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 Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 11:51 am
Gavin frowned as he listened to Eleri, anger starting to build up, like fire in his veins. But he'd lived a long time to not have learned how to keep his cool. So he kept silent for the time being, trying to keep his mind on their goal. "Let's just keep moving and worry about getting out of here alive, shall we? No sense building tension between us like that. We have to work together."
Aleya and Kilu were lagging behind, Kilu walking backwards to keep an eye out for any sneak attacks. Aleya was worried. Well, at this point, who wouldn't be? But she was especially worried about how they were going to get off this floor. "What do we do now? How do we even open a door if we find it? Most of them have locks on them, as I recall..."
*****
Meanwhile, at the base of the tower, the mysterious entity approached the megadroid, undetected by the repair droids or any other Bion forces for that matter. He was totally invisible to any sort of vision at the moment.
The megadroid was like a tower within a tower. Megadroids were only used either as a sure-fire way of capturing escaped prisoners, or as a form of extremely affective defense against attacking resistance forces. They popped unexpectedly out of the floor and were just as tall, and almost as wide around as the towers themselves, covered in thousands and thousands of tiny arms, each with a different weapon, be it a blaster, rojectile gun, whips, or just claws or nets. They were a force to be reckoned with, and their only weakness was at their control center at their base, which was only accessible for repairs anyway.
But the entity's curiousity had been peaqued by the disturbance, and he wanted to see what would happen if this particular megadroid went unrepaired. So he moved over by the control pannel, and in an invisible blur of speed and precision, he worked at coutnering every single repair the droids made, to the extreme confusion and frustration of the Bion repairborgs nearby.
He sort of...enjoyed it. When he'd finished setting up a problem that would cause the droid to be destroyed from the inside out within the next half hour, he bent some circuits into a flower-shape, then casually left the scene and watched the droids and Bions frantically trying to figure out what went wrong.
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Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 3:37 pm
((Wanrning, harsh language))
Sevic twitched at Eleri's first comment, that was a low blow. But he could take it, he'd been through a lot worse. He was going fine, till her last one came.
Stopped dead in his tracks, mechanical arm dropping the large gun he was carrying. Luckily it was built well, just sounding a loud thud, but not breaking.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are you saying I'm no better than them?" His blood was boiling now, that had been painful.
"Why don't you try to be strapped to a table for god kows HOW long, tortured, pulled apart!" His voice had steadily increased until he was yelling. "Why don't you have your humanity torn away from you peice by peice and see if you can keep yourself from going just a little bit crazy!" His hands had curled into fists, he was pissed now.
"Call me crazy, fine, I can take that, I know it's true in a small way. Then you go and call me not human?! That's like telling me to you wish I was dead! What the hell did I ever do to you? It wasn't ME who brought you here! It wasn't ME that caused you any pain! It wasn't ME who created this place! And yet, just because I was TORTURED, you think I should be nothing but a mindless DRONE?!" His face was red, body shivering. He could only handle so much.
"I never did a DAMN THING to deserve your comments or hatred! I'd gladly part ways with you right now... But I need you guys right now, and I'm pretty f**king sure you need me right now too! So stop your whining and at least TRY to treat me like a human! That may seem hard, seeing as I was torn apart and had parts of me replaced, but I still have a mind and a heart, damn it!"
He finished it off by raising his arm, pulling it back, and slamming it against the closest wall. It was the same metalic surface, but he managed to leave a small indent. A deep breath, and a sigh, he didn't pull back though. All he could feel like doing right now was dieing. All he wanted was his humanity back, and that was something that would never happen.
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Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 5:33 pm
By the end of it, she was shaking. Actually visibly trembling all over, so obvious even a blind man would have been able to see it. Her face first gone pale, drained completely of color, before flushing with a bright red. None of this was from anger or fury, no; it was out of fear. Fear and embarrassment.
The girl was looking worse than a small child who had just been chastised and beaten to tears by the hands of its parents.
When he had punched the wall, Eleri flinched, ready to attempt to defend herself in case he extracted well-deserved revenge on her. Yet he didn't, much to her surprise.
Eleri opened her mouth to say something, but promptly shut it again. What were you supposed to say to something like this? A simple 'sorry' just wasn't going to cut it, and besides, it wasn't exactly her style to apologize. She opened it again, possibly having thought of something, yet simply closed it again in a few short seconds.
Gaze flicked from person to person in the group, not for any real reason. It seemed she wouldn't be defended, but wouldn't be screamed at more. Though, even Gavin seemed ticked off, despite his calm words. He had already began to lead the group away now; although, Eleri didn't want to move.
Head down, with her hair shadowing her shamed face, she dragged herself along, leaning heavily against the wall. Sevic had certainly managed to shut her up and put her in her place. But...
Freedom didn't matter anymore.
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Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 6:08 pm
Gavin turned around hesitantly to watch Sev have his outburst. He was partly tempted to interject and tell him to cool down, but he knew that it'd most likely just make matters worse and drag him into a conflict as well, which he didn't want. Besides, the girl deserved it after those comments. Once Sevic had his say, he turned back around and continued walking. "Now if everyone's through behaving like children, let's keep moving," he muttered iritably. "And let's hope no guards heard us, not that it matters at this point.
Aleya and Kilu had frozen in mid-stride and took several steps back when the yelling match had started, not wanting to get involved, their eyes widened. Aleya began to wonder if it was safe to stick with the group, but she didn't say anything. Kilu held her hand though, as if reading her mind, and nodded quietly, then they continued on silently after Gavin, glancing back nervously at Sev and Eleri.
*****
The repair drones and Bions appeared satisfied with the repairs once the megadroid -seemed- operational again. Little did they know it was virtually a timebomb waiting to go off.
But regardless, the megadroid hummed back to life and its thousands of little arms started searching the floor. The door to the elevator opened up and a giant snake-like optical arm came through, searching the hallway, approaching the group quickly, but quietly.
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Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 6:17 pm
Sevic took another deep breath and sighed, finally lowering his hand from the wall. That had felt so good, to finally release soem of that, but he felt bad at the same time. He didn't mean to burst like that, but one could only take so much cruelty.
Finally he moved back, looking down the hallway behind them. As he leaned down to retrieve his gun, slinging it back over his shoulder, he thought he saw something. He focused for a minute, then shook his head... Just a shadow... Now he turned back to the group, following slowly, bringing up the rear. As angry as he had felt with Eleri, he wasn't going to leave her to defend their rear... If anything came up, he wanted to be the one taking the brute attack, to save them.
"And so the party continues. The wise ol' man, the cute couple, the crazy man, and the little, now sad, girl." He sighed quietly. It was apparent he was feeling bad about how he made her feel. Again he thought he heard something behind them, but he shook it off, thinking it only his imagination.
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Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 6:51 pm
Feeling miserable, Eleri managed to zone out into the personal world of hers she used to visit back in the cell when Sevic was being worked on. Nearly everything in reality became nothing, her subliminal thoughts concentrating on stepping and following.
Even she could agree that she deserved the severe chastising. At least, she thought she did. Did she? Maybe she didn't. Many of the friends she used to have would think she didn't. Hell, they might have congradulated her on insulting him.
So who was right?
Eleri couldn't tell.
Yes, she was still a little girl. Only nineteen years old, and had spent a good long while now chained to a wall.
"Lee, they aren't anything."
Eleri was calling up memories now, trying to find how she should plead. Things people had told her came rushing back, supporting either side of her inner arguement.
"Any thing with a single piece of that cursed metal on it isn't human. At all. Got it, Lee?"
"Give everything a chance, Ellie. Every living thing deserves a chance, no matter what it might look or act like."
Guilty or innocent, Eleri still couldn't define herself. It would take a lot of thought, which meant more time in her own dream world.
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Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 7:16 pm
Kilu slowed down slightly, and Aleya looked at him worriedly. "What's wrong?" she asked in a whisper.
"Ever get that feeling you were being... watched? Followed? I got it, right now..."
Gavin kept checking random doors, touching them carefully and jumping at a few that sizzled with a forcefield-lock. So far all of them were indeed quite locked. And thus far, there were no visible vents in the hallway that were big enough to be of any use for escape.
The camera-arm continued down the hall, then saw them. It got closer and closer, zooming in on them, watching them, floating in the air silently behind them. But then something started to go wrong.
It twitched. Its shutters started to spasm open and shut, then hid faultered in its hovering distance to the ground, wiggling slightly. Then sparks flew out of the corner of the camera-eye, causing a faint, brief sizzling sound.
Gavin didn't hear it, but Aleya and Kilu did. They tensed up, and looked around quickly, afraid of what had snuck up on them. But they were a bit perplexed to see the camera-arm having... what looked like a mechanical conniption. Electricity and plasmed burst from cracks in its surface and danced along its metallic surface all the way back to the source.
"What the hell...??"
Gavin turned around and gasped, hurriedly pulling out his blaster again, aiming it at the camera's eye. But then the arm fell to the floor, twitching and jerking like a dying snake. It finally laid still and silent on the ground.
And then, through the thick metallic wall, a horrendous grinding, gnashing sound shook the tower, comming from inside the shaftway where the elevator was. The wall began to crack and a small metallic claw broke through the wall, tearing wildly in random directions.
Kilu and Gavin both fired at it, while Aleya pointed her gun back and forth between several opening cracks in the wall. "What the hell?! They'd destroy their own tower just to capture a couple escapees?!"
"I have a strange feeling this isn't part of any Bion plan... it just doesn't make sense! Something's gone wrong, maybe it has to do with that little droidling?" Gavin wondered between shots, hoping it was true.
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Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 6:14 pm
Sevic was just about to say something when he saw the 'couple' turn around. His head tilted slightly, then he turned himself around.
"Ho's**t!" He stumbled back a bit, beginning to pull the rail gun down. But that's when the thing started to... Malfunction? He stopped moving and just watched it, confused. "What the hell...? Guys, people... I think we should move, fast, and in the opposite direction of this monstrocity." He began to take slow steps backwards, watching, making sure it wasn't getting to close.
Then something went wrong, the triangles of his eyes shifted colors, green. He yelped, free hand quickly moving to color his eyes, to bright, way to bright. That view mode shouldn't be used in lighted areas. "I can't see. Damn it, I can't see!" He was stumbling backwards blindly, occasionally opening his fingers to check, only to quickly cover his eyes again. In a lighted room, night vision was like looking into a solar flare, blinding and painful.
Finally he lowered his hand, eyes closed, hand out behind him to feel where he was going. Until he could figure out how to change his vision back, or it changed back, he was no better than a blind man with a big gun.
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Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 8:30 pm
Oh, that was different. It seemed that, this time around, Eleri could actually hear herself snapping out of her own thoughts.
'How odd,' she wondered to herself before glancing around, realization dawning.
So it was just the wall that made the noise. Better than her head, except... the wall wasn't supposed to be cracking.
"Oh damn."
Eleri had her gun ready to fire, yet -much like Aleya- she didn't know which arm to shoot at. Sevic's yelling certainly wasn't helping, either.
"I vote on running! There's too many breaking through, malfunction or not!"
Glancing at Sevic, an idea crossed Eleri's mind. Perhaps there was a way to redeem herself for her past actions? With a small sigh, she inched over to him, and -with much hesitation- grabbed his 'human' wrist.
Shaking slightly, Eleri then waited for the group to decide whether they would stay or go. Either or, her blaster was at the ready.
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Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 8:50 pm
Suddenly the entire wall ripped away all along the hallway, being torn and shredded to bits by the megardoids frantically clawing arms, blasters and flame-spitting devices ripping it to small and smaller pieces until there were nothing but ashes left. A few claws reached out towards the group, which Gavin lashed out at with his whip.
Aleya immediately opened fire on the droid, spraying her blaster in random directions to keep the arms back. There was now no escape, as the arms began to close in on the group. Kilu kept firing as well, but it all seemed to overwhelming.
Droids and Bions were trying to gain access from the above floors in the shaft, but they, too, were being shredded to bits whenever one got too close to the wildly malfunctioning arms. Some even began to fire on the monstrous thing, but it was no use.
Suddenly a few small explosions erupted out through the surface of the megadroid's armor, some of them throwing various arms and weapons flying off like shrapnel. The remaining arms' movements slowed and became more jerky, but did not stop entirely.
When a smaller droid started to approach, an enormous mechanical arm popped up out of one of the exploded holes in the megadroids top, then yanked the smaller, floating droid out of the air, pulled it inside. There was a sudden burst of flames and electrical energy from within.
The megadroid had gone mad... and it was canabalistic.
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Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 8:56 pm
Sevic turnd his head slightly when he felt somebody take his wrist, a releived smile crossing him. "Thank you." He spoke simply, quickly. Then the wall was torn away, he jumped, but didn't open his eyes, they hadn't gone back yet.
"I say we get the hell out of this place!" If it wasn't for the fact he was near-blind, he would have gladly lead everyone away. Instead he just turned to 'look' at Eleri. "We need to move... If that thing gets to close, don't worry about me, just get the hell out of it's way, okay?"
No easy weapon, useless at the moment, and half-modded... He was as good as dead anyways; He was lucky to have Eleri helping him.
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Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 9:30 pm
The wall was torn away soon enough, and with it came the torrent of the little arms. One hand still latched onto Sevic's wrist, Eleri positioned herself half in front of the half-mod, it allowing her to have a clear shot of the spazzing arms. At least when they were slower, they were easier to aim at.
"We can't move," Eleri explained in a surprisingly calm tone to the temporarily blinded one. "The arms have us surrounded and--"
The display of mechanical cannibalism stopped Eleri in mid-sentence. That was just.. not right.
"Some wire has definately been twisted!"
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Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 9:54 pm
The megadroid's plated armor suddenly began to glow in some spots as the arms' movements became jerkier and slower, until most of them had stopped moving alltogether. Multiple explosions shook the floor as it started to erupt at lower floors. The entire tower started to shake, and the droids frantically flew back up the shaft to secure the upper floors.
The megadroid made several extremely loud, grinding, severely distraught audible signals, its massive vocoder using the last of its power to try and communicate its madness to the world around it. If only it'd been able to tell... well, anyone. For a fleeting moment the megadroid had experienced free thought, sentience, a desire for happyness, despite the fact it'd never been any bit human.
But then, it all ended. In the blink of an eye, a life was born and died without anyone knowing it'd happened. In its dying throes one arm returned to life just long enough to cut a hole in the wall between Aleya, and Eleri and Sevic.
Not wasting a moment's time, Gavin and Kilu hurried everyone in through the gap. Aleya could have sworn she'd heard it try to say something, but the horrendous noise that followed was all that occuppied her mind for a while afterward.
The entire tower shook as a deafening and blinding explosion erupted through the entire shaft. Flying metal and... parts... from Bion guards and droids flew threw the air quick enough to cut other, thinner sheets of metal. Some even melted in the core of the blast and evaporated before it could escape the massive explosion.
The entire shaft was filled with a solid stream of blinding light and intense heat. The lights in the hallway and the room the escapees were now in dimmed and flickered, and the air vents stuttered. It was another storage room, and boxes full of medical insturments and repair supplies fell from their shelves.
Holes appeared in both the floor and ceiling as the entire shower's strength was tested by the massive explosion. Multiple booms and bursts blanked all other noise, though. Any metal untouched by the direct explosions sizzled after a few moments with strange energies.
Finally, when it all supsided, the smell of burnt metal and other substances filled the air, as well as a grey mist. In the remnants of the shaft, some of the metal glowed bright blue, and there were tiny beads of a strange pale-green substance glowing, scattered accross the wreckage.
Though it wasn't noticeable from the escapees' current position, amidst the wreckage, several of the beads had formed the shape of a flower...
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Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2006 1:04 pm
Sevic was about to say something, then a wall was torn in the wall behind him, he could feel it, the sheer strength, the mechanical energies. As he watched the others move through, he made his way there, either with Eleri's help, or pulling her with him. After Gavin had helped him he stepped through, moving over to the side to makeroom.
It was around that time that he could feel his eyes shift, so he opened them. A sigh of releif escaped him, they were back to normal. "Thank you, for the help..." He was speaking to Eleri in a truely humbled tone.
After looking around the room he moved forward to the boxes, ripping a few open before he grinned. "Gotcha..." And he pulled up an adhesive bandage. After fumbling with it for a moment, not having the greatest of visions, he managed to unwrap it. A second later it was stuck to the spot over his cut shoulder, hiding the wound, and stopping the bleeding.
"So... What now?" His voice was quietter, he didn't feel right trying to take a lead-role after what happened.
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Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:55 pm
Eleri's tiny form was almost tossed aside several times as explosions from the megadriod shook the tower. If it weren't for her grip on Sevic's hand -absently tightening with each vibration- she might have fallen countless times. Obviously, Eleri had to be semi-dragged through the hole in the wall.
"Well, we couldn't have you running around aimlessly, could we?" Eleri retorted jokingly, quietly, trying to make light of the group's situation. She then began to cough, desperately swatting the grey mist away from herself.
By the time the half-mod asked his question, Eleri was already at their little entrance hole and wandering out of it.
"Hey, maybe if we're lucky, they'll think we died in the-- oooh! What's that?"
Transfixed by the glowing in the distance, she struggled to make out what it was through the thinning smoke, completely oblivious that she was teetering dangerously close to the edge of what was left of the tower.
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