Link to article: Target Practice.
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[[>]] [[module Rate]] [[/>]] The fly floated down onto the nose of the statue gently, watching its surroundings carefully for any sign of a predator. Content with the fact that there were none, it began cleaning itself, endlessly wiping its forelegs over its head and body, scraping off the excess dirt with an efficiency only millennia of biological programming could produce. Were it capable of sentient thought, or even hearing, it may have //briefly// wondered what the strange, rapidly increasing whistling sound was. But, as it had neither, it was blissfully ignorant of what was about to happen. The statue exploded violently, leaving behind nothing but a shallow crater, a brief rain of stone, dirt, ceramic and one very dead fly. “Nice shot Ice,” grunted Kain, peering at the impact zone from the firing area. “Sophia, what does that make the score?” “Your twenty three points to his twenty Father,” replied the pale girl standing to his right, watching the scene with interest. “Heh. It’s getting close, but I think we know who has the better robot,” the dog chuckled, leaning over the cockpit and laying his head on the bronzed shoulder plate of the Egg Walker. “If I was allowed to use all of my armaments-” started Iceberg, leaning up from his laid back position in the deck chair next to Sophia, a large and very complex remote control nestled in his hands. “If you were allowed to use all of your armaments the firing range would be one very large nuclear crater,” interrupted Kain, his fuzzy face twisted into what one could assume was his version of a frown. The firing range in question was a small dusty valley, populated primarily by large grotesque statues, stylised depictions of monstrous creatures and large craters. Mostly used to test weapons grade SCP items, when not in use, it was fair game for anyone with high enough clearance and a day off. The dog squinted in the midday sun, the heat beating down relentlessly. “So which one should I pick off next?” “Might I suggest the six-eighty-two lookalike three hundred feet to your far left,” offered Sophia, pointing off in the distance. Kain followed the line of her finger to a particularly ugly statue squatting on an outgrowth of rock, leering maliciously at the trio. “That’s pretty far away, but I think the old girl can make it accurately,” he exclaimed confidently, patting the machine’s side. Within moments, a bizarre turret of some sort had unfolded from the left shoulder, pointed at some obscure point in the sky. Kain mumbled to himself a little, muttering some things about wind resistance and angle of entry, before the weapon jerked back with a boom, sending a spinning projectile into the sky only to plummet down and decimate the statue with a small green tinted mushroom cloud. “Twenty four to twenty,” announced Sophia. Behind them, the sudden wail of distress sirens could be faintly heard. Kain lifted an ear to the wind. “Sounds like a code yellow delta two ninety,” Iceberg frowned at this, looking at the professor with annoyance. “No, it’s a code orange lambda three fifty,” he corrected. “Actually, it is a code blue alpha one ten,” surmised the girl between them, not having turned around. The men listened for a few minutes longer before shrugging in acceptance. “Not my problem, it’s my day off. I don’t give those up for anything less than a code red and above,” muttered Kain, the vestial hands of the walker pulling a pair of cold bottles out of a small compartment in its chassis. “Want another beer?” “Yeah sure,” Iceberg accepted, catching the frosty beverage as it was tossed to him. “So what one should we aim for now?” “Hmmm…” “What about that stupid lizard looking thing over there?” interjected Kain, gesturing towards a long reptilian creature hunkered on a rock close by. Iceberg shrugged, messing with the controls in his hands. “Sure,” The small robot in front of him fired a salvo of missiles into space, whistling in the air as they sped towards their target. At the last moment, just before they struck, the lizard turned around towards them, something like shock plastered across its alien features. Then it, and everything around it for several meters, was liquefied into so much molten refuse. There was silence amongst the group for several seconds. “Did… Did that statue just move?” asked Iceberg hesitantly. “Yes. Yes it did,” Sophia confirmed. They ventured over to the remains, examining the rapidly cooling fissure. “Well, I guess we found out what the alarm was for…” mumbled Kain. "You think he can come back from that?" asked Ice, poking the mess with a stick. Kain shook his head. "I doubt it." "But I think that counts for an extra two points. You're still one behind Ice," he said cheerily, moving back to the firing area. [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box]] [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]