Qualt said to Vuela, "I'm going to give him about a week to call us before I get worried.
Seeing as he's vanished before."
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Andertol was still in the blackness. But the fact that his brain was still moving seemed to imply he hadn't yet ceased to exist. He had no sensation of breathing. Only a slight sensation of movement.
Slowly, some sensations began to emerge. He began to feel temperature. No longer cold, this was quite warm.
Sound. It was very muffled, but there was sound. It sounded like there was a hallway with some people in it some distance away.
Then smell. A horrible smell. More intense than he had ever encountered.
Taste. He tasted something sour and bitter in his mouth, his saliva was congealed, everything also had a hint of blood in it's flavor.
He tried to move around, it wasn't particularly prohibitive, but it also wasn't easy. There was also the question of where he was.
He listened carefully, he could barely make out someone saying something.
"Have you seen the keys to the lights? Anyone?"
He must have been indoors. Where ever he was.
"Fine then, we'll do this without it. Yeah, we can run the damn floor polisher without it"
Where ever he was, they had tile flooring.
He then tasted something else. Ash.
Finally, light began to appear, gradually. There wasn't much of it.
He moved around some more, full motion was restored.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The janitor turned on the floor polishing machine right as an acrylic panel came crashing down in the back room.
He turned it off, threw his wash-cloth down on the floor and muttered some profanity.
The halls were still dim as he made his way around the hallway and into the room.
Where he promptly reached for his pistol.
A ragged monster was climbing out of the incinerator. At first he wondered if it was someone who got stuck in there. But this monster looked like it had been through at least one low burn cycle already. It was a charred corpse, bony in some sections.
It rose to it's feet. Some kind of lizard demon.
They must have had it on low-burn so they could keep the bones intact for display.
Not that the janitor had considered any of this. He just dropped his mop and started running, screaming in horror.
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Andertol stiffly staggered for a couple steps, still not completely sure what was going on or where he was.
He began to feel something happening though, he was dragging a huge amount of material out of the furnace with him. As though the grilles and other loose metal inside there had fused to him.
He shuddered and suddenly his vision closed up again.
"Oh so now I'm dead", he thought before an electric-like jolt hit him down the spine. His entire tactile sense went to a dull pain followed by a silky-smooth relief. He began to feel slightly heavier in increments. As though in an elevator going up and down over and over again.
At some point during this process he fell over and began writhing on the floor.
Soon his mind was completely awake. He was feeling things he never had before. Parts of his body he never remembered having.
He got to his feet. He was no longer ragged. A tremendous amount of force in him now. As though he had just drank all of the coffee in the world. He hadn't even moved yet, but he felt like he knew he could punch a hole through a stone wall. Everything was so simple. There was no emotional doubt. Almost no emotion at all. None of it mattered.
But most of all. Right here, he felt completely normal despite everything about this being abnormal.
He felt nothing in particular.
Security guards had already entered the room. They had their guns ready. Hesitating because this creature was not what the janitor had described he saw. This creature was something else, but just as much of a possible threat.
www.furaffinity.net/view/4783072Andertol's red eyelights came on. Instinctively he let out a loud, mechanical-sounding roar.
He saw the armored guards. They called for backup.
"Kill them", K24 said.
"They are only going to delay you."Andertol felt his foot anchors flip down, vents all down his back and tail opened up and he felt something horrible brewing inside him.
Above his tongue, a tube extended out from his mouth and a computer inside him began working on 'marking' a target.
In front of him, he saw a simple yellow crosshair.
"No....", he thought, "I shouldn't kill them. I don't even know them.
I can't. But.
I can't just stand here and let them take me. I don't even know if I can take bullets.
And..."
He began to rationalize what had happened to him.
The crosshair floated around, they started shooting. No time now.
He aimed between the two of them. Right above their heads.
"Pussy"Andertol felt the rush of energy through him. Each and every stage was a sensation. The static crackle of the starter module. Then the throbbing push of the Beta Emission Tube. The pang of the secondary conversion tube, and then finally it roared up his neck into his tertiary tube. The uncontrollable feral howl of the tertiary tube. There was no turning back now.
The beam of bright blue and white electron radiation blasted forth from his mouth cannon as he watched in mild horror, but also primal satisfaction.
It blew the guards through the wall and set them ablaze. Much more than he wanted to do.
"Run"Andy didn't take time to survey the damage, there was no time. The military would soon be there, as there was no way they didn't somehow detect what just happened.
His foot anchors flipped back up into his legs and, using the assistance of an electronic pulse jet, he very loudly made a hasty exit.
He never thought he could weigh so much and move so fast. He shot through doors, smashing them off their hinges by bearing the full force of his momentum. At times simply jumping and letting the pulse jet blast him through the panels, leaving behind only splintered wood.
He wasn't sure if he felt more like a locomotive or an F16.
Finally he came to the main hall. On the other end were the glass doors that served as the entry.
He drifted across the floor on the jet power before his claws screeched to a full stop, leaving him facing the exit.
That's when he noticed something.
This hall was filled with artifacts and displays. There were kiosks and holograms.
One of them was simply standing near the hallway opposite to the one he just came out of. She stood there in dismay and/or disbelief.
Some system inside him told him that this hologram was an AI of some kind. Something similar to him now.
"I'm sorry", the hulking genosaurer said flatly.
He really was.
So he clomped his way through, taking care to avoid touching or disturbing the kiosks and displays. When he got to the door, he noticed it was locked. So he smashed it, using some hydraulic force. Then repeated, again "Sorry", then walked outside.
There were sirens approaching from every direction. Some other system inside him told him to go
up. So he obeyed it and fired on his pulsejets to full power and made his jump.
He felt like a rocket. Once he left the ground he shot off into the moonlit night sky.
Although, not for very long.
-------------------------------------------------------
Andertol felt another strange feeling, this one was fatigue. But unlike being tired, it came on suddenly and severely. Unlike before, it wasn't something where it was possible just to hold on a little longer. This was very absolute.
He fell out of the sky, doing everything he could to try to steer himself for a dumpster or some foliage.
Part of this was instinctual. As long as he could find something combustible, he thought.
There was someone below. Someone short, he didn't want to hit somebody. He'd done enough harm for today, so he tried to push himself so he'd hit the tree.
At the last instant, he saw the secret police vehicle and a couple troops.
What a place to land.
A'risa was down to her last trick knives. The secret police had a clear shot and any minute now, they would lunge and have her on the ground. Sure enough, they did. It was very quick. She flailed with the knife, but their armor was just too much for it. She was on the ground and a second later, they had a black-out bag over her head.
Expecting to be whacked over the head, she instead heard only the loud crash and snapping of a nearby tree. The guards yelled and she felt fewer elbows in her back.
Then there was the smell of ozone and freshly snapped wood.
Maybe it was just her luck there was a shuttle accident. Still, it may not be so lucky. The guards might leave her here in the burning woods while they escaped.
Andertol inadvertantly began chomping at the chunks of tree that he had crashed through. Ravenously. The taste was unimportant, he just needed
something. Nothing else existed but the wood to him.
A whole host of sensations hit him, best summarized as feeling sick to his stomach.
He began to smell something not unlike a fireplace in operation. This whole thing had been so weird though that it didn't matter. For all he knew, this whole thing wasn't even real and was some bizarre, intense hallucination. Like the last scene in the movie
Brazil or something, and similar to the movie, he was in the last few seconds of living.
Power returned.
Another subsystem rushed into operation and pointed-out the armed guards who were already firing on him.
It took a second but then he was able to confirm that they were hitting. He didn't know how much he could take, but he figured he better not risk it.
"This would be a really nice time to have that cannon again", he thought.
"You don't get the whole quantifying energy thing yet do you? Also if you open those vents, those guys are going to shoot you there, and then you're history. I'm going to guess the time for talking this out had already elapsed. So you're going to have to fight them tooth and claw.", advised K24.
"Guys!", Andertol shouted. No response.
His stomach turned again, but with each pang of nausea, followed a relieving warmth. He stomped forward.
The guards didn't want this to become a close-combat battle, so they backed off and kept the fire on him.
"At some point, those bullets are going to beat through your hide and then living is going to get a lot harder. I advise you to neutralize them before they decide to switch to some kind of anti-tank grenades. Which I bet they have.""Yeah yeah. Working on it, K.", Andertol said.
Andertol charged his pulsejets again and then aimed for two of the guards taking cover. Then fired. He launched towards them and slammed them to the ground. Instinct took over and after knocking them down, he stomped against their legs, probably shattering them. At this point he noticed something he hadn't realized in the museum. He was a third-larger than he remembered being before he died. He recalled that there were two main sizes that Malych fall into. The regular size which is equivalent to the average organic anthros of the country, and the extra size, which was anywhere from 25% to 50% larger. It was always the extra-size models which were capable of the enhanced weapons and energy acquisition systems.
Now this made sense, since he had never seen his mate Itka shoot anything before because she was the smaller.
He continued his feral rage.
He tried to toss the next closest guard, but found out that things don't quite work like that. The guard stared at him in bewilderment as he attempted to lift him up and found that the guard was actually to heavy to quickly throw. Andertol's arms switched into a ratio pressure mode and he felt himself slowly pushing the guard to the side. The guard simply moved out of the way, causing Andertol's hydraulic valves to bounce, slowing him down even more.
"I'm dead.", Andertol thought, "I got too confident and now he's got a clear shot of me in close quarters".
The guard wasted no time, he pulled out a combat knife and jabbed it into one of Andertol's neck joints. A hot oily yellow fluid sprayed out. Several subsystems put up alerts. He was loosing hydraulic pressure. Soon he felt his neck stiffen up, then the alerts faded as his hydraulic controls shut off the actuators in his neck, isolating the leak.
Everything above the leak was now stiff, but at least he wasn't dead.
"That was stupid. But you're going to live to learn from that. Assuming you finish these guys off."He fired on his pulsejets again and plowed into the guard. carrying him along until running him into a tree.
Then he tried to throw a finishing punch, once again, overestimating his strength.
The guard grabbed it.
Of course, Andertol thought, their armor has augmentations.
Once again, he found his hydraulic valves bouncing as the guard redirected the punch and rapidly removed the load.
Sending Andertol into another long hydraulic recovery cycle.
"You have a gun on your head, use it."He didn't have time to ask if there were bullets in it or not. So he fired.
The bullets caused the guard to loose track of the next knife, so he reached for his gun.
"You better hope that thing doesn't have full-metal-jackets, or your dead at this range, Andy."Suddenly the guard went limp and slumped against the tree.
A subsystem quickly told him it was from a shot fired to his side.
Then he saw a female fox holding a fairly massive assault rifle. The girl he saw while he was crashing down before.
Andertol moved away from the body.
"Where is the fourth?", he said.
"I took care of him. Now don't you move.", she said.
Andertol obeyed, but he said,
"You're not taking me back alive."
Without breaking aim at the mech, she asked,
"If that's supposed to confuse me then you have another thing coming. You'll never arrest me."
There was a pause for some time. Then Andertol said,
"If you're an elite agent for the Unity, then I advise you let me go because ever since the instant I've entered this country on a diplomatic mission, I have been fired upon, stabbed, bitten and incinerated. It is a complete miracle, which I don't entirely believe myself, that I'm apparently not exactly dead.
What is your
deal."
The fox was still aiming at him,
"I was here for some business. I was attempting to purchase some things. Then things went south and I became stuck here and have been running for my life since they government made the announcements. Apparently the Aluezi AIs have gone completely mad."
Andertol felt a prick of anger and then said,
"It's not the AIs fault it's
yours. I mean the meat.
I mean theirs. It's the organic leadership. The AIs are just helplessly watching it happen.
Not that I know this by talking to them.
Are you going to just stand here and threaten me until reinforcements arrive or what?"
The fox started moving and kept the gun on him.
"For all I know, you're a piece of Aluezi equipment and you're here to neutralize or arrest me"
Annoyed by this, Andertol replied,
"For all
I know, you're just an Aluezi elite agent who is trying to trick me into handing myself over to you without a fight. Since the last few confrontations have been so messy."
"So you've fought them before too", she said.
"Yeah, right after I dragged myself out of some kind of furnace.", he said, "After they almost literally bit my head off before that. Something came out of nowhere and tore my neck open. Next thing I know, I'm in a white room talking to some kind of death spirit who insists they didn't bring me to the wrong afterlife. Clearly all a hallucination seeing as I have yet to see any evidence that I'm dead."
She pushed the barrel of the gun into his side and said,
"A vampire. You survived a vampire attack, died and came back to life? That means you're a vampire under that armor."
"Yeah. Because that makes sense.", Andertol said with no effect on the fox, "Vampire robot. Right. Because blood is at all useful to me now."
"It has iron in it.", she said.
"So does dirt.", Andertol retorted, "But the iron in dirt isn't already oxidized like the iron in hemoglobin."
"Are you seriously a robot?", she asked, as always, with the gun on him.
"Well, I'm pretty sure. I wasn't when I came here. But I am now.", he said.
"Prove it.", she shouted.
"No!", Andertol protested, "How the hell am I supposed to prove that?"
"Do something that shows that you couldn't possibly be someone in armor.", she said, "Open your mouth and put something huge in it. If you can put that entire tree branch inside you, then there's not enough room for a person."
Andertol did as she said, and began eating the fallen branch. Once again, that voracious sensation happened again. The sound of some kind of chipping thing going on in him. That one wasn't enough though, he picked up another and kept going. The hunger was constant. The nausea that accompanied it at first was gone now.
"Ok ok. Ok. That's weird. That's enough", she said.
"NO. I NEED MORE", he growled and kept going.
The fox stuck the end of gun in one of his vent flaps and said, "That's enough."
Andertol had no idea what he looked like when doing this. He was totally oblivious to the anatomy-defying feat he had just undertook and how he appeared to this fox to be something very different from someone in armor.
They continued walking, this time, she kept the gun only
near him. They didn't speak for quite some time on their way deeper and deeper into the woods.
"I've never seen a talking
Ayghu Revwhi before. Much less, one which seems somewhat intelligent.", she finally said.
"I don't know what that is.", Andertol said, "But I'm assuming it's large, metal and eats fallen branches in the forest.
You know, if you're leading me back to the base to capture me again, I do have enough power to use my
mouth cannon now, and it will turn into a repeat of the museum incident."
"Oh shut up.", she said casually, "Let's just get out of this country so I can take you back to Ryvuul and have you disassembled."
Andertol stopped, "I'm taking a different route then. You're all the same aren't you?
All you people. You have no capacity to understand the difference between person and property. No idea about what harm you are capable of doing.
You think that if you take me apart that I won't feel pain, I won't feel myself being ripped to pieces? You think that I won't die because wasn't alive to begin with?
You say you're from Ryvuul? That's Aatuylva.
You guys fight civil wars all the time. Petty battles of territorial disputes that would be resolved if everyone had something better to worry about.
You can't even treat each other like people."
She fired a shot at him.
"You shut up. I was just kidding."
"Were you?", Andertol said,
"Were you?
You think I'm just a thing. Equipment to be owned.
What about you? What if someone owned you?
What if I took you back to the base right now. Let them make you into a state slave.
A piece of meat-equipment, owned by the state?She fired another shot again, this one knocked his head and neck back, in their unpowered stiffness. They bounced back down.
"You need me to get home.
The forest is filled with things that would compromise your intentions."She put the gun back up and said,
"There's the spiders and the Ayghu Revwhi, just to name a few.
Fine then.
I'm A'risa, by the way."
They continued to make their way through the woods towards Aatuylva