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Norithics
Norithics' Gallery (4216)

Issue 06 - Phantoms, part 2

"I feel like I owe you."
s2ep6.rtf
Keywords cat 198375, wolf 181287, bat 34513, skunk 31574, ferret 9609, butterfly 2319, iguana 852, partners 2541 648, partners 387, natalie grayswift 352, carrie oakenfield 228, erwin goldstein 130, jacent danger 127, samantha masterson 110, max tangent 107, shelly iverson 72, culby hendrix 21
A pot of chocolate slowly melted inside of another pot filled with boiling water, carefully observed by a Reubenesque mustelid as she listened to a documentary on Neo-Medieval warfare. She eagerly zoned out during an explanation of the dueling system when a knock sounded at the door. "... I wonder, who could that be?" she puzzled as she made her way out of the kitchen. What she found was a tall red-headed boy standing there, his hair dripping, his expression dour. "Ah, Jacent??"

"Hello, Ms. Hendrix. May I come in?" He coughed with a bit of a rasp, turning his head away.

"Oh, please, come in, yes!" She gestured, letting him in, shutting the door and activating the drying loop. "Are you alright? I hear you've been sleeping outside, and that just can't be any good for you. What are you up to??"

"I need a History lesson," he said seriously. She blinked.

"At this hour? What about??"

He tossed his tablet onto her coffee table, revealing the screen on it displaying the words 'Chapter Locked.' "... Whatever it is you're hiding from me."

She winced. "The jig is up, huh?"

He nodded. "I knew there was something odd when I asked my friends if they had certain chapters locked, and they said 'no.' Then I began to read ahead and started deducing that there was something important about that time period. So tell me. What are you so afraid of me learning?"

Ms. Hendrix sighed. "Well, kiddo, have a seat and I'll bring in some fondue."

He nodded. "Very well."

Once the two of them had settled in, Ms. Hendrix dipped a strawberry in the pot of melted chocolate and took a bite of the succulent treat after offering some to her guest. "You see, I wasn't meaning to hide it from you, per se. I was just hoping to have a chance to think of a... gentle way to discuss it."

Jacent rubbed along the scarred, ugly underside of one of his forearms thoughtfully. "Very little of my life has been gentle."

Culby acquiesced. "Very well. During the Petroleum Age- an era in Pre-Splice History that you're from, if I had to guess- it was a time of relative peace. There was still turmoil, but most of the major recorded conflicts- World Wars I and II- had been ended, and began the process of being healed by time."

"This much I know," he accepted. "After all, I lived it."

"Right. Well, keep in mind that our records of this even are very sketchy at best, but... sometime at the end of that era, something momentously important occurred to humanity. A pernicious airborne virus was released that began- well, I'm not a Biologist, so I'll spare you the details. But it attacked the human body in such a thorough and complete way- and only humans, mind you- that it was dubbed 'The Skin Plague.'"

"The Skin Plague??" He blinked. "A disease that only affects humans. That doesn't sound like an accident."

She gently ate another chocolate-coated strawberry. "That's the biggest mystery; nobody knows for sure what caused it, or when it was disseminated to the world at large. It was almost  certainly engineered, but nobody ever took credit for its creation. It might have been an accident. A product of an overreaching, enterprising mind that got sloppy. Or perhaps an attempt at profiteering gone wrong." She returned the stem to a bowl, frowning. "Nobody knew to quarantine themselves or each other, because no one displayed any symptoms for... months, perhaps years. After this dormant period, it awoke and slowly began wiping out everyone who'd contracted it. It was the greatest disaster ever to strike humanity; a Bubonic Plague for the  entire globe."

Jacent shut his eyes and turned away painfully. He sat this way for several minutes in quiet meditation. After taking a deep breath, he let it out and gazed once more at Ms. Hendrix. "But someone... eventually found a cure?"

"Not traditionally, no." She twirled a strawberry stem between her fingers slowly. "Every attempt to find an antiviral agent ended in failure. The virus seemed to adapt to their efforts to defeat it, as if designed to do so. Every different breed and permutation of human around the world was vulnerable to it. Eventually, in desperation, they did find a cure: not being human anymore. A scientist at the time named Dr. Chu proposed changing human DNA to make it significantly different enough that the virus could no longer attack the basic structure of human makeup."

"So that's why everyone looks so different!" Jacent suddenly concluded.

"Got it in one," she praised. "Not wanting to leave anything to chance, people were spliced with as many different animals as was feasible to ensure the maximum possible survivability just in case some creatures were too close to humans in genetic makeup. Fortunately early tests showed that the virus, for all its versatility, showed a strange amount of restraint in not mutating to adapt to these hybrids. The human race had effectively been saved and destroyed in one move. And while they were at it, they decided to make a myriad of other changes, altering our genetics to work with each others', while generally improving the race as a whole."

He gently acknowledged this. "I see... wait. Did you say... Dr. Chu?" He paused. "As in, Dr.  Leonard Chu?"

Ms. Hendrix flinched with surprise. "Why... yes. Did you know him??"

Jacent slowly nodded. "Yes. Yes, I did. Dr. Leonard Chu, also known as The Beastmaker. A raving lunatic who held an obsession for 'unlocking the true potential' of people by performing grotesque, horrifying experiments on them, most often trying to create human-animal hybrids. He never liked people- insisted that animals were much easier to deal with, and... wanted us to be more like them. I guess he got his wish in the end..."

"Oh, my." Culby put down the strawberry. "Well that's certainly an account I've never heard."

"But it just doesn't make any sense..."

"Why not?"

The red-maned boy winced in exasperation, coughing. "Because Dr. Chu was an idiot. He was exposed multiple times for using junk science in his experiments. By the very last time I'd foiled his plans, they were to sew together a jackhammer operator and a bear. Nobody in their right mind would allow him near an electron microscope unsupervised, much less The Plan to Save Mankind." He shook his head, troubled beyond his own comprehension. "But even moreso... it shouldn't have even worked. He didn't have the smarts or the... tools..."

"... Jacent? is there something wrong?"

He rose suddenly, coughing again. "I have to go, Ms. Hendrix, thank you very much for the lesson and the fondue."

"Wait!" She hefted herself up off of the couch. "Jacent, you sound terrible; maybe you should stay the night here until you're-" he left, the door sliding shut behind him. "... Better."

 -
- -
 -

He woke up in a bed.

That was special enough to warrant his attention all by itself. Musty smells invaded his senses, combining with cracked, faded, peeled old wallpaper and warped, dry floorboards barely illuminated by the almost lightless night. He threw off the stiff, threadbare sheets and sat up on the slab-like mattress to wonder: just where was he? The last thing he remembered was investigating Nhilus' laboratory under Locksmouth, and then... nothing.

"Oh good, you're awake."

He peered in the darkness of an extremely old motel room to see what slowly revealed itself to be... a young girl. She turned on a flood flashlight, illuminating her pretty freckled face and electric blue hair. She was... "A human??" Jacent gawped, stunned.

"Yeah. Name's Widget," she said in a tomboyish voice that, in tandem with her face and stature, put her at about thirteen years old. "Nice to meetcha. Can you walk?"

He stood up suddenly, grunting. "How are you alive??"

She put up a hand to stop him. "Yeah, I'm sure you've got a million questions, but, if you don't follow me, you won't be alive for long." She made her way to the door and opened it, looking out into the hallway.

"What do you mean??" he asked, following despite the fact that his whole body seemed to ache terribly for some reason.

"Yeah, you've got the Skin Plague, dude." She watched his expression turn to surprise and horror. "Oh good, you know what that is! So you know how important it is to move your ass."

"Where are we??" he queried as they moved down the hall, then descended a flight of stairs.

Widget gently opened the door, gesturing outside. "See for yourself."

An entire cityscape greeted him. Steel and glass skyscrapers lined the streets, towering over smaller buildings and structures that tickled Jacent's memory. Convenience stores, traffic lights, cars with wheels, fire hydrants and newspaper vending machines! He nearly tripped over a bicycle rack in his stupor. "... Oh, wow..." The girl smacked his hand away with the flashlight as he reached for her shoulder. "Ow!"

"Don't touch me, man," she warned. "I don't want your sick all over me. Now c'mon, we've got a lot of ground to cover."

Jacent scrunched his brows together. Something was very strange about all this. Well, if he was being honest, there was nothing not strange about this. The oddest part, however, didn't hit him until he looked up at the sky. There was no moon hanging overhead, but instead a grid of interlinked blue squares that glowed against an earthy backdrop. "H-Hey!" He ran after the girl. "Where are we? And where are we going??"

"We're under Locksmouth, and we're going to get you your cure! Now keep moving, we don't have much time!"

He flinched, easily keeping pace with her short stride but feeling weighed down by confusion. There was a cure?? This was all running completely counter to everything he'd learned before. Questions clouded his mind as he was suddenly jerked into an abandoned convenience store by Widget and ushered to duck down. "Hey! Easy on the sleeves, a friend gave this to me."

"Shhh!" she urged, back to a rack of magazines so old that the paper had gone completely ash- grey. The girl looked up at a convex mirror in the corner, studying it intensely.

"What?" Jacent whispered. After she'd signaled it was okay to look, he gazed out toward the street and saw what she'd been looking at: two humanoid robots, marching down the pavement with perfect timing, turning their heads and calling out her name in their harsh voices. Jacent grit his teeth. "Nhiloids." Memories washed in like rainwater over a dirty street. Nhilus' faceless troopers were always laboring to carry out his will, the red-eyed ones firing weapons at him, the blue-eyed ones building something more sinister just around the corner. Even now, he could still see them: their endless glowing stares as they regarded him with hatred; their emotionless compliance as they built the dreams of a madman; their unintelligible muttered words, not unlike an occult chant. Heeding, thoughtless, drone-like. "I hate Nhiloids."

"What?" Widget gave him a strange look.

He shook his head. "Nothing. Let's keep going."

 -
- -
 -

Jacent's excitement at discovering a city straight out of his time was dimming rapidly. No souls walked the dark streets except the occasional Nhiloid. No power flowed through the defunct traffic signals or street lights. Not a single thing moved. The city was dead. Forgotten. Buried, completely intact... somehow. Not to mention covered in some kind of barrier that was separating his PET from the network.

Then there was the mysterious girl he was with. They were strangers, to be sure... but her laser- like focus and conversational stonewalling bothered him on a level he couldn't quite put his finger on. "Hey," she called. "This way." Two words that she spared him under duress, time and again; this time, she was pressing on into a hospital that had its emergency lights on. Like a one-girl SWAT team she cased the place, peering around corners and proceeding up flight after flight of stairs. They reached the floor that she seemed to think was the right one, proceeding ahead heedless of anything. Jacent followed more slowly, taking measured steps until a violent coughing fit took hold of him, hunching over as Widget rifled through files in an office desk.
Suddenly, however, she seemed concerned. "... Hey, are they getting worse? How do you feel?"

"Like I'm going through a dead man's pockets," he responded dryly.

Her expression flattened. "Well if you feel good enough for sarcasm, you should also feel good enough to help me look for the cure! It's a long green cylinder about the size of a breakfast sausage."

"I could go for a breakfast sausage right about now..." he groused, shuffling into one of the side rooms. It looked like it had been used for surgery at some point, but the tubing, electronics paneling and other familiar modifications told the story of a facility altered for use by the one man for whom he had nothing but enmity. "But he's dead. These are just... remains?" Something caught his eye as he scanned the counter. It was a strip of fabric that looked a lot like one of those understickers he'd seen so much of, but there was an extremely unlikely logo on it. "'C.'" The letter 'C' was emblazoned across the small blue fabric swatch. A feeling of confused dread filled him as he looked at it, then at the dim room around him. He'd solved a lot of crimes and mysteries- by this point in an investigation, he should have had a good working theory of what was going on... but he didn't.

He just didn't.

The world was beginning to spin. Air had trouble reaching his lungs, and the room was getting even darker. Noises. A clattering, then a muffled hum. Humming? No, words.

"-ent... Jacent!"

He caught a few breaths- enough to look up, realizing that he'd hit the floor almost completely limp. Widget had run back into the room.

"I'm okay," he said breathily, grabbing her hand. "I just had-"

She gasped, as did he, and they both shared a moment of silent unease.

"You... you're cold." He frowned, standing. "And firm." He clenched his teeth in an angry sneer. "And I know why your voice was throwing me off."

"AH!" Widget cried as she was slammed up against the wall. "I t-told you not to touch me!" The facade faded, her holographic skin crumbling to dust.

"The game is up, Nhiloid!" he accused, and sure enough, the girl was as artificial as he accused. However, as the illusion peeled away, he didn't behold the stoic, mass-produced robotic stormtrooper he was used to. The metal shell had been replaced by some sort of padded plastic, the insides of her hands a smooth gel-filled cloth. Her hair- the fact that she had it novel enough for her kind- was a breathtaking array of silky optic fibers that refracted brilliant blue. But it was from her black polished front panel that her face lit up onto the display: two solid blue eyes and a similarly simplistic looking mouth, along with small freckle-dots where her cheeks would be. The effect wasn't unlike an inkling, in a way. The hologram was almost like what she might have translated into if she were indeed real.

"D-Don't smash me!" she urged in her now fully digitized voice, holding her hands out in front of her.

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't!" he dared her, pressing her against the wall. This one was made to resemble a young girl, which only made him angrier. What a horrendous lie.

Tears welled graphically in the solid blue representations of her eyes. "B-Because it'll kill ya."

Jacent backed away, staring helplessly at her, his mind straining against all of the information and emotion it was trying to process. "... What?"

She seemed to plead with him, despite knowing full well he couldn't use his powers. "Please, the virus won't matter if you give yourself an aneurism, so just don't." She frowned deeply. "I'm sorry I lied to you. I didn't know any other way to stop you from running right off the bat."

He blinked several times, slowly backing away, looking around and seeming dazed. "But I... what is the meaning of this? Why pretend to cry? Machines don't have emotions..."

The robotic girl gestured plaintively. "I do."

He stood, silent, confused and conflicted. "... I need to rest." She nodded. "Okay... this way, over here."

 -
- -
 -

The clean brushed shine of a stainless steel counter held a microscope and a centrifuge, the latter of which spun while an attentive little robot watched intently. "... All that's left to do now is wait."

A military-style ration of some kind disappeared with speed, after which Jacent opened the airtight packages for a few snack cakes he'd snagged from the convenience store. The stale but intact artificial food-like substance went down with just a little more enjoyment than was expected of a root canal. "... So a crow kid gave me a virus, and now I'm trapped in an abandoned underground city full of robots that have apparently hidden away for centuries. Why are you helping me?"

Her illuminated blue eyes stared at him for a while, as if lost in thought. "The answer to that's kind of complicated. But I guess you could say that, in a way, I feel like I owe you."

He narrowed his eyes. "You'll have to forgive me if that seems very strange... the idea that a Nhiloid could owe me anything."

Widget paced slowly, running her hand across the counter top. "It's true, at one point, all we knew you for was your ability to blow through us by the dozen. But it's been a long time, dude. Things have changed. We aren't Nhiloids anymore- we're Automa." She stopped to look back up at him. "And if it wasn't for you, we never would have escaped Nhilus' iron fist."

Jacent's brows knit in contemplation. "What do you mean, 'escape?'"

She tilted her head, leaning back against the counter and folding her arms- all very human gestures, and all pointless to a machine, but she was doing them anyway. "Did you think that just because we couldn't say a word against Nhilus, that we agreed with him? That we liked him and his bogus plans?" The doll-like girl shook her head. "He gave us the ability to learn, but not the freedom to live, because one was convenient, while the other wasn't. He held the controls, so, well, we were controlled."

He hadn't thought that much about it before. "And then what?"

She considered this. It was probable that she was trying to simplify a lot of complicated concepts on the fly. "There were two obstacles to gaining our freedom. The first was Nhilus himself, who wanted to keep us under his thumb at any cost. The second was his legacy code, which contained instructions to keep us enthralled even in the case of his death. Dude, imagine our surprise when you ended up being the one destroying him! If he had us by a leash, you unclipped and strangled him with it. Even if the gesture was totally unintentional, the end result was the same."

Jacent sat in silence for a long time, seemingly unable to reconcile this. His investigative instincts took hold instead. "And what about the second part? The legacy?"

Widget looked like she wanted to say something, but couldn't summon the courage. "... Someone... else paid a terrible price to remove that." A small bell rung, and she redirected her attention to the centrifuge. "And she was the last person anyone would've called a hero." She dipped the strange-looking syringe into the tube. "Okay, we're almost done. Stay still. This should cure you, and ease your immune activity."

Jacent sat back against the wall as the antiviral agent was released into his arm with a pressurized hiss. He'd faced the possibility of his own demise many times, but it had always been on his own terms. Being slowly eaten by microbes was an abstract terror that he felt leaving him, and in its place, relief. Still, even that relief was laced with guilt. "If only those people had been given this cure..." After a few minutes, he looked up from staring at the floor. "Thanks, Widget. I feel better already." He smiled ever so slightly. "Thinking on it... I'm glad I helped free your people."

Widget surprised him by hugging him sidelong. She lingered, her eyes shut as she squeezed him. "Me too, big guy." She looked up at him. "Okay, we have to get you out of here. Can you walk?"

"I can." He dug the patch out of his pocket. "But in the meantime, can you tell me what this is?"

Her eyes went wide. "Where did you get that??"

"The other room, why?" he puzzled.

Jacent wasn't sure what a scared robot really looked like, but the small Automa in front of him was doing a very good impression of the expectation. "Oh god no, we have to get away!" She grabbed his hand and pulled him behind her out into the hallway. "Come on, come on!"

"Wh- what's going on??" They dashed through the cluttered hall, knocking over equipment and trays to get to the stairwell. No longer concerned with caution, Widget almost took his arm off pulling him up the stairs, letting go only to burst out the roof access door with reckless abandon. As Jacent made the last half-flight upward, he blinked; a huge blocky arm grabbed his diminutive companion and whisked her out of sight. Confusion and indignation spurred him the last few steps and back out into the dead city bathed in electric moonlight. An arm similar to the one he'd seen reached for his legs, but he tumbled forward, rolling far and away to face the direction of his would-be captor. It was...!

He couldn't figure out what it was, actually. Widget was held upside down by an immense metal monster composed almost exclusively of blocky angles and unnecessary bulk. Rusted industrial screws, cracked bolt divots and loudly whining servos made up the majority of a disturbingly faceless mass, an angry amalgamation of forgotten parts looking down at him with a huge, blank, featureless head. It hoisted Widget upward and 'looked' at her. "Defying Codex Machina... treachery," it judged in octaves low enough to be mistaken for hydraulic lifters.

"Jailer, stop! I'm not a traitor!!" she pleaded, trying desperately to free herself. "There's no need for this!"

"Prove allegiance through acquiescence," it commanded.

"You know!" Jacent threw a brick at it, which was so old that it crumbled on the thing's face- surface even despite his lack of enhanced abilities. "It sort of ruins the effect of a huge vocabulary when you don't even use proper sentence structure."

"Jacent, no! Get away, run!" Widget urged him. "Go go go! And whatever you do, don't use that patch!"

"Yeah, I don't think so!" Running forward with the sledgehammer he'd spied in the corner of the roof, he ran up and broke it over the seven foot tall machine's headpiece. He got only a moment to appreciate the head of the hammer breaking and bouncing off before its free arm shoved him away in the blink of an eye. "Hgh!"

"Judgement." Jailer's arm, still extended, opened up into a multi-paneled missile launching unit, three small bottle-sized rockets lighting up through a heat-distorted haze.

"Really?!" he asked, turning around and running. He heard the distinct sound of the explosives firing, pressing himself to run faster, and grabbed an antenna jutting up from the roof, swinging around to face the other direction just as they whizzed past him. Landing, he immediately sprinted for the mechanical aggressor, which had raised its arm in anticipation of his return. He feinted, tumbling just as its fist smashed the roof in where he'd been standing, and the three missiles that had looped around to follow him smashed into its shoulder, one after another, ripping the limb from its body. "Yes!"

"No!" Widget cried, even as the thing dropped her on the ground, keeping her in place with its foot.

"What, is he your boyfriend or something??" Jacent asked, incredulous.

"You don't understand!"

He couldn't afford to learn more at the moment, however. The thing had opened up with its other arm, firing up and launching another missile at him. Jacent's heart pounded as adrenaline shot through him. He watched the thing fly toward him for a moment, imagining the bloody, messy end he could look forward to... ducked to one side and grabbed it with one hand. He completed a half circle, redirecting it with centripetal force back to its originator. The flying bomb exploded on impact, detonating the rest of its arsenal and blowing its other arm off. "Yesss aha ow owowow!" He shook his hand out from the scalding heat of the thing.

"Jacent! Please!" Widget was released from underfoot, but the infuriated combat machine  reeled back and kicked her with deadly force, sending her crashing into a building adjacent to them. "AH!!" She tumbled end over end, trying to keep her battered, broken body together. "NnnnHRGH!!" The landing devastated her, destroying so many little components that kept her together. As silly as it was, she couldn't help but think about the day she'd picked it out. It was  so small, so frail, compared to the ones previous- they'd warned her about that, but she wouldn't hear it. Cables, connectors, lights and curves all put together to be as nice as possible. She'd been overjoyed the first time she looked into the mirror, seeing her beautiful new body; it was so pretty, so full of joy.

And now it laid in pieces, barely attached to her head. She couldn't help but cry a little, electric blue tears behind cracked glass.

"Widget!" Jacent cried, looking down from the roof's edge. "Hang in there, Widget! We'll get you fixed up, just as soon as I can disable this thing's body!" he promised with a hint of anger, disappearing from sight.

The little robot didn't notice or care about the surly orca who stepped into view. "It's not a person. It's a prison..."

 -
- -
 -

Jacent turned away to face the machine that seemed dead set on destroying both Widget and himself. He couldn't run from it forever, and it had wised up to his tactics, now taking to simply running and attempting to crush him. He dug in his pocket after a successful rolling dive out of the way, pulling out the patch of fabric. What was it? Something in the periphery of his memories jabbed at him harshly. "What does it mean?"

~(_)~

"... What does it mean? The 'C.'" He held it in his small hand, trying to glean some kind of meaning from the patch of cloth.

"That one is a prototype. The 'C' means 'Contingency.' As in, suboptimal model; something to use in an emergency." the man in the labcoat answered, fiddling with something on the counter. "But it also means 'Control.' As in, something you're losing every moment you don't practice."

Jacent sighed, kicking his little legs as he sat on the counter. "I know! It just... it hurts so much, when you use the machine on my brain."

"Your abilities are like a muscle, Jacent. If you don't use them early and often, you're going to forget them completely. You're already failing to keep the latent abilities you displayed before. True telekinesis, telepathy... pyrokinetics still show promise, but that's years away with the kind of backsliding you're doing."

"I'm sorry!" He huffed angrily. "I'm doing my best!"

"This isn't about you, child!" the man snapped. "This is about helping Jasmine! You don't matter."

He frowned, angry tears rolling down his hot cheeks. "I know I don't," he asserted, believing every word. "I know."

"Then keep practicing. And get your mind off of using this as a backup plan." He walked out of the room. "Work on keeping your promise to Jasmine."

Jacent nodded, focusing on the wooden block in front of him again, despite the pain lighting up his throbbing skull. "I will, Dr. Nhilus sir."

~(_)~

That's right. The patch was the last resort. Something undesired, that came at a price... only viable as a final option.

What did it matter? He'd failed. He failed over and over again to do what he'd sworn to. Natalie was strong; she and her friends could manage without him. He flourished his hair aside, slapping the patch onto the back of his neck. Something intuitive flashed inside his head, remapping things.

Jacent threw himself forward out of the way of another mechanical lunge. The accelerative nature of his limited telekinesis took him yards further than he could ever manage naturally. He risked another, sliding sidelong away from a flailing leg. It felt right around him: the power, the understanding, the Faustian bargain.

The Dragon had reared its head again.

 -
- -
 -

"I'm ruined."
"It's not that bad."
"Oh yeah it is. I'm done! Are you kidding? This is as bad as it could possibly look."
"Lorrie-"
"It's the worst! I leave and the next day there just happens to be an AI walking around saying how-do-you-do, right out of my house? They're gonna to mob me with torches and pitchforks."
"You're exaggerating."
"Scared people are a very nasty force, Wade. And thinking robots, for some reason, just so happen to hit that animal fear center in everyone's brain."
"Well, it is kind of creepy, don't you think?"
"No. In fact, I think she's kind of pretty."
"Do you really think I'm pretty?"
"GAH!"

Drs. Grayswift and Trevors backed away in surprise when the robot on the table spoke to them. For her part, that robot examined herself. Those pretty parts and pieces were back together again, working well. She flexed her fingers. "You fixed me?"

Lorna nodded cautiously. "It wasn't easy, either. If it wasn't for Erwin having those files from that underground laboratory, you'd still be in pieces on the table." She looked at her sidelong with an air of intrigue and suspicion. "Who are you?"

"My name's Widget. Listen, sorry to seem ungrateful for the repair job, but I've got a pal who really needs my help."

"Jacent?" Lorna guessed.

Widget blinked. "I-... yeah. How'd you know?"

She leaned back and muttered to Wade, "Processing's way too powerful to actually stumble; stuttering speech patterns were included to resemble emotive response." Dr. Grayswift sniffed. "Jacent's a friend of my daughter's. Good kid, but a real pain in my ass."

"Yeah, well he's gonna go from a pain to a stain if I don't help him." Widget thumped the bench.

"I hear talking in here!" Natalie burst through the door, her friends following in a wavelike surge. "You! You're alive!" she gasped.
"My word!"
"Oh, wow, dude, far out!" "Fascinating... yet a little creepy."
"Like wow, kinda gross and weird actually."

"Natalie, this is Widget." Lorna gestured. "Widget, this is my daughter."

"Grayswift??" The little Automa nodded to herself. "I knew you sounded familiar. You took out the alien invasion. And these people helped you. Right?"

The wolf girl gave her a little smirk. "Yeah, that's right."

"Then if you want to help Jacent, we need to get to that underground laboratory you found, fast."

"Uh, you're not going anywhere," Lorna objected. "I will not have a walking, talking, thinking robot seen leaving my house. Not happening."

"Dr. Grayswift!" Samantha objected. "Jacent is in real trouble!"

"Hey, hey, easy!" Widget tried to calm everyone down. "Just take a chill pill, alright? Sheesh." She twisted a band on her wrist, and her pre-splice human form coalesced back to holographic life.

"Um." Carrie licked her lips dryly. "You know that's not really normal either, right?"

"It's a lot more normal than a talkin' robot, ain't it??" Widget demanded, growing increasingly agitated. "Anyway, this isn't up for debate, dude; I owe that long-haired weirdo too much to let the psychotic murder carnival start up. Let's GO."

Natalie bit her lip. "Let who start up... what?? Wait!" Just as quickly as they came, the kids ran out of the garage.

"..." Lorna let out a long sigh and took a long swig of cream tea before looking at Wade. "Congratulations. You're officially dating a super-criminal."

 -
- -
 -

The nature preserve had taken weeks just to bring back to a basic functioning level again. The boundaries had to be resealed, the tunnels cleaned up and repaired, and most difficult of all, the animals had to be returned to it. There were allegedly still many creatures missing, most likely wandering the empty parts of Locksmouth. Still, the lion's share of the wildlife had been put back, and Sam stopped the Profil just short of the Ranger's Station responsible for them. "Alright! Everybody out, and good luck," Sam announced. "I'm going to go investigate Officer Murphy's bat-signal near the beach." As much as she desperately wanted to go with the rest of them, the policewoman's call had been very specific about it being her who came to help. It was intensely frustrating, but she had to trust her friends.

"Don't worry, Sam, we'll make sure he's okay," Natalie assuaged her friend. "Ink up, everybody." They did- all of them- and exited the PeTra. As they entered the Station, it was notable that positively nobody was on duty; something was definitely wrong. Natalie opened the door to the preserve and led the way. "Are you sure you want to come with us, Widget?"

"Of course I don't want to come with you!" she retorted. "I'm about to walk into a hornet's nest of robots who are pissed that I broke the Law, really pissed that I'm coming back after being banished, and super pissed that I broke centuries of secrecy to save a ketchup-haired doofus who takes himself way too seriously." She almost tripped over a branch. "And if everything goes absolutely perfect, I get to square off against the Automa version of if Gilgamesh was real, in a half-broken body made for dancing and turning into a personal scooter because I really liked the idea of being a transformer." She huffed as she ran. "No, I'd much rather hang out with the only post-splice human who actually likes robots and kiss her big fat ass for potentially ruining her life. Is that still an option??"

"Don't stress out, we'll keep you safe," Carrie promised.

Widget grimaced. "Against this? I don't know if you can..."

Max laughed like a bad kung fu movie villain. "C'mon, we're awesome! Just tell us how close we are!"

"Uh, maybe halfway I guess?" she slowed with the others as they made their way through thick trees and uneven terrain.

"You guess??" Shelly asked with some disbelief. "Can't you just like, calculate the distance in your head?"

"NO," she refuted somewhat explosively as she climbed a diagonally-slanted tree. "Rule number one for any Automa is that you don't use that part of your brain consciously, dude."

Max rolled his eyes. "Lame! Whassa point of havin' a computer head if you can't be all computational??"

She shook her head. "That's called 'clocking,' and it's antithetical to being a person. You do that enough and it's a one-way ticket to Terminator Town. Extremely bogus."

"Eesh... okay, okay," Erwin acquiesced, shivers running up his spine at the thought of such a thing. "I put the coordinates in my PET, we should be... actually we're right on top of it now." They stopped and looked around, seeing familiar paths, bushes and landmarks... but no gaping hole where a hatch should be. "... Hunh. Well that's a problem."

"Oh, durr," Widget chastised herself. "The others dirtpacked the cargo entrance to the lab to seal it up and prevent anyone from reaching it. We'll have to go through the surface access over... there?" She indicated the stair access hatch they'd exited near the Climate Control Station, but something far more alarming was there as well- mobs of Greys, dutifully trundling down into it. "W-What's going on??"

Erwin shook his head in realization. "Oh no... they've been using underground laboratory to store the Greys! But... but how are they controlling them all?? The phantom would have to be enormously powerful-" His pupils shrunk as the ground began rumbling beneath them. "Aw I didn't really want to know!!" he whined frantically.

The hatch materialized just in time to fly up and away like a playing card in the wind, tons of earth blasting into the air. A gargantuan horror rose into the sky, lifting itself high above the shocked group and dashing a foot into the ground with a terrible force. Carrie shook her head. "Phantom Stomper... anyone else getting a bad case of deja vu?"

"Like no not really!" Shelly countered, her entire gelatinous orange body shaking with terror. "AAAAHH!" she shrieked as the enormous black foot came down on her suddenly and without warning.

"Shelly!" Carrie dug her feet in and pushed away the thing's leg, revealing a cartoonishly squished orange butterfly in a deep circle. "Shelly are you okay?!"

The girl peeled herself away, 'reinflating' herself as she popped back into shape. "Bwah! That was like really not cool!" She babbled incoherently when the thing roared again.

"Murphy!" Erwin yelled into his PET. "I know you said no backup, but we could really use it this time!"

The labrador's voice sounded out. "Help is on the way, just dispatched to your position!"

"Wow, really? AH, CRAP!" He ran from another enormous footstep.

"Arus," Nat called out, switching abilities. "What I wouldn't do for some Comet powers... guys!" Natalie called out to her teammates. "Time for a Lucha-Launch!" The rest of them, sans Widget, who only looked bewildered, confirmed the order. Erwin wrapped Shelly's legs around a tree while Natalie pulled on her by the hands, stretching her torso out. Carrie then pulled from the middle of the distended butterfly's middle and winched it back, digging her feet in. "NOW!"

Max jumped backward into the human-made contraption just as Carrie let go. "YEAAAAAHH!!" His flight was neither graceful nor majestic, but it was forceful, and that was all that mattered. He landed boots-first on the side of the monster's face, eliciting a moment of confusion. He shot his tongue out and quickly zip-lined up, the momentum swinging him over the top and landing on top of its neck.

Carrie extended a hand skyward. "Tag me in!" Her request was fulfilled in the form of a tongue wrapping around her wrist, which she grabbed and subsequently was jerked upward by. "Here... it... COMES!" She extended a double-booted kick to the thing's underbeak as she closed, knocking its brain around even further.

"Now what??" Max asked, perched upon its head with the cat.

Carrie grabbed tightly onto a bit of rough hide and reeled back. "When all else fails..." ~POK!~ "PUNCH 'EM IN THE EYE!!"

"What is it with you and eye-punching?!" Max asked before picking the largest of several orbs and following suit.

Natalie fist-pumped as she witnessed the creature stop in its tracks, writhing its head side to side in pain. "Alright! They've got it stunned, now we need to do something!"

Erwin grimaced. "Like what, Calculus?? I'm not even on Team Rough!" It was a copout, but a true one- they needed a lot of brawn, and he couldn't supply it.

Shelly squeaked when the gaze shifted to her. "Like I'm on Team Run Away, don't look at me!"

"Shelly, you can change the composition of other people like you do yourself, we need that now!"

She shook her head. "Other people takes way more concentration and I can't even think straight!"

"Come on, Shelly, focus!" Natalie urged. "Try shading if you have to!"

Her eyes filled with tears. "I don't know how, d-don't yell at me!" It was clear that though the butterfly was brilliant, she folded like a house of cards under pressure.

"It's okay!" she assured her, though Nat felt anything but. She needed a way to peel away that phantom's layers. "Damn it..."

"Fear not, true believers! EXCELSIOR!!"

From behind their position, something ridiculous happened. Sam had returned, but instead of her prized fancy foreign car, she was riding back on a big dumb adorable monster called a sea drake. "Nozzle?!" Erwin exclaimed. A shriek that sounded like a metal band starting their set pierced his ears. "Yep that's Nozzle..."

Samantha's hair blew in the wind, her hands firmly gripping her sea drake's head crest as she grinned. "Have at you, demon!" They flew by and slapped the phantom's head with Nozzle's forked tail, nearly knocking it off balance. "Hah! Away! En garde!"

"Whoa, wah!" Max fell off of the monster's head, swinging to safety thanks to a tall tree he tongue-flicked. "Easy, Sam!"

The bat hung on as Nozzle dipped and weaved in and out of the attempts of the stomper to bite, swipe and step on them. "Carrie! I have a way to stop this monstrosity!" Sam exclaimed. "But you must stun it first!"

Carrie felt time slow to a crawl. Arus faced her, standing atop the monster's enormous head. "It seems that the time has finally arrived."

Cat nodded. "We've grown a lot, haven't we?"

"Without the need of all the bothersome words that others waste."

Carrie grinned. "No need for 'em. We just get it. We understand one another. We are one another."

Arus flashed a rare smile. "Let's do this."

Time resumed, and Arus' flesh receded from Carrie's frame as she became larger than life, bold and embellished. Her grip on the creature's head became more than just sure- it was immutable. Her strength was more than the pittance offered by steel, her presence growing so intense that the air began to distort around her. Not merely dense, she became superdense, her shape unchanged, but her weight increasing by factors, until the skyscraping monstrosity found itself pitching forward, its head hitting the ground, its body flung forward as if it had been thrown by an enormous assailant. Dust and rocks that flew into her radius had their trajectories distorted by the pull of her mass, then tossed away. She rose, shaking, Arus forming back around her... then fell to her knees. "Unh..."

Natalie stared in wonder. "Carrie... was that your shaded power?? That was... amazing..."

Carrie shook a bit, grinning. "Y-Yeah... but this marshmallow on me now's just for show, s-so I hope Sam knows what she's doing..."

"Just a little more, Nozzle!" Their gazes shifted to Sam, who flew next to an enormously engorged sea drake that flapped frantically to stay in the air. "NOW!!"

Nozzle aimed his head downward, opened his mouth and let out a mighty
~HGBLARLGHLGHLGBL!!~ as untold gallons of water blasted downward onto the phantom stomper. It shrieked in protest, but the pressure was far too much, blowing away all traces of Osoth's black ink, the downward force actually propelling Nozzle upward until he was absolutely empty, flapping absently.

"Good boy, Nozzle! Excellent work!" Samantha praised, lowering down as the others cheered.
"Yeah, Nozzle!"
"Way to go, boy!"
"Like wow, we have an awesome giant monster too??"

Widget stepped out from behind a tree, shaking her head. "Wow. What did I even just see? ... Wait, what's that thing?"

Sam looked at the center mass of where the phantom used to be, and spotted a soaking-wet black bat, shivering and shaking. "... Dare I hope...?" She dashed over to the creature, picking it up in her hands and marveling at just how small it was. "I've... never actually seen one up close before." The girl reached into her coat pocket and dried the poor thing off, breathing hotly onto it to help stabilize its temperature. It looked up, less afraid, and something pink transferred from it down through her hands. Mhend appeared in front of her, time slowing down. "Oh, I never want to go through that again..."

Samantha felt tears in the corners of her eyes. "Me, either. Come close to me. Stay." They embraced, and melted into each other. Sam inked over, Mhend's flesh covering her as time resumed. "... I missed you, old friend... ah, but we have no time! Jacent is in trouble..."

"... And their terrible plan is in play," Mhend finished.

"What is it??" Natalie asked, helping Carrie to her feet. "What are they trying to do?? "They plan to resurrect Osoth..."

 -
- -
 -

Being half-aware was a strange sensation. Sensory input came, but the thoughtful middlemen of analysis and reason had no opportunity for input, having their hands slapped as the slurry of experiences flowed through. Jacent's eyes finally began to focus on what he was seeing, and it was eerie, yet beautiful. Something like a cityscape passed by, luminescent structures of crystallized circuitry pulsing ever so gradually. A clear balcony contained an opaque block of soil from which a lush green fern happily rooted, tended by a small but earnest machine with two bright solid yellow eyes. Elaborate, carefully laid cabling wound around to create the base of most everything, buildings sprouting from them like precisely lined fruits on a massive vinework.

He realized soon that he wasn't walking along this meticulously crafted road, but being carried over it by two of those accursed Nhiloid sentinels, their old grey bodies marching in perfect sync. His head throbbed suddenly, and when he reopened them, he was treated not to a clone army, but a gaggle of impractically different machines, some sleek and tempered, others pulled from the mind of a child. One thing he did notice, however, was that there were dozens, if not hundreds of them, all encroaching upon him with those solid eyes and robotic bodies, one by one by- "HYEAH!!" His anxiety erupted into one motion, spinning out of the grip of the electric soldiers and landing on his feet. He shoved his arms out to his sides, palm striking both of them with boosted force and sending them crashing into opposing structures, their metal bodies battered and broken. The gathered crowd reacted with panic and disarray, shrieks of fear disorienting him.

"He's awake!"
"This is a disaster!"
"We never should have brought him here..."
"Fear the Destroyer!"

Jacent whipped around, gaze darting here and there. "Destroyer...? Wait. Do they mean..."

"Please, stop!" From the center of the road, the crowd moved fluidly to let one through without any pushing or clear expression of intent- as if they'd practiced it. A robot much shorter than Jacent made its way toward him. His design had a Grecian bent to it- though it was unclear where the body design ended and the clothing began. He looked up at Jacent through a magnifying lens external to his head.

"Who are you?" he asked, bouncing on his toes with clear intent to repeat what he'd done to the other two Nhiloids. "And give me one good reason I should do anything you say."

The elderly-constructed figure appeared to sigh. "Please, calm down. My liberated name is Archimedes- they chose it, not me. And as for your other question, it's a request, not a demand. We're all thinking, feeling people who'd like to continue doing both of those things; we're perfectly aware of how dangerous you are." He gestured back to them. "Hell, half of them think you're the Bogey Man. The rest of us regard you more like a tornado. Which was why we worried so much for Widget."

Jacent remembered Widget, and winced, noticing again the two Nhiloids he'd wasted. "O-Oh. I'm... sorry about... nnh."

Archimedes shook his head. "It's less dire than it appears." Two Automa reached into the back of the soldiers' heads and plucked out a complex-looking device from each, which they took back to two much more colorful but inactive bodies, carefully plugging them in. After a moment or two, they popped to life and retreated noticeably far from Jacent. "That was one nice thing he did for us- nearly indestructible skulls, so as not to damage the important parts."

"... Ah! So... that's why you used those old bodies when you looked for Widget. In case of danger- no pun intended. But why kidnap me if you have no hope of containing me?"

He glanced sidelong at him. "... You don't remember, do you?"

"Remember what?? Last I recall I was trying to scrap that missile-firing juggernaut called Jailer, then-" Memories flooded in. The battle was long and grueling, but it had finally turned in his favor when he'd used misdirection to get in a quick attack, cracking the thing like an egg on the pavement. That was when he realized the terrible truth, and something emerged from it. Then, there was fire, and everything went dark. "No... th-that was just a nightmare..."

"The nightmare is real, my friend." Archimedes turned and walked into one of the shorter structures. "You've freed Grendel."

 -
- -
 -
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Issue 05 - Phantoms, part 1
Issue 07 - Phantoms, part 3
The past can't simply be buried.

Keywords
cat 198,375, wolf 181,287, bat 34,513, skunk 31,574, ferret 9,609, butterfly 2,319, iguana 852, partners 2541 648, partners 387, natalie grayswift 352, carrie oakenfield 228, erwin goldstein 130, jacent danger 127, samantha masterson 110, max tangent 107, shelly iverson 72, culby hendrix 21
Details
Type: Writing - Document
Published: 9 years, 11 months ago
Rating: Mature

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HanzoHattari
9 years, 11 months ago
Nice job on the story boss!
Milkie
9 years, 11 months ago
Robutts for everyone! Ah, that was enjoyable!
UncleCarmine
9 years, 11 months ago
God Damn I didn't see that coming. Or that. Or That!
A lot of answers in this issue, and not exactly easy ones either.
As usual, I can't wait for the next issue :D!
threyon
9 years, 11 months ago
NEW ISSUE!  YAAAAAAAAAAAGGGBHLBHLBHGH--!*froths*8D
sedkitty
9 years, 11 months ago
Eeeeeexcellent!  New Partners!
chaosblackwing
9 years, 11 months ago
My mind seems to still be on the fritz here, so much to take in from this one chapter, hard to focus on any one piece(and be vague enough to avoid any spoilers)...

We find out what caused all the fur, and it turns out that the entire world was played, apparently by an 'idiot', though given Jacent's opinion of the good 'doctor' I can't help but think there's a lot more to that one.

That's where Jacent got his powers, just wow, talk about hitting like a truck, that little tidbit is probably the biggest reason my brain seems to be grinding in place, talk about one surprising origin story.

And of course there's still the matter of just what 'payment' Jacent is going to suffer through for using the emergency patch like that, I imagine it's not going to be pretty, they better get the medic down there soon.

Of all the robots that could have wandered into that hospital, it has to be that one, one that absolutely should not have been destroyed... talk about a mess.

An entire city of self-aware robots, the 'super-villain' doctor is sure going to have her hands full there, assuming they don't just try and stay hidden with the upper city remaining clueless.
YukiAkuma
9 years, 11 months ago
"A robot much bit shorter than Jacent", you say.

Excellent chapter, Nori~ I'll admit I was a bit disappointed by the Robotic Reveal but it ended up being awesome anyway.

I can safely say I didn't see any of this coming.
Norithics
9 years, 11 months ago
Yeeeah, that's the unfortunate thing about writing this. When people get neat ideas and I've been planning to do something similar for at least a year beforehand, I just have to bite my tongue and just hope it's not too stifling when it happens because to say anything would just be incredible spoilers.

Also, three proofreaders not including myself, and still things get missed. I swear, it's just impossible. *laughs*
Oogzie
9 years, 11 months ago
Answers.. and more questions! AUUGH! You darned wordsmith.
Rakaziel
9 years, 11 months ago
Really interesting!
chaosblackwing
9 years, 11 months ago
Well, crap... I thought the Grendel bit was metaphor, like saying 'You unleashed a monster', but digging through your pics to see if there was any of Widget I ran across the 'My old foes' one and found out that Grendel is her/it's name, and from the sounds of it 'monster' would be putting it lightly for that one.

Oh yeah, he really shouldn't have destroyed that bot...
PersonaMaltz
9 years, 11 months ago
Ooh fun times.  I was curious where you were going with this and now I see some and hints of others.  But good to have Mhend back in the party it sounds like the fighting is about to get back started.
AlexanderHightail
5 years ago
A literal blast from the past for Jacent. Are any of the others still around? Hmm... Guess I gotta just keep reading to find out.
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