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Post by Gehn on Aug 22, 2017 17:21:51 GMT
The woman in the semi-cylindrical pod looked even stranger as the door swung open on its creaky, metal hinges. The small window only let Gehn see her face and some of her upper body. As the door moved out of the way, it revealed that her black dress hung all the way down her body, complete to her bare feet. Her horns looked even softer and fleshier. The black at the tips looked darker outside of the filter of the window’s bubble of glass. The perfect design of her body seemed—as all the woman that Gehn destroyed so far—oddly feminine, given their purpose. Xavier, now deceased, hardly seemed like the womanizer sort; or maybe he simply enjoyed beautiful company? With a thud and a hiss, the heavy, metal door to the pod stopped. It hung there while the pallor Android laid within the completely barren, cushion-less interior. Her eyes remained closed and Gehn just stood there and waited. He glanced back at the screen on the control panel for her pod, only to see it overridden with a large, bright POD OPEN message. There seemed to be no status on her reawakening. At that moment, Gehn recalled the words Xavier told him about his “new and improved”—he tasted bile in his throat at the mere thought—eye and the neural connection along with it. Much to his surprise, he watched as a heads-up displayed flashed to life within the vision of his left eye the moment he willed it. The ease surprised Gehn, but hardly slowed him down. He immediately filled his mind with the thought of scanning the woman in front of him to get a Power Level of some sort off her. He knew what her pod said earlier, but wanted to confirm. He needed to confirm, before he could start to hope that there might be a way out of this. The Scouter function blipped into being just a moment later. He watched as a yellow outlined surrounded Failure and a series of numbers—in his native, Saiyan language—rushed through the display for him. The numbers counted down from ten thousand, to nine, to five, to two, until it finally bottomed out at the most confusing thing that Gehn could have seen: Zero. She, apparently, had a Power Level of zero. As far as his Scouter concerned itself, the thing he just scanned rated no higher than a rock or a chunk of actual, literal scrap metal. Is she dead or something? Gehn furiously speculated. He knew the clock was ticking and could all but hear the inexorable march of time playing in the back of his head. Or is it because she’s an Android? Or maybe the entry into her Pod was a mistake and she was never at a Power Level of eleven hundred? Too many possibilities and Gehn possessed none of the tools necessary to figure out the truth, not even time. He practically felt the incessant, burning gaze of that tiny, orange Changeling as he marched across the planet over and over in search of this subterranean complex. It wouldn’t be long now; it couldn’t be, Gehn realized. Axar simply wasn’t so dumb as to miss this place entirely. “Failure-64,” Gehn spoke her designation and hoped she recognized it. “If you can hear me, I need you to open your eyes. There’s an emergency. Xavier’s dead and we’ll join him if you don’t get out of bed.” Just like waking his children up for school, Gehn thought. Except, instead of a scolding if they were late, Gehn and Failure-64 both would end up as corpses. He hoped she wanted more than that, if there was still anyone left inside that metal shell.
[Word Count: 623 Words]
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Failure
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Post by Failure on Aug 23, 2017 22:35:00 GMT
Reds and oranges blurred together in a burning mess as her eyes adjusted to the light. The dryness of them forced her to blink before she could even focus on what was around her. In the distance, a muddled voice came.
“Failure… Emergency… Dead…”
Her eyes lifted open, the soft glow of the red orbs paling in comparison to the vibrant, similarly colored lights from the pod. As the world came into focus, she was looking at a man. Shorter than her, she noted, but well built. Strong features, well cut jaw, and pitch-black hair that made the green surface of his left eye seem all the more dominating.
Another one of Xavier’s projects?
“What?” She said stupidly as she looked past the man’s shoulders at the destroyed pods across from her. They were damaged beyond recognition, but the room itself should have been familiar. And yet, she found herself wondering just where she was.
“What happened?” She said with a bit more vigor.
With no hesitation, she stepped from the pod and pushed by the man with a dismissive hand on his shoulder. Once he scooted out of the way, she centered herself in the room and whipped her head around. One direction the flames had yet to spread and the pods seemed in decent shape, but the opposite direction was a complete mess. Doors blown completely open and whatever was inside of them either incinerated on impact, or too mangled to recognize as a human body.
64 pivoted on her heels and shot at glare to the mystery man.
“What happened?” She repeated. “Who are you?”
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Post by Gehn on Aug 24, 2017 1:33:39 GMT
Confusion ebbed and flowed from the moment that Failure opened her eyes. She looked around and tried to take in the scene that played out before her. The reds and oranges of the flames off to Gehn’s side danced shadows over his shoulders and across her face. She repeated the same, obvious questions and slowly peeled herself away from the pod with a hand on the much broader man’s shoulder.
A much more human reaction than Gehn expected. He watched her the entire time, especially when she touched him, to get an idea of her strength. Whatever it was—accurate to the console or not—she gave him absolutely no insight whatsoever. Her hand felt soft, like a regular person. Her arm seemed to have no great power when it lightly nudged him out of the way. She, too, seemed completely harmless when she insisted on finding out just what was going on and who, exactly, Gehn was.
He saw no reason to lie to her, either.
“My name’s Gehn,” he answered and crossed his arms over his white shirt-covered chest. “I’m a Saiyan. Xavier’s dead and there’s a Changeling that wants our heads. I found you in here and turned you back on because I believe you can help me get the hell out of here.”
As much as he wanted to maintain his patience, the ever-present specter of Axar added more pressure than Gehn liked. He resisted the urge to tap his foot as the subterranean complex burned behind him. The smoke hung thin in the air—thankfully, he reminded himself—since everything here burned mostly clean. Over the flames, Gehn could also hear the fans of the ventilation system as they hummed along.
No doubt, anyone who watched the surface would find them shortly.
“Listen, I realize this must all be coming at you fast, but I need you to focus until we're out of this mess,” Gehn laid out the facts, as he saw them, for her. “I checked the computer system here and there’s a nearby bay with Space Pods, some new and others under repair. At least two of them should work enough for a single trip.”
The more he watched the Android woman, the more he realized how little he could read off her. She seemed robotic in many more ways than he expected, as if she was more machine than human at her current stage. She certainly seemed angry, but the idea of a perpetually angry robot that did little more than scowl hardly seemed out of the question—his muscles were silver now, after all.
“That Changeling? He's much stronger than I am, even now,” Gehn bit his tongue when he spoke the words. “Which is where you come in.”
Gehn paused to give the woman a chance to process. He continued to spit words out at her, over and over, in the hopes that she could keep up with this strange, new situation and what he told her. From what little he understood, she probably only remembered the last time Xavier activated her. For her, it probably felt like zero time passed at all since then.
To wake up after that with your home in flames would be difficult for anyone to adjust to.
“If you can fight, and your console reported a Power Level north of one thousand, you’re going to need to,” he finally said. “Now, what do you say?
“Do you want to make a plan to get out of here alive, or do you want to stay here?”
[Word Count: 573]
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Failure
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Post by Failure on Aug 24, 2017 1:52:48 GMT
A Saiyan? What did that even mean? As if forgetting entirely about the burning lab around her, she took a step towards the irritated man and regarded him with a tilted head. One hand came up to touch her chin while the other reached out to grab his forearm.
She squeezed his arm, as if that somehow gave her more information about what he was, and then let it drop. She then leaned back on her heels and gave him a peculiar look.
“Saiyan, huh?” She said too casually. “Are you one of Xavier’s new models? What number are you?”
Oh, wait, he just said Xavier is dead, didn’t he? She wasn’t really keeping up that well.
“Erm, uh…” She stumbled over some filler words and then looked around like she was lost. “Well, it doesn’t matter if he’s dead, does it? How did he kick the bucket? Actually, I don’t really care.”
She waved off the thought with both of her hands and shook her head. Settling down into a more casual stance, she crossed her arms and then half turned to the door. She kept Gehn in the corner of her eye while she looked to the cracked door. Other than more flames trying to reach into the room, she couldn’t see much of interest.
“I don’t know what a Changeling is, but you seem a little upset,” she finally responded to the more important matter. “I don’t really want to dirty my hands.”
“Wait, hold on,” she suddenly cut herself off and jerked towards Gehn. Hands flashed to her hips and she leaned forward with a glare. “Only a thousand?! That can’t possibly be right. I’m made to rival gods. One thousand is barely strong enough to take out the trash or do the dishes.”
She leaned back and scoffed. Slowly, she shook her head and tsked at him.
“You must have misunderstood the terminal, or something,” she continued in that ‘holier than thou’ tone. “I’m strong enough to tear down this entire lab with a single punch if I wanted to.”
Her features relaxed and her eyes widened ever so slightly. Suddenly, a wicked grin spread across her face and then blossomed into a full-on laugh. Her voice boomed against the walls and made the flames shy away from her – at least, that’s how she pictured it in her mind.
“Oh, I understand now!” She barked with a wide grin. “You bit off more than you can chew and now you’ve come to me for help. Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place! Where’s this Changeling of yours that needs to be put in time out?”
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Post by Gehn on Aug 24, 2017 2:06:36 GMT
“A bit more than I can…” Gehn started to answer her in a much harsher tone than he used before. Instead, he stopped himself short and took a slow, deep breath. This Android woman only just woke up, he reminded himself. She had no clue who she was talking to, what he just went through, or anything like that whatsoever. She knew nothing about Axar, nothing about his family, nothing about the danger they were in.
“Axar’s been paid to kill me,” Gehn started simply. “I was forced to fall back and ended up on this planet. Yes, Xavier did some work on me, but he never gave me a number such as yours. My name is Gehn, not Failure or Subject-anything.”
With that out of the way, Gehn pointed a finger straight up into the metallic ceiling that hung over their heads. It, too, glistened with the red and orange hues of the fires that burnt behind him in the broken pods and out in the hallway, along the walls and fuel lines that Gehn’s blasts ripped open.
“Best way to describe them is a race of transforming reptilians with absurd natural strength,” he skipped most of the details, given the situation. “And he’s probably in orbit, looking for this place, if not already on his way to his location. If he finds you with me, he’ll assume you’re an ally and kill you without hesitation. Trust me when I say, one thousand or not, you’re not strong enough to take him head-on.”
When he said those words, his dark eyes stared back at her, unrelenting. It looked like something just short of a glare, but he reserved his hostility solely for the Changeling that ruined his life. He even ignored her comment about being a “god”—the project title, Apotheosis, told him all he cared to know at this point—and just focused on the situation at hand.
“But if you know your actual Power Level, that’ll help with planning,” Gehn explained. “You’re stronger than the other models I walked past and I’m unable to scan your power myself. If I can’t, neither can Axar—and that’s an advantage we sorely need right now.”
If nothing else, she seemed to catch on quick. Gehn expected a few more attempts to get on the same page with her before she started to understand the gravity of the situation. He thanked whatever forces of fate allowed him to awaken an Android like her, at least right now.
Maybe after they escaped he would regret this decision, but at least he would live to regret it.
[Word Count: 437]
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Failure
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Post by Failure on Aug 24, 2017 2:21:00 GMT
“My record punch is just north of 100-thousand Power Level,” she answered with no shortage of pride. Hell, even her chest puffed out a little.
Never mind the fact that such a blow was only given a disappointed scowl from the Doctor and a few taps on his computer – a sign she had quickly learned was not good. Then again, she had never been given a “good” reaction from him to begin with. Even her first few moments were met with irritation and dismissal.
It was his own fault for not appreciating what she had become.
The flames to her left caught against some sort of fuel – maybe they finally cracked into the machinery of the pod that had been ruined – and then lunged at her. The embers grabbed and tugged at her dress, burning away the edges for a long moment before she even realized.
With an irritated huff, she jerked her dress away and flapped it furiously until the infant flame was snuffed out of existence. She took a moment to hold it, uncaring about the way it made the rest of the dress ride up her a bit too much, and then eyed it with distaste.
“Really?” She groaned as she fingered the mess. “Ugh. Do you know what I went through to get this made?” She scowled and turned her attention to Gehn. “It’s not your fault, but really?”
She let the frayed ends fall to the ground and then smoothed out the front of the dress. Just like that, she lost interest.
“So, here’s what we do, okay?” She placed a hand on her hip and shifted her weight to the side. Her free hand gestured to the ceiling. “Your Changeling friend is coming, right? Lure him out, or something, and then I’ll catch him by surprise. If we really want to give it to him, I’m gonna need some time to charge up.”
It’d be the first time she ever actually hit another living being, now that she thought about it. There was something… exciting about it. Punching weighted machines designed to calculate one’s strength wasn’t exactly thrilling. But hunting down a threat and putting that power to work?
64 couldn’t help but grin.
“Oh, by the by, I’m Apotheosis-64,” she said and then extended her hand to Gehn. “I prefer 64, since it’s less of a mouthful. If anyone can take care of your Changeling problem, it’s me. Or maybe 32. She’s terrifying.”
The mere thought of the machine that had been built to kill anything that irked the Doctor was enough to make 64 shudder and shy away. She made no attempts to hide her discomfort, but let it pass quick enough.
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Post by Gehn on Aug 24, 2017 2:42:39 GMT
When the fires burnt through the thin layer of another, damaged pipe, the resultant spray of flame nearly caught Gehn, too. He stumbled backwards with an arm up and just barely escaped an additional singe or hole on his freshly re-made shirt and pants. After weeks of going through space all but alone, they had turned into rags before Xavier repaired them—the only decent thing he did for Gehn, in the Saiyan’s opinion.
Then, Gehn thrusted his palm forward and, in doing so, shoved all the air out of the short distance between his hand and the damaged pod. The burst suffocated the fire that spilled out of the fuel pipe, which left only the fires at the very entrance to the hall of Failures and the throughout the rest of the facility.
With that out of the way, he turned his attention back to 64 and her now-burnt, black dress, her hand offered to him.
“Apotheosis-64?” Gehn answered with a tone more surprised than polite and friendly. Regardless, he returned the very human gesture and shook her hand. Saiyans usually preferred to clasp by the wrists, but decades on Earth acclimated him to their unique mannerisms and customs. “Sixty-four, you might want to check out your console over here.”
He tilted his head towards the console just behind her. Even with the pod’s door open, the screen remained lit up and accessible. He walked over to it and immediately flipped through the screens with an index finger. He pulled up the page that listed her designation and her Power Level both.
“I haven’t been here long,” Gehn admitted and stepped to the side for Failure to get a full view of things. “But perhaps you should look through this? It doesn’t even list the same name you’ve told me. I think some things happened while you were unconscious in there, and the rest of the menus might tell you more.”
Then, Gehn lifted a hand and pointed it towards the door. A burst of air followed, like a wind storm out of his palm, that created a momentary vacuum. In an instant, the fires swirled into a maelstrom only to snuff themselves out a moment later as the air evened itself back out and blew around both his and 64’s hair.
“Catch up on things, I’m going to put out some of the fires and see if the facilities sensors can detect Axar,” Gehn explained, but left out that he was the one who caused all the fires and destruction in a fit of rage after killing the Doctor. 64 dealt with enough wild news out of him already, he decided, so he would leave out the bigger subjects.
At least, that excuse sounded good enough to him.
On that final note, Gehn made his way back into the facility. Each step of the way, he slowly extinguished fire after fire, most of it burning soil behind the broken, metals walls, or fuel lines similar to the exposed one that caught fire back in the hall where he found 64 and the other “Failure” designations.
[Word Count: 517]
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Failure
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Post by Failure on Aug 26, 2017 18:55:06 GMT
64 frowned and started to cross her arms when her excitement and confidence was outright ignored. At first, she chalked it up to him being too lost in his anxiety to pay attention, but when he quickly questioned her name and stepped towards her pod, she was less inclined to believe that.
Maybe he thought she was lying.
Regardless, she strolled on up to the terminal and glanced down at it. She briefly skimmed over the words – most of them she didn’t really understand – and then watched Gehn leave the room. With dismissive flicks of his wrists, he snuffed out the flames and then left the room. Speaking of. What started all this chaos? The Changeling fellow was supposedly still in space. Maybe it had a friend that Gehn had been throwing down with.
It was a shame that she missed out on all the fun, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. Besides, she didn’t really want to ruin her perfectly good dress any more than it had been, so maybe it was for the best.
Her attention shifted back to the small computer and, this time, she gave it a more thorough read through. It was obvious from the start that this was completely wrong. Her Power Level was shown as much lower than what it was, and her “Apotheosis” title was nowhere to be seen on the first menu. All it said was “Failure”, mimicking the bright red ink that was sprayed onto the top of her pod.
Frowning a bit more, she flipped through to the next menu and drank in the more detailed reports. They were brief, incomplete sentences mentioning a young woman from Earth, taken with her sister, who had been used in the Apotheosis project. As it went on, mentioning her suboptimal performance after awakening, it was pretty clear that it was her. But… The final line was rather clear.
“Marked Failure and deactivated.”
She jerked away from the computer and looked down the room. The untouched pods that were lined against the wall all glowed a soft red, signaling that power was still being given to keep whatever was inside alive. Just above the door, each of them were marked with the same “Failure” branding.
A chill ran down her spine. She couldn’t bring herself to read the rest of the notes. She spun on her heels and then marched out of the room. Gehn hadn’t made it very far down the hall, so she barked out at him.
“Hey, Gehn!” She said in a voice too loud. “What’s this bullshit in this terminal? Why did the Doctor deactivate me?”
She wasn’t expecting an answer, so she continued.
“And why are there so many more?” She cut back her voice and started walking towards him. “I’m the most recent project and I know for a fact the Doctor was only working on one other person alongside me.”
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Post by Gehn on Aug 26, 2017 19:08:07 GMT
His boots echoed through the metallic hallway as he marched through it. Each step found itself accompanied by a hard punch through the air that suffocated whatever fire Gehn found burning through the fuel lines in the walls. He also made sure to grip any exposed pipes shut—the last thing he wanted was to have this place explode on him.
Worse yet: He completely failed to identify the fuel source the doctor was using here. It was clearly flammable but, somehow, not explosive enough to have destroyed the entire facility when he went at it earlier.
By the time he marched halfway down the hall, he heard the bare feet of Failure pad across the metal floor behind him. He even heard her irregular footsteps when she weaved through the twisted metal and other debris strewn about the ground
At first, he ignored her and continued towards one of the nearby control rooms so he could get his hands on a full-sized console. Failure persisted and, once she was comfortably in ear shot, started to whine about the terminal on her pod being a liar—or something like that. Gehn mostly ignored it. When he neglected to answer, she persisted, and Gehn sighed quietly.
In front of him, the door to one of the control rooms—he really had no clue what else to call it—hiss opened and he walked through. Consoles lined the walls, far more than Gehn thought the doctor would ever need, and he walked right up to one of them and hunched over. His fingers sped across the controls as he searched for the scanner utility built into this strange base.
“Listen, I just woke up today,” Gehn explained, matter-of-factly. His eyes never left the screen, though he could see the reflection of Failure’s barely-dressed figure in the screen. “Supposedly, I’ve been unconscious and recovering for the better part of a month. I had no sense of time passing. Now, consider this: You could have been under for years.”
At times, he felt like he was talking to a child. He only spent a few minutes with Failure so far, but she already seemed more like a daughter to him than anything else. He wondered if that sensation would change as she got a better handle on what her situation was and what she wanted to do. The last thing he wanted was a reminder of a still-fresh wound.
When he finally accessed the facility’s scanners, he immediately surveyed the surrounding one hundred kilometers—along with orbit. He found Axar’s ship first, naturally, in a low and fast path around the planet. What was worse, though, was when the scanner’s found Axar just a couple kilometers from the base’s surface entrance—already at full power.
Gehn took a slow, deep breath. He wanted to swear, to scream, to go back to smashing this entire nightmare factory until only rubble and scrap remained. It took every bit of his mental fortitude but, slowly, he stood upright from the console yet again.
“Axar’s close, Sixty-Four,” Gehn explained and turned around to face her.
“I don’t know why the Doctor didn’t mention you,” he continued. “Maybe some of the other Androids on this planet will know, I can’t be certain. But we can only ask them if we get past Axar first.”
Then, he turned back around to the terminal and started to redirect the scanner. He wanted something different than a Power Level search, now.
He wanted a way off of this rock.
[Word Count: 587]
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Post by Failure on Aug 26, 2017 19:21:13 GMT
The anxious energy was sapped from her bones when Gehn finally spun around and all but snapped at her. Her brow furrowed and a deep glare started to set across her face. She didn’t bother walking into the control room and helping him fumble around with the machinery. Maybe he had used a better tone with her, she would have shown him how to use it, but instead she just watched with an irritated frown as he pressed random buttons like an idiot.
When he stumbled upon the right click of buttons and navigated through the menu to the scouter program, the screen lit up eagerly and showed off a number of signals. Naturally, the “Saiyan” was quick to hone in on the one floating near the atmosphere of the planet.
“Yeah, okay, I heard you,” she said back, purposely cutting her words short and sharp. “I already told you I’ll deal with him, like, twenty times. I can’t just fly up into orbit and take the fight to him. We have time.”
She didn’t say anything else. Instead, she lifted a hand, gave him half a wave, and then turned around. Without a care in the world, she left the room. Just before the door started to whir shut, she called over her shoulders.
“When you’re done being an asshole, feel free to come find me,” she said nonchalantly.
He had his own problems and now she had hers. The first thing on her mind was reactivating all of those so-called “Failures” and prying whatever information they had out before ripping out their hearts and turning them off for good.
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Post by Gehn on Aug 26, 2017 19:37:48 GMT
Metal groaned when Gehn leaned into the console in front of him. 64 already stormed out of the room in a huff because his attention was elsewhere. He felt his fingertips press into the flat, metal panels on either side. He knew that if he wasn’t careful, he could rip them clean off the machine in front of him and do even more damage to this place almost effortlessly. He could also rip that door out of the wall, charge Failure down, and crush his throat in her hands.
A good part of him—the primitive, Saiyan part that he spent most of his childhood arrogantly bemoaning—wanted just that. Instead, he shut down the applications on the console with a few flicks of his fingers across the keys and turned back down towards the hall Failure went down. The door, too, hissed open for him as he followed her.
“Sixty-Four,” he called out to her before she got even halfway back to that weird corridor filled with other “Failure” models. His voice was softer this time. “Don’t wake the others up, you might not be able to handle them all.”
Gehn paused in the threshold of the metal door. He heard it rattled in the gap in the wall where it hid itself while open. Whatever sensors it possessed told it that someone or something was in the way. He stayed there just a couple seconds longer before he continued.
“My plan is to take us back to Earth,” he started to explain to her, but he didn’t get any closer, or try to stop her himself. If it came down to her fighting Axar and then ignoring each other for the rest of their lives after this, Gehn could live with that.
He would simply rather not have to.
“There are other people there like Xavier,” Gehn continued. “People who can figure out what happened to you without risking waking up another Android that neither of us can handle. And if you’re convinced that you’re stronger than the console claims, that means the others after you could very well be, too.”
In hindsight, he realized he hadn’t exactly been good company. If she really had been out for years, he was the first person to ever see as more than a toy, freely turned on and off again on a whim. Instead of talking to her, or showing any interest in her whatsoever, he realized that he started to see her as a tool, too, in just those few minutes.
Someone to help him deal with Axar, once and for all.
All of this made perfect sense to him. In his mind, the priority was survival. Etiquette and charisma were luxuries that neither of them could afford. Then, nearly a quarter of an Earth century taught him that the people from the rest of the galaxy didn’t share those very Saiyan-like sentiments about these situations.
“I found Xavier’s bay for storing ships, working and under repair alike,” he finally said. “Let’s get off of this planet and then, I promise you, I swear to you, I’ll help you answer all of the questions you have as long as you don’t wake up any more of the people in that room.”
[Word Count: 541]
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Post by Failure on Aug 26, 2017 20:57:07 GMT
Her feet padded along the mental floor quietly. She was careful to step over any debris and avoid hot-looking metal when possible, as if such trivial things could actually hurt her. She – and probably all of the other Androids here – knew very well just how durable they were. It was that very durability that made them unique, and yet she wasn’t the only one to retain some of the more human habits like that.
A few embers still burned around the edges of the hallways where chunks of the wall had been blown apart to reveal the inner workings of the framework. Within the steel beams and ethereal looking structuring were wires of various sizes and colors. Most of which were standard lighting fixtures and circuits for the doors and other basic utilities within. A select few, 64 had learned, were apparently more important than the rest, though she never learned why. Those white wires were the ones that had burst into flames after the initial impact. Even now, they still had tiny flames dancing around them.
Considering how everything was still functional, she wondered more now than ever what they did.
Gehn’s voice cut into her thoughts and made her stop in her tracks. If only for politeness, she half turned to face him and then gave him a flat stare. A “resting bitch face” as some of the other Androids she had met would call it. She never cared for the pet name.
“Why do you assume they’d be hostile?” She asked the obvious question. “I wasn’t and not every Android built here is made specifically for combat.”
But, now that she was given a moment to think about it, she realized it probably would have been a waste of time going through all of them and getting whatever skewed information they had. The Doctor was already off his rocker when she last saw him. If it had been years (that thought was still terrifying), who knew just how mad he was.
She sighed, closed her eyes, and then relaxed. From beside her, one of the wires cackled and sizzled before putting out. The lights above her started to flicker as they shifted to another power source. A few of the bulbs dimmed and then faded out from the strain, casting an uneven shadow across her face.
“But, whatever, fine,” she said and then looked back at him with a tired expression. “You seem to have a better idea of what’s going than I do.”
Well, he had a better idea of what was going down with their more immediate problem: Axar. She couldn’t exactly go out and get answers if she’s dead, now could she?
With a bit of reluctance, she started walking towards Gehn.
“Speaking of waking Androids,” she said. “Usually the Doctor has at least a couple bodyguards around. Where are they? And, since we have the time, what exactly happened here?”
She kept a bit of a distance from Gehn, but was within acceptable talking range.
“I’m assuming you do know that much at least?”
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Post by Gehn on Sept 3, 2017 2:47:11 GMT
Oh yes, Gehn thought. Images of the mangled Androids, shortly thereafter reduced to dust, immediately came to mind. Most of them were attractive women of varying levels of power that paled in comparison to what Gehn now commanded. Some of them even possessed a strange ability to emit steam and vastly enhance their physical power. The others.
Gehn looked directly at 64 and answered, “That’s where most of the damage to this facility came from.”
He tilted his head towards one of the large, shallow dents in a nearby wall. He remembered it well: He tackled one of the Androids into it and nearly smashed her straight through. The impact broke something, which allowed him to toss her down the hall and vaporized her with a red-hot energy wave. His hand felt warm when he remembered all the details.
“There were maybe half a dozen in the facility when I killed Xavier for what he did to me,” Gehn dropped the bomb like it was nothing; just another weekend visit to the park. He fully prepared himself to add this new woman to that list. “None of them would listen to reason. All but one screeched like wild animals when they realized what happened. So, I killed them all.”
Part of him felt a twinge of pride when he said those words. Cold and ruthless, the sort of thing that his two, older siblings would have appreciated. In truth, Gehn enjoyed every moment of it, too. He hated that the doctor had turned him into a part-Saiyan abomination, but the feel of the new power it gave him—power that eclipsed his siblings—was incredible. It felt like destiny long since wrote this transformation into his part-machine monstrosity into his story, and for the better.
None of that stopped him from obliterating each one of the Androids that came his way.
“If you want to take issue with that, Sixty-Four, that’s your right,” Gehn cut her off before she could raise issue with what he had done. His fists clenched at his side, ready to crush her skull with a few well-placed blows. He wouldn’t argue with her over her right to revenge.
“But I think you know that Xavier was a monster,” Gehn continued after a moment’s pause. He wanted 64 to consider what he had to say. Then, he lifted a finger and pointed to the fleshy horns on her head. “He took a perfectly good, young Human woman and turned her into some lab rat for his experimentation. And when he was done, he threw you into a trash heap with the others.”
He let that imagery sink in for a moment. He lived on Earth for decades and the thought, the image of his wife or daughter turned into something like 64, twisted his stomach into knots and wringed it out. He shuddered to imagine what else happened to these women—things that Xavier neglected to allow them to remember.
“He deserved to die, screaming in panic like the worm of a man he was,” Gehn finished. “And that’s exactly what I gave him.
“You’re welcome.”
[Word Count: 520]
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Failure
Newcomer
PL: 16,237
Overdrive (x2)
Zeni: 0
Tag: @failure
Posts: 35
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Post by Failure on Sept 3, 2017 16:57:41 GMT
The Android nodded along, using appropriate “mhms” and “ohs”, as she listened to Gehn’s testosterone-induced rant about slaughtering the closest things she had to friends and then the guy who, as far as she was concerned, gave her life. Other than the raise of her eyebrows, she seemed otherwise completely unphased by the murder of everyone and everything she knew.
When he finished talking, fists clenched as if he expected her to come at him, she just scratched at the inside of her ear. Her finger wiggled around a bit in her ear and then she pulled it away and unceremoniously flicked away the goober she had produced.
“You done yet?” She said. Her arm fell back to her side and she regarded him with a bored look. “I already figured you killed the doctor, so I don’t know why you’re acting like you just shot the president or something. If I was going to be angry about that, I would have a long time ago. I’m not an idiot.”
She swung her attention towards the ceiling where he had gestured and eyed the indention. Whoever he had thrown up there probably died on impact, or shortly thereafter. A very… crude way of executing someone, she noted. It fit perfectly with the meat-headed personality she was started to put to Gehn.
“The Doctor wasn’t all bad, but he wasn’t great either,” she explained. “He’s saved lives before, even if it was for his own, twisted game. And you can’t deny how skilled he is. For a lot of people, he’s the reason they had a purpose in life. He gave them strength, a goal, and a home.”
Her voice droned on, as if she was just regurgitating something she had been spoon-fed for years. Truth be told, she hadn’t. Not too many of the Androids tried to justify Xavier, let alone actively defend him. But she had been thinking on this for a long time. It was the logic that, in her mind, kept her sane through everything.
“I don’t know who I was or where I came from,” she continued. “Not knowing makes it easier to not hate him. What I do know is that he had a few too many screws loose and, while I don’t think killing him was the right decision, he certainly needed someone to rain on his parade.”
She shrugged, closed her eyes for a moment, and then sighed. When she looked back at Gehn, she just frowned. Not out of sorrow or disappointment. It was more of a relaxed sort of frown, as if she had been given too much freedom all of a sudden. Freedom she hadn’t asked for.
“So, I guess to summarize: I don’t really care what you did.” Her voice came out with a bit more force this time. “Right now, all I care about is getting some information on what happened to me and, maybe, getting back a part of my life I don’t even know I’m missing.”
She jabbed her finger towards the sky and shifted her weight onto one hip. Her frown gave way to a small, brief smirk.
“Now, I don’t know about you, but I’d like to make sure we’re prepared for your friend.”
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Post by Gehn on Sept 3, 2017 17:19:13 GMT
This woman consistently baffled him. Even as he admitted to killing half a dozen Androids and Xavier himself, Failure seemed almost painfully uninterested, as far as Gehn could tell. His usual, stoic, business-first attitude evaporated, considering her behavior. He openly blinked in confusion as he tried to make sense of her nonchalant response. He hung on every word of her explanation.
When she finished, it still made no sense to him. She thought he made the wrong decision, yet acted as if it didn’t matter at all. Part of Gehn immediately worried just how much of her conscience remained after what Xavier did to her. Another part of him wondered if she fully understood her own words. She seemed to understand that Xavier stole away all the memories she once possessed of her original life, yet behaved as though it were a casual, trifling matter. As if he accidentally bumped into her on the street.
“Well then,” Gehn cleared his throat. He prepared himself for a fight—at least an argument. Instead, he got the same attitude from her that he gave her earlier. She was in a hurry to get this Axar situation settled once and for all. “I guess that matter is settled.”
She wanted to know a plan, now. Gehn wanted to give her exactly that. He pointed off, away from the hallway that housed the other “Failures”.
“Back that way is the entrance. Axar will likely come from there. The scanners said he was headed for that main entryway up on the surface,” he explained. There remained the risk that he blasted his way in from the surface, but Gehn figured the Changeling would much rather take the easy route. “I’ll conceal my Power Level—I’m relatively certain I can do that, now. I’ll hide in the hallway with the other Failures.”
Gehn took a few steps towards that door, until the automated device opened it with another hiss. He stood there for a moment, still looking at Failure.
“And if you’re serious about how hard you can hit? Hide until you’ve gathered enough power to do just that,” Gehn pressed her. “Hold nothing back. Axar won’t be able to detect your power, so just stay out of sight until you’re ready.”
Then he paused yet again, glanced down the hallway which held the hidden subsection full of Xavier’s discarded toys. The thought still turned his stomach but, soon enough, he would be free of this place and able to forget it ever existed.
“After you’ve hit him with all you’ve got, don’t try to go in for the kill,” Gehn insisted. “He’s too strong to risk a follow-up assault. Knock him on his ass and we’ll make a break for the ship bay, open the surface access doors, and get the hell off of this rock.”
Then they would be free to go their own separate ways, Gehn realized. He held those particular words back, at least for now. If this all went well, he wasn’t sure he wanted to ditch the company of this woman just yet. She might have been a pain to talk with—almost criminally unconcerned with the most important things, not mention arrogant—but if she successfully stopped Axar in his tracks, that was hardly the sort of person he could afford to let go of.
“Sound like a plan, Sixty-Four?”
[Word Count: 561] [Total Word Count: 4,359]
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