Mario Loggagia's Terrible Day
I wrote an omake a couple days ago on the SB Skitterdoc thread and someone requested that I post it here as well, so I have. Featuring a certain Biotechnica executive living to regret both Taylor's spite, and his own grandfather's eccentricities.
Taylor: "On the one hand I'm somewhat offended that was the greatest injury my effort caused. On the other hand, I'm also very curious what I can accomplish, now that you're offering me a billion eddies and a blank slate to 'make a better turtle'."
Fire-breathing turtles would certainly not the weirdest thing we've seen Bonesaw's shard manage. I imagine Nicolo would be thrilled. The rest of his family, not so much.
---Mario Loggagia's Terrible Day---
Mario Loggagia was having a bad day.
If you'd asked him yesterday, he would have said that was a bad day, one of many in the past few months.
But he hadn't spent most of yesterday fighting for his fucking life against murderous reptiles, so today he was recalibrating that scale. Today, this was a bad day.
This was all Grandfather's fault.
Grandfather and that terrorist witch, but she wouldn't have been a problem if Grandfather hadn't decided to give her a state-of-the-art lab, instead of a shallow grave.
You'd think that for a woman who'd manufactured the greatest crisis Biotechnica had ever seen from shit she'd mixed up in some basement, even Grandfather might put his eccentricities on hold for a bit to just have her shot, after a proper interrogation of course. Or perhaps, publicly executed in some spectacular way to serve as an example to the next ten generations that you do not fuck with the Loggagia family.
But no, Grandfather had been impressed. Never mind that she had been out to destroy them – never mind that she had damn near managed it, getting closer on her first attempt than a century of nations and mega-corporations with millions of times the resources had ever come. Well, unless what the Astors had started ambiguously hinting via discreet back channels was true, but they were also making it very clear that she hadn't been acting with their direction or backing, even if they'd very much like her in (or returned to?) their custody.
Astor princess or no, Grandfather had been so impressed with her work he had ensconced her in one of his labs- a luxuriously-appointed facility beneath a refurbished castle on the island of Ischia, near Naples. Yes, a lab that was ostensibly "fully locked down and secured" by Biotechnica security, counterintelligence, and hazard control – but how was that going, you useless fuckers.
Grandfather had wanted to see what her talents could produce with a real budget. Starting with his stupid turtle project.
This morning, a month later, Mario had dropped in with his own team on a surprise inspection, to see what this stunningly clever decision had wrought. And possibly exact some of the corrective violence he'd earlier been denied. In hindsight he had not been ready for it.
He had expected a degree of lunacy. What he'd received was blood and fire.
And turtles.
So many fucking turtles.
Around the corner ahead, there was a thud, a scream, and then a horrible crunch. Mario winced.
The turtles got another one.
At the corner, one of his security borgs raised a hand, [Halt] signal coming over local comms at the same time. The loud crack of a railgun firing came, followed by what Mario was depressed to recognize as the pinging sounds of many small turtle-shell fragments bouncing off of metal corridor walls.
One less turtle too, then. But trading security personnel for turtles wasn't a winning proposition; he was running low on personnel. Even his own personal borg detail had lost several men, and barely a dozen of the less-augmented regular security staff were still alive and mobile. Meanwhile the madwoman had an apparently limitless supply of biologically-enhanced turtles, all of which could all bite through heavy armor and had shown half a dozen other horrible tricks now. The site lockdown she'd kicked off had meant his men had to breach through the different lab spaces if they wanted to make any progress, and every damn one had some new kind of evil turtle.
Also, none of them held her. The woman was apparently hiding in some godforsaken corner of the facility – at least they hadn't seen sign of her yet – and was only interjecting to provide sadistic informational voiceovers via the PA system whenever they encountered some new and horrible turtle that would kill them.
The worst had been the super-speed ones. 'Project Azure' as her cheerful narration had called it. No corp made sandevistan cyberware for a turtle's nervous system, and no sane person would want to, so naturally she'd whipped up a biological analogue somehow. Without fail whichever poor security bastard was on point when one of those things caught sight of them was dead before they could react. Fullborg or not, super-speed user themselves or not. It had taken their group nearly half an hour and twelve dead to get through a lab space smaller than his smallest garage.
Still, they were close now.
He and his men had been fighting their way downward. They hadn't been able to get out – and any putative reinforcements hadn't been able to get in – because the lunatic had somehow triggered an alpha-level biowarfare breach alarm. In that event the site had gone into a fully-sealed lockdown that couldn't be lifted from the science areas, so to prevent any science staff potentially exposed to biowarfare agents from putting their own lives ahead of proper containment and loss prevention.
That had seemed like a perfectly reasonable precaution when he'd signed off on it as COO. After all, it wasn't like anyone truly important, like a shareholder or a corporate officer, would get caught up in a lockdown like this, right?
Ha ha ha.
As a result of past-Mario's stellar decision, there was only one place in this entire damned facility which could actually communicate with the outside world or lift the lockdown. That was the central security hub, located on nearly the lowest level of the base. The only thing below that was the geothermal energy plant that kept the entire place running.
He didn't know what had happened to the staff who were supposed to be in the security hub when this mess broke – probably nothing good – but he and his men were, finally, nearly there. Actually breaching the doors there would take some further time even with his overrides, but they'd at least have a fixed position to guard. Someplace they could defend against all reptilian comers instead of having to advance through a slog of infested laboratory halls where every corner, every vent, every pipe, and every crawlspace could be sheltering some new abomination.
[Clear], the signal came from his security team. [Primary can advance.] The borg at the corner waved him forward.
Cautiously, Mario walked ahead, wincing for a moment from the pain in his leg. He'd taken one glancing blow himself earlier, coming far closer than any Loggagia was ever supposed to come to death. It had been a sobering experience. In that moment, he had felt smaller than he had in years.
He slowly advanced around the corner and down the next hallway. When he reached the intermingled remains of security cyborg and man-eating turtle, he carefully stepped over them. Not that there was much point as his shoes and suit were both a total loss at this point, spattered with blood, machine oil, various reptile bits, and even some less savory things from when they'd had to cut through the sewage processing plant to progress – but still. A man had standards. A Loggagia even more so.
And before him was the most blessed sight he'd seen yet today: the last stairwell down.
One last flight and it was a straight shot to the security hub.
He was surprised when the next man immediately gave the all clear to enter the stairwell, turning to precede Mario in. Prior stairwells had held some of the nastier ambushes they'd encountered, but they'd evidently found no resistance in this one. A gentle warm wind enveloped him as he walked in, heated air rising from the geothermal plant below. He made his way gingerly down the stairs and out. Ahead of him, he saw his men carefully advancing, checking every nook and cranny of the hallway with their cyberware and gun-mounted sensors.
And there in the distance, the corridor opened onto a metal bridge, leading to a great steel door emblazoned: MAIN SECURITY.
Thank God, thank Christ, thank the Holy Spirit. Finally.
And then,
In the distance,
A nightmare crashed down.
It was a turtle. It was the biggest, most hellish turtle he had ever seen. It was huger than anything from the upper floors, towering over his tallest security men. An armored head the size of a car turned toward them beneath an awful shell covered in razor-sharp protrusions, and with one contemptuous gesture it swatted one of his fullborgs with its foreleg.
The man's more-than-human body slammed against a wall and fell, bent and pulped.
The security officers screamed and scrambled away, and even his own men recoiled in fear. [Back! Fall back to the stairs! Protect the primary! Heavy weapons on that thing, now!]
Intelligent hate-filled eyes the size of dinner plates narrowed as they ran, but the turtle didn't pursue.
It didn't need to.
It inhaled, and a terrible fiery light filled its mouth.
Oh, he thought, you've got to be fucking kidding me.
---
An hour later, scorched and bloody, he finally staggered into the security chamber, supported by… the last surviving member of his security team. Luciano, maybe?
Ludovico?
Well, he wasn't sure of the man's name, but he was sure the man was getting a bonus you could buy a villa with.
It was creepily quiet in here. And still no sign of the security staff that was supposed to be present. He suspected biowarfare, or possibly black magic. But as a Loggagia, he had a better counter-biowarfare suite than any amount of money could buy, and that would have to be enough. And if it wasn't, well, he was fucked anyway then. There had been a lot of weird shit in the labs.
He limped over to the main console and carefully input his credentials. Then did it again. Then bled a bit into a receptacle conveniently located to one side.
"Executive override accepted," said a pleasant female voice, just enough synthesis in it to make it clearly artificial. "Welcome, Chief Operating Officer Mario Loggagia. How can I serve you?"
"Re-seal this room," he said, lowering himself slowly and painfully into one of the room's chairs. "Revoke alpha-level protocols across the site but do not disengage any of the physical security yet. Re-establish contact with the outside. What troops are present on the surface?"
If there wasn't a military force up there already, he was going to have several generals murdered.
"Biotechnica Corporate Assistance Group Four has taken control of the island surface, supported by elements of the Italian Army's fifth infantry regiment. CEO Nicolo Loggagia requires immediate communication, connecting now."
"Gah!" Mario startled, attempted to sit up straighter in his chair and look slightly less… burnt and disheveled… as the console's screen immediately blinked to a view of the old man.
"Mario! Good, you're alive. You look like shit. Are you alright? Safe?"
"I never want to see another fucking turtle again," he said, "and I'm not leaving this room until our troops clear their way down here, but nothing that won't keep, Grandfather. We're secure and my implants are patching me up. I can disengage the lockdown, but you need to tell the troops to be ready for all sorts of hostile action. The turtles killed fucking everyone. And," he snarled, "we need make absolutely sure that witch does not escape."
"It's bit late for that," Nicolo said. "She disappeared hours ago. Intel is working to track her, but it sounds like she might've made a clean getaway."
"What!? HOW!?" he howled. "She was– this place was locked down tighter than an angel's asshole! How could she have gotten out!? What do you mean 'she disappeared'!?"
"Ah." In this day for awful firsts, Mario was again treated to something new and terrible – his grandfather looking awkward. "Well… she wasn't there, son. Astor scion or not, you were being vocal about her continued survival and I was… concerned you might do something rash like drop in and torture her while I wasn't looking. So I had her moved to the labs on San Nicola a week ago. And that's where she vanished from, earlier today."
"After all this!?" Mario shouted. "All this AND ALL ALONG SHE WASN'T HERE!!??"
"Yes." Nicolo nodded solemnly. "I'm sorry, Mario, but the princess was in another castle."
ckk185 on SB said:
Taylor: "On the one hand I'm somewhat offended that was the greatest injury my effort caused. On the other hand, I'm also very curious what I can accomplish, now that you're offering me a billion eddies and a blank slate to 'make a better turtle'."
TerraBull on SB said:
Fire-breathing turtles would certainly not the weirdest thing we've seen Bonesaw's shard manage. I imagine Nicolo would be thrilled. The rest of his family, not so much.
---Mario Loggagia's Terrible Day---
Mario Loggagia was having a bad day.
If you'd asked him yesterday, he would have said that was a bad day, one of many in the past few months.
But he hadn't spent most of yesterday fighting for his fucking life against murderous reptiles, so today he was recalibrating that scale. Today, this was a bad day.
This was all Grandfather's fault.
Grandfather and that terrorist witch, but she wouldn't have been a problem if Grandfather hadn't decided to give her a state-of-the-art lab, instead of a shallow grave.
You'd think that for a woman who'd manufactured the greatest crisis Biotechnica had ever seen from shit she'd mixed up in some basement, even Grandfather might put his eccentricities on hold for a bit to just have her shot, after a proper interrogation of course. Or perhaps, publicly executed in some spectacular way to serve as an example to the next ten generations that you do not fuck with the Loggagia family.
But no, Grandfather had been impressed. Never mind that she had been out to destroy them – never mind that she had damn near managed it, getting closer on her first attempt than a century of nations and mega-corporations with millions of times the resources had ever come. Well, unless what the Astors had started ambiguously hinting via discreet back channels was true, but they were also making it very clear that she hadn't been acting with their direction or backing, even if they'd very much like her in (or returned to?) their custody.
Astor princess or no, Grandfather had been so impressed with her work he had ensconced her in one of his labs- a luxuriously-appointed facility beneath a refurbished castle on the island of Ischia, near Naples. Yes, a lab that was ostensibly "fully locked down and secured" by Biotechnica security, counterintelligence, and hazard control – but how was that going, you useless fuckers.
Grandfather had wanted to see what her talents could produce with a real budget. Starting with his stupid turtle project.
This morning, a month later, Mario had dropped in with his own team on a surprise inspection, to see what this stunningly clever decision had wrought. And possibly exact some of the corrective violence he'd earlier been denied. In hindsight he had not been ready for it.
He had expected a degree of lunacy. What he'd received was blood and fire.
And turtles.
So many fucking turtles.
Around the corner ahead, there was a thud, a scream, and then a horrible crunch. Mario winced.
The turtles got another one.
At the corner, one of his security borgs raised a hand, [Halt] signal coming over local comms at the same time. The loud crack of a railgun firing came, followed by what Mario was depressed to recognize as the pinging sounds of many small turtle-shell fragments bouncing off of metal corridor walls.
One less turtle too, then. But trading security personnel for turtles wasn't a winning proposition; he was running low on personnel. Even his own personal borg detail had lost several men, and barely a dozen of the less-augmented regular security staff were still alive and mobile. Meanwhile the madwoman had an apparently limitless supply of biologically-enhanced turtles, all of which could all bite through heavy armor and had shown half a dozen other horrible tricks now. The site lockdown she'd kicked off had meant his men had to breach through the different lab spaces if they wanted to make any progress, and every damn one had some new kind of evil turtle.
Also, none of them held her. The woman was apparently hiding in some godforsaken corner of the facility – at least they hadn't seen sign of her yet – and was only interjecting to provide sadistic informational voiceovers via the PA system whenever they encountered some new and horrible turtle that would kill them.
The worst had been the super-speed ones. 'Project Azure' as her cheerful narration had called it. No corp made sandevistan cyberware for a turtle's nervous system, and no sane person would want to, so naturally she'd whipped up a biological analogue somehow. Without fail whichever poor security bastard was on point when one of those things caught sight of them was dead before they could react. Fullborg or not, super-speed user themselves or not. It had taken their group nearly half an hour and twelve dead to get through a lab space smaller than his smallest garage.
Still, they were close now.
He and his men had been fighting their way downward. They hadn't been able to get out – and any putative reinforcements hadn't been able to get in – because the lunatic had somehow triggered an alpha-level biowarfare breach alarm. In that event the site had gone into a fully-sealed lockdown that couldn't be lifted from the science areas, so to prevent any science staff potentially exposed to biowarfare agents from putting their own lives ahead of proper containment and loss prevention.
That had seemed like a perfectly reasonable precaution when he'd signed off on it as COO. After all, it wasn't like anyone truly important, like a shareholder or a corporate officer, would get caught up in a lockdown like this, right?
Ha ha ha.
As a result of past-Mario's stellar decision, there was only one place in this entire damned facility which could actually communicate with the outside world or lift the lockdown. That was the central security hub, located on nearly the lowest level of the base. The only thing below that was the geothermal energy plant that kept the entire place running.
He didn't know what had happened to the staff who were supposed to be in the security hub when this mess broke – probably nothing good – but he and his men were, finally, nearly there. Actually breaching the doors there would take some further time even with his overrides, but they'd at least have a fixed position to guard. Someplace they could defend against all reptilian comers instead of having to advance through a slog of infested laboratory halls where every corner, every vent, every pipe, and every crawlspace could be sheltering some new abomination.
[Clear], the signal came from his security team. [Primary can advance.] The borg at the corner waved him forward.
Cautiously, Mario walked ahead, wincing for a moment from the pain in his leg. He'd taken one glancing blow himself earlier, coming far closer than any Loggagia was ever supposed to come to death. It had been a sobering experience. In that moment, he had felt smaller than he had in years.
He slowly advanced around the corner and down the next hallway. When he reached the intermingled remains of security cyborg and man-eating turtle, he carefully stepped over them. Not that there was much point as his shoes and suit were both a total loss at this point, spattered with blood, machine oil, various reptile bits, and even some less savory things from when they'd had to cut through the sewage processing plant to progress – but still. A man had standards. A Loggagia even more so.
And before him was the most blessed sight he'd seen yet today: the last stairwell down.
One last flight and it was a straight shot to the security hub.
He was surprised when the next man immediately gave the all clear to enter the stairwell, turning to precede Mario in. Prior stairwells had held some of the nastier ambushes they'd encountered, but they'd evidently found no resistance in this one. A gentle warm wind enveloped him as he walked in, heated air rising from the geothermal plant below. He made his way gingerly down the stairs and out. Ahead of him, he saw his men carefully advancing, checking every nook and cranny of the hallway with their cyberware and gun-mounted sensors.
And there in the distance, the corridor opened onto a metal bridge, leading to a great steel door emblazoned: MAIN SECURITY.
Thank God, thank Christ, thank the Holy Spirit. Finally.
And then,
In the distance,
A nightmare crashed down.
It was a turtle. It was the biggest, most hellish turtle he had ever seen. It was huger than anything from the upper floors, towering over his tallest security men. An armored head the size of a car turned toward them beneath an awful shell covered in razor-sharp protrusions, and with one contemptuous gesture it swatted one of his fullborgs with its foreleg.
The man's more-than-human body slammed against a wall and fell, bent and pulped.
The security officers screamed and scrambled away, and even his own men recoiled in fear. [Back! Fall back to the stairs! Protect the primary! Heavy weapons on that thing, now!]
Intelligent hate-filled eyes the size of dinner plates narrowed as they ran, but the turtle didn't pursue.
It didn't need to.
It inhaled, and a terrible fiery light filled its mouth.
Oh, he thought, you've got to be fucking kidding me.
---
An hour later, scorched and bloody, he finally staggered into the security chamber, supported by… the last surviving member of his security team. Luciano, maybe?
Ludovico?
Well, he wasn't sure of the man's name, but he was sure the man was getting a bonus you could buy a villa with.
It was creepily quiet in here. And still no sign of the security staff that was supposed to be present. He suspected biowarfare, or possibly black magic. But as a Loggagia, he had a better counter-biowarfare suite than any amount of money could buy, and that would have to be enough. And if it wasn't, well, he was fucked anyway then. There had been a lot of weird shit in the labs.
He limped over to the main console and carefully input his credentials. Then did it again. Then bled a bit into a receptacle conveniently located to one side.
"Executive override accepted," said a pleasant female voice, just enough synthesis in it to make it clearly artificial. "Welcome, Chief Operating Officer Mario Loggagia. How can I serve you?"
"Re-seal this room," he said, lowering himself slowly and painfully into one of the room's chairs. "Revoke alpha-level protocols across the site but do not disengage any of the physical security yet. Re-establish contact with the outside. What troops are present on the surface?"
If there wasn't a military force up there already, he was going to have several generals murdered.
"Biotechnica Corporate Assistance Group Four has taken control of the island surface, supported by elements of the Italian Army's fifth infantry regiment. CEO Nicolo Loggagia requires immediate communication, connecting now."
"Gah!" Mario startled, attempted to sit up straighter in his chair and look slightly less… burnt and disheveled… as the console's screen immediately blinked to a view of the old man.
"Mario! Good, you're alive. You look like shit. Are you alright? Safe?"
"I never want to see another fucking turtle again," he said, "and I'm not leaving this room until our troops clear their way down here, but nothing that won't keep, Grandfather. We're secure and my implants are patching me up. I can disengage the lockdown, but you need to tell the troops to be ready for all sorts of hostile action. The turtles killed fucking everyone. And," he snarled, "we need make absolutely sure that witch does not escape."
"It's bit late for that," Nicolo said. "She disappeared hours ago. Intel is working to track her, but it sounds like she might've made a clean getaway."
"What!? HOW!?" he howled. "She was– this place was locked down tighter than an angel's asshole! How could she have gotten out!? What do you mean 'she disappeared'!?"
"Ah." In this day for awful firsts, Mario was again treated to something new and terrible – his grandfather looking awkward. "Well… she wasn't there, son. Astor scion or not, you were being vocal about her continued survival and I was… concerned you might do something rash like drop in and torture her while I wasn't looking. So I had her moved to the labs on San Nicola a week ago. And that's where she vanished from, earlier today."
"After all this!?" Mario shouted. "All this AND ALL ALONG SHE WASN'T HERE!!??"
"Yes." Nicolo nodded solemnly. "I'm sorry, Mario, but the princess was in another castle."
Did I really write a two thousand word omake just to make a Super Mario Bros. joke? Yes, yes I did. The stars aligned for it so perfectly that I couldn't help myself.
Watch out for those blue shells, folks.
Watch out for those blue shells, folks.
