Seeing that nothing useful would be gained by hanging around the naive fools any longer, Nathan set out down the street, leaving the others behind. He had no time for people who couldn't make up there minds, which is something he begrudgingly respected about Garth and Reggie is that they did hold to there beliefs...even if they were wrong.
But still, despite the rejection there was a spring in Nathan's step as he made his way into the city. Now he could go back to using his ability without the constant whine of how it wasn't proper or that it should be used for good.
Hopefully a SWAT van would come by, those were always fun...
"hmmm no answer, have you gone into sleep mode or something because that`s just rude" terrible fired another bolt of lightning into the pile of rubble 1w was currently residing in.
"is that it?...wow they just don`t make'em like they used to" terrible sighed as he turned around and began making his way to the man street he walked through an alley nearby where him and 1W were fighting before setting foot onto the sidewalk, almost immediately afterward some random bumped into terrible knocking him back a few paces.
"watch where your fucking going" terrible grunted pushing the stranger back, sending him off his feet and back half a block, landing flat on his ass.
"okay, now what to do?" terrible said to himself as he walked towards the person he pushed over quickly passing him and starting to walk off.
terrible looked over his shoulder at Nathan before slowly turning around to face him a blank spread across his face.
"okay two things, one why the fuck should I calm down and two if I had any idea where the hospital was I`d be there smashing the place up and making life support systems fuck up" terrible said in an annoyed tone before turning around to walk off again.
"but if you follow the direction the people are running you might find it...or you might find a rocket launcher pointed at your head" terrible said over his shoulder before letting out a deep laugh as he started walking away again.
This post is not nearly as awesome as it should be... Unless one of you happen to implode upon reading this, it isn't good enough.
Two robots stood, perfectly still, in a battlefield of falling debris. For what could have been hours they had stood, the female with her hands laid on top of the male's, and any onlooker could easily mistake them for statues.
Outcry's positronic brain was in a confusing state. There was a fortress of encryptions, data blocks, firewalls and a cubic buttload of things that were designed to destroy the unknown, all guarding Outcry from attack by viruses. Theoretically, nothing could get in, and things seldom got out. But, like every 'impenetrable' mind that Carter had built, it had a weakness.
1W could be beaten by taking advantage of his priorities. He would always protect Carter, and this could always prove his downfall.
2W had been beaten by the combined efforts of many supers, all tearing his armour to pieces and manually shutting down the core. His weakness was inferiority to his prey.
3W had been beaten by his own morality, allowing Catherine to upload a program that overwrote the Laws to suit their needs.
And 4W? Her weakness is her consciousness. All of the other robots in the 'Carter' series were just that. Robots. They were beings of metal, hydraulics and wiring. But Outcry was a person before her time as 4W. There had been 29 years of consciousness that Carter had needed to suppress when the time came to make Outcry operational. And that was were she had slipped up.
One cannot contain the entropic mess that is the human mind using segments of code. It is comparable to using a small brick wall to hold back a flood. By using more code, you would hold it for longer... but it will not last forever. As such, Catherine's mind was now a potential rampage of feeling and thought that was held back by Outcry's consciousness. ThreeWords was about to change all that. He was going to break that consciousness for just long enough to unleash the one within. How?
****
"When I promised you power, your brain will have told you to attack me. But you grabbed my hands instead. Why was that?"
Outcry looked down, as though thinking of an answer, though keeping her hands firmly upon his.
He answered. "Because you are not a machine. You have a positronic brain to make decisions, as all of Carter's robots do, but then you have a real one that makes you act otherwise. You can override your programs."
She looked into his eyes, "You are wrong. I am kept under the influence of the Laws at all times. They limit what I can do so that my actions cause no harm to innocents."
"And has your inaction not cause the deaths of several more so far? If you were truly constrained by the Laws you would have left long ago to protect innocents. But instead you stayed here among the debris of a theatre."
"My actions could not have saved any of them. The possibility that my presence at the scenes of many of these deaths are so low that we can deduce them to all to be negligible. I stayed because..." She paused. She had, at no point, received a command to attack ThreeWords. Carter had failed to mention him. "I stayed because you were a threat to me... I had to destroy you."
"And not because of a program telling you so. Because of your own intent."
They both stayed quiet for a moment, ThreeWords was letting the magnitude of what he had just said sink in.
"If what you say is true... That I am able to bypass the Laws, what makes you think that I shall not break my programming again to attack you right now?"
He chuckled. "Because of your past. You aren't a six month old robot at all, though this wouldn't be shocking to you. You have been alive for 29 years and 8 months, and have spent the last 6 months returning to life."
"Returning to life...?"
"This is not uncommon knowledge. Your death, I mean. Newscasters went on a spree. It was the first reportable death of a confirmed super. You were the beginning of a purge of supers from cities across the world. Carter made sure you never found out."
"My creator wouldn't do that... Even if she did, she will have had the best of intentions."
"...I believe that you were wondering why she would hide something from you. The file..."
"How did... you know that?" It dawned on her just a moment too late as her vision began to fade and her muscles began to relax. "You..."
"Maybe a robot would have been able to see that coming... But not you Catherine. There's too much at stake to let you keep trying to gain powers."
The Urbis skyline turned to blackness as ThreeWords caught Outcry from her fall and laid her down. There was a lot of work to be done if Outcry was to be made useful to him once more.
This post is not nearly as awesome as it should be... Unless one of you happen to implode upon reading this, it isn't good enough.
Two robots stood, perfectly still, in a battlefield of falling debris. For what could have been hours they had stood, the female with her hands laid on top of the male's, and any onlooker could easily mistake them for statues.
Outcry's positronic brain was in a confusing state. There was a fortress of encryptions, data blocks, firewalls and a cubic buttload of things that were designed to destroy the unknown, all guarding Outcry from attack by viruses. Theoretically, nothing could get in, and things seldom got out. But, like every 'impenetrable' mind that Carter had built, it had a weakness.
1W could be beaten by taking advantage of his priorities. He would always protect Carter, and this could always prove his downfall.
2W had been beaten by the combined efforts of many supers, all tearing his armour to pieces and manually shutting down the core. His weakness was inferiority to his prey.
3W had been beaten by his own morality, allowing Catherine to upload a program that overwrote the Laws to suit their needs.
And 4W? Her weakness is her consciousness. All of the other robots in the 'Carter' series were just that. Robots. They were beings of metal, hydraulics and wiring. But Outcry was a person before her time as 4W. There had been 29 years of consciousness that Carter had needed to suppress when the time came to make Outcry operational. And that was were she had slipped up.
One cannot contain the entropic mess that is the human mind using segments of code. It is comparable to using a small brick wall to hold back a flood. By using more code, you would hold it for longer... but it will not last forever. As such, Catherine's mind was now a potential rampage of feeling and thought that was held back by Outcry's consciousness. ThreeWords was about to change all that. He was going to break that consciousness for just long enough to unleash the one within. How?
****
"When I promised you power, your brain will have told you to attack me. But you grabbed my hands instead. Why was that?"
Outcry looked down, as though thinking of an answer, though keeping her hands firmly upon his.
He answered. "Because you are not a machine. You have a positronic brain to make decisions, as all of Carter's robots do, but then you have a real one that makes you act otherwise. You can override your programs."
She looked into his eyes, "You are wrong. I am kept under the influence of the Laws at all times. They limit what I can do so that my actions cause no harm to innocents."
"And has your inaction not cause the deaths of several more so far? If you were truly constrained by the Laws you would have left long ago to protect innocents. But instead you stayed here among the debris of a theatre."
"My actions could not have saved any of them. The possibility that my presence at the scenes of many of these deaths are so low that we can deduce them to all to be negligible. I stayed because..." She paused. She had, at no point, received a command to attack ThreeWords. Carter had failed to mention him. "I stayed because you were a threat to me... I had to destroy you."
"And not because of a program telling you so. Because of your own intent."
They both stayed quiet for a moment, ThreeWords was letting the magnitude of what he had just said sink in.
"If what you say is true... That I am able to bypass the Laws, what makes you think that I shall not break my programming again to attack you right now?"
He chuckled. "Because of your past. You aren't a six month old robot at all, though this wouldn't be shocking to you. You have been alive for 29 years and 8 months, and have spent the last 6 months returning to life."
"Returning to life...?"
"This is not uncommon knowledge. Your death, I mean. Newscasters went on a spree. It was the first reportable death of a confirmed super. You were the beginning of a purge of supers from cities across the world. Carter made sure you never found out."
"My creator wouldn't do that... Even if she did, she will have had the best of intentions."
"...I believe that you were wondering why she would hide something from you. The file..."
"How did... you know that?" It dawned on her just a moment too late as her vision began to fade and her muscles began to relax. "You..."
"Maybe a robot would have been able to see that coming... But not you Catherine. There's too much at stake to let you keep trying to gain powers."
The Urbis skyline turned to blackness as ThreeWords caught Outcry from her fall and laid her down. There was a lot of work to be done if Outcry was to be made useful to him once more.
That was pretty much as intended, if not slightly better. You win a metaphysical cookie =D
"Catherine"
The words echoed around her head. Light returns, and a face appears, familiar, concerned.
Memory returns, and Catherine/Outcry recognises the robot, and at the same time takes in the surroundings; she is lying in a bed in a small but confortable appartment. She is also not wearing anything, and unsure whether that is embarressing or an unnecesary factor
The first thing she noticed as her vision returned was the large blob in the middle of her range. Slowly it refined, the blob becoming something more human until...
"ThreeWords...?" she said softly. She looked around before sitting up and covering herself as best she could. It wasn't a great place to be, sitting naked in a shabby room, but it was better than were she though she should have been.
The last time Catherine could remember, her organs had been collecting in a puddle of her blood on the ground. Everything had gone black... She thought she was dead for sure. And yet here she was, alive.
Really she wanted an explanation. She deserved that much. "...Where are we? And how did I... how am I still alive?"
"yes...yes I do plan on smashing shit up, making people scream and causing general havoc, oh and murdering you can`t forget the murdering, why it`s one of my favorite hobbies actually" terrible responded starting to walk with Nathan instead of away from him.
"so for conversation's sake,why are you still in this city, you breaking stuff like me or are you just here to do some sightseeing?" terrible asked, immediately wondering why he chose to continue talking to Nathan instead of just murdering him like he normally would have.
"yes, I am here" said the robot, and replied to each apparent question in turn "We are in an apartment in the Southern suburb of the city of Urbis. I am unsure exactly how you survived, but through the data I have I infer that you sustained apparently fatal wounds fighting Mr Terrible, who left you for dead. However, Dr Carter, through unknown means, restored you to your current state."
"By that state," he continued, "I mean that you have been given a number of robotic upgrades, a power similar to my own mimicry and a positronic brain within your skull, which fortunately you can override with your own thoughts."
"I came here to kill a corrupt priest and was looking for something to believe in...after my wife died I felt like I had nothing left...but now I just want to get out of this damn city. I'm heading towards the airport, taking control of a plane and getting out of here"
"huh so you`ve been through crap tons of pain and your without religion?....you sound like my kind of guy" terrible said taking a deep laugh it as always laced with a slight tone of malice.
"....why the fuck do I always find these kind of people and never anyone normal or well adjusted, must be my luck" terrible whispered to himself before turning back to Nathan.
"and I`m gonna pass on getting out of here because there's still buildings in this city that are standing so I`m gonna be here a while...but because I`m bored and in need of things to do I`l go with you to the airport, cause I`ve always wanted to tear down an airport hangar and because it means I get to kill people" terrible said with a slight chuckle at the thought of him using a steel girder from a airport hangar as a bat and knocking a civilian into the distance
"so....which way, guy who`s name I don`t know" terrible said looking both ways down the street.
"But if all you met were normal people, where would all the fun be?"
He was enjoying talking to this man, he brought out a carefree nature within him that he hadn't felt since the times he had with his wife.
"I'm Nathan, by the way. I appericate you coming with me, I'll find some way to repay you"
Just then, a blue and white van drove by and Nathan launched a Spirit String at the driver, pulling the older women out of the vehicle, setting her down in front of him
"Which way to the airport?"
He asked kindly to his puppet
"That way, on the other side of the city"
She murmured blandly, pointing in a North East direction.
"Upgrades..." she repeated slowly, looking down at herself. She couldn't see any of them... but then, the doctor had made more than enough robots to learn how to fit them inside a humanoid vessel. It made sense that Carter would use a human subject as well. 3W was an android, a synthetic being made to look organic. Carter's next creation would have been better. An organic being made better through science. 4W.
She looked up towards ThreeWords. "I was... her creation then. Just another machine that she was going to use against the supers."
Suddenly she felt an overwhelming concern. It had been 6 months since she last heard from a single other super that had survived the Surge. Why? Why hadn't one of them made themselves known yet? "What happened to the other city...? They can't have all died... At least one of them must have gotten away, right?"
"huh, Nathan is it?, I knew a guy named Nathan once... wait no I did`nt that`s just what I named this particularly amusing corpse I found this one time, man that was a good day" terrible sighed reminiscing of times past.
"oh please there`s only one thing I want and I`m damn sure you have`nt got it" terrible replied walking over to the car Nathan stopped and leaned onto the bonnet pressing against it, doing a fake check of it`s suspension and even ducking to check the tire pressure.
"hey before we go betcha I make this car go from o to a 100 without starting it, watch" and as soon as he finished his sentence terrible moved behind the car and slammed at the trunk with his palm sending it zooming forward and into a nearby intersection south of them crashing into another car side-on causing a small disturbance around it.
"well now that my deep seated need of destruction is satisfied, let`s go, I`m sure nothing dangerous or possibly life threatening will attack us on the way there, causing us to stop what we`re doing and save ourselves and possibly some other people we can`t stand" terrible said in a purely sarcastic tone rolling his eyes for added effect,almost trying to predict what was going to happen to him.
"so anyway,what the hell can you do, I saw some kind of string coming out of your finger....I swear to god if you climb up one wall or make a smart-ass remark I will have to kill you due to one of the things on my to-do list being bring down Disney and all affiliated divisions no matter how much I like reading old comic books" terrible threatened jokingly but sounding as serious as he normally would have said anything else before starting to walk soon walking alongside Nathan as they started to make their way to the airport.
"I have the ability to take control of people...normal people, like puppets"
Nathan explained, his eyebrow arching curiously at Terrible's comment
"Have you been in a situation like this before?"
He asked, remembering Damien and Kris.
"Hold on a sec...come on girl"
He tugged on the women's string, causing her to walk alongside them with her blank zombie expression and Nathan tossed an arm around her, smiling back at Terrible
The engine of the humvee started with a roar. Garth revved the engine a few times, a smile spread across his face. He enjoyed the sounds of engines and machines, maybe it was because he was a man of metal himself, bearing some sort of resemblance to machine. He did not know, he just liked them.
Reggie turned his head back to Miss Harbours.
"Glad to have you join us, Miss Harbours." He smiled.
"What about them two?" Asked Garth tilting his head at Damien and the other man.
"If they were coming, they'd have gotten in by now. Fuck 'em." Replied Reggie, as he said this, Garth stepped on the gas and they were off. "Next stop, the compound"
Reggie felt happier with another super along, even at the expense of 4 humvees of soldiers. The spun round in a U-turn, avoiding the block previously sunken by Pain, and passed the two other supers.
Shame, missing out on two.
They headed south. Towards the compound where there had been reports of a super attacking company employees. Subject 17, Aka Cecia had escaped. This had been a few hours ago, whether she was still in the compound or not, he did not know and didn't really care for the thought of using telepathy to find out.
To be honest, it's their own fault for holding her like that. I'm not doing this for the company. If she get's into the city....
He couldn't think like that. What he had to think about was what he was going to do when they found her...
Me and Co were heading towards you before. Now that the Pain fiasco is over, we're heading to you again. You should really post, man
"huh so you can make people do things they don`t want to do....I`m really against forced servitude, but hey you can`t pick your powers, but if you try it on me, I will hurt you and I will hurt you severely" terrible threatened upon hearing of Nathan's power, he then looked over at the civilian Nathan had put under his control.
"huh...I never really noticed but some of these non-super dogs are are`nt actually that bad looking, too bad they all have to die at some point" terrible sighed as he and Nathan continued to walk to the airport the soft sounds of chaos and screaming providing them with a nice background noise to their journey.
"so....why you leaving?, if you don`t mind my asking" terrible said halfheartedly trying to make conversation.
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