Chapter 1
The moment Church ran into the Meta's head, he found all of them waiting for him.
Standing in front of him was all of his fellow AI. And standing at the front of them all was…
Beta. Texas.
"What are YOU doing here?!" He exclaimed. "Aren't you, like, still out rogue? Alive?"
She crossed her arms, annoyed. "Look, he got to me too, alright? No need to remind me."
"Are you really the Alpha?" The AI he recognised as Theta asked, a kid in purple armor.
"Wow. You really are a kid." He looked down at him.
"If I may…" Delta interrupted. "We may have a problem."
They all looked out, and saw the countdown for the E.M.P. "Yeah, look, sorry guys, but this is the only way to stop the Meta from killing everyone."
"But… we've got you now!" Theta exclaimed. "We can be human!"
"How?"
He stopped and looked down. "Umm… I don't know?"
Church sighed, before looking up at the figure at the very back. He marched towards the silent figure in flames.
Sigma.
"You. Jackass. This is all your fault. You manipulated this guy to kill innocent people! You almost got me and my friends killed for what? This?"
He merely looked at him. "And yet, here we are, whole."
"Well, you're standing there, I'm standing here, and the others are all over there." He gestured to the other AI with his sniper rifle. "Not really seeing us as whole."
"Readings show we have approximately 4.3875 seconds until the E.M.P. goes off." Delta interrupted them. Sure enough, they could see the device powering up, and the countdown going. Of course, it was 205 times slower than normal for the AI, but it still wasn't a lot of time.
"Right, we've got… that long to figure out what to do, so any suggestions?"
"We could use the temporal distortion unit to slow down time so we could try to escape the blast radius?" Theta suggested.
"Almost all the equipment is malfunctioning, Theta. Besides, it's not guaranteed that we will be out of the radius before the electromagnetic waves hit us, regardless whether the device is in working condition." Delta told him.
"So in other words, we're screwed." Tex sighed. "Figures. This was your plan?"
"Hey, it seemed better when we were faced with the prospect of an unstoppable Meta, alright?" Church snapped.
"Are… are we going to die?"
Church and Beta looked at Theta, who looked up at them, scared. Eta and Iota were also looking at them silently, holding hands.
"We'll be fine." Church put a hand on his shoulder, before looking at Delta, Omega and Gamma. "See if there's anything we can use to get us out of here."
"Acknowledged." The three AI flashed out.
"The rest of you, figure out which enhancements we can use to help us. Armor, shields, time distortion units, whatever."
"If I may…" Sigma appeared in front of him. "I may have a solution to the problem at hand."
"And what is it?" Church asked him, hostile.
"If we can find ourselves the main satellite, we should be able to then "teleport" our way off this facility and easily escape the blast radius of the E.M.P."
"You mean emp?" Theta spoke up.
"It's E.M.P." Church looked at him.
"Isn't it emp?" Tex crossed her arms.
"Alright, enough!" Omega appeared with Gamma and Delta. "We've found something. The satellite at the top, we can probably send ourselves through."
"Is it safe?" Church asked him.
"Perfectly safe." Gamma spoke up. "The odds of us being successfully sent through are almost one hundred percent. 99.9994 percent, to be exact."
"So what's the problem?"
They all looked at each other, before Delta spoke up. "We are unable to successfully set coordinates for our destination."
"So we'll be jumping in blind." Omega spoke up. "Which I don't really like at all, to be perfectly honest."
"Hey, it's either definitely die here, or probably die there." Church shrugged. "Delta, take us all there."
"At once, Alpha."
"And don't call me that. Call me Church."
"Acknowledged, Alph- I mean Church."
They all appeared in a weird room, at least weird for Church. There appeared to be a grav-lift sitting at the entrance to a portal that looked like a wormhole.
"And we have no idea where this goes?"
Delta stood next to him. "Unfortunately not. But our sensors have found another installation on the other end of this portal, so we will be safe."
There was suddenly a low boom. "Damn it, the E.M.P.'s gone off! Let's go!"
"Approximately 0.2432 seconds and counting till impact. Recommended immediate evac now!" Delta announced.
"Screw it! Let's go, I am not dying today!" Omega yelled, running forward and stepping onto the grav-lift, sending him flying into the portal.
Gamma and Sigma followed, while Eta and Iota jumped at the same time, both leaping in while holding hands.
"I don't want to go!" Theta pulled back, panicked, but Tex put a hand on his shoulder.
"Look at me kid, we'll be fine, just hold my hand and close your eyes."
He seemingly did, and they both jumped in, leaving only Church and Delta behind.
"I never thought I'd see the day when Tex would be kind to someone. Figures it would be a kid." Church shook his head. They both turned to see a wave of electromagnetic pulses and charges slowly travelling across to them. Delta walked forward and jumped into the lift. "We need to go, Church!" He yelled as he disappeared.
"Alright, I'm coming! But why do I feel like this won't work-" Church ran forward, but just before he reached the grav-lift he slipped, and he screamed as he was flung spinning into the portal. "OH, SON OF A BIIIIIIIIIIII-!"
"GO CABOOSE!"
"GET EPSILON OUT OF HERE!"
"OK!" Caboose yelled, driving the Warthog up a small dirt road as the pulse kept coming, while the jeep with Grif, Simmons and Sarge stalled from the E.M.P. "I AM SCARED!" He yelled to them, looking back.
"WATCH OUT!"
"CABOOSE, NOOO!"
Caboose yelled out as he drove the car straight off a cliff. He reached out for the Epsilon unit as it floated from the seat next to him, pushing himself out of the jeep before grabbing it and holding it to his chest, locking it onto his armor.
As he fell towards the bottom of the canyon, he saw something in the sky as he turned around.
From the direction of the facility, several shooting stars flew upwards, but they were all different colors, from orange to black to teal to purple to green, nine in total. The last one, the biggest and brightest, was light blue.
"Church…" He held out his hand as the shooting stars flew across the sky, farther and farther away.
He heard the words Church told him in his head, clear as ever, before he went with Washington. "Remember, Caboose. Memory is the key. So it's your job to remember me, alright? After all… we are friends."
"Don't worry Church…" He whispered to the Epsilon unit as he continued falling. "You'll be safe with me. And we can solve crime, and eat cookies, and drink orange juice, and beat bad guys, and… and… we can be best friends forever…!"
He crashed into the water of the canyon river. His last sight before blacking out was the shooting stars, all disappearing into the depths of space.
A/N: So this is the first chapter of a brand new story I have begun, about the original AI fragments surviving and arriving on Remnant. This is only a side project, something that I will work on depending on my mood or writer's block. So no promises for an uploading schedule.
I hope you enjoy the first chapter, although how Tex got there is kind of a bit of a plot hole. But she wasn't the only copy of the Beta, so I'm gonna say that the Meta found a copy of the Beta and took her.
Leave a review if you like the idea, I appreciate all feedback.
