Update: April 14th, 2016
New chapters abound! We get a new name for OC in this character, and the first cameo! I do happen to mention one place you can find this character, but there is another, much more contemporary reference. Guess it and you get a prize!
Personally, I don't really like the latter half of this chapter, only because that sort of stuff seems kind of too happy-go-lucky. But Deunan really does act like this, and eventually does manage to make Briareos see her side and eventually agree with her.
But either way, I do hope that all of you like it!
Disclaimer: Aš neturiu savo Appleseed (Lithuanian)
Tereus glared into the thick white dust that had sprung up around the crater created by the little bomb, grateful that he had his vision scopes. Briareos and the girl were to his left, and Deunan was a bit behind him to his right. He covered his mouth and pressed on though the crater, the others finding their way out a second later than he, and they all streaked across the back of the compound towards the landmates.
"I'm wirelessly activating the landmates now so they're ready to go when we get there," Briareos said. "You, missy, are riding with me," he continued to the new girl. She kept her focus on the high electric fence that surrounded the compound, but nodded to Briareos. She didn't even stop; she dashed right under the overhanging foliage and vaulted herself into the trees, clearing the fence in one leap. She grabbed a branch that hung parallel to the ground, and let her momentum swing her around. She let go as soon as she was vertical, and the next second, she was hanging upside down from the branch by her legs.
"Grab on. I'll swing you into the trees," she said. Deunan caught on first, dropping her Gong to hang by its strap again, and taking a running start to grab the girl's wrists. The girl caught Deunan easily, using the blonde's momentum to swing her up into the trees and out of sight.
"I'm good," she said into the comlink for her male teammates' sakes. "I'm heading on ahead, meet you all there."
"Deunan, wait-" Briareos started, but then cut himself off. There was no use in trying to tell her to come back or wait. That woman was a wildcat when she wanted to be. He sighed and copied his girlfriend's movements, ending up in the trees and chasing Deunan down. The girl hung from her knees again and gave Tereus a look.
"Come on, they're starting to raise the electrical dome," the girl urged Tereus.
Tereus just stared at her, wondering what in the nine levels of hell she was. How could a girl her size do anything she just did without any serious visual cyborg parts? What the heck was she?
"Tereus, now!" Deunan called out into their comlink, voice as sharp as her blade. That woke him up. Finally Tereus let himself be swung into the trees. He barely had to wait a second before the girl appeared on the tree limb next to his, and he led the girl back through the trees, toward the landmates. Ten minutes later, he dropped next to his landmate and quickly disarmed himself and resettled himself into the cockpit. He caught a glimpse of the girl jumping onto Briareos' landmate's back with her gun in hand.
"Magnetic, waist down," she said to no one in particular. Then to Briareos, "Does this mess with any of your systems?"
"Nope, you're good," Briareos said as he took off. The girl was stuck to the outer shell of the landmate, even though her hands weren't gripping anything. That's when Tereus realized that she had commanded the suit to stick herself to the back of the landmate from the waist down with an artificial magnetic force field, and was checking if the landmate was impaired because of it.
"Guys, we have company," Deunan said as an entire platoon of landmates took off from the rooftop of the compound.
"Fucking hell," Tereus cursed as he readied his gun.
"Don't shoot," the girl called from Briareos' back. "They can't see us, so no need to call attention to ourselves. Just stay below the tree line and make as little of a disturbance as possible."
"Are you sure they don't have scanners that can pick us up?" Briareos asked.
"Positive," she replied. "They used anything of value on their projects. Those are just landmates we got from the ships and planes that were taken out. Circe stripped them of anything valuable and used them on her creations; they aren't equipped for an actual pursuit, and the compound never had any guns big enough for those things to use either way. They were used to carry large loads."
"So quiet and invisible, huh?" Deunan chuckled wryly. "Not my style, but if it gets us out of here, I'll take it."
"117 to HQ, do you copy?" Tereus tried a check in with their team leader as all three took off towards their pickup point.
"Copy, 117. Where the hell were you all? What's going on?" their team leader demanded.
"113 to HQ. Once we infiltrated the compound by foot our signal was jammed. We found out that all those missing planes and boats were shot down and brought into the facility. All 23 of them were carrying some cyborg parts," Briareos checked in, dodging a low-hanging branch. The newcomer on his back deftly detached herself from the back of his landmate and jumped over the branch, back flipping, and ending up right back where she started.
"109 to HQ," Deunan checked in last. "The facility is a research center base. We suspect that they're building an army of cyborgs for their own purposes. We also think that we have one of those cyborgs in our custody and are returning now."
"You just love taking souvenirs with you from every mission, don't you 109?" their team leader sighed. "Alright, bring the cyborg you apprehended in. Anything else I should know?"
"Yeah," Deunan continued. "Apparently the defenses were high because their military power is minimal. They only have landmates, and none of them are equipped for pursuit or have firearms."
"Tell your HQ that I was one of the ones who shot down those carriers," the girl called from Briareos' back. "And that there are six other combat-ready cyborgs in stasis back at the lab. If I know my creator, she's going to send them all after me at one point or another."
All three ESWAT members looked over at the girl.
"That can't be possible," Briareos said. "I could sense you as the only cyborg presence on the island, aside from myself. Even if they were asleep or in stasis, I would have found them."
"Well then you would be correct, I suppose, if your definition of cyborg was strictly a sentient or conscious being, almost exclusively human in origin, that now relies on a great deal of machinery or unnatural devices to remain alive. These creatures weren't human to begin with. They were built from the ground up, unlike me. I was the only successful cyborg to come out of this place."
"What?" Tereus couldn't believe it. "I knew this would be trouble. 117 to HQ, we just found out that the cyborg hostage we have was one of seven who shot down those carriers, but the other six are really combat-ready machines. She is the only true cyborg on the island, aside from 113."
"Damn it," their team leader cursed. "Make sure that hostage is secured, you three, and hurry back over here. She's going to be taken to the max-security isolation ward until we figure out what to do with her."
"Copy," all three members stated just as they reached their designated pickup spot on the far west shore of the island.
"Where's the WASP?" Deunan asked, scanning the black skies for the huge aircraft.. But, of course, it was in camo mode, making it impossible for her to see it with her eyes.
"Coming in fast from your 3," Briareos said. His own sensors had picked up the secure radio signals that the other members of his team could not detect.
"Got it," she responded, taking off to meet the WASP, Briareos and Tereus following after her.
Once they were safe in the carrier and dismounted, all three stood around their hostage, who had disengaged herself from the back of Briareos' landmate and seated herself in the corner of the craft and was staring out the window.
"Well, now that we're out of the hot seat for the time being, why don't we introduce ourselves?" Briareos said, letting his hands hang loose at his sides after putting away his J9. He was probably banking on the fact that he could draw one of his smaller handguns in a second, though. Tereus wasn't that comfortable with a potential hostile a few feet away from him, though, and kept his own MN-23 in his hands. Deunan was the brave – or stupid – one to holster all her weapons and crossed her arms.
The girl sighed slightly, still looking outside, and leaned back into the seat. "My name is Artemis, and I am an Android-Cyborg hybrid."
"Android? What is that?" Deunan asked.
"A robot that looks like a human. That's what the other six units at the base are called. Androids One through Six. All those cyborg parts that were on those carriers weren't grafted to human flesh, but rather used to build their own humans from the ground up. I remember watching the tech teams working long into the night as a little girl."
"So the how are you an Android-Cyborg hybrid? You look as normal as any other human, but my sensors are still insisting that you're part machine," Briareos asked.
"I am cyborg in the sense that I am part machine and part human. I am android in the sense that I was rebuilt from the ground up. I am exactly half human and half machine, from all the way down to the cellular-molecular level. That is why I still look and feel human, but my strength, senses, and intellect rival that of your own, Briareos."
"So that Circe woman essentially had you broken to pieces and put together again with half nanobot technology? Is that what you're saying?" Tereus demanded.
"That's the less technical way to say it, yes," Artemis said. "Circe remade me to become a killing machine. She was meticulous in making me the perfect warrior, was the one who trained me, if not by her own hands." Artemis paused for a second. "The people on board those crafts were used to test my abilities."
"You did what!?" Tereus hissed. "How many innocent people did you kill?!"
She was silent a long moment. The three man team stared at her as she hung her head and held incredibly still. If it wasn't for her shallow breathing, they would have thought she was dead. "Hundreds," Artemis finally whispered in a small voice. "Hundreds of people."
And that's when Deunan saw red. "How could you?! Every one of those people had lives to get back to! They all had a reason to live!" She was near livid, her hands automatically going for her knife at her back. And it would have ended up in Artemis's neck had both Briareos and Tereus not grabbed her forearms.
"If I didn't do it, Circe would have them killed anyway, and make them suffer as well! I found it more humane to give them a swift ending, as that was the only way they would ever leave the island," Artemis snapped back. "Believe me, if I had another option, I would have taken it. But she is a cunning woman, always insuring that she would win in the end," she ended in a whisper.
Artemis hung her head. 'All those children she brought in… All so small and scared…I was the only one…the only one who lived…' Her voice cracked as she spoke. "If I could have saved any of them, I would have, I swear to you. Circe…she is almost like the sorceress from whom she got her name from. Cold-blooded and ruthless, as well as smart and calculating. She could do anything she truly set her mind to, making the impossible extremely possible by any means necessary."
All three ESWAT members were silent, processing this information slowly. Deunan spoke next, her tone completely changed from before.
"So all these years you had upgrades and work-overs, gained all this power, saw and hated all the bloodshed, and you still stayed? Why?" Deunan asked, truly confused. Artemis rested her elbows on her knees and stared at her hands.
"I can imagine that you guessed why Circe decided to create her killing machines instead of recruiting them. It's easier that way. The same rule applies to me. With a single word, she could shut my body down. The word acts like a kill switch on the back of a landmate, freezing my body while sending extreme pain signals up to my brain. Whenever I tried to run or rebelled, she locked me in stasis for days, weeks, even two full months one time. After a while, I just stopped trying to get away, instead biding my time until she messed up."
"She really was using you," Deunan whispered.
"Yes, she thinks of me as her prize creation more than a living being," Artemis said as she tightened a fist, remembering all the years she spent as a killer. "I learned to act like they did in order to survive. I hoped and prayed for an opening, and you gave me that chance. I am indebted to you."
"Well that may be the case, but our captain back at HQ still thinks you to be armed and dangerous. Once we land, you are to be taken to the max-security isolation ward and held there until further notice," Tereus said in a clipped tone. "We still have to hold you accountable for the fact that you took innocent lives."
"I understand," Artemis said quietly. Tereus gave her a cold look and turned to walk off, Deunan and Briareos staring after him.
"He's doing the whole hard-ass cop act again," Deunan noted, comparing her other partner's actions to that of the night he confronted Hitomi during the Halcon incident. Her boyfriend hummed in agreement.
"You can't really blame him though, can you. He just isn't made to accept that kind of stuff," Briareos said. The PA system clicked on in the carrier, the pilot's voice coming though.
"Approaching landing pad at ESWAT Headquarters," came the pilot's voice from the small speakers. Deunan turned back to the morose woman in front of her.
"Don't mind Tereus. He means well, he just has a weird way of showing it. We all do, actually. This one besides me has the habit of knocking me out of windows and off high platforms to save my skin," Deunan ended in a laugh as Briareos gave her what she had dubbed 'The Look'.
"Yeah, well you seem to enjoy putting me into those positions by jumping into them headfirst without looking, girl," he countered. Deunan decided to hell with professionalism and stuck her tongue out at him, pouting like a child. Briareos laughed, putting a hand on her head and ruffling her hair.
"All right, enough. We need to get to Lance and check in," Briareos said after a moment. He turned to Artemis and offered a hand. Said woman barely lifted her head. "He may think you armed and dangerous, but I'm convinced you're a friend. We'll put in a defensive word for you," he said.
Artemis stared up at the pair in slight shock. "But why? What benefit would you gain from helping me?"
Deunan pretended to consider this deeply. "Well, aside from all the inside info we could get out of you about Circe, and your firepower on the battlefield, we get a new friend out of it." She gave Artemis a smile. "Now come on, let's not give Lance a reason to not like you."
Artemis looked at them a moment longer before taking Briareos' hand and letting his huge bulk pull her thin frame to her feet. With a new determination she looked her new comrades in the eye and gave them a steadfast nod.
'I will work to right the wrongdoings of my past.'
Again, the ending kinda doesn't sit well with me, but that's keeping in character.
Speaking of, to explain Artemis' last statement. She's the kind of person that is logical and will always think of moral right and wrong. At this point, she understands that what she did is wrong, and what Circe and co. have done is wrong, but she isn't the type to offer help readily. She needs to see that something is wrong, and then understand that it really is wrong, before she helps.
Anyway, I digress.
Now, I will reveal the cameo of Circe! She can be found in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. In this series, she turns men into guinea pigs and makes women beautiful and appreciated knowledge and magic and all that.
Artemis can also be found in Riordan's series, but barely there. She is Goddess of the Moon and of the Hunt, and has her own set of all-immortal-girl hunters. And in all honesty, I just chose the name for this OC because I happened to like the name Artemis.
Anyway, those are the big reveals! As usual, like, favorite, follow, and all of that good stuff! Until next time, stay safe!