As soon as they locked the door behind them, some of them started putting their electronics in a thick lead box. Others wrapped their stuff up in aluminum foil. The calm woman commando and Laura did the same exact thing. It was definitely a wild sight to behold. Laura then looked at me. "We're going to turn on the mini EMP. You might want to wrap up your phone and stuff." she informed me. That made sense. Liam did not seem the type to be trying to violently escape. Still, they wanted to control him. I sighed and walked over to the roll. I wanted a practical demonstration. They looked more than willing to give me one. Wrapping up my phone was one thing. Doing the same thing for one of my tasers was crazy. When we were ready, one of the goons went over to the supply closet. After a countdown, the device was turned on. All of the lights on the floor went out. There were battery powered flashlights ready. Looking into the black room, Liam had collapsed onto the floor. He was flat on his back. With a targeted attack like this. The outer shell was shot to hell. Liam was trapped inside that.
Being that this just happened to him, he was going to be like that for a while. The brute smiled at me. "He's going to be like that for an hour. Want to go upstairs and spar with me? Nothing like a fight to pass the time." I looked at him really hard. I was honestly still pretty pissed off from getting here. After watching everyone else have a turn with Liam in the black room, I was pretty pent up as well. Maybe fighting him for a bit would let me blow off some steam. "Sure. Why the fuck not? Let's go." I said. He smiled wide and wrapped his arm over my shoulders. "Hell yeah. Let's fucking go!" he shouted to the ceiling. Clearly he was waiting for this rematch. We walked upstairs together. The first floor was totally empty in order to throw people that wanted to snoop around off. Upstairs was a money printing and counting machine. It was a large money laundering office. Phobia had many revenue sources. Not all of them were strictly legal. Exactly what you would expect from a massive cyberpunk syndicate. The brute got into his ready stance. We fought it out. I won this time of course. I was better.
Catching him off guard with my strength was not hard to do. I was maxed out on my strength stats. He was not expecting me to be able to overpower him. The reason he got the upper hand was that I was preoccupied with my mission of keeping my team members safe in the fray. They were not here to slow me down now. I could focus everything on him. He still hit like a truck. Dodging his moves was a very important part of the strategy. I got in a lot of my damage from counterattacking. Even then, that was not enough to down him for long. He just kept coming at me. I had to get aggressive to make any real gains. Hand to hand combat was my worst skill. I hated it more than driving. Still, this fight did let me blow off a ton of pent up frustration. When I won, I made sure that I fully healed the brute. He looked appreciative. "Damn. You really can use magic like this." he said. I just nodded my head at him. "This feels way better than going to the local ripperdoc." he added in awe as his big body began to glow. His wounds began to close. When I was done, I reached out to give him a hand.
