Chapter 59: Initiation
The Allseeing by [Redacted]
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65.
July 31st
Ripley’s first day as a Vulture
Okay, so when they meant Platinum-Grade Access to the VultureNet had early access to gang spoils, they meant really early access. I was immediately shot at while driving down the street, one of the men with a devil horn tattoo on his neck screaming in Spanish, but I heard the words ‘Cielos Metálicos’ in there. My spanish was rusty, even if I my mom spoke it, but thankfully a translator in my frame corrected it to Metal Heavens.
Fuck. I drove into a gang war.
Los Diablos and Metal Heavens. My bike skid while I tried to control it, unfortunately my Preservation Matrix much preferred a crash landing in comparison to a bullet wound… I wasn’t complaining.
I was even lucky to skid right into one of the Los Diablos men, my body falling roughly as I rolled over the asphalt floor for several meters… thank god my limbs were made of metal. Plus, I was wearing a completely steeled up mask with a vague resemblance to a vulture mixed with a spider. Matched the theme.
It also made me look like I had a steeled-out head considering the poor arts skills on me, no wonder Las Diablos opened fire on me. They thought I was with Metal Heavens which… now that I was looking, we were on the winning side.
You know what they say… my enemy’s enemy.
Immediately, I channeled my new Bronze Overclock mimicry, letting it freely explode as my limbs were set ablaze by an onslaught of pure energy wrecking through their internal circuitry. When I sprinted, I sprinted, my speed quite literally causing one goon to yelp at my sight as I pulled up under his gun. My punch dove straight through his… completely unarmored jaw. I was sort of getting used to fighting Metal Heavens which was ironic considering they were now giving me covering fire.
The amount of arteries that were in someone’s mouth made me beg the question of why jaw replacement was so common in the first place. As I was now covered by the spraying blood in said vessels.
The fight was more or less over by the time I finished up, landing the final blow by streaking behind cars and vaulting over to shoot one Mutated man’s… acid gullet? And latching my claw onto another’s shoulder. I sent a Warp Sink through it alongside a switch to Dataweaving, using one of the DataCleaver’s Twilight had jammed into my frame last night to render it inert.
Then I yanked it off the guy, whacking it into his neck with the bladed end and… wow, that went really deep in. My incremental upgrades were quite effective. He gurgled on his own blood, and then I very discreetly turned around a car to start scavenging any BUGs I could find.
“Woahoh! Look at that kill, he skeeved em with ‘is own armmm! Sick!” Fuck, a large human-machine of a Metal Heavens man leaned over the car, denting it with the immense weight of his wrecking ball of an arm. “Whe’d you learn to do ‘dat!”
“Uh… my brother.” I said in an obviously fake deep voice, they seemed to have no problem as I stripped one guy’s arm down and found it’s Neuroprocessor… it was all junk.
The large man stopped suddenly, bellowing his voice out. “Oi, oi! Cum’ ere! Lookie at ‘dis one!”
Ah… fuck. All at once I was surrounded by half-shirted men who had more metal than skin visible.
“Show em’ wat you just did!” The larger man screamed at me.
“With… the arm?” I beckoned to the barebones skeleton I just made. He nodded, tossing me the arm I had used to land a killing blow. “Yeh! Wit’ da arm you skeeved ‘em with!”
I beckoned, following so as I traced down it’s flaws and used my claws to splice at the deltoid muscle, peeling my way down as one by one the rest came ripping free to expose the inner neurocircuitry of the arm.
“Look at dat’!” He pointed on, and I got ‘ooohs’ and ‘ahs’ from all over. “The immaculate skill ‘innit! Who trained ya, yung gunna’?!”
“Uh… I was… stationed at Little Requiem… the place that went dead.” I followed through with the deep voice I’d committed to. For some reason. Note to self, install a voice modulator in the mask.
“Ahhh I ‘eard of ‘dat one. A shameee! Anyways wat youus doing here then ‘mate? Ain’t ‘dat just a subfacili’y?”
So what excuse could I come up with now? “Yeah but… I was deemed… unwell… mentally. Drugs. Bad ones… get the jitters.”
“Da fuckin’ prudes, the orthodox are!” He spat on the floor. “Cum’ on, take your pickin’! I’ll leave the good ones for you! You ‘no wot you’re doin’!” I couldn’t tell for the life of me what his accent was, but it was entertaining enough to let me ride out this mess.
So… yeah, they just let me scrap for them. I was praised for my efficiency, a lot. Said they would put a word in with their Priest to get me transferred. I wasn’t sure how to feel, actually it was pretty damn nice to be praised for Shard Operating rather than the occasional approving grunt from Harold Anderson.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Get on ‘mate!” The large man beckoned with his hands to help prop myself on the truck that he was single-handedly… literally, causing it to tilt. Then he stopped and pointed his finger at one of the dead Metal Heaven… brethren. “Ain’t you gon’ clean that one up? Don’ tell me yous orthodox don’ invoke on yer own flesh?
“Uhh.” Shit, what was it Metal Heavens had? Covens? I spoke as I quickly pried out a BUG and some surprisingly well-adjusted chest-plating that I stuffed in my duffel bag. “‘Don wanna be stealin’ from you’s coven.”
Why was I now pulling an accent?!
“Oh shiz? Which one yous follow?” He seemed genuinely curious, even offering me his more normal hand to help me up the truck’s cargo bed.
Very… very quickly, I scanned and absorbed the BUG I just took, repeating the words in my head. ‘Coven, coven, coven, coven!’
I was engulfed in a ritualistic glow, candles alight around my sacred flesh… for today I was embarking on the journey to enter the light of The Absolute Eye. The Allseeing. The Allknower. The Source. A Lightbringer.
I better knew it as a MALtitan.
“Absolute Eye.” I confidently said. “Allseeing…”
“Ay, Allseeing.” He gave some weird salute regarding covering his eyes and dramatically… wiggling? At least that’s how it looked to me. “Strange, I though’ all Orthodox believed in The Unbecoming Source.”
“Truth is… I was… chased out for my beliefs.” Please, believe it. What the hell had I gotten myself into?
“No’ surprised! Fuckin’ prudes!” He scoffed, and all at once the gang around me yelled.
“Fucking prudes!”
He laughed like a merry old man, resting his heavy arm to dangle off the side of the car. “Names Simenry! Parents couldn’t choose between Simon or Henry so dey’ combined both!”
“You can call me… Dreadwire.” I offered uneasily, please don’t have the same reaction Topaz and Diamante did when I suggested it to them. I thought it was badass.
They laughed. Exactly the same belly-wide, uvula staring at you in the eye laugh. “Dreadwire? You tryna becom’ a War Priest or som’n”
“Parents wanted a… unique name.” Was it this easy to lie to them?
It was that easy to lie to them. They all oohed and ahhed again, trying to gather more about me… apparently it was odd to meet people from whatever this ‘Orthodox’ faction was, even if they both fell under the banner of Metal Heavens.
“So…” Was it really wise of me to continue talking to them? No, but it was entertaining. “So… why’d you all go and off that Los Diablos bunch?”
Simenry pulled out a large vial of some green drug, breathing it in like an aspirator. Only when he let out a large sigh of relief and truly resigned to making this cramped cargo bed an actual bed did he speak. “Raped and killed my sister.”
That got dark very quickly. “Oh shit… glad we killed him.”
“Shame he didn’t have any sisters… his brother was fun tho’. Squealed like a pig.” He let out a sinister imitation of the squeal, laughing hysterically before offering the menacing vial to me.
“Promised my mother I wouldn’t. Anymore.” I gave a quiet nod to him, hopefully as a sign of respecting the gesture.
“Good man… betta’ son than I ‘em. Got me own’ mam popped in the ‘ead when I offed a Muramasa Princess’ little bitch.” He took another deep breath of the vial, sucking it dry as he entered a foreign land of bliss. “An’ I do mean a dog. Fluffy prick tried to bi’e me, crushed it with my Wrecking Arm into a puddle! Wanna see a pic?!”
Alright, things had been fun. It wasn't now.
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July 31st
Ripley’s first day as a… Metal Heavens Initiate?
Okayyy, so Simenry wasn’t the weirdest of the bunch. That title went to Priest Norgwal, the man who was said to begin my rite of initiation tomorrow come dawn… safe to say, I wasn’t staying for that. He was quiet, wielding four wiry tentacles as arms and an equal number of spider-like eyes. What did interest me though, was the Priest’s uncanny understanding of my own Shardware at just a glance as he effortlessly picked through our findings.
His beady eyes each curved to look at a different piece of scrap, before each of them funneled into my direction. "Fantastic work... your name?"
"Ah'," Simenry patted my shoulder with his wrecking-ball arm. "This 'ere's Deadwire!"
"Dreadwire." I corrected, before blinking as I realized that somehow the Priest had figured out that it was me who dismantled the Shardware with just a single look. Whether that was a unique Analyze BUG, his own innate knowledge or some Feature Link in his eyes, I was interested. Okay, this day had taken a turn, I was just meant to scavenge around a little, not get indoctrinated into a cult. Though, I would be lying if I said that the inner politics of the place weren’t interesting.
"Dreadwire..." The Priest repeated the name to himself again and again, I didn't like my mercenary name coming out of his mouth like that. "How delightful to have such a wonderful Shard Operator join within our coven of the Heavenly Doctrine. May you embrace in the wisdom that breathes from The Allseeing."
There were two factions of Metal Heavens in their Orthodox and Contemporary beliefs, some more sub-factions that were borderline misunderstandings of some sacred text unearthed in a chapel three centuries ago. The lore went deep, like… really fucking deep. I didn't know much about their religious beliefs; it all sounded the same to me and was practically a cult that demanded you rip your face off to become a Diamante look-alike. What mattered was that they were insane, I loved Shardware as much as the next person, but these people refused to accept flesh at all. They were determined to become entirely machine, to become as 'perfect' as their god. The MALtitan of the Net. The Allseeing.
Thank the Founders that the other MALtitans didn't have cults worshipping them, I didn't want to know how bad we would be suffering if we faced the constant harassment of groups worshipping The Typhoon... or worse, The Infinite. The MALtitans weren't anything to worship, only fear. There was no fighting them, only keeping them as far away from us as possible, like how we locked up the Allseeing with it's hold over the Old_Net behind the FIREWALL. The last time one of those things got near human civilization... it ruined two Free Cities.
“You gonna remove that mask?” Some other Metal Heaven’s punk called Yonra sneered at me, apparently he used to be their primary scrapper… until I came along?
“Seared onto my face, atonement for my sins.” I explained, I’d come to learn these guys believed anything I spewed about the Orthodox faction.
The bald man gulped at the casual mention of my torment, and how come Psyche didn’t award me an Update for all this acting? God, was it now taking me several Irons worth for a single update?
Simenry was busy tinkering with his arm, offering me a show of their scrap room… which was a nicer office than what I had in the Toxin Club if you ignored the mutilated bodies… they even had-
They had an Arachne. A clobbered, missing four limbs Arachne and severely dated model… but an Arachne nonetheless. I pretended to be in awe of such a machine, and Simenry offered me with pleasantry to show how such a machine was operated… it was really dated.
It didn’t even have a direct uplink, instead you had to plug it into your limbs and have to physically move them to maneuver the arms. Still, it was an Arachne.
So… I had decided my next move, Priest Norgwal was set to baptize me or something by the morning and I had until then to steal his eyes (or BUG), scrap apart this Arachne and somehow get it into my duffel bag and motorbike before getting out in one piece.
Sounds easy enough?