Man, where has all this motivation to write been coming from?
Anyways, this is based my ML Cyber!AU which you can find on my tumblr (checkeredtablesloth) if you want to know more about it. Enjoy!
Intro
The gun shook in her hands, adrenaline shuddering through her body one heartbeat at a time. She breathed deeply, praying that the shake in her breath would not betray her. Guns were never her specialty; unlike her former partner their use was was simply not in her nature. But it wasn't as though a bunch of scientists would know the difference anyways. They were scared of her, she could see it their eyes. That was all she needed.
How despicable she was.
Things… weren't supposed to be this way, at least not in the beginning they weren't. Then, she'd been desperate; fresh out of a job for doing what she thought was the right thing. She would've taken anything, anything to forget her old life, her mistakes, her loneliness… And then this job came along, and offered her a fresh start, a chance to make some semblance of a normal life for herself, maybe do society some good for once. And that was exactly what she thought she'd been doing all this time, pouring her heart and soul into creating an AI that could have changed the world for the better. But she was so wrong… how could the world become a better place when it was one life, one future short, because of them.
One of her co-workers stepped forward bravely, wringing her hands though visibly they still trembled. If she remembered correctly she was the youngest on the team, a talented programmer fresh out of university, perhaps Marinette could've even known her once, that was, before what they did to her. "Tikki, why?" They spoke up, the quiver in their voice shaking her unsteady heart. "You worked so hard. We all did!" She trained her gun on them, and they shrunk away from her. Shaking, they were shaking. God how she hated this… It wasn't their fault. They had no idea what had been done, whose life it had taken to make this AI… She had no choice in this anymore, to free her, what was left of Marinette, this was what had to be done.
"I'm sorry…" Tikki answered, quietly pointing her gun at the recovery unit. "But I can't allow this to continue." Finger squeezing the trigger, she fired, the bullet shattering six long years of work in a fraction of a second, plunging them into darkness. And in the black, a small, unseen tear crept down her cheek, the ice cold feeling of realizing she was alone again grabbing hold of her heart. Tikki closed her eyes. It was for the best though, she thought, flitting from the room amidst the panic. The Ladybug AI was free; free to piece together her own future as she saw fit, and that above anything was worth more to her than any kind of happiness.
Freedom is strange, isn't it Ladybug? Tikki thought. We humans hold it dear, yet we use it to do such foolish, foolish things. Things that hurt us, make us cry, things that'd we'd regret for the rest of our lives… and we try so hard just to run from them. But I realize now, we run from them into the arms of our true purpose, and mine, was to meet you, and let you for the first time, choose your own fate.