"We are currently assessing the situation," says a polite and calm female voice coming out of the ship's announcement system. "Please follow the attendants' instructions. Emergency deployment is in progress. Please do not go abovedeck, as we cannot guarantee your safety if you do."

Morgan does in fact get shot. She cannot dodge a bullet point blank. Ow. She even needs to pause a minute to drink a tiny liquid, because yep, that requires extra super healing please and thank you.

"Augh ow, fuck, c'mon we don't have time to fuck around!! They've pumped you full of drugs that are killing you and they'd put damn wires in your head to control you but you're in there I saw you stop running I need you to fight!"

He turns to face her directly, then points both guns at her.

He doesn't shoot. Yet.

"Yes! Good. Keep looking, you're doing great. It's me, Morgan. Little asshole from the cell next door. Big sister you never had and probably never wanted, but too late for both of us, right. There's an outside. Please, I need you to hold still so I can drag you out here."

Will he let her take a step closer so she can maybe get that fucking tech off of him?

No.

His fingers twitch.

But there's someone here who can read intentions, isn't there?

Zash is there in a flash, gun held to Livio's temple. "Stop this."

...also no.

Just as quick as Zash is, Livio dodges the gun and goes melee with him.

Oh come on that's his strat, what is it with people here and stealing his stuff.

(And from the distance, numerous sand sails piloted by people in glowing full-body suits and the letters BL in neon attached to the boats start becoming visible in the distance and approaching rapidly.)

Someone is kind of too busy to notice, or care.

"Fuck okay, not that way, fine, I'll figure it out hold on I need to think how to get around it fuck fuck fuck. Zash he's like me but the tech's feeding him his drugs on need so every time he heals he's using up lifespan! I'm going to need you to pacifist the everliving shit out of him!!!"

Okay, okay, some way to get past the tech and to him. Can't be too clever because the fucking doctor asshole is always thinking from that direction. Gotta be something primal, there's an animal called a person under that tech and she wants him back thank you.

Well that's fine actually, Zash has a lot less trouble not hurting people in melee range. Livio still tries to occasionally shoot them but Zash has no trouble dodging out of the way and/or redirecting his shots. He wrestles with Livio some then kicks his feet out from under him so they can wrestle on the floor and Zash can try to knock him out with a gun to the temple.

More guards appear, some twenty of them this time, and then another ten from another side. "Drop your weapons right now!"

Augh!! Damn it, stop interrupting her she's trying to think this is fucking hard enough already!!!

She can use her gigantic gun as a mostly covering shield for the three of them, faced towards the side with the twenty guards. For the other side, she'll move to try and free up Zash a bit with Livio so he can handle the other side. This involves putting Livio in a chokehold. Love comes in all kinds of forms, okay.

Zash's signature move of knocking guns out of hands is the kind that eventually gets old, when people realise that he's definitely not hurting them and so they hold onto their guns more fiercely. And the problem with that is that he can still knock the guns out of their hands but in ways that tend to break fingers. Of course, that may not be a problem here when he really, really wants them to be out of action for a while, but it's still a bit more violence than he likes.

So he'll do something else.

There are crates over there. Those crates can be used. The way they can relevantly be used is by Zash shooting a tiny but powerful grappling hook from his mechanical wrist and then pulling.

He gets shot at, even hit a couple of times, but the guards don't actually have that much time before the enormous metal crate is coming at them at somewhat terrifying speeds.

And Morgan has an idea.

Smell.

That’s how she’ll get past these fucking cybernetics and at the human inside.

“Zash! Grab a cigarette, we need, to light it,” she grits out, still barely keeping hold of Livio, both of her arms kind of busy with that chokehold. She’s also been shot, a couple of times, but who even cares at this point, right?

"...cigarette?"

Except... here are several grappling hooks with poles attached, BL in neon colours, coming from the various sand boats approaching the steamer.

"All that glitters is ours!" decry dozens of voices amplified by megaphones. "The most gorgeous and terrifying bandits you'll ever see!"

And they begin to climb, one after another, in their gaudy, glowing neon suits.

Fuck that's the Bad Lads gang. "You!" Zash calls to the guards. "Protect the civilians! Barricade! Close the doors! Don't let these guys get in!"

"Who do you think you are to order us like—"

    "That's Zash the Stampede, you moron," says another guard. "How do you think they've been beating us up so much? This is way above our pay grade."

"...Zash the... Stampede..."

        "Let's retreat and barricade. Sound the alarm. We can't deal with the Human Typhoon but we can deal with a gang of bandits."

Oh thank fuck.

Bang bang, goes Livio.

Morgan winces like she's the one who's been shot. Sorry, Zash. Without a cigarette to try getting around the cybernetics gracefully, she's busy trying to implement, uh, she's on, like Plan C, right? Plan C. Which is break the cyborg mask thing and see if that helps. It's riskier than Plan B but man are they running out of time.

The guards do in fact retreat and just as they do the deck starts swarming with gang members.

Zash starts swearing a lot, loudly, and using his robot arm to block Livio's bullets. "Really wishing people were more scared of Zash the Stampede right now."

Livio barely seems to register the gang, and turns his attention to Morgan now.

Ka-click goes the mask thing, and part of it snaps off. It looks like it might be important. Hopefully that wasn't the part of it that was supplying him with the healing serum, because they are all about to probably need to do some healing right about now.

"C'mon let that be enough," she grunts, as Livio finally gets around to throwing her off. She can use the opening to have her own healing serum, which is not applied through a cybernetic whatsit, thank you, but is probably better for that because look at who the fuck controls those things.

And then she needs to retrieve her gun before anything else because yeah um she's about to need it.