It didn't have the kind of AI that could keep the mech running without any input from the person inside. Most of the Guardians were equipped with that kind of tech, which meant they could continue to protect Sanctuary when the pilot experienced difficulty. It also worked out well enough for when they didn't want to necessarily do the work they needed to do.
If Mini's AI had worked properly, the task ahead was something it would have been able to do automatically. Since it was mostly gutted through poor coding, there was no way to accomplish it without doing the work herself.
The reality was a little frustrating, but she had grown accustomed to it by this point. Once she’d primed her grappler, she aimed it at the mech still about ten feet away from the edge. The sheer size and weight of it were probably enough to be a challenge for the smaller Minato, but she wasn't about to give in to it. She had the advantage, after all.
She wasn't dead.
The secondary firing mechanism was launched to fire it to a higher point on the mountain, from which it could pull the larger mech up. It already whirred, working slowly as she fired another line into the ground below her to enable her to descend carefully to the ascending load.
There wasn't much that she could do herself but finding the controls for the pirate mech's grappler gave her more to work with. There wasn't much to it other than connecting the Minato's controls to a connection port in the mech, which was found in the boot, and then working the mechanism like it was in her own mech.
It wasn't long until the combined strategy hoisted the larger mech onto level ground.
"I fucking hate Lancers," Jessica13 said softly as she hauled herself onto the chest of the larger mech. It would take her all damn day to take this fucking thing apart.
"That's not a Lancer," Lance7 said and shook his head. "They aren’t that big."
"Sure, they put on a few extra tons of armor but that still didn't do them any good," she retorted. "But it's a Lancer all right. You can tell from the helmet structure. People like copying it since it's so effective and really cheap to make. Well…effective is kind of subjective in this case."
"Yes, I wondered exactly how well all the extra armor worked," he replied, his tone slightly sarcastic.
"I guess they thought more was better," she said as she removed a piece from the chest plate. "All they ended up doing was welding a mess of useless metals on. Look at this—it's not even for a mech. It looks like…something…"
She wasn't sure what she was looking at. The square chunk of aluminum had been shot through easily, but a couple of bright red words were scrawled on it, clearly an indicator of what it had been before—Live Free or Die Hard, coming to theatres this Jun.
"What do you think that means?" she asked in bewilderment.
"I think die-hard is a term old-timers like to use," Lance7 explained. "It means going out while kicking ass or something like that. Or maybe literally hard. Who knows?"
She tilted her head and studied the chunk of metal. Dying hard wasn’t very appealing at all but the live free did seem more interesting. She merely wasn't sure what the theaters part meant.
"Yeah, who knows, but it'll take me a while to get through all this," Jessica13 said. "Are you sure you want to stick around for it?"
"Sure." The man looked around. "People say I have too much Outsider in me, but I like being up here and out in the open. It’s not really fresh air we're breathing, but we can still pretend, right?"
"That’s dangerous talk," she warned and ignored the fact that it triggered an immediate response within her. "I know they don't exactly banish folk here for talking about the Outside, but they might send you to the recyc unit."
"I know that well enough," Lance7 replied. "Believe me, I don't want to get stuck working the furnaces. But it's… nice to be out here looking at everything in the world. It's…beautiful."
He was a bold one, that was for sure. She doubted she would be caught dead saying anything like that. Aside from the obvious deterrents like recyc, she liked her job too much.
And yet, a quick peek at the world spread below them and still gilded in what was now gold and pink told her she felt the same way. There was something about being Topside and looking out at it all that sparked her imagination. It made her wonder what the world had been like before the Reaping. She pushed the odd sense of yearning aside and focused on her task.
It was slow work to cut through the heavier armor on the Lancer and to climb off it each time she had to place the pieces in their particular piles. Five other bulletfoots did the same work she did, while others carted everything in to be scanned and cleared to enter Sanctuary. Most of the Guardians had already gone down, while a handful remained Topside to guard the smaller mechs while they worked.
"All right, folks, listen up," Armstrong7 called over the comms as he came out of the elevator. "No one wants to be out here come nightfall, which will be in about fifteen minutes. Put that on your timers and have everything you can ready to be taken down by then.
