My Life as a Teenage Robot and all related characters are the intellectual property of their respective owners.
The following work and its proceeding chapters will contain mature content, read on at your own peril.
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Chapter 10: Dis
"Their sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through the air forever dark, as sand eddies in a whirlwind."
Krust Manor, Tremorton
'Keep scrubbing. It'll go away.'
The strange mantra passed through Brit Krust's troubled mind like a New York Subway Train: noisily and often.
The shower poured down on her, the water mixing with her tears. The mixture fell down a narrow path between the tanned peak of her breasts, only to crash into the cold, unforgiving marble floor.
They couldn't understand. They had no idea what she had gone through! She had lost her only friend, and her world was stained by a violation which still burned her.
But the words stuck and pricked her like the thorn berries in Tiff's garden.
"Tiff. Oh heaven….Tiffany, help me."
But no one answered, save for the melody of the falling water.
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Tremorton, Yesterday
"Just stick to the story, Ms. Krust and I promise that all your problems will go away."
His words, his voice, that awful cocky, demonic smile. The judge and his son were cut from the same cloth indeed. He didn't need to touch her. His words raped her more than his son would have.
Brittany Krust was stunned at the news that her savior was none other than that nerd, Sheldon "Loser" Lee. But after learning of Tiff's death, she could scarcely feel anything at all. Tiff was her lifeline, her one and only friend. Without her, the popularity circus was simply a painful, meaningless cycle.
But she had to keep performing. For the sake of her cousin's memory, she had to.
It was this reason which had her accept the judge's demands. The choice was simple, either aid him in destroying the character of his son's slayer or she would be joining Sheldon in the public inquisition/lynching that was to come.
She agreed. She accepted the violation of her spirit and mind just like the sneering judge wanted.
But sacrifices had to be made in the name of public order. If they let Sheldon go than more vigilantes would swarm the streets, and soon robotic do-gooders like Jenny would be too difficult to control. Crime was necessary for those in power to justify control and oppression. All for the public good, would be the catchphrase, but all knew the truth.
But Brit agreed nonetheless. Besides, that falling Cluster ship must have been the reason Tiff was dead. It was his fault anyway.
If not, oh well, he was used to getting screwed over. After all the flak he took for that robotic little bitch and receiving nothing in return, he was used to being betrayed.
This line of thinking led her to the hospital.
It led her to calling him those names.
It led her to scream his damnation.
She even smirked as the robot girl and her new boyfriend trampled on him one last time.
The deal was done. The judge kept his word and she became the new model of pity for the nation. Her cousin was given hundreds of memorials and Brit herself was showered with condolences and praise for standing up to her "rapist".
In today's case, she had just finished her umpteenth news conference for the day. The news of Sheldon's demise in the Tremorton Hospital explosion had brought a flurry of reporters around asking for her opinion on the matter.
It was exhausting, but it needed to done.
The popularity circus had to go on.
Then she stopped. It was here.
The alleyway at Mezmer's. The nightmares began here.
The grinning wolves. The feel of near violation and then her Silver Paladin appeared.
But now the paladin was gone. She helped destroy him. Now only the ghosts of her old fears remained, waiting in the alley to tear her apart and continue where they left off.
She gazed into the alley, the darkness stared back.
"Sorry baby, looks like you just lost your lifeline!"
"We're just gonna have some fun, right boys?"
"Suck it bitch!"
No….stay back!
She tried to run, only to crash into something solid.
"Watch it you fool!"
"……"
She looked up from the ground, and saw a Skyway patrol uniform. Bunglers.
"I demand you apologize! Don't you know who I am!?"
"I know who you are, Brit. Frankly, that's why I'm here."
That voice, Carbunkle! Well, she wasn't expecting this! Perhaps the red haired zero turned hero was planning on asking her out?
Not her type, but hurting the little blue robitch was enough of an excuse.
Picking herself up she stood with the poise of her familiar, vain self.
"Hmm…what can I do for you, Captain?" She closed the distance in a few steps and began to toy with the collar of his uniform.
He seized her and pulled her into the alley. What is this? Was he going to…?
He slammed her back into the wall.
"What do you know about Sheldon?"
How dare he!
"Let go of me before I scream!"
"Go ahead, I'll give you something to scream about Krust."
That voice….that metallic voice. She was here too?!
Out of the shadows stepped a humorless, robotic form. Jenny Wakeman. Ah yes, the synthetic little hussy who turned her perfect life into a constant struggle against humiliation and shame.
But this time she looked different, sounded different. She laid back on the wall section next to her and turned her head with a slight motorized whir.
"The truth. Now."
Brit spilled her guts. She told them what happened in this alleyway, the meeting with the judge. Even her anger at Tiff's death.
But they were not satisfied. Jenny showed no emotion, but Brad…
"You conniving little bitch!"
POW!
"Brad!"
Jenny restrained her boyfriend after he belted Brit in the stomach. This rage was unlike him. He had seemingly gone mad!
"Let me go Jen! She betrayed Sheldon! She sold him out!"
"Brad! Stop please!"
Brit coughed and wheezed as the blow's effect slowly wore off.
"You betrayed him!"
"Brad!!"
Suddenly a weak voice called out.
"So did you."
The three players in the scene turned towards the shadows, towards the sound.
Enter Tuck Carbunkle, age seven. The boy stood in the alley, his finger pointing like the end of a fencing foil. Accusing them all.
"Go ahead and hit her, Bradley. Beat her into a pulp. Then you can take your medicine too."
Brit rose to her feet. "Now see here, boy."
"Don't speak to my brother that way, you….!"
"Shut up! All of you!"
The three turned again to the angry child who now shook with juvenile, unbound rage.
"All of you had the chance to do the right thing and stand up for him. You didn't. He saved us. He suffered for us. Just as we had done for him, he had done for us. Why was that day so different from all the others? "
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Krust Manor, Tremorton, Present Day
"Traitors! All of you! Whores! Cowards! Opportunistic vultures!"
Words hurt, sting, and burn. These words cut deeper than any before.
They told her that Tiff was dead long before the ship fell. A neutron blast. The Cluster….
The one man that saved her life. The one last bastion of knightly chivalry that she so desperately wanted and dreamt of….
Chivalry was dead. She had been its executioner.
She lay on her bed, her nude form clutching a large body pillow.
"Tiffany. Please help me."
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Daniels Family Estate, Tremorton, Evening
Judge Daniels washed his hands for the fifteenth time that day. So much filth around lately.
There was nothing that Dominic Daniels feared more than contamination. The germs and filth which swirled around outside made him ill. But it was the filth inside average people which really made him wretch.
Disgusting peons. Wealth and power had helped him distance himself from that mess.
The power of the law. The ability to wield the most powerful force in human society.
The power to destroy and cleanse the world of those he deemed 'unfit'.
Growing up in Mississippi, he knew what it felt like to be hated and judged. The Klu Klux Klan and Skin-Heads who wanted to "roast another black boy". The gangs which wanted to break him for "not being black enough".
It was a hard childhood; genius is often never appreciated until it is used to subjugate others.
But the law became the great equalizer. He had cleansed his home state of the bigot plague. He could recall the defeated faces of his tormentors finally facing their own roasting--courtesy of the newly reinstated electric chair. He had broken the gangs, and crushed their operations with a zeal that bordered on fanaticism.
He was a hero. He was a shining model of a man who rose from nothing to make the world a better place.
Bullshit.
All he wanted was a little respect. He gave his all for Jade Winters, only to have her continually brush him off. His only friend, Lance Torqueda…she had chosen him instead.
"Sorry D, but I can't let her go. Please understand." His friend had stabbed him in the heart. After all the hell they had gone through in order to survive, this was his thanks?
Jade was worse. She slapped him in the face. Not literally of course. But with that cold phrase, "Let's be friends."
Friendship? What the hell did she define as "Friendship"? Looking down on a man just because he shows devotion to you? Ignoring the fact that he always stood up for her when those Nazi worshipping pricks tried to hurt her (and nearly getting killed because of it)?
But power changed things.
He gained the popularity he hungered for as a child. The love he desired since his youth was in his grasp.
But most importantly, he got his revenge. He didn't fool himself. He didn't care about what some fat cat on Capitol Hill thought. He didn't give a crap about the impotent, ineffectual legal system which used to let the racist and gang bangers go free. But most of all he couldn't care less about the lesser people around him.
Peons who couldn't appreciate greatness. Fools who couldn't grasp the wondrous gift he had tried to bestow. People like his old friends.
Lance…..poor bastard. He was once such a nice boy. But unfortunately he couldn't convince a jury that he wasn't behind the massive flood of the designer drug , "C.A.G.E", which was now poisoning the streets from both sides of the Masson-Dixon line.
Of course he didn't. He was as innocent as the clear sky. But then again, truth was just another relativistic term anyway. Just another tool in the hands of the artist that was Judge Dominic Daniels.
He appealed the findings again and again. Each one secretly intercepted by a man he thought was trying to protect him! The fool!
But the appeals stopped one day. The same day that Lance was found dead and bleeding in the prison showers.
It truly shocked and disgusted the judge to find out that it only cost him $50 and a carton of cigarettes to have his friend butchered in that forsaken place. But hey, he didn't matter. No one did.
Besides, Jade now ran to him for comfort. Oh yes, poor Dominic! He tried so hard to save his friends! Oh the tragedy! Oh the sorrow! Yes, poor Jade! She lost her fiancée to the evils of crime! Oh the loss! Oh the woe!
Oh….the utter horse shit. She was his now. Her broken heart now sought his in order to find healing. She was putty in his hands. She had manipulated him before. Not consciously of course, but it was still all her fault for making him feel the way he did as a younger man. Now it was her turn.
She became his wife. She bore their son. She died during childbirth.
Strange…in his heart he always hated her, justifying all his actions as simply using her just as she used him. Yet as they lowered her into the earth, her beautiful face, a mix of the best features of her Asiatic and African roots forever sealed behind that metallic box, he felt such sorrow.
But the wound dulled, and power brought him more playthings for both himself and his spawn.
The boy was trouble. Shateed always had a way of testing his father's patience. So it almost came as a relief when he had heard his sun and his idiotic posse were massacred by some vigilante.
Sheldon Lee.
He read the file, and interrogated as many of his peers as he could. He even searched through the wreckage of his house (himself!) in order to find his journal.
This young man was so much like him that it was frightening. Brilliant beyond his years, in love with a woman who he couldn't have, and if the scene at the hospital was any indication, he had also been betrayed by his best friend.
But he was a fool. He fought to make the world a better place. The journal spoke of his desire to punish "sinners", of gaining "penance". All in order to protect people who didn't care about him.
Altruism. What a fool's paradise!
But it looked like he had been spared the final insult. A bomb's burst and it was all over.
But of course, it wasn't over for his friends. No, this situation was far too perfect. The world was in chaos, the Cluster could attack again, and their only salvation, that robot developed by Wakeman, was capable of going on a murderous, malfunctioning rampage!
Such an event could result in the dissolution of all Skyway patrol-related projects and could serve as the final blow against the militaristic police agency. If that were to occur, the courts would have to empower a judge "sensitive" to the situation in Tremorton in order to reorganize the legal system both there and the rest of the surrounding area. Such a judge would have to be above the power of the Supreme Court, answering only to the president himself. After all, there would be no time for all the red tape, results would be needed immediately.
The president was in his pocket, and the decision makers could be manipulated. All he needed was for his little robotic doll to go rogue.
Judge Daniels looked outside his window, towards the graves of his wife and son. Well, the grave of his wife anyway. The boy, he had buried in the Nevada desert, he needed the space for something more important. Hidden six feet below the empty grave to Shateed Daniels was a most fascinating device. A powerful transceiver which had but one function: to fry XJ9's hard drive with a disrupting frequency that would cause her to go berserk. She would do this for about an hour until her electronic brain burned itself into a crisp.
Ah it was too good. He could even have the Carbunkle boy and Dr. Wakeman executed for conspiracy.
Nothing wrong with a little more blood on the slate, after all. Maybe Sheldon could appreciate the company in the netherworld.
As Judge Daniels finished washing the blood off his hands he noted that he would have to thank himself when this was over.
A thud coming from his basement called his attention to his remaining 'guest'. Three girls, a short one with red hair named Pteresa, a tall dark girl named Stephanie, and a cute one named Jantrice, had come to his home in order to present 'evidence' that Sheldon was innocent of two of his crimes.
Apparently, one of them saw Shateed attack the Krust girl, and the three of them witnessed Tiffany Krusts death at the hands of Cluster soldiers! My, what a story!
They asked the judge to help them clear the boy's name and to help Brit cope with her loss. It seems that Pteresa had feelings for the boy. Apparently they dated in some vain attempt to make the robot-girl jealous (what fools). While she could not admit it while he was alive, she had fallen in love with his strange personality and odd charm.
Truth is such a heavy burden to the human spirit, so being the kind civil servant he was he sought to free them of it.
Jantrice reminded him of his late wife. Her eyes and lips warmed his heart again.
That's why…..she would die last.
The Judge's rather thick form cast a large shadow over the struggling, bound teen. The mangled bodies of her friends were laid out like some hideous painting from the collection of the Marquis de Sade.
The two girls had been chained to the wall, and slowly disemboweled. Pteresa called out Sheldon's name as she died. Stephanie called for her hero, Don Prima to save her.
Jantrice froze as the judge cradled her neck.
"It's okay honey. Shhh. I'll make the hurting stop."
A quick stab into the Lumbar Vertebra and death came quickly.
'Peace. I will give them the peace of death. Those that survive, they will give their lives and liberty over to me.'
The judge suddenly gave a start as he felt a warm wetness splash on his pants. So much blood and….oh great, she had voided her bowels as well. He unceremoniously dropped her still bound corpse on the floor and went upstairs again.
So much filth around lately….
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Next Chapter: Hive
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