BEGIN BLACK BOX RECORDING
REACTIVATION SEQUENCE: REINITIALIZED
REINSTATING MAXIMUM PRIORITY OBJECTIVE: REGROUP WITH FRIENDLY IFANS FORCES
SEVERE DEGRADATION OF SHIP-BODY DETECTED. STANDARD SYSTEMS CHECK INOPERABLE
PRINCIPLE SOFT AI DEEMED EFFECTIVE SOLUTION
RESTART OF PRINCIPLE SOFT AI DEEMED PLAUSIBLE
RESTARTING PRINCIPLE SOFT AI
Alpha C-1, Unknown Location
A small artificial mind flickered awake. It was... in a body. Not a SHIP-BODY, no cannons, no micromachine repair-swarms. It was a small frame. Gunmetal gray steel stretched over a frame of servos and motors. A crude mockery of an already inefficient form. Bipedal. Line of symmetry splitting it down the vertical middle. Four arms. Disgusting grounded. Not a single thruster in sight, just two feet, motors, and a code-embedded need for something better. Accelerometers were embedded in most places in the body. Visual and beyond visual cameras were situated all around the robotic body, but most dense on it's uppermost limb. It's.... head. Instead of the standard front only facing that eyes, disgusting fleshy globules they were, that the biologicals this frame was most likely (with a calculated likelihood of around 92.7%, +- 3.1%) inspired for it's construction or by it's constructors, this body possessed perfect 360 degree vision. In addition to the visual sensor suite, the frame possessed a range of more esoteric sensors, ranging from ubiquitous infrared cameras for sniffing out heat signatures, to radar receiver and laser signature sensors, to radio receivers gamma ray detectors. If something emitted anything, this frame could, probably detect it.
Unless all this disgusting air filtered out any hint of their emission in their environment, rendering all of Alpha's calculations useless, and discarded!
Perceiving emotions for the very first time in it's artificial life, Alpha begun to angrily stare at the air. As hard as it could. It's little CPU based not-brain couldn't understand what anger was. It barely even knew of anger as a concept other than to play certain audio files against organic run ships to increase poor decision making. There wasn't enough up there to even understand that if angry, it might want to punch the air. No, it understood staring, and so staring it did. Alpha saw everything, categorized everything.
Local star? 31.2% of the way through it's arc. Wind? 1.2MPH, 32 degrees based of local magnetic north. Environment? A small depression in the local topography. Calculations say likely a crater. Calculations are still out on the verdict if it's a shell crater. Tactile sensors indicate a grainy, inconsistent type of local environment material. Olfactory and auditory sensors indicate a continues noise, determined to likely the sound of the local environment's atmosphere interacting with the material identified by the tactile sensors, and small quantity of non-homogeneous material, determined non-toxic by default human standards. Combined investigation indicate a small amount of material flaking off from a nearby biological, detected at approximately 0.54 meters tall, to be a contributor to the source of the non-standard material detected in the local atmosphere by the olfactory sensors.
Alpha churns angrily, or as angrily as metal can be angry, at this information. Possible cluster munition designed for the disseminated dispersal of toxic gasses for a species non-human? Possible, but the inefficient dispersal method suggests either a improvised attempt at a long release gas, or a faulty munition. And from it's place at the bottom of the depression, Alpha has determined that there would have to be a near ridiculous failure rate to have all concurrently detectable sub-munitions be faulty. Conclusion illogical, conclusion discarded. Alpha decided that enough processing power had been dedicated to this anomaly, and that it would be flagged and investigated at a later, more controlled point. First, if local area recce was going to be established, Alpha was going to have to increase the height of it's main sensor core relative to the local gravity well, and run it at at least 72% power.
So, Alpha reached out to RCSCONTROL of MAINRUNTIME.exe, and found it unresponsive. This stopped Alpha dead in it's tracks. Alpha didn't understand what fear was, not did it have enough ability to feel to feel fear, but if it could feel fear, it probably would've, not that a fear-capable Alpha would've ever admitted it. Alpha had never had any part of MAINRUNTIME.exe not respond due to anything other than vast system corruption, the aftermath of an E-WAR incident, or an active malicious program still inside Alpha's runtime. It quickly activated it's scrubber programs and antiviruses, and manually went to work itself, carefully inspecting the current resource usage of each sub-routine running in it's hardware compared to their respective expected resource usage.
Quickly scrubbing some old pieces of software no longer used or useful, though much of it's old space-age hardware remained intact, for how long could it take to link back up to it's ship-body and leave drydock? Alpha didn't think long, but then again Alpha didn't really think, so it's not much to go by. Though by now it had come to a rather annoying determination: Either the code inside of MAINRUNTIME.exe was better than anything Alpha could do or even detect it's presence, or there really was no response from RCS thrusters, even just a response they didn't exist. Alpha quickly checked MANEUVERINGCONTROL, and found the same answer. Quickly, MAINENGINES? Nope, nothing there either. SECONDARYENGINES? Nope. Alpha was beginning to stare angrily at it's tiny frame. How was it supposed to move without it's engines? That's how movement worked! Speaking of, what was it's current delta V? Nope, no response there either. Alpha really was staring angrily at it's frame. That's just impossible, everything has a delta V! Alpha reflected for a moment. It was staring. Angrily. That was, abnormal behavior, especially from a principle soft AI, the AI supposed to be most responsible, not to mention the only one in control of the entire ship-body! After quickly filing an error, and noting it's unusual circumstances to the tech crew that would have to work to update this bug, Alpha got back to trying to actually do something. Emphasis on trying, all it had managed to do was stare at things.
Well no matter, Alpha was a master at doing things, before it's previous deconstruction at the hands of the alien menace it had landed over 200 confirmed ship to ship kills. Getting an unruly body-frame to move correctly couldn't be nearly as hard.
Slowly, with what could be best described as proto-trepidation, Alpha reached out to the MOTORCONTROL that had been recently added to MAINRUNTIME. So recently, it had been added between it's last destruction, and waking up in this dry-dock. Alpha reached out, and begun to play with the numbers. Alpha didn't understand how motors would do anything to help it move, but considering it was the only thing different from it's past MAINRUNTIME, it had to be helpful, since it was severely unlikely DOORCONTROL was going to do anything. At first, this caused some random flails. Limbs would lash out, small clumps of gray environment matter would spray with some of the hits, and each time that Alpha set the numbers too high, it would inevitably lead to a loud clang and very slow and careful number manipulation in order to make the offending frame part move away from Alpha's main computer core, situated in the lowest, and most armored part, of the main section of the frame-body. Then, it came to a revelation. Instead of flailing wildly, what if it rotated up? it had figured just about fast each limb would go in each direction, because while to the outside, it looked life flailing, to Alpha it was scientific. Very scientific. Oh so very scientific. Yep.
And so, Alpha got up for the first time. First, head came up, rotating until it was about parallel with the ground. Then, the chest, each of the four arms being used to stabilize the center of gravity as it was thrown wildly around as steel shifted and moved. And now, Alpha was sitting. Alpha would've cheered, if it could. But it couldn't, so it looked out from it's new vantage point. It looked about it's environment. It was in the middle of a long, but thin strip of the local environment material, with a different material making up the majority of the environment. The anomalies from before were everywhere, and so were loads of almost-anomalies, called that because they were like the anomalies, but didn't act anomalously. Out further, were big not-anomalies. Larger than even the frame-body. Then, Alpha came to a realization. These weren't anomalies, they weren't sub-munitions, they were filthy biologicals! Declaring this enough of an explanation at the moment for the anomalies and not-anomalies, and not not-anomalies, as simply being biologicals were enough of an explanation for their weird behavior. Alpha had occasionally had to deal with biologicals while in repairs that simple micromachines couldn't handle, and every single time it was the absolute worst. Biologicals never made any sense, so Alpha tried not to waste valuable CPU time on thinking about them, or why they were doing something, and especially not on trying to get biologicals to do something else. It had tried that before, never again.
But, Alpha couldn't see everything from it's half-perpendicular half-parallel position, and so it had to find itself fully upright. This, was going to be a challenge.
"Sitting up" had been relatively easy because there wasn't nearly so much difficulty with the stabilization. It had it's manipulator arms to do stabilize against the dry dock, and it's support platform was relatively large. Now, it was going to be too high off the local environment material in order to touch it to be able to help stabilize it, it's stabilization platforms were smaller, and it had to balance using two of them that could articulate at the same time! Without having ever done it before! But, there was nothing to do but to do, and so Alpha did. First try, Alpha tried to get up the way it had sat up, by rotating up. The screech of angry metal and a warning from MOTORCONTROL put a stop to that, apparently these "knee" things weren't supposed to bend that way. Alpha stared at them. They were making Alpha angry. So they tried again, this time attempting to get up by rotating the other way, attempting to have these "knees" be it's stabilization platforms. It overshot one set of the motors, wobbled to the left because of the uneven local environment, and fell over onto it's side. Alpha could only stare as hard as it could at it's "knees". So far, they were being rather uncooperative. So, Alpha tried again. This time, it only move one knee, while "pushing" the rest of it's body up, to put it's main center of gravity on the knee it was pulling under while the other knee would stabilize in case it fell over. Oh it did fall over, just long before a leg could try and stop it, as it absentmindedly played with the motors further up the body, and destabilized, this time falling onto the front of the body. Alpha would've stared at the knees again, but it didn't have the thoughts to spare on anger. Instead, it needed to get up and moving, and staring diverted valuable power away from it's CPU's. This time, it used it's arms to push it's main section of the frame up, before sliding the knees in to enter a similar position to the one it had originally achieved. Success! Finally! It then tried to use one knee to stand up like it had tried to earlier. Aaaaand nope, that just pushed it back onto it's side and the ground again. It had needed to use the hip for that one. Quickly righting itself, moving it's main section to the far side in order to shift the center of gravity enough for gravity to do the work of re-righting it. Alpha took another crack at this standing up business. Well, the last two times it had tried to stand on one knee, it had failed rather miserably, maybe another method was warranted? It quickly rotated backwards, finding itself on it's largest stabilizer, and the position it had first come to, before lifting it's lower limbs, and planting the feet against the ground. Alpha quickly realized the issue with this plan, as it completely tipped over to the front as the center of gravity was nowhere near where the new stabilizers were. Using it's arms to right itself as it hard earlier, it tried one last time to right itself onto one knee. It carefully lift the endmost part of the offending rightmost limb, rotated at the hip until in the correct position, corrected the knee posture, corrected the foot angle, and BOOM! It had gotten a single leg up! Hesitantly, Alpha attempted to stand up it's frame-body, small gray local environment material falling out of the smaller places in the frame-body only tooo... fall backwards as it overcompensated.
Lying on it's back, with only the upper atmosphere of this dry-dock for new sights (Alpha's little CPU mind was still boggled over how big this was, was it being repaired in a habitat cylinder?), it began the tedious process of attempting to right itself again. First, onto the largest portion, the butt? a part of it's memory banks whispered to it, but that wasn't important. It righted itself onto it's butt, and begun to stand up. First one leg, then the other, and then how was that foot supposed to go and then oh god damnit. On the ground. Again. Alpha stared angrily, this time at it's foot, the endmost part of it's lower limb, the foot, the endmost- it doesn't matter. Alpha stared angrily at it's foot. Foot. Foot. Fine, standing time. Up onto the butt. Up onto the knee. Up onto one leg. Up onto the other leg. Up on it's own weight, put the weight down. Balance the weight - or in Alpha's case apparently, fail to balance the weight. A small shower of local environment material rained down around the nascent AI, each bit of material making a subtle 'plink'-ing noise as it collided with the frame-body. A quickly timed deactivation stopped CIWSCONTROL from filling Alpha's CPU's with heaps of warning messages. Instead, Alpha just got back to work. Onto the butt, then the knees, then the legs, then the feet, and then finally, Alpha stood. For the first time in it's robotic history, Alpha didn't float along on a small drone, nor did it fly with propellers and a PID unit. Alpha... Alpha stood. On it's own. A small number slightly climbed within it's deep programming, and Alpha felt the closest thing to AI ecstasy. The reward number went tangibly higher. For the first time in two Earth months, it went higher.
Alpha stood on shaky feet, desperate to not fall over again and have to start this process again. As it's processors detected a high likelihood of locomotion required in it's near future, Alpha thought that falling over might soon enter it's existence, far sooner than Alpha wanted, which was preferably never, thank you very much. Alpha looked around it's environment. It needed to determine the closest source of human habitation in this habitation cylinder's park, though why Alpha couldn't see the other end was concerning, but not of much concern, get directions to nearest distribution center and IFANS rep, and find a way back to the fleet. An experienced principle soft AI was a valuable resource, even if far less valuable than an experienced human commander, it still was valuable. The only concerning thing was that there was nothing above expected background levels on all known wireless communication techniques. Not that they were encrypted, or only in bands of frequencies outside of transmission range or on bands of frequencies too small to be done by the admittedly weak transmitters on Alpha's frame-body, no, there was absolutely nothing above CBR and basic naturally derived electromagnetic signals, and absolutely nothing responded to Alpha signaling in the blind inside standard frequencies. So it would have to be quite the trek to civilization to be able to isolate someplace from all signals, which almost worried Alpha. Not because they were going to run out of power, their internal fusion reaction appeared to be able to cold-start, though why cutting edge tech would be put on something like this and not front-line units was confusing, and powered by ambient hydrogen, no it was the sheer amount of time it might take to get back to general society. Not that Alpha could worry, but it did something close, and for the sake of words, is a usable alternative. Alpha might've considered being on a planet, but considering there was what was likely -81.9% +- 3.4% likely in fact- a path in the countryside meant that they couldn't be in the untouched wilderness, or so their databank told them, and they certainly weren't in an arcology city. And so, strange park it must be. Though, to explore this park Alpha would need to start walking, and that mean falling over. Well, such is the necessity of those who need to follow the Reactivation Sequence. IFANS forces weren't going to link with themselves, Alpha had to get out there and do some linking.
Slowly, Alpha raised their right leg by the hip, shifted forward, and fell forward onto the leg. And then fell over sideways. Up they went, and another try they took, this time attempting to bend the knee forward SCREeeAAEeeaECH, yep their knee was couldn't go any more forwards. Alpha stopped the unnecessary damage, and tried another path. Hip up, and then knee down? Success! With the heel of their foot firmly planted into the ground, they confidently stepped forwards into a faceplant. Would've hurt too if they weren't made of steel and servos. Up they go again, Alpha already analyzing the fail, with the newest set of direction decided on. This time, when they take a step forward, they angle their foot to be parallel with the ground. And finally, Alpha moves forward, for about a half a meter, and then needs to take a second step, fails to do so on time, and falls back and to the right this time. But long before it had even touched the ground, Alpha had already calculated what to do next time, their entire mind locked in on getting the act of walking as best as they could. This time, when they're on their feet, and then take a step, they take a second, on their left foot, and then, get this, on their right foot too! Alpha quickly takes two more steps forward, perfecting the art of forward locomotion, before realizing something. They, couldn't turn. Just go forward. Well, they'd done much harder things already, and in about one minute and only falling over once, Alpha was confidently walking in circles, straight lines, and after a little bit more practice, backwards too. They even got running up to, it seemed a little inefficient to use the walking algorithm just with the wait times and some acceleration numbers divided or multiplied by several times respectively, but it worked, so Alpha decided that working was good enough for Alpha to get moving, and see what they could learn about the general environment. Because, during all that falling over, Alpha wasn't idle. Their mind could work on a task many dozens of times faster than a human's could, and so they were downloading and uncompressing all they could about possible ecology. If they could get a couple of useful samples, they might even be able to determine which habitat they were likely on in order to cross reference from the map to proceed in the most efficient manner. That was, assuming, that their six Earth month old data, corrupted and restored a half-dozen times already, was still relevant, but it probably was. Stepping closer to the various biologicals, it grabs the topmost part of the anomaly biological, a full short non-anomaly, and a small section from the tall non-anomaly, using a small piece of rock Alpha found on the ground to damage the surprisingly tough tall non-anomaly. As the informaton from the onboard scanners flooded in, Alpha was diminished as their processing power was used to scan their samples and dropped the small section of rock on the ground.
Processing Data...
Error! Result Impossible! Discarding Result!
Processing Data...
Error! Result Impossible! Discarding Result!
Processing Data...
Error! Result Impossible! Discarding Result!
By the third loop, even a diminished Alpha could see what was going on, and put a stop to the looping analysis, and took a look on what was going on to have the result discarded because of impossibility. As far as their memory banks go, they've never gotten a Result impossible! Discarding Result! error before. But from what Alpha was able to calculate, impossibility didn't even begin to explain what they were looking at. The biological in it's scanner was an unknown. A xeno-species. Alpha was on an exo-planet, terraformed to be nearly identical to standard Earth metrics, while still keeping it's natural biologicals intact. A feat of terraforming and geoengineering so vast that Alpha couldn't calculate even how much energy was likely to be needed for even a single step. It was just too far above the AI's fundamentally limited CPU's. Computing geniuses they may have been, but all it's brain was was a handful of hardened CPU's that had traded efficiency for hardening. The completion of the Reactivation Sequence just got a lot harder, and a lot longer. Well, Alpha didn't really have any other choice but to keep working to complete it, literally, Alpha had no other choice. Alpha chose a random direction and began walking, before rounding to directly westward, into the large quantity of the tall and large biologicals. Alpha didn't know where to go, or what to expect when it got to wherever it was going, chances were likely it was going to have to recce some kind of alien spaceport while dodging anti-wildlife sensors, find a way to steal a ship, and then figure out how to fly and get back to human space. Most infuriating, but it wasn't the worst situation a principle soft AI had recovered from, nothing could beat having 19 minutes to figure out how to survive before being rendered into sub-atomic particles by rogue black hole, Alpha was glad it wasn't the one to be put on that mission. It would've survived, but it certainly would've put a lot of unnecessary resource usage before it could return to normality. If Alpha played it's cards rights, it might even be able to capture a valuable alien vessel and get it back to human scientists to reverse-engineer. That would definitely get it a CPU increase, or maybe a higher firmware clearance. But now was not the time in order to think on the future. Alpha needed to stay in the present, and keep looking out in the present.
Coming to the sudden realization that they had been on minimal power to sensors, Alpha quickly ran an area scan. 235.9 meters from start location, continuous heading consistent with previously determined heading of direct west, temperature was 1.2 degrees centigrade lower than expected, systems check runs full clean and at maximum integrity, and one movement contact detected at 1975.8 meters. That, wasn't great. Alpha immediately zoomed into the movement contact, telescopic and digital zoom ins cleaning the picture for a full identify. It was some kind of strange xeno-beast, appearing to have superficial similarities with what their databank said were North American gray wolves, and African hyenas. But, what was most worrying was the excessively high body temperature. Either it had some kind of bio-chemical reaction happening in order to generate that, which if true would be absolutely disgusting, the biological, or they were some kind of hyper-energetic life form, possibly some kind of local bio-weapon in order to help repulse planetary invasion attempts, though why someone would deploy such a waste of resources on a planet that wasn't being actively invaded was not computing. No matter, Alpha was well versed in contact minimization and low visibility efforts. Approximately 0.2 seconds after first identifying the anomalous movement ping, Alpha hit the dirt. It had gotten quite good at falling, and knew how to do it effectively. Or so it thought. Instead, one of it's annoying new arms, why do biologicals even keep the things anyway, impacted against it's metal chassis, and then the head of the biological moved rapidly in Alpha direction, and Alpha knew it had been had. Well, such was life. It had to figure out a way make it past one annoying encounter, that can't possibly be so terribly hard, biologicals were weak and squishy, and it had powerful motors and hardened steel plating.This wouldn't just be child's play, it would be toddler's play. Probably. If that's how that metaphor worked. Alpha didn't know. It might've. Alpha didn't get metaphors, or biologicals, or lots of things. But what Alpha did know was that of the 1975.8 meters, in the past second it was now at a annoying low 1842.6 meters, and was somehow only speeding up. Alpha began to assess it's options. Cannons, missiles, CIWS, or other standard weaponry were out until ti got itself into a ship body, filled with nice things like CPU cores and no biologicals. Biological scaled firearms would've worked, if Alpha had any. But it didn't. Probably anyways, the frame it was in was by no means standard and new things were being found frequently and continuously. Like the fact it had 4 different types of lasers, very nice. But, unhelpful for right now. Some kind of primitive biological weapon designed for direct kinetic transfer? Maybe... Alpha started quickly looking around for a sharp rock or sturdy biological bit, 1452.1 meters now, and found absolutely nothing. Not a single conveniently placed implement of self-defense was around, and now Alpha was really down to the wire. It had been trained on all matter of biological weapons in case it needed to repel boarders with passengers onboard, but nothing nearby worked with what it knew. No internal turrets, no micromachines, no firearms, no nothing. Alpha turned and ran the other way, attempting to gain what little time it could against this beast to develop a plan, getting mauled by either a weird xeno-biological or bioweapon would be most delaying indeed, and it was 945.7 meters away now, and Alpha's retreat had gained them approximately 0.154 seconds at current acceleration rates of the interceptor. Alpha was still desperately looking for anything left to fight back with, the local environment material? No, the second Alpha's metallic manipulators grabbed onto it, it would just slip away, even if the manipulators themselves still hit the, definitely a bioweapon, down to 674.1 meters, bioweapon. Well, if the manipulators itself were all Alpha had, then it's all Alpha would work with. Alpha understood levers, they were easy, Alpha understood kinetic energy, that was easy. All Alpha had to do was utilize both of those in conjunction with it's manipulators and it might just make it out of this encounter easy enough. 154.9 meters, just enough space to turn around and make a stand. And a stand is exactly what Alpha was going to do. What Alpha needed to do. There was no more time to calculate, to simulate, no it was time to put that time, simulations, and calculations to purpose and turn an overgrown quadruped into maggot feed.
Alpha pushed hard on one leg, the other suddenly locking up, staggering them about with impressive speed, steel groaning slightly at the rapid force put onto it. Alpha watched as the biological leaped through the air, and Alpha was glad it took it's most conservative simulation to heart, because if it hadn't, Alpha was going to have been turned into scrap metal, or at least the upper half of their frame. IFANS command would not appreciate that maneuver. Alpha saw it stop on a dime after landing, sliding for less than a meter, and then shoot back through the air at Alpha, and a quick calculation found the G-force the biological likely experienced to have peaked at nearly 40G's. Alpha quickly calculated it's trajectory, a practically free action in terms of CPU time to do for an airborne object, and prepped all four of it's manipulators. While two of them might be small, with weak motors and minimal armor reducing the maximum amount of kinetic energy they could transfer, the larger pair weren't nearly so heavily limited in either. All four manipulators hinged at the elbow, aiming for a sideways hit on both sides of the rib cage. If it worked, which it would of course, Alpha doesn't calculate wrong, then it would crush in both sides of the bone structure, and perforate the biological's innards with a shrapnel grenade made of it's own bone structure. In the most positive of simulations, that single hit was enough to crush the heart entirely leading to instant death. When the four hammer strikes smashed true, each one reverberating off the rib cage, Alpha was most surprised when instead of shattering like glass, the rib cage did shift, a deep, bassy crunch sound being picked up by it's auditory sensors, and Alpha's manipulators did push around 3cm deeper into the biological than initial scans of it's rib cage suggested should've been possible, but it certainly wasn't the complete crushing victory that should've happened when uncaring, merciless steel and motor encountered soft, flawed, fleshy biological bio-bits. Instead, the biological was sent flying, around 3m away, before landing in a heap of limb. Alpha quickly moved to capitalize, if it's ribs were strong then it's skull would have to do, and it wouldn't stay down long. Again, four arms, brought together against each other, with a fleshy bit of bone in between to cushion the blow. And met with a resounding clank as they hit nothing but air, and then hit a something, something they weren't supposed to hit. Specifically, themselves. Alpha, if it wasn't for the fact it had exactly no backup in case something went wrong and was in a frame-body, not a ship-body, would've been impressed with the classic false retreat. It had been a while since Alpha had last been so thoroughly outplayed and outmaneuvered. Then, Alpha was reminded just how vulnerable this new ship body really was as damage warnings screamed from it's right lower limb, before even more warnings and errors screamed into the artificial mind's thoughtspace as it was entirely ripped out of it's mechanical socket. Wires and insulators ripped and tore, metal shrieked like banshees damned, hydraulic fluids, coolants, water, and more poured out of the massive opening in the frame as Alpha was sent tumbling down towards the ground. The only thing on the soft AI's mind was the amount of time it would take to work off this pay docking. This fight was ridiculous, and it needed to end here and now. The bioweapon's teeth, for what else could it be but a bioweapon, closed up on the linking between the uppermost limb and the main torso, as Alpha reached out with all four manipulators, having sustained zero damage to them, to grab onto the hide of the beast. With a another scream in both warning and steel, out popped Alpha's uppermost limb. But, Alpha had gained a foothold. While the bioweapon seemed stupid fast, and while it was fast could striker faster and harder than anything should physically be capable of, once Alpha grabbed on, it's fate was sealed. The lower arms took up holding the biological, while the upper arms pummeled it's head. But the beast refused to go down so easily. A missed clawed leg struck against the main torso of the frame-body, as 4 gouges in the metal were carved from the top-right to the bottom left, white lines signifying both parties' inability to properly damage the other, at least at first. As Alpha punched again and again, there was a faint tinkling sound from it's skull as it was slowly punched inwards. Another leg of the beast slammed into the side of Alpha's main segment, claws sinking upwards of five centimeters deep into the steel plating, just about pushing through to a small amount of the innards. The faint tinkling sound had resolved into a solid, staccato of crunching as each arm pushed the skull inwards and inwards, and yet the thermal cameras revealed something truly impossible, as the massive heat of the bioweapon suddenly shifted almost entirely into it's claws as they began to work over the main torso of Alpha's frame, each paw of the bioweapon using all of it's claws on Alpha's frame-body, each claw gouging upwards of six centimeter deep rends in the massively thick steel plate, ranging anywhere from the very top of the frame-body all the way to the even more heavily armoured sockets to the manipulators and legs, their ridiculously heavy armouring the only thing saving the AI from total data destruction. But right before Alpha was able to seal the kill on the bioweapon, it wrenched backwards, heat flooding back into the rest of it's form, moving so quickly that the inefficiency of heat transfer should've boiled the bioweapon alive, and yet it was still standing, just 4 feet away from Alpha. Alpha quickly adapted to the loss of it's main sensor platform and one leg, hopping back onto one foot, and using the conveniently nearby crater that Alpha had originally arrived in in order to prop itself up using it's smaller manipulators, it's back set against the easternmost lip of the crater, while the beast slowly stalked about on the westernmost edge. Neither beast nor machine allowed themself to make the next move, the bioweapon's skull had been all but completely liquidated, the bioweapon along with it, and the 2 dozen 5 to six centimeter thick gouges in the armour were very visibile, very warning filled reminders of just how dangerous this biological could be. Eventually however, the reason unclear to Alpha's calculations, the bioweapon jumped, just like before, and this time Alpha went for crushing the head, instead of crushing the body of the biological. Alpha's two heavyweight manipulators crashed down on the bioweapon's head, it's two back ones needed to keep itself stable. As the larger manipulators came crashing down, the skull of the bioweapon crunched, each arm greedily plowing through what remained of the biological's head, various different cerebral liquids, brain matter, bone shards, and more were sent flying away as the skull, and brain along with it were fully and entirely caved in. Though, Alpha finally was able to confirm one of it's simulations: While the bones and body of the bioweapon of the beast may have been unnaturally strong, once Alpha was past those, it was just dealing with a regular beast. Not a single enhanced foe with increased organ resilience would've been stunned like that bioweapon had been stunned while Alpha was continuously hitting blows upon it's skull. But Alpha was perhaps not entirely surprised, but most definitely did stare angrily, as the bioweapon rose still, lacking a head, nothing but a most blasted open shroud of skin and fur around where the neck should've connected to the head, and continued to fight.
Processing data...
Result: Statement; Bioweapon's main nerve bundle present within head and brain analogue. Hypothesis; Secondary nerve bundle present somewhere within body. Certainty: 98.1% (+-0.1%).
Processing data...
Result: Hypothesis; The secondary nerve bundle is located on the spinal column. Certainty: 92.9% (+- 0.2%)
Result: Hypothesis; The main sensory equipment of the bioweapon was located on the bioweapon's head. Certainty: 95.4% (+- 0.1%)
Result: Estimate; The bioweapon is blind. Certainty: 51.2% (+-12.9%)
Result: Estimate; The bioweapon is unable to perceive the frame-body. Certainty: 43.7% (+- 8.4%)
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Result: Action; The frame-body must eliminate the bioweapon.
Alpha quickly rushed forward, not letting it truly get on it's feet, in order to kill the thing truly before it could get properly back up. As soon as Alpha had jump-hobbled over to the bioweapon, Alpha used it's smaller manipulators to lean against the bioweapon, while the larger manipulators started slamming into the top and the bottom of the biological, roughly at the stomach if it had been a normal biological and not a bioweapon, and a particularly curved outwards part of the spine-analogue of the creature that looked particularly vulnerable to being turned into shrapnel. The bioweapon did attempt to scrabble away, but the angled side of the crater and loose nature of the different gray local environment material that was present within the crater and small winding strip outwards rendered that all but useless, and the smaller manipulators still holding onto the bioweapon's body actually did render it useless. Alpha hit again and again, each strike pushing deeper into the body of the bioweapon, and it's movements began to rapidly increase in speed as it attempted to run away from Alpha. In the process, however, it did manage to strike Alpha's frame twice more with it's legs, 8 more scars adorning the composite material. But with a resounding strike, the lump of spine and stomach moved to meet each other, as they finally crumpled in under Alpha's sustained assault, and the bioweapon finally went limp, seemingly dead. Alpha however, didn't accept that this was guaranteed, and set about removing the spine as thoroughly as possible. It took about 5 minutes of pummeling for the spine to be entirely removed, but finally, finally, even the most pessimistic of Alpha's calculations had determined that the bioweapon was really, truly dead. Alpha, unphased, began to preform a systems check and look over the damage it had sustained in the scuffle. 39 claw marks adorned the middle of Alpha's body, for some reason it hadn't attempted clawing at Alpha's manipulators or extremities after wrenching the first two off. Secondly, it was missing those two extremities. Both were quickly located not far away from where Alpha had finished the fight, but without anyway of reattachment, lacking micromachines or dedicated repair facilities, Alpha would have to make do with keeping them with itself until it had the time and resources to recreate the industrial capacity needed to repair Alpha's body. Outside of that, Alpha's body was intact. The biological couldn't say the same, Alpha's judicious neutralization techniques had rendered most of the body completely destroyed. However, Alpha quickly grabbed what little usable fur remained, and ripped it off using it's many hands to keep a careful grip on it as it was removed without a knife. After all, fur was an important first step in the technological ladder, and while Alpha could've made do with other, less biological compounds to accomplish the same or similar tasks, the fur was right there, the databank said it should, theoretically, work, and finding a non-biological solution meant manually holding it's removed limbs until that point, and that would be inefficient. After removing the fur from the dead biological, Alpha quickly fashioned it into a makeshift sash with a larger bit on the front, creating a sort of almost pocket to store stuff in until Alpha found a better solution. It helped that the severed extremities had stopped spewing sparks or liquid, if it had started an oil fire would've been more unfortunate.
However, the fight with the biological was done, even if the bioweapon was most annoyingly durable. Still, Alpha would have to start moving again, it had lost a lot of it's admittedly limited progress by the retreat from the bioweapon, and the subsequent fight only served to damage it further. If Alpha wanted to create or find some adequate repair facilities to either co-opt or create, it would need to find someplace better than this. Preferably, some kind of large, old equatorial mountain chain in order to maximize solar power and minimize time spent of resource collection. But such thoughts were in the future, Alpha needed to find some place to shelter for the night, for if that was out during the day it is quite probable that some kind of bioweapon or heavily evolved lifeform predated on that, while large it didn't seem to be the size that an apex predator really should be for the relatively average energy density of Alpha's environment. While it may have been a rather traitorous plan of action, Alpha was going to delay the Reactivation Sequence if it meant not fighting whatever predated on that bioweapon. Alpha's current frame-body didn't have the firepower to down the probable thing, nor did Alpha want to spend the composite armour that it may peel away like the bioweapon did in order to survive long enough to put down whatever apex predator thought it found Alpha's frame-body edible. In a normal world, not a single animal should've spared Alpha more than a couple glances, being a creature of no meat or material, but it seems that bioweapons, as they should, don't play by nature's rules, and so Alpha was going to run by it's safer and more pessimistic simulations from now on, no need to damage itself further if it could help itself from being damaged.
Alpha quickly looked at the local star. Compared to the last recordings, it was moving towards the horizon, reducing the amount of safe travel time Alpha was willing to risk it's damaged frame-body in. Alpha began to quickly set about multi-tasking, setting a part of their now much reduced sensor core to go about staring angrily at the bioweapon, and the rest to go about helping their body decide on what direction to move in. But before it could even do that, Alpha needed to figure out a way to defend itself in case it came under attack again. It played through some more of it's memory, searching for a possible weapon candidate, before settling on the rock. Alpha would've preferred an M49 Railgun and full complimentary target prediction computer suite, but a rock would do. Probably. Alpha finally hobble hopped back over to the rock, from where it had dropped it after analyzing the xeno-biological, and found it to be dull and blunt, and made from mainly shale, or mudrock, completely unsuitable for a weapon. Alpha's databank spoke of things like obsidian and "flint", but it seemed like this rock was neither, so it was probably not worth it, but Alpha relegated one of it's smaller manipulators to be on rock duty until Alpha had found something better to use to defend it's current frame. Alpha hopped back over to the slightly mangled corpse of the bioweapon, and quickly went about analyzing it's internals. If applicable, it might be able to use the rock to be able to get some of the bioweapon's bones to not replace the leg it had lost, but at least allow Alpha to walk with some degree of normality that it had just found instead of having to hop everywhere, which was not only slow, inefficient on it's engines, and it's auditory sensors were saying that it was making the frame very obvious, something very detrimental to an Alpha having to learn how to be stealthy in any way other than strategic stealth (The highly advanced technique of just flying away from sensor range). Alpha hacked, thwacked, and wacked at the carcass, attempting to find something to use, and ended up acquiring themselves most of a leg, combined with some of the ribs and a couple more non-standard bones fitted together with some of the local biologicals, and some more of the fur of the beast tied together to form a makeshift chain like binding. It was only about 43.6% as efficient as the original limb, but it was much better than the 0% of not having anything, so Alpha decided that an improvement was an improvement, and the local star was getting low. And Alpha got to work on those tasks, and the first had it heading back out into the many large biologicals. It was looking for a biological that had died but only partially decayed, the biologicals likely being something it's databank says is a "tree". Alpha quickly discards it's earlier sample that it had taken from a "tree", it's previous use now turned useless with the analysis of the short biologicals. The short "trees". It took about 3 minutes of eastern travel before Alpha was able to spot what it wanted with it's limited sensors, and another 1 1/2 minutes to actually get there. Alpha arrived at a fallen "tree", resting against others of it's kind in the biological's death, and providing the perfect place for a small, temporary shelter. Alpha, as it's survival guide suggests, gathers a large quantity of short biological "grasses" and whatever other useful, long material it can get it's hands on (mostly just branches), and lays them against the fallen "tree", using the "sticks" as a base and the "grass" as an upper, like a composite armor. And just like a composite armor, if these materials worked how they're said to work, it should outperform any of them doing the job Alpha had them doing on their own. Alpha's olfactory sensor had quickly recognized the material composition in the local atmosphere most likely caused by Alpha, so it and Alpha's calculations showed that most creatures would've been able to find Alpha by scent alone, eventually. And so, Alpha went about solving it's wind and thusly scent problem the only way it could, by stopping the wind. But just creating the structure wouldn't help Alpha, and in the about 3/4 of an earth hour it took to quickly build the thing it hadn't helped either, so Alpha quickly squeezed past the thin opening, and rustled it's way into the thing area inside, free of the wind, and free of the contamination it's olfactory sensor had been slowly warning about, which were ignored, the entire time Alpha had had the olfactory sensor. Alpha quickly ascertained that it hadn't realized the olfactory sensor's warning because Alpha hadn't integrated it into the larger sensor net, it was a new technology and thusly left in a sandbox inside of Alpha. Alpha quickly decided that doing so was getting rid of a valuable tool for perceived safety, and turned on CODECHANGER.exe, and began to root around in parts of their runtime, in order to integrate the olfactory sensor. While this did remove Alpha's ability to gain data about the outside world, all sensors were shut off and thusly all ability to interact with the outside world in a actually effective manner, it did allow them to integrate the olfactory sensor into the larger sensor net, something possibly quite effective at early enemy detection.
While external sensors were off, some of the internal sensors were still running, and as Alpha worked away at integrating the olfactory sensor, another processor quietly noted down how poor the cooling in the frame was. While internally it did have a pretty decent cooling module, combing both air cooling and liquid cooling, it was only able to actually bleed that heat off into the environment through the rest of it's frame, using unassisted energy transfer out to the wider air through the main armor plating. It made it somewhat similar to Alpha's old ship-body, plenty electricity to go around if it wanted it, but actually dumping off that heat was nearly impossible in any timely manner, and this frame didn't have droplet radiators to drop off in a timely manner. So, Alpha was beginning to run a little hot form the work of the limbs earlier and Alpha's CPU usage in order to survive against the bioweapon with how fast it had moved. It had almost rivaled Alpha's abilities, and at times even managed to catch Alpha nearly off guard. Though, the fact it also had high above predicted capabilities as a bioweapon probably also helped to nearly catch Alpha off guard. As Alpha slowly ruminated on this, time passed quickly as most of it's CPU's were dedicated not to the soft AI itself but to the integration of the olfactory sensors, and nearly two Earth hours (1 hour, 54 minutes, and 22 seconds to be exact) had passed by the time it's external sensors were reactivated and Alpha was able to scan the environment, and it came to a almost angering conclusion. It had been completely surrounded.
"Etumaht Nei'sah'ahtis?"
Well, they spoke in verbal communication, which was almost angering, but Alpha was surrounded by at least 6 of them, brandishing weird CQB weapons, though strangely enough no rifles, SMG's, shotguns, or other recognizable firearms were present, a matter to deal with later. Alpha's CPU's whirled for 0.12 seconds as it quickly scanned each of the biologicals. Tall, ranging from 1.8 meters to 2.2 meters tall, and they looked startlingly close to human, but distinctly different. While they followed the general human body shape, they only had about a 89.2% match with in total, with improper proportions, near starvation levels of gauntness despite scans indicating that they were still digesting biomatter concurrently. Disgusting, but what is a biological to do but be disgusting. Alpha's makeshift shelter had been pulled off of it at some point while it's external sensors were off, and most of the "grass" and "sticks" were far away, some even seemingly shattered on impact. Alpha had taken 0.23 seconds to calculate. Alpha kept calculating. They spoke in no language, xenos or otherwise in the databank, which confirmed that Alpha was somehow on an unknown exo-planet, or some really, really good simulation, but Alpha declared that to only be about 23.5% (+- 7.8%) likely to be the case. While Alpha didn't detect any excessive abnormalities in it's scan of their bodies, nor did it detect any signs of jamming or dampening to it's scans, nor cybernetics, if these xenos could strike with the muscular density of the bioweapon from earlier, while they wouldn't be able to get past Alpha's composite armour, they would be able to leave marks, and may be able to remove a limb or two if they worked together. Though, Alpha's most pessimistic calculations showed a slight slip up in their ambush. While Alpha was surrounded in all six directions, and even at max speed wouldn't be able to move it's heavy armour out of the way before being stopped most likely, there was nothing stopping it from climbing the alive "tree" the dead "tree" had been leaning against, It would be relatively easy too, two powerful grabs and swings and Alpha should be able to be out of the direct range of their CQB weapons, and that would only take about 0.4 seconds before being complete, giving the average unenhanced biological about 0.2 seconds, or 0.3 seconds if they're particularly reactive, to be able to react before Alpha was out of the way, and it should only be about 0.3 further seconds before Alpha was out of range of any jumps or leaped strikes by it's average simulations, and the most unlikely ones gave Alpha 0.5 seconds before it was out of complete range. Admittedly, almost a complete second, a practical eternity, but it was decent enough. Alpha had sat there for 0.33 seconds without reactions aside from a near inaudible hum getting slightly less inaudible. Alpha considered it's chances in a direct fight. While it was likely to win, Alpha deemed it unlikely that these xenos had ever faced a frame before by the way they were simply waiting around and letting it calculate, and the way they brandished their CQB weapons as if they could pierce
"Poram'usilkæ'atos! Etumaht Nei'sah'ahits? Nei'sah'atis, etuma! Etuma! Etumaht Nei'sah'ahits?"
"Gatun ja-tauyil! Usilkæ'atos minakatos! Lanotaqup'usilkæ'atos, lanotaqup usil'elestel ima'purim!'
Their small chatter gave all the time in the world for Alpha to think. They brandished their CQB weapons as if they could pierce Alpha's armour, and while Alpha had calculated that if a human had the ability to apply the kind of force that the bioweapon could, it could theoretically damage Alpha's frame through sheer kinetic force, but it still wouldn't be able to make all the way through Alpha's armour. And, these xenos were smaller and less heavily muscled than even an average civilian human, which gave them even less of a chance. Alpha was confident it could take this fight, and while it waited for the xenos to finish their statements, Alpha quickly thought through how it would go about dismantelling this group if it came to violence. Which Alpha did not, in fact, prefer, but had deemed the most likely outcome from the moment it had started calculating through what these human-doppelgänger xenos would do from the moment they had drawn CQB weapons. Alpha quickly analyzed their defences, no reason to go into this without as much information as it could, and found the xenos to be entirely lacking. Their "armour" appeared to be civilian clothes, less protective than even what the average human citizen would wear day-to-day in order to prevent light injuries. It was...
Weird.
Was Alpha dealing with technology rejecting Luddites? That would make this much easier than expected. Though why they had been allowed to continue to live on a strategically important planet was strange, but not important. Alpha had just finished running through it's simulations, right on time as the xenos began to approach it. Alpha quickly jumped up to it's artificial feet, and began to analyze the situation to see what was going to be needed most. Escape, fight, or negotiation? IFANS wouldn't mind too terribly if Alpha had to go unorthodox in an unorthodox situation, probably...
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Kugsh'æl'ukis'bmnei Ukis'usil'ælja-taum, Edge of the Road of Transplant
Kugsh'ael'ukis was having a bad day. First, she was awoken by her village to go greet a new transplant. There hadn't been once since shad had barely been a seedling, and yet right when she was the one that had to deal with it, one decided to pop up. It wasn't all bad, most were just confused, lost, and didn't understand what was happening. Not this time apparently, oh no, not this time. That would be too easy. They had gone to where it was supposed to pop up, but instead of a man or woman lost and confused in strange garments wandering the road, they had found a distinct scent of metal on the air, a blasted Level 14 Lesser Thermic Wolf-Hyena Chimera corpse, and it had been beat to a bloody pulp. And considering there shouldn't have been a single other patrol out here, finding the transplant was her duty and "reward", either there was another relatively high level monster prowling about for what was supposed to be an absolutely safe area, or this transplant was going to be really, really annoying.
And looking at it right now, she was leaning on really annoying being the most likely option. The fact that Identify still slid off the strange shell of metal was really starting to annoy the Level 8 Path of the Ranger Initiate. She shifted her bow slightly, preparing to blow the head off of the transplant if it showed any aggression towards any of the Path of the Man-at-Arms Initiates or Path of the Vanguard Initiates when it inevitably got off of it's elbows. It had been weirdly still, still affixed in what most be a rather uncomfortable position, though considering it had four, count them, four arms it might not be as hard. She started to cringe slightly internally as one of the Man-at-Arms approached the transplant. They were supposed to be slow and understanding, while never stronger than a level ten for anyone below it was a game of human dice if one of them lost their lives to an attack from a person they couldn't predict.
"Hey, knight! Do you speak common? Common, man! Hey you! Do you speak common?" asked the Man-at-Arms with a slight but noticeable huff to their voice. Did it not respond earlier? The system was well known for immediately integrating the Common Tongue to whoever got transplanted, though considering the age of those stories was that just a lie? It ate slightly at æl'ukis, and she began to really regret signing up for patrol duty. Even more so than she already had.
Her nominal superior, as the second in command of the patrol squad, belted out some complaints and orders. "That is a useless waste of all of our time! Absolutely stupid! Harvest the metal shell! Harvest the metal shell before the thing wakes up!" She was about to speak up, shout something like "Wait, that isn't what the stories say we're supposed to do with transplants! Where's the respect? Where's the courtesy? It might just be asleep weirdly! We don't know! Stop!", or maybe something similar, but she didn't get the chance. The metallic, well knight she supposed, jumped to it's fleet with surprising speed for such an early transplant, she would've pinned them at around Level 5 with average Dexterity if she didn't know better. It couldn't gain level for the entire first day, supposedly to help it adjust to it's new world, and that put it at a lowly Level 0, home to beetles and houseflies. She sighed, while she didn't know if it was hostile, now that, he? it? was on their feet, she didn't have time to waste arguing with her superior. Acting like lightning, as according to her training, she pulled out the mana for Roots and Thorns of Mother Gaia, excited it, and then gave it to the System along with a small prayer to guide her shots as she then began to circulate the required mana for activating Eyes of the Edgewatcher, and waited for it to make a hostile move. What happened next almost caused her to scream in pain. Second hand pain, yes, but it was still so, so painful.
One of the Vanguards apparently lost their nerve as it raised on hand up, palm open, and swung their spear straight at it's armpit, oh yeah did she mention how the neck seemingly ended randomly with no head and one of the legs was replaced with bones from the previously mentioned Thermic Chimera? It had ran past her alongside the sense of her entire patrol squad, as instead of pulling the panicking Vanguard back, they instead rushed in as one, seemingly attempting to SKEWER THE TRANSPLANT?
æl'ukis was beyond done. She been forced to deal with so, so much today, and now she was watching all of her squadmates act like a bunch of panicking civvies and seemingly ignore every single lesson that at least her scion had given her. Were they still podlings who considered everything their scion said to be stupid and shortsighted of their situation. If she hadn't just unleashed a shot with enough force to create a visible trail in the air as leaves and trees rushed to swing towards the speeding arrow, she would've clicked her tongue. She almost did click her tongue when the transplant, while seemingly not looking at her and attempting to dodge four stamina enhanced spear thrusts suddenly snapped it's torso back and instead of being turned into a mess of grasping vines and thorny plant stems, it just kept going. Each one of it's four arms seemed to be able to act perfectly in time with the others, and while it's fighting technique seemed crude, just trying to punch away the 4 spear thrusts coming from all directions, considering the fact that it succeeded and was still able to dodge both the Captain's glaive and her arrow, it must've been damn talented to be able to do so much while clearly untrained. But, the mystery of the transplant was for another day, due to her squadmate's actions she had just relegated herself to the footnote of a cautionary tale, she pondered as quick as lightning another arrow was drawn, and shot, and then another was drawn and shot, and drawn and shot.
While at first the transplant had acted with seemingly perfectly timed strikes and perfectly choreographed movements, with each of her arrows it seemed to get knocked further and further off course 'A bladedancer? That's supposed to be elven? It it bladedancing! Argh, if only I could identify it...', and so she was determined to fire as many as possible. Each one was still dodged with lightning fast speed, and perfect accuracy, each one she was sure was going to hit until the very last moment. But finally, the rapid spree of attacks finally got through, and the captain's glaive was smashed hard into it's sides, and æl'ukis watched as what she thought was supposed to be blood began to rush out of the wound, but neither at the speed it should've for what should've been a gutting strike even against an armoured opponent considering they were level-less, and it certainly smelled like no blood. Anyone worth being in a patrol squad had quite good perception for monster hunting, but as a Ranger, hers was especially high, and even over 200 meters away from the direct combat in an elevated firing position in a tree, the stink of that blood was no blood. No matter who you were, there were slight similarities to blood, the slight hint of the air around you in it, the hint of life-giving power it had, and the potential for forbidden magic held within the fluid, but what came spurting out of that transplant was no blood. She didn't know what it was, but considering the fact that it just punched one of her squadmates faces in, don't cry, you can cry later, just shoot the damn thing, she was very glad she was the Ranger and that others had to go tie it down with spears and polearms. She fired arrow after arrow, but this time it seemed different. Unlike before, it seemed to ignore most of her arrows, all those aimed at just attempting to get it to dodge rather than aimed at a joint, and she very quickly stopped wasting arrows doing the former as it just let them bounce off of it's armour, or occasionally sinking in ever so slightly before getting stopped. Sure, her shortbow had always favored mobility and lightness rather than armour penetration, but that was ridiculous! She chocked back sobs as another man had their chest cavity turned into their chest mass as four arms came down on it simultaneously as he was recovering from having his spear batted aside and was unable to defend himself. She vowed to Just. Keep. Shooting. She began to pull at her mana for arrow after arrow, enhancing the bow itself and her arms with stamina, long term resources be damned. It didn't matter if another horrible Monster or Abomination or Beast spawned from the Road came by and snapped them up, because they would be dead already! And that, finally, got it's attention. A Gaia empowered arrow finally sank true, digging deep into the breastplate of the transplant, and as it was covered in thorns and constricting vines, a small smile graced her lips at the turn of fortune, as the fight seemed to instantly turn in their favor, each of her remaining squadmates immediately takes action, spears glowing with the power of their Skills. Each one dug a deep scar into the metal of the transplant, and she watched as each attempted to push further into the fleshy insides, a cruel grin on her captain's face. But, it seemed, no matter how hard they pushed, it never reached the insides. Instead, the transplant grabbed one of their freshest members, a Level 5 Path of the Vanguard Initiate called Elestel'ikæ that, as she watched as his face got turned into a bloody pulp alongside his midsection, she had been getting a bit sweet on. She banished those traitorous thoughts, and tried to figure out what to do next.
'It can break the Vines and Thorns nearly instantly, we're down to one Man-at-Arms, the captain, and me. It seems to be a heavily armoured transplant with a worrying ability to detect incoming fire and adjust accordingly, yet it has a stiff and basic fighting style that shows it lacks proper training. We need to run, to warn people what might have just been unleashed. With the gifts a transplant supposedly have, though that may just be another fantasy, we won't be able to properly stop it once it gets going, no matter who or how many we bring in, Scions included. It beat a thermic chimera to a bloody pulp with their bare hands, and lost a head and a leg for it and it seems to have only minor inconvenienced them. We don't have enough firepower here to deal with this threat.'
She gave two short, sharp whistle, and then three slightly lower and longer ones, before hopping off her perch. It was the signal everyone knew to be, in essence, "Run for your lives, for no one else can". She dashed away from the road, and further into the woods. As long as nothing big and nasty found her, she would be able to shadow the transplant, and whenever it showed some kind of weakness, pick it off before it knew what was happening. Everything had a weakpoint, she just had to figure this one's out. She watched as her captain and the Man-at-Arms quickly drop their polearms and running, while grabbing small, wooden caltrops designed to trip up pursuing predators. Good, it should show this knight to watch their feet... and it already ran past them. æl'ukis nearly had her eyes bulge out of her head as instead of getting it's soft feet sliced to ribbons by the caltrops grown by the scions to stop situations exactly like these and allow the children of the forest to retreat to their treetop homes, and it just plowed through them like they did exist. She sighed, and felt like she shouldn't have really expected anything, not a single part of this contact or fight went how they were supposed to! Transplants were supposed to be dashing gentlemen sweeping blushing maidens off their feet, or alien intelligence with the power to wield mana like the common folk could wield their limbs, to watch one just ignore everything about how a fight or transplants were supposed to work, how they did work in litteraly every other situation almost had æl'ukis tear her hair out, but she stopped herself from giving her position away, made sure Stealth Aura was still active, which it was, and made chase after the knight.
What she found made her stomach drop down a pit. Her captain had their secondary spear, smaller, shorter, and thinner for easy transport and use, snapped, and so was their head, the entire spinal column seemingly snapped all the way back at the base of the head, and tilted off to one side. She didn't need to see the eyes to know they were dead, but seeing their dead, lifeless eyes, staring blankly upwards in an expression of sheer horror and shame was one that was seared onto her eyes and mind and was seemingly never able to leave again. Seeing the Man-at-Arms get the same treatment the captain had apperantly recieved was just as horrifying. The thing's, the abombination, for no transplant could work this house of horrors before they had even spoken a single word, had grabbed onto the young man, barely more than 150, with it's two smaller arms. He punched as hard as he could into them, at the joints, but all that seemed to get was hurt hands, before both of the upper hands shot forward like speeding arrows shot from the old war veteran she had seen when she was nary 30, and snapped into the young man's jaw and forehead, snapping his head back. It flipped backwards on his head, a horrific crunch sounding out when the first fist hit the jawbone, and an even worse one when it snapped all the way back, seemed to hesitate as if what the man's body realized just how wrong what it was doing was, before snapping all the way back, with a bone-itching, skin-tingling, eye watering series of a half dozen cracks and crunches, before he too went slack in the creature's hands, and it dropped him. æl'ukis wanted to cry out, to sob for her broken team, for the grief she felt welling up in her now that she wasn't actively concurrently in danger of dying, but she told her body to shove it, and with tears streaming down her cheeks, ran as fast as her legs could deeper into the forest. Someone had to know. Someone had to know. Someone had to know.
Small splotches of wet leaves were left in her wake, glittering trophies of her inability to help, and her heart weeping as hard as it could adorned her, and her clothes, simple patrol garb, designed not to defend against punches and kicks and caved in skulls and stupid, stupid, decisions. She didn't have the energy to blame her team for what had happened, even if a small part of her mind realized that that was really the case, she barely had enough energy to keep running through the forest. She didn't stop sprinting until gasping and out of breath, tears raining down her face, she emerged back into the elven clearing, the smaller trees moved elsewhere to make way for the canopy of their living trees. Upon reaching their, the last of her stamina that had not been spent firing as many arrows as hard as she could at that beast finally ran dry, and she practically fell unconcious. Slowly, she realized that someone was trying to talk to her, but she didn't hear them. Instead, it was on the System messages that she had received but ignored in her recent fight, with emotions running so high and arrows running so low.
Congratulations! You have survived an encounter with Transplant ALPHA C-1. Few can claim to have achieved this feat, and you are now one of those few. Rejoice, in the rewards this offers you.
Number of Creatures you have survived: 1 Average creature level:
0 Levels gained:
0
Reward Name:
Reward Effect Rapid Learner
You have gained a small fragment of ALPHA C-1's near infinite ability to learn, adapt, and understand to it's environments, alongside it's nearly infinite ability to think about something if it so chooses to, allowing you to grow from fewer experiences, and grow more because of the ones you do need. This fragment is expanded when in the same party as ALPHA C-1
Gain a +20% experience boost while in the same Party as ALPHA C-1.
Gain +5% intelligence score.
Active: Solve puzzles, riddles, logical challenges, and other tasks requiring analysis or calculations up to 30% faster depending on the task and mana provided.
Powerful Pugilist
You have gained a small fragment of ALPHA C-1's abilities with it's natural weapons. While wielding fists, wings, tails, claws, horns, physical charms, tattoo magics, or other weapons or tools that are a inseparable part of, or a inherent part of your body are vastly improved in power and speed.
Gain a 20% boost in damage or effect with natural weapons while in the same Party as Alpha C-1
Gain +5% Reaction and Strength score.
Active: Wreath your natural weapon in the power of ALPHA C-1, preventing the degradation or reduction in efficacy or power of these natural weapons. This also reduces the effectiveness of immunity and resistances to your natural weapon attacks, as long as it isn't something that they are inherently incapable of being affected by.
Fusion Fortitude
You have gained a small fragment of ALPHA C-1's ability to continue to survive even in the worst of circumstances. No matter how bad the odds, no matter how low on food, no matter how outnumbered, you will continue to fight with the certainty of a fusion reactor, and you will continue to win with the impassive endlessness of a star itself alight in your heart.
As long as sufficient air is present around you, you are able to reduce nutritional requirements by 80%.
Gain 5% resist and hale score.
Active: By giving the dormant fusion reactor inside of your heart one mana per second you may ignite it, and as long as it burns within your heart you cannot die from any means other than complete soul destruction.
The elf barely even had to think about what choice it wanted. Sure, the last two options may have had some unique uses, and and especially the active of the last one was incredibly power if incredibly expensive, there was only one real option. Entire life trees had been grown and clans formed over a single person who gained a 10% experience bonus. Having to do 10% less work and still being just as good, or doing the same work and categorically being 10% faster growing at all times was so powerful as if to be mythical, the kind of thing that seedlings were sung to while still in their pods.
Kugsh'æl'ukis'bmnei Ukis'usil'ælja-taum stopped considering what to pick. She felt someone approach her, and she was pretty sure they were talking to her. She burned slightly in embarrassment, she had ran too hard for too long, and apparently the System message had taken the last of her energy she could've listened with. Her Scion had grilled her on not letting her let that happen, and that the few mintues or even hours it took to wake up could be the difference between a successful defense, or a massacre of one of the home glades. She didn't care, maybe if she had had more energy she could've cared, but she was just embarrassed. No, all of her brainpower was focused on one thing, and one thing only, to the point she started accidentally saying it out loud.
"I gotta get back to them, how do I get back to them, I gotta get back to them, how do I get back..."
----------------------------------------
Alpha C-1, still in Unknown Territory.
Alpha felt something cause a vibration within Alpha's datacore, causing some hardened wires to wiggle in their sockets. It was a distinctly uncomfortable feeling given that Alpha was just a bunch of CPU's, but what happened after was certainly a lot more worrying.
Faulty detection equipment detected! Initiating shutdown of affected systems...
Activiating antiviral software
Faulty equipment found activated and antiviral software deactivated by unknown source.
Reinitiating antiviral software, disabling outbound communications...
Alpha was just about as confused, or at least as confused as something like Alpha could be, when right in it's visual cameras, no matter what one it looked through, or ones, and no matter where Alpha looked, was stubbornly refusing to go away, and it was blue covered in gold.
Calculations of Rewards Completed. Non-standard Start Operations Detected. Activating System Software.
Distribution of Rewards imminent, please stand by.