Rainfall

Chapter 4/4: Controlled

In the dusky warehouse, where the anti-socialism group, Legion, held their work, the ground workers busily worked on the projects they were assigned to. Legion's leader had put many into motion, in case another failed, but she had her sights on one project and one project alone: Project Puppeteer. A project she had it movement for many months now, and now what she believed to be the climax of the preprepation phase was finally reaching its peak, until...

"Leader!"

She only turned her head enough to see the member of her team, a high-ranking officer on the very project she cherished. Even so, she kept her focus straight on her subordinates as she watched from her raised position. From both of the lack of information since the recent action and amount of time it took for someone to report to her, she expected nothing but bad news.

And bad news did she get.

"I'm listening, soldier." She responded dully, her emerald eyes just as emotionless as her voice and posture.

"Our main operation is having some…" The officer hesitated, looking for the right word to trying to coax it, but failed to, "...issues in development."

"Issues?" Her interest grew, but not in a good way, as her voice rose in anger along with it. "We removed the guardians out of the picture, didn't we?" The parents, she knew, had be killed in order to get ahold of the subject. Both of them, but especially the mother, had been extremely overprotective of the child, and knowing that she was the daughter of an exceptionally famous robotics engineer, her death would not be taken quietly.

That's the exact reason they had made it seem like an accident.

"Yes, but…" The leader could easily pick up the fear and worry in his voice as he spoke. "I'm afraid another took custody of the child, ma'am. He's been safeguarding the child from our attempts, which makes believe that he's aware of our plan, more or less."

"What kind of relation does he have to the family?" She turned around to face her officer at last, but only to take the tablet with the information listed from his hands. The data had tons of information on the one who had taken custody of the target.

"William White, affliction with Sanda Technology. Also, according to reports, known as Bill Blackwell, which would make him… her younger brother, ma'am."

She shook her head and gave the tablet back after skimming the information. "Do what you have to. I won't let this operation fail." The officer visually tensed up, but straightened themselves in order to not show weakness to the superior.

"Understood." The officer nodded and left, leaving the leader back to her thoughts.

If this operation failed, she'd take matters into her own hands. She had no problem marching up to the facility where this man worked, shutting down all their security, and taking what should've been hers, all when their guard was down when they felt like the threat was finally gone. But it hadn't yet, not under her watch.

Human nature, however, was finicky. Unlike most, she didn't feel an overwhelming grief over the murder of innocents or fear of legal action against using a child for her ambitions.

He was the one, after all. The one that would finally lead Legion to victory.

Her thoughts were interrupted again by no other than her second-in-command, the only one who could face her without overwhelming fear.

"You have a call. Our benefactor is requesting video chat, as well." The second-in-command told her matter-in-factly.

Ah yes, the benefactor. Unlike all her other projects, he was the one funding Project Puppeteer, not to mention giving many valuable assets from both completed and uncompleted projects alike, unaware of the project's true intentions. This man, only bent on the money he was promised, believed that the project was to create a robot that would be powerful to rocket himself up the leaderboard in the Battle Colosseum. With the high ranking, he'd be able to access tons of funds and privileges that he didn't already have.

Boy, was he wrong.

"Give me ten minutes. I'll head down shortly." As in, the only room in the facility that didn't look so dusky. It had the perfect facade of her and her team working in a office building instead of this warehouse, the only place they'd be able to get away with these constant tests and actually afford all of it, too.

She preferred it here, anyways. The open air of balcony above gave her the perfect gazing point, making her feel as powerful as she would be soon enough.

"Understood, ma'am. I'll inform him." The second-in-command left, allowing the leader to escape to change out of her usual sleek, intimidating uniform into something more presentable.

From her red-and-black full bodysuit, complete with heeled boots and long, black gloves, she slipped into a white blouse, a black pencil skirt, wrist-length black gloves, and exchanged out for black dress shoes. She slicked back her short, black hair from its usual fear-striking spiked look to a more formal look, and finally, swapped out her eyepatch- that she wore to cover up her damaged right eye she had received from an incident pertaining to Legion- from Legion's special logo to a more plain black one.

An outfit like this would fool anyone that she was just an innocent woman, and it fooled many she worked and lived amongst.

The leader entered the sparkling office area and headed straight for the meeting room, fitted with a long table and comfortable chairs. At the opposite end of the rectangular room, a large monitor fitted with a microphone and camera hung on the wall. The table was sturdy as leaned against the polished, wooden table and pressed a button on the panel behind her, stopping the light next to it to stop flashing, also known as its indication of a hold on the line.

Before her appeared the benefactor: a finely-dressed businessman man with blonde hair and purple eyes; the image that could not be mistaken for anyone else but the CEO of Cherry Dynamics, Gregory Graham.

"Ah, Mrs. Seymour. Just the person I wanted to talk to." Mr. Graham's sly manner could not fool a woman who was already sly herself, keeping the truth behind the project for so long. Thus that secret still held. "How is the project going?"

"Well. I just received an update on it before you called." She let herself smile, a fake one at the most. "We've had a few… bumps in production, but nothing that will stop us from completing it.

"Good… very good. I expected nothing less from you." Graham seemed pleased to say the least, which meant her facade was working.

"If so, I will take matters into my own hands." He gave her a confused look as she continued. "Wouldn't want your money to go to waste."

"What's that supposed to mean?" At this point he was irritated, but she continued to give that fake smile of hers. Or was it real, now that she was making him unhappy? After all, she had no means to want to please him other than funding and assets for the project.

Luckily, her second-in-command saved her from an assault of questioning from her benefactor. "Mrs. Seymour? You have a call on line 4, when you're available." She turned towards the mic on the table, set up to the office's com system.

"Thank you, Ms. Reynolds." She looked back at the screen. "I'm a very busy man, Mr. Graham, so I'm afraid we'll have to talk at a later date, unless you want to wait on hold."

"Wait-" But before he could put in another word, she switched to line 4.

"Who is this?"

"Hey, um… Mom. It's me." The leader sighed, recognizing the voice immediately. It was her daughter, of all people.

"What do you want now, Sona?" She wasn't even sure why her daughter was calling her in the first place, due to her own nature, they both were on uneven terms. Sona leaned closer to her more sympathetic father in that case, but at the same time, Sona was always trying to strengthen her bond with her mother.

"I don't want anything more than to spend some quality time with you." Once again, here she went with the bonding. If Sona had bothered to call her a video chat, she would see her mother's face look ill. Her mother hated her attempts. "Maybe we could catch a bite after all the matches are over for the day?"

"I don't know. I have plenty of work to do." She was more or less lying. Her job mainly consisted of answering calls, having meetings, and observing, not including her work as a chairwoman for the NBCA. That was about it.

"Alright, I guess I'll just… hold off for now." Sona audibly sighed, whether it was just a reaction or on purpose to make her feel bad. Either way, Sona always had a streak for bouncing back quick. "But mark my words, one of these days, I'm taking you out to do something!"

The call ended, knowing that her mother wouldn't give much of a goodbye in the first place. Line 2 was still flashing, which meant Graham was still awaiting her response. She shook her head, thinking of how persistent he was. Well, there was no use in pretending that she was still in a call if it would make him more angry.

Her finger pressed down on the button connected to Line 2 and turned to face Graham.

"Now, shall we continue?"

And, with all of that had happened, Beck's destiny was set.

[A/N: Extending on the thought from last chapter, I planned the "beginning" and the "end", not really thinking about a "middle", and I don't really plan to at this point. I don't really want to constrain my story to a specific time set, as in "this event happened, and then the next", because I'm sure there's at least an overall time period set, one I haven't completely decided on.

Doing that until the ending would be difficult even in the fact I've already mentioned I've planned endings, 3 to be exact. I'm the type of person who likes both fluff and angst, so deciding on one ending with that in mind isn't something I want to do. I haven't completely decided how to present them yet, but I thought I'd mention them in brief.

(More or less, good, bad, and neutral refer to the severity of the ending, as in good is the best outcome, bad is the worst outcome, and neutral isn't the best or worst outcome, it's in-between.)

- Freedom Ending (Good End): Beck stays human, and continues to live with Dr. White, slowly learning to tinker around with things while dealing with fears of the past, not to mention both social and academic pressures.

- Entertainment Ending (Neutral End): Graham gets a hold of Beck after he is converted into a robot/cyborg after finding out Legion's true intentions and putting an end to it. Without much research, he puts Beck into the Battle Colosseum in order to bring CherryDyn up the leaderboard. Although a clean slate, he struggles with the memories of his connections with the Mighty Numbers.

- Controlled Ending (Bad End): The group keeps Beck as they intended and makes him lead their rebellion under the strict supervision of their leader. Things do not end well for the other side. Many are injured or dead, buildings are destroyed, and so on. Beck is only a puppet to their game now.

Most likely, I'll be doing separate short fics for each of them, but I haven't decided all the plot yet, so I decided to leave readers with synopsis in case it takes too long (or so you know the endings in case I don't get around to writing them, which sounds like something I might do, honestly).

I wrote a bonus chapter featuring Bridget and a certain purple-haired robot… so that's why there's 5 instead of 4, in case you happened to be wondering…

Edit 1/7/17: Accidently called Mrs. Seymour a "Miss" in one line, fixed it to clear up confusion.]