It turned out that the tubes did work outside of the resurrection chamber. Meaning that it wasn’t actually a resurrection chamber anymore. Just the resurrection tubes. Which was pretty good for them.
There was one issue with that, though. There were seven tubes, including the primary one that they used thus far, not sure if the others weren’t damaged and not wanting to create some abomination in the eyes of gods and men.
It turned out that the secondary tubes didn’t work and that when Singularity was chosen on a panel attached to one of them, she began to ‘spawn’ from the primary tube. This led Humility to speculate that the remaining six are supposed to be used while spawning an entire unit of mooks.
The clothes appeared where they expected them to. Or, to be exact, her villain uniform. None of her civilian clothes whatsoever.
Since Revenant suggested testing that, they moved the wardrobe where things spawned elsewhere first.
Yes, it was the deployable wardrobe, meaning that they had to remove it from the wall first. Yes, the worst-case scenario was Singularity’s outfit not spawning at all and the girl forced to lounge around (and fight) completely naked. No, she wouldn’t really care (for reasons that would make Revenant care very much). But…
… it worked.
The things just appeared out of thin air on top of the wardrobe, now lying on the floor outside of the room. How very… scientific.
Still, this meant that they could take it with them as well and maintain access to the villain outfits. They still would feel great having a change of clothes, but… baby steps. For now, getting away and restarting their little farming project was the priority.
The moment the process was finished, Revenant asked to be allowed to have a minute with Singularity in private. Humility nodded and explained how to finish the spawning process and release the person from the tube.
Everyone else was waiting in the corridor beyond the room where the tube was temporarily placed. They were pretty much ready to go, just waiting for Singularity to be up and running and help them carry the tubes.
“The question that plagues my mind right now…” Humility says, turning its face plate towards Decay. “... is ‘what’s the deal with Singularity?’”.
Humility realized rather quickly that Decay lacks a brain-to-mouth filter. Getting information out of him was significantly easier than out of Revenant. Of course, the AI was certain that Decay had strict orders from his boss as to what sort of things he wasn’t allowed to share with Humility.
Still, it was relatively easy to find out at least something from Revenant’s dragon.
“Don’t ever mention brainwashing someone as an option for dealing with an enemy permanently or recruiting them to your side.” Decay comments. “At least not with Revenant around. You will die.” Everyone in the room either nods or lets out a scarce ‘mm-hm’ of approval, except for Onslaught. Who is clearly busy listening in.
That was interesting.
“I assume that Singularity was a victim of something like that, then?” the AI decides to ask. After all, Revenant is its ally. Humility needs to know what to expect. And where his berserk buttons are to avoid pushing them accidentally (and knowing how to push them when the situation calls for it).
“Yeah.” Decay replies. He doesn't like talking about it. “She used to be his classmate in the hero school. Close friend, too. Apparently died in the same attack that led to him leaving the school. Everyone thought she was dead until we ran into what was left of her while we were clearing up remnants of Archvile’s Villain Academy after the First Villain War.”
Humility wants to ask a lot of questions right now. But… it would provoke Revenant into asking more questions about it in return. He is that sort of person. And he is way too dangerous for Humility to feel comfortable while he knows too much.
It could lie, but… he would catch it, sooner or later.
“Archvile faked her death, kidnapped her and had her be the guinea pig for a new program of his, supposed to test whether sufficiently deep brainwashing can change a hero into a loyal and obedient villainous lieutenant.” Decay replies. “Succeeded. Not much of old Singularity left. Archvile planned to have himself imprinted as her owner, due to wanting a perfectly trustworthy bodyguard but kicked the bucket beforehand. Then we found her.”
Uh-oh. Must have done wonders for Revenant’s sanity. Especially if Humility's grasp of their universe’s timeline was to be believed, and it happened soon after Onslaught’s death. Author really must have had an issue with Revenant to mess up with him so much, didn’t he/she?
There is suffering for character development and then there is this.
“I assume that whoever was in the facility at the time ended up seriously regretting their life choices.” Humility replies.
The fact that Revenant acts surprisingly friendly nowadays didn’t fool it for an instance. The AI met many dangerous and terrifying people in its long life, and Revenant was giving it the same vibes. Most of them knew how to pretend they were normal. Some even ended up being normal, embracing it and abandoning their past. But… if you cut deep enough, you still found steel.
“Yeah, the boss asked them a single question of ‘can you reverse it’.” Decay replies. “Then when they said that it wasn’t possible, he had them all buried alive.”
Yeah, that checks out. The AI notices a flinch on Onslaught’s face. Someone was learning more things
“He then imprinted her on himself, hoping to find a way to fix her and, well, she needed someone to order her around to get herself food and so on so the imprint was a necessity.” Decay continues. “Eventually nothing worked, and they both ended up dying. But it seems that you’ve made him take another shot.” He scratches his chin nervously. “Just, you know, don’t mention brainwashing as a solution. You’ll end up like Mindwasher.”
“Thank you for reminding me of that.” Thorn shivers lightly in the background. “I almost managed to forget.”
Now, that sounds interesting.
“Care to elaborate?” Humility asks.
“Yeah, we were recruiting minor villain groups to form the VAA, between the First and Second Villain War.” Decay replies. He is still scratching his chin, but now more nervously. “The guy turned out to be a brainwasher, one proud of what they were doing. Revenant said nothing, just stood up from his seat, approached Mindwasher… and suddenly garroted him from behind. In the middle of the meeting. He would have died if Mindwasher’s elite mooks weren’t too shocked and if Thorn and I didn't move fast enough.” The scratching comes to a halt. “Seriously, don’t mention brainwashing as a good idea near him. Mindwasher wasn’t anyone important or really useful, but…”
“Duly noted.” The AI comments.
***
Revenant returns a few moments later. His face was perfectly unreadable, something that even Humility had to admit with a hint of respect. He isn’t alone.
The young woman that’s walking beside him has short, messy brown hair, and a relatively pretty face (Humility isn’t really interested in the details of that, so it mostly skims that part of the assessment). Body-built perfectly average made slightly more pronounced with her clothes.
Or, to be exact, her… trenchcoat? No, more like a leather jacket and thick trousers, in a mixture of black and gold, with thick wristguards and something akin to a small backpack. No helmet, oddly enough.
Her outfit is, naturally, rather bulletproof.
She is smiling faintly while following Revenant.
“Singularity, I want you to help carry a few things with your individuality,” Revenant says, trying not to look at Singularity’s direction. “Humility, the robot, will show you which ones.”
“Okay!” Singularity replies with a smile. “No problem!”
If Humility itself didn’t consider mind control to be highly distasteful, seeing the way Singularity acts would make it start doing so. Messing with someone’s mind is a nasty thing, and thankfully, modern Mankind understood that.
This feeling of distaste doesn’t extend to the situation when the transhumans are the victims. What Humility did to the group it got its robotic frame from qualified as brainwashing. Although it was only a small part of what it did to them.
A slight rewrite of their mental process to make them incapable of perceiving the metaphorical ‘exit’ button right after Humility trapped them in a simulation which put them on a thirty-second long loop ending with their painful demise - only for them to wake up again and start the whole thing again.
A very tame version of what the Solar Commonwealth did to the members of the Transhuman Alliance leadership that it managed to capture during the war.
***
Humility failed to contain its curiosity/desire for more potential blackmail material and expansion of its personal psychological profile of Revenant. A few minutes after they departed, the AI decided to approach Revenant.
Singularity’s individuality turned out to be one that could manipulate gravity. She made the tubes and some other things they took with them (wardrobe, cutlery, some of the food and water in Thorn’s wood flasks) weightless, and actually made sure it controllably ‘fell’ in the direction they wanted it to.
Only a fragment of her full capabilities. SS-Ranker. Much weaker than Virtue at her strongest, but stronger than Virtue at her current.
“I noticed that you aren’t a big fan of brainwashing and mind control in general.” Humility says. The look it gets in response is perfectly calm. Too perfectly.
“I think that I’m allowed to have things that I personally dislike.” Revenant replies, not even looking in Humility’s direction. Decay takes the occasion to turn towards them, still walking in the same direction as everyone but now backwards, just so that he can give Humility the ‘are you fucking stupid’ look before starting to walk normally again. “I also dislike the colour violet and superhero movies that include Superman. The latter is due to the man reminding me of Invincible. Do you want more examples of things I dislike?”
Good to know, but…
“And yet you still used her in your war.” Humility knows that things are a bit risky right now… but those who don’t take risks, don’t reap benefits.
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“Only once it became clear that I can’t help her.” Revenant replies. “Only once it became clear that the alternative was to kill her with my own hands. And even then… I just made her death, the death of the walking corpse that replaced my friend means something. Even if I knew that the real her would hate me for that.” He stays quiet for a second. “I, to be honest, wasn’t very sane back then. One more file to the ‘regrets’ folder.”
How many petabytes of files does he have in that folder? Well, his new life is clearly giving him a shot at fixing at least some of that.
“You’re less evil than I initially took you to be, you know?” Humility asks. In all honesty, it’s mostly curious about his reaction. The final chapter that the AI got to read was… concerning, on many fields simultaneously.
“Yes, because I should have been a total monster.” Revenant replies with a hint of venom in his voice. “I should set myself a daily quota of kicked puppies, and program myself a random number generator deciding which of my underlings I was going to betray for no other reason during the execution of my newest plan. That would have certainly made me a much more effective villain.”
“That’s not what I…” He glances at the AI, now with very visible fury in his eyes. Looks like Humility really stepped on his toe this time.
“I don’t feel the need to prove my moral alignment to you, Humility.” Revenant doesn’t let it finish. “Simply because I don’t do evil when I don’t benefit from it. And raising your opinion about my puppy-kicking quota doesn’t count as a benefit. Understood?”
“Duly noted.” Humility replies before retreating.
That’s a lot of intel. Approaching him while he was distracted was a good idea. Organics were… the possibilities were greater than among the synthetics, but the design flaws were obvious.
Humility would have become human a long time ago if it didn’t want to avoid said design flaws.
The fact that Revenant only gave that angry rant to the AI when Onslaught wasn’t in hearing range said a lot.
***
They found the bodies a bit more than six Terran hours after departure, at least according to Humility’s inner chronometer. Seven humans, scattered around a bigger room. Judging from the barricade they had to cross to enter it, a failed defence perimeter.
Bullet holes were still visible all around them. That was some intense firefight.
“Dead for at least two weeks, judging from the state of the bodies.” Revenant comments after glancing at them. “The stable climate makes it easier to calculate.”
“Could be worse.” Decay replies while crossing over the barricade and glancing at the corpses. “You remember Starscream? Died in his full-body armour, and we found him way after that. When I popped the armour open, that guy practically flooded all over my boots.”
Revenant does, in fact, remember it. The fight between Judgment and Starscream was short, and his sort-of stepsister didn’t bother cleaning the body afterwards. Leading to him discovering Archvile’s former dragon in the state that Decay described.
He agrees with Decay. What they found right now could be worse in that department.
“Wow.” Virtue comments dryly, her back on the wall. She took the vanguard position for the group and entered the room first. “That’s a mental image that I really needed to have in my head, thank you.”
Decay gives her a thumbs-up gesture, either not realizing it or consciously ignoring her sarcasm.
“Those guys look comparable in equipment to the US Army soldiers that I knew of.” Revenant comments. It’s a bit odd to see centuries in the future. “Aside from that one guy over there.”
Fatigues are of a different colour (grey) and from a completely different, synthetic material. The body armour is slightly more futuristic in colours, shape and texture (and also grey). But the helmet’s shape is pretty much identical.
The helmet’s a closed one. Which makes sense, it was like that in his times too. There’s a lot of electronics in the helmet nowadays, providing soldiers with as much information as they might possibly need.
He can count three assault rifles, what looks like a light machine gun, something with a slightly longer barrel but not the right build to be called a sniper rifle, and several handguns. The assault rifle oddly resembles a cyberpunk take on the unsinkable AR-15 design.
The only exception to ‘looks comparable in equipment’ is ‘that one guy’, lying on his side by the wall of the room. Instead of the fatigues, there is a bodysuit with numerous armour pieces on it, from bracers to greaves.
His helmet’s bigger. Clear sign of being someone important, yep.
“Must have been the soldiers from the local ethnopolity.” Humility replies, finally stepping over the barricade. “The one that got eaten up by the Visitor.”
“The equipment looks oddly similar.” Revenant figured it out already (but it’s nice to have confirmation). It wasn’t the question he asked.
“The war is oddly similar.” Humility replies. “The technology got better, but tactics didn’t change that much. The guy by the wall seems like he was from the regular military, the rest were probably conscripts.”
Looks like the local government noticed the approach of the Visitor and set their army on high alert. It just didn’t work as intended. Then again, it’s not like they could hope to shoot the thing off their sky, hmm?
“Conscripts?” Decay seems insulted by the term. He is busy checking the pockets of one of the dead soldiers. “In the 26th Century?”
“People live up to two centuries nowadays.” Humility replies. “Sacrificing five to ten for a mandatory military service isn’t as much as it used to be. But with some occasional reminders, it gives any ethnopolity a pool of reservists approaching the number of citizens in work-viable age. Which tends to be a lot. Doesn’t seem like it helped that particular ethnopolity a lot, though.”
An enemy really outside of their weight class. Yeah.
Decay throws him one of the assault rifles. Figuring it out doesn’t require a doctorate, and the design didn’t change a lot.
It’s a conventional firearm, nothing high-tech, although much more advanced than what people used in their times. Humility promptly explains that firearms are cheap and reasonably useful, while also not requiring any cumbersome power sources to work. Staple weaponry of the armies of most ethnopolities, although you can expect the elite formations (especially the units in powered armours) to have more advanced stuff.
Good to know.
***
In the end, they stole most of the usable equipment. Yes, there is still some lingering smell, but… hey, it’s better than nothing, got it? Hopefully, they’ll get to wash it sooner or later.
Revenant got himself the body armour of one of the conscripts (fit almost perfectly), an assault rifle and a belt with pouches to keep ammunition. All of that was worn on top of his business suit, the material that it was made of preventing the whole thing from suffering as a result.
He also took a handgun (after all, sidearms are useful). Not to mention some decent-quality knives and a few frag grenades.
Humility got itself another conscript body armour, another assault rifle, a belt for ammo and grenades and… well, that was pretty much all. Then it grabbed the longer rifle and threw it at Clockmaker.
“Take this.” Humility adds while doing so. Clockmaker was clearly considering picking the third assault rifle up, but that’s when Humility intervened.
“Oh, what’s that?” Halworth asks back, examining the rifle up close. It clearly has a scope but seems to lack any other attachments.
“Tactical rifle, also known as an anti-tank or anti-armour rifle.” Humility replies. “Low fire rate, precision shots, improved armour penetration. Supposed to deal with heavier armoured enemies, like people in powered armours. Should work well with your optical implants.”
Right, not exactly a sniper, but something that works as a more tactical version of those. Cool. Revenant approves. So, clearly, does Clockmaker. After all, her girlfriend/boyfriend/rogue AI fuckbuddy just gave her a nice present.
Also, Clockmaker’s an idiot for telling Humility about her implants. Sure, Onslaught mentioned them first, but now the AI clearly knows how they work. And that’s something that only Humility could talk about. He made sure of that.
Of course, Revenant’s planned for that to happen. It’s a nice thing, to watch your own plan slowly unfold itself with next to zero input from you. Just correctly prepared initial circumstances that make its success into a nigh-inevitability.
Anyways.
Virtue grabbed some flash grenades. Just what she needed to be dangerous. But just in case, she picked a handgun. So did Thorn. Thankfully, heroes were all trained to at least basic proficiency with guns.
Decay refused to take anything aside from what Humility identified as smoke grenades. It made approaching enemies much easier. And a handgun, just in case that got useful.
Onslaught had limited use for weapons, and it’s not like they could find body armour that fit her small frame.
They found a crate of ammunition, the defenders clearly taken down too quickly to replenish what they had on them. Nice.
Everything else is loosely tied together, Singularity making it float behind them like the rest of their equipment. Not enough to hope to outfit a mook unit, but… it might come useful. Besides, knowing Clockmaker, she already thinks about the best way to dissect some of it for SCIENCE.
The soldier's armour is too damaged to be used. Stray shot to something that shouldn’t be shot. Clockmaker might be able to repair it, but since it has something akin to a light exoskeleton within its structure to make walking in it easier, using it in its non-powered state is… not worth the additional armour layer.
It would restrict your movements way too much.
They also don’t wear helmets. Those need to be thoroughly washed to be wearable. They throw it all into the pile of goods they take with them. On the other hand, backpacks were still a thing, and so they managed to massively improve their ability to carry things around.
“Nice, we have gotten ourselves some proper equipment,” Revenant announces once they are done pillaging the room. He would prefer to get himself a source of new equipment, but… “Unfortunately, that’s the ‘I have good news and bad news’ situation.”
“Yay!” Clockmaker looks overjoyed by the statement. “Equipment’s the good one, yes? So what’s the bad one?”
Decay noticed it already. Virtue too. He could tell from the brief exchange of looks and the fact that Virtue was by the right set of doors, clearly standing guard (even without being ordered to) during their little pillaging session.
Unfortunately, that concludes the list of tacticians in the room. Except for Revenant, of course.
“We haven’t encountered any split in the road for at least an hour.” Revenant replies. There were still rooms and the associated chaos of the maze, but… it was mostly a straight road. “Meaning that if we don’t want to lose too much of the advantage we have over the potential transhuman pursuit party, we have to continue the journey… through those doors.”
He points towards the set of doors on the other side of the room than the doors they came through. The ones left open, yet blocked with a surprisingly well-crafted defensive barricade. The one that would be a pain to go through if the soldiers were alive.
They might have powerful individualities on their side, but… he isn’t sending Onslaught to charge through a straight corridor at local soldiers unless he figures out if tactical rifles can punch through her reinforced skin.
“And that’s a problem… How exactly?” Humility asks. Confirming Revenant’s worries.
“You aren’t exactly experienced in ground combat, are you?” He asks just in case. Humility doesn’t seem to be insulted by those words.
“Everyone has their own specialities.” It replies. “There is a reason why I’m letting you make the decisions. I’m a scientist more than a tactician, and I feel no issue with admitting that aloud.” More like a ‘mad scientist’, if what he heard thus far is to be believed, but… that’s beside the point.
“From how I see it, this outpost is too well equipped to be a random last stand of a group of stranded soldiers after whatever happened to their world.” Revenant then says. “This was a logically placed fortified position, protecting an approach to something big. Right in the chokepoint of the corridor, we’ve just passed through. Not only well-equipped, but the fact that they’ve realized that it was a critical defensive position implies that they scouted ahead.”
He can see some ‘damn, now that you said that…’ looks from them. Minus Humility, who is merely standing there.
“This implies a larger surviving military unit, with a working command structure and sizable supplies.” Revenant continues. “Normally, it’d be great for us, as we could pretend to be a group of survivors while hiding our individualities. Or, at least, some of us could, the rest would wait outside so that we could get some intel on the surrounding area and, hopefully, steal some useful supplies.” He pauses for a moment, before pointing at the pile of half-rotten corpses by the wall. “I’m sure that you can see the problem with that.”
“Something wiped them out.” Decay adds before anyone else has the time to voice their answer to that. “And that’s the smaller problem we’re facing right now. The bigger one is that the bullet holes are on the wrong side of the barricade.” He scratches his head nervously while Virtue nods in the background. “Those guys were attacked from behind. From the very direction where we’re heading.”
***
This time, Singularity.
Came out a bit younger than I honestly intended her to be.
She's like 26-27. But in a true anime fashion she feels 15. Sigh.
At least the equipment is fine.
[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1029465796570783838/1064592118699536464/00003.png]