his missile and managed to take control of it. While he swerved around Heavy's and BRS's lines of fire and the missiles' explosions, Space Core babbled playfully, "Ba! Ba ba ba ba ba! Space! Ba ba ba! Ba! Ba ba ba!"
Brbrbrbrbrbrbr
KrkrkrkrkrkrKRAK!
BLAM! BLAM! Explosions continued to erupt in the sky as Space Core flew away from them while hanging onto his missile.
"Duck and weave! Duck and weave!" called Rick. "Whoo-hoo, the sweet science!"
Tsumugi had arrived back onstage and saw Ritsu and Mio trying to comfort Azusa, who was again in her panicked duck-and-cover crouch with her hands on her head. She also noticed that Wheatley had been moved right beside Azusa.
"Don't be alarmed, alright?" Wheatley tried to console Azusa. "Because ah... well, actually, if you do feel alarmed, hold onto that. Do you understand what I'm saying? At all? Does any of this... make any sense?"
Vrrak-BANG!
Another group of missiles blasted off. There were now so many missiles that three of them, even though they were thrown off course by an explosion, managed to miss Heavy's and BRS's lines of fire; the missiles rocketed off toward the stage... and the bandmates and personality cores that were there!
Luckily, Sniper and Spy picked off two missiles at the same time respectively with their rifle and Ambassador.
BANG! BLAM!
However, Sniper needed to pull his lever to reload his rifle, and Spy was out of ammunition having used it all through the day; neither of them could take down the third missile before it rammed into the back wall of the stage.
BLAM!
The missile crashed above the bandmates' heads, but the explosion greatly stunned Azusa. Her head started to wobble. "Fuwa fuwa... time..." she mumbled before she collapsed onto her side.
Ritsu, Mio, and Mugi yelped in shock.
"Aah!" reacted Wheatley. "Oh, God, you look te-- ummm... good. Looking good, actually. Are you okay? Are you-- Don't answer that. I'm absolutely sure you're fine. There's plenty of time for you to recover."
"Azusa, take it easy!" Mio said in a rather determined manner. She stood up and turned to leave the stage... But Soldier was blocking the way, armed with his shovel. Mio threw her closed hands to her chest in a panic; she had been her shy-bassist self for the last little while, and did not have the mentality of whoever she had sounded like earlier.
"Still think you're funny, funny girl?", taunted Soldier, placing unusual emphasis on the word "girl". He then swung his shovel at Mio, who dived to her right and fell onto the stage floor. Mio heard the sound of a mental inhibitor's signal scramble....
Kshzzzt!
It was unclear what kind of external flashback Mio was seeing, or how she could see it, but it was clear that she was watching a group of alleged psychopaths having their clothes blown around on a very windy day. However, Shion Sonozaki, a girl with long green hair and a yellow ribbon in her hair, was unfortunate enough to be wearing a short blue skirt.... Her twin sister, Mion, another girl with long green hair but in a ponytail, laughed in a playful faux-malicious manner; she was wearing a long red dress and did not have the same kind of exposure.
Meanwhile, at the Construct grounds, Rena Ryugu was watching this very flashback on a disconnected television screen. She then heard herself speak.
"Hauuu~... But Rena's not wearing anything underneath today!"
Rena gasped silently at her own statement. Suddenly, she smiled and waved with her left hand and blinked three times. However, it was anyone's guess as to why Rena waved when there was no one else on the grounds....
Kshzzzt!
A look of fear crept onto Mio's face. With Soldier swinging his shovel above her the same way he did when he invaded the Light Music Club's room, Mio expected the very flashback that would come next as Soldier raised his shovel for another strike.
BANG! Sniper shot the shovel out of Soldier's hand.
Clang. The shovel landed in front of Mio as the signals scrambled again.
Kshzzzt!
Mio saw another flashback. It was the infamous performance that spawned a fan club at her school... and drew that jerk Soldier to her in order to throw her into the mercenaries' dangerous missions. Mio saw herself in a black frilly dress after their first onstage performance of "Fuwa Fuwa Time", another song she helped write with her bandmates.
The dressed-up Mio began to walk offstage, but she unknowingly caught her foot against a cable. She tripped and crashed onto the floor noisily against her bass. However, even as she got up on her knees, Mio's bottom was now facing the audience, causing them to gasp. Mio then screamed....
Kshzzzt!
Mio gasped once she came out of that flashback. "Aaah... that's embarrassing!!!" she shrieked as she stumbled to her feet and ran off in terror.
"Shake it off, shake it off!" Rick called.
"The worm has turned, gentlemen!" Soldier declared with his shovel in hand once more. It was only then that Yui, Ritsu, and Tsumugi turned around and glared at Soldier for scaring off Mio. However, they heard a few loud footsteps on the stage floor. The four of them looked at stage left.
Mio had returned; upon hearing Rick's voice once more, her confidence also came back. Mio knew that she had to do a gesture that was once rumoured to be connected to her apparent cuteness, and she did not need to be in a maid costume dress to do it. She then spun around once while spreading her arms out and raising them above her head.
"Moe, moe... Kyun!!!" Mio called out while throwing a heart-shape gesture with her fingers.
"Aaagh!" Soldier fell over backwards from her impact of cuteness and dropped his shovel again.
"Yeah! Nice!" Rick cheered.
Mio smiled at Rick and then to her bandmates, who smiled back at her. Engineer then arrived onstage beside Mio and looked at the downed Soldier. "Y'all take that, rocket boy," he quipped.
Meanwhile, the damaged primary mental inhibitor scrambled the signals once more.
Kshzzzt!
A man with short black hair and red sunglasses appeared. He had a Darth Vader action figure on his shoulder. The man then made a statement.
"Ugh. Even though I'll have a hard time getting that outta my head," the man said, "I can say that you're all getting really close, team. Keep it up."
Kshzzzt!
"Whoop- wah- Wah-hah!"
With another triple jump imitation, Scout arrived onto the field and picked up his Force-A-Nature shotgun and his aluminum bat. He had been patched up by Medic as best as possible with the limited items he could access at the time: bandages with some faint bloodstains were wrapped around Scout's torso, his right eye was blacked out, and his nose was red.
"Boom! I'm back!" Scout announced as he took out his bat.
Just then, a futuristic-modern shotgun, used in an earlier attack, clattered in front of Scout. Scout looked to his right.
Neru, the cyberbully leader herself, had stumbled onto her knees and was now getting up. However, a young woman with long silvery-white hair was with her.
"Is-is anyone even paying attention to me?" Scout asked.
Neru motioned for the woman to step forward and greet Scout. The woman nodded and did so. She smiled as best as she could with her droopy eyebrows, and waved with her right hand at Scout. It was once again anyone's guess as to why a lonely person like the silver-haired woman would wave like that. However, she was yet another close ally of the #SK09-HM10-07XX subject. The woman's name was Haku Yowane. It was rumoured that Neru and Haku sang the same song together, though this was not yet proven.
Haku's silver hair was tied in a ponytail with a large purple and black bowtie. She had red eyes and a constant solemn look on her face. She wore a low-cut dark gray shirt that exposed her midriff. Haku also wore a purple necktie, long black pants with a purple belt, black detached sleeves, and white shoes with purple soles.
"Hey!" Scout called.
Just then, Teto excitedly ran over to Neru and caught her off guard in a sudden hug. Before Scout could comment on it, the inhibitor signals scrambled.
Kshzzzt!
BZZT!
"Security alert!" GLaDOS announced in her commanding voice....
