“What… was”
“Oh, that? I simply redesigned her body to look more human in case I ever choose to use it. Her memories are still intact and she’s still alive but at the very least she’s convincing, no?”
The ears on the side of the girl’s face were indeed rounder, her body was slightly shorter, and her hair shifted from a turquoise hue to more of a purple black, much like the body she was currently staring at.
“Come now these elves won’t rewrite their own outward appearance.”
As Mia stalled trying to understand she soon joined her master in stripping washing and dumping the sleeping bodies into the vats. After all eleven of the girls, she brought were neatly floating before them she heard her master’s voice again.
“Archive mind waking one of them up for me.”
[Which one master?]
“This one seems to be the smartest.”
She pointed at the one girl that remained silent the entire time Mia dragged them over. After a moment the screen before her vat began filling with text and the girl inside opened her eyes in shock to find herself floating in a vat and barely able to move. The thick viscous liquid made it difficult for her to move her arms, so she didn’t even try to break the glass as she knew it was a futile action.
Instead, the floating girl stared daggers at the pair on the other side of the glass as the fluid that filled her lungs began to feel less and less uncomfortable. She began to calm herself and look over at them. She tried to speak but only her lips moved, and no sound came from her lungs, yet sound came from the room.
[She wants to know what you want.]
The master put her arm around Mia’s shoulder and urged her with her eyes to ask what she came to ask.
“Why did the elves refuse our peace treaty and attack my home?”
[You’re really asking me that after what you humans did?]
“What do you mean?”
[You short-lived idiots. This is the third peace treaty you’ve offered us this millennium and we’re not falling for it again.]
“Ha! She thinks I’m short-lived. Archive how old am I?”
[You programmed me over a hundred and thirteen centuries ago I have no prior knowledge to that.]
The elf’s eyes widened, and Mia was so shocked she didn’t even notice to where her master’s hand had wandered. After a few moments of silence, her master spoke again.
“Archive, take Kathy’s programming out of cold storage put in on some nanites and fill… let’s say that one’s blood with them. re-write and back up her memories into a few volumes of books and leave them in the library for future reference.”
[Why? She’s useless.]
“Leave the existing personality delete all memories associated with elves and leave all her current known skills intact I want to reprogram Kathy manually.”
The girl she pointed at was the youngest looking out of the group, but she was also the most outspoken and vulgar of the group. The elf was taken aback at these words and turned to her left to see a familiar but slightly changed face asleep in the tank next to her. She seemed to want to scream as she saw needles come up from the bottom of the tank surround and pierce the body before her eyes.
From some of the needles, a thick black ooze poured in from the others a thin green fluid flowed out. The body thrashed about slowly and soundlessly, her face contorted in discomfort, but still sleeping.
After a while, there was no blood remaining and the black ooze stopped flooding in. The tank opened and a girl with changed irises swam to the surface. Her Irises glowed a prominent yellow. After getting out of the tank and coughing out the fluid in her lungs she rushed over to the woman standing proud and hid her body against hers.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
{Mas-mas-master is mean.}
“Ha! The first words you speak to me are a complaint.”
[“What did you do?” she asked.]
Archive provided the bathrobe to the stuttering girl, via a robotic arm from the wall, and she donned it hurriedly before hugging her knees to her chest and covering herself with the fabric. The elf stared in fear at the girl and then began touching her own ears and looking at her hair.
“While you two were wasting time I did simply what I wanted to in the time I wanted to do it. Archive do you still have Lexicon’s Programming in cold Storage somewhere?”
[Yes… also, “wait stop I’ll talk,” she says.]
With the halberd balanced over her shoulder and both arms wrapped around Mia from behind the woman pressed her face against the girl’s and said, “What do you think? Should we give her a chance to speak or take her knowledge by force?”
“W-what?”
Mia was shocked by the sudden question. She didn’t even notice the arms around her snaking up her shirt while her master pressed her face against hers. She brought her lips right up to Mia’s ear and whispered,
“Wouldn’t it just be beautiful to erase the memories of these girls and have them destroy their own country? Imagine the looks on their faces when we restore their memories and all they can recall is their own betrayal.”
As she spoke a bunch of thin metallic tentacles began slowly rising up the vat of the frightened girl as she tried in vain to swim away. Mia saw this and pushed her master away, the sensation of warmth leaving her chest caused her face to redden for a moment, but she continued.
“Release her,”
The tentacles stopped moving for a second as if waiting for an order and the girl huddled herself in fear against the lid of the tank. She reached her hand up to Mia’s face and held it gently in her hand.
“Of course, if it’s for my lovely apprentice even watching her most hated enemy suffer must be hard on you. For you, I’ll let her, specifically, go.”
She snapped her fingers and the lid to her vat specifically was opened and the girl rushed out, coughed out the fluids in her lungs and climbed down to meet them. Her body dripping with green fluid. She seemed to want to check the state of the girl cowering on the floor but before she could the woman scooped her up in her arms and held her close.
{Why did you put my programing in the body whose personality conflicted with me most?}
“Because your shy cute personality took its mission to be the quiet girl too seriously and you never spoke a word and were too afraid of failing to do anything, causing you to fail by default.”
The girl shrank further in the woman’s arms, and she slowly began stroking her damp hair. The shivering girl seemed to calm down in her arms and wrapping her arms around her neck she trusted her with her weight and looked like she was about to fall asleep.
“Helmi, are you okay?”
{This body seems to find that name nostalgic, but my name is Kathy.}
“No, you are Helmi, you helped me settle in when I got drafted and taught me to drink all my problems away.”
{Master make her stop addressing me. It’s making me depressed.}
As Kathy buries her face into her master’s neck the elf shrinks down in despair.
“Leave Kathy alone you’re making her transition into this new body harder than it has to be.”
“You, your body is an elf too, isn’t it?”
“Only half.”
The elf froze confused at the response. Mia took this moment to recompose herself.
“What’s your name, mine’s Mia”
“Isla…”
“Isla? Since she has a human body now should we give her a more human name?”
“Oh, when you said to release her you meant like all the way release her?”
Her master spoke up. A realization settled on both of their faces.
[Master all the knowledge of the elves concerning the war has been compiled sorted and systematically checked against the memories of the other elves, there is no longer a need to leave their memories intact.]
“Wonderful, Isla was it? (she turns to face her) I’d like you to choose someone for me to put Lexicon’s programming in.”
She turned back to the remaining 9 visible vats and noticed that her vat was still open. She looked around and then looked down, fear covered her face, she quickly looked at the peacefully sleeping faces of her remaining friends. She bit her trembling lip. She resisted the urge to punch the woman with the big halberd in her hand. Mia looked troubled but didn’t try to stop her master.
She never knew her master to be evil and understood that the elves were their enemy but the cruelty he showed her made her feel a bit sorry for her especially since she learned how to speak to them. The girl let out a long sigh and climbed back up the ladder to the vat.
“I’ll do it.”
With those words, she nose-dived into the water and let the needles pierce her.