#sebramir

It had been a few days since he and Noia had made it back to the observation bays in the first place. He’d been stressed out, twirling his claws around the frays of his lab coat, though it didn’t really help. His glasses were cracked in places, but he could still see well enough to fix the C.R.A.B. Cannon and get it operational again. Enough firepower for a few more blasts, but that was about it.

He’d had Noia scrounge through the remains of the weapons bay as well and she had been able to find a handful of useful tools to bring along. Mostly weapons that weren’t fully functional, but would do well enough in this situation.

“You remember the plan, right?” Dr. Uket said as he drove carefully to their hideout, a broken shack of rubble that seemed to still be standing despite the prismatic lasers that sheered through the steel and concrete of the taller buildings. “Noia? Regina?”

Noia had been strapped in the middle seat between Dr. Uket and a bright Dengaru she had never seen before. Regina was her name and she was strong. Which was the only thing Noia really knew about her. She had lifted and moved the Prototype-B stock bodies so easily and Noia was concerned about the security risks. Foolishly.

Regina, however, was the type of Dengaru to mind her own business. She chewed gum, blew bubbles, and moved through life to the beat of her own drum, and she was determined to get something out of this even though a giant machine was threatening to blow the whole planet up.

She wasn’t stupid, however. She knew a Cyclone-backed catastrophe when she saw one, but she was well educated because she explicitly knew when to keep her mouth shut and when to apply pressure. She figured she’d be able to get something good out of this exchange, so when Dr. Uket came calling - seemed he knew where everyone was at any given time, the snake - she decided to apply that pressure.

She wanted something that she would ask for later. Dr. Uket must have been in a rush because he agreed without much pushing, and when she had first seen the imirseb in the flesh, she immediately knew why. He was desperate. Noia wasn’t strong enough to move all the cargo and Dr. Uket wanted to keep whatever he was doing a secret for now.

“Yeah, I know,” Regina said, staring pointedly out the window. “Putting me in the line of fire for a crapshoot?”

“It’ll work,” Dr. Uket growled. “Subject-1387 is a wildcard. All you need to do is pick up the brain capsule when the stock body blows up.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Regina asked, already knowing the answer. She already knew how this sort of thing worked.

“It will,” Dr. Uket replied.

Noia was scrunched up, Dolly’s brain case in her lap. Apparently, the brain was still fine. Dolly was still in there, but there was something unsettling about hooking a brain into a body, strapping a weapon to it, and then sending it off. And then when it was destroyed, doing it over again. Noia wanted to say something about it but her throat closed up every time she thought of bringing it up.

This was a desperate time. Dr. Uket had convinced her that Dolly would like it, love it even. And that it was a service to Cyclone City citizens. It was a requirement of the job. Noia tapped her fingers gently on the capsule, hoping that it would maybe help Dolly calm down.

“And you, Noia?”

Noia straightened. “Yes, uhm, I’ll be dispensing the healing. If anyone goes down. I know who the top priorities are.”

The van went silent, tension rising as they rolled into the dusty garage. The base of operations was a single-car garage with just barely enough space for the smuggled equipment. It had taken a couple of trips to get everything into place and the last pieces were the stock bodies. As soon as the door closed, Regina hopped out of the van and began unloading it.

Dr. Uket slid out of the driver’s side and rummaged through his other equipment. The whole garage shook as another blast of prismatic light shattered windows and melted the landscape. Others were fighting it after all, but their fights were probably going about as well as this one was going to.

He smoothed his hands over his lab coat, taking a deep breath as he strapped the refurbished C.R.A.B. Cannon to one of the stock bodies that Regina had laid on the ground. He went through his equipment and strapped another pair of old-looking gauntlets to another, and drew out a long staff for a third.

Regina didn’t say anything as she moved the pieces into place, but Noia couldn’t help herself.

“What are those?” She asked shakily as another blasting beam of energy vaporized another sector of the city.

Dr. Uket remained silent, focusing solely on powering the weapons up and ensuring that starfall still flowed through them. The gauntlets were still operational. The scepter glowed brightly and the crystals were still in their original array. There was a spear, a battering ram, a rapier. One weapon for each of the stock bodies. He’d likely lose all of it in the coming fight, but if the world was incinerated, he wasn’t going to have a use for it where he was going.

“I’m simply pulling out all the stops, darling,” Dr. Uket said, his voice still steadfast despite his body language denoting otherwise. “One weapon for each body. Subject-1387 is going to cost us a lot of resources. We’re all here to support the primary weapon. That’s it.”

Regina quirked a brow and shifted her own glasses, which were a rosy red color. Her clothing was a bit damaged from the rogue steamrunners, but she was going to prepare anyway. She put her blue backpack in the furthest corner of the garage and rifled through it, looking for her own supply of supplements. It would help her calm down since she was the one expected to go out into the fray to find the damn brain when it was blasted out of the sky.

“Dr. Uket, isn’t there another way to go about this?” Noia pressed. “I mean, this is insane. Don’t you have something that can interrupt its starfall? Or pathism? Or something?”

Dr. Uket did not respond right away. He merely continued equipping each body with a weapon. And once he was finished, the garage floor was littered with bodies that would get up and running mere minutes after having a brain slotted into the special container for it.

He loomed over Noia.

“You look like you want to run,” he said calmly, flicking his tongue out between each word. “Nobody will blame you, Noia. They will all be dead.”

Noia frowned. “Not like this, Dr. Uket. Dolly is rashaakan just like the rest of us. We can’t do this to her.”

Dr. Uket squatted down with a significant amount of effort. He could look so frightening when he was trying to get things done. He’d almost forgotten that little Noia was flighty and mostly selfless. He soothed her as she trembled.

“You are strong, Noia,” he continued. “This is a desperate time. We cannot falter because of this. Dolly you called her? Dolly would want to do this. She would want to help Cyclone City in the only way she knows how. You didn’t know her like I did, Noia.”

Noia sniffed, though she tried not to. “This is just so much, Dr. Uket. What if we don’t make it? What if all this ends up being a waste?”

Dr. Uket froze in place. He knew better than to actually touch other citizens of Cyclone City. He had a habit of thinking of solving the very real problems they had. If only Noia couldn’t cry all the time, she’d be much more useful. She’d do her part without having to be soothed and lead into doing it. If she was a Steamseb, she’d be perfect.

But he had to snap out of the line of thinking. One project at a time.

“If it ends up being a waste, then we can safely say that we tried our hardest to stand against the threats that would undo us.”

Noia was not comforted by this but when Dr. Uket took Dolly’s brain case out of her hands, she let him. And when he went over to the stock body with the C.R.A.B. Cannon attached to it, she looked away as the capsule was inserted into the head and a swarm of micromachines began crawling over the base body.

Regina was interested but didn’t spend too much time going over things she couldn’t understand. Instead, she handed Noia one of her supplements. It was a bright red in color and it was in a pouch shaped like a goofy apple. Noia accepted it because she had to.

It tasted a little old.

“Just hang back for a bit,” Regina said. “I’ll only need you if I get hurt, but I think Dr. Uket’s going to do his damndest to make sure this goes off without a hitch. Or a few hitches. We’re going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.”

Regina did honestly believe that, but she just couldn’t truly understand what went on in that serpent’s brain sometimes. Uket was creepy in ways that made Regina’s skin crawl and her arm spines extend reflexively. She hated being around him, but it rarely happened. It was mostly the stories that made him so unsettling.

The way he looked at rashaaka like they were little more than dolls to play with. Dolly seemed so much more fitting all of a sudden.

“Are you ready?” Dr. Uket said. “I think it’s coming online.”

The stock body had finished adjusting to the genetic makeup of what had been left of Dolly. It was an almost perfect replica, though some of the proportions were still a little off. Dr. Uket seemed satisfied, however, as he plugged a cord into the back of Dolly’s neck and turned the ignition on in the van again.

There was a raucous jolt as Dolly sprang to life, all her vitals coming back online in an instant as she drained some of the battery. Her eyes flickered, her tubing pulsed, and she sat straight up as she seized.

“Wait! Don’t kill me!”

Noia and Regina took a step back as Dolly’s wings exploded from her arms and she flapped around uselessly, confused and alarmed. One moment, she had been in the clutches of Kingslayer, the next, she was now in an unfamiliar garage, around unfamiliar people, though after a few moments, her systems had come back fully and she was reduced to a standstill, her body large and sweeping. The C.R.A.B. Cannon was attached awkwardly to her foot.

Dr. Uket slid back out of the van and pulled on Dolly’s long tail. All the red paneling on her glowed furiously as she spun around to attack her would-be assailant, but as soon as she saw Dr. Uket, she once again calmed.

“Hello, Subject-1387,” Dr. Uket said. “I saw what was in the blackbox. You’re not done testing weaponry yet. I need to assign you a new task. You are fully operational for the purposes of weapons testing. Your brain will survive and be reapplied when you fail your objective.”

Dolly sputtered in place as her eyes glazed over.

“Excellent listening skills,” Dr. Uket continued. “There is a construct out there that is going to vaporize the planet if you do not do everything in your power to destroy it first. I have refurbished the C.R.A.B. Cannon specifically for you to play with once more, but when you fall, you will need to utilize other weapons instead.

“You have six opportunities to text six different weapons. If the construct is defeated before then, then you will find that you won’t be able to see what comes next. Does this seem reasonable?”

Dolly snorted, her flared nostrils wiggling indignantly. “I want to use them all.”

“Then be fast,” Dr. Uket said. “Subject-1886 will be here to assist. Try to die in a place where they can get to you easily.”

Dolly snarled and arched around, her circuits fraying as her energy increased. She was wild and unfocused, her organic brain trying to take back a body that wasn’t hers. There was a struggle as Regina shielded Noia from Dolly’s snaps and Dr. Uket pulled the cord from the back of her neck.

“Open the door!” he cried.

Regina didn’t waste any time in doing as instructed. Doll had already accepted the new instructions from Dr. Uket, but her vampiric nature made her unable to focus for long. As soon as the garage door was opened enough, Dolly flung herself through the opening, denting the metal along the way and taking flight.

The city was much different than when she had been making her way to the wall with the Midnight Riot. The C.R.A.B Cannon felt right in her possession again. It was easily her favorite weapon to wield. So smooth and heavy. It was refurbished, but it was still nice to hold. Or, rather, it was nice to have it attached to her body once more.

And she saw the construct almost immediately. A huge monstrosity that wound over the tallest buildings in Cyclone City like a smug serpent, a cannon right in the center of its maw, firing enormous swathes of light energy in any direction that would cause mass destruction. Smoke furled up from the rubble, and Dolly took the clouds of smoke as cover.

She would fly in, fire the C.R.A.B. Cannon, be destroyed, and wake up in a new body with a new weapon. Her brain scrambled through a myriad of emotions, though most of them were easily subdued by the hard coding that Dr. Uket had given her. She had six chances to do this. Six weapons to play with. No doubt, the Midnight Riot would make a return.

She grew closer and closer to a section of the construct that gripped onto the spires of the city, a chokehold on its lifeblood. Her eyes went bright. Her lifeblood. Her city.

Dolly remembered. Yes, the grid below her, teeming with electricity that was only for her to consume. It was still so beautiful to behold even as the city was burning and buildings were melting. Even as a monster threatened to destroy them all, the city was beautiful.

Dolly snapped out of her ruminations as a blast of light nearly knocked her out of the sky. It was a light cannon of some kind and it had originated from the mouth of the construct. Dolly blanched. She hadn’t even gotten close to the thing and it already had its sights on her. She had just barely been able to arc out of the way, but she was in the line of fire still.

She dove behind some buildings and a line of light followed after her as the construct focused fully on her. Dolly dodged another vicious attack before she was upon one of the legs, and she wasted no time in firing the C.R.A.B. Cannon as many times as her pathism would allow. She crackled with electricity, plugged the tip of her long corded tailed into two freshly constructed holes in the C.R.A.B. Cannon.

She was filled with the searing hot electricity as it wracked her body and the C.R.A.B. Cannon fired back a shot that clanged off the metal plating that made up a bulk of the construct. But she wasted no time in firing a second time. Or a third. As many times as she could before her Electropathy faded and she was slapped down by the end of the creature’s long tail.

Down to the ground. Down into a dozen pieces. Her brain went offline once more and she was shunted into darkness.

Only to be woken up immediately, a fresh stock body, brain spinning wildly as she tried to orient herself from her previously falling position.

Dr. Uket and Noia had to duck out of the way as Regina and Dolly fought, Regina trying to control the vampiric lust for electrical power by punching Dolly until she fled, this time, holding the Midnight Riot between her clawed feet.

And she immediately went out to attack the massive construct, which continued to swat at any flying intruders like they were little more than flies. It would bark orders and scream and make horrendous grinding noises as it curled around the spires of buildings that still stood tall, though the weight of it was crushing the concrete and ruining the rebar.

Dolly plonked against the same limbs as before, gripping the Midnight Riot like a bat. Just as before, she bashed it against the metal plating, driving the starfall blade into whatever openings she could find until she was swatted down once again and her body and weapon were destroyed beyond repair.

---

“Dr. Uket!” Noia screamed.

Dr. Uket was sweating. His skin had gone clammy as Regina returned covered in dust and wheezing with the effort to return a second time. She hadn’t returned the first time in good shape either. The constant running, climbing, and dodging was already taking its toll.

She couldn’t fly like Dolly. Her excavations had involved going out into the ruined city, picking through rubble and praying that she would be able to find the brain case. If nothing else. She was tired and it had been a long day.

“We have to send out again,” came Dr. Uket’s reply. “We cannot afford to waste time.

Regina shoved Dolly’s brain into Noia’s hands and stalked up to Dr. Uket, dust flying from her colorful fur like an angry cloud. She poked him in the chest a few times as she spoke, though her voice was wheezing like she couldn’t breathe through all the debris in her throat.

“No! No more,” Regina growled. “It is dangerous out there now and night is falling. Save it for the morning.”

Dr. Uket uncharacteristically hissed back, the full of his Hood flaring out in a threat. “Any later and it will be too late.”

Regina blinked in surprise and immediately punched him square in the nose, shattering his glasses and bursting the blood vessels in one of his eyes. Dr. Uket fell to the ground, out of breath as blood spurted down his shirt, Regina looming over him, a wild animal of her own.

She shook her hand to release the tension.

“That monster will still be rampaging tomorrow,” Regina continued, her voice strangely calm, though she wanted to keep punching Dr. Uket until he stopped moving.

Noia kept her hands firmly over her mouth in shock. But she didn’t move. To do so would likely put her on the receiving end of a punch as well and no matter how well she thought she could handle herself, Regina was still bigger and stronger than her and the tension in the air was crackling.

“I need to rest.”

Regina sagged down next to her backpack and pulled out a couple of bottles of water, draining them wordlessly as she contemplated just what in the fresh hell she had gotten herself into. The truth was, she would have been able to make another round. But she had seen that thing transform into a Sebra. It could go from an enormous monstrosity to a comparatively tiny Sebra within half an hour and if it was stalking through the rubble at night to find its next targets, there wouldn’t be a base of operations anymore.

It was better to lay low while stupid fighters decided to draw its attention.

After a few hours of stunted silence, Dr. Uket had fallen asleep. Regina was still on high alert though. She had forced the garage door to close most of the way and had made sure to turn off anything that would alert a predator to their location.

Noia was not sleepy though. While Dolly and Regina had been out in the city, Noia had been talking with Dr. Uket. It was odd, seeing him so worried. Pacing and mumbling to himself, double-checking that the gauntlets worked and that the scepter was functional. He had been so concerned about those two weapons specifically, that Noia thought something was up.

Something abnormal.

She waited until she knew Dr. Uket was in a deep sleep before crawling over to Regina. Regina sat still, frowning deeply, her ears twitching and searching for sound. But when Noia made herself known, Regina did relax a little bit. She had no real issue with Noia. She didn’t even really know the little Sebra.

“Tough day,” Noia said softly. “Sorry that it’s come to this.”

Regina tensed a little. “It’s not your fault. Unless it is. In which case, I have no sympathy for you.”

Noia chuckled nervously. “I’m afraid not. I don’t know a thing about...whatever that is. I’m just as lost and scared as everyone else.”

She paused and looked around, her feelers twitching in a similar fashion to Regina’s ears. Dr. Uket was still sleeping, snoring softly as far as she knew. She had even paused to listen in closer, and when nothing had changed, she turned her attention back to Regina.

“I wanted to ask you something,” Noia whispered. When Regina didn’t respond, she pressed further. “About all of this. Cyclone and the city and the construct.”

Regina’s grew dark. She didn’t trust that Uket was asleep for one second. That imirseb had done outrageous things with his technology and Regina wasn’t stupid. Just because Uket looked like he was asleep, didn’t mean that his machines weren’t listening in.

“I’m just some Dengaru citizen,” Regina said. “All I know is that the city is in danger and I had to do my part as a citizen. You’re better off talking to Dr. Uket. He’s the expert around here.”

Noia frowned. “You know what I mean!”

Regina frowned as well. “I really don’t. Dr. Uket offered to help me if I gave my strength to the city. You should be more respectful.”

There was no edge to Regina’s voice as she spoke. Normally, she’d be growling and threatening, but she knew better. Noia should have known better as well. Regina shifted.

“I’m tired, Noia,” she said. “I have to go back out there and get that capsule again. And the fighting is only going to get worse as time goes on. I saw it do something unusual. Become like us.

“It’s hunting for us and we are right in its line of fire. You were relatively safe here, but if that thing decides to come down here and finish off the rats hiding in the rubble, then I hope your experiment or whatever the hell that bat thing is will be strong enough to protect you.”

He hadn’t even realized that he hadn’t uttered a word to her in all the time. Perhaps now it was finally catching up with him. The shock of living through the state of Cyclone City as it was now. Being roughed up, almost killed, nearly melted. It was intense. And now was not the time to start worrying about the past.

This was about the future.

“Noia, darling,” he stated, “I am trying to think. There is a lot going on right now.”

“I noticed,” Noia said, looking up at the ceiling in fear of what would crash down upon them if that creature rampaged.

It was only a matter of time anyway. That construct had been beyond her comprehension. She was already small, barely over two feet tall, and the thing named Overkill had been many times bigger than anything she had seen so far. Even the Steamrunners that had been well over ten feet tall.

It was capable of destroying them all, and it was a little difficult to keep her grip, both in her mental state and on the capsule that housed Dolly’s brain. All the rest of Dolly had been smeared across the wall and Noia had spent a significant amount of her time trying to not imagine what it had looked and sounded like in real-time.

“So what now?” she asked.

Dr. Uket shrugged. “We fight it.”

“Fight it?” Noia screamed. “How? With what? A rock?”

Dr. Uket motioned to the capsule in Noia’s hand. The brain was still alive. The formula for the liquid had specifically been designed to keep the brain alive for about three days before the entity inside would perish. And it just so happened that Dr. Uket knew that this entity’s favorite thing to do was destroy things. He refused to call it Dolly. Naming things that had long since lost their grip on what made them rashaaka in the first place was a bad call. It was probably at least part of the reason they were in this mess.

“I have an idea,” Dr. Uket said. That was all he had.

Noia frowned. “And what about Dolly?”

Dr. Uket tensed up. “Don’t call it that, Noia. They aren’t alive in the same way anymore. If you give it a name, you’ll start to form attachments to it and then it all goes up in flames. We are using Subject-1387 to throw at the giant construct out there. And we’re going to do it smartly.”

He moved through the observation bay, pulling out prototype-B bodies that had not yet been given a new consciousness. If Subject-1387 liked to fight, then he would equip her - No! It. IT! - with hot-swappable bodies so when the bodies were blasted apart, he could just slot the capsule into another body.

It would retain the same properties. The vampirism, the pathism, the previous memories. A little bit of a synthetic boost, and outfitting the shell bodies with some responsive fibers, and Dolly - Subject-1387 - could get blown up as much as it took to bring down the current threat.

This would be the last one. It had to be.

This marked the second time she had been knocked offline, and Dr. Uket needed to get the recorded information out of her before he made his next move. Though he had the sinking suspicion that it wasn’t going to be quite so easy.

It rarely ever was.

“We’re almost there, Dr. Uket!” Noia said as she continued to climb the stairs. “Hang in there.”

“I’ll envy your enthusiasm until the day I die, darling,” Dr. Uket replied, clutching his side as a new stitch opened up.

Noia pressed foreward until they finally made it to the top. The door was dented, but with enough force - and eventually a surge of cryopathy - Noia was able to blast it open. A catastrophic wind threatened to steal her away, but she steeled herself against the door jamb.

“I think that’s her!”

Dr. Uket continued up the stairs as well and leaned against the door jamb, catching his breath as Noia pushed foreward once again. He was never going to truly understand what made her so resilient. But once he was able to breathe easier again, he waddled along, pulling out a miniature toolkit from the breast pocket of his lab coat.

“Oh, she does not look so good,” Noia sad.

Dolly was a mess. It would have been more accurate to describe her as a pile of wires and clumps of flesh than any sort of Sebra. The only thing that was truly intact was her headcasing. Her eyes were dull in color, and her brain looked a little shaken up, surrounded by bubbles in the head capsule.

Dr. Uket tutted as he bent down to assess the damage. “Well her brain is still okay at least. Whatever it was that did this wasn’t holding back.”

“Is she dead?”

Dr. Uket laughed. “Even if she was, that’s not so much of an issue. Let’s patch her up and we’ll deal with the next hiccup.”

“Dr. Uket, I would hardly call this a hiccup!” Noia cried, but she still followed Dr. Uket’s motions, picking up the scattered pieces of Dolly’s Prototype-B components and trying to arrange them into a normal body shape again. “This is the end of the world.”

Dr. Uket hummed. “Yes, it certainly feels like that, doesn’t it?”

He set to work. It wasn’t going to be a perfect job by any means but so long as he could get Dolly back online, she would likely take care of the rest on her own. These types of steamsebs were a different type of resilient. As long as the brains of the operation were still intact, then the body could press on. She was mostly inorganic anyway.

Noia watched as Dr. Uket soldered wires back together and placed them into their proper places. It was messy, but he was getting something of a signal. Dolly was still offline, but once her finished retooling her, it would probably be fine. She’d be able to get them down safely. Maybe even back to Central Hub, but that was a little optimistic for his tastes.

Some of the screws were still loose by the time he had finished, but once all the cybernetic parts were shoved together and the fleshy parts had been arranged properly, Dr. Uket pulled out another device and attached two coiled wires to some jutting pieces of metal. In theory, this would work, but in practice?

The electric current flowed out of the device, draining the entire internal powersource in one tremendous charge. It lasted only a few seconds, but it did, at the very least, bring the light back to Dolly’s eyes.

She flickered in the darkness a few times, her internal systems passing many errors through her fleshy brain, which had swelled a little. She could barely recall what had happened to her before she had gone offline and her flesh self was in too much pain to make words anymore.

She could see Dr. Uket and Noia looking down at her mangled body and she attempted to make sounds, though a hollow sounding voice echoed out of her head.

“I fired the C.R.A.B. Cannon,” she said.

“I am aware,” Dr. Uket replied. “Listen, I need your blackbox encrypted.”

“The Midnight Riot,” Dolly continued. “I like that one, too.”

“Yes, darling, it’s all very good,” Dr. Uket said, somewhat urgently. “The black box. I need it.”

Dolly’s internal systems buzzed as excess electricity coursed through her. The black box was deencrypted, but when she tried to move, she found that she could not.

“I can’t move.”

Noia grimaced as she looked at Dr. Uket, who had begun to dig around for the device that would get him up to speed since he had been removed from the Central Hub. Was he just going to let her suffer?

Dr. Uket cleaned his glasses on what tiny bit of clean lab coat he had. “Yes, well you’ve been destroyed again. I’ll put you back together, don’t worry.” A pause. “So what are you going to do about Sebra.AI’s offer, hmm? You heard it, right?”

Dolly’s circuits stuttered once more. Of course she had heard it. “I refused the offer already. She is made of ones and zeroes.”

Dr. Uket seemed satisfied with that answer. “Good. I don’t need another one of you turning on me.”

Noia jumped. “Dr. Uket! What does that mean?”

Dolly’s bright eyes blinked a few more times as the shapes faded in and out. She was losing power again. Noia’s voice was loud and panicked and Dr. Uket seemed to be trying to awkwardly comfort her enough to get her to stop screaming.

But Dolly didn’t see the rest. She flickered offline again.

Noia grabbed the headcase, leaving everything behind outside of the brain and a single piece of Dolly’s arm. They were going to have to make the trip all the way back down again and she was horrified by Dr. Uket’s nonchalance about it all.

But she wasn’t going to say anything about it. She had just seen him bring someone back from the dead, no matter how briefly. Dr. Uket tucked the black box into his pocket and made his way back to the stairwell. He’d look at the data once they were in a safe house. Until then, he had to focus on dealing with what was liking going to be Sebra.AI’s last stand against them.