BoringverseAzrael had received a call from that fool Patrick Zala about putting their ceasefire into writing.
"Heh, as if he expects a piece of paper to keep me from pulverizing him and his bastard kind the moment I get a...what's that smell?" The chairman of Blue Cosmos paused, looking into an office nearby as he was hit by the overwhelming stench of old sweat and cheetos, "Is that...Djibril?"
It was. In the past two days since Flit had decided to mindfuck the man, he had put on over a dozen pounds, grew out a stubble on his chin, and opted to walk around with ill-fitting outfits that did nothing to hide his growing bulk. Pinching his nose, Azrael leaned his head into the dark chamber, devoid of light except for a single television moniter showing some kind of children's cartoon. Djibril sat on a couch, watching it while holding a glass of wine aloft in the air.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Oh, Chairman Azrael. Come, join me in watching the dance of ponies." The wreck of a man sad, patting the couch to his side invitingly.
"Uh. No. I don't watch crappy kids cartoons." As soon as the words left his mouth, Azrael heard the sound of glass creaking and cracking.
"...Can't account for the tastes of plebs like you." He replied, smirking even as he trembled in impotent rage.
"Well, whatever. You still have a job to do while I'm out at this meeting, so I expect it to be done by the time I get back. Got it Djibril?"
"THAT IS NOT MY NAME!!!!"
Azrael left the room, shaking his head. Ordinarily he would have brought Djibril along just to keep himself entertained, but in his current state, he'd only serve as an embarrassment. "What
happened to you...?"
it was a question that would haunt him the entirety of his journey towards meeting with Zala
Aboard the
Nava-Hoe, Aaron was busy in his personal workshop. Surrounding him were a number of sharp, painful looking implements. Including, bizarrely, an assortment of axes.
This is...complex. It appears to run on no kind of technology I've ever encountered before.He carefully rolled the machine onto it's face, before jamming a screwdriver into the base of its neck.
If I understand this correctly, there should be a panel located here for me to pry open...There wasn't, and a small stream of white fluid burst out at the impact point. Sighing, Aaron reached over for a hatchet from his pile of tools, and used that to hack a large section of the machines neck out above the shoulders. Then, prying carefully, Aaron lifted up the back of the machine's neck, revealing some kind of electrical socket like hole that had been obscured. Wordlessly, Gentles grabbed a live electrical wire, and jammed it in.
The energy seemed to pass through, as various systems on the gynoid seemed to activate, followed by a piercing scream. He unplugged it, before returning to work. Now that he knew how to power the device, he could make some real progress. He withdrew a USB cable and shoved that into something that looked like a compatible port that was also located at the base of it's neck.
Time to look at it's programming.
Several hours later, Aaron was finally finished. He couldn't find anything compatible with the gynoid's old frame, so he simply attached some of the bulkier bipedal legs he kept on hand as replacements for his cleaning robots. It had taken some work, but it would be able to move from point A to B, at least. Along with some other poking around in the machine's OS, Aaron found out that he wasnt able to access the machine's higher functions with the equipment he had on hand. He was still able to make some minor if necessary adjustments to the machine's settings, though.
The problem was the power consumption. It apparently lacked the ability to charge itself, so Aaron was forced to keep it plugged in if he wanted any kind of prolonged activity from it. Sighing, the engineer made a note to pick up a sufficient external power source the next time he had the chance. But in the meantime...
He wanted answers. It was very rare for a piece of machinery like this to appear before him, and Aaron couldnt help but wonder if the gynoid in front of him might be related to the aliens that had showed up lately. So, plugging her in once again, he figured it was time to get things started
This kept on happening to her! Always getting split in half again and again and again! Her logic circuits couldn't comprehend why it was always the same method, no matter how many times she fought. Her CPU began dreading the possibility that the one the humans called "God" simply was using her as a cosmic joke to amuse himself.
Why? Just because she was made by humans? Because she pretended to have a soul in spite of being a godless machine? Was it because she attempted to do what any woman would logically desire and seek out a male in order to use them for cheap labor and the acquisition of currency to fund a life of comfort?
The images kept looping in her memory viewing subroutines, and so she kept screaming. Sometimes it was the same person that did it. Other times, it was some kind of force beyond her imagining, or some being she could not recognize.
She had been a victim so many, many times after Negi had died.
So many faces that flashed across her flash memory, the faces being the last things she saw before being chopped in half once again
Then there was that one time she never even saw it coming
Or that one weekend...
At least she had gotten off easily, compared to what had happened to her best friend...
Poor Aigis.
But then, one day, her suffering came to a temporary end in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, where she encountered a lonely man who attempted to use his supernatural abilities to make her fall in love with him. Poor Finn never realized that soulless machines were immune to his power, but he was able to drive off a few monsters that had been dangerous for her in her current position.
He was no Negi, but Chachamaru had been through too much by then to complain about standards. Negi was dead and gone, and here was a convenient meal ticket just waiting to shower her with everything she could ever want.
Or so she had thought at the time.
Chachamaru's memory banks recalled the final fateful moments of that battle as she was split in half, yet again, as Finn just stood by, crying like the useless little bitch he was as her upper body was forcefully sucked through the void. She never had learned the name of the being that they were fighting, only that it was so powerful that its very presence warped space and time in odd ways.
Her trip down memory lane ended, Chachamaru noted that her screaming subroutine had come to a halt, so she opened her visual receptors once more, taking in the scenery around her, and the face of the blond man sitting on a stool, facing her.
"Do you speak English?"
"...Yes." Chachamaru answered
"What is your designation?"
"...My name is Karakuri Chachamaru."
"I see. That sounds japanese." The blond man stood up, grabbed a tablet computer, and then proceeded to leave the room.
"...Eh?" The green haired gynoid said, the only response her programming could find appropriate for the situation.
"So." Ali said, as Aaron returned to the mess hall, after nearly 12 hours of working on the machine, "What's with the android?"
"It's japanese. Possibly ORB make. I've never seen technology that works the way it does. It may be related to those things that attacked the Ame-no-Mihashira the other day, I'm hailing the
Dominion."
So he did, after returning to the bridge. "Lt. Commander Badgiruele, Mr. Gentles. What's the occasion?"
Aaron ignored the blush to her cheeks, because it really made him uncomfortable being looked at that way, "I need a word with the Vice Admiral, patch me to his quarters."
"You don't have the authorization to demand such a thing, Gentles! A contractor such as yourself can relay any messages you have to myself, the commander of this vessel, and I'll pass it up the chain of command! Now, what is this message!"
Aaron sighed, "Half of a gynoid hit my windshield nearly 12 hours ago. I've repaired it, and it seems to identify itself as japanese."
Badgiruele nodded, "Allster! Patch him through!"
Some time later
"Well, this is weird shit." Flit replied, having finally received all data on the "Karakuri Chachamaru" from the Guild Tech. "You say you can't identify how it's power source works?"
"No, sir. It appears to operate on some kind of spring-loading mechanism, but the item I found on it's person," Aaron holds up some vaguely key-shaped object, "While fitting, does absolutely nothing to charge it's systems."
"And you can't just figure out its schematics from it's core memory?"
"Programming language I've never even heard of."
"Hmmm...Well, our first destination has a number of highly advanced technologies. With luck, they may be able to assist you in decrypting it's files..."
"In the meantime, sir, I think I'll just ask it."
"Yes, it did seem self-aware, didnt it? You go ahead and do it, then update me on the results."
Flit sighed, then turned off the transmission.
"Project Stargazer, and some kind of mysterious ORB robot, huh? This just keeps on turning into more and more of a clusterfuck."
