I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such. ________________________________________ Aldro and Tatir snuck through the halls quietly. The king in the nearby town ask the two of them to take out the machine that Vess was using to threaten his kingdom. They had been making their way slowly hoping they would find it before Vess could find them. The alarms were blaring so they had to be extra careful as they moved through the halls.
Soon enough they opened a door to find the machine sitting by a window. They looked around the room, when they saw no one they entered and closed the door behind them.
“Okay….” Aldro looked at the machine. He could hear things whirling and others ticking but he couldn’t see any way to turn it off. It was ball likes with a metal flat frame an arm or something pointing out the window.
Tatir moved around to the other side of the machine. “Hey Aldro I think I found what we were looking for.”
Aldro moved from the controls, which was just a mess of buttons and levers, over to where she was. Following where she was pointing he saw a label that said danger and under it a button that said do not push. He chuckled, “I wonder what this does. Do you think it turns it off or causes it to self destruct?”
Tatir shrugged, “don’t know but I bet whatever it does Rivatha put it there.” she said with a laugh of her own.
Aldro nodded, “most likely, do you want to do the honors?” he asked waving at the button. Tatir nodded and pushed the button. Before either of them could think to move a door opened allowing for a gun popped out and sprayed them with bullets. While it didn’t kill them it did mortally wound them.
While they laid on the floor slowly bleeding to death the door they came from opened and Vess and Kilo came through. Vess sneered at them, “oh so this is where you two were.” He moved over to the control panel kicking Tatir out of the way who cried out in pain.
“Wh-what…ar-e…yo…” Aldro tried to speak but it was hard to with the cut that he had got on his neck, he had been lucky, or unlucky, any more to the left and he would have been dead instantly.
“Stop talking alright? Your annoying to hear with that gasping.” Vess turned to him, “if you must know I’m setting up to have it fire at the castle we’ve been threatening. At first it was going to be near the town because they weren’t cooperating. Now it is going to be right on the castle since he sent you two.” He turned back messing with some more buttons and levers. "We've already evacuated the people so who's going to care about the lose of a king and his family." He turned a dial to one side then frowned turning to kilo "can you go turn that alarm off?"
"And leave you alone while these two scoundrels could attack you while setting up the machine that wil-"
Vess interrupted Kilo's rant before he could really get started "and what could they do? Their riddled with bullets." Vess waved to the two still slowly dieing.
Kilo looked them over quickly before nodding and running to find Luir the only one able to turn the alarm off.
Vess went back to working at the machine and Aldro tried again "wh-...w...why?"
Vess sighed "didn't I tell you not to talk?" He glared at Aldro for a second. "and I have to do it instead of Riv because she wanted to get a good spot to see her machine in action.” Vess looked over at a screen reading it carefully. After he was done reading it he pulled a lever that seemed to make the whole machine come to life. The last thing Aldro saw was a beam heading out of the machine's off into the distance.