Nanami blinked in surprise as she exited the inner comms center. She couldn't help but wonder what was going on. Did they just get the newest bulk upload from the major porn sites or something? Walking through the crowd she slowly tensed up. While many of the people were flirting with each other, men with women, men with men, women with women, she felt that an disproportionate number of eyes were on her.
"Hey," the clerk she talked to said with a bit of a stammer to his voice, "Would you like to get something to eat?"
Nanami frowned slightly. He was looking at her with unveiled lust, and she couldn't help but analyze him as a potential mate, cataloging his appearance as if her was a laboratory specimen. He was okay looking but he was physically unexceptional, seemed emotionally unsure, and while his job wasn't one any moron could do, it sure as hell wasn't anything challenging. In essence, he wasn't a worth her time.
"Not interested," she replied calmly, pushing her way past.
"Hey babe," another man, this one thick necked a physically imposing figure with a gravely voice dressed in black leather with heavy boots, looking rather like one of the thugs who accused her before. Big, dumb, and utterly unworthy.
"Go away" Nanami said with a literal growl backing her statement.
"Don't me like that babe," he said with a cocky smile, placing a hand on her shoulder.
Nanami hissed by instinct and grabbed his thumb and twisted. With a loud, wet snap the man was forced onto his kneels.
"Do not touch me!" she roared in anger, kicking him away. Turning to the other man, and some women, who were looking at her, she exclaimed, "All of you, back off! I'm not interested!"
Getting the point the crowd parted and she stormed off, eyebrow twitching. What the hell was going on, she wondered. Why were they all looking at her like this? It was like automatic reaction. There had to be something up. There was something up, and it was with her.
Pausing near the building she started to look over herself. Feeling around her body she felt an oily substance near her armpits. Taking whiff she cursed. It was a pheromonal excretion.
"Stupid!" she cursed, as she walked for the door, moving as fast as she could walk without attracting more attention to herself. "Stupid and lazy!"
When she'd left the Love Hotel she'd only done a quick rinse off to clean off the most visible signs of her personal time. While that would have been enough to clean off the signs of sex from a human female, she was no longer human. She was something else. While she didn't know much about the mitochondrial parasite or hunter genetics that may of may not have been introduced into thier genome, but from the old Project: SIL and Project: EVE records and the literal mountain of data on the Bugs, she knew both were highly pheromonal species.
With the SIL/EVE hybrids, she knew well that they were highly geared for reproduction, and were able to read the scent of most potential mates like an open book, as well being extremely sensitive to even the slightest clues and able to secrete a powerful pheromonal attractant to boost the lure of their already stunning looks. Bugs on the other hand communicated and even saw via pheromones, and were able to leave tags that could last for weeks. Combine that with the involuntary secretions of a hard up hybrid female who'd just blown off over a week of intense sexual frustration, and all the connected mating pheromones, without really without a heavy shower afterward, and you have a potential disaster waiting to happen.
In other words she was covered from in sexual attractant and needed to take a long shower and run her clothes through the washer two to three times just to make sure. Now, normally this would be humiliating but tolerable, if not for two facts. First, she didn't really want to be in the same room as Ranma like this. He was showing masterful self-control, but the last thing she wanted was to throw him into a rutt. That wouldn't be fair to either of them.
Worst of all was the fact that the Xenomorphs pheromonal signatures were well known these days. Due to their radar absorbent near black body carapaces, detection systems sensitive to their unique "scent" had been developed, based on their own unique vision sense. These sniffers were now common in most common smart weapons and security systems. It wasn't enough to eliminate their infamous stealth abilities, but it was enough to reduce it enough to change them from uncontested nightmare to something that could be death with.
She already was rather sure that their bodies didn't smell Xenomorph in normal conditions to set off the sniffers, bathed in her own mating pheromones she was naturally somewhat edgy. Even if she didn't have enough 'bug' in her to register as one of the black on black nightmares, there was still a chance that one might err on the side of caution and detect her as a non-human.
With this in mind, she stormed through the exit and double timed for the ship, anxious to decontaminate before things went completely to hell. Unfortunately for her, fate had different plans, for as she turned the corner to the main road to the space port she found herself face to face with a small group of armed security and one really big, really intimidating law enforcement robot.
As a matter of protocol, this robot, an ED-290XLP, a later model of OCPs venerable ED-200 line of Combat and Security droid scanned the woman in front of it, checking for threats such as weapons. Detecting an intense pheromonal signature, it cross referenced it across its database.The resulting data was contradictory, detecting as human, but also containing a faint Xenomorphic signature, traces of Predator, and a good deal of anonymous to raise a number of Level Yellow Increased Alertness Flags without putting into full Level Red Combat Alert status. Not used to having so many potential danger warnings compound upon one individual, the Enforcement Droid found that it did not have a protocol on hand to deal with the situation. As such, the unit queried its Bio-processor for a decision.
While the bio-processor in the ED-290 series was cheap, this savings came with a trade off. Most of the 290's decision making was handled by a series of simple pre-programed functions. In cases where this was not sufficient, a gumball sized culture of cloned brain tissue sat in the center of the armored frame, and make up the dedicated judgment center of the ED-290's AI control system. While superior to the notoriously buggy software based fuzzy logic system used in most earlier ED models, it was far from perfect. The Biological elements required both life support to maintain, and it was rightfully infamous for being profoundly stupid. While an improvement, they were still infamous in their own right for their complete lack of empathy, irrational conclusions, chaotic decision making, and their tendency to err on the side of excessive physical violence.
In retrospect the OCP board probably regretted their decision to base the growth cultures on the harvested brain tissue of convicted murderers, not that they'd ever admit it.
The query process lasted for all of three seconds before the ED-290XLP came to a decision. In criminal cases so many compounding factors would systematically raise the threat level of the target, and with so many danger flags, it might be best to treat the subject as a Level Red threat. In other words, when in doubt, shoot it.
"WARNING!" The combat robot announced in its trademarked loud, and imposing voice as it readied the the feeds to its three caseless 10mm machine guns and racked a shell into its 30mm gernade launcher. "NON-HUMAN TARGET DETECTED!"
For her part, Nanami only had one thing to say.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!"
She ran back around the corner as the ED-290 gave its own witty retort: three bursts of machine gun fire that all but shredded the corner of the building, where she'd been standing.
Seeing no reason to give up, the machine stormed off in pursuit, leaving a dazed and confused Schmidt behind to gawking as it began its rampage.
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(Posted Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:42)
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