Claptrap Chapter 28 - Bringing the Heat

I rolled up slowly, my wheels making my moves near soundless unless you were within a few feet of distance. I remembered this part of the game, and while I wouldn’t count on them to determine what I would face, I could rely on them to give me directions. My eye wandered up to the sniper nest hanging up at the distance, and I could see a Bandit sitting there on the ledge, looking bored and gazing at things through the scope of his rifle.

I took aim and slowed time down, crosshairs hovering over the bandit’s head, before the sound of the gun filled my audio receiver. It was a bass sound rather than the loud bark due to my mind processing faster than normal. Time sped up again, and the body slumped back onto the platform.

A distant panicked shout made me curse as I rushed forward over the nearby dirt incline and slowed time again as I focused my aim on a Bandit that had pulled out his repeater, gazing towards me, slowly pointing his weapon in my direction. My weapon barked a second time and once more a head shot, sending a splatter of brain and blood behind the man as he fell backwards. My time sped up again, and I felt my cooling fan kick in, thermal meter near 75%. I needed time to cool down…oh god.

“I made a game pun!” I groaned/cheered.

The distant shouts past the arena like area filled the air, about intruders, and grabbing weapons, and “Meat Choppers are on the plane to Spain”.

I sighed and switched out my Sniper Rifle for my Dahl SMG, double checking to make sure it was loaded as my sensors showed four red marks coming my way.

“Welp.” I start as I release the action of my weapon. “Time to clean up.”

I pulled out a grenade, and readied it as I rolled forward, and stopped dead when the first thing to come past the gate was a mishappened Psycho-beast with one arm that looked more like it belonged to the Hulk. It roared and smashed the ground, launching it upwards into the air and towards me. Despite being hot, time slowed as I processed what I was seeing, and began rolling backwards and taking aim with the SMG while dropping the live grenade.

Time eventually sped back up as I fired towards the chest and face with my weapon, spattering mostly across its chest and neck, but I was out of its impact range as it slammed its arm into the ground that sent a small shockwave of force everywhere. To my surprise, it landed right over the grenade, and its attack didn’t just set the thing off. I almost thought it was a dud as it leaned up, until it exploded and made the damned mutant cry out in agony as its chest and arm are ripped open. I fired into its exposed chest, bullets sending blood everywhere as they punched through meat.

That made it angry.

It shrieked an inhuman sound as it began lopping forward like a gorilla rather than a man. I realized in a panic that it was about to ram me, and barely dodged by rolling sideways as it charged at me.

Then three bandits with rifles appeared past the gate, cautiously, pointing at me before freezing.

“The hell?” one of them asked, incredulous, as they stared at me.

“A Claptrap?” sounded a second one, who seemed to be looking elsewhere, as if trying to find another threat.

“Why does it have a gun?!” shouted the third one as it began snapping off fire at me.

The bullets splashed my shield, and I replied by throwing a live grenade at them as I rolled towards them.

The three realized what I just threw and dove away in shouts of panic. Two managed to get away, but the third didn’t and his arms exploded off him. The stumps of his arms poured out blood like a spicket as he screamed his death knell. Not giving a moment of reprieve, I fired upon the two bandits that were on the ground, taking one down with a burst to the head, and the other I shot dead as well, but not before he rolled to his side and fired a wild burst in my general direction. It wasn’t in any way accurate, and did moderate damage to my shield.

Remembering the mutant, I turned to face it, and froze in terror as I turned directly into a giant fist. It smashed directly into my shield, and the force of the impact sent me flying through the air, and depleted the shield down to nothing. Klaxion Alarms filled my hearing about the shield being down and needing recharge, but I was focused on just landing as I neared the ground.

My gyro worked overtime as my wheel touched earth and I managed to keep upright, only to impact into the sheet metal wall that divided the camp from my area. The taxing of the shield, the overuse of my analysis, the focus I had in landing and the impact, and the attack all took its toll as I just sat there for a moment in a daze. My thoughts were a jumble, with so many reports and errors filling my head. I brush them aside for the moment and focus on what was in front of me, and saw the big mutant psycho shake himself off as he gazed at me.

We stared for half a moment before bursting into action. I was rolling aside as he charged with a haymaker. I was inches away from the fist as the mutant buried his fist through the steel sheet, trapping him in place. He pulled, and yanked, but his arm was stuck in place. He roared in anger as he struggled, only to cry in pain, and then in death, as I unloaded the rest of my firearm into his face. The mutant slumped dead, arm still hanging from the hole he had made.

I quickly reloaded, and thanked god I didn’t have to worry about blood pressure, or my breathing, or whatever, because I’m pretty sure I would be done right now if I did.

The Claptrap part of me was freaking out that I just killed people, and partly my human side too, but the vicious portion of my human side shoved it down and focused back on the mission.

I quickly rolled over to the three bandits, and took their weapons and ammo, not really taking the time to see what they had, before rolling into the camp.

I slowed time down again just as I passed the threshold, and using a wide-angled view, took stock of what I faced. My stomach dropped a bit when I saw five buzzaxe wielding maniacs just starting to rush me in slow motion, along with nine other bandits with an array of weapons on their elevated platforms pointed in my direction. I analyzed their weapons and most of them were Tediore rifles, with a few Vladof pistols in there, and one Torgue Support Machinegun.

Time began to speed up as I lobbed a grenade towards the group and rolled to the left. The sniper rifle appeared in my grip as a hail of gunfire flew my way, and I took immediate cover behind a pillar of steel jutting from the ground. A boom sounded, two of the icons disappearing with a couple of shouts of pain accompanying the alert that my shield finished its recharge. I popped from cover and activated my Hyper-Analysis. The gunfire was slowly shifting towards me, and I used my CPU’s to focus on three targets.

With the three chosen, I activated the auto-target subroutine and my rifle snapped to the first target. The weapon barked a bass as the bullet flew towards the bandit, before the weapon’s recoil even finished my body was swinging itself towards the second target. Once he was on sight, the weapon barked again, sending another bullet down. I now saw the first target was only injured, but it sent him flying onto his back as the bullet punched into his lungs. As I fired upon the third, I saw the second one was dead from a shot to the heart. The third target was only injured with a hit to his left arm, and he was a righty.

Time was still slow, but I was at 75% heat as I rolled back into cover.

Time sped up, and I heard a Psycho run around the corner. Slipping on the sand like dirt, as he laughed maniacally. I dropped my rifle and pulled out my SMG and fired. At this range, he couldn’t dive away, nor just bear with it. The bullets ripped through him, and kill him immediately, leaving his dead body right there at an awkward angle.

Reaching down, I placed my clamp hand onto my rifle, and reabsorb it into my inventory. I will have to reload it later. I leaned back into the steel pillar which clanked loudly from bullets slamming into it, and realized I had to move otherwise I was just gonna get stuck here until either they ran out of bullets, or they decided to rush me and take me out, or just lob grenades until I explode. With a moment of hyper-analysis, I came up with a plan and switched out my SMG for my shotgun.

Spinning my wheel to maximum acceleration, I felt the dirt beneath me kick up in a cloud of dust as I rushed from the right side of the pillar and towards the bandits. Gunfire blasted into my shield until I reached 20%, as I rolled into the two living, but crippled, psycho bandits. With a blast, I killed them both, and rolled under the cover of the platform. The gunfire stopped for a moment as the bandits began to move to a better position.

Time slowed down again for me as I used my thermal sensors to see their body heat through the sheet metal boards of the platforms above me, took aim, and fired. I fired at each target one after another until their threat icon disappeared off my HUD, and killed four before I had to stop and reload. Instead, I switched out to my SMG and continued firing at the retreating heat sources which looked longer as the bandits scrambled and slipped to get away from my weapon fire.

I killed an additional two bandits with that before my system began a cooldown.

I had in just a few moments of time killed a total of six bandits on the platforms, and there were nine.

I reloaded the SMG, and then the Shotgun as I rolled up the hill opposite of the Dahl Depot. As I came around the bend, I was immediately assaulted by a Bandit with the support machinegun and another two with rifles who had taken cover behind metal walls. I rushed forward behind the boulder that led down the hill and switched out for the sniper. I reloaded it as I heard the three shout and hoot at me, how they’ll grind my body to steel dust, and so on. I hardly paid any attention as I finished and dashed down the hill.

I was out of their line of sight, and kept under the platform until I began to reach the other hill. I couldn’t see them, nor they me, until I was rolling up the hill, and over the depot itself where I had a good vantage.

“He’s behind us!” one shouted as he moved to cover, and the other two reacted by turning to the side to see where I was. Time slowed again as I used my scope to aim at them, and then used my eye to zoom in further, and fired into the head of the machine gunner. To my shock, I missed, and he ducked and began to move. Fortunately, he was in slow motion so I aimed again and fired, and this time his head exploded into chunks. I took aim at the last one who had been scrambling for cover, and fired just as he was about to make it, and took his head off. His body lurched forwards near the last one, and time sped up again as I needed a cooldown.

“Oh fuck! Fuck! FUUUUUUUUUCK!” the man shouted in absolute panic as he scrambled to run away. He was outright sprinting, hands empty of a weapon as he took off screaming. I had no real hope to catch him as he jumped off a ledge while I reloaded.

I sat there, just staring for about five minutes as what I just accomplished washed over me. While I couldn’t say I was a Vault Hunter in terms of badassery…I think with my programs, I’m on my way to it.

For the next five minutes, I rolled all over the camp, taking weapons, ammo, grenades, my first grenade mod, an Explosive Longbow, and a few shields that were weaker than my own. These would go to my bandit weapon mission.

With my looting done, I loaded my Shotgun and slowly rolled into the Depot.

===

Angel’s jaw was still agape as she watched the green robot go into the Dahl facility. She had wondered what the little machine was going to do. Taking on a band of Bandits was not what she expected. Sure, she saw it take on Skags when she first noticed it, and saw it do a few other things like rescue that man, McClane, from those bandits who sought to kill him, but nothing on this level. He just literally took on nineteen bandits in a space of...four minutes and forty two seconds.

While it wasn’t unheard of for people to try and modify Claptraps to be guards, or law enforcement, they were never good at those jobs because they were, to put it simply, egotistic about the job and often took on more than they could handle. In an actual fight, they were pretty much worthless, and a child could beat them.

Gates, that was the robot’s name, was not at all like that. He was able to think on his…well, wheel, and actually fight with some level of competence. In fact, according to her calculations comparing him to various studies on fighting capabilities of Bandits, soldiers, and elite forces, he was about...above average for a human. The reason was due to his incredible reaction speed. She chalked that up to him being a robot however, as they generally thought many times more quickly than a human could.

If he were a full-blown combat robot, he would have had built in combat subroutines that made his abilities even better, and even as a robot of his size, a nightmare for the average human being. The fact he was this capable despite being…a Claptrap…was worrying. A lot. Something in Gates is different and she needed to know what it was.

All that said, she had to admit with a small smile.

“…That was cool.”