Fading Memory — Roleplayer Guild

Saturnine dismissed Hotshot's contact icon from his HUD with a waved hand, veering his hoverboard sharply in the air. He dropped to a knee, sharply twisting the frame of the bulky board upwards where his left hand met a handle on its frame and gripped powerfully.

"Mm...Find Baba..."

He murmured to himself quietly, pulling the nose of the board higher and higher as his weight shifted the engine ever lower, the behemoth thruster rocketing him into the sky as a neon-tailed blur. Eventually he tugged and gut the thruster with a kick, twisting the board until it was suspended in the air above him upside down. With the primary thruster dead like this, it meant Saturnine was hanging in the air from a death-defying height solely by the gloved hand holding onto that handle. He hung there, casting his gaze slowly over the city.

"Got any leads, Sis?" He spoke up.

"On Baba?" her voice crackled in a tinny manner, as if she were speaking through a can- or, perhaps, distantly. "I'll check, one sec."

And silence claimed him for these precious few moments. Perhaps it was minutes, rather than moments. Perhaps it was longer. Saturnine's gaze followed the city in rapid movements which would have seemed disorderly and meandering to an onlooker, but were in truth filling his mind swiftly from the most obtrustive and eye-catching points of interest andd radiating outwards. The Spire rising indomitably. The Nova Peak, a distant silhouette in the skyline rising over the slums of the Megacity. The blurry movements of the rail system, like a vicious spiderweb boring into the flesh of the city. It wasn't until his arm began to throb in the early signs of fatigue that he switched his grip to the right arm and queried his communicator again;

"Uh, sorry, spaced out. Did you say something?"

Silence reigned once more. His gaze flickered across his HUD, noting the dropped call. He frowned, his gaze rising from the city to the diminutive drone, Sparky, which still hovered over his left shoulder. Its singular eye spun to face him and the drone bobbed in place as if to nod. Saturnine sighed in relief and let his gaze fall.

"Alright, I'm through, sorry." Sister's voice came from the modulator in Sparky rather than through Saturnine's headphones. "Something crazy's going on. I found old tags of The Lost, but you know how they are. They could be anywhere."

"I think I see what you mean." His words were much calmer than they should have been. The city seemed to shake below him, the tremor starting at the Spire and emanating outwards. It began with a swarm of maintenance drones rising from housings lodged securely in the Spire, then with a flock of pigeons exploding from a nearby library, then with distant shrieks rising as the ground's trembling became stronger. And stronger.

"Sister, grab onto someth-"

His words were stolen from him. It was as if a god had leaned down and sneezed straight into the center of Megacity-01; the Spire rumbled, and following the earthquake came a daunting shockwave. Saturnine's HUD vanished as the wave hit him-

As did the hover thrusters of his board. He began to plummet. Weightlessness gripped him. A calm overtook him. He pulled the hoverboard down and forced it below his legs, kneeling onto it even as gravity reclaimed its dominion over his defiant existence. As he fell, he gazed in wonder- his hair whipping upwards, replacing the neon trail of his hoverboard's engine with the chaos of thick white lashcords- as the shockwave visibly coursed along the entirety of the city. He couldn't tell if it was physical, some kind of bomb that was about to climax into a hyper-hyper nuclear cloud and swallow them all, or if it was purely electrical. The rail system crashed to a halt. A violent one. Traffic flow cataclysmically failed. The dazzling world of lights and neon scars below him vanished for but a moment.

And for that briefest of moments, here above the clouds, Saturnine looked skyward and saw the stars for the first time in...He couldn't remember. His entire life the city's light had drowned the sky. The moon was a dull orb in overcast skies, typically emanating through the oppressive sheen of a city that only slept once the coffin lid slammed shut...

But for this instant, Saturnine could see Luna in the heavens sparkling on the horizon, coyly blinking at him from behind the Spire. For this instant, all light died and the stars shone through. For this instant, Saturnine forgot about Rotor, or Hotshot, or Baba, or Eesha, or murder, or mysteries, or even his own plummet towards the earth. He screamed in pure joy;

"Do you see this?!"
"Saturnine, please don't die."

The sheer incredulity of his voice, the insatiable joy of his laughter, and the brief nirvanna that struck him was fated for brevity however. Lights began to blink on rapidly, and Saturnine at last brought his gaze down towards the ground that was suddenly much too close for his liking. He kicked the primary thrust control. The engine rolled once. Twice. Then, it fired. Neon orange fire roared to life. Saturnine's body shifted over the board and angled it down, capturing the gravity rather than fighting it and fishtailing into an explosive crash below. His experience and the training of Afterburn proved itself sufficient on this night.

"Alright I have control, I can crash properly now."
"Secondary thrust should come back online in fifteen seconds."
"Oh. That'll be about ten after I hit the ground."
"Just don't die. I don't care about anything else."

Sparky settled onto his shoulder, as if terrified of their descent. Saturnine grinned at Sister's words of encouragement. Adrenaline surged. The world seemed to slow down. It was an experience that some chrome-heads claimed to achieve with adrenal pumps and reaction enhancers, but Saturnine's laboratory crafted genetics permitted naturally. He stomped hard, bringin the nose of the board up and using the main engine to begin redirecting his momentum horizontally. The neon flame carved a parabola through the night air. The nose of his board barely cleared the top of a billboard, the reinforced bottom smashing into it. The flimsy viewscreen of the billboard sparked to life just as his board collided with it, skipping him like a stone across a pond as an explosion of sparks exclaimed his passage.

However Saturnine was not skipping across a pond. He was careening through downtown Megacity-01. The moment he began to gain even the barest amount of altitude he grabbed the frontal handle once more and threw his bodyweight to the side, twisting the board to the left and beginning a slow spiral as its weight labored to follow his commands without the hover thrusters. The left edge of the board climbed just enough to slam the reinforced base against the corroded steel structure of a skyscraper. His trajectory richocheted wildly, the thruster carrying with inertia and sending him into a potentially deadly spin. The board managed to spin a full circle before his senses recaptured the world in frozen comprehension, Saturnine clinging to the side of it like a gecko to splinterwood.

He could feel the heat of the thruster's flame as it spiralled around him, chasing away the chill of the plummet. His heart beat twice. He began to grin. Eight seconds left before the hover thrusters came back online. So far he'd defied gravity for three entire additional breadths of time, and he was pretty sure he'd just cashed in all his luck in this moment. One final rotation brought the reinforced hull of his hoverboard crashing like a meteor into the front hood of an MCPD aerial heavy response vehicle. From the officer's perspective, Saturnine must have appeared like some obscene video game obstacle right before the finish line of a mid-difficulty racing sim.

Saturnine bounced up. The MCPD vehicle careened and barely regained control before crashing into the street below. Straining with his arms, Saturnine managed to regain control and orient the board back below him. He cast a glance behind him and let out a sigh of relief as he angled towards the ground in a controlled manner. He began to calm down. The world sped back into real-time. It'd be a hard landing, but then he'd get away from this place and the MCPD would never see him aga-

A hook appeared on the front of his board. Before he had time to register just what the crude, all-metal construction was, a steel chain snapped taught and dipped the nose of his board down violently. The chain then snapped, incapable of handling the sheer thrust of his SK8TE implementation, but not before catapulting Saturnine out of the air and crashing down into the crowded, glass-filled, people-strewn, streets.
"--Saturnine?!" Sister cried into her headset. "Saturnine? Saturnine? Say something! Oh, you foolish man, what's going on? Say something!"

"....see that....
...nasty fall.....broke our....meant for the PD....

Sister held her breath as the voices came through Sparky's omnidirectional microphone input. She dared to tilt her head, raising Sparky up and widening its viewport. Her Neural-Helm filled her with digitized sensation. She saw a crowd of dirty people. She saw smoke rising above. She heard the beginnings of Captain Ryker's address. She saw a man kneeling over Saturnine.

"...breathin'...pretty boy...
...nice tech....scrap fer parts..."

A hand grabbed Sparky and lifted it. Sister's fingers flexed on their controls, but dared not risk a miscalculated maneuver. The woman who grabbed the drone's voice came clearer.

"Those leatherbacks just landed, we need to scramble. Just kill the guy and let's move."
"...boss, we...quick.

"Blast it!" She cursed, quite viciously for her vocabulary. "Saturnine, don't kill them!"

Her voice emanating from the drone seemed to startle those in the immediate vicity, allowing Sparky to slip from the woman's fingers. It thrust itself violently down, landing onto Saturnine's back in a blitz of speed. She could hear the myriad sounds of panic, as not only did her voice and Sparky's sudden movements cause a stir- but so too did the redirected heavy MCPD response team that Saturnine crashed into. As Sparky extended a drone arm into Saturnine's neck and shot a jolt of electricity into his spine, a cacophany of automatic gunfire rained down onto the streets.

...The city will be functioning again as soon as possible... the fifth loop of Ryker's automated message filled Sister's mind as Saturnine jerked awake.
"Saturnine, don't kill them!"

Sister's words echoed in his mind. As he lifted his head, the gunshots rang across the street and chaos ensued. He blinked- and was suddenly in that laboratory, all those years ago, a gun in his hand. The woman standing over him, reaching for him, suddenly toppled back in a bloody spray as automated fire unleashed over him. He felt like he was fifteen again. Eyes wide as blood fountained from a gushing neck wound. His hand tightened on the pistol he gripped-

His hand tightened into a fist. The Demonio lieutenant hit the ground, and Saturnine pushed up with his right hand, throwing his shoulder into the man who was kneeling over him- much lighter than the man seemed to anticipate. Saturnine bounced off his over-corrected stance and surged to his feet, nimbly slipping between the man's grasping arms. He threw a look back just as his HUD came back online, and with a flick of his fingers the hoverboard raged into life.

He ducked a punch, flipping away in a lightheaded delirium as the Skynet overlay triggered back into his vision. A pair of arms caught him in the air, and threw him down towards the ground. He landed in a sprawl, then launched himself forward between a man's legs as his hands thrust into the air. The hoverboard surged upwards, dragging a desperate woman into the air with it. Saturnine grimaced, and twisted a hand to tilt the board and shield the woman from a peal of gunfire that rained into it. This distraction lead to a kick landing squarely onto Saturnine's right leg and knocking him back to the ground. Sparky soared into action, rising off his shoulder and connecting into the attacker's forehead with the solid thunk of a metallic baseball.

"--Sis, that's rude!" He chastised hastily.
"He had a pipe!" Her voice was once again coming into his headphones, the call reconnecting.

Saturnine swept his arm down then leapt into the air, grasping onto the hoverboard's handle as it rocketed past him overhead. There was no time to climb aboard, or even to console the screaming woman who was swinging a chain from atop his property, because six exo-suit bearing MCPD officers had now formed a lethal semicircle of automated gunfire in the street. Bodies were beginning to become more common than standing, sapient, people. Saturnine's eyes witnessed the ghostly echo of that same far-off laboratory, blood-strewn halls. His hand tightened on the pistol.

His hand tightened on the hoverboard, and with its full suite of controls returned he elegantly sent it into a spin and redirected it back towards the MCPD officers. The flash of a disorienting stun grenade deafened the world- but when the flash cleared, Saturnine was kneeling on the board with two assault rifles in his hands, and three of the officers were knocked to the ground. Saturnine turned to the woman, who was clutching her head in pain from the grenade, and opened his mouth to speak;

"Everything's gonna be oka-"

His voice cut short as her torso erupted into blood, high powered rounds trailing up and richocheting off the steel buildings around them. Saturnine hugged himself to the board and rolled onto his back, swiftly disassembling the rifles and dropping their components into the open air. He spent precious seconds reaching over and grabbing the woman's body.

"...I can't save everyone...?" He murmured to himself, seeing Sister's face on the woman's body. His hand tightened on the pistol. His hand pushed her off the board. As the gunfire died down below, he surged into the air and into safety. His disarming and scattering of the MCPD firing line appears to have allowed the Demonio rats to creep back out of their holes. The last thing he saw as he rose back to his feet was a behemoth of a man taking a sledgehammer to the top of an officer's helmet. Saturnine turned away, kicked the board into its highest gear, and was a neon blur racing across the rooftops away from downtown.
Sister sat back into her chair. Her heart was pounding. The gunfire had been so loud. Sparky's visual lens had a bit of blood on it.

"...Nine, can you...?" She managed in a tired voice.

"Oh, yeah, one sec." Sister watched as Saturnine grasped the drone, then slowly and carefully wiped the blood from the viewport. It felt like an eternity. It felt like being held in his arms again.

"Thank you very much."

"Anything for you, dear Sister." came his ever gallant reply.

"I'm going to try and check in with the cell. GEONet....Crashed. You'll be alright for a bit?"

"Yeah, I'm in full control. I'll ping you if I need Sparky. Love you."

"Love you too. Thanks for...I'm sorry I hurt that man."

"It's alright." Saturnine pat Sparky affectionately, then slid it onto its port on the hoverboard. "Take it easy. Thanks for looking out for me. I'll ping you, sweetness, so make sure the cell is alive. Vivian's calling me, guess we're all having a busy night."

Sister nodded, then cut the call and flew her fingers over the terminal. All her typical data threads were cut temporarily, service was spotty at best and not improving. She had to hope the Cell was being smart tonight. She dismissed the 'net, and drew upon Skynet in full. The entirety of the city mapped before her vision, and through her Neural-Helm she overlayed Afterburn tags and timestamps. A portion of the city lit up. She filtered by recency, and noted positions. Phoenix was alive, or at least was as of ten minutes ago. Dumpster had updated his tag on her workshop twenty seconds ago. She could see the explosion of datum-noise as GEONet struggled to come back to life, a dozen relavent Afterburn calls coming into her and dying in an instant. She split her focus, one hand directing the 'Net traffic to its intended recipients and boosting connectivity- in essense, playing digital spider and keeping the Afterburn web up and running- while the other manipulated the Skynet map.

"...Whatever happened, it's impossible." She murmured to herself. "Spire's supposed to be impregnable. the 'Net is supposed to be...Above all interference. This is insane. The entire city went offline for a moment..."

Then she paused for a moment. Her entire being frozen in one, sudden, jarring, divine revelation. She licked her physical lips. Her tongue was so dry. Sister hastily dismissed all her feeds. The Cell would have to deal with the dropping of calls like the rest of the city. The Cell would have to work on its own legs for a little while.

She slowly lifted the Neural-Helm off her head and laid it back onto its mount. She took a deep breath, then slowly reached over and grasped the handle of a cybernetics scanner. She lifted it, slowly tuned the instrument, and turned it on. She angled its reader against her own chest and pressed it into the coveralls steadily, until she had a deeply uncomfortable feeling in her chest. She stared down at its upside-down screen and waited what felt like an eternity.

"...Oh, wow, geeze that's not good." She whispered. "That's really...really...not good."

She surged to her feet, throwing desk into disarray in her haste. The coveralls fell from her shoulders, and as she jumped to her feet she wrestled the work garment off until she took a final step into her private room and left the denim in a pile behind her. Within one hundred twenty seconds she emerged again, wearing a light blue dress cinched at the waist with a thick black belt. Her ponytail was pulled through the back of a baseball cap that she now wore atop her head.

"Alright, stay calm. The typical pain is still ongoing, so the current nanite cycle is still active. Time between refreshes varies based on nutritional input...Two slushees and a corndog really isn't a good diet, Sister, you stupid girl, that's probably only an hour of energy for the hive."

As she spoke to herself she moved with an incredible purpose, gathering up a go-bag in the form of a backpack which she threw onto her shoulders and tightened down. She fell heavily into a chair, pulling a set of boots in front of her. She stared into their yawning mouths as if they held the answers.

"That means I've got fourty five minutes, then. Before the nanites go home and realize there's no battery left. Which means I've got...Two hours before the first of the shakes start. Three before vision goes blurry. Plenty of time."

She slowly slipped her bare feet into the boots, tying them swiftly then double-knotting them. She pulled a visor onto her eyes, syncing its AR feeds with the skynet module broadcasting from her workshop as well as with Sparky's datum feeds. She took a deep breath, and rose to her feet calmly. She rolled her neck. She shook her arms out. She did everything she could to trick her mind into feeling relaxed.

"Plenty of time." She repeated, watching Saturnine's movements through one display of her HUD. "Plenty of time. I don't need to bother him. He's already in so much danger. I can do this."

She stepped towards the same window that Dumpster had checked in with her at what felt like a lifetime ago. She reached under the table and pulled out two bracers, slim and sleek in design. She slowly strapped them onto her forearms. The clasps fit perfectly, tailored to her slight frame, and once they locked into place they felt snug. She rolled her wrists, and a dozen microfilament cables headed by tungsten darts protruded from the wrist of each bracer. The motors whirred to life.

"Alright. Just like a trip to the Novapeak. It's not far. Well it is far, but it's not too far."

Sister stepped into the window and cast a glance up. She didn't want to worry anyone, and she could take care of herself! Secure in knowing her movements were as-of-yet unnoticed, she turned, fired a dart into a nearby building, then swung into the air and began to cross the city.

"...Oh, Badger, please be there."
Fading Memory Member

The Final Flame of a Fiery Bird

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