She was jade.
Sea and beryl, moss and viridian.
Made from the free-floating materials of the world she was grown on; strong, fast, beautiful.
Deadly as quicksilver lightning.
And her Master had another mission for her.
“Find the silver unit that resides amongst the citizens of Hale’s Moon. And return it to me.”
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Patrolling the town was a constant habit of the local Sheriff, Gallagher Aeon. Wrapped up in his thoughts he barely noticed the many-armed female shape that walked towards him; the ‘reformed’ warbot, Raids, was not an uncommon sight in the town after all. As she drew closer something tickled at the back of his mind, something sounded an alarm in his subconscious.
She was green.
That was the only conscious though that went through his mind as his hand went for his sidearm. The warbot striding towards him reacted instantly, whipping an assault rifle from where it was nestled between her robotic climbing arms, immediately opening fire on him.
He barely escaped with his life. He managed to contact Jai Raghilda before collapsing onto a cot in his bunker, medigel already healing his injuries. The communications console sputtered to life and as he drifted into healingsleep Jai’s voice crackled from the speakers.
“Attention, Hale Militia and other people available to lend assistance, a warbot has been confirmed in the Hale Outlands Area. Please come ready to assist…”
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“Where is the silver unit that is known to reside amongst you?”
They never told her, they concealed and equivocated. Some blustered, some plead ignorance, they all lied.
“Then you are of no further use to this unit.”
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The screams and blood were like wine to her; the running and leaping, climbing walls and hammering of bullets into concrete all were the breath of life. On occasion she would have opportunity to question one at length, drawing her razorclaw fingers across the fragile flesh of their faces, blood seeping forth eagerly to wet the ground. She would hold them so they could not move their faces away from her gaze as she inflicted pain on them, the screams and the agony writ large upon their expressions filling her with an ecstasy that no fleshly paramour could hope to engender in his lover. She thirsted for each encounter, drove herself to kill those who opposed her, injure them, make a space in time where she could crouch over one and grip their jaw in her slender yet powerful fingers, holding them so she could drink in their agony and convert it to bliss.
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Jango Fell grimaced as he tried to remember exactly how the broadcaster operated. Hoping he had the correct channel selected he picked up the microphone in one hand as his other held a bandage against the bullet wound in his side. “We got the Warbot back at Hales. Any help with the fun would be appreciated…”
Dropping into a chair near the table, Jango dropped the microphone and fumbled with the medigel, blood made his fingers slick and shock fuzzed his mind. “I just love warbots. Why can’t things stay dead when we kill them, like in the old days?”
The cracking voice of Seana Kawanishi, Mayor of Hale’s Moon and rumored former special forces operative, came from the speakers of the communication broadcaster. “Militia sharpshooters, to your posts. Make sure of your target. Don’t want no civilian casualties.”
Jango muttered as the medigel began to take effect, “Yeah, don’t want any civilian casualties. No sir, sure don’t. Too bad we’ll be cleaning up that family the ‘bot got today with a garden hose and a bunch of baggies.”
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The young woman quickly crossed the street from Fook Yoo’s to the apartment block. The client she had come to Hale’s Moon for had very much enjoyed his time with her so she felt content and pleased as she always did after a successful rendezvous. A Companion’s life could be challenging, but it was not without its significant pleasures and rewards. But she had to get back to Sihnon quickly and the journey from the rim was long. Her expensive shoes clicked upon the gray concrete of the sidewalk briskly but she maintained her grace and dignity, refusing to run down the darkening street to the landing pads. She would be at her ship soon enough….
“You. Organic.”
The voice, a feminine voice of sweet honey and velvet, caught her attention immediately. Her thought, as she turned, was that the owner of such a voice was highly trained in its use.
The face of the obviously artificial person standing before her was lovely, crafted in the form of perhaps a schoolgirl, a fantasy figure with elaborately styled dark green hair and blue eyes that glowed in a slow pulse in the dimming light of the evening.
Rain Biscuit stood still, her hand at her throat nervously, as she observed the four mechanical arms affixed to the artificial woman’s back, each arm ending in a horrifically clawed hand.
The lovely sweet voice spoke again, insistently. “Where is the silver unit that is known to reside amongst you?”
“I… I do not live here. I do not know anyone, really.” Rain’s legs began to tremble, the memory returning to her of the warning messages she received on arrival at Hale’s Moon. The stories of people being killed horribly by a warbot of some kind, a ‘bot with a purpose none truly understood.
“Don’t hurt me.”
Rain’s voice sounded very small and very scared to her own ears. To the warbot facing her it must have sounded delicious, judging from the blissful expression that turned the ‘bots face from merely lovely to angelic.
That angelic face smiled eagerly as it lunged at Rain Biscuit.
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More citizens of the town die, blood on the walls of a breakfast room in an apartment where a family lived. A shopkeeper eviscerated and left lying in a pool of his own entrails.
Fights and bullets, screams and blood. Sometimes retreating into the outskirts and wilds to repair and regenerate. Then back into the town, to seek what the Master sent her to find.
Raids. The silver unit that resides amongst them.
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A snipers’s high caliber round punched into her torso, blasting a hole 8 centimeters across out of her back, just to the right of where the spine would be in a human. Tracking sensors quickly analyzed the trajectory of the round and traced it back to its source. Falling to a crouch in the blackness of an alleyway, she looked up into the hills and buildings to the west.
There. A small movement; the glint of starlight on metal.
Her legs were a blur as she ran across the open landing pad towards the high cliff the sniper was hidden upon. Two more shots threw chips and sparks from the ferroconcrete of the ground she flew across, the shooter unable to lead his shots correctly against her inhuman speed. Her clawed arms scrambled hard against the rock of the sheer cliff till she flipped over the railing at the top to face the man, now falling back and firing an assault rifle towards her, a black raven flying away from its perch on his shoulder in a panic as her own assault rifle hammered a reply.
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Cody Winterwolf. Davion Holmeforth. Delta Umino and his squad of mercenaries, Scar, Gwen, and Mei. Elix Darkfold. Jai Raghilda. Gallagher Aeon. Jango Fell. Lanny Ansar. Mikie Rhiadria. Rain Biscuit. Thoth Bellic. Ibram Ansar. Neo Poza.
They fought her and they bled and they screamed and they crowed victory when she was forced to retreat. They saved each other’s lives with acts of bravery; they carelessly fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition through the streets of the town where any child might walk out into the danger.
They did not stop her.
“Where is the silver unit that is known to reside amongst you?”
I don’t know!
Green lips curved upwards.
“Then you are of no further use to this unit.”
Raids 