Chapter Text
“I have a visual on the enemy combatants,” Ciel’s voice rang through my communication system as I ran and slid into cover behind a snow bank, “Confirming the AK-130s. Twelve individual units, ‘Alpha’ units are–”
“A.E.G.I.S guard units, Schnee production models. First or second revision,” I interrupted her as I ran my stealth suite– or what passed for it at least, damn thing was barebone. I could lower my thermal and aura output and that was it. One to avoid thermal imaging, the other was, in theory, to make it harder for aura sensitive devices and entities (like Grimms) to detect me. I only did the first before peeking at my targets from where I was hidden.
The A.E.G.I.S project… Heavens, what a mess that was. Everyone knows about the successes of the Atlas military, but never of its failures, and boy was that one of the biggest ones. So big, in fact, it directly led to my and the Paladins’ creations!
“I can confirm the fact they’re A.E.G.I.S units,” my voice in the skies responded. I was silently thankful that she didn’t get her panties in a twist over the interruption, but from the tone of her voice, she was curious on how I knew about them. “But how can you tell they’re from the SDC?”
“Head module. Red optic wasn’t added until the first SDC revision once they managed to 'legally' obtain the blueprints.” I had no idea if our conversation was being monitored by the council members, and that maybe I shouldn’t make the quotation marks in my voice so audible. But frankly, in this case, I didn’t care. Jacque Schnee– not even the SDC! Somehow getting the schematics for an abandoned military project and registering it to his personal name rather than his company’s was shady as hell!
As to what the project itself was? The Advanced E(something) G(something) Imaging System was to be the next step in Atlas’ robotic warfare. It was designed to address the major weakness of the military’s mechanical soldiers, which wasn’t that they didn’t hit particularly hard or that they had paper thin armour. Both of those were features, ye’ see? Drown the endless hordes with our own hordes! And to be fair, that worked really well.
Nah, the weakness was that they couldn’t operate outside of CCT coverage. It could be mitigated somewhat when doing large military deployments by using massive CCT uplinks that allowed them to continue working, but the things were as old as the network itself, bulky enough to require their own transport vehicle, and finicky enough that half the people working on them were constantly two seconds away starting a proto-mechanicus.
The A.E.G.I.S project was meant to solve that problem. The original plan was to miniaturise the uplink as much as possible using cutting edge tech, then stuff it into a ‘command unit’ that could travel alongside the AKs. To their credit, it worked! Kinda.
They managed to make the array much smaller and put it into a robot. But that’s when the horror began. What horror? Why, feature creep, of course!
So, at first, the A.E.G.I.S was only just a bit bigger and bulkier than the AK units it led. But people realised that A: It had enough bandwidth to fit in more features, and B: was the new weakpoint. B made sense; at that stage, it was kind of just a big satellite dish on legs. Grimms might not be smart, but they’re not dumb. Alphas would figure out that they only needed to take the weird unarmed robots down and presto all the other ones would be harmless!
So, understandably, that couldn’t fly.
Personally, I think that if they just worked on B, the A.E.G.I.S would be in use. It wouldn’t be great, but it’d have its use. But then, rather than leave it well enough alone, they tackled A, and uuuuh… That's where things really started to devolve. ‘Why limit ourselves to just visuals? We can also add a lidar in there, right?’ ‘Oh, hey. There’s juuuuuust barely not enough bandwidth for thermal imaging too! If we make the CCT router a little bit bigger–’ ‘–Right, but now we need to account for the armour too.’ ‘I think the bulk means we can add some more stuff. What about radar for when there’s a big storm?’
And on, and on, and you get the idea. The result: a bulbous, vaguely conical body containing way too many highly sensitive pieces of tech. Granted, it could ‘see’ using every conceivable method in a 360° radius. New problem, though: the quality was terrible. Sure, it was able to do all that, but it was just so much information that the original redesigned CCT router couldn’t handle it. Either there was so much artifacting in the data transmitted that it was useless, or it led to massive input delays even in CCT tower range. So they re-redesigned the router.
Now it could handle the load– and burn itself out doing it. No worries, they can slap a ice-dust cooling system on it! Okay, but now the body’s so big they need new legs that can handle it, making it twice the size of an Ironwood… the man is 6’6” (1.98m) tall, by the way. No way something that huge can be deployed, it’ll get singled out from size alone!
‘Should we make it smaller?’ ‘And compromise on the design!? Lets add a hardlight shield generator, that’ll fix the problem!’
Fun fact: it, in fact, did not fix the problem. Damn thing could barely stand and even by turning the single generator into two that stood on its ‘shoulders’ it was still completely unbalanced. So they changed its legs to have reverse joints for more stability… don’t ask me, I’ve no idea how that works.
Anyhow, the legs were, you guessed it so now say it with me–!
Rated for heavier loads!
Yippie! We can add fucking ammo bins to the generators now! And so was the A.E.G.I.S given triple barreled, rotary cannons instead of hands…
By the grace of the lord, that was when they finally stopped adding shit to it– noooot because they couldn’t, or decided that it was done. Nah, by this point, the military had had enough of their bullshit and had (not so) quietly organised a contest to see who was going to get the next round of funding. The A.E.G.I.S project swiftly got dumpstered by one Wattz’s paladin combat platform.
It could quite literally do every single thing that the A.E.G.I.S could do, including serving as a control node for AKs. But better in every way at the cost of having a pilot. Which, honestly, was seen as the better option by the higher ups after the ungodly mess that the idea of an unmanned unit remote controlling AKs in the field had led to.
Hell, even my father’s crackpot ‘Living Android’ theory was seen as holding more water than the A.E.G.I.S’ sinking ship. And that’s something he wrote up fully expecting to be asked if he was drunk or under the influence.
That should have been the end of the A.E.G.I.S project. But one certain ice-themed capitalist somehow got his hands on not just the prototypes, but also the schematics, and told his weapon division to make something of it. They tore out almost everything- only sensors they kept were visual, lidar, and heat. The oversized uplink? Well, now that the amount of data was sane they could use the original one that by now was used as a backpack comsystem by men and women in the field. Hardlight shielding? Eeeeh, keep that in. Could be useful, but, uh… make it worse so we can fit in more bullets. Oh! And add a creepy face to it.
In the end, every change was made with a very specific use in mind: guard duty in ‘high risk locations’, or if you’d rather have it in plain-speak: SDC mining towns out in the boonies. Why have a massive uplink when each town already has one? Why have high performance energy shields when the workers are only armed with tools the town already has walls? The large ammo reserves are obviously so that they can help with small bands of roving Grimms that come a bit too close to the town and not have to worry about resupplying much…
The face’s just there to be intimidating and make people think twice about ‘participating in sabotage sponsored by a known terrorist organisation’. SDC doesn’t even pretend otherwise for that one.
“I’m not sure how you know this much,” Ciel said over the radio after I finally finished my ranting. If ever there was an implied question, this was one. Unfortunately for her, I didn’t particularly want to explain the rabbit hole that had led me to learn about these guys. Mainly because my search history when researching them looked something like this: ‘Evil robots’ ‘Evil Atlas inspired robots’ ‘Is the SDC evil’ ‘SDC robots’ ‘Evil SDC guard robots’, “But the database lists a fourth revision as well, equipped with better shield emitters and fire-dust tipped bullets,” she continued after I stayed silent.
“Too expensive for that sort of exercise,” I told her with a shake of my head before slowly creeping towards the building. That thing was one of my better bets when dealing with the robots. The AKs would be able to enter it without any problem, but the A.E.G.I.S? They’re simply too large to even fit, “I’m heading to the FOB, can you draw me a path? Minimal exposure.”
“One moment,” True to her words in the briefing, she didn’t boss me around and allowed me to choose my engagement method– or the nerves were getting to her and she forgot to say something, “I have a path, sending it to your AR display.”
Sure enough, as soon as she said that, a line overlaid itself in my vision, telling me where to go, “Thanks. Moving.”
“Be aware, you’re close to the ice canyon. Be wary of crevasses hidden by the recent snowfall.”
“Gotcha.” I wasn’t sure if she could see through my eyes, or only had a bird’s eye view of the situation, but I nodded in thanks anyway. A reflex born of the years of my human side spent doing as much every single time he was thankful, “Thanks for the word of warning.”
Honestly, it was a good thing she did warn me. Because otherwise, I wouldn’t have thought to toggle the small sensory suite connected to my feet. It was extremely distracting at the best of times– imagine that every time you take a step, a ripple that allows you to ‘see’ and ‘feel’ in a small radius crawls along the ground. And only the ground, before receding. Penny 1.0 didn’t mind it any, but to the human, it just felt weird. Too weird to be able to get used to it before the exercise.
My biggest attempt was before my mecha anime binge. I’d turned off every sensor I had, except that one. Walking around in my room had been… an experience to say the least. Pure darkness all around me, except where the pulse was crawling over the surfaces, letting me ‘see’ a negative version of the world.
Here and now though, I could look (heh) past the bizarre feeling and get a move on. Every few steps, I’d adjust my course to avoid a hidden crack waiting just under the soft for an errant leg to catch. As I kept going, I couldn’t help but frown, I was running into more and more of them. Not less.
The why quickly reared its head, and unfortunately, I wasn’t too pleased, “Ciel, I think your information hasn’t been vetted properly,” I grumbled, “The ravine is in the way of the indicated route.”
In front of me was the massive artificial ice crevice that spawned much of the combat area. I wasn’t at the widest point of it, not by a long shot, but it wasn’t a jump I’d be able to clear without either flaring my aura, or using my Floating Array as grappling hooks. Neither of which were particularly good ideas, “I’m aware?” Her response kind of surprised me. The only reason why I wasn’t super happy was that I thought she’d been fed poor intel on purpose.
“Why are you making me cross it then?” I wasn’t even mad anymore, just confused. She’d seemed professional enough that I didn’t think she would have made that sort of mistake, and since she was appointed by Ironwood, sabotage seemed unlikely. Sure, I could be wrong on both fronts, but that way led to edgy protagonists no one liked.
“The information package I received on you states, quote: ‘Limited airborne capabilities through the use of her weapons’ unquote, along with an estimated maximum distance,” she explained, “I’ve cross-referenced both that distance and the variable width of the canyon to find the optimal point for crossing that would still allow for rapidly reaching the FOB.”
I stayed quiet for a moment before sighing, “Ah. That explains things,” Poor communication truly was where everything broke down, huh? “That’s not exactly the sort of path I was looking for. I wanted one that circumvented the ravine area altogether,” I wasn’t even mad at her. She was obviously taking this very seriously based on her tone, “Apologies, I should have clarified.”
In the moment between my words and her response, my mind sped up as fast as it could. Though usually kept at the same sluggish (from my point of view at least) pace as those of humans began to run so fast that the whole world slowed to a crawl around me.
I wasn’t mad at Ciel, couldn’t be. She took this as seriously as she could, and honestly I could only respect her for that. I, for one, would struggle if I were put into her shoes. Suddenly being handed a data packet, told to serve as the voice in the sky for someone exactly as green as I was? I’d be panicking and making all sorts of mistakes. If I were to guess, Ironwood would have wanted us to at least have met each other at least once before this exercise, possibly more than that, so we’d have a measure of one another. We weren’t hardened soldiers, our rough edges sanded away through training and experience, thus making us able to quickly slot together with minimal troubles.
We were both just off the assembly line– if even that. We both knew what to do, or at least thought that everyone did things in the same ways as we did, which wasn’t the case at all. When I asked for ‘minimal exposure’ I meant ‘in total stealth’, but to her? It probably meant something like ‘As quickly as possible, some risk is acceptable so long as it speeds things up enough’, and honestly? I couldn’t blame her for it, looking in the direction where the ravine was thinnest, based on my initial position, it would have added a good five or ten minutes of walking, depending on the amount of hidden faults in the ice.
Considering my plan apparently hinged on securing the FOB and using it as a defensible position to thin the number of AKs, that was a perfectly rational assumption to make. Unfortunately, “Any crossing will require deploying my floating array, which would make me show on their censors like a flare– Even in standby, it cycles roughly 10 grains of gravity dust, along with an additional four of fire dust and two of electricity dust– er… .6, .25 and .15 grams – every .3 seconds.” My weapons were hungry little guys. They used crystals, which were far longer lasting than actual dust Dust, and actually sort of ‘recycled’ the energy to make them last even longer.
But overall, using them where there were dust-detecting sensors? It was like screaming ‘HEY! I’M HERE!’ and the robots were sure to have those.
“What? Hold on–.” The sound of furious tapping filled her side of the audio channel as I considered how to deal with the situation. I couldn’t turn back and try to cross the canyon where it wasn’t as wide, thanks to how irregular it was, it widened considerably on either side of my position before tapering off. If I followed the edge to the closest point where I could just jump off safely, AKA not damage the ice by having to use my full mechanical power. Then, based on their original position and heading, the robots would reach the FOB first, and by quite a margin too. Meaning they’d have the advantage over me.
As the tapping continued, I observed the area around me some more with a commiserating hum. This place was not flat in the slightest. Discounting the piles of snow, hidden cracks ready to break under your feet and trip you up and the giant hole in the middle of everything, Atlas’ ice ravines have another defining feature: Spikes.
Lots and lots of giant spikes of ice. Some small ones too! It reminded my human side of the Deep Rock Galactic’s glacial strata, except with a lot less evil bugs, mineral wealth and open to the air for the most part… Wait, no. Oh god, oh fuck. Why did I look up the type of Grimms that lived around the ravines?! They ARE full of evil bugs, there’s glacial Lancers nesting in them! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa–
“Apologies.” –aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa– “It seems I've overlooked that information during my review of the package. Should we adjust?”
–aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa– "Why is it always giant insects?”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing…” An idea reared its head. A possible solution to our current conundrum, one that needed a question answered to know if it would even be viable– but first I had a different thing to ask, “Okay. So– can you please go over the information about my weapon and combat capabilities in your package? I'd rather not have another situation like this.”
“Certainly, your weapon Floating Array. A collection of ten folding swords stored in your backpack.” So far so good…, “In order to manipulate them, you make use of thin, barely a millimetres thick, metal wires that connect to the handle and, evidently, the Dust crystals you've mentioned. I am guessing they interact with the semblance they mention being the reason you can control the swords?”
“Yep.” I lied through my teeth. If that was how the general wanted to play that part of my abilities, I wasn't going to go against the grain.
“Right. It then say that your wires’ range is ‘medium’ with much explanation in the way of what this means. I will assume three to four metres?”
“Ten at most,” I told her, “But at this point, the sword is less a weapon and more of a grappling hook due to how it forces me to shorten all of the other wires, and is very vulnerable to disruptions. Three is the most I've done in controlled environments, so assume it to be more like one or two here.”
“Acknowledged. I suppose that would be your ‘limited airborne capabilities’ then?” It wasn't– I could turn my swords into bona-fide thrusters. But I kept that to myself for now. If it wasn't on the sheet, it wasn't for her to know. Yet. Instead, I made an agreeing sound, “The packet then mentions that your weapons are capable of switching into ‘variable yield’ ranged weaponry–” “–Laser pistols–” “I… see.”
She didn't get mad when I interrupted her! Yey! “It also mentions that you can… ‘use the unique wavelength of the energy form produced by your weapons to operate them as an anti-armour cannon’?”
“Wait, they put that in the file?” I was genuinely shocked to hear her say this.
“Yes?” I could almost hear her frown as she went on, “Is something wrong?”
“No! Just–” It just didn't seem to me that the super laser beam cannon was something they'd want to be known, considering there wasn't any mention of the thruster mode. “Surprised is all. What does it say about it?”
“That you require all ten swords, and a long charging period. Nothing else.”
“Ooookay. So, that's incorrect.” Deploying one of the wires, I quickly scribbled a schema in the snow to explain the super beam, “Basically the laser I can shoot can amplify each other. Ever heard of thermal runoff with resin?”
“I know of resin. A relative rants about it, saying it is the greatest thing for allowing him to make figurines for his friends’ odd tabletop game.” Ah, a man of tastes then.
“Different resin. That's UV resign I'm pretty sure. Cures when exposed to UV light. What I'm thinking of is of the two-part epoxy sorts of resins. Simply put, it's composed of components A and B.” drawing the funny little bottles in the snow, I poured them in a bucket, “you mix them to a certain ratio, mix them, and a chemical reaction will harden the slurry. Thing is, that releases a lot of energy in the form of heat.”
“While I appreciate the chemistry lesson, I fail to understand how it relates to your weapons.”
“My weapons are the components here,” The temptation to just tell her I was ‘getting somewhere’ was strong. But I managed to stay strong and ignore it. “And the beam is the ‘cured resin’ so to speak. Except for the reaction to work, I need at least three of them working in tandem… And it'll be pretty weak compared to a full ten sword blast. That brings me to thermal runoff. Because of the heat generated by the resin itself as it cures, if you put too much resin at once weird things start to happen. Basically, the resin starts cooking faster because of the heat it's being subjected to. Which then makes it release even more heat and the cycle continues. The more swords I add, the longer it takes, the higher the risk something that really shouldn't be hot starts getting way too hot.”
“Better not to count on it then.” In that single sentence, she summarised my entire thought process regarding using that attack. ‘Probably don't.’
“Yep! But now that we're on the same page. I have another question: can you confirm the specs of the knights? They have Dust sensors tuned to the detection of hotspots that could be stranded people, right?” Useful for finding survivors from an attack, individuals lost in a blizzard, or terrorist cells!
“Yes, effective up to a hundred meters in clear conditions.” She quickly confirmed, “Why?”
“Because I have a plan.”
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“I must say, this has been a most interesting demonstration so far,” A voice that Ironwood never wanted to hear, least of all today, approached the Atlesian General. Out of politeness more than anything, the grizzled huntsman turned to his right, “Quite the show of the military's budget.”
“Jacques.” He said as evenly as he could. Some might mistake his use of his first name as a sign of closeness. Every single person in the room knew it was very much not the case. Ironwood on grounds that were legal, moral and most assuredly personal refused to flatter the man's ego in any kind of way. He was not ‘Mr. Schnee’, or ‘Director Schnee’. He was, and always would be ‘Jacques’... unless it was a speech. In which case, he would sometimes call him ‘Director Jacques’ if he could get away with it.
Frankly, if ever he could get away with it, he'd call him Gelè just to see the man fume and grind his teeth over being denied the prized Schnee name… “–surprised for some of my personal stock to be requested for this event.”
Tuning back into the discussion, the General made a non-committal noise, “Some people,” He said with a shrug as he turned back to the viewing window, “Insisted that your weapon division might be producing armaments capable of outperforming those being developed by the Atlas Military.” Ironwood betrayed nothing as he spoke. Each word was carefully chosen to expose nothing of the utter TARFU that had just taken place, none of this should be happening. Of course, they were true enough that a few of the councilmen and military personnel both shrunk in fear even as they preened with pride. These people had been whispering these kinds of thoughts, just loud enough they could pretend they were just errant thoughts and nothing serious.
Jacques was amongst them– not doubt the one feeding them those very thoughts even –minus the fear of course. His over-inflated sense of self importance would never allow him to experience such a feeling after all. Regardless, to them all, this was make or break. Either their offering delivered by shattering Penny's aura, thus allowing them to push for buying more and more of the Schnee company's patented weapons through no doubt generous government contracts, or Penny crushed their plan here and there.
High risk, high reward as it were. And in their minds?
Ironwood was the one to arrange the whole thing. Which he most enthratically had not! Someone had forged his signature, both physical and digital, in order to quietly arrange all of this. A sigh tugged at his lips, this reeked of The Witch's agents… Of, if that child, Wanda, was to be believed, Watts.
He hadn't been completely certain that she wasn't half mad from her experience in the blizzard. But had treated the information she'd given him with all due importance… or so he thought. Looking back, doubts had still been there, but with this happening? The truth of her words weren't in doubt anymore. Only someone with extensive knowledge of the Atlas Military's internal digital structure would have been able to do this, and Watts was the only one that fit the bill– well, Pietro did too. But that was a laughable notion on so many levels that Ironwood didn't feel the need to continue that train of thought.
“I see, I see. Well, I would say that they are proving themselves quite a bit more capable than the literal child you've–” Jacques paused theatrically before turning to James, “My apologies, but what exactly is being showcased on your side? My A.E.G.I.S need no introduction, but the invitation was rather evasive regarding the weapon the military was planning to unveil.”
A murmur of agreement spread through the room, and Ironwood frowned. How could he… Ah, “I personally thought it rather obvious,” He said with an easy shrug, “But I suppose you've unfortunately missed it during our conversation.”
Almost immediately, Jacques frowned at the clear snub and implication, and turned back towards the training field. Picking up one of the prepared binoculars, he looked to where Penny had last been– right by the ice ravine, “All I see is that your ‘tester’ has seemingly forgotten to clean after herself in her haste.” The CEO huffed after glancing at the readout from his mechanised units. Clear as day on the monitor was one of Floating Array's blades, veritably bleeding Dust into the air like some kind of Bonfire.
Ironwood nearly grimaced as the robots adjusted their route. It was rather obvious that the android had been heading for the FOB, which had been a fine plan– except for the fact she'd so sloppily revealed her position, allowing the drones to adjust their course for an intercept. Whoever was giving them orders was pushing them hard, unless Penny pushed herself even harder, they'd reach her long before she could reach the buildings.
Unfortunately, based on the fact that she wasn't visible on the readout meant that she was still hoping to sneak through. Internally he cursed, Ciel Soleil was a brilliant young lady, almost certainly ACE-ops material once graduated. But it seemed he'd jumped the gun with his plan to have developed alongside Penny. Even so, the mistake was his. Penny had been more right than she knew, his reputation wouldn't have survived intact and it would have taken years to recover. But letting her persuade him was an even worse mistake, one that'd cost them dearly.
As the knights and the A.E.G.I.S moved closer and closer to the sword, he ground his teeth and prepared to just call the entire thing off, and damn the consequences! Only to pause after glancing at the readout from the droids. He read it a second time to make sure that he wasn't making a mistake. But no, he wasn't.
Penny's sword was right there, yes. But… where in the world was Pietro's daughter?
A knight suddenly losing his head and jerkily slashing at the one right beside it as its processing unit fell to the floor seemingly answered that question. Its wrist-blades carved through the 130's armour with what was no doubt a screech of metal– only for it to be turned to scrap as four other 130s pounced onto it.
“What in the–” Before Jacques could even finish his question, three flashes of green bloomed at the base of a nearby spike of ice, with two more along its length as it tipped over. The result was immediate, a cascade of ice crashed down on top of the knights that had just dispatched the rogue unit, eliminating all four at once.
As much as he hated to admit it, Ironwood couldn’t help but be as confused as the Schnee CEO.
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“I cannot believe this worked.” I whispered from my hiding spot as a few tons of ice buried six of the knights.
“Nor can I,” Ciel mumbled with a tiny bit of amazement in her voice at the result of my apparently shockingly competent ambush, “But I’m certainly glad you chose to pursue this avenue rather than risk my suggestion.” I mechanically suppressed a wince, not because of anything she said. But rather because as soon as that note of awe left, all I could hear was the strain.
Slowly winding back my wire, I took stock of the situation. Part one of my plan had been a roaring success! It had been something of a long shot, one that would definitely get me into trouble with Ironwood and my father later. First thing I'd done, was say ‘screw it’ and stop sending a truncated version of my feed to Ciel. I more or less hijacked the comms channel we shared, confirming that it was also visual. But what it was showing her was limited to the sorts of reading you’d get from a soldier’s kit– pretty much just a high-quality live feed. Not anymore, I’d begun streaming every single bit of data I recorded and calculated to her. Things like current temperature, ballistic simulations, the estimated path of the droids. Hell, even the weird blind-sense I had!
While all of that flooded her screen, I’d jumped to the other side using one of my swords as an anchor– it had felt weird to be honest. But since time was of the essence, I didn’t linger on that for long. Instead, I asked Ciel which feed she wanted me to kill, and which she wanted me to keep. To my surprise, just as I landed, she told me to leave all of them on, and to explain what the fuck was going on and why my body temperature was quickly dropping to 0°c (but more professionaly).
I completely ignored her request and instead went over the rest of my ambush plan. I’d leave the blade here, even actively make it burn more dust than it normally would to make it easily detectable by the drones. Once they detected it, their algorithms, or whoever was behind the wheels, would head this way to cut me off from reaching the FOB. I’d then greet them in style with an ambush.
She advised me to get to the FOB. I answered with overwhelming data that pointed out that if my plan worked out, it’d be far more effective than taking the FOB and dealing with them there. She reluctantly agreed, before spending the rest of our waiting time trying to keep up with the data feeds… So far, she was, somehow, but from the sounds of it, she was nearing whatever limits she had.
In anycase, with half the knights either destroyed or Mission Killed thanks to my little ploy. That left only six robots to eliminate, not counting the big guys. I’d been smart and lucky, timing my trap at the perfect moment to crush the middle of their little pack, separating the survivors into two groups. Four at the front, on my side of the ice-fall, while the other two and the A.E.G.I.Ss were stuck on the other side for now.
The knights immediately started to scan the area for the source of the attack, allowing me to get a good look at them. Unsurprisingly, unlike me they were clearly robotic– but wore their ‘knightly’ inspiration on their sleeves. Their general look brought to mind a somewhat stylised mechanical knight sort of being, with clearly defined greaves, gauntlets and so on. They even had a gorget! Not a large one, but enough that the piece of metal protecting the front of their neck was recognisable as one.
Their entire body was a dark, close to black, grey, only broken in places. Most obviously were their visor and the vent in their front chestplate. Both were not just U shaped, although the visor had a thicker lower section than the vent, but also glowed with an ominous blood-red colour that brought to mind Grimm markings. The more discrete mean to break up the grey monotony were the joints, who were also grey– but a far lighter shade, not quite metallic, but not too far removed.
Their knife hands too were in that light grey colour, which once again made me wonder why my human side remembered them as being Atlas white. Turning that question over in my head, I eventually settled back on my first guess: they’d been recoloured to fit with the exercise’s theme… But then, why were the A.E.G.I.Ss white?
Shaking my head to banish these useless thoughts, I singled one of them out, took aim and– “Alright… SHOWTIME!” Two of Floating Array’s blades burst from the snowbank I’d been hiding in. One hit its mark, smashing through one of the lead AK’s knees, but unfortunately, the second one missed and instead embedded itself into the frozen ground. Not that it changed what happened after. Reeling myself in, I exploded out of the snow at mach-fuck-you and obliterated the damaged AK’s head with an aura-reinforced flying knee. As soon as I felt its faceplate crack, I disconnected from the blade that had kneecapped him, “Seven!”
Landing in a crouch, I reached behind my back with both hands and firmly grasped the handles of my last two swords. Pushing off of the ground by combining all of the force my mechanical legs could muster and the sheer rewind power of the cable still attached to the sword that had missed, I created a visible shockwave when I pounced on the flailing knight. Before it could even realise what was going on, I’d sliced off its arms and kicked its chin from below.
“Eight!” Spinning to face the last two AKs of the group, I tried to pull the sword out of the ground via my wire, only for it to stay stuck. I didn’t have any time to do anything about it beside frown, when–
“Take cover!” My body moved as soon as it registered Ciel’s tone of voice. Meaning that I’d already disconnected from the blade stuck in the floor, dropped one of the ones I held and dove to get hold of the disarmed knight by the time she was done shouting.
Good thing, because bullets started to hammer into my makeshift shield’s less than stellar armour, “These things have GUNS!?” What in the actual–!?
“What–? Of course they have guns, they’re Knights!” Ciel shouted in my ears as I turned my last sword into its gun form and returned fire to little effect.
“But they don’t have their rifles!” My complaint sounded a lot more like the whining of a petulant child caught doing something dumb than I’d intended.
“Rifles what are you– These are 130s, not 200s!”
…Oops.
A quick check of my database and I realised that yes. there were indeed more than one AK model, a dozen Atlesian Knight models in fact! And that my human side had… completely forgotten that fact. Something that put much of their knowledge in question. I'd have to cross-reference what they knew later though, because a lucky shot tore through the knight I was carrying and scratched my aura. Damage was minimal, not even 1% of my total reserves. But it meant that my shield was quickly turning useless, and any loss of aura here was aura I lacked to face off against the two A.E.G.I.S.
Without any real plan, I threw the increasingly useless metal corpse at the knights, hoping that it'd soak up a few more shots that way. As it tumbled through the air and did its job admirably, I sent a wire down to wrap around the handle of the sword I'd dropped and flicked the weapon up into my waiting hand. The move was mathematically perfect, but despite that, I nearly misjudged the timing and ended up fumbling with the rather unergonomical handle before I could secure a good grip on it.
Interfacing with the sword’s OS through my palm it quickly mechashifted into it gun mode, allowing me to dual wield like I was the pizza woohoo man himself, unfortunately, unlike Dante, my aim was kinda terrible as I ran away from the knights and ducked behind an ice pillar. Taking a quick breather, I checked my current state. Aura was down to 98% after getting hit by a few shots as I retreated, out of Floating Array's blades, I only had two on my person. One was still embedded in the ground near the ravine, making it irrecoverable at the moment. Five in total were in the ice debris, I could still detect them and they were still functional, but I wasn't digging them out of there anytime soon. In retrospect, that many was absolutely overkill, but I wanted to be safe rather than sorry.
The two swords I'd then shot at the AKs made eight. Connecting to the blades in my hands, I forced them to enter a cooldown cycle. Immediately, the round section that bore the power symbol opened up with a spin, exposing the energy coils to Atlas’ cold air. My ranged option wasn't using physical rounds, instead they were laser guns– or many beam rifles from Gundam –point was, they could fire laser ‘bullets’ or higher powered laser beams. Either firing mode caused them to eat up dust like crazy, and heat up just as much, “Any ideas?” I asked Ciel.
“Are you able to replicate the trick you used to control the knight during the ambush?” I thought about it. I'd decapitated them, then more or less shoved a wire down its neck to connect to its systems and puppet it. It'd worked great, but… I silently shook my head, I wasn't designed for that sort of invasive intrusion. Doing it once had strained me to my limit, I wasn't going to be able to do it a second time. Not on a whole (minus its head) robot, “I have no suggestions then.”
“Back to shooting them then.” Taking a deep lungful of the cold air around us, I felt my insides cool down minutely. As inefficient as this air-cooling method was, it was definitely calming. Rising to my feet, I tapped a foot against the ground and– diving to the left, I spun in the air and fired. Twin lances of energy slammed into the armour of the AK-130's my pulse had detected, slagging it into uselessness, but unfortunately not destroying it. Landing with a roll, I sent a wire his way and wrapped it around one of its ankles, one sharp yank later, and the droid was falling backwards, which gave me the perfect window to propel myself forward with a powerful leap.
Once more in sword form, my blades pierced the weakened chestplate like it wasn't even there. I didn't have time to be happy about it though, because a volley of bullets slammed into my side, chunking my aura down to 94%. Ripping one of the swords out my latest victim's body, I turned in the attacks’ direction and used the knight hanging limply from my sword as a makeshift gunrest/stabiliser/tripod by resting the barrel of my gun-mode array against one of its shoulders. More bullets hammered into its poorly armoured back, for a moment, I thought that they'd punch through, but to my disbelief, the knight held together just long enough for my gun to bark four times. The first shot went hilariously wide, missing the last knight by a mile. The second nailed it in its right arm, setting off its ammo reserves or something, because it violently blew and threw it to the floor, which made the third shot miss. The fourth and final beam went straight through its faceplate, destroying the electronics located in the head and forcing it to shut down.
Panting, I pushed my meatshield off of my sword and tucked my two weapons back into my backpack. As I was doing that, I jogged to recover the other two floating blades still stuck in the ground as quickly as I could. Depending on who was being the wheels of the other four droids, they were either doing their best to plow right through the debris blocking their way, or took the long way around to me. Since I couldn't hear anything like ice getting shoved out the way, I had to assume that they were going for option B.
Either option would have taken about as long, so that wasn't the crux of the situation. Rather, I had absolutely no idea where they were going to pop out from. There were three unobstructed paths they could take to get to me, each of them overlooked by a smaller ice spike. If I had all ten swords from Floating Array, and more time, I could have easily booby-trapped each of them to inflict some more damage. As it stood, I could maybe trap two of them with two swords each. But I wasn't intending to fight two A.E.G.I.S and two knights without any weapon, which lowered the number of booby-trappable routes to only one.
Well, to that, I said ‘Screw that noise!’. Fun fact about the beams my gun-mode sword could fire, like any good weird mecha beam weapon, firing them in close proximity to each other results in a singular, far more powerful laser! Pulling the blade that had kneecapped a knight, I tossed it in the air with a hand and connected one of my control wires to it as it was spinning. A small smile grew on my face as I made it weave around me. I hadn't used 1.0's usual combat style for a reason: I didn't feel confident I could pull it off properly. But now? After dispatching four knights and getting a better grip on my capabilities in an active combat situation, I didn't feel nearly as out of depth as I did before!
Throwing my arm in the direction of the blade that had refused to budge last time, another wire shot out of my back and raced towards it. It slammed into the connector at the bottom of the weapon's handle, and instantly I felt that tiny part of me rejoin the whole. Bits of data flowed through me as I unnecessarily gestured for it to ‘come to me’. The small thrusters built into it flipped open instantly, and with a burst of green flames, the sword took to the air and joined its sister after weaving around for a bit. That hadn't exactly been part of the plan, I wanted it to come straight to me, but there was some kind of weird input lag. But I had to admit.
It looked cool.
Redeploying the blades in my backpack, I switched all of them to gun mode and positioned myself to be able to see each entry point. A quick round of calculations, and my gutted array was assembled in a X pattern in front of me. Energy from the on board crystal slowly flowed through their frames and gathered in the space between the barrels, forming a small, steadily growing sphere of beam goodness.
“I would advise against this.” Ciel made her presence known once again by speaking in my ears, “I understand your plan to fire on the approaching targets as soon as you have visual confirmation. But holding this charge will strain your weapon more than necessary. I believe it would be better to wait until you are able to see which route the targets are taking.”
“That was my original plan, yes,” I told her while continuing to charge the shot, “But based on my estimate, they'll probably be in visual as soon as the maximum charge is reached, and if they aren't for whatever reason?” Pivoting the four-sword array, I aimed it at the pile of ice debris under which and grand five swords were buried, “The combined beam should be more than enough to melt a majority of the obstruction here, allowing me to recover more of Floating Array.”
As if on cue, the two knights ran through one of the passages just as I reached max charge. Just like I didn't waste any time readjusting my aim, neither did they in opening fire in full auto. Their aim was frankly terrible, but the sheer volume of fire meant that a few bullets did score hits on me, which dropped my aura to 90%.
But now? I had them in my sights. A whine filled the air as the four floating blades began to rotate around the green sphere in the middle and– “Koushiryoku! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMUH!” –I just couldn't resist!
The energy collapsed in on itself, before surging out as a lance of pale, near white, energy a moment later. One of the knights immediately turned to slag as the plasma washed over him, leaving only its legs behind. Of course, I quickly angled to catch the other one with the rest of the beam–
Bullets hammered into my aura from another direction, “Enemy fire!” Ciel shouted, “From the icefall!” as she did, what were no doubt the A.E.G.I.Ss kept on the pressure. Red tracers slammed into me, chunking my aura by 3-4% with each. Reacting as fast I could, I completely ignored the last knight and painted my beam across the training field in an effort to return fire.
Luckily, the 130 still suffered disabling damage, even without me focusing my laser on him. The hidden A.E.G.I.Ss though? That was a different matter entirely. The ice between me and them bubbled and sputtered, turning into super-heated steam– which thankfully severely reduced their accuracy, “Get into cover! What are you doing!?”
“Can't! Beam's containment is unstable!” I screamed back. What in the fuck-!? “If I stop firing before I use up the whole, the backlash will–”
“Aura at 45% and dropping!”
“Fucking piece of–!” 30% aura was the cut off point for spars in Atlas, any lower, and there was a risk of aura exhaustion as it replenished. I wasn't quite subjected to the same biological failings, and tests had shown I could go as low as 15% before it started to cause issues. But that didn't mean anything when 30 was the failure condition for this operation. Two more bullets slammed into me, singing parts of my clothes where my aura had thinned just enough to be unable to fully protect them– “40!” “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARH–!”
Shutting off the beam, an energy backlash ran through my body. Green sparks blossomed all over me as the circular parts of my swords adorned with a power symbol blew up and trailed black smoke before falling limply to the floor. Gripping my sides as tightly as I could, I turned back and dashed away as fast as I could. I only managed to of my ‘super jumps’ before something in my legs seized up and caused me to crash face first into the ground, “Penny! Penny respond! Are you okay!? Oh Gods what did I–”
“I'm- Im fine!” I gasped, before crawling into cover…, “Aura?” I really wasn't.
“Penny, I'm so–” “AURA OPERATOR CIEL!” My scream was a static filled, barely coherent thing– on her side of things at least. On mine, I was deathly silent. Half of my systems were damaged, and the other was going through infinite loops of reboot attempts, which included my voice module.
“I-” “Please…” I pleaded as my vision erratically switched between every type of sensors I had, filling it was junk, artifacts and error messages.
“34%” She eventually said after a long pause.
“Thanks…” Closing my eyes, I hard rebooted everything I could– causing me to cough my ‘lungs’ out to clear them of the liquid coolant that had begun to fill them. “Urk– I feel like shit…”
“I– I'm sorry, this is–” “Not your fault.” opening my eyes back up, I was pleased to see that I was mostly able to see things again. Quality was absolutely terrible, but I did have huge blobs of static, or artifacts, blocking part of my view.
“If I hadn't asked you to drop your beam, you wouldn't be in this state!” She shouted in my ear– or at least, it sure felt like she did. I really hoped the audio volumes of my ears weren't fucked, those were a pain to calibrate.
“You're right,” I said with a sigh– oh hey, voice was back –, “I'd be in a worse one, and we'd have failed the exercise… Water vapors were disrupting the beam, reducing its effectiveness– I don't know by how much. But too much to be effective.”
“That's not– Penny you're nearly–” Whatever she was about to say, she stopped herself before whispering something in disbelief, “what the… 38%?”
Huh. Guess my aura generator was entering emergency restoration mode… “Good,” pushing off of the snow bank I'd been hiding behind, I took an unsteady step, “I can’t– shit. I can't see them. Sensors aren't booting up right. Do you have visual on the last two targets from your vantage point?”
“What are you talking about?” She asked incredulously. Clearly, this wasn't what she was expecting me to say, “We should put an end to this exercise before you injure yourself.”
“Heh, not an option.” A mirthless laugh left my lips as I tried to figure out where the big fucks were, “Not for me at least. I need to win this, or I'm done for.”
“What?” She clearly wanted to know more, to have some sort of explanation. But I kept quiet. Mostly because I couldn't get a terrifying picture out of my head.
Me, locked into my maintenance pod, slowly decaying to nothing more than a crazed mind, prisoner of its own mechanical body as it laid forgotten and bereft of repairs…
The damage from the backlash would not be cheap to repair– far too expensive for my father, Ironwood, or both of them combined to pay for. Nevermind all of the proprietary Atlas Military components I used. Simply put, if I lost and the funding to the P.E.N.N.Y project was cut? I was as good as dead…
On a whim, I sent a simple message to my uncle: “Don't cancel. I am combat capable still.” Hopefully, it'd convince him not to cut the exercise short. The fact that he hadn't yet told me that he had probably reached the same conclusion as me– or was so horrified that he hadn't made the call yet, “Aura?”
“40%, it doesn't seem to be going any higher…” Right. Well, as they said in my human's world: good enough for government work. Walking out of cover, I hobbled back towards the ravine. The five swords buried in the ice were a lost cause, the four I'd used for the laser were beyond fucked, which only left one weapon I could easily access. “How… how did this even happen…” The poor Ciel whispered under her breath, “Why would they even deploy such a dangerous weapons, what's the general–”
“The general's faultless,” I interrupted her rising anger towards my uncle before it could turn to misaligned bitterness and poison, “If you need to blame anyone. Blame the council… I wasn't meant to deploy for weeks still. Hell, I'm pretty sure he would have forced us to meet before the actual exercise. Uncle's kinda like that.”
“Council? Uncle? What are you talking about? The General doesn't have relatives.” Ah damnit, didn't mean to call him that… oh well.
“Oh, we're definitely not blood related. Doesn't stop him from being my cool uncle… But anyway, they sprung this on him this morning. Wouldn't be surprised if there was backroom fuckery somewhere, especially if the newest, fanciest SDC toy robot got deployed and he didn't include that in the briefing… But back to me, Floating Array's been fucked this whole time.” I spat the words– along with a glob of coolant, “Because of a recent incident, most of my stuff needed recalibration and fine tuning to make sure everything was working properly… clearly, it wasn't. I am supposed to be able to shut down the beam safely. But– the safeties weren't working.”
Ciel stayed quiet, probably digesting all of the secret information she was definitely not meant to know. But you know what? Fuck this. Fuck hiding what I was so closely, fuck being unable to connect with anyone before meeting a dumb, innocent girl in vale because of this soul-crushing secret. I'd already begun one friendship with that guy over on the Internet by alluding to the trust with the whole ‘cyborg’ thing. And that honesty had been LIBERATING. So sorry, not sorry. But I wasn't going to wear this mask of ‘I'm a real human girl, I swear!’, or the smile it carved into my face whenever I was forced to wear it any longer!
By now, I'd reached my sword. Bending down with a whine of my servos, I firmly grasped the shitty, unergonomical hilt that was just a straight metal tube, and yanked it out of the ice– right in time for a singular bullet to be fired my way. In a move that made my entire body scream in protest, I spun in its direction and swung my blade with every ounce of force I could muster.
The sound of metal on metal echoed in the empty training field. It was a response from me to the world, one symbolised by the asshole drone's bullet being deflected into a snow bank, leaving me unarmed. Taking a deep breath, I leveled my weapon at it in a silent challenge.
I was damaged, hurt and my limbs on the right were twitching uncontrollably every 4.89 seconds. My aura was at 40%, and was probably about to start steadily ticking down once my generator couldn't burn emergency dust to maintain those levels. My eyesight randomly glitched out whenever I tilted my head too far on one side. I was, in every measure of the word, fucked up.
Fucking wannabe Recon Zaku III wasn't any better. Apparently, I’d actually managed to hit them– or at least this one –through the ice and steam. A surprise, but a very welcome one indeed. Its entire front was scored with a massive rend of half melted metal that ended precisely at its right section. A flickering hard-light shield that flickered in and out of existence told me why it had been spared on this side– its left arm was ruined, generator and gun lost to some sort of explosion. Probably the ammo bin going up in flames, “Should've brought C.A.S.E dumbass,” I whispered as I walked up to it. Making a short request to Ciel, I took a look at its other arm.
It was mostly intact. But completely jammed up, the rotary gun trying and falling to fire at me. Each pull of the trigger led to a failed cycling of the cylinders, allowing me to conserve energy by approaching it at my own pace.
When I was just a few meters away, its approach finally changed. Clearly shooting wasn't going to work. So it chose to run at me, lifting its arm in an attempt to crush me. I didn't move to dodge it and let it approach… no point in wasting energy after all. Switching to gun mode, I aimed and fired.
The laser bullet completely missed the mech twice my size, and splashed almost harmlessly against the ground. Almost, because what I'd asked from Ciel was the data from our first go through here, specifically where all the hidden little crevices were. Predictably, the one I'd just shot broke open, swallowing the A.E.G.I.S’ leg and dragging it to the floor. Its face bounced off of the frozen ground, and when it looked up to try and get out– my sword pierced its optic in a single, jerky movement. Glass offered no resistance as dust-treated steel slid right into its control unit and deactivated the unit forever.
“One left…” And I didn't even have to look for it. Because it burst into the scene, its guns trained on me and already spinning up to deliver an absolute tempest of lead onto me. My response was to twist my sword in his friend's skull and HEAVE! Metal screeched as I wrenched the corpse out of the hole it was half buried in, just in time for fire rounds to start raining in my direction. Unfortunately for the mech, the fire dust ammo it carried? It was great! Amazing fire bullets, did a ton of damage to things like Grimm flesh, aura-less people, and aura too since it had to protect you from something trying very hard to set you on fire.
But metal armour? Now, against that, it was kinda shit. Most of the dust charge was lost on impact. And unlike the flesh that aura was protecting, metal didn't exactly care about things like being lit on fire. Sure, each little fireball went above the boiling point of water, but iron had a melting point well in excess of 1000°. Nevermind the dust treated steel that made up these things. Oh, sure, it was still taking a beating and was being chipped apart. But it gave me time to wait for–
[center][Click][/center]
A jam. Letting go of the sword, I dashed past my shield and saw the A.E.G.I.S desperately trying to fire more bullets, only for its glowing red-hot rotaries to just not. Another problem with fire-dust bullets: it's not just the point of impact that gets real hot. The guy behind the controls clearly suddenly remembered a specific button, because powderized ice dust gushed out of a bunch of vents near the base of the guns, an emergency cooling system? Neat.
Too bad it was too little too late though. By now, I was right in its face and rearing my arm for a punch. Hardlight flared between me and it, blocking the strike. But I didn't care, using every CQC lesson Winter had beaten into me, I did my best impression of Master Asia and attempted to just bludgeon my way past its stupid shields. At this range, I was nearly completely safe from its cannons, and only had to worry about its clumsy swings– although every now and then, it did manage to take aim at me. Too bad that it was the swords of Floating Array that were fucked. My wires were still working, for now at least, and wrapping them around its arms allowed me to not just wrench them away from me whenever it tried for a potshot, but also meant that he was getting rid of me!
“Aura 34%!” Ciel called in a panic, “You're doing more damage to yourself than it with these hits! You need to change your approach and quick!”
Unsaid was that a single lucky hit would end this exercise in my loss.
Unfortunately, I didn't have anything I could use! I'd counted on it being similarly damaged as the other– or at least for its shields to be weakened enough I could break through them! “I need penetration power! Any ideas!?”
“I- I don't know! Add spin to your punches!?” Oh– VERY HELPFUL CIE–
… Wait. Spin?
Shoulder checking the A.E.G.I.S, I looked down at my right arm. The one that was already damaged before I started to punch, the synth-skin on the knuckles was starting to peel off, revealing the metal underneath…, “That– is perfect! Thanks Ciel!”
“Perfect? What are you–?”
Fun fact. My joints, all of them, have a 360° degree of movement. The only thing preventing that is the layer of fake skin applied over it. Forming a spearpoint with my fingers, I locked them into position, turning them into a relatively pointy weapon, “Driiiiiiiiiiiiill–!” Then, as I pulled back my arm, I shut down every protection stopping me from doing something incredibly stupid. My wrist twisted unnaturally, pulling my skin with it like someone trying to twist off a raw chicken's leg. For a moment, it resisted, but– “PRRRRRRRESUUUUUUURE–!” A wet tearing sound filled the air, and I heard Ciel gasp– or maybe gag –as my skin ripped to pieces. White skin, red flesh, fake blood. All things meant to make me look more ‘human’ in case of a minor injury, flew all over the place, coating my front as the jet-black metal bones of my wrist were finally free to spin freely and as quickly as they wanted–
[center]“PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNCHHHHHH!”[/center]
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Spinning finger slammed into hardlight.
Arc of electricity flashed between us as each of us poured more and more power into our systems.
Both me and the intelligence piloting this thing, be it artificial, or human, knew that this was it.
The last hurrah.
Whoever broke first would lose.
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Whoever held would win it all.
It had all the advantages. Undamaged, ostensibly unbothered by my previous barrage of punches and kicks…
I was hurt, quickly losing power and tearing my arm to pieces by turning it into a high revolution makeshift weapon.
But. Unlike it? I had one thing it would never have!
“UUUUUUUUUUUUUOOOOOOOOOOOOH!” Screaming at the top of my lungs, green energy started to pour out of me, “BURN BRIGHT–!” Strands of aura exploded from my body, before wrapping themselves around my arm, “GREEN GLOW–!” Cracks started to form in my finger's super structure, making me grimace in pain and frustration. Someone was screaming in my ears, saying something, but I couldn't hear them over the sound of my sound surging forth and weaving itself into my fractured fingers, reinforcing them.
With a cruel snap my first phalange completely shattered. Stress it was never meant to endure tore it to pieces– and yet, I didn't stop. No, I pushed harder! Another phalange vanished, this one exploding like a mini frag-grenade and ripping up part of my face. One after the other, the metallic bones of my fingers vanished in a flash of green and a cloud of debris… but then–
[center][Crack][/center]
The sweetest sounds of all echoed from right in front of me. Hairline fractures, minuscule and meaningless compared to the damage I'd done to myself formed in the hardlight shield. A crazed grin, worthy of any one of the Getter's pilots etched itself on my bloodied face, “–OF–” my aura poured into the cracks, widening them and tearing the shield's integrity apart from the inside out, “–MY–” at once, the whole thing shattered letting me punch the drone straight through the chest, “–SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUL!!!”
Its armour plating could do nothing against my finisher, the aura-manifested drill was simply unstoppable and carved through everything in its path– only stopping once I was elbow deep inside of it, and hit something very sensitive.
When I came to, my lips were kissing the ground. Feeling pain that went deeper than my simulated responses– because those were turned off and I was still hurting. I tried to get up, only to fall back on my face when my right arm refused to support my weight. I glanced at it and– “Oh… Oh, that's a stump.” –blinking at the missing arm, I couldn't help but find the sight kind of incredibly funny. Everything below the elbow was gone, coolant, oil and Heavens knew what else was dripping out of the jagged, gaping hole where there had once been the rest of my arm– there even was a pair of dangling wires throwing electricity!
Part of me was horrified. The other was incredibly amused by the fact that this sort of gruesome injuries were the sorts that were totally unacceptable in a children's show… unless it was on a robot. In which case, it was fiiiiiiiiiiine.
I didn't know which part was feeling what though.
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Something buzzed in my ears as I got up properly. Ignoring it, I looked at the last A.E.G.I.S and… ouch. The entire thing had exploded outwards, sending me flying into an ice pillar with enough force to make it fall on top of the other large drone. Stumbling forward, my feet bumped into something. Looking down, I saw my last sword. Blinking, I sent a wire to pick it up with a chuckle, “Penny,” I said with a voice as hoarse as I felt, “Reporting mission completion…”
Suddenly, I couldn't feel my legs and tumbled forwards just in time to see Specialist Winter running towards me faster than I'd ever seen her run. Weirdly enough, right to the left of her panicked face was the window to the observation deck. It had a huge hole in it! Oh… and right behind her was uncle Ironwood too! How weird. He shouldn't be there, should he?
Before I could ponder the reason for that, or feel the Specialist's arms stop me from eating snow yet again, emergency power saving mode and shutdown made the whole world go dark, and lulled my consciousness into nothingness…
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Waking up from a shutdown officially sucked. I’d done it twice in less than a week, and it was, without question, the thing I hated the most. Unlike waking up from ‘sleep’, everything felt weird since everything had to reboot one by one in sequence. Okay, sure, it was the same as when exiting sleep– but under those circumstances, it took about a second, maybe two before I was in working order. After a total shutdown like this one? Everything took a good two seconds to boot up, it might not sound like much, but imagine being able to open your eyes, doing as much, knowing that you did it because your system tells you you did, and all that greets you is… pure darkness.
And then, the darkness stays for ten seconds or so because the sequence considers that lower priority than some of your other functions! It wasn’t particularly pleasant, I can assure you. It took half a second more for my visual feed to refocus and return a coherent picture of the room I was in. Right in time for my audio receptors to reboot too.
“– I’d like an answer.” My head immediately swiveled towards the door. It was a big, sci-fi looking automatic double door that I recognised as one belonging to one of the infirmary’s emergency rooms. From the sound of it, Ciel was talking to someone right behind it.
“You forget yourself, Trainee Solei.” I didn’t have to wonder who was the other person involved for long, because uncle’s voice immediately responded to her in his gruff ‘don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to’ tone.
“Forget myself?” While what was definitely an argument continued behind the closed door, I took a look around the room. It was very much an emergency room? Or so I guessed, I’d never been in one in either of my previous selves. It was a big cube cut in half by sliding glass doors, on one side was a bunch of unused materiel, cabinets and a few machines. While on my side, there was an hospital bed (in which I was currently laying) and a whole lot of weird monitoring machines– and just as many tools that did not fit in an ER room for humans. Things like screw drivers, spanners, a goddamn boltcutter for some reason, and more, “General, with all due respect. I deserve an answer as to what the hell happened down there!”
“Trainee…” Ironwood’s voice didn’t flinch when Ciel raised her voice. If anything, all she managed to do was cause his gruffness to turn into a warning growl.
“General, my partner– who you assigned to me, without following proper protocols, if you’ll remember –tore her entire arm off!” I what?! Looking down to my right I– the memories of the last few moments before my shutdown replayed in my mind –stopped panicking almost immediately. Shame and pride instead swelling through me, “She made her entire wrist spin at over 5000 RPM in order to break through a hardlight shield. Enhanced that attack with her aura– only for the explosion of the A.E.G.I.S to take her arm. And what do you think I saw right before the broadcast from her ‘headset’ cut off? Jagged metal, a mechanical arm, weeping oil.”
“Trainee, you will forget–”
I tuned out the rest of the argument and covered my eyes with my good arm. This– this wasn’t what I wanted… I wanted to win and make people happy– proud –of me! Not– not cause people to get angry at each other and shout!
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It was only thanks to my system pinging me that I didn’t start crying. The distraction was just enough to delay my break down for a few seconds. Holding back tears with a shuddering breath, I looked down and finally registered that my entire middle section was missing. Instead of my false midriff, there was a hole through which snaked a heavy cable– or maybe hose? Paying attention to it, I realised that it was connected to my Aura Reactor, pumping something directly into it. Craning my head towards the other end of it, I saw that it was connected to some bizarre, egg-shaped contraption. All along its sides, contained in glass ampules, were Dust crystals of all the colours of the rainbow. All of them being drained of their energy so it could be fed into me.
“Heh, Rayleigh would get a kick out of this…” Lowering my head back down onto the pillow, I chuckled. What a weird thing to think… Or– was it? Closing my eyes, I looked inwards and asked myself a singular question.
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“–Or I will see to it that you are–”
The sound of the door sliding open ended the argument right there and then. At least temporarily. But it was my quiet request that put a complete stop to it. “Uncle, please stop shouting…”
There I was, standing in the door frame, exactly as I was. Wearing nothing more than my tattered dress and the wounds I’d suffered today, hiding nothing from the world… After all, I’d made a promise to myself, hadn’t I?